The Goddess, ET and the “Angel”

The Stream of ConchUs-ness with Sunny Sun-Downer

Ahhhh…. We desert-dwellers are so fortunate. I realized this again last night sitting in the local public hot mineral water pool after a very long drive back down from Northern California. I’d gone up to Chico for a celebration of my sister Christina’s life on the 3rd anniversary of her transition to the “other side.” She left in 2007 within a couple of days of the anniversary of George Harrison’s transition. The “Cosmic Coincidence” (CC) of this is that back in 1971 she turned me onto George’s first album, ironically titled “All Things Must Pass,” giving me some “sweet refuge” as I would perform some of his songs for her family and friends back at the painful time of her departure. Also, in this “CC,” the album contained one of the first introductions of Eastern Mysticism to the popular cultures of the West- his classic song, “My Sweet Lord.”
This was so special to Chris and I, as we were brought up in a rare Orange County household that practiced Hindu meditation- so we were emboldened with this mass-indoctrination from an Ex-Beatle’s introduction of the cross-cultural “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama” and the plethora of other Hindu names of God musically interwoven with Western religion’s “Hallelujah… My Sweet Lord!”
So, fast-forwarding back to the “gift” of the “present,” I found myself at the famous (at least in Northern California circles) “Chico Goddess Temple” (www.thegoddesstemple.com) that my sister frequented, created by metal sculptor Robert Seales (who we used to call “Bobby” but I believe he grew tired of being confused w/the 60’s Radical of the same name, so now goes by “Robert”). This Ah-mazing solar and wind-powered 700-plus acre retreat was created for weddings, funerals, solstice/equinox celebrations, etc., so it was the perfect place to honor my sister, whose picture I placed under the 4 foot tall metal “Goddess” sculpture inside the hall (centered between two massive metal elephant sculptures) and proceeded to honor her spirit with candle and incense. Outside, the entrance to the temple is graced with a 30’ tall metal sculpture of the Goddess with a Yin-Yang symbol on her belly, whose open legs you walk under as you enter. This created the feeling of being born into this beautiful “Goddess Realm,” with statuesque flora and fauna, its wide range of winged-ones, its big pond with fish and ducks, not to mention dogs, cats and a free-roaming friendly hog named “Pig.” With song and dance, including dancing dogs, we honored my sister’s wonderful life as a mother and Northern California activist of many worthy causes (among so much else), whose spirit was glowing in our mind’s eye. (Her spirit also lives on in the 2007section of my blog mentioned at end).
It was on the next night that I would learn about another death in my family- my “spiritual family,” that is. To introduce this part of the story, I give you lyrics by the 60’s sitar-infused hit song, “Fat Angel”:
“He will bring happiness in a pipe, he'll ride away on his silver bike…
and apart from that, he'll be so kind in consenting to blow your mind…
he will bring orchids for my lady, the perfume will be an excellent kind
and apart from that he'll be so kind, in consenting to blow your mind…
Fly Trans-Love Airways, gets you there on time…
Fly Jefferson Airplane, gets you there on time…”
This song, written by Donovan in 1966, and made even more famous (in the 1st Hippie Era) after it was covered by Jefferson Airplane in ‘71, is about an early “Hipster” and drug broker in New York City’s Greenwich Village. One of the people he “turned on,” by consenting to “blow his mind” was my friend Eldon Taylor (ET). Unbeknownst to ET at the time of his association with the Fat Angel, who did more than “peddling” around the village on his silver bike, he was getting “turned on” to something beyond even the experience that occurred from the physical ingestion of an “allay” (entheogenic substances from ‘”acid” to “ ‘shrooms”): The Teachings of Tantric Tibetan Buddhism with the book that the “Fat Angel” gave him to read, “The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa.” The Tibetan yogi and poet-saint was more recently made famous in the 90’s when the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch teamed up with Erin Potts, a Peace Corps volunteer who he met when he was trekking in Nepal and together formed “The Milarepa Foundation” to create large “Free Tibet” concerts to help Tibet and the Tibetan people whose culture is facing extinction after the Communist Chinese-forced takeover of their country some 6 decades ago.
In one of my recent Desert Valley Star articles, I mentioned during my “1960’s formative years” in Buena Park, a couple blocks away from the “then-free” Knott’s Berry Farm, I would frequent an all ages night club called “The White Room.” Years later, after meeting ET up in the beautiful mountain community of Idyllwild, where he would eventually end up helping to sponsor the construction of a Tibetan Temple (rinpoche.com), I was informed that he ran a billiard room next door to the White Room, making him my “homeboy,” although we were over a decade apart in age. Later still, I found out that he ran a “head shop” in Long Beach back in that Hippie Era as well.
If I may digress (or “pro-gress,” if you will) back to my No. Calif. story for a moment- On the return back south, I managed to stop to play percussion with some old friends who have a band called the Dharma Bums (www.dharmabums.org), a Reggae-Rock band from Woodstock NY, out here on their San Francisco Tibet Day Tour. Their final concert of the tour was held at a comfy café called “Java Beach” in the “Ocean Beach” segment of “The City,” and one of the final songs of the evening was an extended version of band-leader Phil Void’s Eastern-influenced “Infinite Mind.” In another “CC” coup, at the end of one of the most psychedelic versions of the song I’ve ever heard, I seized the moment to dedicate the song to ET, announcing that he had just entered the Bardo (Tibetan for “after death”) state that previous night and that his Long Beach, California Head Shop back in the 60’s was called “Infinite Mind!” I then beseeched everyone to send him loving thoughts to merge with the “Bright Light” as the “Bardo Terdol,” (“Tibetan Book of the Dead”) instructs, on his journey into “Eternal” Infinite Mind. It turned out that I wasn’t the only one there that knew ET, as singer-songwriter Phil and lead guitarist Joseph Liston both knew him from Idyllwild to New York to Nepal.
I had lamented not having a copy of the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” upon hearing of ET’s “departure,” or as the book calls it, “dissolution of the 5 elements back to their state of emptiness,” and wondered where it might be resting since the last time I used it. But lo’ and behold, in my final “CC” here, upon my return to the Desert Hot Springs “Vortex,” what gift was waiting in my mailbox but a gift from my Sis Chris’s Buena Park home-girl and best friend forever, Kathie Rodgers-Wilson of Oahu: The DVD of the Tibetan Book of the Dead narrated by Leonard Cohen! Insert, push a button… This “Ancient Technology” rocks!
Over the course of his life, ET received the blessings of many Tibetan and other holy teachers, such as HH Gyalwa Karmapa and HH Dalai Lama. Those of us in his spiritual family are very grateful to him, especially for his “Angel-ic Connection” and help in spreading the Buddha-Dharma to the West… Especially when I see him with his teacher, the recently “escaped-from-Communist-China-control” Karmapa, (who along with the Dalai Lama is one of four “Dharma Kings” of Tibet) I consent to their “blowing my mind” with the Jewel-like teachings of Awakened, “Infinite Mind.”
-Sunny Sun-Downer is the facilitator of the Desert Karmapa Meditation Center. Check out his blog at www.conchustimes.blogspot.com. His email is conchustimes@yahoo.com.