Cracked Pot Meditation – Mixing Harmony with Chaos

Meditation for March 15th

Mixing Harmony with Chaos

Rock & Roll bands have embraced the mixture of harmony & chaos for years, with band names like Led Zeppelin, Smashing Pumpkins, Screaming Trees, Billy Joel, Screeching Weasel (actually, weasels do screech when tossed into bathtubs and toilets), Iron Butterfly, and others. Nowadays, people in the punk and metal scenes are flocking to mindfulness and spiritual practices, bringing their chaos with them. People are hosting metal yoga, punk-rock meditations, anarchist Buddhism, and other chaos-mixing-with-harmony fads. Books like Dharma Punx, Punk Spirit!, Hardcore Zen, and others are cashing in on the alternative acceptance of a spiritual life.

The issue is that you can’t. Punk & metal don’t belong on the path of enlightenment. It is impossible. Chaos is what tries to tear apart your harmony, causing depression, anger, and anxiety. They use metal and punk as enhanced interrogation in our fight against terrorism. Mastodon may have helped a prisoner give away the next terrorist plot against America, so why then should it help us on the road to Shambhala?

Buddha attained enlightenment after almost thirty years of being rich and privileged. He lived a life of luxury and was shielded by his father from seeing the poor and suffering. This means that a person growing up in the streets and being all punk cannot attain enlightenment because you must know what it is to have not. You must know privilege to know what it is like not to have privilege. You sure can’t be blasting MDC and trying to figure out your true aim. Punk & metal is the sound that someone makes when enlightenment is off limits.

The point of metal and punk has always been mixing fashion and art with the music. Bullet belts and leather armor (which was used before metal and Kevlar) covered in spikes is so militant. The sound of punk & metal is to match the look of punk & metal. It isn’t music for music’s sake; it is a lifestyle one has to buy into all the way. Punk and metal embrace the materialistic world. These are a long way from a peaceful and harmonious spiritual practice.

The live fast, die young mentality of alternative rock doesn’t match the living cycle belief of Buddhism, Hinduism, or other more peaceful religions that are being marketed to disenfranchised youths and soccer moms. YOLO isn’t reincarnation or karma. Moshing in a pit, all wearing the same outfits, punching people wearing similar outfits, blasting your eardrums out with high-piercing, whining distortion, or cookie monster crunch, bass doesn’t invoke inner peace at all.

Put on a Ray Lynch or Yanni album instead.

Prayer

Sarawati,

Fill me up with knowledge and peace,

So that I may learn to find inner balance.

I am trying to be a peaceful Buddhist,

But I want to keep the street like toughness.

I want to be a true teacher of the Ways,

Without losing my cool.

I want to wear a shirt of a fat laughing Buddha,

But has stretched earlobes and is covered in tats.

I want to do yoga to Red Fang and Black Sabbath.

I love meditating to Skinny Puppy and Megaton Leviathan.

Buddha would be cool with me punching people in the neck over their disrespect for my beliefs and cultural identity.

I have a Krishna tattoo covering my back,

And Ganesha on my chest,

Along with a Misfit skull, the Black Flag flag, and a car bomb with the Dropkick Murphys logo on the clock.

After my yoga practice,

I’m going to go to the Bi-Marks show and smash a can of Oly on a girl’s face ‘cause metal. I’m gonna go to the after party and smoke blunts and drink vodka and take advantage of some wide-eyed youngster who is mesmerized by my Buddhist meditation and yoga empire. Namaste, sucker!

I want to be cool and spiritual at the same time, dude.

Amen.

Craft

Here is a quick way to come up with a band name: mix something heavy or chaotic with something light or harmonious. Use the first letter of your first name and the first letter of the ex you hate the most.

First letter of your first name:

A – Alcoholic

B – Beef

C – Coral

D – Deep

E – Epidote

F – Fire truck

G – Granite

H – Harvard Square

(the Rs are silent)

I – Indigenous Person

J – Jeep

K – Ketchup

L – Lair

M – Mylonite

N – Neanderthal

O – Ophiolite

P – Piss

Q – Quartz Monzonite

R – Rash

S – Southern

T – Touchy Uncle

U – United States of America

V – Veiny

W – Walla Walla Resort

X – Xilignolite

Y – Yawn Punch

Z – Zincite

First letter of the ex you hate the most

A – Aurora Borealis

B – Bluebell

C – Cuddle Muffin

D – Dahlia

E – Embrace

F – Future

G – Golden Buttons

H – Huggy Wuggy

I – Isle of Man Cabbage

J – Jingle

K – Kunzite

L – Laughter

M – Menstrual

N – Nephrite Jade

O – Open Relationship

P – Passion Flower

Q – Quantum Quattro Silica

R – Rock Rose

S – Sex

T – Trumpet Vine

U – Ulexite

V – Velvet

W – Wulfenite

X – Xanthoparmelia Scabrosa

Y – Yellow Cake Uranium

Z – Zenobia

Have fun remembering the hated ex!

Goal

When you decide to take a spiritual path more seriously, ignore the ones that promise alternative lifestyles, such as punk and metal, with their practices. This will only destroy what little harmony you may have walking into the black painted halls of grunge woo-woo. Stick with the tried-and-true, where the soccer moms and the much older college students go. Dave Mustaine and Lars Frederickson have no place in our meditation practices; they belong in a museum.