I Dreamed I Was St. Boniface

 Rising inward, my prosthetic dream

bled out onto your snow-covered bed.

Pink with iron and welcome limestone, met

in karsts of prescient somnolence.

(red and white at their very best)

That which dreamed itself your bedsheet

they would say a Saxon field.

Your naked feet, embedded, pink upon the snow, yet

drawing up into your mouth.

(a liturgy of ancient wisdom songs)

 Bloodless blood and Brahmsless Brahms,

"In whose honor, sacramental chef?"

Pale white bones in oaken chapels, set

about the silk and garnet implements.

(for those who would so eat their God)

Thunder, splayed among an amaryllis,
paused, unspoken, in a shrinking sky.
As I cut the Donar Oak you bade me, "Let
them be as though their See shall free them.
(We can sing the verses of the night)"

atypical eros

Two rounds

with Saturn, a classic cut

above my eye.

Red, green-yellow, blackish blue wound,

glimmering in hemo-luminosity.

Why is it all so bloodybeautiful?

Standing before

the fake-stone Buddha, white

in meta-silence.

Graciously receiving all the birdshit it deserves,

silently minding, as Vaihinger feared,

another case of "Bird Fancier's Lung".

Atypical Eros

with cross reactivity to yolk sac,

and getting sicker

by the moment (of naming things),

things that stand naked inside me,

naked in infinite love.

Fuck flattery

and bend to the swain of Gomorrah,

whose Byronic youth

would to you, tonight, so rend and cloy

the sacristy of Salome

with whitely silent truth.

Zeno's Paradox (The Down)

I did lose my common view
             amidst the closeness of your down.
Slight and fine as faerie breath,
             between swadhistan and nabhi.

Not that cherished tuft tomentum,
             crowning crest of lotus-lips,
But that softness, in above-ness,
             diaphanous, in sparse array.

Though truly rapt to breathe so near
             your oodhious aigrette canopy,
And coax your sacred delta's dew,
             unconstrained, I'd sip the dew in full ecstatic reverence.
But at this site of downy wisp,
             a kiss would seem most true.

I think no thoughts, though think they me
             a raging serous centrifuge.
My kiss: A heedless, formless equus,
             lame as Ovid's lorem ipsum.

Rapt, and doubtless, (unrequited),
             half the distance could I fly.
Half again and half again in hubric contrapedal love,
             unconstrained, I knew my math was un-Pythagorean.
My common view cannot recur, like Oodh, you've cancelled lesser fragrance.
             Once a condor, now forsaken only by the code of doves.

"Widerstehe doch der Sünde" Stand Firm Against Sin (or something like that)

I broke out of my Vajrasattva retreat in 1975 to sneak into the city.  My plan was to go to Ira Cohen's pad and listen to Glenn Gould on those supernatural head-phones.  A friend of mine was (I hoped) still pad-sitting Ira's place and I felt that I required tonal rehabilitation and, at least, a spigot that would offer hot water.  Ira was off doing some kind of psychedelic poem/play written by Greg Corso.  They all knew me; Corso, Ginsberg, Cohen, et al, because of the intricate mutual connections of New York Dharma Bums.  I was, however, very young, not at all city-wise and certainly not qualified to be a real bum.  My only claim to possible Bum candidacy derived from an early encounter I'd had with Kerouac when I was about five years old.  The details of that encounter made for an interesting story and they were all rather amused by it.  Greg called me white-phantom-cake-boy or maybe it was white-cake-phantom-boy.

It didn't work out however.  My retreat master caught me, sent me off to the store to buy some stuff, made me some soup, and returned me to my cell with a prescription for atonement.  The atonement for breaking retreat is to practice Vajrasattva.

(I regret not knowing how to chain these videos together)
part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SDpIyVhZKA
part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1GrX32kpH4&feature=related

Tomo Geshe Rinpoche.

In the previous post I mentioned two Tibetan Lamas who not only edified me, but also instructed me in the most subtle aspects of the Lion's Roar martial system.  After some consideration and some scattered FB messages I decided that more information about my Tibetan teachers would be meaningful.  They were both fascinating individuals and I will tell my stories about Tomo Geshe Rinpoche first.

Tomo Geshe Rinpoche was indisputably one of the most distinctive, brilliant and important Lamas of the twentieth century.  He officially belonged to the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism and was the third highest ranking monk of that school, the first and second ranks belonging to H.H. The Dalai Lama and H.H. The Panchen Lama, respectively.  I say that he officially belonged to Geluk because, like the Dalai Lama, his perspective, knowledge and activities transcended the limitations of sectarianism.  As is well known, Buddhism teaches that the consciousness of a being survives death and reanimates another body after a certain period of time.  It is believed that ordinary beings are not able to control that process at all, and that once rebirth has occurred, conscious knowledge of the previous lives is blocked.  In Tibetan Buddhism there is however a special tradition of highly developed masters taking rebirth deliberately into a circumstance that would afford them the opportunity to basically pick up where they left off.  Tomo Geshe Rinpoche belonged to this unique class of masters.

The first Tomo Geshe (1866-1936) was one of the most renowned masters of Tibetan Buddhism.  The image to the right is a photo of his mummified body.  In 1937 he took rebirth into the Kazi aristocracy of the kingdom of Sikkim, on the southern border of Tibet.  His father, Enche Kazi, was personally responsible for enabling many famous westerners' access to Tibet and its vast mysteries.  A short list of these westerners includes, Anagarika Govinda, Alexandra David-Neel, Marco Pallis and Giuseppi Tucci, all of whom helped open the door of Tibetan wisdom for the first time to the western world.

The amazing and miraculous stories about Tomo Geshe would easily warrant an entire book.  When he was still an infant he told his father that his monks would soon be coming to get him, to take him back to Tibet.  When this later actually happened, Tomo Geshe greeted each of the monks, calling them each by name.  He even recognized his previous pack-mule and upon stroking its head, the animal began to shed tears.  This second Tomo Geshe was extremely humble and, at the same time, never intimated by anyone.  This fascinating trait was just as it had been with the first Tomo Geshe.  Everywhere he went he incessantly offered help to anyone in need and was respected by everyone, regardless of religious or cultural affiliation.  He was particularly famous for making and distributing medicinal pills called rilbu.  These pills are a little hard to explain because their manufacture requires a combination of conventional medical knowledge and alchemy.  Tomo Geshe would make these pills (sometimes including such substances as desiccated snow-lion's milk) and effect miraculous cures.  Another incredible feature of Geshe Rinpoche's rilbu was that they were often self-replicating.  He would have a dozen or so of them in a little pouch and after an entire day of administering them to the very ill, there would still be about a dozen or so of them left in the pouch.  I entirely respect the attitudes of those who dismiss this out of hand.  If I had not seen this with my own eyes, I would be one of you myself.  It was in 1974, I believe, Tomo Geshe came to New York City and I had the opportunity not only to meet him, but I also spent a considerable amount of time with him.  Another faction of the Sikkimese Kazi clan was living in New York at that time and through my association with them, I was asked to serve as Geshe Rinpoche's valet for a number of weeks.  My Tibetan language skills were limited but not so bad in those days.  Rinpoche also spoke English fairly well.  When I first met him, he laughed out loud upon seeing me and declared, "My goodness, you're so tall".  Later, at my apartment when we were alone together for the first time he said, "If there's anything at all you want to know, please ask, and if I can't remember, I'll do something to find the answer."

Not only did Tomo Geshe quickly and easily answer most of my questions, he also demonstrated what he had meant by "do something to find out".  Geshe Rinpoche possessed remarkable divination abilities using various methods that included, manipulating his prayer-beads, dropping rice grains on a plate, looking at patterns of birds in flight and melong.  The melong, which is Tibetan for mirror, is a small metal disc that is polished on one side so as to function somewhat as a mirror.  It is not like what we generally consider to be a mirror in that the metal's ability to reflect an image is quite limited compared to highly reflective modern mirrors.  In any case, it can function as a conventional mirror in a crude way.  However, its real function (besides being an esoteric symbol of the mirror-like nature of the mind and the insubstantiality of all phenomena) is to concretely manifest images of information.  In this function it is like the use of a crystal ball among the Romani.  In the hands of a true master like Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, the melong can produce images that are just like watching a small television.  I have seen this.  Rinpoche once joked that if he had no vows he could be a millionaire just with his melong.  Of course, beyond it being a very funny remark, it was also completely true and yet another testament to his complete disinterest in self-gain.  Regarding the miracle of the self-replicating rilbu, here is how it happened.  One morning I was informed that Rinpoche wanted to go to Freehold, New Jersey.  I learned that there was a large community of Mongolians there who were particularly devoted to the Dalai Lama and to Tomo Geshe.  Accordingly, we boarded a transit bus and made the trip there together.  As we left New York City and traveled through some bustling, predominately African-American areas of New Jersey, Rinpoche clutched my arm tightly and asked me, "Are they fierce?"  I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, as was often the case.  When we arrived we were met with great ceremony and tremendous emotional outpouring.  Rinpoche tirelessly ministered to thousands of devotees all day long.  He also administered many rilbu -- many more than were in the pouch when we started out.  I know this because, acting as his attendant, I was holding the pouch the entire day.

Interesting as all of this may be, there is in fact relevance to the previous post.  Although Tomo Geshe Rinpoche himself was not at all trained in (or personally interested in) martial arts, he knew that I was.  He was the one who actually brought the subject up.  I had a million questions about Lion's Roar because at that time there was only very sketchy data available from very few Chinese sources.  And I wasn't just interested in facts or history, I wanted to practice it.  With his encyclopedic knowledge of Tibetan history, culture, spiritual practice and "highly classified" monastic specialties (and on one occasion, a melong version of a youtube clip), Tomo Geshe Rinpoche was able to give me an in-depth Lion's Roar education that would have been completely impossible under normal circumstances even for a Chinese person -- much less, a Bak Gui such as myself.

A brief word about sectarianism in general and in Buddhism particularly:

Tomo Geshe Rinpoche exemplified the ideal attitude regarding sectarian differences.  He advocated the avoidance of two extremes.  One is the extreme of ruining one's heritage by homogenizing all distinctions into mush.  The other extreme is to paralyze the possibility of the evolution of knowledge by fixating on mere images of the past.

For those interested in more information about Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, I have included a couple of  links:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158567785X/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1585674656&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1D3QZ9CCYD2Q24P51D23

http://www.domogesherinpoche.org/

Lion's Roar

It is with more than a little reluctance that I shake the hornet's nest of opinion regarding the various styles of martial arts.  Of all the martial arts traditions, styles, etc., by a great margin, Lion's Roar is the most comprehensive and most effective of them all.  The Lion's Roar system has sired many offspring and also has many satellite systems.  So, if your favorite system is one of the offspring or satellites, there's no need for you to become defensive.  To get this out of the way early, here is a list of the more well known derivatives: Lama Pai, Hop Gar, Pak Hok. Bak Mei, Fut Gar, Choi Lee Fut (the Fut part), Mongolian Bokh and the Russian Systema.  These above listed systems are totally derived from Lion's Roar but there are also many others that have adopted, or perhaps adapted, certain elements of Lion's Roar into their systems.  There are a number of reasons why this occurred but before addressing that, I'd like to identify what makes Lion's Roar so special.  Lion's Roar is a uniquely powerful system because it combines integrated training in five important areas.  These are: Purpose, Resolve, Perception, Energy and Technique.  Training in any of these five areas can result in significant benefits but the integration of all five is what makes Lion's Roar superior.  I'll describe these five areas in very general terms but keep in mind that the traditional way of Lion's Roar is to integrate all five areas into practice.

The training of Purpose involves getting clear about one's motives and fear-based blind-spots.  In the Lion's Roar tradition we must not fight unless there is a clearly righteous purpose.  This sounds simple but when contemplated deeply, it is far from being a simple matter.  Incidentally, the Hop Gar system derives its very name from this first Lion's Roar principle.  The human capacity for self-justification is infinite.  So, the training in Purpose is on-going and fundamental to the system.  Specifically, this involves meditation on four issues: the uniqueness of human existence, the transitory nature of everything, the nature of suffering, and the reciprocal inevitability of action.  Students of Buddhism may recognize these four meditations.  Training in Resolve is a kind of psychological training that seeks to develop a highly refined level of deliberateness.  As one will definitely discover when first attempting this area of training, it is not so easy to actually do anything deliberately.  What we believe we are "doing" every day, all day, is really not doing at all but rather, reflexing.  Doing, as in resolved doing, is a unique type of deliberate action that is not a re-action to something else.  When this principle is properly understood and developed, a Lion's Roar strike simply cannot be deflected.  The training in Perception is particularly unique and useful.  In this training, we can learn to clearly perceive the opponent's energy, weaknesses and timing.  Being able to perceive and work with these vital data give an obvious advantage.  The Lion's Roar Perception training also has another feature that is hard for many to believe.  The advanced level of this training involves learning how to actually change the opponent's perception of what is happening.  It is also possible to learn how to significantly slow the action down so that you perceive everything in much slower motion.  Almost everyone has had an experience, usually an accident of some kind, where everything was perceived in slow motion.  In the case of a traumatic or frightful accident, this happens involuntarily.  In Lion's Roar however one can learn to produce this affect at will.  The Lion's Roar training of Energy is fundamentally similar to the various systems of Qi Gong and Yoga.  However, it also includes specific training for some extraordinary abilities like those that have been sensationalized in Chinese Kung Fu fables and movies for generations.  The ultimate of all of these extraordinary abilities is literal  invisibility.  The Lion's Roar training of Technique shares with other martial systems an array of methods to strike the opponent so as to disable him.  The main technical feature is to learn how to strike the opponent in three especially disabling ways.  These include, striking him at the same moment that he is striking out at you; striking him at a particularly sensitive or disabling area (like a dim mak point or the eye, etc.); and striking him at the peak of his inhalation.

Although its roots can be traced to ancient India and still somewhat recognizable in the very ancient systems of Kalari, there are in fact two distinct Indian lineages.  One is the lineage of the first Chan patriarch, Bodhidharma (Damo), whose knowledge of Indian martial arts formed the basis of the Shaolin system, and the other is the lineage of an enigmatic master named Humkara.  The lineage of Humkara is directly antecedent to Lion's Roar.  During the era of Kublai Khan (1271), the Mongols conquered all of China and a vast portion of the adjacent territory.  This is known as the Yuan Dynasty and was the first time in history that China was ruled by a non-Chinese emperor.  This greatly and deeply offended the strong nationalistic sentiments of the Chinese and even to this present day it is not unusual to hear these grumblings among the older Chinese.  When Kublai Khan set up his palace in the Forbidden City he also installed an elite force of Lion's Roar masters as palace guards and as his personal bodyguards.  The stories and legends related to these guards are countless and always include details of powers that are patently magical.  As Chinese Kung Fu nationalist encountered these Lion's Roar masters, they inevitably absorbed certain more obvious features of what they (the Chinese) considered to be the "evil art of foreign demons".

Among the martial systems that are derived from Lion's Roar, the most obvious is Lama Pai.  This system maintains most of the Technical and Energetic aspects of Lion's Roar.  The Tibetan White Crane system retained even more of the Energetic content and also some fragments of the Perceptual principles.  As mentioned above, Hop Gar was originally distinguished by its emphasis on honor and righteousness.  Whether this emphasis exists today is questionable.  Without question, however, the serious ethical commitment that once required formal vows as a prerequisite for training no longer exists.  Another conspicuous Chinese martial system that adapted many of the Lion's Roar technical and energetic features is the Bak Mei system.  Bak Mei means White Eyebrow and, according to the Chinese, is so named because the Taoist originator had remarkably prominant white eyebrows.  The true story however is that the Bak Mei master got his name from his Himalayan hermitage which was located at the White Brow Mountain in Tibet.  This master, who was opportunistically loyal to the Chinese, was quite famous for defeating numerous Lama masters.  In the end however, the Bak Mei master renounced the Chinese nationalists and returned to life as a hermit.  The main feature of the Bak Mei system that links it to Lion's Roar is the distinctive use of whole-body Ging which they call, Geng Jak Ging (sacred power).  In summary, all of the derivative and hybrid systems that contain elements of Lion's Roar have their story, and they are all very interesting.

Today, realistically, it may be very difficult indeed to learn how to train in all of the five Lion's Roar principles. In my own case, starting more than forty years ago, I had to find different masters who had learned one or two of the training methods and then reconnect them all.  It would be even more difficult to do that now because martial arts has become such a commercial endeavor.  And there are only very few of the old masters still alive.  About twenty years ago I made an effort to seek out Lion's Roar practitioners who may have learned some Lion's Roar from Tibetan teachers.  I couldn't find a single one.  As far as I know, I may be the only Lion's Roar exponent who trained under indigenous Tibetans.  However, my Tibetan masters themselves did not possess full knowledge of all five principles.  Nevertheless, it was from my Tibetan masters that I learned the most important, subtle and elusive training principles of Lion's Roar.  These, combined with the other aspects of Lion's Roar that I learned from Chinese masters afforded me knowledge of the complete system.  Based on my personal experience and interaction with so many martial styles and systems over the years, my conclusion is that no system is more comprehensive and far-reaching than the Lion's Roar.

The following is a list of old masters under whose training and by whose generosity I received significant knowledge of Lion's Roar:  Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche, Gong Duk Foon, Gin Foon Mark, Chen Hok Fu, Luk Gan Wing and his brother Luk Chi Fu, Kwong Man Fong, and the incomparable Chew Yook Wing.

For a video sampling of some of the fundamental aspects of Lion's Roar Technical training, see the YouTube selections at the following channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/lionsroarsifu
and an old film of Luk Chi Fu:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qGSldBuj7A

For examples of the Energy training, see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk4NIQL6s2c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSyqAJUYJdk&playnext=1&list=PLA6659AAAF75D184E&index=27

A novel by M. J. Sullivan that describes a number of Lion's Roar features:
http://www.ebookmall.com/ebook/142813-ebook.htm