Planet Philippines Feature

It wasn’t what he’d call a dead end job. For six days a week at noontime, he was at it, singing beside a tambiolo, asking often nonsensical questions from girls parading in their swimsuits and doing the myriad tasks (or antics?) of being a mainstay of a television variety show. The pay was good so why should he complain? But he felt that only 15 percent of Jim Paredes was there; the rest was floating elsewhere.

Now helpfully centered by his practice of Zen meditation and the author of two bestsellers, Humming in My Universe and Between Blinks (both published by Anvil), this stalwart of that generations-cutting troika, Apo Hiking Society or APO, looked back on the TV experience, describing it as “a noisy, trivial and crazy endeavor that was making me quite unhappy. It affected my views on everything from being what an artist was to what a spiritual life was. And it wasn’t good.”

When the ax fell and the last memorable image of the APO looked very ’60s as Paredes, Buboy Garovillo and Danny Javier were shown leaving the ABS–CBN compound in a Volkswagen Beetle, he did not feel a great loss.

Certainly there was “a substantial chop in earnings,” but in exchange he got his mental health back and won the freedom to pursue writing, teaching, conducting workshops on creativity.

In a way he was being prepared for the moment. He discovered Zen at a busy time in his life when he needed an anchor. “Showbiz is a fast life. You can get sucked into its meaningless details, the illusion of how greatly different you are from the rest of humanity. I was on the look-out for spiritual grounding. Somebody told me about a Zen group, and I showed up one day,” he said.

He sits or does zazen once a day for 20-30 minutes facing a white door. “There are times when I’m diligent about it,” he confessed. “Other times I’m lazy, but the important thing is it introduced me to a still point where I can separate my life situation from my life. Zen meets the resistance, the blocks that prevent you from being happy and creative.”

The amiable Paredes, 51, has listened to fellow entertainers who lead difficult lives and are spiritually hungry. Many have read his books which they claim have a powerful resonance. The author receives a lot of “intense e-mail” from people who are able to connect to his songs and jottings.

Knowing that the APO has touched both baby boomers and Gen Xers, he said, “If our songs provided the soundtrack to moments in your life, that’s good. If my books put you on the spiritual path, that’s even better.”

He considers his wife Lydia, children Erica, Ala and Mio, buddies Buboy and Danny as his teachers. “Any person who can be a significant other and a significant bother has something important to tell you in your life.”

When he found more time for inner work, he also became an active father. “Before I had a general out-line of what a father should be. I learned the loving, intimate details of what it takes to be one.”

Now he looks at show business in another light. This he traces to the experiences he gained in teaching creativity, performance and practice at the Ateneo University and his participation in book clubs where spiritual literature is discussed and attendance is like a weekly religious practice.

In the past, it was a “been-there, done-that” kind of repetition. “With Zen, I am beginning from repetition, but it feels different. Now in every aspect of my life I try to be present. This makes it a fuller experience. Even if it’s the hundredth time I’m doing a song, it feels new.”

Asked if his Catholic education at the Ateneo helped bring him in touch with his soul again, Paredes replied, “I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the Catholic Church. My disappointment with it led me to Zen. It made me understand God more deeply in spite of the church.”

A typical workshop runs for two hours for six days. The goal, among others, is to unblock the participant and bring him/her back to the original joy of creating.
One exercise Paredes requires is this: The moment you wake up, fill up two pages with anything that enters your mind.

He explained, “No censorship, no pa-pogi (prettifying). Sometimes we’re nagpapa-pogi even to ourselves. Let the mind and imagination have a play-ground.

You will notice that the censors are awake. In the beginning, I was afraid to spell out the ‘f’ word until I wrote ‘Fuck fuck fuck’ two hundred times.” The experience was again liberating.

The ninth of 10 siblings, Paredes came from an “expressive family. My mother told me before I entered college, ‘Whatever you want to be, even if you want to be a cook (the position wasn’t called a chef then), so long as you do your best, that’s okay by me.’”

He has felt the presence of his late parents and the great teachers Jesus and Buddha—”one of the blessings of Oneness” as recalled in his book—in his car.

He said, “When you’re totally within the flow of the universe, there are no barriers to the energy out there. I felt the energies of my mother and father, the borderless energy of the unmanifested. While empirically it cannot be proven, experientially it was there.”

He compared this to athletes reaching “the zone. It’s anti-intellectual. It’s just in the flow of things. How do you know? You just know! You build towards it. It’s within your grasp at any given time, but you must be totally non-resisting.”

That energy is almost palpable as Paredes readies for the launching of his third book, Writing on Water, this time accompanied by his photos. It is in “the stream of Zen but darker. You can’t be so serious about writing your life. A wave comes, and you’re gone and become part of the collective ocean.”

He beat writing siblings Ducky and Paulynn with two volumes under his belt, but claimed that being a beginner was a plus. “There’s less self-consciousness, less hangups. I’m less critical of myself.”

He is only 17 books shy of his goal of 20.

E-mail Paredes at haringliwanag@hotmail.com. Visit his website at www.jimparedes.com.

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