Backstory & audio of poem/song, "Golden Token" from the new book, "Breathing Life into Death: Poems, Songs & Visions" by Pushkara Sally Ashford.
When I was quite new to the practice of meditation, I was invited to serve in the Prison Project, teaching meditation to male inmates at MacNeil Island Penitentiary. Once a week, our team traveled 30 miles by car to board a boat that ferried prison staff, inmates and visitors to the island. Our little band of three sat on deck at the stern accompanying ourselves on harmonium, cymbals and tambourine in much the same fashion as I’d witnessed on the streets of Seattle.
Before the time of my spiritual awakening, I would never have imagined doing such a thing. Chanting Sanskrit mantras and willingly going into a male prison facility were foreign to anything that I had ever done. Some unnamed terror came over me on arriving there to give my first talk. As we were leaving, I told my companions, “Somebody had better take my hand, my eyes have gone out the back of my head.” I felt very spaced out and in no way grounded in everyday reality. Even so, I continued to show up each week to make the journey to the prison.
In the meantime, I offered prayers to my teacher, asking for help and guidance regarding this seva. “Why me? Why here?” “Why now?”
I had a dream then, in which our meditation community was preparing for our teacher’s arrival in Seattle. In the dream, my teacher had arrived and was about to enter a vintage birdcage elevator, the bars of which were made of gold. A small group of friends had circled and were listening to a folk ballad being sung about “the Lord” who gives a “golden token“ to a “prisoner,” symbolizing a task which, if completed, would set the prisoner free. I watched as a small cylinder, the same gold as the elevator cage, was placed on the palm of the prisoner’s hand.
Still in the dream, my teacher entered the elevator to ascend to a rooftop open to the blue sky. The small crowd that had gathered listened as the song played on. Leaning against the elevator cage one man remarked, “I like the part about the prisoner being freed.”
During a subsequent meditation, the dream scenes replayed. This time, I heard a Sanskrit phrase being repeated: “Moksha moolam guroh krpa.” I didn’t know Sanskrit, but I knew where to look for the translation: “The root of liberation is the guru’s grace.” I’ve since come to understand that freedom is an inside job, one whose journey can be eased through the guidance and direction of a true master.
Before long, I realized that I was no less a prisoner than the inmates at the prison. When I shared my dream and meditation with them, the walls and bars between us dropped away. They also liked the part about the prisoner being freed!
I thought I'd find the ballad among the annals of American and British folksongs, many of which I'd been performing for years. In the dream, this song seemed so familiar. Instead, I was moved many years later to write “Golden Token.” It was finally performed at my 65th birthday and recorded by a lovely group of musicians and singers on Whidbey Island in 2005, The lyrics are in my book, “Breathing Life into Death: Poems, Songs & Visions,” available here: https://singpeacepilgrimage.ning.com/
Chorus: Jan Swalwell, Julie Mae Pigott, Lauren-Mirabai Burrei, James Budinick, Richard Rhydes, Halim Dunsky, Pushkara Sally Ashford; Violin,Talia Toni Marcus; Piano, Terri Anson; Tin Whistle, Devin Ossman; Guitar, Halim Dunsky. Julie Mae Pigott; Autoharp, Pushkara Sally Ashford; Bass, Greg Barnes; Percussion, Robert Simon Siegel; Sound effects, David Ashford; recorded by David Malony, Blue Ewe Studios.
Photo of Pushkara taken at sea on the Sea Wyfe in 1959.
Comments