Hi Friend,
For the last two weeks I’ve been building out our teachable platform and listening to music that I, of course immediately associate with the different places I’ve been and the people that I love.
Students of Nature
The Lessons:
Finding Self Love
Wisdom Isn’t Always Pretty
We Are All Both Student and Teacher
Support Looks Different for Everyone
Hardship Is Not a Contest
Learning from Nature
Tina Turner has always been a strong figure in my life and reminds me of L.A., but more often San Francisco where I’ve spent too much time as a surfer, carpenter, punk rocker gone yogi, Jack Kerouac Zen seeker.
Tina was abused, addicted, betrayed, and broken—publicly. She was raised in the deep christian south by parents who did their best and failed her in parts that stayed broken for decades. And when she walked away from it all—marriage, money, expectations—fools called her stupid and the wise called her brave & loved her even more.
In her darkest hour, she discovered Nichiren Buddhism & started chanting
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, over and over. In hotel rooms, backstage, on her knees. It wasn’t glamorous. Tina’s suffering is legendary and her reemergence with Private Dancer has never been matched in the music world to this day.
Chögyam Trungpa wasn’t a polished monk in orange robes on a mountain. He drank vodka until it killed him. He slept with many students. He offended Western ideas of holiness. But he told the truth. All of it. Trungpa taught his own style of transcendence. Forged from many hardships.
He taught his kind of bravery. The kind that says: “This is who I am. I will not lie to you.” He said: “The essence of warriorship is not being afraid of who you are.”
I can’t help thinking that he knew deep down alcoholism was a spiritual disease, one of detachment from one’s self and the world.
You can see clearly how the disease played them both to choose the paths they walked down.
I can’t help but think what would’ve transpired if Tina Turner & Chögyam Trungpa spent time together. Maybe stumbling into each other at one of the wild mountain bee apiaries amorphously scattered throughout Mill Valley just on the outskirts of San Francisco in the early 70’s, 73 to be exact. Both trying to escape the chaos within the city and both knowing the secret lies within.
It’s humming. Constant. Alive. A thousand wingbeats in the sun.
Then Tina, soft but unwavering, says:
“You know, these bees—they don’t try to escape their purpose.
They don’t question it, or perform it.
They just live it.
Trungpa raises an eyebrow. He wants to interrupt, but he senses something in her tone. So he stays silent.
“They aren’t afraid to work. Or to die.
But they never stop making sweetness. Even in danger.”
She pauses. “That’s what I learned when I left. When I was alone.”
She doesn’t mention the chanting yet. Not the stage. Not the pain or beatings. She just watches a worker bee land, loaded with pollen, heavy and sacred.
“I used to think strength was in surviving.
But it’s in offering yourself true love & then sharing it. Over and over. Without applause.”
Trungpa blinks. His mind goes to his own students. His own contradictions.
The hardships. His drinking. The chaos he called clarity.
“I drank to dissolve things,” he says finally. “Structure. Ego. Even my own ideas of truth.”
Tina smiles, just barely.
“I chanted to find mine.”
The hive buzzes louder.
Tina: “I feel there’ll come a time when many animals, including insects will be considered sentient beings.” she says.
Chögyam: I hear they have a special dance they do as a way to communicate.
Chögyam: yes, to communicate the exact location of the nectar to all the hive.”
Tina: “I knew it.
A single bee dances, and the whole hive hears.”
She turns to him.
“You teach honesty as warriorship. We both live it.
Not in a monastery. Out in the real world.”
He exhales. In recognition.
Chögyam: “Yes, we do. So you’re saying the bees are already enlightened warriors?”
Tina: “Yes, they are living beings of metta.”
Chögyam: “Nature is the true teacher.”
Tina: “Yes, nature is the teacher.”
They stand together a little longer.
No mantra. No scripture. Just a hum that holds the whole world.
And at that moment, they are both students of the bees..
ox Dennis
* In 1973, Austrian scientist Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize for discovering the “waggle dance”—a figure-eight pattern bees perform to communicate the exact location of nectar, using the angle of the sun and the rhythm of their body.
Music We’re Lovin
Israel Kamakawiwoʻole
Facing Future 2010 •15 songs • 56 minutes
YouTube Music
Why it’s Iconic:
Facing Future is the second album by Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, released in 1993. The best-selling album of all time by a Hawaiian artist, Facing Future combines traditional Hawaiian-language songs, hapa-haole songs with traditional instrumentation, and two Jawaiian tracks.
My heart often lives here, oxox enjoy
Book- Audiobook
The books I’m reading right now are resource books & manuals that are assisting me in the courses I’m building out within our teachable platform to provide consistency for the readers. These are the two books/audiobooks I’ve read and listen to on Tina Turner and Chögyam Trungpa.
This is the book that introduced me to Chögyam Trungpa back in my 20’s in audible form. It’s a true classic for anybody that wants to take a deep dive into spiritual materialism at it’s relationship to Buddhism.
Audible Books:
Chögyam Trungpa
Cutting through Spiritual Materialism &
Tina Turner:
By far, the best:
My Love Story by Tina Turner
