A personal account of the Tai Chi, Qi Gung, & Taoist Meditation Workshop held at the Omega Institute with David Carradine from October 6-8, 2000

24 Questions

David started out the afternoon session with telling that there was some confusion as to whether he was going to make it this year. He stated "It went out on the website that I wasn't going to show up. There were a lot of cancellations. I think now, at least the people here at Omega are aware of how much I will try to be here, because I really shouldn't be here at all. I was working until 9:30 Friday night and got straight on a plane and I had been working since six o'clock in the morning. And I start Monday morning back in LA at 5:00. So I think I've shown them that I will make every possible effort to be here. So, I think the idea is very positive right now."

(I must interrupt here and apologize to David for causing any conflict that had happened back in 2000. Michael Craft had written to me saying that David would be at Omega BEFORE everything had been confirmed, and I had posted that letter to my website with his permission. Though I might have posted it a bit premature back then. I will not make that same mistake, again if I hear anything regarding David Carradine's schedule. Even though I, and I am certain many others, would like David to return to Omega, I would not want him to return because of an obligation, that someone else made without consulting him. If and when David returns, it will be because the time is right and that he also wants to be there. His statement above tells me that he would love to be able to, but there are circumstances that may not allow him to, other projects that have been scheduled in advance that he must fulfill. So, if you are reading this David, we would love to have you back at Omega, but please come when you can so you can also enjoy it fully. Now I take you back to David's special afternoon session).

A woman asked what it was like getting here on a Holiday, Columbus Day. Another guy asked about taking pictures on the porch, but David indicated that it would not be possible because they would be running. They were going to drop Rob off at La Guardia (which I came on last year) and David had to go onto JFK and he wanted to be sure they didn't miss any planes. He would only have about a minute. He was lucky to be able to do this special session.

Then one woman asked about the other questions, like his favorite color. He said he did not bring those questions because they did not relate to the subject matter, but he shared some others. The questions that he shared can be found on Deja's site which you can get to via my links page, but it was special up at Omega because he elaborate further on those questions. I think you will enjoy them.

He stated, "People ask me things about religion and politics, all that kind of thing. And I think my answers are pretty brilliant. But, I didn't think it was germane. I didn't bring it with me. On a lot of trips I take my laptop with me which has my whole life in it. I didn't do that this time. But I did bring this . . . I was doubtful as to whether I really want to read it because . . . But Rob keeps telling me that you like this stuff. Cuz some of this is, you know, I . . . like I said, you know . . . I am trying to work on my sense of humor. But just for kicks I thought I would read . . . I have two copies here. I should have had them printed up for somebody who wants them, but this is called "24 Questions Towards a Higher Awareness, asked to David Carradine by his pet seeker. I told you all about that, right.

1) "As defined by non-ethnic or cultural parameters, what is soul? A. Whatever spiritual mode there may be that survives the disillusion of the organism. That leaves it pretty wide open. B. What black people have. C. The devil's obsessively collected relicts for what purpose I've never understood. Seriously though, how can you sell something you can't find?

2) "What is reality? An illusion.

3) "What is the prime reasoning of karma? What goes around comes around. Not as a rule, but because it can't help it. Nature abhors a blaggard. On the other hand in Hollywood it’s said that no good deed goes unpunished. Still, he who is first will later be last. I'm a beatnik. I actually precede Bob Dilan. Everybody thinks I'm the first hippy but I'm actually the last beatnik. I was the kid on the block in North Beach San Francisco, and you know, Firmangetty was rich, owned a bookstore. Carrowack was rich and drunk. You know, even beyond . . . They've all gone on. But there was still the last finger snapping. Remember we used to snap our fingers instead of applauding. And there was still a little bit of that going on and I was just a kid. Interesting thing about that era they talked about the beat revolution, the beat generation. I never found more than about 50 people that were actually in that . . . They also told me that I wasn't really a beatnik, they would say that to me because I wanted to work. You know I had ambition and I would take jobs. I did odd jobs. I carried bags of cement and stuff like that. That wasn't part of the ethic. Part of the ethic was to remove ones self from the workforce. And there were no drugs. We had coffee, a lot of coffee. We couldn't afford to go to bars. And as a matter of act I was too young. I didn't have ID that would let me into a bar for that matter. But, we didn't smoke marijuana. I remember actually bouncing somebody off a wall. Me and this big friend of mine, this girl that we knew. There was this guy that tried to get her to smoke a joint at some party we were at. And we grabbed this guy, got him into the hallway and just beat him up. 'Don't you ever do anything like that again.' Then within a couple of years all of us were really stoned. It's funny. But anyway, that’s karma.

4) "Is reincarnation a viable part of the soul's reality? I'm reading all this stuff. Most of it is just stupid . . . So they say. That's a human idea though, thought up by mortals. It's probably a garbled or incomplete description of what really happens. The truth is beyond us so we make up stories. Some of them may accidentally be true. You know, I think there is some greater reality than this one with the hardwood floor, and our aches and pains. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But I don't think any of us understand it. I don't think Einstein understood, he said that all the time. He didn't really understand it. And, uh, I mean maybe there'd been 12 people in the history of the human race who really were close to an answer, people like Buddha, Christ. But when we talk about these systems and when we talk about these ideas that we have about movement in Tai Chi and about how it effects us, and about opening and closing and all that. It really is to enormous extent guesswork. I think it's closer to the truth than things like the American Medical Association is doing or what organized religion is doing. And I think that the self-expression that Rob is trying to tell us all about brings us closer to the truth than the rules do. And I feel like I believe in everything. People always say, 'You believe in astrology?' Okay, I believe in everything. I mean the stars have got to effect us in some way or another. But I don't necessarily believe in the people who tell me about it. (Sounds like a UU to me.-AJ) I always thought that astrologers were all pretty crazy. Kind of silly. And there's the chart."

Someone agreed and then David stated, "Well, I did it, you know. I went out and got those books, the cyberial time thing and the table of houses. And I used to read the tarot cards. But I was faking it. And I would just look at it and go, see a card and you'd say 'Well blah, blah, blah,' you know. And to a certain extent that's how it does work because theoretically it should be channeled. I mean if you open yourself up you should be telling the truth whether you like it or not. But I don't think we should depend on that kind of thing. I don't think we should depend on teachers, or gurus, or books, or systems of philosophy. I think that, because every moment is new. Anyone who tells you that they've been here before is lying to you. Because nobody has been here before. This moment has never happened before. Not the way we understand time and space and our lives are just flowing by so fast, we never get anything done. Okay, let's go onto the next one.

"Carl Yung . . . Oh no, As defined by the soul's, this is number five. As defined by the soul's definition, why is it that you have come to be? I didn't write this stuff down. Beats me. To amuse the maker. I know why I keep coming back. Because I like the game. And I truly want to be of use. This ethic gets muddy as I get older every time, every time. I think.

"Carl Young, number six. Carl Yung explained the anima and the animus as being the masculine and the feminine sides of our personality that comprise the whole self. Would you equate this to the Tao symbolism of the yin and yang? Yung would. The real yin and yang are more complex. The other thing I didn't bother to answer was that I have no idea what he's talking about when he says anima and animus. But you can extrapolate. If he says it's like the yin and yang, he says it. I don't think it's that simple. There are two things anyway. There's at least three. I mean, I think the idea of duality is a thing that we really need to . . . It’s funny because in the Taoist philosophy they tell you to get away from duality and yet the symbol of it is this dualistic symbol. And I think the thing that we miss when we talk about the duality is the fact that the yin/yang has this little spot of the other color inside each one. And if you read the I Ching, that little spot is not really a spot, it's always changing. If you see something that's totally white, it's becoming black as you look at it. So that the female and the male, if you want to look at it that way, you know that all the great religious symbols are these dualistic things. And I think it's limiting. But you have the Madonna and the Child, which is the passive and the active force, the Cross, the active and the passive force, the Sun and the Moon are the Crescent and Star which is the Moon which is reflecting and the Star which is giving. All of these dualistic, they are all the same. All these great religions, you know, they just have a different picture for you. And then they have different stories. But it all adds up to the same thing to me. But I really do believe . . . there's this Sufi thing, I think it's Sufi, that is . . . uh . . . three. There's the yin/yang and it has three things in it. Like there's this, that, and the other thing. The thing that I remember reading about this, the white light, the primary white light which is when illumination and enlightenment comes to you. It comes to you in a flash of absolutely white light. It's just clear. Everything is solved. And hardly any of us ever get that. We miss it. It goes by and that was it wasn't it. And then we have to work to find a dim yellow light version of it. And we'll never find that white light because we missed it and it only came around once. But it seems to me that there's something else too. There's a third, I don't know what it is, but it may be like you know, there's this and there's that, and there's the other thing. Well what's the other thing all about. We don't talk about that. Maybe that's what it is. Like . . . uh . . . we don't even want to know. But there is more than this duality, you know. And I think that Yung and Freud and all those people were really limiting themselves. As a matter of fact, I remember reading a book about the fact that Freud who told us that our main motivating factor was sex, right. And I read this book in which somebody said, 'That's such a romantic idea,' and I thought it was so fun for somebody to put Freud down that way. Well, you know, kind of sentimentalist isn't he. Talking about sex being the main thing. And the other thing is that he formulated his theories by watching animals in zoos. Well, what does a monkey have to do in a zoo accept jack off. There isn't anything else to do. And if you examine the animals in the wild, there are lots of other things, you know, that are more primary. And then Yung said that it’s that power thing. It's that territorial imperative, he called it. That's actually more important. Well a monkey in a zoo can't exercise that."

Then Rob asked, "Do you remember you told me what his last words were."

David said, "I don't remember."

And Rob stated, "What do women want."

And David said, "Oh yeah, what do women want. yeah, he was really hung up. Then the other thing that I figured out after reading this thing about how he was examining animals in the zoo and I thought, 'But this is a zoo,' Civilization is a zoo. So maybe actually we are looking at a situation in which we don't have anything to do except sit in our room and jack off. The territorial imperative is hard to exercise. But it seems to me that, if we can think and we can make music, we can make art and we can make art out of movement.

Then Rob stated, "But as opposed to masturbation, you want to promote life at any opportunity you can."

Then David replied, "Well that's what I’m saying. We're not monkeys. I think I get to something like that as we go along here. Not that I’m in a hurry. 7) If you saw a human . . . I just . . . These are the questions what can I tell you. I did not make up the questions, the answers. If you saw a human being drowning would you try to save them? Why? Well of course. Well yeah. Because I could. Not really for compassion or anything else but just because I can do this. And it's something to do. It's better than jacking off. It's better than sitting there watching this guy drown. What else could you do but include yourself in the activity that you see around you. And if it's helpful . . . You know, when I was living in New York, once I got my growth and realized that I'm tall and I'm kind of strong, and what am I going to do with this. I don't want to go around being a bully. So what am I going to do. One of the things that I discovered is when you get on the subway everybody tries to push onto the subway before people get a chance to get off. And it's really difficult to get off. You've got little old ladies and people who are infirmed or something and I though,'You know what I can do, is I can stand here and keep people from getting on.' It feels good; man it's like heroic or something. And it's a real tiny bit of heroism, but it is . . . makes you feel that way. And it turns out it's wonderful to feel that way so you do something with your strength. You do something with your knowledge, you're bound to want to do something good. It's puzzles me that people want to do things that they know are bad. And I don't mean like smoking a cigarette or something like that, but I mean like hurting people or cheating people. Cuz it just seems to me that it's so much better to do it on the up and up. And I've always wondered if people who steal for a living because it seems like so much more work and so much more dangerous than actually just doing something that makes money, working for it. People who do movies, there are people who cheat."

Rob stated, "There are those passing classes by cheating. It's so much harder than putting in effort."

David replied, "Yeah, there you go. Why not just study. Okay, that takes care of drowning. Eight, if you were granted one personal wish, what would it be? This would be personal. You can't wish for peace on earth or something like that. Not for humanity or for others but personally. And I really thought about it. And my answer is written down here, it says, I honestly don't know what the hell it is I want. So, that Freud on his deathbed could, you know, what the hell is it that David Carradine wanted. But I don't know. The . . . uh . . . you know and that always puzzles me. What are you going to do next, I don't know, whatever happens next. What's your favorite movie? The next one. I don't now. There's two things going; one is that I can't really believe that I can conceive of something that's so big that it's what, it's THEE thing that I want. And there's also this underlying thing, if I ask for it too hard may they'll here me and I won't get it for sure. Cuz, you know, the Universe is always trying to get in the way. You know the Murphy's Law. And the other this is I really do have a sort of a feeling that everything that I want, everything I need, everything that I truly want is here in any case. I mean this day, this is a beautiful day. A little chilly. No? Thank goodness for that. Because we would be in the Sahara desert if it didn't get cold here once in a while. It's like , it's always rainy in Ireland, but that's why it's so green. I've always sort of felt that I don't need to wish for things because the things will come to me that i need and that I'll find my use. Or my usefulness will find me, if I just stay awake, if I pay attention. If I get out of my shell, I think maybe that's in the other questionnaire, the one I didn't bring with me. They said. 'What is it . . . uh . . . what is it that you need to do that you're not doing?' And I said, 'Get off my ass.' And I think that's been our biggest problem. You guys have come to a lot of trouble to come up here to try to energize yourself in some way. And I did the same thing. This energizes me as much as it does you. And I think, that first thing, probably the main thing which is we all did get off our ass. Overcome our shyness and our inertia. We're not potatoes today. They don't have any couches here.

End of Day 3 - Afternoon Session - Part 1

Alisa Joaquin Copyright@2002.
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