Islands of Refuge: Adventures with a Living Kahuna

By Jeff Muñoz

"Islands of Refuge is the stuff of legends. A confused teenager in big trouble over drugs, wanted by the FBI, goes on the lam and has just landed on Hawaii's Big Island when a car driven by an old man pulls over and offers him a ride. Daddy Bray, Hawaii's last great kahuna, tells Jeff that he has been waiting years for him to arrive. Over the next quarter century, [Munoz] remakes himself into a new kind of man..."

Jeffrey Paine, author of Father India and Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West; vice president of the National Book Critics Circle and Judge of the Pulizter Prize.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452552156

Jeff Muñoz

JEFF MUNOZ was born in Santa Monica, California in 1948. His oldest brother -- one of the pioneer big-wave surfers of the North Shore of O'ahu -- imbued Jeff from childhood with the magic and lure of Hawai'i and brought him under the spell of the 'kahuna surf gods'. Today Jeff is the founder/director of Prayer Rock Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the stewardship of Prayer Rock Sanctuary, a sacred pilgrimage site on the island of Maui. Some of the foundation's activities include rare endemic plant restoration and the maintenance of sacred shrines in the Hawaiian/Buddhist tradition. For the last forty-five years in Hawai'i, Jeff continues to live the Aloha Path as taught by his hanai tutu kane, Daddy Bray, one of the last great kahuna of Hawai'i.

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Copyright © 2012 by Jeff Muñoz.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-5214-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-5215-6 (e)

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Photo credits: Cosmio Propeller – Pg. vi, David M. Bray – Pg. 72,

Catherine Prescott – Pg. 91, Jeff Muñoz – Pg. 123

Cover Art by Lieve Maas ©

Balboa Press rev. date: 09/24/2012

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Part I   Southern California – 1966

1   Fourth of July

2   Purple Pez

3   Come Down

4   Connections

5   In the Wind

6   Baja California

7   Smuggler’s Moon

8   Bare-butt Busted

9   Coincidence

10   Babu

11   Open Letter, Pact of Secrecy

Part II   Hawai‘i – 1967

12   On the Lam

13   Kona

14   Destiny

15   Pathway of the Gods

16   Kahuna Surf Gods

17   Who Am I?

18   Refuge

19   Acceptance

20   Heiau

21   Temple of Lono

22   Ola Honua

23   Hanai

24   Holo Holo

25   Buddha Nose

26   Rainbow Sign

27   Initiation and Offering

28   Tia

29   Kahiko ‘Aina –

The Ancient Land

30   Hula

31   Coconut Chris

32   Controversy

33   Black and White

34   Kahuna

35   Piki Bread

36   Mauna Loa

37   Ho‘oponopono

38   On the Cusp

39   Lu‘au

40   Monsoon

41   Return to Kona

42   In the Cards

43   House of Eternal Fires

44   The Net Is Cast

Part III   Blind Justice – 1968

45   Halawa Jail – Honolulu

46   L.A. Old County

47   Papa

48   Embracing the Inevitable

49   The Goddess Blind Justice

50   Prison ‘Aumakua

51   Dream Dog Sacrifice

52   Letter

53   Escape No Escape

54   Gestation

55   Rebirth

Epilogue

Addendum

Glossary of Hawaiian Words *

Acknowledgments

Islands of Refuge

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Dedication

To Hawai‘i Nei – These islands that have so nourished, supported and embraced my being.

Daddy Bray – who gave refuge and showered me with love and understanding.

My dear brother Babu – steadfast and loyal mentor, true friend and spiritual hero of the first order.

Na kupuna o Hawai‘i – who encouraged me along the way with aloha, wisdom and generosity of spirit.

Na ‘aumakua of land and life, the living waters, sacred earth, heavenly rains, breath of life, warmth of sun, guiding light of stars

– Mahalo a nui loa –

Prologue

ONCE THERE LIVED IN the sacred islands of Hawai‘i a man who became known as the last great kahuna. In those days, the spiritual practices of ancient Hawai‘i – his Hawai‘i – were vanishing. Because of the integrity of his vision, he was chosen to carry forth the remnants. This was not his choice. Guided by his ‘aumakua, it was his destiny. Spanning from the time of the last monarch of Hawai‘i, King David Kalakaua, when many islanders were still living in pili grass huts, to the modern era of jet airplanes and skyscrapers, David Daddy Kaonohiokala Bray stood forth to share his wisdom and knowledge.

In his days and in his nights on each of the Islands and on the Mainland, in his temple and atop craters of flowing lava, Daddy Bray made manifest the wisdom of Aloha. Despite existing laws against kahuna practices, he was commended for his more than fifty years of healing and peace making. In 1959, the last Territorial Legislature of Hawai‘i acknowledged Daddy Bray as a Living Kahuna.

It was the fate of a troubled young man, on the run from the law, to meet, be adopted and given refuge by this Living Kahuna. I was that young man and this story tells of the circumstances that led up to and what followed that meeting. It is my hope not to offend the reader by including my involvement with the mind-expanding tools of the ’60s, but to give an honest account of my adventures.

This book offers an opportunity to learn of the ancient wisdom and knowledge freely given me by Daddy Bray. I believe that Papa, as we called him, would be made happy by this – his way was one of generosity, freely offering his kindness, his guidance, and his teachings. As Papa used to say, Money cannot buy the gift of my ancestors! It is my sincere hope for all those who read Islands of Refuge that they too will gain a deeper understanding of the spirit of Aloha.

Today, more than forty years later, his wisdom continues to guide me – as he would have wished it – to live life balanced in the spirit of love and harmony.

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Part I 

Southern California – 1966

1 

Fourth of July

WANNA DROP?

I was standing barefoot, in tee shirt and cords leaning against my old trusty rusty funky junk surfer car across from King Harbor. Righteous Art, tall and skinny, straight blond surfer hair hanging over his ears, shined me a Cheshire grin. Art’s hand outstretched, extended a Goofy Pez candy dispenser. Out of Goofy’s mouth popped a loaded purple Pez.

Three hundred micrograms pure LSD, Art purred. I just dropped. Come on, let’s go watch the fireworks at Haggerty’s Cove.

The afternoon sea breeze had come up. The sound of halyards clattering on aluminum masts fluttered through the marina. Crying gulls swooped around a fishing boat coming to dock. Edison Electric hummed on.

The little candy looked innocent enough but I knew it packed a whole lot of power. Righteous Art’s hand remained steady with the Pez perched on Goofy’s tongue. Could use a good mind blowing, I thought, feeling on the down and outs, bumping around the beaches, a little depressed with teenage angst. Coming up on eighteen and a half, I did feel a lot older, if still a bit oblivious of responsibility, not unlike the Tarot fool stepping into space. However, this time I did pause to reflect before jumping off the edge.

The beach has always been a refuge since small-kid-time, a borderline place, a demarcation between the known and unknown. An arrival and departure zone from where one could leap into the ocean, paddle out through snow-white foam, salty bubbles, splashes, and fresh sea smell into the smooth line-up. Straddle board, dangle legs into the murky mystery and wait for the perfect wave. From time to time I had to remind and counsel myself, one wave at a time, take it easy, take it slow. Waves rise off the horizon, you choose to paddle your ass off and go for it or not. Life situations form like that from an ocean of events and offer themselves for a decision to be involved or not. It’s the swell, rise and lift, drop-in, accelerate, and make it or wipeout, tumble, swirl and try again.

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I was on my own at fourteen. I had just started high school when Mom moved south on a job transfer. I refused to go. There were social implications, switching to a new school, making new friends. It’s a territorial thing. Kids can be so damn mean. Anyway, I was at that rebellious age myself and Mom had already raised my four older siblings, and was really done. She moved, I stayed and started living out of a cardboard box, sleeping on a friend’s family-room floor. Did that until the end of freshman year, and actually managed to pass despite countless visits to the vice-principal’s office. I got to know Carl The Terrible pretty well. After stern lectures, a few whacks on the butt, he saw through my rebellion and connected with my natural intelligence. Carl was a sailor, and turned out to be pretty cool. He had a 30-foot sloop that he raced regularly. After the umpteenth visit to his office he invited me to crew for him in the next race off of King Harbor, then a big one to Catalina. I ended up sailing with Carl a lot. I was agile, experienced with ocean and wind, a natural sailor and best of all, in that element, surprisingly followed orders well. I lucked out, and by the end of the school year – despite frequent absences gone surfing – my grades were passing.

I surfed all summer 1963 until school loomed up again. A family in Palos Verde invited me to live with them and attend PV High. They were kind and generous to me, and their two sons were like younger brothers. I was very helpful to Marlene with housework and could make the perfect extra dry martini for Jack, who also had an incredible collection of Hawaiian music, sat on the floor around a low table and ate with chopsticks. Best of all I really felt loved and supported. Sophomore year flew by, punctuated only by the tragic death of John F. Kennedy. I think that single event shocked and changed my outlook on life more than anything else up to then. The world was simply not inviting. As comfortable as things were – loving family, clothes, food, everything I could want – mundanity was closing in, the suit and tie looming. Although my circumstances were fine, I was lacking something; my restless nature was amping up. On my sixteenth birthday, Mom’s gift at my insistence was to come all the way to Palos Verde and sign for my driver’s license. I was in tenth grade when I began to drive. The girls loved it and I was the lone sophomore with a license.

Summer came. I was gone – gone surfing on long safaris to Baja. I found freedom. When September came and despite the fact that I was already camping at the beaches pretty much out of range of my surrogate family, I went back to PV High for eleventh grade. It didn’t last long. I came and went from classes as I wished. With the perfect surf car, a competition-orange ’51 Chevy sedan delivery, I was out of control, the idol of the wild girls. My school counselor suggested the only thing I could deliver was bad influence on my classmates.

As it was, school dropped me. Believe me I tried, tried to follow through but just couldn’t do it. The school counselor thought it better I get a job, save some money and complete school in a junior college when I became stable. Of course that would never happen; after all I did ditch my very first day of kindergarten. Mom had delegated sister Candy to lead me to the first day of class. I recall vividly her taking me up the stairs to Mrs. Winston’s classroom and kind of nudging me hurriedly into the room filled with first timers like myself. Candy left quickly for her fifth grade class. Me? I was stuck at the threshold, terrified. As soon as she disappeared around the corner I darted down the stairs and ran out to the street fronting Canyon School to find Dodo Chaney parked in her white Dodge pick-up having just dropped her kids off. I climbed onto the running board sniffling back tears. Dodo took me home.

But this wasn’t kindergarten.

Two things happened as a result of dropping out of high school. One, I left on a road trip in a VW van to Aspen, Colorado to learn to ski with a friend, Bruce, who had graduated the year before from South High. Two, I turned on to pot. My scholastic career over, I launched into an unknown future.

Aspen was great. My oldest brother Mickey had set me up for a job at the Chart House with his surf and ski buddies who owned the restaurant. I was the cleanup boy for a few hours in the mornings and the bar/busboy in the evenings. The bar looked over the road to Little Nell, the beginner’s slope, the perfect place for me to learn to ski. The experts took me under their wings, and I graduated quickly to the higher and faster runs. The restaurant crew for the most part was a bunch of radical surfers from California and Hawai‘i. Buddy Boy, a homeless orphan, had been raised by the beach boys of Waikiki; a surfer to the core, he spoke a sort of Sylvester the Cat Hawaiian pidgin with a bit of slobber and had a basic approach to everything. E brah, go for it! he slavered over his shoulder as he pushed off the slope. I felt at home with everyone. They all watched out for me, cheering me on to the ski bum party life of Colorado. In fact it was party after party … Aspen was all about partying and skiing. Though only sixteen, I could go into a lot of the bars and drink 3.2 beer, but for the most part I didn’t, preferring the slopes to booze. New Year’s Eve was different. That night we were busy at the Chart House. The Kennedy family came for dinner, I was the busboy and Ray from Hawai‘i was the waiter. I got my first and last dose of Dexedrine handed out to all the crew by the bartender – three little white tablets. It was not my thing. Dexies and alcohol made for a vicious combination, especially for a hyper young man on the job around famous people. I managed to get through with no major mishaps, only a few perfunctory apologies with nervous giggles. I buzzed around the table, at the head of which sat the current Secretary of War, flanked by Secret Service agents, the widow of the slain President and his brother, the former U.S. Attorney General. That night, serving these people, I knew I would never end up in their world. I was headed somewhere else, only I didn’t know where. After closing I stayed with the crew and followed them from bar to bar, drinking and partying all the way. In the wee hours I was reduced to tears and cried for the next few days, for no reason other than to relieve the stress of waking up into the next life-phase of a kid coming into a big world. Not that Aspen was so big – it was more of an in-between place where the world took refuge in recreation. Instinctively though, I knew the next step was to figure out what to do with my life.

As fortune would have it I ran into a mentor friend, Dr. Dan, an MD from Malibu. He was really happy to see me. Dr. Dan and his wife had come on a charter flight of doctors and their families from Los Angeles to ski and of course party. I ended up spending a lot of time with them skiing. I guess they picked up on my Dexedrine comedown as Dr. Dan proposed that I stow away on the return flight to L.A. I could just board with them a little early and slump down in a seat, nose to a paper. It seemed to be the next step, so I packed up, sold my skis, and hitched to Grand Junction to meet them for the flight. The stewardesses counted everyone two and three times over. I pulled the paper closer. The count did not tally. However, everyone who was supposed to be there was there, and, overlooked, I was headed back to the South Bay.

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Pot had been a lingering influence in my life since I was five years old. While playing out on the lane in front of our home, voices came from the neighbor’s hedge, Hey Bitsey! Two older kids called out my nickname whispering, Come on in. Want to smoke reefer? Inside the hedge the young teen boys were playing with matches and smoking a tiny twisted cigarette they called reefer. They put it up to my mouth and made a hissing sound sucking in air, intimating what I should do. I tried but had no idea what it was about and soon left them to continue my play. I later tried smoking cigarettes with my older brother, even got kicked out of Cub Scouts for smoking. But I didn’t try pot again until I returned to L.A. from the big adventure in Aspen following my seventeenth birthday. I took up hanging out in Hermosa Beach, surfing and hitting the Insomniac, one of California’s famous string of coffee houses, a haunt for the bohemian set. I loved the smoky atmosphere, the funky blues of Long Gone Miles and the Chambers Brothers, the rock-out spirit of Bessie Griffith and the Gospel Pearls. I played chess with the intellectual types who discussed philosophy, learned to roll Bull Durham and drink espresso and listen to Bob Dylan. It would have been easy to be an alcoholic, I was so romantically impressed with wine in a poetic Omar Khayyam sort of way. Then I went down surfing to Baja and while skate boarding on a hill above Ensenada met Rick Griffin, the famous surf cartoonist, who talked up the virtues of marijuana. Back in the South Bay, hanging out with my surf buddies and former school friends, the hot topic besides girls and surf was smoking pot. Only no one had really tried it except me and that was a vague unrequited memory at best. However, I was a proponent and repeated all that I had heard from Griffin in Mexico. In our discussion group hanging around our parked cars, Ken, a quiet junior college dude, pulled me aside. Hey man, you want to try it?

For sure! I gladly followed.

We drove out to his apartment near Harbor College. His place was neat, clean and quiet. He had several large fish aquariums that were prominently featured.

Ken disappeared out the door into the yard. In a few minutes he returned with a can in hand. Drawing the curtains and turning down the lights, the aquariums glowing and bubbling with colorful fish, Ken laid out a cloth on the carpet where we sat. Slowly, turning every movement into a ritual-like gesture, he prepared the pipe with marijuana and offered it to me. He lit a match, I took a deep drag into my lungs holding it with puffed out cheeks until it burst out with a sputter and cough. Leaning forward handing Ken the pipe with both hands, I felt a lightness and levity that reduced me to laughter almost immediately. I liked it, a lot. We both ended up rolling around the floor laughing hysterically in tears; everything was truly hilarious, and life was suddenly a gas.

The world appeared differently from then on. I looked forward to turning on to pot at every opportunity. That’s when I met Righteous Art; Righteous, because Art had the best deals on pot and acid. We became instant buddies with surfing, sailing and pot smoking in common. My first hit of acid came from Art, Sandoz acid that he had scored in Mexico. LSD was still legal in those days. I experienced that first trip on Hermosa Beach on a warm spring afternoon lying on my back in the sand watching the strangest dance of clouds right overhead. People were milling about doing their thing walking the strand enjoying the approaching sunset while I was completely tripped out on pastel cotton candy clouds that seemed to be custom dancing just for me. So close it seemed I could reach out, touch and taste them turning and twisting into different colors. Like wow! What a trip!

2 

Purple Pez

THIS FLIP FLASHBACK OF my life flickered through my brain in time with the fluttering wind. As it rolled up to the moment, I considered Art’s offer to try LSD once again. With little to lose, I took the dose that would initiate a train of events that would dramatically alter my consciousness and life direction. As the candy dissolved under my tongue, a seductive purple sour-sweet LSD buzz tingled to the brain. Time warped with an added acuity of the senses. A feeling of being out of place with the ordinary pushed an urge for adventure to spring beyond familiar bounds. We hopped into Art’s old panel truck and rumbled off into another dimension.

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Winter 1966. Eighteen. I had taken the first hit of acid and wanted to know more. Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychology professor advocating open experimentation with LSD, had come to the Santa Monica Civic. On the books, acid was still legal.

Turn on, tune in, drop out, Leary proclaimed.

Makes sense to me, I chimed to Righteous Art. It was because of that first trip that I truly began to understand Leary’s timely statement: Turn on – awaken awareness. Tune in – to the universe and its infinite subtleties. And, Drop out – of the world of social and cultural conventions.

Indeed, marijuana and LSD were among the basic essentials for turning on. That was, after all, the main goal and this was realized at a time of great turbulence, in a world caught up in revolution. Society was demanding a kind of conformity that adhered to mundane grayness, the exact opposite of the colorful outbursts of the youth of the sixties. We, in every field of opportunity, sought to bring forth the infinite palette of creativity. The word was, Drop acid, not bombs.

In those years Black Power rose, fomenting riots and looting in the ghettos of the inner cities, raising a cry for recognition of the sufferings of oppressed peoples. The Vietnam War escalated along with national doubt, as more and more young men were drafted never to return. And then, from the broken homes of the mundane middle class, came the hippie revolution, unleashing flower power and renunciation of the comforts of suburbia in exchange for the natural, the exotic and the search for meaningful answers.

The quest was on for the Holy Grail of True Understanding of Life’s Purpose. A generation of youth stepped up to undertake ‘The Journey.’ We were beginning, or even just fantasizing about beginning, to break free, and to live out the dreams and visions of a generation. We gave up all that was familiar and ordinary in a terrific leap beyond.

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The fireworks display at Haggerty’s Cove was colorful but not inspiring, even in the altered LSD state. We headed back to the harbor and pulled up in front of the Edison plant to discover that in the place where my car had been there was now only a crumpled bicycle, run over by the escaping carjacker. My heart sank, all my worldly belongings, gone – surfboard, clothes, wallet – everything but the broken bike. Though my luck had been down of late, this was over the top. I felt like that crunched bike splayed out on the asphalt: would I ever ride again? Barefoot and stunned I stared into a void as the acid kicked on strong.

Art groaned in his stoned out froggy voice, Bummer, dude! And suggested we row out to Del Sol and continue to trip from there.

The acid was swiftly overtaking us in a warm bath of luminous energy. The scene from the skiff as we pulled away from the dock was totally psychedelic. The glassy, inky looking water was streaked with multi-colored whips and streamers of red, blue, green golden lights that

Reviews for Islands of Refuge

[shieldwolf_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well the book was recommended to me when I wrote a Wikipedia article On David K Bray (the Kahuna) Mr Munoz writes about in this book. I'd seen some of his blog blurbs before and It's an interesting tale of his life with Daddy Bray. Can't say how much of it was true or memories as the author saw them. If you lived during the counter-culture era of the late 60's, this book would appeal to you. I knew David Bray during that same time and have a slightly different perspective. Which is fine, the author wanted to tell his story and he did just that. a good job at writing. But if you are looking for Kahuna traditions of Ancient Hawaii as taught by David Bray, I wouldn't really recommend this book.