KMS Blog

This is an excerpt from the still-being-edited biography of Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi.   

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Japanese monasteries are, as mentioned, benign dictatorships, with a rigid hierarchy in place. It had worked this way, and worked well, for a dozen centuries, and Eido Roshi saw no reason to change that. As such, he ran his monastery very tightly. He was always aware of exactly what was happening, from back alley politics, to personality conflicts, to problems with the building, to things the board of directors might be considering. He knew exactly what was happening at all times, a testimony to his detail-oriented personality and his belief that it was, in the end, his monastery.

Dai Bosatsu, founded by Eido Roshi, saw him in residence most of the year and leading trainings all year round. One of those trainings always fell during the week of the 4th of July. Roshi absolutely loved fireworks, and it gave him tremendous pleasure to be able to watch the spectacular fireworks in New York City once a decade or so. But his service to the monastery came first, and so he settled for his students placing candles inside of floating paper bags on the lake that sat on Dai Bosatsu's property. He would come down to the dock on the night of the 4th, in his robes, hands held neatly behind the back, and watch as the hundreds of candles inside of paper bags floated across the water peacefully. After twenty or thirty minutes, he would walk softly back to the Zendo and go to bed. It lacked the dramatic punch of a firework's display, but it was very Zen.

Kelly knew that his roshi loved fireworks and knew even more certainly that it would be almost impossible to surprise him. In the middle of the winter of 1989 he pulled aside a handful of trusted conspirators, secured a lot of extra cash - almost $20K, most of that his own - and set about preparations. 6 months later, he was ready.
Roshi was leading a very large 7-day sesshin with a few dozen people who had signed up to do the intensive 17-hour days of sitting and walking. Bedtime was normally 9pm, but on the 4th of July they stayed up a little later than usual so Roshi could make the walk from the temple to the lake, and watch the hundreds of candles floating on the stillness of the water in the recently settled darkness. He had, very uncharacteristically, failed to notice how Kelly had been vanishing that week whenever he had the chance, and getting up nearly two hours before the 4:30am wakeup call. He failed to notice too that Kelly and a few other senior disciples were not part of the group walking down to the lake.

Roshi, hands clasped behind his back, walked out onto the dock, watching as the candles floated serenely. It was a warm and still night where a gentle breeze pushed the candles in beautiful, peaceful eddies along the water's surface. The trees were heavy with leaves, and they murmured quietly in the evening air. The night was clear, and the stars stood out starkly.

Several hundred yards away, on the far side of the lake, Kelly was running around in all black clothing, moving between three foxholes that he and the others had dug. Inside each hole was about $6,500 worth of professional fireworks, and two of his co-conspirators were hunkered down there as well. Kelly had not only secured the permits to have the show legally, he then used those permits to contact professional fireworks manufacturers. He had made more than a dozen trips to pick up scores of high-powered explosives, planning exactly how they would be lit to ensure the most spectacular show. It took him hundreds of hours of work, all done in the most intensive secrecy.

EIdo Roshi stood on the dock, his senior attendants behind him, his face a mask of contentment, restraint, and discipline. The sesshin attendants lined the shores and, forbidden to speak on retreat, took in the candles silently. On the far side of the lake, masked in darkness and conspiracy, Kelly lit the fuse of the first firework, with the battery of explosives arranged in the order in which they would be lit. The fuse hissed up into the body of the large missile and, with an arch of flame it fired off into the sky, leaving a thin trail of smoke and sparks behind it. Kelly then darted out of his hole to the others, whispered instructions to the other two helpers on which fireworks to light and when.

On the dock, Roshi's attention went to the single streaking firework and he allowed himself a smile, thinking someone had lit off a large bottle rocket from the woods. But when it exploded a ¼ mile in the air into a huge red-and-orange ball with blue highlights, his mouth popped open. A few seconds later, the entire sky was suddenly alight in fireworks, with huge explosions and amazing colorful lights reflecting off the waters, the tranquil candles providing a striking backdrop. Kelly darted from one foxhole to the other, making sure that everything was being fired in the correct order, then tore back to his own hole to light more fireworks. He was burned and blacked by the huge rockets taking off so close to him, but the burns only made him laugh all the louder. The finale was carefully planned, and the skies over Dai Botsatsu burned orange, and red, and yellow, and blue and green as the explosions echoed for miles around.

The show lasted fifteen full minutes, and by the end of it the students attending retreat exploded into cheers and chatter, whooping and hollering. Eido Roshi's arms had fallen to his sides. His normally composed face was a mix of awe, gratitude, and utter shock, but he quickly tucked his arms behind his back and set his face. Without a word or gesture he left the dock and made his way back to the monastery, indicating that his attendants should leave him alone.

Kelly was waiting for him by the rear entrance, blackened, burned, covered in mud and mosquito bites, his eyes beaming. He had, after a decade of training, finally gotten Eido Roshi. Kelly watched as the diminutive, intense shadow of the roshi came up the path and into the circle of light, and he took a step back at the sight that greeted him. Tears streaked Eido Roshi's disciplined face, and his lips trembled with uncontrollable emotion. He threw himself onto Kelly's chest, beating him with his fists, sobbing in joy and gratitude and love. After a few moments Roshi released Kelly, composed his face and body into that of the master once more, and entered the building without saying a single word.

Kelly sat outside in the sweetness of the summer night air. That night would become one of the very sweetest memories of his life. Despite all his experiences, that one - sharing a moment of profound humanity with his teacher - was one of the most profound, the most cherished, and the most moving of his entire life.

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    Chapter 14

Kelly threw himself into the business of running his small Zen yoga studio.  He worked from 6am till 9am, took the afternoons off, and then ran classes again from 6pm till 9pm.  The pain of Brenda’s leaving was fresh in his mind, as was his confusion at his reaction to her. 

The last time he had gone to India it had changed his life, and so Kelly thought it was time for him to make another trip.  Perhaps this would provide the clarity he sought.  His plan was to spend several months studying under Pattabi Jois, the master yogi in Ashtanga who had few equals.  Life in India was cheap by American standards, and so he knew he would be able to stretch his modest savings a long way there.  He rented a spacious apartment near Pattabi’s house where the master lived and trained.  Pattabi was a real character in his own right, a yogi of almost unparalleled realization and skill, and not above the occasional demonstration of his humanness. 

 

Kelly flew to India and then journeyed to MySore, located in the southwest of the country.  Patttabi Jois taught out of his modest home, not out of some huge ashram like Kelly had envisioned.  The orientation talk was held in the small basement studio of Jois’ home, where a dozen or so Western students, including Kelly, had gathered.  Pattabi explained a little about how they would train and what they could expect, and afterwards pulled Kelly aside.  “One of my nieces will be cleaning your apartment for you, and cooking your meals.  You will pay her $1 a week.” 

Kelly scoffed at this.  “I can afford to pay her more than $1 a week.”   

Pattabi shook his head sternly, and wagged his finger in Kelly’s face.  “This is a radiant, beautiful Hindu goddess who is doing this service for you, and for me.  Do not take this happy creature and convert her, with your morality, into a capitalist pig by giving her a single extra dollar.”  Kelly’s mouth popped open.  He was, after all, a man who had given a near stranger $8,000 on whim — a kingly sum in the early 1970’s  “Our culture,” Pattabi continued, wagging his finger more aggressively, “Is not your culture.  Our culture has been in place for thousands of years, and it has worked for a reason.  We do not need or want your values here.  We will come to your country when we want to learn your ways.  But you are here, to learn from us.  So learn.”  He waited until Kelly’s eyes registered the profound truth of what he had just said, then turned and left.   

The days were beautifully simple.  Rise at 5am and meditate for an hour, then have a very light breakfast, then 3 hours of yoga training under Pattabi, then a break for lunch, and then yoga training in the afternoons.  It was a glorious program designed to deepen ones exposure to and training in yoga.  Kelly fully expected that he was going to walk away from his time at Mysore with many stories about Pattabi Jois, and how this master teacher pushed, prodded, and opened him – another kind of Swami Gauribala. 

There was a beautiful gray-haired man who came into their morning meditations everyday, but who would excuse himself ten minutes into the hour practice.  Kelly would see him afterwards, sitting quietly in the sun, sitting, sipping coffee, his eyes incredibly alert and aware.  His hair and his energy were that of an older man – certainly someone in his 60’s — but his face was free of worry or of any wrinkles, and had he dyed his hair he could have easily passed for someone in his 30’s.  After the fourth day of seeing him sitting and drinking his coffee, large and alert eyes taking in everything, Kelly approached the man. 

“Hi,” he said, sitting down, holding his own cup of coffee in his hands. 

“Hello,” the man said.  “I don’t know how you do it.” 

“What’s that,” Kelly asked. 

“Sit for so long.  You are much better at it than I am.”  The man smiled.  The statement was said with utter humility and sincerity, but there was something lyrical in the man’s tone, and something calming about his presence, and Kelly looked at him a little harder. This man’s eyes were like looking into the deepest mountain lake; they were still and tranquil, and if kindness could be physically manifest.  They possessed a softness that reached right into Kelly’s heart and opened him up.  It felt strange to think and feel it, but he fell in love with the man almost immediately, and it was as effortless and easy as looking a great painting and feeling something in yourself soar. 

The two men paused in their conversation as hundreds of colorful parrots flew by overhead, calling to each other and landing in nearby trees. 

“There’s a sight,” Kelly commented.  He looked back at the Indian man.  “I’m Denis.  Denis Kelly.”   

“I am Su Bara Char,” the man answered, bowing his head slightly.

“You are training?” Kelly asked.

“No, not really.  I am writing a book on Pattabi Jois, and so am here as a kind of journalist, I guess.”  He laughed. 

“Are you a journalist?” 

“No sir.  I am a retired professor.  I used to be the Dean of Students at the University of Mysore.” 

 

Another week passed, and the professor followed a similar routine.  He would join the students in the morning meditation, and then depart early, finding a comfortable spot in the sun where he would drink his coffee and take notes in a notebook, looking as rooted and tranquil as the ancient trees under which he sat.  He never attended the yoga classes, but waited in the garden outside, writing and sipping his tea or coffee.  

Su Bara Char and Kelly spent most of their early morning breakfasts together, getting to know one another. 

One morning Kelly asked him about his family.

“No, Mr. Kelly, I do not have a family,” he replied, but something in his eyes made Kelly press for more information.

“No one,” Kelly asked, “You don’t have a wife or a consort of some kind?”

Bara Char laughed.  “You are very perceptive, Mr. Kelly.  I have a great love, yes, it is true.”

Kelly smiled.  “So you do have a partner?”

“Yes, Mr. Kelly.”  Bara Char’s face looked illuminated from within, as if he were someone channeling the warmth and intensity of the sun just by thinking of the woman.  “She is my great love, Mr. Kelly, and I am blessed and humbled by her company.” 

“So you two are married?”

“Married?  Goodness no.  We fell in love many many years ago, but she was married to a close friend of mine, and so we never consummated our love. It is not necessary, anyway.”  He smiled.

“She is still married to your friend?”

“She is a Brahman, Mr. Kelly.  As such, marriage is always for life.  Her husband – my friend – died many years ago, but she must remain faithful to him.”

“But,” Kelly asked, confused, “With him — celibate, in other words?”

“Yes, Mr. Kelly.”

“How long have you been, uh, in love?”

“I have been devoted to her for almost 30 years.”

“But you – you’ve had other lovers, other loves?”

“No, Mr. Kelly.  She is all that I need, all that I ever wanted.”

Kelly could only stare back.  “So what do you do with her,” he asked at last.  

“Many, many things, Mr. Kelly.  I see her nearly everyday, and my love for her, and for God, is all that I need in this life.  I am a very, very lucky man.”  Bara Char sat back and smiled radiantly. 

At the beginning of the third week, Professor Bara Char pulled Kelly aside. 

“Mr. Kelly,” he said, being more forceful than Kelly had yet seen, “You need to leave this place and come with me.  Together we will explore the temples here in southern India.  There is something you need to see.” 

Kelly laughed.  “You’re not serious,” he said, but Bara Char just looked back.  “I’ve seen plenty of India, and plenty of temples. I’m here to study under one of the greatest living yoga masters.”

“That is not why you are here, Mr. Kelly.” 

Kelly just raised his eyebrows, laughed, and walked away. 

The professor became increasingly adamant as the days passed that Kelly go and visit Hindu temples.  

“Listen, professor,” Kelly said, irritated, after a week of saying he was not interested.  “I am not going to go to look at the temples.  I’ve already seen enough of India, as I told you.  I’m here to train with Pattabi, and nothing else.  This is all I need and want right now.”

Bara Char smiled, revealing his white, evenly-spaced teeth.  “There is something you need to see, Mr. Kelly.  You need to visit the Hindu temples in the South, where there are still uncorrupted and unlooted treasures to behold.”

Kelly shook his head, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder.  “Thank you, professor.  But I’m here for Pattabi Jois.  To train with him is an honor, and I’m not going to leave his side to merely sightsee.” 

“But Mr. Kelly,” the professor insisted, “There are things you need to see.”                   

 

Another two weeks passed, and while Kelly and the professor talked about a great many things, Bara Char never stopped insisting Kelly leave his training to travel. 

“Okay,” Kelly said one morning after their meditation.  In his sit that morning it had occurred to him that the universe was, through Bara Char, insisting he leave to travel to temples.  Kelly saw he had been stuck on an idea, a story, that he was “supposed” to be training with Pattabi Jois.  “I’ll go,” he told the professor after breakfast, “But only on one condition: you have to come with me, as my guide.”

Bara Char clapped his hands together, his eyes shining.  “Oh Mr. Kelly!  I would be honored!  And my cousin is a driver.  He will take us wherever we wish to go.  Now, a few things.”  Bara Char rattled off directions without a pause.  “The first thing is that many of the temples that take government money must be open to tourists.  We will avoid those, and only go to temples for Hindus.  You will shave your head and put on robes and paint your face and body, and I will tell people that you are a very prominent and famous American Hari Krisna, who is spreading Hinduism to the West. In this way, they may allow a Westerner to enter the sacred grounds.” 

“How long do you want to travel,” Kelly asked.  “I really don’t want to be away from Pattabi for too long.”

“We will travel, Mr. Kelly, until you get what you need.”  Bara Char smiled broadly.  “But if it eases your mind, I don’t think we will need more than two weeks.” 

Kelly sighed, and surrender. 

Two days later the men were in the backseat of a large sedan, and were whisked across southern India by the very quiet driver.  The professor knew a great many people, and the three of them stayed as guests in the homes of half a dozen people.  For those who have never experienced what it is like to be the guest of a Hindu Brahman family, it is an opulent, beautiful thing.  Fresh flowers, perfumed sheets, the finest foods and drinks the family owns, and more kindness than you might normally experience in a year. Over the first four days together, they visited no less than 20 temples, and got into about 1/3 of them. 

Professor Bara Char would explain who Kelly was to the priests guarding the temple entrances, and nod towards Kelly, who stood regally with his freshly-shaved head and colorful robes.  The professor would cajole, bribe, and otherwise insist as forcefully as he could that Kelly had to be granted access.  Sometimes the priests relented, and sometimes they would simply laugh at Kelly, shaking their heads and shooing them off.  Because some of the temples possessed ancient statues made entirely of gold and encrusted with jewels, many had armed guards from the Indian army standing watch in the corners, machine guns at the ready. 

In the temples where they did get access, Bara Char would never enter with Kelly, but would instead wait in the car.  Kelly would go into the rectangular-shaped temple grounds and make his way to the temple located at the rear of the compound.  There he would stand with another 30-60 people, and eventually be granted access to the temple itself.  The inside temples were large, full of hand-carved stone and wood, and at the far end of the temple were the closed doors of a shrine. 

With incense heavy in the air, the temple priests, chanting and whirling intoxicatingly, would eventually open up the doors of the shrine to reveal gold or bronze statues of Indian gods and goddesses, always bejeweled and dazzling.  The doors would stay open for 5 or so minutes, and then the priests would shut them once again.  Kelly would see many of the Hindus around him go into an ecstatic state, sometimes collapsing or sobbing or being so disoriented that they would have to be led outside.  The group of 30-60 people would then be ushered out of the

 temple and back to the temple grounds.  Kelly would go back to the car and to Bara Char, who would study Kelly intently for a moment or two before telling him the location of the next temple they were to visit. 

Days passed, and Kelly grew weary of seeing the same thing again and again. 

“I get it,” he said to Bara Char one day, “I understand how the mythical-poetic structure of the Hindus is not that different from Roman Catholics praying to Mary and the Saints.  I feel the Hindu’s energy shift, I see the ecstatic states they enter.  My appreciation of the depth and the beauty of Hinduism is greatly deepened. 

What is it you want me to see beyond that?”

But Bara Char only shook his head and smiled kindly. 

Kelly entered a temple on his 5^th day, so much like the others, after walking across the meticulously maintained temple grounds.  He was ushered in with about 50 other people, and he was the only Caucasian in the entire group, or on the entire temple grounds for that matter.  They stepped into the darkened temple, and as Kelly had seen before, there were temple priests on both sides, burning thick camphor incense and chatting.  Twenty feet away stood the closed shrine, and the chanting and the music intensified.  Kelly was a head taller than the next tallest man, and so had a clear and easy view of the shrine doors.  He knew the drill well by now: the chanting would go on for five or ten minutes, then the doors would open to reveal the statues of the deities, people would swoon, and then the doors would

The chanting intensified, and Kelly felt his heart opening to the beauty of the voices.  The smoke was heavy in his nostrils, and the crowd created an intensity of heat.  And then Shiva’s golden head turned, and his ruby eyes looked out over the crowd, causing many people to gasp or begin chanting, and a few to faint.  Kelly stared, wide-eyed, and blinked.  He had just shared a group hallucination.  How interesting!  But then Shiva’s golden leg came down to the ground, and Shakti too turned and faced outward.  Both deities smiled, and then began to go through some kind of mudras together, moving fluidly from one position to the next, their faces full of joyousness and love.   They moved for many long minutes, fluidly, until their bodies began to once again grow rigid.  Shiva first came to his original position, and the animation slowly left his body, leaving only a beautiful gold statue standing, lifeless, in the shrine.  Shakti too slowed and took up the original position, but before her head turned back she looked out across the crowd and met Kelly’s eyes with her own ruby ones.  Kelly felt an opening in him beyond anything he had ever experienced before, a movement of energy through this body that blew his consciousness into a million whirling fractals.  He was suddenly not sure if he still had a physical body, for he was all energy, all movement.  The shrine doors came to a close, and the priests harshly pushed the worshippers out, many of whom, like Kelly, were barely able to walk. 

Kelly stepped out into the midday sun, feeling its warmth across his skin, a more sensual touch and more intimate connection than any he had ever experienced in the embrace of a woman.  Tears ran down his cheeks without effort or awareness, and the earth felt as if he were walking across a pregnant belly, and so he tread reverentially across the grounds.  He got lost twice in the simple rectangle, and kind soldiers, their eyes shining and their faces open, gently took his arm and guided him towards the front gates.  Kelly wandered out into the street, and then saw the car with the professor inside.  He got in and sat down, and the professor clapped his hands together, touching Kelly’s heart.  “That is what you needed to see, Mr. Kelly,” Bara Char said gently.  Kelly stared at him, struggling to understand the words, yet unable to forget them.  “You have received the divine feminine into your own heart.  You will never again be the same.  Thank you for the deep honor to have shared this experience with you.”   

Kelly was incapable of speech, and would not be able to utter a single sound for three days, but his saintly companion guided him into the homes where they slept, helped to feed him at times, and simply let Kelly swim in the sea of silence that had overcome him.  Kelly was no longer like an anthropologist looking at Hindu culture from the outside, but rather was living it from the inside.  He was Hindu; his mind and Krisna’s were one; he was loved and beloved, eros and agape, evolution and involution, the source and the end, utterly and completely wrapped in perfection.   

Kelly went on to continue his training with one of the greatest yoga masters of the 20^th Century, and yet his teacher had been a retired dean of students, a humble and modest man who loved a woman with the whole of his being, yet who was forbidden to consummate that love.  So he served her, and Kelly, and everyone else he came across, the fire of his sacred heart burning into anyone who was ready to feel it. Kelly realized this man was a true saint, a man who lived on devotion to God and to his fellow human beings alone, expecting nothing in return.  His kindness and his insight and his fiercely open heart opened anyone who was willing to experience him this way.  Kelly watched in amazement as the professor gently spoke to other participants in the group, and how his mere presence would cause them to expose their darkest secrets and their deepest fears, allowing him to hold those things in the spaciousness of his eyes and the openness of his being. 

As Denis Kelly prepared to return to the United States, he realized that sometimes God does indeed walk among us.  

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Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi sits across from me, on a rainy morning in Massachusetts, a black hood draped over his head.  We are on the porch of an old lake home, overlooking a small stand of trees and then, through an opening in the underbrush, water.  We are both holding steaming cups of coffee, and even though it is late June our hands huddle around our cups for warmth. 

Jun Po’s eyes, intensely blue, stare past me at the distant memories I know he was summoning, watching them take shape in his mind.  We sit together, my digital recorder at the ready, notebook open with pen in hand; we wait together in a measured silence as he searches for a place to begin.

Dennis Kelly is tall and muscular with broad shoulders and a natural athleticism that defies his age, but his mass is now subdued, thoughtful, turned in on itself. When he places his coffee cup on the table, I notice the hands of a laborer; broad and ropy muscles cover large bones.  There are pleats in his cheeks, and deep lines etched into the skin around his mouth.  The scars from his radiation treatments a few years before can be seen running across his neck, as if he’s an old cowboy who somehow escaped the hangman’s noose.  His is a face accustomed to wearing serious expressions, and seems most at home with slightly narrowed eyes and downturned lips, despite the fact I know he is prone to sudden laughter and frequent smiles.  His eyes are intelligent and measure and hold no fear or hesitation.  Like the water outside the window they are clear, deep, still.   The dark hood comes away from his face, exposing large ears and a large nose and a large chin that, taken together, create a rugged handsomeness that harkens back to some Dust Bowl farmer deeply in touch with the wisdom of his land.

His 67 years show on his face, but the decades of daily yoga practice are hinted at in the deep masculinity and strength that emanates from his body.   This is the first day of two weeks we are to spend together, two weeks in which he will go over the events of his extraordinary life in extraordinary detail, being candid to the point of making me occasionally squirm in my chair.  I will come to understand that any discomfort is mine alone to bear, for he long ago made peace with the monsters and angels that gave him form and purpose.    

When he finally speaks, his voice is a grumble, coming from somewhere deep in his belly, as if the story of his life will emanate from that space. “Okay,” he says, his eyes briefly engaging mine before they find some undefined point in the ether behind me, “The first thing I remember.  Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Had to be forty-five or six.  Father was just back from the War.  Nasty alcoholic.  I was lying in a pool of my own piss, my little fat baby boy hands stuck out in front of me.  In the next room, there’s an explosion of violence.  Screams and yelling, and I’m just trying to get away from it, and have backed myself under a bed.  I stare out between my hands and my piss, trying to make sense of just what the fuck is going on in the next room, and then,” he snaps he fingers, “And then I’m gone, out of the body, out of that place, in the most serene stillness you can imagine…”  His words are calm, and sometimes border on the lyrical.  They are driven by the intensity that is this man, but there is little other emotion to animate them.

I will eventually become used to this; Jun Po’s descriptions of his life are at times unbearably sad and poignant, but he never once falters in his story, never dabs a tear from the corner of his eye, never has a quivering voice, and never once expresses much beyond a stoic wonder and a wry sense of humor and irony.  Far from being repressed or detached from his emotions, I realize as our days together go past that he has already spent more than two decades of his life deconstructing them; many of these stories, once problematic, have become old friends full of their own hard wisdom.  He welcomes them as such, mostly without valuation, although in a few areas he is harsh — almost cruel — in his assessment of himself.  

His life has been almost unimaginably full; a world traveler, seeker of wisdom, ascetic, holder of vast wealth and power, lover of women, homeless mendicant, wanderer, fearless warrior, father and husband, spiritual adept, yogi, federal prisoner, family deserter, hedonist, Zen master. There are a dozen men that sit down with me every morning, but they are all held by this man who has become Jun Po Roshi.

At the end of our time together, I spend a long day reviewing my notes, and I realize something profound: I have been handed a story far richer and more incredible then I could have ever imagined.  For this I am, and will always be, deeply grateful.  

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I’m about to put all my chips on my own version of the Roulette wheel.   For those of you familiar with the game of Roulette, it’s pretty simple.  The wheel has 36 numbers, alternating red and black in color.  The simplest way to play is to bet either “red” or “black”, meaning if the wheel is spun, the ball dropped, and it comes to rest on the color you’ve picked, you double your earnings.  50/50 shot.   If it lands on the color you didn’t chose, you lose everything.

 

The Set-Up
Those of you who know me know that I took a huge gamble with my 20’s and 30’s — I sacrificed much of what people consider necessary or normal in life to follow my artistic dreams.  I did, it is worth noting, have a fantastic and loving 12 years with one woman, and she made the process a lot easier with her love and support.  Our relationship ended, but I continued on the path I had begun to see if I could not only create a complete collection of short stories, but also to get them published.  

The odds of getting published are astronomically small, especially for a work of literary fiction (genre fiction, like Romance, stands a much better chance because of a larger, more dedicated, and less fickle audience).  Short story collections are notorious poor sellers, even for big name guys like Stephen King.  So I was aiming for a pinhole on a dartboard.  The path was not an easy one — 300 rejection letters have a way of undermining one’s confidence, sometimes in the extreme.  But in December of 2007, I finally got published by O-Books.  I had achieved the very thing I had been seeking my entire adult life, but I had no money and no jobs, little support from those closest to me, and no idea what to do next.  In what was a very telling moment, the fact of my publication was not celebrated in the least.  No champagne.  No extravagant dinner out, or even modest dinner out.  No bragging to friends and neighbors.  I just kept my nose down, and kept plugging forward the way I always had, as if nothing had changed.  But everything had changed; I just didn’t know it yet.  About two months after I was published a mentor noted, with a bit of shock, that I hadn’t celebrated, so I did finally go out to do so.  It felt strained and heavy, an almost joyless event of which I have little memory.  

The truth was that the struggle to get published had nearly sucked the life out of me.  It had taken its toll so that I was more identified with the struggle then with the act of creation itself.  How strange!  I was more identified with the “struggling” part of “struggling artist” then with the “artist” part.  What, or who, was I without the struggle?  I wasn’t entirely sure.  

Ironically, it was those few months after I got published that were some of the darkest of my life.  I was being encouraged by some of those around me to settle down and take a full-time job to take a break from my self-imposed stress, and rest in the security of a weekly paycheck.  There was little encouragement to keep pushing boundaries and limits, or to see the light that lay just beyond my identification with the struggle.  For my part, all I knew to do was what I always had done.  My partner at the time saw the toll the work had taken and assumed that the wisest course of action was to step away from it and embrace something more stable, perhaps a 9-5 job and a more settled life. There was wisdom there, for sure, for I did need to lay down the struggle to move forward.  But I feared that stepping into a full-time job would be a retreat into security, and a movement away from growth.   I knew all too well that safety and security have their place in our lives, but they also have their price.   To break into something difficult and challenging requires that you forgo safety and security, and step into the world of uncertainty even if, or sometimes especially if, no one else believes you can do it.  It is the ultimate leap of faith.  After all, if you do not have faith in yourself, who else will?    So I worked through my over-identification with the struggle, went back to freelancing with newfound vigor, and slowly pulled myself out of the darkness and into the light.  I emerged alone, but emerge I did.   

Fast-forward about a year.  The opening of the summer finds me more positive and optimistic then I’ve been in years, and I genuinely look forward to each and every day, and to my immediate future.  I am now surrounded by the right kinds of people, who see who I am and what I’m capable of, and also know how to push, pull, prod, and encourage me to move further down the path I started so many years ago.  To move further into my fear, not away from it.  

The Status of the Roulette Table
Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi, the 83rd Patriarch of the Rinzai Zen school, has hired me to write his official biography, and is flying me to Massachusetts on June 17 for two weeks.  I will fictionalize his life, keeping the stories all 100% true to what he tells me, but adding in the luscious detail of a storyteller.  Jun Po has been kind enough to advance me a significant sum (for me at least), knowing (as I do) that the book will be a bestseller (his life is like a combination of Hunter S. Thomson and Ram Daas, with a touch of Jim, Morrison and Adi Da thrown in for good measure).  His story is amazing, and the book will capture it in language that can honor the beauty, complexity, and uniqueness of Jun Po’s story.  His advance will fund me until October of 2009, but not beyond.  At that point, I will have to return to the grind of freelance business writing, or step up to the gambling table.  

The Bet
I have a house in Philadelphia, my last concrete investment and the last piece of physical security that I have in the world.  I could take Jun Po’s advance, which will fund me until roughly October 1st, and then go back to freelance writing to make ends meet, as I have done for the last decade, and then wait the 18-24 months for royalties to start coming in from our book.  I could then take that money, and really sink myself into completing the 4 major works of fiction I have rattling around in my head.  That would be the safest, most secure, and most rational route, and would give me some options if anything goes wrong.  But it means delaying, once again, my own work while I eek out a living.  It means hanging my own future on the outcome of a book that is not certain.  It means playing it safe until I can find the time to write, full-time, my own material, cramming a few hours here and there into odd corners of the week around freelance interviews, deadlines, and stress about money.  

Or…or I could turn my back to security and safely, up the ante, and bet everything on myself.  

All Chips In
My house is going on the market July 15th.  Once it sells, I will take the profit and use that money to fund me after I finish with Jun Po’s book.  I have a group of intensive friends who are willing to hold my feet to the fire, and I’m convinced that I can complete at least 2 of my 4 ideas in the 9 months I’ve allotted.  So basically, from July of this year until July of next (2010), I will be doing nothing but writing professionally.  And once that money is gone, I will have nothing — no savings, no investments, no property.  Only a dog, a really cool 1972 BMW motorcycle, my used and worn 88 Jeep Wrangler, and a few odds and ends.   If I “hit” on this, I will make back my gamble with a wonderful windfall.  If I miss my mark, and I can’t sell or even complete any of my own works, then I’ll know that I chose the wrong path for myself, and be able to start something utterly new while still in my 30’s.  In short, I’m all chips in.  

Stay tuned.  The next 12 months will be interesting ones.  

 

Why does believing you are a spiritual person not really amount to much of anything at all?  

There’s an interesting phenomena here in Boulder.  A lot of people one meets profess to being “spiritual” in some way or another, by which they usually mean: “I believe in being good to the environment, being socially responsible, being a good partner and parent, living as sustainably as possible, and being respectful of others’ view.  I also believe in (insert one of the following): god, energy, a greater power, a divine presence, an essence, Gaia, etc.” These sorts of "spiritual" beliefs are an excellent repudiation of believing in a single god for a single people (see the Middle East for how the one god thing is working out). Many people here, as in other places, have rejected religion as too narrow, rejected mainstream Western culture as too shallow and short-sighted, and rejected atheism or agnostism as too cold, impractical, and out-of-touch with the connection they feel. 
(Image above is of Jun Po Roshi -- think this guy gets easily rattled?) 

Another  way of saying it is that spiritual beliefs are an evolution from a dominant culturally-created and believed-in god to one that is more personal, independent, specific to the individual, inclusive, and tolerant of other gods, beliefs, and ideas. In this sense, these beliefs are positive and beneficial, and do indeed foster more toleration and open-mindedness. 

However, these spiritual beliefs are, still, just beliefs, no more or less substantial than the ones they are repudiating.  (Ever see people with “religious beliefs” and people with “spiritual beliefs” shout at one another across picket lines, as if shouting their beliefs will somehow get them into the skulls of the others?)  The bottom line is that these kinds of beliefs are often associated with some kind of minimally-spiritual practice like yoga (at least as it is practiced here in the West where it's almost entirely about the body).  And then there are littlte micro communities where people get together and affirm their mutual beliefs.  The problem is this: believing you are “spiritual” doesn’t really mean anything except you carry a certain set of beliefs. 

The problem with beliefs is that they tend to crumble and fall apart under strain — they are, after all, merely concepts and ideas held together by the mind.  In my own experience, I have frequently seen so-called “spiritual” people, who want a “spiritual relationship”, resort to all manner of base and petty actions, reactions, retaliations, distortions, and selfish need.   Why is this? 
To create real change, lasting change, one needs a true spiritual practice and not just beliefs.  A practice is just that — the practice of actually being that which you claim to be!  Practice transcends belief entirely.  

Think of it with this analogy: a man watches lots of Kung Fu movies, thinks about Kung Fu, talks to his friends about Kung Fu, owns Kung Fu posters and T-shirts, and hangs out with a Kung Fu community.  He thinks about Kung Fu all the time.  Yet when a street mugger attacks him, he is left utterly defenseless because he has no practice.  All he has is his concepts and his beliefs, and nothing more.  So he gets his ass kicked.  A Kung Fu practice, on the other hand, where one trains the body and the mind through endless repetition and training, results in the ability to defend oneself against real world aggression — often by not having to ever engage a potential combatant, because the latter senses the confidence and presence of the practitioner.   

A spiritual practice is no different.  Because one trains the mind on a meditation cushion, under the watchful eye of a master of some sort (you can no more teach yourself spiritual insight than you can teach yourself Kung Fu) the mind grows and evolves.  Your mind, like the martial artist’s body, becomes more resilient to challenge, more able to hold space in conflict, more able to see perspectives even in heated disagreement, more able to be truly compassionate not just in words and beliefs, but in actions.  It allows for you to actually be the things you believe when it matters most — in conflict, in heated exchanges, in the face of national disasters, when one’s own life gets turned topsy-turvy through childbirth, marriage and divorce, disease, old age, suffering, and death.  Beliefs are cold comfort in the most challenging times, because they’re just ideas, just concepts.  But a spiritual practice leads to the kinds of experience and insight that ground the practitioner into a deeper truth, a deeper reality, a deeper version of their own true face. 

So if you want peace and happiness, or a loving and spiritual relationship with a partner, or a meaningful and rewarding relationship with your children and friends, develop something stronger than beliefs to support those desires.  A spiritual practice trains the emotional body to withstand and respond to the very worse things that life will, inevitably and to every single person, throw.  

Get out of your mind, and get onto a cushion.  Stop believing you’re a spiritual person because you stand around and talk about it, go to yoga once a week, and recyle your bottles.  Start believing you’re a spiritual person because that’s your experience, your truth -- yes, but more than that, your insight has been forged in the fire of meditation, tested under the careful gaze of a spiritual master, and put into practice in the most difficult and challenging areas of your life.   

Then you have so much more than belief.  You have a practice, and life itself becomes your teacher, your friend, your best insight into your true nature.  

Sometimes I create parts of stories that simply don't fit.  Here's something pulled recently when I was editing...

 

Until he had been dropped off at the school, Darnell had never in his life been out of Philadelphia except for occasional field trips and other day excursions to the shore.  At fourteen years of age the night sky for him was one of little wonder; a washed out version of its daytime self where a half-dozen stars, easily overlooked, twinkled meekly through the canopy of light. Now in the seclusion of a small Vermont village and far from the comforting lights of the city, he felt just how vast the world could actually be.  On his first day, Darnell had gone through Mount Claire’s orientation, been assigned a room, and settled in.  But he had little in common with the other students and so decided to wander outside to be alone.  He pushed through the front door of the dormitory, which led to a small concrete pad.  The door closed and Darnell stood overlooking the gentle curve of a valley whose shadows rose, uninterrupted, to meet the shadows of the sky.  Behind him a single bulb burned, while just beyond its reach darkness pressed in, as if all the night were gathered there.  Over his head two thousand stars twisted and boiled, set afire in the stillness of the New England night.  They were violent, active things whose motion broke their colors into a thousand writhing fractals overhead.  Darnell turned back towards the embrace of the light bulb, and quickly rushed back inside. 

 

Too excited to sleep – it seemed impossible, especially as a middle-aged man whose existence had grown as regular and reliable as a Sunday sermon.  Early in life, as one flies through their twenties and thirties, life is defined by a frantic change; friendships dissolve around marriages, whole new families are born and grow, and vocation is marked by an upward advance and ambition.  As the forties give way to the fifties, though, one begins to dread change, for more often than not it means something tragic, unexpected; the death of a parent or friend, cancer, the loss of employment, the decline of the body, or the uncertainty that waits beyond the few remaining breaths of an exhausted marriage.  Middle age, as Will experienced it, was defined by a methodical, stubborn steadiness.   And yet after four months of traveling to New York City every week, like some kind of beatnik, his methodical patterns, those familiar thoughts and daily routines and beliefs, had all been quietly exposed.  Will had became aware, slowly at first, then more rapidly, of just how much his life had slipped into unconscious routine, and once exposed to a critical eye, he found the revelation as startling as it was invigorating, and began to peel away the layers of his languorous existence to see what lay beneath.  For the first time in as long as he could remember he was awaking excited to start his day and moving with a new energy, and a new appreciation, of just how incredible life could be.  He felt driven by passion even when doing simple tasks, and strong emotions – often contradictory – ran through his mind at the most inopportune times.  It seemed like he had somehow mostly slept through the last decade of his life without even realizing it.  

So from time to time I'll put poems I'm working on here.  I'm honstly not much of a poet, but it provides a good emotinal outlet for me, and is less involved than an entire story.  Feel free to comment or post suggestions....

 

"Seen"
It seems, love, I have disappointed you --
that you expected more of me, again,
to be strong, even if I must pretend 
there was nothing to what you put me through.
No need to explain, your friends all agreed,
my concerns were childish, a selfish path
when instead we should focus on your wrath,
and honor your experience, your need.
I wish you understood why i must leave
instead of turning, avoiding my eyes
whispering to friends I was full of lies
unable to see or hear why I grieve. 
(c) 2008 KMS

 

"Uncertainty on the Edge of Doubt"
What I once thought was hard fact
were only chalk line hypotheses
impermanent remedies
blown away by a breeze.

Once we were open to the other
but your past was concealed
and it’s cold where I used to feel -
perhaps it's time to travel on

I'll write stories from the edge
so look for yourself in pages
where no longer constrained by cages
we’ll achieve what might have been.
(c) 2008 KMS 

An interesting year, to say the least.  The hard work and sacrifice that go into creating art is an intense experience.  To those of us on the outside of this process, it can look romantic, even a wonderful expression of something that so many of us attempt at some point in our lives. We say, "Wow, that's great!  It must really be rewarding..."  And it is, for certain.  But the view from within can be far more complicated and harsh, and the psychological maneuvering necessary to stubbornly pursue your artistic dreams, at the expense of other more practical realities, can create a casualty list of its own.  It can certainly create its own demons.  The photos here, taken this past summer ('08) are of the nearly 300 rejection letters I masochistically  kept before I finally got published. 

But having gotten published, after over a decade of trying and many hundreds of rejection letters, has been an experience that is difficult to describe.  It has freed up a defiant part of me, a defiant part that was largely the part of myself from which motivation sprung.  Now I have a publisher, and anything I write can at least get into print, for the first time in my life.  And that prospect is, strangely, terrifying.  So the work I am doing now is letting go of this bare-knuckled and intensive “writer” who was willing to sacrifice so much to get published — letting that part of myself go, and finding a more mature way to express it.

If nothing else, it should make a good story :-)