WiP #54 Celebrating Wes Nisker, the Great Question Mark in the Sky

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Here, you’ll find tools to facilitate change – perspectives from the frontlines of resilience, mindfulness, psychedelics, and neuroscience – with a sprinkling of pop culture. All from an integrative medicine psychologist/coach/prof who’s right by your side in this journey of growth and renewal.

🗂 This Week in Work in Progress

• Status Update:  An homage to Wes Nisker, the most beloved meditation teacher who’s Buddhism’s best kept secret.

• Inspiration:  A poem that reminds us that love and pain are entwined…and that’s as it should be.

• Lighter Note:  Tidbits from Wes & WandaVision

🔔 Status Update

Wes Nisker was a comedian. He was also my most beloved meditation teacher and a Theravada Buddhist. His work focused on the cosmos, on physics, on the awe in absolutely everything. Wes Nisker was a unique and unlikely amalgam of everything I love. 

Wes Nisker died on August 1st. 

I’m still crying as I write this. Is it grief? Or is it love? Making friends with my mind, I remember: it’s both. 

“What is grief if not love persevering?” 

– WandaVision

Wes was probably the most sublime mindfulness guide you’ve never heard of. He never reached the fame of his peers – people like Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, and Jon Kabbat-Zinn. But he was renowned and adored within the community of Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation. He was the consummate teacher’s teacher and, as such, had a wealth of wisdom to share.

Today, I’ll introduce you to Wes, so you might discover him through the library of inspiring material he left behind. Here – carrying his message forward – is my deep bow of gratitude to Wes. Dear readers, thank you for taking this journey with me.

Wes Nisker: Infusing the Spiritual with Spirit, the Karma with Comedy 

When I say that Wes was a comedian, I don’t mean that his talks and meditations were funny, though they were. I mean he was an actual standup comedian. It’s safe to say he was the first (and only?) comedian Buddhist meditation teacher. 

He was also a mystic, though he never would have referred to himself that way. In his awe-infused meditation practice, “Be Here Wow,”  he imbued meditation with joy and wonder. His was a different type of meditation altogether.

Instead of simply observing an anchor – the breath or sensation in the body – he infused that investigation with a sense of reverence, advising meditators to attend to the amazing biological near-impossibility that we are. That we grew out of stardust, thanks to just the right balance of matter and antimatter. That our bodies developed and adapted to generate a form that functions on this planet. That our brains have the capacity to turn waves into something we recognize as sound. That those same brains transform 11 million bits of information per second into the data we need and deliver them in a way we understand and are able to act upon. 

“After engaging in some conscious reflections such as the ones above, I suggest a meditation session, where we can experience the mystery inside of ourselves: What is this warm, energized, self-regulating, self-knowing, pulsing, vibratory field of mystery? For a while at least, our innocence is restored and perception becomes laced with a sense of wonder: What is breath? Sentience? Consciousness? Aliveness? What is life? The questions are koans, skillful means, a way to be here, wow!”

– Wes Nisker

Hearing this talk was the precise moment when I became a committed meditator. It happened in 2007, during a Spirit Rock retreat, in my first sit with Wes. At the time, I’d already been meditating – haphazardly – for about fifteen years. But with “Be Here Wow,” Wes startled some aspect of my being. 

Drawing connections across disciplines of physics, philosophy, religion, and evolution, Wes interlaced meditation-speak with a heavy dose of earthly enlightenment. His words made me want to keep trying. 

Years later, at a 10-day silent Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation retreat in the rolling hills of San Geronimo Valley where Spirit Rock, my spiritual home, peacefully rests – I sat in silence with Wes. I’d scored a coveted one-on-one slot with my teacher and aimed to use every sacred moment well.

Eventually, he initiated the dialogue, asking what was needed in my practice. I told him how much I admired his humor – the levity he brought to even the most complex and painful topics. I wanted to emulate him – his joie de vive, his lightness, his radiance. I, who’d leapt from the womb seemingly prepped for intense introspection, longed to infuse my life and my craft as a meditation teacher with a glimmer of his glow. 

Wes nodded thoughtfully, with his characteristic Yoda-like facial expression and tilted chin. His eyes met mine, he took a deep breath, and he graced me with his only guidance (non-ironically): “You’ll figure it out.”

I laughed out loud, thinking, “Ask a Buddhist a question, expect a koan as an answer,” but left feeling no closer to my goal than I had on arrival. 

And yet, he was right. 

In the years since, many clients have remarked that my humor helped them heal as much as any wisdom, inquiry, or technique that I’d shared. And there was a deep message in his meager response: He trusted me to find my way. He knew he needn’t say more.

Note: For those blessedly uninitiated in the concept of koans…Oxford Dictionary defines a koan as “a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.” You’ve certainly heard this one: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” In my opinion, they’re meant to drive you nuts, but I’ve probably got that wrong. 🤣

Wes also taught me happiness and helped me find it, moment by moment.

“As strange as it sounds, meditation may reveal that we are happier than we thought we were. We may discover that ancient conditioning rather than present circumstances is causing our dissatisfaction , and that this moment is quite sufficient or even wonderful, and we simply hadn't noticed.”

– Wes Nisker

With all these gifts, Wes transformed me from a meditation dabbler – primarily visiting Spirit Rock to sit by the feet of Jack Kornfield, listening to his stories – to a committed mindfulness practitioner and teacher.

He changed my life.

Grieving Part One

A few weeks ago, in a ketamine journey, Wes came to me in the form of a new entity: YodaWes. There were a dozen of these morphed creatures encircling me. YodaWes told me that he’d left me his levity in his will. I felt infused with his glow as he ascended to heaven (a concept neither of us believe in but hey, on a journey you just go with it). This was his parting gift.

Later, I realized that Wes actually looked quite like Yoda (absent the ears and adding considerable height). AI was kind enough to create a bit of a blend that I can enjoy in perpetuity.

Einstein said…

“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 

Wes chose the latter. I’m working to do the same.

We can learn to be more truly ourselves, without masks, without pretense, by emulating those we admire who have done the same. 

How to Find the Best of Wes

In the 80s, Wes founded Inquiring Mind, a now-defunct journal for the Theravada/Insight Buddhist community. The journal that spanned nearly three decades (1984-2015) includes interviews and essays by many of the great minds of the time (teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Jon Kabbat-Zinn, and Joanna Macy). 

Archives remain available here and I recommend a deep dive. Revel in the legacy this unique teacher left behind! The best part is the topics index – easy to find on the site’s homepage. It’s a wonderful resource when you’re struggling with something. A warm, healing salve awaits.

Wes was prolific, so many books and teachings accompanied the journal, often deepening the dabble of his monthly essays. My favorite is The Essential Crazy Wisdom, in which Wes’s mastery of synthesis shines. In it, he draws together ancient and modern “philosophers” (from Rumi to Einstein, from Gandhi to Lily Tomlin) in a joyful path to enlightenment. Quite the departure from the typical somber or zenned-out presentations we usually see in the meditation world. 

Here’s a taste…

Crazy wisdom sees that we live in a world of many illusions, that the emperor has no clothes, and that much of human belief and behavior is ritualized nonsense. Crazy wisdom loves paradox and puns and pie fights and laughing at politicians… 

Crazy wisdom is the skeptical voice inside us that doubts our importance in the world and questions our belief in a higher purpose. It is the nagging suspicion that both our reasons and our reasoning are mistaken. Crazy wisdom laughs at our ridiculous ways and shows compassion for the suffering that results from them. It presents us with the bigger picture, and with ways to step lightly through it. 

– Wes Nisker

Grieving Part Two: Saying “Hello” Instead of “Goodbye”

Wes loved a good cosmic mystery. And we’re confronted by those on a weekly basis, thanks to scientific advances. Like this recent wonder…

Have you seen the great question mark in the sky? 

Scientists tell us that we’re viewing a pair of actively forming stars when we look upon this recently captured image from the James Webb Space Telescope*…

 …as seen from this glorious constellation*:

This image has mesmerized the masses.

One Webb scientist, Macarena Garcia Marin, believes the great question mark in the sky is resonating so much with people because,

 “We all enjoy finding familiar shapes in the sky; that creates a deep connection between our human-experience and language (in this case a question mark!) and the beauty of the Universe surrounding us… this exemplifies the human need for exploration and wonder…"

Wes epitomized this connection between human experience and the universe. And I choose to believe (against all scientific evidence), that the giant question mark is Wes, in his next incarnation. There he is, up there looking down, laughing, questioning, and lighting the way.

A final quote from WandaVision:

"We have said goodbye before, so it stands to reason...we'll say hello again."

Till we say hello again, Wes…

Who has served as your inspiration? How did they change your life and worldview? Please share. I’d love to know!!!

* Images courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale

💡 Inspiration

“Your ache is as large as your capacity for love.” It’s wise to remember that there’s a cost to love – one worth every emotional cent. If you love, you will eventually lose. But if you choose not to love, you are already lost. 

So go ahead…break your own heart. The breaking of it is its own glue. 

That’s what this quote triggers in me. What does it say to you?

🤡 On a Lighter Note

Celebrating mentors and role models who light the way …

• The Wes Nisker dharma talk, Be Here Wow (for the uninitiated, think lecture or inspiring sermon or, in this case, transformative experience).

• Short and funny Wes Nisker comedy/dharma routines (as only Wes has ever done): The Artist Formerly Known as God & Crazy Wisdom

• One of the most beautiful TV scenes ever: WandaVision “What is grief, if not love persevering?” 

Want more on meditation role models? Here’s your next read, about Jack Kornfield. 

🎀 It’s a Wrap

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