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Entries in Tao (2)

Friday
Oct202017

Question Authority - Ice Girl

Chapter 4.

Leo carried buckets of night soil shit. It was the price he paid for quest-ioning Authority.

  -why, do we have to read Mao’s little red book, it’s mush for pigs, he asked Authority.

  -because you are a tool of the state, said Authority.

  -this shit stinks.

  -here, said Authority. Carry some more.

  After that melancholy loss Leo didn’t take shit from anybody. He burned through levels of existence as an exiled ghost. He slept with shamans in cemeteries.

  He didn’t suffer from PTDS. He didn’t prowl life’s perimeter at midnight with bandoliers of munitions and Howling Wolf, his M-16 on full automatic.

  He wasn’t a suicide bomber hijacking ambulances in Gaza or Baghdad or Karachi or Damascus. He wasn’t blowing up cafes in Haifa or Spanish trains of thought watching children and adults fly through the air with the greatest of ease in the Greatest Show on Earth.

He did not attend pre-9/11 flight training school in Florida on a secret mission of revenge and miraculous destiny.

  Being a worthy asset with nonofficial cover he was quieter than a mouse. The second mouse gets the cheese.

  He disembarked, disabled, distributed, declassified, delineated, discussed and detonated unconscious trip wires. He was a silent night hymn, a predator practicing silence and cunning with his tantric eye wide open.

 I am a camera, he said to Rita, cutting ice. Like you I see the big picture. We are ahead of the future. Wandering storytellers accepted my willingness to walk point. It's the Tao of insight, intuitive friendship and leadership. I don’t sweat the small stuff.

  It’s all small stuff, said Rita. God, the Devil and Allah are in the details.

Checkmate, said Death. I only make one move and it’s always correct.

In Cadiz, Spain a well-dressed bald man with gypsy blood wearing polished black wing tipped shoes used the financial section of a daily rag to collect his dog’s shit off Roman cobblestone. He dumped it into a metal trash basket nailed to a postmodern yellow splattered wall.

  Five minutes later an obsessive-compulsive cleaning woman in her ground floor flat yelled, “What’s that smell?”                                              

  “History.”

Ice Girl in Banlung 

Saturday
Aug152015

Practice 10,000 times

Zeynep in Bursa taught me how to swim with gigantic sea turtles.

We practice a sitting mediation. We practice a walking meditation. When you walk you become nobody. If your legs get heavy walk with your heart, she said. We meditated on our death.

Everything we do is a meditation. Practice 10,000 times until you’ve got it, she said.

Dive deep exploring coral and underwater life below the surface of appearances.

Let’s have a little adventure, I said to Zeynep.

I wove a magic carpet, she said. Let’s go.

We flew to the Temple of Complete Reality on Qinchengshan Mountain in Sichuan. It is a 2,000-year old series of Taoist temples in red orange yellow green autumn foliage.

Taoism’s home in China is balance and harmony in nature. We climbed for 2.5-hour in green hills, mountains, and clouds knowing us by now, feeling strong cold winds on a clear day. We caressed old stone steps and steep angled paths through old growth.  

We climbed through primal forests with Mountain Girl, ten. She sold tea near a trail fork. We didn’t ask her to guide us. She attached herself to us. She didn’t want anything. She wasn’t hustling anything. She lived onthe mountain, not below the mountain.

She diverted us away from whining Chinese. She pointed out medicinal plants and herbs in meadows, showing us delicious wild yellow and red berries. She babbled stories about the forest, plants, trees, rivers and animals. 

She shared a story about mountain spirits. Three men chased her through the forest. She met a snake.

“Please help me escape from men chasing me.”

“It turned into a slim beautiful woman.”  

“Don’t be afraid. I will help you.”  

“She took me down the mountain, saving me from the bad men. Then she turned back into a snake and disappeared into the forest.”  

We climbed through a series of temples. Statues, incense, prayers and spirit energies. Inner and outer visions extended in four directions.   

We shared rice, chicken and bread near the summit.  

Twin turtles with dragonheads guarded the entrance. The main temple was a reddish brown ornate rising sculpture. Large crimson incense smoke curled into sky.

Four Chinese characters reflected light.

Clouds circle this temple.

We circumnavigated levels of experience on narrow wooden steps. On the main level was a gigantic gold statue of a Lao Tzu riding a wild ox. Yin/Yang.

An old woman offered medallions of the cosmic symbol on red thread. Mountain girl and Zeynep selected one. They put it around their necks. We descended. Mountain girl fingered her threaded treasure. She was a treasure for us.

We stopped at a temple for tea. A young nun washed teacups. “I’ve been here fifteen years. I clean, pray, read, meditate, talk with monks and travelers, and do my work. I am focused on my goal.  My goal is to reach the root below the surface.”

Her awareness is direct with heart-mind intention.

In twilight we bought Mountain Girl food to take home and walked to her bike. I gifted her a white khata scarf from Tibet.

Zeynep gave her a poem by Rumi.

Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky

And you lift me up out of the two worlds.

I want your sun to reach my raindrops,

So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.

“Thanks,” said Mountain Girl. She smiled and zoomed away.

Every heartbeat is an eternal rhythm of universal possibilities.

“We went up. We went down,” said Zeynep, after we returned to Bursa, breathing through tribal masks.

“What kind of mask? Is it hand carved from memories?” 

“Masks are symbolic manifestations in primitive cultures,” she said. “Mask dance is a shamanic ritual, a dance trance. Wearing a mask you become the thing you fear the most, your basic human nature. Masks hide a human’s consciousness of fear.

“Dance is about process, becoming. Destroy Time. Shiva symbolizes the union of space and time and destruction. Dance is an ancient form of magic. People wear masks to hide their transformation, seeking to change their dancer into a god or demon. Dance is the incarnation of eternal energy. You see them everyday, everywhere. Have the courage to be natural with your mask. The entire universe is a vast theatre. The two critical elements of intelligence are humor and curiosity. Do you remember James Joyce, how he went into exile with silence and cunning?”

“Yes. He knew how to put seven little words in order. He was a cunning linguist. He said, ‘everything I do is an experiment.’”

“So it is. Your ability to imagine and scheme and deceive is raw instinct,” she said. “It separates you from lower life forms like apes, plankton and sea enemies-anemone (fish eating animals) and androgynous androids in the deep subconscious. Writers lie for a living. Literature is the best way to make fun of people. They treat their mental illness every day. They say what others are afraid to say. Being a writer is like having homework every day.”

“We are the only animals who laugh,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “and we are the only animals who know we are going to die. We imagine our death, our mortality. This fills some with dread, psychological neurosis, lack of purpose. For others it’s a release, a joy, and a dance. Freedom is unconditional. I was born laughing.”

“I was born dead and slowly came to life. Are you a clown? Perhaps a clown fish?” I asked.

“Look in your dream mask mirror,” she said. “Not all the clowns are in the circus.”

“Under this mask, another mask. I will never be finished removing all these faces.”

“Let’s dance. Let’s meditate on the process of death.”

My name is Beauty. Death is my mother. I have no tongue.

Your mask eats your face.