Timelessness, dance trance, homosexuality, becoming Buddhist, and the World Cup

All the pink in this painting is for Chris Romain.

Here are some children picking up large pebbles at their school.

A TV crew came to my middle school today to film the students yelling “gambare!” to one of the World cup players (Fukunishi Takashi) who is from Niihama and went to this school. (I pass by his parent’s house almost everyday, actually. Doest that make me cool?) The big game starts in an hour. It's unlike me, but I really want Japan to win.

This morning I woke up at 5:00, exactly one minute before a big earthquake hit Niihama. It was very exciting at first, but then got a little scary after what seemed like a minute. Do I get out of bed and hide under my table? I stayed in bed, hoping the ceiling wouldn't fall on me making this my last morning in this sore body

Boy am I sore today. Saturday night I went dancing in Takamatsu until morning and totally forgot my past and future.

Let me take this opportunity to tell you about becoming Buddhist.

When I officially became Buddhist almost 5 years ago (which, being one who doesnt believe in organized religion, seems kind of fishy, I know. But at the time I intellectually understood why having the support of a 2,500 year old tradition would induce certain psychological changes inside me, and so I felt I was ready to enter into that large river.) I was given a new name by my teacher Khamtrul Rinpoche and a “direct transmission” of some “secret” dzogchen teachings passed on verbally from teacher to disciple all the way back to the time of the Buddha. In this ceremony he also cut my hair symbolizing rebirth into a new body.

One meaning of this ceremony is to give you an opportunity to forget your history, your personal story that you carry around with you and look to constantly solidify who you think you are. It's not who you really are. You're not that idea, that image, that memory. You are the presence which is aware all those passing concepts. You don't have to be that historic person. You can be a new person, with a new name, who has just been born, and that, from now on, will be reborn everyday. So that is one reason for the ceremony: Not just formally entering into the Buddhist lineage, but also formally receiving an identity that has no past.

Anyway, dancing to James Brown mixed with a phat beat, I suddenly found myself in a dance trance.

A sense of the Sacred descends from within. I am entirely here, without past, without future, entirely focused on the present, on the Real, on the music, on the body. I know without a doubt that in my direct experience there is no time, no future and no past, no past sounds, no future sounds, no past selves, no personal history. I am only and always alive Now, already living timelessly because I am already living in a timeless moment, not timeless because it lasts forever, but timeless because it never had a past or a future. Right now is Eternal, or existing above time. And, because I know it is impossible to live outside the present moment, it is also impossible to live outside Eternity. The Eternal Present Moment, happening right now, and now, and now, is impossible to avoid. I think of the famous poem “Footsteps.” Even when you think you are alone, the Eternal Presence is with you. Alone with the Alone.

Feeling deeply into this present moment I feel into Eternity itself, the Omnipresent One, into the presence inside me and around me that will never die. I feel into the part of me that is unborn and undying, the presence I am before I was born, before this universe was born. I can actually feel into that part of me that existed before I was born. and so can you. Of course, it’s not a part of me, but is the whole Me, in a fundamental sense.

Dancing, beautiful sexy people synchronize their bodies with my own, the pulsing of our muscles. The women keep their distance, a very sexy move, and the men rub their bodies against mine, their hands touch my chest and my hips. These men are not homosexuals, but this is homosexuality. Our soft but swelling cocks touch. Our bodies hump the beat, making the beast with two backs. I am entirely here, focused on the stretching muscles, on palms and penises, on the heat and sweat wetting my back and chest, on the eyes looking into mine, and the smiling teeth, glowing in the black light, hovering magically in the space in front of me. I feel a sense of adoration, of ecstasy. I am thankful for being alive. For being alive here, now. And as a Being saturated with the present, thick in the moment, i realize I do not pass through time, but time passes through me, just as music passes through me, and fingers pass through my hair.

Suddenly, without warning, the sacred prayer arrives at my lips. “May I use this ecstasy to benefit others. May I not keep it to myself. May all beings be free.” The holy wish outshines the music and ushers me into the secret room where I commune with the Great Heart and Mind of Love herself, the heart of Compassion, the heart of the Deity with a thousand caring eyes and hands.

the music is invisible. I move to the music. I finger and hump the invisible beat, i drink the rythms flooding the room, the invisible rivers washing the inward room of its time and personal past. I arrive and arise out of the luminous womb, the pregnant Now from which all universes always come and go and sing and dance to the song of creation. I dance, the stars dance, the universes dance in a blink of the Eye of God, in the I of God, in the Hallway of eternity where we all dance dead already and eternal already. And today I'm sore as hell.