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Introduction

A New Interpretation of SMiLE

Zen and Pet Sounds

The Elements

The Koan/The Hallucination

Bio Based SMiLE

The Opposites

Ego

Zen and The Beatles' Revolver

East Or West Indies

Cool Links

The Trip

 
East Or West Indies

"Almost all mysticism, whether Western or Eastern, has the sense of the given-ness of union with God, of its eternal reality which has to be accepted and recognized-not achieved."~Alan Watts, Behold The Spirit, (pg.135)

"East is still East, and West is still West, but there is evidence now that the twain have started to meet, and at a point where one might least have expected it: the point of religious metaphysics."~William Braden, The Private Sea, pub.1967, (pg.18)

"Have some tea, there isn't any tea."
~Brian Wilson to Derek Taylor
"My Tea is No tea..."
~Seisetsu (Japanese Zen master)

"Fresh Zen air around my head..."
~Highly contested lyric translation from the "I'm In Great Shape" portion of "Heroes And Villains"(demo)

"The guestmaster impressed me very much. He looked just like the pictures of Daruma I had
seen, and had very much a Zen air."~D.T.Suzuki, The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk (pg. xv)

'"In Zen literature there is an expressive term called kafu or kyogai. Kafu literally means "household air," or "house atmosphere;" or "family tradition." Kyogai is "a sphere," or "a realm," that is, "an are enclosed within boundaries." Kyogai and kafu express practically the same idea: kyogai has a more subjective and psychological connotation while kafu is
historical and may be conceived as the kind of atmosphere prevailing in a given community. In the history of Zen, questions frequently concern this "spiritual atmosphere" in which the master is moving, or the general psychological attitude or reaction characterising a Zen master as such."'~The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk (pgs. 116-117)

"Children of God are in their twenties"~Brian Wilson, from the film Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey

"The playfulness of the child, the saint, and of God are alike in this: that they are all actions in the mood of eternity rather than the mood of time....Absorbed in twisting string or dropping stones in a pool, the child lives in a timeless realm where a game that goes on and on without goal is like the the planets which go round and round to nowhere at God's command."~Alan Watts, Behold The Spirit (pg. 183)

"They don't keep track of the time"~lyric from the BRIAN WILSON LP track "Little Children."

"So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God."~Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations

"Nothing is left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh!"
~Anonymous Zen master, The Book (pg. 156) and The Way of Zen (pg.144)

"And now, I want to show you a form of meditation which was explained to me by a Zen master who said it really is one of the very best kinds of meditation, even better than sitting a long time and getting your knees achey. What you do is just put your hands on your hips with the wrists upwards. And now...let's all laugh."
~Alan Watts, from the 1971 film The Art Of Meditation

Click here to listen

"Bicycle rider see see what you've done to the Church of the American Indian."

"The rise of the Native American Church is emblematic of a broad, if uneven, regeneration among Native Americans generally....The religious dimension of the movement is suggested by the term spirituality, as distinct from religion, the former connoting a self-consciously anti-Western, anti-Christian sensibility that retains close contact with tribal traditions and is characterized by nontheological concerns and by respect and reverence toward every aspect of life."~New Historical Atlas Of Religion In America (pg.118)

'"I think pop music is going to be spiritual...that's the direction I want to go. I'm very religious. Not in the sense of churches, going to church; but like the essence of all religion. Yeah," he says again, pleased with the phrase. "The essence of all religion."'~Brian Wilson quoted by Tom Nolan (LLVS pg.167)

"In brief, although Zen Buddhism is in some sense a religion, Zen itself is the light of all religions; it is not one of them."~C.Humphreys, Zen Buddhism (pg.46)

"To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms-this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
~Albert Einstein

"As I conceive it, Zen is the ultimate fact of all philosophy and religion. Every intellectual effort must culminate in it, or rather must start from it, if it is to bear any practical fruits. Every religious faith must spring from it if it has to prove at all efficiently and livingly workable in our active life."~D.T.Suzuki, Zen Buddhism (pg.111)

"...this sense of being the whole process is frequently experienced with LSD, and, for me, it has often arisen out of a strong feeling of the mutuality of opposites. Line and plane, concept and percept, solid and space, figure and ground, subject and object appear to be so completely correlative as to be convertible into each other."~Alan Watts, This Is It (pg.150)

'"As 1966 ended...Smile began to turn into a frown. It might have been at this point- when he tried to 'explain' Smile to the Beach Boys- that Brian slowly started to lose his confidence and creative momentum."'~David Leaf

"Those who have experienced it (satori) are always at a loss to explain it coherently or logically....The satori experience is thus always characterized by irrationality, inexplicability, and incommunicability."~The Zen Koan as a means of Attaining Enlightenment (pgs. 24-25)

"You don't need words when you know. And if you don't know, man, don't expect anyone to tell you."
~Brian Wilson, Surfing Saints (LLVS pg. 93)

"The very idea, the very word "God" may indeed distract us in the process of realization because because it is still a symbol, a concept, standing between us and the Reality-NOW! When we say, the Eternal Now is God, our minds are apt to start equating the Now with an idea called "God" and thus we are distracted from the real and present Now. At this stage the idea of God becomes unnecessary. Abandoning all concepts and conventional feelings about Reality, letting go of all devices and methods for realizing union with God, we approach the Now just as it is."~Behold The Spirit (pgs. 99-100)

"Brian grasped many things intuitively, but in the end, his naive wonder at the magnificence of the arts, particularly painting, gave way to a fascination with the less scientific, more spiritual, occult studies such as numerology and astrology."~David Leaf, The Beach Boys (pg. 93.)

"This was the grain of truth in the primitive and unreliable science of astrology- as there were also grains of truth in alchemy, herbal medicine, and other primitive sciences. For when the astrologer draws a picture of a person's character or soul, he draws a horoscope- that is, a very rough and incomplete picture of the whole universe as it stood at the moment of that person's birth. But this is at the same time a vivid way of saying that your soul, or rather your essential Self, is the whole cosmos as it is centered around the particular time, place, and activity called John Doe."~Alan Watts, The Book (pgs. 68-69)

The Bodhisattva Miroku contemplates how
to achieve the salvation of mankind.

"Of course all this universe is like water; it is fluid, it is transient, it is changing. When you are thrown into the water after being accustomed to living on the dry land and you are not used to the idea of swimming, you try to stand on the water. You try to catch hold of it, and as a result you drown. This refers particularly to the waters of modern philosophical confusion, where God is dead, metaphysical propositions are meaningless, and there is really nothing to hang onto because we are all just falling apart. The only way to survive under those circumstances is to learn how to swim; you relax, you let go, and you give yourself to the water. You have to know how to breathe in the right way, but then you find that the water holds you up, and indeed in a certain way, you become the water."~Alan Watts, Talking Zen, pub.1994.(pg. 186)

"And swimming. A lot of swimming. It's physical; really Zen right?"~Brian Wilson

"Vigorous physical exertion is an integral part of the Zen training."
~Andrew Powell, Living Buddhism, pub. 1989.(pg.82)

"The symbols of the Holy Spirit are wind and fire-wind which is masculine in its strength and feminine in its softness, and fire which is masculine in its brilliance and feminine in its warmth and volatility. Water, too, is associated with the Spirit as the agent through which it works, for "unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven."...The Holy Spirit is the breath of God's life, the flame of his glory, and the stream of his love."~Behold The Spirit (pg. 173)

In Brian Wilson's story for The BEAT (LLVS pg. 68) Brian Gemini eats vegetables to get "some very out-of-sight vision of a very out-of-sight world." This is an "enlightening perception."

"At about the same time as the tea ceremony was being developed, a form of shojin ryori (the Zen Buddhist monk's vegetarian cooking) was also brought back from China. The meal eaten by monks during training is not only vegetarian but modest."
~Emi Kazuko, Japanese Food And Cooking, pub. 2001.(pg.18)

"Fourthly, that this is medicinal and is taken to keep our bodies in good health;
Fifthly, in order to accomplish the task of Enlightenment, we accept this food."
~from the 'Five Meditations on Eating,' The Spirit Of Zen (pg. 89)

"At the end of the 12th century, Zen Buddhism, a strict sect of Buddhism, arrived from China and, with it, shojin ryori. This was originally simple vegan cooking performed by the monks as part of their severe training. It usually consisted of a bowl of rice, soup and one or two other dishes, but it now refers to a formal vegetarian meal."
~Japanese Food And Cooking (pg.12)

"The philosophy of food preparation in a Zen temple is encapsulated in the style of cooking called shojin ryori. This may be simply translated as 'vegetable cooking', but shojin ryori carries with it the idea of cooking for spiritual development and its purpose is to contribute to the physical, mental and spiritual health of the cook and those who partake of the food."~The Elements Of Zen, pub.1992.(pg. 81)

Gautama, the Buddha-to-be, ate prior to his Enlightenment.

"That which is called ego-death is coming to you.
Remember:
This is now the hour of death and rebirth;
Take advantage of this temporary death to obtain the perfect state-
Enlightenment.
Concentrate on the unity of all living beings.
Hold onto the Clear Light.
Use it to attain understanding and love."
~Leary, Metzner, and Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience (pg.115)

"The terms in which a man interprets this experience are naturally drawn from the religious and philosophical ideas of his culture, and their differences often conceal its basic identity."
"Clarity - the disappearance of problems - suggests light, and in moments of such acute clarity there may be the physical sensation of light penetrating everything. To a theist this will naturally seem to be a glimpse of the presence of God..."
~Alan Watts, This Is It (pg. 19)

"The thing you really look for is the moment of clear light. It's only happened to me once - early in the morning alone on the beach (?) with the sun coming up very red. A moment of clear light."~Brian Wilson, Surfing Saints (LLVS pg. 98)

"Like with the sandbox in the living room. Why would you want to do that? Simple--he wanted a certain feeling. So then, when he had the piano in the sandbox, what he wanted was to section off a part of the formal dining room. He had a runner along the ceiling, like a curtain rod, and he wanted to close off the sandbox like a room....The idea was that he would pull the curtain closed, and it would feel like you were at the beach." ~Marilyn Wilson

"Water, water, water, water, now, now, now, now..."

Surf's Up Inside!

"According to the Kegon (Avatamsaka) sutra, at the moment of enlightenment he spontaneously cried out: "Wonder of wonders! Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue, but because men's minds have become inverted through delusive thinking they fail to perceive this." The first pronouncement of the Buddha seems to have been one of awe and astonishment. Yes, how truly marvelous that all human beings, whether clever or stupid, male or female, ugly or beautiful, are whole and complete just the way they are. That is to say, the nature of every being is inherently without a flaw, perfect, no different from that of Amida or any other Buddha. The first declaration of Shakyamuni Buddha is also the ultimate conclusion of Buddhism."
~Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars Of Zen (pg. 31)

wa (harmony) Japanese
ho (Dharma) Japanese
ho (harmony) Chinese
"wa, wa, ho, wa"
~ "I Love To Say Dada"

"The Sanskrit word tat (our "that") is probably based on a child's first efforts at speech, when it points at something and says, "Ta" or "Da." Fathers flatter themselves by imagining that the child is calling them by name- "Dada" or "Daddy." But perhaps the child is just expressing its recognition of the world, and saying "That!" When we say just "That" or "Thus," we are pointing to the realm of nonverbal experience, to reality as we perceive it directly, for we are trying to indicate what we see or feel rather than what we think or say."
~Alan Watts, The Way Of Zen (pg. 67)

In Brian's explanation of "Surf's Up" (LLVS pg. 80) he mentions God "hiding His love" and God "letting us find Him." This is God's game of hide-and-seek (Alan Watts' The Book pg. 14)

"I fear we've committed hari-kari"~Van Dyke Parks to Brian Wilson following the infamous SMiLE lyrics confrontation.Wouldn't It Be Nice (pg.164)

The following quote best represents the philosophy of Brian Wilson, 1967 to the present:
   "No two waves are alike. That's what you really learn from surfing, that everything is always changing and time never repeats itself. When you realize that, you stop trying to predict and control. You just flow with the tide."
~from Surfing Saints

"God has purpose only in relation to the imperfection of man, purposing that man shall attain the divine life of purposelessness."~Behold The Spirit (pg. 177)