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Entries in bhutan (3)

Sunday
Mar192023

Rolling Thunder

One hot July day my mother rolled her living prose poem of anguish, vision, truth and beauty through Denver and beyond.

“It’s all a myth, a way of remembering the past,” she screamed chasing shadows into blazing sunlight on Broadway Street where immigrant families sat on broken dreams.

She passed devout Tibetan pilgrims walking, singing, praying, and laughing inside the Barkhor circuit in Lhasa. They threw sky crystals at karmic ravens, the symbol of reincarnation.

She rolled past terracotta warriors crashed on bags at Shanghai train stations seeking invisible unknown terminal destinations.

She rolled past Elmore James, Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Sonny Boy, Howling Wolf, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters down at the crossroads sliding their callused fingers on metal frets trading their souls to the devil.

The blues are the roots. Everything else is the fruit.

She flew past Balinese carvers edging faces for shadow puppet plays, jungle painters creating corporate butterfly murals, villagers harvesting rice in layered green pastures and landmine amputees plowing behind oxen.

Hearing Irish tinkers pound pans between villages she rolled past homeless humans dreaming of food as shadows danced on cave walls in the United States of Amnesia.

She rolled past a naked evangelist at his wailing wall forecasting human greed and global economic terrorism.

A phallic snake symbol delighted the envy of quicksilver messengers wheeling past tan cellular idiots waiting for an express bus to financial heaven.

Shifting gears, she burned past her husband’s white-haired aunt in a nursing home painting her final autumn leaf watercolor vision.

She sheared past Ashiakawa weavers threading seasons in Hokkaido, Japan and Sherpa’s brewing tea at 18,000 feet for expeditions collecting Trophy Mountains after paying hard currency to totalitarian emperors for the pleasure of suffering altitude sickness, hypothermia and high blood pressure death.

She rolled past consumers making quick money honey living on plastic debt while driving 4x4s through scarred Rockies as cock-a-roaches devoured natural resources. Land grab development bankers heard mutants scream, “Where is the water for God’s sake? We paid for our thirst.”

She sailed past her eldest son waiting for his NAM dust off chopper from Camp Eagle near Hue toward San Francisco. On the flight to Denver and beyond he became a ghost in exile.

He stayed in Colorado for a month, did eight weeks at the DOD Information School, finished his time in Europe and got out, a free man. He spent six months roaming from Germany to Finland, Portugal, Spain, and Morocco.

In 1973 while attending the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley she knew he’d face abusive rejection from some students. They’d accuse him of being a baby killer and an undesirable outcast.

He became an invisible literary outlaw.

He incorporated passive-aggressive silence. He became anonymous, a figment of their imagination. Staying away from them he practiced covert dark arts on night patrols with stealth, silence and cunning on fully automatic.

Write it down and done, laugh, and move on.

His undeclared major was Survival 101. It wasn’t in the catalog of classes. University admin officials in their cubicles screamed, “You have to declare something!” He selected Cultural Anthropology & Mythology to placate the beast.

She read his final letters home about fire fight survival instincts remembering the horror etched on a black wall in D.C, with 58,000+ names as reverberating chopper blades severed stale humid tropic air and jungle survival removed veils of illusions. He’d surrendered to life and began collecting dust.

Like an old river she careened past Arabic nomads exchanging goats and camels for pearls as oil deserted sand enveloped silk encrusted carpets. Refugees on sinking lifeboats discovered geological family strata amid Chinese shipwrecks shifting divorce paradigms.

Independent shamans played with awareness using active imagination’s free potential - exhaling a mind’s eye making B&W street photography in exile.

Women wearing exploitation’s cloth wrapped in solitude braved whirling third-world poverty as their economic fate shattered malnourished rocks along Bhutanese mountain roads creating capitalistic nirvana. Imported from India and desperate for food they lived in river reed habitats with Gross National Happiness.

Gathering speed now.

Rolling her Wheel of Life, she evaporated six degrees of separation near the Tropic of Cancer in fast rivers celebrating animist tribal dialogues hearing tongues sing air earth water fire languages by crow, eagle, raven, coyote and wolf.

She received the mark of the king tattoo from a Tahiti artist in Saipan.

Indigenous natives were surrounded and confounded by blue-eyed European’s commercial greed and cultural annihilation while calculating slavery’s cost for competition’s profit.

In silence she rolled with patience, solitude, and nature just being her doing nothing poem.

Her life created a ruptured aorta in earth, fire, water, and air with pulse platelets as red lava flowing past Himalayan monasteries heard monks chant prayers in assembly halls at dawn.

Green, blue, white, yellow and red Lung-Tao prayer flags singing wind songs welcomed her sacrifice, liberation and freedom with perfection celebrating Maya illusion wisdom free from Bardo.

ART

 

Monday
Dec172018

Bhutan

A wandering Chinese monk shared a talk story with Omar.

“One day in the Himalayas I hiked to a meditation hut above Taktsang, Tiger’s Nest, in Druk Yul overlooking the Paro valley laced with rice paddies, rhododendron, fir, spruce, hemlock and barley fields.

“Guru Padmasambhava or Guru Rimpoche (Precious Teacher) was the spiritual founder of the Nyingmapa old school of Himalayan Buddhism in 800 still taught in central Bhutan. Tantric Buddhism, the esoteric form of the Drukpa Kagyupa Buddhist School in Bhutan dates to 450. The state religion of Mahayana Buddhism or the Great Vehicle was established in the 8th century.

“According to legend, Rimpoche subdued many demons in Paro and central Bhutan. At one time he had two wives, an Indian and a Tibetan. He transformed his Indian wife into a tiger and flew to Taktsang Monastery in the 8th century.

“Tiger’s Nest is a series of small tight buildings built into the cliff. It is composed of intricate staircases, stone flagging, a small open air kitchen, balconies, rooms for sleeping, and meditation. I was welcomed by boys and monks who showed me a small meditation room filled with statues, offerings of rice, coins, fruits and vegetables.

“They showed me the cave where Rimpoche lived for three years. Three monks appointed by the chief abbot in Thimphu live here for three years for meditation study and are followed by novice monks in their spiritual meditations.

“Taktsang, destroyed by a fire in 1998, was rebuilt.

“I traveled east along the spine of the dragon climbing to 10,000 feet, dropping into valleys and climbing again. Distinct elevations consist of grasslands, crop lands, forests, hardwoods, coniferous forests, soft woods, alpine meadows, yak pastures, and glaciers. Barley, wheat and potatoes are spring and summer crops from 7,500-13,000’ with the tree line coming at 12,000-14,000' and coniferous replacing hardwoods above 8,000’.

“I passed West Bengal and Indian road gangs working at quarter mile intervals. They carry large rocks and crushing granite to repair and fill endless washouts. They live and work here for two or three years maintaining roads before being replaced by new workers from northern India. Their living situation is grim. Shelters are woven reeds, fortified with any materials they can find along the rivers. They carry their children on their backs as they work. Younger ones sleep along the road under torn black umbrellas.

“Ten thousand people live in the Bumthang area. Small shops and stores along the single main street serve as homes and business. Built of wood with small steel stoves and chimneys, the rooms are multipurpose; selling in front, eating and sleeping quarters in the rear. Merchandise includes thread, wool, fabric for weaving, canned goods, small toys, sweets, local spirits, spices, eggs, a limited supply of green vegetables, a few green apples, and soap.

“The architecture is Tibetan. Rectangular buildings are two-three stories high, a pitched roof with open space holding firewood and fodder. The middle floor is for storage of grains, seeds and foodstuffs. Upper floors are living quarters, broken into smaller rooms. The ground floor on a working farm is for the cattle. If not, there are windows at this level with a shop, storeroom, kitchen, and servant’s quarters.

“I arrived at a monastery in the foothills overlooking the town where 300-500 Bhutanese gathered to receive a blessing from a lama. Children and adults on timber slabs sat talking on a sun baked ground.

“Three monks blew long wood and silver jallee horns to chase evil spirits away.  The lama, Nam Kha Nen Boo, is Khenbow, a reincarnation of a former monk known for his fortune telling power. He was seated and read in a low tone of voice for twenty minutes and used a small hand held drum and bell.  

“Finished, he moved among the people touching us on the head with a statue called a Tshtshto. This dignifies the life of a human with a blessing “Have a long life.” People approached with offerings for his blessing. Bags of red string, flour, and jenlap, a nutmeg like substance, were offered. One lama handed each person jenlap. Another lama gave each person a single red string to be worn around the neck.   

“I visited the Jakar Dzong. The head lama opened large doors in the spiritual center. Ornate sculptures of Padmasambhava and flickering yak butter lamps filled the center wall. Inside another room was a ten foot high statue of the guru, bronze statues with salt and butter flower carvings.

“Display cases with hundreds of identical 5-6" Buddha statues sat in tiered arrangement extending the length of the room, reaching the ceiling. Larger images depicted historical and religious levels of spiritual attainment.  

“My meditation is on The Eightfold Path or Middle Way between self-indulgence and self modification. The eight orders are: Right Views, Right Purpose, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Awareness, and Right Concentration or Right Meditation.

“I have a diamond in my mind. I am alive and empty and present.”

A Century is Nothing

 

Monday
Jul172017

mind stream transmission

The Temple of the Divine Madman

Bhutan

Druk Yul - Land of the Thunder Dragon

Keep it raw

Human flourishing

Eudaimonia

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Under this mask, another mask.

I will never be finished removing all these faces.

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Wandering river mystic wind

Rhythm of world

Dances

No fear

Expanding joy

Contentment

Laughter therapy

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Jump out of your skin

Backwards

Dream

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Mind-stream transmission

Form is emptiness

Emptiness is form