Dear Editors,
Please feel free to post my comments below on your website.
I’ve always been puzzled by advaita-Vedanta proponents' strange silence about Adi Shankara’s later life. Adi Shankara was the founder of the “I am That” philosophy of advaita Vedanta. This odd silence, intentional or innocent, conveniently skirts the deeper issue of the relationship between "advaita Vedanta" and devotion. For many contemporary advaita Vedanta teachers, no such relationship exists, nor has one ever existed, for the Self, or Absolute, is phenomena-free, without any association to devotion or energy (Kundalini-Shakti).
Reflecting (upon Shankara's later life), one sees that advaita Vedanta proponents have unfortunately hidden behind a curtain of denial, one that readily dismisses the crucial topics of devotion and energy in the state of Self-Realization. These phenomena are caustically dismissed by advaita Vedanta fundamentalists as extraneous and incidental to 'full enlightenment."
Adi Shankara, in His later years, abandoned His earlier, adolescent, "I am That" style of enlightenment-talk. He sang love-hymns to the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother became the total focus of His attention. Consumed in adorational intensity for The Mother, devotionally inebriated, Shankara manifested Devotional Advaita Vedanta. He founded Divine Mother temples throughout India.
My invitation to those who think that advaita Vedanta is all there is to enlightenment is to contemplate the entire life of Adi Shankara. How do you reconcile His (later) behavior with a feeling-less, energy-less enlightenment, one that is often justified in the names of Ramana Maharishi and Nisargadatta Maharaj? Do you think Adi Shankara perhaps became overly emotional in His old age? I think not. Perhaps realization of the Absolute merely, has never been, is, and never will be, the real story of full awakening.
Only the simultaneous merger and interpenetration of Divine Light (realization of the Self), Divine Love (Devotional Intoxication) and energetic awakening in the Kundalini-Shakti, describes entire spiritual awakening.
Without its spouses of devotion and energy, advaita Vedanta is just a convenient, pathetic excuse not to go mad in God.
Sincerely,
David Spero
P.O. Box 4773
Palm Springs, CA 92263
http://www.davidspero.org
Editor's note: Take a look at David Spero's website for more.
Monday, December 13, 2004
Dying... What is it Like to Die?
From Arcana Coelestia (Heavenly Secrets) by E. Swedenborg
CONCERNING THE RESUSCITATION OF MAN FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
AC 168. Being permitted to describe in connected order how man passes from the life of the body into the life of eternity, in order that the way in which he is resuscitated might be known, this has been shown me, not by hearing, but by actual experience.
AC 169. I was reduced into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus almost into the state of dying persons, retaining however my interior life unimpaired, attended with the power of thinking, and with sufficient breathing for life, and finally with a tacit breathing, that I might perceive and remember what happens to those who have died and are being resuscitated.
AC 170. Celestial angels were present who occupied the region of the heart, so that as to the heart I seemed united with them, and so that at length scarcely anything was left to me except thought, and the consequent perception, and this for some hours.
AC 171. I was thus removed from communication with spirits in the world of spirits, who supposed that I had departed from the life of the body.
AC 172. Besides the celestial angels, who occupied the region of the heart, there were also two angels sitting at my head, and it was given me to perceive that it is so with every one.
AC 173. The angels who sat at my head were perfectly silent, merely communicating their thoughts by the face, so that I could perceive that another face was as it were induced upon me; indeed two, because there were two angels. When the angels perceive that their faces are received, they know that the man is dead.
AC 174. After recognizing their faces, they induced certain changes about the region of the mouth, and thus communicated their thoughts, for it is customary with the celestial angels to speak by the province of the mouth, and it was permitted me to perceive their cogitative speech.
AC 175. An aromatic odor was perceived, like that of an embalmed corpse, for when the celestial angels are present, the cadaverous odor is perceived as if it were aromatic, which when perceived by evil spirits prevents their approach.
AC 176. Meanwhile I perceived that the region of the heart was kept very closely united with the celestial angels, as was also evident from the pulsation.
AC 177. It was insinuated to me that man is kept engaged by the angels in the pious and holy thoughts which he entertained at the point of death; and it was also insinuated that those who are dying usually think about eternal life, and seldom of salvation and happiness, and therefore the angels keep them in the thought of eternal life.
AC 178. In this thought they are kept for a considerable time by the celestial angels before these angels depart, and those who are being resuscitated are then left to the spiritual angels, with whom they are next associated. Meanwhile they have a dim idea that they are living in the body.
AC 179. As soon as the internal parts of the body grow cold, the vital substances are separated from the man, wherever they may be, even if inclosed in a thousand labyrinthine interlacings, for such is the efficacy of the Lord‘s mercy (which I had previously perceived as a living and mighty attraction), that nothing vital can remain behind.
AC 180. The celestial angels who sat at the head remained with me for some time after I was as it were resuscitated, but they conversed only tacitly. It was perceived from their cogitative speech that they made light of all fallacies and falsities, smiling at them not indeed as matters for derision, but as if they cared nothing about them. Their speech is cogitative, devoid of sound, and in this kind of language they begin to speak with the souls with whom they are at first present.
AC 181. As yet the man, thus resuscitated by the celestial angels, possesses only an obscure life; but when the time comes for him to be delivered to the spiritual angels, then after a little delay, when the spiritual angels have approached, the celestial depart; and it has been shown me how the spiritual angels operate in order that the man may receive the benefit of light, as described in the continuation of this subject prefixed to the following chapter.
CONTINUATION CONCERNING MAN‘S ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
AC 314. After the use of light has been given to the resuscitated person, or soul, so that he can look about him, the spiritual angels previously spoken of render him all the kindly services he can in that state desire, and give him information about the things of the other life, but only so far as he is able to receive it. If he has been in faith, and desires it, they show him the wonderful and magnificent things of heaven.
AC 315. But if the resuscitated person or soul is not of such a character as to be willing to be instructed, he then desires to be rid of the company of the angels, which they exquisitely perceive, for in the other life there is a communication of all the ideas of thought. Still, they do not leave him even then, but he dissociates himself from them. The angels love every one, and desire nothing more than to render him kindly services, to instruct him, and to convey him to heaven. In this consists their highest delight.
AC 316. When the soul thus dissociates himself, he is received by good spirits, who likewise render him all kind offices while he is in their company. If however his life in the world has been such that he cannot remain in the company of the good, he desires to be rid of these also, and this process is repeated again and again, until he associates himself with those who are in full agreement with his former life in the world, among whom he finds as it were his own life. And then, wonderful to say, he leads with them a life like that which he had lived when in the body. But after sinking back into such a life, he makes a new beginning of life; and some after a longer time, some after a shorter, are from this borne on toward hell; but such as have been in faith toward the Lord, are from that new beginning of life led step by step toward heaven.
AC 317. Some however advance more slowly toward heaven, and others more quickly. I have seen some who were elevated to heaven immediately after death, of which I am permitted to mention only two instances.
AC 318. A certain spirit came and discoursed with me, who, as was evident from certain signs, had only lately died. At first he knew not where he was, supposing himself still to be in the world; but when he became conscious that he was in the other life, and that he no longer possessed anything, such as house, wealth, and the like, being in another kingdom, where he was deprived of all he had possessed in the world, he was seized with anxiety, and knew not where to betake himself, or whither to go for a place of abode. He was then informed that the Lord alone provides for him and for all; and was left to himself, that his thoughts might take their wonted direction, as in the world. He now considered (for in the other life the thoughts of all may be plainly perceived) what he must do, being deprived of all means of subsistence; and while in this state of anxiety he was brought into association with some celestial spirits who belonged to the province of the heart, and who showed him every attention that he could desire. This being done, he was again left to himself, and began to think, from charity, how he might repay kindness so great, from which it was evident that while he had lived in the body he had been in the charity of faith, and he was therefore at once taken up into heaven.
AC 319. I saw another also who was immediately translated into heaven by the angels, and was accepted by the Lord and shown the glory of heaven; not to mention much other experience respecting others who were conveyed to heaven after some lapse of time.
ON THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF THE SOUL OR SPIRIT
AC 320. With regard to the general subject of the life of souls, that is, of novitiate spirits, after death, I may state that much experience has shown that when a man comes into the other life he is not aware that he is in that life, but supposes that he is still in this world, and even that he is still in the body. So much is this the case that when told he is a spirit, wonder and amazement possess him, both because he finds himself exactly like a man, in his senses, desires, and thoughts, and because during his life in this world he had not believed in the existence of the spirit, or, as is the case with some, that the spirit could be what he now finds it to be.
AC 321. A second general fact is that a spirit enjoys much more excellent sensitive faculties, and far superior powers of thinking and speaking, than when living in the body, so that the two states scarcely admit of comparison, although spirits are not aware of this until gifted with reflection by the Lord.
AC 322. Beware of the false notion that spirits do not possess far more exquisite sensations than during the life of the body. I know the contrary by experience repeated thousands of times. Should any be unwilling to believe this, in consequence of their preconceived ideas concerning the nature of spirit, let them learn it by their own experience when they come into the other life, where it will compel them to believe. In the first place spirits have sight, for they live in the light, and good spirits, angelic spirits, and angels, in a light so great that the noonday light of this world can hardly be compared to it. The light in which they dwell, and by which they see, will of the Lord’s Divine mercy be described hereafter. Spirits also have hearing, hearing so exquisite that the hearing of the body cannot be compared to it. For years they have spoken to me almost continually, but their speech also will of the Lord‘s Divine mercy be described hereafter. They have also the sense of smell, which also will Of the Lord’s Divine mercy be treated of hereafter. They have a most exquisite sense of touch, whence come the pains and torments endured in hell; for all sensations have relation to the touch, of which they are merely diversities and varieties. They have desires and affections to which those they had in the body cannot be compared, concerning which of the Lord‘s Divine mercy more will be said hereafter. Spirits think with much more clearness and distinctness than they had thought during their life in the body. There are more things contained within a single idea of their thought than in a thousand of the ideas they had possessed in this world. They speak together with so much acuteness, subtlety, sagacity, and distinctness, that if a man could perceive anything of it, it would excite his astonishment. In short, they possess everything that men possess, but in a more perfect manner, except the flesh and bones and the attendant imperfections. They acknowledge and perceive that even while they lived in the body it was the spirit that sensated, and that although the faculty of sensation manifested itself in the body, still it was not of the body; and therefore that when the body is cast aside, the sensations are far more exquisite and perfect. Life consists in the exercise of sensation, for without it there is no life, and such as is the faculty of sensation, such is the life, a fact that any one may observe.
AC 323. At the end of the chapter, several examples will be given of those who during their abode in this world had thought otherwise.
From Arcana Coelestia (Heavenly Secrets) by E. Swedenborg
CONCERNING THE RESUSCITATION OF MAN FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
AC 168. Being permitted to describe in connected order how man passes from the life of the body into the life of eternity, in order that the way in which he is resuscitated might be known, this has been shown me, not by hearing, but by actual experience.
AC 169. I was reduced into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus almost into the state of dying persons, retaining however my interior life unimpaired, attended with the power of thinking, and with sufficient breathing for life, and finally with a tacit breathing, that I might perceive and remember what happens to those who have died and are being resuscitated.
AC 170. Celestial angels were present who occupied the region of the heart, so that as to the heart I seemed united with them, and so that at length scarcely anything was left to me except thought, and the consequent perception, and this for some hours.
AC 171. I was thus removed from communication with spirits in the world of spirits, who supposed that I had departed from the life of the body.
AC 172. Besides the celestial angels, who occupied the region of the heart, there were also two angels sitting at my head, and it was given me to perceive that it is so with every one.
AC 173. The angels who sat at my head were perfectly silent, merely communicating their thoughts by the face, so that I could perceive that another face was as it were induced upon me; indeed two, because there were two angels. When the angels perceive that their faces are received, they know that the man is dead.
AC 174. After recognizing their faces, they induced certain changes about the region of the mouth, and thus communicated their thoughts, for it is customary with the celestial angels to speak by the province of the mouth, and it was permitted me to perceive their cogitative speech.
AC 175. An aromatic odor was perceived, like that of an embalmed corpse, for when the celestial angels are present, the cadaverous odor is perceived as if it were aromatic, which when perceived by evil spirits prevents their approach.
AC 176. Meanwhile I perceived that the region of the heart was kept very closely united with the celestial angels, as was also evident from the pulsation.
AC 177. It was insinuated to me that man is kept engaged by the angels in the pious and holy thoughts which he entertained at the point of death; and it was also insinuated that those who are dying usually think about eternal life, and seldom of salvation and happiness, and therefore the angels keep them in the thought of eternal life.
AC 178. In this thought they are kept for a considerable time by the celestial angels before these angels depart, and those who are being resuscitated are then left to the spiritual angels, with whom they are next associated. Meanwhile they have a dim idea that they are living in the body.
AC 179. As soon as the internal parts of the body grow cold, the vital substances are separated from the man, wherever they may be, even if inclosed in a thousand labyrinthine interlacings, for such is the efficacy of the Lord‘s mercy (which I had previously perceived as a living and mighty attraction), that nothing vital can remain behind.
AC 180. The celestial angels who sat at the head remained with me for some time after I was as it were resuscitated, but they conversed only tacitly. It was perceived from their cogitative speech that they made light of all fallacies and falsities, smiling at them not indeed as matters for derision, but as if they cared nothing about them. Their speech is cogitative, devoid of sound, and in this kind of language they begin to speak with the souls with whom they are at first present.
AC 181. As yet the man, thus resuscitated by the celestial angels, possesses only an obscure life; but when the time comes for him to be delivered to the spiritual angels, then after a little delay, when the spiritual angels have approached, the celestial depart; and it has been shown me how the spiritual angels operate in order that the man may receive the benefit of light, as described in the continuation of this subject prefixed to the following chapter.
CONTINUATION CONCERNING MAN‘S ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
AC 314. After the use of light has been given to the resuscitated person, or soul, so that he can look about him, the spiritual angels previously spoken of render him all the kindly services he can in that state desire, and give him information about the things of the other life, but only so far as he is able to receive it. If he has been in faith, and desires it, they show him the wonderful and magnificent things of heaven.
AC 315. But if the resuscitated person or soul is not of such a character as to be willing to be instructed, he then desires to be rid of the company of the angels, which they exquisitely perceive, for in the other life there is a communication of all the ideas of thought. Still, they do not leave him even then, but he dissociates himself from them. The angels love every one, and desire nothing more than to render him kindly services, to instruct him, and to convey him to heaven. In this consists their highest delight.
AC 316. When the soul thus dissociates himself, he is received by good spirits, who likewise render him all kind offices while he is in their company. If however his life in the world has been such that he cannot remain in the company of the good, he desires to be rid of these also, and this process is repeated again and again, until he associates himself with those who are in full agreement with his former life in the world, among whom he finds as it were his own life. And then, wonderful to say, he leads with them a life like that which he had lived when in the body. But after sinking back into such a life, he makes a new beginning of life; and some after a longer time, some after a shorter, are from this borne on toward hell; but such as have been in faith toward the Lord, are from that new beginning of life led step by step toward heaven.
AC 317. Some however advance more slowly toward heaven, and others more quickly. I have seen some who were elevated to heaven immediately after death, of which I am permitted to mention only two instances.
AC 318. A certain spirit came and discoursed with me, who, as was evident from certain signs, had only lately died. At first he knew not where he was, supposing himself still to be in the world; but when he became conscious that he was in the other life, and that he no longer possessed anything, such as house, wealth, and the like, being in another kingdom, where he was deprived of all he had possessed in the world, he was seized with anxiety, and knew not where to betake himself, or whither to go for a place of abode. He was then informed that the Lord alone provides for him and for all; and was left to himself, that his thoughts might take their wonted direction, as in the world. He now considered (for in the other life the thoughts of all may be plainly perceived) what he must do, being deprived of all means of subsistence; and while in this state of anxiety he was brought into association with some celestial spirits who belonged to the province of the heart, and who showed him every attention that he could desire. This being done, he was again left to himself, and began to think, from charity, how he might repay kindness so great, from which it was evident that while he had lived in the body he had been in the charity of faith, and he was therefore at once taken up into heaven.
AC 319. I saw another also who was immediately translated into heaven by the angels, and was accepted by the Lord and shown the glory of heaven; not to mention much other experience respecting others who were conveyed to heaven after some lapse of time.
ON THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF THE SOUL OR SPIRIT
AC 320. With regard to the general subject of the life of souls, that is, of novitiate spirits, after death, I may state that much experience has shown that when a man comes into the other life he is not aware that he is in that life, but supposes that he is still in this world, and even that he is still in the body. So much is this the case that when told he is a spirit, wonder and amazement possess him, both because he finds himself exactly like a man, in his senses, desires, and thoughts, and because during his life in this world he had not believed in the existence of the spirit, or, as is the case with some, that the spirit could be what he now finds it to be.
AC 321. A second general fact is that a spirit enjoys much more excellent sensitive faculties, and far superior powers of thinking and speaking, than when living in the body, so that the two states scarcely admit of comparison, although spirits are not aware of this until gifted with reflection by the Lord.
AC 322. Beware of the false notion that spirits do not possess far more exquisite sensations than during the life of the body. I know the contrary by experience repeated thousands of times. Should any be unwilling to believe this, in consequence of their preconceived ideas concerning the nature of spirit, let them learn it by their own experience when they come into the other life, where it will compel them to believe. In the first place spirits have sight, for they live in the light, and good spirits, angelic spirits, and angels, in a light so great that the noonday light of this world can hardly be compared to it. The light in which they dwell, and by which they see, will of the Lord’s Divine mercy be described hereafter. Spirits also have hearing, hearing so exquisite that the hearing of the body cannot be compared to it. For years they have spoken to me almost continually, but their speech also will of the Lord‘s Divine mercy be described hereafter. They have also the sense of smell, which also will Of the Lord’s Divine mercy be treated of hereafter. They have a most exquisite sense of touch, whence come the pains and torments endured in hell; for all sensations have relation to the touch, of which they are merely diversities and varieties. They have desires and affections to which those they had in the body cannot be compared, concerning which of the Lord‘s Divine mercy more will be said hereafter. Spirits think with much more clearness and distinctness than they had thought during their life in the body. There are more things contained within a single idea of their thought than in a thousand of the ideas they had possessed in this world. They speak together with so much acuteness, subtlety, sagacity, and distinctness, that if a man could perceive anything of it, it would excite his astonishment. In short, they possess everything that men possess, but in a more perfect manner, except the flesh and bones and the attendant imperfections. They acknowledge and perceive that even while they lived in the body it was the spirit that sensated, and that although the faculty of sensation manifested itself in the body, still it was not of the body; and therefore that when the body is cast aside, the sensations are far more exquisite and perfect. Life consists in the exercise of sensation, for without it there is no life, and such as is the faculty of sensation, such is the life, a fact that any one may observe.
AC 323. At the end of the chapter, several examples will be given of those who during their abode in this world had thought otherwise.
NONDUALITY AND DANCE ... at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. T. S. Eliot
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If you find the perfect beat pass it on.
x. Indigo g(^_^) tentman
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...there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance! One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. Osho
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Nina Murkkis, writing on Nonduality Salon (featured in Highlights #1097) From 'My Body, the Buddhist', by Deborah Hay
Photo: Deborah Hay "My Body, dancing, is formed and sustained imaginatively. I reconfigure the three-dimensional body into an immeasurable fifty- three trillion cells perceived perceiving, all of them, at once. Impossibly whole and ridiculous to presume, I remain, in attendance to the feedback. At such times Deborah Hay assumes the devotion of a dog to its master; reading the simplest signs of life, lapping up whatever nuance my teacher produces. When the greater part of the Buddhist world finds it strength, solace, and wisdom through a practiced devotion to a guru, or Rinpoche, please iamgine my hesitancy in admitting to twenty-eight years of devotion to an imagined 53-trillion-celled teacher." I like that she admits that her teacher is imagined. I also like the chapter headings of her book, originally a list of things her teacher has taught her: 1 my body finds benefits in solitude2 my body finds energy in surrender3 my body enjoys jokes, riddles, and games4 my body engages in work5 my body commits to practice6 my body seeks comfort but not for long7 my body is limited by physical presence8 my body knowingly participates in appearances9 my body likes rest10 my body is bored by answers11 my body seeks more than one view of itself12 my body delights in resourcefulness13 my body trusts the unknown14 my body feels weightless in the presence of paradox15 my body equates patience with renewal16 my body hears many voices, not one voice17 my body relaxes when thoughts abate18 my body is held in the present I like that Deborah Hay, dancer, choreographer, doesn't choreograph to music. What is choreography? Is it the conversation of a past place of being? Could it possibly be exactly in the moment instead? That's what Deborah Hay seems to be getting at... that the most essential choreography is exactly that. The word 'practice' comes to mind. What is practice? The repetition of a prescribed piece of work? Could it possibly be the expression of what is happening right now? Practice practice practice. back into the body, where am I?back into the body, where am I?back into the body, where was I? Oh yes... When the practice is the choreography, what is had?
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Rave Dancing http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1201/a03.html "Rave dancing is not choreographed," said Wyoming Telford, a 23-year-old cocktail waitress from Seattle who has been going to raves for seven years. "You don't count steps, you don't have to work with other people, and you're not trying to evoke a story line. It's a pure transmutation of energy." Though raves originated in Europe in the late 80's, the dance style is a distinctly American contribution. More than just dancers at a late-night club, most ravers are part of a community devoted to the hippy-esque mantra known as PLUR: Peace, Love Unity and Respect. Ravers may not learn their steps in a classroom, but they are as devoted to their dancing as ballerinas are to theirs. . Not unlike ballet or any other established genre, rave dancing requires dancers to possess tremendous passion and discipline both to excel and to avoid injury; ravers wear costumes ( albeit "phat pantz" and sneakers, rather than tutus and tights ), and the dancing consists of distinct techniques. Of current dance styles, rave most closely resembles break dancing. Both emerged out of American youth culture, namely hip-hop and raves, and both thrive on the democratization of dance, the notion that anyone can participate or perform.
Photo: Raver with chew toy How to Rave Danceby Bam-Blizzard If you find the perfect beat pass it on. x. Indigo g(^_^) tentman
1.To dance liquid, hold your wrists together and break da hands at 90 degree angles. (whenever you change direction, have hands at 90d) 2. When you do the arm wave, unroll wrist, hand, knuckles, fingers.(go ahead and started with a bent knee) 3. Know what the D.J.s are going to play, when. (Be versitile) 4. When you bounce forward, backwards, side to side, know how far out your body will fly so you don't hit anyone, but don't look at where you will LAND! 5. It's hard to practice to most styles of dance because everyone's vibe is a little 'parking elf'. HAPPY HARDCORE is great to practice to.(Anyone can dance great to it. Chemical bros.= X) 6. Take drugs, drink Jagermeister. It's the ultimate fairy booster juicer, only dance on marrijuanna when a) theres no room to leave the dancefloor even if you wanted to b) you know the music style like the back of your hand c) yer battling a friend{not in a circle} d) if the the lighting is awesome(let the music take control) 7. Breathe and stop. Come alive, show me what you got {q-tip} 8. Make eye contact with someone whom you are seperated by 12-15 dancers 9. give the dj props, s/he is the star(or whatever your high idol is at the minute) 10. Chemical bros. revolutionized movement{including making 'ruff beats' acceptable in dance clubs which almost cost us blah blah blah} 11. huff and puff 12. smile, let someone around you know you are enjoying yourself 13. 8 consecutive moves are a rootine 14. when instructors are choreographing, they go "BAM! BAM! BAM!" 15. Practice glides 16. If you get good at glides, {James Brown good} (<--the Idol) move your hands the same as you move your feet 17. the basic for glides {moonwalk inc.} is heal, toe. toe at heel, push toe flat heel, bring heel up to toe {L,R} 18. The best motivation is critisism, the best sense is olfalctory, the best sweat is "I'll Show hir!" 19. Get an Identity, I.e wear the same thing until you have a repetoire 20. Slow beats fast 10 times out of 10.(If you like my style, E me) 21. the 5th freedom is the freedom to have your mind at whatever state you want it Ok 22. If you feel you are being judged, you will have many "cobwebs" to work through 23. Angels, Devils, modesty, humility, showooffynes and self are all on the edge of the tea cup that is your soul. Submit, and let the power of your centrifical force show you the way.(Or: chase the dragon to the berry cave and get the amplifier plunger and parachute the turntable. Go to the leaky old one and charm hir with some jolly ranchers)
THATS IT! I'M 23! AND SINCE IT'S SEPTEMBER 3RD HERE'S 3 MORE:
1. SEND ME YOUR PIC, I'D LOVE TO SEE U 2. RASTAFARIANISM, JAH, TELLING STORIES THROUGH DANCE, DANCING ALL DAY AND NIGHT, THE BEATLES PAST MASTERS WHITE ALBUM, AND USING DANCE TO SAY NO TO FASHION, all *Poop* to put in upper case(OR: we are all being offset in our DNA by the soundwaves and soon we will mutate) 3. I wish I were an animated gif. Peaceeaceeace Loveoveove Unityunity RESPECT
P.S. HERES THE BREAKDOWN (If you will train raver-san, we will have mighty rave power and be in newspaper)
1. spining on the ground 2. liquid 3. waving 4. glides 5. popping 6. breaking 7. popping with glides 8. locking
1. combo uprocking (or dancing to jungle with someone who dance like u) 2. choerographed uprocking 3. dancing with fire 4. glowsticks 5. touching 6. stomping to the beat 7. dancing to speed garage 8. conceptual dancing and perceptable rhythm(yeah)
HEROS: CRAZY KUJO from the It's Like that! video jason nevins (Afro, also bboy.com vet)(Myself. Hello?) AIR FORCE CREW SF exploritory breakdance styles the beat in Breakin' where they first show the RadioTron (real place)((It goes DIP DIP DAP DOO . . DIP DIP DAP DOO . . BIP BDIP BDAP DOO .. DOOOOO.... DOOOOO.WHBDOOO..DOOOO) the racial minority DJ ICEY, Freddie Fresh The first DJ you lost your inhibitions to breaker memorabilia ZEROS: The APHEX TWIN video will show you the ultimate in bad habit, sorry, it's UNLEARNABLE JAMES BROWN a better sex machine Tha Rascals, The Jungle Brothers, Jamiroque Breaks (The older the information is the more awesome it is. heres a line from beatnuts I dig ((because I love you, and respect is due)) If you owe me money better find that *Poop*, cus ****** is dyin', behind that *Poop*) Tell me if you find the perfect beat. x. Oom
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Ceremonies of the Living Spirit
Benito Rael is a Native American of Tiwa and Southern Ute decent whose father was a Picuris holy man. He is a carrier of the teachings of his brother Beautiful Painted Arrow, Joseph Rael. The following interview was conducted before the Sun-moon dance held in Manchester during July 2000 at which Benito Rael was the dance Chief.
The Sun-moon dance lasts for a period of four days in which participants dance backwards and forwards to a ceremonial tree in the centre of an Arbour. During this period they abstain from food and water. This is spiritual ceremony.
Joseph Rael in his book “Ceremonies of the Living Spirit” says:
'I don’t teach Picuris (Tiwa) religion or Ute religion. I teach what has come to me from my visions. I spent fifty years becoming a visionary, so that what I do in ceremony comes from the Source and it works. I don’t know how these ceremonies work or why they work, but they work. People who criticize me for sharing ceremonies with non-Indians don’t understand that the ceremonies I am doing are not traditional or tribal.'
'I believe that this is a way of bringing people who really want to know the Spirit into the context of the Spirit, so that they will know their own inner source and how to bring that forth in their lives in an active way and awaken their own spiritual awareness.'
The following interview is with Joseph's brother, Benito Rael:
Photo: Benito Rael
Can you explain something about ceremony for those who haven’t come across it before?
The thing about ceremony is, you need to want to better your life.
In my brothers books he states - and what I was taught when I was growing up - that ‘work is worship’. In Picuris where I was raised, just to go out and irrigate your fields, or hoeing, or raising food we see as spiritual endeavours. This work for us is worship. So when you do a dance, the effort that you place in the dance, whether it be a Drum dance, Long dance, or whatever, the effort that you put in, you get out of it. If you have some issues that you want to work with, you work with those issues in the dance. You make your path forward or backwards. A lot of people go to the dance saying I’ve got a lot of trouble in this area or that area and they want to make them right.
When you’ve decided to do a dance it's commitment. And when you decide you want to do something you commit to it just like you do in a job. You say I want to do a Sun-moon dance. I’m going to commit myself for four years. And then when you reach that four your going to say “gee whiz”, so you might decide to make another commitment. What you are doing every year is you’re taking your brain and what you’ve learned to the dance and enhance that learning process in the dance and like I said ‘work is worship’.
You give up your food and you give up your water- you’ve made a commitment to do this.
Many years ago when the non-Indian heard about this way of worship they said, “What’s the trade?” - “Why are you dancing to this tree?” or, “Why are they dancing to this line of feathers”, or “Why do they do what they’re doing?”
A priest asked me once, “What is it in that tree?”
I compared it to his ceremonies. I said, “What is it sitting at that altar and going to church and getting calluses on your knees?”
He said, “Don’t you talk about it like that!”
And I said, “Well, what are you doing to me?”
I said, “When I go and do ceremony it is done in a manner that I know. Many years ago my Dad said there are so many directions you can go - you’ve got a sister who is a Methodist, a mother who’s baptised Catholic and a brother who’s Pentecostal, and another brother that’s a Mormon and they all chose what they wanted to do. And he said, “Son, one of these days you’re going to have to choose the kind of work you want to do.”
And what I’d seen in that vision when I was 15 years old **, that’s when I was told what I’m going to do. Now that I have been brought into this way of life I realise what that vision was. When you dance to that tree, that tree is the tree of life, that tree is a symbol that we use for dance, just as churches have symbols or procedures that you have to follow. It’s the same thing, it’s just a different way to believe and to bring yourself to spiritual life. And in this way, in a pure way, we worship.
(** When Benito was 15 years old he had a vision of many bad spirits and animals closing in on him from the side, and the only way out of this was to pull a piece of string that hung from the roof. When he pulled the string he was taken to the spiritual realms.)
To a lot of people this may seem a bit backward - a bit simple. People might be thinking you are missing the point or something. Can you explain to someone with these views?
There are different ways of making yourself right with the higher power. Some kneel for hours and hours because it is really good - and it’s the same thing as dancing until you wear down. That discipline always has a factor in how you do the dance. That discipline you learn from your parents.
They imposed religion on us. And you think “gee whiz” they were trying to take away our belief because it wasn’t their way and they didn’t understand it. A lot of it has to do with if you can understand this way. A lot of people say I don’t know how you can do what you do and receive spiritual light. So a lot of people need to experience this for themselves.
If you get a person and set them out in the middle of nowhere and there’s no means of food or water who do you think they turn to? That’s where this comes from.
When you’ve reached that last bit of water and you are wondering where the rest is going to come from, then you come to realise that without the guy up stairs, Great Spirit, Wah Mah Chi, God, or whatever you want to call it, you wouldn’t be where you are today because he’s the only one who gives us this divine calling as you would say.
So, it’s all a matter of preference. Some people don’t understand it at first. So my brother wrote his books so they could read and he could explain what all this stuff is. So therefore when the time comes to right your way of believing you can use the dance. It doesn’t have to be a Sun-moon dance or a Long dance or a Drum dance. You can give thanks through many different dances. The way I was raised the animals were our bothers, and we protect them, and in return they give themselves to us. They were gifts. So sometimes we do animal dances.
We are all raised in a society where things are cut and dried - this is what you believe in and that is it, and there is no other avenue. A lot of people who do this work are the clergy. I’ve had clergy come. They say I’m father so-and-so, I’m sister so-and-so, and I’m Reverend so-and-so.
I say, “Well what are you doing here? You don’t need this dance.”
They have said, “No, but there’s something in there as far as discipline is concerned. I need discipline to go out and teach my congregation. I need the discipline it takes to confront my daily endeavours because I was taught this stuff here but I was never taught the discipline it takes, that I receive from this kind of dance.”
We have preachers and lawyers and people of high standing that are doing this work because they’ve come to a point where the way they were brought up and taught is not exactly what they want. So they’re looking for something different. This is something they do for themselves for their own spiritual strength.
How would you define ceremony? How would you say to people what ceremony is?
It’s like that festival that is on in Holland right now. They are having a Revival that is lasting four days or a week or so. People go there and have a Revival. That’s what you could say this could be. It’s a Revival for you to make yourself right in you.
You could say “I’m going to a Native American ‘traditional / non-traditional’ Revival where everyone can participate if they want to. And maybe they fast and through prayer they receive.
The Native Americans, the South Americans and the Greeks used to do it and they just got away from it. Christianity changed a lot how we perceive this. If they would have understood it many years ago then it would have been different. If they’d have understood it then maybe there’d be more people interested in it. Interest comes with the knowledge. Like I said, my brother wrote those books to give the knowledge to the world and through that people have dedicated their lives to this kind of work.
Because this is a non-traditional dance people don’t have to feel excluded?
Everyone who wants to enhance their way of believing can do it this way because there is no certain set pattern, you just go to an Arbour and you do it in a circle of light and you do it in a line, to where you can focus on what you want. That’s what the dance is about - focus and making a commitment.
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Capoeira: where dance meets martial arts
On it's deepest level, Capoeira transcends martial arts, music and ritual and is a philosophical framework for approaching and interacting with the others and the world at large. It is a deep and holistic art form that pushes the practitioner to the proverbial limits - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. from http://www.capoeira.com/planetcapoeira/
Photo: Mestre Manoel performs a bananeira - a move mimicking the swaying of a banana tree
http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=15746
Capoeira’s Serious Play Teaches Spiritual Lessons
By ELYSHA TENENBAUM
Contributing Writer Monday, August 2, 2004
To its adherents, Capoeira is a conversation. Two people meet and express their feelings and desires through movement rather than words. Although initially developed as a martial art, today it serves as a means for spiritual reflection and growth. Its origins, however, reach into the dark history of slavery and oppression that has gripped the western hemisphere for more than 500 years. Born among the slave populations of Brazil, Capoeira brings together a unique mix of Afro-Brazilian cultures with music and dance. Players of the art, the capoeiristas, set themselves in a large circle, the roda. At the head of the roda are musicians with handmade instruments. The berimbau, a single string instrument resembling a bow, sets the pace for the game. Two enter the roda, while all around them a great conflagration of sound arises from the chests of their compatriots. They sing of nature, which provides the seeds for their movements.
The “shua shua” of rustling leaves are lyrics made manifest by swaying bodies—this swaying also mimics the undulating rise and fall of the ocean waves. The rabo de arrais, a side kick, takes its name from the stingray who extends its stinger in self-defense. Then there is the bananeira, named for the banana tree, embodied as a capoerista stands on her hands and sways her feet to and fro.
Although Capoeira requires all of an individual’s skill and wit, it is from the interaction between players that the game acquires a deeper meaning. Because each motion is a reaction to one’s partner’s movement, a dependency forms between the players. Ultimately, this serious play enacts the highest respect possible between two human beings.
But what they call a game today was once a means for liberation. Just as each movement represents a struggle of the player, Capoeira represents to some the struggle of a people to maintain connections with their ancestors. Traced to its roots, Capoeira celebrates the powers of the human body and mind to overcome oppression.
During the struggles between Portuguese and Dutch traders to control Brazil’s wealth in the 17th century, many of those who had been taken from Angola as slaves escaped into the jungles. In those jungles they formed communities with those who, like themselves, sought freedom. When the Dutch were expelled and the Portuguese came looking for their lost quarry, the slaves developed a means of defense to stand up to firearms. They named the Capoeira for the brush woods in which the slaves hid themselves.
Today, Capoeira is taught in schools and prisons around the world as a means of self-discovery and escape—a means limited only by the player’s creativity.
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http://www.winchesterstar.com/TheWinchesterStar/040131/Life_Tango.asp
Tango
Tango traces its roots to the loneliness and longing of mostly male settlers in Argentina nearly 100 years ago.
Its unique dance “language” is now spoken in nearly every country on earth. However, A dozen couples in downtown Winchester (Virginia) are learning this language on Wednesday nights.
Instructor Ting-Yu Chen’s passion for tango infects her lessons and her students — not to mention a wide-eyed sense of humor that cuts through the tension of students trying to shed their extra left feet.
“Women, when you sense danger, you move to him,” she explains, demonstrating a step where the woman leans at a precarious angle against her partner while he dances around her. “Hold him, so if you’re going to fall you take him down with you.”
Chen, who has danced since kindergarten, said she fell in love with tango through the music in 1996. She now teaches beginner and intermediate classes each Wednesday night at the Shenandoah Arts Center Gallery in Winchester. Although classes are larger at times, she said usually about five couples attend both the beginner and the intermediate classes that started Jan. 14.
She is also an assistant dance professor at Shenandoah University.
Tango’s essence is the communication between partners, Chen said. While much contact occurs throughout the dance, the main focus is on communicating through the hands.
It is also essential that the male lead in the dance and the female follow, she said. “For the follower to try to lead, then there is no tango.”
While this may seem contrary to modern interpretations of gender equality, Chen said, to assume tango is a man’s dance is to miss the point.
“It’s a dynamic lead and follow,” she said. “You lead and you respond to what the other person does.”
When she first took tango lessons, Chen said she reacted against her perception that the male was in charge, and tried to design a dance where the woman led the man.
But in time she learned that there was tremendous freedom and grace in giving in to the male lead and responding in a more feminine way.
“The true tango really respects this gender with equal importance,” she said. “When you have to totally trust and surrender to the moment, you know you can interpret it and redirect it into something that’s graceful.”
She said men too must “listen” to what their partner is communicating through the dance in order for the tango to go on.
“It comes to that place where you can feel each other’s movement and, not using words, you know exactly where they are,” Chen said, thumping her chest, “It’s right here. It’s from the heart.”
Rooted in the late 19th century in Argentine, tango flourished as an art form after World War I, Chen said, when waves of mostly male immigrants flooded into Argentina.
“Tango has that close embrace, and that’s where it came from: from that loneliness and the need to be hugged,” she said.
Then, in the 1920s it became a popular pastime among the upper class in Paris and other major European cities.
Now, she said, tango is danced in every major city in the world.
“In a way, tango is like a passport. You can talk to people in every culture, and you can connect even if you don’t speak their language,” Chen said.
Despite its risque roots, tango provides a model for a healthy relationship between a man and woman or a husband and wife, she said.
“My couples’ dynamics show so much in their dancing lessons,” she said. “I can see taking a tango class as almost a marriage therapy.
“It requires you to be attentive to the person in front of you. It makes you be present with each other. So much of our lives we can be vacant, even with the ones we love.
“Harmony is the focus.”
Erica Helm, dance chairwoman at Shenandoah University, assists with the classes. Tango is unique among formal dance because it combines intimacy with a complete freedom to improvise, Helm said.
“I grew up doing the two-step and rock and roll dancing,” she said. “A lot of those dances, you’re dancing at someone. ... With tango you are dancing for them.”
But unlike ballroom dancing or the older regency dancing Helm also participates in, tango is neither scripted nor a memorized routine.
“It is a complete improvisation,” Helm said. “In tango, you don’t have to memorize anything. The man can do anything at any moment.
“For the woman to just follow, for the man to just lead where he wants to go, just interpreting the music — there is so much freedom.”
Many of Chen’s students seem to have gotten the message.
Rick and Paulette Aboe, of Martinsburg, W.Va., got interested in tango three years ago when they saw the stage show “Forever Tango” in Washington, D.C.’s Warner Theater.
Rick loves the freedom. “Almost every other dance is based on the music. You do something on every beat of the music.
“With tango, you can adjust your dance to whatever you feel fits the music.
“And besides, it’s a sexy dance. It’s a playful dance.”
Greg Cone, a Winchester native who lives in Loudoun County, got involved in tango through his job. Greg works as an engineer with The Wright Stuff — recently famous for attempting to re-enact the Wright Brothers’ first flight on its Dec. 17 centennial.
“When I took the job I work now, I was expected to get a little more social,” he said.
At a ballroom dance and dinner in Kitty Hawk, N.C., he said he embarrassed himself pretty badly on the dance floor.
In desperation, he turned to a dance studio in Upperville and ended up taking lessons from Sharon Duvall, wife of film star and tango aficionado Robert Duvall.
“Of all dances, this is the dance,” Cone said.
“You are dancing for her. It’s not just my dance; it’s her dance,” he said. “She doesn’t just follow, she adds embellishments in response to me.
“You’ve got this unspoken communication going on. It’s the emotion of the music. You can display any kind of emotion with this dance.”
Cone, who takes intermediate lesions from Chen, is modest about his own abilities.
“I’ll never learn it,” he said. “Really, I’ll be a beginner all my life.”
“That’s the best attitude,” Chen replied.
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http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1460
A Dance With Spalding Gray
by Neda Pourang
When I was 22, I spent an entire night dancing at the Palladium in New York City with Spalding Gray. We danced and danced to every song- danceable or not. I didn't know who he was but my friends did and he was a very cool older man who seemed to still like the things I'd assumed you stopped liking when you turned gray.
I had been in a fashion show at the Palladium that night and I still had on my long white Mary McFaddon dress while bopping around to Madonna's "Express Yourself." My friends and I were new to the city and looking back it seems perfect that Spalding Gray was one of the first ambassadors to guide us into the mysteries of New York. He treated me like a grown up and was a perfect gentleman. More than anything, he reminded me of the shy art majors I was at grad school with at NYU. At the end of the night, my girlfriends and I walked him home before heading back to our apartment on Second Avenue -- the first of many apartments during my ten years in New York.
That old apartment is gone -- burned down. The Palladium is now NYU dorms. All that thumping house and lit staircases -- razed to house the students who were babies or not even born when the dance hall was king. And this week I know for sure that Mr. Spalding Gray is gone too.
Years later I saw and read his work and wished I'd asked him clever questions when we met instead of just jumping up and down to George Michael.
I'm gone too. Ten years of parties, boyfriends, school and false career starts awaited me in New York after we left Mr. Gray at his brownstone. I am not anywhere close to being the un-jaded newcomer that I was. I have left. I drive a green Honda in Los Angeles traffic and think about my own struggle with depression. I didn't know what it was or how many pills there would be for it back when I was spinning around in my white gown with Mr. Gray.
I always assumed I'd run into him again. New York is like that -- you don't worry so much about exchanging information because you live by the city's serendipity. But I never did, and for a long time, I forgot all about it. Now I feel a loss I don't really have the right to because it is not sadness for the tragic death of a talented man -- a good man -- I feel. It is more about the loss of everything that changes and passes. From legendary clubs, to my own unaccounted-for twenties. And then there is my feeling that I didn't so much leave New York as get spat out by it. Anyway, I danced one night in New York City in the early nineties with Mr. Spalding Gray and he never got tired or missed a beat.
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Spalding Gray dances with The Dalai Lama
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/132/story_13252.html
Inside Out The Dalai Lama interviewed by Spalding Gray. Reprinted from the Fall 1991 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (premier issue).
Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people and the 1989 Nobel Peace Laureate. Born to a peasant family in 1935, in the northeastern province of Amdo, His Holiness was recognized at the age to two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and a manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Spalding Gray, born in Rhode Island in 1941, calls himself a writer and performer who has been “circling my meditation cushion for almost twenty years.” His best-known performance is the stage and film version of his monologue, Swimming to Cambodia.
The paths of the revered Buddhist leader and the avant-garde performer crossed in a hotel suite at the Fess Parker Red Lion Inn in Santa Barbara, California, on April 8, 1991.
Spalding Gray: We’ve both been traveling these last weeks and the most difficult thing that I find on the road is adjusting to each location, each different hotel. I have a tendency to want to drink the alcohol, which, as you said in an earlier interview, is the other way of coping with despair and confusion. Just what are some of your centering rituals and your habits when you come into a new hotel?
The Dalai Lama: I always first inquire to see “what is there.” Curiosity. What I can discover that is interesting or new. Then, I take a bath. And then I usually sit on the bed, crosslegged, and meditate. And sometimes sleep, lie down. One thing I myself noticed is the time-zone change. Although you change your clock time, your biological time still has to follow a certain pattern. But now I find that once I change the clock time, I’m tuned to the new time zone. When my watch says it’s eight o’clock in the evening, I feel sort of sleepy and need to retire and when it says four in the morning I wake up. Spalding Gray: But you have to be looking at your clock all the time.
The Dalai Lama: That’s right (laughs).
Spalding Gray: Did you do a meditation this morning?
The Dalai Lama: First I take a bath, then I sit on that bed (in the other room) crosslegged.
Spalding Gray: And when you go into the meditation, is it similar every morning?
The Dalai Lama: Similar, yes.
Spalding Gray: And can you tell me a little bit about what it’s like?
The Dalai Lama: (sigh, laugh) Mmmmmm…The first portion is the recitation of a mantra. There are certain mantras aimed at consecrating your speech, so that all your speech throughout the day will be positive. These recitations should be made before speaking. I observe silence until they are finished and if anyone approaches me, I always communicate in sign language. Then I try to develop a certain motivation, or determination, that as a Buddhist monk, until my Buddhahood, until I reach Buddhahood, my life, my lives, including future lives, should be correct, and spent according to that basic goal. And that all my activities should be beneficial to others and should not harm others.
Spalding Gray: How long does that take?
The Dalai Lama: Some ten, fifteen minutes. And then I do a deeper mediation where I mentally review the entire stages of the path of Buddhist practice. And then I do some practices aimed at accumulating merits, like prostrations, making offerings to the Buddhas, reflecting on the qualities of the Buddha.
Spalding Gray: Is there a special visualization going on?
The Dalai Lama: Oh, yes. Along with these are some cases of visualization. We call this guru yoga. The first part of guru yoga means dedicating yourself and your practice to one’s own teacher. The second part is deity yoga, transforming oneself into a particular deity. Deity yoga refers to a meditative process whereby you dissolve your own ordinary self into a sort of void and emptiness. From this state your inner “perfected state” potential is visualized or imagined as being generated into a divine form, a meditation deity. You follow a procedure known as the meditation of the three kayas—dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. These correspond to the experience of natural death, the intermediate state, and rebirth as described in the Buddhist literature. With each different deity, there is a different mandala in my daily prayer. All together there are about seven different mandalas involved. These deity yogas, they involve visualization of mandalas. That takes two hours.
Spalding Gray: You can see the deity very clearly in your mind with your eyes closed?
The Dalai Lama: Sometimes very clear, sometimes not clear (laughs). My physical condition makes a difference, I think. It also depends on the amount of time that I have. If I feel that all my prayers must be completed before eight, then it affects my awareness. If I have a whole morning free, then my concentration increases.
Spalding Gray: Do you ever entertain the distractions, invite them into your meditation and let all of these women in bikini bathing suits that you must see here out by the pool come into your meditation?
The Dalai Lama: As a monk, I have to avoid that experience, even in my dreams, due to daily practice. Sometimes in my dreams there are women. And in some cases fighting or quarreling with someone. When such dreams happen, immediately I remember, “I am a monk.” So that is one reason I usually call myself a simple Buddhist monk. That’s why I never feel “I am the Dalai Lama.” I only feel “I am a monk.” I should not indulge, even in dreams, in women with a seductive appearance. Immediately I realize I’m a monk.
Spalding Gray: One Western writer called Ernest Becker, who wrote The Denial of Death, said “We don’t know anything beyond it. We must bow down to that mystery because there is no way of knowing what is coming next,” and the thing that has always confused me and interested me about Tibetan Buddhism is the extremely complex system of knowledge about after-death states and reincarnation.
The Dalai Lama: The most subtle consciousness is like a seed and it is a different variety of consciousness than the consciousness developed by a physical being. A plant cannot produce cognitive power. But in every human being, or sentient beings with certain conditions, cognitive power develops. We consider the continuity of the consciousness to be the ultimate seed. Then once you understand this explanation, subtle consciousness departs from grosser consciousness. Or we say the grosser dissolves into the most subtle mind.
There are some cases, very authentic, very clear, where people recall their past lives, especially with very young people. Some children can recall their pas experience. I do not have any sort of strong or explicit doubts as to this possibility. But since phenomenon such as after-death experiences, intermediate states and so forth, are things that are beyond our direct experience, it does leave some slight room for hesitation. For many years in my daily practice, I have prepared for a natural death. So there is a kind of excitement at the idea that real death is coming to me and I can live the actual experiences. A lot of my meditations are rehearsals for this experience.
Spalding Gray: Do you have one predominant fear that you often struggle with, the thing you fear the most?
The Dalai Lama: No, nothing in particular.
Spalding Gray: You are feeling not fearful?
The Dalai Lama: Because of the political situation, sometimes I have fears of being caught in a kind of terrorist experience. Although, as far as my motivation is concerned, I feel I have no enemy. From my own viewpoint, we are all human beings, brothers and sisters. But I am involved in a national struggle. Some people consider me the key troublemaker. So that is also a reality (pause). Otherwise, comparatively, my mental state is quite calm, quite stable.
Spalding Gray: How do you avoid accidents?
The Dalai Lama: (laughs) Just as ordinary people do, I try to be more cautious. One thing I can be certain of is that I won’t have an accident because of being drunk or being stoned on drugs.
Spalding Gray: But you are flying a lot and the pilots are drinking. That’s what I’m always afraid of. I’ve always said I would never fly on a plane where the pilot believes in reincarnation. When you get on a plane to fly, do you have to work with your fears?
The Dalai Lama: I used to have a lot of fear when flying. Now I am getting used to it. But when I get very afraid or anxious, then yes, as you mentioned, I recite some prayers or some mantra and also, you see, the final conclusion is the belief in karma. If I created some karma to have a certain kind of death, I cannot avoid that. Although I try my best, if something happens, I have to accept it. It is possible that I have no such karmic force, then even if the plane crashes, I may survive.
Spalding Gray: You walk out.
The Dalai Lama: Yes. So that belief, also you see, is very helpful. Very effective.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/08/obit.gray/ Spalding Gray found deadBody of writer, actor found in East River
From Jonathan Wald and Annie CastellaniCNNTuesday, March 9, 2004 Posted: 1315 GMT (2115 HKT)
Photo: Spalding Gray NEW YORK (CNN) -- A body pulled from the East River at 3 p.m. Sunday was that of actor-writer Spalding Gray, who had been missing since January 10, the New York City medical examiner's office said Monday afternoon. The body was identified after an autopsy through dental and other X-rays, said Ellen Borakove, the medical examiner's spokeswoman. She said the cause of death is under investigation. The only identifiable evidence on the body was a pair of black corduroy pants similar to the pair Gray was wearing on the night of his disappearance, she said. Gray, 62, was known for writing and starring in the autobiographical "Swimming to Cambodia" and appearances in films such as "The Killing Fields," "Beaches," "The Paper" and "Kate & Leopold," but was most celebrated for his autobiographical monologues, including "Cambodia," "Monster in a Box" and "It's a Slippery Slope." He had attempted suicide several times since a car accident in Ireland in June 2001 in which he sustained severe injuries. Family friend and spokeswoman Sara Vass said in January that he had never been the same since that crash and had subsequently received treatment at psychiatric hospitals. In September 2003 Gray left a message at his Soho apartment in Manhattan saying goodbye to his wife, Kathie Russo, and telling her he planned to jump from the Staten Island Ferry that day. Russo called police, who notified authorities on the ferry. A despondent Gray was found sitting on the ferry and was escorted off the boat. Russo and Gray's therapist thought he had been making progress since then and that he was through the worst of his depression. His wife had held out hope he was alive during his disappearance, she told The Associated Press. "Everyone that looks like him from behind, I go up and check to make sure it's not him," Russo said in a phone interview with the AP about a week ago. "If someone calls and hangs up, I always do star-69. You're always thinking, 'maybe.' " Telling stories Gray was sui generis: He looked like an Ivy League professor and spoke with a New England accent, but spent years in the often avant-garde downtown New York theater scene and created a painfully confessional style in which the stage practically became a therapist's office. He performed sitting down, usually with only a desk, chair and glass of water for company. "This man may be the ultimate WASP neurotic, analyzing his actions with an intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so self-deprecatingly funny," Associated Press Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara wrote in 1996. "He questions everything and ends up more exhausted than satisfied." Gray's monologues included "Cambodia," about his experiences in a bit part in the movie "The Killing Fields"; "Gray's Anatomy," about his struggles with a serious eye problem; and "Monster in a Box," about an endlessly growing semi-autobiographical novel concerning his mother's suicide. He appeared in a handful of Broadway productions, most notably the 1989 Tony Award-winning revival of "Our Town" and the 2000 revival of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man." His 38 films include "Beaches," "Straight Talk" and "King of the Hill."
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Dervish Dancing: from an Osho disccourse http://www.choiceless-awareness.com/ohhm_08.htm
Dervish dancing is a physical method to give the mind a dizziness and this is a mental method to give the mind a dizziness. If you dance fast, move fast, whirl fast, you suddenly feel a dizziness, a nausea, as if the mind is disappearing. If you continue, for a few days dizziness will be there and then it will settle. The moment dizziness has gone you will find the mind has gone, because there is nobody to feel dizzy. And then a clarity comes. Then you look at things without the mind. Without the mind the whole is revealed - and with the whole, the transformation.
more Osho: http://www.oshoturk.com/osho-life/07-28-activities.htm
My sannyasins have all to be dancers, and no excuse should be missed; each excuse has to be used as an opportunity to dance. Somebody's birthday, dance; somebody has died, dance. Somebody is ill, dance around him. Somebody is going for a journey, give him a farewell dance. Somebody is coming, welcome him with dance. Make it a point that the more you dance, the more you are in tune with god.
When you dance it is god who dances in you; that's why it is so beautiful. Whenever you dance you are no more separate, you don't have a split. You are no more body/mind; you are no more this and that. You don't have alternatives. All alternatives disappear, all dualities disappear. In fact there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance!
One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. That's what people are searching for through love, through alcohol, through drugs—a state where they are no more separate from existence. But those methods are dangerous and very costly. You gain very little joy and you destroy your whole chemistry, your body. It is not worth it.
Through dance you don't lose anything and you gain infinity….
I give you this as a key, as a criterion, as a touchstone. Keep it always in mind that whenever you are feeling uneasy, disturbed, restless, remember: you are doing something which is against the universal rhythm, the universal dance. You are out of step, that's all. Start moving back into rhythm, come back into harmony, and suddenly there is sunlight; the clouds have disappeared and the path has been found.
Dance is a rhythmic movement. Dance represents god more than anything else. In my observation, dance is the most prayerful activity possible. When your body is in a dance and you are utterly lost in the rhythm of it, you start coming closer to god. halle16
Just as music is one beautiful door, so is dance. And dance will help you immensely. The only secret is to be lost in it, to be drowned in it. One has to dance in a kind of drunkenness. It is intoxicating, if you allow it. If you allow yourself to be possessed by it, then the very movements create some alchemical change in the inner energy. It intoxicates. Nothing intoxicates like a dance, and sometimes the intoxication is so much that even those who are looking at the dancer start feeling drunk. But that is nothing compared to what happens to the dancer himself or herself.
But dance should not be a performance, otherwise the whole thing is missed. Then it is just acting on the outside—the dancer is never lost in it. And that is the whole point, the very crux of the matter: dance is divine when the dancer has disappeared into it. When the dancer dies in his dance and only dance remains, then you are in the hands of god. Then he is moving you, he is moving within you. Then for miles you cannot find yourself, and the moment when you cannot find yourself is the moment when god is found.
So while you are here, dance to abandonment!
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If you find the perfect beat pass it on.
x. Indigo g(^_^) tentman
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...there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance! One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. Osho
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Nina Murkkis, writing on Nonduality Salon (featured in Highlights #1097) From 'My Body, the Buddhist', by Deborah Hay
Photo: Deborah Hay "My Body, dancing, is formed and sustained imaginatively. I reconfigure the three-dimensional body into an immeasurable fifty- three trillion cells perceived perceiving, all of them, at once. Impossibly whole and ridiculous to presume, I remain, in attendance to the feedback. At such times Deborah Hay assumes the devotion of a dog to its master; reading the simplest signs of life, lapping up whatever nuance my teacher produces. When the greater part of the Buddhist world finds it strength, solace, and wisdom through a practiced devotion to a guru, or Rinpoche, please iamgine my hesitancy in admitting to twenty-eight years of devotion to an imagined 53-trillion-celled teacher." I like that she admits that her teacher is imagined. I also like the chapter headings of her book, originally a list of things her teacher has taught her: 1 my body finds benefits in solitude2 my body finds energy in surrender3 my body enjoys jokes, riddles, and games4 my body engages in work5 my body commits to practice6 my body seeks comfort but not for long7 my body is limited by physical presence8 my body knowingly participates in appearances9 my body likes rest10 my body is bored by answers11 my body seeks more than one view of itself12 my body delights in resourcefulness13 my body trusts the unknown14 my body feels weightless in the presence of paradox15 my body equates patience with renewal16 my body hears many voices, not one voice17 my body relaxes when thoughts abate18 my body is held in the present I like that Deborah Hay, dancer, choreographer, doesn't choreograph to music. What is choreography? Is it the conversation of a past place of being? Could it possibly be exactly in the moment instead? That's what Deborah Hay seems to be getting at... that the most essential choreography is exactly that. The word 'practice' comes to mind. What is practice? The repetition of a prescribed piece of work? Could it possibly be the expression of what is happening right now? Practice practice practice. back into the body, where am I?back into the body, where am I?back into the body, where was I? Oh yes... When the practice is the choreography, what is had?
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Rave Dancing http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1201/a03.html "Rave dancing is not choreographed," said Wyoming Telford, a 23-year-old cocktail waitress from Seattle who has been going to raves for seven years. "You don't count steps, you don't have to work with other people, and you're not trying to evoke a story line. It's a pure transmutation of energy." Though raves originated in Europe in the late 80's, the dance style is a distinctly American contribution. More than just dancers at a late-night club, most ravers are part of a community devoted to the hippy-esque mantra known as PLUR: Peace, Love Unity and Respect. Ravers may not learn their steps in a classroom, but they are as devoted to their dancing as ballerinas are to theirs. . Not unlike ballet or any other established genre, rave dancing requires dancers to possess tremendous passion and discipline both to excel and to avoid injury; ravers wear costumes ( albeit "phat pantz" and sneakers, rather than tutus and tights ), and the dancing consists of distinct techniques. Of current dance styles, rave most closely resembles break dancing. Both emerged out of American youth culture, namely hip-hop and raves, and both thrive on the democratization of dance, the notion that anyone can participate or perform.
Photo: Raver with chew toy How to Rave Danceby Bam-Blizzard If you find the perfect beat pass it on. x. Indigo g(^_^) tentman
1.To dance liquid, hold your wrists together and break da hands at 90 degree angles. (whenever you change direction, have hands at 90d) 2. When you do the arm wave, unroll wrist, hand, knuckles, fingers.(go ahead and started with a bent knee) 3. Know what the D.J.s are going to play, when. (Be versitile) 4. When you bounce forward, backwards, side to side, know how far out your body will fly so you don't hit anyone, but don't look at where you will LAND! 5. It's hard to practice to most styles of dance because everyone's vibe is a little 'parking elf'. HAPPY HARDCORE is great to practice to.(Anyone can dance great to it. Chemical bros.= X) 6. Take drugs, drink Jagermeister. It's the ultimate fairy booster juicer, only dance on marrijuanna when a) theres no room to leave the dancefloor even if you wanted to b) you know the music style like the back of your hand c) yer battling a friend{not in a circle} d) if the the lighting is awesome(let the music take control) 7. Breathe and stop. Come alive, show me what you got {q-tip} 8. Make eye contact with someone whom you are seperated by 12-15 dancers 9. give the dj props, s/he is the star(or whatever your high idol is at the minute) 10. Chemical bros. revolutionized movement{including making 'ruff beats' acceptable in dance clubs which almost cost us blah blah blah} 11. huff and puff 12. smile, let someone around you know you are enjoying yourself 13. 8 consecutive moves are a rootine 14. when instructors are choreographing, they go "BAM! BAM! BAM!" 15. Practice glides 16. If you get good at glides, {James Brown good} (<--the Idol) move your hands the same as you move your feet 17. the basic for glides {moonwalk inc.} is heal, toe. toe at heel, push toe flat heel, bring heel up to toe {L,R} 18. The best motivation is critisism, the best sense is olfalctory, the best sweat is "I'll Show hir!" 19. Get an Identity, I.e wear the same thing until you have a repetoire 20. Slow beats fast 10 times out of 10.(If you like my style, E me) 21. the 5th freedom is the freedom to have your mind at whatever state you want it Ok 22. If you feel you are being judged, you will have many "cobwebs" to work through 23. Angels, Devils, modesty, humility, showooffynes and self are all on the edge of the tea cup that is your soul. Submit, and let the power of your centrifical force show you the way.(Or: chase the dragon to the berry cave and get the amplifier plunger and parachute the turntable. Go to the leaky old one and charm hir with some jolly ranchers)
THATS IT! I'M 23! AND SINCE IT'S SEPTEMBER 3RD HERE'S 3 MORE:
1. SEND ME YOUR PIC, I'D LOVE TO SEE U 2. RASTAFARIANISM, JAH, TELLING STORIES THROUGH DANCE, DANCING ALL DAY AND NIGHT, THE BEATLES PAST MASTERS WHITE ALBUM, AND USING DANCE TO SAY NO TO FASHION, all *Poop* to put in upper case(OR: we are all being offset in our DNA by the soundwaves and soon we will mutate) 3. I wish I were an animated gif. Peaceeaceeace Loveoveove Unityunity RESPECT
P.S. HERES THE BREAKDOWN (If you will train raver-san, we will have mighty rave power and be in newspaper)
1. spining on the ground 2. liquid 3. waving 4. glides 5. popping 6. breaking 7. popping with glides 8. locking
1. combo uprocking (or dancing to jungle with someone who dance like u) 2. choerographed uprocking 3. dancing with fire 4. glowsticks 5. touching 6. stomping to the beat 7. dancing to speed garage 8. conceptual dancing and perceptable rhythm(yeah)
HEROS: CRAZY KUJO from the It's Like that! video jason nevins (Afro, also bboy.com vet)(Myself. Hello?) AIR FORCE CREW SF exploritory breakdance styles the beat in Breakin' where they first show the RadioTron (real place)((It goes DIP DIP DAP DOO . . DIP DIP DAP DOO . . BIP BDIP BDAP DOO .. DOOOOO.... DOOOOO.WHBDOOO..DOOOO) the racial minority DJ ICEY, Freddie Fresh The first DJ you lost your inhibitions to breaker memorabilia ZEROS: The APHEX TWIN video will show you the ultimate in bad habit, sorry, it's UNLEARNABLE JAMES BROWN a better sex machine Tha Rascals, The Jungle Brothers, Jamiroque Breaks (The older the information is the more awesome it is. heres a line from beatnuts I dig ((because I love you, and respect is due)) If you owe me money better find that *Poop*, cus ****** is dyin', behind that *Poop*) Tell me if you find the perfect beat. x. Oom
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Ceremonies of the Living Spirit
Benito Rael is a Native American of Tiwa and Southern Ute decent whose father was a Picuris holy man. He is a carrier of the teachings of his brother Beautiful Painted Arrow, Joseph Rael. The following interview was conducted before the Sun-moon dance held in Manchester during July 2000 at which Benito Rael was the dance Chief.
The Sun-moon dance lasts for a period of four days in which participants dance backwards and forwards to a ceremonial tree in the centre of an Arbour. During this period they abstain from food and water. This is spiritual ceremony.
Joseph Rael in his book “Ceremonies of the Living Spirit” says:
'I don’t teach Picuris (Tiwa) religion or Ute religion. I teach what has come to me from my visions. I spent fifty years becoming a visionary, so that what I do in ceremony comes from the Source and it works. I don’t know how these ceremonies work or why they work, but they work. People who criticize me for sharing ceremonies with non-Indians don’t understand that the ceremonies I am doing are not traditional or tribal.'
'I believe that this is a way of bringing people who really want to know the Spirit into the context of the Spirit, so that they will know their own inner source and how to bring that forth in their lives in an active way and awaken their own spiritual awareness.'
The following interview is with Joseph's brother, Benito Rael:
Photo: Benito Rael
Can you explain something about ceremony for those who haven’t come across it before?
The thing about ceremony is, you need to want to better your life.
In my brothers books he states - and what I was taught when I was growing up - that ‘work is worship’. In Picuris where I was raised, just to go out and irrigate your fields, or hoeing, or raising food we see as spiritual endeavours. This work for us is worship. So when you do a dance, the effort that you place in the dance, whether it be a Drum dance, Long dance, or whatever, the effort that you put in, you get out of it. If you have some issues that you want to work with, you work with those issues in the dance. You make your path forward or backwards. A lot of people go to the dance saying I’ve got a lot of trouble in this area or that area and they want to make them right.
When you’ve decided to do a dance it's commitment. And when you decide you want to do something you commit to it just like you do in a job. You say I want to do a Sun-moon dance. I’m going to commit myself for four years. And then when you reach that four your going to say “gee whiz”, so you might decide to make another commitment. What you are doing every year is you’re taking your brain and what you’ve learned to the dance and enhance that learning process in the dance and like I said ‘work is worship’.
You give up your food and you give up your water- you’ve made a commitment to do this.
Many years ago when the non-Indian heard about this way of worship they said, “What’s the trade?” - “Why are you dancing to this tree?” or, “Why are they dancing to this line of feathers”, or “Why do they do what they’re doing?”
A priest asked me once, “What is it in that tree?”
I compared it to his ceremonies. I said, “What is it sitting at that altar and going to church and getting calluses on your knees?”
He said, “Don’t you talk about it like that!”
And I said, “Well, what are you doing to me?”
I said, “When I go and do ceremony it is done in a manner that I know. Many years ago my Dad said there are so many directions you can go - you’ve got a sister who is a Methodist, a mother who’s baptised Catholic and a brother who’s Pentecostal, and another brother that’s a Mormon and they all chose what they wanted to do. And he said, “Son, one of these days you’re going to have to choose the kind of work you want to do.”
And what I’d seen in that vision when I was 15 years old **, that’s when I was told what I’m going to do. Now that I have been brought into this way of life I realise what that vision was. When you dance to that tree, that tree is the tree of life, that tree is a symbol that we use for dance, just as churches have symbols or procedures that you have to follow. It’s the same thing, it’s just a different way to believe and to bring yourself to spiritual life. And in this way, in a pure way, we worship.
(** When Benito was 15 years old he had a vision of many bad spirits and animals closing in on him from the side, and the only way out of this was to pull a piece of string that hung from the roof. When he pulled the string he was taken to the spiritual realms.)
To a lot of people this may seem a bit backward - a bit simple. People might be thinking you are missing the point or something. Can you explain to someone with these views?
There are different ways of making yourself right with the higher power. Some kneel for hours and hours because it is really good - and it’s the same thing as dancing until you wear down. That discipline always has a factor in how you do the dance. That discipline you learn from your parents.
They imposed religion on us. And you think “gee whiz” they were trying to take away our belief because it wasn’t their way and they didn’t understand it. A lot of it has to do with if you can understand this way. A lot of people say I don’t know how you can do what you do and receive spiritual light. So a lot of people need to experience this for themselves.
If you get a person and set them out in the middle of nowhere and there’s no means of food or water who do you think they turn to? That’s where this comes from.
When you’ve reached that last bit of water and you are wondering where the rest is going to come from, then you come to realise that without the guy up stairs, Great Spirit, Wah Mah Chi, God, or whatever you want to call it, you wouldn’t be where you are today because he’s the only one who gives us this divine calling as you would say.
So, it’s all a matter of preference. Some people don’t understand it at first. So my brother wrote his books so they could read and he could explain what all this stuff is. So therefore when the time comes to right your way of believing you can use the dance. It doesn’t have to be a Sun-moon dance or a Long dance or a Drum dance. You can give thanks through many different dances. The way I was raised the animals were our bothers, and we protect them, and in return they give themselves to us. They were gifts. So sometimes we do animal dances.
We are all raised in a society where things are cut and dried - this is what you believe in and that is it, and there is no other avenue. A lot of people who do this work are the clergy. I’ve had clergy come. They say I’m father so-and-so, I’m sister so-and-so, and I’m Reverend so-and-so.
I say, “Well what are you doing here? You don’t need this dance.”
They have said, “No, but there’s something in there as far as discipline is concerned. I need discipline to go out and teach my congregation. I need the discipline it takes to confront my daily endeavours because I was taught this stuff here but I was never taught the discipline it takes, that I receive from this kind of dance.”
We have preachers and lawyers and people of high standing that are doing this work because they’ve come to a point where the way they were brought up and taught is not exactly what they want. So they’re looking for something different. This is something they do for themselves for their own spiritual strength.
How would you define ceremony? How would you say to people what ceremony is?
It’s like that festival that is on in Holland right now. They are having a Revival that is lasting four days or a week or so. People go there and have a Revival. That’s what you could say this could be. It’s a Revival for you to make yourself right in you.
You could say “I’m going to a Native American ‘traditional / non-traditional’ Revival where everyone can participate if they want to. And maybe they fast and through prayer they receive.
The Native Americans, the South Americans and the Greeks used to do it and they just got away from it. Christianity changed a lot how we perceive this. If they would have understood it many years ago then it would have been different. If they’d have understood it then maybe there’d be more people interested in it. Interest comes with the knowledge. Like I said, my brother wrote those books to give the knowledge to the world and through that people have dedicated their lives to this kind of work.
Because this is a non-traditional dance people don’t have to feel excluded?
Everyone who wants to enhance their way of believing can do it this way because there is no certain set pattern, you just go to an Arbour and you do it in a circle of light and you do it in a line, to where you can focus on what you want. That’s what the dance is about - focus and making a commitment.
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Capoeira: where dance meets martial arts
On it's deepest level, Capoeira transcends martial arts, music and ritual and is a philosophical framework for approaching and interacting with the others and the world at large. It is a deep and holistic art form that pushes the practitioner to the proverbial limits - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. from http://www.capoeira.com/planetcapoeira/
Photo: Mestre Manoel performs a bananeira - a move mimicking the swaying of a banana tree
http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=15746
Capoeira’s Serious Play Teaches Spiritual Lessons
By ELYSHA TENENBAUM
Contributing Writer Monday, August 2, 2004
To its adherents, Capoeira is a conversation. Two people meet and express their feelings and desires through movement rather than words. Although initially developed as a martial art, today it serves as a means for spiritual reflection and growth. Its origins, however, reach into the dark history of slavery and oppression that has gripped the western hemisphere for more than 500 years. Born among the slave populations of Brazil, Capoeira brings together a unique mix of Afro-Brazilian cultures with music and dance. Players of the art, the capoeiristas, set themselves in a large circle, the roda. At the head of the roda are musicians with handmade instruments. The berimbau, a single string instrument resembling a bow, sets the pace for the game. Two enter the roda, while all around them a great conflagration of sound arises from the chests of their compatriots. They sing of nature, which provides the seeds for their movements.
The “shua shua” of rustling leaves are lyrics made manifest by swaying bodies—this swaying also mimics the undulating rise and fall of the ocean waves. The rabo de arrais, a side kick, takes its name from the stingray who extends its stinger in self-defense. Then there is the bananeira, named for the banana tree, embodied as a capoerista stands on her hands and sways her feet to and fro.
Although Capoeira requires all of an individual’s skill and wit, it is from the interaction between players that the game acquires a deeper meaning. Because each motion is a reaction to one’s partner’s movement, a dependency forms between the players. Ultimately, this serious play enacts the highest respect possible between two human beings.
But what they call a game today was once a means for liberation. Just as each movement represents a struggle of the player, Capoeira represents to some the struggle of a people to maintain connections with their ancestors. Traced to its roots, Capoeira celebrates the powers of the human body and mind to overcome oppression.
During the struggles between Portuguese and Dutch traders to control Brazil’s wealth in the 17th century, many of those who had been taken from Angola as slaves escaped into the jungles. In those jungles they formed communities with those who, like themselves, sought freedom. When the Dutch were expelled and the Portuguese came looking for their lost quarry, the slaves developed a means of defense to stand up to firearms. They named the Capoeira for the brush woods in which the slaves hid themselves.
Today, Capoeira is taught in schools and prisons around the world as a means of self-discovery and escape—a means limited only by the player’s creativity.
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http://www.winchesterstar.com/TheWinchesterStar/040131/Life_Tango.asp
Tango
Tango traces its roots to the loneliness and longing of mostly male settlers in Argentina nearly 100 years ago.
Its unique dance “language” is now spoken in nearly every country on earth. However, A dozen couples in downtown Winchester (Virginia) are learning this language on Wednesday nights.
Instructor Ting-Yu Chen’s passion for tango infects her lessons and her students — not to mention a wide-eyed sense of humor that cuts through the tension of students trying to shed their extra left feet.
“Women, when you sense danger, you move to him,” she explains, demonstrating a step where the woman leans at a precarious angle against her partner while he dances around her. “Hold him, so if you’re going to fall you take him down with you.”
Chen, who has danced since kindergarten, said she fell in love with tango through the music in 1996. She now teaches beginner and intermediate classes each Wednesday night at the Shenandoah Arts Center Gallery in Winchester. Although classes are larger at times, she said usually about five couples attend both the beginner and the intermediate classes that started Jan. 14.
She is also an assistant dance professor at Shenandoah University.
Tango’s essence is the communication between partners, Chen said. While much contact occurs throughout the dance, the main focus is on communicating through the hands.
It is also essential that the male lead in the dance and the female follow, she said. “For the follower to try to lead, then there is no tango.”
While this may seem contrary to modern interpretations of gender equality, Chen said, to assume tango is a man’s dance is to miss the point.
“It’s a dynamic lead and follow,” she said. “You lead and you respond to what the other person does.”
When she first took tango lessons, Chen said she reacted against her perception that the male was in charge, and tried to design a dance where the woman led the man.
But in time she learned that there was tremendous freedom and grace in giving in to the male lead and responding in a more feminine way.
“The true tango really respects this gender with equal importance,” she said. “When you have to totally trust and surrender to the moment, you know you can interpret it and redirect it into something that’s graceful.”
She said men too must “listen” to what their partner is communicating through the dance in order for the tango to go on.
“It comes to that place where you can feel each other’s movement and, not using words, you know exactly where they are,” Chen said, thumping her chest, “It’s right here. It’s from the heart.”
Rooted in the late 19th century in Argentine, tango flourished as an art form after World War I, Chen said, when waves of mostly male immigrants flooded into Argentina.
“Tango has that close embrace, and that’s where it came from: from that loneliness and the need to be hugged,” she said.
Then, in the 1920s it became a popular pastime among the upper class in Paris and other major European cities.
Now, she said, tango is danced in every major city in the world.
“In a way, tango is like a passport. You can talk to people in every culture, and you can connect even if you don’t speak their language,” Chen said.
Despite its risque roots, tango provides a model for a healthy relationship between a man and woman or a husband and wife, she said.
“My couples’ dynamics show so much in their dancing lessons,” she said. “I can see taking a tango class as almost a marriage therapy.
“It requires you to be attentive to the person in front of you. It makes you be present with each other. So much of our lives we can be vacant, even with the ones we love.
“Harmony is the focus.”
Erica Helm, dance chairwoman at Shenandoah University, assists with the classes. Tango is unique among formal dance because it combines intimacy with a complete freedom to improvise, Helm said.
“I grew up doing the two-step and rock and roll dancing,” she said. “A lot of those dances, you’re dancing at someone. ... With tango you are dancing for them.”
But unlike ballroom dancing or the older regency dancing Helm also participates in, tango is neither scripted nor a memorized routine.
“It is a complete improvisation,” Helm said. “In tango, you don’t have to memorize anything. The man can do anything at any moment.
“For the woman to just follow, for the man to just lead where he wants to go, just interpreting the music — there is so much freedom.”
Many of Chen’s students seem to have gotten the message.
Rick and Paulette Aboe, of Martinsburg, W.Va., got interested in tango three years ago when they saw the stage show “Forever Tango” in Washington, D.C.’s Warner Theater.
Rick loves the freedom. “Almost every other dance is based on the music. You do something on every beat of the music.
“With tango, you can adjust your dance to whatever you feel fits the music.
“And besides, it’s a sexy dance. It’s a playful dance.”
Greg Cone, a Winchester native who lives in Loudoun County, got involved in tango through his job. Greg works as an engineer with The Wright Stuff — recently famous for attempting to re-enact the Wright Brothers’ first flight on its Dec. 17 centennial.
“When I took the job I work now, I was expected to get a little more social,” he said.
At a ballroom dance and dinner in Kitty Hawk, N.C., he said he embarrassed himself pretty badly on the dance floor.
In desperation, he turned to a dance studio in Upperville and ended up taking lessons from Sharon Duvall, wife of film star and tango aficionado Robert Duvall.
“Of all dances, this is the dance,” Cone said.
“You are dancing for her. It’s not just my dance; it’s her dance,” he said. “She doesn’t just follow, she adds embellishments in response to me.
“You’ve got this unspoken communication going on. It’s the emotion of the music. You can display any kind of emotion with this dance.”
Cone, who takes intermediate lesions from Chen, is modest about his own abilities.
“I’ll never learn it,” he said. “Really, I’ll be a beginner all my life.”
“That’s the best attitude,” Chen replied.
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http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1460
A Dance With Spalding Gray
by Neda Pourang
When I was 22, I spent an entire night dancing at the Palladium in New York City with Spalding Gray. We danced and danced to every song- danceable or not. I didn't know who he was but my friends did and he was a very cool older man who seemed to still like the things I'd assumed you stopped liking when you turned gray.
I had been in a fashion show at the Palladium that night and I still had on my long white Mary McFaddon dress while bopping around to Madonna's "Express Yourself." My friends and I were new to the city and looking back it seems perfect that Spalding Gray was one of the first ambassadors to guide us into the mysteries of New York. He treated me like a grown up and was a perfect gentleman. More than anything, he reminded me of the shy art majors I was at grad school with at NYU. At the end of the night, my girlfriends and I walked him home before heading back to our apartment on Second Avenue -- the first of many apartments during my ten years in New York.
That old apartment is gone -- burned down. The Palladium is now NYU dorms. All that thumping house and lit staircases -- razed to house the students who were babies or not even born when the dance hall was king. And this week I know for sure that Mr. Spalding Gray is gone too.
Years later I saw and read his work and wished I'd asked him clever questions when we met instead of just jumping up and down to George Michael.
I'm gone too. Ten years of parties, boyfriends, school and false career starts awaited me in New York after we left Mr. Gray at his brownstone. I am not anywhere close to being the un-jaded newcomer that I was. I have left. I drive a green Honda in Los Angeles traffic and think about my own struggle with depression. I didn't know what it was or how many pills there would be for it back when I was spinning around in my white gown with Mr. Gray.
I always assumed I'd run into him again. New York is like that -- you don't worry so much about exchanging information because you live by the city's serendipity. But I never did, and for a long time, I forgot all about it. Now I feel a loss I don't really have the right to because it is not sadness for the tragic death of a talented man -- a good man -- I feel. It is more about the loss of everything that changes and passes. From legendary clubs, to my own unaccounted-for twenties. And then there is my feeling that I didn't so much leave New York as get spat out by it. Anyway, I danced one night in New York City in the early nineties with Mr. Spalding Gray and he never got tired or missed a beat.
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Spalding Gray dances with The Dalai Lama
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/132/story_13252.html
Inside Out The Dalai Lama interviewed by Spalding Gray. Reprinted from the Fall 1991 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (premier issue).
Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people and the 1989 Nobel Peace Laureate. Born to a peasant family in 1935, in the northeastern province of Amdo, His Holiness was recognized at the age to two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and a manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Spalding Gray, born in Rhode Island in 1941, calls himself a writer and performer who has been “circling my meditation cushion for almost twenty years.” His best-known performance is the stage and film version of his monologue, Swimming to Cambodia.
The paths of the revered Buddhist leader and the avant-garde performer crossed in a hotel suite at the Fess Parker Red Lion Inn in Santa Barbara, California, on April 8, 1991.
Spalding Gray: We’ve both been traveling these last weeks and the most difficult thing that I find on the road is adjusting to each location, each different hotel. I have a tendency to want to drink the alcohol, which, as you said in an earlier interview, is the other way of coping with despair and confusion. Just what are some of your centering rituals and your habits when you come into a new hotel?
The Dalai Lama: I always first inquire to see “what is there.” Curiosity. What I can discover that is interesting or new. Then, I take a bath. And then I usually sit on the bed, crosslegged, and meditate. And sometimes sleep, lie down. One thing I myself noticed is the time-zone change. Although you change your clock time, your biological time still has to follow a certain pattern. But now I find that once I change the clock time, I’m tuned to the new time zone. When my watch says it’s eight o’clock in the evening, I feel sort of sleepy and need to retire and when it says four in the morning I wake up. Spalding Gray: But you have to be looking at your clock all the time.
The Dalai Lama: That’s right (laughs).
Spalding Gray: Did you do a meditation this morning?
The Dalai Lama: First I take a bath, then I sit on that bed (in the other room) crosslegged.
Spalding Gray: And when you go into the meditation, is it similar every morning?
The Dalai Lama: Similar, yes.
Spalding Gray: And can you tell me a little bit about what it’s like?
The Dalai Lama: (sigh, laugh) Mmmmmm…The first portion is the recitation of a mantra. There are certain mantras aimed at consecrating your speech, so that all your speech throughout the day will be positive. These recitations should be made before speaking. I observe silence until they are finished and if anyone approaches me, I always communicate in sign language. Then I try to develop a certain motivation, or determination, that as a Buddhist monk, until my Buddhahood, until I reach Buddhahood, my life, my lives, including future lives, should be correct, and spent according to that basic goal. And that all my activities should be beneficial to others and should not harm others.
Spalding Gray: How long does that take?
The Dalai Lama: Some ten, fifteen minutes. And then I do a deeper mediation where I mentally review the entire stages of the path of Buddhist practice. And then I do some practices aimed at accumulating merits, like prostrations, making offerings to the Buddhas, reflecting on the qualities of the Buddha.
Spalding Gray: Is there a special visualization going on?
The Dalai Lama: Oh, yes. Along with these are some cases of visualization. We call this guru yoga. The first part of guru yoga means dedicating yourself and your practice to one’s own teacher. The second part is deity yoga, transforming oneself into a particular deity. Deity yoga refers to a meditative process whereby you dissolve your own ordinary self into a sort of void and emptiness. From this state your inner “perfected state” potential is visualized or imagined as being generated into a divine form, a meditation deity. You follow a procedure known as the meditation of the three kayas—dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. These correspond to the experience of natural death, the intermediate state, and rebirth as described in the Buddhist literature. With each different deity, there is a different mandala in my daily prayer. All together there are about seven different mandalas involved. These deity yogas, they involve visualization of mandalas. That takes two hours.
Spalding Gray: You can see the deity very clearly in your mind with your eyes closed?
The Dalai Lama: Sometimes very clear, sometimes not clear (laughs). My physical condition makes a difference, I think. It also depends on the amount of time that I have. If I feel that all my prayers must be completed before eight, then it affects my awareness. If I have a whole morning free, then my concentration increases.
Spalding Gray: Do you ever entertain the distractions, invite them into your meditation and let all of these women in bikini bathing suits that you must see here out by the pool come into your meditation?
The Dalai Lama: As a monk, I have to avoid that experience, even in my dreams, due to daily practice. Sometimes in my dreams there are women. And in some cases fighting or quarreling with someone. When such dreams happen, immediately I remember, “I am a monk.” So that is one reason I usually call myself a simple Buddhist monk. That’s why I never feel “I am the Dalai Lama.” I only feel “I am a monk.” I should not indulge, even in dreams, in women with a seductive appearance. Immediately I realize I’m a monk.
Spalding Gray: One Western writer called Ernest Becker, who wrote The Denial of Death, said “We don’t know anything beyond it. We must bow down to that mystery because there is no way of knowing what is coming next,” and the thing that has always confused me and interested me about Tibetan Buddhism is the extremely complex system of knowledge about after-death states and reincarnation.
The Dalai Lama: The most subtle consciousness is like a seed and it is a different variety of consciousness than the consciousness developed by a physical being. A plant cannot produce cognitive power. But in every human being, or sentient beings with certain conditions, cognitive power develops. We consider the continuity of the consciousness to be the ultimate seed. Then once you understand this explanation, subtle consciousness departs from grosser consciousness. Or we say the grosser dissolves into the most subtle mind.
There are some cases, very authentic, very clear, where people recall their past lives, especially with very young people. Some children can recall their pas experience. I do not have any sort of strong or explicit doubts as to this possibility. But since phenomenon such as after-death experiences, intermediate states and so forth, are things that are beyond our direct experience, it does leave some slight room for hesitation. For many years in my daily practice, I have prepared for a natural death. So there is a kind of excitement at the idea that real death is coming to me and I can live the actual experiences. A lot of my meditations are rehearsals for this experience.
Spalding Gray: Do you have one predominant fear that you often struggle with, the thing you fear the most?
The Dalai Lama: No, nothing in particular.
Spalding Gray: You are feeling not fearful?
The Dalai Lama: Because of the political situation, sometimes I have fears of being caught in a kind of terrorist experience. Although, as far as my motivation is concerned, I feel I have no enemy. From my own viewpoint, we are all human beings, brothers and sisters. But I am involved in a national struggle. Some people consider me the key troublemaker. So that is also a reality (pause). Otherwise, comparatively, my mental state is quite calm, quite stable.
Spalding Gray: How do you avoid accidents?
The Dalai Lama: (laughs) Just as ordinary people do, I try to be more cautious. One thing I can be certain of is that I won’t have an accident because of being drunk or being stoned on drugs.
Spalding Gray: But you are flying a lot and the pilots are drinking. That’s what I’m always afraid of. I’ve always said I would never fly on a plane where the pilot believes in reincarnation. When you get on a plane to fly, do you have to work with your fears?
The Dalai Lama: I used to have a lot of fear when flying. Now I am getting used to it. But when I get very afraid or anxious, then yes, as you mentioned, I recite some prayers or some mantra and also, you see, the final conclusion is the belief in karma. If I created some karma to have a certain kind of death, I cannot avoid that. Although I try my best, if something happens, I have to accept it. It is possible that I have no such karmic force, then even if the plane crashes, I may survive.
Spalding Gray: You walk out.
The Dalai Lama: Yes. So that belief, also you see, is very helpful. Very effective.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/08/obit.gray/ Spalding Gray found deadBody of writer, actor found in East River
From Jonathan Wald and Annie CastellaniCNNTuesday, March 9, 2004 Posted: 1315 GMT (2115 HKT)
Photo: Spalding Gray NEW YORK (CNN) -- A body pulled from the East River at 3 p.m. Sunday was that of actor-writer Spalding Gray, who had been missing since January 10, the New York City medical examiner's office said Monday afternoon. The body was identified after an autopsy through dental and other X-rays, said Ellen Borakove, the medical examiner's spokeswoman. She said the cause of death is under investigation. The only identifiable evidence on the body was a pair of black corduroy pants similar to the pair Gray was wearing on the night of his disappearance, she said. Gray, 62, was known for writing and starring in the autobiographical "Swimming to Cambodia" and appearances in films such as "The Killing Fields," "Beaches," "The Paper" and "Kate & Leopold," but was most celebrated for his autobiographical monologues, including "Cambodia," "Monster in a Box" and "It's a Slippery Slope." He had attempted suicide several times since a car accident in Ireland in June 2001 in which he sustained severe injuries. Family friend and spokeswoman Sara Vass said in January that he had never been the same since that crash and had subsequently received treatment at psychiatric hospitals. In September 2003 Gray left a message at his Soho apartment in Manhattan saying goodbye to his wife, Kathie Russo, and telling her he planned to jump from the Staten Island Ferry that day. Russo called police, who notified authorities on the ferry. A despondent Gray was found sitting on the ferry and was escorted off the boat. Russo and Gray's therapist thought he had been making progress since then and that he was through the worst of his depression. His wife had held out hope he was alive during his disappearance, she told The Associated Press. "Everyone that looks like him from behind, I go up and check to make sure it's not him," Russo said in a phone interview with the AP about a week ago. "If someone calls and hangs up, I always do star-69. You're always thinking, 'maybe.' " Telling stories Gray was sui generis: He looked like an Ivy League professor and spoke with a New England accent, but spent years in the often avant-garde downtown New York theater scene and created a painfully confessional style in which the stage practically became a therapist's office. He performed sitting down, usually with only a desk, chair and glass of water for company. "This man may be the ultimate WASP neurotic, analyzing his actions with an intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so self-deprecatingly funny," Associated Press Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara wrote in 1996. "He questions everything and ends up more exhausted than satisfied." Gray's monologues included "Cambodia," about his experiences in a bit part in the movie "The Killing Fields"; "Gray's Anatomy," about his struggles with a serious eye problem; and "Monster in a Box," about an endlessly growing semi-autobiographical novel concerning his mother's suicide. He appeared in a handful of Broadway productions, most notably the 1989 Tony Award-winning revival of "Our Town" and the 2000 revival of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man." His 38 films include "Beaches," "Straight Talk" and "King of the Hill."
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Dervish Dancing: from an Osho disccourse http://www.choiceless-awareness.com/ohhm_08.htm
Dervish dancing is a physical method to give the mind a dizziness and this is a mental method to give the mind a dizziness. If you dance fast, move fast, whirl fast, you suddenly feel a dizziness, a nausea, as if the mind is disappearing. If you continue, for a few days dizziness will be there and then it will settle. The moment dizziness has gone you will find the mind has gone, because there is nobody to feel dizzy. And then a clarity comes. Then you look at things without the mind. Without the mind the whole is revealed - and with the whole, the transformation.
more Osho: http://www.oshoturk.com/osho-life/07-28-activities.htm
My sannyasins have all to be dancers, and no excuse should be missed; each excuse has to be used as an opportunity to dance. Somebody's birthday, dance; somebody has died, dance. Somebody is ill, dance around him. Somebody is going for a journey, give him a farewell dance. Somebody is coming, welcome him with dance. Make it a point that the more you dance, the more you are in tune with god.
When you dance it is god who dances in you; that's why it is so beautiful. Whenever you dance you are no more separate, you don't have a split. You are no more body/mind; you are no more this and that. You don't have alternatives. All alternatives disappear, all dualities disappear. In fact there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance!
One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. That's what people are searching for through love, through alcohol, through drugs—a state where they are no more separate from existence. But those methods are dangerous and very costly. You gain very little joy and you destroy your whole chemistry, your body. It is not worth it.
Through dance you don't lose anything and you gain infinity….
I give you this as a key, as a criterion, as a touchstone. Keep it always in mind that whenever you are feeling uneasy, disturbed, restless, remember: you are doing something which is against the universal rhythm, the universal dance. You are out of step, that's all. Start moving back into rhythm, come back into harmony, and suddenly there is sunlight; the clouds have disappeared and the path has been found.
Dance is a rhythmic movement. Dance represents god more than anything else. In my observation, dance is the most prayerful activity possible. When your body is in a dance and you are utterly lost in the rhythm of it, you start coming closer to god. halle16
Just as music is one beautiful door, so is dance. And dance will help you immensely. The only secret is to be lost in it, to be drowned in it. One has to dance in a kind of drunkenness. It is intoxicating, if you allow it. If you allow yourself to be possessed by it, then the very movements create some alchemical change in the inner energy. It intoxicates. Nothing intoxicates like a dance, and sometimes the intoxication is so much that even those who are looking at the dancer start feeling drunk. But that is nothing compared to what happens to the dancer himself or herself.
But dance should not be a performance, otherwise the whole thing is missed. Then it is just acting on the outside—the dancer is never lost in it. And that is the whole point, the very crux of the matter: dance is divine when the dancer has disappeared into it. When the dancer dies in his dance and only dance remains, then you are in the hands of god. Then he is moving you, he is moving within you. Then for miles you cannot find yourself, and the moment when you cannot find yourself is the moment when god is found.
So while you are here, dance to abandonment!
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
`A rabbi who had the Understanding lived in a tiny room with no stools to sit on and a desk which served as his bed at night. Anybody who came to see him had to sit on the ground or stand to talk. One of his visitors said, `Rabbi, where is your furniture?' The rabbi said, `Where is yours?' The visitor replied, `I am only passing through.' The rabbi replied, `So am I.'
- story
If I ask you what is the taste of your mouth, all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what is remains is reality, simple and solid.
-- Nisargadatta Maharaj
- story
If I ask you what is the taste of your mouth, all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what is remains is reality, simple and solid.
-- Nisargadatta Maharaj
A pivotal moment in my own loss of innocence came about at a young age one morning in my grandfather's backyard. I was playing with the gardener's son; we were fast becoming friends as the rapport deepened. I suggested that we should get together and spend the night at one of our houses and have dinner together. This was a relatively normal event at that age with other friends. He agreed, and we went to the gardener, his father, and proposed the idea. The look on his face when hearing of our idea is something I will never forget. Until that moment, I had not realized that he and his son were black, and that I was white. That he was the servant, and I, the grandson of his master. He told me in no uncertain terms that his son and I could never be friends. I then had a very clear moment of realization. I saw that the world of the gardener and my grandfather, and that of all adults, was insane. It was based on rules of behavior that were false and contrived, and yet somehow functional. I resolved then and there that I would never enter the adult state of mind. Decades later, I had the equally clear realization that this decision had somehow led me into the very state of mind I had sworn to avoid. I had become that which I despised: a fearful adult living in a false paradigm of isolation and ignorance.
-Bob Fergeson
-Bob Fergeson
Monday, November 29, 2004
As Castro's right-hand man in the new regime, Guevara ordered the execution of hundreds of people while in charge of the notorious La Cabaña prison in Havana. He was unapologetic about the mass killings of innocent people, explaining, "To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."
"Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine – this is what our soldiers must become," Guevara said.
Once again, in rallying his guerrillas in Angola, he wrote: "Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary."
"Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine – this is what our soldiers must become," Guevara said.
Once again, in rallying his guerrillas in Angola, he wrote: "Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary."
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Nazeon said, "Life is but melting snow."
Why are you spending so much time building a snowman for a lover? He
will be gone with the morning sun. Why are you worrying about what the
snow lady said about you at the party last night? Her body will melt
before you plot your revenge. All these phantom creatures will one day
disappear in the light. You too. Why fuss so? Better to open your arms,
lie down in the fluff, and make a snow angel. Take her with you
throughout your days. And as she melts in joy, let all that worryin'
melt right along with her. Spend your days in play, in laughter, in
love. Life's ending sky will smother you in frozen rain soon enough.
Open. All the way. Let the supposed hurts and betrayals go. They are
only holding you back from sledding to freedom.
~dg
Why are you spending so much time building a snowman for a lover? He
will be gone with the morning sun. Why are you worrying about what the
snow lady said about you at the party last night? Her body will melt
before you plot your revenge. All these phantom creatures will one day
disappear in the light. You too. Why fuss so? Better to open your arms,
lie down in the fluff, and make a snow angel. Take her with you
throughout your days. And as she melts in joy, let all that worryin'
melt right along with her. Spend your days in play, in laughter, in
love. Life's ending sky will smother you in frozen rain soon enough.
Open. All the way. Let the supposed hurts and betrayals go. They are
only holding you back from sledding to freedom.
~dg
posted on Daily Dharma
Friday, November 26, 2004
Q: What's the aim of you not allowing yourself to be photographed, having your voice recorded or making your biographical data known? Could this affect what you've achieved in your spiritual work, and if so how? Don't you think it would be useful for some sincere seekers of truth to know who you really are, as a way of corroborating that it is really possible to follow the path you proclaim?
A: With reference to photographs and personal data, the other three disciples of don Juan and myself follow his instructions. For a shaman like don Juan, the main idea behind refraining from giving personal data is very simple. It is imperative to leave aside what he called "personal history". To get away from the "me" is something extremely annoying and difficult. What shamans like don Juan seek is a state of fluidity where the personal "me" does not count. He believed that an absence of photographs and biographical data affects whomever enters into this field of action in a positive, though subliminal way. We are endlessly accustomed to using photographs, recordings and biographical data, all of which spring from the idea of personal importance. Don Juan said it was better not to know anything about a shaman; in this way, instead of encountering a person, one encounters an idea that can be sustained; the opposite of what happens in the everyday world where we are faced only with people who have numerous psychological problems but no ideas, all of these people filled to the brim with "me, me, me."
- Carlos Castaneda (from interview)
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Carlos Castaneda
Intending and Function
The universe in general is predatorial to the maximum, but not predatorial in the sense in which we understand the term: the act of plundering or stealing, or injuring or exploiting others for one's own gain. For the shamans of ancient Mexico, the predatory condition of the universe meant that the INTENDING of the universe is to be continually testing awareness. They SAW that the universe creates zillions of ORGANIC BEINGS and zillions of INORGANIC BEINGS. By exerting pressure on all of them, the universe forces them to enhance their awareness, and in this fashion, the universe attempts to become aware of itself. In the COGNITIVE WORLD of shamans, therefore, awareness is the final issue. Don Juan Matus and the shamans of his lineage regarded AWARENESS as the act of being deliberately conscious of all the perceptual possibilities of man, not merely the perceptual possibilities dictated by any given culture whose role seems to be that of restricting the perceptual capacity of its members.
Don Juan maintained that to release, or set free, the total perceiving capacity of human beings would not in any way interfere with their functional behavior. In fact, functional behavior would become an extraordinary issue, for it would acquire a new value. Function in these circumstances becomes a most demanding necessity. Free from idealities and pseudo-goals, man has only function as his guiding force. Shamans call this IMPECCABILITY. For them, to be impeccable means to do one's utmost best, and a bit more. They derived function from SEEING energy directly as it flows in the universe. If energy flows in a certain way, to follow the flow of energy is, for them, being functional. Function is, therefore, the common denominator by means of which shamans face the ENERGETIC FACTS of their COGNITIVE WORLD.
--CARLOS CASTANEDA Commentaries on the Occasion of the Thirtieth Year of Publication of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. -- Edward Abbey
Intending and Function
The universe in general is predatorial to the maximum, but not predatorial in the sense in which we understand the term: the act of plundering or stealing, or injuring or exploiting others for one's own gain. For the shamans of ancient Mexico, the predatory condition of the universe meant that the INTENDING of the universe is to be continually testing awareness. They SAW that the universe creates zillions of ORGANIC BEINGS and zillions of INORGANIC BEINGS. By exerting pressure on all of them, the universe forces them to enhance their awareness, and in this fashion, the universe attempts to become aware of itself. In the COGNITIVE WORLD of shamans, therefore, awareness is the final issue. Don Juan Matus and the shamans of his lineage regarded AWARENESS as the act of being deliberately conscious of all the perceptual possibilities of man, not merely the perceptual possibilities dictated by any given culture whose role seems to be that of restricting the perceptual capacity of its members.
Don Juan maintained that to release, or set free, the total perceiving capacity of human beings would not in any way interfere with their functional behavior. In fact, functional behavior would become an extraordinary issue, for it would acquire a new value. Function in these circumstances becomes a most demanding necessity. Free from idealities and pseudo-goals, man has only function as his guiding force. Shamans call this IMPECCABILITY. For them, to be impeccable means to do one's utmost best, and a bit more. They derived function from SEEING energy directly as it flows in the universe. If energy flows in a certain way, to follow the flow of energy is, for them, being functional. Function is, therefore, the common denominator by means of which shamans face the ENERGETIC FACTS of their COGNITIVE WORLD.
--CARLOS CASTANEDA Commentaries on the Occasion of the Thirtieth Year of Publication of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. -- Edward Abbey
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Living the run is really about living your life from birth until death.
Life is a run – you hit the ground running at birth, and don’t stop until death. Even in a sedimentary life, time takes its toll, the aging of the physical body is continuous, and provisions must constantly be made for the survival of the physical body. Eating, breathing as well as all of the other bodily functions continue on day-by-day. Survival of the physical body, regardless of the circumstances, is a ‘run’. A never-ending race to the finish, regardless of where that finish may be.
Hence we are all 'Living the Run'.
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Created to fear (Click to reply)
submitted: 9/28/2003 11:28 AM
by: jshorvath@...
We are the product of those that would benefit from our existence, and are the sum of all of their efforts to date.
We are the product of those creatures that have created us for their service, and as such are in continual servitude to our creators.
But what service might we provide to them – what can we provide to our creators merely by way of our existence.
What is it that we produce – what is it that we give off – what is our benefit to them?
In a word – fear.
Fear – our most prevalent, most dominant and powerful emotion – not fear itself, but rather the frequency that fear is – for we continually emote (or vibrate to) the frequency that fear is, not by chance but rather by design.
Much in the same way that a microwave oven generates energy via a frequency, we, by way of our emotions, generate energy - a frequency based energy that is utilized by our creators.
Fear is our most prevalent emotion, and not without reason or purpose, for there is reason and purpose to all things human.
We were created simply to fear.
Created to emote or vibrate to the frequency that fear is.
Created as a source of that specific frequency required by our creators.
We fear, that is give off the emotion or frequency of fear, in servitude to our creators.
We, by way our emoting the frequency of fear, are the food source if you will, for our creators.
Biological fear transmitters, with the ability to replicate - the ability, by way of our sexuality, our genetically coded behavior pattern, to be driven to replicate.
With much forethought by those who created us, we are biological machines with one overriding purpose - to emote as programmed, day-in, day-out, for as long as we live, while in the course of our living, doing our part to create more biological fear transmitters. And generation-upon-generation, it continues on.
What a perfect cycle indeed.
Life is a run – you hit the ground running at birth, and don’t stop until death. Even in a sedimentary life, time takes its toll, the aging of the physical body is continuous, and provisions must constantly be made for the survival of the physical body. Eating, breathing as well as all of the other bodily functions continue on day-by-day. Survival of the physical body, regardless of the circumstances, is a ‘run’. A never-ending race to the finish, regardless of where that finish may be.
Hence we are all 'Living the Run'.
=====================================================================================
Created to fear (Click to reply)
submitted: 9/28/2003 11:28 AM
by: jshorvath@...
We are the product of those that would benefit from our existence, and are the sum of all of their efforts to date.
We are the product of those creatures that have created us for their service, and as such are in continual servitude to our creators.
But what service might we provide to them – what can we provide to our creators merely by way of our existence.
What is it that we produce – what is it that we give off – what is our benefit to them?
In a word – fear.
Fear – our most prevalent, most dominant and powerful emotion – not fear itself, but rather the frequency that fear is – for we continually emote (or vibrate to) the frequency that fear is, not by chance but rather by design.
Much in the same way that a microwave oven generates energy via a frequency, we, by way of our emotions, generate energy - a frequency based energy that is utilized by our creators.
Fear is our most prevalent emotion, and not without reason or purpose, for there is reason and purpose to all things human.
We were created simply to fear.
Created to emote or vibrate to the frequency that fear is.
Created as a source of that specific frequency required by our creators.
We fear, that is give off the emotion or frequency of fear, in servitude to our creators.
We, by way our emoting the frequency of fear, are the food source if you will, for our creators.
Biological fear transmitters, with the ability to replicate - the ability, by way of our sexuality, our genetically coded behavior pattern, to be driven to replicate.
With much forethought by those who created us, we are biological machines with one overriding purpose - to emote as programmed, day-in, day-out, for as long as we live, while in the course of our living, doing our part to create more biological fear transmitters. And generation-upon-generation, it continues on.
What a perfect cycle indeed.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Six Kinds of Loneliness
Pema Chodron
To be without a reference point is the ultimate loneliness. It is also called enlightenment.
In the middle way, there is no reference point. The mind with no reference point does not resolve itself, does not fixate or grasp. How could we possibly have no reference point? To have no reference point would be to change a deep-seated habitual response to the world: wanting to make it work out one way or the other. If I can’t go left or right, I will die! When we don’t go left or right, we feel like we are in a detox center. We’re alone, cold turkey with all the edginess that we’ve been trying to avoid by going left or right. That edginess can feel pretty heavy. However, years and years of going to the left or right, going to yes or no, going to right or wrong has never really changed anything. Scrambling for security has never brought anything but momentary joy. It’s like changing the position of our legs in meditation. Our legs hurt from sitting cross-legged, so we move them. And then we feel, “Phew! What a relief!” But two and a half minutes later, we want to move them again. We keep moving around seeking pleasure, seeking comfort, and the satisfaction that we get is very short-lived.
We hear a lot about the pain of samsara, and we also hear about liberation. But we don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA. We are undoing a pattern that is not just our pattern. It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world without embarrassment. We can live happily every after. This pattern keeps us dissatisfied and causes us a lot of suffering.
As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity. To the degree that we’ve been avoiding uncertainty, we’re naturally going to have withdrawal symptoms—withdrawal from always thinking that there’s a problem and that someone, somewhere, needs to fix it.
The middle way is wide open, but it’s tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or the left. We don’t want to sit and feel what we feel. We don’t want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me.
Meditation provides a way for us to train in the middle way—in staying right on the spot. We are encouraged not to judge whatever arises in our mind. In fact, we are encouraged not to even grasp whatever arises in our mind. What we usually call good or bad we simply acknowledge as thinking, without all the usual drama that goes along with right and wrong. We are instructed to let the thoughts come and go as if touching a bubble with a feather. This straightforward discipline prepares us to stop struggling and discover a fresh, unbiased state of being.
The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it’s very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don’t want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood.
Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.
There are six ways of describing this kind of cool loneliness. They are: less desire, contentment, avoiding unnecessary activity, complete discipline, not wandering in the world of desire, and not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts.
Less desire is the willingness to be lonely without resolution when everything in us yearns for something to cheer us up and change our mood. Practicing this kind of loneliness is a way of sowing seeds so that fundamental restlessness decreases. In meditation, for example, every time we label “thinking” instead of getting endlessly run around by our thoughts, we are training in just being here without dissociation. We can’t do that now to the degree that we weren’t willing to do it yesterday or the day before or last week or last year. After we practice less desire wholeheartedly and consistently, something shifts. We feel less desire in the sense of being less solidly seduced by our Very Important Story Lines. So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn’t sit for even one, that’s the journey of the warrior. That’s the path of bravery. The less we spin off and go crazy, the more we taste the satisfaction of cool loneliness. As the Zen master Katagiri Roshi often said, “One can be lonely and not be tossed away by it.”
The second kind of loneliness is contentment. When we have nothing, we have nothing to lose. We don’t have anything to lose but being programmed in our guts to feel we have a lot to lose. Our feeling that we have a lot to lose is rooted in fear—of loneliness, of change, of anything that can’t be resolved, of nonexistence. The hope that we can avoid this feeling and the fear that we can’t become our reference point.
When we draw a line down the center of a page, we know who we are if we’re on the right side and who we are if we’re on the left side. But we don’t know who we are when we don’t put ourselves on either side. Then we just don’t know what to do. We just don’t know. We have no reference point, no hand to hold. At that point we can either freak out or settle in. Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness. We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength. Usually we have to give up this belief about a billion times, again and again making friends with our jumpiness and dread, doing the same old thing a billion times with awareness. Then without our even noticing, something begins to shift. We can just be lonely with no alternatives, content to be right here with the mood and texture of what’s happening.
The third kind of loneliness is avoiding unnecessary activities. When we’re lonely in a “hot” way, we look for something to save us; we look for a way out. We get this queasy feeling that we call loneliness, and our minds just go wild trying to come up with companions to save us from despair. That’s called unnecessary activity. It’s a way of keeping ourselves busy so we don’t have to feel any pain. It could take the form of obsessively daydreaming of true romance, or turning a tidbit of gossip into the six o’clock news, or even going off by ourselves into the wilderness.
The point is that in all these activities, we are seeking companionship in our usual, habitual way, using our same old repetitive ways of distancing ourselves from the demon loneliness. Could we just settle down and have some compassion and respect for ourselves? Could we stop trying to escape from being alone with ourselves? What about practicing not jumping and grabbing when we begin to panic? Relaxing with loneliness is a worthy occupation. As the Japanese poet Ryokan says, “If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.”
Complete discipline is another component of cool loneliness. Complete discipline means that at every opportunity, we’re willing to come back, just gently come back to the present moment. This is loneliness as complete discipline. We’re willing to sit still, just be there, alone. We don’t particularly have to cultivate this kind of loneliness; we could just sit still long enough to realize it’s how things really are. We are fundamentally alone, and there is nothing anywhere to hold on to. Moreover, this is not a problem. In fact, it allows us to finally discover a completely unfabricated state of being. Our habitual assumptions—all our ideas about how things are—keep us from seeing anything in a fresh, open way. We say, “Oh yes, I know.” But we don’t know. We don’t ultimately know anything. There’s no certainty about anything. This basic truth hurts, and we want to run away from it. But coming back and relaxing with something as familiar as loneliness is good discipline for realizing the profundity of the unresolved moments of our lives. We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness.
Not wandering in the world of desire is another way of describing cool loneliness. Wandering in the world of desire involves looking for alternatives, seeking something to comfort us—food, drink, people. The word desire encompasses that addiction quality, the way we grab for something because we want to find a way to make things okay. That quality comes from never having grown up. We still want to go home and be able to open the refrigerator and find it full of our favorite goodies; when the going gets tough, we want to yell “Mom!” But what we’re doing as we progress along the path is leaving home and becoming homeless. Not wandering in the world of desire is about relating directly with how things are. Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved. The same is true for any other experience we might have.
Another aspect of cool loneliness is not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts. The rug’s been pulled; the jig is up; there is no way to get out of this one! We don’t even seek the companionship of our own constant conversation with ourselves about how it is and how it isn’t, whether it is or whether it isn’t, whether it should or whether it shouldn’t, whether it can or whether it can’t. With cool loneliness we do not expect security from our own internal chatter. That’s why we are instructed in meditation to label it “thinking.” It has no objective reality. It is transparent and ungraspable. We’re encouraged to just touch that chatter and let it go, not make much ado about nothing.
Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.
Cool loneliness doesn’t provide any resolution or give us ground under our feet. It challenges us to step into a world of no reference point without polarizing or solidifying. This is called the middle way, or the sacred path of the warrior. When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart? The next time you get a chance, experiment with this.
- Pema Chödrön
Pema Chodron
To be without a reference point is the ultimate loneliness. It is also called enlightenment.
In the middle way, there is no reference point. The mind with no reference point does not resolve itself, does not fixate or grasp. How could we possibly have no reference point? To have no reference point would be to change a deep-seated habitual response to the world: wanting to make it work out one way or the other. If I can’t go left or right, I will die! When we don’t go left or right, we feel like we are in a detox center. We’re alone, cold turkey with all the edginess that we’ve been trying to avoid by going left or right. That edginess can feel pretty heavy. However, years and years of going to the left or right, going to yes or no, going to right or wrong has never really changed anything. Scrambling for security has never brought anything but momentary joy. It’s like changing the position of our legs in meditation. Our legs hurt from sitting cross-legged, so we move them. And then we feel, “Phew! What a relief!” But two and a half minutes later, we want to move them again. We keep moving around seeking pleasure, seeking comfort, and the satisfaction that we get is very short-lived.
We hear a lot about the pain of samsara, and we also hear about liberation. But we don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA. We are undoing a pattern that is not just our pattern. It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world without embarrassment. We can live happily every after. This pattern keeps us dissatisfied and causes us a lot of suffering.
As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity. To the degree that we’ve been avoiding uncertainty, we’re naturally going to have withdrawal symptoms—withdrawal from always thinking that there’s a problem and that someone, somewhere, needs to fix it.
The middle way is wide open, but it’s tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or the left. We don’t want to sit and feel what we feel. We don’t want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me.
Meditation provides a way for us to train in the middle way—in staying right on the spot. We are encouraged not to judge whatever arises in our mind. In fact, we are encouraged not to even grasp whatever arises in our mind. What we usually call good or bad we simply acknowledge as thinking, without all the usual drama that goes along with right and wrong. We are instructed to let the thoughts come and go as if touching a bubble with a feather. This straightforward discipline prepares us to stop struggling and discover a fresh, unbiased state of being.
The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it’s very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don’t want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood.
Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.
There are six ways of describing this kind of cool loneliness. They are: less desire, contentment, avoiding unnecessary activity, complete discipline, not wandering in the world of desire, and not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts.
Less desire is the willingness to be lonely without resolution when everything in us yearns for something to cheer us up and change our mood. Practicing this kind of loneliness is a way of sowing seeds so that fundamental restlessness decreases. In meditation, for example, every time we label “thinking” instead of getting endlessly run around by our thoughts, we are training in just being here without dissociation. We can’t do that now to the degree that we weren’t willing to do it yesterday or the day before or last week or last year. After we practice less desire wholeheartedly and consistently, something shifts. We feel less desire in the sense of being less solidly seduced by our Very Important Story Lines. So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn’t sit for even one, that’s the journey of the warrior. That’s the path of bravery. The less we spin off and go crazy, the more we taste the satisfaction of cool loneliness. As the Zen master Katagiri Roshi often said, “One can be lonely and not be tossed away by it.”
The second kind of loneliness is contentment. When we have nothing, we have nothing to lose. We don’t have anything to lose but being programmed in our guts to feel we have a lot to lose. Our feeling that we have a lot to lose is rooted in fear—of loneliness, of change, of anything that can’t be resolved, of nonexistence. The hope that we can avoid this feeling and the fear that we can’t become our reference point.
When we draw a line down the center of a page, we know who we are if we’re on the right side and who we are if we’re on the left side. But we don’t know who we are when we don’t put ourselves on either side. Then we just don’t know what to do. We just don’t know. We have no reference point, no hand to hold. At that point we can either freak out or settle in. Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness. We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength. Usually we have to give up this belief about a billion times, again and again making friends with our jumpiness and dread, doing the same old thing a billion times with awareness. Then without our even noticing, something begins to shift. We can just be lonely with no alternatives, content to be right here with the mood and texture of what’s happening.
The third kind of loneliness is avoiding unnecessary activities. When we’re lonely in a “hot” way, we look for something to save us; we look for a way out. We get this queasy feeling that we call loneliness, and our minds just go wild trying to come up with companions to save us from despair. That’s called unnecessary activity. It’s a way of keeping ourselves busy so we don’t have to feel any pain. It could take the form of obsessively daydreaming of true romance, or turning a tidbit of gossip into the six o’clock news, or even going off by ourselves into the wilderness.
The point is that in all these activities, we are seeking companionship in our usual, habitual way, using our same old repetitive ways of distancing ourselves from the demon loneliness. Could we just settle down and have some compassion and respect for ourselves? Could we stop trying to escape from being alone with ourselves? What about practicing not jumping and grabbing when we begin to panic? Relaxing with loneliness is a worthy occupation. As the Japanese poet Ryokan says, “If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.”
Complete discipline is another component of cool loneliness. Complete discipline means that at every opportunity, we’re willing to come back, just gently come back to the present moment. This is loneliness as complete discipline. We’re willing to sit still, just be there, alone. We don’t particularly have to cultivate this kind of loneliness; we could just sit still long enough to realize it’s how things really are. We are fundamentally alone, and there is nothing anywhere to hold on to. Moreover, this is not a problem. In fact, it allows us to finally discover a completely unfabricated state of being. Our habitual assumptions—all our ideas about how things are—keep us from seeing anything in a fresh, open way. We say, “Oh yes, I know.” But we don’t know. We don’t ultimately know anything. There’s no certainty about anything. This basic truth hurts, and we want to run away from it. But coming back and relaxing with something as familiar as loneliness is good discipline for realizing the profundity of the unresolved moments of our lives. We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness.
Not wandering in the world of desire is another way of describing cool loneliness. Wandering in the world of desire involves looking for alternatives, seeking something to comfort us—food, drink, people. The word desire encompasses that addiction quality, the way we grab for something because we want to find a way to make things okay. That quality comes from never having grown up. We still want to go home and be able to open the refrigerator and find it full of our favorite goodies; when the going gets tough, we want to yell “Mom!” But what we’re doing as we progress along the path is leaving home and becoming homeless. Not wandering in the world of desire is about relating directly with how things are. Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved. The same is true for any other experience we might have.
Another aspect of cool loneliness is not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts. The rug’s been pulled; the jig is up; there is no way to get out of this one! We don’t even seek the companionship of our own constant conversation with ourselves about how it is and how it isn’t, whether it is or whether it isn’t, whether it should or whether it shouldn’t, whether it can or whether it can’t. With cool loneliness we do not expect security from our own internal chatter. That’s why we are instructed in meditation to label it “thinking.” It has no objective reality. It is transparent and ungraspable. We’re encouraged to just touch that chatter and let it go, not make much ado about nothing.
Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.
Cool loneliness doesn’t provide any resolution or give us ground under our feet. It challenges us to step into a world of no reference point without polarizing or solidifying. This is called the middle way, or the sacred path of the warrior. When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart? The next time you get a chance, experiment with this.
- Pema Chödrön
Monday, November 15, 2004
Said a traveler to one of thedisciples, "I have traveled agreat distance to listen to theMaster, but I find his wordsquite ordinary."
"Don't listen to his words.Listen to his message."
"How does one do that?"
"Take hold of a sentence thathe says. Shake it well tillall the words drop off. Whatis left will set your hearton fire."
Anthony de Mello, S.J.
"Don't listen to his words.Listen to his message."
"How does one do that?"
"Take hold of a sentence thathe says. Shake it well tillall the words drop off. Whatis left will set your hearton fire."
Anthony de Mello, S.J.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Re: Can anybody give me information on Russian MA...
Quote:
Out of curiosity was your first teacher in the military? If so is that were he learned all those martial arts. Yes and no. Sergei was an engineer, and this made him eligible for officer training, but in a reservist capacity, i.e. he didn't have to see a lot of action on the front. The implicaion I got was that he used military connections who had connections with chinese miitary connections to arrange the exchange program, so you could say that the military was involved in a way.He also had a job as a sort of debt-collector for *cough cough* genlemen requiring some discretion, which he later parlayed into a detective agency. A big difference between what he did and what you would expect from such a job description over here is that often the collectees were also organized, armed, and often dangerous.He got into that line of work as a result of his rep as a sport fighter. He'd made the papers a few times, gotten some championships, and on the Soviet street, a sport fighter was in demand as muscle, maybe a step below being in spetsnaz for value.I can corrobate this with what my friend Misha who used box during that time said - often street toughs would walk into his boxing gymn looking to boost their reps (and hourly rate) by going in the ring, and fighting dirty. His trainer would tell him "Infidel" (his coach was muslim) "if you do not beat this guy, you cannot box under me anymore." Misha's boxing is pretty dirty if he wants it to be -hidden elbows, cross buttocks that look like hooks, lotta old-school bareknuckle moves this guy knows ...Anyway, one interesting bit of information from my first teach - when he started out collecting, with just the sport background, he would win his streetfights, but would often sustain some injury in the process. However, he then met this guy Lavrov in Krasnodar (if you look on certain websites, there is a series of articles related to RMA, primarily by Pachenko. Most of Pachenko's articles try to discredit the idea of a native RMA, but one article on that page has an interview with Lavrov). Lavrov knew some RMA, and according to Sergei, it made a big difference - no more injuries, and he understood his other stuff better. Lavrov was deteriorating by then tho - too much drinking. Anyway, Sergei sees the writing on the wall, moves to Canada wth his wife and an incredible amouint of liquid currency, teaches at a karate school for pocket money (did I mention he also has a 5th dan in karate?) and hears about Vladimir. He sort of thought it was a scam actually, and he wandered in with a very smug attitude, thought he'd have some fun and show some people up - and then Vlad pounded on him in such a fashion that he realized that Vlad was way more advanced than anyone he ever saw, and he really had a lot to learn. A familiar story for the people in Toronto.Nowadays Sergei runs a resort camp in Eastern Ontario, doing quite well.
Quote:
Out of curiosity was your first teacher in the military? If so is that were he learned all those martial arts. Yes and no. Sergei was an engineer, and this made him eligible for officer training, but in a reservist capacity, i.e. he didn't have to see a lot of action on the front. The implicaion I got was that he used military connections who had connections with chinese miitary connections to arrange the exchange program, so you could say that the military was involved in a way.He also had a job as a sort of debt-collector for *cough cough* genlemen requiring some discretion, which he later parlayed into a detective agency. A big difference between what he did and what you would expect from such a job description over here is that often the collectees were also organized, armed, and often dangerous.He got into that line of work as a result of his rep as a sport fighter. He'd made the papers a few times, gotten some championships, and on the Soviet street, a sport fighter was in demand as muscle, maybe a step below being in spetsnaz for value.I can corrobate this with what my friend Misha who used box during that time said - often street toughs would walk into his boxing gymn looking to boost their reps (and hourly rate) by going in the ring, and fighting dirty. His trainer would tell him "Infidel" (his coach was muslim) "if you do not beat this guy, you cannot box under me anymore." Misha's boxing is pretty dirty if he wants it to be -hidden elbows, cross buttocks that look like hooks, lotta old-school bareknuckle moves this guy knows ...Anyway, one interesting bit of information from my first teach - when he started out collecting, with just the sport background, he would win his streetfights, but would often sustain some injury in the process. However, he then met this guy Lavrov in Krasnodar (if you look on certain websites, there is a series of articles related to RMA, primarily by Pachenko. Most of Pachenko's articles try to discredit the idea of a native RMA, but one article on that page has an interview with Lavrov). Lavrov knew some RMA, and according to Sergei, it made a big difference - no more injuries, and he understood his other stuff better. Lavrov was deteriorating by then tho - too much drinking. Anyway, Sergei sees the writing on the wall, moves to Canada wth his wife and an incredible amouint of liquid currency, teaches at a karate school for pocket money (did I mention he also has a 5th dan in karate?) and hears about Vladimir. He sort of thought it was a scam actually, and he wandered in with a very smug attitude, thought he'd have some fun and show some people up - and then Vlad pounded on him in such a fashion that he realized that Vlad was way more advanced than anyone he ever saw, and he really had a lot to learn. A familiar story for the people in Toronto.Nowadays Sergei runs a resort camp in Eastern Ontario, doing quite well.
There is this traveler in the desert. It's very, very hot, and he is thirsty. In the distance there is one lone tree. He didn't know that it was a wishing tree. He goes and sits beneath it and he thinks, 'this is nice, I only wish I had a cool drink now'. Lo and behold, a cool drink appears in his hand. 'Oh! Terrific!' he says. 'Now if I had a soft bed to lie on and drink this with a bit of a breeze to fan me'. Lo and behold, a soft bed appears, as well as a maiden with a fan, fanning him. 'Oh! This is terrific. Now all I need is a good meal to go with all this and everything would be just right'. Lo and behold, a big meal appears. Then the mind says, 'Hey! What's all this? What's going on? Maybe it's a devil?' And the devil appears. The mind then says 'Oh! He's going to eat me'. And he does!
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
If all there is is Consciousness, if there is only Consciousness, then why or for what are you still seeking? If there is only Consciousness then right now you must be That and everything else that appears in and as awareness must also be That, including any sense of separate self. Any appearance of mundane, ordinary existence can be no less of Consciousness than any appearance of unconditional love, wholness, bliss, stillness, silence or anything else. Does anything really need to be transcended, found or let go of? - Nathan Gill
Monday, October 25, 2004
Give up mischief.
Be serene.
Leave everything behind you.
Do not take offense
And do not give it.
Want nothing from this world
And nothing from the next.
Be free as the bird who
Leaves no tracks in the sky.
Calmly
Let go of life,
Of home and pleasure and desire.
Let nothing of this world hold you.
Nothing of all creation hold you.
And with great gladness
Know that you are finished.
You have woken from your sleep.
Then in you there will be
No yesterday,
No tomorrow
No today.
Possessing nothing,
Wanting nothing
You will be free.
Without fear, go.
The Deathless is waiting for you."
~The Buddha
Be serene.
Leave everything behind you.
Do not take offense
And do not give it.
Want nothing from this world
And nothing from the next.
Be free as the bird who
Leaves no tracks in the sky.
Calmly
Let go of life,
Of home and pleasure and desire.
Let nothing of this world hold you.
Nothing of all creation hold you.
And with great gladness
Know that you are finished.
You have woken from your sleep.
Then in you there will be
No yesterday,
No tomorrow
No today.
Possessing nothing,
Wanting nothing
You will be free.
Without fear, go.
The Deathless is waiting for you."
~The Buddha
If the desire to be honest is greater than the desire to be "good" or "bad," then the terrific power of one's vices will become clear. And behind the vice the old forgotten fear will come up (the fear of being excluded from life) and behind the fear the pain (the pain of not being loved) and behind this pain of loneliness the deepest and most profound and most hidden of all human desires: the desire to love and to give oneself in love and to be part of the living stream we call brotherhood. And the moment love is discovered behind hatred all hatred disappears.
Fritz Kunkel, M. D., The Choice Is Always Ours
Fritz Kunkel, M. D., The Choice Is Always Ours
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