FEAR Sucks!

Why are so many people running away from things that aren’t chasing them? 

– from the back cover

An exile for 50 years from the land where he has served as spiritual and temporal leader for many lifetimes, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet said in a recent interview that “Wherever you find happiness, that’s your home.” 

Doug “Ten” Rose can surely relate. After 35 years of hitchhiking around the US, Ten recognizes more fully than many of us that happiness – and home – is not a moving target after all. Ten chronicles his astounding journey, on both inner and outer levels, in his new book Fearless Puppy on American Road. 

Ten ran away from his parent’s house in New York City at the age of 15, never to return. He encounters more than his share of miracles, menace, insanity and illumination in his long, mostly homeless travels. A mostly chronological series of colorful vignettes woven together with spiritual insights and personal musings, this self-published autobiography and “pretty much true story” is fiercely honest and humble. Devoid of literary pretense, it’s also graphic, manic and not meant for children. 

Every once in awhile a book comes along that nudges our consciousness beyond any semblance of its comfort zone. In reading it we’re transformed… or maybe just opened up to a transformation that’s been lying in wait for us all along. Many folks will be whomped by transformation somewhere on their journey through Fearless Puppy. 

Perhaps this disclaimer from the book’s back cover says it best:

If you put the writings of Kerouac, Chopra, Hunter S. Thompson, Castaneda, Black Elk, Will Rogers, Gandhi, and a clown in a blender with 500 lbs. of additional hallucinogens and a time machine, you would have the writings of Doug Rose.

The Fearless Puppy Project

But there’s more to this story than just the words. In fact, Fearless Puppy isn’t only a book in the first place – it’s a project. Once the minimal publication costs (borrowed from a friend) are recouped, all proceeds from the book will be used to create Westerner-friendly guesthouses adjacent to Buddhist monasteries in Asia. These lodgings will not only help support the monks and nuns, but also give Westerners access to vital teachings from these “wisdom professionals” and the more self-responsible, sustainable cultures in which they live and practice. Indigenous elders, shamans, mystics and other spiritual teachers will eventually be part of the project also. For more information visit the Fearless Puppy Project website at www.fearlesspuppy.org. 

Ten’s inspiration

Ten knows first-hand how vital the Buddhist teachings can be. A former drug dealer who dropped more than 500 hits of acid before he was 30, Rose has spent time in jails and psychiatric hospitals and has chronically abused both alcohol and heroin. 

With his life swirling down the tubes several years ago, Ten made his way to a monastery in Thailand where he lived and healed for six months. The monks spoke almost no English and Ten spoke essentially no Thai. Yet he was welcomed, adopted and told to “make himself comfortable” with nothing asked in return. “It took me awhile to realize that the intended emphasis wasn’t on ‘making myself comfortable’ but on making myself comfortable… with myself,” Ten explained. 

While at the monastery Ten began to write about his experiences there. In conversations with the abbot he hatched plans for the Fearless Puppy project. Finding one’s own, authentic teacher is a gentle yet recurring theme in Fearless Puppy. Buddhism for Ten has been literally a saving grace, and a source of stability in a life with few reference points. 

The Temple Dog Soldier trilogy

But wait: the Fearless Puppy project involves more than one book. It’s actually Book 1 of a trilogy. What turns out to be Book 2 (to be titled Temple Dog Soldier) is the one Ten started writing in Thailand. It was only after he got back to the US that Ten finally began working on the book his friends had been cajoling him to write for years, about life on the road. “I realized that one had to come first,” explained Ten.

And Book 3? That will mostly be about Ten’s philanthropic adventures distributing and working with the money he’ll raise from the sale of the first two books. With more than a few ribald anecdotes and insightful observations thrown in, no doubt. 

A Conversation with the Author

Reading Fearless Puppy with its conversational verve, you can’t help but feel like you’ve hung out with this remarkable man. So why not phone him up for a chat? 

That proved mildly challenging as Ten (short for Tenzin Karma Trinley, a name he received from a high Tibetan Buddhist lama) has no phone. Nor does he have a bank account, credit card or permanent address. But he does have e-mail and a PennyTalk card. And so it was that eventually he tracked me down from a payphone in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. 

Ten had spent the winter in Truth or Consequences finalizing on Book 2 in the trilogy and taking daily therapeutic soaks in the local hot springs. Though he’s been homeless most of his 57 years and has never driven a car, Ten is semi-retired from the physical demands of full-time hitchhiking. “I can’t lug a big heavy duffle bag around like I used to,” he mused. Brattleboro, Vermont is the closest thing Ten has to a home, and he plans to spend the summer there. He’ll be taking the bus back East. 

Asked about his motivation to undertake the Fearless Puppy project he replied: “I’m doing this to support the wisdom professionals, and writing was the best way I could think of to raise money. We need to create more wise people. There are still far too many stupid people out there doing stupid things to themselves, each other and the planet. Not that I have any illusions that I can save the world. I just want to do what I can. It’s our individual responsibility to create change from within as well as without. Each of us must do that work for ourselves. No one can do it for us.” 

Ten drew my attention to the Tibetan expression quoted in Fearless Puppy’s front matter, which he first heard spoken by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and which inspired the book’s title:

Though that person may have low and humble social status, like that of a dog, yet he or she takes great responsibility.

Ten’s goal, which is another major theme in Fearless Puppy, is to keep himself and others moving “more toward the positive, toward how we innately actually want to live. The problem is we get caught in fear. Greed, hatred, anxiety – it’s all fear, and we’re served a heapin’ helpin’ of it every hour of the day by our TVs. I hope my book can help counteract that, whether any guesthouses ever get built or not.” 

Ten went on to describe how the laborious editing of the book, as well as the development of the project’s excellent website, were the work of a Cherokee woman who Ten has never met and who has never accepted any money for her thousands of hours of work. Ten seems prone to encountering, and inspiring, that kind of support. 

A growing buzz on the Internet shows that some people who’ve encountered Fearless Puppy consider it a work of major significance. But Ten is growing impatient with stealth marketing and the gradually expanding social media snowball. He’s looking for new ways to promote the project, such as sending copies of the book to influential celebrities like Richard Gere. 

Not that Ten is new to the world of grassroots fundraising. He’s spent much of his time over the years supporting various causes while accepting nothing for himself. Among many efforts he was a door-to-door canvasser for Greenpeace and in 1985 organized “Massachusetts for Africa Month,” a statewide campaign that raised thousands of dollars for famine relief and earned him praise from Senator John Kerry from the floor of the US House of Representatives. 

As we were saying goodbye, with the hope of meeting in person someday, Ten said I was the only interviewer who hadn’t ask whether the events in his book were true. 

“I believe!” was my reply. 

Getting your copy

You can purchase Fearless Puppy on American Road on Amazon.com and at a number of participating retail establishments across America. However, you’ll get maximum charitable impact by buying it with PayPal from the Fearless Puppy Project website at: 

http://www.fearlesspuppy.org/m_purchase.htm

Get your copy, find a comfortable spot and hit the American road. May the experience benefit you and all beings. 

Scott Cronenweth is a freelance writer, naturalist and shamanic healer based in South Portland, Maine. Among his various service projects Scott is the communications director for the Siddhartha School Project (www.siddharthaschool.org), a non-profit that raises funds for a school in northern India, with the goal of supporting Tibetan Buddhist culture and ethics. Please visit Scott’s website at www.gotbuddhanature.com.