Exuberant, irreverent, and self-mocking humor is a timeless tool used by spiritual teachers from multiple traditions. In a short text akin to rap lyrics, Adrian Symonds wryly improvises on the famous mantra from the Heart Sutra, “Gate gate paragate parasam gate bodhi swaha.” The mantra can be roughly translated from the Sanskrit as “Gone, gone, gone beyond, to the other shore. Enlightenment. It is so.”

In blending the sacred and the profane, Adrian shares his playful and personal invitation to examine the intermingling of our spiritual longing with our sensory-based life. Hakuin’s famous painting, “Blind Men Crossing a Bridge’ is added for fun.     

bodhi baby  

(Backed by a wailing sax and several chanting frenzied primates…..)

black bras, beds, sucking, suckling, hot tangled sheets, wet thighs, wetness, tongues, suction, probing, blackness, hair, nipple, groan, thrust and turn and pull and rotate and turn and torque and hang right out there on the edge face turned up, right out there on the edge gone gone gone ‘gate gate paragate parasam gate’‚ bodhi give it to me baby.

nothing to want, nothing to do, nowhere to go, not that it’s illusion, just that I’ve fallen into it, seduced and I gotta, gotta, gotta ‘gate gate paragate parasam gate’‚ hang right out there on the edge, face turned up right out there on the edge, face turned up, gone gone gone impermanence all things change even change itself, gone gone gone ‘gate gate paragate parasam gate’‚ this edge is but the veil of God bodhi so feel it baby; this edge is but the veil of God bodhi so see through it baby; this edge is but the veil of God bodhi, so be it Baby.

Listen to Adrian reading bodhi baby