A Fruitful Journey of Self-Realization

Last week I stayed in California, dividing my time between my chosen family in Santa Barbara and my beautiful sister, Cybil, in South Bay’s El Porto. The afternoon I arrived in South Bay, Cybil had plans to drive to Laguna for a concert. I had already ridden on a bus along PCH for several hours that day, and now she wanted to hop on the 405 in Friday afternoon traffic. Laguna isn’t necessarily ‘close’ to El Porto, and if you aren’t familiar with Los Angeles traffic, consider yourself lucky. I didn’t realize that hours later I would be thanking my sister for her patient persistence.

When we finally arrived in Laguna, we pulled up to a neighborhood church and walked across the street to grab a tostada from a local joint. I could already tell the night was going to be interesting. The news channel was predicting rain, and we rollercoastered through depressive states until we finally realized it was a Chicago news station. It was the only U.S. establishment I’ve been to that served Imperial (the cerveza of Costa Rica). I was having a hard time remembering where I was.



We walked across the street to the church and two men were praying in meditative yoga positions on a bench outside. Inside, about 25 people ordered chai tea and found a seat. As the two men entered the church and approached the stage, I realized that it was singer/songwriter Trevor Hall and his Grandfather Guru.



In January the two traveled to India together and stayed at the Yoga Vedanta Kutir ashram. We were all there for a concert benefiting the orphan children that Trevor had stayed with on his trip. The “ashram boys" between the ages of 5 and 14 were orphans at one time or another, and the head of the ashram took them in, cleaned them up, taught them yoga, and sent them to school. While Trevor stayed in India, he fell in love with the boys who showed him their yoga postures and sang chants with him, and he decided he wanted to help them in return for how they helped him.


The Ashram Boys

Trevor stood alone in a white tunic on a simple church platform surrounded by candles and pictures of Indian children, and he shared humble and very personal experiences of his struggles and spiritual realizations. Between songs, he told stories of his journeys in India … of the holy union of Rama and Sita … of bathing in the holy rivers of India … of lane lines in India as ‘merely suggestions’ … of beautiful temples and ashrams … of wonderful yogis and saints … of the beauty, grace and joy of the children he stayed with and the holy places he visited.





I was particularly amused by one particular story about a banana. When traveling in India, he and his grandfather guru visited a holy ancient meditation temple to visit a saint. He was given a banana in the temple, which, given the holiness of the circumstances, is considered prasada. Prasada literally means ‘a gracious gift’ and is believed to be karmically beneficial to its recipient.

As Trevor traveled down the dirt road from the temple, he saw a man on his knees with his hands extended begging for nourishment. The man had uncommonly beautiful crystal blue eyes, and he decided to offer the man his banana. He bowed his head to the beggar and extended his banana in front of the kneeling man, but the man did not take the banana. He did not smile, and did not reach for the blessed fruit, but his hands and eyes remained open.

Trevor shook his head and admitted that he began to grow angry. “Negative thoughts started coming to my mind, like ‘Why won’t this man take my banana?’ and like a domino effect, within 20 seconds my mind was filled with terrible thoughts. ‘Is my banana not good enough?’ ‘Is it because I’m white?’” Trevor lowered his head at this point of the story and softly laughed in humility.

The gurus and other men watching from further down the road finally yelled to Trevor that the man was blind.

Trevor said that an overwhelming sense of emotion took over, and uncontrollable tears poured from his face. He grasped the weathered hands of the kneeling man and placed his banana in them, clasping them around the holy prasada.

In contemporary Hindu religious practice in India, two major aspects of pilgrimage and temple visits are the desire to get prasada and to have darshan. Darshan means vision or "to see with reverence and devotion" and translates to epiphany. I believe this experience granted both for Trevor. A blind man had given him vision.

No one in my memory has told such a story about what life can teach you if you only seek the knowledge and listen with your heart.



The benefit concert raised about $5,000 for the ashram boys. All proceeds will benefit their education, clothing, food, etc. If you would like to make a donation to the orphan children at Yoga Vedanta Kutir, you can send Trevor a message by visiting his Myspace.


You can find Trevor’s single Other Ways on the Shrek 3 soundtrack.

Decalooney

The pope and his posse have delivered a bizarre charge to the followers of the Catholic Church. This charge came in response to what is obviously the most profound crisis facing modern humanity: road rage and motor safety.

Just as Moses received a message from God to deliver the 10 commandments, the Pope also drafted a 36-page document written in old English asking believers to question what Jesus would do if he got behind the wheel. Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road includes 10 ‘recommendations’ including "Thou shalt not drive and drink," "thou shalt not make rude gestures behind the steering wheel" and also addresses prostitution in vehicles, referred to as the “occasion of sin.”

Before such trivial worldly matters of rape, disease and genocide, Pope Benedict is gravely concerned with the personal warfare currently taking place on roads and highways across the globe. Rightfully so, after the recent attempted attack on his Popemobile.



Read about the Vatican's 'driving commandments' here.

Riot on the East Side

Whether something is or is not art has become an inquisitive fixture in my thoughts. I’m sure we can agree that quality plays an important role in this judgment, but the answer is not a definitive one. Art to me, art to you and art to everyone else is different, and what constitutes 'good' or 'bad' art or art in general is very personal and individual.



I have never claimed to be an expert on the technicality of art, and I have no desire to start today. Hell, I can't even recognize when art is 'technically' and ‘skillfully’ executed by any measure of artistic style or judgment, but that's not why I look at it. The lines, mediums and technique could reach out from the work, introduce themselves to me and explain their function within the piece, and I still would not evaluate the art from that standpoint. But I’m not a trained artist. I’m a writer, and a thinker and a curious third party, and I’m relatively sure the lines don't notice me either.



If you were to ask me … come on, ask me … I believe art is about an internal dialogue that develops personally and internally with what I see. I prefer thought provoking art that awakens wonderment about the state of life, the simplicity of nature, the relevance of chaos or various other unspoken messages, usually serving some function of personal or social awareness. That's what I think 'art' is, and that's what I love it for. I love it for the effect that has on my heart and my mind in that moment and forever.



As every good writer should, I will support my claims by referencing an essay by Leo Tolstoy. In What Is Art?, Tolstoy compares art and non-art (or ‘counterfeit-art’) based on their ‘infectious’ communicative abilities with their audience. For a piece to be considered art it should create an emotional link between artist and audience – one that "infects" the viewer. Albeit, the essay was written in 1897, and I couldn’t comment on the ‘infectiousness’ of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but for this argument to hold validity, let’s assume that all great thoughts transcend time.



I have maddened many of my artistically inclined friends with my probing research, and the general consensus among this enigmatic guild claims that those who make art evaluate art by its process. They use words like patterns, rhythm and movement in reference to the art itself, rather than a presumed message. They describe the process of art, created without intention to convey a message or concern for how it may be perceived. It is a showcase of skill rather than a commentary.

Okay, I get it. But even rituals in mysticism have some message or meaning, whether premeditated or bestowed by a higher being.



I have some reservations in critiquing art by its technicality for one reason: When we begin to discuss art in terms of style - color, line, shape, space – we can conveniently ignore or dampen whatever social, political or progressive statements the artist makes in their work, regardless of whether they had hoped or planned to.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some Greenpeace, tree-hugging, philosophical, voice-or-die hippie picketer, and I’m certainly not suggesting that artists are unilateral, free thought killing party police communists. (So if that’s what you were thinking, you’re way off and I suggest you go release some endorphins).



This weekend, my thoughts and notions regarding art and its interpretation were exposed as never before to the playground of minds that create art as a process. At Saturday night’s Vision Riot all attention was turned towards "making" and the manipulation of materials. The East side’s Pump Project Art Complex on Shady Lane invited several local contemporary artists, filmmakers and musicians to participate in a massive collaborative art and media experiment.



Because the method of making was the prima ballerina of the evening’s recital, what was being created took the backseat. Often the creation was temporary, interacting with or disappearing below layers of collaborative efforts. This was process as an art in some sort of unrehearsed performance installation.

On six towering planes of white space, artists displayed the diversity of their processes and styles. From intricate abstracts to master stenciling to lowbrow street art, this art intervention produced a sort of guerrilla communication among the spectators, musicians and the artists themselves. There were no existing themes or rules and no expectations of a particular audience.


My Empty Phantom

While ‘pigment manipulators’ challenged, commented on, related to and interacted with previous work of others, they were driven by inspiration from sound and sight. Large video footage of dreamy psychedelic images and cleverly, rhythmically edited public access television projected on various white walls of the shady lane space. The enchanting live sets performed by local artists My Empty Phantom and It Was Divine Justice provided the artist-performers with a rhythm for their interpretation, and provided the spectators for some jamming dance beats.


It Was Divine Justice

According to William Rubin, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "there is no single definition of art." … I guess that’s a good way to sum it up. As long as people are making art, there will always be controversy, contemplation and conversation. Individuals will always harbor unique, possibly conflicting views about so many things in life that are more important than favorable or unfavorable art. It is this diversity in ideas, cultures, thoughts and observation that makes our world so intriguing.