piyananda
Padme' Hung
------------------
Om Ma Ah Hung
Om Ma Ah Hu
Om Ma Ah Hung
Vajra Guru
Padme Siddha Hung
__________________________
__________________________
-:¦:-
Nama’ste ~ Hopefully the
wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened and somewhat
achieved by my recalling and narrating my peculiar life story - to get you
interested, or get you interested on
your own, or get you re-interested once again - and gets you closer
to even just ‘considering’ going out
on the ‘outer’ or ‘inner’ road less traveledd. Doing some serious sacred
'searching' here in the USA - or for the really skillful, courageous, brave and
earthy - taking the risk to actually go abroad. It’s no vacation. It is a pilgrimage of finding your particular
higher purpose. Just what you’re heart’s always wanted. You get to mindfully
see and eat and shit and live and serve somehow in these raw cultural
contexts that these unbelievable ancient indigenous spiritual practices that we
are becoming heir to - originate from. They originate from Roots. They always
do, they can’t help it. That’s the Nature of Living Conscious Things. Roots. Always go back and look for the Roots
of things. Always look for the
indigenous origins ! Notice the natural similarities everywhere ! Keep reading…
Hey
Friend,
Savor the Journey too...
Savor the Journey too...
it's
in every step
------------------------
" The Journey Itself
IS the Destination "
------------------------
" The Journey Itself
IS the Destination "
The
LAUGHING BUDDHA SANGHA offers
MINDFULNESS
MEDITATION and ZEN•MEN
Group-work as a THERAPY in Santa Monica
Group-work as a THERAPY in Santa Monica
------------------------------------------------------------------
H I M A L A Y A N • J O U R N A L
of AN AMERICAN BUDDHIST MONK • An
Epic Tale
Here Below:
a Short Cheeky Profile of AKASA LEVI
also profile
material for media use etc.
♦ AKASA LEVI, DhMA ( D.Min ) - SUNY Harpur College,
Binghamton University, New York • Once upon a time long, long ago Akasa
was a U.S.Military Vet - he was an officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu forest
monk, who lived several years in rural Asia - to be with the last living
Buddhist teachers of the Asian Pre-Global
Era - most passed on now.
• Akasa is a
feisty 75 - and intentionally pretentious, playing himself as an authentic
curmudgeon, in that he didn't like the other life-choices offered. Full of mischief,
he's an oddly sweet, strangely funny, eccentric old Dharma Dude and a respected
BuJu Elder. K'vetchy by nature, but not too creepy, and always
the compassionate rogue - this modern tribal sage is into nourishing and
mentoring a maverick, iconoclast intelligence in the students and people he
treats, teaches, counsels or dharma-life coaches at his little meditation
shrine room near the beach, filled with old ritual objects and statues of the
ancient Buddha.
• Akasa, now a senior-level meditation teacher, also
instructs us in the empirical, scientific, secular spirit of the moment in
contemporary Mindfulness meditation practice as well. He is definitely an
acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste, and knows that by practice you can
effect a calm, meaningful, noticeable difference in yourself. Beyond his
broad, abstract comprehension, Akasa is known for his spontaneity, ready
warmth, and wry unpredictable humor.
• "
Some people say
he's really bogus "
Someone thought
this small Profile
was supposed to be
slightly self-effacing
and funny. So it is.
_________________________________________
The Road Not Taken /
The Road Less Traveled
Robert Frost, 1926
Robert Frost, 1926
------------------------------------------------------------
Two
roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And
I'm sorry I could not travel both.
And
so being only one traveler, long I stood
And
looked down each road as far as I could
To
where it bent in the undergrowth.
-------------------------------------------------
Then
I took the other road, just as fair,
And
having perhaps the better claim
Because
it was grassy and wanted wear.
Though
as for that the passing there
Had
worn them really about the same,
And
both that morning equal
in
leaves no step had trodden black.
-------------------------------------------------
Oh,
I kept the first road for another day,
Yet
knowing how way leads on to way,
I
doubted if I should ever come back.
I
shall be telling this tale with a sigh
Somewhere
ages and ages hence -
------------------------------------------------
Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I,
--
I took the one less traveled by,
And
that has made all the difference.
______________________________
UUUUUUUUUUUU
Robert Frost, 1926
The Road Not Taken --
The Road Less Traveled By --
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And I'm sorry I could not travel both --
And so being only one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one road as far as I could
To where it bent into the undergrowth.
Then I took the other road, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first road for another day,
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
And I'm sorry I could not travel both --
And so being only one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one road as far as I could
To where it bent into the undergrowth.
Then I took the other road, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first road for another day,
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads
diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
____________________________________________________
•♦• Much of this
inner-work is 'Spiritual'
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'
__________________________________________________
“
The Greatest Risk is Not
Taking One "
Know that The Way
always faces East....
And, after that...
Be most welcome to read Akasa's expanded
Big Block Buster Bio: Himalayan Diary
of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Spiritual Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that thing
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.
Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time: It's called going on Pilgrimage.
Be most welcome to read Akasa's expanded
Big Block Buster Bio: Himalayan Diary
of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Spiritual Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that thing
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.
Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time: It's called going on Pilgrimage.
More:
Buddhist-based
'alternative' approaches to relating with Your True Core Self • One-to-One
individual therapy • Relationship counseling • Partnering issues • Difficult to
communicate feelings • Disheartened anxious insecure Wounded Spirit • Counsel
for 'Uncommon People' 'Rebels' 'Creatives' 'Sensitives' cerebral nerdy verbal
artistic gifted genius - yet really Unhappy people. "Mindfulness
Insight" cultivates a calm, kind, wise, deep liberation with a "Big
Good-Hearted Mind"
16 Himalaya Lama Lane ~
The Road Now Taken
Early
'Contributing Factors' and 'Conditions'
Karma arrived, showing up as a series of
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early
magical
'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --
" The Greatest Risk
is Not Taking One ! "
Himalayan Diary of an
American Buddhist Monk
at Kopan Gompa Monastery
Bodh’nath, Kathmandu, Nepal
American Buddhist Monk
at Kopan Gompa Monastery
Bodh’nath, Kathmandu, Nepal
_______________________________
Foolish Nasreddin's Lost
Keys ~
One late evening Nasreddin is
walking home.
He can be seen to be upset about something.
Just then a young man comes along
and sees the Mullah's distress.
"Mullah, please tell me - What is wrong? "
He can be seen to be upset about something.
Just then a young man comes along
and sees the Mullah's distress.
"Mullah, please tell me - What is wrong? "
"Friend,
I seem to have lost my keys.
Would you help me search for them ?
I had them when I left the tea house.
Would you help me search for them ?
I had them when I left the tea house.
So
he helps Nasreddin search for the keys.
For quite a while the young man is searching
here and there but no keys are to be found.
He looks over to Nasreddin and sees him
searching only a very small limited area
For quite a while the young man is searching
here and there but no keys are to be found.
He looks over to Nasreddin and sees him
searching only a very small limited area
around
an old oil street lamp.
" Mullah, why are you only searching over there ? "
" Because there's much more light over here.
Should I foolishly search where there is no light ? "
The Mullah Nasreddin never found his keys.
" Mullah, why are you only searching over there ? "
" Because there's much more light over here.
Should I foolishly search where there is no light ? "
The Mullah Nasreddin never found his keys.
__________________________________
" We shall not cease from
exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
And know the place
for the very first
time." ~ T.S. Eliot
___________________________
Dear
Reader ~
This
same never-ending story in every
human culture
always repeats itself, it always begins
with a 'Search' -
through
the deep Unknown with raw beginner's skills
that
are barely known to an unaware beginner's mind.
Spiritually speaking, that's a very classic way to start.
At one's Core, something got lost - and one goes out
to try'n find it. Don't we all kinda' relate with that ?
Spiritually speaking, that's a very classic way to start.
At one's Core, something got lost - and one goes out
to try'n find it. Don't we all kinda' relate with that ?
The LONGER profile version presented here, makes a bunch of confusing
time-jumps, it leaves the story or ideas hanging, at times makes no sense
or takes you nowhere until you actually go somewhere or get something: and you
still ask Why ? - But the text drops enough names as 'keywords' so that
you can do this miraculous Wikipedia action called 'Search' - and this site
opens up like a VVVVVVVV because my site here has no
fancy formats and links yet…
Sorry, Worthy and Good Seeker, ya'
gotta Work it.a bit… All On Board
_________________________________________________________
MYSTERY of MYSTERIES
I
lost my Mom to breast cancer when I was seven. My whole future relationship
with women’s lovely souls and the sweet softness of the goddess Kwan Yin and my
Yang changed. So did my relationship with Death. The young
potent power-filled Son with no Mother to come home to proudly
protect, stalled. A dark cloud home where everybody’s clothing had the salty
smell of tear soaked tragic dampness. For now Reader, I’m keeping all that boy
into man Oedipal Phallic Freudian stuff for me to explore with Doctor Max
Zugger, the Don Rickles of insult psychiatry. It’s in his office where I
heard it for the first time -- 'Shit Happens'.
“ It’s a pity that misery is wasted on the
miserable “ ~ Woody Allen
Suffering Early Childhood Loss: I was a miserable kid. The totally
transitory, totally unarguable, ever
changing, unforgiving, unstable, unreliable, absolute 'Impermanence' of
it all. Buddha's Dharma ( teachings ) is sort of the Reality Science School of Ultimate Total Loss - The What Is of
The Way It Is. This IS It. The healthy, not morbid, Wisdom that is experientially developed directly out of
insecurity itself,
is the prominent cornerstone of Buddhism's acceptance teachings
on Impermanence. "Unfortunately for human beings" - said The Dalai
Lama giggling, "Buddhism has no
Savior, only a desire for one -- but they do have TV ".
At
the time though, I experienced a suddenly new phenomena very few kids get
to have: Real ‘Death’ up close. Death lived with my family by the beach in
Far Rockaway, New York. Death had a room upstairs. Death ate at the table,
Death sobbed along with everyone else sobbing. No alternative weekends
with a divorced parent. There wasn't any. No back-button. No click Undo. No
relief from broken hearted stories told half in English, half in German about
“How talented… “How gifted… your Mother was… Ahh, Beatrice was the maestro Rubakian’s
best piano student. She had radiated a young painter’s delight with our
little farm up in Woodstock… and of course, the eminent reality of a recital
in Carnegie Hall and all.
So
I sat on the floor as a mommy-less little kid and watched everything. I sat on
the grass and watched. I sat at the window and watched. I was a sullen kid
- and overcame the tedium by taking an uninvolved, yet steady interest in
what I was watching since that was " IT " for what was currently
available in that moment. I was conscious. So I just watched. Not much content.
No ‘story’ line with it. I just watched. Watching was all too real for me to be
a voyeur. It was enough for me just to be in the presence of all that.
Death by Default -- Whew ! I was sorta' like Peter Seller's character in
the film "Being There" ~ I was a passive Watcher, not a Doer, a
Watcher. I'm a llife-long meditative, mindfulness trained 'Observer'. I like to
simply watch.
I developed
a child’s un-informed notion that - So maybe there were bona fide resurrection
‘Miracles’ out there. That would bring Mommy Beatrice back and stop the random
outbursts of continual sobbing. So at ten years old I began to practice and
perform stage Magic, to see if there was such a thing. Anyway, I didn’t like
the reedy clarinet or the clarinet teacher who smelled funny. God forbid, I
should turn my back on the oh so sacred piano. It was funny how all the
music teachers had really flakey dandruff and smelled funny - and no
store-bought, standard kid’s hobby took my interest or my heart.
But
I was very adept at being critical, complaining and genetically k'vetchy. Surprisingly, this was the
beginnings of an oddly developing Wisdom - if’ the ability’ was apprehended in
time. It usually isn’t and the kid becomes a ‘crank’. If it is, the kid learns
that ‘Wisdom’ Really Likes ‘Wisdom’ - and the kid will search the world over
for confirmation that he ‘Knows’ - and that he is highly desirable and is
worthy of being loved for that. He soon found that nobody gave a
shit. Unfortunately the wounded, narcissistic, gifted kid had
become cynical, contemptuous and disdainful - and could simply get lost out
there - go downstairs for a pack of smokes and never return.
Just
around the corner of my beingness, as a Pre-Bar Mitzvah Boy, with a smelly
Hebrew teacher, I started hanging around with some older boys who were local
amateur magicians and a few performing stage 'pro's -- after my Dad would
really check them out first. But wait, there’s more ! Besides being the son of
an extraordinarily talented, almost worshipped, deceased classical pianist and
painter -- I was also the physically way under-developed, seemingly talentless,
disinterested, chubby son of an athletic, muscular NYPD police officer who sang
German and Italian opera on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour on TV as The Singing
Patrolman. Back in the 1950’s you’d never say ‘Cop’.
Through
Whitey, Dad’s friend the antique dealer who was a magician, I met my first real
teaching ‘mentors’ in the City, where they clustered at Harry Houdini’s old
shop upstairs near Penn Station. Jeez,
the peculiar company I kept ! I never saw it that way. What I saw was that
these guys, they kinda of 'knew' stuff - stuff that ‘ordinary’ people didn’t
know. Esoteric stuff. I found that I genuinely, thoroughly, wasn’t ordinary.
Uncommon or Non-ordinary were new academic terms it was called. Back in the
50’s I was pretty alone in all this -- all of us Magi still are.
Soon,
as the remarkable teenage Mr.Magic, I got booked to do children’s birthday
parties on weekends, earning pocket and later, gas and date money for college
at SUNY Running In the background to all this was, of course, a Certified
Wicked Witch of the West Jewish Stepmother that Doctor Zugger has already
reserved for a water boarding in Milton’s Purgatory. I’m currently attempting
to share the dharma teachings with my less resistive clients, students and
myself: on boundless appreciation, unconditional acceptance and the authentic
magic of continual forgiveness. Keep forgiveness mindfully in front of you, and keep try’in
…..
" Go to holy places,
you'll meet up
with holy people "
you'll meet up
with holy people "
1959 Rebel without a
cause -- with AKASA LEVI ~
There is only once around, only once upon a time, long, long ago, and for Akasa
it was the body and mind of a Long Island high school kid in a black
turtleneck, driving a 51' Chevy lime green coupe, Kerouac and non filter Pall
Malls in his pocket, and a condom - every guy had to have the circular
badge of a condom bulge in his wallet. Akasa was actually there in
the Village experiencing the very last remnants of the Beat
generation. Akasa did some rather singular things in his life, when others
were not. Not yet ! But very soon. They were a comin' - to the sound of a
different drummer. Hey, good clichés rule !
At the movies, James Hilton’s 1939 "Lost
Horizon" jump started ‘something’ really serious buried deep in my soul
when I was sixteen. My first 'contact' with the movie depiction of a lead
character called the Grand Lama became a living reality when I first met His
Holiness The Dalai Lama in India years later. It brings a slight swelling
behind my eyes even now as I write this. Weekly, I soaked myself in a young Jean Shepard’s heady late night,
late 50's WOR jazz/talk radio show in the Village ( New York City ), where he
read from the "Amazing Adventures of Doctor Fu Manchu" and lots of
Tao and Zen poetry. I started to grow a tiny teenage goatee, hung around the
Art Room crowd, explored the social dangers of wearing black and read Kerouac.
Forget high school sports, me and The Exotic Esoteric were off and running! In
1959 I concluded high school with Paul Reps’ "Zen Flesh Zen Bones",
the Buddhist-theories of D.T. Suzuki and lots of Alan Watts "The Wisdom of
Insecurity". There’s ‘wisdom’ in insecurity ? Why that title of all
things ? It really made me ‘question’ it all. I learned that Buddhists laugh a
lot and are still willing to give voice to ‘impermanence' and 'uncertainty in
an Age of A-Bomb Anxiety and devastating Hollywood Blacklisting. In 1959 the
winter snows were just melting as the young Tibetan Dalai Lama and a small
horseback party began the final crossing into exile in India. His Holiness has
never been home since.
Hear, Here and Gone ~ in the radical hotbed it
became, SUNY Harpur College / Binghamton University in sleepy
upstate New York, Akasa was mostly gone - having a front aisle seat
at the back beat sound of this new emerging round of old but unsurprising
classic 'inner' explorations of the mind. Except, they work ! Without the
dependency on "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" -- and he did.
Through a plethora of 'Far Out' incredible Music, permissive Love and the
psychedelic insights that fueled Hippies, lots and lots of Hippies. But there
were the painful, unforgiving Addictions. Most of us had to go sweetly,
stubbornly or go suffering: The Only Way Out Is
Through". With more organized gravitas: the Activists
and Progressive people of all Liberation and Freedom loving ideals, and very,
very vocal Civil Rights risk takers stood up, stood proud, stood
strong. There were the heroic miracles of Dr. King, and many others
deeply influenced impressions
at the Heart level by the great classic European thinkers - and the
compassionate Wisdom teachings of the East. There was the chaotic
but growing critical mass community of fresh, newly awakened consciousness
expanding really opening minds
in process. Warm, young concerned bodies out in the surround, in
the streets and other 'Live' venues - seeking and absorbing
'non-ordinary', truly 'uncommon' experiences that would emotionally support me by making all the difference. So I could help make a difference !
I wasn't alone in my mind and
being-ness anymore...
SUNY, the State University of New York
in the heating-up Sixties, revealed to me the tight-assed academia, the
ill-conceived struggles for misunderstood meanings of Western philosophy, that
I didn’t ‘get’ anyway - and the permissive, easy-going spaciousness of Eastern
‘emptiness’. Emptiness is the ‘joy’ of uncertainty 'realized’. Living in
Greenwich Village after being a journalist in the U.S.Army ( Desert Storm:
First / 81st Armored Division, PIO information specialist 63’-65’ )
Finally
his number literally came up, and Akasa found his charlatan ass drafted,
serving the Army as a Special Services journalist, till he came home honorably
discharged, only to be spit on in the heat of the 60's
Counter-Culture generation's zeal. Be it Protesters, Yuppies or
Hippies - his soul exhausted, this ex-pat-Vet, eventually went on to live
abroad.
I was right there with another generational
shift I witnessed at the poetic heroic wane of the Beat-era -- and my ‘Self’
becoming ‘consciously’ reconstituted with my own beginnings, of my own
authentic Hippie soul. The birth of a fledgling Bodhisattva - a few old ones
still here - new stock arriving all the time.
The Puer: The Most Interesting Boy Man In The
World ~
Akasa found it just plain ol' fun to be the epitome of Hip - eccentric/artistic, a well dressed intellectual smoothie, a lovable fraud, he would charm and talk his way in - he became a young "creative" that simply knew that it simply was all created. Constructed. Fabricated. Designing himself as a savvy young 'designer' in men's wear fashion, or directing TV deodorant spots or canned dog food commercials on Mad Ave, or gory Slasher film production for the elusive Rabbi Herb Freed.
Akasa found it just plain ol' fun to be the epitome of Hip - eccentric/artistic, a well dressed intellectual smoothie, a lovable fraud, he would charm and talk his way in - he became a young "creative" that simply knew that it simply was all created. Constructed. Fabricated. Designing himself as a savvy young 'designer' in men's wear fashion, or directing TV deodorant spots or canned dog food commercials on Mad Ave, or gory Slasher film production for the elusive Rabbi Herb Freed.
My
personal archetype was as ‘The Outsider’ - that was quite clear. I was / I
still am an acquired taste for a few - but the Wunderkind me was soon making
expensive visual magic at a TV commercial production company directing pilot
spots. It so happened that I smoked some outstanding weed one day in ’68, and
left for a long sojourn in Europe and points unknown. "Freedom From the
Known" as Krishnamurti deliciously and disturbingly called it. In Israel I
just kept meeting people coming back from India - and they said “India Man, You
gotta go, Man - You gotta go ! - That’s the ‘real’ Holy Land!.” Further East,
the compass pointed the direction I needed. I met lotsa’ helpful Indiana Jones-
types along the Silk Route when it was still archeologically more intact.
Winter
1972 - 'Over-Land' to Secret India --
Saying
farewell to Rosh Pina, the Kibbutz, and daily rocket fire from Syria -Akasa
sets off as a
filmmaker and ongoing student of the Sufi Gurdjieff and his pioneering Mindfulness
'Work' - "Meetings With Remarkable Men". Icy slick snow on
the ground, driving the treacherous ancient “Silk Route” in a lightly armed
tight caravan formation from Istanbul in Mick's five smuggled Benz luxury limos
on a single lane nearly empty road, except for horseback bandits cum
road tax locals, who would actually kill you. No accommodations meaning there
was just nothing there - we all slept on donkey hair mats in a big smelly
black goat skin tent - had multiple vehicle breakdowns, actual film-making
waylaid yet another few months, and my own complete psycho-physical
breakdown near Herat, Afghanistan - where quite to my surprise, I found a
small ongoing orthodox Jewish community, still wearing
kaftans and get this, they were abiding here at least a thousands years,
having come with Al Xander ! Nursed with their chicken soup, of
course, and other 'medicine' certainly from elsewhere - some kind of
far out black sticky stuff - and soon I'm healed up good to go. Over
the Khyber Pass and Paki food at last - finally arriving at
the Amritsar crossing into Mother India."
I
wasn’t aware then, that I was traveling with a spiritual ‘dedicated purpose’, a
mission, a holy 'intent' as Lama taught me later. I traveled in an old Russian
mini-bus, overland thru the thick snows of Eastern Turkey, the Shah’s Iran and
many months of a restorative, recuperative layover with the Jewish community in
Herat, Afghanistan during the brutal winter 1972-73. I kept observing a subtly
different, ‘alternative’ cultural paradigm out there. Asia was not Kansas
anymore, Coney. It certainly wasn’t the South Shore of Long Island where I was
raised W.J.M., either. Here, people looked right into your ‘mind’. They can
read you. In India they had a legacy of deeply observing and comprehending the
human mind - a very complete, ancient ‘science-teaching’ about the true nature
of mind. No ‘churches’ that could
suppress it - no matter how the Brits tried to civilize the Wogs…
At
the Eastern Pakistani/Indian border in Amritsar, a seasoned ex-patriot American
yogi who looked like Shiva said to me, unsolicited - “Hey Man, Just skip
Hinduism altogether, my friend, and go straight to Dharamsala and hang around
with the Buddhists” - “You’ll end up a Buddhist anyway, from what I see in
you...” He gave me the address of a very special ‘Teacher’ to visit there, and
literally vanished. Weeks later I ambled down a crooked little street high up
in the thick pine covered foothills of Northern India, past a flock of laughing
Tibetan Buddhist monks full of horseplay, back from their visit to The Dalai
Lama’s residence up the hill -- and ‘Lost Horizon’ became a reality.
After
a plate of mo-mo dim sum, I went to pay, and discovered the teacher’s address
deep in my shoulder bag. As described, I found an alley, then a door, knocked -
and a voice said “Come in”. Sitting in full lotus on the floor nursing a
single-burner propane stove and tea, was the same yogi guy I met at the border
! He looked up at me, smiled, then laughed and said “You made it man - Good, I
have some great people for you to go up into the hills here to meet”…
I
said to myself ~ " Way to go Mr.
Magic, let me praise you -
You
‘showed up’ for yourself again - it made all the difference ~ Whew ! "
How and Who I met - What sacred
'transmissions' they would share from directly within
their very own inconscious paradigm surrounded by their very own cultural
artifacts lived resplendently by a little nut brown man in a tiny hut sitting
on a woven mat. Or the woman art-maker activist who embraces
and holds tiny, mistreated babies, and won her
nation's highest regard for literally saving, feeding and caressing the souls
of abused children in Nepal, or maybe it was South India, or maybe it was South
Central. Or the actor who went to dig in the muddy fields beyond the jungle, and
found his own magic celebrity-energy transform into indelible compassion. Many
empathic Americans served abroad in the
Peace Core. You can find them there too -the teachers, the tortured - and
sometimes it's just me mostly writing about ‘me’ and my Parkinson's medication side
effects... and I'd rather go back now to my
pisha'ka travel 'story', and my basic bad writing...
Hopefully
the wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened
and somewhat achieved by reciting my peculiar life story: to get you
interested, or get you interested once
again - and gets you going out on the road less traveled - doing
some serious sacred 'searching' here in the USA, or better, for the really
gutsy, brave and unattached, if you take the risk to go abroad. You get to
mindfully see and eat and shit and live and serve in these
raw cultural contexts that these unbelievable ancient spiritual practices
originate from -- Roots, always
look for the roots of things, always
look for the indigenous origins ! Notice the similarities everywhere !
♦ The Himalayan Diary in these
pages ardently encourages you to 'search' out some of the history
of the renown Buddhist teachers mentioned, as well as the many inspiring,
un-named unknown un-educated teacher's wise and clarifying counsel
and potent clean energy influences
- literally what arises out of them and flies over into you. Sacred
seeds a plenty are dropped during these meetings with remarkable
people - unique
indigenous people who recognize the potential value of a good
student, possibly to serve as a future teacher - in service to this
idea, these senior guides themselves
would pass you around, sending you Hither and Yon to meet other teaching
masters too - human to human, this is how the
sacred "Teachings" and their highest cultural traditions are
kept vibrantly alive, kept going, and are aurally preserved in
perpetuity thru other specially 'taught' humans -- these were basic
precious human 'realizations' that would carry me and make ALL the difference on the
road less traveled. ( Friends ~ They are still out there to be
learned from... Mister G. would be proud -- so far... )
♦ " Like Attracts Like " Wisdom LIKES Wisdom
So basically, Wisdom Attracts
Wisdom. The very beginnings of
true Wisdom is very attracted to Higher Wisdom. Wisdom likes Wisdom -
as Stupidity likes Stupidity, and seeks out
more Stupidity. Ignorance seeks out Ignorance. And so it goes... And
so the very beginnings of Awakened Enlightened-mind
-- "Enlightenment" seeks out Enlightenment and is so happy
to find more enlightenment out
there, that it never wants to go back to ignorant stupidity."
~ Lama Thubten Teshe
_______________________________
The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One
" Go to holy places,
you'll meet up
with holy people "
you'll meet up
with holy people "
" The Only
Way Out
Is Through "
Way Out
Is Through "
Winter 1972 - 'Over-Land' to Secret India --
Saying farewell to Rosh
Pina, the Kibbutz, and daily rocket fire from Syria - Akasa sets off as a filmmaker and ongoing
student of the Sufi Gurdjieff and his pioneering Mindfulness
'Work' - "Meetings With Remarkable Men". Icy slick snow on
the ground, driving the treacherous ancient “Silk Route” in a lightly armed
tight caravan formation from Istanbul in Mick's five smuggled
Benz luxury limos on a single lane nearly empty road, except for
horseback bandits cum road tax locals, who would actually kill you. No
accommodations meaning there was just nothing there - we all slept on donkey
hair mats in a big smelly black goat skin tent - had multiple vehicle
breakdowns, actual film-making waylaid yet another few months, and my own
complete psycho-physical breakdown near Herat, Afghanistan - where quite to my
surprise, I found a small ongoing orthodox Jewish community,
still wearing kaftans and get this, they were abiding here at least a
thousands years, having come with Al Xander ! Nursed with their chicken
soup, of course, and other 'medicine' certainly from elsewhere - some
kind of far out black sticky stuff - and soon I'm healed up good to go.
Over the Khyber Pass and Paki food at last - finally arriving at
the Amritsar crossing into Mother India."
___________________________________
Now let's skip around several years chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
♦♦♦ ♦ 'Seeking'
a deeper Truth
with Reb Shlomo at the Western Wall - to the remote
Sherpa monasteries of rural Asia for the whole decade of the 1970's -
trekking way out into the wild to be with the last living Buddhist
teachers of the Asian Pre-Global
Era - most passed on now.
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
Now let's skip around several years
chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
♦♦♦
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
.___________________________________
♦ 1974 - Akasa met what came
to be affectionately called : The Two Lamas. This is where
he received Vajrayana Refuge Initiation in The Three Jewels
and other necessary empowerments for 'practice' under Geshe Lama
Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan, Nepal
and Dharamsala, India. These two Gelugpa monks and their mostly
Western Sangha became the founders of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Wisdom
Publications in Boston, USA. After two intensive practice-years with Lama Yeshe
and Lama Zopa in Kathmandu -- I found myself on self-retreat in Bodhgaya,
India one sunny May Vesak day. Standing off to the side of an event
under the Bo Tree, just quietly watching, was an old monk from
somewhere in Sri Lanka -- when he saw me, he broke out laughing... longchenpa
"What's The Practice
? --
Don't believe your own
mind" ~ Goenka-ji
_____________________________________________
Later on, Akasa became an officially
ordained Buddhist monk - a 'Bhikkhu' - a ‘sacred beggar’, a forest
Sadhu-monk for 6 years in orange cotton robes on the hillside jungles
of Sri Lanka - trained and ordained into the Theravada monastic order by
the revered Venerable Balangoda Ananda Maitreya, the current late Maha
Nayake Thera head of the Amarapura Nikaya lineage.
"Life is not a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely
in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside,
thoroughly used up, totally worn out,
and loudly proclaiming
'WOW What a Ride!' " ~ Billy Bo Sat
Out dear Maha Nayake
arrived August 24, 1896.
He went July 18, 1998, at
102 years of age.
" The Art of teaching
is the art
of assisting
discovery "
Bodhgaya, India ~ After the First Kalachakra empowerment
ceremony ever to be performed outside Tibet, Akasa entered meditation
teacher-training in 'technique' and remained in Bodhgaya, India as a
student of a funny, young upstart, renegade Zen-master Subhuti Shibuya
Sensei. There was also at the same time, a highly regarded
senior monk, who had a little classroom out back of the Gandhi Ashram. Sri
Anagarika Munindra Barua - the renown Bengali Vipassana
Mindfulness master-teacher was accorded the respect of being the resident
meditation instructor and dharma teacher to the western students who began to
settle around him to do more long term 'practice' of what came to be known
as "Mindfulness"
Linages of spiritual practice ~
Munindra-ji along with S.N. Goenka were
almost the sole creators of contemporary 'Mindfulness' in India, as we
today know the practice. These two master-teachers
brought 'Mindfulness' in from Burma across the Bay, rife with cruel
political strife, carrying the blessings of the Burmese founders Mahasi
Sayadaw and U Ba Khin. These meditation practice lineages exist in
vibrant health today -- worldwide.
Go to Wikipedia Search bar and just
proceed to type.
These monks were actually 'Living
a Teaching' totally 'Live' in the remote little desert village of Bodhgaya,
India where the famed sacred Bodhi Tree still stands, the great
grandson of the tree that the Buddha to-be Siddhartha took up a seat
facing East to the Morning star -- and sat -- and he 'Awakened' as
The Buddha - during an unwavering, uncompromised, committed dawn
meditation under the Full Blue Moon in May ( 528 BC ) … Whew !
From that time to our time, he became
known as Shakyamuni The Buddha Gautama, - better known to us just as The
Buddha.
Teachers: Akasa's intellectual and experiential
influences and impressions came through his main mentor The Most Venerable
Ananda Maitreya and Nilambe's Acharya Godwin Samara'ratne and Dr.
Lily DeSilva, the Buddhist Publication Society's late Nyanaponika
Mahathera, Bhante Piyadassi Mahathera - and especially thru the
controversial lay teacher Henri Van Zeyst - all teaching and mentoring
students upcountry, near Kandy, Sri Lanka. After a long three month silent
retreat of ups and downs, bliss and bummers - Akasa served as Western
teacher-in-residence at the Forest-yogi Bhante Polpitiya Kassapa's Rockhill
Hermitage where many freedom motivated Westerners would come to study
'the teachings' and do extended retreat. "And my once a day monk's
noon meal: the food was great " Akasa went there !
"Everything
we've ever, ever learned -
we've learned somehow
from somebody else."
The 1970's in South and
East Asia ~
Imagine a time when there's just so much Good Metta and well intended inward
restorative energy - fueled and motivated by mindfulness meditation power
and enlightening Dharma practice towards a true inner liberation that
could be in many places all at one time - yet all over. The inevitability of it
- as spiritual teachers throughout Asia saw the strong
probability of the Dharma coming to the West, ironically via these 'foreigners',
these Hippies arriving in droves by 70's decade's end. Young seeds carried on
the tropic winds, fallen into floating coconuts, blown across the seas to root
in new places thanks to all the elements involved, so the Dharma sailed
Westward as a seed and carried inland snagged in the fur of a returning
creature going home bringing an invisible guest. Historically, some thing lost
was once again found.
Please, give me a moment now,
and let's skip around a chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama Time ~ By now I'd been
to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight
Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who
bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting
right next to Kalu Rinpoche for a Kalachakra ceremony and having my
head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly
an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my
life long, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle in to commit,
to dedicate to do 'practice' ?
Now let's skip around several years
chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
♦♦♦
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
Now let's skip around several years
chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
♦♦♦
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
♦
Later on, Akasa practiced Non-Duality
Advaita n satsang with the wonderfully notorious Bede Baba Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj in old Bombay, and his teachings of "I
AM THAT" - Maharaj certainly was THAT !
________________________________
" With a hammered iron
bowl in his hands,
at the front yards and the
tiny doorways
of little mountain village
houses,
the white monk
appreciatively,
silently begged his food
daily --
-- even in the muddy rain.
The locals loved it !
Opps, a warm piglet
just shit on my foot..." ~ Sudu Hom'dru
____________
1980 ~ After returning to the USA - still in
monk's orange robes, still with a shaved head - on an open invitation to
teach Vipassana at The University of Oriental Studies and The
International Buddhist Meditation Center in LA's Koreatown. He was
sponsored by Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Tien-An, the school's
founder and a leading international Buddhist academic scholar. 'Suto'
was regarded "as probably the most humbly compassionate of wise-beings
they'd ever met " who took in the homeless to see some remarkable
turn-arounds - and Akasa gets to see this man on a daily basis, sort of
breakfast with the Buddha...
Akasa developed and appreciated a long
enduring friendship with pioneering ‘women's mindfulness movement’
vipassana teacher Ruth Denison at her Dhamma-Dena Retreat Center
in a very remote Joshua Tree, California.
"A ravaging monster of an afternoon
windstorm on the High Desert can be a true ally to strengthening a
meditation practice: you're stuck, you ain't going nowhere, and you can do
nothing but sit it out: so you sit -- and observe your
utter fear, thoughts, sensations, feelings and emotions --
and learn to pray" ~ Billy Bo Sat
____________________________________
The Laughing Buddha Sangha's official Sri Lanka monastic
connection for many years now has been thru the kindness of The Dharma
Vijaya Buddha Vihara on Crenshaw at Washington ( The Sri Lanka
Temple and Monastery in Los Angeles ) and it's Abbot, The Venerable Sangha
Nayake 'Bhante' Walpola Piyananda of Sri Lanka.
"THUS WE HEARD ~ Recollections
of The Life of The Buddha " is a newly published book from Los Angeles
that is certainly an Opus. It is already a complete cultural artifact -
actually a grand 'tribal' work, a huge document of ancient human history
that is unarguably so precious and so important to each and every
individual culture and it's central paradigm - especially if it's ongoing root
literature is contemporary, yet still carefully maintained at an
almost pure, fairly undisturbed level. Crucial to such a huge
sacrifice of daily life, for the time and effort of painstaking academic
research, and the distillation of ancient knowledge - is one main action,
the result of constant motivation that surrounds a worthy intention: sitting
down and actually Writing the bloody thing. Enough said - Thank you
gentlemen for what most of the rest of us just simply could not do !
Thanks Bhante Piyananda, and
Thanks professor
Stephen Long for writing "THUS WE HEARD
~ Recollections of The Life of The Buddha " - a truly valuable
and wonderful treasure, a Gift to all who read it, carefully consider it's
words, and slowly integrate them within. It's a big book and a long
read, so get prepared to enjoy a massively told great epic story !
Bhante, Stephen, we so appreciate you
both, and our all being here in Sangha together at this moment in the
Sassana.
Akasa Levi is considered to be a Bodhi-Acharya
by the Sri Lanka community, as a 'Lineage-holder' of the Theravada
teaching-transmission, as a counselor and senior Dharma-guide to the
ardent younger Western students following behind him on The Path of The
Elders. His monastic exploration ( broadcast on BBC ) as "In The
Footsteps of the Buddha" was recognized for it's avant garde yet
gentle merit. Currently, as a Dharma mentor, Akasa is simply 'Available' -
gladly and actively serving the needs of the greater Buddhist
community ( pro bono or dana as need be ) as a Kalyana
Mitta: a guiding ‘spiritual-friend' to all meditation practitioners,
as well as all others in need of The Buddha's Good Medicine.
Akasa studied western-style psycho-dynamic
analysis and theory - and it's applied therapy at UCLA WestLA.
Akasa offers a Buddhist-based individual therapy and a relationship partnering
counseling as a possibly effective spiritual tool or 'complementary' medicine,
a mindfulness based alternative to the standard secular, non-meta-physical,
non- spiritual based clinical therapies. Buddhist-based therapy claims nothing
salvific, no other worldly promises, no salvation guarantees - as each client’s
choices, life-partnering, or individual situation is by it's transitionary
nature different and effectiveness may vary widely. Hey, Reach out.
After a strenuous younger life 'on the
road', Akasa is now quite travel-saturated, and stays mostly in a semi-retreat
mode, rarely teaching outside California. Diagnosed in 2014 with a
degenerative movement disorder, he is living with Parkinson's Disease.
That’s almost a ‘Real’ thing… This modern tribal sage is quite content to
nurture plants in his garden - and 'Work' the Buddhist teachings in
company with reasonably steady students, caring individual people close to his
home. Akasa is known for his spontaneity and wry, unpredictable humor in his
approach to the Buddha’s truly precious, liberation oriented teachings.
We are non-denominational
and definitely non-religious
and welcome all journeyers
of all Ways or even none.
and definitely non-religious
and welcome all journeyers
of all Ways or even none.
♦ Testimonial: esteemed "Spirit Rock"
teacher
Jack Kornfield refers to Akasa in his
fraud-mode
as The Old Rogue - which is an
archetype form
of The Angelic Troublemaker Trickster
Fool.
___________________________________
end
Plz DO NOT GO
BEYOND THIS PPONT - IT'S JUST DRIVEL ANYWAY. .thanks...
The Old Rogue -- which is an archetype form
of The Angelic Troublemaker Trickster
Fool.
The Old Rogue -- which is
an archetype form
of The Angelic Troublemaker Trickster
Fool.
Akasa Levi.Profile.4.2016.Large.a
serious profile for him.docx
http://buddhistmeditationsantamonica.com just good reading
And that has made all the difference.
AKASA LEVI, DhMA ( D.Min ) - SUNY Harpur
College at Binghamton University, New York - Once upon a time long, long ago
Akasa Levi served several strong life-roles: a Desert Storm
ex-pat U.S.Military Vet of the 60's Counter- Culture generation that lived
the decadent 70’s Decade abroad as a wandering Sadhu
seeker in rural Asia, becoming an officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu forest
monk - to be with the last living Buddhist teachers of the Asian Pre-Global
Era - most passed on now. What that was is all now Gone.
Akasa is a feisty 75- and
intentionally pretentious, a charletan playing himself as an un-adorable,
authentic curmudgeon, in that he didn't like the other life choices. Akasa is
definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste, Full of mischief, he's an
oddly sweet, strangely funny, eccentric old Dharma Dude and a respected BuJu
Elder. K'vetchy by nature, but not too creepy, and always the rogue -
this faux academic mentor is always into nourishing a maverick, iconoclast
intelligence in the people he treats, teaches, counsels or dharma-life coaches
at his little meditation shrine room near the beach, filled with old ritual
objects and statues of the ancient Buddha.
Akasa, a senior-level
meditation teacher, also instructs us in the empirical, scientific, secular
spirit of the moment, found in contemporary Mindfulness meditation practice and
modern Advaita as well. He knows that simply by practice you can effect a
meaningful, noticeable difference in yourself. Beyond his broad, abstract comprehension,
Akasa is known for his spontaneity, ready warmth, and wry unpredictable humor.
Akasa Levi, lives a life of meditation
practice and ocassional teaching in Santa Monica California. He has recently
been diagnosised wit Parkinson’s disease which is bound to bum anybody
out, even a full-fledged Budha ! UPDATE: 2016 ~ Joyfully, THIS is it. I
was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in early 2014. Truthfully, and Joyfully,
to make a turn of phrase: There’s no Love Lost as there’s a good and plenty supply
of fine senior meditation teachers and mindfulness trainers and young upcoming
guides in the Buddha’s Dharma that now abundantly populate and abound in the
land … 310-450-2268• Prior to Akasa Levi’s partial retirement from group
meditation teaching in 2014 with a Parkinson’ diagnosis
-:¦:- The SPIRITUAL
ADULTHOOD PROJECT • The LAUGHING BUDDHA SANGHA Guided by AKASA LEVI
• Please VISIT the Expanded
BIG BIO PROFILE at the TABLE of CONTENTS
-:¦:- The SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD
PROJECT • buddhistcounselingmindfulnesstherapy.blogspot.com • Buddhist-based
'alternative' approaches to relating with Your True Core Self • One-to-One
individual therapy • Relationship counseling • Partnering issues • Difficult to
communicate feelings • Disheartened anxious insecure Wounded Spirit • Counsel
for 'Uncommon People' 'Rebels' 'Creatives' 'Sensitives' cerebral verbal
artistic gifted ~ yet really Unhappy. "Mindfulness Insight"
cultivates a calm, kind, wise, deep liberation with a "Big Good-Hearted
Mind"
The SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD PROJECT is a
Member of S.E.N. ( Spiritual Emergency Network
at Esalen Institute in Big Sur ). We are an outreach-project of “The Laughing Buddha Sangha”
in Santa Monica, CA 90405 - and utilize some of the practice-approaches recommended by Jack Kornfield and offered by Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre/Santa Rosa, CA. Our favorite meditation center here in Santa Monica is InsightLA.org guided by Trudy Goodman. InsightLA is about 4 blocks away right up 14th Street.
at Esalen Institute in Big Sur ). We are an outreach-project of “The Laughing Buddha Sangha”
in Santa Monica, CA 90405 - and utilize some of the practice-approaches recommended by Jack Kornfield and offered by Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre/Santa Rosa, CA. Our favorite meditation center here in Santa Monica is InsightLA.org guided by Trudy Goodman. InsightLA is about 4 blocks away right up 14th Street.
_________________________
"Don't believe your own mind"
~ Goenka-ji
"Everything we've ever, ever
learned -
we've learned somehow
from somebody else."
Uncertain Times
____________
" It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way -
in short, the period was so far
just like the present period.
~ Charles Dickens 1859,
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
The Old Rogue -- which is an archetype form
of The Angelic Troublemaker Trickster
Fool.
" The art of teaching
is the art
of assisting discovery
"Don't believe your own mind"
~ Goenka-ji
On The Road Children
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
♦ Much of this inner-work is
'Spiritual‘ ~
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'…
( The spiritual science of an applied 'meditation'
as a part of good therapy )
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'…
( The spiritual science of an applied 'meditation'
as a part of good therapy )
WE’RE ‘UNCOMMON’ PEOPLE:
Sensitive, creative, individualistic, intelligent people - higher-consciousness
oriented people - artistic, intellectual, or even spiritual. Non-traditional,
non-mainstream, non-Matrix lifestyle - uncommon, non-ordinary - a very
individual person,living their own sense of being 'civilized', compassionate
and inward oriented with integrity as well. And who also have an insatiable
curiosity...
UPDATE: 2016 ~ Joyfully, THIS is it. I
was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in early 2014. Truthfully, and Joyfully,
to make a turn of phrase: There’s no Love Lost as there’s a good and plenty
supply of fine senior meditation teachers and mindfulness trainers and young
upcoming guides in the Buddha’s Dharma that now abundantly populate and abound
in the land … 310-450-2268• Prior to Akasa Levi’s partial retirement from group
meditation teaching in 2014 with a Parkinson’ diagnosis
Plz DO NOT
GO BEYOND THIS PPONT - IT'S JUST DRIVEL ANYWAY. . .. Thx
The spiritual science
of applied awareness
with 'mindfulness meditation'
is part of a very good
therapy
" With the drawing
forth of this Love
and the Voice of this
Calling. . . .
We shall not cease from
exploration,
And the end of all our
exploring
will be to arrive where we
started,
And know the place for the
first time.
Through the unknown,
unremembered gate
When the last of earth left
to discover
is that which was the
beginning."
~ T. S. Elliot - Four
Quartets
---------------------------------------
" Just as
a drop of water falling into the great ocean
Is never
depleted even before the ocean ever dries up –
Likewise, with
the Full Intent I now dedicate to Awakening,
will never be
depleted before my Enlightenment is fully attained."
~ Buddha
Shakyamuni
" By
learning the ‘Path of Wisdom-Silence’ you can
Break through
the illusory world of 'worldly' words
( and break
through the world of 'other-worldly' words too )
So that The
Wordless Flower of 'Just Being' may bloom.
Just allow
yourself to become suddenly still, inside and out,
So that you
may pierce through the thin shell of the 'World',
And now fill
the entire cosmos with your own truly Free Mind.
So the healing
of you and thus the healing of the world may begin."
~ Zen-master
Ji Aoi Isshi – 13th century Japan
Hey Friend,
Savor the Journey too
– it's in every step –
--------------------------
" The Journey Itself
IS the Destination "
________________
" The Art of teaching
is the art of
assisting discovery "
♦ I'm a BIG BOY BIO NOW, Dad to be
with the last living spiritual teachers
of the pre-global era.
♦ Buddhist Therapy:
It’s been done
very effectively
for 1000’s of years
This well seasoned neighborhood man was there - a funny, friendly lantz'mann of a ‘tribal elder’ - a sort of NYC 'witch-doctor' that just loves being referred to as a 'Shrink'. So when you're looking for a 'shrink' – Look for long experience and a natural sweetening that can come with age, is a definite plus plus thing." ~ J.K.
'Awakened' under, during a dawn
meditation on the full moon in May. ( 528 BC ).
"Don't believe your own mind" ~ Goenka
Whew !
With an iron bowl in his hands, at the
doorway of little
mountain village houses, silently,
appreciatively
begged his food daily. The locals loved
it !
___________________________________________
Rilke
You may wish to
hi-lite, copy and send the
Rilke quote below to young people you know...
it offers some of the
wisest personal guidance
you'll ever read, given to
personal use caringly.
Here it is ~
LOVE THE QUESTIONS INSTEAD
-----------------------------------------------
" Be patient toward
all that is unsolved in your heart.
Try to love the
'Questions' themselves like locked rooms
and like books that are
written in a foreign language.
Do not, just right now,
seek for the Answers.
The 'Answers' which cannot
now be given to you -
because you would not be
able to actually ‘Live’ them.
And the point is to ‘Live’
everything - experiencing everything.
At present, you need to Live
the Questions themselves.
Perhaps you will then
gradually, without even noticing it,
Live along some day into
the true Answer."
~ Rilke's "Letters to
a Young Poet" (1903-1908)
"Life is not a
journey to the grave
with the intention of
arriving safely
in a pretty and well
preserved body,
but rather to skid in
broadside,
thoroughly used up,
totally worn out,
and loudly proclaiming
'WOW What a Ride!'
" ~ Billy Bo Sat
On The Road Children
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
‘The Old Rogue’ – which is an
archetype
form of The Angelic Troublemaker
Trickster.
-------------------------------------------------------------
On The Road Children ~
someone thought this
small profile Bio
is supposed to be
slightly self-effacing
and funny. So it is.
The Old Rogue ~
which is an archetype form of
The Angelic Troublemaker Trickster Fool.
" It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way -
in short, the period was so far
just like the present period.
~ Charles Dickens 1859,
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
On The Road Children
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
♦ Much of this inner-work
is 'Spiritual‘ ~
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'…
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'…
WE’RE ‘UNCOMMON’ PEOPLE: Sensitive, creative,
individualistic, intelligent people - higher-consciousness oriented people -
artistic, intellectual, or even spiritual. Non-traditional, non-mainstream,
non-Matrix lifestyle - uncommon, non-ordinary - a very individual person,
living their own sense of being 'civilized', compassionate and inward oriented
with integrity as well. And who also have an insatiable curiosity...
UPDATE: 2016 ~ Joyfully, THIS is it. I
was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in early 2014. Truthfully, and Joyfully,
to make a turn of phrase: There’s no Love Lost as there’s a good and plenty
supply of fine senior meditation teachers and mindfulness trainers and young
upcoming guides in the Buddha’s Dharma that now abundantly populate and abound
in the land … 310-450-2268• Prior to Akasa Levi’s partial retirement from group
meditation teaching in 2014 with a Parkinson’ diagnosis
_______________________________________
_____________________________________
___________________________________
" Eighty percent of ‘success’
is just showing up ! ” ~ Woody Allen
___________________
Remember, Dear
Reader....
" The Journey IS
the Destination ~
Success is a
Journey, not a Destination.
Whatever the
motives, good or bad --
If you do not
change directions,
you may end up
where
you are
heading." ~ Lao Tzu
__________________________________
Each
chapter of this site is concluded
with
theme-related quotes and poetry.
Be
inspired with your own enjoyment
________________________________
“ Whatever the Question ~
Love and Kindness is the Answer ”
--------------------------------------------------
“
If you wish to experience peace
-
provide peace for another.
If
you wish to know that you are safe
-
cause another to know that they are safe.
People
ask me - What is your religion?
I
respond: My religion is ‘Kindness’.
Kindness
is my religion.”
~ H.H.The Dalai Lama ~
__________________
“
There is more hunger
for
Love and Appreciation
in
this world than for bread.
Loneliness
and the feeling of
being
unwanted is the most terrible.
If
we have no Peace,
it
is because we have forgotten
that
we belong to each other.
We
can do no 'great things' –
just
many small things
with
Great Love.”
~
Mother Teresa ~
_____________
"Good timber
does not
grow with ease.
The stronger the wind,
the stronger the trees."
~ Willard Marriot
______________________________
Grandfather
Bearheart, a Creek Elder said:
"
Destiny is every step we are
going
thru right now to get there."
“
La vraie générosité envers l'avenir
consiste
à tout donner au présent.”
“
True generosity towards the future
is
to give everything to the present.” ~ Albert Camus
"
It is not how 'much' you do – but how much
Love
you put into the 'doing' that matters --
People
don't care how 'much' you know,
until
they know how much you care." ~ Cavett Robert
"
Kindness" is more important than 'Wisdom' -
and
the 'clear-recognition' of this -
IS
the beginning of Wisdom." ~ Theodore Issac Rubin
" If there is any kindness I can show
or any good thing I can do for a fellow being
Let me do it now - and not deter or neglect it,
as I may not pass this way again." ~ William Penn
“
Seeing our lives as a ‘Force’
for
bringing on happiness
and
peace to ourselves and others.
Do
we trust enough
to
surrender our separateness ? “ ~ Anna Douglas
“
If you do not see Godliness
in
the next person you meet,
you
need look no further.” ~ Gandhi
“
Every man is guilty
of
all that Good
he
didn't do.” ~ Voltaire – 1750
__________
... and
the children
listen best
to sunshine
and the whispering
of the wind,
they understand
the flowers
the clouds
and they pray
you and I
will find
a better way. ~ Nick
Rath
The End is Insight
___________________________________
BREAK
THE SILENCE WITH LAUGHTER !
_____________________________________
“
I am astounded by people
who
want to 'know' the Universe –
when
it's hard enough to find
your
way around Chinatown “ ~ Woody Allen
Remember...
" The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One ! "
HimalayaLamadocx
# 1. Ah Aum ~
Om Mani
Padme' Hung
~ Ah Aum
-------------------------
Om Ma Ah - Hung
Om Ma Ah - Hung
Vajra Guru
Padme Siddha Hung
_________________________________
16 Himalaya Lama ~ The Road Now Taken
Early
'Contributing Factors' and 'Conditions'
Karma
arrived, showing up
as a series of
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early
magical
'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --
18 Himalaya Lama ~ The Road Now Taken
Early
'Contributing Factors' and 'Conditions'
Karma
arrived, showing up
as a series of
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early
magical
'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --
" The Greatest Risk
is Not Taking One ! "
Himalayan Diary of an
American Buddhist Monk
at Kopan Gompa Monastery
Bodh’nath, Kathmandu, Nepal
American Buddhist Monk
at Kopan Gompa Monastery
Bodh’nath, Kathmandu, Nepal
____________________________
Foolish Nasreddin's Lost Keys ~
One
late evening Nasreddin is walking home.
He can be seen to be upset about something.
Just then a young man comes along
and sees the Mullah's distress.
"Mullah, please tell me - What is wrong? "
He can be seen to be upset about something.
Just then a young man comes along
and sees the Mullah's distress.
"Mullah, please tell me - What is wrong? "
"Friend,
I seem to have lost my keys.
Would you help me search for them ?
I had them when I left the tea house.
Would you help me search for them ?
I had them when I left the tea house.
So
he helps Nasreddin search for the keys.
For quite a while the young man is searching
here and there but no keys are to be found.
He looks over to Nasreddin and sees him
searching only a very small area around
an old oil street lamp.
" Mullah, why are you only searching over there ? "
" Because there's much more light over here.
Should I foolishly search where there is no light ? "
The Mullah Nasreddin never found his keys.
For quite a while the young man is searching
here and there but no keys are to be found.
He looks over to Nasreddin and sees him
searching only a very small area around
an old oil street lamp.
" Mullah, why are you only searching over there ? "
" Because there's much more light over here.
Should I foolishly search where there is no light ? "
The Mullah Nasreddin never found his keys.
________________________________
"
We shall not cease from exploration,
And
the end of all our exploring
will
be to arrive where we started
And
know the place
for
the very first time." ~ T.S. Eliot
_________________________
Dear
Reader ~
This
same never-ending story in every
human culture
always repeats itself, it always begins
with a 'Search' -
through
the deep Unknown with raw beginner's skills
that
are barely known to an unaware beginner's mind.
Spiritually speaking, that's a very classic way to start.
At one's Core, something got lost - and one goes out
to try'n find it. Don't we all kinda' relate with that ?
Spiritually speaking, that's a very classic way to start.
At one's Core, something got lost - and one goes out
to try'n find it. Don't we all kinda' relate with that ?
_________________________________________
The Road Not Taken /
The Road Less Traveled
Robert Frost, 1926
Robert Frost, 1926
------------------------------------------------------------
Two
roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And
I'm sorry I could not travel both.
And
so being only one traveler, long I stood
And
looked down each road as far as I could
To
where it bent in the undergrowth.
-------------------------------------------------
Then
I took the other road, just as fair,
And
having perhaps the better claim
Because
it was grassy and wanted wear.
Though
as for that the passing there
Had
worn them really about the same,
And
both that morning equal
in
leaves no step had trodden black.
-------------------------------------------------
Oh,
I kept the first road for another day,
Yet
knowing how way leads on to way,
I
doubted if I should ever come back.
I
shall be telling this tale with a sigh
Somewhere
ages and ages hence -
------------------------------------------------
Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I,
--
I took the one less traveled by,
And
that has made all the difference.
______________________________
MYSTERY of MYSTERIES
I
lost my Mom to breast cancer when I was seven. My whole future relationship
with women’s souls and the sweet softness of Yin changed. So did my
relationship with Death. The young potent power-filled Son with
no Mother to come home to proudly protect. A dark home where everybody’s
clothing had the salty smell of tear soaked tragic dampness. For now, I’m
keeping all that good ole' Freudian stuff for me to explore with Doctor
Max Zugger, the Don Rickles of insult psychiatry. His office was where I
heard it for the first time -- 'Shit Happens'. The unarguable, ever
changing, unstable, absolute 'Impermanence' of it all. Buddha's
Dharma ( teachings ) is sort of the Reality Science of ultimate Loss - The What
Is of The Way It Is. This IS It. The healthy, not morbid, wisdom
that is experientially developed directly out of insecurity is a
prominent cornerstone of Buddhism's acceptance teachings on
Impermanence. "Unfortunately for human beings" - said The Dalai Lama
giggling, "Buddhism has no Savior, only a desire for one -- but they do have
TV ".
At
the time though, I experienced a suddenly new phenomena very few kids get
to have: Real ‘Death’ up close. Death lived with my family by the beach in
Far Rockaway, New York. Death had a room upstairs. Death ate at the table,
Death sobbed along with everyone else sobbing. No alternative weekends
with a divorced parent. There wasn't any. No back-button. No click Undo. No
relief from broken hearted stories told half in English, half in German about
“How talented… “How gifted… your Mother was… Ahh, Beatrice was the maestro
Rubakian’s best piano student. She had radiated a young painter’s delight
with our little farm up in Woodstock… and of course, the eminent reality of a
recital in Carnegie Hall and all. I sat on the floor and watched. I sat on
the grass and watched. I was a sullen kid - and overcame the tedium by
taking an uninvolved, yet steady interest in what I was watching since
that was " IT " for what was currently available in that moment.
I was conscious. So I just watched. Not much content. No ‘story’ line with it.
I just watched. Watching was all too real for me to be a voyeur. It was
enough for me just to be in the presence of all that. Death by Default -- Whew
! I was sorta' like Peter Seller's character in the film "Being
There" ~ I was a passive Watcher, not a Doer, a Watcher. I'm a
llife-long meditative, mindfulness trained 'Observer'. I like to
simply watch.
I developed
a child’s un-informed notion that - So maybe there were bona fide resurrection
‘Miracles’ out there. That would bring Mommy Beatrice back and stop the random
outbursts of continual sobbing. So at ten years old I began to practice and
perform stage Magic, to see if there was such a thing. Anyway, I didn’t like
the reedy clarinet or the clarinet teacher who smelled funny. God forbid, I
should turn my back on the oh so sacred piano. It was funny how all the
music teachers had really flakey dandruff and smelled funny - and no
store-bought, standard kid’s hobby took my interest or my heart. But I was very
adept at being critical, complaining and k'vetchy. Surprisingly, this was the
beginnings of an oddly developing Wisdom - if’ the ability’ was apprehended in
time. It usually isn’t and the kid becomes a ‘crank’. If it is, the kid learns
that ‘Wisdom’ Really Likes ‘Wisdom’ - and the kid will search the world over
for confirmation that he ‘Knows’ - and that he is highly desirable and is
worthy of being loved for that. He soon found that nobody gave a
shit. Unfortunately the wounded, narcissistic, gifted kid had
become cynical, contemptuous and disdainful - and could simply get lost out
there - go downstairs for a pack of smokes and never return.
Just
around the corner of my beingness, as a Pre-Bar Mitzvah Boy, with a smelly
Hebrew teacher, I started hanging around with some older boys who were local
amateur magicians and a few performing stage 'pro's -- after my Dad would
really check them out first. But wait, there’s more ! Besides being the son of
an extraordinarily talented, almost worshipped, deceased classical pianist and
painter -- I was also the physically undeveloped, seemingly talentless,
disinterested, chubby son of an athletic, muscular NYPD police officer who sang
German and Italian opera on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour on TV as The Singing
Patrolman ( back in the 1950’s you’d never say ‘Cop’ ). Through Whitey the
antique dealer who was a magician, I met my first real teaching ‘mentors’ in
the City, where they clustered at Harry Houdini’s old shop upstairs near Penn
Station. My God, the company I kept ! I never saw it that way. What I saw was
that these guys, they kinda of 'knew' stuff - stuff that ‘ordinary’ people
didn’t know. Esoteric stuff. I found that I genuinely, thoroughly, wasn’t
ordinary. Uncommon or Non-ordinary it was called. Back in the 50’s I was pretty
alone in all this -- all of us magi still are. Soon, as the teenage Mr.Magic, I
got booked to do children’s birthday parties on weekends, earning pocket and
later, gas and date money for college at SUNY Running In the background
to all this was, of course, a Certified Wicked Witch of the West Jewish
Stepmother that Doctor Zugger has already reserved for a water boarding in
Milton’s Purgatory. I’m currently attempting to share the dharma teachings with
my less resistive clients, students and myself: on boundless appreciation,
unconditional acceptance and the authentic magic of continual forgiveness. Keep
forgiveness mindfully in front of you, and keep try’in …..
At
the movies, James Hilton’s 1939 "Lost Horizon" jump started
‘something’ really serious buried deep in my soul when I was sixteen. My first
'contact' with The Dalai Lama. It brings a slight swelling behind my eyes even
now as I write this. Weekly, I soaked in a young Jean Shepard’s heady late
night, late 50's WOR jazz/talk radio show in the Village ( New York City ),
where he read from the "Amazing Adventures of Doctor Fu Manchu" and
lots of Tao and Zen poetry. I started to grow a tiny teenage goatee, hung around
the Art Room crowd, explored the social dangers of wearing black and read
Kerouac. Forget high school sports, me and The Exotic Esoteric were off and
running! In 1959 I concluded high school with Paul Reps’ "Zen Flesh Zen
Bones", the Buddhist-theories of D.T. Suzuki and lots of Alan Watts
"The Wisdom of Insecurity". There’s ‘wisdom’ in insecurity ?
Why that title of all things ? It really made me ‘question’ it all. I learned
that Buddhists laugh a lot and are still willing to give voice to ‘impermanence'
and 'uncertainty in an Age of A-Bomb Anxiety and devastating Hollywood
Blacklisting. In 1959 the winter snows were just melting as the young Tibetan
Dalai Lama and a small horseback party began the final crossing into exile in
India. His Holiness has never been home since.
SUNY,
the State University of New York in the heating-up Sixties, revealed to me the
tight-assed academia, the ill-conceived struggles for misunderstood meanings of
Western philosophy, that I didn’t ‘get’ anyway - and the permissive, easy-going
spaciousness of Eastern ‘emptiness’. Emptiness is the ‘joy’ of uncertainty
'realized’. Living in Greenwich Village after being a journalist in the
U.S.Army ( Desert Storm: First / 81st Armored Division, PIO information
specialist 63’-65’ ) I was right there with another generational shift I
witnessed at the poetic heroic wane of the Beat-era -- and my ‘Self’ becoming
‘consciously’ reconstituted with my own beginnings, of my own authentic Hippie
soul. The birth of a fledgling Bodhisattva - a few old ones still here - new
stock arriving all the time.
My
personal archetype was as ‘The Outsider’ - that was quite clear. I was / I
still am an acquired taste for a few - but the Wunderkind me was soon making
expensive visual magic at a TV commercial production company directing pilot
spots. It so happened that I smoked some outstanding weed one day in ’68, and
left for a long sojourn in Europe and points unknown. "Freedom From the
Known" as Krishnamurti deliciously and disturbingly called it. In Israel I
just kept meeting people coming back from India - and they said “India Man, You
gotta go, Man - You gotta go ! - That’s the ‘real’ Holy Land!.” Further East,
the compass pointed the direction I needed. I met lotsa’ helpful Indiana Jones-
types along the Silk Route when it was still archeologically intact.
I
wasn’t aware then, that I was traveling with a spiritual ‘dedicated purpose’, a
mission, a holy 'intent' as Lama taught me later. I traveled in an old Russian
mini-bus, overland thru the thick snows of Eastern Turkey, the Shah’s Iran and
many months of a restorative, recuperative layover with the Jewish community in
Herat, Afghanistan during the brutal winter 1972-73. I kept observing a subtly
different, ‘alternative’ cultural paradigm out there. Asia was not Kansas
anymore, Coney. It certainly wasn’t the South Shore of Long Island where I was
raised W.J.M., either. Here, people looked right into your ‘mind’. They can
read you. In India they had a legacy of deeply observing and
comprehending the human mind - a very complete, ancient ‘science-teaching’
about the true nature of mind. No ‘churches’ that suppressed it.
At
the Eastern Pakistani/Indian border in Amritsar, a seasoned ex-patriot American
yogi said to me, unsolicited - “Hey Man, Just skip Hinduism altogether, my
friend, and go straight to Dharamsala and hang around with the Buddhists” -
“You’ll end up a Buddhist anyway, from what I see in you...” He gave me the
address of a very special ‘Teacher’ to visit there, and literally vanished.
Weeks later I ambled down a crooked little street high up in the thick pine
covered foothills of Northern India, past a flock of laughing Tibetan Buddhist
monks full of horseplay, back from their visit to The Dalai Lama’s residence up
the hill -- and ‘Lost Horizon’ became a reality.
After
a plate of mo-mo dim sum, I went to pay, and discovered the teacher’s address
deep in my shoulder bag. As described, I found an alley, then a door, knocked -
and a voice said “Come in”. Sitting in full lotus on the floor nursing a
single-burner propane stove and tea, was the same yogi guy I met at the border
! He looked up at me, smiled, then laughed and said “You made it man - Good, I
have some great people for you to go up into the hills here to meet”…
I
said to myself ~ " Way to go Mr.
Magic, let me praise you -
You
‘showed up’ for yourself again - it made all the difference ~ Whew ! "
Hey
Friend,
Savor the Journey too...
Savor the Journey too...
it's in
every step
------------------------
" The Journey Itself
IS the Destination "
------------------------
" The Journey Itself
IS the Destination "
Short
PROFILE of Akasa Levi also
profile
material for media use etc.
The LAUGHING
BUDDHA SANGHA offers
MINDFULNESS
MEDITATION THERAPY
and a
ZEN•MEN Group in Santa Monica
---------------------------------------------
-:¦:- The
SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD PROJECT
buddhistcounselingmindfulnesstherapy.blogspot.com
Buddhist-based
'alternative' approaches to relating with Your True Core Self • One-to-One
individual therapy • Relationship counseling • Partnering issues • Difficult to
communicate feelings • Disheartened anxious insecure Wounded Spirit • Counsel
for 'Uncommon People' 'Rebels' 'Creatives' 'Sensitives' cerebral nerdy verbal
artistic gifted genius - yet really Unhappy people. "Mindfulness
Insight" cultivates a calm, kind, wise, deep liberation with a "Big
Good-Hearted Mind"
♦ AKASA
LEVI, DhMA ( D.Min ) - SUNY Harpur College, Binghamton University, New
York • Once upon a time long, long ago
Akasa was a U.S.Military Vet - he was an officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu
forest monk, who lived many years in rural Asia - to be with the last
living Buddhist teachers of the Asian Pre-Global Era - most passed on
now.
• Akasa is
a feisty 75 - and intentionally pretentious, playing himself as an authentic
curmudgeon, in that he didn't like the other life choices. Full of mischief,
he's an oddly sweet, strangely funny, eccentric old Dharma Dude and a respected
BuJu Elder. K'vetchy by genetic nature, but not too creepy, and always
the compassionate rogue - this faux academic mentor is always into
nourishing a maverick, iconoclast intelligence in the people he treats, teaches,
counsels or dharma-life coaches at his little meditation shrine room near the
beach, filled with old ritual objects and statues of the ancient Buddha.
• Akasa,
now a senior-level meditation teacher, also instructs us in the empirical,
scientific, secular spirit of the moment in contemporary Mindfulness meditation
practice as well. He is definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste,
and knows that by practice you can effect a calm, meaningful,
noticeable difference in yourself. Beyond his broad,
abstract comprehension, Akasa is known for his spontaneity, ready warmth,
and wry unpredictable humor.
• "Some
people say
he's
really bogus"
Someone
thought this
small
profile Bio
is
supposed to be
slightly
self-effacing
and
funny. So it is.
UUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Robert
Frost, 1926
The
Road Not Taken --
The
Road Less Traveled By --
Two roads
diverged in a yellow wood,
And I'm sorry I could not travel both --
And so being only one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one road as far as I could
To where it bent into the undergrowth.
Then I took the other road, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first road for another day,
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
And I'm sorry I could not travel both --
And so being only one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one road as far as I could
To where it bent into the undergrowth.
Then I took the other road, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first road for another day,
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads
diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
____________________________________________
•♦• Much of this inner-work is 'Spiritual'
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious' _____________________________
Below: is a much Longer PROFILE of Akasa Levi
"
The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One "
Pardon me: an Apologia - or go now and push on
to the Himalayan
Monk Story back at Home
The
LONGER profile version presented here, makes a bunch of confusing
time-jumps, it leaves the story or ideas hanging, at times makes no sense
or takes you nowhere until you actually go somewhere - but drops enough
names as 'keywords' so that you can do this miraculous action called 'Search'
because my site here has no fancy formats and links.
Sorry,
Worthy and Good Seeker, ya' gotta Work it.
♦ How and
Who I met - What sacred 'transmissions' they would share from directly within
their very own paradigm surrounded by their very own cultural artifacts lived
resplendently by a little nut brown man in a tiny hut sitting on a woven
mat. Or the woman art-maker activist who embraces and holds tiny,
mistreated babies, and won her nation's highest regard for
literally saving the caressed souls of abused children in Nepal, or maybe
it was South India, or maybe it was South Central. Or the actor who went to dig
in the muddy fields beyond the jungle. Many Americans served abroad in the peac
core. You can find them there too - the teachers, the tortured - and
sometimes it's just me mostly writing about me and my Parkinson's... and I'd
rather go back now to my pisha'ka travel 'story', and
my basic bad writing...
♦ Hopefully
the
wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened
and somewhat achieved by reciting my peculiar life story: to get you
interested, or get you interested once again - and gets you
going out on the road less traveled - doing some serious sacred
'searching' here in the USA, or better, for the really gutsy, brave and
unattached, if you take the risk to go abroad. You get to mindfully see and eat
and shit and live and serve in these raw cultural contexts that these
unbelievable ancient spiritual practices originate from -- Roots, always
look for the roots of things, always look for the indigenous origins !
Notice the similarities everywhere !
"
The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One "
Know
that The Way always faces East....
And,
after that...
Be most welcome to read Akasa's expanded
Big Block Buster Bio: Himalayan Diary
of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Spiritual Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that thing
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.
Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time: It's called going on Pilgrimage.
Be most welcome to read Akasa's expanded
Big Block Buster Bio: Himalayan Diary
of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Spiritual Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that thing
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.
Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time: It's called going on Pilgrimage.
More:
Here
below or see main menu
sidebar
tab list above - or both:
H I M A
L A Y A N • D I A R Y
of AN
AMERICAN BUDDHIST MONK • An Epic Tale
♦ The Himalayan
Diary in these pages ardently encourages you to 'search' out
some of the history of the renown Buddhist teachers mentioned, as well as the
many inspiring, un-named unknown un-educated teacher's wise and
clarifying counsel and potent clean energy influences - literally
what arises out of them and flies over into you. Sacred seeds a plenty are
dropped during these meetings with remarkable people -
unique indigenous people who recognize the potential value of a good
student, possibly to serve as a future teacher - in service to this
idea, these senior guides themselves would pass you around,
sending you Hither and Yon to meet other teaching masters too - human to
human, this is how the sacred "Teachings" and their highest
cultural traditions are kept vibrantly alive, kept going, and are
aurally preserved in perpetuity thru other specially 'taught' humans
-- these were basic precious human 'realizations' that would
carry me and make ALL
the
difference
on the road less traveled.
♦ " Like Attracts
Like "
Wisdom LIKES Wisdom
So
basically, Wisdom Attracts Wisdom. The very beginnings of
true Wisdom is very attracted to Higher Wisdom. Wisdom likes Wisdom -
as Stupidity likes Stupidity, and seeks out
more Stupidity. Ignorance seeks out Ignorance. And so it goes... And
so the very beginnings of Awakened Enlightened-mind
-- "Enlightenment" seeks out Enlightenment and is so happy
to find more enlightenment out there, that it never wants to go
back to ignorant stupidity."
~ Lama Thubten
Teshe
( Friends ~ They are
still out there to be learned from... Mister G. would be proud -- so
far... )
_______________________________
The
Greatest Risk is Not Taking One
"
Go to holy places,
you'll meet up
with holy people "
you'll meet up
with holy people "
♦ 1959 with
AKASA LEVI
~ There is only once around, only once upon a time, long, long ago, and
for Akasa it was the body and mind of a Long Island high school kid in a black
turtleneck, driving a 51' Chevy lime green coupe, Kerouac and non filter Pall
Malls in his pocket, and a condom - every guy had to have the circular
badge of a condom bulge in his wallet. Akasa was actually there in
the Village experiencing the very last remnants of the Beat
generation. Akasa did some rather singular things in his life, when others
were not. Not yet ! But very soon. They were a comin' - to the sound of a
different drummer. Hey, good clichés rule !
♦ Hear,
Here and Gone ~
in the radical hotbed it became, SUNY Harpur College / Binghamton
University in sleepy upstate New York, Akasa was mostly gone - having
a front aisle seat at the back beat sound of this new emerging round of
old but unsurprising classic 'inner' explorations of the mind. Except, they
work ! Without the dependency on "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" --
and he did. Through a plethora of 'Far Out' incredible Music, permissive Love
and the psychedelic insights that fueled Hippies, lots and lots of
Hippies. But there were the painful, unforgiving Addictions. Most of us had to
go sweetly, stubbornly or go suffering: The Only
Way Out Is Through". With more organized gravitas:
the Activists and Progressive people of all Liberation and Freedom loving
ideals, and very, very vocal Civil Rights risk takers stood up, stood proud,
stood strong. There were the heroic miracles of Dr. King, and many
others deeply influenced impressions at the Heart level by the great
classic European thinkers - and the compassionate Wisdom teachings of
the East. There was the chaotic but growing critical mass community
of fresh, newly awakened consciousness expanding really opening minds in
process. Warm, young concerned bodies out in the surround, in
the streets and other 'Live' venues - seeking and absorbing
'non-ordinary', truly 'uncommon' experiences that would emotionally support
me by making all the difference. So I could help make a
difference ! I wasn't alone in my mind and being-ness anymore...
♦ The Puer:
The Most Interesting Boy Man In The World ~
Akasa found it plain ol' fun to be the epitome of Hip - eccentric/artistic, a well dressed intellectual smoothie, a lovable fraud, he would charm and talk his way in - he became a young "creative" that simply knew that it simply was all created. Constructed. Fabricated. Designing himself as a savvy young 'designer' in men's wear fashion, or directing TV deodorant spots or canned dog food commercials on Mad Ave, or gory Slasher film production for the elusive Rabbi Herb Freed.
" The Only
Way Out
Is Through "
♦ Finally his number literally came up, and Akasa found his charlatan ass drafted, serving the Army as a Special Services journalist, till he came home honorably discharged, only to be spit on in the heat of the 60's Counter-Culture generation's zeal. Be it Protesters, Yuppies or Hippies - his soul exhausted, this ex-pat-Vet, eventually went on to live abroad.
♦ 'Seeking' a deeper Truth with Reb Shlomo at the Western Wall - to the remote Sherpa monasteries of rural Asia for the whole decade of the 1970's - trekking way out into the wild to be with the last living Buddhist teachers of the Asian Pre-Global Era - most passed on now.
♦ Hear, Here and Gone ~ in the radical
hotbed it became, SUNY Harpur College / Binghamton University in sleepy
upstate New York, Akasa was mostly gone - having a front seat at the
back beat sound of this new emerging round of old but classic 'inner'
explorations of the mind. "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" and he did.
Through a plethora of 'Far Out' incredible Music, permissive Love and the
psychedelic insights that fueled Hippies, lots and lots of Hippies. With more
organized gravitas: the Activists and Progressive people of all Liberation
and Freedom loving ideals, and very, very vocal Civil Rights risk takers stood
up, stood strong. There were the heroic miracles of Dr. King, deeply
influenced by the great classic thinkers - and the Wisdom teachings of
the East. There was the chaotic but growing critical mass community
of fresh, newly awakened consciousness expanding open minds. Warm,
young concerned bodies out in the streets and other 'Live' venues -
seeking and absorbing 'non-ordinary', truly 'uncommon' experiences that would emotionally
support me by making all the difference. So I could
help make a difference ! I wasn't alone in my mind and being-ness
anymore...
♦ Winter
1972 - 'Over-Land' to Secret India --
Saying
farewell to Rosh Pina, the Kibbutz, and daily rocket fire from Syria - Akasa sets off as a
filmmaker and ongoing student of the Sufi Gurdjieff and
his pioneering Mindfulness 'Work' - "Meetings With Remarkable
Men". Icy slick snow on the ground, driving the treacherous
ancient “Silk Route” in a lightly armed tight caravan formation from Istanbul
in Mick's five smuggled Benz luxury limos on a single lane
nearly empty road, except for horseback bandits cum road tax locals, who
would actually kill you. No accommodations meaning there was just nothing there
- we all slept on donkey hair mats in a big smelly black goat skin tent
- had multiple vehicle breakdowns, actual film-making waylaid yet another
few months, and my own complete psycho-physical breakdown near Herat,
Afghanistan - where quite to my surprise, I found a small ongoing
orthodox Jewish community, still wearing kaftans and get this, they
were abiding here at least a thousands years, having come with Al Xander !
Nursed with their chicken soup, of course, and other 'medicine' certainly
from elsewhere - some kind of far out black sticky stuff - and
soon I'm healed up good to go. Over the Khyber Pass and Paki food at
last - finally arriving at the Amritsar crossing into Mother
India."
___________________________________
Now let's skip around several years chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
♦♦♦
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
Now let's skip around
several years chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
♦♦♦
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
.___________________________________
♦ 1974 -
Akasa met what came to be affectionately called : The Two Lamas. This is where
he received Vajrayana Refuge Initiation in The Three Jewels
and other necessary empowerments for 'practice' under Geshe Lama
Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan, Nepal
and Dharamsala, India. These two Gelugpa monks and their mostly
Western Sangha became the founders of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Wisdom
Publications in Boston, USA. After two intensive practice-years with Lama Yeshe
and Lama Zopa in Kathmandu -- I found myself on self-retreat in Bodhgaya,
India one sunny May Vesak day. Standing off to the side of an event
under the Bo Tree, just quietly watching, was an old monk from
somewhere in Sri Lanka -- when he saw me, he broke out laughing... longchenpa
"What's
The Practice ? --
Don't
believe your own mind" ~ Goenka-ji
_____________________________________________
Later on, Akasa
became an officially ordained Buddhist monk - a 'Bhikkhu' - a
‘sacred beggar’, a forest Sadhu-monk for 6 years in orange cotton robes on
the hillside jungles of Sri Lanka - trained and ordained into the
Theravada monastic order by the revered Venerable Balangoda Ananda Maitreya,
the current late Maha Nayake Thera head of the Amarapura Nikaya lineage.
"Life is not a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely
in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside,
thoroughly used up, totally worn out,
and loudly proclaiming
'WOW What a Ride!' " ~ Billy Bo Sat
Out
dear Maha Nayake arrived August 24, 1896.
He went
July 18, 1998, at 102 years of age.
"
The Art of teaching
is the
art
of assisting
discovery "
Bodhgaya,
India ~
After
the First Kalachakra empowerment ceremony ever to be performed outside Tibet,
Akasa entered meditation teacher-training in 'technique' and remained
in Bodhgaya, India as a student of a funny, young upstart, renegade
Zen-master Subhuti Shibuya Sensei. There was also at
the same time, a highly regarded senior monk, who had a little classroom out
back of the Gandhi Ashram. Sri Anagarika Munindra Barua - the
renown Bengali Vipassana Mindfulness master-teacher was accorded the respect of
being the resident meditation instructor and dharma teacher to the western
students who began to settle around him to do more long term 'practice' of what
came to be known as "Mindfulness"
Linages of spiritual
practice ~
Munindra-ji along with S.N.
Goenka were almost the sole creators of contemporary 'Mindfulness' in
India, as we today know the practice. These two master-teachers
brought 'Mindfulness' in from Burma across the Bay, rife with cruel
political strife, carrying the blessings of the Burmese founders Mahasi
Syadaw and U Ba Khin. These meditation practice lineages exist in
vibrant health today -- worldwide.
Go to Wikipedia
Search bar and just proceed to type.
These monks were
actually 'Living a Teaching' totally 'Live' in the remote little
desert village of Bodhgaya, India where the famed sacred Bodhi Tree
still stands, the great grandson of the tree that the Buddha to-be Siddhartha
took up a seat facing East to the Morning star -- and sat --
and he 'Awakened' as The Buddha - during an unwavering, uncompromised, committed dawn
meditation under the Full Blue Moon in May ( 528 BC ) … Whew !
From that time to our
time, he became known as Shakyamuni The Buddha Gautama, - better known
to us just as The Buddha.
Akasa's intellectual
and experiential influences and impressions came through his main mentor The
Most Venerable Ananda Maitreya and Nilambe's Acharya Godwin
Samara'ratne and Dr. Lily DeSilva, the Buddhist Publication
Society's late Nyanaponika Mahathera, Bhante Piyadassi Mahathera - and
especially thru the controversial lay teacher Henri Van Zeyst - all
teaching and mentoring students upcountry, near Kandy, Sri Lanka. After a
long three month silent retreat of ups and downs, bliss and bummers - Akasa
served as Western teacher-in-residence at the Forest-yogi Bhante Polpitiya
Kassapa's Rockhill Hermitage where many freedom motivated Westerners
would come to study 'the teachings' and do extended retreat. "And my
once a day monk's noon meal: the food was great " Akasa went there !
"Everything
we've
ever, ever learned -
we've
learned somehow
from
somebody else."
The
1970's in South and East Asia ~ Imagine a time when there's just so
much Good Metta and well intended inward restorative energy - fueled and
motivated by mindfulness meditation power and enlightening Dharma practice
towards a true inner liberation that could be in many places all at one
time - yet all over. The inevitability of it - as spiritual teachers
throughout Asia saw the strong probability of the Dharma coming to the
West, ironically via these 'foreigners', these Hippies arriving in droves
by 70's decade's end. Young seeds carried on the tropic winds, fallen into
floating coconuts, blown across the seas to root in new places thanks to all
the elements involved, so the Dharma sailed Westward as a seed and carried
inland snagged in the fur of a returning creature going home bringing an
invisible guest. Historically, some thing lost was once again found.
Please, give me a
moment now,
and let's skip around
a chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama Time ~ By
now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent
Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom
Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche
to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche for a
Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The
Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ...
darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, chronic
self-loathing... So where would I settle in to commit, to dedicate to do
'practice' ?
Now let's skip around
several years chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
♦♦♦
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
Now let's skip around
several years chunk of time...
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
Dial-a-Lama ~ By now I'd been to visit or have long stays with Tulku Lamas to Tom The Tent Maker to Eight Finger Eddy to Tumbo Guta to the Godfather Chinee Lama to Dudjom Rinpoche who bounced me to Tuche Rinpoche who sent me to Zong Rinpoche to sitting right next to Kalu Rinpoche at a powerful Kalachakra ceremony and having my head touched and rubbed by The Dalai Lama himself - that's truly an auspicious sign ... darshan treats like these do antidotal wonders for my life long, Jewish-style, chronic self-loathing... So where would I settle down, settle in to commit, to do dedicated to 'practice' ?
♦♦♦
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
___________________________________And most unusual, Akasa himself then went on to further study and become an officially ordained Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk. Akasa Levi, his Thomas Merton Days as he calls it, now behind him, is a feisty 75, living and teaching in Santa Monica California.
♦
Later on, Akasa
practiced Non-Duality Advaita n satsang with the wonderfully notorious Bede
Baba Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in old Bombay, and his teachings of "I
AM THAT" - Maharaj certainly was THAT !
________________________________
"
With a hammered iron bowl in his hands,
at the
front yards and the tiny doorways
of little
mountain village houses,
the white
monk appreciatively,
silently
begged his food daily --
-- even
in the muddy rain.
The
locals loved it !
Opps, a
warm piglet
just shit
on my foot..."
~
Sudu Hom'dru
____________
1980 ~ After returning to
the USA - still in monk's orange robes, still with a shaved head - on
an open invitation to teach Vipassana at The University of Oriental
Studies and The International Buddhist Meditation Center in LA's
Koreatown. He was sponsored by Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Tien-An,
the school's founder and a leading international Buddhist academic
scholar. 'Suto' was regarded "as probably the most humbly
compassionate of wise-beings they'd ever met " who took in the homeless to
see some remarkable turn-arounds - and Akasa gets to see this man on a
daily basis, sort of breakfast with the Buddha...
Akasa developed and
appreciated a long enduring friendship with pioneering ‘women's mindfulness
movement’ vipassana teacher Ruth Denison at her Dhamma-Dena
Retreat Center in a very remote Joshua Tree, California.
"A ravaging
monster of an afternoon windstorm on the High Desert can be a true ally to
strengthening a meditation practice: you're stuck, you ain't going nowhere, and
you can do nothing but sit it out: so you sit -- and observe your
utter fear, thoughts, sensations, feelings and emotions --
and learn to pray" ~ Billy Bo Sat
____________________________________
The Laughing
Buddha Sangha's
official Sri Lanka monastic connection for many years now has been thru
the kindness of The Dharma Vijaya Buddha Vihara on Crenshaw
at Washington ( The Sri Lanka Temple and Monastery in Los Angeles ) and it's
Abbot, The Venerable Sangha Nayake 'Bhante' Walpola Piyananda of Sri
Lanka.
"THUS WE HEARD ~ Recollections
of The Life of The Buddha " is a newly published book from Los
Angeles that is certainly an Opus. It is already a complete cultural
artifact - actually a grand 'tribal' work, a huge document of ancient
human history that is unarguably so precious and so important to each and
every individual culture and it's central paradigm - especially if it's ongoing
root literature is contemporary, yet still carefully maintained at an
almost pure, fairly undisturbed level. Crucial to such a huge
sacrifice of daily life, for the time and effort of painstaking academic
research, and the distillation of ancient knowledge - is one main action,
the result of constant motivation that surrounds a worthy intention: sitting
down and actually Writing the bloody thing. Enough said - Thank you
gentlemen for what most of the rest of us just simply could not do !
Thanks Bhante
Piyananda, and Thanks professor
Stephen Long for writing "THUS WE HEARD ~ Recollections
of The Life of The Buddha " - a truly valuable and wonderful
treasure, a Gift to all who read it, carefully consider it's words, and
slowly integrate them within. It's a big book and a long read, so get
prepared to enjoy a massively told great epic story !
Bhante, Stephen, we
so appreciate you both, and our all being here in Sangha together at this
moment in the Sassana.
Akasa Levi is
considered to be a Bodhi-Acharya by the Sri Lanka community, as
a 'Lineage-holder' of the Theravada teaching-transmission, as a
counselor and senior Dharma-guide to the ardent younger Western students
following behind him on The Path of The Elders. His monastic exploration (
broadcast on BBC ) as "In The Footsteps of the Buddha" was
recognized for it's avant garde yet gentle merit. Currently, as a Dharma
mentor, Akasa is simply 'Available' - gladly and actively serving the needs of
the greater Buddhist community ( pro bono or dana as need be
) as a Kalyana Mitta: a guiding ‘spiritual-friend'
to all meditation practitioners, as well as all others in need of The
Buddha's Good Medicine.
Akasa studied
western-style psycho-dynamic analysis and theory - and it's applied
therapy at UCLA WestLA. Akasa offers a Buddhist-based individual
therapy and a relationship partnering counseling as a possibly effective
spiritual tool or 'complementary' medicine, a mindfulness based alternative to
the standard secular, non-meta-physical, non- spiritual based clinical
therapies. Buddhist-based therapy claims nothing salvific, no other worldly
promises, no salvation guarantees - as each client’s choices, life-partnering,
or individual situation is by it's transitionary nature different and
effectiveness may vary widely. Hey, Reach out.
After a strenuous
younger life 'on the road', Akasa is now quite travel-saturated, and stays
mostly in a semi-retreat mode, rarely teaching outside California. Diagnosed
in 2014 with a degenerative movement disorder, he is living with Parkinson's
Disease. That’s almost a ‘Real’ thing… This modern tribal sage is quite
content to nurture plants in his garden - and 'Work' the
Buddhist teachings in company with reasonably steady students, caring
individual people close to his home. Akasa is known for his spontaneity and
wry, unpredictable humor in his approach to the Buddha’s truly precious,
liberation oriented teachings.
We are
non-denominational
and definitely non-religious
and welcome all journeyers
of all Ways or even none.
and definitely non-religious
and welcome all journeyers
of all Ways or even none.
♦ Testimonial: esteemed
"Spirit Rock" teacher
Jack Kornfield refers
to Akasa in his fraud-mode
as The Old Rogue
- which is an archetype form
of The Angelic
Troublemaker Trickster Fool.
___________________________________
end
Plz DO NOT
GO BEYOND THIS PPONT - IT'S JUST DRIVEL ANYWAY. .thanks...
The Old Rogue
-- which is an archetype form
of The Angelic Troublemaker Trickster Fool.
The Old Rogue -- which is an archetype form
of The Angelic Troublemaker Trickster Fool.
Akasa
Levi.Profile.4.2016.Large.a serious profile for him.docx
And that has made all the difference.
AKASA
LEVI, DhMA ( D.Min ) - SUNY Harpur College at
Binghamton University, New York - Once upon a time long, long ago Akasa Levi
served several strong life-roles: a
Desert Storm ex-pat U.S.Military Vet of the
60's Counter- Culture generation that lived the decadent 70’s Decade abroad as
a wandering Sadhu seeker in rural Asia, becoming an
officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk - to be with the last living
Buddhist teachers of the Asian Pre-Global Era - most passed on now. What
that was is all now Gone.
Akasa is a feisty 75- and intentionally
pretentious, a charletan playing himself as an un-adorable, authentic
curmudgeon, in that he didn't like the other life choices. Akasa is definitely
an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste, Full of mischief, he's an oddly
sweet, strangely funny, eccentric old Dharma Dude and a respected BuJu Elder.
K'vetchy by nature, but not too creepy, and always the rogue - this faux
academic mentor is always into nourishing a maverick, iconoclast intelligence
in the people he treats, teaches, counsels or dharma-life coaches at his little
meditation shrine room near the beach, filled with old ritual objects and
statues of the ancient Buddha.
Akasa, a senior-level meditation teacher, also
instructs us in the empirical, scientific, secular spirit of the moment, found
in contemporary Mindfulness meditation practice and modern Advaita as well. He
knows that simply by practice you can effect a meaningful, noticeable
difference in yourself. Beyond his broad, abstract comprehension, Akasa is
known for his spontaneity, ready warmth, and wry unpredictable humor.
Akasa Levi, lives a life of meditation practice and
ocassional teaching in Santa Monica California. He has recently been
diagnosised wit Parkinson’s disease which is bound to bum anybody out,
even a full-fledged Budha ! UPDATE: 2016 ~ Joyfully, THIS is it. I was
diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in early 2014. Truthfully, and Joyfully, to
make a turn of phrase: There’s no Love Lost as there’s a good and plenty supply
of fine senior meditation teachers and mindfulness trainers and young upcoming
guides in the Buddha’s Dharma that now abundantly populate and abound in the
land … 310-450-2268• Prior to Akasa Levi’s partial retirement from group
meditation teaching in 2014 with a Parkinson’ diagnosis
-:¦:- The SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD PROJECT • The
LAUGHING BUDDHA SANGHA Guided by AKASA LEVI
• Please VISIT the Expanded BIG BIO PROFILE at
the TABLE of CONTENTS
-:¦:-
The SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD PROJECT •
buddhistcounselingmindfulnesstherapy.blogspot.com • Buddhist-based
'alternative' approaches to relating with Your True Core Self • One-to-One individual
therapy • Relationship counseling • Partnering issues • Difficult to
communicate feelings • Disheartened anxious insecure Wounded Spirit • Counsel
for 'Uncommon People' 'Rebels' 'Creatives' 'Sensitives' cerebral verbal
artistic gifted ~ yet really Unhappy. "Mindfulness Insight"
cultivates a calm, kind, wise, deep liberation with a "Big Good-Hearted
Mind"
The SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD PROJECT is a Member of S.E.N. (
Spiritual Emergency Network
at Esalen Institute in Big Sur ). We are an outreach-project of “The Laughing Buddha Sangha”
in Santa Monica, CA 90405 - and utilize some of the practice-approaches recommended by Jack Kornfield and offered by Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre/Santa Rosa, CA. Our favorite meditation center here in Santa Monica is InsightLA.org guided by Trudy Goodman. InsightLA is about 4 blocks away right up 14th Street.
at Esalen Institute in Big Sur ). We are an outreach-project of “The Laughing Buddha Sangha”
in Santa Monica, CA 90405 - and utilize some of the practice-approaches recommended by Jack Kornfield and offered by Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre/Santa Rosa, CA. Our favorite meditation center here in Santa Monica is InsightLA.org guided by Trudy Goodman. InsightLA is about 4 blocks away right up 14th Street.
_________________________
"Don't believe your own mind" ~ Goenka-ji
"Everything we've ever, ever learned -
we've learned somehow
from somebody else."
Uncertain Times
____________
" It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way -
in short, the period was so far
just like the present period.
~ Charles
Dickens 1859,
A Tale of Two
Cities (1859)
The Old Rogue -- which is an
archetype form
of The Angelic
Troublemaker Trickster Fool.
" The art of teaching
is the art
of assisting discovery
"Don't believe your own mind" ~ Goenka-ji
On The Road Children
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
♦ Much of this inner-work is 'Spiritual‘ ~
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'…
( The spiritual science of an applied 'meditation'
as a part of good therapy )
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'…
( The spiritual science of an applied 'meditation'
as a part of good therapy )
WE’RE ‘UNCOMMON’ PEOPLE: Sensitive,
creative, individualistic, intelligent people - higher-consciousness oriented
people - artistic, intellectual, or even spiritual. Non-traditional,
non-mainstream, non-Matrix lifestyle - uncommon, non-ordinary - a very individual
person,living their own sense of being 'civilized', compassionate and inward
oriented with integrity as well. And who also have an insatiable curiosity...
UPDATE: 2016 ~ Joyfully, THIS is it. I was diagnosed with
Parkinson’s Disease in early 2014. Truthfully, and Joyfully, to make a turn of
phrase: There’s no Love Lost as there’s a good and plenty supply of fine senior
meditation teachers and mindfulness trainers and young upcoming guides in the
Buddha’s Dharma that now abundantly populate and abound in the land …
310-450-2268• Prior to Akasa Levi’s partial
retirement from group meditation teaching in 2014 with a Parkinson’ diagnosis
Plz DO NOT GO
BEYOND THIS PPONT - IT'S JUST DRIVEL ANYWAY. . .. Thx
The
spiritual science
of
applied awareness
with 'mindfulness meditation'
is part
of a very good therapy
" With the drawing forth of this Love
and the Voice of this Calling. . . .
We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started,
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
is that which was the beginning."
~ T. S. Elliot - Four Quartets
---------------------------------------
"
Just as a drop of water falling into the great ocean
Is never
depleted even before the ocean ever dries up –
Likewise,
with the Full Intent I now dedicate to Awakening,
will
never be depleted before my Enlightenment is fully attained."
~ Buddha
Shakyamuni
" By
learning the ‘Path of Wisdom-Silence’ you can
Break
through the illusory world of 'worldly' words
( and
break through the world of 'other-worldly' words too )
So that
The Wordless Flower of 'Just Being' may bloom.
Just
allow yourself to become suddenly still, inside and out,
So that
you may pierce through the thin shell of the 'World',
And now
fill the entire cosmos with your own truly Free Mind.
So the
healing of you and thus the healing of the world may begin."
~ Zen-master
Ji Aoi Isshi – 13th century Japan
Hey Friend,
Savor the Journey too
– it's in every step –
--------------------------
" The Journey Itself
IS the Destination "
________________
" The Art of teaching
is the art of
assisting discovery "
♦ I'm a BIG BOY BIO NOW, Dad
to be with the last living
spiritual teachers
of the pre-global era.
♦ Buddhist Therapy:
It’s been done
very effectively
for 1000’s of years
This well seasoned neighborhood man was there - a funny, friendly lantz'mann of a ‘tribal elder’ - a sort of NYC 'witch-doctor' that just loves being referred to as a 'Shrink'. So when you're looking for a 'shrink' – Look for long experience and a natural sweetening that can come with age, is a definite plus plus thing." ~ J.K.
'Awakened' under,
during a dawn meditation on the full moon in May. ( 528 BC ).
"Don't believe
your own mind"
~ Goenka
Whew !
With an iron bowl in
his hands, at the doorway of little
mountain village
houses, silently, appreciatively
begged his food
daily. The locals loved it !
___________________________________________
Rilke
You may wish to
hi-lite, copy and send the
Rilke quote below to
young people you know...
it offers some of the
wisest personal guidance
you'll ever read,
given to personal use caringly.
Here it is ~
LOVE THE
QUESTIONS INSTEAD
-----------------------------------------------
" Be patient
toward all that is unsolved in your heart.
Try to love the
'Questions' themselves like locked rooms
and like books that
are written in a foreign language.
Do not, just right
now, seek for the Answers.
The 'Answers' which
cannot now be given to you -
because you would not
be able to actually ‘Live’ them.
And the point is to
‘Live’ everything - experiencing everything.
At present, you need
to Live the Questions themselves.
Perhaps you will then
gradually, without even noticing it,
Live along some day
into the true Answer."
~ Rilke's
"Letters to a Young Poet" (1903-1908)
"Life is not a
journey to the grave
with the intention of
arriving safely
in a pretty and well
preserved body,
but rather to skid in
broadside,
thoroughly used up,
totally worn out,
and loudly
proclaiming
'WOW What a Ride!'
" ~ Billy Bo Sat
On The Road Children
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
‘The Old Rogue’ – which is an archetype
form of The Angelic Troublemaker Trickster.
-------------------------------------------------------------
On The
Road Children ~
someone
thought this
small
profile Bio
is
supposed to be
slightly
self-effacing
and
funny. So it is.
The Old Rogue ~
which is an archetype
form of
The Angelic
Troublemaker Trickster Fool.
" It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way -
in short, the period was so far
just like the present period.
~ Charles
Dickens 1859,
A Tale of Two
Cities (1859)
On The Road Children
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
I grew up on a NYC housing construction site. This section in work.. IN WORK... is really more about the freedom seeking 60's cultural template that put all these middleclass On The Road Children after Beat literally took themselves Way Out there, each of us to our own individual meetings with remarkable people. Our parallel karma life choices arose simultaneously ready enough to be open enough, ready enough with us to be here nowthe renown 'influences' that penetrate to the Core of our parched soul when we are in he right place at the right time. I and a small handful of new friends traveled months what was called 'overland' to India. It was dangerous, we didn't know it . that they were their own generation's best. and the teachers were the We couldn't help it more ....
♦ Much of this inner-work is 'Spiritual‘ ~
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'…
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'…
WE’RE ‘UNCOMMON’
PEOPLE: Sensitive, creative, individualistic, intelligent people -
higher-consciousness oriented people - artistic, intellectual, or even
spiritual. Non-traditional, non-mainstream, non-Matrix lifestyle - uncommon,
non-ordinary - a very individual person, living their own sense of being
'civilized', compassionate and inward oriented with integrity as well. And who
also have an insatiable curiosity...
UPDATE: 2016 ~
Joyfully, THIS is it. I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in early 2014.
Truthfully, and Joyfully, to make a turn of phrase: There’s no Love Lost as
there’s a good and plenty supply of fine senior meditation teachers and
mindfulness trainers and young upcoming guides in the Buddha’s Dharma that now
abundantly populate and abound in the land … 310-450-2268• Prior to Akasa
Levi’s partial retirement from group meditation teaching in 2014 with a
Parkinson’ diagnosis
_______________________________________
_____________________________________
___________________________________
" Eighty percent of ‘success’
is just showing up ! ” ~ Woody Allen
___________________
Remember, Dear
Reader....
" The Journey
IS the Destination ~
Success is a
Journey, not a Destination.
Whatever the
motives, good or bad --
If you do not change
directions,
you may end up where
you are
heading." ~ Lao Tzu
__________________________________
Each
chapter of this site is concluded
with
theme-related quotes and poetry.
Be
inspired with your own enjoyment
________________________________
“ Whatever the Question ~
Love and Kindness is the Answer ”
--------------------------------------------------
“
If you wish to experience peace
-
provide peace for another.
If
you wish to know that you are safe
-
cause another to know that they are safe.
People
ask me - What is your religion?
I
respond: My religion is ‘Kindness’.
Kindness
is my religion.”
~ H.H.The Dalai Lama
~
__________________
“
There is more hunger
for
Love and Appreciation
in
this world than for bread.
Loneliness
and the feeling of
being
unwanted is the most terrible.
If
we have no Peace,
it
is because we have forgotten
that
we belong to each other.
We
can do no 'great things' –
just
many small things
with
Great Love.”
~ Mother Teresa ~
_____________
"Good timber
does not
grow with ease.
The stronger the wind,
the stronger the trees."
~ Willard Marriot
______________________________
Grandfather
Bearheart, a Creek Elder said:
"
Destiny is every step we are
going
thru right now to get there."
“
La vraie générosité envers l'avenir
consiste
à tout donner au présent.”
“
True generosity towards the future
is
to give everything to the present.” ~ Albert Camus
"
It is not how 'much' you do – but how much
Love
you put into the 'doing' that matters --
People
don't care how 'much' you know,
until
they know how much you care." ~ Cavett Robert
"
Kindness" is more important than 'Wisdom' -
and
the 'clear-recognition' of this -
IS
the beginning of Wisdom." ~ Theodore Issac Rubin
" If there is any kindness I can show
or any good thing I can do for a fellow being
Let me do it now - and not deter or neglect it,
as I may not pass this way again." ~ William Penn
“
Seeing our lives as a ‘Force’
for
bringing on happiness
and
peace to ourselves and others.
Do
we trust enough
to
surrender our separateness ? “ ~ Anna Douglas
“
If you do not see Godliness
in
the next person you meet,
you
need look no further.” ~ Gandhi
“
Every man is guilty
of
all that Good
he
didn't do.” ~ Voltaire – 1750
__________
... and
the children
listen best
to sunshine
and the whispering
of the wind,
they understand
the flowers
the clouds
and they pray
you and I
will find
a better way. ~ Nick
Rath
The End is Insight
___________________________________
BREAK
THE SILENCE WITH LAUGHTER !
_____________________________________
“
I am astounded by people
who
want to 'know' the Universe –
when
it's hard enough to find
your
way around Chinatown “ ~ Woody Allen
Remember...
" The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One ! "
HimalayaLamadocx
JOURNAL of an AMERICAN BUDDHIST MONK • An Epic Tale of A Good Hearted Search
# 108.
Om Mani
Padme' Hung
-------------------
Om MaAh Hung
Om Ma Ah Hung
Om Ma Ah Hung
Vajra Guru
Padme Siddha Hung
________________________ It's Basically ALL Poetry !
That's why it reads funny...
-:¦:- Namaste ~ It's ALL Poetry in Here - That's why it reads so funny...Hopefully the wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened and somewhat achieved by my recalling and narrating my peculiar life story - to get you interested, or get you interested on your own, or get you re-interested once again - and gets you closer to even just ‘considering’ going out on the ‘outer’ or ‘inner’ road less traveled. Doing some serious sacred 'searching' here in the USA - or for the really skillful, courageous, brave and earthy - taking the risk to actually go abroad. It’s no vacation. It is a pilgrimage of finding your particular higher purpose. Just what you’re heart’s always wanted. You get to mindfully see and eat and shit and live and serve somehow in these raw cultural contexts that these unbelievable ancient indigenous spiritual practices that we are becoming heir to - originate from. They originate from Roots. They always do, they can’t help it. That’s the Nature of Living Conscious Things. Roots. Always go back and look for the Roots of things. Always look for the indigenous origins ! Notice the natural similarities everywhere ! Keep reading…
Hey Friend,
Savor the Journey too...
Savor the Journey too...
it's in every step you take
-------------------------------
" The Journey Itself
IS the Destination "
-------------------------------
" The Journey Itself
IS the Destination "
The LAUGHING BUDDHA SANGHA offers
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION THERAPY
and a ZEN•MEN Group in Santa Monic
--------------------------------------------------------
The BUDDHIST MENTORING PROJECT
buddhistcounselingmindfulnesstherapy.blogspot.com
Go sidebar tab home page list above - or both
The H I M A L A Y A N • JOURNAL
of AN AMERICAN BUDDHIST MONK •
An Epic Tale of Middle Class Pilgrimage
Here Below:
a Short Cheeky Profile of AKASA LEVI
also profile material for media use etc.
----------------------------------------------
Esteemed "Spirit Rock" teacher
Jack Kornfield refers to Akasa
as The Old Rogue - which is
a classic archetype form of
The Angelic Troublemaker
Wiseman Trickster Fool.
----------------------------------
We are non-denominational
and definitely non-religious
and welcome all journeyers
of all Ways or even none.
ABOUT MY "SELF" • I WAS CONSTRUCTED
OUT OF MY OWN WOUNDED 'IDEA' OF A "SELF"
• WHAT THE F-WORD DID I KNOW ?
-:¦:- PROFILE ♦ AKASA LEVI, DhMA ( D.Min ) - SUNY Harpur College, Binghamton University, New York • The BUDDHIST MENTORING PROJECT • The Laughing Buddha Meditation Sangha • Buddhist Counseling / Mindfulness Meditation Therapy • Guided by AKASA LEVI
• Once upon a time, long, long ago Akasa Levi was a U.S.Army Vet - and later, an officially ordained Buddhist Bhikkhu forest monk, who lived several years in rural Asia - to be with the last living Buddhist meditation teachers of the Asian Pre-Global Era - most passed on now.
• Akasa is a feisty 75 - and intentionally pretentious, playing himself as an authentic curmudgeon, in that he didn't like the other life-choices offered. Full of metaphysical mischief, he's an oddly sweet, strangely funny, eccentric old Dharma Dude and a respected BuJu Tribal Elder. K'vetchy by nature, but not too creepy, he's always the compassionate rogue. Akasa is into nourishing and mentoring a maverick, iconoclast intelligence in the students and people he treats, teaches, counsels or dharma-life coaches at his little meditation shrine room near the beach, filled with old ritual objects and statues of the ancient Buddha.
• Akasa, now an emeritus-level meditation teacher, also instructs us in the scientific secular spirit of the moment in contemporary Mindfulness meditation practice as well. He is definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste. He knows that simply by ‘practice’ you can effect a calm, meaningful, noticeable difference in yourself. Akasa is known for his spontaneity, ready warmth, and wry unpredictable humor.
• Therapy for Smart People: Akasa’s Buddhist-based 'alternative' approaches to relating with Your True Core Self • One-to-One individual therapy • Relationship counseling • Partnering issues • Difficult to communicate feelings • Disheartened anxious insecure Wounded Spirit • Counsel for 'Uncommon People' 'Rebels' 'Creatives' 'Sensitives' cerebral nerdy verbal artistic gifted genius - 'Non-ordinary' people yet really Unhappy people. "Mindfulness Insight" cultivates a calm, kind, wise, deep inner liberation with a "Big Good-Hearted Mind" -- end --
The Expanded
BIG BIO PROFILE The H I M A L A Y A N • JOURNAL
BIG BIO PROFILE The H I M A L A Y A N • JOURNAL
of AN AMERICAN BUDDHIST MONK
• Please See It Here Below
• Please See It Here Below
__________________________________________
The Road Not Taken / The Road Less Traveled
Robert Frost, 1926
Robert Frost, 1926
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And I'm sorry I could not travel both.
And so being only one traveler, long I stood
And looked down each road as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
-------------------------------------------------
Then I took the other road, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear.
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equal]
in leaves no step had trodden black.
-------------------------------------------------
Oh, I kept the first road for another day,
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this tale with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence -
------------------------------------------------
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
-- I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
________________________________•♦• Much of this inner-work is 'Spiritual'
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'
______________________________
The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One
Directionless ?
Know that The Way
Know that The Way
always faces East....
16 Himalaya Lama Lane ~
The Road Now Taken
And, after that... Be most welcome to read Akasa's
Himalayan Journal
of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Spiritual Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that thing
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.
Sweets: Don't show up empty handed
Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly intimate in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time: It's called going on Pilgrimage.
of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Spiritual Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that thing
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.
Sweets: Don't show up empty handed
Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly intimate in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time: It's called going on Pilgrimage.
Early 'Contributing Factors'
and Unexpected 'Conditions'
and Unexpected 'Conditions'
KARMA arrived, showing up as a series of
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early
magical 'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --
Himalayan Diary of an
American Buddhist Monk
at Kopan Gompa Monastery
Bodh’nath, Kathmandu, Nepal
___________________________________American Buddhist Monk
at Kopan Gompa Monastery
Bodh’nath, Kathmandu, Nepal
Dear Reader ~
This same never-ending story in every human culture
always repeats itself, it always begins with a 'Search' -
through the deep Unknown with raw beginner's skills
that are barely known to an unaware beginner's mind.
Spiritually speaking, that's a very classic way to start.
At one's Core, something got lost - and one goes out
to try'n find it. Don't we all kinda' relate with that ?
Spiritually speaking, that's a very classic way to start.
At one's Core, something got lost - and one goes out
to try'n find it. Don't we all kinda' relate with that ?
__________________________________
Foolish Nasreddin's Lost Keys ~
One late evening Nasreddin is walking home.
He can be seen to be upset about something.
Just then a young man comes along
and sees the Mullah's distress.
"Mullah, please tell me - What is wrong? "
He can be seen to be upset about something.
Just then a young man comes along
and sees the Mullah's distress.
"Mullah, please tell me - What is wrong? "
"Friend, I seem to have lost my keys.
Would you help me search for them ?
I had them when I left the tea house.
Would you help me search for them ?
I had them when I left the tea house.
So he helps Nasreddin search for the keys.
For quite a while the young man is searching
here and there but no keys are to be found.
He looks over to Nasreddin and sees him
searching only a very small limited area
For quite a while the young man is searching
here and there but no keys are to be found.
He looks over to Nasreddin and sees him
searching only a very small limited area
around an old oil street lamp.
" Mullah, why are you only searching over there ? "
" Because there's much more light over here. Should I foolishly search where there is no light ? "
The Mullah Nasreddin never found his keys.
" Mullah, why are you only searching over there ? "
" Because there's much more light over here. Should I foolishly search where there is no light ? "
The Mullah Nasreddin never found his keys.
__________________________________
" We shall not cease
from exploration,
And the end of
all our exploring
will be to arrive
where we started ~
And know the place
for the very first time." ~ T.S. Eliot
________________________________
This LONGER Story version presented here, hops around, makes a bunch of confusing time-jumps, leaves the story or ideas dangerously hanging, at times makes no sense or non-sense or takes you nowhere until you actually go somewhere or get something: and you are still asking Why ? - But the text drops enough names you can use as 'keywords' so that you can do this miraculous Wikipedia thing called 'Search' - and their site opens up like a blossoming lotus flower - because my muddy site here has no fancy formats and links yet…
Sorry, Worthy and Good Seeker, ya' gotta Work it.a bit…
All On Board
__________________________________________________All On Board
MYSTERY of MYSTERIES ~ 1948
I lost my Mom to breast cancer when I was seven. My whole future relationship with women’s lovely souls and the sweet softness of the goddess Kwan Yin and my male Yang changed. So did my relationship with Death and Life. The young potent power-filled Son with no Mother to come home to proudly protect, stalled. Arrested development. A dark cloud home where everybody’s clothing had the salty smell of tear soaked tragic dampness. For now Reader, I’m keeping all that boy into man Oedipal Phallic Freudian stuff for me to explore with Doctor Max Zugger, the Don Rickles of insult psychiatry. It’s in his office where I heard it for the first time -- 'Shit Happens'.
“ It’s a pity that misery is wasted on the miserable “~ Woody Allen
Suffering Early Childhood Loss: I was a miserable kid. The totally transitory, totally unarguable, ever changing, unforgiving, unstable, unreliable, absolute Suffering the 'Impermanence' of it all. Buddha's Dharma ( teachings ) is sort of the Reality Science School of Ultimate Total Loss - The What Is of The Way It Is. This IS It. The healthy, not morbid, Wisdom that is experientially developed directly out of insecurity itself, is the prominent cornerstone of Buddhism's acceptance teachings on Impermanence. "Unfortunately for human beings" - said The Dalai Lama giggling, "Buddhism has no Savior, yet people still have a desire for one - meanwhile they do have TV ".
At the time though, I experienced a suddenly new phenomena very few kids get to have: Real ‘Death’ up close. Death lived with my family by the beach in Far Rockaway, New York. Death had a room upstairs. Death ate at the table, Death sobbed along with everyone else sobbing. No alternative weekends with a divorced parent. There wasn't any. No back-button. No click Undo. No relief from broken hearted stories told half in English, half in German about “How talented… “How gifted… your Mother was… Ahh, Beatrice was the maestro Rubakian’s best piano student. She had radiated a young painter’s delight with our little farm up in Woodstock… and of course, the eminent reality of a recital in Carnegie Hall and all.
So I sat on the floor as a mommy-less little kid and watched everything. I sat on the grass and watched. I sat at the window and watched. I was a sullen kid - and overcame the tedium by taking an uninvolved, yet steady interest in what I was watching since that was " IT " for what was currently available in that moment. I was conscious. So I just watched. Not much content. No ‘story’ line with it. I just watched. Watching was all too real for me to be a voyeur. It was enough for me just to be in the presence of all that. Death by Default -- Whew ! I was sorta' like Peter Seller's character in the film "Being There" ~ I was a passive Watcher, not a Doer, a Watcher. I'm a llife-long meditative, mindfulness trained 'Observer'. I like to simply watch.
I developed a child’s un-informed notion that - So maybe there were bona fide resurrection ‘Miracles’ out there. That would bring Mommy Beatrice back and stop the random outbursts of continual sobbing. So at ten years old I began to practice and perform stage Magic, to see if there was such a thing. Anyway, I didn’t like the reedy clarinet or the clarinet teacher who smelled funny. God forbid, I should turn my back on the oh so sacred piano. It was funny how all the music teachers had really flakey dandruff and smelled funny - and no store-bought, standard kid’s hobby took my interest or my heart.
But I was very adept at being critical, complaining and genetically k'vetchy. Surprisingly, this was the beginnings of an oddly developing Wisdom - if’ the ability’ was apprehended in time. It usually isn’t and the kid becomes a ‘crank’. If it is, the kid learns that ‘Wisdom’ Really Likes ‘Wisdom’ - and the kid will search the world over for confirmation that he ‘Knows’ - and that he is highly desirable and is worthy of being loved for that. He soon found that nobody gave a shit. Unfortunately the wounded, narcissistic, gifted kid had become cynical, contemptuous and disdainful - and could simply get lost out there - go downstairs for a pack of smokes and never return.
Just around the corner of my beingness, as a Pre-Bar Mitzvah Boy, with a smelly Hebrew teacher, I started hanging around with some older boys who were local amateur magicians and a few performing stage 'pro's -- after my Dad would really check them out first. But wait, there’s more ! Besides being the son of an extraordinarily talented, almost worshipped, deceased classical pianist and painter -- I was also the physically way under-developed, seemingly talentless, disinterested, chubby son of an athletic, muscular NYPD police officer who sang German and Italian opera on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour on TV as The Singing Patrolman. Back in the 1950’s you’d never say ‘Cop’.
Through Whitey, Dad’s friend the antique dealer who was a magician, I met my first real teaching ‘mentors’ in the City, where they clustered at Harry Houdini’s old shop upstairs near Penn Station. Jeez, the peculiar company I kept ! I never saw it that way. What I saw was that these guys, they kinda of 'knew' stuff - stuff that ‘ordinary’ people didn’t know. Esoteric stuff. I found that I genuinely, thoroughly, wasn’t ordinary. Uncommon or Non-ordinary were new academic terms it was called. Back in the 50’s I was pretty alone in all this -- all of us Magi sti
Soon, as the remarkable teenage Mr.Magic, I got booked to do children’s birthday parties on weekends, earning pocket and later, gas and date money for college at SUNY Running In the background to all this was, of course, a Certified Wicked Witch of the West Jewish Stepmother that Doctor Zugger has already reserved for a water boarding in Milton’s Purgatory. I’m currently attempting to share the dharma teachings with my less resistive clients, students and myself: on boundless appreciation, unconditional acceptance and the authentic magic of continual forgiveness. Keep forgiveness mindfully in front of you, and keep try’in …..
" Go to holy places,
you'll meet up
with holy people "
you'll meet up
with holy people "
1959 Rebel without a cause -- with AKASA LEVI ~ There is only once around, only once upon a time, long, long ago, and for Akasa it was the body and mind of a Long Island high school kid in a black turtleneck, driving a 51' Chevy lime green coupe, Kerouac and non filter Pall Malls in his pocket, and a condom - every guy had to have the circular badge of a condom bulge in his wallet. Akasa was actually there in the Village experiencing the very last remnants of the Beat generation. Akasa did some rather singular things in his life, when others were not. Not yet ! But very soon. They were a comin' - to the sound of a different drummer. Hey, good clichés rule !
At the movies, James Hilton’s 1939 "Lost Horizon" jump started ‘something’ really serious buried deep in my soul when I was sixteen. My first 'contact' with the movie depiction of a lead character called the Grand Lama became a living reality when I first met His Holiness The Dalai Lama in India years later. It brings a slight swelling behind my eyes even now as I write this. Weekly, I soaked myself in a young Jean Shepard’s heady late night, late 50's WOR jazz/talk radio show in the Village ( New York City ), where he read from the "Amazing Adventures of Doctor Fu Manchu" and lots of Tao and Zen poetry. I started to grow a tiny teenage goatee, hung around the Art Room crowd, explored the social dangers of wearing black and read Kerouac. Forget high school sports, me and The Exotic Esoteric were off and running! In 1959 I concluded high school with Paul Reps’ "Zen Flesh Zen Bones", the Buddhist-theories of D.T. Suzuki and lots of Alan Watts "The Wisdom of Insecurity". There’s ‘wisdom’ in insecurity ? Why that title of all things ? It really made me ‘question’ it all. I learned that Buddhists laugh a lot and are still willing to give voice to ‘impermanence' and 'uncertainty in an Age of A-Bomb Anxiety and devastating Hollywood Blacklisting. In 1959 the winter snows were just melting as the young Tibetan Dalai Lama and a small horseback party began the final crossing into exile in India. His Holiness has never been home since.
Hear, Here and Gone ~ in the radical hotbed it became, SUNY Harpur College / Binghamton University in sleepy upstate New York, Akasa was mostly gone - having a front aisle seat at the back beat sound of this new emerging round of old but unsurprising classic 'inner' explorations of the mind. Except, they work ! Without the dependency on "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" -- and he did. Through a plethora of 'Far Out' incredible Music, permissive Love and the psychedelic insights that fueled Hippies, lots and lots of Hippies. But there were the painful, unforgiving Addictions. Most of us had to go sweetly, stubbornly or go suffering: The Only Way Out Is Through". With more organized gravitas: the Activists and Progressive people of all Liberation and Freedom loving ideals, and very, very vocal Civil Rights risk takers stood up, stood proud, stood strong. There were the heroic miracles of Dr. King, and many others deeply influenced impressions at the Heart level by the great classic European thinkers - and the compassionate Wisdom teachings of the East. There was the chaotic but growing critical mass community of fresh, newly awakened consciousness expanding really opening minds in process. Warm, young concerned bodies out in the surround, in the streets and other 'Live' venues - seeking and absorbing 'non-ordinary', truly 'uncommon' experiences that would emotionally support me by making all the difference. So I could help make a difference ! I wasn't alone in my mind and being-ness anymore...
SUNY, the State University of New York in the heating-up Sixties, revealed to me the tight-assed academia, the ill-conceived struggles for misunderstood meanings of Western philosophy, that I didn’t ‘get’ anyway - and the permissive, easy-going spaciousness of Eastern ‘emptiness’. Emptiness is the ‘joy’ of uncertainty 'realized’. Living in Greenwich Village after being a journalist in the U.S.Army ( Desert Storm: First / 81st Armored Division, PIO information specialist 63’-65’ )
Finally his number literally came up, and Akasa found his charlatan ass drafted, serving the Army as a Special Services journalist, till he came home honorably discharged, only to be spit on in the heat of the 60's Counter-Culture generation's zeal. Be it Protesters, Yuppies or Hippies - his soul exhausted, this ex-pat-Vet, eventually went on to live abroad.
I was right there with another generational shift I witnessed at the poetic heroic wane of the Beat-era -- and my ‘Self’ becoming ‘consciously’ reconstituted with my own beginnings, of my own authentic Hippie soul. The birth of a fledgling Bodhisattva - a few old ones still here - new stock arriving all the time.
The Puer: The Most Interesting Boy Man In The World ~
Akasa found it just plain ol' fun to be the epitome of Hip - eccentric/artistic, a well dressed intellectual smoothie, a lovable fraud, he would charm and talk his way in - he became a young "creative" that simply knew that it simply was all created. Constructed. Fabricated. Designing himself as a savvy young 'designer' in men's wear fashion, or directing TV deodorant spots or canned dog food commercials on Mad Ave, or gory Slasher film production for the elusive Rabbi Herb Freed.
Akasa found it just plain ol' fun to be the epitome of Hip - eccentric/artistic, a well dressed intellectual smoothie, a lovable fraud, he would charm and talk his way in - he became a young "creative" that simply knew that it simply was all created. Constructed. Fabricated. Designing himself as a savvy young 'designer' in men's wear fashion, or directing TV deodorant spots or canned dog food commercials on Mad Ave, or gory Slasher film production for the elusive Rabbi Herb Freed.
My personal archetype was as ‘The Outsider’ - that was quite clear. I was / I still am an acquired taste for a few - but the Wunderkind me was soon making expensive visual magic at a TV commercial production company directing pilot spots. It so happened that I smoked some outstanding weed one day in ’68, and left for a long sojourn in Europe and points unknown. "Freedom From the Known" as Krishnamurti deliciously and disturbingly called it. In Israel I just kept meeting people coming back from India - and they all said “India Man, You gotta go, Man - You gotta go ! - That’s the ‘real’ Holy Land!.” Further East, the compass pointed the direction I needed. I met lotsa’ helpful Indiana Jones- types along the Silk Route when it was still archeologically more intact.
Winter 1972 - 'Over-Land' to Secret India --
Saying farewell to Rosh Pina, the Kibbutz, and daily rocket fire from Syria -Akasa sets off as a filmmaker and ongoing student of the Sufi teacher Gurdjieff and his pioneering Mindfulness 'Work' - "Meetings With Remarkable Men". Icy slick snow on the ground, driving the treacherous ancient “Silk Route” in a lightly armed tight caravan formation from Istanbul in Mick's five smuggled Benz luxury limos on a single lane nearly empty road, except for horseback bandits cum road tax locals, who would actually kill you. No accommodations meaning there was just nothing there - we all slept on donkey hair mats in a big smelly black goat skin tent - had multiple vehicle breakdowns, actual film-making waylaid yet another few months, and my own complete psycho-physical breakdown near Herat, Afghanistan - where quite to my surprise, I found a small ongoing orthodox Jewish community, still wearing kaftans and get this, they were abiding here at least a thousands years, having come with Al Xander ! Nursed with their chicken soup, of course, and other 'medicine' certainly from elsewhere - some kind of far out black sticky stuff - and soon I'm healed up good to go. Over the Khyber Pass and Paki food at last - finally arriving at the Amritsar crossing into Mother India."
I wasn’t aware then, that I was traveling with a spiritual ‘dedicated purpose’, a mission, a holy 'intent' as Lama taught me later. I traveled in an old Russian mini-bus, overland thru the thick snows of Eastern Turkey, the Shah’s Iran and many months of a restorative, recuperative layover with the Jewish community in Herat, Afghanistan during the brutal winter 1972-73. I kept observing a subtly different, ‘alternative’ cultural paradigm out there. Asia was not Kansas anymore, Coney. It certainly wasn’t the South Shore of Long Island where I was raised W.J.M., either. Here, people looked right into your ‘mind’. They can read you. In India they had a legacy of deeply observing and comprehending the human mind - a very complete, ancient ‘science-teaching’ about the true nature of mind. No ‘churches’ that could suppress it - no matter how the Brits tried to civilize the Wogs…
At the Eastern Pakistani/Indian border in Amritsar, a seasoned ex-patriot American yogi who looked like Shiva said to me, unsolicited - “Hey Man, Just skip Hinduism altogether, my friend, and go straight to Dharamsala / McClod Ganj where The Dalai Lama lived, and hang around with the Buddhists” - “You’ll end up a Buddhist anyway, from what I see in you.” He then gave me the address of a very special ‘Teacher’ to visit there, and literally vanished. Weeks later I ambled down a crooked little street high up in the thick pine covered foothills of Northern India, past a flock of laughing Tibetan Buddhist monks full of horseplay, back from their visit to The Dalai Lama’s residence up the hill -- and ‘Lost Horizon’ became a reality.
After a plate of Tibetan mo-mo dim sum, I went to pay, and discovered the teacher’s address deep in my shoulder bag. As described, I found an alley, then a door, knocked - and a voice said “Come in”. Sitting in full lotus on the floor nursing a single-burner propane stove and tea, was the same yogi guy I met at the border ! He looked up at me, smiled, then laughed and said “You made it man - Good, I have some great people for you to go up into the hills here to meet”…
I said to myself ~ " Way to go Mr. Magic, let me wholeheartedly praise you - You ‘showed up’ for yourself again -
It made all the difference ~ Whew !
It made all the difference ~ Whew !
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"How and Who I met - What sacred 'transmissions' they would share from directly within their very own inconscious paradigm surrounded by their very own cultural artifacts lived resplendently by a little nut brown man in a tiny hut sitting on a woven mat. Or the woman art-maker activist who embraces and holds tiny, mistreated babies, and won her nation's highest regard for literally saving, feeding and caressing the souls of abused children in Nepal, or maybe it was South India, or maybe it was South Central. Or the actor who went to dig in the muddy fields beyond the jungle, and found his own magic celebrity-energy transform into indelible compassion. Many empathic Americans served abroad in the Peace Core. You can find them there too -the teachers, the tortured - and sometimes it's just me mostly writing about ‘me’ and my Parkinson's medication side effects... and I'd rather go back now to my pisha'ka travel 'story', and my basic bad writing...
Hopefully the wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened and somewhat achieved by reciting my peculiar life story: to get you interested, or get you interested once again - and gets you going out on the road less traveled - doing some serious sacred 'searching' here in the USA, or better, for the really gutsy, brave and unattached, if you take the risk to go abroad. You get to mindfully see and eat and shit and live and serve in these raw cultural contexts that these unbelievable ancient spiritual practices originate from -- Roots, always look for the roots of things, always look for the indigenous origins ! Notice the similarities everywhere !
♦ The Himalayan Diary in these pages ardently encourages you to 'search' out some of the history of the renown Buddhist teachers mentioned, as well as the many inspiring, un-named unknown un-educated teacher's wise and clarifying counsel and potent clean energy influences - literally what arises out of them and flies over into you. Sacred seeds a plenty are dropped during these meetings with remarkable people - unique indigenous people who recognize the potential value of a good student, possibly to serve as a future teacher - in service to this idea, these senior guides themselves would pass you around, sending you Hither and Yon to meet other teaching masters too - human to human, this is how the sacred "Teachings" and their highest cultural traditions are kept vibrantly alive, kept going, and are aurally preserved in perpetuity thru other specially 'taught' humans -- these were basic precious human 'realizations' that would carry me and make ALL the difference on the road less traveled. ( Friends ~ They are still out there to be learned from... Mister G. would be proud -- so far... )
♦ " Like Attracts Like " Wisdom LIKES Wisdom
So basically, Wisdom Attracts Wisdom. The very beginnings of true Wisdom is very attracted to Higher Wisdom. Wisdom likes Wisdom - as Stupidity likes Stupidity, and seeks out more Stupidity. Ignorance seeks out Ignorance. And so it goes... And so the very beginnings of Awakened Enlightened-mind -- "Enlightenment" seeks out Enlightenment and is so happy to find more enlightenment out there, that it never wants to go back to ignorant stupidity."
~ Lama Thubten Yeshe
-:¦:- Nama’ste ~ Hopefully the wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened and somewhat achieved by my recalling and narrating my peculiar life story - to get you interested, or get you interested on your own, or get you re-interested once again - and gets you closer to even just ‘considering’ going out on the ‘outer’ or ‘inner’ road less traveledd. Doing some serious sacred 'searching' here in the USA - or for the really skillful, courageous, brave and earthy - taking the risk to actually go abroad. It’s no vacation. It is a pilgrimage of finding your particular higher purpose. Just what you’re heart’s always wanted. You get to mindfully see and eat and shit and live and serve somehow in these raw cultural contexts that these unbelievable ancient indigenous spiritual practices that we are becoming heir to - originate from. They originate from Roots. They always do, they can’t help it. That’s the Nature of Living Conscious Things. Roots. Always go back and look for the Roots of things. Always look for the indigenous origins ! Notice the natural similarities everywhere ! Keep reading…
-:¦:- Nama’ste ~ Hopefully the wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened and somewhat achieved by my recalling and narrating my peculiar life story - to get you interested, or get you interested on your own, or get you re-interested once again - and gets you closer to even just ‘considering’ going out on the ‘outer’ or ‘inner’ road less traveledd. Doing some serious sacred 'searching' here in the USA - or for the really skillful, courageous, brave and earthy - taking the risk to actually go abroad. It’s no vacation. It is a pilgrimage of finding your particular higher purpose. Just what you’re heart’s always wanted. You get to mindfully see and eat and shit and live and serve somehow in these raw cultural contexts that these unbelievable ancient indigenous spiritual practices that we are becoming heir to - originate from. They originate from Roots. They always do, they can’t help it. That’s the Nature of Living Conscious Things. Roots. Always go back and look for the Roots of things. Always look for the indigenous origins ! Notice the natural similarities everywhere ! Keep reading…
-:¦:- Nama’ste ~ Hopefully the wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened and somewhat achieved by my recalling and narrating my peculiar life story - to get you interested, or get you interested on your own, or get you re-interested once again - and gets you closer to even just ‘considering’ going out on the ‘outer’ or ‘inner’ road less traveledd. Doing some serious sacred 'searching' here in the USA - or for the really skillful, courageous, brave and earthy - taking the risk to actually go abroad. It’s no vacation. It is a pilgrimage of finding your particular higher purpose. Just what you’re heart’s always wanted. You get to mindfully see and eat and shit and live and serve somehow in these raw cultural contexts that these unbelievable ancient indigenous spiritual practices that we are becoming heir to - originate from. They originate from Roots. They always do, they can’t help it. That’s the Nature of Living Conscious Things. Roots. Always go back and look for the Roots of things. Always look for the indigenous origins ! Notice the natural similarities everywhere ! Keep reading…