On Being Oneself
Seeking the Spirit of Zen Shiatsu in the Tao led me to a mountain in Colorado. I heard a man shout, “Be Yourself!”
He held the Talking Stick: we could neither speak nor eat till he had done. He roamed around the camp-fires, a little man in orange shorts and wild Indian hair, shaking his thin arms and shouting, Be Yourself, nothing but that.
Earlier that day I sat at the edge of the pine forest, looking down a great green valley, at thousands of rainbow-drops walking through swaying grass beside a crystal lake, under a backdrop of snowcapped peaks. They streamed up the valley, wanderers, traders, musicians, men, boys, women, kids, dressed in all the colours, some in rags, some in leathers, tribal families hung about with beads and feathers, Hindu saddhus, Buddhist monks, cowboys alongside Flower Children. It was the annual gathering of hippies, the Rainbow Family of Living Light and I had hitched from Los Angeles to join them. Each new arrival was greeted with a hug and “Welcome home, we love you.” I felt stiff and British.
Tented camps known as kitchens spotted the slopes, each manned by volunteers serving a few hundred people. Everything was free: as much food and tea as you could eat and drink. I had no tent, not even a sleeping-bag so I slept in the sunshine by day and at night when the temperature plummeted below freezing, sat around camp-fires swapping tales with world travellers and listening to blue-grass music or stood in line at TeaTime meeting people and ideas that caused an avalanche in my mind.
I joined the multicoloured human stream flowing up to Main Circle, all in silence. At noon on July 4th a great shout rose and spread among the thousands filling the grassy floor of the valley and up through the thousands sitting on the slopes, and down the path of the hundreds still arriving, a great shout that turned into a cheer and a then a John Lennon song: Imagine. The drums began, atavistic rhythms I had first heard in Africa. I pressed forward into the crowd.
A wooden post about eight feet tall and decorated with coloured cloths, feathers and bones stood at the centre, some twenty drummers making a passageway for the dancers, naked, body-painted, some in flowerpower clothes. Soon everyone was dancing, the whole crowd, through the afternoon, into the evening, high on acid, marijuana and love. A couple made love surrounded by cheering clapping dancers.
On the fringe of the throng I heard an argument between one group who wanted another to burn the American flag they were carrying: it was supposed to represent ‘one nation’ which the protesters said the United Sates certainly was not. And for every ten who cried ‘Peace, brothers and sisters’ there were two or three to shout ‘No peace before justice!’
They were strong but peaceable in their beliefs and sincere, and angry at what their government was doing to the environment. A Hopi chief came to the circle to ask for witnesses to his village’s impending forcible eviction from Big Mountain, which had been leased, to a mining company. I later head the eviction had not happened: the presence of a large group of white, articulate witnesses.
I was surprised to be addressed as ‘brother’ but got over my self-consciousness by remembering the priests and monks and nuns at boarding schools who had to be called brother, sister, mother, father regardless of their brutality. Now I could say brother to men who feel like brothers to me, who smile and talk and are interested in more than themselves.
The talking circle was held each evening before dinner. We stood holding hands in a circle that encompassed the floor and slopes of the valley up to the edge of the pinewoods and twenty thousand voices sang a long deep high Om. Then every other person took twenty paces forward to make an inner circle. Then from each of those two circles, every other person took ten paces forward, making two more circles. Those in the inmost circle turned outward to face those in the second, while those in the third turned to face those in the outer circle. Thus we had four concentric circles making two round corridors around which the volunteers from the kitchens dragged containers of food and ladled it out. And all this was achieved with precision and without fuss or shouting.
A band of musicians danced and sang around each circle carrying the Magic Hat. I put in a five-dollar note. My neighbour, a tall ginger man from the Elvis Lives kitchen, wearing nothing but a black stetson, leather belt and cowboy boots, put in two hundred. A girl opposite dressed in plastic and safety-pins, clearly from Punk Rocker kitchen, added a few dimes. More than a hundred and fifty kitchens, from Lost Souls to Cornucopia, through Calm and the Gypsy Cafe, took turns to cook for the dinner circle. I had joined Everybody’s and worked finding firewood and carrying water. The proceeds from Magic Hat, some ten to fifteen thousand dollars every mealtime for three weeks, went on food in the local village, two hours away down the mountain. The focalisers brought it back to Supply where kitchens would collect a share according to their numbers.
In 1992 this was the 20th annual gathering. They began after a Vietnam Seals veteran on leave in Haight Ashbury had been hugged by three random hippies saying, “We love you, Brother.” When he left the service he travelled the country telling of his vision for a community who would gather each year and celebrate life and pray for Whirled Peas. He made it happen. Fifteen hundred people turned up to the first gathering: he had expected maybe two hundred.
After the circle I sought out the little man in orange shorts. He had fierce twinkly eyes and said “Welcome home, Brother. Be yourself!”
“Is that so easy?” I said.
“How hard do you want to make it?”
“How long will it take me?”
“How long do you want”
“How much practice will I need?”
“What practice did you have in mind? To meditate every day on what has caused you pain? To use that cause and that pain as a reference for present and future experience? How then can you experience the present and future without pain? ... leave it behind: tin the past, where it belongs. Be yourself. Be yourself and live, live in the present moment as intensely as if running with your hair on fire...or stroll through life supremely at leisure. Or as you feel, in the moment, in the spaces between, in the void. Be yourself, always and in everything.”
I saw him again, at a gathering in Australia. I waited to speak to him, gave him Namaste and put my hand on my heart.
“Thank you, Shantiji, thank you for your words.”
He did not recognise me. Why should he: he must have seen and inspired thousands. “My words?”
“What you said in Colorado. To be myself.”
“Ah, those words.”
“Ever since then, every difficult situation I’ve found myself in, every decision I’ve had to take, and sometimes when I just have not known what to do, your words have echoed in my mind.”
He seemed to stare into my soul. He said, “You’ve done it, haven’t you.”
“I thank you, Shantiji. You helped me be myself.”
His fierce twinkly eyes filled. “No, you helped yourself. I can only recite words.” And he turned away.
I saw him again, dancing in the Sunday drum-circle on Makena beach in Maui, still in the orange shorts. He sought me out.
“I remember you. You said I helped you.”
“You did. I still think of you and thank you in my heart.”
“Are you doing OK?” The fierce twinkle had faded.
“Well enough,” I said. “I have the life I want.”
“Plenty of money then?”
“I don’t have money, Shantiji, only enough for my needs, which are few. I have no possessions to speak of. One travel a year, no expensive tastes, no drink, no drugs. I live simply, teach meditation, shiatsu.”
“ So you can’t help me out?”
“What do you need? I’ll help with what I can.”
“A quarter-million would solve all my problems.”
He was being himself.
From Kris Deva North's forthcoming book: Spirit of Zen Shiatsu
http://www.healing-tao.co.uk
He held the Talking Stick: we could neither speak nor eat till he had done. He roamed around the camp-fires, a little man in orange shorts and wild Indian hair, shaking his thin arms and shouting, Be Yourself, nothing but that.
Earlier that day I sat at the edge of the pine forest, looking down a great green valley, at thousands of rainbow-drops walking through swaying grass beside a crystal lake, under a backdrop of snowcapped peaks. They streamed up the valley, wanderers, traders, musicians, men, boys, women, kids, dressed in all the colours, some in rags, some in leathers, tribal families hung about with beads and feathers, Hindu saddhus, Buddhist monks, cowboys alongside Flower Children. It was the annual gathering of hippies, the Rainbow Family of Living Light and I had hitched from Los Angeles to join them. Each new arrival was greeted with a hug and “Welcome home, we love you.” I felt stiff and British.
Tented camps known as kitchens spotted the slopes, each manned by volunteers serving a few hundred people. Everything was free: as much food and tea as you could eat and drink. I had no tent, not even a sleeping-bag so I slept in the sunshine by day and at night when the temperature plummeted below freezing, sat around camp-fires swapping tales with world travellers and listening to blue-grass music or stood in line at TeaTime meeting people and ideas that caused an avalanche in my mind.
I joined the multicoloured human stream flowing up to Main Circle, all in silence. At noon on July 4th a great shout rose and spread among the thousands filling the grassy floor of the valley and up through the thousands sitting on the slopes, and down the path of the hundreds still arriving, a great shout that turned into a cheer and a then a John Lennon song: Imagine. The drums began, atavistic rhythms I had first heard in Africa. I pressed forward into the crowd.
A wooden post about eight feet tall and decorated with coloured cloths, feathers and bones stood at the centre, some twenty drummers making a passageway for the dancers, naked, body-painted, some in flowerpower clothes. Soon everyone was dancing, the whole crowd, through the afternoon, into the evening, high on acid, marijuana and love. A couple made love surrounded by cheering clapping dancers.
On the fringe of the throng I heard an argument between one group who wanted another to burn the American flag they were carrying: it was supposed to represent ‘one nation’ which the protesters said the United Sates certainly was not. And for every ten who cried ‘Peace, brothers and sisters’ there were two or three to shout ‘No peace before justice!’
They were strong but peaceable in their beliefs and sincere, and angry at what their government was doing to the environment. A Hopi chief came to the circle to ask for witnesses to his village’s impending forcible eviction from Big Mountain, which had been leased, to a mining company. I later head the eviction had not happened: the presence of a large group of white, articulate witnesses.
I was surprised to be addressed as ‘brother’ but got over my self-consciousness by remembering the priests and monks and nuns at boarding schools who had to be called brother, sister, mother, father regardless of their brutality. Now I could say brother to men who feel like brothers to me, who smile and talk and are interested in more than themselves.
The talking circle was held each evening before dinner. We stood holding hands in a circle that encompassed the floor and slopes of the valley up to the edge of the pinewoods and twenty thousand voices sang a long deep high Om. Then every other person took twenty paces forward to make an inner circle. Then from each of those two circles, every other person took ten paces forward, making two more circles. Those in the inmost circle turned outward to face those in the second, while those in the third turned to face those in the outer circle. Thus we had four concentric circles making two round corridors around which the volunteers from the kitchens dragged containers of food and ladled it out. And all this was achieved with precision and without fuss or shouting.
A band of musicians danced and sang around each circle carrying the Magic Hat. I put in a five-dollar note. My neighbour, a tall ginger man from the Elvis Lives kitchen, wearing nothing but a black stetson, leather belt and cowboy boots, put in two hundred. A girl opposite dressed in plastic and safety-pins, clearly from Punk Rocker kitchen, added a few dimes. More than a hundred and fifty kitchens, from Lost Souls to Cornucopia, through Calm and the Gypsy Cafe, took turns to cook for the dinner circle. I had joined Everybody’s and worked finding firewood and carrying water. The proceeds from Magic Hat, some ten to fifteen thousand dollars every mealtime for three weeks, went on food in the local village, two hours away down the mountain. The focalisers brought it back to Supply where kitchens would collect a share according to their numbers.
In 1992 this was the 20th annual gathering. They began after a Vietnam Seals veteran on leave in Haight Ashbury had been hugged by three random hippies saying, “We love you, Brother.” When he left the service he travelled the country telling of his vision for a community who would gather each year and celebrate life and pray for Whirled Peas. He made it happen. Fifteen hundred people turned up to the first gathering: he had expected maybe two hundred.
After the circle I sought out the little man in orange shorts. He had fierce twinkly eyes and said “Welcome home, Brother. Be yourself!”
“Is that so easy?” I said.
“How hard do you want to make it?”
“How long will it take me?”
“How long do you want”
“How much practice will I need?”
“What practice did you have in mind? To meditate every day on what has caused you pain? To use that cause and that pain as a reference for present and future experience? How then can you experience the present and future without pain? ... leave it behind: tin the past, where it belongs. Be yourself. Be yourself and live, live in the present moment as intensely as if running with your hair on fire...or stroll through life supremely at leisure. Or as you feel, in the moment, in the spaces between, in the void. Be yourself, always and in everything.”
I saw him again, at a gathering in Australia. I waited to speak to him, gave him Namaste and put my hand on my heart.
“Thank you, Shantiji, thank you for your words.”
He did not recognise me. Why should he: he must have seen and inspired thousands. “My words?”
“What you said in Colorado. To be myself.”
“Ah, those words.”
“Ever since then, every difficult situation I’ve found myself in, every decision I’ve had to take, and sometimes when I just have not known what to do, your words have echoed in my mind.”
He seemed to stare into my soul. He said, “You’ve done it, haven’t you.”
“I thank you, Shantiji. You helped me be myself.”
His fierce twinkly eyes filled. “No, you helped yourself. I can only recite words.” And he turned away.
I saw him again, dancing in the Sunday drum-circle on Makena beach in Maui, still in the orange shorts. He sought me out.
“I remember you. You said I helped you.”
“You did. I still think of you and thank you in my heart.”
“Are you doing OK?” The fierce twinkle had faded.
“Well enough,” I said. “I have the life I want.”
“Plenty of money then?”
“I don’t have money, Shantiji, only enough for my needs, which are few. I have no possessions to speak of. One travel a year, no expensive tastes, no drink, no drugs. I live simply, teach meditation, shiatsu.”
“ So you can’t help me out?”
“What do you need? I’ll help with what I can.”
“A quarter-million would solve all my problems.”
He was being himself.
From Kris Deva North's forthcoming book: Spirit of Zen Shiatsu
http://www.healing-tao.co.uk
posted by Kris Deva North at 10:32 PM
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