Most of us grasp the idea of the three-sided coin. I have heard people respond to the idea of the three-sided coin with a quick, “But no, the coin has only two sides!” Then of course the response is to pull out a coin and point out that the ridge defining the coin’s circumference is indeed its third side.

I’m still pondering aspects of karma I addressed in last month’s column, and, thankfully, I testify here that things are feeling better and looking up. Now, feelings reside in the illusion of self. They’re not real in any sense except that they surely seem to be a part of this human existence.

Last week a close friend was listening to my accounts of what my life has been like since I last saw him in 2009. When I’d finished with what admittedly sounded like a litany of woe, his response was, “Man, you’ve had some bad karma. I mean really. Bad karma. What do you think, did you murder someone in a past life?”

Readers of this column should know I do not firmly acknowledge reincarnation, nor do I conclude a belief in transmigration of the soul as in life after death. But, just like the existence of God, I certainly do not disbelieve in those things either. To remind folks, I call myself a “spiritual empiricist,” meaning I believe in things I have seen and felt. But face it, we cannot prove a negative based on lack of experience, meaning both God and life after death could be very real. They just aren’t things a logical or inferential mind can grasp and talk about in “real-life experience.”

A close friend of mine has returned from his third sojourn in India. He was visiting the ashram (Hindu monastery would be the most accurate definition) of Sri Lakshama Swamy and Mathru Sri Sarada in southern India. His hope and intention is to return to spend alternate times between there and his estate in rural Brown County. He spoke eloquently of being torn between his beautiful place in Wisconsin and the hot, dry world of India, where he had to endure the rigors of a world much different from ours to have the presence of two gurus in the Hindu tradition.

Life in India is harsh, the culture and climate so very different. Each day reaches more than 100 degrees, and everything from transportation to electricity is much more haphazard than here. People are often jam-packed together, and television, radio, music and general family voices interact in jumbled intrusion into his personal peace of mind. But then, in the refuge of the ashram, where the contention is that two “realized masters” reside and offer their karmic transmissions to devotees, some coming from the West, like my friend, and others growing up in families of Indian devotees. This ashram grew up around the two gurus after their life growth in the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, one of India’s greatest masters, and certainly among the most renowned of “modern” masters. He lived and practiced around a mountain, which was his home, in this area of southern India.

I won’t go into the many nuances and details of this world, but I most definitely can attest to its multicultural and colorful tableau steeped in Hindu lore and tradition. Souls in statues and many creatures too subtle to be seen reside among the elephants, monkeys, tigers and snakes of India. The religious practice is rich. The stories supporting the beliefs are amazingly beautiful, captivating and allegorical, with creation legends and explanations of the “what’s and why’s” of life are on par with anything in the Bible for their cultural depth.

This practice is Vedic. It tells us to give up the self to return to the Self (God). It relies on mantras, very intense concentration exercises, and a 100% focus on that. The trivialities of life are to be gotten rid of. Ego is characterized as the invention of small minds trying to hold on to themselves. I certainly cannot explain it, but it is quite different in many ways from Zen Buddhist practice. It is also very different from nearly anything people of Christian persuasions can relate to, except perhaps some of the concentration evident in prayer or the richness and beauty of altars and vestments in the church.

The other most influential thing to me lately is I’ve just finished the book The Magus by John Fowles. This book centers on culture of the post-World War II, and the coming of age of western man in the tenuous nuclear age following the war. It uses Greek myth to help explain the human condition. The author synthesizes myth and legend to suggest that even in this “modern” scientific age we are in fact still existing in a world of myth. This is a very long book. I’d read it before, but I wanted to return to it to be challenged again. I am so happy I did it just now.

So, needless to say, my situation has been very colorful lately. What of the “bad karma” from the first half of 2010 I’d told of to my friend? Well, today it feels like it’s been beaten back from my door by the purely interesting influence of spirit and myth. I cannot touch the spirit or myth. I cannot tell you any of it is essentially real. But I can tell you I am extremely thankful that I have left the door to creativity open. It’s open for the entrance of many teachings and traditions. It’s been so fortunate that these two expansive influences, religion and literature, have seemingly carried me from a gloomy beginning of the year to a very stimulating and alive onset of summer.

The three-sided coin? Imagine the austere serenity of Zen (my main area of practice), one side of the coin, and the colorful worlds of Hindu and Greek mythology, the other side, offering me peace. That might be hard to understand, but here is the message: Realize that you can be the edge of the coin. Don’t ignore what lives on the edge. It might just be what’s buried in the obvious that saves you, if you let it all in. Let karma be your universal washing machine and your definition. And be thankful for what you do not understand.

As I conclude writing this article, it is just past mid-June, on the cusp of the solstice and summer. I have just begun another estate-sitting venture for my traveling friend of whom I spoke, in rural Brown County. The birds have finished their morning feeding frenzy, the altars are quiet, the cats sleeping, and the wind is whispering quiet tales to the earth with the lush flora as its audience. The many altars are quiet, the bell is waiting to be rung.

Kabhir-John Price is an ordained Zen lay monk, a practitioner of various traditions, a retired public school educator, and writer. He welcomes reader contact at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 920-558-3076 or 920-279-4997; 1340 Geneva Road #10, Menasha, WI  54952.

There’s instant karma…then there’s karma stretched across a lifetime

There are several versions of the same story. I’ve just experienced one firsthand, and I cannot wait to tell of it. Yet, at the same time, I feel a bit embarrassed by the facts behind the story. But, as is the case often with Zen, actual events, people, causes and effects, those kinds of things, are hard to specifically define. I’ll relate the old story. You can fill in the blanks as they suit your own experience.

Nearly 30 years ago, a teenage boy planted a seed. He had decided to cultivate the plant the seed would grow into rather than go out to see the world. “To plant a garden is to walk with God,” was an old saying of his paternal grandmother, who taught his father to be an accomplished home gardener. The boy’s father had recently died, and he felt strongly it was most appropriate to grow plants and spread the bounty they provided to the local folks. Although he felt robbed by his father’s death, he thought he’d turn around those feelings and give back to the world. His father was taken from him, but he would turn the tables on life.

His friends went all over the world. Coming from an intelligent community, the people could pretty much write the ticket to their lives. Across the planet they spread, mostly having fun, copulating, living the life of off-beat people. The fellow who planted the seed had once heard the word Bodhisattva, and he wanted to be one, to give of his treasures inside to the world outside, to make everyone better off. The seed he’d planted promised food, abundance, medicine. All good things for the people of the area. The fellow even went to school to learn botany, so he could expand his contributions beyond those of a single seed.

As the years passed, the now botanist realized he’d given up much pleasure for his decision. Staying close to home, managing a garden, having little outside wildness in his life, sometimes made him feel like he was missing something. His friends, traveling all over the world, looked to be having much more fun than he. But he took comfort in the idea that his gardens fed the community, so whenever he felt sorry for himself, he took comfort in those contributions.

Over the years, he became quite good at his work and did a fine job of feeding the people. One day a man from the state agricultural commission came to see him and offered a job supervising the farmers in the area as they planned for each season’s crops. He’d oversee the bulk purchase of seeds, track weather patterns and generally did everything that was a few steps away from actual gardening. Again, at times he felt a bit of emptiness in that the life he’d made for himself was less than his far-flung friends around the world. But, as before, his personal comfort came from his contributions.

In his middle years, he became quite ill and his physical maladies became so great that he had to give up his work and retire. But he was a curious sort, and he spent many hours at he library with books and recordings of stories and facts from all over the world. He knew, of course, his friends from earlier years were experiencing those wonders directly, while he could only read about them and imagine them. As time went on, he began to feel distant, not unhappy, but distant from the excitement of the world.

One thing that amazed him more and more over the years was the feeling that life was longer than he had imagined it would be. When his illness first struck, and he felt that the end of his life might be coming soon, he had a certain, shorter, perspective on time. But then he didn’t die, and he actually began to move into what might be called his elderly years, though, like most people, inside he always felt young and vibrant. He aged physically, but he didn’t feel old inside.

Times in the country changed, and it became more difficult to support himself on his pension. What had served as a reasonably comfortable retirement became more challenging as the economy called for more sacrifice just to get by. His old friends came and went, stopping to see him occasionally. He could see they were aging, too, just like him.

As old age crept upon him, he became rather poor, and planning for life’s daily needs became more and more challenging. His ill-health had taken away his vitality that had brought him sustenance in earlier times, but he didn’t lose faith in life and always tried to maintain a good attitude. But things became dire, and he began to worry that he would no longer be able to keep up his small dwelling and simple lifestyle.

Then one day a letter came in the mail. He didn’t recognize the name on the return address. When he opened the mail, he was astonished. It held a check which for him was a near fortune, and it explained that a particular strain of plants he’d begun developing many years ago had bloomed into a type of food that could feed many people, and in his own way, he was a hero in the agricultural community.

The fellow had learned long ago to have an even sense of life. He learned not to get too full of himself in happiness when something good came along, and likewise not to become too down on himself in the troubled times. His life became more comfortable in a completely unexpected way. A seed he’d planted long ago now supported him quite well in his old age.

Now this little story, a cliché though it is, does tell a common theme. It’s an easy theme to figure out: “As ye sew, so shall ye reap.” Of course, most of the time we apply this moral to things good or evil. If we are good people and treat others well, sooner or later it will come back. In contrast, if we are ill-willed and mean-spirited, that, too, will come back on us.

This seems like just a story, but, be assured, it has its deep element of truth, and for all of us, a seed we planted long ago could become something very valuable for us in later years.

***

May 2010: Aspire to greatness: Do not sell yourself short

I was watching a movie about a Chinese student who comes to the U.S.A. to study cosmology at a prestigious university. He is brilliant, and he soon shows his abilities go beyond those of his graduate professor. It reminded me of my own PhD work, a sad story where my dear adviser died before I got my degree.

But my story is similar to the Chinese student in that I challenged a professor on a major subject of his academic renown, and he basically told me not to write the paper I proposed. I wrote the paper anyway, and I suffered this man’s wrath to the point of letting it get me down. I mean down, literally, to the point where my advanced degree turned out to be an ABD (“All But Dissertation“).

In the politics of any workplace, in or out of school, confrontations and challenges can cause people to not be true to themselves over worry about their standing firm, possibly at the cost of a promotion, a degree, or even a job.

April 2010: Nothing for granted but we all do it!

How is it that “I” know?

Common logic would suggest that “I” am the sum total of my experiences coupled with my genetic codes. Yet, considering what we don’t know, what about that? Could it be that we are also what we are not? After all, an ancient saying tells us, we all have to be somewhere, even when we’re not.

Don’t take anything for granted.

It just happens that his native land is one of my own ancestors’ and his first religion was Catholicism, also my own. He told me of a book he’d read recently by a Jesuit priest from Bombay who offered him insight about acceptance and kindness far beyond anything he’d imagined for his life. Of course, I immediately recognized it was Anthony De Mello of whom he spoke. The particular book was Awareness, and while I was uttering the author’s name, my meandering eye immediately found the book’s spine on my crammed book shelf.

Today, I was thinking about taking in a walk. Yet I stayed home for a bit, for some little reason feeling like the moment called for me to be here. I heard a voice outside my window, calling my name, and asking if I was all right. It was a person with whom I’ve shared some major life issues lately, who was coming to check on me. I hadn’t called in a few days, and she was concerned. A small thing, but my being here answered her question. I’m fine.

What about these names?

How important is a name? Isn’t the name you were given at birth good enough?

Of course it is.

I wrote the other day to a reader and mentor concerning my take on people renaming themselves. This is related to his doing so, based on his Tibetan and Taoist studies. I acknowledged my own renaming, based on my totem. “Totem” is defined, in American Indian parlance, as in the animal in this world that keeps watch over a person and informs and guides him.

It seems like forever that I’ve known my totem. But it was very strongly affirmed many years ago on the edge of a remote stream. This happened on the near edge of my two periods of (physical) blindness and led to a major segment of my Vision Poems series. It was further affirmed at an initiation experience some four years later, then strengthened even more on the afternoon before my Zen ordination. I was offered the name Kabhir, and it was miraculously affirmed by the appearance of my totem animal.

The mentor-reader-friend I mentioned had come to taking a new name image for himself. This has taken place at the dawn of his 8th decade of life, but based on his fairly recent studies of Buddhist and Taoist practice.

I actually have had several names over the years. My first alter-ego was one I adopted for a trip throughout the western states in the 1960s. I adopted a name for practical purposes while traveling the U.S. in the ’60s. I’ve also used a stage name in my days as a percussionist. I’ve written many poems of a social-political bent under a pen name. But the name Kabhir, attached to my given and family name, is the most significant and one I’ve kept for much of this decade. Now, for a variety of reasons, I am thinking about letting that tag go.

I’ve marked my calendar for the End of the World

So, I notice today on National Public Radio, references by the ancient Mayans to the “predicted end of the world as we know it.” I confess to “borrowing” a rock from a jungle Mayan temple at Coba. I am both drawn to and haunted by it. Superstition, I know, but I feel the attraction-repulsion, the repulsion from having stolen such a treasure.

As one who has great curiosity about the origins of humanity and who is constantly seeing speculative, historical, esoteric and other explanations concerning our existence, I have regularly looked into many aspects of Mayan lore and its possible impact on our lives. Extra-terrestrials? Mathematical genius? Religious revelation? Poetic muse? Other? All, some or none of the above? Whatever, many people world-wide are enthralled by Mayan lore and wait in wonder for Dec. 12, 2012 (12/12/12).

What keeps my attention is the litany of possibility associated with whatever those inscriptions on ancient Mayan tablets foresee. Admittedly, this is the one and only “end of the world (as we know it)” fantasy that’s captured my real interest for many years.

What then? On the eve of Dec. 12, 2012, will I find a new name for the universe? Will the silver spaceships land and define Neil Young’s fantasy? What?

My totem is Crow. Whatever happens, the “Rose by any other name,” will continue to make words small and realization large. The shining black birds, smartest of all birds and descended from great beasts, watchers and laughers, will look down at me, as in my death-daydream, and laugh, oh, will they laugh!

Kabhir-John Price is a person too often consumed by ponderances of existence but appreciating the sense of wonder he still has. He is a retired public school educator and a writer. He welcomes contact from readers at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 920-729-0040.