Japan Poems 1

Composed in Iga-Ueno Shi and Kyoto, 2005.

it’s not as if
the scattered brick-chips
mind if they
trepass on the
stepping-stones

***

the moth
flies into the side of the bread bag and
turns back around, trying another way.

he hides
behind a box of Japanese hot cocoa mix
and veers once more toward the light.

the totality of moonlight
why must it be
beaming from her face?

***

a squeal of unclassified birds
alerts the rain frogs
rain is over

through one window
two
i look through three windows.

without eye glasses
the mountains could be
demons.

***

the place where i was born
has orchids
blooming with various impressions

the place where i was born
has an outstretched hand
tenderly pinching
bursting with exasperated sweat
crackling from voyages
to long destroyed forest
buildings
rough with the rubbing
of things that look like bones
veiny with death
realization
fresh with
hair of the past present
future.

the place where i was born
was demolished
by government land officials
in search of a better modality
of trans hyper national apple
transplantation

the place where i was born
was wild, swampy, stood still
amongst reptiles, boulders, 10,000 years
of land disagreements, family disputes
and moonlight interpersonal communications

the place where i was born is a prism
reflecting all the other
places i was born

the place where i was born
is truly not
the place where i was born

the place where i was born
was drenched with blood
was soaked with blood
was downright bloody
and the rivers, they say,
were like veins

the place where i was born defies all categories
the place where i was born might have
been called a hospital
the place where i was born was excellent,
reknowned, and intimidating

fierce and grassy, mildly entertaining:
worth visiting once every few years:
subtle and mysterious, humid with
childhood anxiety;
somehow present –

a brick house on a small town road.

***

raindrops keep falling on the roof
and there is a man who can’t go to sleep.

“what makes a person good or not
is how
he can
deal
with adversity.”

thousands of insects died in his room
some trampled by his feet
others just puttered out
from exhaustion. Some of them
had a lust for light
(too strong).

“thousands of mothers
are crying for their sons. Everyone

wants to get real close to the sun, steal some of its light,
bring it home
hide it under
some dry blankets, say it is
theirs.”

dewdrops keep sticking to
his bones, the rain
was going for seven hours or more, the

train was absent until
daybreak, but now it is
always sending out signals of
danger, a perverse alarm
in the rice paddies, letting the

rain frogs

know that it is
time to hide.

***

Oh travelers! oh wanderers
when you stop upon that road
remember where you came from:
no thunder in the valley.

Babies of this amusement park planet
please don’t forget the ticket
has a price:
the rain seeps through bricks.

When you look up, and if,
what do you pay attention to
and is it hard
or soft? a picnic with clouds:
no cows in the streets.

having seen the sky
you won’t have to see it again:
he walks away
stumbling
towards heaven.

more haiku composed in japanese

some more haiku poems I wrote when in Japan in 2005. In Japanese with English translations.

goko o kaite
sensei to itta
“itsutsu no ka?”

write five poems
the teacher said
“five?”

***

kokoro ni wa
taiyou nitte’ru
sonna koto

in my heartmind
it looks like the sun
– that kind of thing

***

onnanoko
niyaniya warau
nande kana

girl
with the broad grin, laughing
i wonder why

***

rafu tatami
shizuka kabe wa ne
shiroi heya

rough tatami mat!
as for the quiet wall
– white room

***

mado o mite
aozora ja nai
tsuyu, ame wa…

look through the window!
that’s not the blue sky:
rainy season, and the rain…?

(this poem was also translated into Spanish by Baxter, who produced two versions:

Mira afuera!
no es el cielo azul;
¿est Elluviendo?

Look outside!
It’s not the blue sky;
is it raining?

Mira por la ventana
Eso no es el cielo azul
estación de lluvias, y la lluvia

Look through the window
that is not the blue sky
rainy season, and the rain)

3.11.08

Bir, Himachal Pradesh

My second day in Bir. I’m staying at Chokling Gonpa, currently in the guest house but soon the monastery, once they have my room painted. Today has been good. Last night I had a had a hard time sleeping due to what I thought was a lack of blankets — what do you know but at around 4 am or probably later I opened up the cabinet next to the bathroom and lo! a cabinet full of blankets — I should have known better than to think that they wouldn’t provide blankets! I woke up late, around 10:30 or later as I remember; went to the internet at Ramu’s — came back to the guest house a little late for check out time, packed my stuff to check out thinking that I’d be moving into a room in the monastery today, and went downstairs to the ground floor, only to be met with “Where are you going?!” by the young monk guest house manager — the monastery room won’t be ready for another day or so, he said, and I should just stay in the guest house until then — so Ok, took my stuff back to my room — I began to meet the monks around this time — one of them, Namgyal, asked me to teach him in the evenings and I agreed to do so — I first saw him with Lama Pema, the older lama who’s coordinating my lodging situation — I was offered lunch by Namgyal, and very shortly after I got back to my room a small Indian, probably Bihari, boy knocked on my door while I was reading ‘Ask and It is Given’, presenting yummy steamed masala-ish vegetables and plain rice — simple but excellent — after lunch I was craving caffeine — so I decided to go get a coffee at the nearby shop Buckstars which I’d never sampled my first time in Bir — on the way, I ran into Pema Jinpa on his motorcyle, presumably looking for me and Namgyal had told me before lunch that he’d come looking for me earlier — I got on his motorcycle for the short short ride to the coffee shop — and I had perhaps my first good coffee in India while talking with PJ about his recent marriage. Our talk was fairly short, he may have been on break from work. Not much seems to have changed for the people I know here; it makes me reflect on how most people’s lives are relatively uneventful compared to mine, and how I often seem to be on a very different rhythm, a different wave-structure life pattern, than most — I’m wondering whether dinner is ready or not — and I think I’ll go check –

3.07.2008

3.07.2008

Tashi Jong, Himachal Pradesh, India, SAMSARA

The lights are currently out and a magnificent storm rages outside. Tashi Jong is a Drukpa Kagyu community, and the symbol of the Drukpa Kagyu sect is the dragon — the druk in Drukpa — and it sounds like there’s some drunken druks waging war in the lofty skies above this usually tranquil valley. Tashi Jong means “Auspicious Valley”.

I thrive off storms like this — they make me feel energized, as if every thunderclap that resounds replenishes some vital energy within, one that can only be vitalized by thunder. Or perhaps it’s a special formula, an elemental elixir that feeds my hungry dynamic energies with one part thunder, one part lightning, one part rain… maybe one part general stormy ambience.

In the dark I’m left with almost no visual faculties to speak of. I now have the luxurious confinement of being forced to ruminate on dragons, ancient yogis, the effects of thunderstorms on mindstreams, and what’s happening in them there hills.

The Fifteen Yogis are out there in them there hills. Maybe they’re thinking of similar things. No doubt their thoughts, whether similar to mine or not, are imbued with more luminous transparency than mine.

The Fifteen Yogis. Usually, it’s the Thirteen Yogis, but for some reason two more are joining the fray right now, probably more for the sake of attaining enlightenment than for adding an unconventional twist to the numbers. Long ago, in a previous incarnation, Khamtrul Rinpoche was wondering how many yogis would be a suitable number to have as retreatants around his monastery. I’m not sure how he arrived at his numerical conclusion, but he ended up with 13. Ever since then, in each of Khamtrul Rinpoche’s lives, and presumably even between lives, it has been tradition to have 13 full-time, lifetime retreatants around Khamtrul Rinpoche’s monastery. I know not whether this is the first time that tradition has been slightly broken. I have a hunch that 13 is a minimum rather than a maximum.

According to Phopa Rinpoche, the Thirteen Yogis are generally retreatants for life, but one their main spiritual goals is to accomplish a 12 year retreat, focusing much of their time on attaining accomplishment in the Six Yogas of Naropa. The Six Yogas of Naropa includes such delightfully esoteric and impressive practices such as Dream Yoga, the Yoga of the Illusory Body, the Yoga of Transference of Consciousness, the Yoga of Inner Heat, the Yoga of Clear Light, and the Yoga of the Intermediate State. After completing the 12 year retreat, some of the yogis will come out from time to time to give teachings, conducts prayer services and ceremonies, and the like.

I wonder whether there is ever a shortage of aspirants for the job, thus forcing the monastery to start drafting people to reach the quota of 13.

“Khamtrul Rinpoche wants YOU to attain unexcelled, complete and perfect enlightenment! Join the 13 Yogis today! Special sign up bonus of 13 yaks for your family if you enlist before Losar!”

I’m even more curious about the possibility of meeting with one of the Thirteen Yogis.

The lights are still out. I contemplate what it would be like if the electricity never came back. There’s no doubt I’d spend less money, and also probably read, write, and study more. And wake up earlier.

…

I want to merge with the storm.

I want to be a giddy daka, jumping from raindrop to raindrop, being pushed this way and that by the fierce winds, but always in control, the skies above Tashi Jong my playground, the rain and wind my seesaw and swings, the lightning-trails a harmless obstacle course, the thunder a joyful punctuating din, adding a dramatic tone to my rythmic raindrop hopscotch.

I miss a step, miscalculate the direction a wind current will take me, and I slide into a grumpy cloud who’s still willing to break my fall: two backwards somersaults and I’m back in the game.

I’m a male sky dancer

I ride the waves of empty space

I’m a pawo: a hero, and all the gandharvas are there to test my resolve to have undistilled fun; all the dakinis are there to cheer me on, but I choose not to see them. I want this to be a lonely game tonight: I’m flying solo, just me and the storm.

The storm at once has no stake in the game, and yet displays giving rise to helpful and harmful intentions, all quite naturally. But all is calm in the storm’s heart. It knows what it is doing. And so do I.

Like the impossibility of the ultimate physical union which the sexual act unspokenly strives for, I attempt to blend seemlessly with the storm, even though I cannot — at least not fully. I take a little bit of it in, and it takes a little bit of me in. Some sort of child is produced by the twain, if nothing else but the exhilaration of contact, the exultation there in the trying.

I’m a sky dancer, baby.

And I’m ready to re-cognize my mind as endless space…

I look out the window. The sky pulses with a red-purple pigment, a kind of radiant opacity. I can’t tell if it’s my eyes playing tricks on me, but it’s thick, weird, surging, and sexy.

The Prayers Wheels at Tashi Jong

what i’ve been doing, roughly

I’ve been in Tashi Jong for the last week, mainly for purposes of exploring my part in the distribution and dissemination of Lama Chodpa incense, a very special blessed incense made by the monks, lamas, and laypeople of Tashi Jong, under the direction of Ven. Phopa Rabjam Tulku Rinpoche, who functionally acts as the mayor/president of Tashi Jong. 

 The stuff is really chock full of precious and blessed substances, and in talking with Phopa Rinpoche, I am discovering more and more blessed substances that are put into the incense. It’s fascinating. The relics of past masters are put into the Lama Chodpa stone soup, and there’s one particular precious pill which claims a powerful effect: The Rainbow Pill, or Jatsunma Pill (Ja means “rainbow”, tsun means “to appear”). Why rainbow? If the Rainbow Pill is given before death, then a rainbow will appear around the time of death. It also protects from rebirth in the lower realms when taken before death. Big claims! Incredible. But this stuff is in the incense. Thus while perhaps not having the exact same effect as if one were to take the pill directly, it can still contribute to a similar benefit.

Also included in the incense are tormas. Tormas are ritual symbolic statue-like offerings which are generally composed of barley, molded into proscribed traditional avant-garde designs which often look like they’re from outer space, and painted with bright colors. These particular tormas are consecrated during the annual long Mahakala puja at Tashi Jong’s monastery, takes place in the fall. After the puja’s conclusion, the tormas are then taken to a special Dharma Protector shrine room, where a designated Dharma Protector practitioner engages in day and night practice of those guardians of the Buddha’s teachings. He does this for one year, until the beginning of the next year’s Mahakala puja. The year-old tormas, now suffused with the blessings of one year of Dharma Protector practice, are then put into the incense.

There’s also something about the flesh of masters being in the incense, and the blessings from this flesh naturally increasing with time. I didn’t quite catch that in its entirety, so I’ll have to re-interrogate Phopa Rinpoche on that one! It certainly sounded interesting.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to, and why I’ve been in Tashi Jong: Lama Chodpa Incense. Other things have been at the forefront of my experience, and have taken up quite a bit of time: Ajay’s 3 day wedding, which was one of the most intensive cultural experiences I’d ever had, as well as the best time I’ve ever had dancing (these people love dancing so much and it is so beautiful), as well as being very sick for about 3 days (all of them during the wedding — I finally feel better as of today).

Tashi Jong was recognized by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and other lamas as being the Pure Land of Manjushri, the Buddha of Wisdom. This alone makes me want to stay there.

It is really a magical place. So much more quiet and laid back than any other Tibetan community I’ve been to. The population is very small, only around 1000, perhaps half of them being Tibetan. The landscape is mind-blowingly heavenly. There have been so many times when I thought, ‘I must have died and gone to heaven”. It’s like a perfect blend of traditional Tibetan and Indian culture, in a cloistered, quiet, gorgeous, very spiritual valley, where the people tend to radiate warmth and good feeling. 

So I’m falling in love with it. What can I say.

And proceeds from Lama Chodpa incense go directly to support the people of Tashi Jong. I want to help this village. It deserves it.

I can and will be an instrumental force in revitalizing the local community, bringing  prosperity and well being to its members. And all the while, making money to support my own Tibetan language studies here in India… as well as the benefit, blessing, and merit that everyone who buys and smells the incense receives.

 Currently, I’m looking into teaching English at Tashi Jong’s monastery/philosophical institute Khamapagar in exchange for room and board. I don’t have much money, and I came here with the intention of teaching English at Chokling Gompa in Bir, but at this point I want to stay in Tashi Jong, given the most auspicious connection I’ve made with that most lovely of villages.

May all beings have all temporal and ultimate joy and happiness, from the tiniest of pleasures up to and including complete enlightenment!

SARVA MANGALAM. May excellent virtue increase!

3.02.2008

3.02.2008

Paprola, Himachal Pradesh,

The Noble Land of India (Tibetan: Gya-gar Phag-pa’i Yul)

  Sitting here in Paprola again, at what I think is the only internet “café” in town, with two computers in its cyber-arsenal. Tashi Jong just got 1 computer, my friend Rana’s father’s international phone place. When I walked down from the colorful festivities of Ajay’s wedding, down past the breakbeat Indian village dancing, over through the verdant wheat fields - the greenest green this man has ever seen - Rana Sr.’s shop was a closed blue metal garage door. At that very moment a taxi was taking off, and I ran to catch it. A Tibetan family was on their way somewhere, and I got in next to the father. He didn’t seem to happy about not having his daughter next to him, as she was displaced to the front seat due to my ghetto taxi hitch tactics. Spontaneity doesn’t always leave everyone pleased.

In India, international phones are referred to as STDs. Communicable diseases. Communication is diseased, in most cases. Diseases propagate themselves. Health and well being is innate, but it’s the diseases which get the headline news.

Buddhism says that both well being and sickness are innate. Well being is nirvana, one’s buddhanature, which is timelessly the case, always there from the very beginningless beginning. It’s what’s really there. We just don’t usually experience it due to our emotional and cognitive obscurations. Sickness is samsara, the self-perpetuating round of bewilderment, confusion, negative emotions, and misunderstanding. It’s superficial. It characterizes most of our experience. It’s not really there, ultimately. Sickness is what we go through due to our emotional and cognitive obscurations.

There is something about India. As if whatever you want automatically appears. Just a few moments ago was a case in point. I wanted a cup of chai. Even in India, which is inherently stimulating, I need my caffeine. I was intending to ask the shop owner if he could tell me how to order a cup. Suddenly a boy appears with a freshly steaming cup of that sweet sugar-milk goodness. “For me?” His response was some kind of affirmation. But really, it’s been like that. People are tuned in. Like how the taxi suddenly appeared - and like how so many other things have happened in the 5 ½ days I’ve been here, seemingly perfectly aligned, perfectly arranged, exactly in accordance with need, desire, and inclination. Exactly in accordance with something that I can’t even conceptually fathom, perhaps. 

I was beginning to write a piece about this in my moleskin journal, which I unfortunately lost on the bus to Baijnath. This felt-sense of psychic communication which seems to operate in this country. It was prompted by the fact that shortly before I boarded the bus, a man appeared and sold me a combination pen/flashlight. “Only ten rupees sir.” It was truly what I needed, a pen and a flashlight.

So what could this psychic phenomena be chalked up to? I wondered.

Well, first of all, I need to say that, the fact that India as a country works at all must be the workings of some kind of supernormal apparatuses at work. A land of contradictions, indeed, even in the most broadly generalized conceptual terms: a seemless mix of chaos and harmony, of suffering and happiness, of the ancient and modern.

Well, first, there’s the religions. India has a yogic tradition going back at least 5000 years, which claims to be able produce psychic, extrasensory, powers. Even omniscience, in the case of Buddhism. Omniscience aside, it is not thought strange in the context of the yogic traditions of India to be able to read thoughts. This is actually considered a pretty mundane accomplishment. These people were doing meditation, yoga  and contemplating the ultimate nature of reality, on a large scale when most of my ancestors were trying to figure out how to build houses.

Of course, most Indians aren’t yogis or sadhus. But there’s little doubt in my mind that India has produced the most sophisticated forms of spiritual practice. There’s lots of evidence that Hinduism and Buddhism even influenced Christianity and Islam, even at the early start of their careers- it’s actually pretty undeniable. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism had highly developed forms of prayer, contemplation, devotional practices, yoga, meditation hundreds of years before Christianity and Islam.

Over the course of so many thousands of years, it’s not too much to conjecture that India’s religious traditions, which were always so central to it’s culture, would pervade the human evolution of its people - including the psychic phenomena which its traditions can produce - reading others’ thoughts and emotions, intuiting the future, etc.

India’s religions put such a strong emphasis on the third eye, the chakric energy center of intuition, vision, insight, wisdom, and knowledge. I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that Indians have such large, beautiful, penetrating, knowing eyes. Which in my experience, seem to go straight to your heart.

3.01.2008

3.01.2008 CEPaprola, Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, The Noble Land of India

Sitting in Paprola (not sure about the spelling), the closest town to Tashi Jong, the heavenly little Tibetan community I’ve been living in for the last few days. So much has happened. I just got a haircut and a shave for the whopping price of 20 rupees (about 50 cents), with after-cut chai included. Today is so beautiful; the sun shines like a radiant deity bestowing blessings, empowerments, and tan lines. I’ve been taking lots of pictures, which I hope to put on here soon. This trip has thus far been seemingly endless waves of auspiciousness, beauty, fun, and opportunities. It feels like I am becoming much more self-realized in the process.

In New York, I met Remy, a 26 year-old neurobiologist and musician from Quebec, who came to India to study sitar, intending to find a sitar master in Varanasi. We hit it off quickly, especially when we found out we had the same book on the Law of Attraction - his in French, mine in English - Abraham-Hicks’ ‘Ask and It is Given’ (Note: I highly recommend this book to anyone. It has already changed my life considerably. I plan on writing blogs on Abraham-Hicks’ teachings in the future. Buying the book in New York has turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made in a while).

I’m going to switch computers - to be continued.

Kuwait Airlines

My trip from New York to Delhi on February 24th was the first time I’d ever flown on Kuwait Airlines. The name alone is enough to strike fear, or at the very least some aversion, in the average American’s heart: when I related the company I’d be flying with this time around, the responses were almost always a mixture of apprehension, concern, and humor. Of course, most people my age and a little bit younger can remember how Kuwait becamse a household name during the early 90s’ Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and we came to the heroic aid of their oil (some say people).

When I asked the travel agent I’d booked the ticket with whether I had anything to worry about during my 5 1/2 layover in Kuwait, his response was somewhat reassuring; in the way that something can be reassuring because you intuit that it is probably mostly true but at the same time the person doing the reassuring is mainly doing so for business purposes. Echoes bouncing off echoes. At the nanosecond of this present writing moment, I am yet to land in Kuwait, and thus unable to verify Sonny the Indian New Jersyan travel agent’s words: ‘Oh really sir it’s no problem, people this totally wrong conception of it, it is actually quite a nice place, and after all it’s an international airport, and where you’ll be there is security everywhere…”

It’s not that I’m worried.

But apparently I’m one of the brave ones, judging by the sheer number of empty seats on the plane — at present I would estimate that less than 45% of the seats are full, and of those few appear to be Americans of the caucasian persuasion. Certainly the most empty international flight I’ve ever seen. I kind of like that, actually.

“Want to fly to India practically alone? Come join us at Kuwait Air!”

The service is alright — worse than Jet Air, the Indian airline I flew with last time, but better than most American airlines, which these days seems to not be saying much. The seat-screens are funky, looking like a cross between a Desert Storm video transmission and a Nintendo game. The map of the world that is shown in rotation with other flight information reminds me of the “this is what you must conquer” world maps from early ’90s war strategy video games. Most of the flight information is in Arabic, with the occasional English, which makes me wonder whether they just don’t do many international flights, or if the same renegade Japanese Nintendo programmer who designed the beauties has a thing for consistency or a preference for the swirling Arabic script.

Probably just convenient that way, I realize.

Quickly approaching Kuwait City, I look at one of the very few maps that has English translations, and see what I envision as a connect-the-dots map of all the cities that most of have heard of, but very few of us have ever visited: Abu Dhabi, Tehran, Baghdad, Medina. And then some: Makkah, Bahrain, Riyadh, Doha. Even sweet old Athens is there, hanging out in the northwest… A reminder that Western and Middle Eastern cultures are closer than most of us care to think – historically, geographically, and culturally.

Prelude to a 12 Hour Himalayan Bus Ride

Currently 3:11 PM. Delhi. A little over 2 hours until boarding the Haryana Roadways doubedecker “sleeper” bus to Baijnath — the closest busstop to Bir. Quebec Remy is coming with me, I managed to convince him to come, for the creative benefit of all dear little sentient beings. Due to lots of background noise inhibiting my ability to think clearly, I’ll transcribe the bus ticket:

 HARYANA ROADWAYS

I.S.B.T. DELHI

RESERVATION SLIP

Date of Journey: 27-2-08                 Serial No.: 4347

Name:                                                  Plat Form No.: 8

Station From: Delhi                           To: Baijnath

Dep. Time: 18:00                                Seat No.: 37-38

No. of Passengers: 2                           Fare Rs.: 704

Sig. of Reservation Clerk:                  Reservation Charges: 2

                                                                Total: 706

Note:-

1. Reservation slip/Tickets strictly non transferable

2. Passengers travels at their own risk & responsibility

3. Please report 15 minutes before the departure time.

4. Passengers are requested to travel with light luggage.

5. Passengers are requested to get the Reservation slip. Exchanged from Plat Form window before Boarding the Bus.