Readings: Still Here by Ram Dass

The notes below were made during a second reading of the excellent book, Still Here, by Ram Dass. I was still working at Alden Library when I read the book for the first time. I had purchased it to see if it would help me to cope better with aging. It did.


But, after I retired on April 1, 2020, I found that I was again having problems dealing with feeling old and useless, so I decided to give the book a second read and this time take some notes for future reference. The results of that second reading and note-taking can be seen below:

Ram Dass Notes

·       Be conscious. Do not allow myself to be unconsciously influenced by cultural attitudes toward aging, e.g. seniors are: silly, stubborn, vindictive,  cute, invisible;

·       Don’t fight nature. Aging is not a type of failure.

·       Don’t unconsciously view yourself as “other” or as a burden to society and the young;

·       Stop processing information and strive instead for wisdom, which alone increases with age, up until death;

·       Rather than striving to stay up-to-date, see enlightenment through the wisdom of directed consciousness;

·       We are materialists – the real is perceived through the senses.

·       Consciousness + Matter + Energy = the Universe;

·       Life is a journey toward Awareness = Atman = God;

·       Old age as a release from materialism (body). Liberation, not loss. Ask: Is more really better? Is enough enough?;

·       Meaning of life seen through: jobs, possessions, health only = constant suffering, anxiety;

·       Reincarnation: learning to be a Buddha;

·       Awareness = Ground of Being = Atman;

·       You have the power to age as you choose: from ego’s fear of death to soul awareness;

·       Practice mindfulness: meditation: a) be comfortable; b) relax jaw, tongue touching front teeth; c) look down at 45 degree angle, forearms on thighs, concentrate on breathing through the nostrils;

·       Face Your Fears: Senility; loneliness; embarrassment; powerlessness; loss of role/meaning; depression;

·       Accept your aging body; don’t bemoan it;

·       Practice walking meditation – awareness of body’s motions;

·       Old age is being, not role playing; freedom to do nothing at all;

·       The Ego collects information the Soul needs to learn Wisdom;

·       The Ego is an actor that has forgotten it is playing a role;

·       Elders now suffer isolation, removal from family role;

·       The tendency to isolate is dangerous;

·       From a soul perspective, dependency can be liberating;

·       Do not allow loss of power to cause fear and suffering;

·       Stillness is required to awaken wisdom. No need for busyness;

·       Dharma is Karma;

·       Slow down and open the door to Mystery;

·       Anicca – the impermanence of all phenomena;

·       Observe change from the present moment: Awareness;

·       In the moment we are free of Ego’s desires and open to Soul;

·       Future: fear thrives on the unknown;

·       Time and change are interrelated: we measure each by the other;

·       Curiosity rather than dread;

·       There is no “way things ought to be” – only the way things are;

·       The desire to control change is the greatest obstacle to Wisdom;

·        Mystery is the Soul’s element;

·       Attention: Eternity is Now;

·       Attention is the transforming agent;

·       Death is the final stage of our healing;

·       Death is like taking off a tight shoe;

·       Don’t allow your death to be guided by Ego: be Aware;

·        Change is the mantra of aging;

·       Gita: use the battles of life to become God;

·       Greater suffering elicits higher consciousness;

·       Suffering is caused by attachment, so it prompts us to let go;

·       To let go is to heal – not to cure – what ails us;

·       Faith and Love (Soul Awareness) are stronger than aging and death.

Reflections: A Random Note

The following was found on my computer table at home, scribbled in pencil on a note card, undated other than by my given age:

I am 72 years old and have reached a place where I know I am going to die. This expectation of death is no longer just an intellectual concession -- it is a gut certainty. It is also a visible and sensual physical perception; somatic, emotional, and on a persistent, conscious, mental loop.

Nice place to be, huh?

Readings: The Other Kind of Sixties

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I went to hear Denise Levertov read her poetry at the 92nd St. Y in New York City, sometime in the 1970s. She was born in the 1923, so she would have been in her 50s at that time. I was somewhere around age thirty. The collection from which the following poem is taken was published in 1990, when she was around 67; so she was probably close to my current age, give or take a couple of years, when she composed it. I know all-too-well, therefore, the truth of what she so eloquently states:

Broken Pact

A face ages quicker than a mind.

And thighs, arms, breasts,
take on an air of indifference.
Heart’s desire has wearied them, they chose to forget
whatever they once promised.

But mind and heart continue
their eager conversation,
they argue, they share epiphanies,
sometimes all night they raise
antiphonal laments.

Face and body have betrayed them,

they are alone together,

unsure how to proceed.

xxx~ Denise Levertov, Evening Train

Still and all, antiphonal laments are better than the other kind. I’m learning that, too. Oh, yes, I am.

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Reflections: Why His Old Eyes Shine

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I have written before about the poet, Donald Hall. I find myself currently reading a book of his that I picked up some time ago and have never gotten around to reading. This book, Their Ancient Glittering Eyes, is a revision of an earlier book – Remembering Poets – extended by the addition of “More Poets.”

I may have mentioned in earlier posts that I consider Donald Hall to be a better writer of prose than he is a poet. In my humble, though perhaps biased, opinion, Hall’s wife (and my high school classmate), Jane Kenyon, was a better poet. Given the excerpt that follows, clipped from Hall’s introduction to Their Ancient Glittering Eyes (“Introduction: Old Poets”), I believe that he gives me permission to execute such a ranking. That which applies to the poem must likewise be applicable to the poet. Here is Hall:

It goes without saying – or it ought to – that we love some poems and call them great. When I wrote Remembering Poets I felt unabashed in my admiration for great poems. I still do. In the early 1920s Robert Grave’s examiners at Oxford reproved him for thinking that some poems were better than others. For decades, Graves’s anecdote ridiculed dons who found quality irrelevant, or the assertion of quality presumptuous. Now, in academic America, some dons again find it unscrupulous or naïve or oppressive to claim that one poem is better than another. The idea of superiority comes into question. Surely superiority is an awkward idea, even oppressive; but so is death. “There is no order,” said Samuel Johnson, “without subordination.”

A few pages further on in the same introduction, Hall introduces the topic of intimations of mortality, insofar as these harbingers of finality affect the emotional comfort of poets, and others. You may find it laughable that I have regarded myself primarily as a poet throughout my adult life. Since I’ve had neither the kind of ambition of which Hall speaks below, nor any capacity for self-promotion, my bardic self-image has gone virtually undetected by the world-at-large. But I’ve had no other profession. Ergo, whether I merit such bittersweet agony, or not, I feel that which Hall presents below to the very marrow:

... All poets die without knowing what their work is worth; many fear not only that they have messed up their lives for nothing, but that they have harmed the lives of others.
Maybe no one ambitious, in any line of work, dies with conviction of accomplishment. Throughout their lives, dissatisfaction with work done drives ambitious people to try again. While they keep life and energy, the disparity between goal and achievement can be countered by plans for further work, but when death is imminent, or when old age drains ability and strength, depression over failure may become inexorable. Remember Leonardo’s melancholy question at the end of his life: “Tell me if anything ever was done.”

Okay. So I’m an elitist, suffering under the self-delusion that I’m a poet. So shoot me.

_______________________
Addendum: Depending, I guess, on whether your orientation is one of introversion or extraversion, should you remove the dust jacket of my copy of Their Ancient Glittering Eyes, you would discover that either: the cover is attached upside down; or the pages are inverted top-to-bottom.

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Readings: Identity and Time

I fought with my twin
that enemy within
‘til both of us fell by the way
~ Bob Dylan, Where Are You Tonight?

***

Money won’t change you
But time will take you on
~ James Brown, Money Won’t Change you

***

So let it be the City of Lights and Thomas sixty, eager as a colt for love, even though getting out of bed some mornings he feels like a condemned prisoner mustering for roll call. Well, maybe aging’ s not quite as bad as all that but you do get tired, awfully tired of sharing a tiny cell with a dying stranger whose stink and noises you abhor, whose whining, constant neediness and selfish demands appall you. Who could love anybody like him, the drool dried on his chin, the earwax, toe jam, wild hairs in his nostrils and ears, the leaks and nasty stains, nasty habits. Who wants to listen to his nattering. This twin who either grumps around belligerently silent or chatters way too much in a language more and more opaque each day whether someone’s willing to listen or not. Your cellmate.

Enough about growing old, Thomas complains. You could just say old’s a rerun of youth, of feeling ignorant, sidelined, inadequate. Reexperiencing childish terrors you spent a lifetime trying to put behind you. Painfully eager and willing to please, unable to comprehend why no one seems interested in what you have to offer. Except, back when you were a kid, you believed in time. Believed you had time to grow. Time to prove yourself. Time to hurt others who hurt you. Believed time on your side and the world would change if you just hang on, keep pushing.
~ John Edgar Wideman, Fanon