The Dharma Journal: A Quest for Wisdom Leads to Extraordinary Encounters with Wise Men and Women Across the Globe.

By Frank T. Morano

ABOUT THE DHARMA JOURNAL

Too often we settle for living without resolving the essential mysteries of life: Where were we before we were born? What is the purpose of our lives? Where do we go when we die?

Frank Morano is a seeker of wisdom who has had extraordinary experiences. The Dharma Journal chronicles his quest for answers to these transcendent questions, and the wisdom he found in ordinary and extraordinary people.

You will share his wonder and delight in exploring teachings from Western and Eastern religious and spiritual traditions, as he traveled throughout the USA, Asia, and Europe.

You will read about his unusual encounters with little known cultures and his irresistible pull towards the Tibetan people and their struggle to preserve their culture and identity.

The Dharma Journal is a book of stories and conversations for the spiritually curious. It includes guidance from world famous figures, such as Margaret Mead, John Lennon and Mother Theresa, as well as several personal audiences with the fourteenth Dalai Lama.

Whether you are interested in mysticism, meditation, spirituality, exotic cultures, or travel, you will find it in The Dharma Journal, by a spiritual explorer whose life has been guided by the pursuit of universal truths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781490708133

Frank T. Morano

Frank Morano is a seeker of wisdom who studied the world and had extraordinary experiences. He lived in Asia and Europe and in five American states, and had the good fortune to meet and learn from famous icons of our time. He has been an electrician, a cab driver, an organic farmer, a photographer, an artist, a poet, a teacher, a radio personality, and a chef. He believes that borrowed knowledge is useful, but the experience of living among people in foreign lands, adapting to their cultures, and taking new paths and journeys is unsurpassed. He documented his life with original drawings, paintings, sculptures, poetry, and photography, capturing moments in his dance with life, across continents and cultures, as a teacher, a traveler, and a student. He lives in Florida with his wife, Rena, and their sons, Ananda and Vajra, where he plants trees and devotes himself to the Free Tibet movement.

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Copyright 2023 Frank T. Morano.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-0812-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-0814-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-0813-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023905010

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.

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

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Trafford rev. 05/26/2023

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Author Frank Morano with the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala India, Sept 23, 1985, the year of the Ox and the day he was given his Tibetan name, Tenzin Wang-du, by the King of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso.

Inspiration

I am forever grateful to the King of Tibet, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, Ocean of Wisdom, the 14th Dalai Lama.

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Photo of His Holiness taken by author

Devotion

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Ling Rimpoche

This effort to record the Dharma wisdom I have received in my lifetime is devoted to the sixth incarnation of Kyabje Yongzin Ling Rimpoche, the highly realized Tibetan lama whose incarnation was discovered by the Great Thirteenth Dalai Lama. In turn, Ling Rimpoche revealed the incarnation of the God of Compassion, Chenrezig, the fourteenth Dalai Lama.

The Sixth Yongzin Ling Rimpoche was revered for his scholarship, wisdom, dedication, compassion and spiritual awareness. He seldom travelled and stayed at his residence on a mountain above Dharamsala where he spent his days in meditation, teaching, and occasionally granting audiences. I was humbled and euphoric when I heard he had agreed to grant me an audience.

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When Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala prayed for teachers, Ling Rimpoche gave us his blessing for the building of a school for Tibetan refugee children.

Dedication: To my sons, Ananda and Vajra

Look at the sky.

The stars tell you a story.

Stories teach us how to live.

Study the holy books,

The story of our Gods.

Stories teach us how to die.

Stories are the medium

Between the fire and our food.

Nourish yourself. Share your story.

Stories are the conduit

Between the fire and warm water

In which we bathe. Purify yourself.

Look at your hand. It tells your story.

Look at your lover’s face,

Bathe yourself in her beauty.

Nurture her with your seed.

Study the story called life,

And pass it on to your children.

Love, Dad

Table of Contents

Inspiration

Devotion

Dedication

Chapter 1     Listening to the Birds

Chapter 2     My Birthday Wish

Chapter 3     My Birth Religion

Chapter 4     My Personal Tormentor

Chapter 5     The Question Kid

Chapter 6     My Heritage

Chapter 7     Getting Lost

Chapter 8     Snake Hill, Our Enchanted Park

Chapter 9     The Beggar

Chapter 10   New York City Trains

Chapter 11   Mid-Century Streets of Chinatown

Chapter 12   The Jade Teacup

Chapter 13   The Pure Hand Temple of Wisdom

Chapter 14   The Ahh So Attitude

Chapter 15   Youth Gangs of Ozone Park

Chapter 16   Country Girl

Chapter 17   Greenwich Village

Chapter 18   My Sister-in-Law, Michele

Chapter 19   Terry Street-Car Kelsey

Chapter 20   My Neighbor, John Lennon

Chapter 21   The Woodstock Guru

Chapter 22   Yoga, the Journey Through You, To You

Chapter 23   Going Green

Chapter 24   Cosmic Consciousness

Chapter 25   Bangkok, Another World

Chapter 26   The Ancient City of Bangchalong

Chapter 27   Dharma Talk in Bangchalong

Chapter 28   Khun Huaradong, Man Who Laughs Loud

Chapter 29   The Village Monk

Chapter 30   Kam-dii, Good Karma

Chapter 31   The Khun Yutitom Touch

Chapter 32   The Crystal Buddha

Chapter 33   Guesthouse for the Gods

Chapter 34   Nepal, the World’s Altar

Chapter 35   The Kumari

Chapter 36   Mother India, The Cradle of Civilization

Chapter 37   Road to Kashmir

Chapter 38   Dharamsala, The English Teachers

Chapter 39   Ling Rimpoche

Chapter 40   The Apple Story

Chapter 41   Ratu Rimpoche, the Secret of the Magic Box

Chapter 42   The Master of Past Lives

Chapter 43   Tibetan Children’s Village

Chapter 44   Our First Audience

Chapter 45   My Life-Giving Bowl Empowerment

Chapter 46   Maharaja of Rajasthan

Chapter 47   The Chaka Rock

Chapter 48   Good Vibrations

Chapter 49   Omens and Agreements

Chapter 50   The Yong Ling Rimpoche School

Chapter 51   Our Second Audience, The Presence

Chapter 52   Continuing the Conversation, the Second Audience

Chapter 53   Tibetans and Hopis

Chapter 54   The Tibetan State Oracle

Afterword

Chapter One

Listening to the Birds

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Frankie-boy, as I was called, at age four, on the roof of our three-story house listening to the birds.

My extended family’s two-hundred-year-old home was the only three-story house in a two-story Brooklyn neighborhood. It was the tallest, the oldest and the most solidly built. All three stories had very high ceilings, making it twice as high as the more modern two-story houses around us. At the time, the United States was one hundred seventy-seven years old, and our house was older.

My immediate family lived on the top floor, my grandparents, who were the heart of our world, lived in the middle floor apartment, and my Uncle Tommy’s family lived on the ground floor. Uncle Tommy was my Godfather and was the foundation of the house and our family. He maintained the boiler room and wood shop in the basement and he did the landscaping in the front and back yards. Every day after work he could be found swinging a hammer, building something, shoveling soil, or planting a tree, and I loved to watch him work. I was equally at home in all three apartments. I went up and down the fire escape, popping in through the windows in each apartment to eat and to collect food for the wild birds.

My home at 257 Hemlock Street was the site of my first Dharma experience. Courageously for a four-year-old boy, I made my way up the iron steps of the fire escape in the back of the house that led onto the roof, where my companions, the wild birds, waited for me. To risk my life to see the wild birds, to hear their songs, and to watch them come to me for food was, to me, an act of devoutness.

From my rooftop, I had a panoramic view of everything important in my world. I could see the tops of the two-story houses that led all the way up to Highland Park, which was a nature preserve and our reservoir. From my vantage on the roof, I could see the only nearby building taller than our house, the Blessed Sacrament Church which we all attended.

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Fulton Street between Hemlock and Crescent Street

Below me was my grandparents’ vegetable garden and the tall ladders that anchored the clotheslines that went to each house. North and south of Hemlock Street were houses. Looking east along Fulton Street I could see the Greek restaurant, the funeral home, the candy store, Talata’s toy store and Long’s Ice-Cream Parlor. To the west were the Italian grocer, the bicycle store, the pizza parlor and the German delicatessen. In the distance, nine blocks away, was the biggest building in our neighborhood, our school, PS 171 Lincoln Public School. Its massive size rivaled the Catholic church, symbolizing the tension between Church and State that was rampant across the country since the birth of our nation.

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Until PS 171, Lincoln Public School was built in the 1800’s, Blessed Sacrament Church was the tallest structure in the neighborhood so that nobody could look down upon it.

Directly below at the side of our house were the Norwood Laundry and an alleyway with garbage cans from the Fulton Street stores. Although numerous cats congregated in the alley amidst the trash, birds would risk their lives to go there to find food. As a young child, I thought birds were little angels because they had wings. To me, they looked like God’s magical paintbrushes with which he colored the sky. I thought they could fly to Heaven and know God’s thoughts.

I loved birds more than any other animal because they were always alert, always looking for food and aware that they were food. If they daydreamed for a second, people would shoot birds with BB guns and sling-shots. I thought those people who hunted for sport were insane.

I loved wild animals because they were sane. Animals that were kept as pets, whether they were birds, cats or dogs, did not seem normal to me. The more animals associated with humans, the more neurotic they became. Only God’s wild animals were perfect, never mentally sick, deformed or depressed. I wanted to be in their presence. I often told people that I wanted to be a farmer or live in the jungle someday. They laughed and said, in your dreams. I dreamed about it all the time and eventually those dreams came true.

The quieter I was on my rooftop, the more still I became, the more the wild birds came to me. Whenever I moved or spoke, the birds flew away. I trained myself to sit still for hours, quieting not only my body but also my mind. By the time I was five years old, wild birds freely perched on my head, my shoulders, and my fingers, and they ate out of my hands.

Observing the birds taught me that unlike people, they knew what to eat. Other animals, like squirrels, would store their food. Birds never did. They woke up hungry and bankrupt every day, and had faith that Mother Earth would provide for them. The only species that stores more food than it can eat, wastes tons of food, is too fat or too thin, and causes famines, is humanity. I thought humans were inferior to the other species with whom we share this world.

Listening to the birds also taught me to stop thinking. I realized that there was a silence within the silence when I quieted my mind and I attained what I perceived as pre-thoughts. These came to me in the form of blue light, in the gaps between my thoughts. They weren’t yet thoughts in the form of words. They were formless, silent thoughts of colorful light. Some were beyond my understanding, and I had no language to associate with them. When I was in the state of non-thought, I became aware of my inner self. I had contacted my inside me and I realized I was two people, me and my real self. My Inner Self, which I secretly called the real me, was not Frankie Boy. The person who was my Inner Self was the one who talked to Frankie Boy.

One day a Catholic nun, visiting her mother who lived across the alley, was hanging laundry on a clothesline that connected her window to a tall pole in the back yard, as did all of the neighborhood clotheslines. She moved the clothesline on the pulley, startling some of the birds who were roosting on her rope. They fluttered their wings, and then flew to me on the roof, settling down where I was feeding birds chopped walnuts that my grandmother would mix with almond paste to make marzipan pastry.

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I am in front of the house on Hemlock Street in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, where I grew up, 1954. Originally there was an old wooden stairway to the first floor with the basement door beneath it. My Godfather rebuilt the stoop with red bricks.

I looked around to see what had startled them, and saw a young nun with beautiful, forbidden golden-brown hair peeking out from her headdress. She saw me on the roof with the birds and couldn’t take her eyes off of me. The pretty young nun crossed the courtyard, came to our house, and invoking the identity of the founder of the Franciscan sect who was famed for his rapport with wild beasts, announced to my family that Saint Francis was on our roof.

My Godfather opened the window and yelled out at me, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear, Hey! Saint Francis! Get the hell off the roof before you fall and break your neck!

I was never allowed to go up on the roof again. From that day onward, I stopped looking up at the sky. Instead, I looked down and noticed the wonderful world of soil. In a handful of fertile, Brooklyn soil, there were worms and wonderful bugs living together like in a little village. I was totally content playing by myself in the back yard with a stick in the dirt. I stared at the organic soil of my grandparents’ garden for hours. I filled a small bucket with water and poured it into a hole I’d dug with a stick and slowly watched the water go down. I found this to be soothing and relaxing. As I dug deeper, the earth changed color and texture. The changes were slight, but very interesting. The longer I gazed at the water going down into the earth, the more I felt I was descending with it. As I poured the water, more bugs would surface and I would rescue them as if I were a god liberating souls from hell. The deeper I gazed, the more aware I was of smaller and smaller life forms until I could see the most miniscule dinosaur-like creatures. I was like a mud scientist, experimenting with dirt. I figured there were as many lifeforms in a handful of soil as there were people on earth.

I became aware that there are many worlds: the world of humans, the world of birds, the world of ants, the world of cats, the world of butterflies. Inhabitants of these worlds are mostly unaware of each other, although we all share the same earth. I liked ants because they were strong and lived in the inner earth. To me they were the direct opposites of birds. Birds flew high to heaven and ants made deep tunnels, so when I wasn’t allowed on the roof, I fed my leftovers to the ants, and other bugs would fight them for the crumbs. I realized that a peaceful vegetable garden or meadow of wildflowers was actually a battle ground with one species killing and eating another.

In school we were taught about human wars. We prepared for a nuclear disaster with air raid drills where we sheltered under our desks. Some children had nightmares about the end of the world because of films that showed cities turning to dust. We wondered how our desks could protect us. I had my own Armageddon nightmares, but it wasn’t about the end of the world; it was about the end of good soil, air and water.

Perhaps half the soil in the world has already turned to sand. Even as a child I worried that at the rate we were cutting trees, mankind was creating its own doom. If all of the insects perished, the entire planet would die. Without birds and bees, seeds wouldn’t spread, there’d be no pollination, and erosion would increase, causing a worldwide famine. I have attempted to do my part in repairing the world by planting trees. I’ve planted hundreds of trees on my own property in America and thousands of trees around the world.

When I was in third grade, my attention shifted to my next preoccupation – how people lived. Halloween became my favorite holiday, but not because of the free candy. It was the only time when people would open their doors and admit complete strangers, even those in scary costumes, into their homes. I was fascinated by the glimpses into other homes with different and unfamiliar odors, furniture, sounds and colors.

On my morning walks to school, I often stopped to watch the activities of other families. They seemed so unlike mine. I remember one in particular. The father and a couple of children would pile into the car on their way to school and work. The mom always walked out with them, handing each a lunch bag. She kissed each of them on the cheek, and as the car drove away, she stood and waved goodbye until it disappeared down the street. Then she would take her shopping cart and put on a hat even though it wasn’t raining or cold, and walk to the stores. One time she invited me in and asked me if I was hungry. I was a chubby kid but people liked to feed me. On the table I saw a sandwich of toasted white bread. What is that! I asked, and she told me it was a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I’d never seen anything like mayonnaise and the smell of bacon made me feel sick. Italian kids in my neighborhood were taught it was polite to accept other people’s food, but the mayonnaise looked like pus to me.

It’s good, she said. What does your family put in their sandwiches? I opened my lunchbox and showed her my big loaf of Italian bread stuffed with Italian sausage, peppers, onions, garlic, potatoes and eggs fried in olive oil with oregano.

She said, My, my, that is almost as big as you! Then we each ate our own sandwiches, not at all tempted to share our food.

One day while I was walking to school, I saw some men moving a house. It was a big old farmhouse, one of the last ones left in Ozone Park which was once all cattle farms. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen! I sat down on the curb and watched every move. When the workers ate lunch, I ate the lunch I had brought with me. I sat all day, not moving from my spot on the curb, and watched the men move that house out of the city, hopefully to the country where it belonged.

I got to school that day at a quarter to three, fifteen minutes before dismissal, and told everybody about the old farmhouse being moved. My teachers were unimpressed; to be fair, I was unimpressed with them and found schoolwork very dull. I was never a good student and the teachers didn’t seem to care that I had been gone all day. I realized nobody really cared if I went to school or not, so I started to miss school more often. I would get dressed for school every morning like everybody else, grab my lunch and wander around the neighborhood. I watched men working on cars, and delivery trucks unloading their goods at stores and restaurants. Sometimes I would sit under a tree and make myself comfortable and just watch houses, fascinated by all of the different life styles they revealed.

By comparison, school was not very interesting because the teachers told you what to think. I imagined they were teaching subject matter that they were taught and didn’t matter to them. The teachers themselves seemed as antique as the school. They were mean and puritanical. They didn’t let us Italian kids speak with our hands and made us sit on them. At the time I couldn’t speak without my hands and I found school to be very stifling.

In fact, school was confusing for families like mine. The teachers taught us about World War Two from what they’d read in books, but our men who had fought in the war told us different stories. It was hard for a kid to choose between his family and his teachers. We didn’t want to get in trouble and we didn’t want to go against the family.

My cousin Patricia was outspoken and told her class things that her father, my Godfather Tommy, said, and she got in trouble, but my cousin Tommy and I kept our beliefs to ourselves. The older we got and the more we experienced the world, the more we learned our fathers and uncles were correct.

For example, our teachers taught us that when Columbus sailed to the New World and reached the Caribbean, he thought he was in India so he called the people Indians. My grandparents and other immigrants had learned that when Columbus came to the Americas and saw the people were naked and unashamed, he thought he had found a paradise and called the people in Dios, people of God. They pointed out that in Columbus’s time he was likely to use the name Hindustan to refer to the sub-continent.

They also pointed out that there were benefits to British colonization, which united many different countries, each with its own language and culture, into the nation now called India. My grandparents identified with that because Italy had a similar history. It consisted of many kingdoms and states, each with its own dialect, and wasn’t united until the late 1800s.

Chapter Two

My Birthday Wish

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I am in the back yard in 1953, blowing out the candles at my fourth birthday party.

I was born Frances Thomas Morano in 1949, the Year of the Earth-Ox according to the Chinese Zodiac. I am a true Earth Ox – grounded, content to be alone, capable of being lazy, yet very strong and a hard worker. I was born in June and my Greek astrological sign is Cancer, the Crab. Crabs like to hide but they can hurt you if you invade their caves.

In 1953 we celebrated my fourth birthday with a party in the back yard and I blew out all the candles, guaranteeing I would get my birthday wish. There was one place that was unfamiliar and mysterious to me and my family. It was the Chinese restaurant on Fulton Street under the Crescent Street El, near Mellor’s drug store. The place frightened us, so I decided that that was where I wanted to go for my birthday dinner. Nobody else wanted to go there. My family loved our Italian food and didn’t readily trust foods from other cultures. We didn’t understand foods like jello, spam, white bread, or soft American cheeses and we all feared mayonnaise. When I announced my choice, my grandmother objected in Italian, When they make chicken chow mein, the chicken walks through it with boots on. My Uncle Bruno added, Never eat that soy sauce. It is made from pigeon blood and is a Chinese plot to poison Americans. And don’t eat any of their cookies. They put paper in the middle to choke you.

My parents indulged me and took my sister and me to the Chinese restaurant. The dimly lit restaurant was nearly empty, so the entire staff came out to wait on us. My sister Maryann was a beautiful and talented girl whom everyone loved, and she knew it. She did her Shirley Temple act, adorably singing The Good Ship Lollipop and the Teapot song. The staff loved it and made a fuss over her golden eyes, pretty dress and beautiful blond hair. Then they turned their attention to me, picked me up and marveled at how heavy I was.

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My Uncle Bruno, my mother and father, with sister Maryann

They carried me to the private back room and there, for the first time, I saw a statue of the Buddha. There were two candles flickering on either side of the statue and an incense burner in front at the Buddha’s feet. I was fascinated by the image and also by how the Chinese people bowed to it. They paid reverence to the Ho-Tai Buddha, sometimes called the Fat Buddha. In my church by comparison, the Catholic statues of saints were tall and thin, white skinned, and they usually had blond hair and blue eyes.

I knew I resembled the Buddha and that we were inseparable. Time stopped, as did my thoughts, while I gazed at the dancing shadow of the Buddha in the flickering flame of the candles. The incense smoke twirled slowly around the golden idol, then quickly danced up and away in the hot, rising air of the candles, and disappeared into another dimension. The mystical fairy dust from the incense sparkled in the beam of the candlelight, making the shadow of the Buddha look like it had come alive.

I could not articulate my thoughts but I blinked my eyes and made eye contact with each person in the altar room. Their wide eyes were fixed, staring at me. I closed my eyes, immersed in the light dust that floated in the air.

An old man handed me a Chinese newspaper. He wanted me to read an article that seemed to disturb everyone. I couldn’t read English, let alone Chinese, but somehow, I understood that China had announced they were building a road to Tibet. I started to cry.

Then a blue-eyed Chinese woman wiped the tears from my eyes and told me in English that I had a lucky face, like the Buddha. With both hands, she picked up a small, golden Buddha, touched it to the top of her head and then gave it to me. Imitating her, I touched it to the top of my head. I looked at the golden Buddha and saw myself. She put the holy image in my shirt pocket as she said, Always keep this near your heart. I stopped crying and said, Jeepers, thanks for the toy, lady! She said, It is not a toy; it is your path.

My mother appeared, looking very disturbed. She took me by the arm and dragged me out of the altar room as my father paid the tab. On our way home, my mother let me do one of my favorite things, which was to run up the stairs to the Crescent Street El, cross over Fulton Street and run down the other side as they crossed the street below. Those iron steps were the birth of my love affair with trains. The sharp turn from Fulton Street to Jamaica Avenue was frightening and the trains always went slowly, so as not to fall onto the East New York Savings Bank. This fascinating piece of engineering was a fun, exciting ride to all young boys, and fearsome to all mothers.

My parents asked me what the Chinese people had done to me to make me cry. I said, Nothing! They liked me and gave me a toy. I showed my mother the little golden Buddha and said, Look Mommy! It’s fat like me and it is made of real gold!

My father held it, weighed it with his hand and said, Hmm, this might be worth something.

My mother snapped, No Carmelo, that is a voodoo doll. It is cursed!

I said, Chinese red Communists are invading Tibet.

My mother said, The Chinese are not red. Indians are red; Chinese are yellow.

My father replied, Frankie-boy, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Communists are from Russia.

But the Chinese newspaper said the Chinese Communist Red Army was building a road to Tibet.

Frankie-boy, said my mother, you can’t even read English. They must have told you that. We are never going back there again.

My father asked, Why not? The food was good, and it was cheap.

Carmelo, they didn’t wait to hear Maryann finish singing I’m a Little Teapot, and they took Frankie to the back room. I went back there. It was creepy.

Isabel, where is Tibet?

My mother answered confidently, There is no such place. It’s from a movie called Lost Horizon about Shangri-La. It doesn’t really exist. They make up these things in Hollywood.

My father said, I remember that movie. I think we should go back to the restaurant and make Frankie return that golden idol.

I cried, No Daddy, I want to keep it! The little golden Buddha reminds me of me before I was born.

My mother said, Frankie boy, they made you meditate. You went too deep! Don’t do that again because if you go too deep you will find the Devil!

My father questioned, How can someone make you meditate?

I tried to explain, Mom, I felt holy, like being in church. If I must meet the Devil someday, I think I’m better off meeting him while I’m meditating. Being a child, I didn’t have the words to express my instinctive understanding. What we call the devil is a being or situation that seeks to manipulate us. Meditation enables one to control mind and imagination, so it makes us immune to subtle negative influences.

When we got home to our old brownstone, we walked up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. It took a long time because we had to stop on each floor and tell each