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The Song of the Smile

The story you will read below was originally told here, at a sacred mound near what is now called Chillicothe in e-Ohio. The tale is from a time long before the barbarian contact.

It was a time when wise women and men kept the practice of the weeping eye. By smoking the old tabac, which induced the transformation of humans into birds, wolves, bears and deer, and by conducting charnel-house rituals, the Adena shamans brought other-worldly spirits to life within the game realm.

In other words, they initiated and very likely invented the process that we now call avatara, by which the sprits of "real" people are transmuted into and represented as "game" people.


The Adena weed, commonly referred to as "the Old Thwack"




About The Song of the Smile

The Song of the Smile is a deeply philosophical piece concerning e-self-realization. It was first told long before the Barbarian Contact. The Pre-Contact age was a time of rich civilization and deep appreciation of wisdom amongst the r-People and the e-People. In those days, the People often inscribed sacred images on stone and on their bodies out of respect for the great knowledge.

The distinction between the "real" and "game" worlds was fuzzy, and folks often passed back and forth with ease between them. Indeed, even the distinction between r-worlds and e-worlds was seldom a topic of discussion and players were simply referred to as the People.

Mindful of the shared repository knowledge and the importance of practicing the great warrior-spirit, they moved through the forests and plains and mountains and valleys of the various worlds like a breeze, at one with all that moves.

The Song of the Smile is thought to be the first part of a much longer work. Investigative e-musicologists have recently begun to refer to the entire (putative) work as "The Avedatavara Song".



A Red Pine grows up to 65 feet (about 20 meters) tall and lives for over 200 years. Say hello to the next one you see because they definitely remember the old wisdom.


Part One, or simply "the Smile-Song", as some wags refer to it, was carved onto a collection of stones that were recently uncovered deep within the sacred mound noted above. The meaning of the carvings was interpreted (into the barbarian language that we all now share) by Adam's Sons and Company, an e-ethno-musicology firm out of e-Seneca Falls, in Upstate New York, not too far from e-Rochester.

These researchers believe that stones containing the rest of 'The Avedatavara Song' were probably scattered and hidden upon Contact, in order to prevent their destruction by barbarians. Even though centuries have now passed since the Contact, the discovery of the Song of the Smile provides solid evidence that the old wisdom has not been lost completely.

In a private interview with Players' Quarterly, e-researcher Olympia Google told us that such signs of the old wisdom can easily be found all around us, if we will just open our eyes to see them. For example:


An Ancient Bowl of Life. This is a sacred sculpture from the old times. Hiding in plain sight, its profundity was -- until recently -- utterly lost on the barbarians. By noticing such things, we enhance the chance that the remaining stones of the "Avedatavara Song" will soon be unearthed.






Sidebar: Barbarian Contact

Who were the barbarians and where did they come from?

It is known that pre-Contact foreigners wore clothing made of natural materials such as animal skin and plant and animal-based textiles. Ashamed of their own bodies, their women wore long dresses and covered their hair, while their men wore long tunics and leggings. Both men and women liked to wear jewelry made from precious stones and metals as a sign of status, an important marker in their strictly-stratified social strutures.

Before Contact with the People, the foreigners had very poor diets. Most were farmers and grew some wheat and vegetables but were ignorant of how to cultivate sophisticated crops like corn or potatoes. They also raised cows and sheep and pigs to eat. They rarely washed themselves, and had many diseases because they often let their animals live with them. Their closeness to swine, in particular, is what ultimately brought the Deadly Pox to the People.


The Barbarian Contact with the People was one of the greatest tragedies in human history


Superstition infused every part of the barbarians' lives. According to extant relics, they believed in one supreme deity, an angry thunder-god father figure, whom they believed was made of three parts, and they particularly worshiped the deity's son-emanation, who had been cloned as a human so that he could be executed by human authorities, thereby providing more grist for the angry-father mill.

They claimed that their god had given humans domination over the universe and over all other life-forms. They built elaborate temples to commemorate the execution of the deity's son. They performed ceremonies in which they ate crackers and drank wine and believed it was the body and blood of their god, who would provide them with a wondrous afterlife when they died -- if they repeated certain magic words often enough. Many wars were fought over disagreements about the details of this religion, each group believing their interpretation was the right one that should spread across their entire land, which was just a tiny a corner of a vast continent, but they believed it constituted "the entire world".

Despite a millenia-old culture that had spread across the two continents and many islands, had achieved tremendous feats of engineering, science, and agriculture, and had created vast trade networks, along with a widespread practice of the profound wisdom, Contact brought a horrifying devastation to the People in the form of fast-spreading epidemic Pox. The barbarians themselves, were, in effect, a biological weapon of mass destruction.

The People are still recovering from that onslaught.

Luckily, we are in a New e-Age now. The Long Count has re-started. The Moon is in the Seventh House. New knowledge is rapidly being acquired by vast masses of players all over this planet. For example, as noted in this recently-published scientific article entitled Uranus takes a pounding more frequently than thought, we now know why that is, whereas previously, we didn't. Just one small example. But still. It's happening.


So. It is hoped that sharing the Song of the Smile will help to bring to the descendents of the barbarians a measure of solace and wisdom and thereby, at long last, accelerate the process of integrating them back into the People.









So, presented here for the first time in the barbarian-language...



The Song of the Smile




PQ, after hearing the 'The Song of the Smile' for the first time







Once Upon a Time, the Teacher-who-travels-around was visting this Mound. A great assembly of spirit-warriors from all the lands of the People had gathered here to listen to him. Skilled in the knowledge that external reality is a perception of one's own mind, they had travelled the worlds for many Moons, opening the doors of liberation for beings of every mental and physical capacity.

This vast assembly of spirit-warriors were players who were already thoroughly versed in...

* The five realities: appearances, names, projections, correct knowledge and this-and-that-ness.

* The three modes of reality: imaginary, inter-dependent and perfected.

* The eight modes of perceiving reality: touching, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, conceptualizing, self-identifying and, the less-often-recognized eighth mode, which is storing and distributing the seeds of habit-energy left behind by the operations of conceptualizing and self-identifying. Or what is sometimes referred to as "what goes around comes around".

and

* The two kinds of emptiness inherent to reality: the denial of self-existence concerning animate (r-) objects and the denial of self-existence concerning inanimate (e-) objects.



Animate or Inanimate? Does it matter? Is there really such as think as a fruity watermelon table-shark?


The paramount Facilitator of the Ohio and Omaha Potlach, which happened to be going on at the time, was accompanied by a retinue of spirit animals and ghost dancers when she arrived at the throng and immediately saw the thoughts of those in that assembly stirred by the wind of externality, their collective minds a vast repository of what remains from all the images we have previously projected upon an 'external' world as well as upon an 'internal' world.

Yeah, she saw their thoughts rising like so many waves in the oceans of their shared repository consciousness and shouted "I will go and invite this Awesome Teacher to the Potlach in order to augment the lasting happiness and welfare of humans and of all spirit-creatures!"


Then the members of a reviled tribe -- probably from Minnesota, but some say it was e-New Zealand -- joined the throng at the invitation of the Facilitator. At the urging of the Facilitator, a single spokesperson from those-who-would-be-last became first and the crowd parted to allow him to approach the Great Teacher. He beseeched the Teach for the teaching that is free from the faults of other paths, devoid of the prattlings of false-teachers and illusionists, for the immaculate teaching that is only realized within, you know, that teaching, the one that leads to perfection.




Upon request, The Guy conjured up mountains, peaks, seashores, beautiful scenes of every sort, adorned with countless gem-like special effects and on every peak, on every shore, the Teacher could also be seen and standing at his side the Facilitator of the Feast and the members of the reviled tribe and the entire assembly of spirit-warriors, visible on each summit, in every land, and all other Great Teachers were present too and together with the Facilitator and the Shamans of the Mound all of the residents of the Ohio and the Omaha appeared as well, gazing upon each other and other things also appeared, wondrous things, the products of the Master's power, vast orange groves and sunlit forests, and nothing in any way different, repeated endlessly, in countless lands and cities, the spokesperson of the reviled tribe, asking the same question, over and over, asking for the teaching of self-realization, which all the Correct Teachers spoke in countless voices and after they had spoken these throngs and these spaces vanished.


Only the the humble spokesperson of the reviled tribe remained, alongside the Facilitator, standing on the Mound. The Facilitator wondered what had really just happened. Who had spoken just now and who listened? Who saw? And what was seen? Where did all those mountains and seashores and forests and spirit-warriors go?


So she asked The Guy: "Where did all those people go? Those radiant teachers? Those countless comrades? Were they a dream or an illusion? Was that the work of tricksters and magicians? Was it a mirage, the smoke and flame from a wheel of fire?"







The Teacher-Dude contemplated a flower, smiled, and responde😛 "Such is the nature of things, the realm of nothing but mind. This is something the foolish ones don't know since they are bewildered by false projections. There is no seer or anything seen, no speaker or anything spoken. The appearance of teachers and their teachings are merely what we imagine. Those who view such things as real, they don't see the Teacher, nor do those who meditate successfully without thought. Only those who transform their existence do."








Then one of the spirit-warriors ran up and gave the Teacher a big head-noogie, which also made the Teacher smile.






With this, the Facilitator felt an awakening and transformation of her consciousness, as she realized what appeared was nothing but the perceptions of her own mind, and she found herself in a realm free from such projections.


Due to the stockpile of good actions she'd inherited from previous avatars, she suddenly gained an understanding of all e-strategies, the ability to see the game as it really is and not how others see it, how to examine things with her own wisdom while remaining free from discursive views and the urge to troll, and all the abilities of a great player no longer dependent on others: namely, how to manifest herself in various auspicious forms, how to master all skillful means, how to know the nature and characteristics of the stages of game advancement, how to delight in detachment from the self-existence of mind, will and conceptual consciousness, how to liberate herself from views involving greed, anger and delusion, how to refute the arguments of followers of false paths concerning causation, how to understand perfection, self-realization and a purified mind, and how to live with this knowledge.












And then from the sky and from within herself and from the mouth of the teacher-dude, she heard a voice say: "Well done, Facilitator, well done. Players should play as you have played. Any other way would be nihilistic. They should look within and not be misled by external appearances or delight in idle or frivolous talk, or cling to outworn views, or become attached to exercising power over others, or indulge in meditations aimed at cultivating supernatural powers. This, Facilitator, is the understanding of all great players who make use of subtle wisdom to transform their consciousness."


















-- This ethno-musicological e-report was brought to you by me, Phoenix Quinn, a freedom writer of the Great Wind, a friend to and fellow traveller with the WTP Writers Guild and honest admirer of the e-Belgian royal-socialist e-family, among others.


Sláinte!