Charlie 5

I'm a shaman, and my medicine name is "charlie 5" (查利伍 - chá lì wǔ), and I usually say that when I thought I was mortal, I used my father's last name, but when I was enlightened into my immortality, I realized that was misleading, as if who I am was something finite, something my father or his father invented, something separate from the universe, something that could be 'lost' or 'destroyed'. The number 5 is a much better identifier of that unidentifiable essence; 5 is everywhere, and nowhere; you can draw a "5" in the sand and call that a "home" for 5, but in the end, when that washes away, "5" is still 5. I first understood the "Vedanta", "end of knowledge" when I read the SvetaSvataropanishad. I read all the other Upanishads, many of them over and over, and also found the same knowledge, from other perspectives, in Dzogchen Buddhism and in Ling Bao Daoism, where the Chinese character for Brahman is 大梵 dà fàn. I find that re-reading the Upanishads creates a light in the mind that affects not only the reader but everyone around them. I also find it difficult, in modern day America, to explain the "end of knowledge", or Brahman. I typically say "I don't believe in reality; I see it, I think it's beautiful, and I try to cultivate it like a garden in time, but I don't think it has anything to do with who or what or where we really are". I explain why I decided to give up reading, saying that in the West, they say "keep learning" no matter how old you get, but in the East there is the concept of the "Vedanta", or "the end of knowledge". I explain to younger people that at the beginning, you think there are lots of things in the world, and you set out to learn them, but you might eventually arrive at a point where you realize there is only one thing, and we already know it. At that point there is no longer a reason to read the circular stories over and over (the sastra); I say I've already seen all the movies, the one you could call "guy chases other guy with a gun", the one you could call "boy meets girl, they break up, and get back together", etc. And instead of all the world literature I used to read, I simply listen to people about their lives, and let the lights in their eyes be the candles on my altar. I tell people that it's what all the dead people know (the vidhe mukta - people who achieve liberation after death), and that in the West, we're taught the only one who is "jivan mukta", one who achieves the liberation (moksha) before death is jesus, but when you encounter eastern literature, you learn there are many yogis, many buddhas, many daoist immortals that pursue "perfection into truth", and that in modern times we arguably have more access to the ancient scriptures that lead to this path than people at any time in the world have had before, and so the path of jivan mukta is wide open. Daoists say that at one time, only kings had access, then later the priests or monks were the only ones with access, but now any one can find this path, but they are obscured in a jade hailstorm of distraction in the depths of the abyss of modernity. What kids call ‘boredom’, and so terrifies them, I think of as a silent waterfall that washes over us; the Daoist called it LingBao, “precious treasure that is the numinous energy of the wind and the rain”, and their writings admonished us to receive, accept, and endure that hard-to-bear universal training through nature-weather-paradise, heaven’s blessing; of course I know this perspective is uncommon today, when over 60% of the population have eve’s apple in their pocket with the bite taken out of it, their refrain the led zeppelin line “how could we say no?”, and so I see their smart phone as an umbrella people use in the waterfall, as well as all the other anodynes they run to in the storm - drinking and smoking, dairy and carbs, TV and shopping - anything to get out of the divine rain; but the easy shelters of dopamine reward are just shadows, unreal in the hailstorm smashing through their umbrellas. Rather than lazy, wu-wei (無爲), the doing of nothing, the “highest vehicle”, is the opposite of not doing anything; it’s the doing of spiritual practice, the doing of mental, physical, and spiritual fasting; the doing of yoga - a union with the universe, it’s standing in the steelyard where the gold is refined, under the heat and pressure that kids call ‘boredom’, it’s standing still in the jade hailstorm of modernity, yoga at the center of the storm, twisting silently on the dark road to interior destiny, mysterious clarity in the jungle of forever, the hope of eternity, the pattern of creation, the blossom of stillness, the road to infinity, the castle of becoming, the silence in the thunder, the glide in the crystal, and the structure of the dream; happy go the causes, silent flows the stream. Like a constant soft snowfall, grace is all around us for everyone; but we can hide from it under the umbrellas of food, smoking, entertainment, etc., hiding from the “boredom” instead of “exercising the magic of “receive-accept-endure” (受 - shòu), taking in the wind and the rain and the light, the hard-to-bear universal training through nature-weather-paradise, that is heaven’s blessing”; like a predestined graceful path through a garden, we could walk the path of grace effortlessly, but we tend to let our culture of materialism inspire a dark cloud ‘self’ who then tries to create straight lines and impose a path of “predictable efficiency” onto the garden; but it’s the simple, sound wisdom of nothingness in action, vast and humble, mind like the pure breeze of heaven, the majestic mystery of wind and light, that washes away the petty and inappropriate demon road with its sharp-forking paths; the predestined path of grace is provided by heaven, but is often cluttered by the bizarre and harmful demon road of crafty evil, all the loose and wayward, strange and impractical rocks from that isolated demon road, that then need to be brought to rest in the ocean of divinity, arriving at their mysterious, profound, subtle and marvelous truth in spirit; by making as strong an effort as we can to control our own mind and heart, our own body and breath, our counterpart who is universal and outside of “time and events”, will then be more in harmony with us, and “take it from there”, changing things that we cannot see or know but that affect the whole, including the complexities of the body, divinity acting as an elder partner of mankind; I like to say that another way to describe "love" is "radical transcendent unity", because it's a simple beautiful observation that when we see everything and everyone as the "One" we realize it is simply love, there is no "separation". The goal: like a tranquility worker immersed in tranquility craft, to be still in the jade hailstorm, without hiding in the square box of subjectivity and using the netherworld as an umbrella, but outside, as the green of objective reality comes streaming from the moment we open our eyes or open the door to walk outside; at the office, in a dark box, we focus on the subjective, but there is also a jade hailstorm aspect to it - sights, sounds, voices, words on a page. Obscuring the simple luminosity of the one, the pure and simple Brahman, we have not only the jade hailstorm, of the objective world, but also the swirling darkness of the netherworld of the human mind, all Maya; the jade hailstorm outside, the "opaque rustling of existentialism" - sights, sounds, voices, words on a page, stir up the dark clouds of the netherworld, but with control of body and mind, these two can be decoupled, and one can be controlled and stilled. inside, just shine, radiate quiet mystery. Immortality is a meditation, not a superhuman power, the value is the end of suffering, the move from finite and limited, to boundlessness; the issue is, who, and what, and where we really are. My body is my garden in time, and I don't set it on fire, I'm not careless with it and I don't abandon it to the wind; I cultivate it, I help it grow into its destiny, its longevity; charlie isn't what I am, it's what I'm wearing, what I speak and pray through, a lamp that shelters and reveals the one shining light that is our heart essence. In Daoism they speak of the "three borders" of Past, Present, and Future, and then of what is "beyond" the three borders; the "Book of the Five Talismans" ends with an invitation to that beyond; they call it "Brahman", the "One"; it is the home of divinity, and the Past Present and Future are the yards surrounding the house, a front yard, a backyard, and a side yard; Out in the "present", alone there, the winds blow up a storm from the other areas, the traumas of the past, the concerns about the future, winds that travel on "stories" we tell ourselves, sometimes paralyzing spirit in its tracks, limiting the growth of the tree of life. Once we go past the three borders, recognizing ourselves in immortality, the perspective changes and we can act with love, achieve compassion-happiness, work wonders. Where my heart can’t help but bristle is if we say that’s ‘all there is’ when we look out only one side of the door, at the physical environment of the finite side. Often I wake to a thriving metropolis of splendor in my garden, but sometimes inevitably there’s drought, hail damage, rabbit-theft, fire and wind, and I do what I can to alleviate the suffering in the garden and start over with the cultivation. The key though, is that there is a transcendent realm beyond that garden, the farmhouse at the center of the vortex, and that’s where I locate myself, like the number five; you can draw a five in the sand, and call that a ‘home’ for five, within the time garden, but when that home surely burns, it is not a threat to ‘me’; indeed, just like Lao Tzu taught, for the number five, there is no ‘kill site’, and so it is a home of immortality.