PACIFIC SUN - April 23, 2015
Peter Coyote reckons with his
life as actor, author, activist, priest, and
soon-to-be Marin expatriate

So, why another book from you? You covered a lot
of ground in your previous one …
Yeah, and especially why another memoir in
particular, right? Well, when I looked back at my
early life more recently, I realized I had been
operating under a world view that was not exactly
accurate—I thought there were just two options—a
world of love or a world of power—and the trick was
to somehow get the mix right. Love without power is
flaccid; power without love is brutal. I had all
these mentors who have taught me about the world,
taught me about navigating the realms of love and
power, and from a conventional point of view I’d say
I did alright—it’s not an exaggeration to say that
for a time I was an international movie star, maybe
not of the first magnitude, but my film
"A Man in Love"
did open the 40th anniversary of the Cannes Film
Festival. But it was wanting.
Luckily, I had grown up in the household of a very
rich man, in which I don’t remember anybody being
happy. So that liberated me from being attached to
the idea that true wealth was going to be material
in nature. At about age 29, I met Gary Snyder, and
he was such an exemplar of an integrated life that I
was floored. I couldn’t figure out at first what the
trick was, how he linked his family life, his
political life, his artistic life, his fame, his
family life—all of it, until I realized that
Buddhism and Buddhist practice was at the core.
Did you start involvement with Buddhism soon
after meeting Snyder?
Not immediately, but maybe five years after I met
Gary I began courting a woman who was living at Zen
Center, whom I subsequently married, and I began
formal Buddhist practice. And I didn’t really stick
to it diligently for a long time, you know. I was
building a career—I didn’t get my Screen Actors
Guild union card until I was 39—and I had a daughter
to get through school, and we had to save for
college, then we had a son. Also, I had chosen a
wife who did not want to live in the back of a
truck, so I put a lot of energy into earning a
living even though it didn’t engage me all that
much.
Do you mean that you really weren’t that into
acting?
It was never my greatest gift. I’m a much better
writer than I am an actor. I might have been a
better actor had I had time to really study, but I
started late and couldn’t take a year off to go to
England, which I would have liked to do. So in some
ways, when I was performing, I always felt a little
naked and exposed. I came to understand that because
of my childhood I had been really traumatized when I
was little and that the way I learned to survive was
by cutting off my feelings, and learning to see
things in a clear observational, unemotional way. It
helped me then, but it’s an impediment to being an
actor because it often took me a long time to figure
out exactly what I was feeling—and knowing what you
are feeling is a prerequisite for a great actor. You
don’t actually have to be smart, but you can’t act
unless you have ready access to your feelings. And I
don’t. It’s not easy for me. Even today when I see a
script where somebody breaks down in tears, more
than half the time I’ll just turn it down. It’s too
much work.
But you must have enjoyed some of it, even though
you stayed in Marin instead of moving south.
I love the camaraderie of acting, the rehearsing,
the problem-solving, but the business of making
films is so noxious and fraught with horseshit and
ignorance. In fairness, either through lack of
talent or age, I could never get to the level I
wanted to get—I was 40 when I began, and it’s a
kid’s game. I could never quite get access to the
great scripts and roles, so by the time I was about
50 my opportunity to be a star with access to them
had run out. I was getting the leavings, and I think
because I wouldn’t live in Hollywood and didn’t have
a publicist and didn’t go to film openings and all
that, I was just not in the central corridor of the
industry. It did bother me sometimes, as I couldn’t
get access to the best stuff, but it didn’t bother
me enough to move to Los Angeles, and live a ‘film’
life. I figured that I really lived much more time
offstage than on and that that was the life I ought
to take the best care of.
Your new book is very much a frank reckoning with
your difficult childhood and youth. Not to be too
therapist-like here, but do you think you were
afraid of really accessing and showing your feelings
in acting because that was just too frightening for
you?
I don’t know if it was threatening, but I didn’t
have any technique to do it. If I couldn’t
intuitively grasp what was being asked of me in a
role, I was in trouble. So I didn’t seek the
challenges as an actor, and every role made me feel
as if I’d just gotten away with it. I was very lucky
they came to me a lot. I’ve done over 140 films for
the screen and TV, but I just never felt fully
engaged as an actor.
But you did achieve fame. What was that like for
you?
You know, I’m vain enough to want to be famous for
something. I wouldn’t mind being famous for being a
good writer. When I won a Pushcart Prize, for
Carla’s Story, I thought, ‘Holy shit, Raymond
Carver, John Updike and Saul Bellow won Pushcarts!
Wow!’ That’s good company, so yes I’m proud of that.
But just because somebody’s seen you on television,
and they elevate you to the pantheon of the
cheeseball celebrities on the cover of tabloids in
the supermarkets? Gag me. Once I was in Spago with
my first wife and we were having a really tough time
and she was openly weeping, and here comes a woman
with a pad and pencil and a big grin, hanging
expectantly over my shoulder indicating she wants an
autograph, and I said to her, ‘Are you f—g crazy?
Can’t you see my wife is in tears? That this is not
a good time?’ Well, that’s no recipe for good
manners or stardom, but people will approach you at
any time and you’re expected to be charming. I had
kids at home and some guy published my home address
in a fan magazine without a thought about the risk
it might cause. So I don’t care about the fame other
than being able to meet who I want to and getting
into a restaurant I want to try, and occasionally
shining a light on an important issue. Other than
that, you can have it.
I recall when you and I were having lunch in
Tiburon years ago, a kid followed us out to our
cars, and asked if he could take your photo, and
then asked, “So, who are you again? I know you are
famous but I don’t know just who you are.” It seemed
a perfect illustration of the emptiness of fame.
There you have it!
You have also had a good career using your voice
for many things, too—that seems a great way to not
be visibly recognized.
Yes, that worked for a long time, but Ken Burns
sorta took that anonymity away and now everybody
recognizes my voice—I joke that he killed my career
as a bank robber. But once Christopher Reeves, rest
his soul, asked me, ‘Peter, how do I break into this
voiceover market?’ And I had to say, ‘Well I’ll tell
ya, Chris, as soon as you tell me how to break into
the multi-million dollar salary racket!’ I mean, how
much does anybody need? Why not leave something for
all the guys like me who are not making big money as
an actor and have tuition, mortgages and bills to
pay?
“How much do you need?” seems a crucial question
nowadays.
Indeed. For me, I am actively lowering my lifestyle
right now. I make about 20 percent of what I used to
make. I got rid of my fancy car and drive a Chevy
Volt; I’m buying a house with half the proceeds of
what I sold my Mill Valley house for. The new place
will need some work on it and I will have to work
myself for that, but I don’t mind working for
something specific. I just don’t want to work when I
don’t have to anymore. My kids graduated debt free
and are doing well. I’m 73 years old. It goes by
very fast, let me tell you.
I already agree. Back to your book—your father
was a powerful but distant guy, your mom seems to
have been fragile, and it reads like you were
looking for other parents, other family for a long
time—and that your childhood had a big impact on
your marriages and relationships with women.
When I was a little kid, my mom had a nervous
breakdown and she was a ghost for a couple of years,
and I think it triggered this little ‘make the mommy
feel better’ gland. And it’s so convenient, to
always be helping others. It makes you feel needed,
powerful even, and you don’t have to worry about
your own problems. I’ve given that up. It only took
50 years. There was nothing truly wrong with the
women in my life; it was more my feeling that I was
somehow responsible for their suffering or helping
them.
You also wrote that your need for lots of
solitude also made relationships hard for you.
I think my wives could never really grasp what a
hermetic person I am. When I was working on this
book, one day my wife said, ‘You’re just hiding out
from life.’ True, I’d go to my office all day every
day, and swim around in my thoughts and memories to
write. But getting this book out was like crapping a
porcupine.
You wrote that reading—a solitary pursuit— has
always been crucial to you.
Yes, when I was in 4th grade, I went to a lovely
little school called the Elizabeth Morrow School in
Englewood, New Jersey, and my desk was back in the
far left corner next to a bookshelf of little orange
books that must have run 15 feet—biographies of
famous people mostly—and I resolved to read them
all. Then there was a series called the Landmark
Books, and I read them all. Then the Oz books and I
read all those, too. Then Lad of Sunnybrook Farm,
and the Black Beauty series, and I never stopped. I
think what I found in books was a freedom in my
imagination that I could not find in my physical
life. My parents were hyper-vigilant, always worried
about me. My mom worshiped Sigmund Freud and got
everybody in the family but herself into analysis.
She was always scanning me for potential problems or
telling me what I was really thinking and feeling
and it made me very angry. She sent me to therapy
when I was 11 and one day the therapist asked me,
‘Why are you here?’ and I said, ‘Well, I do this,
and this, and this,’ and ran down a litany of
complaints that my parents complained about. And he
said, ‘Yeah? And who is that a problem for?’ and I
said, ‘Well, it’s a problem for my parents,’ and he
said, ‘OK, you go home and send your parents in to
see me!’
Sometimes it takes many years to get some
perspective on those childhood family influences …
Just last fall, I was visiting a wonderful therapist
I check in with once in awhile just to touch base
and he said to me, ‘You do know your parents were
crazy, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Oh sure, yeah …’ And
he said, ‘No—your parents were crazy, certifiable.
It was as if God asked himself, ‘How can I give this
boy the toughest adolescence possible?’—because
that’s what you had.’ And I felt this strange sense
of relief, as if my life had been seen.
You really do lay yourself bare in this book.
Why write otherwise? I think that as long as you
don’t take cheap shots, especially against those who
can’t answer back, you should tell the truth. And,
like in acting, if you are really specific and
honest, some elements become universal in a funny
way.
You write movingly of your mother’s death, in a
hospital, and how a nurse offered in a crudely timed
manner to “help” her die sooner. It’s a striking
story, as this issue of “assisted dying” is in the
news right now, with possible legalization in
California coming. Any thoughts on that?
I think you have to begin with the observation that
everything has a ‘shadow’—so while I agree with the
concept, there will be people who may take advantage
of this in certain ways—let’s save the estate by
getting mommy gone a little earlier, and so forth.
But it comes down to the question of whether or not
a person has the right to control their manner and
time of their death. If you ask me as a Buddhist
teacher, I am categorically against suicide. But the
world is not my student and that is just my opinion.
So if somebody is wracked by pain and there is no
way out, they are not going to get better, and they
choose to start over or—as the Dalai Lama once said,
‘Change their clothes,’ I don’t think it’s my
business. It’s like abortion—I don’t have a womb,
and so I stay out of the debate, except to support
the right of women to make their own choices. Some
women would think nothing of sacrificing a son to
the military in a fruitless war, but would never
consider an abortion for any reason. That’s curious
to me. Of course there would need to be safeguards
in place and all that, but nothing will ever be
foolproof and we have to accept the errors along
with the choice. Which is why I’m against the death
penalty.
You were close to Robin Williams. Any thoughts on
his dying?
I wrote a piece online that went viral, about
Robin’s great gift. Likening it to a thoroughbred
horse of near magical ability. The problem was that
it was never adequately trained. Sometimes he would
get on it and it would take him (and us) into
magical dimensions, but at other times it took Robin
where it wanted to go. That was the great tragedy
for me, that his greatest gift actually killed him.
Had he had some sort of spiritual training, he might
have been able to wait out the bad period he was
going through, but he was always in the saddle, and
this trip took him over a wall with nothing on the
other side.
In your first book you wrote at length about your
role in the Diggers, prototypes for the whole
Haight-Ashbury ’60s scene. Are you still in touch
with any of them?
Certainly. In fact, just last year I called all the
surviving Diggers and Free Family folks together—108
of them. I wanted to organize a relief effort to
help some of our members who were old and poor—about
six of them. I tried first on the Digger website,
asking people to why not list their skills—if I need
a lawyer or plumber, why not a Digger lawyer or
plumber? And people got really indignant and angry
with me for dealing with money. Even old and very
dear friends I really respect. I tried to point out
that if we were candid, the Diggers were like an art
project—we were never the model of a viable
alternative economy. We were living off welfare
payments to mothers with children, selling dope,
bartering, doing all sort of things including
thievery.
So I decided that I was not going to fight my oldest
friends, and I apologized, saying that I understood
that this had become sort of a religion and
apologized for being insensitive. I started a new
site called the Free Family Union, and virtually
everyone came over. So one thing I learned is that
everybody has their own reasons for joining a group,
and they may not see it the way you do even if you
started it. Most everyone in this group now lived in
the world, made money, paid taxes, but they had this
idealized memory of the Diggers as a place of
purity. It’s a common delusion that there’s some
other world other than this one with all its warts
and angels where we can live. Well, my Buddhist
practice has informed me that there is no pure place
outside of the world to stand—the world is exactly
what it is, and if you can’t find your happiness and
joy in this world, with ISIS, with Hitler, with
Mother Teresa all mixed up in it, you’ll never find
it. What a shame, to pass up the opportunity for joy
because it feels trivial or inadequate next to the
suffering of others—who are searching for joy, by
the way. So once the new group got rolling, I backed
out a little—and this goes back to another downside
of “fame”—that you become a touchstone for people’s
projections and ideas of you. They still come to me
either overly deferential, or as if they perceive me
thinking that I am a big deal and it is their job to
take me down. It smothers you in thoughts and can
get tiresome. So I find things work really well
without me, and I just participate like anybody else
when I feel like it. And we are supporting six
people, giving them each about $200 a month. It’s a
big bump of grace to people living solely on Social
Security, and I wish we could do more.
On a broader level, how about the whole ’60s
idealism, what it all might have meant in the longer
term? I mean, the “revolution” did not happen, but
some lasting impacts seem to have occurred …
That’s right. In the ’60s, you could say we lost
every political battle. We didn’t end capitalism,
racism, war, violence, we didn’t create a world of
love and peace, and we just have to accept that.
But, it’s also true that we won every cultural
battle. There’s no place in the U.S. today where
there is not a women’s movement, an environmental
movement, civil rights, and so on. Paul Hawken, in
his book Blessed Unrest, pointed out that if you
aggregate all these little or big individual
struggles, it’s the largest mass movement in the
history of the planet. There’s also no place you can
go where there are not alternative spiritual
practices—yoga, Buddhism, organic or slow or local
food are spreading—these things exist in the realm
of culture and that realm is much deeper than
politics. And when people have lives that are
meaningful to them they will hold and defend them.
Back then, the Diggers couldn’t believe people would
throw themselves onto the barricades to become part
of Marx’s lumpen proletariat, but today I’m watching
farmers in Nebraska fighting for their water,
watching people fighting to keep big-box stores out
of their towns, to stop fracking, all over the
country. So we were cultural warriors, and I take a
lot of pride in the changes we started. It’s not the
end of the battle by far—this generation and others
will have their own struggles, but we played for
keeps, gambled everything, and we moved the marker
an appreciable amount.
Perhaps the most visible mark of that is a black
president, something unimaginable not so long ago.
Yes, and yet there is still a huge population who
cannot stand the thought of a ‘N—r in the White
House.’ He gets a huge number of threats every day.
People with guns stalked around his early speeches.
What do you imagine might have happened if the Black
Panthers had shown up armed to a Reagan speech? It
would have been a bloodbath. Anyway, he might not be
the black president I might have wanted, but I
admire him, and I’m not in the hot seat with him and
so I temper my judgments a bit because I remember my
days on the Arts Council and some of the flak you
get for anything you do. That’s not a pass by any
means, but … that’s a whole other subject.
Drugs were a big part of the ’60s, and of your
own life. Any lessons there?
I was addicted to just about everything. We made a
lot of mistakes there. But I can remember
superficially how and why so many of us got into
hard drugs. If you’ve taken on the charge of
imagining a new world and acting it all out, one
thing you have to demand of yourself is, ‘Suppose my
imagination has actually already been tamed,
colonized, and all my grand visions and plans are
simply permitted within the parameter of a bigger
field that just appears to be liberated, but is
still inside the fence of the majority culture’s
values?’ That was a very scary thought. So one of
the ways you could test yourself was to take
substances—speed, heroin, cocaine, acid, DMT and
STP—substances the establishment was terrified of.
And of course when you do that in your 20s you have
no idea of the toll it will take on your body and
health. Acid was different, though. Everybody I knew
who took acid took it as a kind of spiritual
pilgrimage. What we never anticipated was that the
next generation would take it to trip at the mall
and that it would become a spreading, indulgent,
sensual party, stripped of spiritual dimensions.
There has never been a drug law in this country,
since the Civil War morphine laws, that has not been
based on bullshit. Every one of these ‘expert
panels’ convened to study the subject, from
LaGuardia through Nixon and Kennedy have said,
‘Forget the drug war,’ decriminalize it, help people
kick or give them maintenance doses so they can
contribute to society. Even the drug pushers want
the ‘risk premium’ that raises the prices of drugs
due to their illegality.
Music was another huge part of those times, and
you write about being very into playing and
listening from a very early age. Years back I heard
you do a whole set of what you called “country death
rock” at the old Sweetwater. Are you still playing?
Music is a huge part of my life. I’d probably
believe in God if I’d only been given the talent to
be a professional musician. I was playing guitar for
two hours today before I came to meet you! But it’s
not my gift. We had a six-bed bunkhouse in the Olema
commune and musicians would come out and stay, like
Paul Butterfield and Michael Bloomfield, and we’d
stay high and play music for days. And in the book I
recall hearing sax greats Al Cohn and Zoot Sims
playing in my house, and it was the first time I’d
seen grown-up people having so much fun.
Your book starts and ends with you in Zen
sesshins—extended, intense meditation retreats—some
40 years apart, at Green Gulch. In the latter, the
more recent one, you relate a profound experience, a
sort of breakthrough as it seems. But you don’t name
it.
Yeah, the Japanese call it a ‘kensho’ experience,
but right, I didn’t want to name it. When I started
out in Zen, that was the thing to strive for, and if
I could get that, I thought I’d never be
uncomfortable, awkward —I’d be enlightened, the
coolest guy in the room. Somewhere along the line
that notion falls away, and you realize that if you
have an idea of yourself over here and enlightenment
over there and they are separate, they are never
going to come together. The truth according to the
Buddha, is that we are all enlightened, that it is
our basic nature, but we don’t or can’t pay
attention to it, or even believe in it. So the
second thing that happens when you have an
experience like that is that you understand that it
is not so important after all. Nobody really cares
about my personal experience. What they might care
about is how I live my life—am I kind,
compassionate, helpful, vigorous, wise? And if I’m
not, what difference does my personal enlightenment
really make? I wondered if I might get some blowback
or distort the meaning of the experience by
describing it, but I discussed it with my Zen
teacher, and he said, ‘Sure, include it.’ But more
important is what he first said when I reported it
to him, which was, ‘Don’t try to hold onto it!’
What did the actual process of taking vows and
becoming a priest entail for you?
First, I would never put myself forth as a teacher
of any kind, because I could never think of how to
do it without my stepping forward becoming an
expression of ego. One of the reasons I became a Zen
Buddhist was because of the custom of
‘transmission’—that you don’t teach independently
until you are given permission to teach by your
teacher and by the students you have been practicing
with. And that saves you from being one of the guys
who just show up and announce that they are gurus,
set out their shingle. A lot of abuses stem from
that. So at a certain point my teacher told me it
was time to start teaching, and when I demurred that
I was not ready, he said, ‘There are people behind
you who you can help, and others you can learn
from.’ And he and four other teachers had
established a three-year priest’s training program,
kind of like a divinity school, to try to train
priests to be alert to some of the hazards that
arise when you are in a position of
authority—transference, countertransference, women
being attracted to you, financial improprieties and
so on. I told him I didn’t want to be a priest but
would take the class since he asked me to. And I was
so impressed by the caliber of the other 40 or so
people in it, I followed through.
Being ordained is kind of like having a Ph.D.—you
don’t have to use it, but it is a kind of
accreditation. I wanted to step up my game, so I
ordained as a priest, and now I’m studying to
receive transmission from my teacher. I’m not sure
I’ll even use the term ‘teacher.’ My old friend Dan
Welch, one of the first students of Suzuki Roshi
[founder of the San Francisco Zen Center] uses the
term ‘Dharma Friend’ and I probably will too, to
sidestep these traps and props of hierarchy and
status, all of which are very Asian, and Japanese,
and not all of which are helpful. I’m not overly
enamored of classical Japanese Buddhism, which is
what Suzuki Roshi was seeking to escape by coming to
America. My intention is to help make Zen vernacular
here, eventually less exotic, something that would
make sense to garage mechanics and ranch hands. My
teacher and I refer to it as the ‘thousand year
project.’ So, I only wear my robes for very formal
ceremonies like weddings and funerals, and haven’t
shaved my head, as most Buddhists in the world do.
Speaking of time, you’ve lived in Marin for many
years. But now you are moving. Why?
Yes, I am moving to Sonoma County. I’ve had it with
Mill Valley. It’s become so crowded, so much
traffic, and so little responsibility has been
devoted to the carrying capacity of the area. We are
seriously overpopulated just with respect to water.
As far as I’m concerned, every successive group of
supervisors and commissioners have been bought off
by developers. I saw some of that with my own eyes.
I first came here in 1965, and loved it, and then
moved to Zen Center in the city. I returned in 1983,
as my daughter was getting mugged for her lunch
money in the Fillmore.
Twenty-five years ago I participated in a series of
meetings called ‘Take Back Our Town.’ Over 700
people showed up, and we wanted to use water as the
basis of determining population. Wanted to cut down
traffic. We even ran people for office, but the
developers outspent us six to one, and have been
building ever since.
Now traffic has reached critical mass, IT money is
coming in and bidding houses for hundreds of
thousands over asking price, all cash. It feels like
the town is filling with people who ruined and fled
the last place they lived. I walk on the marsh path
with a plastic bag picking up organic yogurt cups
and Kleenex and all sorts of trash our newly
enlightened denizens fling away at will. I’ve seen
people in Whole Foods yelling at a young mother for
being too slow to move her cart due to trying to
corral two children, and so many times people
honking and screaming at one another in their cars
for no reason—IN MILL VALLEY! Well, they’re all
stressed because it takes so much money and so much
work to live here. Couple that with the entitlement
that dictates that we are entitled to the best of
everything and you have a toxic broth in a
paradisiacal setting. I have friends here who are
not that, but we are like the proverbial frogs in
the water that is being heated slowly. Meanwhile I
am spending too much time in traffic, and it’s
maddening. The water issues will only get worse.
I feel I’ve spent 40 years fighting for this great
place, trying to preserve it, and I’m going to spend
what is likely my last vigorous decade not fighting
anymore, perhaps helping others, and leave before I
get cooked.


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