Rodney J Owen - Blog

The Longest Road

11/21/2020

"Never underestimate the long-term consequences of your actions. For as long as the mind has the obscurration of grasping at an inherently existing “me”, then there will be karma. No matter how far on the path one is, no matter how realised one is, no matter how many miraculous powers one has attained, for as long as there is even a subtle trace of this obscurration, karma is there.

That is why Padmasambhava, an enlightened being not even affected by it, had skilfully told ordinary beings, 'My realization is higher than the sky, but my observance of karma is finer than grains of flour.'”
~ Chamtrul Rinpoche

I have been going to back to the basics and working on the subtleties of Taiji form. I feel like a rank beginner. What seems so simple is in reality very deep and profound. The more we refine, the clearer the energetic presence, the deeper the healing. By going deeper in Taiji we get closer and closer to Wuji. But it is work. It is work that is basically never done. It takes time and practice. And it takes beginner's mind, which of course takes work.

In time we discover something that has been there all along but hidden so well. It is a coming together of familiar existences, a remembering if you will. But what happens at these deeper levels of energy work is hard to express adequately. However, the more it happens the easier it is to access, to remember, to engage at will regardless of where we are, what we are doing. As Erle Montaigue once said, we practice Taiji so we can always do Taiji, even when we aren't doing Taiji. So, like Padmasmbhava sifting through fine grains of karma, we can always look closer, go deeper, walk the long road.

Thisness

11/18/2020

Ultimately it's all the same thing; Winter, Summer; Night, Day; Asleep, Awake; Dead, Alive. We do ourselves no favors bemoaning change. Yet we do anyway as if there were an alternative, as if everything wasn't already change, as if change were irregular, temporary, and negotiable. We see and experience the world in relative terms, in terms of Taiji. But underlying the world is Wuji. And Wuji doesn't differentiate--anything. Wuji is soothing, reassuring, dependable. At the same time though, Wuji births Taiji which is ultimate differentiation. And this is the stuff of our relative experience. We live in this world of constant unrelenting change, but it is girded by pure, infinite potential. So, it gets cold but only because it was once warm and will be warm again. The sun sets only to rise again tomorrow. Someone dies, someone else is born. It really is all the same thing. Believe it or not, like it or not, Wuji is ultimately Taiji, is ultimately the ten thousand things, which are ultimately Taiji, which is ultimately Wuji. This is the way.

Single Pointed

11/1/2020

At some point we need to let everything go and just be. In doing that we are relieved of the sense of responsibility that never needed be assigned us, that we assigned ourselves, and that is totally unjustified, unnecessary. Life lives itself. We are not directors nor pawns. We are life itself being lived. Understanding that is huge. The red pill doesn't lead to bliss anymore than the blue pill relives one's suffering--or vice-versa. Our experience of Nirvana is an experience, and therefore is still that much more Samara. Coming unplugged of the Matrix doesn't mean the annihilation of illusion, it's just different, a new and improved illusion. The experience of life living itself is also illusion because it is experience. That's not a bad thing, or necessarily a good thing. It has no value. It is.

Consider: At the point the prodigal woke up and decided to return home, he was still in the Kingdom, as he was at his lowest point tending pigs and even after he returned and was welcomed in glory. It's all Kingdom, bliss and ignorance, suffering and saturation. Perhaps the path home took longer and was filled with even more danger and adventure than scripture reveals. Perhaps the path didn't end at home. Perhaps there never was a path after all. Perhaps it is all path. Perhaps returning home is no more or no less than the end of conflict--conflict with the source of family, with the source of pleasure, with the source of pain, with the inevitability of return, with the path itself, with the source of source.

I feel that any true path ultimately leads us back to where we started. I have found there is nothing to find that wasn't already. That doesn't mean the searching wasn't worth it. It doesn't mean we know everything, or anything. It doesn't mean we stop wandering. It means we can always rest at home, having never really left. And if anything is to be gained from it all, it's the eternal ability to always rest at home.

Religion and Politics

10/29/2020

So, one morning I woke up and realized I had lost interest in most everything. And it was the most enlightening moment of my life. I hope I never go back. The truth is I feel it's impossible to go back. I wouldn't recognize myself there mainly because my 'Self' was covered in distraction and impression management. And if I did go back and were to remove all that I would find no self there at all. And that is the greatest of all fears and the thing to be avoided at all costs. Hence the fascination of Everyman with distractions and impression management. However, the reason I lost interest is due to the realization of no-self anyway. It's like all the running around was for the sake of running around. No, it's not "like" that. That's how it was, how it is, how it will be.

Of course that doesn't make sense, right? And it's not supposed to--unless it does. And if it does then you get it. If you don't get it, that's OK too. It's perfectly fine to write this all off as the ramblings of a madman. That fits perfectly within what I'm saying.

The thing is, all the passion and drive over such seemingly important things as religion, politics, sports, news, and weather are only just that much more of the dog chasing his tail. The real trouble starts when the damn thing actually catches it.

Waiting

10/24/2020

I sit and read on a Saturday night, alone. My eyes gathering in the words of a madman written nearly sixty years ago. In the background, the Rolling Stones play the soundtrack of my life--also some sixty-odd years. One of the songs announces that time doesn't wait for us. As I hear this, I read Kerouac's thoughts as he sits alone in a fire tower on Desolation Peak dreaming of being in the company of others, getting drunk with friends, eating out and bumming around. Which is nothing more or less than daydreams because he is, as noted, stuck in a fire tower, alone.

I am reminded of military assignments where time seemed to drag and all I could think of was what I would do once I got back to the world. I know the feeling Jack is describing. I also know the existential truth that Mick is carrying on about in the background. We all know these things and COVID has made them all the more cogent. Being alone has the same effect. As we are forced to deal with our temporal restraints and physical restrictions, we accordingly come face-to-face with the limits of our mental creations and physical distractions. Wherever we are is where we are doing whatever it is we are doing, even if it's nothing. The option to engage in distractions and entertainment is not on the table.

As I have noted before, I don't think this is all bad. This is an opportunity for growth, perhaps a blessing even. We just need to read between the lines and breathe.

Time

10/15/2020

In the mid-sixties, Jack Kerouac foretold "the ghostly day when industrial America shall be abandoned and left to rust in one long Sunday Afternoon of oblivion (Desolation Angels, pp34)." It has been obvious for some time that day has long arrived. Oh, there's still an industrial America, it's just not the one we grew up with, not the one that laid all the post WWII foundations of prosperity and growth that we have only tossed aside like empty soda cans along pre-interstate surface roads before polluting was thing. No, the industrial America of this day is a corporate monster fed and maintained with what should have been worker pensions and pride of workmanship, but instead is bottom-lines and gentrified gambling. The rust is there for all to see, the deterioration not so much in falling beams and cracking foundations, but in no foundations whatsoever and growth beyond anything any so-called beams could ever contain.

To paraphrase Jim Dandy Mangrum, who crudely paraphrased Nietzsche, who was likely paraphrasing some apocrypha: by striving to become stronger, we ended up being the monster. We seem to always find a way to soil our nest, whether that nest is our government, our industries, or our literal nest, the planet. And then we either ignore it or blame it on someone else. In the meantime, we have lost touch with a definition of work that isn't pejorative. There are few left who understand, really understand, craftsmanship, customer service, service with a smile, hell, service period. So what then?

To not be the monster means to either slay the monster or to live where the monster doesn't. And slaying the monster only makes us yet another monster of a different mind. But perhaps we can live without the monster right here in the monster's midst. Maybe we can just ignore the damn thing and carry on. I feel sure the monster is right clever, its traps are well-set and hidden in plain sight. I propose we tell the monster to go to hell, that we live like it was 1963 and all that is missing is the sunrise, or ice cream. At least we can enjoy the ride.

Listen

10/14/2020

The proper definition of apocalypse is that of an unveiling, a disclosure or revelation of great knowledge. There are those who might call our current pandemic as an apocalypse so as to blow it out of proportion, as if to say it is the beginning of the end. And maybe it is. Either way, I feel certain we can see it as an unveiling, or at least a major part of an unveiling.

We are discovering that we maybe we don't need all the distractions, all the various covers we use to define ourselves, all the senseless activity that often serves as nothing more than a vehicle for the burning of hours and days in order that we aren't left face-to-face with our true selves. We are instead finding something that has been here all along--emptiness, the Void in all it's vacuous reality.

They are saying there's no going back to 'normal', whatever that means. I suppose there are those whose lives haven't been altered at all, but I doubt they are many. As for myself, the further we get from normal the less I miss it. I am finding something personal in the loneliness, something familiar in the fact of time, something reassuring in the uncertainty. I have to say, this is the strangest time I have ever encountered.

I have a feeling that we, or at least some of us, will actually progress in the seeming regression. I think time to sort things out, to re-prioritize, to scuttle what no longer serves us and remember, and indeed again live, simpler lives is truly a blessing in the midst of suffering and upheaval.

I don't mean to downplay the severity of the situation or to ignore the very real pain and suffering it causes. I am only acknowledging other aspects of this situation. I think some of these changes are long overdue but would have occurred with or without COVID. This just happens to be the catalyst, the ignition of unveiling so to speak. Something in all of this is speaking to us. Listen

In the Land of Guitar Gods

10/8/2020

So, just the other day, Eddie Van Halen died. I was never a big fan of the band, outside of a couple of albums, but I really appreciated EVH. In fact, I don't think I know any serious fan of rock and roll from my generation (1970s) who didn't.

I can still remember being a senior in High School, 1978, and a drummer friend of mine asked me if I had heard of Van Halen, as his band was doing their version of an old Kinks song. At that time I hadn't. So I bought the first album and was quite impressed. They were for a short period of time (that first album, actually) a part of the new wave of late-70s hard rock/metal, along with AC-DC, Motorhead, The Scorpions, etc... But beyond that, there just wasn't any music at that time that sounded like "Atomic Punk", "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love", and of course, "Eruption"--Oh My God, Garth.

Over time they left their metal roots and fulfilled the destiny of all or most LA bands, bright lights, swimming pools and movie stars, rather than hot rods and punk decadence. In my opinion they became another 80s pop band, albeit with an awesome guitarist. Over the years they did return a couple of times to those blazing roots, notably the "Mean Street" and "Diver Down" albums, at least to some degree. But I have always thought they would have been a completely different band had they followed in the style of that first album, but alas... I suppose that was not what they wanted, and they were awfully successful anyway.

In the meantime, Eddie was one of the few real innovators of rock guitar. Nobody sounded like that before he came along, and no one has really topped him since. I give him all the credit he deserves and appreciate being alive in his era. If you never have, or even if it's been a while, take a listen--a real listen--to that first album. Listen to it in light of it's place in history. 1978 was a change year for rock and roll. People were losing interest in the music that had defined the generation, with the exception of the above noted behind the scenes new metal bands. Van halen abandoned that track, but this album is steeped in it. It is awesome and unique in history, that of rock and roll in general and Van Halen in particular. RIP, EVH.

Auspicious Beginnings

9/20/2020

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On September 19, 1920, a young Swami Yogananda (later known as Paramahansa Yogananda) first set foot on American soil, having traveled from his native India on "The City of Sparta." He would come to be regarded as "the father of Yoga in the West." The Boston Globe reported on the steamerâ€™s arrival in Boston Harbor, noting that Yogananda "has come to this country to attend a religious conference in Boston and later plans to make a lecturing tour through the country."

A post shared by SRF Yogananda (@selfrealizationfellowship) on Sep 19, 2020 at 6:00am PDT

100 years ago, September 19, 1920, my paramguru (my teacher's teacher), Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in the US. He was not the first yoga teacher from India to travel to and lecture in the US, but he was the first to make his home here, to actively propagate the teachings of yoga in the United States. And that has made all the difference for so many people. Indeed, I would argue it has made a difference for many people who don't even realize it, as teachings don't belong to any individual, they belong to us all. Teachings escape their trappings and infiltrate all aspects of their host society. As I have been following these teachings for many years, I feel I can see not only how that happens but can witness countless aspects of it in our current worldview.

I am not, nor ever have been a member of SRF, but I have been a disciple of one of Yogananda's ordained teachers and have integrated Kriya Yoga into my life to the point that I don't really consider it a path or a teaching anymore. It's how I live my life. And I think that is ultimately the idea of this and similar teachings. My approach to this is that we should look at the teaching, practice it if it resonates, find what is important to us, if anything, and integrate it. At that point it is no longer about the teacher, the lineage, the philosophy, or anything of that nature. It is about the quality of life.

The root word of Kriya is action. Hence, Kriya Yoga is about right action. It's not about beliefs or concepts, it's not about religion and ritual, it's not about outward modes of expression. It's about this moment and the next, how we live this life, which only happens in the moment and is best expressed spontaneously, devoid of concept and belief. In other words, life is lived to the fullest when we flow with the flow, change with the change, and live life to the fullest. Beyond the mysticism attributed to Yogananda, beyond the beads and robes, beyond his vital and impressive lineage, beyond all the superficial things, including the man himself, this what he most wanted to impress upon the country he adopted. Live life to the fullest, starting right now.

Present Presence

9/15/2020

To be present is arguably the best thing. And it is really the easiest thing. And the hardest thing. Until it isn't, then we find it is the easiest thing after all. But that is not something anyone can tell you. Which means I'm not really telling anyone either, I'm just putting words on the page. I'm not implying there is no one there to tell. I'll leave the nihilism to Nietzsche and the Neo-Advaitists. My point is I'm not trying to persuade anyone, just stating a fact. To understand that presence is the best thing and the easiest thing, one has to practice it.

I'm inclined to think that presence is the key to the Kingdom, so to speak. At this point I'm thinking enlightenment, at least as it is presented, is a pipe dream, an ever out-of-reach pipe dream that keeps one in a state of desire for the unattainable. Further, life after death, reincarnation, etc... are equally pipe dreams because no one has gone there and come back to tell all the rest of us what it is like. All such associated ideas are concepts and concepts are unattainable because, well, they are only conceptual. But presence is available now, right now. And the more one practices it the easier it becomes to acknowledge it and abide. For me, the more I practice presence the deeper the experience of presence becomes, to the point that it is possible to see all of life in a different light.

None of this is revolutionary. Yet the direct experience of the depth of being aware of being aware is truly profound. It has opened up the possibility of a much simpler and organic life experience for me. And while I still maintain an interest in some of the practices I have utilized over the years, I no longer see them as essential to waking up or anything else for that matter. They are no more profound or supermundane than riding a bicycle or taking a nap. Mentally separating anything we do from the rest of life is a large mistake. In fact it can't really be done except in your mind, and all that does is cause more confusion or what the Buddhists call dukha.

In short, we can live life to the fullest right now, today. We don't need to go to a monastery, on retreat, learn yoga, or sit at the feet of the next silk-pajama-guru. All we need do is be present to being present and let all the small stuff go. And as they say, it's all small stuff.