Pass the Mic

There’s a line in one of my favorite Beastie Boys songs. The song is called Pass the Mic. The line is so simple, but it’s delivered so perfectly, “and now I’ve gotta pass the mic to Yauch”. That would be Adam Yauch, one third of the Beastie Boys, and the one that the other two (Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond) credit with founding the group and being its driving creative force. For the record I’ve always had a crush on AdRock (Adam H), who currently looks like a hot, scruffy, hipster dad from Brooklyn. Yauch became a fully practicing Buddhist in the 90’s, which is why it’s appropriate that I end my retreat recap with a reference to him. Most intensively creative people are always on a quest for ideas and inspiration. Creativity is a muscle that always needs to be flexed, and like any muscle it just gets stronger. It also needs to recharge and restore during periods of rest. I don’t think it’s possible for a deeply creative soul to be complacent. The need to constantly be connecting dots and unearth more inspiration never goes away. As is often the case, Yauch, despite experiencing tremendous wealth, success, fame, and creative fulfillment that came attached to all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll one could ever dream of, realized that the ideas of Western achievement were false. So many seemingly successful people, famous or not, are just not truly blissful and peaceful. They don’t necessarily like their lives. Not content to just sail on the winds of all his success, Yauch traveled to Nepal where he was greatly moved by the plight of the persecuted Buddhists in Tibet. He became devoted to the teachings of the Dalai Lama. He was very much in awe of the monks he met who were brutally tortured yet retained a deep sense of joy, peace, and compassion for life, even for their torturers. Peace is addictive in that once you really taste it you crave more. This is obviously the best kind of addiction, and from then on his Buddhist ideals infused everything he did, including the music. Yauch was the one who founded the Free Tibet concerts as well as the Milarepa Fund. Milarepa was a famous Tibetan monk who was terribly tortured. Yauch was a true Boddhisattva, an awakened being, and wrote a song called Boddhisattva Vows. With the concerts and fund he wanted to help Tibet be free from the oppression of the Chinese government, that to this day forcefully prohibits practicing Buddhism. It’s nuts how the most peaceful people literally on Earth have to flee, all the while holding their captors and oppressors in a space of compassion. This seems impossible but it’s not because they’re doing it. These are not white girl problems. Yauch sadly died of cancer way too young, but left a lasting impact for so many reasons, including his talent, mind, heart, and dedication to all of humanity. An awakened being never goes to sleep, even in death. That’s why a true Buddhist doesn’t fear leaving their bodies. I cannot imagine not being afraid of death, but just think of the peace that comes with eliminating that central worry in all our lives. What if we just took that piece out? Every single day our lives are decreased by one. We inch closer to dying every night we go to sleep. Dying is just as natural as being born; maybe it’s really not as bad as we have been taught to believe. I don’t want to die now, like AT ALL, but I’d like to go through my time here without imagining the grim reaper following me and my loved ones around, like in the Scream movies. Truthfully I don’t do that anymore. That stopped a couple years ago, though I absolutely was previously obsessed with mortality. Obsession of any kind blocks joy because it’s attachment. A fixated mind gets in the way of an open heart, no matter the object of our fixation. The goal of Buddhist practice is to achieve an open heart that includes all the pain and suffering in the world, especially our own. It’s not “get over it and open your heart”. No, it’s allow all the pain, see it, love it for teaching you grace, but don’t get tangled up in it. Life has ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows, all asking for our acceptance and acknowledgment. All transient passersby. We are made of equal parts love and fear. The practice is to have the love conquer the fear in each individual moment. Moments and experience are always in flux but the task is unchanging. As with creatives, a spiritually aware person is also never complacent. They don’t get attached to the pleasures and joys either, as those are in flux too. At the end of my silent retreat, a Friday, I was a roiling kettle of simmering, competing emotions and sensations. I was proud, relieved it was over, triumphant, lighter, exposed, raw, drained, invigorated, scared to leave yet dying to sleep in my own bed, unbelievably moved, beaming, and sobbing hysterically. This is tough work and I, We, had completed it together. I felt deeply connected to each member in our 65 person group without ever having spoken to them. One body indeed. Part of our morning was the same as the others, but mostly we had several ceremonies that fiercely drove home all we had just done. Three students had just completed a year of intense study and were given their robes and Japanese names in a Jukai ceremony. Many of the attendees had these robes and special names. I didn’t understand the purpose of the names, though I thought they sounded super cool (especially because they reminded me of characters from Kill Bill). During Jukai it was explained that these names are fresh versions of ourselves, almost like a spiritual alter ego. For example, the teacher said to one of the students, Alex, “Life is always full of situations and conflict. There’s Alex’s reaction and there’s Konshin’s reaction”. Ah, ok, I get that! I loved it actually, knowing that we can always choose our approach to anything. I often think about how the old Jessica would react vs how the new Jessica would react. The new version is a lot smarter and more grounded; her reactions are always better. These new inductees had family and friends come to the ceremony, it really was like a graduation. At one point during part of the rituals included in the induction, the three of these men stood on a platform and the rest of us snaked around them while reciting Buddhist vows. I locked eyes with Michael, the oldest of the three, and was struck by the shining purity in his face and blue eyes. It was like looking at the eyes of a baby, all raw joy and sweetness. I know nothing about this man, which is the point of all this; we don’t need to know anything except each other’s Buddha nature. Make no mistake, life includes wisdom, which is vastly different than knowledge. Knowledge lives in the mind, it is facts, statistics, information, books, and ideas. Wisdom resides in the heart. Both are important but not equally so. Heart wisdom is always the inner teacher. Wisdom includes knowing how to size up a situation and knowing how to act out of compassion for ourselves. Ahimsa, the Sanskrit word for compassion, begins with how we relate to ourselves. Self preservation and self care are vital. Heart wisdom doesn’t mean to be a soft schmuck. But it means we can move wisely throughout life with a deeper understanding of the incentives of others. The vision of Michael’s eyes come to me often, he was just this beacon of love in that powerful moment. He was aglow. I’m fortunate to have seen that. That day and time I could have been anywhere, seeing or ignoring any number of scenarios. But I was there and I saw that. Another ceremony we had before Jukai was at the conclusion of our final morning meditation. It was instrumental, using all these ancient Buddhist means of sound. I love sound vibrations and attend sound baths at home periodically. They are delicious. You just lie there comfortably while different vibrations engulf and enter you. It’s incredibly healing and unlocks us internally. I have always loved the primal beats of African music, the painful wail of bagpipes, the soulful shriek of a harmonica, and the ridiculous sexiness of a guitar, just to name just a few. I am in awe of the effects of sound. During the retreat the robed women in the back of the meditation zendo, played these massive sound bowls. It’s work, as I know from my yoga teachers who do it daily during our class. You bang the edge of the bowl then catch the vibration and move it around the rim, filling the space with the vibration over and over. Each bowl sounds different, and each person I know that has one says the same thing, that the bowls have a mind of their own. They teach you how to use them, not the other way around. I’ve been meaning to get one for a long time, and my daughter brought me one from her trip to India. On this final day as I was releasing the black smoke from my gut that I referenced in the previous post, during this intensely powerful music ceremony, a mad rush of the smoke poured furiously out of me. I did not plan on this, it just happened and it felt like I was on this wild energetic ride. I sat it my chair as I’d done all week, being filled with gongs, chimes, and drums. The last few minutes all these mystical, ancient sounds came together in one fast, giant clanging force, and the only word I can use is transformative. It was very cleansing. Shifting energy is draining work. I was euphoric but wiped out, like after giving birth. It’s a spot on analogy; we each birthed yet another version of ourselves on this retreat. Dormant pain bodies were shaken awake and began to reluctantly pack up their dirty things. To love is to exist under a new regime. Clearing space takes fierce determination when there are certain egoic aspects that refuse to move. They have nowhere to go so they latch on to our purity and goodness. But if all things are transient, they need to leave too. Which leads me to Pass the Mic, which we did that day as well. When we were finally allowed to break our silence, I think this was after the sound ceremony because I could barely speak (not to worry, I figured it out) since I had been crying so much. We each had two minutes to say what we were feeling in that moment. Timing was important because we had to be efficient since we needed to leave Garrison by the afternoon to make room for the next retreat. Reyshin was told to gong us when we reached our time limit. I think I was gonged nine times, as one would expect. There was so much to say. As I often do, I started with humor. I introduced myself and said that I think we should end the week with a talent show, like at Kellerman’s in the last scene of Dirty Dancing, since this felt like the last day of camp. Like, imagine if the person who we all thought was the shyest in the group just busted out some breakdancing. We had of course all been making up assumptions about each other all week, so it could be a fascinating and hilarious social experiment. Daishi, our strict but loving leader would direct, since in my imagination she owned and operated a Reform Jewish sleepaway camp in the Catskills. Koshin, one of the teachers who I hadn’t yet met, doubled over laughing. Mic drop, mission accomplished. I also commented on how the corn on the cob that we ate at lunch the day before could have easily been a logistical nightmare on a silent retreat, but that we as a group handled that quite impressively (cue the laugh track). Not wanting to seem like the avoidant class clown, I also spoke of how I was terrified to go back to regular life. How I was wary of failing at the new challenge of integration. How I had entered this week with such outlined commitments to myself, and I didn’t want to let myself down by immediately taking back on the roles I was determined to shed. Gong! I spoke of how one evening a few of us were staring quietly at the mountains after a storm. There was a magical smoke floating on top of the mountains, and that I was moved by how nature/we are always simultaneously still and in motion. I quoted Eckhart Tolle who tells us to “let nature teach us stillness”. Gong!! I said I know, I know, you’re right but can I just thank Frank (Wilford Brimley from the first post) for being such a Buddha...GONG GONG GONGGGGGG!!!!!!!! Later on at lunch, a few of the ladies were so cute and came over to me saying that they’d suspected all week that I’d be funny (🏼). One of the things I loved hearing during pass the Mic was when a woman thanked her neighbor directly across from her (the aforementioned Alex) for always smiling at her when we did our bows. That touched my heart so much. She said that the two of them looking at each other and smiling during each bow kept her going. The power of just a simple smile to connect is one of life’s most basic threads. Most of us took ourselves and our bows very seriously this week. Picturing these two sweet faces shining at each other from across the zendo was beautiful. They were in it together, united by just the upward direction of their mouths. Think of the fleeting connection when you smile at a stranger. It’s often all it takes. A yogi friend asked me how it was. I said Milarepa had it worse and he didn’t get farm fresh scones. Life is full of words. Carrie Fisher, in describing her volatile relationship with Paul Simon said, “words, words, there were just so many words”. I never forgot that line. I’m sure they did, especially with him being a linguistic genius. But the “I love you” can morph into a “fuck you” so quickly. Language is a gift of communication unique to humans. We so often misuse, overuse, underuse, and abuse it. There is always so much to say. But there is also always more that doesn’t need to be said. At least not in the way we think. Speech is never as impactful as true communication. And communication is at its most powerful when we learn to communicate with ourselves. I’m proud I did this. I’ll do it again. I’m practicing finding my voice with silence.