Update

As you may notice, I've updated the look of my blog to stay current with the changes in my life. Rather than explain all the reasons and philosophies behind the change, I'll just leave it to be discovered by those who may be reading and following along, and I'll leave this post as history of what came and went.

As my life continues to change, I'm looking around at this world I live in with new eyes. I'm looking with fascination and marvel at this very physical universe.

In this world, there are trees. There are squirrels. There are people. There is a bright blue sky which spans out into the greatest depths of infinite space. There is the light of the sun which trickles down through leaves, shutters, and shades to reach this fantastic sense organ called the eye.

There is a human being seeing, thinking, and typing. There are the molecules of organic matter composing an intricate and richly layered organism of cells, tissues, and organs. There is this whole business called being alive.

Why is it that a Human Being, living in this verdant paradise still lives with anger and aggresion? Why is it that a Human Being lives with fear, stress, and anxiety? Why the violence? Why the corruption? Why the sorrow? This is what we call the human condition.

Here I am, alive in this moment. And here is a fresh start.

Going Beyond Beauty

I woke up this morning, feeling fresh, well rested. I looked across the room to the blue curtain hanging by the brown wooden window frame. The contrast of bright blue on woody brown was stunning and I decided to linger with my attention there for a minute. As I continued to enjoy this vivid display of color, a sense of beauty arose in me.

"That's beautiful," I thought to myself, while looking at this vivid blue on brown arrangement of light.

"Ah, beauty!" I thought to myself next. I had been eagerly awaiting a chance to explore this beauty thing in greater depth. What is this thing we call beautiful? I investigated inwardly with an attentive curiousity. Ah, yes... beauty is a feeling, an emotion!

It sounds strange even writing it now, but in the moment it's so clear. Beauty is my enjoyment of my concept about the show of light I was watching. It's a sorta inward vibing with myself and my own thought "this is beautiful." Because I have concieved that I'm observing a "beautiful thing," I can experience a sorta inward pleasure with myself. Because "I" am witnessing the beauty, and because "I" am a part of this beauty - I get a warm pleasure inside. In essence, the beauty wouldn't even exist if not for "me!" and what a wonderful boost this is for "me."

"Ah, yes... this is what I've been calling "beauty." What a waste! Let me throw that out," I thought next. The absurdity of it required no further investigation. "Now, let me see what this experience actually is," I continued with the inquiry. What is this blue and brown? What is this seeing? What are these sensations in my eyeballs which are percieving color - vibrant, active, radiating.

I continued to look at the colors with the directness of my actual eyes. Abandoning the safe space behind the eyes where I could sit and observe - the safe space where "I" still exist. I lept forward, into the colors themselves, into my eyeballs, into the sensations. The colors were the sensations, the curtains were the colors, my eyes were the sensing. The sensing was active. These colors were not dead, lifeless, inert. These colors were now! These colors, the actual experience, was actually happening. Light entering eyeballs, a selection of wavelengths percieved by the sensitive apparatus of the visual organ. Each wavelength unique and distinct by it's very factual existence. The sensing was the most intimate and direct contact with these already existant colors.

Delight would be a small understatement. Pleasure fits well. What a joy these colors were. The joy was the sensing - there was no gap. No sensing first and then enjoying. The sensing was the enjoying. Sensuosness. The pure pleasure of unadulterated sensing. Actual color, actual light.

It was clear that I had left the territory known as the beautiful and was now traveling in a new landscape. This landscape was completely unknown as it's existence was only in the present moment. There was no way to have been there before, thus no way to have known it previously.

What was "beauty" had now opened up into a new world of sight and seeing. Beauty had fallen by the wayside. Things still held some resemblence to that old image of beauty. The experience was still fascinating, scintillating, vibrant, stunning, wondrous, active and dynamic. The pleasure of it had only increased if anything. But, beautiful? A far cry. Such a personal and self-referential adjective couldn't possibly describe this experience which was so much more than "I" could ever be.

Ah... time passed and I sat down thinking, "maybe I should write about that experience." I began to reflect on it (as I'm also reflecting on it now while typing.)

Reflecting thus, "going beyond beauty. What a wonderful experience," I began again to tune into my experience. This time I sat at my computer, music playing, soft light coming in through the blinds.

"Ah, yes. It's still here." *IT* being the actual universe as experienced through the sense organs. It is still here indeed! Ha!

I hear the music and once again take the leap. The leap into the sensations themselves, free from my self. The music surrounds me, it approaches from every angle, as I sit in the music itself - In the hearing, at the exact point of dynamic contact. The colors blend with sound, as it all becomes just raw sensation. This time the pleasure nears overwhelm, and literally knocks the breath out of me. I recoil to catch my breath. Physical waves of pleasure move through the entirety of my body.

This is new.

I've never ventured this far out before - this far beyond "the beautiful."

Habitual reactions come up. Mostly fear. "Oh, this is too much," and "oh, I can't take this," and "I can't handle this," and "this isn't good," etc.

I pause and consider the facts: Well, certainly I wouldn't live very long if I'm not breathing, so catching my breath is a sound idea. But, having the breath knocked out of me is just a startle response to the rather surprising stimuli of such intense pleasure. There's nothing about the pleasure itself that is overwhelming. Ok, excuse diverted.

I continued the inquiry. "Could I live there forever?" And the next fear became clear: "Ah... but it will consume all of me. Like a black hole, it will absorb me completely." And for some reason this seems "scary"? The scariness of it evades me at this moment. A flurry of other reactions and resistance shows it's head - all of it unfounded in any sort of sensibility.

It's like a tin can called "beauty" was sitting on my shelf and I naively decided to open it. "Experience" popped out, and now there's no getting it back in. In fact, I'm not sure I can even find the can anymore.

I sit, continuing to type. Yes, there is still work to do. This isn't, at all, the end of the journey, but the end of this little tale. A tale which continues on as this moment, "this only moment of being alive."

Reader's Write: "Where Do You Work?"

A friend writes:

"Nice one, cutting the hours back to practice. Where do you work that lets you do that, lucky."

My job is wonderful, and I feel very fortunate to have it. It doesn't pay a lot, and there isn't really any "upward mobility" or "career ladder" to climb. But, it is lots of fun, and the people are great. Basically, I wake up at 4am, eat an omellette, and then drive to meet my carpool from which point we continue on to Wattsonville. There we pick up a truck which has been loaded with super fresh fruits and veggies (mostly picked the day before) and start driving up toward the
Bay Area.

By the time I arrive, it's around 7am, the sun is up, people are laughing, and the day is getting underway. We set up our veggie stand at the Farmer's Market (I'm in Berkeley on Saturday and Montclaire on Sunday) and start selling by 9am. It's fast paced hustle and bustle - not at all like Safeway. We weigh people's food by old time scales and geuestimate the prices to the nearest quarter. Sometimes I can take maybe about 20 customers per minute when things are really flying!

We sell super fresh California delicious certified organic produce. It's seriously some of the highest quality food on the planet. Special Bonus: I get to take home as much as I want as well as "trade" with other vendors for whatever they are selling. My food bill averages about $10 per week. And, when I get it home, I don't even do fancy recipes or lots of spice because the food is so good and so fresh that it just bursts with flavour as-is. My favorite dish is to throw everything in a cast-iron pot with some olive oil (garlic, onions, potatoes, squash, broccoli, tomatoes, fennel with some fresh rosemary, marjoram, sage) a little salt - don't even cut them up, just cook 'em whole. And, eat them super hot right out of the pot. Simple food can taste so good.

Before i know it, it's already 1PM, market's over and time to pack up and go home. I get back to the farm around 4:30pm, finish unloading the truck and getting it ready for the next day. Clock out with about a 12.5 hour day and drive home for a quick bubble bath and a few hours of sleep before I repeat the whole thing again the next day. So, right now I'm just working Saturday and Sunday (for a total of 25 hours)... and then mon-fri I have free to do whatever I want!

Field Trip to the Fields

I may not be traveling anymore right now, but I can still take a field trip. So, last Monday about a dozen Happy Boy Farms employees (including myself) took a field trip out to the fields where our veggies are growing fresh and lively.

One thing that can be said about the Happy Boy farmer's market workers is that we are our number one fans! Which is to say that we probably eat more of Happy Boy's produce than any of our other customers. The running joke is that the people at the grocery store must be laughing at us when they only ever see us buying dairy, toilet paper and beer. Well, maybe not exactly, but when all of our veggies, fruit, bread, rice and honey are coming fresh from the farmer's market, there's not much need for anything else.

Mouths watering, we hit the fields. A few of the veggies were so tempting that they just had to be plucked on the spot. Other than eating watermelons and tomatoes in the field, I also took home a "first of the season" red kabocha squash, a few fresh red cippolini onions, and a handful of okra.

California is such an amazing land. The skies were big and blue and the sun was shining hot. The majority of the fields we visited were in the Hollister and Gilroy area, although I don't know all the exact locations. Greg (the owner of the farm) was excited about our newest field because of the mix of long hours of sunshine with a cool coastal air - perfect for our baby lettuce!

The colors were beautiful, the smells were fresh, and the Happy Boys and Girls were smiling happily. Yum!

By the way, I've used up all my free space on Picasa, so I started another account to fit the new photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bhavanatraveler

Jumping Off Trees in India

Here's a video that a friend took of me and some friends in India. This was day 39 of our 40 day retreat when we were first allowed to talk again, and we were invited to take boats out on the lake to get to know each other.

I ended up in a boat with 4 other men. Men! So, what do you think we did? Well, we sang funny songs, and then decided to jump out of a tree about 30 feet high above the water. In the video, I'm the last one climbing up the tree, and also the first to jump.

My friend Eskild took the video. He was also the guy in the room next to mine, so I saw him every day of the retreat as I had to walk through his room to get to the front door. The guy speaking French in the video was in the room on the other side of me. And the fourth guy was on the other side of the house. As we jump, we shout out: Asish Bhawan! (which was the name of the cottage we were living in.)

Oh, what fun we had.

Meeting Mokshananda

California is a wonderful place for all things related to mind, spirit, psychology, and the inner journey. Especially wonderful is Santa Cruz which happens to be home to an enlightened master named Mokshananda (who knows how many enlightened beings are in this town, perhaps quite a few.)

I wanted to go to a dharma gathering of some sort and meet some like minded individuals, and also to continue my ongoing process of inquiry. So, I looked in the Santa Cruz area and found quite a few options. Big on my list to visit are Vipassana Santa Cruz, and the Burmese monastery in nearby Boulder Creek. But I found a gathering with Mokshananda to be the first event which really fit well with my schedule, so a couple months back I went. I'd been meaning to write something about it for a while, but it's also been nice to let it sink in a bit and be able to write on it with some perspective.

I found Mokshananda on the website of Adyashanti, who apparently was one of Mokie's teachers. Of course, one of the most obvious things about both these teachers is their use of funky Hindu names despite the fact that they are zen teachers who are white guys from California. Even funnier is that Mokshananda goes by Mokie, and Adyashanti goes by Adya. But, whatever... we're all a little quirky I guess.

The Adyashanti lineage seems to teach a sorta amorphous non-dual enlightenment that's only very loosely based on zen, and is most commonly transmitted through Satsangs (a hindu concept which basically means a community gathering "sangha" to explore truth "sat"). So, it's got a very Advaita (Hindu non-duality) feel to it as well.

Anyway, I went to see Mokshananda and found it particularly amusing that he decided not to give a themed talk on that particular day. He started by saying "well, most of you seem like familiar faces and have heard everything I have to say, so I'll just open it up to questions instead." Doh! I haven't heard any of it, yet! In fact, I'd never heard anything from Mokie before, since I only found him on another website and decided to check it out because it was close by. What's also funny is that the one time I went to see Gil Fronsdal he also decided not to give a talk, but rather just answer questions instead. Oh well.

I arrived a minute or two late for the gathering and so everyone was already sitting in silence. Mokie was sitting on the big red couch in the front of the living room, and everyone else was scattered throughout, sitting on the floor or in chairs. I found out later that this was actually Mokie's house I was sitting in. Cool! It's not often that a spiritual teacher just says "hey, c'mon into my house and let's talk."

He had on an Independent beanie (a skateboarding brand) and he looked pretty peaceful sitting on his couch in silence. What was also obvious very quickly is that almost everyone there was older than me with the majority being over forty, and maybe a couple folks nearer to my age. Mokie looked like maybe about forty years old himself, but maybe he just looks good for his age (edit: I just found out he's in his late fortys). It was quite an eclectic group too, like maybe comprised of ex-hippies. No matter - I was happy to be there, whatever the crowd.

Although I didn't really get too much sense of what the teaching was, I really enjoyed hearing Mokie's responses to questions, and enjoyed asking a question of my own. I'm not sure his answer helped me too much, however. He was big on the practice of asking the question "who am I?"

So, in the end I can't say much about him as a teacher. I still feel fairly unacquainted with who he is. But, he did have a very welcoming attitude and made it clear that I was certainly welcome to come back again. I may take him up on that, as I like the idea of a simple teacher living locally and easily accessible.

Tomato Time!

So delicious!