♦ YOU Could Start HERE - - AKASA LEVI - PROFILE - Read Slow
"May You Live in Interesting Times"
You've heard the phrase ~
What does it mean ?
You've heard the phrase ~
What does it mean ?
_/!\_
with
palms joined
Nama'ste
. .
Akasa Maitreya Levi
The Laughing Buddha Sangha
The First Wave Meditators • 1970's
Come Learn Dharma and Sit Meditation
with the Westside Old Timer's Sangha
Small Local Informal Relaxed Practice
who lived their "Mindfulness" in India
becoming the first Western students.
Guiding the "Mind-FULLY" and ZEN•MEN
Santa Monica CA 90405 • 1-310-450-2268
Beginners always Welcome
-:¦:- "There is No Buddha"
Please Scroll Down for Profile --
"May You Live in Interesting Times"
Suzhou, China in 1227 ---
"May You Live in Interesting Times"
You've heard the phrase ~
What does it mean ?
"May You Live in Interesting Times"
You've heard the phrase ~
What does it mean ?
Unfortunately, the most fascinating periods in history were filled with tumult and upheaval. Tales of treachery, wars, and chaos provided compelling, exciting reading and telling -- so much so the 'fascinating' became 'distraction' for the intellectual elite / socially powerful living in these / those much too 'interesting times'. Commoners lives unraveled, work didn't get done, while other's attention to duties of skillful governance suffered badly. Sadly, for the participants actually living through these momentous and most often, monstrous events: they were stuck experiencing ever present fear, inhuman torture, devastating hunger, and brutal massive slaughter.
And...
And...
For those of you who are still currently
mean-spirited enough and moved to
exploitation by having a Hex to lay on -
spurred on by the sheer crippling power
of cold indifference to 'enable' such
a Damning Dumbing-Down Curse:
"May You Live in Interesting Times.
mean-spirited enough and moved to
exploitation by having a Hex to lay on -
spurred on by the sheer crippling power
of cold indifference to 'enable' such
a Damning Dumbing-Down Curse:
"May You Live in Interesting Times.
May you live in a captivating age.
May you live in exciting times.
May you live in total overwhelm.
May you die in total confusion.
Dying in bloated consumption.
May you live in exciting times.
May you live in total overwhelm.
May you die in total confusion.
Dying in bloated consumption.
There is no doubt that a dreadful
Curse has fallen innocently on us.
We move from crisis to ugly crisis.
We suffer one heartless disturbance
and irreparable shock after another.
Whatever happened to the blessings
of our Mother Goddess Kwan Yin ? "
-----------------------------------------------
and irreparable shock after another.
Whatever happened to the blessings
of our Mother Goddess Kwan Yin ? "
-----------------------------------------------
"There is a noteworthy Chinese adage contrasting times of peace and war back then, displayed in Suzhou, China in 1227. These tales expressed a yearning, yet somber preference for times of peace and stability versus war and turbulence. Thirsty, hungry, the people bore all manner of terrible hardships -- while the affluent lived indulgently secure in their indifference. Where would the poor have a safe home to call their own again? They prayed to Heaven, to Earth, and to their Ancestors, and to the very Buddha himself. Mostly, they prayed not to let them run into the rulers and their merciless, demonic horse soldiers...
'Truly, better to be a dog in days of peace -
Than to be a human being in times of war'
Bollywood hadn't been invented yet.
"May You Live in Compassionate Times
-- instead !
-------------------
PROFILE: Akasa Levi --
who's now 76, a wild card,
somewhat roguish, and
a life-long curmudgeon...
PROFILE: Akasa Levi --
who's now 76, a wild card,
somewhat roguish, and
a life-long curmudgeon...
♦ Once upon a time, long, long ago --- before
the Sun, stars and seasons kept time, before sand and water-clocks kept time, before wind-up, mechanical and analog clocks kept time, before digital and electronic devices kept time, and even a time when people just didn't have any time to have a good or a bad time, or even a time when they had too much time -- or just outright, they had No Time. Not enough damn Time...
Dear Reader, If this was the Interesting Time that you were incarnated just to read this cautionary, wary text here with me --and some believe, you were born again/rebirthed only to have once again, a materially obsessed life-time --so get out and get going, before you get caught up in the swell of the spell of the curse. So again be warned-- you better reconsider the price of some kind of totally consuming, exasperating, hidden low-life, self worth, anxiously depressed, semi-conscious, banal incarnation: Now that's a Curse -
I woke up mid-dream back in The Great Chaotic Unrest --the Feral State of the late 60’s in a linen leisure-suit, carrying the Curse of Yuppie America..
"I was still measuring a dream by another dream" - so my teachers later taught-- that phase was ending with a better understanding of 'impermanence' and yet, another dream beginning....
----------------------------------------
Name Dropping of Living Treasures
Here we are at last at this populated Profile which arrived as a sporadic cascade of living spiritual beings-- here there and there, that I came upon -- AS AN EXAMPLE of sipping the many strains of 'spirit' like a well aged rum nectar. "They Are Out There" -- Please Go Find Them, these many named Mish'she-ach, these Teaching-Angels and Wise Men, these Tribal Teachers and Truth Carriers, these Princes and Sherpa porters of the universal Dharma -- these living, modern day Messengers, Pointers, Pilots, and of course, The Stranger. Some strangers have come to give while other strangers have arrived to receive. All carry the 'Words' necessary to Realize.
------------------------------
The PROFILE Already ! ~
♦ Me, Akasa Levi ( a nice Jewish mensch of a man from Hewlet and Far Rockaway NY, right near the beach ) served in the U.S.Army 63-to-65 with the First/of the 81st Armor Division of the infamous Col. George Patton Jr, himself -- Stetson cowboy hat, twin pearl handled .45 caliber revolvers, and "the smell of napalm in the morning" -what a monster. Akasa, upon his military discharge, was full of Sixty's vitriolic pissed off war protest anger, so in '68 he abandoned New York City and seductive 'Madison Avenue' for the Mediterranean, then living by film-making in Israel, then finding the slowest long way overland through the Kyber Pass to Asia. It took months.
( see page "Notes of An American Buddhist Monk" )
♦ It took years -- and by 1975, Akasa Levi had some of the very basic, preliminary training to become an ordained 'Samanara' - a Buddhist novice monk, then six years a mendicant Sadhu wandering and meditating in “beggar-man’s” orange robes with an alms bowl in mid-70's back-country, still very indigenous rural Asia. Akasa was trained and ordained as a Bhikkhu monk into the Buddhist Theravada monastic Amarapura Order of The Triple Gem by the beloved and revered 'Bhante' Nyaka Thera Balangoda Ananda Maitreya and Kassapa Maha Thera in Sri Lanka's lush Bamboo Forests near Kandy.
The Story of a Monk's 'Drawn' Robe ~ Earlier, my own novice robes were 'drawn' - I literally pulled pieces of cloth out of the rubbish pile --or an old scarf I actually pulled off the body on the burning funeral pyre. "Once the fire is lit, the body of the deceased belongs to no one except Lord Shiva". The family was so pleased to have invited a foreign monk to receive their loved one's remnant. Lastly, I sch'leped from temple to temple asking the abbots for discarded pieces of any monk's old robes -- that only when I had a complete set of scraps could I come to a sacred 'Sima' ritual place surrounded by a small moat that symbolically unhitched me from the 'World' - and ordain. A committee of Sangha Elders vetted me at length by questions thru a translator before I was approved. A week later, a set of new, fine quality donated robes were gifted to me, and my vows were taken under the actual great grand child of the original Bodhi-Tree itself, in the small remote desert village of Bodhgaya, North India.
♦ At an auspicious pre-ordained (pun) moment of a traditional ordination -- in the most sacred Buddhist vortex on the whole Earth -- under the very same Ficus Religiosa sacred tree the Buddha himself sat, imperturbable during the final abusive trial of his totally letting go of totally all of his self created, self generated worldly attachments and possessive 'ideas' and identity-- into an exquisitely empty, self released, self aware state of compassionate, illuminated, ultimate contentment. An a'fete Accompli --For several moments I myself too, was Done. I was so Here ! -- At-one-ment for a timeless moment, amidst a 25 hundred year old epic historical back-story --and here I was, already nick-named Bhante Sudu Hom'dru ( the White Monk ) walking in tandem alongside all the Buddhas that have ever been -- as the karmic parallels of my own journey just keep eternally paralleling, narrowing and narrowing -- I was so There... I almost wasn't anywhere. As I knew 'myself', I almost didn't exist ! I'd done various native Ritual, but this was simply astounding. Yup, so here I was a freshly ordained novice standing under a huge tree-- so I wasn't very good at tying my robe on, and the lun'ge sarong skirt on the damn thing wouldn't stay up, and I almost dropped my monk's sarong skirt leaving me bare-assed under the most sacred tree in the world ! What would my Jewish grammy say ? "You can come home now Mr. Buddha".
• Previous to this final 'anointing' ( there's only two monastic levels - samanera /novice monk and bhikkhu / senior monk ) which all monks enter into with the Monastic Maha-Sangha -- only on the basis of one's ordained time, years in Sangha - so you may see an older monk who is actually younger in rank in the Sangha, not with how much inner 'attainment' has been developed. Observe and Listen -- No one really knows who has 'achieved' What -- In Theravada Buddhism It's a don't ask - don't tell issue. (more)
♦ Going backwards: Akasa Levi was a Gelugpa Vajrayana initiate and temple gardener to Geshe Lama Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu in Nepal during the early 70's - Lot'sa "Big Love" - Digging big holes with Lama Yeshe - Urinating on tomato plants with Lama - Moving giant rocks with Lama - Having Lama's dogs trample my garden many times - Seeing Lama's herd of young kid Rinpoche incarnate monks hitch up their burgundy robes and actually fly off a windswept hill up into the air on windstormy nights off the Gompa's meditation hall high steep steps - Then there was November Courses with Lama '73-75' - Bodhgaya with Lama - Dharamsala / Tushita with Lama - Lots of Laughing with Lama, him laughing at me - London with Lama - The North Umbria Priory with Lama - Los Angeles with Lama - It was truly a Big Love Affair, of course, and supposed to be that - cult-like 'passion' that matures in Good Hearts and leads to Wise Skillful Compassion and Loving Kindness - In 1982 Lama died here in LA - Lama Yeshe was 54. Certainly, If you need to have a Root Guru assisting you in steering your Practice, I am so grateful to have been introduced to Lama way up a steep Solo Kumbo mountainside near Namche Bazzar.
♦ Later on, I became a resident Vipassana student to learn 'Mindfulness' practice directly from the renown Anagarika Munindra Barua, a sweet and nimble man, the leading teaching-master of Satipatthana Mindfulness in Bodhgaya, India where the ancient Bodhi Tree still stands giving 'Refuge' to all newbie Bodhisattvas to come • 1975-76: Also at this time I relished my annual monsoon seasons of non-duality practice in satsang under the wild and notorious ‘Bede Baba’ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in India's Mumbai slums in Old Bombay. I'd have sores on my head from the apples and oranges he'd throw at people daily. What an adorable, brilliant, cantankerous, chain smoking old man. He was the real deal, That !
the Sun, stars and seasons kept time, before sand and water-clocks kept time, before wind-up, mechanical and analog clocks kept time, before digital and electronic devices kept time, and even a time when people just didn't have any time to have a good or a bad time, or even a time when they had too much time -- or just outright, they had No Time. Not enough damn Time...
Dear Reader, If this was the Interesting Time that you were incarnated just to read this cautionary, wary text here with me --and some believe, you were born again/rebirthed only to have once again, a materially obsessed life-time --so get out and get going, before you get caught up in the swell of the spell of the curse. So again be warned-- you better reconsider the price of some kind of totally consuming, exasperating, hidden low-life, self worth, anxiously depressed, semi-conscious, banal incarnation: Now that's a Curse -
I woke up mid-dream back in The Great Chaotic Unrest --the Feral State of the late 60’s in a linen leisure-suit, carrying the Curse of Yuppie America..
"I was still measuring a dream by another dream" - so my teachers later taught-- that phase was ending with a better understanding of 'impermanence' and yet, another dream beginning....
----------------------------------------
Name Dropping of Living Treasures
Here we are at last at this populated Profile which arrived as a sporadic cascade of living spiritual beings-- here there and there, that I came upon -- AS AN EXAMPLE of sipping the many strains of 'spirit' like a well aged rum nectar. "They Are Out There" -- Please Go Find Them, these many named Mish'she-ach, these Teaching-Angels and Wise Men, these Tribal Teachers and Truth Carriers, these Princes and Sherpa porters of the universal Dharma -- these living, modern day Messengers, Pointers, Pilots, and of course, The Stranger. Some strangers have come to give while other strangers have arrived to receive. All carry the 'Words' necessary to Realize.
------------------------------
The PROFILE Already ! ~
♦ Me, Akasa Levi ( a nice Jewish mensch of a man from Hewlet and Far Rockaway NY, right near the beach ) served in the U.S.Army 63-to-65 with the First/of the 81st Armor Division of the infamous Col. George Patton Jr, himself -- Stetson cowboy hat, twin pearl handled .45 caliber revolvers, and "the smell of napalm in the morning" -what a monster. Akasa, upon his military discharge, was full of Sixty's vitriolic pissed off war protest anger, so in '68 he abandoned New York City and seductive 'Madison Avenue' for the Mediterranean, then living by film-making in Israel, then finding the slowest long way overland through the Kyber Pass to Asia. It took months.
( see page "Notes of An American Buddhist Monk" )
♦ It took years -- and by 1975, Akasa Levi had some of the very basic, preliminary training to become an ordained 'Samanara' - a Buddhist novice monk, then six years a mendicant Sadhu wandering and meditating in “beggar-man’s” orange robes with an alms bowl in mid-70's back-country, still very indigenous rural Asia. Akasa was trained and ordained as a Bhikkhu monk into the Buddhist Theravada monastic Amarapura Order of The Triple Gem by the beloved and revered 'Bhante' Nyaka Thera Balangoda Ananda Maitreya and Kassapa Maha Thera in Sri Lanka's lush Bamboo Forests near Kandy.
The Story of a Monk's 'Drawn' Robe ~ Earlier, my own novice robes were 'drawn' - I literally pulled pieces of cloth out of the rubbish pile --or an old scarf I actually pulled off the body on the burning funeral pyre. "Once the fire is lit, the body of the deceased belongs to no one except Lord Shiva". The family was so pleased to have invited a foreign monk to receive their loved one's remnant. Lastly, I sch'leped from temple to temple asking the abbots for discarded pieces of any monk's old robes -- that only when I had a complete set of scraps could I come to a sacred 'Sima' ritual place surrounded by a small moat that symbolically unhitched me from the 'World' - and ordain. A committee of Sangha Elders vetted me at length by questions thru a translator before I was approved. A week later, a set of new, fine quality donated robes were gifted to me, and my vows were taken under the actual great grand child of the original Bodhi-Tree itself, in the small remote desert village of Bodhgaya, North India.
♦ At an auspicious pre-ordained (pun) moment of a traditional ordination -- in the most sacred Buddhist vortex on the whole Earth -- under the very same Ficus Religiosa sacred tree the Buddha himself sat, imperturbable during the final abusive trial of his totally letting go of totally all of his self created, self generated worldly attachments and possessive 'ideas' and identity-- into an exquisitely empty, self released, self aware state of compassionate, illuminated, ultimate contentment. An a'fete Accompli --For several moments I myself too, was Done. I was so Here ! -- At-one-ment for a timeless moment, amidst a 25 hundred year old epic historical back-story --and here I was, already nick-named Bhante Sudu Hom'dru ( the White Monk ) walking in tandem alongside all the Buddhas that have ever been -- as the karmic parallels of my own journey just keep eternally paralleling, narrowing and narrowing -- I was so There... I almost wasn't anywhere. As I knew 'myself', I almost didn't exist ! I'd done various native Ritual, but this was simply astounding. Yup, so here I was a freshly ordained novice standing under a huge tree-- so I wasn't very good at tying my robe on, and the lun'ge sarong skirt on the damn thing wouldn't stay up, and I almost dropped my monk's sarong skirt leaving me bare-assed under the most sacred tree in the world ! What would my Jewish grammy say ? "You can come home now Mr. Buddha".
• Previous to this final 'anointing' ( there's only two monastic levels - samanera /novice monk and bhikkhu / senior monk ) which all monks enter into with the Monastic Maha-Sangha -- only on the basis of one's ordained time, years in Sangha - so you may see an older monk who is actually younger in rank in the Sangha, not with how much inner 'attainment' has been developed. Observe and Listen -- No one really knows who has 'achieved' What -- In Theravada Buddhism It's a don't ask - don't tell issue. (more)
♦ Going backwards: Akasa Levi was a Gelugpa Vajrayana initiate and temple gardener to Geshe Lama Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu in Nepal during the early 70's - Lot'sa "Big Love" - Digging big holes with Lama Yeshe - Urinating on tomato plants with Lama - Moving giant rocks with Lama - Having Lama's dogs trample my garden many times - Seeing Lama's herd of young kid Rinpoche incarnate monks hitch up their burgundy robes and actually fly off a windswept hill up into the air on windstormy nights off the Gompa's meditation hall high steep steps - Then there was November Courses with Lama '73-75' - Bodhgaya with Lama - Dharamsala / Tushita with Lama - Lots of Laughing with Lama, him laughing at me - London with Lama - The North Umbria Priory with Lama - Los Angeles with Lama - It was truly a Big Love Affair, of course, and supposed to be that - cult-like 'passion' that matures in Good Hearts and leads to Wise Skillful Compassion and Loving Kindness - In 1982 Lama died here in LA - Lama Yeshe was 54. Certainly, If you need to have a Root Guru assisting you in steering your Practice, I am so grateful to have been introduced to Lama way up a steep Solo Kumbo mountainside near Namche Bazzar.
♦ Later on, I became a resident Vipassana student to learn 'Mindfulness' practice directly from the renown Anagarika Munindra Barua, a sweet and nimble man, the leading teaching-master of Satipatthana Mindfulness in Bodhgaya, India where the ancient Bodhi Tree still stands giving 'Refuge' to all newbie Bodhisattvas to come • 1975-76: Also at this time I relished my annual monsoon seasons of non-duality practice in satsang under the wild and notorious ‘Bede Baba’ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in India's Mumbai slums in Old Bombay. I'd have sores on my head from the apples and oranges he'd throw at people daily. What an adorable, brilliant, cantankerous, chain smoking old man. He was the real deal, That !
♦ The Bhikkhu monks and lay teachers of Sri Lanka were very, very good to me -- Nyanaponika, Kassapa, Godwin, Lilly, Fernando -- and the precocious Henri Van Zeyst up in Kandy's Bamboo Forest.• Bhante Piyadassi gave me singing and voice lessons • Back then, these revered teaching Elders often had a sort of side specialty in the tribal arts, sand or poetics - and laughing - besides some serious academics and meditation guidance. Yet they were able to offer visiting westerners the most precious Gift of All Gifts that they could -- the Gift of the Dharma -- the next best gift was an invitation to stay on for an extended practice sojourn - rent a local room nearby the teacher, where it's common for lay teacers to mentor at their and continue 'practice' whatever that means to you. "Your Practice is IN your Life, your Life is IN your Practice" -- mid 70's • BTW, all these special teachings may take several lifetimes to comprehend --and one can still be a jerk • Akasa’s sincere aspiration: To Be Directly With the Last Living Buddhist Meditation Teachers of the Pre-Global Era --most passed on now.
"That's the last of 'em, Luke -- Yoda was for real".
♦ To complete his BA / MA - 59' thru 62' - Akasa attended SUNY Harpur College, State University of New York, Binghamton University • Now returning from a whole 70’s decade abroad, Akasa studied an occidental, through the overly aloof, way above the roof, intellectual intricacies of Western psycho-dynamic analytic intersubjective therapy at UCLA in Los Angeles. I was left yearning for something way simpler and much warmer • Akasa guides "Mind-FULLY" Awakens Awareness and Mindfulness Meditation + Buddhist Insight Therapy at The Laughing Buddha Sangha on 14th Street's Zafu Row • Coaches a ZEN•MEN peer group • and he offers Buddhist-based Individual counseling and Insight therapy.
• Akasa's Sri Lanka monastic affiliate in LA is the Dharma Vijaya Buddha Vihara under his decades long old friend from the Abbot of The Maha Bodhi Society in Calcutta, Bhante NyakaThera Walpola Piyananda.
♦ Akasa now a feisty 76 - finds himself not a published proper academic, but more of an out on a limb improper 'experience provider' -- he has an odd, sort of awry, happy Doubter's Joy in his altruistic, aesthetic, atheistic approach to the Dharma. At heart, Akasa is a vulnerable old school Bohemian from a NYC art-based family, that can be a perpetual nud'nik to the gravitas of established Buddhist composure. At times, truly without a clue about his own genuineness, a fragile identity, an authentic 'Not knowing' What he is, maybe play acting the curmudgeon, or maybe the Fool card - in that he didn't like the other lay-life choices offered anyway. Maybe he was the original Zelig.
• To counter his delusive Bewilderment, he's continually serving up generous Seva ( service ) by creating lots of weekly pro-bono available time for basic heart to heart and hand holding of people in pain. He’s really funny, an eccentric Grandpa Dharma - and a respected BuJu tribal elder. K'vetchy by genetics, but not too creepy, a flamboyant old rogue, he's definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste.
• To counter his delusive Bewilderment, he's continually serving up generous Seva ( service ) by creating lots of weekly pro-bono available time for basic heart to heart and hand holding of people in pain. He’s really funny, an eccentric Grandpa Dharma - and a respected BuJu tribal elder. K'vetchy by genetics, but not too creepy, a flamboyant old rogue, he's definitely an acquired taste like Thai shrimp paste.
• Seriously: Akasa is into nourishing the many 'contemplative' vocal aspects of the emerging 'heart-wisdom' poetry revealed in a student's use of developing dharma vocabulary words -- mentoring a maverick “iconoclast intelligence” in the students and people he treats, teaches, counsels at his little meditation shrine room near the beach, filled with Dharma books, tribal masks and ritual objects, and cool calm statues of the ancient Buddha.
• Akasa Levi, an emeritus-level senior meditation teacher in the Theravada lineage, guides us into the cognitive/empirical Felt Sense Awareness of a Sati-awakening present moment -- fully self-caring, fully self-aware training in his mindFULLY approach. Akasa knows that by building on Self-inquiry and meditation practice skills, you can effect a calm, fearless and loving, meaningful, noticeable difference in yourself. Akasa is known for his spontaneity, wise ready warmth, and wry unpredictable humor.
----------------------------
----------------------------
" Kindness " is more
important than ' Wisdom ' -
and the clear recognition of this -
IS the beginning of Wisdom "
~ Theodore Issac Rubin
----------------------------------------
" You don't get enlightened --
it is 'enlightenment' itself
that gets enlightened."
---end---
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