From Beast to Priest: The Transformation of Benny Podda

From Beast to P riest riest The Transformation of Benny Podda

ais ing a Ma n  by Todd W . Skipton An excerpt from R aising

The author spent 4 surreal days with the Podda family and witnessed first-hand a small, select sample of the Podda worldview. The author experienced many strange, other-worldly events in the lair of the Podda, and observed the remarkable and shocking total transformation of the Beast from the East. This article is the barest, most rudimentary distillation of the Podda madness. Every idea and story in this article emanates from, and is representative of, the Way of the Podda. Enjoy this unique look at Podda, and many other fascinating characters, in the new ebook Raising a Man, by Todd W. Skipton, available at http://raising-a-man.org

Benny P odda  “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot.  “Destroy everything, obliterate what makes us weak / so a new life can begin.” Hatebreed, lyrics to song “Destroy Everything.”   “… that for which you seek, is that with which you seek.” Benny Podda. Benny Podda devotes his time to life’s deepest mysteries, such as “why are we alive?” and “what is our purpose?” and “what are the limits of the human organism?” His quest began at a young age. His first conscious memory is of his 2nd birthday party. He prepares to blow out the candles on his cake and looks at his peers and relatives, who wear silly hats and blow noisemakers. He thinks (in so many words), “take off those stupid hats; there’s more more to life than this foolishness!”  His life is devoted to moving past the foolishness and getting to the crux of man’s existence. A companion of Armenian author and spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff said, “When you were near him, every attitude, every gesture, was different from ordinary life; he made you feel another dimension, another possibility of being … Everything was wide awake, as though I had found a lost paradise … {he displayed} precision and extraordinary vivacity the instant the need arose.”  Podda has the same charisma and the same vitalizing effect. He does everything with a focus and an intensity that separates him from the herd – he’s not just eccentric, he’s out-of-this-world crazed in comparison to the average; albeit he’s anchored and solid and stable within a spiritual dimension visited by few and understood by fewer.

Podda came to acclaim as a national champion bodybuilder in the 1980s. He used the disciplines of bodybuilding and powerlifting as ways to maximize his potential. Ostensibly, he inflicted the maximum possible amount of physical stress to his corporeal body in order to transform his physique; the real purpose, however, was to push beyond the limits of the physical body and tap into the greater capacities of his mind and his spirit. The pursuits of lifting weights and training his body were mere pathways to the ultimate goals of maximizing his mental and spiritual powers. They were external expressions of internal power. He took his evolution as a personal responsibility and did everything possible to grow in capacity of body, mind and spirit. If evolution is a ladder he always sought the next rung. In terms of  integrating the body and mind and spirit into a single point of focus, imagine a large, slowspinning orb. It is transparent and hollow; inside are 3 rubber Super Balls, bouncing about. The faster the larger orb spins, the more the 3 Super Balls inside begin to conform to its same path until at a maximal spin and speed all of the balls and the surrounding orb appear to synthesize and become one. Such is the way of a man whose entity (the orb) houses a coalesced bodymind-spirit (the 3 Super Balls): when all are focused on the same goals and travel along the same path, the differences between them become blurred and indistinct and unimportant. Nothing in a man who has fused these normally disparate parts of himself lies unused or undeveloped, and in this fashion a man can focus his full attention on developing his potential. It’s confusing and esoteric and entirely possible, with enough practice. This is what it means to put “your all” into a task. Jim Morrison of The Doors said, “There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors.” Morrison’s life was an effort to break down those doors, to break on through to the other side, as he sang in a popular song. He said, “I like ideas about the breaking away or overthrowing of established order … external revolt is a way to bring about internal freedom.” Podda’s life has always been about breaking down doors, both in a literal and a metaphysical sense. Consider the childhood game of “hot box.” 3 young men, 1 baseball. 2 bases, 2 basemen, 1 runner. The runner begins in the middle, halfway between the bases, and his objective is to reach a base without being tagged out by a fielder. Use this game as a metaphor for life, with the bases representing potential. One base represents individual potential used purely for self; the other base represents individual potential used for a greater good. A normal, average runner plays it safe, remaining somewhere in the middle. He waits for a fielder to make a mistake or a bad throw; he is dependent on their actions. The daring runner pushes the limits and is aggressive. He dares a fielder to tag him and he progresses toward a base at all times. The reckless runner’s

derring-do can be disastrous, or it can be successful, but it is always entertaining. Podda went to extremes in everything: racing headlong toward one base and then the other; feinting and swerving and reversing direction at an instant; running far out of the baseline; and leaving a trail of dust and destruction in his wake. He barreled into the base and stampeded any fielder who got in his path. He embraced the paradox that is life, and went way beyond the norm in everything he tried. He wanted it all! He was reverent and he was irreverent; he was civil and he was uncivilized; he was thoughtful and he was thoughtless; he was mellow and he was manic; he meditated and he was a man of action; he was compassionate and he was belligerent; he was a hermit and a loner and he was gregarious and the life-of-the-party; he broke bones and he healed injuries; he engaged in unrestrained, debauched acts and he was devout and religious. He embraced the entire spectrum of being a human and took everything, good, bad and all points in-between, to its extreme. Because, in his view, there is no difference: everything is related and everything contributes to growth toward potential. It’s like running between the bases in hotbox – every step counts and it doesn’t matter which base you reach, as long as you arrive. When you embrace extremes you are unencumbered by expectations of normalcy. Podda swung between the poles of a monk’s life of devotion and the fakir’s life of exhibitionism. He kept assiduous, accurate and detailed journals of every morsel of food he ingested and every emotion he felt – and he impulsively traveled around the globe in pursuit of the ultimate training partners. If you were strong, Podda found you and trained with you. He wanted to be the best so he sought the best. If he heard of a strength feat, he tried it until he could duplicate it or obliterate it. His training was so intense that he was known as “The Beast of the East.”  He became famous for, among other amazing feats: squatting multiple 50-rep sets with 315 pounds; performing bent-over rows with an excess of 500 pounds; straining so hard that he turned a vivid shade of purple during his training sets; vigorous posing routines that caused blood to pour from his nose in copious quantities; balancing a barbell loaded with 405 pounds across his neck while lying prone and without using his hands {do not try this}; hanging from a noose, supported only by his neck muscles, for minutes at a time {do not try this}; deadlifting deadlifting hundreds of pounds with his testicles {do not try this}; breaking coconuts with hand strikes; and shattering 2 x 4 wood boards across his limbs and torso during posing routines. He was extreme, he was colorful, and he was completely out of control when he trained! It seems every person who saw him train has some sort of crazed tale usually involving blood (Podda’s, and others) and a stupendous feat of strength done with a seeming reckless disregard for life, limb or sanity.

As unhinged as he appeared, there was always a deep intellect and a boundless curiosity providing an underpinning. Sure, he was always psyched and ready for madness – at the same time, he conducted in-depth research on topics such as philosophy, religion, chemistry and the rehabilitation rehabilitation of polio patients. Gurdjieff Gurdjieff said, “He who has not a critical mind has no place here.”  Underneath all the excess, Podda found a way to balance every extreme with an equal opposite. All the while, he incorporated extensive martial arts into his regimen, to the point that he once challenged world champion karate fighter Chuck Norris to kick him as hard as possible in the chest, while Podda stood, unprotected and unmoving. Norris did; Podda laughed; and Norris hired him as his bodyguard and trainer. Podda worked with Norris for 5 years and appeared in 2 of his films. Podda learned the martial arts in China – there are incredible, amazing stories about his time overseas that strain the bounds of credulity and comprise volumes. Suffice to say, the stories, however fantastic, are credible because Podda is a world champion lei tai platform fighter who still competes in international tournaments. People do not value a thing unless they pay for it. Read the Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged for a full explanation. Podda paid for his martial arts expertise in blood, sweat, and the destruction of  his pre-conceived personality and his strong Catholic beliefs and his habitual ways of acting. His martial arts masters exposed him to such extreme conditions that they reduced him to nothing more than a mass of flesh operating on instinct, without rational thought. Then they rebuilt his intellect and his spirit with an emphasis on the importance of interior and exterior training as developed and perfected by Genghis Khan. The founder and leader of the Mongol Empire was a practitioner of the ars regia, “the royal art,” in this sense a type of Taoist internal alchemy and a martial art called Yi Chuan (mind fist) that demanded intensity, ferocity, and complete commitment. Podda’s martial arts masters indoctrinated him into this way of life and it became another path in his journey to maximize his potential. The book Out Of Control by G. Gordon Liddy described a martial artist as  “… lashing himself into even greater effort. More, more, more! His body was animated by a restless energy, which, because so well controlled by the discipline of martial art, manifested itself in a dynamism producing a tension so great it was almost palpable … his ability to stop and start was so remarkable. He moved in controlled bursts between frozen, split second pauses … so suggestive of invincible strength … as if powered not by muscles but by hydraulics. From his throat came a roar that seemed to rumble and reverberate with the deep chest tone of a tiger … {he} moved with speed astonishing for a man his size.” This is an apt description of Podda, the martial artist.

Much of the synthesis of the mental, physical and spiritual is contingent on focus and concentration. Gurdjieff said, “I am where my attention lies.” A typical man sleepwalks through life, devoting only the bare minimum of his power to a given task. His power lies fallow and wasted for most of his life. When he wishes to tap into his greatness and display the full extent of  his powers, he often finds that he’s still part asleep because he’s forgotten how to be totally awake. This is why a coach says, “Practice like you intend to play.” Greatness is not something that can be turned on and off like a faucet; the faucet becomes rusted and stuck from lack of use. Find ways to go against your habits in order to wake yourself from your slumber. When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge. Seek out conscious labors and inflict intentional sufferings on yourself. Force yourself to turn your faucet on full force! In this way, your power will be there when you need it. At any single moment, it is possible to be attentive. Therefore, if you focus on this moment, and only this moment, you can never have the excuse “I’m tired” or “I’m distracted” or “I’m bored.”  Sever the edge between “before” and “after.” Put your complete focus and concentration on the  “here” and on the “now.” An effective way to practice this is via candle meditation, or pranayama. Sit at a table and look, without blinking, at the flame of a small candle or a stick of incense. When you can remain still and focused and unblinking for at least 30 minutes, you’ll have made a start. This is very beneficial for the young athlete. Take your thoughts off the demands of the game, and focus on your ability to control your body and control your attention and control your reactions. A martial arts master taught that the control of emotion was the most important skill. His students wanted to believe him, but they were more interested in the fighting and grappling and weapons. The master taught those skills, too, but he emphasized that the control of emotion was the most important. One evening, a group of young students arrive at the studio before the master. When the master arrives he holds a loose and precarious stack of porcelain tea cups. He is so focused on the carrying he does not appear to even notice the group of students. A mischievous student thinks,  “Here’s a perfect chance to prove even the master can’t always control his emotions.” The student sneaks behind the master and gives him a hard push in the back, simultaneously yelling “boo!” as loud as possible. The other students know the surprise is coming and are still startled by the sudden movement and noise. The master, though, appears unperturbed. His stride remains unchanged due to the hard push, and he looks and walks straight ahead. The fragile cups remain intact in his arms. He reaches a

table and places the tea cups on it. As soon as the cups are secure, he turns and looks at the mischievous student student for a good 15 seconds. All is still. Then the master lurches forward as if he’s  just been pushed, throws his arms into the air and yells “ahhh” as if he is surprised. “That is an example of control over your emotions. Everything that happens to me, I allow to happen, and therefore I control my response,” he said. Stay in control! Some simple, initial ways to practice this mastery include: 1) eat spicy foods, or use hot sauces. Control your response; minimize how much you drink. Practice your “poker face.” 2) Take contrasting hot and cold showers. Control your response; regulate your breathing. 3) Do not complain if something goes other than intended. Control your verbal responses to “bad” things. 4) Eat foods you dislike – find a way to move past the feeling of dissatisfaction. Practice control in everything! Another martial arts master welcomes a new student to his training regimen. The student is excited and eager to learn. After the first class he asks the master, "How long will it take for me to become your best student?" The master thinks, and replies. "10 years." The student is disappointed. He thought it might take 1 year, or maybe 2 years at the most. 10 years! Impossible. The student asks, "What if I train every day and never miss a class?" The master thinks, and replies. "15 years." The student is downtrodden and perplexed. He thinks, “I train more, and it takes longer?” The student asks another question. "What if I train twice each day for a total of 8 hours every day and never miss a class?" The master thinks, and replies. "20 years." Exasperated, the student asks a final question. "Master, I do not understand. Why is it that every time I tell you I will train longer and harder, the longer it will take me to be the best student?" The master thinks, and replies. "With only 1 eye on the path of martial arts mastery and the other eye on your goal of being my best student, you will never find your way." Meaning, partial concentration precludes reaching your maximum potential. You must learn to focus. Podda became a famous trainer of athletes, professional and amateur, and earned top dollar (he worked with All-Pro linebacker Chris Spielman, whose chapter begins on page 284 of the book, among many others). It was said, “He’ll push you so hard that you won’t want to quit – you’ve

begun to realize that there is more to you, that you are capable of whatever life demands.” He especially taught young men to learn how to motivate and train themselves. Discover what is important to you, and you’ll put forth the effort required to achieve greatness. Clients were plentiful and the money flowed. Podda said, “I have an intense aversion to conventional notions of success,” and he walked away from his lucrative training business. He liked to train athletes, but as proficient and successful as he was, training was not his ultimate destiny. He disappeared from the mainstream radar and continued his search for higher meaning and his quest for a higher potential. His “Beast of the East” combative energies within still surged and boiled over, but his paths took a different form. He took up residence on an Indian reservation and spent considerable time contemplating and studying. In times of extreme solitude, he secluded himself in a remote cave, with his only companion a wary mountain lion. His perpetual mission for more, and his life of paradox, culminated in an experience that changed his life. He was summoned overseas to the Orient, in order to bid farewell to his martial arts master, who was dying. During their last meeting, something extraordinary and inexplicable happened. Podda was listening to his master when he was upended, lifted into the air and rendered unconscious by an unseen, great force he later interpreted as the Holy Spirit. He awakened in a different location, with the firm and unshakable belief ensconced that his new mission in life, his ultimate purpose, was now to meld Eastern Taoism and Western Catholicism into a unified, congruent spiritual whole. He threw his soul into the pursuit, and was transformed from “Beast” to “Priest.”  It was the ultimate paradox. Take everything to its maximum possible potential, from one extreme to the other, and this was the result. Yes, Podda became a Catholic priest. No, he did not become a traditional man of the cloth with soft hands tending to a posh, wealthy diocesan church. He takes his ministry into the impoverished barrio; into a makeshift altar in the back room of a small home in a decrepit neighborhood. Instead of speaking tired homilies and discussing a weak and watered-down faith, he wields 2 separate 3-foot, 25 pound broadswords during his sermons and speaks (by memory) an entire, full, traditional Latin Mass. He’s still as extreme as ever, and his transformation is not by the bread of man, but from a higher source. Tap into your ultimate purpose and you can likewise be transformed into something great. Meld all your life experiences into an unconquerable, maximum you. Podda’s power was revealed to be divine; keep searching and you’ll find your power, whatever its source.

 “Man – a being in search of meaning.” Plato.  “Expect nothing. Expect anything.” Sherlock Holmes.   “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” Mahatma Gandhi.   “Life, I feel, is a state of impermanence, and materialism is the ultimate impermanence. If an individual’s preeminent goal is to subscribe to these materialistic gains, then he will never see clearly the reality we have never known, the true values, the true power, we all have.” Benny Podda.

Note: at the time of the author’s visit, Podda had recently undergone a fasting and training regimen that carved an approximate and deliberate 60 pounds off his stocky frame. At that time, excess muscularity impeded his duties as a priest, and Podda shed the bulk as a part of an overall spiritual and physical transformation. He spoke of a functional “second anatomy,” in essence a literal and dormant suit of muscle that can be “worn” or “removed” virtually at will, which exists   “inside” his physiology and is readily available in many different guises. After a time, Podda returned to his muscular ways and gained an approximate 85 pounds of lean bodyweight within several months. This is hard to imagine and more difficult to believe, but in the world of the Podda, anything is possible.