alan liles - Emptiness

Chapter 1 WATERFALL, NO NOTHING…

How is liberation possible?

What prepares an innocent soul for such a cataclysm?

Well, for me, there was the ten-plus years of grim nightly (black-and-white) television coverage of the Viet Nam War, starting when I was around nine years of age; the unhappy, increasingly violent relationship of my beloved parents ending in bitter divorce about the same time as “the war” ended. Then, of course, the Rock and Roll Rebellion, with those youthful raconteurs and heroes - Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Jim Morrison - whom surely encouraged that first perceptual door opening, mind-exploding acid trip: drug-induced epic. Then, literature from Gilgamesh to Kerouac, Homer to Castaneda… Longfellow, Melville, Thoreau, Whitman… all those bold, insightful journals of self-discovery and ardent adventure that inspire an impressionable boy to quest, to question. And, perhaps, the creeping, insinuating realization that, at 18-19 years of age, I knew “shit” about this puzzling monster in a bewildering maze called “life”, coupled with the burgeoning suspicion that no one else within the walled sanctuary of my university classes did either.

Perhaps the seed of my heart, within the husk of my mind, was ripening?

Mired in the second “pre-ordained” year of an increasingly disconcerting, yet blindly and obediently followed, “pre-med” curriculum at the University of Virginia, in the star-spangled napalm year, 1974: a year before our duplicitous, dangerous president, Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon, withdrew our sorely conflicted nation from the disastrous war which was spilling the warm teen blood of tens of thousands of our naive, expendable, young lives - two years after dutifully applying for the “mandatory draft” - I began a class called Buddhist Meditation taught by Professor Jeffrey Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins was a gifted linguist, a scholar of dead languages like Ancient Sanskrit, teaching in the Theology Department of the University whom, unbeknownst to me at the time, was the 14th Tibetan Dali Lama, Tenzin Gyatsu’s, first official translator in the West.

Who had heard of such a mythical creature as a Dali Lama, or, of the plight of his obscure, remote…. magical Himalayan kingdom, the toppled nation of Tibet, back then?

Certainly not this average, “red-blooded American” - unworldly - Southern boy from uptown New Orleans.

I took this unusual (at the time) class, as prescribed by the University, to fulfill an “area requirement” in the Arts and Humanities, to broaden my scientific education, and, because a fellow student, a trusted friend of mine - who had heard that it was a “gut course”; that is, as you may well know, a course considered easy to make an (A) grade in without much effort - recommended it.

The class was taught on “The Lawn” of the University. The Lawn of the University of Virginia, as I recall it with great fondness, was a long, cascading, open green rectangular - empty pasture - of mown grass, perhaps fifty yards wide, and several hundreds of gently sloping yards long? An inviting - hollow space - open to the infinite azure, a grand celestial promenade on occasion, as well as, an elegant public meeting grounds where students could sit, study, tussle, meander… or daydream… surrounded by carefully constructed classical colonnades: covered porticoes of rhythmically alternating white-plastered ionic, doric and corinthian columns. Off of these sheltering, red-brick walled, red-brick walked, red-brick bordered… neatly trimmed porticoes, were modest, yet highly-prized, single student rooms and historically furnished, swanky, married professorial homes, in back of which were intricately-designed formal, semi-private gardens, some with playful “serpentine” red-brick walls surrounding them!

All of this glorious empty green space, and its lovingly maintained eighteenth century, classical style dwellings and intimate gardens, which form the primordial, idyllic… poetic nuclei… of the ever-expanding University, was designed by the Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient ….

Principal Author of the Declaration of Independence, Third President of the United States, and Founding Father of the University of Virginia….

Thomas “Long Tom” Jefferson!

But, of course, you already knew that. While I had to go to school to learn it!

A solemn step, a studious yak’s breath away, then, from that heavenly green growing omphalos, on the southern end to the right, was a smallish, not-too-big, just right… sublimely well-proportioned, dramatically effective… amphitheater classroom, inside a Hallowed Hall, called Cabell. I shall never forget that, forgotten, first fateful day. I was seated anonymously in an anonymous back

seat in a slightly curving row of permanently installed, comfortably cushioned perhaps, collapsible seats, like in an opera or old fashioned movie house, the whole room sweeping downward toward the performance stage, in this case, a professor’s blond oak desk, and… possibly a green slate blackboard? Hmmm… I don’t remember a chalkboard. Or maybe I do

And I don’t remember any Greek tragedians, Roman senators or American patriots either! So there.

What I do remember, was a small, roundly beaming, fully bearded… spritely median age (early thirties… early forties?) gentleman… who, upon entering the classroom, immediately proceeded to shut off many, if not all, of the rows of tubular fluorescent lighting many airy feet above our heads.

Click, click, click, click…. off went alternate banks of glaring electric lights above allowing a full wall of high windows to our left to bathe us all in natural sunlight. And then… with the flick of a switch and a silent whoosh… this lively, quick little fellow was down one of the aisles - hop, skip, jump - on top of his large, sturdy blond oak desk and…. Bingo!

Out popped a something! A whatchamacallit…. A…. a…. long, dark, flat rectangular oddity…. maybe, six inches wide, twenty inches tall, an inch thick?

Am I remembering this? Or am I making it up?!

It’s like a movie in my head…. and there it is…. a strange, “long lost” book

Which, said “beaming gentleman” then, placed: carefully, decidedly…. with a rye flourish… ceremoniously, upon his left knee, and, balancing it assuredly with his left hand: the strange, attention-grabbing dark object standing to the vertical, as he sat erect and motionless, securely rooted, upon his large, smooth, battered perhaps, but sturdy… yes… solidly constructed: fair oaken raised dais, in an oddly marvelous, cross-legged position, beaming like a bright, conspiratorial… smiling red bear… seemingly magnifying the radiant morning light filling our Cabell Hall classroom to bursting.

I sat attentively for four months in that miraculous class with that small, beaming, mysterious man with a robust beard, who read to us articulately aloud: firstly, in an incomprehensible foreign language, then, concisely translated into precise, modern English, and, finally…. calmly attempted to explain, through our

many utterly baffled questions and his ever patient answers, the hidden meaning behind the densely poetic, enigmatic words of what was reputed to be a thousand-year-old Tibetan “treasure teaching”, or, terma: a hidden text discovered by a terton… some kind of wizened, wizardly monk on a far distant, misty mountaintop, I imagined.

It would be no exaggeration to say that I was mesmerized by the gentle, methodical Professor Hopkins, fascinated by his long dark, brooding book with its sinuous, flashing silken bookmark, riveted by the strangely appealing, alluring… familiar, yet utterly unfamiliar… musical notes of the Tibetan language, and, swept ecstatically into the light rain of naturalistic, myriad colored… rainbow beads… that pelted steadily down… pooled and cascaded… soaking, and stroking the thirsty seed pod… strumming the strings of “the body electric”… my youthful heart-mind

     “Waterfall
     No nothing can harm me at all
     My worries seem so clear and small
     With my waterfall”

     “I can see
     My rainbow is calling me
     Calling through the misty beads
     Of my waterfall…”

Chapter 2 THE WHEEL WHICH IS….

At the end of the semester, having been exposed to a plethora of vivid, fertile, fundamental concepts such as: The Wheel of The Law… The Four Noble Truths… The Eightfold Noble Path… The Three Jewels: The Buddha, The Dharma and The Sangha… We were invited to write a term paper on--

Excuse me. The Wheel of Who, What….?

Oh. Yes. For those who have not heard it spun. How this, our Beloved World, spins. To one who is, roundly “wide awake”. A teaching, a vision. A sad dove song… worth elaborating upon? The Spinning Wheel which is

The Wheel of Shakyamuni, Not!

The Wheel of Shake-Ya-Bootie? Say what?!

That coded, encrypted: hereditary clatter… that thought-train ridden by “dharma bums”… hopping the rails of dark grey matter… the scrambled, besotted contents, then… spilt from my twenty-year-old polliwog brain…only… reincarnated some forty-odd… scrivener’s erroneous… Thelonius years later… into the ravings of a mad monkey

Make it: two shots and a toke… then two more, and, hold the zen. Hit it, boys. Fire one, fire two… and a one two three…

Action. Roll em

Birth, aging, suffering, sickness and death… birth, aging, suffering, sickness and death… Birth, Aging, Suffering, sickness and death… birth aging, Suffering, sickness and death… [Burning, churning, turning… Evolving, devolving, revolving… Learning, yearning, Returning]… birth, aging, Suffering, Sickness and Death…

(Note: the above refrain: Birth, aging, suffering, sickness, etc.. is to be chanted continuously, in low, urgent whispers, by hundreds of young, hungry Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist monks, as subtle “background music”… woven into a thickening sound curtain… fog of simultaneously, syncopated, rhythmic… hand-clapping with furious stomping… from thousands of bare-footed, bare-chested, uproarious, indigenous natives on hollow ground… as… “thrown into the mix all together”— “tossed in there for good measure”… repeated in “recitative style”, perhaps: [Burning, churning, turning, and so forth…] is sung, by the frantic, ecstatic, black, female voices of a “back-up” Gospel choir of millions— all of this: Grand and Goodly Cacophony, then— this bewildering, rejoicing… Holy Frog Mayhem!… this unfurling cone of rapturous noise…pumping like the haunches of our Father Poseidon… wave after wave booming… launching inside

the depths of a billion queen conches— While the following lines are laid down: emphatically, slowly, deliberately, by the late, great, angelic Leonard Cohen)

     Eternal freight-train transmigration
     Railroad of imprisoned souls
     Tunneling funneling toward reincarnation
     Evolutionary involuntary
     Incarnate bondage

     In blackness of box car night
     After box car after box car of box car
     Night
     Let us roll on
     And on and on

     Dreaming meat-puppets
     Beaten
     But not defeated
     Hostages of fear ransomed by desire
     Sentient link-sausages chain-linked to the light

Birth, aging, suffering, sickness and death… birth, aging, Suffering, sickness and death… Burning, yearning, Returning… worming toward Re-Birth Station… into a newt, a Newtonian brute… a continuous blending, a heart-rending ending… tis down the shoot for us saps… up in smoke with a little soft shoe… with electro-magnetic elation… desire and collusion… a little jazz-fusion, all in unison… a murderous, trance-inducing lunacy… mass psychosis… do-si-doses… under the elliptical wheel of heaven… into the lip of hell… onto the end of the line

Birth, aging, Suffering, Sickness and Death… birth, aging… Bufferin, Bayers and Tums!?… Salute the jolly maggots, beat bums!… Toast to free lice, and all lovers of lies!… Board the fleet, runaway locomotive!… Nightmare Train of History… bound for the cosmic slums… and trenches of eternal blue yonder… Don’t miss this chance to Bojangle… to stomp on the dead, to a grind a last tango… to bump, with the darkling, lark of dawn… Raise your skull cups on high, good sons

Where every square, numinous, inch…. of immeasurably, infinite, gas-cloudy stench is… hierarchically populated… to pernicious, perilous over-capacity… with prideful, preening peacocks… Heavenly Ghetto Gods!… and Godly Gangster Wenches!…. (not to mention, the sinister grinches)…. those over-zealous jealous finches… them spiteful, warring Demi-Gods… them lesser ganja lords… whose armies of ungrateful, wretched clods… whose multitudinous, mutinous hoards…. unloosing cannons of dissension, with blasphemous opinions… making a horrible, atom-splitting row…. just over the serene, top-knotted heads… of our unassailable, unfailing heroes: Yonder All Compassionate, All Wise, All Loving… Otherworldly Buddhas, Lotus-Floating… and selflessly, self-sacrificing, (almost-but-not-quite), “fully enlightened”— holding back from: Entering The Buddhahood, hanging back in our contiguous cosmic neighborhood— then, while being quite capable of appearing… in the sub-sub-basements, and upon the fire escapes… of yonder festering parliaments and tenements, or…. any: where and when… here, there, and everywhere at once!… popping up like holy mothers!… to even a score, or, just… “for the sake”… of all us other less “realized” bros… Supremely Compassionate, Most Helpful and Kind, Hardest Working, Tirelessly Divine, Always Wondrously Generous, Super-Star, Super-Hero… Super Fly Bodhisattvas… amongst other superlative, supramental, perspicacious high-flyers: immortal celestial landlords, well-proportioned planetary goddesses; lesser, more local, “pimps n hoes”… lake, mountain, river and atmospheric dieties; the occasional, tyrannical, angry “queen bees”: a scythe-swinging, single-eyed, triple-breasted, eight-armed ogress… A Single Mom!… maybe, late for boulder-hurling, skull-smashing, dance-on-the-dead practice, or, her humorless daughter’s…. All-Important First Prom!… and other delightful spiritous species too numerous to name… on down to… us: the “auspiciously born”… lucky humans… the blameless, the shameless, the sinless…. if, “ignorant”… fruit of the loins of Mahakala… then onto our hapless next of kin: the wild, the neighborly, the enslaved… our long-suffering, animal cousins… poor helpless, mass-murdered, collared beasts… the blood coins of our dark times… the slaughtered children of our most ignorant dollars… further, and further below… to lowly, pathetic “hungry ghosts”, who “can’t get no satisfaction” no matter how hard they boast… and uncountable hosts of grossly malformed, malicious malcontents… phantoms on the fringes of an idle mind….dusty, out-of-work, side-railed lurkers… who hide in lost churches… dank ditches, under old bridges… downtrodden preachers of darkest, subconscious night…the homeless spawn of depressive draughts… resentful, angry, blame-filled tramps… poisonous microbes, cantankerous bacteria, revengeful viruses, perhaps… disembodied, ghouls egregious… the doomed roomers of discordant heart-minds… all those revoltingly ravenous ravers… belligerent beasties of

incessant noise… who ride the bends and folds… chide in tenderest glens… abide in cancerous sigmoid colons… seeking a drear, final sanctuary… a few bloody mouthfuls of immaculate protein… the fermenting liquor, of the pub in our bowels… a sweet meal with temporary shelter… last chance in the raging cyclone… metaphorical, metaphysical, metastatic… ecstatic musical storm… birth, aging, suffering, sickness and death… birth, Advil, Maalox, Bufferin and Tums— ARE YOU SICK OF IT YET!?

ALL ABOARD!!

The Wheel of the Maw?

The Flight of Shakyamuni Raven!… Caw caw caw

The iTrain… riding on the greasy, squeaky parallels of a craven brain…. The Law of Raw Meat and Sweet Dreams… rolling onto Re-Birth Station… always on schedule so far…. best “just desserts” in the galaxy…. and in-house, free movies… featuring our favorite stars

That Ubiquitous, Wiggly-Puff, “Self-Perpetuating” One… In A Squealing-Wheel-in-a-Long-Dark… Tunnel Drama… That Ever-Seductive, Ever-Lethal Plum… Who’s Who-Who… Who’s Always Grinning Hideously for The Camera… Whilst Giving Birth to a Gristly Chimera… Out of a Trillion-Trillion Ever-Sprouting Orifices… then… Eating All Of Its Own Babies!… That Omnivorous, Drooling, Disingenuous Bastard!… Who Laughs Longest and Loudest and Best!… Who Can’t Seem To Stop… Wobbling and Gobbling Us All, With Such Unsightly, Insidious Relish… Next! Next!! Next!!!

Kali Ma, Lord Shiva’s True Mistress!

Lord Shiva’s Mother, Sister, Lover…

Lord Shiva’s Wife, and, Lord Shiva’s “Evil” Twin!

The Master’s Witch!?… the cultural link

Edgar Allen’s Bitch

The Great Black Hole, The Easter Eagle, The Bleeding Wound of Ever-Lasting Life…. “ the stars up above, that play with Laughing Sam’s Dice” …. Mother Nature, The Poet’s Everlasting Muse, and… the other cognizant, guilty until proven innocent half… The Eternal Witness Of It All… Consciousness Itself… the gristmill mind of a raving mad cap…

It’s what you think…. pen-n-ink… time, history, the kitchen middens… haw haw haw

All Aboard!!…. suckers

     “Instant Karma’s gonna get you
     Gonna knock you in the head
     Better get yourself together brother
     Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead…”

Chapter 3

At the end of the first semester, then; having been given a tiny glimpse of the “wild world” according to Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism, with its wondrous buddhas, selfless bodhisattvas… and endlessly inhabited worlds stretching out into the vast dimensions of time and space, we were invited to write a term paper on: “emptiness”

THE DIRECT COGNITION OF EMPTINESS

“Emptiness” was apparently Professor Hopkin’s number one specialty! He had written his doctoral thesis on: EMPTINESS! So we were told —
Emptiness was always somehow…. lurking precipitously at the very heart…. of Mahayana Buddhism. And so, we students….

No. Me! Me, Myself and…?

I, yours truly… the blind, obedient son of the south… was asked to compose, and submit: a “five-page paper”, demonstrating my newly acquired understanding of the Fruitful, All-Important Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist Concept: Emptiness.

EMPTINESS OF INHERENT ARISING

Uh…. How do you spell that?

E M P T I N E S S

E M P T I N E S S ? !

It pains me to confess. I did not get an (A) grade in Buddhist Meditation. Alas, and a little lost yak. However, that did not prevent me from bravely enrolling in the fall semester again with Professor Hopkins in the follow-up course: Buddhist Nirvana. Or, was it the other way around: first class, Buddhist Nirvana… then, Buddhist Meditation….?

I think not. For surely, the rigorous, “Eastern” concept of meditation— mind-calming training, leading to the incipient, chilling contagion, with advanced signs of samadhi— precedes the egoically fatal, final… “state of which there are no signs”…. the “blowing out of the candle of desire”…. nirvana? Except perhaps, in extremely rare cases

Again, we were asked to memorize the basic, reasonable tenets of Buddhism, while being encouraged to cultivate a “growing awareness” of - an ever-expanding, seemingly contradictory, at times blithely fantastical… almost Dalinian… but…. nevertheless, always felicitously entertaining - Tibetan iconography. While the ever-blooming intellectual subtleties - and nearly hieratic, hyper-complexities of this demanding, conceptually verbose, heritage breed, branch, or, “lineage”, of, uniquely, ANCIENT TIBETAN Mahayana Buddhism - we were told - the almost inhuman, unscalable mountain goat heights as it were - of these Highest Dharma Teachings, would, ultimately, only be accessible to the rarified minds of a precious few gifted sentients in the world at large, upon our

tiny planet Earth, during any chosen epoch. Just as there were few native inhabitants of our globe presently, who could honestly disentangle themselves from a future wrought by Super G-String Theory, or, even vaguely comprehend the advanced mathematical incantations and cryptic scientific rituals required to become a bonafide adept in God Particle Physics, or, pontificate and debate: Quantum Mechanical Mumbo-Jumbo before an audience of subatomic mystics and quark sushi aficionados…. so, too… THE UNFORTUNATE TRUTH was: few of us, in this second introductory level class, if any, had the inherent marbles, the Darwinian traits, the god-given MATHEMATICAL GRAC-I-CLES… “the (I) capacity”… to understand the hidden messages, or, “esoteric” true meaning of the secret language of this most quintessentially indecipherable of metaphysical sciences…. which was constantly, zealously guarded and protected in its primordial purity… by the “Warm Breath of the (very hot) Dakinis”… and, further, which… was… and, IS… ever beyond a certain, impossible to ascertain point….. most assuredly inaccessible without… their explicit, super-critical, melting-down… infinitely encoded… holy secret

Directly-Dakini-Transmitted: Permission to Penetrate The Mysterious Void!

Yipes, the yaks are stampeding!!! And so it is…..

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