No Number AKASA LEVI --♦-- PROFILE --♦-- Akasa Levi --♦-- PROFILE --♦-- S.R.Levy post
_/!\_
with
palms joined
Nama'ste
PROFILE • Akasa Levi •
About this home-made Blog-site collection:
I promised Her I'd make some tangible 'Work in Progress' progress. I've never done this 'memoir' thing before ~ so here goes... plz read patiently. Fits and starts anxiously carry me forward as time is fleeting-- this thrown about loose, awkward accounting-- but it's my personal story, so top it off with really bad grammar --
it jumps tense recklessly, irresponsibly. Worst of all, it's all about me. Solipsistic as self-obsessed you can get --especially when others say-- "Here, please read my work..." --- Oiy !
Apologia --
I Give Thanks and Grateful Appreciation
to several friends - and of course, myself,
that this Journal of my journey even got
assembled -- as I've got more pressing
considerations, so they say, to give my
attention to at 76 -- like the # 1 item in
our home is composing my Advance
Health Directive, Living Trust and other
grown-up gravitas stuff like that to do --
maybe 'cause I'm still in Stage One
foot dragging in Denial / Anger about
my recently diagnosed Parkinson's Dis-at-ease.
~ Surprise, Blindsided, I didn't see it coming !
It's brought the whole felt-notion of 'Death' so truly close as a 'supreme inevitability' that in of itself , it pales in it's very own presence.
"Existential" experiences seek n' find me --and ask. Business machinations never were my forte'-- yet the 'creatives' find me and ask. Deep inquiry into the Unfamiliar does provide sustenance for the Non-ordinary, Uncommon person. Literally, it's been a wonder-filled esoteric Life gone by living with Buddhist art, academics and the sacred words of the Heart. Like the Tarot's Fool card true to the role of a Dharma Bum -- just an Old Hippie and kinda' loving it ! Nowadays I meet with new people drawn here by their own soul-felt needs. I am Poor yet Blessed. Odd, Huh... Akasa Maitreya Levi
My Big Bro Bio • To Go
Akasa’s original motivated intention to visit with a passing, endangered 'spiritual species'-- a sincere aspiration was to be Directly With the Last Living Asian Buddhist Meditation Teachers of the Pre-Global Era. Off he went in '68...
Influenced by the 'Search' explored in Gurdjief's "Meetings with Remarkable Men" 1927, and Paul Brunton's "Search In Secret India" 1931 -- innocently and romantically motivated Akasa’s sincere aspiration in going to get caught up in Indra's Net in the first place...
To Be Directly With the Last Living
To Be Directly With the Last Living
Buddhist Meditation Teachers
of the Pre-Global Era
------------------------------
of the Pre-Global Era
------------------------------
Given Akasa's atill
askew True Being:
A Bogus n' Sketchy
Buddha Nature for
Fraudulent Tricksters.
So someone thought
this cheeky Big Bio is
supposed to be banal,
slightly self-effacing,
affected and funny.
So it is.
PROFILE • AKASA LEVI ......... page copy
Akasa Maitreya Levi
My Big Bro Bio • To Go
-:¦:- guides "Mind-FULLY" and the ZEN•MEN
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha Meditation
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha
-:¦:- guides "Mind-FULLY" and the ZEN•MEN
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha Meditation
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha
AKASA LEVI ♦ PROFILE 12 .16 post copy
Akasa Maitreya Levi, DhMA
Big Bro • Bio Profile • To Go
AKASA LEVI ♦ PROFILE 12 .16 post copy
Akasa Maitreya Levi, DhMA
Big Bro • Bio Profile • To Go
How Come ?
---------------------
Everybody
Elsewhere,
Everyone
Everywhere,
---------------------
Knows About That
Undesirable Deficit
About Everyone Else.
To Be Undesirable is
Not Desirable.
Not Lovable.
------------------------
Maybe
Wanted A Bit --
Just 'Not Enough'.
That Left Me
A Very Needy
Little Child
---------------------
The Curse of
'Rejection' and
'Not Enough',
-- It Strikes
Any One
Any Body
Any Where
Any Which Way
Six Ways to Sunday
Yourself To Love
Yourself, First --
Buddha said:
It's Gotta Be
YOU First !
askew True Being:
A Bogus n' Sketchy
Buddha Nature for
Fraudulent Tricksters.
So someone thought
this cheeky Big Bio is
supposed to be banal,
slightly self-effacing,
affected and funny.
So it is.
-----------------------------
PROFILE • AKASA LEVI ......... page copy
Akasa Maitreya Levi
My Big Bro Bio • To Go
-------------------------------------------
-:¦:- AKASA MAITREYA LEVI - DhMA ( D.Min )
guides "Mind-FULLY" - the ZEN•MEN group
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha • call first
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha • 1-on-1 Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha • call first
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha • 1-on-1 Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
-:¦:- guides "Mind-FULLY" and the ZEN•MEN
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha Meditation
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha
• 1-on-1 Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
-:¦:- guides "Mind-FULLY" and the ZEN•MEN
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha Meditation
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha
• 1-on-1 Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
AKASA LEVI ♦ PROFILE 12 .16 post copy
Akasa Maitreya Levi, DhMA
Big Bro • Bio Profile • To Go
------------------------------------------
-:¦:- AKASA MAITREYA LEVI - DhMA ( D.Min )
Akasa Levi guides a ZEN•MEN peer group
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha -- 1-on-1
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha
• Dharma Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
-:¦:- AKASA MAITREYA LEVI - DhMA ( D.Min )
Akasa Levi guides a ZEN•MEN peer group
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha -- 1-on-1
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha
• Dharma Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
---------------------------------------------------------
AKASA LEVI ♦ PROFILE 12 .16 post copy
Akasa Maitreya Levi, DhMA
Big Bro • Bio Profile • To Go
------------------------------------------
-:¦:- AKASA MAITREYA LEVI - DhMA ( D.Min )
Akasa Levi guides a ZEN•MEN peer group
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha -- 1-on-1
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha
• Dharma Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
-:¦:- AKASA MAITREYA LEVI - DhMA ( D.Min )
Akasa Levi guides a ZEN•MEN peer group
• The Laughing Buddha Sangha -- 1-on-1
• The Seasoned Wisdom Old Timer's Sangha
• Dharma Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy
• Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
---------------------------------------------------------
♦ About MY "SELF"
I'm A Construction,
Fabricated
Out of My Own
Wounded 'Idea'
Out of My Own
Wounded 'Idea'
of A "Self"
---------------------
-----------------------
" I Didn’t Get
---------------------
-----------------------
" I Didn’t Get
Enough Love
As A Child "
---------------------How Come ?
---------------------
Everybody
Elsewhere,
Everyone
Everywhere,
---------------------
Knows About That
Undesirable Deficit
About Everyone Else.
To Be Undesirable is
Not Desirable.
Not Lovable.
------------------------
Maybe
Wanted A Bit --
Just 'Not Enough'.
That Left Me
A Very Needy
Little Child
---------------------
The Curse of
'Rejection' and
'Not Enough',
-- It Strikes
Any One
Any Body
Any Where
Any Which Way
Six Ways to Sunday
Any Damn Way,
ANYWAY -- Needy,
Angry and Confused.
Loba, Dosa, Moha
--- Sad, Huh ?
'Cept If You Teach ANYWAY -- Needy,
Angry and Confused.
Loba, Dosa, Moha
--- Sad, Huh ?
----------------------
Well, Some How
Well, Some How
It Felt Like That -
---------------------
---------------------
Yourself To Love
Yourself, First --
Buddha said:
It's Gotta Be
YOU First !
---------------
So I asked --
"Which way
is the Way ?
The Way
Outta' Here ?"
------------------------ is the Way ?
The Way
Outta' Here ?"
Someone Pointed
n' said confidently
"That-a-Way" and
He Pointed East.
---------------------
n' said confidently
"That-a-Way" and
He Pointed East.
---------------------
111111
♦ Once upon a time, long, long ago, even before digital time you were again reconsidering some kind of exasperating reincarnation -- back in the great unrest feral state of the late 60’s ♦ Akasa Levi ( a nice Jewish mensch of a man from Far Rockaway NY ) was in the U.S.Army 63-to-65 -- and full of Sixty's protest anger, he abandoned 'Madison Avenue' for Asia - and by 1975, he became an officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu Monk, six years a mendicant Sadhu in “beggar-man’s” orange robes with an alms bowl in mid-70's back-country rural Asia • Trained and ordained into the Buddhist Theravada senior monastic Amarapura Order of The Triple Gem by the beloved and revered Bhante NyakaThera Balangoda Ananda Maitreya and Kassapa MahaThera in Kandy, Sri Lanka's lush Bamboo Forests. My novice robes were given under the Bodhitree in Bodhgaya India itself. (ordination story)
♦ At the precise moment of ordination -- in the most sacred Buddhist vortex on Earth -- I was so Here ! -- At-one-ment for a timeless moment amidst a 25 hundred year old back-story running in tandem with Them for a moment, alongside all the Buddhas that have ever been -- as the karmic parallels just keep eternally narrowing and narrowing -- I was so There... I almost wasn't anywhere. I almost didn't exist ! Yup, So here I was... (more ordination story)
• Previous to this final 'anointing' ( only two tiers - novice junior and bhikkhu senior ) which all monks enter into with the Maha-Sangha only on the basis of Seva/service 'time' in sangha, not with 'attainment'. Akasa Levi was a Gelugpa Vajrayana initiate and temple gardener to Geshe Lama Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu in Nepal during the early 70's • "Big Love" - Digging holes with Lama, urinating on tomato plants with Lama, moving giant rocks with Lama • Much later on, a sabbatical resident Vipassana student to learn Mindfulness practice directly from the renown Anagarika Munindra Barua, the leading teaching-master of Satipatthana Mindfulness in Bodhgaya, India where the ancient Bodhi Tree still stands giving Refuge to all newbie Bodhisattvas to come • Akasa relished his annual monsoon seasons of non-duality practice in satsang under the wild and notorious ‘Bede Baba’ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in India's Mumbai slums in Old Bombay.
♦ At the precise moment of ordination -- in the most sacred Buddhist vortex on Earth -- I was so Here ! -- At-one-ment for a timeless moment amidst a 25 hundred year old back-story running in tandem with Them for a moment, alongside all the Buddhas that have ever been -- as the karmic parallels just keep eternally narrowing and narrowing -- I was so There... I almost wasn't anywhere. I almost didn't exist ! Yup, So here I was... (more ordination story)
• Previous to this final 'anointing' ( only two tiers - novice junior and bhikkhu senior ) which all monks enter into with the Maha-Sangha only on the basis of Seva/service 'time' in sangha, not with 'attainment'. Akasa Levi was a Gelugpa Vajrayana initiate and temple gardener to Geshe Lama Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu in Nepal during the early 70's • "Big Love" - Digging holes with Lama, urinating on tomato plants with Lama, moving giant rocks with Lama • Much later on, a sabbatical resident Vipassana student to learn Mindfulness practice directly from the renown Anagarika Munindra Barua, the leading teaching-master of Satipatthana Mindfulness in Bodhgaya, India where the ancient Bodhi Tree still stands giving Refuge to all newbie Bodhisattvas to come • Akasa relished his annual monsoon seasons of non-duality practice in satsang under the wild and notorious ‘Bede Baba’ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in India's Mumbai slums in Old Bombay.
• The Bhikkhu monks and lay teachers of Sri Lanka were very, very good to Akasa-- Nyanaponika, Kassapa, Godwin, Lilly -- and the precocious Henri Van Zeyst up in Kandy's Bamboo Forest.• Bhante Piyadassi gave him lots of singing lessons • Back then, practice--sojourns with teachers took the gift of long stays of Time at the right time - mid 70's • BTW, all these special teachings may take several lifetimes to comprehend --and one can still be a jerk • Akasa’s sincere aspiration: To Be Directly With the Last Living Buddhist Meditation Teachers of the Pre-Global Era --most passed on now. "That's the last of 'em, Luke -- Yoda was for real.
• For his BA, Akasa attended SUNY Harpur College, State University of New York, Binghamton University • Returning from a whole 70’s decade abroad, Akasa studied 'Why' and 'How' -- Who's on first, What's on second - through the overly aloof, intellectual intricacies of Western psycho-dynamic analytic intersubjective therapy at UCLA, yearning for something simpler • He currently guides Insight Awareness Mindfulness Meditation at The Laughing Buddha Sangha on 14th Street's Zafu Row • Coaches a ZEN•MEN peer group • and offers Buddhist-based Individual counseling and Insight therapy • Akasa's Sri Lanka affiliate in LA is Dharma Vijaya Buddha Vihara under his decades long old friend from Calcutta, Bhante NyakaThera Walpola Piyananda.
• Akasa now a feisty 76 - finds himself just not a proper academic, but more of an out on a limb improper 'experience provider' -- he has an odd, sort of awry, happy Doubter's Joy in his altruistic, aesthetic, atheistic approach to the Dharma. At heart, Akasa is a vulnerable old school Bohemian from a NYC art-based family, that can be a perpetual nud'nik to the gravitas of established Buddhist composure. At times, truly without a clue about his own genuineness, a fragile identity, an authentic 'Not knowing' What he is, maybe play acting the curmudgeon, or maybe the Fool card - in that he didn't like the other lay-life choices offered anyway. Maybe he was the original Zelig.
• To counter his delusive Bewilderment, he's continually serving up generous Seva ( service ) by creating lots of pro-bono available time for basic heart to heart and hand holding of people in pain. He’s really funny, an eccentric Grandpa Dharma - and a respected BuJu tribal elder. K'vetchy by genetics, but not too creepy, a flamboyant old rogue, he's definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste.
• To counter his delusive Bewilderment, he's continually serving up generous Seva ( service ) by creating lots of pro-bono available time for basic heart to heart and hand holding of people in pain. He’s really funny, an eccentric Grandpa Dharma - and a respected BuJu tribal elder. K'vetchy by genetics, but not too creepy, a flamboyant old rogue, he's definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste.
• Seriously: Akasa is into nourishing the many 'contemplative' vocal aspects of the emerging 'heart-wisdom' poetry revealed in a student's use of developing dharma vocabulary words -- mentoring a maverick “iconoclast intelligence” in the students and people he treats, teaches, counsels at his little meditation shrine room near the beach, filled with Dharma books, tribal masks and ritual objects, and cool calm statues of the ancient Buddha.
• Akasa Levi, an emeritus-level senior meditation teacher in the Theravada lineage, guides us into the cognitive/empirical Felt Sense Awareness of a Sati-awakening present moment -- fully self-caring, fully self-aware training in his mindFULLY approach. Akasa knows that by building on Self-inquiry and meditation practice skills, you can effect a calm, fearless and loving, meaningful, noticeable difference in yourself. Akasa is known for his spontaneity, wise ready warmth, and wry unpredictable humor.
-----------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
" Kindness " is more
important than ' Wisdom ' -
and the clear recognition of this -
IS the beginning of Wisdom "
~ Theodore Issac Rubin
----------------------------------------
" You don't get enlightened --
it is 'enlightenment' itself
that gets enlightened."
---end---
------------------------
NOTE ---WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW is UNFINISHED notes, sketchy IMPRESSIONS, and SCRAPS etc... enjoy other tab reading sections, or be welcome to continue to read here too...
-- then I was stuck on the freezing Beach 34th Street boardwalk with a hot potato k'nish in what's now become greasy cotton gloves solidifying in the bitter cold bite of a Far Rockaway NY snowy winter....
--as I write this Leonard Cohen just died today at 86 -- Thank You so much, Sensei. Nov 2016
Kubler-Ross's 5 Stages...
( please see the readings tabs on either side-bar columns for Journal Notes of an American Buddhist Monk )
the living spark, weaving eternally integral
" Profile / Sch'mo-file,
I told you to tell 'em
Absolutely Everything
--as I write this Leonard Cohen just died today at 86 -- Thank You so much, Sensei. Nov 2016
Kubler-Ross's 5 Stages...
( please see the readings tabs on either side-bar columns for Journal Notes of an American Buddhist Monk )
the living spark, weaving eternally integral
" Profile / Sch'mo-file,
I told you to tell 'em
Absolutely Everything
-- and did you ?...
Now you go back
in there and...."
Given Akasa's
askew True Being:
A Bogus n' Sketchy
Buddha Nature for
Fraudulent Tricksters.
So someone thought
this cheeky Bio is
supposed to be
slightly self-effacing
and funny. So it is.
How Come ?
---------------------
Everybody
Elsewhere,
Everyone
Everywhere,
---------------------
Knows That
Deficit About
Everyone Else.
------------------------
Just 'Not Enough'.
That Left Me
A Very Needy
Little Child
---------------------
The Curse of
'Not Enough',
-- It Strikes
Any One
Any Body
Any Where
Any Which Way
Six Ways to Sunday
Yourself To Love
Yourself, First --
Buddha said:
It's Gotta Be
You First !
---------------------------
Now you go back
in there and...."
Given Akasa's
askew True Being:
A Bogus n' Sketchy
Buddha Nature for
Fraudulent Tricksters.
So someone thought
this cheeky Bio is
supposed to be
slightly self-effacing
and funny. So it is.
--------------------------
♦ About MY "SELF"
I'm A Construction,
Fabricated
Out of My Own
Wounded 'Idea'
Out of My Own
Wounded 'Idea'
of A "Self"
-------------------------
------------------------
" I Didn’t Get
-------------------------
------------------------
" I Didn’t Get
Enough Love
As A Child "
---------------------How Come ?
---------------------
Everybody
Elsewhere,
Everyone
Everywhere,
---------------------
Knows That
Deficit About
Everyone Else.
------------------------
Just 'Not Enough'.
That Left Me
A Very Needy
Little Child
---------------------
The Curse of
'Not Enough',
-- It Strikes
Any One
Any Body
Any Where
Any Which Way
Six Ways to Sunday
Any Damn Way,
ANYWAY...
-- Sad, Huh ?
'Cept If You Teach ANYWAY...
-- Sad, Huh ?
----------------------
Well, Some How
Well, Some How
It Felt Like That -
---------------------
---------------------
Yourself To Love
Yourself, First --
Buddha said:
It's Gotta Be
You First !
-------------------
So I asked --
"Which way
is the Way ? "
is the Way ? "
------------------------
Someone Pointed
n' said confidently
"That-a-Way" and
He Pointed East.
----------------------
Someone Pointed
n' said confidently
"That-a-Way" and
He Pointed East.
----------------------
______________
______________
---------------------------
Akasa Levi ♦ PROFILE 11.16
AKASA.MAITREYA.LEVI
Big Bro • Bio Profile • To Go
Given Akasa's True Nature:
Someone thought
---------------------------
" Profile / Sch'mo-file,
I told you to tell 'em
Absolutely Everything --
♦ About MY "SELF"
" I Didn’t Get
How Come ?
---------------------
Everybody
Elsewhere,
Everyone
Everywhere,
---------------------
Knows That
About Mostly
Everyone Else
---------------------
Any Where
Any How --
-- Sad, Huh ?
• The Bhikkhu monks and lay teachers of Sri Lanka were very, very good to Akasa-- Nyanaponika, Kassapa, Godwin, Lilly -- and the precocious Henri Van Zeyst up in Kandy's Bamboo Forest.• Bhante Piyadassi gave him lots of singing lessons • Back then, practice--sojourns with teachers took the gift of long stays of Time at the right time - mid 70's • BTW, all these special teachings may take several lifetimes to comprehend --and one can still be a jerk • Akasa’s sincere aspiration: To Be Directly With the Last Living Buddhist Meditation Teachers of the Pre-Global Era --most passed on now. "That's the last of 'em, Luke -- Yoda was for real.
" Kindness " is more
important than ' Wisdom ' -
and the clear recognition of this -
IS the beginning of Wisdom "
~ Theodore Issac Rubin
----------------------------------------
" You don't get enlightened --
it is 'enlightenment' itself
that gets enlightened."
-------------------------------------------
NOTES --- enjoy another tab reading section,
or be welcome to continue to read here too...
Phenomena Come and Go and Ebb and Flow
as Centuries of sometime Time Lines pass
-- and Monks with Exotic Spiritual Names
having honest to God ancient mystical
incarnation lineages that never ever died---
as I deeply soak into kind, loving eye contact
with a smiling little nut brown forest dweller
who's been happy almost for ever -- and
that's the Way in some Pacifica place
they're monastery-made in a gracious
silent flurry of a hurry as they scurry
like a happy house full of enabling
Bubbies and Aunties.
----------------------------
Given Akasa's True Nature:
Someone thought
AKASA.MAITREYA.LEVI
Big Bro • Bio Profile • To Go
-------------------------------------------------------
Given Akasa's True Nature:
Someone thought
this cheeky Bio is
supposed to be
slightly self-effacing
and funny. So it is.
---------------------------
" Profile / Sch'mo-file,
I told you to tell 'em
Absolutely Everything --
and did you ?...
Now you go back in there and..."
------------------------------------------
Now you go back in there and..."
------------------------------------------
♦ About MY "SELF"
I'm A Construction,
Fabricated
Out of My Own
Wounded 'Idea'
Out of My Own
Wounded 'Idea'
of A "Self"
----------------------
----------------------
" I Didn’t Get
Enough Love
As A Child "
---------------------How Come ?
---------------------
Everybody
Elsewhere,
Everyone
Everywhere,
---------------------
Knows That
About Mostly
Everyone Else
---------------------
Any Where
Any How --
-- Sad, Huh ?
---------------------
-:¦:- AKASA MAITREYA LEVI - DhMA ( D.Min )
Akasa Levi guides The Laughing Buddha Sangha
ZEN•MEN group • The Seasoned Wisdom Sangha
Dharma Counseling and Mindfulness 1-on-1 Therapy
Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268 • Noon/6pm
Akasa Levi guides The Laughing Buddha Sangha
ZEN•MEN group • The Seasoned Wisdom Sangha
Dharma Counseling and Mindfulness 1-on-1 Therapy
Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268 • Noon/6pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I Give Thanks and Grateful Appreciation
to several friends - and of course, myself,
that this Journal of my journey even got
assembled -- as I've got more pressing
considerations, so they say, to give my
attention to at 76 -- like the # 1 item in
our home is composing my Advance
Health Directive, Living Trust and other
grown-up gravitas stuff like that to do --
maybe 'cause I'm still in the Denial part
of my Parkinson's Dis-at-ease. Surprise !
This narrative will jump from 3rd person
to 1st person irresponsibly.
----------------------------------------------------------
I've never done this memoir thing before
~ so here goes... plz read patiently.
------------------------------------------------
Akasa’s sincere aspiration:
To Be Directly With the Last Living
Buddhist Meditation Teachers
of the Pre-Global Era
_________________________
♦ Once upon a time, long, long ago, even before digital time you were again reconsidering some kind of exasperating reincarnation -- back in the great unrest feral state of the late 60’s ♦ Akasa Levi ( a nice Jewish mensch of a man from Far Rockaway NY ) was in the U.S.Army 63-to-65 -- and full of Sixty's protest anger, he abandoned 'Madison Avenue' for Asia - and by 1975, he became an officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu Monk, six years a mendicant Sadhu in “beggar-man’s” orange robes with an alms bowl in mid-70's back-country rural Asia • Trained and ordained into the Buddhist Theravada senior monastic Amarapura Order of The Triple Gem by the beloved and revered Bhante NyakaThera Balangoda Ananda Maitreya and Kassapa MahaThera in Kandy, Sri Lanka's lush Bamboo Forests. My novice robes were given under the Bodhitree in Bodhgaya India itself. (ordination story)
♦ At the precise moment of ordination -- in the most sacred Buddhist vortex on Earth -- I was so Here ! -- At-one-ment for a timeless moment amidst a 25 hundred year old back-story running in tandem with Them for a moment, alongside all the Buddhas that have ever been -- as the karmic parallels just keep eternally narrowing and narrowing -- I was so There... I almost wasn't anywhere. I almost didn't exist ! Yup, So here I was... (more ordination story)• Previous to this final 'anointing' ( only two tiers - novice junior and bhikkhu senior ) which all monks enter into with the Maha-Sangha only on the basis of Seva/service 'time' in sangha, not with 'attainment'. Akasa Levi was a Gelugpa Vajrayana initiate and temple gardener to Geshe Lama Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu in Nepal during the early 70's • "Big Love" - Digging holes with Lama, urinating on tomato plants with Lama, moving giant rocks with Lama • Much later on, a sabbatical resident Vipassana student to learn Mindfulness practice directly from the renown Anagarika Munindra Barua, the leading teaching-master of Satipatthana Mindfulness in Bodhgaya, India where the ancient Bodhi Tree still stands giving Refuge to all newbie Bodhisattvas to come • Akasa relished his annual monsoon seasons of non-duality practice in satsang under the wild and notorious ‘Bede Baba’ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in India's Mumbai slums in Old Bombay.
to several friends - and of course, myself,
that this Journal of my journey even got
assembled -- as I've got more pressing
considerations, so they say, to give my
attention to at 76 -- like the # 1 item in
our home is composing my Advance
Health Directive, Living Trust and other
grown-up gravitas stuff like that to do --
maybe 'cause I'm still in the Denial part
of my Parkinson's Dis-at-ease. Surprise !
This narrative will jump from 3rd person
to 1st person irresponsibly.
----------------------------------------------------------
I've never done this memoir thing before
~ so here goes... plz read patiently.
------------------------------------------------
Akasa’s sincere aspiration:
To Be Directly With the Last Living
Buddhist Meditation Teachers
of the Pre-Global Era
_________________________
♦ Once upon a time, long, long ago, even before digital time you were again reconsidering some kind of exasperating reincarnation -- back in the great unrest feral state of the late 60’s ♦ Akasa Levi ( a nice Jewish mensch of a man from Far Rockaway NY ) was in the U.S.Army 63-to-65 -- and full of Sixty's protest anger, he abandoned 'Madison Avenue' for Asia - and by 1975, he became an officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu Monk, six years a mendicant Sadhu in “beggar-man’s” orange robes with an alms bowl in mid-70's back-country rural Asia • Trained and ordained into the Buddhist Theravada senior monastic Amarapura Order of The Triple Gem by the beloved and revered Bhante NyakaThera Balangoda Ananda Maitreya and Kassapa MahaThera in Kandy, Sri Lanka's lush Bamboo Forests. My novice robes were given under the Bodhitree in Bodhgaya India itself. (ordination story)
♦ At the precise moment of ordination -- in the most sacred Buddhist vortex on Earth -- I was so Here ! -- At-one-ment for a timeless moment amidst a 25 hundred year old back-story running in tandem with Them for a moment, alongside all the Buddhas that have ever been -- as the karmic parallels just keep eternally narrowing and narrowing -- I was so There... I almost wasn't anywhere. I almost didn't exist ! Yup, So here I was... (more ordination story)• Previous to this final 'anointing' ( only two tiers - novice junior and bhikkhu senior ) which all monks enter into with the Maha-Sangha only on the basis of Seva/service 'time' in sangha, not with 'attainment'. Akasa Levi was a Gelugpa Vajrayana initiate and temple gardener to Geshe Lama Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu in Nepal during the early 70's • "Big Love" - Digging holes with Lama, urinating on tomato plants with Lama, moving giant rocks with Lama • Much later on, a sabbatical resident Vipassana student to learn Mindfulness practice directly from the renown Anagarika Munindra Barua, the leading teaching-master of Satipatthana Mindfulness in Bodhgaya, India where the ancient Bodhi Tree still stands giving Refuge to all newbie Bodhisattvas to come • Akasa relished his annual monsoon seasons of non-duality practice in satsang under the wild and notorious ‘Bede Baba’ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in India's Mumbai slums in Old Bombay.
• The Bhikkhu monks and lay teachers of Sri Lanka were very, very good to Akasa-- Nyanaponika, Kassapa, Godwin, Lilly -- and the precocious Henri Van Zeyst up in Kandy's Bamboo Forest.• Bhante Piyadassi gave him lots of singing lessons • Back then, practice--sojourns with teachers took the gift of long stays of Time at the right time - mid 70's • BTW, all these special teachings may take several lifetimes to comprehend --and one can still be a jerk • Akasa’s sincere aspiration: To Be Directly With the Last Living Buddhist Meditation Teachers of the Pre-Global Era --most passed on now. "That's the last of 'em, Luke -- Yoda was for real.
• For his BA, Akasa attended SUNY Harpur College, State University of New York, Binghamton University • Returning from a whole 70’s decade abroad, Akasa studied 'Why' and 'How' -- Who's on first, What's on second - through the overly aloof, intellectual intricacies of Western psycho-dynamic analytic intersubjective therapy at UCLA, yearning for something simpler • He currently guides Insight Awareness Mindfulness Meditation at The Laughing Buddha Sangha on 14th Street's Zafu Row • Coaches a ZEN•MEN peer group • and offers Buddhist-based Individual counseling and Insight therapy • Akasa's Sri Lanka affiliate in LA is Dharma Vijaya Buddha Vihara under his decades long old friend from Calcutta, Bhante NyakaThera Walpola Piyananda.
• Akasa now a feisty 76 - finds himself just not a proper academic, but more of an out on a limb improper 'experience provider' -- he has an odd, sort of awry, happy Doubter's Joy in his altruistic, aesthetic, atheistic approach to the Dharma. At heart, Akasa is a vulnerable old school Bohemian from a NYC art-based family, that can be a perpetual nud'nik to the gravitas of established Buddhist composure. At times, truly without a clue about his own genuineness, a fragile identity, an authentic 'Not knowing' What he is, maybe play acting the curmudgeon, or maybe the Fool card - in that he didn't like the other lay-life choices offered anyway. Maybe he was the original Zelig.
• To counter his delusive Bewilderment, he's continually serving up generous Seva ( service ) by creating lots of pro-bono available time for basic heart to heart and hand holding of people in pain. He’s really funny, an eccentric Grandpa Dharma - and a respected BuJu tribal elder. K'vetchy by genetics, but not too creepy, a flamboyant old rogue, he's definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste.
• To counter his delusive Bewilderment, he's continually serving up generous Seva ( service ) by creating lots of pro-bono available time for basic heart to heart and hand holding of people in pain. He’s really funny, an eccentric Grandpa Dharma - and a respected BuJu tribal elder. K'vetchy by genetics, but not too creepy, a flamboyant old rogue, he's definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste.
• Seriously: Akasa is into nourishing the many 'contemplative' vocal aspects of the emerging 'heart-wisdom' poetry revealed in a student's use of developing dharma vocabulary words -- mentoring a maverick “iconoclast intelligence” in the students and people he treats, teaches, counsels at his little meditation shrine room near the beach, filled with Dharma books, tribal masks and ritual objects, and cool calm statues of the ancient Buddha.
• Akasa Levi, an emeritus-level senior meditation teacher in the Theravada lineage, guides us into the cognitive/empirical Felt Sense Awareness of a Sati-awakening present moment -- fully self-caring, fully self-aware training in his mindFULLY approach. Akasa knows that by building on Self-inquiry and meditation practice skills, you can effect a calm, fearless and loving, meaningful, noticeable difference in yourself. Akasa is known for his spontaneity, wise ready warmth, and wry unpredictable humor.
--------------------------
--------------------------
" Kindness " is more
important than ' Wisdom ' -
and the clear recognition of this -
IS the beginning of Wisdom "
~ Theodore Issac Rubin
----------------------------------------
" You don't get enlightened --
it is 'enlightenment' itself
that gets enlightened."
-------------------------------------------
NOTES --- enjoy another tab reading section,
or be welcome to continue to read here too...
Phenomena Come and Go and Ebb and Flow
as Centuries of sometime Time Lines pass
-- and Monks with Exotic Spiritual Names
having honest to God ancient mystical
incarnation lineages that never ever died---
as I deeply soak into kind, loving eye contact
with a smiling little nut brown forest dweller
who's been happy almost for ever -- and
that's the Way in some Pacifica place
they're monastery-made in a gracious
silent flurry of a hurry as they scurry
like a happy house full of enabling
Bubbies and Aunties.
----------------------------
-- then I was stuck on the freezing Beach 34th Street boardwalk with a hot potato k'nish in what's now become greasy cotton gloves solidifying in the bitter cold bite of a Far Rockaway NY snowy winter....
--as I write this Leonard Cohen just died today at 86 -- Thank You so much, Sensei.
Kubler-Ross's 5 Stages...
( please see the readings tabs on either side-column for Journal Diary of an American Buddhist Monk )
the living spark, weaving eternally integral
--as I write this Leonard Cohen just died today at 86 -- Thank You so much, Sensei.
Kubler-Ross's 5 Stages...
( please see the readings tabs on either side-column for Journal Diary of an American Buddhist Monk )
the living spark, weaving eternally integral
Given Akasa's True Nature:
Someone thought
this cheeky Bio is
supposed to be
slightly self-effacing
and funny. So it is.
------------------------
" Profile / Sch'mo-file,
I told you to tell 'em
Absolutely Everything --
I told you to tell 'em
Absolutely Everything --
and did you ?...
Now you go back in there and..."
--------------------------------------
Now you go back in there and..."
--------------------------------------
♦ About MY "SELF"
I'm A Construction,
Fabricated
Out of My Own
Wounded 'Idea'
Out of My Own
Wounded 'Idea'
of A "Self"
-------------------------
-------------------------
" I Didn’t Get
Enough Love
As A Child "
How Come ?
Everybody
Everybody
Everywhere,
Everyone
Elsewhere
-- Everyone
Knows That
About Mostly
Everyone Else,
Any Where,
Elsewhere
-- Everyone
Knows That
About Mostly
Everyone Else,
Any Where,
Anybody,
Any How,
Any How,
Anyway --
-- Sad, Huh ?
-- Sad, Huh ?
Well, Some How
It Felt Like That.
-----------------------
-----------------------
NAVIGATION note note --------------------------------------------
This profile narrative will jump around
from 3rd person to 1st person, to 2nd,
from 3rd person to 1st person, to 2nd,
irresponsibly 'cause we're all lazy editors
-------------------------------------------------------
I've never done this 'memoir' thing
before ~ so here goes...
before ~ so here goes...
-----------------------------------
I Give Thanks and Grateful Appreciation
to several friends - and of course, myself,
that this brief account even got written--
as I've got more pressing considerations,
to give my obsessive attention to at 76
-- like the # 1 item at home is composing
my 'Advance Health Directive' and other
really grown-up gravitas stuff like that --
maybe 'cause I'm still in the blindsided
"Didn't see it coming" / Denial / Anger
part of Kubler-Ross's '5 Stages'...
part of Kubler-Ross's '5 Stages'...
note --------------------------------------------
This profile narrative will jump around
from 3rd person to 1st person, to 2nd,
from 3rd person to 1st person, to 2nd,
irresponsibly 'cause we're all lazy editors
-------------------------------------------------------
I've never done this 'memoir' thing
before ~ so here goes...
before ~ so here goes...
-----------------------------------
♦ Once upon a time, long, long ago ~ before a time when you were again reconsidering some kind of exasperating reincarnation -- back in the unrest feral state of the late 60’s ♦ Akasa Levi ( a nice Jewish mensch of a man from Far Rockaway NY ) was in the U.S.Army 63-to-65 -- and full of Sixty's protest anger, he abandoned 'Madison Avenue' for Asia - and by 1975, he became an officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu Monk, six years a mendicant Sadhu in “beggar-man’s” orange robes with an alms bowl in mid-70's back country rural Asia ♦ Trained and ordained into the Buddhist Theravada monastic Amarapura Order of The Triple Gem by the beloved head of the sect, the revered Bhante NyakaThera Balangoda Ananda Maitreya and Kassapa MahaThera, monks who lived in Sri Lanka's elephant forests and magnificent caves. ♦ FYI: There are "Point Men" ( sorry, actually both genders ) very remarkable special 'strangers' often called Angels in the bygone days of Mythos, who 'find us' bewildered at the Crossroads and they simply do just that: They Point towards ... The Way knowing that you almost know what that means, and almost missed it anyway. Yet, you will recognize them and them you - Thank You Barry Plunkett and Rainbow Tribe people for the sacred pointing. I have continually walked in at the right time and at the right place almost ready - possibly pre-maturely - to hear a 25 hundred year unbroken remembered back-story running in the vast background of Humanity, behind all the currently playing NOWness.
----------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------
-- Please see the readings tabs
for "Journal NOTES of an
American Buddhist Monk"
----------------------------------
To Continue and Go On ~
• Previous to Theravada monkhood, Akasa Levi was originally a Gelugpa Vajrayana initiate and temple gardener to Geshe Lama Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Gompa Monastery, Kathmandu in Nepal during the early 70's • 'Big Love' was digging holes with Lama • Much later on as a matter of ritual colors, Akasa gave back the burgundy red cloth for the plain white cotton - becoming a resident Vipassana student of the renown Anagarika Munindra Barua, the leading teaching master of Satipatthana Mindfulness in Bodhgaya, India where the ancient Bodhi Tree still stands giving shade to refuge-building to all bodhisattvas who come nere • Akasa relished his annual monsoon seasons of Non-duality practice in satsang dialogue with the notorious ‘Bede Baba’ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in India's Mumbai slums of Old Bombay • Maharaj made you fight for the clarity of your inquiry !
• The Bhikkhu monks and lay teachers of Sri Lanka were very, very good to Bhante Akasa-- Nyanaponika, Kassapa, Godwin, Lilly -- and the precocious Henri Van Zeyst, all up in Kandy's Bamboo Forest.• Bhante Piyadassi gave him lots of singing lessons • Back then, practice sojourns with teachers took the gift of long stays of Time, at the right time - mid 70's • BTW, all these teachings take several lifetimes to comprehend --and one can still be a jerk • Akasa’s sincere aspiration: To Be Directly With the Last Living Buddhist Meditation Teachers of the Pre-Global Era --most passed on now. That's the last of 'em. Yoda was for real. Shuk'crea.
• For his BA, Akasa attended SUNY Harpur College, State University of New York, Binghamton University • Returning from a whole 70’s decade abroad, Akasa studied 'Why' and 'How' and the 'intersubjective' through the aloof intricacies of Western psycho-dynamic analytic therapy at UCLA • All human interaction is transference. He currently guides Insight Awareness Mindfulness Meditation at The Laughing Buddha Sangha in Santa Monica on 14th Street's Zafu Row • He coaches a ZEN•MEN peer group • and offers Buddhist-based Individual counseling and Insight therapy • Akasa's Sri Lanka affiliate in Los Angeles is Dharma Vijaya Buddha Vihara under his decades long old friend Bhante NyakaThera Walpola Piyananda.
• Akasa now a feisty 76 - a mindfulness 'experience provider' who has an odd, sort of awry, happy doubter's joy in his altruistic, aesthetic, atheistic approach to the sturdy, soul-less Dharma. At heart, Akasa is a tender, sentimental yet cool old school Bohemian from a NYC art-based family. He can be a perpetual nud'nik to the gravitas of established Buddhist composure. At times he too is without a clue, not knowing 'What' he is amidst the 'What is',,, maybe play acting the curmudgeon, or maybe the Fool card - in that he didn't like the other lay-life choices offered anyway • To counter his chronic Identity Bewilderment, he's continually serving up generous Seva and creating lots of pro-bono available time for basic heart to heart and hand holding of people in suffering pain. He’s a really funny, eccentric Grandpa Dharma - and a respected BuJu tribal elder. K'vetchy by genetics, but not too creepy, a flamboyant old rogue-- he's definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste.
• "Don't even bother trying to shape yourself into being anything at like me-- it would be a waste to create a double identity... you yourself is enough of a distortion to have to work with-
• Seriously: Akasa is into nourishing the many 'contemplative' vocal aspects of the emerging 'heart-wisdom' poetry in a student's developing own dharma words -- mentoring a maverick “iconoclast intelligence” in the students and people he treats, teaches, counsels at his little meditation shrine room near the beach, filled with Dharma books, tribal masks and ritual objects, and cool calm statues of the ancient Buddha.
• Akasa Levi, an emeritus-level senior meditation teacher in the Theravada lineage, helps guide us into the cognitive empirical Felt Sense Awareness of a Sati-awakened present moment -- fully self-caring, fully self-aware training in his mindFULLY approach. Akasa knows that by building on inquiry and meditation practice skills, you can effect a calm, fearless and loving, meaningful, noticeable difference in yourself. Akasa is known for his spontaneity, wise ready warmth, and wry unpredictable humor.
( ♦ Smart-phone me, let's make a time
and have some tea -- no fee, simply
the pleasure of a visit with a
semi-retired Old Pointer thas' all )
and have some tea -- no fee, simply
the pleasure of a visit with a
semi-retired Old Pointer thas' all )
--------------------------------------------
" Kindness " is more important than ' Wisdom ' -
and the clear recognition of this -
IS the beginning of Wisdom " ~ Theodore Issac Rubin
-----------------------------------------------------------------
" You don't get enlightened ---
it is 'enlightenment' itself
that gets enlightened."
" You don't get enlightened ---
it is 'enlightenment' itself
that gets enlightened."