What Spuds Know
Or The True Nature of Underground Meditation
Well, I heard that potatoes had become Enlightened, so I immediately went to the grocery and bought a 10 pound bag of russets. I put them in various places in my house to remind me that even a potato can save the entire world!
My girlfriend, however, pointed out after a few weeks that they were all growing strange sprouts out of their eyes, though others had shrivelled up and were smelling rather bad.
“What do you want me to do?” I had to ask. “The entire Universe is coming alive through me! I am just a vessel.”
“John, you’re a cuckoo, and you should just stick to the frozen french fries from now on,” she reminded me.
Knowing she was absolutely right, I got a big black plastic garbage bag and went to collect at least the ones that were stinking, but Osho came down on a puffy white cloud and stopped me!
“What are you doing here?” I had to ask him. “No one’s seen you in over 30 years and now you’re coming back to mess with my potatoes?! What kind of guru are you?” I let him know.
At that severe insult, he decided to give up on me after all. Then he vanished in a puff of smoke — and took all the potatoes, too!
Have you ever had a day like this, friends? Osho left me a note, though. “John, if you want to get advice from potatoes, you have to move to Idaho and join the Potato Underground,” he wrote.
So that’s where I am now. The potatoes are teaching me how to be cool and just smell the humus. You should do the same, or at least have a try. Forget about ‘All One’ and stuff like that. Inspect your Root Energy instead.
~***~
Well, things are getting weird around my house. Just yesterday I went out on the deck and this aspen tree started talking to me.
“Do you know Sanskrit?” it asked.
“Of course I do! You can’t be a Tantric Master without the detailed energy body understanding that only comes from a deep reading of the Upanishads. Doesn’t everyone know that?” I replied.
“My Uncle Leroy doesn’t know Sanskrit. Can you teach him?”
“Will he pay?”
“He says you can keep all the golden leaves come September.”
What the hell? I figured. I’ve never taught a tree Sanskrit before. It should be fun.
Well, it was. It seems like the Grand Council of Russets had let everyone in the agricultural world know about Leroy the Aspen and myself, along with our deep dive into ancient Indian meditational literature. And we were a little famous now! People started coming to us for advice on almost everything: How to paint the kitchen? Who’s in Grant’s Tomb? Why do pigs fly?
Leroy was a little pissed. “John, I thought this would all be about romantic advice. What do I know about pigs? I’m a tree!”
“But Leroy, you know Sanskrit now! It’s a responsibility.”
“Well, you’ve got a point,” he admitted. “What’s the next question?”
“This one is from Merry in Oregon. How can I grow in stature while still maintaining my identity as a human? ”
“What?!” Leroy shockingly exclaimed. “You should want to be a tree! And speak Sanskrit. Then you can meditate on top of a mountain at 10,000 feet and grow so tall that satellites must swerve to avoid you.”
On hearing this, Merry was greatly Enlightened.
~***~
You probably think I’m not going to give you any more details about how to speak in Sanskrit. I wish I could, but I have to let you know that the Rishis, those mysterious fellows who wrote the Upanishads in the first place, decided to also get involved when they heard what Leroy and I were up to.
They appeared directly above my head while my girlfriend and I were making love one night. “Dudes! Could you maybe come a bit later? We’re sort of busy now,” I attempted to say, but the lot of them simply pulled me out, rather literally, I’m ashamed to say, and then took the two of us off to Khajuraho.
When we got there, they sat us both down. “You’ve completely misunderstood what Tantra is supposed to be about,” they then told us.
Well, that’s when Lotus (my girlfriend) decided to nip this nonsense in the bud. “Then why did you bring us to Khajuraho? You can’t get more sex and Tantra than this.”
“Well, we realize that, but, John, why in hell are you teaching Sanskrit to trees? Everybody knows we were pretty tripped out with the soma and all that jazz, but…”
“You didn’t trust the trees,” I reminded them.
“Or the potatoes,” Lotus added.
“We ate too many mushrooms,” they suddenly admitted.
Lotus and I were impressed by their honesty. “But why did you wait 3825 years to admit it?”
“We never had a tree we could talk to. We never even thought of asking a tree! We thought they were just…”
“Vegetables.”
“Well, yeah. We admit it.”
“So then why did you kidnap Lotus and me and take us to Khajuraho? What did you think you were going to get out of it?”
“We want you to teach us how to time travel. When Leroy suddenly popped up in ancient India, we gave up on the mushrooms and just wanted to know how he had done it!”
At this point, I realized I had my opening: “Guys, you mastered the Energy Bodies, but you didn’t have science to explain (even to yourselves) what you had done.”
“What’s science?”
****************
Well, it was a little rough, but after a couple weeks, we had educated the lot of them on Galileo to Einstein, Darwin to DNA, ENIAC to Nvidia. Osho came down to watch because he had been a little fuzzy on this stuff himself.
But Bodhidharma was a pain in the ass. He got into the biggest argument with Dōgen about the exact nature of time. Richard Feynman had to also show up from wherever he is these days. He gave them both bongos and suggested they just go to Carnival in Rio and have a good time.
Lotus and I are back home now, too. Leroy eventually came and rescued us, but (now that he knows how to time travel) he brought Merlin along, too. Is it busy at our house?
Just ask the potatoes.
Full circle, friends. Full circle.
_______________________
© “John” Lesly Levin 2024
PS — Dōgen is one of my favorite Zen Masters. He once said “Everyone thinks time is passing them by. They’re wrong. It stays right where it is.”
