|
Be Here, Write Here Now
July 27, 2010
By Steve Fox
 Two five-day teaching and practicing intensives celebrating the perennial wisdom teachings of spiritual teacher Ram Dass, who had a strong relationship with the Lama Foundation in San Cristóbal, will be held this month at the Chamisa Mesa school buildings. July 19-23, a Lama Foundation alumna, student of Ram Dass and translator of the devotional mystics St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, Mirabai Starr, will lead BE HERE NOW: The Spiritual Legacy of Ram Dass. This five-day intensive experience will include “study, meditation, chanting, guest speakers, visiting sacred sites, and multi-media presentations [to] explore the profound impact these teachings have made on our culture and the significant shift in consciousness that unfolded in their wake,” according to the Sage Institute, which is sponsoring the celebration.
Then, July 26-30, author and Zen Buddhist practitioner Sean Murphy and Starr will lead WRITE HERE NOW, a five-day writing and meditation intensive with surprise guests from New Mexico’s literary community (details below).
Starr says the Sage Institute, which she helped form along with Sean Murphy last year, is dedicated to blending the creative arts and contemplative practice in service of humanity and the planet. “Sage Institute is a blossoming thing filling a role in the community,” she says. Starr was also the founder of Chamisa Mesa School 25 years ago, so this celebration of Ram Dass’ teachings brings her full circle with that mesa site and its 360-degree views of Taos Valley.
Ram Dass himself will appear and dialogue with participants via a live webcast on July 22, following a screening at the KTAO Solar Center of “Fierce Grace,” the poignant and moving documentary on Ram Dass by filmmaker Mickey Lemle. The film was named one of the Top Five Non-Fiction Films of 2002 by Newsweek.
Starr is on Maui, at this writing, visiting Ram Dass for three days in preparation for these events in his honor in Taos. “He’s very excited about our event, and very much involved from afar,” she says.
On July 23, the last day of the intensive, Starr will lead the group on a tour of Lama Foundation, where “Be Here Now” started its journey into American, and world, consciousness.
Taos Horse Fly readers will recall that, in April, we reported on the premiere performances of “Lama Genesis, Lama Incarnations,” a dramatic reading at Metta Theater of stories told by “Lama Beans” to the Lama Foundation Oral History Project. The events this July in Taos are not affiliated with the Oral History Project, but they, and the April theater project, show the continuing impact this strand of Taos culture has.
The BE HERE NOW intensive will be kicked off on Sunday, July 18, by an evening of kirtan, or call and response devotional chanting, led by renowned chant master Geoffrey Gordon, who has toured the globe with Jai Udall. Following the chanting there will be a lively panel discussion by people who’ve been moved by Ram Dass and his teachings, including a 30-year-old woman who grew up at Lama. Renowned chronicler of the countercultures, photographer and videographer Lisa Law, will moderate the discussion.
Ram Dass’ book, “Be Here Now,” printed on brown paper and sold loose in a little box by Lama, introduced the teachings of Ram Dass and his teacher, Neem Karoli Baba of India, to the public in 1970. The book had three parts: the first detailed his personal transformation from psychologist into the yogi Ram Dass. Part two, the heart of the book according to Starr, is Ram Dass’ “summary of his immersion in the ocean of Asian thought … the incredible contribution to our culture by distilling 5,000 years of Eastern contemplation into a Western idiom.” The third part is a ‘cookbook’ or manual of spiritual practices from many traditions.
I asked Starr what knowing Ram Dass and practicing his teachings has meant to her. The answer comes flowing quickly and steadily in her articulate speech: “Because of Ram Dass, my professional life and spiritual path are totally intertwined. I had two other mentors as a young teen at Lama—Asha Greer, who co-founded Lama, and Natalie Goldberg—and they have been extremely important to my mind and spirit. But I learned from Neem Karoli Maharaji, through Ram Dass, that there’s an essential unity underlying all spiritual traditions. There’s a devotional heart of all faiths that planted the seed that continues to flower in my work and life. It’s the ‘path of the heart.’ In my translation work, I’m distilling the perennial wisdom traditions of the Christian mystics into current idioms, as Ram Dass did with Asian thought, so they’re accessible to people today.”
WRITE HERE NOW. Beginning on July 26, Sean Murphy and Starr will lead a writing and meditation intensive at the Chamisa Mesa School compound on Blueberry Hill Road. You do not have to attend the Be Here Now Ram Dass intensive to take the writing course. Sean Murphy is well-known in New Mexico and national writing and Zen Buddhism circles because of his four published books that came tumbling out between 2002 and 2005: “One Bird, One Stone—108 American Zen Stories,” a nonfiction book about 100+ Zen masters in the U.S. and their American followers (Renaissance/St. Martin’s Press, 2002); a novel, “The Hope Valley Hubcap King,” which won the Hemingway Award For a First Novel (Dell/Bantam Press, 2002); another novel, “The Finished Man” in 2004 and “The Time of New Weather,” a satire, in 2005 (both from Dell/Bantam).
Murphy’s website says that “One Bird, One Stone” “presents notable encounters between teachers and students, the moments of insight and wisdom, the quotable quotes, and the humor of Zen as it has flowered in America over the last hundred-plus years.” Murphy says, “I was astounded by the diversity of centers, practice styles, and teachings I encountered, and came away with a renewed faith in the power and adaptability of this ancient tradition, which has now, through some mysterious process, become firmly rooted in western soil.”
Malachy McCourt, author of “A Monk Swimming,” wrote that ‘The Hope Valley Hubcap King’ is a rich, vast, and slyly comedic novel that leaves you laughing and weeping. Read and rejoice,” and Publisher’s Weekly says, “This book has ‘Future Cult Classic’ written all over it.”
I asked Sean, a teaching colleague of mine at UNM Taos and a writing mentor of mine as well, what they’ll do at the Write Here Now intensive. “It’ll be like the contemplative writing seminars I’ve been teaching for two years at the Bachelor and Graduate division of UNM,” he said. This intensive is also set up to provide optional credit in upper-division coursework. If people want the credit option, they should call Upper Division UNM at 758-2828 for the credit option ONLY, then sign up on-line at www.sagetaos.com.
“Mirabai and I’ll mix meditation, writing exercises, reading your writing to the group, and yoga. The main point of this is to give people who attend the Ram Dass Be Here Now workshop another five days of concentrated practice to open the writing process up. But it’s open to anybody.”
I asked Sean what his entryway was to contemplative practice. “It was through pop culture,” he said. “Writers like Jack Kerouac and his book ‘Dharma Bums,’ Alan Watts and his popular talks for ordinary people and his books on Asian thought and practice. Also the Beatles—George Harrison and ‘My Sweet Lord,’ and he got interested through John Lennon. Lennon’s song ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ from 1966 quotes lines from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which was translated into a popular English version by Timothy Leary, who was very close to Richard Alpert—later, Ram Dass. I taught writing workshops with Natalie Goldberg from 1998 to 2003 and still sometimes collaborate with her. She studied Zen Buddhism, and I’ve studied under John Daido Loori for 20 years. But you see,” Sean continued, “all the contemplative traditions originated in India and flowed through Tibet to China, Korea, Japan, and southeast Asia, and as they did, they became thought of as diverging strands. But now, in America and Western Europe, the strands are re-converging again. That’s why Ram Dass is so important—he’s helping people realize that the strands all came from the same root. We in the West are more open to learning the common values and practices than they are in Asia.
“We’re coming into an era when the first-generation American students of these traditions are getting old, and we need to preserve their legacies. John Daido Loori died last October. Ram Dass is in his upper 70s. Mirabai and I are part of the second generation, whose job it is to convey the teachings of the first generation to the third.”
Some people regard the multiplying options to learn meditative practices as interchangeable—a “spiritual mall.” It is clear that under the direction of Mirabai Starr and Sean Murphy, these intensive workshops connect you to serious lineages that go back centuries.
|
