This is my first blog post after six months of travel throughout Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and India. Where to begin? How about pics of my favorite places – I’ll start with a few from India
The above picture is of a Shiva sadhu. He walks naked covered in ash, carrying his trident in one hand with eight-foot dreadlocks draped over the other. This was taken in Rishikesh, India, close to Haridwar, during the Kumbh Mela, the largest religious gathering in the world, which takes place once every three years in alternating cities.
We spoke for about fifteen minutes. Afterwards, he gave me a blessing on the forehead, and a blissful feeling of peace irresistibly came over me that lasted for several hours.
This next picture is from the night that I met my guru. It is said to be an auspicious sign to come across a calf being born. On my way to meet him my friend Brajesh and I encountered some people who were caring for a cow and its newborn calf.
We walked with them and alternated carrying the newborn. You can see how present and mindful guruji is holding the calf, the love of the cow for its child, and the beautiful intermingling of nature and spirituality that permeates daily life in India.
This is a worker on a bus in GOA, India. What I like about this picture is that he didn't know who 2Pac was. Often times we try to project symbolic meanings upon things that people do, this guy just needed a shirt to wear
This is the sunset in GOA, India. There is a slight haze that hovers over the water that makes objects in the distance seem blurry, but not a cloud in the sky. As the sun sets, it turns a deep red as the light refracts through the hazy mist. You can see the change in color below, but the pictures don’t really do justice to its magnificence.
GOA Sunset - Deep Red
This picture is of a guy who plays a flute with a dancing cow. I have video of the cow dancing, which I will post eventually. What I love about this picture is the creativity of how to make an honest living in India. Perfectly matched, and the cow rings its bell and lifts up its foot on cue. So many holy cows everywhere in India, but this one was my favorite.
Does this picture need a comment? Seems to capture the tourist industry quite well. What I also like is the Indian woman in the background to the right of the blond tourist is wearing a Yankees cap.
She did not know that NY stood for New York, she just needed a hat to cover her face working at the beach.
Below is the last pictures for now, taken from Kashmir, India, called “Paradise on Earth.” It’s hard to argue that any place on earth is more beautiful, too bad the media and politics have distorted perceptions of the region into a place of danger, conflict, and angry Muslim militants.
I will be traveling for the next several months in Southeast Asia and will be writing infrequently on this blog but devoting time to finishing my book, which I’m tentatively calling Buddha to Brooklyn – a Reluctant Memoir.
The book explores my perceptions on the co-evolution of modern marketing and the social sciences primarily from the 1960s to the present, along with the subsequent loss of (and yearning for) spirituality and meaning in the post-modern world. It’s written primarily from the first person in a lyrical style similar to the blog entry of the same name. I’d like to think of it as Malcolm Gladwell and Cornell West meets Charles Bukowski and Alan Watts, but that could all change as the story unfolds and manifests.
I will be in Thailand Nov 5-Dec 1, Vietnam Dec 1-13, Myanmar (Burma) Dec 14-Jan 10, and the rest is up in the air. Please be in touch. Pics above Bagan, Myanmar, and below Ko Tao, Thailand
I’ve always been fascinated with sound and believed since an early age that rhythms contained and could unlock intrinsic patterns to the underlying core of our being.
This reminded me of my early days studying Eastern religions and my former professor Paul Eduardo Muller-Ortega’s work on the Hindu Tantra, in which he studied a non-dual mystical tradition of Abhinavagupta. Perplexed by why sacred texts repeatedly referenced different vowels of the mantra “OM,” Muller-Ortega came to the realization that Abhinavagupta was discussing how the patterns in sound mimicked the underlying patterns at the heart of all reality.
Practitioners could attune to these internal resonances through discipline of the mind via meditation on mantras, thereby both merging with and dissolving the misperception that one’s true nature is separate from the underlying fabric of all reality. It’s interesting to see the possible validation from modern science of perspectives dating back thousands of years to the dawn of civilization in India.
My colleague Jeff Malmad posted a link to the above video by Jon Rawlinson, a cinematographer and editor who specializes in documentary projects. His shorts serve as poignant reminders of the simple beauty found in mother nature.
The uninterrupted shot of the oceanic underworld provides a glimpse into the majestic beauty of the sea. Rawlinson gives the following description:
The main tank called the “Kuroshio Sea” holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and features the world’s second largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60 centimeters. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.
Rawlinson calls us to protect our oceans and nature, take a pause and appreciate his vision. Enjoy!
I rarely post about personal experiences but felt compelled to share and reflect.
Last Sunday my good friend Pepe Lopez Waldron and I went to Blue Cliff Monastery to see the venerable Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who is in the U.S. for two months for a short tour. Thich Nhat Hanh joined the monkhood at age 16 and began his work of public service in Saigon during the 1960s. He was banned from returning to Vietnam when he left to the U.S. and was instrumental in convincing Martin Luther King Jr. to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. MLK would later nominate TNH for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Thich Nhat Hanh eventually founded Plum Village in France, a training center where he has lived in exile since 1983. Now 85-years old, he is one of the most renown teachers in the world and we are thankful to have had the opportunity to see him and be in his presence.
Thay, as he is called by his students, gave a dharma talk followed by walking meditation and a communal meal. About 1,000 people were in attendance for the afternoon.
Thay spoke of what he termed inter-being, a oneness and connection we have with one another cultivated through mindfulness and concentration. Pepe shared the following reflections among our close friends:
He talked about inter-being and the absence of any independent reality “I inter-am, you inter-are.” He said this insight is the fruit of practice. He said that mindfulness develops our awareness and ability to be present in the moment. “when our mind and body is present, we are fully alive.”
Mindfulness frees us from the past and future and makes it possible to enjoy every moment. Concentration help you penetrate ‘what is there’ and produces the insights of “emptiness or suchness or inter-dependence, or inter-being.”
He said these insights cannot passed through words – “like the taste of a mango, it cannot be transmitted by words.” The person must taste it for him or herself to know mango-ness. He said that concepts and notions are useful only as far as the foot of the path to insight, they are like a map.”
Pepe and I were fortunate enough to have strangers offer to take us to and from New York City to the monastery. Upon our return in the early afternoon we headed to Sunday Best at The Yard hosted by our good friends Doug Singer, Eamon Harkin, Justin Carter, and MeanRed Productions.
Motor City Drum Ensemble headlined the day and played an excellent set ranging from classic disco and house to Detroit techno and some original dance tracks. Pepe and I danced with close friends and eventually we all relaxed at his nearby brownstone on his backyard deck by his pool (a rareity in Brooklyn). It was truly the best Sunday ever.
There is a widely held misperception that the peaceful compassion of Buddhism and contemplative practices are incompatible with the diverse lifestyles found in places like Sunday Best. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The sense of communal harmony that tied together a thousand people of the sangha in a day of dharma talks, singing, walking meditation and eating was the same sense of inter-being that unified my fellow Brooklynites in a night of dancing under the stars.
Similarly, the soft-spoken voice of Thay pierced through our hearts and touched our spirits in ways that parallel the DJs inspired us to connect and share with one another with their music track selection. The day truly made us appreciative of the simple and beautiful mystery of how there is a unifying inter-human core to our diverse cultural heritages.
I stumbled across this video today and it made me happy. You should watch it. Bobby McFerrin talks about the universality of the Pentatonic Scale and how audiences always respond to it around the world.
Jump ahead and I come to reflect on a piece in the NYT on “Twitterology.” The author, Ben Schott, reflected on the 140 character messaging system and pondered that in the future people would come to tweet short abbreviations of words, much like they did with the launch of the telegraph. His musings on words appear regularly in the NYT, and are worth a read in his blog
The connection Schott makes to words is interesting, as are McFerrin’s, but the more compelling I think are the ways in which language and music can be used in different contexts for subversion. Around the same time that Morse was inventing the telegraph in the 1830s enslaved black people in the South would sing Gospel songs and encode secret meanings to communicate unbeknownst to their masters.
In doing so they hijacked the religion plantation owners had used to justify slavery and laid the foundation for the vibrant spiritual tradition that would evolve a century later into blues. It’s indeed ironic that centuries after the British brought slavery to the Americas their musical heritage would traverse back across the Atlantic to inspire the UK roots of rock music (check out the BBC video below on the influence of American blues on Brit rock).
It would be interesting to see what Schott, Professor at Cambridge University, might have to say on this.
Thanks to my former professor from Princeton Albert Raboteau, pioneer in the study of Slave Religion, for passing on his wonderful perspective on race in American history.
I absolutely love Alva Noto, and this collaboration with legendary Japanese artist Ryuichi Sakamoto is simply beautiful. It has a timeless appeal at an almost pre-conscious level of understanding in the minimal music, colors, and natural imagery.
The following two are solos by Alva Noto, Prototype 6 and Berlin. Both resonate strongly to me with the processes that occur at the deepest levels of consciousness.
I envision creative thoughts and inspirations bubbling into my awareness and bursting forth in flashes like we see in the video, while the music serves as a constant reminder that there is an underlying order to the subtle processes of what scientists might call cognition or in contemplative traditions would be considered mindfulness.
Take 10 minutes and enjoy these videos, like a form of waking meditation, you’ll thank yourself after and return to whatever you were doing with a fresh outlook.
