Perpendicular to page,

his brush trails the line in mind,

inks a near perfect circle.

He selects a new sheet.

I think we human beings have told all our stories already.  We really have relatively few to tell.  The one about relationships.  The one about sex.  The one about loss and grief.  The one about overcoming obstacles and winning.  The one about having power and manipulating other people.  The one about hurting each other.  The one about the better way of living.  You’ve heard the story lines already.  I have too.  So there really isn’t anything of interest there. 

I wonder sometimes if whales and dolphins tell stories about changes in water pressure and temperature.  Maybe about the audio reflection of a school of fish.  I have no clue.

I wonder if life forms on other planets would create sagas and myths.  Would they look out at the stars and invent their own zodiac.  Would their UFO’s return from Earth and write reports about life on that planet?  I have no idea; it’s beyond me.

I wonder if stars tell stories about gravity gradients.  Would binary star systems wax lyrical about their complex orbital configuration?  Would one of their stories take a billion years to tell?  Would they begin to shout their stories to each other as they moved further apart?  No clue; pure speculation on my part.

I wonder if branes tell each other stories at the moment they slam together and infuse each other with primordial energy.  Would they whisper “Let there be light!” at the moment of ecstasy?  Pure science fiction on my part; no clue.

It’s the infinite variations on the stories that are interesting.

Here’s one of my stories.  I do know you don’t know about my new key chain.  I bought it in the gift shop at Schloss Neuschwanstein, probably the most famous of King Ludwig’s ruinous residences.  It has a short chain, a double coil ring for the keys on one end of the chain, and a coin shaped fob on the other end.  On one side of the fob is a German eagle with the word, Deutschland, and on the other side there is a depiction of the castle and its name, Neuschwanstein.  It’s a sturdy and pragmatic key chain.

The new key chain reminds me of an earlier one I had from my first stay in Germany.  That one lasted for 30 years.  I should say the fob lasted for 30 years.  I put it on key chains too numerous to count.  Then like the galaxies in this universe being forced apart by dark energy, the whole key chain was lost to view and, for the last few years, lost from my memory.  The new key chain also reminds me of my years of attachment to things German – the language, the customs, the sights and sounds.  It even reminds me that tourist trinkets can be useful and have a valued place in my life.  Enough of that story.

So, boringly few and repetitious as the story lines are, I tell stories.  They share my experiences and provide a kind of experiential history and the precipitated street wisdom there from.  Santayana says, “Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it.”  Ah, the purpose of the past is to inform the present more wisely – if the past needs a purpose.  OK, I get that.  I do know that when I looked at the new key chain in King Ludwig’s gift shop, I checked it for strength and durability.

Here’s another key chain story.  The other day I ran across the white, draw-string pouch in which I put old key chains.  Imagine my excitement now that my new key chain had reminded me that I had lost the old fob.  I knew that bag could have the old key chain in it.  It didn’t.  Worse yet it had rings of keys to doors and locks I can no longer remember.  I threw out a couple of car key sets.  We only have one car now.   All the keys to it are accounted for, and one set is on my new key ring.  There were two sets of house keys.  One, I think, was to my mother’s former home.  One may have been a spare set to a condominium I owned.  Several keys looked like they might lock suitcases or desk drawers.  I put them all back into the pouch and pulled the drawstring tight again.  Time will soon enough push the memory of those keys away.  More dark energy at work.

Speaking of being doomed to repeat the past.  Some cosmologists speculate that about every three trillion years the universe – at least this ten-dimensional, brane universe – recycles.  Yep.  By the end of the three trillion years, dark energy will have pushed the rest of the matter and energy in the universe so far apart that one couldn’t see the nearest star anymore.  The universe would have spent all its energy and come to the end of entropy.  Even dark energy would have lost its lusty push outward.  In effect, the universe would become brane dead.

(I forgot to mention that there is another brane universe an infinitesimal distance away from ours.)  But the force of gravity working in this brane and the other one slowly draws the two branes together.  As they finally slap together, they reenergize and refill each brane with a blast of energy.  The energy begins to cool.  Subatomic particles form.  Particles congregate on the street corners and become electrons, protons, et alia.  The atoms get together and become stars.  And, you know the rest of that story. 

I wonder if maybe in some twenty dimensional universe, one that contains our puny ten-dimensional branes, some god-like child has a perpetual motion toy.  To get it going the first time, the big kid pulls these two branes apart and watches them slap back together.  There is a brilliant burst of energy in each brane, and the two branes are blasted apart.  Quick as a wink the light from the energy begins to coalesce into tiny swirls and disks of bright pinpoints in each brane.  The lights shift and change until slowly they burn out.  Meanwhile gravity gradually pulls the two branes back together until they slam into each other again. 

I wonder if the toy would make a good alarm clock to get the big kid up for school the next day. 

I wonder if the kid writes any stories or paints circles on rice paper.

Fingers crumble the cookie.

I read the future writ large

and race to place my money.

For sure the lotto is mine.

My sister and her husband came to visit us a couple of months back.  They’re pretty devout Methodists.  My religious beliefs have been the subject of their interest for quite some time.  So maybe it was the seven Buddha figurines or the many Chinese paintings scattered around the house that led them to conclude I was now a Buddhist. 

But they failed to notice the feng shui dragon horse holding a Susan B Anthony silver dollar in its mouth and facing the front door.  They also missed the two small Chinese chop stones sitting side by side, the ones with the character, fu (good fortune), engraved across the two front sides.  So I am sure that they missed the fact that as a mostly retired educator living on a pension, I really worship Mammon.  Perhaps that’s a bit too strong.  Let’s say I keep a wary eye on the monthly balance sheet and seek to draw all the good cosmic fortune forces to my side.

That makes me a superstitious person.

I was born in a year of the dragon.  Here’s the dragon fortune for 2007.  “Dragons are trailblazers, and you will get many opportunities to put your maverick ingenuity to good use in 2007. By heading in a new direction, you could net both recognition and financial rewards. The key lies in expressing your true talents and following your heart. Nothing less will get results. Leave behind your fear of not having enough, and cultivate abundance consciousness. Let your enterprising spirit soar.”  So I am praying that St. George remains in Europe this year.  At the very least, I hope he doesn’t notice my dragon horse should the devout saint find his way to my door.

Still, I look askance at superstition. 

When I see a TV evangelist quoting passages from the Bible in answer to people’s questions, I question the questioner and the evangelist.  I wonder which one is more in need of understanding.  Let it be clear here, however, that I am impressed that TV evangelism seems to be such a good paying job.

When I read an op-ed columnist online – pontificating, say, about the merits of a new Attorney General candidate – and read the comments submitted by readers, I realize that a lot of us are looking for reassurance from pundits and experts.  It is a dangerous world out there. 

All of this would fall into the Locus of Control orientation in one’s personality.  Within psychology, Locus of Control is considered to be an important aspect of personality.  Locus of Control refers to an individual's perception about the underlying main causes of events in his/her life.  Or, more simply:  Do you believe that your destiny is controlled by yourself (an internal locus of control) or by external forces such as fate, god, or powerful others (an external locus of control)?  These beliefs, in turn, guide what kinds of attitudes and behaviors people adopt.  [Online references – James Neill and Wikipedia]

Superstition would fall into the external Locus of Control orientation in as much as it fosters the belief that one can manipulate life by belief in benevolence – or condemnation – from forces in nature such as dragon horses.

One would think meditators would fall into the internal locus of control group.  Meditation, by its very nature, involves observing one’s mental, physical, and emotional processes or absorbing oneself in the use of a mantra or the like.  So it would seem that meditation leads to an internal orientation, an action of observing and becoming honestly aware of one’s personality at many levels and over time. 

Still meditators do get caught up in the external trappings of meditation.  Must one sit in a specific posture?  Does one eat no meat?  What are the minimum/ maximum amounts of time to meditate?  So in a way doing meditation the “right way” can be a sort of superstition.  And, in the meditation society to which I belong, I have often heard people speak about “the guru” having something to do with the trials and tribulations they are enduring.  Mind you, our guru has been dead since 1988.  That would seem to be putting the burden of one’s life on the shoulders of an external Locus of Control.

Yet I do think that meditation leads more naturally toward an internal Locus of Control orientation.  Specifically, that part of the meditation process in which one dispassionately observes what one is thinking, feeling, or sensing.  Dispassionate observation lends itself toward honestly and objectively viewing life and one’s interactions in life, of being the owner of one’s own actions and reactions.  Likewise, dispassionate observation leads to an attitude of nonattachment, of recognizing that there is a flow of events and interactions in one’s life, and of accepting that “this too is passing”.

Still, if we go back to teach in China next semester, I plan to add a one yuan coin to the Susan B Anthony in my lucky dragon horse’s mouth.  I am consciously choosing to play all the angles.

“I read the news today oh, boy”

Day in the Life? Was that song

before The Fool on the Hill?

Last chord fades beyond my ears.

Could have been a TV show.  Was it an accidental death?  Was it a murder-suicide?  Were they both killed by government agents?  Unfortunately, this all took place in 1886 in upper Bavaria so there was no CSI Munich to send out a crack team of detectives to gather up all the evidence and solve the case.  It remains an unsolved mystery.

King Ludwig II comes to the throne of Bavaria when his father dies in 1864.  He is eighteen years old and has grown up secluded from court life in a castle in the lovely countryside of upper Bavaria.  The castle, set apart high above the surrounding countryside, is full of wall paintings of medieval knights and quotes from famous poems and sagas about honor, duty, and beauty.  Between 1864 and 1886 Ludwig spends the family’s entire accumulated fortune building lavish castles.  In 1886 he asks his government to use the kingdom’s funds to complete work on two of the castles and build an additional two.  His government hires a psychologist to determine Ludwig’s sanity.  The professor declares Ludwig insane.  He is placed in confinement.  The psychologist goes to check on him in order to send the court a status report.  Ludwig and the psychologist go for a walk around the grounds where Ludwig is being held.  That evening, their bodies are discovered floating in a lake on the property. 

You can buy the story in the gift shop at each of Ludwig’s castles.  You can get it in German, English, French, Japanese, Spanish, and, coming soon, in Chinese.  You can hear the story as a part of the guided tour at each castle.  The story, the unsolved mystery at the core of the story, is what actually sells the castles.  Was he really mad?

I find an interesting personal parallel in the story.  I had a similar question about my guru, Gururaj Ananda Yogi.  Was he crazy or for real?  

My first encounter with him in 1982 came when I went to the house of a dear friend.  My friend was already very involved with the American Meditation Society founded by Gururaj.  And, Gururaj was in the Midwest prior to a week long American Meditation Society course.  He was doing an introductory talk at my friend’s home.  I was intrigued to see a Hindu guru at first hand.  As the evening wore on I became convinced he was just a spiritual snake oil salesman. 

Still, in 1986 I took the Society’s meditation classes myself, and I was interested in hearing Gururaj speak again.  I went to the next American Meditation Society course.  Gururaj was teaching each day at the course.  I was dumb struck.  He was so spontaneous and so without concern for social acceptability and his lectures seemed to be such rambling, off-the-cuff musings that I couldn’t follow them.  So I still came away wondering if he were for real.  The next time Gururaj was in the Midwest, I went to that course.  And to the next one.  And the next.  Each time I left one of his meditation courses, it was with a deep heart-level connection to Gururaj and the same burning question.  Was he for real?  It proved to be the perfect unsolved mystery that drew me onto his spiritual path. 

Gururaj died in 1988.  That ended the problem of his lack of social etiquette.  It still left the problem of his lectures. 

Fortunately I was asked to transcribe several of the lectures.  Finally there was the opportunity I wanted to slow down his incoherent ramblings, to listen as he spoke on a topic, and to understand that he actually addressed the topic at multiple levels.  What seemed like aimless ramblings became a series of spiritual explorations probing one aspect of the topic after the other.  I had but to set aside my expectations of what he should say in order to listen to what he did say.

At one of Ludwig’s castles I heard a lady explaining to friends that Ludwig was a spiritually anointed person.  He had, she claimed, selected each of the locations because the castle would be at the vortex of spiritual forces.  Anyone who visited one of his castles and who was spiritually attuned would experience those forces for themselves.  I did not feel it.  Perhaps I was simply so caught up in the lavishness of the palace’s rooms and grounds that I was insensitive to the amplified spirituality of the site.

Yet that’s not important.  I hope that the lady who seemed quite prepared for the spiritual beneficence she would experience actually did get the experience she wanted.  Belief that something is so goes a long way toward making it real in the believer’s mind and consequently in their experiences.

My own belief that I had a heart-level connection with Gururaj made it a fact in my life.  That the man was, at the same time, too spontaneous and unpredictable for me to feel comfortable around him did not diminish my sense of connection with him.

Another aspect of the Ludwig legend.  What did Bavaria do with the castles?  In 1918 when Bavaria ceased to be a kingdom, the government inherited one completed Ludwig castle, Schloss Linderhof, and two incomplete castles, Schloss Neuschwanstein and Schloss Herrenchiemsee.  The Bavarian government made lemonade of Ludwig’s lemons.  It carefully nurtured the great mystery story, built a highly effective marketing campaign around Ludwig and the castles, and turned the castles into a tourism goldmine. 

Me?  With Gururaj’s lessons?  I continue to mine them for wisdom.