Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
 Joining us in Inkwell is Wes "Scoop" Nisker. Scoop is an author,
radio commentator, Buddhist meditation teacher, and performer. His book
"The Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom" was published by Harper
in April, 2003, and he has recently been performing a comic monologue
with the same title. (cd of the monologue is available from his
website: wnisker.com)  His other books include the enduring classic,
"Essential Crazy Wisdom" (Ten Speed Press, 2002), and "Buddha's Nature"
(Bantam 1998). Scoop has also worked as a radio commentator in the San
Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, and he is a Buddhist meditation
teacher affiliated with Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California.

 Leading the conversation is Inkwell.vue host David Gans. David is a
musician, writer, radio producer, and online raconteur who regards
Scoop Nisker as a role model in radio and in life.

 Welcome!
  

    

Welcome, Wes!  I'm so glad you're here.

In the intro text I submitted (posted right there in response 0), I stated
that I regard you as "a role model in radio and in life."  I should have
added "in radio," too, because when I got started in radio in the mid-'80s I
took great inspiration from your KSAN work, in which you illustrated the news
with relevant fragments of the music we were listening to on the station.

But more importantly, you've always delivered your political and social
criticism with great compassion and humor.  We had plenty of angry people
declaiming from all sides of whatever issue was before us, and there you were
with a wise and warm take on it.

"The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom" sheds some light on the
formation of your character: "...the only Jewish kid in a small Nebraska
town... an outsider from the very beginning," born of immigrant parents who
appreciated the benefits of American life.  I don't know how many of us would
be capable of admitting, let alone recognizing, Alfred E. Neuman as a "guru,"
buut the instant I read that in your book I realized it was true of me, too
-- and I'll bet there are plenty more of us, too.

The path you recount in the book is a road map of counterculture history,
experimenting with a great variety of cultures, philosophies, and
prescriptions.  I think you said that your outsiderhood kept you from falling
too hard for any of the movements you assayed; instead, you took some of this
and some of that and created a spirituality for yourself that seems to serve
you well.

Could you talk a bit about what you've picked up in your travels, and how it
all works for you today?
  

    
David et al...
In my travels and observations of life, I feel as though I have always
been searching for the elusive "meaning" of it all, or some way to
live without meaning, or perhaps I was always looking for the
existential kick that would say to me "You have lived!" so that I could
then relax and just live. What I have come away with, so far, is a
Buddhist meditation practice that brings me great relief from myself
and my own drama, and also gives me a feeling of being part of all
life, or of all creation, a feeling that used to be called
"participation mystique." The meditation practice has brought me some
intimacy with my biological self, and has even triggered my current
fascination with evolutionary science, which I think contains a great
spiritual message for our time: we are related to all life. Anyway, I
wrote a book about the confluence of Buddhism and evolutionary science
called Buddha's Nature. But what I feel most strongly as I think about
your question is that I now consider myself a recovered cynic, and
increasingly feel full of gratitude for my life, the time and place in
which I live, and full of love for this suffering, fragile world. And
in the end, I think I have gained some humility, which I think is the
essence of spirituality, realizing that none of us really know anything
about much of anything. We're all flying by the seat of our pants,
doing the best we can, and perhaps our "best" is to forgive everyone
and love everyone, and pray that it's all going to be alright. Finally,
just let me say (and this is what I try to say in my new book, "The
Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom) that "the kids are alright!"
and that the countercultures of recent generations have planted seeds
of change that will prove very valuable in coming decades, and that we
can be proud of our brave and adventuring spirit. Blessings...       
Scoopji 
  

    

>  a great
 spiritual message for our time: we are related to all life.

Amen!


> a recovered cynic

Recovered, as opposed to recovering?  Congratulations!  (eh)

Say more about the egnerations, generations, please.  In the subculture I
sometimes travel in, I see a lot of young folks practicing the "hippie"
lifestyle, at least the surface manifestations of it, and I also see a
heartening number of young people working for social and political change.
But I also encounter an awful lot of really superficial stuff, dressing the
part but not really exploring the spiritual frontier.  Tell me somme
encouraging stories, please!
  

    
David,
   You caught me in an inaccuracy. I am still in recovery from
cynicism and in fact King George has pushed me off the wagon several
times in recent months. As for the sham and fakery of our culture and
even our countercultures, ever has it been so. Again, I take the big
perspective and try to remember that change often comes through a small
but committed group of people, and that it takes a lot of time.
Paradigms are heavy and hard to move even a fraction. As I say in the
last chapter of my book, it took the Christians several centuries to
gain any influence in the Roman Empire, and even though the alternative
visions may appear dim in this dark imperial moment in our collective
history, the good work is being done to prepare for another future. As
D. H. Lawrence said, "The whole great form of our era will have to go.
And nothing will really send it down but ther new shoots of life
springing up and slowly bursting the foundations." Perhaps the best
thing we can do is to cultivate and water those new shoots, take
cuttings and spread them around. For the time being, we need to be
patient and rejoice in the process of our work and our lives. 
   Sorry to be so vague and general, but I do think the era of speed
and greed will come to a screeching halt someday, hopefully sooner than
later. Humans seem to have a great capacity to awaken to what's
necessary for survival. Meanwhile, let's celebrate Bastille Day!!! That
will really piss them off!! Blessings... 
                                               Scoopji
  

    

Well, that about covers it.  Thank you for joining us!  Drive safely,
folks...

Just kidding.

Your path has taken you through many of our generation's highest, lowest
andmost ludicrous moments.  What's the weirdest new-age scam you even
encountered?
  

    
Ah David, new age scams! Yes! Step right up folks, and after two days
of doing this technique (wearing this pair of pants, chanting this
slogan, gazing at the picture of this guru) you will become enlightened
and never be unhappy again. It's the great American idealistic dream,
transformed into a new age promise of eternal bliss.  I have tried a
lot of somewhat questionable schemes in my search for nirvana. For
instance, I did the spriulina diet, which may be quite healthy--eating
blue-green algae, the original bitter herb, but all it did for me was
get me in touch with my inner fish. The most outrageous new age scam I
ever came across concerns a man named Dr. Fredrick Lenz, who was a
respected academic who I interviewed on the radio in the late 70's
because he had written a well-researched book on people's past-life
memories. A couple of years later I saw a picture of Dr. Lenz in a new
age magazine. He was now calling himself Rama, and was wearing an
indian collarless shirt, and his picture was backlit, giving him that
holy halo effect. What was most outrageous is that in this add for his
seminars and teachings, Dr. Lenz aka Rama, had listed HIS PAST LIFE
RESUME!! He said that in the 13th century he was a famous Zen Master in
Japan, and in the 15th century he was a high lama in Tibet, etc. etc.
An irrefutable account of past glory and righteousness! There are lots
of scams in the new age, but the spirit of commerce cannot overlook the
possibilities of the commerce in spirit. Blessings....   Scoopji
  

    

The Rama story in "The Big Bang, the Buddha, and The Baby Boom" was one of my
favorites.

If I recall correctly, KSAN was the designated recipient of taped (and writ-
ten?) communiques from the Symbionese Liberation Army in the mid-'70s.  Can
you tell us a little about that weird episode, and maybe some other fun tales
from your days in the eye of the counterculture-media hurricane?
  

    
David,
   Lurid tales from the FM Files! I remember the night that the FBI
came to arrest Roland Young, the only African-American DJ on KSAN, Jive
95, and the reason they were arresting him is because he played a tape
of Black Panther David Hilliard, speaking at an anti-war rally in
Golden Gate Park with half a million people attending, saying that "we
will kill Richard Nixon if he stands in our way," and Roland played a
tape of that threat against the president, and that was the end of
Roland at KSAN. I vaguely remember being there that night and the
general alert went out to the staff so that people began showing up at
the station and making sure that all the marijuana was well hidden. The
communiques were commonplace: SLA, Revolutionary Communist Youth
Brigade, Weather Underground, etc. It's somewhat shocking to remember
that many people back then actually thought that they could overthrow
the government of the United States, through revolution, and that
eventually "the people" would see the light and rise up against the
oppressors. And of course, for many, the ends justified the means, and
it all turned into a violent, sorry mess. Of course the best story from
those days was when Margo Saint James, dressed as a nun, gave Paul
Krassner a blow job while he was on the air exposing (aside from
himself) a Rolling Stone magazine sellout deal with some big auto
company. Paul didn't miss a beat during his talk on the air, even
though he was getting blown, and nobody really knew anything about it
until the next hour of the talk show, when Dr. Hip, Eugene Schoenfeld
came on and began making all sorts of double entendres about
cunnilingus, and some lawyer in the audience was offended and wrote the
FCC and there was a big scandal, not about Paul getting blown by a
woman dressed as a nun, (which couldn't possibly offend on radio), but
by someone "talking" dirty. Anyway, those were the days, but aren't
they all. Days, that is. Blessings...
  

    

Man, tell us some more stories from the KSAN days!

It does seem rather quaint that people expected to be able to effect such
massive change, but I dfind myself a bit nostalgic for a time when it seemed
that the government was at least somewhat responsive to public sentiment, and
when there were media that attempted to challenge government policy.

I mean, compared to where we are now.

Do you have any ideas about what "we" can do to alter the frightening course
of American history?  How does someone who has achieved inner peace put some
energy into infuencing the larger story?
  

    
David,
    Another story from the KSAN days, also recounted in my new book,
The Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom, concerns a special day in
history, July 20th, 1969, the day that humans first stepped on the
moon. That same day a long-haired hippie in San Francisco took LSD and
jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, and survived with very few injuries.
I was news director at KSAN and when I heard about the leap I went to
visit the hippie in the hospital. He said that it didn't hurt when he
hit the water, because he separated his mind and body and just watched
the impact. When I asked him why he had jumped he replied, "For
spiritual advancement!" I took the tape of his words and put them
together with Neil Armstrong saying "It's one giant leap for
mankind..." with the Byrds singing "8 Miles High" underneath. We were
answering the establishment with our own kind of advancement! 
    Meanwhile, David, how can we change the course of American
history? Actually, I don't think we should think in such grandiose
ways, which is partly why the activism of the 60s seems to have failed
so miserably. History has a momentum of its own, and if we think we are
going to radically turn things around anytime soon, we will probably
become frustrated and miserable.  What I think we should focus on is
creating alternative ways of living, moving around, eating, dying,
thinking and praying, so that slowly, as the old ways prove
unsustainable, we will be there with different practices and a new
paradigm and hopefully, a new consciousness, a new way of understanding
ourselves in the scheme of things. But bringing it all down, man??? As
Allen Ginsberg once said to me, "People have the hardest time being
liberated from hope." 
                                            El Scoopo Nisker
  

    

But Scoop, is not a future that is sustainable and less of a oil-
filled bubble but another kind of hope?

I saw the early incarnation of TBB, BATBB at The Marsh, and I thought the
stepping up to thirdworlddom and equilibrium, if I characterize that 
right, was presented as graceful and hopeful.  

Hi and welcome, by the way.
  

    
I'm a '55s baby and the first question that came to mind as I read
your book was, "What is your birth year?"

The second question that came to mind was, "Why not Jewish Mysticism?"

9 1/2 Mystics and all--although I understand not enough men but...
  

    <scribbled by ceder Fri 11 Jul 03 19:10>
  

    
Hey, Scoop!  I remember you from KFOG about a million years ago -
"Fogheads..."

Welcome!
  

    
I have read 9 1/2 mystics since it was assigned my last semester of
college.  But SUNY Stony Brook was 75% Jewish.  After that I lived two
blocks from the messiah in Brooklyn....

I read slowly but will be back with more relevancy.  I have read
everything I could about the big bang and evolution and creation.  At
one point reading about theories of big bang or big little
bang--depending on how much matter is in the universe it came to me:
WOW it's like who's right--the Buddhists or the Judeo-  Eek!

Pardon me, how about the Bible readers?  Let me get my foot out of my
mouth.  <Popp!>

So the Big Little Bang: when there's not enough matter so it expands
only so far then collapses to become another big bang.  <pshew wiping
sweat off forehead.>

Imagine me <shiksa that I am>  trying to get a glimps of the messiah. 

<curtsey>  Pleased to meet you.  and Wellcome ;-)
  

    
"If you don't like the news... go out and make some of your own!"

I just want say thanks Scoop!  IMHO that 'challenge' is one of the
great (if not greatest) signatures in the history of broadcast news.  

After these many years it seems to have become even more meaningful,
especially given the corporate 'lidding' of the media on the one hand,
and the power-to-the-people potential in 'linking' via the internet on
the other.


On this fine morning, I'm inspired by the words of Bill Ayers in his
inkwell topic, "Fugitive Days" <inkwell.vue.187.52>:

>  "Gather around you friends and colleagues with whom you can
interpret and make sense of the world,and find pathways to resist...
And participate in political activity because that's how you learn the
limits and possibilities and next steps...
Rosa Luxemberg wrote to a friend from prison:Be a mensch...Love life
fully, admire the sunrise and the clouds, fall in love....and be
prepared to throw yourself on history's wheel when possible.
So be both modest and audacious in turn.We are both little specks of
nothing living on the edge of the galaxy for a nanosecond,and at the
same time we have seen ordinary people stand up and change history....
What a dire and happy time to be alive and fighting..." 
  

    
Hi Wes/Scoop,

As <app2bcom> says, thanks for "If you don't like the news, go out and
make some of your own."  (my other favorite signoff is Jennifer
Stone's "Until then go easy, and if you can't go easy, go as easy as
you can.")

I first wanted to comment on the power of your style of collage
journalism.  I think it goes beyond informing and entertainment - that
you helped to create a powerful tool for understanding our times: in a
way, a new form of divination.  As you say in the book, (repeat title
here), you weren't on an ideological mission, you just wanted to add
emotion and reveal truth.  To me, the most valuable thing I've always
gotten from your newscasts and monologues isn't the particular insights
you express (or allow to come through), but the style - the
willingness to engage chaos and nonsense, to take the microphone right
up to the tower of Babel, listen, and expect to hear something.

One example where I found myself using your method came during the
Recent Unpleasantness.  I noticed there were an awful lot of blue buses
appearing in the war photos of "accidental" encounters.  At a loss as
to how to comprehend, or even relate to the news, I kept trying to
think of what song it was I knew that had a blue bus in it. 
Eventually, I realized it was The End, by the Doors, and pulled up the
lyrics.  (see below)  Ouch! and Aha!  Of course I didn't come up with
the full or one and only truth by doing that, but, almost like picking
a couple of Tarot cards, or throwing an I Ching, I created a focusing
lens through which I could see.  

It's interesting that you speak of yourself as a recovering cynic, and
of course I understand what you mean.  But there is something so
profoundly optimistic about your approach too.  I guess it's the
optimism of the mystic.



The End

This is the end 
Beautiful friend 
This is the end 
My only friend, the end 

Of our elaborate plans, the end 
Of everything that stands, the end 
No safety or surprise, the end 
I'll never look into your eyes...again 

Can you picture what will be 
So limitless and free 
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand 
In a...desperate land 

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain 
And all the children are insane 
All the children are insane 
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah 

There's danger on the edge of town 
Ride the King's highway, baby 
Weird scenes inside the gold mine 
Ride the highway west, baby 

Ride the snake, ride the snake 
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby 
The snake is long, seven miles 
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold 

The west is the best 
The west is the best 
Get here, and we'll do the rest 

The blue bus is callin' us 
The blue bus is callin' us 
Driver, where you taken' us 

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on 
He took a face from the ancient gallery 
And he walked on down the hall 
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he 
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he 
He walked on down the hall, and 
And he came to a door...and he looked inside 
Father, yes son, I want to kill you 
Mother...I want to...fuck you 

C'mon baby, take a chance with us 
C'mon baby, take a chance with us 
C'mon baby, take a chance with us 
And meet me at the back of the blue bus 
Doin' a blue rock 
On a blue bus 
Doin' a blue rock 
C'mon, yeah 

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill 

This is the end 
Beautiful friend 
This is the end 
My only friend, the end 

It hurts to set you free 
But you'll never follow me 
The end of laughter and soft lies 
The end of nights we tried to die 

This is the end
  

    
Wow! Jim Morrison was prophetic. Hi everyone! It's fun to be here with
all of you Well people. This is the first time I've ever hung out with
folks like this in this disembodied space. I appreciate all of your
comments about my notorious signoff "If you don't like the news..."
which of course I can take no credit for. It was channeled, just as all
of our thoughts and ideas come through the great streams of past
humanity and microbes as well, to appear in our brain as if we created
them, but actually the universe is behind it all. (Bowing now!) Rip
(Mr. Van Winkle)...you suggest that it is mysticism that saved me from
terminal cynicism, but rather than call it mystical, I think it is more
a matter of staying in touch with the larger perspectives, seeing our
lives and current history in the context of vast stretches of
biological and cosmic evolution. Not only do those perspectives allow
forgiveness of all of us (we're only human, and just got these big
brains a few hundred thousand years ago) but it offers hope that we can
change (we will change!) and also the message that we are part of this
great mysterious unfolding universe that moves beyond us and through
us. Those perspectives keep me humble and relatively happy with this
life. I think one of the greatest blessings is to have been born in a
time and place where so much wisdom and information about ourselves is
available...so many tools for our liberation and happiness. Of course,
as Charlie Dickens says, "This is the best of times, the worst of
times...." Blessings to all. Talk to me! 
                                   Scoopji
  

    
Scoop, I've always been impressed by your wordplay and I wonder if
you'd talk a bit about your writing process. Having seen you perform
"TBB,TB,ATBB" before reading the book, I'm impressed by how much I hear
your voice in it. You manage to find rhymes and allusions and
parallels that don't seem forced at all -- in fact, they seem
inevitable! How could the theory of relativity *not* have led to "It's
all relative" and thus to "Whatever"?

I have also read the terrific "Crazy Wisdom" and "If You Don't Like the
News..." when they came out. All your books share your particular vocal
rhythms and love of language, and I wonder if you write with speech in
mind, or transcribe from dictation tapes, or just what?
  

    
I don't have a question yet, but I want to say how much I appreciate the 
accuracy of the history in the book. Over the years I don't know how many 
times I've tried to explain to people who weren't there that the hippies 
and the antiwar activists ("politicos" at the time) were not the same 
people. (Yes, I am oversimplifying, and I know there was a fair amount 
of overlap -- I'm speaking in vast generalizations here.) 

(I appreciate other things in the book too, of course!)
  

    

Hi Scoop.  Book definitely brought back memories.  Any interesting,
important, fun or otherwise events, anecdotes, history you wanted to
include but got cut out?
  

    
hi scoop,

"take no responsibility, it was channeled..."
is this true for much of your stuff.
are you, like rilke, only a pen?
  

    
Hi out there everyone,
    Another glorious Sunday morning in the Bay Area, reading your
messages, listening to great radio, appreciating life. To T. Dyslectic,
I was born in 1942, just ahead of the "Baby boom" and I believe that
my journalism has been informed by that birth date. I think of myself
as "pre-post-literate," because I had one foot in the old literary
world, and my heros include the existentialist philosophers, the
transcendentalists, the beats, etc. I think those influences helped me
to interpret the present with some historical clarity. Clare E....maybe
you are the messiah. Eh? We are all sons and daughters of creation
(creator) and with our very lives we are saving all of life. Is that
Zen enough for a Judeo-Christian concept? Moving on...Get Shorty asked
about my writing process, and although it isn't really a conscious
process, there is a pattern to my work. The hardest thing is to make
sure that I sit down and do some writing everyday. Beyond that, I like
to jump from one project or idea to another, and let my mind play on,
and then come back to it later for editing. But after watching my mind
in meditation for so many years, I don't really take credit for
anything that appears, not that what does appear is all that profound
or mystical, but it all appears out of past conditioning, what has been
put into my mind, my temperament, my historical and cultural moment,
etc. I am convinced that our sense of individual autonomy and
separateness is not only mistaken, but is the curse of our culture, and
the more we can recognize that everything we do is a collective
project and the flowering of all the life that has ever lived, then the
happier and more successful we will all be. That's a real
Sunday-go-to-meeting kind of thought, with all sorts of spiritual
implications.... "Not I liveth, but God liveth through me."
                                         Scoopji
  

    
But how do you get the wood chopped and the water carried without a
sense of individual autonomy?  I agree about the illusion of
separateness, but as far as individuality, I think you have to have it,
even delight in it, dive in fully, if you're ever going to get past
the illusion of separateness.  (Help me with the historical
perspective, what is that philosophy?)

Here's a glorious Monday Morning question (that I've been waiting to
ask you for years): about coffee!  I used to be able to attend your
sitting group on a very occasional basis, and the last time I got
there, you talked about a new approach to mornings you were taking. 
Instead of drinking coffee first thing in the morning, you had some
fruit first, and coffee figured in sometime later.  So did it work? 
Was it a good idea; what was the philosophy behind the change?

(Slurp...ahhhh...feeling around my neck...wondering what Malidomo Some
would see...(that part in the book where he came to the west and, with
his sight-gift, saw so many people with "holes where their necks
should be" really stays with me.))
  

    
I've gotta run out and get the book.  Bless you Scoopji .. blessing us
all at the same time