# 108. JOURNAL of an AMERICAN BUDDHIST MONK best clean plain

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...

it's in every step you take
-------------------------------
" 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

of AN AMERICAN BUDDHIST MONK
• Please See It Here Below 

__________________________________________

The Road Not Taken / The Road Less Traveled 
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.

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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.

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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 -

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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

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.

Early 'Contributing Factors' 
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

magical 'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
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

___________________________________

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 ?

__________________________________

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? "

"Friend, I seem to have lost my keys.
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

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

________________________________

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  

__________________________________________________

 

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 "

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. 

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 !

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"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 




appreciation, unconditional acceptance and the authentic magic of continual forgiveness. Keep forgiveness mindfully in front of you, and keep try’in

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...

it's in every step you take
-------------------------------
" 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

of AN AMERICAN BUDDHIST MONK
• Please See It Here Below 

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The Road Not Taken / The Road Less Traveled 
Robert Frost, 1926

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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.

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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.

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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 -

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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

-- I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.
 

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•♦• 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

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.

Early 'Contributing Factors' 
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

magical 'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
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

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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 ?

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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? "

"Friend, I seem to have lost my keys.
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

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

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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  

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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 "

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. 

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 !

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"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 




appreciation, unconditional acceptance and the authentic magic of continual forgiveness. Keep forgiveness mindfully in front of you, and keep try’in