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| Stan Madson and the late Phil Thompson inside Bodhi Tree Bookstore (wikipedia) |
Goodbye, Bodhi Tree Bookstore! Melrose Ave.
As part of our continuing series "Adventures in Church," we this morning enjoyed a peaceful Sunday service with the Quakers, one of the best forms of Christianity we have ever come to know (which also has a few others worth mentioning: Gnostic, Unitarian Universalist, and Seventh Day Adventist). This morning at the Friends' Meeting in Pasadena, one Friend stood up to remember Bodhi Tree Bookstore Co-Founder Phil Thompson.
- (Ronnie Pontiac) PHIL THOMPSON of the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, West Los Angeles, shuffled off the mortal coil yesterday [Halloween 2024]. Many people owe him gratitude. Phil had a high paying job designing weapons of mass destruction for the U.S., but instead he decided to quit it and open a spiritual bookstore. What a magical place the store was! Read about its amazing history below.*
(Wisdom Quarterly) It's hard to overstate the importance of LA's own New Age mecca, Bodhi Tree Books, second in importance only to its namesake, the original tree in ancient Proto-India even before the area came to be known as Buddhist Bihar.
There would be no Wisdom Quarterly (which began in print form) without it because so much that was learned and is now shared in these pages was gleaned from one corner of the store that sold Buddhist Publication Society books. (Hundreds of those Bodhi Leaves and Wheel titles are now available FREE from BPS.lk in Kandy, Sri Lanka).
All the other books about other religions in the emporium are out of print or available on storekiller Bezos' venture (amazon.com). We prefer to support independent bookstores like Alexandria II and Vroman's so long as they last. Thompson is survived by his fellow founder and family.
Filmed on location (with actors)
WARNING: It's hard to film a movie, even in West Hollywood, so close to where the movie industry became a worldwide business. This good idea devolves into a violent and sophomoric attempt, funny only for its location and what it may have been trying to say originally. Blood, gore, bad acting.
FILM: Foxfur: Bodhi Tree Bookstore
(Damon Packard) 12/16/11. Set in December of 2012, following the arrival of Foxfur and Khris at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore and following Khris' encounter with the Pleiadian beam ship above the Bodhi Tree. Foxfur disappears and Dewshine appears. Bob Lazar is wandering the aisles, wondering why no one came to his book signing.
Semjase is a real Pleiadean or Plejaren ET, a beautiful Nordic alien, who contacted Billy Meier. He is the founder of a UFO religion called the "Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies" and a contactee whose stacks of UFO photos are claimed to show alien UFO spacecraft (vimanas). Meier claims he is in regular contact with ET beings, which he calls the Plejaren [2]. He further presented metal samples, sound recordings, and film footage as evidence. How is it possible? It is said that Meier claims to be the seventh reincarnation after six prophets common to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam: Enoch, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Immanuel (aka Jesus), and Muhammad [3]. More
Are all Plejarens blond beauties?
David Icke is discovered working the cash register at the bookstore under new cholo (Mexican gang member) management after his vanishing in early 2012. The bookstore was located under the Hollywood sign, just a few miles from the studios, next to the glass pyramid that is the Beverly Center. Scenes from the upcoming mini feature FOXFUR.
Scenes featuring Paris Wagner, Khris Kaneff, Rigg Kennedy, Erica Rhodes, Bob Ellis, Jared Cyr, Ervin J Ross, Kristine Caluya, Joseph Olibrice, Christopher Turner, Rick Klu, Linda Mintz, Stanley Griego, Abraham Rubio, Craig Henderson, Vincenzo De Ghoulie, Bogart Linares, Carlos Minoz, Tony Mendera, and Stephen Walter as the property manager. Written and directed by Damon Packard. A Stephen Carter Production.
*Illuminate Heart and Mind: Bodhi Tree Books
Ronnie Pontiac, via Threads, Nov. 1, 2024, and medium.com, March 8, 2020
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| How do you know if you're hip? |
Like a Tibetan wind horse, for decades the flag of the Bodhi Tree Bookstore rode the breeze above Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood.
At first the freak flag flew to attract only the most underground. Then it became the flag over the capitol of the New Age. Who could count the number...that have known the complementary Bodhi Tree bookmark, with its tree logo, and the slogan: "Books to Illuminate the Heart and Mind"?
At first, run by hippies for hippies, with only a few portraits of spiritual masters on the walls, it seemed like a mirage conspired by a couple of dropouts. Then punk rockers arrived, because at the Bodhi Tree they could find books by William Burroughs, Patti Smith, and Bukowski.
As the New Age grew from a mild trickle to a mighty river, for enthusiasts the Bodhi Tree became not only the top destination in Southern California, but for many, in the United States...
[Co-Founders] Stan Madson and Phil Thompson were a couple of literal rocket scientists, aerospace engineers to be exact. They weren’t the only young people who wanted to do something more positive with their lives at the end of the 1960s.
However, they are among the few who actually did it. They created the Bodhi Tree Bookstore. In an interview with Ray Hemachandra in 2006, Stan talked about the origins of the Bodhi Tree Bookstore. It all began when he attended an event headlined by Timothy Leary:
“Tim Leary was there in a white gown, and he opened by having The Grateful Dead play music. I had never heard of The Grateful Dead. Leary said the idea was to tune in, turn on, and drop out.” But Stan was working in aerospace, he couldn’t take the plunge.
Next came Zen meditation. Then a serendipitous meeting while on a walk in Calabasas led to “a session of private talks with Krishnamurti on an estate in Malibu. So about 30 of us were sitting around talking with Krishnamurti.”
Transcendental meditation followed. “Out of all of this, and sitting around and talking amongst ourselves, we decided that there was something intrinsically wrong with doing aerospace and supporting the practice of thermonuclear war.” Years later, looking back on his life, he expressed his happiness that he had found [Buddhist] “right livelihood.”
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| The Beatles travel to India to meet their guru. |
On July 10, 1970, the Bodhi Tree opened. Bodhi Tree’s first Christmas, George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was Number 1. But Janis Joplin had just died that October. Jimi Hendrix had died only a few weeks before Janis. Jim Morrison would die the following summer.
Soon the clean mellow sound of California folk pop, the introspection of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King, ruled the airwaves. People turned inward in search of answers to suddenly pressing questions about the meaning of life, the laws of good health, and the history of human spirituality.
By 1976 the Bodhi Tree’s business had doubled then redoubled and so on so rapidly that they bought the building they had been leasing. The labor of love they themselves didn’t expect to last very long had become a success.
Dan and Marj decided to move on, perhaps because the Bodhi Tree was turning into a demanding business. On the last day of November in 1972, Phil and Elsa along with Stan and Fran formed a corporation called Bodhi Tree Bookstore Incorporated. They dropped the tea shop but always offered free tea for customers to drink and a wide selection of exotic and rare blends, both packaged and bulk, the latter to be scooped out of big glass jars and poured into ever present plastic bags.
In 1978, the small bookcase of used books grew into a stucco cottage next door that became Bodhi Tree Used Book Branch. It had a few shelves on the porch outside the old wooden door offering free books at any hour.
When shoppers entered, they breathed in the aromatic delights of the bulk herb room. Shelves of big mason jars filled with dried lavender, rose petals, licorice root, eyebright, star anise, chamomile, eucalyptus leaves, teas, and of course catnip. More:
- Illuminate the Heart and Mind: The Bodhi Tree Bookstore (Ronnie Pontiac | Medium)
- Laziness does not exist. Psychological research is clear
- I'm 72 years old, healthy, retired for 5 years and completely bored with my life — I want to go back to work but no one wants to hire me because of my age. What can I do?
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