Mama Said There'll Be Days Like This

"Our thought now being no-thought, even our singing and dancing are the voice of the Dharma." Hakuin-zenji, Song of Zazen

 "Mama said there'll be days like this

There'll be days like this mama said."

-- The Shirelles

For decades now, Simply Sitting Still has been at the heart of my daily Practice.  Although, I may take a few conscious breaths and focus on the sensations of my posture for a few moments, I then settle into the Shikantaza of Soto Zen I was introduced to decades ago.  I simply rest in the bright, alert, spacious awareness that presents itself.  

 

Combined with certain other meditative techniques, and "off the zafu" mindfulness practices, prayers, castings, and study, I am often able to access the vast, spacious, and mysterious Presence of the Real Deal -- at least for a few precious moments -- most days.

 

Yet, me being me, the spirit of curiosity has continued to draw me to explore the understandings and practices of the world's saints, sages, seekers, philosophers, poets, and scientists from traditions within -- and beyond -- Buddhism.

 

For the past decade, feeling drawn to my family roots, I have connected more deeply with the mystical traditions of Judaism and Christianity.  Drawn further into the understandings and practices of the "people of the Book," I've now done a deep dive into the teachings and practices of Sufi teacher Neil Douglas-Klotz, and I can wholeheartedly embrace that form of Islam as well.

 

The Truth, as it has touched my life directly, appears to glow brightly at the heart of each.  

 

This on-going exploration has brought many wonderful teachers into my life.  Some of these have been formally authorized to teach in a specific lineage.  Some of them have been family members.  Some of them longtime dharmabuddhys.  Some of them are my current cohorts in the MMM Circles.  Some have been cats, mice, squirrels, eagles -- or pigeons.  A few of them have been inebriated strangers on the street.   

 

The Sometimes Soundless Sound of Music 

In the early 70's,  I was introduced to the Chant of Chenrezig by a friend of mine.  Back in those days, I didn't have to pay a lot of money for mantra or a belong to a community to explore the "unseen" world of spirituality.  The Spirit was on the land.  Even a working class kid like me had a number of mind boggling episodes of the "supernatural."  I had out body experiences and compelling visions.  I encountered beings in different dimensions.  I saw auras.  Each experience convinced me, in my bones, that there is a sacred dimension to life.  

 

Of course,  as a member of the Woodstock generation, a few of those Peeks at the Sacred did involve marijuana, mushrooms or some synthetic concotion.  Most of the time, though, there were no psychoactive chemicals in my bloodstream.  In the high times of the 60's and 70's, it felt like the Collective Consciousness itself was laced with psychedelics.

 

To be sure, some of these experiences emerged in the stillness of silent meditation.  Yet, others arose as I wandered or sat alone in the vast, yet comforting, embrace of Mother Nature.  Others materialized as I communed heart to heart with dear friends in conversation or lovemaking.  

 

One such "awakening" even occurred while in the midst of the mundane.  I was shopping at the supermarket.  In those moments, I was swept up in a Boundless Love that connected me at the heart with every person I encountered.  It felt as if we were all part of an angelic choir soundlessly singing and dancing in harmony. The aisles were alive with the sound of music. 

The Chant of Chenrizig

 

The Tibetan chant, Om Mani Padme Hum, wasn't transmitted to me by a qualified Buddhist teacher.  There was no formal initiation, transmission, or ceremony.  My old high school buddhy hadn't received it from an authorized teacher either.  He had been introduced to this Tibetan Buddhist invocation of Avoloketishvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, as he pushed a huge prayer wheel with a group of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners in Northern India.  He had come across this gathering during a solo motorcycle journey from Singapore to France months before.  

 

Looking into his eyes, standing about three feet away I got totally stoned as he chanted "Om mani padme hum.  Om mani padme hum.  Om mani padme hum. " In those few moment in time, I was swept up in the Timeless.  I felt an intense, "untamed" boundless, energy course through me.  Then, as if it were "no big deal," he continued on with the tale of his amazing journey. 

 

Although I didn't speak of it at the time, I knew Something Special had happened.  So, when I came across this chant in Ram Dass's classic tome, Be Here Now, a month later, I filed it away for future reference -- and waited for the chance to practice it more intensely.  Later that year, I had the means and opportunity to Practice do just that.  

 

Unlike my friend's experience in India, my prayer wheel was the steering wheel of a canary yellow VW camper.  I was practiced it silently to myself.  Yet Something Special occured. 

 

I was cruising southward along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado on Interstate 25 headed for New Mexico at the time.  The journey was going to take several hours.  My partner seemed content listening to the cassette player and silently taking in the scenery.   It seemed like a perfect time.  Being the practical multi-tasker, I used the mile markers to remind me to re-focus my attention if I'd wandered of into thought or day-dreaming.  I chanted for well over an hour.

 

At a certain point, I experienced a Shift in consciousness.   

 

Image generated by AI, edited by Lance Smith

The experience was as tangible as shifting the gears of the van.  It was as palpable as hum of the engine, the vibration of the tires along the road, and the whistling crosswind that was both heard and felt in my body.  

 

In a flash, the chant was no longer just the sound of my own voice in my head.   In the cathedral like reverb chamber of this mode of consciousnenss,  a vast chorus of innumerable voices emerged.  I was swept up into an expansive experience of boundless energy and wonder.  The entire Universe seemed of to hum along in harmony with the mantra as I drove down the road.

 

As I sit here at the screen with that memory now, I can see wisps of doubt emerge.  I'm so grateful that, at this stage of the journey, I can recognize and relate constructively to this state of mind.  Seen as one of the Five Hindrances in Buddhism, doubt is a form of thought and feeling that is widespread in a materialistic culture that promotes skepticism and privileges thinking over other, more comprehensive, modes of knowing.  Like the other hindrances, these passing mindstates, can be seen, and released, as an impediment to the evolution of the awakened mind.  

 

Sitting at the keyboard here now,  I can stop typing and pause to connect more deeply with the sensations of my breath and body, then allow my mind's gaze to expand to include my breath, bodily sensations, and visual and auditory fields.  As I did,  a gracious spaciousness re-emerged.  Opening my heart to the Eternal Nowness, doubt dissolved.  Now, it's clear that "this" moment includes that moment.  There is no separation.  Time and the Timeless embrace and dance as One.   

Om Mani Padme Hum

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'Tis the Season

  "Commitment is at the very heart of freeing ourselves 

of old habits and old fears."

― Pema Chodron

 “I think what everyone should be doing, before it's too late, is committing themselves to what they really want to do with their lives.”
― Thich Nhat Hạnh

Whispering through the trees in small patches of red, orange, and yellow, the first hints of autumn have appeared here in Western Massachusetts.  

Here it comes, ready or not.   

To Every Thing There is a Season

As they often do as autumn announces its presence, my thoughts have turned to those times in my life that I have committed to Intensive Practice in the fall.  In Buddhism, like many of the world's religions (Ramadan in Islam.  The High Holy Days in Judaism.  Lent in Christianity,  etc.), there are extended periods of time each year that some folks move beyond "business as usual" to make a special commitment to their spiritual practice.    

In Buddhism, the tradition of the Rain's Retreat (Vassa or Ango) goes back to the time of the Buddha.  Traditionally beginning the first day of the waning moon of the eighth lunar month (June/July), it lasted about three months, the period of time that the monsoon season in India made travel difficult.  During that time the monks, who were homeless wanderers most of the year, would gather in one place to hear the Buddha's teachings and engage in intensive meditation practice.  

To this day, an extended period of meditative retreat is widespread in Theravadan Buddhism.  It is observed in various forms in Tibetan Buddhism and Zen as well.  Here in the US, where hot summer weather is more problematic than monsoons, the rain's retreat seems to have evolved into periods of intensive practice that occur in the Fall and/or the Spring. 

At Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, MA, the Rain's Retreat has become The Three Month Course, a meditation intensive that begins in September each year.  In 1991, I joined that retreat for the entire month of October.  
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Me and my Shadow

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, 

but by making the darkness conscious...
Knowing your own darkness is the best method
for dealing with the darknesses of other people."

-- C.G. Jung

 

“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments 

that teach us where it is that we’re holding back...
They’re like messengers that show us,
with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck."

 --  Pema Chödrön

Many folks experiencing a lot of stress in their lives are drawn to meditation.  It's only natural.  There appears to be a deep human yearning to just chill out.  

 

And, to be sure, Mindfulness Meditation Practice can provide many moments of calm and clarity.

Yet -- and this is generally not proclaimed in the slick internet ads  -- it is also true that a regular meditation practice can bring to the surface a lot of feelings that we have assiduously managed to repress, deny, or otherwise avoid, as we scurry along in our lives.

Conditioned to operate in the fast-paced materialistic society of our post-modern capitalist society, one that keeps us focused outwardly for fulfillment, we are programmed to keep moving.  Even our "downtime" is often stimulus rich entertainment or "recreation" in busy, noisy environments.  Day in, day out, we just bop until we drop.  

 

Yet, for many of us, a sense of deep disquiet continues to emerge.  There appears to us a deep yearning for something more.  Propelled by this yearning, and drawn to the peace and tranquility offered by mindfulness meditation, some of us chose meditate.  And, to be sure, once we slow down and begin to practice, most of us access a bit more calmness.  Yet, it is not uncommon to encounter "darker," more distressing energies as well.  

Contrary to what we might think, this is a Good Thing.  It's a sign that the Practice is working! Mindfulness meditation gives us the opportunity to bring our subconscious conditioning into mindful awareness.  The energetic patterns of thought and emotion that have subconsciously operated to create the way we see and react to the events of our lives are brought into the realm of our conscious awareness.  Ultimately, this will give us more freedom and agency in our lives.  (How often have you winced and thought "Damn.  Why did I say/do that!?  Wouldn't you like to know?)

 
Truth in Advertising

Adrift in momentary delusions of grandeur, I sometimes envision beginning a high profile advertising campaign for Monday Morning Mindfulness.  Full page bold print ads, billboards, and television commercials would proclaim something like:
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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.  Their cottage industries included a midwifery clinic, soy diary, publishing company, trucking company, and construction firm.  At it's peak it had about 1600 residents and had generated several satellite communities spread across the country.  On the Farm, continuing in the tradition of Monday Night Class, the community 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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