Lila Ċepa’s Meet & Greet: The Dalai Lama.

#921.04  His Holiness Led Me To Prison. Bless Him For That!

I always thought it would be a bit pretentious in my civilian life to say I had morning tea with His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso, so I never did. But I'm a prison spook now and have abandoned all pretense along with my cherished beliefs, so I’m gonna tell the story of me and the Dalai Lama, and like some seconds of poignant serendipity, where clarity struggles into epiphany…just how much it fucking hurt. 

The story that His Holiness told me about *Lo Penh La (spelling?) has helped me in dealing with some very difficult guards here, who believe I’m in for battery on a LEO family member. Especially the female ones, two "twins" in particular, with everything to prove in this masculine world. Let me close my eyes to their former ante up to love, getting hurt and living a life of bitterness, choosing career paths to reflect such hurt. Kudos to you for finding a job where you can take out your frustrations in hurt, on the people you work around, with impunity.

Let me tell you, impunity is an illusion. Karma is a fierce wind that blows the smoke and mirrors of illusion down under your funhouse debris. Just ask Carson Daly. This is dedicated to the female twins of pain that command Fremont Prison with such sincere pettiness. I learned Karma the day I met His Holiness and I can assure you, the path that leads you into the understanding of karma, unfortunately, does not clear your karma, and that's coming from an innocent man’s neck on the other side of your Nazi Jackboot. You will be as devastated as I was when you understand karma, because in the two wars I fought, I could have shown mercy and I didn’t. Ever. 

I always felt that I’d have to pay for what I did in Iraq and didn’t do in Geneva and this is the exact date that I knew the charge was inevitable. When the charges came, I was horrified at my future, but like a car crash, I couldn’t look away. 

*Lo Penh La was a childhood friend of the Dalai Lama. After China invaded Tibet His Holiness was spirited away to India to be in exile on March 31, 1959, where he remains to this day. Lo Penh La, Lo for short, (we’re friends, he won’t mind) was not so lucky. The year the Dalai Lama was whisked to safety was the year Lo was imprisoned by the Chinese. Lo was tortured daily to recant his Buddhist beliefs. 

In 1979, the Dalai Lama negotiated Lo’s release and they met in India and his Holiness asked Lo what the worst thing about being imprisoned and tortured for 20 years, and Lo responded: 

“One day, the beatings were so bad, I almost lost compassion for my captors.” 

I never let that go, thank God, because I need it in here. Especially with the blue dressed twins “Shining” their best “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” impressions. 

It forced me to remember some old Strawberry Crop Reports sticky with Mabel syrup lost to an Intel altar deep within me.   

Sept 21, 2004. Reliving my Hopi Vision within the resurrected philology of the Dalai Lama through my brain’s warped Wernicke: 

His Holiness was supremely child-like, not childish, he would be quick to point out. There is a huge difference, like Julia’s “Pretty Woman” Huge. Especially if the bags are filled with nothingness. 

His Holiness reminded me of the living incarnation of a dead language. The Hopi one. It did have some dead-live inversions…like the Tibetan word for the Moon: “Dawa” is the Hopi word for the Sun. The Tibetan word for night: “Nyma'' is the Hopi word for day. 

Lovely synchronicities. Linguistic antipodes matching geographic ones. The Hopi word Koyaanisqatsi means being out of sync with the rhythms of nature. Being in sync with nature is the only way to experience synchronicities in your life. It is why those two words are so similar, even the etymology of synch and synchronicity is serendipitous. We can learn a lot from a simple word, especially when they don’t exist. The Hopi did not have a word for ‘other,’ or ‘over there,’ they were so at one with where they were, an energy would gather in the quiet of their presence. Like the Anasazi ancestors before them. They radiated the extra presence as a tangible, visible biophotonic luminosity that generated an auric signature scripted in the calligraphy of dazzling stillness. Wise men decree this stillness is the language of God. Sapir and Whorf will say their Hopi language influenced their thought, and their separation was in the adverb. I think their cosmic consciousness/unity awareness influenced their thought, which formed their language. 

Their greeting was a lot like my ancestor’s; the Lakota’s Mitakuye Oyasin, meaning: ‘We are all related.’ The Hopi would say ‘En’Laish,’ when greeting each other, meaning: You are not an extension of me; we are connected, we are One. 

Einstein said: “Separation is an optical illusion of consciousness.” 

The Hopi, the Lakota, and Einstein had this perfected vision to see through the illusion. The Dalai Lama saw with those same eyes. Kindness in one eye, compassion in the other, and a perception of cosmic consciousness that comes with an understanding of unity awareness in the Third Eye. Symptoms of Hopi vision. 

He seemed to be alive in that dead language with such extreme serenity, scripted in such a radical acceptance of the present, that he draws you into the moment, like Mesmer, drawn like water to spaceship moon, into a mental ping pong game, upon a spirited table. It is like playing with a child, who doesn’t have a paddle, for he and the paddle have become one, and he’s showing you this oneness, in living form. A koan inducing higher consciousness, that can be attained, lived, and then, most importantly, radiated. That was his true power. His radiance. 

My first thoughts, when I met him on Sept. 21, 2004 was…what a show off. He laughed when I called him that. It had been my two year anniversary of my Near Death Experience in San Jose, Costa Rica, and I was so amazed, sincerely, at how luminous a human could become. He was so shiny and playful, I offered to take him to a strip club. 

His Holiness had a huge entourage and if I was paying, I knew a strip club that had a free Tuesday morning buffet. We were in Miami, I thought it was acceptable, in a ‘When in Rome’ kind of cliche. He politely declined. My FIU alma mater had brought him over for a lecture at UM’s Bank United. His sing-song speech was a melody of paradox. Child-like notes surrounded by pauses as ancient as Chenrezig’s sorrows. I synched my inner light with such sorrows, as I emptied my pockets of omens that thrived in the un-examined dark of my subconscious murk, and in the empty, I heard him clearly.

What I heard changed me. 

I knew, If the Dalai Lama could attain such fluency of such lofty, highest-self-like-dynamics in life, then, anyone could. Which, happily, included me. I set out to be a better person. The best person I could be and I thanked the Dalai Lama and saw my path to enlightenment and was immediately horrified. 

This is when I discovered the fundamentals of Karma and I knew I would eventually have to take poverty and non-violence oaths. As I am a violent convicted felon and I did not violate my oaths, (until my prison musicals) prison found me as an innocent man with a bittersweet smile, understanding the karmic irony of never being able to erase the wars of my past, even with the Satyagrahi oaths. 

Our actions echo into eternity and wake with us every morning and find vibrations in our empty coffee cups and in our flatulence. 

In my first few years of incarceration, I suppressed the memory of His Holiness and the story of Lo. Now, it is the source of inspiration for how I walk upon this path. An incarcerated neophyte collecting soulful neologisms to enhance the language of the spirit. The pure joy that comes from learning a new language for me, can only be surpassed by humility. Another language of God. 

The Dalai Lama, the Hopi and my fellow prison Punks are teachers I’ve met in my lifetimes of light and dark, sun and moon, spirit and flesh that I cherish. I wear their teachings in my heart like a loving mother wears a new child, or a child wears a onesie. In prison, upon becoming fluent in the language of stillness, I fumbled my way into Hopi-Vision. What can I say, I had my memories to feel out, and in prison I am too poor to own a TV. 

Hopi poor, on my ninety cents a day, prison library salary, as I smile thinking of the poverty of the ascetic, chosen by most people of peace. Hopi means people of peace. The irony is the abundance awareness that comes with asceticism is infinite; another language of God. 

Thank you, Dalai Lama, for the lesson in Karma. I knew it was only a matter of time until mine was balanced. I’m even. Next time let’s hit that Tuesday buffet at the Pink Pony, where it rains dollar bills in the champagne room. Dalai Lama lap dances with Dolly Parton spinning the stripper’s 9 to 5. You know I can get you laid! OMG Tenzin, are you a virgin? Lo, get some condoms we’re heading back to Dade County. I’ll meet you when I’m out of the joint!

Cue: Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me.

My Name is Earl. 

 

"Karmically speaking, Lila, you're fucked." His Holiness, Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama explaining war-dharma to Lila Ċepa with Dara Dubinet in tow, on Lila’s second anniversary of her death date, on September 21, 2004. (Dara is the current life coach of emancipated singer, Britney Spears). We had brunch with His Holiness before a speech at UM’s Convocation Center. Currently the Bank United building on campus. The Dalai Lama’s trip was sponsored by Lila Ċepa and her FIU alumni association. Lila Ċepa offered to take His Holiness to a Strip Club near the Miami Airport where a Tuesday-Free-Brunch was being served that rounded the buffet around the stage. Tenzin Gyatso politely declined. In my defense, the Lama had a huge entourage and if I was paying, the Pink Pony had the best deal in town. Fuck that uppity Tibetan Nigga, I remember thinking at the time. And I knew unequivocally, the definition of his “Fucked,” when I came up for the role of Andy Dufresne in my pre-production of Shawshank-Shitty pipe dreams. I remember him saying I would get the future part. He casually mentioned that I had auditioned for the role as the philosopher/artist/chess champion named Marcel Duchamp with the same soul, long before I met him. I said sure, buddy, thinking of the lovely smells of Dara’s cunt. What can I say, I wasn’t very enlightened at the time. But...I know I can say this better: The Dalai Lama was not just a simple meet and greet, (9/21/04) but an elaborate heirloom in my memory…sentimental and bitter-sweet. An ornate room with panoramic views and a karmic balcony with loosened screws a spirited fall away from the high road cues lost on the back streets of my yesterday. I once surveyed the sweep and scope of my kingdom and wept, for there was nothing left for me to conquer but myself. And, from the looks of it, it was a bit like Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, but older and with a bigger boat, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Unfortunately, with run-on sentences on literary dry land, diving into motes of quicksand as a big, fat, black woman who once had tea and held the hand of a holy man, attempting to lead him astray…specifically, to the Pink Pony. A Miami strip club with a free Tuesday Buffet. Dalai declined, but in my mind, an heirloom hit the champagne room breaking risqué with a stripper slut named Mercedes Benz Desiray. I smile looking through the smut of my after-life lens like an Idaho Hemingway with Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, sweeping the broken shards of night away. And, oh, how extraordinary as a sincere: "What The Fuck!" was Dara Dubinet, whose beauty made even the holy man blush with a red brush of cheeky rouge with his childlike play.