High Times and the Timeless

With A Bow to Stephen Gaskin

 

"There is a plane of experience, other than the three dimensional plane, which can be felt by a human being...If people never get above the merely signal level of communication, and don't become telepathic, they haven't explored their full human birthright."

-- Stephen Gaskin

"We are all parts of God.  Each one of us has an electrical body field that surrounds us, and a mind field that goes on to infinity."

--Stephen Gaskin

Stephen Gaskin (February 16, 1935 - July 1, 2014) and his wife, Ina May

In meditation, the subjective nature of Time passing becomes obvious. 

Sometimes, an hour zips by.  At other times, I've felt like a dazed prizefighter hanging onto the ropes of a painful existence waiting forever for the bell to ring.

Although modern science creates a "benchmark" for one second of objective time tied to the decay of a cesium atom, Einstein's theory of relativity already pointed out that it "ain't that simple."  

No shit, Sherlock. 

As I get older, it becomes increasingly impossible to grasp the nature of concepts like a second, a day, a decade.  In fact, at this stage of the journey, it's easier, at times, to directly sense the mysterious nature of the Timeless glowing in the boundless expanse of each moment.  I blame that on jumping heart first into Bodhisattva Practice years ago.  

I first came across the Bodhisattva Vow as it was expressed by Stephen Gaskin in Hey Beatnik!  The words resonated with something in my heart of hearts.  I was hooked. At that moment the vow took me. 

So, did Stephen Gaskin and the Farm.

Although I only had three conversations with him -- spread over a dozen years -- Stephen was a major influence in my life.  I'm not surprised that he came to mind for the first time in a long time during a conversation with an old friend a couple of days ago.  It was that time of year.  Gaskin passed away twelve years ago on July 1. 

In some traditions, the anniversary of a guru's passing is a high holy day.  I don't usually put a lot of weight on the "spooky" stuff.  Yet, Gaskin's "Mahasamadhi" brought about his mysterious "appearance" in my life twelve years ago -- a few days after he died.

As was my practice in those days, I would compose a blog post each week and send out an email "tickler" announcement.  (I'll do that for this post as well.)   As I sat at my laptop, struggling to write a commemorative post for a man that I revered, the iPhone dinged. 

When I opened the phone, I was amazed to find an announcement for Your MMM Courtesy Call: "Lighten Up!" -- with a quote from Stephen Gaskin staring me in the face! For some inexplicable reason, Google re-delivered the email announcement I'd sent six months before! (I'd only quoted Gaskin twice before in the epigram of a Your MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call post in hundreds of posts to that point.)  Google had never re-delivered an old email I sent before.  It hasn't done so since.

Wierd!?  Synchronicity? Coincidence?  All I know is that I lightened up.  I  found myself grinning from ear to ear.  I just wrote a brief intro about the experience -- and re-posted "Lighten Up."

Stephen Gaskin and the Farm

Stephen Gaskin always maintained he was more of a beatnik than a hippie.  Yet, wearing tie-dyes til the end, Gaskin was at the epicenter of the burst of spiritual energy that encircled the globe during the 1960's and 70's. A Marine Corp veteran of the Korean War, he was teaching in the English department at San Francisco State College when the hippies of Haight-Ashbury mushroomed into a worldwide counter-cultural phenomenon.  

What Gaskin started as an experimental evening discussion class with six students in 1968 grew into Monday Night Class which drew as many as 1500 people each week at a local rock venue.  They meditated together in silence.  Then Gaskin would deliver and extemporaneous talk on psychedelic spirituality before answering questions.  Within three years, Gaskin and those who considered him to be their spiritual teacher had established an intentional community called the Farm in rural Tennessee.  At it's peak it had about 1600 residents.  They met together for meditation and a talk by Stephen weekly at Sunday Morning Service.

This all, of course, gathered a lot of public attention.   It sure caught mine.  I devoured the books the Farm's publishing company distributed.  I visited it three times during its first 5 years, staying a month at a time twice. (When push came to shove though, I couldn't make the choice to live 700 miles away from my ex's and children.)

High Times -- With or Without Drugs

If the truth be told, I was a lightweight when it came to psychedelics.  Introduced to marijuana in the Spring of 1968, I went on to experience a number of trips on mushrooms, and on what was presented at the time as  "synthetic mescaline." (who knows what it was...)   Yet, as I began to explore Yoga and Meditation, I soon sensed that the drugs weren't the only means to accessing extraordinary qualities of consciousness.  Intrigued by these experiences, I read extensively about spirituality, religion, and mysticism.  I also met regularly with a small group of friends who were actively exploring spirituality in their lives.  (Two of them were being trained as peer support facilitators at a cutting edge psychiatric hospital.) 

Although I continued to pass a joint around once in awhile during those years, I actually avoided LSD out of concern that I wasn't "ready."

It didn't matter!!  

The Collective Consciousness was so energized as the 60's became the 70's, that I was swept up in a set of "paranormal" experiences.  I had a number of compelling out-of-body experiences, saw aura's, encountered ghosts and other "astral beings." I also experienced moments of synchronicity and telepathy that were absolutely mind-boggling -- without drugs in my system at the time!   

Then, in the spring of 1972, I had a direct experience of Perfect Oneness that fulfilled my deepest aspirations for Spiritual Connection at the time -- and dispelled a fear of death.  In those moments, I tasted the Real Deal.  The elements of the Perennial Philosophy were no longer merely conceptual.  I knew, in my bones: There is Sacred Oneness.  We are, individually and collectively, emanations of infinitude.  And as Saint John of Liverpool (and mystics through the ages) proclaimed, we all shine on!
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In It for the Long Haul

"As the mind becomes a little more quiet the sacredness of everything 

within and without becomes clear to us.”

-- Zen Teacher Norman Fischer

 

 “Be still.  Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.
When there is silence one finds the anchor of the universe within oneself.”
― Lao Tzu

In the midst of the scurry of the past couple of weeks, I was especially aware of how precious each morning's meditation was to me.  

 

Sitting here at this aging MacBook Pro,  I take a long, deep conscious breath.  Feet firmly on the floor, sitting relatively erect, I take a full conscious breath.  My belly expands, then my rib cage.  Then, as I continue to inhale, my attention rises to my heart center -- and my awareness expands beyond the sensations in my body into the gracious spaciousness of Open Awareness.  

 

Here, I rest in the still, silent, expansive presence of the present moment.

 

Breath continues to breathe. Bodily sensations arise.  Eyes see.  Ears hear.  Thoughts emerge.  My fingers tap dance on the keyboard.   Letters appear on the screen.  I return to my breath, the sensations of my body and senses.  The spacious silence that exists within each moment reappears.

 

In my mind's eye, an image emerges.  I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  At age 80, I have now entered my ninth decade of life on this planet.  (Yikes.  I feel even older conceptualizing it like that.  I best just settle in with saying that I'm 80 years old. LOL)  

 

However I choose to hold it in my mind, it's clear that in the long haul of human life, I'm somewhere in the final lap.  I've got more many more yesterdays in my pockets than tomorrows.   I know that I'm not getting out of here alive.  

 

Taking another full, conscious breath, continuing to relax into an open-hearted presence, the tunnel and the light dissolve into the clear, expansive, luminous brilliance that is beyond endings and beginnings.  I'm at peace.

 

Once again, I know.  Home is where the Heart is.

 

Touching this silent stillness, even for a few brief moments, is like feeling the warm glow of a fireplace, snuggling at home on a snowy evening peering through the window at the moon.  Paradoxically, touching this silent stillness is also like sipping clear, crisp spring water on a steamy summer day.  In Stillness, a Presence emerges.  In a silent whisper, it sings of the Ineffable, an infinite space where the fundamentally mysterious and completely ordinary meet to form the fabric of Life itself.  

Simply Sitting Still

 

Although I use a variety of meditation techniques, have an active prayer life, and practice a set of daily spiritual rituals, the foundation of my personal practice for decades has been shikantaza.  I simply sit still with what Zen teacher Norman Fischer calls "the basic feeling of being alive."   (An article on Shikantaza by Suzuki Roshi)

 

Sometimes, it may take awhile for the dust to settle.  Yet, often enough, I can Simply Sit Still and allow the restless energy embedded in my body and mind to dissipate.  I can relax into the embrace of the expansive spaciousness of what contemporary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle calls the Eternal Now.  Resting in the spaciousness of open awareness, a subtle, yet very real, healing emerges.

 

Of course, this is often easier said than done.

Conditioned as we are in this society, our attention is usually drawn into the thoughts, images, memories, and daydreams cascading through our mind.  Rather than sitting still, observing the experience of the present moment with a relaxed open gaze, we find ourselves lost in thoughts and images of the future or the past.  

Yet, the moment I simply notice this, a moment of Practice emerges.  If that noticing is precise, clear, open, calm, and non-judgmental, I have engaged Mindfulness.  It is a qualitatively different mode of consciousness.  There I approach the Gateless Gate to our True Nature.

At times, it is just that simple.  Yet, simple doesn't necessarily mean easy.   

 

Why?

Without Practice, moment to moment, how we experience our lives, is mostly just a bad habit.  The way we see and react to our experience, is primarily a result of our conditioning.  Thoughts and feelings arise, unbidden, to dominate our attention.  Most the time, we don't choose to think what we are thinking or to feel what we are feeling.  It just bubbles up from our subconscious.  

 

Without a conscious commitment to put in the time and effort to discover what so often remains beneath the threshold of our awareness, we are held in bondage by our past.   Creatures of habit, we are likely to create a future that contains the same old, same old.  We continue to experience the suffering that characterizes much of the human condition.   

 

Thankfully, there is Practice.

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Body of Wisdom

 “Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. 
Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is the only moment.”

― Thích Nhat Hạnh, Being Peace

"When you listen to your body in this way, you can also feel that it’s the Earth’s body. Its bones are made of Earth minerals, calcium and magnesium, and there is seawater in your blood. Your body is everything you eat. It’s not just your body but part of something bigger: you are the Earth come alive."

-- Jack Kornfield

Reverend Gyomay Kubose (1905 - 2000)

When I observed my first Zen teacher dry mopping the wooden floor of the Zendo at the Buddhist Temple of Chicago years ago, I was awestruck.  

 

I hadn't seen anything like it before. 

There was a simple grace in his bearing, a Presence in his slow mindful steps that was astonishing. 

It was obvious to me that Reverend Gyomay Kubose, in his 70's at the time, was connected to his body, to the smooth wooden floors of the Buddhist Temple of Chicago -- and to Life itself -- in an entirely different way. 

 

Embodied Practice

The first of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of Body, is a concept that stretches back to the earliest texts of Buddhism.  The Anapanasati and Maha Satipathana Suttas spell out the details of meditative techniques which have been widely taught for about 2,500 years.  In these teachings, the development of a fuller awareness of our bodies is seen as a means of cultivating a calmer and clearer sense of the entire realm of our own experience.  

Beginning with focusing our attention on the process of breathing, attention can be directed in a number of ways to more fully experience our embodied existence.  As Mindfulness Practice deepens and we become more fully present to what we are experiencing on deeper and subtler levels, Reality asserts itself.

At a certain point, the Real Deal becomes self-evident.  
 

Getting From There to Here

Conditioned as we are, most of us are "in our heads" most of the time.  Although we are always breathing, and our bodies and our sensory apparatus are operating to generate a whole realm of experiences, most of this occurs without our conscious awareness.  Generally, conditioned as we are, the focus of our attention is primarily captured by the thoughts running through our head.

Fueled by emotional energies, subconscious beliefs, and conditioned filters, these thoughts dominate our attention in a way that sweeps us along the stream of our own conditioned ego patterns more often than not.  Mindfulness Practice, both on and off the meditation cushion, offers us a means to  expand our range of awareness to include a universe of experience that we generally aren't aware of.  Without Practice we are liable to "sleepwalk,"only half-awake,  throughout our lives. 

Reverend Kubose, most definitely, was not sleepwalking that day.  He was awake to the present moment, to the Oneness of Life Itself. 
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When It Rains

"The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face...When we want to complain about the rain, we could feel it's wetness instead."

-- Pema Chodron

“The best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain. ” 

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When it rains, it pours...

It seems that Mother Nature saved our April showers for the second week of May this year.  Helping to alleviate the Northeast's drought conditions, Her showers reigned for days and days. 

We got Drizzled upon. Misted. Doused. Drenched.  

The flowers loved it.  So did I.

This wasn't always the case.  

There was a time that "rainy days and Monday's would always get me down."  Prone to bouts of depression, primarily propelled by the unexplored grief of a traumatic childhood, I'd invariably cloud up on gray days, and rain on my own parade. 

Nowadays, I find gray days and stormy weather both comforting and energizing.  It is always a chance to get real.

Whether it's an overcast sky, a soft foggy drizzle, a thunder-booming rip-snorting whizzbanger -- or anything in-between --  once I remember to just be present for the actual experience, there is something immensely alive and vibrant about rainy days.  Dancing beyond our ability to control it, Mother Nature just is.  She will just do what she will do -- no matter how we think or feel about it.  

So, why not relax and dig it!? 

At this very moment

I feel a lot of gratitude for Mindfulness Practice.

As I sit here with fingers dancing across the keyboard, I see the sun finally emerging to play hide and seek with the storm clouds. Through the open window, I hear the wind singing in the trees, a collection of birds twittering, the pulsating surf of tires hissing along the rain-slickened asphalt of High Street here in Greenfield, MA.

Pausing, letting go for a moment of "thinking mind," I'm aware of my breath and the sensations of my body sitting here.  I feel the wind dancing across my skin through that same open window.  The sounds ebb and flow.  The sensations ebb and flow. 

Life is like that, too.  
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