Tooltip Text“I’ve always wanted to get as far away as possible from the place that I was born. Far away both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind…”
Paul Bowles
I’m watching Anthony Bourdain in Tangier and and musing about the endless drive to travel I’ve always had, and that Paul Bowles quote he laid on us. Yes… that’s it. That’s it exactly.
You would think that being free to roam this country now with my mobile income would satisfy me, but it feeds that unquenchable need to explore and experience new things: I don’t want to confine myself to the borders of one country, or even one continent. I want it all. Even though I know there is no place or number of places I can go to where I say, “Aha! This is it. I am finished as I have now seen everything I ever want to see.”
It will never happen. I know that now.
I crave something that doesn’t really exist, at least not in a tangible way. It can’t be summed up in a bucket list, although they can serve a purpose. It’s something deeper I suppose. Living with a sense of purpose. A sense of adventure. A sense of wonder.
Some people say when you give up your dreams you die. I’ve given up so many dreams… and found new ones, but I’m still alive. The thing that I think really kills you? Giving up your sense of wonder. Your sense of the sheer madness of the world, the brutality, the suffering and all the horrid things that threaten to break you but make you really understand and appreciate the preciousness of the beautiful moments… watching the sun rise over a desert mesa, the silence under a sky of stars and no other soul around, the sound of the surf and the wind in your hair as you ride your bike along the beach, wine-buzzed laughter among companions, the sun-weathered face of a 103 year-old Navajo woman studying the strange alien creature you are in her world. Driving into the sunset… literally, with the top of the convertible down and Elvis Presley blaring. Or maybe The Gun Club… or Sonny Boy Williamson… or all of the above.
Of course, most people can’t just run away and live as an expat in Morocco or Thailand. But you really don’t have to. It’s all a state of mind… a different way of seeing everything, even the most simple or mundane encounters. It means engaging and being present, not thinking about your shopping list or all the shit at work you have to deal with or who the hell is going to win “American Idol.”
Hey! This is your life! Right here! Right now!
You can find that adventurous spirit and your sense of wonder in your backyard. Slow down and disconnect from technology a bit, like I did at The Garchen Institute outside Chino Valley, Arizona, the home base of H.E. Garchen Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama and the embodiment of pure grace. You don’t have to be Buddhist to go there (although I have been a spiritual tourist as well as physical and geographical), nor to appreciate the sense of transporting to another time and place. And you don’t have to be a Buddhist to recognize the holiness of man who walks the talk, after spending over 20 years in a Chinese prison.
Being in the presence of Rinpoche is sort of like being spiritually stoned. You sort of get this weird feeling and find yourself sort of staring in a daze. Then he chuckles, pats you on the head and carries on.
Don’t bother with cell phones or trying to find wi-fi or TVs if you go there. Really, you can live without them a few days. Many retreatants have taken vows of silence, so don’t expect much noise up in the mountains except the sound of wind and flapping prayer flags. Which is to say, it is divine.
As is everything around you if you see it with the right eyes.
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