The Bridge Between.

For a copy of my gripping book; The Bridge Between, please contact Susan Randall; madhurta@magma.ca. or call; 819 459 1160.  The cost is 14.00 cdn., which includes postage within North America . 

The Flowers.

Early morning in Kullu, when the sun streams in through my tall porch windows, I like to sip a coffee while watching pheasants flutter around the bushes and trees in my yard.  They wag their long, colorful tails up and down instead of from side to side.  They look in my windows, as curious about me as I am about them.  Eventually, I lie back down on the bed and a channel, a steady and intoxicating stream of consciousness inevitably opens up, flowing through me, carrying me along its current to a place I like even more. 

I’ve had a lot of time to hang out in that place lately.  I’ve been staying home, sick with something exotic such as malaria, or maybe it’s just a simple, garden-variety flu.  But, let’s not quibble.  I’ve been sticking close to home and that’s the main point, lying on my bed drifting, dreaming, standing by the sink gargling, drinking; walking in the yard coughing, wheezing, sitting in the garden, watching.

About ten days ago, I put in some nice flowering plants, a couple of ancient stone carvings, for effect, and cut back the shrubbery.  Of course, it takes a while for plants to proliferate and for flowers to flower.  And I’m not at all against instant gratification, in principal.  So I trundled off to the spring crafts fair in town and bought some silk flowers, put them in an urn and put the urn in the new garden for something bright to look at immediately.

As I sat there, I soon realized that I wasn’t the only one enjoying the new, silk flowers.  A big old bumblebee came along and alighted onto one of them, buzzing from one to another of them, doing what bumblebees do, I guess.  And, while I am a firm believer in keeping my nose out of other folks’ business, I couldn’t help wondering what that big old bumblebee might be thinking and feeling.  There she or he was sitting on what, to all appearances, was a terribly luscious, bright yellow flower in full bloom, trying to draw out the good stuff only to come up empty.  That’s gotta sting, excuse the expression. 

A second bumblebee sat down upon a neighboring fake flower.  I envisioned that the first bee had called out; ‘Hey, Freddie, come give us a hand will ya? Something’s all messed up here either with me or this friggin flower. I don’t get it. I mean, I really don’t get it.’  While I don’t pretend to know the bumblebee mechanism for extracting nectar from a flower, I do realize that ‘hand’ is probably not the word he or she used.  In any case, the second bee had no better luck, shot me a withering glance, and eventually they both buzzed off in a huff.  And I went back to my bed.   

Of course, whoever may be reading this blog posting would be well within their rights to assume that my description of the bumblebees’ ordeal has been the meanderings of a drug-addled flu sufferer, or maybe it’s malaria.  But, I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.  I perceive that the bees’ frustrating, futile, failure for fulfillment is an apt metaphor for the human condition.  Let’s face it.  We do tend to seek fulfillment where it isn’t, or at least where it isn’t for long. 

According to all the ancient saints and sages, except for St. Leonard of Lascivious, this world is not real because it’s not permanent.  Leonard disagreed, but apparently his heart attacked him while he was fulfilling himself.  The others realized that true fulfillment can only come from directly knowing that one steady stream of consciousness, pure, free and forever, runs through all of God’s creatures, irrespective of color, caste, creed or any differences.        

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Nathan Vanek is also on Facebook.  Feel free to connect that way. 

He's Got Game.

One hears people say; ‘I’m dragging my backside around,’ from time to time.  It’s an almost endearing, enigmatic expression which can mean anything from; ‘I’m waiting for a triple-bypass operation,’ to; ‘I drank too much prune juice last night.’  In my case, it simply means that I played too much basketball again.  And at this time, I mean it quite literally.  I am actually dragging my backside around.  

I would prefer that my backside keep up with the rest of my torso, but it insists on lagging behind, as it were.  I find myself talking to it while trying not to look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame walking down the street.  I cajole it.  ‘For Christmas sake,’ I mutter, red-faced, clenched-teeth, exasperated, ‘could you possibly go any slower (!?) You’re embarrassing me.’  You see, I have always been a sports star in my own mind and I’ve been trying to prove it, to anyone at all, for the past fifty years.   

This unfortunate state of affairs began with hockey. 

My parents enrolled me in an intramural hockey league at a local rink.  I would’ve preferred to remain in my room playing with my pet budgie, named Mr. Cohen, but my parents insisted.  That meant that I could either play hockey or endure a debilitating character assassination, probably several.  So, off I went.   

The coach was duty-bound to play all the kids, only I was really a terrible skater.  He tried to teach me.  He even went out and bought me ankle supports.  It was futile.  He tried me at every position until, one fateful evening, he placed me in goal.  The coach put all the pads on me; he even gently inserted the metal cup over my gentals, a kindness that made me feel mildly uncomfortable.  He threw the mask over my sorry head, tied the skates and pushed me out onto the ice with stick in hand.  And I immediately recognized the first signs of a urinary discomfiture.  It was a little early in life to conclude that God was against me.  Still, I really couldn’t believe my rotten luck.  I was mortified. 

Meanwhile, the puck was dropped.  I was a prisoner within the game, the goal, my pads and my body while a growing panic brought with it a sense of urgency.  From that first moment, I knew I was in trouble.  Within no time, a huge brute of a kid was bearing down on me, stick handling around the defense like a pro until he had a clear path to the goal.  I had a fleeting thought that he looked like some sort of mutant.  Wouldn’t that be illegal, I reasoned (?)  The kid had a breakaway and I was the only obstacle between him and his future.  He made one last nifty move to my left; he shot, I peed, he scored and I never played hockey again. 

Later on, I shifted my attention to football, then baseball, soccer, volleyball, even lacrosse, until I tried basketball.  I was pretty good at most sports, but I instantly fell in love with basketball.  I decided it was my ticket to soaring heights of success.  I practiced day and night. 

Anyway, I returned home one evening to find Mr. Cohen hanging upside-down on his perch, stiff as a board.  In order to allow a respectable period of time for the grieving process, I was late for school that next morning.  So my home-room teacher, a lady whose name, not coincidentally, was also ‘Cohen,’ asked me why I was late.  I told her that I had to bury Mr. Cohen.  There followed a long and rather uncomfortable silence until I finally pointed out that Mr. Cohen had been my pet budgie, recently deceased.  There followed another long and rather uncomfortable silence until she asked, with some apparent difficulty, why I had chosen that particular name for the bird.  I responded that the name had occurred to me, obviously, because of his large beak and that’s when I was sent to the proverbial principal’s office.  I assumed that being from the same ethnic background would afford me a certain artistic license, but apparently not.  

I was suspended from junior high-school for only a few days, but kicked off the basketball team as further punishment.  Later on, I smoked myself off the high-school team, drank myself off the university team, which brings me back to my current inability to walk like a normal human-being.  Be that as it may, once my backside catches up with the rest of me, I imagine I’ll be right back on the court, playing with anyone, anyone at all.  That’s just the way it is.    

The Tidal Wave.

In the meantime, I watched a great movie last night that I found inspiring and uplifting.  That’s what great movies do for us.  It was all about how the leaders of the developed countries of the world banded together, during a G8 summit, to actually eradicate extreme poverty in Africa.  At the end, once I was sitting back in my chair reflecting upon what I had just viewed, I could not help but acknowledge that it was, after all, just a movie.  It wasn’t real.    

Fortunately, my reasoning did not stop there.  I thought about how bold the makers of the movie had been.  The film-makers had done what they could do.  And, I realized, that should not be minimized.  Film-makers can donate money and time, of course, to charities of their choice.  But, as makers of films, that was what they could do for Africa, for the world.

As meditators, we are doing what we can do.  And that should certainly not be minimized, although it so often is.  There may always be poverty.  There will almost certainly be natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis.  There will always be birth and death.  But, there is a lot of scientific data now to prove the positive power of meditation upon ones environment.  Of course, I know I’m preaching to the choir, so to speak, when I say that we should, we must be great, to do what we can do.  All over the world today, there are pockets of souls sitting together in meditation, praying for peace, creating vibrations of oneness and harmony.  We are creating a better world, a tidal wave of unity consciousness washing away our tears. 

To an enlightened mind, this world is a movie, not real.  After it’s over, when an enlightened being sits back and reflects upon what he has just viewed, she cannot help but acknowledge that it was, after all, just a movie.  It wasn’t real.  We know, however, that every character in it was animated by one life, one light, pure, free and forever.  And we continue to meditate on that one love.  That’s what we can do.

The Source of Joy.

Walking away from the Wakefield dental office without my two bottom front teeth was a pivotal moment for me.  At first I thought that perhaps I could tell people I lost them playing hockey, only I don’t play hockey.  I thought I could say I had been mugged, again.  Instead, I gave up all hope.  I’m not sure what I had been holding onto so hard, aside from those teeth, but I smiled to myself then.  I let it go.         

Jack Benny once said that advancing in age is a case of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, he said, it doesn’t matter.  Of course, he was well into his eighties by then.  I was only in my fifties.  And, for the first few moments after my teeth went flying across the clinic floor, it mattered to me.  The world as I knew it had just changed forever.  But, I let it go.  I had to wait a week for the gap to be filled with what they call a ‘partial plate.’  I had to sit in my shop and smile a toothless smile at all the lovely people, but I let it all go.     

It’s really a process of giving up all hope, of a self-image which is impossible to live up to forever, of holding onto a permanency where it never has been, never will be.  It’s really a process of getting over ourselves.  And that happens automatically to everyone with age.  It has to happen.  Some people age gracefully.  Some don’t. 

My old granddad leaned up against a ledge to rest, as we ambled slowly along the hospital hallway, looked out the window, down at a graveyard far below us and said with a wan smile; ‘Well, that’s convenient isn’t it?’  Then he looked over at me.  ‘Howie, Nathan, Handswash or whatever your name is,’ he said fondly, ‘Sometimes you have to smile even when you’re not feeling it.’        

What can help in this process and why we meditate is simply knowledge, an ability to see things as they are, knowledge of what is not permanent and, more to the point, what is permanent.  However, the sort of knowledge I’m referring to is direct.  It’s not theory.  Every thinking, inquisitive human has studied enough Philosophy, Science, and Theology or just thought deeply enough to realize intellectually that there must be a continuum of life beyond our transitory self. 

Meditation is a process of experiencing that continuum directly, first-hand, of experiencing the agency that animates our bodies, the pure essence of what we are.  Then that direct knowledge goes hand in hand with the intellectual knowledge and the aging process.  That’s the whole package.  That’s the holistic knowledge which becomes our rock, our unshakable strength of character.   

I remember just like it was yesterday how I felt upon leaving the Wakefield dental clinic that day as a cold, autumn wind whistled through the gaping hole in my mouth.  It was a strange kind of freedom.  I had embraced my toothless-ness.  It was, after all, likely to be the only thing I was going to embrace for a while.  But, little by little, I began to enjoy smiling a big old smile as people marched through my shop.  I smiled at the brave little girl with no hair.  I smiled at the aged man who was purchasing the carved walking-cane, the young couple in love, anyone, everyone. 

Thich Nath Hanh wrote; ‘Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile.  But, sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.’           

    

Observations of a Gas Jockey.

Bigotry is handed down from generation to generation.  It’s as old as the hills and completely insane. 

A lot of the racial strife in this country dates back thousands of years to when, due to climate change, the light-skinned Indo-Aryans filtered down into the Hindu Kush from the Caspian Sea area, allegedly around fifteen-hundred B.C.  It was the beginning of the caste system in India.  They pushed the darker, indigenous people, later known as Dravidians, south.  Aside from not really liking the look of them, and needing the land for themselves, the Aryans did not appreciate that the Dravidians kept pilfering their cows.  The Dravidians had never seen animals like that before and were strangely drawn to them.      

The Dravidians, on the other hand, didn’t appreciate being pushed around and have been firmly holding onto the grudge ever since.  They largely ended up in what is known as Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka today, where the Tamil Tigers have been fighting for a separate homeland for many years.  In general, the darker-skinned peoples of the land became the lowest caste, the Untouchables, Shudras, even though they were here first.  And, of course, that has been a hot-ticket issue over the years, sometimes leading to horrid violence.  Foreigners, by the way, called Malecha, are even lower on the totem pole than Shudras, although not really in practice.     

I won’t bore you with details of why, historically, Sikhs tend to hate Muslims or why Muslims tend to hate Hindus or why the Hindus tend to, well, be wary of just about everyone.  Suffice it to say, Indians have suffered many foreign conquerors and have become just a wee bit cranky.  It is note-worthy that the Sikhs, for example, started with Guru Nanak preaching oneness and ended up vowing to never cut their hair until all Muslims are driven from the land, agitating for a homeland of their own, Kalistan, in what is the Punjab today. 

Now, one of the attractions for me to move back to Canada, in ’98, was to live in my own birth-culture once again.  I was certainly one of the most integrated into Indian society by then.  I loved and love India.  However, I just felt an overpowering desire to be with my own people, so to speak, at least for a while.  So I went to Canada and, with my customary sound logic, decided to settle down in Quebec.  What’s wrong with that picture, you may ask (?) 

As soon as I fell off the proverbial turnip truck and landed in beautiful, downtown Wakefield, I needed a job.  So I applied at a local Garage where I saw a help wanted sign in the window.  I was immediately rejected because I could not speak French.  The owner, a good old West-Quebec boy, larger than life, who could put the fear of God in anyone, visibly trembled at the thought of the so-called Quebec language police.  It seemed that I could not even get a job as a gas jockey in Quebec.

Everything worked out for me.  Eventually, I even had my own business in Quebec.  But, even then, as an Anglophone business owner in Quebec, there were times when I felt the next logical step was for the Quebec government to round me up and cart me off to a camp somewhere, and not to go paddle-boating.  It became clear that some Quebecois hate the English, some English hate the French.  It’s well known that some people hate the Jews and the blacks, the Irish, the British.  The Sunnis and the Shias have a nasty habit of massacring each other.  Catholics and Protestants have a difficult time of it.  The list goes on and on.  It’s truly enough to give a decent, thinking person a headache.   

Yet, this goes way beyond who is right or wrong, justified or not.  We all breathe the same air, our hearts all pulsate with the same desire for love, all our minds can indeed be turned to Oneness.  And it doesn’t take thousands of years.