(I recently had to correct the Wikipedia entry for George Bush, earliest American settler in the Olympia area, which identified him as "the only 1812 veteran buried in Thurston County". Meet William Rutledge, friend and [still] neighbour of Bush, who arrived soon after. He lies about 10 feet away in the same pioneer graveyard, beneath a memorial placed by the N.S.U.S.D. 1812. [Interestingly, they did not afix such a plaque on Bush's stone, which is still the barely-legible 1863 original.])
Here's one for those days. You know the ones. The grim, sparks-fly-upward days. There's much to love about this quintessentially Australian song. You just can't listen to the Pigrim Brothers' vocals and instrumentals and not become equanimous. (Hey. Buddhist superhero: "Equani-Mouse!") And those lyrics... that's a fair-dinkum teisho, mate.
Where nothing ever really happens and probably just as well
I've seen things really happening where it's all downhill to hell...
Too right.
The rest:
NOWHERE ELSE BUT HERE
The Pigrim Brothers
Medidebating at a fireside in this beautiful land of Oz
Could heaven be a better place than home, well supposin' that it was
If heaven is in some future with a tomorrow so unclear
Then home for me I guess couldn't better be nowhere else but here
Nowhere else but here- ooh yeah, nowhere else but here-ooh no
Home for me I guess might never be nowhere else but here
If daunted by the many, many times things don't turn out as planned
Or haunted by the feeling of that unfamiliar hand
Just listen to little honeysuckle singing sweet and clear
The sweetest honey is in the tree that's nowhere else but here
Nowhere else but here she sings, nowhere else but here
Here's where my honey is, in this tree that's nowhere else but here
Is there much that might not happen right wherever I may be
If all I gotta do is soften some of my precious certainties
Was all that toil and turmoil, just to help me understand
That heaven may be just a fancy name for some never-never-ever land
Where nothing ever really happens and probably just as well
I've seen things really happening where it's all downhill to hell
Through a devil's pass on a bolting horse, with Buckley's hope to steer
Where we could regret we never ever cared to be nowhere else but here
Nowhere else but here ahhhhh nowhere else but here...
Now I'm dreaming by this campfire gleaming in this dear old land of Oz,
Flippin' idly through the pages of the tales of the never-was
Losing interest in a future what with tomorrow so unclear
I guess maybe I'll never really need to be nowhere else but here
Nowhere else but here - oh no, nowhere else but here - for sure
Guess maybe I may never ever need to be nowhere else but here
Nowhere else but here - oh no, nowhere else but here - for sure
Guess maybe I may never ever need to be nowhere else but here
If there's one place we're all free to be, it's nowhere else but here
(They recently pulled a false front off this old garage and found the original façade still intact underneath it. Note the phone number, which still bears the old alphabetic exchange. And that, for those of you playing at home, is why the gold-record rock group -- all students at Olympia High -- was called that.)
This is the mouthpiece of the Insight Meditation lineage maintained by Gil Fronsdal. (I have no idea what titles are in play or how the hierarchy over there works, but Gil delivers most of the teishos, so I'm assigning him authority.)
Insight in general, and Gil in particular, offer a refreshing perspective on Buddhist practice. Gil's gentle, self-effacing delivery inspire trust, and his perspective that existence is more or less an elaborate practical joke suggests to me that he's as near enlightened as anyone in this life. (Also, as a Zenner who jumped ship for Theravada, he's an invaluable resource for Zenners; his subtle criticisms of our approach to the Great Matter are both respectful and incisive.)
About half of the teishos here are his; the other half are delivered by a host of other teachers speaking on a range of mostly life and practice topics. (You can always count on Insight to get to the point.) Treatises on sutric or koanic literature are occasionally uploaded as well.
Individual podcasts can be downloaded from the Audio Dharma website, or listeners can subscribe via iTunes or XML. Like the SFZC podcast it's an exhaustive library of teachers and topics, offered entirely free of charge, that could serve as your sole source of spoken-word teaching if you were so inclined.
