Richard Grossinger - The Bardo of Waking Life

Selected Other Works by Richard Grossinger

Book of the Cranberry Islands

Book of the Earth and Sky

The Continents

Embryogenesis: Species, Gender, and Identity

Embryos, Galaxies, and Sentient Beings: How the Universe Makes Life

Homeopathy: The Great Riddle

The Long Body of the Dream

New Moon

The New York Mets: Ethnography, Myth, and Subtext

The Night Sky: The Science and Anthropology of the Stars and Planets

On the Integration of Nature: Post-9/11 Biopolitical Notes

Out of Babylon: Ghosts of Grossingers

Planet Medicine: Origins

Planet Medicine: Modalities

The Provinces

The Slag of Creation

Solar Journal: Oecological Sections

The Unfinished Business of Doctor Hermes

Waiting for the Martian Express: Cosmic Visitors, Earth Warriors, Luminous Dreams

As Editor or Co-editor

The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century

Baseball I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life

Ecology and Consciousness

Into the Temple of Baseball

Nuclear Strategy and the Code of the Warrior

Olson-Melville Sourcebook: The Mediterranean

Olson-Melville Sourcebook: The New Found Land

Copyright 2008 by Richard Grossinger. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

The Bardo of Waking Life is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, call 800-733-3000 or visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grossinger, Richard, 1944
The bardo of waking life / by Richard Grossinger.
p. cm.
Summary: The bardo of waking life is a meditation on the Tibetan Buddhist bardo realm, which is viewed as the bridge between lives, the state people enter after death and before rebirth. This book examines waking life and its history and language as if it were a bardo state rather than ultimate reality. Bardo is at once prose poetry, intimate memoir, and anthropological inquiryProvided by publisher.
eISBN: 978-1-58394-406-6
I. Title.

PS3557.R66B37 2008
818.5407dc22

2007042473

v3.1

For:
Robert Simmons and Kathy Warner,
Elliot Spiker and Karel Weisberg,
George and Susan Quasha,
Andrew Lugg and Lynne Cohen,
Robert and Sonnie Goodman,
Charlie and Susan Halpern
Keith Karlson and Al Walker,
Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow,
Ed and Sonya Mondazzi,
couples whose love for each other makes a difference.

I want to thank Mary Stark for reading, correcting, and commenting candidly and profoundly on this manuscript as I wrote it. Her influence is reflected throughout the book, sometimes in the words I use and sometimes in words that arent there because she vetoed or at least frowned upon them. There are a few sections where, in truth, she deserves a co-writing credit.

I also want to thank Kathy Glass for doing the formal edit at the end. She not only caught a surprising number of typos and other errors but helped refine the tone by serving as a second conscience.

I will cite (or re-cite) a few others here: Rob Brezsny for his constant pronoic visioning, David Ulansey for his devils advocacy, Rich Bordens Human Ecology class at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor for their feedback, Dusty Dowes for his wise snippets, Charles Stein for his brilliant wisdom always a step ahead of the curve, Esperide Ananas for her tour of Damanhur, Gerrit Lansing for having the references any time I asked an esoteric question, Gene Alexander for his radical insights, Patricia Fox for her teaching, Paul Weiss for the chi gung, Phillip Wohlstetter for keeping the politics honest, Miha Mazzini for his challenges from outside the grid and the chance to read from this book in Ljubljana, Slovenia, John Upledger for his transmission of healing, Cullen Dorn for his unsparing glimpse of infinitude, Steve Perrin for the trail, and Robert Simmons for the transparency and the crystals.

Thanks too to Susan Quasha for her elegant design.

The photograph of the swans on the cover is an image I held for over ten years, hoping to find a book on which to use it. I am grateful to Teijia Saga and his son Takeo Saga for granting permission, and to Hisae Matsuda for tracking them down and handling the correspondence gracefully in Japanese. I hope North Atlantic Books will be able to publish a book of Mr. Sagas remarkable swan photographs within the next year or two.

This magic moment,/so different and so new /will last forever,/forever/until the end of time.

J AY AND THE A MERICANS , T HIS M AGIC M OMENT

The human body is like a rootless tree and relies solely on the breath as roots and branches. A lifetime is just a dream, like an out breath which does not guarantee the in breath after it. And today does not insure the morrow. If life is passed aimlessly with death ever coming unexpectedly, the bones of the body will disperse, the four elements will scatter, and the deluded consciousness will transmigrate through another realm of existence without knowing what form it will take in another life.

L U K UAN Y

I believe we can nowhere find a better type of perfectly free creature than the common house-fly. Nor free only, but brave, and irreverent to a degree which I think no human republican could by any philosophy exalt himself to.

J OHN R USKIN IN T HE Q UEEN OF THE A IR

The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each word, thought, and deed lays up a store for you and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and forever.

S WAMI V IVEKANANDA

The blues they come,/the blues they come./Nobody knows where/the blues come from./The blues they go, the blues they go./And everybodys happy when the old blues go.

L EROY C ARR , P APAS ON THE H OUSETOP