Shuffle

Listening to the radio is like sitting in meditation: you tune in to receive the energy current of what’s being transmitted now. If you are tuned in to the most beautiful song ever you simply enjoy it, because it’s unsure whether you will get to possess it. Maybe the DJ will announce afterwards the song or maybe he won’t and you will have loved and lost the most beautiful song you’d ever heard. Songs stream constantly out through the radio like water through your fingers, it disperses organically into the air, without a trace, just like the always flowing stream of the moment.

There is this hanging on the edge of the line feeling radio gives.
It keeps you engaged because you never know what will come next.

Or you wade your way through the radio waves for the sake of your favorite song—you listen all day, maybe switching between channels, just praying to hear your jam. This cultivates patience and perseverance, and when you finally do hear the song it is so rewarding. I remember listening to modern rock radio all night long impatiently awaiting my favorite songs. We would call and request and wait hours for the song to shuffle in the mix. Now we never have to wait longer than our slowed down broadband download time to hear or watch whatever we can think of. But there goes the relaxing quality Lately, I have rediscovered ‘Shuffle’ and it is reconnecting me to this spontaneity of music listening the iPod and digital music has made me forget.

Letting go of control
Relieving the responsibility of doership, knowing what you want
Ordering, sometimes it is nice to be surprised, to be served the mystery.
In our modern sense that only we know what we want, we have cut off the open-endedness of gifts, randomness, surprise. Just let life’s jukebox play, there’s a pressure to make everything the end all and be all, but it limits the possibilities from the beyond.

NYC Stranger

First I saw him walking under the hard shade of scaffolding on a hot day in Chelsea. He walked upright with a current of energy; like he was floating on the wake of the one way traffic down 19th street.
An honorary tribesman arrived in New York after some wrinkle in time unfolded and magically materialized him here and now in Manhattan. Crocodile Dundee, Coming to America, the type of guy that stands out and makes the city look out of place, like he was here first.
He has a doll face, with intelligent eyes, the kind that aren't just organs, they are well experienced tools of multiple perceptions. In Lehman's terms: he owned the street with the twinkle in his eyes.

He was shirtless, which drew me to him even before his face. His light and floating torso was a copper shield against the city and a welcome banner. His hair was parted and tied back in a long, shiny tail. He walked with purpose but did he have a destination? His mission was more like a parade-- he was simply spreading the news about himself.
But even before seeing all this, I had the sense that a badass loomed. He perspired a hormonal message through the streets to take heed, the King was near.

The arm action in his powerwalk showed off two gaping scars on his elbows. The upraised fault lines of puffy, soft flesh on each elbow were so exact they looked intentional. Who was he?: a mutant? an apparition? a shaman? an actor? He looked familiar to me, he atleast has family in New Mexico if not a native himself: the type of guy who walks down the road in black sunglasses not because he can't afford a car but because spirit told him to. I perked up once I saw him, I offered a nod as we passed each other: "Thanks for Being".

The second time I saw him he was walking in Williamsburg, why in heavens brought him to Williamsburg? Still shirtless-- who is he?

The third time I saw him, two monthes later, he was running across the street as the red don't walk hand flashed and then asserted a full STOP. He jogged past me and I felt a gasp of his energy in me. What a stranger- have you seen him? I hope to again.

Old Cabin in Ananda Forest

Iced Coffee with a dash of Coconut Milk

Who Knew?

Bhagavane

“There are many ways to reach God, I have chosen the path of dance and music”-- Rumi

Before they were Gurus so many cosmic beings were singers. I thought of this while reading Amma's Biography: “The Biography of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi”.

It is no coincidence that Amma is always surrounded by song; She is introduced as a humanitarian and a saint but it makes just as much sense to define her job title as what she has been for the longest time: a singer.

Since she was a little girl she spontaneously wanted to sing to God with the name of Krishna. She composed songs then and still writes them now. Song is a direct expression of her bliss. “Love is my religion”, She says, and Her singing is the direct expression of that love. So it goes for so many divine voices-- love, god and song all go together. Even the essential vedic text is called “The SONG of GOD” -- .

There is a beautiful song by Amma “Bhagavane” (Oh Lord), and Amma's biography recounts the circumstances that inspired the song.

In her teenage years, after already meditating deeply throughout her early life, Amma started to go into deep spiritual experiences and would be able to interact with people from a deep level of meditation. People were healed, people felt the divine energy, and word began to spread. People were travelling to see her, witness the Krisha Bhava and be showered by Blessings.When she had started going into Krishna Samadhis-- where she would dissolve in to the presence of Krishna, embody Krishna- representing him in human form.

When Amma sang out to God what would become the song “Bhagavane, Bhagavane”, things had never been so good and so and so bad for Amma and Her family. Their quirky daughter who preferred to sleep under the sky and had sabotaged multiple wedding arrangements was now in touch with God and making quite a stir. Amma had come in touch with her cosmic love to spread in the world, but there were skeptics.

People came from all over Kerala to see Her in the early days. Some just wanted to see what the fuss was about. Others were against Her. Amma learned from an early age that there is always going to be someone raining on your soul's parade. But she just wiped the dew drops off her shoulder and kept bringing her bliss, trusting Love conquers All.

The song “Bhagavane, Bhagavane” is lulling and melancholy. Like a funeral hymn of deceased false beliefs, it is sung with a triumphant heart but a bruised body. It reminds me of the songs Bob Marley wrote when going to prison or when Tupac would get serious.

In life there are times when something cuts to the heart and then there is this wide open call: this song sings from all all that is there:
The lyrics say: “Are there only unrighteous people in the world?!
O Lord, O Lord! (Bhagavane, Bhagavane!)
Who is there to instruct us in the righteous path?
The essential principles of the Vedas are only found printed on the pages of books...
O Lord, O Bhagavan! What one sees is just
False costume and trumpery.
O Kanna, please protect and
Restore righteousness!

It's often echoed that the bliss of resting in the Heart cannot be put into words; it's also agreed that song comes closest to the experience. For this reason so many pilgrims have broken out into song to express the feelings that want to rush in to the world.
Those souls who have tended to the gardens of their hearts pour forth with words like nectar. My our hearts follow the path of blossoming in their right time, too.

Summer sails by...

And sometimes you just have to enjoy the in between.

Are we ever really “there” in our lives? It is rare and precious indeed when we feel the moment is all there is and all we need. These peak moments are blessings and between them we just have to enjoy the steady stream of life. I've hankered for explosive experiences and am having to accept that sometimes life is just life, it is a coat of many colors and the florescents wouldn't look so bold if there weren't grey days for them to stand out against.

Yesterday I ate lunch with a gentleman visiting from the city. We sat at a wood picnic table shade provided by a mature pine tree. Doesn't this in itself sound like enough? But of course in that moment it seemed very ordinary, very fleeting, just another moment in my long, busy day. He was talking about Walden Pond, which is near the Ashram. The book, he thought, was actually pretty boring. It is essentially Thoreau's journals and they are often mundane and tiresome: lists describing provisions he brought or wildlife he saw that day, and simple descriptions of daily routines. It's no Sex and the City-- but shouldn't that be enough? Chop wood, carry water the Zen saying goes, just 'being here now'.

I heard about the singer Vashti Bunyan in a magazine interview with Devenda Banhart-- she is his favorite singer. It was one of the greatest music tips I ever got, thank you Mr. Banhart. For the next 6 months I listened to “Just Another Diamond Day” every morning when I woke up. It was like a prayer at the beginning of my day, an invocation. It describes the elemental beauty of the cotidian: “Just another Diamond Day, Just a blade of grass. Just another diamond day, and the horses pass”.

“Diamond Day” is suggesting the same way of seeing as Blake's famous line's:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour.

Blake celebrates the human talent to transform the banal into beauty. This is the great action of art-- a transfiguration by the fire of imagination. Our mind's aren't trained like this, though. It is a potent soul who is able to keep their power to see the beauty of the world in the rush and hub hub of our disposable modern age.

Being in nature reminds us how we are organic, too and we're part of this organism called Earth; we are connected. It's so easy to lose this connection and just vacuum up the grain of sand in the weight of our daily chores. We have to keep remembering and revering the sand, Tipping our hour glasses of conciousness towards eternity.