When I ask Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche (my dharma teacher of almost 30 years) what is the main obstacle for most people in dharma practice, the answer is always “lack of merit,” not enough merit has been accumulated. This is why we practice dharma, to accumulate enough merit. Enough merit for what? So what is merit anyway in dharma terms? A quick look through a half dozen dharma teachings shows me that often ‘merit’ is said in the same breath as the term “awareness.” In other words, the phrase “merit & awareness” occurs again and again in the Buddhist literature. Sometimes these two terms are also translated as “skillful means & wisdom.” Thus ‘merit’ is synonymous with ‘skillful means” and ‘awareness’ is synonymous with ‘wisdom.” More interesting is the fact that these two terms not only occur together but they actually cause one another to appear in the world. How does this work?

Many of you appreciate these astrological interpretations. The astrological technique behind the interpretations is not something I expect readers to understand, but you might like to have a taste of what goes on behind the scenes. Take the astronomical fact that on the day of the recent election, November 6th, the planet Mercury turned retrograde in the heavens.

The fact that Mercury went retrograde on Election Day is pure astronomy; it is fact, not astrology. The astrology part is about what the astronomical fact of Mercury retrograde means to us; let’s call it cultural astronomy. What does it mean to have Mercury go retrograde on November 6th, the day of the election? In the blogs and comments about Mercury retrograde on election day that I saw, there were a lot of oohs and aahs about Mercury retrograde, and suggestions that it was an inauspicious sign, at best. Is that all we astrologers have to say? It is not.

The whole point of meditation and mind training is to learn to use our own mind. I'd say "use it or lose it," but you can't lose what you have never known. It seems that the hardest part of mind training is breaking away from our ingrained stare at the external world and learning to turn inward and actually look at the mind itself. Do you realize that most people have never done this? I love the passage of the philosopher Hegel from his most important book "The Phenomenology of the Mind," where he says "We go behind the curtain of the Self to see what's there, but MAINLY for there to be something to be seen."

There is a gravitational component to mind training, but I have not often seen it mentioned, so now is a good time, since it is almost zero outside on this very cold morning and spring is still not here. This little poem I wrote can serve as an introduction.

Although today it seems like some far off dream, only a few short years ago I was high in the mountains of Tibet at Tsurphu Monastery (the seat of the Karma Kagyu Lineage), where I met His Holiness Urgyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa. All of this is even more remarkable since my friends know that I hate airplanes and seldom travel far from my home in mid-Michigan. Although I have been interested in Buddhism for many years, I never seriously considered going to Tibet. Then suddenly, in less than a month, I am in Tibet, along with my wife, two daughters, and young son. How does such an event happen to a middle-aged businessman? It happens when your lama tells you to go to Tibet as soon as we could manage it. Here is our story:

Many of us have a regular meditation practice, whether it is once or twice a day or a couple times a week. If our workday schedule is very busy, we may have to fit in sitting meditation wherever we can. If things get too rushed on any given day, our meditation practice is often the first thing to go. For some of us, it is amazing how ingenious we are at rationalizing our practice out of our busy schedule. At the same time we know that without developing our practice, our general awareness and meditation will not move forward and may even decline. What to do about this?

Mind training is going secular. It no longer has to be associated with a religion or even with spirituality. And it won’t be long before corporations realize the very great advantages to having employees with some mind training and then meditation will go public big time. It will no longer be alternative and it will no longer be an alternative. It will be mandatory. As I like to say: what college diplomas are today, mind training certificates will be tomorrow. What I am pointing out here is that although mind training is an integral part of Asian religions like Buddhism, it can also stand alone by itself (secular) or be used with other religions. As I have tried to explain in previous blogs, mind training is a method to develop greater awareness and not a religion or religious by itself. However, mind training combined with a spiritual practice can be very potent. It is unfortunate that the general public is confused about just what meditation is.

This is part of a series of dharma-related articles trying to drill down on the details of learning and practicing dharma. This one looks at where we start with dharma practice.

Learning meditation is not easy, not because it is all that difficult, but more because there are hundreds of kinds of meditation out there; most Americans have never been introduced to any of them and would not know where to begin. Because meditation is an unknown to them, they just skip the whole thing and stay away.

Meditation is not as easy as just lighting a candle and sitting in a quiet place. Then what do we do next? And it is easy to confuse the many kinds of new relaxation therapies with meditation techniques that have been around a thousand years. There is nothing wrong with relaxation techniques and they do have something in common with traditional Asian forms of meditation, but they are not the same.

Growing up in the late 1950s, Buddhism was an intellectual topic, something my friends and I would sometimes talk about (like existentialism and Ingmar Bergman films) late into the night while stoked on cigarettes and coffee. I did not know anyone in the 1950s who actually meditated. Back then I wanted very much to be a beatnik and refashioned myself in that image as best as a teenager could. By 1960 I had dropped out of high school and was living in an abandoned wooden freezer in the basement of a gallery called the Gas House (a famous Beat hangout) on Venice Beach in Santa Monica, California. I was sure that I was destined to be an artist and was painting oils at the time.

Measuring spiritual experience is difficult and in the Tibetan system there are two main

ways to do it. One way, quite common, is to just count up to a certain number the

mantras or other practices we do, like how many full-length prostrations we have done,

and so on. 111,111 is a common target number. 108,000 is the actual number, but the

extra 3000+ are to make up for the ones we don't do properly. It is the same idea with

mantras. Perform 111,111 recitations for each syllable of a mantra. Thus the famous

six-syllable mantra of compassion and loving kindness, "Om Mani Padme Hum," would

be recited 666,666 times and that would signify that you have done the minimum

number for that particular mantra or practice.

The transit of Venus across the face of the Sun is one of the rarest astronomical events. This coming transit of Venus will take place on June 5-6, 2012 toward sundown, and is the last event of its kind this entire century. The next will take place in December of 2117. Why are Venus and this event so special? The secret to understanding the meaning of Venus transiting the solar sphere is to be found in the planet Earth and the effect of Venus on us. It is us, here on Earth, who see this happening, not the other planets. Because this event is so rare, astrologers have not had that much experience interpreting this, so please bear with me.

Recently, solar flares and solar activity has been steady in the C-Class range with one spike early this morning that almost reached into the strong M-Class. So we are kind of at a solar slow-boil and have been for some time. That, coupled with this triple eclipse time, means the opportunity for change is very much with us.

If I look up the meaning of the word "change" in the dictionary, it is defined as the "process of becoming different." We are all kind of familiar with change, or should be by now, with one provision, and that (unfortunately) is that many of us tend to view change as something external that just happens to us. This is a little bit masochistic on our part, seeing ourselves as somehow the victim of change. Passivity.

Just a few words on the coming eclipse, reminding myself (and any of you out there interested) that this is a solar eclipse of the Sun that is coming up next Tuesday and thus a New Moon, which means we are now heading into that time in the solunar cycle just before any New Moon, what used to be called the "Dark Days" or in Medieval times the "Devil's Days," and in Tibetan Buddhism the fierce "Dharma Protector Days," and so on. I often find that this is a time for me to just wait it out, a time during which to keep my head down until the New Moon rolls in, starting another cycle.

Retrograde planets in astrology always gets the buzz going. “Mercury is retrograde;” that explains it, and so on. Well, Mars is about to go retrograde and astrologers are talking about what this means. Back in the early 1970s I developed a very easy way to look at retrogrades called “Burn Rate” and I will try to present it here. This may be a little technical so perhaps this is more for my astrologer friends.

Retrograde is only an apparent phenomenon. Nothing ever retrogrades in the solar system. Planets only appear to retrograde from Earth’s point of view deeply embedded within the solar system. Here is a very basic diagram of the current Mars situation in the solar system (tropical zodiac).

Yoga means “union.” Yoga as physical exercise is something I don’t do enough of, although I know it is good for me. But marriage, the most common form of yoga or union, is practiced all over the world. And it too is a discipline that is not always easy to do properly. I have practiced the yoga of marriage, like it or not, for at least some 41 years now.

I have also counseled couples for many years, so I know firsthand that marriage can be a most difficult dharma practice indeed. There is nothing like the unconditional nature of new love. When first we meet our life partner there are no conditions. Everything is free and wide open, and being loved unconditionally is just that… unconditional love.

This may appear as a sidebar or sidestep from what we have been discussing of late, but hopefully it will be helpful. Back in the 1960s, when I was first discovering myself a bit, the process was not all wine and roses. Waking up and becoming more aware was fraught with major ups and downs, arounds, ins and outs, and all of that. It was not smooth by any means. During that time I wrote a short series of poems that are very dense, but also very concise and to the point. I have been told by others that they are practically unreadable, and while I understand their point, I still feel they are useful, if only to me. And it may be a mistake to share them here, but what the hell.

This may appear as a sidebar or sidestep from what we have been discussing of late, but hopefully it will be helpful. Back in the 1960s, when I was first discovering myself a bit, the process was not all wine and roses. Waking up and becoming more aware was fraught with major ups and downs, arounds, ins and outs, and all of that. It was not smooth by any means. During that time I wrote a short series of poems that are very dense, but also very concise and to the point. I have been told by others that they are practically unreadable, and while I understand their point, I still feel they are useful, if only to me. And it may be a mistake to share them here, but what the hell.

One of the qualities of mandala offerings is executing the offering skillfully in a “Zen Like” manner, with perfect mindfulness. This pertains to everything we do. We learn to make the things we do last by doing them carefully and mindfully. Great and lasting art is made so well that it lasts and fascinates us for a very long time, often far longer than the civilizations that produced it. We still read Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey” thousands of years after the cities of the men he wrote about have turned to dust. Shakespeare has defied the combined ears of centuries to fathom and to exhaust the ability of his words to last or hold our attention. They shine. Only absolutely ‘true actions’ hold together (cohere) long enough for us to see anything in them, for them to give off light. Real and lasting offerings are ones that endure.

I wrote a blog recently about the Tibetan concept of the Earth Lords, the protectors of the land and the environment. There is no question that some natural spots have power and a life of their own. I know Americans love nature, but we don’t tend to personify natural beauty with beings other than we humans. The Tibetans Buddhists do. In Tibet, places have energy-beings, protectors of the power and beauty that holds them together, that makes them what they are. I know, some will say that beauty is just in the eye of the beholder, but here I am talking about beholding beauty a little deeper than what our eye takes in. I am talking about a shock and awe factor a little larger than just ourselves. As we become more aware, we can begin to feel the vitality of places. There are creeks and streams and then there are Creeks and Streams, water where life runs through it. Some of us are sensitive to the nature of these power spots, or can learn to be.

This article is about musical time, something we might agree to call “making time.” The classic blues players, like all great musicians, literally “make” time. They don’t just follow along in time like most of us do when listening. They set the time, inset the time with their music, but it goes deeper than that. Every once in a while you and I might look at our watch and see what time the clock says, but the time in between those clock checks goes unchecked? It just passes, like the old song from Sandy Denny, “Who knows where the time goes?” I certainly don’t know where it goes. My point is that while clock time seems to be regular, what goes on when you and I are not watching the clock can be anything but regular. In other word time contracts and expands, especially when it comes to musical time.

Not the largest solar flare in history (Nov. 4. 2003), still this solar flare is the strongest since may of 2005 and (more important) has been termed “geoeffective” which means that it is located in the very center of the Sun and therefore coming directly at Earth. It is many times longer than the width of Earth so we will be bathed in its influence for some time.

I wanted to start writing something on food, eating, and what we eat, you know, how far organic foods and all that have come in our lifetime. I thought I would use as a graphic for my food blog the logo I designed for Eden Foods back in the 1960s. It is still being used today and I am proud to see my work on every can of beans or whatever when I browse the local food coops. Here is the original poster I did for them many years ago. I still like it. But then my mind kind of wandered into all the logos and designs I have had to come up with over the years to help show the world just what I am doing or into. And some of you have messaged me about my designs and perhaps it is worth sharing with you how I look at logos, how important they are in my work. For some of you this could be very interesting.

One of the treasured experiences of my recent retreat-intensive was the presence of Lodrö Nyima Rinpoche at KTD Monastery. He was visiting the United States for the very first time from the area of Kham in Tibet.

Lodrö Nyima Rinpoche is the 9th incarnation of Bengar Jampa Zangpo, who lived in the 14th Century and composed the Kagyu Lineage prayer that all Kagyu lamas recite, also called in Tibetan "Dorje Chang."

Astrology has been very useful for me in looking at relocation, understanding why I live where I do and what to expect if I travel to this or that other city. How is astrology used for relocation? Just imagine at your birth that your mother handed you to your father for the first time. Your dad holds you up, looks into your eyes, and carries you outside. As he stands in the early morning light with you in his arms he can see the Sun in the sky to the East, the Moon setting somewhere to the west, and Venus bright in the sky not too far from the Sun. The Sun, Moon, Venus and all of the planets are each in a particular direction in the sky from the place where you were born.

RELOCATION: Where Should You Live? In the early 1970s I discovered a fascinating way to use astrology for relocation. I termed it “Local Space” and along with “Astro*Carto*Graphy,” another popular relocation technique, Local Space is now used by astrologers all over the world. And it is very simple. Just imagine that right after you were born your dad picked you up for the very first time and holding you walked to the window and looked out. As he looked at the sky he could see the Sun rising (let’s say) to the east, Venus setting in the north-east, and so on.

At the end of this blog I will post links to some new videos that I just put together on Local Space, a form of relocation astrology I developed in the early 1970s, which is now an integral part of most astrological software, but here I just want to offer a taste of what this powerful relocation is all about.

There is at least one aspect of relocation astrology that is perhaps not so well understood, and that is that we can achieve instantly by relocation what otherwise might only be achieved over a long period of time by transits and progressions. Let me explain.

As we look into the sun during the course of a year and describe the qualities of those who are born in the various signs, we succeed in defining NOT the position of the sun, but that of the earth in relation to the sun. As astrologers, this should be second nature to us and it illustrates an important axiom: All inquiry into greater centers does not reveal the nature of that center (in itself), but rather reveals our relationship to that center.

In other words: centers serve to mirror or reflect. Their nature is to reveal to us not THEIR intrinsic nature, but our own. REVELATION of any kind is the sign of communication with greater centers or planes -- revelation, not of some far off distant entity or "God," but always revelation of ourselves and the spirit within us. In a discussion as to the qualities of the centers of the galaxy and super galaxy, we can understand that inquiry into the direction of the sun will reveal the nature of the earth, inquiry into the nature of the galaxy will serve to reveal the nature of our own sun, and inquiry into the Super galaxy will serve to reveal the nature of our galaxy. The idea presented here is that it is the very nature of higher centers to reflect and respond to more particular or local centers.

Although I have had many ups and downs in my life I have been very fortunate in the area of having perfect life teachers and guides. The universe has always provided me with key people who have appeared in my life, connected with me, and transmitted information essential to my future. Most of my Facebook friends know I have worked with Tibetan teachers for the past 37 years or so but I had other teachers before that.

In the next blog or two I will share with you something about the most incredible teacher from my early years and that is Andrew Gunn McIver, a man who literally changed my life. And, as I am getting older by the day, I must warn you that in what I write here I am not going to sanitize or tone-down my accounts of what happened back then. Why should I? I am putting it out there so that some of you might know that these kinds of experiences still exist in the world and not just in movie plots.

When I think back on people who affected me in a big way, they are few but those few had a most powerful effect. Let’s see, the first has to be Peggy Dodge, an artist and friend of my mother, who lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I was born. Dodge lived out in the country on a place with a pond, meadows, and trees. Mom would meet at the Dodge farm with other fine-arts painters, and sometimes she would take me along. I was six years old. It was Peggy Dodge who first sparked my interest in nature and all things natural, and at that young age I became a naturalist, and a serious one at that. I did little else but study nature until I was around the age of eighteen, but that is another story. I want to tell you about the next person who greatly affected me, and that was Stanley Tennenbaum.

never fail to continually amaze myself at what a slow learner I am and how easily I get carried away by every wind that blows. It does not take much for me to get distracted and totally blown out by some new idea or desire. My habitual patterns run deep. I have no idea how deep because I have never seen the end of them yet. And I know (or am told) that they obscure whatever truth I am behind or beneath them. Like wearing dirty sunglasses, I vainly try to see something called life through a glass darkly. I have no choice. The Buddhists would have it that these ingrained habits arise not only from this life I am now living, but also from the many (innumerable) lives I have lived previously and that my hard habits are just passed on forward through time. I don’t know about that, but as one Buddhist teacher said to me, “We are the dregs. In all of the time there has been up to now, we are the ones who never got it, the most dense ones,” the ones who ignore the obvious ways to wake up.

I just returned from a road trip to find that a friend of mine, the great Sixties-poster artist Gary Grimshaw, has died after a long illness. I am so sorry to hear this. I feel it is appropriate to say something about how important Grimshaw's work is (in my opinion) to the culture of the 1960s. As a well-known archivist of popular culture (founded All-Music Guide, All-Movie Guide, All-Game Guide, ClassicPosters.com, etc.), I have studied and collected rock-concert posters for decades. I have met and interviewed many of the great 1960's rock-concert poster artists, and the ones I have not met or interviewed, I have studied their work with care. Not only have I collected many thousands of concert-rock posters myself, but I have gone to the trouble to personally photograph over 30,000 pieces of the finest rock-poster art. A few years ago I donated my collection of images, data, notes, articles, etc. to the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, so scholars of the future can research them.

I have blogged about what is called "The Lama of Appearances" many times, and written a whole book about it as well. Mother Nature displays what is called the "Lama of Appearances," being a true and complete reflection of the dharma. As I frequently note for myself, nature is a harsh mistress. And being asked where is the seat or heart of compassion in nature, there is one and only answer, one place alone that is the heart-compassion of nature visible for all to see and that is the love of a mother for her child -- nowhere else. There is no love like a mother's love, not in the entire world.

 It is no accident that in Tibetan Buddhism the concept of mother love is dominant and viewed as the epitome of what love and compassion is. The Buddhists use this as the example we all should follow and point out that everyone has been our mother at one time or another.

One thing I hear a lot from my Facebook friends in messages and emails is how might one go about learning astrology? Of course, like so many things, the deeper I get into astrology (fifty years and counting), the simpler it gets in my view, but conveying that simplicity also gets harder and harder. I have learned that experiential knowledge cannot simply be handed over and shared, but only pointed out. The reason is that each of us must experience life for ourselves, and this includes astrology. I first learned this truth when studying Tibetan astrology many years ago . Perhaps a few words on that experience might be useful.

I seem to have difficulty learning from other people. You can call it a learning difficulty if you wish; I have had it all my life. I tell myself that I am just very particular about who my teachers are and, perhaps because of that, I have been fortunate to have very, very good teachers. Or maybe I am just fussy.

If you think I am joking, I am not. Fairly early on, when I was first in grade school it seems I exhibited the same behavior, and apparently it was severe enough that the school demanded that I be put through a battery of tests to see if I was up to going to a school. Of course I had no idea what they were doing to me, what this was about. As it turned out, it was just the opposite of what they worried about. They tests showed that I was actually (believe it or not) bright and just bored by school. That much I can remember, the boredom, because this continued until I finally dropped out of school completely. I never did finish high school. And this learning difficult was particularly difficult with spiritual topics.

Typically, Insight meditation has two parts, first what is called the analytic meditation of the pandita, and second, the resting meditation of the kusulu. We are to understand that a pandita is a scholar, while a kusulu is a yogi or meditator, two different approaches to enlightenment. And these two approaches are contrasted.

I have worked with the Ven. Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche for almost thirty years, ever since he came to me in a dream and the dream actually came true. He proceeded to manifest in my life as an actual living person. What a surprise! I posted this story some time ago, and the link is here.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151123199552658&set=a.110624912657.118041.587252657&type=3

I cannot convey in words the brilliance, compassion, and sheer kindness that Rinpoche personifies. If I had not experienced it for myself, I would never have believed these qualities existed in the world in one person. For many years Rinpoche travelled to all of his centers, including our own center, the Heart Center KTC, here in Big Rapids, Michigan

Karma is so close. I used to think that karma, like the ten commandments in the Bible, referred to the big things we should not do, like “Do not kill,” “Do not steal,” etc., things I don’t do anyway, so why worry about karma? But karma is so much closer than that, like a magnifying mirror right in front of our face. Even the smallest details of life are karma-ridden. They count, add up, and we are counted by everything we touch and do, as well as how we do it. There are no exceptions. Could this be true?

When I asked the Buddhist teachers and drilled down on it a little, the truth was even more explicit than I had even imagined. It would take some advanced calculus to grasp the scope of the differential involved in karma. There are no limits, edges, or end to it. Nothing short of complete and total awareness is enough, and I don’t have that yet… but it is on my list.

The term Juke (or Jook) Joints is probably derived from the Creole “juk” meaning to be disorderly and rowdy. Juke joints are said to have arisen after the emancipation when Jim Crow laws forbade blacks from entering white establishments. The facts show that they existed long before that, probably as early as there were plantations and slaves. In other words, even after the emancipation when slaves were free to leave the plantation they were not allowed in any establishment in town. Proscribed from white society and white establishments of any kind, juke joints arose wherever blacks could gather, socialize, eat, drink, and dance; many also sold grocery items, moonshine, and some even had rooms to rent and other conveniences.

Before we jump into the riding-the-bike photo and analogy let’s talk about “awareness.” We know the Sanskrit word “Buddha” basically means “awakened one” or one who is aware. So what is awareness? How aware are we? Of course we are all aware, but it is a question of to what degree. And we all have times of real awareness, but too often they are fleeting and we don’t even realize when we lose that awareness and slip back into distraction only to wake back up days, months, or even years later. We realize then that we have been here before, been aware like this before, but where were we in between when we were not aware? We were asleep or distracted, lost in our freight train of thoughts or just plain absent - AWOL. The gaps or time-outs in our awareness can be huge. And now we can bring in the bike analogy.

Time is of the essence. Life appears like an exponential curve, when it comes to measuring time. When I was a teenager, time seemed to be so slow that it took forever, and becoming an adult was an almost impossible dream. However, once over thirty I forgot all about the slowness of time and, caught up in the gears of life’s prime, things were very busy. Now as I slip into age, time is as fast as it was once slow back when I was a child. Moments merge with days and days turn into months and seasons, almost without a gap. Like two trains running, passing close in the night, as my body begins to slow down, time seems to reach the speed of light and flashes past.

In my experience, perhaps the most common problem presented in a counseling session has to do with partners at odds and hurting one another. It is more common than it is rare. Couple-bickering gives a new meaning to the word recursive. We react and then we react to the reactions, and set each other off in a domino-effect, retro-ending in a tail-spin, with hours or days of the cold-shoulder routine, if not a full stand-off. And don’t imagine you are immune to this scenario because it is pretty much as common as marriage is common. Sooner or later it happens to the best of us. What triggers it? Well, the simple answer is our inability to give, as in to “give-in” and expose our vulnerability to the other when we feel we are under attack or criticism. It is difficult for us not to offer a hard edge to what we feel is a hard edge from our partner. Thus we protect ourselves and even that protection is seen as aggression by the other, and away we go.

I am sure we have all used binoculars, and understand how two separate images merge into a single clearer image when we focus. I am guessing this happens internally to us as well. At least something like that seems to be happening to me.

One image is the guy who writes these blogs, and the other image is the guy who gets up in the morning, walks the dogs, and tries to figure out what to eat each day.

Well, the guy who writes the blogs is silently merging with the guy who walks the dogs and thus learning to walk the talk, putting all these words out in action and just plain living. My guess is that this is a good thing, but all the results aren't in yet.

I am struck by the impossibility of my helping everyone and everything in every situation, at least where I am today. I wish I could. This thought would be depressing if depression could help, but that would only make things worse. So here I am, stuck right in the middle of all this everything, like a teacup packed in cotton.

The Buddhists teach that we must first learn to help ourselves before we can be of use to others. I am reminded of the Gospel quote from Matthew "… first take the speck out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your

brother's eye." Buddhism is a self-help story, but where do we turn for guidance? Being a non-theist does not mean that there are not higher levels of awareness, beings more advanced than ourselves. There are, but how to contact them?

In recent years I have been learning to mix my mind (and dharma practice) with my life, so that they are more one than two. Meditation practice, as I endlessly point out in my blogs, is just that, "practice," learning the muscle memory and physical habit of meditation. And while that practice eventually turns into actual meditation on the cushion, there is no reason to restrict meditation at that point to any one place (like a cushion) or a particular time of day. We can learn to meditate wherever we are and whenever we can. The Zen Buddhists are skilled at pointing out how to bring meditation to the life path.

In the early summer of 1995 Margaret and I made a trip to the mountains above Woodstock, New York where we do a yearly ten-day meditation intensive with our dharma teacher Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche at his Tibetan Buddhist monastery (Karma Triyana Monastery). 2014 will be the 26th year we have done this intensive. Khenpo Rinpoche speaks only Tibetan, so there we were in the midst of having a short personal interview with Rinpoche, speaking with him through a translator. I always ask him if there is anything special he wants me to do, and he always answers "Nothing special, just keep practicing." Once again, I had just asked that question and some others, and Rinpoche had begun to answer. But after less than a minute, he just stopped, looked at us, and declared that he was not going to answer further, and that, instead, we should take these questions to His Holiness the 17th Karmapa, who is the head of our lineage. Like the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa is the head of one of the five main lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.

Here is an interview that I did with the legendary Howlin' Wolf. It was the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival and there I was backstage talking with Wolf. It was just the two of us standing in the open sun and it was not your normal interview.

As I stood there listening to this huge man, I flashed back to some years before when I had seen the Wolf performing live in a small bar at the north end of Chicago late one night. There was no one in the place, just Howlin’ Wolf and his guitarist Hubert Sumlin.

My brother Dan and I stood somewhere at the back of the place and it was very dark. Wolf was way up to the front, with one small light playing on him. He was sitting on an old wooden straight-backed chair. It was all light and shadows.

Here is an interview I did with Gary Grimshaw some years ago, along with a look at some of his major poster art. It will give you an idea both of the man and the art. As an introduction, I share how I got into making posters myself in 1965, and later began collecting them as well. You may not be able to watch the whole thing, but perhaps you have time or be able to make time for some of it. Keep in mind that today there will be a New-Orleans-Style funeral March (Sunday Jan. 19th), starting at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit at 11 AM. Those of you in the Detroit area may wish to attend. For more details on this and other events today, see this link.

It was the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival and there I was backstage talking with the legendary Howlin’ Wolf. It was just the two of us standing in the open sun and although I had done a lot of interviews, this was not your normal interview. As I stood there listening to this huge man, I flashed back some years before when I had first seen the Wolf performing live in a small Chicago bar late one night. There was no one in the place, just Howlin’ Wolf and his guitarist, the legendary Hubert Sumlin. My brother Dan and I stood somewhere near the back of the place and it was very dark.

A number of you want to know how to best pick up on these inner events, astrological and otherwise. When I write about New and Full Moons, solstices, and what they mean, I tend to leave out one fact, and that is our awareness of what is going on and how easily we slip back into our everyday distractions, ignoring what’s most important, and generally trip-out, carried away in the moment. What about that?

Let’s not confuse trying to grasp the meaning of the deep solar information we feel moving inside us and everyday normal conceptual or analytical thinking. When someone criticizes us or makes suggestions, comments, asides, etc., certainly we can spend a long time processing it. In particular a harsh comment can take up hours or even days at a low boil in the back of our mind. And following philosophical or spiritual arguments or any argument is pretty normal behavior. Response to solar influx is not like that.

Shamata meditation of the kind that the Zen and Tibetan Buddhists do has been taught for thousands of years and the meditation technique is actually very simple. There is a proper way to sit which I could explain to you, but for now just sit comfortably, pick an object, and focus on it. It could be a pebble, a stick, a spot on the wall -- whatever. Perhaps the most popular object of meditation is the breath, following it in and out as we breathe. Let your mind rest on the object of meditation and do your best not to be distracted. Relax. Just focus on the object. If you get carried away in daydreams or some thought or another, when you become aware this has happened, just drop those thoughts and return to the object of meditation. Keep whatever object you have chosen in mental focus. The secret is that you can’t do it, at least not yet.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins introduced the concept of "inscape" to the English language, a word he coined to indicate our access to the beautiful and profound, the way into allowing the mind to rest naturally. Scholars tell me Hopkins keyed on this concept from the work of Duns Scotus, another of my favorite poets. I can't say I agree with most scholars as to their interpretation of what Hopkins meant by "inscape." I have my own understanding and will use that.

Inscape to me is a natural sign (a signal in our busy life of distractions) that gets our attention and carries us within to rest in the nature of the mind, however briefly. That rest is crucial.

If you ask most Buddhist practitioners what they do as regards meditation, they will say they are doing their practice. The accent should be on the word ‘practice’, because in the beginning we are practicing meditation, not meditating. True meditation comes later. It took me years to understand this. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I guess I thought I was meditating, when in fact I had never really learned how. Actually I was practicing meditation, but hadn’t understood that was what I was doing, practicing.

I am up on the Bernard family farm, the site of this weekend’s Harvest Gathering. I drove up yesterday morning through almost solid fog, about an hour’s trip. Many folks are already here getting ready, the security team, recycle, signs, pre-gathering kitchen crew, and all kinds of building going on.

One new stage is on a huge sled getting ready to be dragged into place by tractors, a long way from where it is now. And there is a new large hexagonal deck that is being built and will be mounted on the remains of a silo next to the barn stage, and this is where acoustic musicians will entertain between barn sets. I don’t know how they are going to move the thing, but they will.

An Italian word meaning inactivity or immobilization, what I call my "do-nothing policy,"

which sometimes comes over me, always against my will. I am wondering if others

experience this too. Let me back up for a moment.

One of the symbols often used in Buddhism is the dharmachakra, the dharma wheel of

eight spokes. It is said that the Buddha turned the wheel of the dharma. Indeed he did,

and left his method of awakening for others in the form of what is called the dharma.

What is not immediately clear is that we too each have to turn the wheel of the dharma

for ourselves. No one can do it for us, because the whole idea is for us to enlighten

ourselves just as the Buddha did. Sometimes I think the image of the wheel should have

a crank on it to remind me that in order to be turned, it has to be, well, turned of course.

And that would be each of us turning it for ourselves.

This is what the great Tibetan lama, the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, said when asked why he visited America. That statement has meant so much to me over the years, because it sent me a message to stop looking for something I want outside myself, like looking in other places, in other people, and for other times (sometime) for something I can only give to myself. And there was a correlate that came with it: Instead of always looking for an ideal time or place to be, it is much easier for me to make a lake such that the “swans” would just naturally come to it. It just takes time, care, and love to create an aura or space that is a refuge for myself and others from the storms of life.