I thought he was lying to me at the time. At one point I tested him on his story after a suspicious looking customer came in. I told my friend, who was in the breakroom, that a guy was there looking for him, that he looked like a dude who knew martial arts.
Rather than burst out laughing, my friend got pretty upset, panicky for a moment as he checked the security camera to make sure that it wasn’t his former teacher.
So I’m pretty sure it was real. Unless he was pulling my leg all along, my friend clairvoyant enough to know that I would need that scene for a book almost twenty years later.
Other inspirations and meditation
A lot of the scenery in this book came from narratives of Tibet, most notably Way of the White Clouds by Lama Anagarika Govinda. The structure of the Path of the Divine was partially conceived after listening to Running with the Mind of Meditation, by Sakyong Mipham, which was narrated by the same narrator doing the Way of the Immortals series, Neil Hellegers. It was recommended to me by him, and I’m grateful for his recommendation as it really has helped me conceive and hone what the system should look like, especially with my desire to stay true to the conventional styling associated with Mahayana Buddhist practices.
There was mention of trance-walking in this volume, and I figured it was worth mentioning again.
There are two or three sources out there that have seen trance-walking in action in Tibet.
One comes from Alexandra David-Neel and her book, Magic and Mystery in Tibet. To summarize, she was crossing a great plateau, ahem, along with a caravan when they saw a cloud of dust coming their way. She asked what it was, and they told her to step aside, to not distract the person.
A man zoomed past, floating just a few inches above the ground. David-Neel also described another encounter with a man who wore heavy chains, presumably to keep him grounded.
This account was later recalled in Lama Anagarika Govinda’s aforementioned book, Way of the White Clouds, which details the German-born Buddhist’s journey to Tibet in the 1950s. He recaps what David-Neel wrote, and adds some additional details from a British bureaucrat he had met in India, who had also witnessed this feat.
While Govinda didn’t witness someone trance-walking himself, he did visit some of the monasteries where this skill was practiced.
His accounts of the monasteries are fascinating. Anonymity was a part of the meditation process, so after a person was sealed inside a meditation chamber, not only was their identity kept from the public, it was also kept from most of the monks, the meditator wearing gloves when he took his daily food through a slot beneath the door.
Trance-walking got me thinking about other meditative practices, from generation of inner warmth, or tumo, to silent meditation and long retreats. As I mentioned in the first installment of Way of the Immortals, there is still a country out there where hermits are funded by the government to meditate, and that country is Bhutan. But it isn’t the only place that has had stringent meditation and rituals and hermitages.
In the summer of 2012, I visited the Gobi Desert in Mongolia with a French friend of mine named Veronique, (and yes, for those of you that have read Cherry Blossom Girls, I named one of the characters after).
We went to what the locals called an energy center (Hamarin Hiid Energiin Tov), which was near some of the caves that monks used as hermitages.
Here’s a picture I took of some of them:
I remember wondering at the time what it would be like to actually take a long retreat in one of the caves, the desert all around you with its intense heat and wicked cold nights.
I suppose this has been one advantage of writing this series for me.
Not only do people seem to enjoy it, but I emphatically enjoy doing the research for it, and revisiting some of these places that I have been. Oddly enough, and almost apropos, writing this book has kickstarted a pretty healthy meditation habit for me as well.
From around 2008 to 2010, I dabbled in meditation and other spiritual practices while doing my best to keep Austin, Texas weird.
Strangely enough, moving to Asia halted many of these practices, and even while I was experiencing these things, and visiting these amazing holy places, I was no longer practicing.
But this series has gotten me back in the habit.
I am up to twenty or thirty minutes a night, I’ve been going to meditation class, I’m planning a silent retreat next year, and it really has brought joy to my life. It is also amazing how hard meditation is! I can sit and watch a Netflix show, or play video games, for an hour and half and not think anything of it. But sitting for twenty minutes in my office on a cushion takes an incredible amount of willpower.
But it’s getting easier, and I’m starting to really enjoy some of the benefits of it, from a more relaxed demeanor to being able to pause better and reflect. I have cheated some, using meditation just so I can plot, as I’m a very visual writer, but I try not to do that too often. I attempt to divvy it up some as well, doing Buddhist meditations, or YouTube guided meditations, or simply listening to meditation music. Recently, I meditated listening to the new Freddie Gibbs/Madlib album, Bandana, which blew my mind.
All this to say: the resources are all out there, and even now that I’ve gotten used to it, that I’ve been at it again for a couple months as of October 2019, it is still sometimes hard to find time to just sit there.
Weird how that works.
Life’s a Gas
Finally, what installment of Way of the Immortals would be complete without something from our Bhutanese divine madman, Drukpa Kunley? If you couldn’t tell, the long poem that the skeleton says to Nick and company before trying to kill them is a direct quote from Drukpa Kunley, which you can read in the only novel in English written about him.
I also named the madman in our book after this famous monk, and his nickname, Flatulence of a Dragon, was stripped from a line from the book about him. To set it up, Drukpa wasn’t really good with religious authority, and after visiting a monastery in which they judge him heavily, he left them a little present. Here is the paragraph from the book:
He [Drukpa Kunley] walked to the middle of the assembly hall and broke wind like a dragon. “Take your chunk, please,” he said to the monks and the whole room was filled with the pleasant odor. The young novices giggled, while the elders cover their noses and frowned. Since that time, the back rows of the assembly hall have had a holy smell to them, or the front rows of the elders are never reached by the scent of incense.
I believe that is probably the best way to end this back of the book section. In the next one, maybe I will talk about going to find the green tire reincarnation and Western Mongolia, or trying to use salvia to better my meditation practice and ending up with a near out of body experience.
I probably should talk about that last one. Either way, I will try to make it interesting and enlightening, and until that time, thanks for your reviews and thanks for reading along.
Harmon Cooper
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Other Books by Harmon Cooper
I have written over thirty books. Here are some of the highlights!
A man becomes the grim reaper and introduces game mechanics to the role. DO NOT miss this book.
https://geni.us/Dea
thsMantle
Hate your job. Win the lottery. Get a superpower. House of Dolls.
https://geni.us/HouseofDolls
My best-selling Superhero Harem Adventure about a sci-fi writer and the superpowered women who are trying to kill him. Fun content, adult read!
https://geni.us/CherryBlossomGirls1
A fantasy harem adventure inspired by Pokemon Go!, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and the Persona family of video games. Check out this Amazon best seller!
https://geni.us/MonsterHuntNYC
What if Ready Player One was a multi-part epic? Gritty LitRPG action, gamer humor, fantastic fantasy worlds, and a killer MC.
(This one is related to Monster Hunt NYC)
https://geni.us/TheLoop
If you love dark fantasy, RPGs, Witcher, Punisher, or Mad Max, you'll love this powerful gamer trilogy about a man and his wolf companion.
https://geni.us/LastWarrior
Tokyo, Japan meets online fantasy gaming and South Park-styled humor. Yakuza, goblins, action, intrigue - add this book to your inventory list!
(This one is related to Monster Hunt NYC)
https://geni.us/FICK
Divine Madness Page 29
