I'm an old guy and I've decided I have just said too damn many words.
From
winning public speaking contests a hundred years ago in high school to
touring as a professional storyteller to playing music on stages and
fronting a band to having had a three hour a day talk show on an ABC
News/Talk format radio station, the yakking has gone on and on.
That
part of me was on a collision course with another bigger and more
important part of my life -- a spiritual journey that has gone on as
long as I can remember, from Christian to Buddhist to traditional
Christian mystic to what is known as Advaita Vedanta. As well, you can
mix in one part Quaker, where in weekly Meetings there were both moments
of intense silence as well as occasional, "inspired" speaking. So many
ways, but so many words. Shake and stir. As if "talking words" were not
enough, let's just pile on a few of my books, stage plays and
screenplays for good measure.
Now, as time dwindles, I
find myself in the role I never anticipated. Living alone in the
strange, often hostile city where I was born. Dependent upon things like
Social Security Disability and the remarkable medical treatment of the
community hospital and clinics. After years of friends and band members
and a wife around me, and, my Ace in the whole, beloved children now are
grown or traveling the world or having children of their own. It is
rare if I see anyone I count a real and deeper friend (although there
are a host of good people at regular stops). Add to that the occasional
odd character who drifts in and out like a boat loose from any moor or
calls me and wakes me at 4:30am saying she's found herself, at 59 years of age, by really, really wanting to make paper dolls.
Teeth
are falling out, one by one. There's this or that medical concern.
There are gifts, like my cats, Sita and Rumi, who help keep me opening
my eyes. A sister far away that I talk to on a blessed regular basis. A
daughter and my grandchild I love to see and talk with on Skype every
chance I get. A son back from photographing around the world who has the
talent to make a heck of a phone call and comes across like a champ
when needed. A cousin who's been part of my world for all my life who
would take notice, even across the miles, if I was having a bad day or
simply wasn't breathing. An earth angel or two who keep an eye in my direction now and again. A very deeply appreciated friend who makes sure
I get to the grocery store twice a month and now and then treats me to a
movie or for beloved Mexican food. In life, where there is an enchilada and a
puffy chile con queso, there's hope.
My first reaction, meaning specifically to the first two
sentences in the previous paragraph, is to feel sorry for myself, to
just give up. In some moments, however, I see it as a slightly less than
gentle nudge to turn my mind and heart in a different way. If I am,
basically, alone each day, it brings back the times I visited or stayed
at monasteries, some Buddhist, some otherwise. In that moment, what I
see is not the aging and rather tenuous body. Instead, I see options.
Examples. One of those examples can be glimpsed in the lives and talents
of Chinese Taoist hermits, wise beyond my pay grade. Another in the
Vedanta-infused sannyasin -- actually a designated late era in a
person's life. A sannyasin can also known be known as ‘renunciate’, a
person who has dedicated their entire life towards spiritual pursuits.
These "titles" recognize a kind of isolation from participation in the
ways of the World.
What's more, there is something that
has caught my attention, something I'd often heard of but which, now,
seems to me to have a powerful attraction. From it comes this entire
idea of a small blog. That "something" is called in Sanskrit "Mauna" and
means silence. Poets of the heart, who took refuge in the
isolation of high mountains overlooking waterfalls, streams or the
flowers in a field, to read their works. Many great sages and teachers
have recommended it down through the spiritual part of my travels.
Another example that certainly feels within my world as it is now come
from the past, where I have always noticed it or read a tiny bit about
it: the tales of those people, often of Vedanta or Hindu tradition, who
undertook the practice of maintaining Silence. Those who lived within the World,
but not of the World, who made it their focus in the Act 3 of their
lives to know what it means to be not just knowledgeable about spiritual
theory, but, rather, to live, move and have their being within it.
After
a lifetime, though, it appears it is my turn for silence. For me, this
silence first comes in the form of not talking. Writing? Not so often,
but, like others before me, I don't see a problem with doing it. A tiny
spiral notebook and a pen in my pocket for asking this or that of a bus
driver or, like a flash card, for thanking them. Somewhere, I even have a
mini chalkboard, a 5 x 7 if I need it and if I remember to carry a rag
to erase it.
In teachers, I lean toward people such as
Ramana Maharshi, Robert Adams, Ram Dass and Krishna Das (love his
chanting, although the tapes of his telling of his story are
fascinating. Fascinating.), stretching back to old friends like Alan
Watts and an Episcopal priest I knew who, in an day's conversation, was
like what my friend described as something akin to "a spiritual
chiropractor."
People often start this kind of Silence
in their own moments, when they happen across it and realize a hint of
the power it holds for themselves and the quelling of their monkey mind
that would rather chatter and run the show. They set aside a part of one
morning of the week to practice and experience it. Then they think of a
full day, then a week, a month or to no end of the silence in sight.
So,
paradoxically, with this blog I'll type about things like Advaita
Vedanta or Mauna or Silence. Meditation techniques. The practice of
Self-Enquiry. How to deal with the guaranteed challenges that come when
you want to be Silent in this world, necessarily silencing the thoughts.
Ultimately, as always, you are your own worse enemy, standing in your
own way. But what happens when that chattering You, the one standing
and yelling in the front row, actually stops talking and just sits down?
Welcome aboard.
