Everything Is As It Should Be

I recently enjoyed a reunion, of sorts, with a group of guys I started working with over 20 years ago.  Going in to this experience there were numerous opportunities for trouble.  There was a guy who battled addiction and has been clean for over a decade walking back in to the lion's den.  There was a guy who had been fired for being a jerk, and left numerous ruined and ravaged relationships with friends and family in his wake.  There were ex girlfriends attending this event alongside current wives.  There were guys who went on to have successful alternative careers, while others toiled away in the same career.  There were all sorts of things that made it challenging.  Two of the guys had spent those years on a spiritual quest.  They used to be united by this, but one found Christianity and the other Buddhism (that's me, of course) and are now, seemingly, divided by ones inability to accept the others ways.

In spite of all of these things, the weekend was stupendously amazing.  The bad blood washed away with hugs and handshakes.  The career choices mattered not at all in the face of a bond between this band of brothers that is still stronger than jobs and talent and charisma and which transcends time and practice.  Old flames were warm and friendly but cold by comparison to the heat of familial love.  Old demons cringed in the awesome power of life lived with love and presence.  It was simply, astoundingly, amazing.

It was rewarding for me to see in many ways, but watching all of this I couldn't help but be amazed by the dharma of interbeing everywhere I looked.  I looked around at these people who are really like a family to me, and I realized to my astonishment that any one of these great families, partnerships, friendships...any one of them...might not exist today if not for the choices we made back then.  Good choices, bad choices...they all led here.  And "here" was a beautiful thing.  It was just humbling and beautiful to see.

At the height of the celebration, in the middle of beautiful chaotic creativity, I stood - took a few deep breaths - looked around and smiled.  It was truly one of the greatest moments of my life.  I'm grateful, on this Thanksgiving Day, for all that has led me to where I am today and made me capable of seeing that moment for what it was.  I'm being intentionally vague here, in the interest of others' anonymity, but I hope you've followed the point.  The point is that everything is as it should be.  Enjoy it.

A Jazz Koan

I have written in the past, on more than one occasion, about music and how it has effected me in my health, wellness or spiritual pursuits.  I've talked about Ben Harper's "With My Own Two Hands" and how it is a very "Buddhish" sort of song.  I've written about trumpet virtuoso and legend, Jack Sheldon, and how I experienced a deep and profound sense of involvement in the song and music of his that I was listening to one day.  Well, today, I experienced a similar event of both of those things combined.

I woke up in my hotel room, did my usual morning Tai Chi, practiced my morning meditation, and spent some time reviewing my vision board, as usual.  I then packed everything up and set out for the airport to make my way back home to my family.  In the car, I turned on XM/Sirius' fantastic jazz station "Real Jazz" and drove along enjoying the music.

The show was "American Jazz" and it was focusing on the music, performed by a variety of artists, of legendary writer Jerome Kern.  Having grown up on jazz, I have a pretty good familiarity with a lot of it.  The song that caught my attention was a Jerome Kern piece, with lyrics by Hammerstein,  being performed by Etta Jones called "Why Was I Born".  This was a new song to me.  After hearing it, having the experience I am writing about, I decided to look in to it's history. Then, while researching it so that I could write about it, I now realize why I wasn't familiar with it.  It's from origins are from Broadway, which I've never followed much.

Anyhow, whether because of the relaxed, meditative, state of mind I was in or just because I was in the moment, I found myself amazed and deeply involved with this song.  From the light-footed starting jog of the drums, to the stunningly elegant vocal interpretation of this classic song which - as often was the case for her career - brings to mind the passion of Billie Holiday mixed with the clear sharp energy of Dinah Washington, this song grabbed my attention right from the start!



I mentioned her elegant interpretation...this seems to be the reason she left out the first verse of the original Hammerstein lyrics.  I am guessing at this, as my research on this song was quite conflicting and tells nothing of how the lyrics were changed or why.  From what I could find, it was originally written for a late 20's show.

Whatever the reason for the lyric change, it's that change that made this song so noticeable to my "Monkey Mind".  As though she were a Zen Master re-imagining this song as a Koan, Jones starts off asking:
 
Why was I born?
Why am I living?
What do I get?
What am I giving?

And then she exhibits those old cravings that we're all familiar with at one time or another in our lives.  The craving for love.  She asks with pleading power:

Or why do I want for things, 
I dare not hope for?
What can I hope for?
I wish I knew.
Why do I try, to draw you near me?
Why do I cry?  You never, never, never hear me.
I'm a poor fool, but what can I do?
Oh, why was I born to love you?

These eternal questions, sung with such hope, pain, love, passion and determination fill the listener with every ounce of emotion possible from a song, I feel.  The lyrics give way to a scandalous,  bourbon flavored sax lead that is equally filled with the feeling of these burning questions on the human condition.

All of this, mixed with my mood, led me to ponder - perhaps taking all this a little too far, but enjoying it none the less - what IS music, and (a question I have pondered for most of my life) why do some songs bring lyrics, music, artistry, vocals, talent, words and everything that goes in to a performance together in such a way that they profoundly effect you more than others?  Is great music because of a singer?  The songwriter?  The musicians?  Can the magic happen because of just one of them, or is it the inter-connectedness of them all, in some perfect dose, that does it?  Or is it more?

If you've ever gotten chill-bumps from listening to a good song, you know what I am referring to.  It happened almost any time I listened to my dad play, which at that young age I attributed to hero worship.  The next time I encountered it, I was working for a rock band.  That spine tingling feeling was the reason I was there.  I heard them play for the first time ever, and was struck by the same feeling I had gotten listening to my Dad play.  It wasn't every song, in fact it wasn't even every show.  But every now and then, the atmosphere would sort of click in to place at the club, and MAGIC would happen!  It's quite an experience, and I know a lot of people who have experienced it, usually at live shows.

I don't know what it is but I do believe, just as I spoke of in my Jack Sheldon post, that when it happens, we are TRULY in the moment with the music.  I am beginning to think that what this feeling is, is very similar to what I have heard described by people who have experienced extraordinary meditation states.  The feelings described are similar, and the reason makes sense to me.  Perhaps it is in these moments that we are touching, at it's most fundamental level, the inter-connectedness of the entire universe, or at least of mankind.

Too deep?  I don't know, but it makes good sense to me.  Check this song out, but more importantly be sure you spend some time listening to your very favorite music while being FULLY present in the act of listening to it.  It's an experience worth having, regardless of my musings above!

I would LOVE to hear of similar experiences from any of you readers!  That's the whole reason we're titled MondoSamu after all!

MondoSamu

Tron - A legacy of Buddhism?!

I had the childhood-fantasy-fulfilling, special-effects-sploding, Daft-Punk-rocking, Geek-tacular pleasure on Friday of seeing the (nearly thirty years in the making) Tron: Legacy movie, and surprisingly the first thing I wanted to do was write this post!

Why, you might - rightly - ask yourself, would I want to write about a Disney special effects computer geek movie on my weight loss and mindfulness blog? Well let me tell you....

First off, I held off writing this until a fellow meditating-mindful-blogging-geek-buddy of mine had a chance to see it simply because I know he reads this and I didn't want to spoil it for him or anyone else.

That said, I have read TONS of reviews all over the web, and all my geekiest friends have seen it now, so I feel free to write briefly about it here. Don't worry, I will not be telling anything at all about the movie EXCEPT for one thing....

FLYNN IS A BUDDHIST!

For all you normal folks out there to whom "Tron" doesn't stir childhood memories and excitement, you can stop reading after the next line and you'll be just fine. If you are about to stop reading at this point, I have only one thing to say - GO SEE TRON LEGACY, because it's just a great, fun, excellent movie!

Now...for the rest of us...

I don't have a ton to say, again because I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, but I want to tell anyone who has an interest in both Tron AND Buddhism to be prepared to LOVE the sequel far more than you might have realized you would. Personally, I was not terribly excited about the Tron movie other than at the prospect of a new Daft Punk Tron Soundtrack! I felt that Hollywood was going to royally screw this one up. I had a bad feeling it was going to be Highlander all over again, where they take an iconic movie, years later, and bastardize it in to something you're embarrassed to say you watched.

Boy was I wrong. First of all, as you would expect, the technology for making a movie like this is PERFECT right now. The computer generated images that were a DREAM in those days, are a common reality today, so the look - we all knew - was going to be great. What scared me was the story. I was worried it would be horrible.

Suffice it to say that they came up with some really good, plausible stuff (stop laughing - I mean plausible with regard to the implausible movie idea). I won't get in to any details, but I sat in a full theater watching this movie and laughing at all the spots they expected us to, along with everyone else. I dropped my jaw in amazement at all the same things everyone else did, and uttered all the same "YEAH!"'s as everyone else when one of the bad guys got turned in to so many tiny blocks of bad data.

What was strange though was how often I laughed out loud at something in the movie when NO ONE else did. I kept seeing things pointing to a very Zen story line and it just made me chuckle at the irony, the well thought out story, and the GREAT delivery mechanism for the Buddhist plot. I kept laughing - incredulously and happily - because I saw so much of myself and my friends in this movie, and because Flynn is such a Badass Buddhist!

Jeff Bridges, who plays both Kevin Flynn and CLU, actually worked with Zen Master, Bernie Glassman to bring Flynn's Buddhism to life in the movie in the most realistic applicable way possible. You can find tons of interviews with Bridges discussing this, as well as Glassmans' site ZenPeaceMakers.org.

I'll leave it at that, but please - do yourself a favor - go see it. It's chock full of the Buddhist way! You will appreciate it for that regardless of your geekdom!

It's all summed up for me by old man Flynn when he says "It's BioDigital Jazz, Man!"

Enjoy,
MondoSamu

PS - One more thing....if you are a man of an age to have been mad about Tron when it came out, but you're still a kid enough to enjoy toys that you're probably too old to be enjoying....then you really need to check out the Tron Merchandise! There's some serious toys for big boys and there's kids toys that will have you pretending to shop for your nephew at Toys'R'Us!  Dig it:

"I'm JUST a Bill"

I write, and talk, a lot about mindfulness. Mindfulness, essentially, is just being in the moment and not being distracted by other things. When you read books like "Savor" about mindfulness they often talk about things like when you eat, you should eat mindfully and enjoy the food, without watching television or listening to music and such. Another example is when you walk mindfully, it's a good idea to not listen to an iPod the whole time, but to enjoy the sites and sounds around you and live in that moment as well.

These things are all certainly true and helpful. I've done them. I used to use an iPod in the airport, when walking, while waiting in lines. I have stopped that, and thus have stopped a lot of music listening as well. This has been a bitter-sweet thing for me. While the quality of my mindfulness has exponentially improved, my time spent listening to music - a thing that I derive tremendous joy from - has greatly been reduced.

At least, that's how it seems at first.

However, when you really get in to mindfulness and improve your practice of it, you may find that when you take time to listen to music mindfully then that is greatly enhanced as well. See, I guess the point the teachers are making is that when you are walking AND listening to music, you are not necessarily doing either one fully or fully enjoying either one.

So, since I started my mindful walking and other mindful activities, I had been missing music a lot. I'm a life-long music lover, and I get tremendous enjoyment from almost all forms of music. So the purpose of this post is to talk about the moment I had recently (and the many times since then) when I realized what they mean by that whole thing about not doing either thing fully when you do both.

I was really wanting to listen to some jazz recently (again, I like all music for the most part, but I was raised on jazz and it's the first music I ever knew). I fired up the 'ol iPhone 4 and Pandora to get my Jack Sheldon Station going.

Jack Sheldon is a living legend. The guy's is a true genius when it comes to music and entertainment. Whether you like Jazz music or not, you are probably already a Jack Sheldon fan, even if you've never heard of him. He's been making incredible music for several decades and is still going strong. Most of us, especially those who were kids in the 70's, will remember Mr. Sheldon as the voice of "Bill" in the Schoolhouse Rock song "I'm just a Bill". Also, he was the voice in Conjunction Junction". He was frequently playing and performing on Merv Griffin, was a semi-regular actor on Dragnet, parodied himself as "Bill" on an episode of the Simpsons. He's played on Tom Waits albums, performed with countless others, and has run several of his own bands as well. Jack has also been an actor, made soundtracks, performed with many other famous artists, and more. The guy is simply incredible. To this day, he still plays live a few days a week in Los Angeles.

Anyhow, I had the Pandora Station playing and was simply sitting and listening to music, while doing nothing else. My only purpose was to enjoy the music. This Pandora Station I created played 1997's "Jack's Blues" from the "Live at Don Mupo's Gold Nugget" record and then some of his trumpet virtuoso work on other songs, and then moved on to other artists such as "Stan Getz meets Chet Baker" and more.

Listening MINDFULLY to this music, I not only liked it, not only enjoyed it, but I lived it! It was FANTASTIC! When you listen that intently to these songs (or any) you hear things you don't normally notice, you get the feelings the music is trying to put across and you are transported - as if by magic - to the place the artist wanted you to go. Ultimately, this is what most musicians want more than anything. They want their music to be heard and felt and understood in this magical way that expresses what they felt when they created it for us. It's something that you can't get when you're doing other things and listening to music as background filler.

This is nothing new, and I am not claiming to have uncovered a great mystery. I just realized that this is something that I haven't done in years...probably since when I first became a hard core fan of music in the first place! For me - a married man, with a kid and a full time job and all the life responsibilities that come along with that - it's easy to forget. It's so easy to listen to music while driving, to listen when working, but to never REALLY listen.

So whether it's Reggie Watts special brand of comedy/music, or Jack Sheldon's virtuoso jazz Trumpet, or Johnny Cash, or Nirvana, or Ben Harper, or Eminem or WHATEVER type of music you love...take some time in your busy day to listen to it only for the sake of enjoying strictly that music.

Then, furthermore, apply that same complete mindful attention to the other things in your life that you like to do but don't ever do without multi-tasking. When you read a book, don't have the TV going in the background. Breathe in, and out, clearing your mind before you settle in to read and marvel at how deeply immersed you get in the world of your book. If you ride a bike for enjoyment, put all your concerns out of your mind before your next ride, and revel in the feel of the wind on your face, and the ground flying beneath your feet.

You get the idea, and it sounds like such an obvious and simple idea. But you'll probably notice when you perform these favorite things of yours, that you will realize how long it's been since you've done these things to the exclusion of all else. I hope it will be as refreshing and enjoyable for you as it was for me.

When poor old "Bill" was lamenting that he was "Just a Bill, sittin on Capitol Hill" he was sad because he was focused on becoming a law. There's a powerful lesson there, one that perhaps wasn't even intended. But I would suggest that you learn that lesson from Bill as well. The lesson that you should enjoy being "just" a Bill. Enjoy every moment IN the moment.

Who knew Schoolhouse Rock was teaching us Buddhist lessons!?

Enjoy Mindfully!
MondoSamu

Wonderful week of mindful fun!

Hello all! Sorry this week has been light on posts, but I was in Trinidad for a week. I worked hard, played hard, ate like a king - yet mindfully, lost two pounds in spite of it, enjoyed the local music, saw live bands, hung out with many locals and made great new friends, shared mindfulness with them, discussed their current events such as the 14 school girls who were demonically possessed (top news story on all channels that week), went boating around the island and much more.

It was a great week of fun and work, and now I'm back! I'll post some of the poignant mindful moments as I can, but wanted to quickly let everyone share some of the enjoyable sights I caught on film. More soon!

MondoSamu

Change the World, with Your Own Two Hands

On my way to vote this morning, I took a few minutes at the voting location to have a brief mindful walk and think about the items and positions up for a vote.  Afterward, as I waited in line to vote, I listened to some music on my iPhone to keep from overhearing people talking about politics. One of my least favorite things about voting is having to listen to people in line argue about politics.


Anyhow, I was listening to one of my favorite artists, Ben Harper, and a song came on from the Diamonds on the Inside album called With My Own Two Hands, or sometimes known as just Two Hands.

As I listened, and being in the frame of mind for voting as well as having spent some time doing my Tai Chi and meditating and all, the words of the song had a particular sense of meaning to me today.  I've always loved this song, but I really saw deeply in to the lyrics today and it occurred to me that they represent a pretty good summation of how to live life.  Here's the lyrics for you to enjoy, and I would invite you to check out the song if you really want a treat.

With My Own Two Hands by Ben Harper

i can change the world
with my own two hands
make a better place
with my own two hands
make a kinder place
with my own two hands
with my own
with my own two hands

i can make peace on earth
with my own two hands
i can clean up the earth
with my own two hands
i can reach out to you
with my own two hands
with my own
with my own two hands

i'm gonna make it a brighter place
i'm gonna make it a safer place
i'm gonna help the human race
with my own
with my own two hands

i can hold you
with my own two hands
i can comfort you
with my own two hands
but you got to use
use your own two hands
use your own
use your own two hands

with our own
with our own two hands
with my own
with my own two hands


In the lyrics of this one little song, lie great words of wisdom on how to help others, how to help yourself, help the Earth, deep reflection, great hope and an overall representation of Interbeing.

What a nice way to launch my day!
MondoSamu