Zen: surrendering to the flow

So I've been reading a lot about Buddhism and Zen in the past year and a half or so, and I have to say I find it to be extremely refreshing. The thing about Zen is, you can find it in any aspect of life; music, theatre arts, religion, sports, hiking....

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

~ John Muir

I admit to have never felt anything I would call 'spiritual' prior to my 25th year. Don't get me wrong, I sure ain't no born again. ;) Seriously though, the more time I spent outside, appreciating nature, the more I had this amazing feeling of connectivity to everything - and the more I began to develop a great sense of compassion for all things living (except maybe the drivers George was referring to in his blog and the members of the current administration). So whenever I have this conversation and somebody asks me to describe what it was like to identify this feeling with spirituality, I was always more or less at a loss. To me, it was more of a fleeting feeling of being completely one with the world and the universe that then gets drowned out by our day to day lives and 'problems.' A glimpse of enlightenment. Then I read this quote by Peter Matthiessen:

"Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free BEING becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day... we become seekers."

That is exactly it - that is my experience. It was made possible by several variables, and I think the biggest has been being on the road with U-Melt. The connection with nature is something I've always felt, but am just beginning to understand deeply, I think. ;) The rest, however, is coming from spending so much time on the outskirts of our 'society'...

In the van for hundreds of hours a year, one has plenty of time to be contemplative. Simultaneously, doing something like what we do removes you from what's going on in society just enough not to be objective (because I'm trying to shed the objective/subjective duality view of reality, which is not actually the true nature of things) but to see the forest for the trees, if you will. To see things as they actually are. If you can't understand what I mean, I'll give you an easy example to help ya: You've all known someone in a bad relationship, or been in one yourself. Just how bad it is is sometimes completely ignored or somehow missed by one member of said relationship - although you can clearly see that it's terribly disfunctional. So in essence, it's a feeling of being on the outside looking in. Of course that's a false mental construct to certain degree, but we're still on Buddhism 101 here... Well, anyway, traveling on the road the way we do is FREE BEING, in the sense that no one's telling us what to do; for the most part, we're our own mini society. We're doing only what we want to and what we feel is right. I believe this has let me shed a lot of the preconceptions and opinions that I got bombarded with as a child growing up (as we all do) and not just as a child even - it never stops. In contrast to performing for people who are cheering for us, it has also let me shed a great deal of ego. I was never an ego case or anything like that, but I'm talking about ego as one's sense of 'self.' It's been a very interesting journey for me. It is beginning to translate to my playing - something I noticed in particular just last night at the Stone Pony.

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

~ William Shakespeare



"When I'm in this state everything is pure, vividly clear. I'm in a cocoon of concentration. And if I can put myself in that cocoon, I'm invincible.... I'm living fully in the present. I'm absolutely engaged, INVOLVED in what I'm doing.... it comes and it goes, and the pure fact that you are out on the first tee of a tournament and say, " I must concentrate today," is no good. It won't work."

~ Tony Jacklin

The past year and a half we've writing some really difficult music. Sometimes we nail the parts, sometimes we don't. I will tell you that when we do nail them is not when we're thinking extra hard, but rather when we are SURRENDERING TO THE FLOW. I bet some of y'all have heard that somewhere before...

That is when I have a good show. When I can channel.. IT. Whatever IT is. You know, the same IT from Panacea's lyrics. When I am listening to the guys play and not think about what they're ABOUT to do but what they're DOING... and truly connect with it. It is a true moment of Zen, another glimpse of enlightenment. It is but fleeting, but once you know it's possible...