Back To Less Important Business
The children have been fed through the severest emergency period, lockdown is partially relaxed here in Nepal, and families in the village we were feeding are doing a little bit better. The remaining smidgeon of money that was in the kitty of our food drive has been properly distributed to food and medicine for two desperately needy local families. (Romash and friend, pictured above getting ready to deliver.) There are many families throughout the city that are still very much in trouble, so we will keep the GFM page open and take care of those folks as contributions to do so roll in. As always, we will continue to report to you in prose and photo about the great good that your generosity accomplishes. Our crew is, at least part time, getting back to their previous lives. That means that I am once again an author writing a book about a laughing corpse who travels completely around a decaying world in search of truth and fun. Here is a very short piece from March. It describes the beginning of the long, severe lockdown in Nepal. Oddly enough, nearly everything in it is still very much current (except of course that the numbers are much higher than one by now). ***And again, thank you very, very much to all the compassionate donors that have helped, and those who will continue to help, to keep our neighbors from starving! https://www.gofundme.com/f/malnourished-nepali-children-need-help
Trapped In Heaven/Free In Bondage
Want to know how to be blissful and free while shackled to where you are? I found the answer (again) while trapped in The Boudha Stupa’s wheelhouse in Kathmandu, but it can happen anywhere.
Just three short days after moving into The Pundarika Cozy Apartments to enjoy my last two weeks in Kathmandu while finalizing plans for a Spanish adventure, Spain closed. It seems like most of the world closed with it.
The corona virus has spun the planet into panic. Everything is closed. Everyone is out of work. Early reports say that it will become a lot more serious. So far, what we have seen here involves a lot more social engineering and cultural manipulation than disease. A lot has been done about successfully controlling human behavior. Nothing has been done about successfully controlling a virus.
“Never waste a crisis.” —Winston Churchill
The manufactured fear, real economic impact, and spooky sociopolitical consequences are already proving to be worse than the actual disease. Nepal has one reported case so far. That person was isolated and cured weeks ago. Nonetheless, the government has officially mandated social distancing to the point of locked down isolation for its citizens. There is no projected end date to this process. Communication with the Western world tells me that reactions and overreactions to this virus are just as pronounced there. A real disease exists and it can be dangerous. But media exaggeration, dramatization, and fear-mongering seem to be serving a diabolical purpose that has nothing to do with a virus. Call me a conspiracy theorist, label me paranoid, and send me for counseling but I’ll bet anyone that wants to take the bet—there is a sociopolitical plague and an impending degeneration of freedom in the works that a virus itself could not produce.
Anyway, I am trapped here in heaven and loving it, so far. I'm not loving the fact that people around the world are getting sick and some are dying. I’m not loving the the way so many people are drinking fear as if it is champagne during Prohibition. There is nothing lovable about the economic butt kicking being suffered by so many people that have always been a paycheck or two away from being homeless and hungry, or the restrictions already put on personal freedoms, or the strong possibility that those restrictions will expand in the near future. What I am loving is that sheer dumb luck has landed me on a fragrant garden island floating in a sea of both bullshit and real shit. Yes, there is a nasty storm all around. Yes, the storm is complete with viral monsters, social maelstroms, a typhoon strength manipulation of the public that is painful to watch, and tidal waves of debilitating insecurity and fearful insanity. Common sense has become a victim of both the hype and the disease.
But life here in the Boudha Stupa area is a bit more fun than most reports of life elsewhere. When your dimension is collapsing, it is a real plus to be surrounded by folks who are already halfway into another dimension.
Joseph Campbell said that when a person is no longer directed by and mentally immersed in the history of his or her carnal body, but is rather directed by and immersed in the Consciousness that informs that body, then the suffering of that ego driven carnal self no longer has anything to do with this person's experience of life. Although conditions outside of self stay the same, a change of perspective, perception, and focus can actually make the suffering disappear from the way we experience those conditions.
Identifying with the dimension of consciousness cancels a lot of problems that we employ by identifying with our so-called normal egoistic frame of reference. Mr. Campbell said that it is as if the shackles fall off while never leaving your wrists—like being free in bondage. A common old expression states a similar notion as, “head in the clouds with feet on the ground.” George Harrison nailed open the door to all this for us by saying quite often that, “It’s all in your mind.”
A very high percentage of the people here understand and live by these ideas. There are over a thousand monks and nuns in this small neighborhood. They spend more time dwelling in that Universal Consciousness than in their carnal, ego-based history. They radiate what the Buddhists call Loving Kindness. It is considered to be the base station of both human and universal nature. The entire population of the neighborhood absorbs a lot of what the robed people radiate. That general public then radiates love and support back to the monks, nuns, and each other as well as toward any and all living things.
This kind and loving way of life makes sense, and it is nothing new. It has been voiced in one form or another by sages, shamans, and other emotional scholars around the world for thousands of years. Generating a state of Loving Kindness and psychological freedom by identifying with the Universal, instead of identifying with the strictly and restrictively personal, has major advantages. It provides the practitioner with great inner strength as well as a ticket to ride with happy freedom’s essential sibling components—altruism, compassion, and universal connectedness. These qualities are the building blocks for a happier life.
Knowing that a mind free and strong enough to transcend conventional, mundane thought is the base station for happiness is not enough. Just knowing about this state of mind is a very different thing than consistently practicing and actively embodying it enough to internalize its benefits, and become skillful in sharing those benefits with others.
It doesn’t take a shaman to see that we are on the edge of some very deep shit, folks. It is more important now than it has ever been to practice the transcendence that will actually bring transition. Knowing about it won’t save us. Embodying it, becoming it, and then consistently being it, will.
Knowing that we need food to live will not keep us alive if we don’t shop, cook, and eat.
MORE TO COME ON Nepal, photos of ancient spiritual and historical sites, people, culture, then the continuing trip around the world, and more—if you want it. If not let me know and I will take you off the mailing list right away.
***If you missed the Introduction to the book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier and contains the above chapter, or would like to see several other chapters that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section at www.fearlesspuppy.info This is a book in progress. You are reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story—and probably the only book ever written about and by a corpse traveling around the world!
***The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through the website at www.fearlesspuppy.info, as are sample chapters from those books. Very entertaining tv/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books, if you choose to buy them! (You can also get them right from Amazon. See all the 5* reviews there.) All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not exclusive to Buddhist monks and nuns.