From an Oregon Shore

November 25, 2008 at 2:01 am (Thoughts, Trips)
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I apologize for the delay; I have been busy enjoying life. Even here in America that’s possible. I went on a trip to the coast last week with my parents; we went South to take advantage of the nice weather and it really was beautiful for anywhere. I also had my first experience meditating near the ocean. On the first night we got a condo complete with fireplace and kitchen. The biggest draw was the grand balocony that sprawled in front of the bay with a postcard perfect view of an old bridge and hundreds of sailboats, similar to the dock at La Rochelle except without the castle. I sat out there in the cool of the evening on a yoga mat and immediately I was transported into utter awareness of the peace and calm nature of my mind. The still crisp air kept me anchored in the moment unable to float into the troubling sea of my thoughts. There is definitely something special about peacefully abiding in this place than some other. I suppose with practice it would be this easy even in a samsaric ghetto in Washington DC. 

Just three short days hitting all my favourite places on this coast: The hippy shops of Newport Bay, the best clam chowder in Depoe Bay and dodging the viciously rough waves as they tumble the rocky beach of Yachats. I even got to attend a tea workshop and learned about what they predict to be the latest drink craze: Pu-erh tea. They explained all about the province of the Yunnan where all the tea plantations are that make this extra intense yet medicinally potent green brew. It comes from the very south of China right near the juncture of Laos and Myanmar, so close to where I was situated just over a month and so many miles ago.

Now I’m wondering if I should venture back and go to China. So many fascinating things emanate from that place. But, at the same time maybe I should just stop planning and reside peacefully where ever I happen to be. I’m kind of confused right now and finding it difficult to be in the moment when the future is so uncertain. Also, every movement I make seems to have such monumental consequences. Could my soulmate be waiting for me in this or that country or am I going to become someone great if I stayed here or would I miss out on further developing myself if I didn’t go over there? So many questions and uncertainties puzzle me and I suppose this is all part of the journey.

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Transcending Time To Find Phantoms All Around

October 31, 2008 at 8:13 am (Thoughts)
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Since it is Halloween I’m going to tell you a true tale that happened not long ago. Travel with me down a deserted country road in the darkest part of night. There’s no lights anywhere except for your own lonely head lights, which don’t seem to do much good. You get lost as I often do and find yourself turning around in front of some little country house with a morbid collection of dolls standing like grave-heads in the lawn. As you try not to look to closely into the encroaching shadows you turn around and feel a deep dread in your stomach that if you were to stop, something hideous would climb from somewhere under your car and strike at you through the glass. That thin layer separating you from all your deepest fears that lie out there, temporarily shielded from your carefully protected reality. And as you continue on down the road going the opposite direction quickly blinking and trying anything to keep from dozing off you wander if there’s any way you’re going to make it to your destination, which seems endlessly out of reach. You stop at a flashing red light and what you took for a roadside hedge suddenly comes racing at you and the fear of death seizes you as you enter into your own real life horror.

But, this isn’t the point of the story. Actually, whether we live another day or are dashed to pieces like Paris Hilton in The House of Wax, does that really separate the hero from the rest of us poor doomed victims? I guess what really matters is what we’ve done with our lives. As anyone who has come back from being clinically dead will tell you; there is much more meaning to this life than what we gather from these “gateways to night and day” (the eyes) and “the whirling wheels” (the ears). 

What is real anyway? Can you say something is real life and something else is not? Yesterday I was working on the computer until about four in the morning and then I went up to my room and like I usually do, turned on the heater and sat in front of it in swastikasana and began my nightly meditation. It was one of those few moments when it was so easy. My conscious mind just melted away into the bright light of the machine and I could feel with awe the strength and perfection of my essence, my buddha nature. I was aware. And some thoughts did come but they seemed foreign and I realized they were not me and they just smashed to bits screeching just as they had come. I became aware of how insanely repetitive the monkey mind really is. I meditated on the true essence of mind. The concepts of time and space seemed far removed. Sometimes I feel like there are beings moving around me when I’m sitting. Once I felt the hindu deities gathered about me, and one of them, perhaps it was Krishna stroking my hair. This time I felt someone brush past me and like there was all this activity and commotion happening all around me, but I was still, but I could participate if I wanted to. I knew this was not in the present era. Was this another dimension? I even heard noises that couldn’t have come from the sleeping house. If, as in some traditions, time is just a human construct and the past, present and future lie on one single continuum, then what is separating us from the past people and things that once shared this same space? If, indeed, all of these notions are just illusions, then it is only our own perceptions preventing us from being in other times, places and with other beings, etc. This whole notion of being different and of otherness is false and like a vase containing my own inner world away from the outer one. I found it close to breaking, cracking and just letting everything collide, come what may.

I wonder, is time travel really necessary or do we constantly have access to a transport vessel if we only learn how to utilize our minds? 

If the elephant of mind is bound on all sides by the cord of mindfulness,

All fear disappears and complete happiness comes.

All enemies: all the tigers, lions, elephants, bears, serpents

And all the keepers of hell; the demons and the horrors,

All of these are bound by the mastery of your mind,

And by the taming of that one mind, all are subdued,

Because from the mind are derived all fears and immeasurable sorrows.

~ Shantideva

Happy Day of the Dead!

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Ten things to learn from Asia

October 24, 2008 at 12:45 am (Uncategorized)
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I went to Asia with the desire to learn from the culture. As simple as that. I had a sneaking suspicion that there was something missing in the sleek “we are the world” western package I had been purchasing all my life. So here it is, a list in no particular order of some of what I consider the most important things I learned over these nine months in India and Southeast Asia.

Spiritually:

1-Yoga – I studied for about two months total both in Rishikesh, India and Chiang Mai, Thailand. I discovered how life-enhancing yoga is and why the west is becoming obsessed with this long practiced simultaneous excercise of body and mind. My favourite asanas (postures) are the head stand and padastasana (touching your toes) and doing surja namaskar twelve times during sunset has also proven rejuvenating.

2-You cannot convince someone who isn’t ready. Each person will realize the truth eventually in their own time: The words of my herbal guru in northern Thailand. I have difficulty realizing this because I want so much for people to realize the pure joy I have found. But I guess teaching by example is the best method.

3-Meditation – I cannot extoll too much the virtues of meditation in every aspect, and when I found out it was used to treat even the most serious diseases like HIV and cancer, well you can’t argue against it.

“Sit, then as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that batter it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar.” – Sogyal Rinpoche from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Practically:

4-How to cook a decent Thai dish. Taking a cooking course individually with a Thai lady was one of the most practical things I did. I’m able to cook an array of healthful tasty foods like pad thai, tom yum, green curry, etc. Atleast I can work on American’s waistlines if I can’t alter their mindset.

5-Giving a Thai Massage. I took an intensive two week course and also learned from my guru some useful “lazy yoga” techniques and practice my Indian head massage. Massage is really almost a magical art like meditation bringing you into another state of mind.

6-Raising a baby. Ok, I didn’t have a baby, but I raised a puppy from one day old to opening its eyes and walking. I learned to give myself fully to another being, including waking every two hours for feeding, pooping, sharing body heat and otherwise caring and nurturing for a helpless creature as, I suppose a mother does. It’s a lot of responsibility and I can only wander and be grateful of how my mother was able to do it for longer than two weeks. India provides this opporunity plentifully as the idea of owning a dog is non-existant and strays abound.

7-Medicine and the power of tea-I tried every type of tea I could get my hands on. Indian chai, Thai cha yen to Darjeeling and Oolong blends. I learned about certain powerful herbs that grow in the jungle or simply everywhere like Bai Bua Boke (gotu kola) and Tongkat Ali. I watched how a giant papaya leaf could be used as a cast on a foot injury and alternative techniques and mantras could have unintended consequences. Herbal medicine is absolutely fascinating.

Randomly:

8-How unneccessary a chair is. You can sit anywhere, the world is your chair. I’ve never spent more time eating, drinking, talking, listening, playing everything that we do can be done on the bare ground and tables as well are mere luxuries.

9-It’s the process of work, not the results that count. I learned to take breaks and deep breaths and work mindfully so that the entire work process can actually be enjoyable and unrushed. We are only as hurried as we believe we are. 

10-It doesn’t matter where you are or how far you travel, you will always feel and be the same. The real difference lies within. ~V

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Here Comes The Witch Doctor

September 12, 2008 at 6:49 pm (Thoughts, Trips)
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Why is it that women were considered witches if they knew anything about plants? Well, all I can wonder at is how amazing are the twists and turns of this travelling life. Everyday completely dashes any hopes of plans and makes me realize how useless thinking about the future and past really is.

 

 

I now find myself staying on a college/organic farm outside Chiang Rai, a few hours north of Chiang Mai at the pinnacle of Thailand and the junction between Laos and Myanmar. Somehow I think I stumbled upon a herbal medicine/massage guru who miraculously is eager to dispel all of the eastern wisdom to little old me. I have surrendered myself to his teachings and am giving thai massages every day and we take long walks and he picks plants and meticulously explains all of their medicinal properties and shows me how to make poultices and herbal balls out of them. It’s a dream come true. I’m also practicing more and more mindfulness and finding it much easier in the quiet crucket-fueled hum of the country, walking bare-footed in the dewy grass ablaze soley by the peaceful glow of the moon.

I feel truly blessed to be having this experience.

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Drugs or Meditation?

July 19, 2008 at 9:36 am (Spirituality)
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“Infinite power and knowledge and blessedness are ours, and we have not to acquire them; they are our own; we have only got to manifest them.” ~Swami Vivekananda

Drugs are completely unnecessary when you’ve got meditation. I’m living in Thailand, in a city that is practically the temple capital of the world. There are over 300 temples here (called wat in Thai) and meditation, particularly vipassana, or insight meditation, which Buddha used to reach enlightenment. So I supposed, since I’m stuck in this southeast asian buddhist enclave, I might as well give meditation a go.

Today I meditated just a little longer than usual and I had a drug-like experience. After spending some time practicing techniques to shoo excess thoughts away, like envisioning all the random thoughts in my over-active mind as clouds floating by, they began to evaporate and suddenly I was left silently focusing on my breathing (prana) and on the eternal soul – my topic of meditation for the session. Suddenly I felt a hazy, unaffected feeling, a feeling of bliss, simplicity of everything and a complete lack of concern or worry for anything: The exact feeling that one looks for in a joint or in a few pints down at the pub. No wonder everyone whose spiritual doesn’t need drugs! Yoga and meditation could be the best drug there is.

Osho in A New Man For a New Millenium writes:

“From the Vedas, the ancientmost book in the world, to Timothy Leary, man has always been attracted by drugs – alcohol, marijuana, opium. Why this attraction? All the moralists have been against it, all the puritans have been against it and all the governments have tried to curb and control but it seems beyond any government to control it. What has been the cause of it? It gives something – it gives a glimpse into the innocent mind of the child again [...] And unless meditation becomes available to millions of people, drugs cannot be prevented.”

I’m not sure if I’m ever going to reach samadhi, or enlightenment in this life, but it’s always possible. It supposedly can take just three years to complete the spiritual evolution and merge into the Infinite Person, or the Superconciousness or kundalini rising; all different names to call what Jesus, Buddha, Shiva and numerous others have attained. Anyway, that’s my first spiritual blog. I’m going to be going to weekly meditation sessions so I’ll report on the results.

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