Knight is most famous for his first book, The Taqwacores, which was a work of fiction chronicling the lives of a handful of Muslim punks living in typical punk squalor. What for Knight might have been an attempt to create a world where he could feel at home being both a punk and a Muslim, quickly revealed an already existing world of real-life punks of Muslim background.

Before the book was officially published Knight had been selling/handing out stapled photocopies of the book in mosque parking lots. The book circulated with a bit of a cult following and soon enough Muslim punk kids were contacting Knight to alert him to their existence. Thus a movement was born (or more appropriately, given a name): “Taqwacore.” “Taqwa” is Arabic roughly translated as God Consciouness. “–core” is what any self-respecting punk places on the end of any and every hybrid manifestation of hardcore music (grindcore, queercore, Krishnacore, et al).

The most recent trailer for the Taqwacore documentary can be found here. Enjoy!

Up to this point my search had lead me to a few discoveries. First, finding Kali mandirs (temples, or places of worship) is not always easy. With the exception of a Kali mandir out on Long Island which, aside from its huge committees and the $1000 membership fee, seemed to serve mostly as a cultural center, I was coming up empty.

Part of the issue I was having was that I was originally focusing almost entirely on Flushing, Queens, since way out on the end of the 7-train there’s a huge South East Asian population with scores of Hindu temples and Gurdwaras (Sikh temples) lining the blocks. I had taken a trip out there once before to visit a few temples, and while I had the opportunity to meet a nice Sikh man who was kind enough to show me the ropes at one of the Gurdwaras, I ultimately left and noted the experience as being a good one. Of course this was after I nearly incinerated the inside of my mouth with a “vegetable” (read: chili pepper) uttapam.

As I continued to look, however, I slowly started to realize that not all worshipers of Kali are necessarily from India or even identify culturally as Indian, though they may considered themselves to be Hindu. Had I forgotten what Brooklyn was all about, where for every ten orthodox Jews there’s a Black Hebrew waiting to be granted Israeli citizenship? Nevertheless, as I clicked around I began to see the words “guyana” or “guayanese” pop up when reading the fine print between “brooklyn,” “kali,” and “mandir.” Although, once I formally added “guyana” to the mix it all started to unfold, albeit in piece meal. Call me crazy, but it never occurred to me to look up English speaking Hindus from Guyana, a country on the northern tip of South America, who identify more with the Caribbean cultures of Tobago, Trinidad, and Jamaica then they do with South America or India as my gateway into local Kali worship. But here I am, wondering if I have actually stumbled upon a culture informed simultaneously by Catholic and Hindu sensibilities.

So it went. The more I looked online, the more I found. So long as I kept my research linked to Guyanese culture I was able to find a number of websites along with the ever-coveted find: videos!

If you were to move to South Philadelphia around the Tasker/Morris stop on the subway, you might notice a number of small Christian churches occupying ground-floor corner properties. In these churches you would probably see rows of folding chairs, men, women, and children in various states of engagement (foreign tongues included), a statue of Mary Mother of God, and see and hear a band playing. So be it that when my wife looked at the above video her first thought was, “Looks like one of the Christian churches in South Africa.” She’s from South Africa.

Interestingly enough, Guyanese mandirs in Brooklyn have services on Sundays at 10 am. They may have a band. They may have folding chairs. They worship the Mother. Apparently you might see people speaking in tongues. Go figure. I’ll have to see.

Coming up next: “Sorry sir. Do you live on this block?”

Finding places where people gather to worship the aspect of God of severed heads is not necessarily an easy task. There’s nothing particularly secretive about Kali worship, it just tends to often be the practice of either A. Amma or Bhagavan Das devotees who, while fine enough people, are not necessarily my main focus here, or B. immigrant communities that aren’t necessarily interested in proselytizing and thus do not have fancy websites calling all those outside the diaspora to the faith.

So, what I’m doing is letting you in on a little secret past-time of mine, which is to uncover spiritual spaces (TAZs?) in my locale that I may have not noticed before, but had I been aware of them, would provide me with great joy. In the past I’ve met (or otherwise “stalked”) the residential home of Kamit Publications (Ra Un Nefer Amen’s publisher), the Ausar Auset Society, a sufi master running a pizza shop, various ital roots tonic distillers, the Nuwaubian Bookstore, The Allah School (HQ of 5%er Nation of Gods and Earths), the people handing out Chick Tracts, Malcolm’s mosque, orthodox Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, and all their squirrelly nemeses.

What these spaces have in common, is that they are or were at some time all ground-floor, street-level, grass-roots spiritual endeavors, and the people who founded them genuinely creative. Perhaps its due to my learning as a teenager that anything done DIY is better than its opposite that I am always drawn to small, niche religions. There’s also this desire in me to prove to myself that the stories of old where seekers traveled around and met otherwise occulted students and teachers of the Divine is a tradition still alive and well. That if you look hard enough and with enough humility, you will see spiritual practice happening all around you. If you apply your “punk rock mind,” the mind that looks at every flier posted on every telephone poll, you will uncover a world teeming with heretics and blasphemers, the pious and the righteous, the insane and the faltering all trying to sip from the same Godly cup.

So, with that, I’m off. I’ve already found out quite a bit about Kali worshipers in my area, but have yet to really experience the practice first-hand. Will post more as it reveals itself.

Spiritual disciplines span the spectrum from quiet personal self-reflection to physically militant offensives against the ego that tyrannizes us all. Writer/Director Bertrand Bonello’s latest film On War deals with the latter.

On War is a film about purging—the purging of self, of attachment to the world, and of attachment to assumptions about one’s self in the world. As the characters in the film suggest, it is only through this purging that a person may fully release into the immediacy of joy and pleasure. And it is joy and pleasure, things real and authentic, that our protagonist Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric) is searching for.

Full review over at Quiet Earth.

I feel as if it’s a rare thing to see non-conformist spirituality depicted as a center-piece to a film. Anyone know of any others of note? Let’s assume Peter Brook’s Meetings with Remarkable Men is a given.

Why is being interrupted so jarring? Looking out my office window I see people walking. They are moving. Walking forward. Those who are standing are swaying just a little. Why is it that the stopping of movement has such an effect on us humans where bumping into someone’s shoulder, even with a polite “sorry,” is an irritation?

Anyone who has practiced some form of meditation has probably been told to “still the mind” or “cease the flow of thoughts.” Even meditation practices that shy away from commands to “quiet the mind” still at least suggest an interruption in mental chatter. The call to mental stillness is ubiquitous in spiritual communities and yet, for some of us (most of us?) being told, subtly coaxed, or gently lead into stillness is an act that is as simple as balancing on the head of a pin.

So it was one summer day riding to work on our bicycles when B—, riding behind me, had the opportunity to watch me fly over my handlebars and crash into the pavement after I yanked on the brakes to avoid hitting a careless driver’s turn. When once I was smoothly gliding over the Earth I was interrupted by a traffic intersection. My thought as I was hurling towards the pavement? Don’t hit your face. I did. Though only slightly.

Two weeks later I had the opportunity to watch B— slam into a car pulling out of a parking garage. Her thought just prior? Don’t scuff your new white shoes. She did. Though only slightly. Thankfully we are both fine, if initially some what shaken.

So here we were. Two urban cyclists interrupted by Ford’s legacy and our last thoughts were tangled up in the way we look. How perfect for New York City!

In the film Fierce Grace, a documentary film about the life of spiritual vanguard Ram Dass, Dass remarks on his mental state just as he were having a stroke. Much to his surprise his thoughts were not of the Divine or God, but were of the pipes on the ceiling. According to him, here he was “Mr. Spiritual” and when given the ultimate test, “failed.” Did he?

If the Divine is (at the very least) This Here and Now, and our thoughts do have some place in this existence, are not the mundane thoughts and concerns just-pre-trauma as Divine as any other? Could not our concern of our hair at the time of death also be of God? Would it not be the ultimate cosmic joke to become intensely aware of one’s dirty dishes just as it all came crashing down?

From the AYNY website:
Fire embodies the sun, and is its spirit on Earth. Fire is the celebrant of sacrifices, and “digester” of life experiences. We rely on fire’s good judgment to keep the other Elements in right relationship to one another. These lectures will discuss how best to invoke fire into our lives, internally & externally; how to prevent fires in places we don’t want them to start; how to align our internal fires; and how to keep Tejas predominant, and Pitta subservient.

About three months ago my cyber self came across the Ashtanga Yoga inspired and spiritually genuine musings of Spiros Antonopoulos at SoulJerky.com. As a site whose well-earned no BS take on yoga and all things Eastern came as a breath of fresh air, I quickly made it one of the few haunts on my weekly Web wanderings. Happily, while browsing the site I was hipped to Rudolph Wurlitzer’s latest novel The Drop Edge of Yonder.

Earning its place as the third novel I have read in eight years (I’m a non-fiction guy), The Drop Edge of Yonder easily coaxed me into its Naked Lunch-esque world of Meursault-like (of Camuss’ The Stranger) indifference and brujo koans. An affront to both the stereotypical Western, as well as the post-One Hundred Years of Solitude magical realism crowd, The Drop Edge of Yonder dares the reader to rest comparisons on adjectives like “surreal” and “edgy.” No descriptions hold when describing this book. As such, it comes as no surprise when a woman named Not Here Not There stumbles frozen and half dead into Zebulon’s commandeered cabin. When you inhale more Gold Rush-era oxygen than you’re used to, what else does the world become but the backdrop for stray bullets grazing witches in a Bacchanalian saloon?

But comparisons are sometimes inevitable, and it’s ironic to find so many telling similarities to Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film Dead Man. What’s ironic is that after humming Neil Young’s beautifully sparse soundtrack to the film while reading the entire book I learned that Dead Man was in fact heavily inspired by the original manifestation of The Drop Edge of Yonder—a 1970s screenplay titled Zebulon that never was.

Learning this little factoid proved to be a small but settling affair that eased my confusion as to why I could not get Johnny Depp’s face out of my head page after page. But unlike relatively safe “Ah ha!” moments one might have in the Obama Age of change and possibility, in The Drop Edge of Yonder where just the scent of your reputation can get you strung up, “moments of clarity” have none of the uplifting effects Hollywood commonly associates with them. In fact, realizations do just the opposite—they drop you face first in a muddy ditch lying next to an unlucky man with a hole in his head. These are the teachings of crazy wisdom gone mad! And here, spiritual lessons have more to do with trusting a lunatic jail mate bust you out of the clink than finding a peaceful tree to meditate under.

And that seems to be the point. Rudolph Wurlitzer, a practicing Buddhist, came of age in the late Sixties literary world of just-post-Beat, where American Buddhism was having a nice rebellious ride across the plains. The West became the East, was the East, and it was not long before Buddhism struck gold in towns like Boulder and Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. However, despite that Richard Gere allegedly noted way back when that the original screenplay this book later grew out of contained all four Noble Truths, The Drop Edge of Yonder is not a book about Buddhism with a six-shooter edge to it. The Drop Edge of Yonder is dirty earth. It’s nineteent century uneasiness with exotic foreigners. It’s shoot a prostitute for lewdness. It’s Manifest Destiny gone insane (as if it could have gone any other way). And as a novel, The Drop Edge of Yonder is a gem. It’s independent, spiritually grounded (deep in the dirt), and about as “If you see the Buddha walking down the road, kill him” as you can get. Enjoy!

Once there was a time when the person on your block who did yoga was a dangerous person. This was the person who had a little extra knowledge into what’s really going on—the person who walked to the mailbox with an intention matched only by his great posture. And yet, these days it’s almost cliché to say, “I do yoga.” While once a person who claimed to have a yogic practice might have been a menace to the complacent status quo, today all that’s required to take a noon yoga “power hour” is an interest in staying fit on your lunch break.

What’s at stake when spiritual practices become so embedded in the consumer culture that their rebellious roots become overgrown with conformist identities? Does the tradition itself become tarnished, or must “serious” practitioners simply wait for the herd to get bored and mosey on down the line? In Chogyam Trungpa’s seminal text The Myth of Freedom Trungpa discusses the role of boredom in Zen practice. He states, “[Zen] is trying to bring about boredom, which is a necessary aspect of the narrow path of discipline, but instead [for the American novice] the practice turns out to be an archeological, sociological survey of interesting things to do, something you could tell your friends about: ‘Last year I spent the whole fall sitting in a Zen monastery for six months…. It was a wonderful experience and I did not get bored at all’” (Trungpa, 55–56).

Eventually, yoga, like all commodities, will get boring. And what will happen when, rather then bringing about mental clarity, yoga asanas simply induce widespread yawning? Is the fact that so many New York City yoga classes blast pop music and invent names like “Lotus Flow” and “Cosmic Play” just an attempt to keep yoga fresh and interesting so that huge Manhattan lofts won’t become abandoned?

Is boredom in spiritual practice something to be so worried about?

For a number of years I have been practicing a specific type of yoga. Like most people I have talked to, my first experience of taking yoga in this lineage was blissful and invigorating. I left my first class feeling like I had more energy running through my body than I had ever had. I was happy. I was positive. I was a pleasure to be around. I was also, ironically, incredibly bored. Not bored with the practices, they were completely foreign and therefore exotic to me, but bored with the way the teachings of the yoga were presented. It seemed the organization that promoted this yoga lineage was interested in one thing: accessibility. Everything about their marketing is an attempt to make palatable the teachings. Soften the edges, make fuzzy the angles, and water down the language. In essence, make the yoga almost invisible. And yet, the funny thing is, I never stopped going. Very little about the presentation of this yoga interests me, and yet not only did I continue to build a personal practice, I eventually became certified to teach within this lineage.

So what’s going on here? Has boredom won me over? Am I a masochist? Is my sticking with this yoga simply indicative that boredom has become the hottest new trend? Are we entering a new phase where unemphatically bored yogis will be flooding yoga studios begrudging, but in huge numbers, buying yearly unlimited passes? I’ll just stop right there.

Introducing: The Psalters. Think Desert Fathers (and Mothers) with dreadlocks, banjos, face tattoos, and a healthy dose of anti-capitalism and anti-communism while attempting to walk the talk of so many Christian Luddites before them. They travel the world in a black bus and maintain a relatively nomadic lifestyle. They’ve been to corners of the Earth people like me only dream about (most recently picking banjos on the banks of the Tigris) and seem to take literally “The meek shall inherit the Earth.” Amen.

However, lets give credit where it is due. The pathways for spiritually inclined people who simultaneously crave an independent approach to music in order to express that inclination have been cleared for some time now. For the past ten or twelve years independent music minded people have been realizing (remembering?) that Jamaican roots music (rock steady, dub, and reggae) is very hip, old timey Appalachian banjo music is pleasantly eerie and refreshingly confrontational, and the best music to sit around a campfire singing to is the music of God (read: all those old psalms you sung in Catholic school if you were a little Catholic boy like me). All of this has coalesced in a decade long resurgence of folk-inspired bands finding homes in the stocked artistic ponds of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

But somewhere along the line, punks realized that all these musical movements shared something in common… this music has at its core a homegrown, raw, and independent “Bible religion” so salty you can taste it. AND, the belief is that this Do-It-Yourself style of religion can still be rebellious and empowering. Mix that with a fascination with Christian antinomians (Levellers, Diggers, Adamites, Ranters, et al.), and the fact that Foucault may someday become a household name, and you find yourself wading in a sea of appropriation and discovery—a sea I’m not so shy to swim in.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m still slightly skeptical as to whether the merging of music and religion can remain honest when that honesty rides on the back of self-promotion. For instance, would the Gnostics of old have a MySpace page if they had the technology? Hard to say. But as far as religion and music cohabitating is concerned, this is nothing new. A person could easily argue (and so many people have) that music actually birthed from the spiritual. So when a group of people come together (giving new meaning to the term “band”) to sing the praises of Jesus, nothing should shock us. But what if that group of people tries to actually live the “shed your riches” lifestyle for real, the way all those Christian boy-bands don’t?

So, it’s my hope that the Psalters and the handful of other groups that form this blossoming scene of anarcho-Christianity will have life spans longer than those who have set out before them. However, I wonder if it it’ll end up being just another Cajun-flavored Dorito fad, all image and no substance. We’ll have to wait and see as the proof is almost always in the pudding.

Here’s to hoping it tastes half as good and lasts at least twice as long.