The Education of Grandpa Bobar: in Pursuit of Excellence

By Robert Colacurcio

The education of grandpa Bobar has proceeded from an early childhood to what I prefer to call a second childhood rather than retirement. What went undetected during all these years, until now, was how excellence was encrypted in my education, even beyond the appreciation I have always had for the excellence of my many teachers. I hope this anecdotal memoir with a message about excellence gives the reader an opportunity to look more closely into the role excellence has played in their own educational development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479751655

Robert Colacurcio

Robert Colacurcio has been practicing the methodology of the Buddha’s spiritual technology for over thirty five years under the guidance of some of the most accomplished meditation masters in the Vajrayana lineage of Buddhism. Earlier in his life he studied to become a Jesuit priest, and earned his PhD from Fordham University in philosophy. His spiritual background includes two years at the New York Zendo, extensive study in the Human Potential Movement under the direction of Claudio Naranjo and Oscar Ichazo. His journey then took him to a Sufi commune learning the disciplines of the Russian savant, G.I. Gurdjieff. He is also deeply indebted to the works of Carlos Castaneda, Robert Pirsig and Jane Roberts. He currently lives with his wife, Carol, in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, and delights with pride in the growth and constant source of revelation that are his children and grandchildren

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Copyright © 2012 by Robert Colacurcio.

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Contents

Chapter 1 Bobar

Chapter 2 In the Beginning

Chapter 3 Contortion

Chapter 4 Celibacy

Chapter 5 Cloistered Luxury

Chapter 6 More About Cloistered Luxury

Chapter 7 On the Move

Chapter 8 How Do You Know You Are Hungry

Chapter 9 Life on the Outside

Chapter 10 Opening a Can of Change

Chapter 11 Transition

Chapter 12 Emptiness as Fullness

Chapter 13 The Potency of Emptiness

Chapter 14 The Teacher or the Teaching

Chapter 15 Not So Easy Lessons

Chapter 16 Second Childhood

Chapter 17 Eucharist

Epilogue Paideia

Footnotes

Dedication

For all my teachers, especially my parents, Michael and Elizabeth, including my grandchildren: Leo, Griffen, Collier, Wesley and Lilah, who continue to inspire my search for excellence.

Chapter 1

Bobar

Bobar is a name I got tagged with as a child growing up in an eastern suburb of Cincinnati. The name played off of Babar the baby elephant in a children’s book. They said I was pudgy like Babar although I can’t find any photos showing me overweight like the pachyderm in the story. I do know that like Babar I loved to play in the dirt. I still do. In fact I told my wife Carol recently that, if my final resting place has a stone marker, let it read: He was happiest playing in the dirt.

Between our backyard and the next street over was a stand of trees that we called the woods, dark enough and wide enough for a child to get lost only with imaginative play. By the time I hitch hiked off to high school, a real estate developer would have been impressed with how completely I had platted almost all of the woods with tree houses, forts, foxholes and bridges. But my favorite play place in the woods was a dirt slope about twenty feet from crest to trough. I micro managed this dusty embankment with a labyrinth of roads for my cars and trucks. Whether it was the sometime solitude or the camaraderie when some of my pals would join me as my road crew, something about that shady, dusty hillside remains indelible. And this, despite the fact that after every heavy rain, I would have to re-carve all those sinuous creases and curvatures that criss-crossed that slope like the tracks of a novice skier on a bunny run. I guess Bobar stuck because coming home from that dirt slope I often looked like a baby elephant after a dust bath.

I live now on a slope at the top of a mountain close to the Skyline Drive gateway in Virginia. Thinking back to those woods east of Cincinnati in the years just after World War II, I feel they were part of a childhood that was so special in its ordinariness. When I talk now to guys approaching retirement, I often hear their nervousness about it. Apart from the financial anxieties that have increased of late, there is almost a fear of being freed from a work routine. What to do with all their free time once a lot more golf has been played, trips have been taken, and the luxury of mid-day naps has been satisfied? In many cases when I ask about their childhood, I sometimes learn that theirs was not so different from mine. I ask if they have a memory of a time, before structured school began, when their day was their own. No agendas. No time slots to fill. Did they live in a neighborhood that was safe so that disappearing into the woods alone didn’t make Mom nervous? Were they able to bike around without any restrictions as to how far they went, as long as they checked in for lunch and showed up with a scrubbed appearance for supper? To those guys who enjoyed a childhood like that I say retirement can be a second childhood just like that. The difference is that now you have more options and more money. But the freedom can be just like that. To those guys who can’t relate, I wish them the best and hope that their anxiety about being freed from a work routine will dissolve over time.

There is a saying that goes It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. While I believe that is true, I can’t paint a picture of retirement as second childhood for those whose pre-school days were not special in their ordinariness. And I am saddened to feel this way, but anymore, that ordinariness is becoming even more an extraordinary thing of the past.

Chapter 2

In the Beginning

Have you noticed how memories differ? I mean not in the obvious sense that one’s history is composed of many different memories. Memories tend to get ranked as though they were in the military. Think about which memories you would classify as privates or corporals, the foot soldiers and guard duty grunts. Which memories have won their Master Sergeant stripes? Some memories go on to become like mid level ambitious officers—how often they show up to take over a conversation or a reverie! And then there are the highest in command, the four star generals. These memories direct the show, whether through inspirational leadership or a battle-tested tenacity that doesn’t know the meaning of surrender.

I have a childhood memory that has been a general of inspiration my entire life. Again it seems so special in its ordinariness. It happened one morning in late spring during that period before school work and agendas commandeered my expectations of what the day would bring. This day dawned mountain-air fresh. The steamy summer mugginess of the Ohio River valley was still a few weeks away. I remember running out into our large backyard barefoot. The early morning dew was heavy enough to make the rose bush droop. But there was no drooping in my attitude. The clarity of the sky, the wetness of the grass, the freshness of the air and my open-ended day suddenly conspired in my imagination. The plot line of this childhood conspiracy was as simple as it was profound: anything is possible today. I felt support from the elements themselves, like a first place finisher lifted shoulder high. I felt a sense of successful completion even though I had barely begun. And not just that day, my entire life seemed to have its beginning and its end made somehow emblematic in that timeless moment. I don’t remember what I did the rest of that day. Probably I checked on my forts in the woods and tooled around the neighborhood on my bike. Those details have taken their place among the many foot soldiers in my memory. But the confluence of memory and motivation that created that fountain of youthful inspiration has remained a general and commanding outlook in my life.

A mourning dove—which for