Omega II: Visiting with the Sages
Day 2 - Afternoon Session - Part 6

by Alisa Joaquin

The woman continued in trying to get an answer in dealing with a problem that was still there whether it was two hours or two days. Heidi again stated that she would still deal with the problem but not with anger.

Another person spoke up and stated that we almost always look at the word confront in physical terms. He recommended that we change it to clarification. In this way we can distance ourselves from the emotions.

Another person commented that he believed that emotions were neither good nor bad, but that people enter a type of pattern when an emotion happens, they go into their pattern. He sited someone who might be born into a family who may be prejudice. That person would have that built into their believe system and that you would have to take that into consideration and deal with them. It's not the emotion, it's the pattern that's built up behind it and the energy that it activates.

The David stated, "Well, you know, events out there in the world and the shape of things, it's like the weather. There isn't anything you can do about these things. And if you believe in something like destiny, then you cannot really change things in a large way, maybe even in a small way. If you step back from the flow of events, from the past to the future, maybe nothing would change. If you stepped back and did nothing. Then things would still be there exactly the way it has because the . . . you know . . . the forces, I mean billions of people on this ball going towards something. And all those stars out there. And now we know there may be other universes out there, not just other galaxies, there's hundreds of millions of them. And blackholes that are devouring entire galaxies at all times, what can our moment-to-moment actions possibly do to change the course of this? So in that case, what is this choice we have? And one of the choices that we do have, if we definitely have no choice about anything, we do have a choice about how we're going to feel about these events. And like you were saying, if you could just make yourself feel good about it, if you can find a way without damaging the stuff around you, without hitting somebody, or without making somebody feel bad. You know how easy it is just to destroy somebody's life with a one-liner. Like when you're having an argument the two of you probably have been together for quite a while. There are things you could say that you never say that would just simply hurt forever if you did. And you don't do that. And you can apply that much more broadly. To say, 'Well, I'm just not going to, I mean, I don't feel good about this, I'm just not going to let this . . . this hatcheck person . . . you know this supermarket checker right . . . the guy in the photography shop right . . . the operator on the telephone who was giving me all this hard time . . . I'm just not going to make her any worse right now.' Because nothing's going to change. Not even because . . . You know what I'm saying. It may be that all we have that we can do is to control the feelings, of ourselves and of the people we come in contact with. Maybe that's all we can do. We have to make it . . . I think we should work on our senses of humor."

Another person tried to see the other side from not doing something to doing something and quickly responding. He stated he found himself on opposite poles and David quickly stated, "A bitch, isn't it? He who hesitates is lost, look before you leap. What are you going to do?"

David went on to say, "It's a puzzlement. But life is an absolute puzzlement there's no doubt about it. Bruise as little a possible and keep your sense of humor alive and all those little things about stopping and smelling the roses and everything else are probably more important than the lessons about striving, about getting stuff. And then there's that old Chinese saying, on searching for your goal and being intent on a goal causing you to totally miss out on the flecks of gold and stuff that's on the path beside you. You know, because you never look down. There was a questionaire that was going out among my friends. One of the questions was 'What color is your bedroom carpet.' And it turned out that almost nobody knew. Isn't that amazing, that nobody looked down. But then you think, "What are you talking about? Every time you do this (bending over as if to tie his shoe) you're seeing the carpet. But hardly everybody knew what color their carpet was. If you're missing little details like that, then if you do react, you're reacting without having enough information. I mean if you're colorblind, you're really going to have to check on whether anybody else thinks that light has turned green. I just made that up. I know it sounds stupid."

The next person, a gentleman who was at Omega in 1999 when David did his first workshop, was saying that David's tapes had helped him to see things differently, i.e., the old saying, "Accept the things that I cannot change, change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference," had a profound impact on him. He said it wasn't really a plug for the tapes and David said in reply, "I don't know about that, can we get you to record that, can you put that in writing."

David went on to say, "This is a wonderful day. Isn't it? That's the main thing. You know, I live in a really beautiful house. I have so many problems I can't tell you about, they're just huge. And their endless 'cuz they'll never all get solved. I don't have the time, the money, the energy, the anything, to fix them all, or very many of them from moment-to-moment. This really feels good right now, this right here. And that's all we really have is the moment. There really isn't any other moment except this moment. And I just had to comment on . . . and by the way, telling me how that tape did you so much good really improved this moment for me."

(That brought tears to my eyes just relistening to what David said.)

Rob spoke up and said, "We did this really fun thing in high school in the psychology class. Everyone was griping, it was one of those down days. It was a real bummer. And the teacher, being really clever, 'All right, gather around. I want everybody in the room to write down your problems. Everybody, write all the problems that you have on a piece of paper.' So this is what everybody did. You know, this is wrong . . . Everybody got a whole list of problems. We put them in a basket, twirled them around, and repassed out the problems to everybody. And every single person wanted their own problems back."

He had a really big belly laugh with that one.

The Rob said, "I think of that often. It's a really great lesson. It was wise on the teacher's part. There again, it said that humor is the answer with that one. It's a true story."

David said, "Yeah, you will almost never get your luggage stolen at an airport." There was silence at first until her stated, "It can happen by accident. Somebody can pick up your bag, but nobody really wants your bag. They want their own bag. They don't want to get into whatever that Pandora's box might be."

A woman spoke up and said she really admired him for the work that he's done, such as his movies and now with his book, but she had not had a chance to read it yet. She wanted to know how he had gotten chosen for the role of Caine. And David said at first that it's a long story and she really ought to read the book, but then he went on to say, "I was chose for that role probably when I was five years old long before the thing had been written. It was cosmic forces that were just . . . it was just . . . looking back even at the moment that I realized that I had been chosen or long before I had been chosen. It wasn't so much as being chosen it's like, where is this thing I'm going to be chosen for. Because it was just so obvious it's out there some place. For instance, at that time in history third world characters were always played by Irishmen and Italians. Indians were played by old Jewish men. You know that kind of thing. And I played a lot of these ethnic characters. Mostly Indians. And I stopped doing that. I wanted to stop doing that. You know, because, why am I doing this? There was this moment. I remember thinking that there was this one script that I had looked at and I had turned it down . . . . . (there was some microphone noise interfering) Who is that?"

The technician tried to tell him that it was his microphone rubbing against something and David jokingly said, "No it isn't. It's David Nakahara outside." He then finished his story. "Well, anyway, I had to stop playing these ethnic characters. There was this moment when I said, 'You know this needs to be done. These stories need to be told. You know they won't hire an Indian to play and Indian in those days. And there weren't that many Indian actors to choose from. It was me or Charles Bronson or someone else who was going to do it. So if these things need to be done, everybody seems to want me to do it, so why don't I just do it. Why don't I just . . . and then the very next time somebody offered me such a thing was this story. That's not how I got hired. That wasn't why it happened. But that is an example I'm trying to give you of how long the story is. Because there's a million little quirks like that all came together at a certain moment to make that series happen. And that this explosion, this east-west message, and this explosion of holistic alternative medicine and eastern philosophy and all the different styles of martial arts just burgeoned on us. Suddenly there is a place on every street corner that says 'Kung Fu Taught Here.' The thing that I thought was really funny is when these signs started appearing that says Kung Fu Karate. Which is just a karate studio that has suddenly changed its name. But anyway. The thing is that . . . uh . . . it's a long story what happened."

The woman thanked him and then said, "You rose to that place to do that."

And David replied, "Well everybody did some rising. I had unknowingly, or maybe knowingly. It's hard to say. I've been preparing myself for that role for a long time. I don't know what I was preparing myself for, but I was definitely and then it goes on and on. It didn't end there. It just . . . I mean it didn't start there. But there was a cusp. There was a turning point, a pinpoint that a whole new thing started. It's a long long story. It's in both books (referring to Spirit of Shaolin) actually."

She said she would get the books, but what about the next thing and David asked, "How would I know?" and the woman replied, "The same way you did the last time." And David said, "Didn't"

End of Day 2 - Afternoon Session - Part 6

Alisa Joaquin Copyright@2001.
This personal account cannot be reprinted or sold in any other form without strict permission from the author. It is being distributed here solely for your enjoyment.

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