Cowboy Sahib!

 

In honor of International Yoga Day!

Staring into the Year End Campfire

When I set out to find the perfect Western, Biden was a Vice-President, Putin was a Prime Minister, Ukraine was a Russian client-state, Trump was a game show host, I had a heart that was 100% natural, and had never heard of the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga.  A lot has changed since then.

In those days, and the couple of years that followed, I spent a lot of meandering mental energy thinking about man in nature, the folly of civilization, completely ignored Hobbes, and longed for some kind of Tyler Durden-esque collapse of the status quo that would certainly have killed me within days.

(Side note: you know how life expectancies were so low back in ye olden days?  It wasn’t because everyone died at 35, it was because so many people died of things that we can prevent or manage today.  If I were born 50 years earlier I would not have lived past 40, and probably would have had trouble making it to my 20’s.  A friend asked me mid-pandemic why I was so cranky and depressed all the time and that it was bringing down all my co-workers.  I said that if the Qanon-MAGA hat crowd decides they don’t like the election results and start a civil war I’ve got 60 days max before a disrupted pharma supply chain kills me.  He thought that was ridiculous, then we had Jan 6.  He also occasionally read this blog.  Hi RC!)

In the decade since the allure of the return to primal has faded… a little.  I mean, I did save the picture above from The Last Book You’ll Ever Read, a graphic novel by Cullen Bunn about that exact re-wilding of civilization.  A lot of my non-western hiatus was spent reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, time travel hunting books, pulp safaris, Hemmingway’s hunting stories, etc.  I think that with a lot of yoga study I saw that there is a happy hunting ground between civilization and the wilderness.

Several times I’ve set out to make a Dungeons and Dragons character that felt like a Saddhu, the ascetic wandering yogis that still exist today.  My buddies assume that I’d make a monk, but the times where I’ve done it I’ve always made some kind of Druid. 

Yoga, particularly Shaivist Tantra yoga I study, is pretty primal.  You can’t really experience it unless you can experience it in your body first.  Not that you’ve got to be a super athlete; I started my study without a sternum, not a lot of complicated yoga postures happening at that time.  The quintessential yogi for me is Shiva- one of the three faces of God, Lord of Yoga, sitting on a mountain, meditating and surrounded by animals.

There is also some evidence that Cernunnos (the Celtic & Gaulic god that is a precursor to Herne, the Wild Hunt, and the Green Man) is Shiva.  So yeah, the druids were yogis.

That ascetic, austere seeker going to the mountains to meditate always appealed to me.  Why do people go to find enlightenment on top of a mountain?  Because you are never the same person at the top that you were at the start.  I even wrote about that way back in 2013.  Just this week I got thinking about this chain:

The Saddhu, seeking a quiet perch on a mountaintop to meditate.

The Druid, wandering the expansive forests and mountains of Britain getting list in vision of the Otherworld.

The Mountain Man, leaving the civilization that defined him to live apart from societal binds and expectations.

The Saddhu, the Druid, the Mountain Man, all connected.

Happy New Year.  Time for one last hike.

 

Meditations of a Mountain Man

When I close my eyes and take a deep breath I often find myself high in a forested mountain with fresh, clean air.  Sometimes it is in an ashram1, meditating in lotus2, senses turned inward to my breath and heartbeat, third eye3 blazing.  Sometimes it standing near a beaver pond, senses turned outward, listening for Bugs Boys4 or Old Ephraim5, with my trigger finger on my Hawken6 ready for the chance to make meat7.

Inside me there is a vegetarian yogi who practices pranayama regularly and is concerned about his meditation, because sometimes it’s too easy to get lost in the Atmamya kosha8 and hard to come back.  He’s often at odds with the big bearded buy who reads and writes westerns, romps around the woods, kayaks and runs and knows way more about guns than he should.

Yesterday I left my weekly advanced yoga class, where I really started getting the hang of handstand and arm balance basics, and walked out to my car9 barefoot and blissful.  When I started up the radio came on and this was the song that was playing:

For once, the two sides got along great.

And now for the footnotes:

1- Forest academy, a place for spiritual or religious contemplation

2- Cross legged seated position

3- Place of focus related to the pineal gland

4- Blackfoot Native American tribe

5- Grizzly bear

6- Muzzle loading rifle favored by fur hunters

7- Hunting for game

8- Inner veil the reveals connectedness to the universe and all living things

9- Subaru Forester, of course

Short Ride to the Sunset

As I’ve said before I’ve slowed down my writing here quite significantly.  I have taken to a few other projects in life, which I am have recently started writing about at another blog.  I’m sure that I’ll find my way back to Slap Bookleather periodically, if only to finish my story about my D&D cowboy.  If you enjoy the writing here please give The Yogi Gamer a try.  Vaya con dios, Namaste, etc, etc, etc.  

By the way, finally gave up on All-Star Western.    

Tantric Lone Ranger Rides Again!

As you may be able to tell by the sharp drop in frequency of my blog posts, this is the year that I almost gave up on westerns.  The Lone Ranger and yoga may be what redeems them, but more on that later.  

There were just so many disappointments in westerns this year.  On the comic book front, All-Star Western continues to suck the life out of the genre.  I picked up the latest issue this week and flipped through.  Dr. Jekyll made an appearance, then there was some kind of fight in a slum, and then a Chinese lady is stockings started kung fu fighting.  It is an embarrassment to call this a western.   The backup stories are still great (ironically written by the same very competent team) but I don’t want to spend $4 for a backup story.

Then Peter Brandvold, who I have written so much about in the last year, seems to have lost whatever touch made his Lou Prophet books work for so long.  I’ve tried half a dozen of his more recent novels looking for a return to that wit that made his books great and been disappointed each time (including the one where he said he’d eat the manuscript if I didn’t like it).  His new Rusty Spurr book, which has so much potential, has flat characters that are indistinguishable from one another.  The only time in the last few years that I’ve really enjoyed his books are when he writes weird westerns (Ghost Colts, Bad Wind Blowing); I found Dust of the Damned under my Christmas tree, maybe he’ll be back to form there.

What really killed my desire to write this blog is a tragedy from earlier this year that I still want to write about.  In brief, I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons weekly with the same group of friends for seven years.  Six months ago I worked out a plan with the friend running our game to introduce a gunslinging cowboy into the otherwise pure fantasy game.  It was so much fun that I planned out a five part series of posts to write about it.  That friend died soon after in a tragic accident, leaving behind a wife and two kids.  I can’t come back to the blog without thinking about it.

Oh, and after a sudden onset of gout I’ve become a teetotatling vegetarian.  Takes a lot of the fun out of reading about whiskey swilling fellers eating buffalo when you are sucking down tap water with your tofu.

With all of this disappointment I also almost gave up yoga, something that helped me get over the host of mental, emotional, and physical problems that follow massive invasive surgery.  Something in the practice just wasn’t coming together and I couldn’t figure out why.  I decided before I gave up all together I would go try Bikram, the program that was described to me when I walked in the door as “Simon Says for 90 minutes in a 105 degree room”.  I went in and found a practice that didn’t look a thing like yoga, and though I walked out disappointed I felt somehow good and kept going back.  After my second class I left the building, drove to the local supermarket, and put together a pack of food, water, and hot coffee for the homeless guy at the end of the road.  After my third class I returned to my original yoga home and signed up to learn to be a yoga instructor. 

This is because of westerns, or more specifically because of the Lone Ranger.  I’ve written about the connections between yoga and the Lone Ranger before, and as I move through life they are becoming more palpable.  The notion that one can serve the betterment of humanity, seek to protect life, and do it without the notion of reward (hence the mask) is really entrancing.  Also, he has two Colts and a cool cowboy hat.  It helps that, like the Lone Ranger, I have my own silver mine to support me (in the guise of a great job with a Fortune 100 company).  So the Lone Ranger is my guru, a comic book battle cry is my meditative mantra, and I dream of wearing a mask as I move through the postures of my yoga practice.

Having said that, this movie looks terrible.

 

Cowboy Yogi, Part 3- Virgil Cole’s Sixgun Salutation

Yesterday I started reading Blue Eyed Devil, Robert Parker’s fourth and final book about itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, and I was struck by a single short passage.  Master shootist Virgil is moments away from a potential gun battle, and our narrator describes Virgil’s change in posture: “…I also knew Virgil was ready to shoot.  He hadn’t changed position, but I knew he was balanced, knees bent a little, shoulders relaxed.”

This description sounds almost exactly like my favorite yoga instructors leading a class through a sequence of Sun Salutations.  Parker probably never meant this to look like yoga, but rather boxing, as that was his sport of choice, as well as that of his most famous character, Spenser.  That point of physical calm before moving the body into action, whether in yoga, before throwing a jab, or slapping leather, is a sublime moment. 

The Cowboy Yogi, Part 2- The Tantric Lone Ranger and Atmamya Kosha

In the last post I discussed classical yoga, the five Koshas, and the ability of the Rawhide Kid to exist daily in the Anandamaya Kosha.  Today, however, is all about Tantra.  Whereas classical yoga is about transcending the world, Tantric yoga rejects this dualistic philosophy and sees that world as something to be lived in, not transcended.  The physical world is something that we are intimately connected to, not something to be rejected or moved past.  Because of this, in tantric yoga philosophy there are two additional layers of the human experience that go deeper than the classical Koshas.  Once one has found the Anandamaya Kosha, the pure space inside where our perfect self lives, we can go further to the Cittamaya Kosha.  Here we start to understand where our perfect self exists in relation to the world.  Yet deeper, there is the pure awareness of Atmamya Kosha, where we realize that our perfect selves are not alone, and that we share a connection to the possible perfect selves, perhaps even the divinity, that exist in each of us across the world.  This is the enlightenment of the Lone Ranger. 

No matter the incarnation, whether in film, radio, or comic, there is a sense of urgency in the Lone Ranger’s actions.  This urgency is not a need for action, but a need to do on behalf mankind.  The Lone Ranger creed, devised in the old radio days of the character (and copied in this post) clearly lay out an almost holy responsibility to the greater world, suggesting an understanding of the deep connection between us all as found in the two innermost Koshas of Tantra.  Indeed, the Lone Ranger’s mask sheds his individuality in favor of integration with humankind.

The Lone Ranger has achieved a deeper awareness than the Rawhide Kid, moving past the Anandamaya Kosha through to the Atmamya Kosha.  By connecting to the wider world, his worth as a hero far exceed his talents.  While I will always take joy in the Rawhide Kid, it the example set by the Lone Ranger that informs my day, and my yoga practice.

Namaste.

Cowboy Yogi, Part 1- Krishna and the Rawhide Kid

Earlier this week I attended the first part of a meditation workshop at the Newington Yoga Center, which teaches Embodyoga, a modern style of tantric influenced yoga.  Throughout the workshop, I couldn’t help but draw connections between yoga traditions, the Rawhide Kid, and the Lone Ranger.

A large part of the workshop involved discussing the layers of human consciousness.  In classical yoga, the human experience is defined by a series of five layers, or Koshas, progressively moving towards our core being.  The first is Annamaya Kosha, represented by earth, which is our physical body.  Inward is Pranamaya Kosha, represented by water, which is the motion of our physical form.  Still further inward is fire, the Monomaya Kosha, the chattering thinking monkey brain that compels our body into motion.  Within that is Vijiianamaya Kosha, the air Kosha, which is the emotional heart that motivates our thoughts.  Finally, classical yoga has at its core Anandamaya Kosha, representing space, the central core of who we are, the perfect self that lies within us all that through leading a good and just life we are able to access.

In this understanding of the human experience, the Rawhide Kid (as seen in his modern interpretations) in touch with Anandamaya Kosha and achieved self-actualization.  He is the best.  Really, he tells people so all the time, and proceeds to consistently prove it.  The Rawhide Kid is the best fighter, best shootist, best horseman, chef, vinter, hairstylist, and military officer in the world.  Also, the snappiest dresser.  The Rawhide Kid, in the manner of a classical yogi, he has transcended this mortal coil and lives his daily life as the most perfect form of himself. The Rawhide Kid appears to have embodied the lessons of Prince Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.  At each quickdraw duel you can almost hear Krishna whispering in his ear, “Do not yield to unmanliness, O son of Prithâ. It does not become you. Shake off this base faint-heartnedness and arise, O scorcher of enemies!”

The Rawhide Kid, however, has no personal connection with anyone outside of himself. He rides throughout the West righting wrongs and defending the defenseless.  The Kid does these things not because he cares for the townsfolk he protects from bandits, but simply because it is right to do so and is within his capabilities.  In one exchange with the Two Gun Kid in The Sensational Seven, Two Gun asks Rawhide, “No offense, but do you think it’s possible that deep down you’re incredibly self involved and not terribly interested in other people’s lives because you feel certain that you’re the most fascinating person in the world?”  The Rawhide Kid’s smirking response: “It’s not even that deep down, partner.  I’m the Rawhide Kid.”  Although he has achieved pure sense of himself and is able to actualize this ideal, he still lacks a greater awareness.  That greater awareness is explained through the deeper Tantric Koshas, and achieved by the Lone Ranger.

 Tune in next time for the thrilling tantric adventures of the Lone Ranger.