Dolores Park

Paperback: HiT MoteL Press, April 2001, 1st Edtion
508 pages. Paperback ISBN  0-9655842-3-2
Ebook: HiT MoteL Press, 2008, 2nd Edition.

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See the other books in this sextet HiT MoteL Press.

Summary

This novel is the third volume of the My Years of Apprenticeship at Love sextet which follows the main character Walker for about 20 years. It shows him back living in Berkeley and joining a tantric buddhist commune in San Franciso. When Walker Underwood left Texas he was escaping oppression and seeking a more loving and spiritual home where he could live closer to the heart of his own creative nature. In San Francisco he fell in love with a beautiful woman who belonged to a Tantric Buddhist commune.

Following in romantic pursuit, we are brought through shifting points of view into the lives and struggles of the people of the commune and the Group Mind at the center of Tantric Buddhist spiritual practices.

Such was the impact of this experience confronting his ego defenses and indeed his whole world view that Walker chose to say yes to the call and go into the Sangha of Dorje Chang community. Find with him a terrific sense of self-acceptance from him and toward him as he finally "comes home".

Dolores Park records the poignant year that began in the fall of 1982, when the nuclear freeze initiative was gaining momentum, and the AIDs epidemic was just starting to surface. A precious time of inner renewal and sexual self-discovery.

Here are recounted the philosophical assault and resulting ego death one encounters when pursuing enlightenment through group marriage.

With humor, Walker describes how the experiences changed his attitudes, salvaged his sexual life and enriched his spiritual life.

Rich in psychological insight, flowing with lyrical beauty, and depicting the sadness at the heart of all attempts to live an authentic feeling life, Dolores Park invites the reader to join this hapless southern writer on his journey to a deeper understanding of the divine and the human community. Published 2001

Table of Contents

Individual Romance
. 1  Dahlia ........................................................................... 1
. 2  Home ............................................................................ 7
. 3  Group Wedding Portrait ............................................. 16
. 4  The Van man’s hope as electron in a circuit ............... 30
. 5  The Love Poem .......................................................... 41
. 6  Porpoises at the Drip-Dry Lounge ............................. 49
. 7  Zapped ........................................................................ 57
. 8  The Strawboss of Skillful Means ............................... 62
. 9  A Night to Remember ................................................ 85
. 10  Love Torqued on His Thoughts ................................ 107
. 11  Nuclear Dread Oroborous Transcending ................. 118
Group Mind
. 12  Kalachakra Initiation and the Dakini ....................... 139
. 13  Diary of a Commune Nympho ................................. 146
. 14  Tantric Sex Secrets ................................................... 157
. 15  Tara the Bodhisatva of Compassion Rising ............. 170
. 16  Group Shower Authority .......................................... 179
. 17  The Husbands of Acid House .................................. 183
. 18  The Ineluctable Reluctance of Permeability ............ 192
. 19  Keepers of the Flame ............................................... 198
. 20  Make love as if it is the last time ............................. 201
. 21  A Chiascuro of Jealousy Moving ............................. 209
. 22  The Things We Need to Do for Love ....................... 214
. 23  Egodeath .................................................................. 217
. 24  Jade, Cool as Green Ice ............................................ 232
. 25  Memories like Blossoms on a Stream ...................... 236
. 26  First Time Again ...................................................... 242
. 27  Looming toward a Phantom Love High ................... 246
. 28  Sisters and Brothers; Wives and Husbands .............. 249
. 29  The Genius of Love Tries out her new Body ........... 255
. 30  Feeling 18 when you are Thirtysomething .............. 264
Group Marriage
. 31  Tommy Boy, Wyoming and Scott ............................ 273
. 32  Nimrod ..................................................................... 277
. 33  Wolf Eyes ................................................................. 282
. 34  A Tibetan Funeral in America .................................. 291
. 35  The Analyst at Work ................................................. 315
. 36  Deconstructing Sutra ................................................ 339
. 37  Wooing the Wild Tantrika Feminine ........................ 364
. 38  Night Movie in the Long Body of a Dream ............. 372
. 39  A Recidivist at the Court of Love ............................ 393
. 40  Thought Forms ......................................................... 395
. 41  In a San Francisco Bath-House, 1983 ...................... 398
. 42  Ring Around the Rosy .............................................. 408
. 43  Stonewalling the Brute ............................................. 412
. 44  The Unconscious Group .......................................... 422
. 45  Trust and the Trans-parent Self ................................ 425
. 46  Mr. Nice Guy ........................................................... 432
. 47  Book of Matches ...................................................... 437
. 48  Feeling / Defending .................................................. 438
. 49  Like Two Carnivorous Waterbeds ............................ 452
. 50  Reconstructing Sutra ................................................ 454
. 51  A Gardener in the City ............................................. 473
. 52  Dolores Park ............................................................. 479

The book has three sections called gates.

From the Author

It was great to get back to Berkeley and fall in with old friends at the Amphictionic theatre. To escape Texas, hopefully forever. Ah Berkeley with its California aesthetic of the physical and the zen, with its northwest forest eco poetic, its neo-Reichian body work, its primal scream therapy its whole foods (which did start in Austin).
I was living in my VW van with my sweet pit bull Sunshine. I could sleep at the Marina with the back gate up in the glow of the golden gate.
Then at a solo theatre performance in Fort Mason I met this woman who it turned out lived in a sangha. It turned out to be a tantric buddhist commune. The way they lived together, all in one big room with a loft in the penthouse of a building on Mission St, the way they divided up work and cooking vegetarian cuisine and responsibility for child care, the way they talked to each other individually and in groups was the most intimate thing I had ever seen. It was the radical edge of the counter culture and they made it work. I had to be with them. Dolores Park is that story of how I learned about buddhism and tantric sex and my own psychology. I think there is enough detail in this book to be a blueprint for such a utopian community.
The person who started the sangha was a psychologist from New York and he wrote beautiful essays and cogent analysis reports. He ran the group like a kind of graduate school and indeed many of the participants went on to become therapists. He was the first person I have seen to write about the internal lights some call chakras.
The experience allowed me to introduce myself to mystical literature of the east especially the Tibetan Book of the Dead. (So good to have Jung as a guide to this literature.) We did a lot of meditation often with beautiful chanting sound work. There were “yogas”, practices one was required to engage in, exercises to confront psychological blocks; chanting was amazing to confront fear. It made sex spiritual.

Images on back cover