Me, My Non-Self, and I

Random reflections after skidding off an icy mountain road, flying down a steep mountainside, and smashing into a tree.

1. You can read all the books and scriptures you want. You can meditate, do yoga, listen to tons of TED talks, and go to all sorts of retreats and lectures. But sometimes you need to be shaken up, to actually get it. I guess that's why those Japanese zen monks sometimes whack their students on the back with a bamboo stick while the students are meditating. Sometimes what we need, in order to wake up, is to be shaken up.

2. Wearing seat belts is wise. I almost did not put mine on. The attitude was that I could not be bothered. But the act of buckling that strap, which I regarded mainly as a little ritual to symbolize respect for my life, saved me from being crushed to death.

3. As my car flew through the barbed wire cow fence and down the mountain, my only reaction was: "Wow. This is it! Game over!" When I smashed into the tree, and there were no bodily injuries, no explosions, and only silence and stillness, I was very happy, almost ecstatic. Later it occurred to me that if I can view a car wreck with gratitude and even happiness, then maybe I could learn to accept, or even be grateful for, all kinds of other events that usually just piss me off. We cannot control what happens to us, and I am not even sure we can control our reactions, but definitely there are at least two very different ways to view things. It seems I am learning to be positive instead of negative. Years ago, I think my reaction to this event, from the beginning to end, would have been a explosion of expletives.

3. Having to cancel all my appointments and supposed "matters of consequence" for a day, is better than canceling my life.

4. If the Diamond Sutra is correct in its statement that our entire "fleeting world" is "a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream," then what is "my life"? It is even more fleeting than the fleeting world. I could be merrily going down a beautiful deserted road on a sunny day, and then easily obliterated the next instant. Wise teachers say we pop up into human form like a tiny vibration in the cosmos, and then go back into the dust almost as quickly as we manifested, never being separate at all, no matter what we might think.

5. On that same subject, as Michael Deininger-Bell recently posted, we are not entitled to anything. Personally, I've already lived at least two lifetimes. This is if you measure a lifetime by the average human life expectancy from only a few thousand years ago, or if you measure it by how many incredible adventures a person has experienced, or how many wonderful friends he or she has made. I really need to stop obsessing about what I still need to "do" in this life in order to feel fulfilled. I already have enough, right now. From now on, anything that happens is frosting on the cake.

6. Sometimes when you do as you've been told, and turn the steering wheel in the direction of a skid, your car actually goes in that direction, and off the road.

7. Jeeps have great bumpers. Actually, this entire post is sponsored by Jeep. The crash never happened, and the image is photoshopped.

Worth Repeating

"The world is not imperfect, or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people – eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore it seems to me that everything that exists is good – death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it, and to be glad to belong to it."

-- Herman Hesse, "Siddhartha"

Jesus in Mysore Tonight

Sri K Pattabhi Jois's shala is closed for a couple of weeks, while life in Mysore goes on.  Among several hundred thousand other things, yoga students still having lunch and dinner parties.  Serious ashtangis from the shala, those who did not flee to Goa, gather in the dark at 5am to practice at a private house.  They do so almost in secret, driven underground like the early Christians. (Not.)

Speaking of Jesus, he made a big appearance at temple tonight, on the occasion of Christmas Eve.  There were no less than five Christmas trees to the left of the Ramakrishna shrine, including a relatively large one with two smaller ones on either side, all surrounded by dozens of tall, blazing candles.  Instead of  shiny ball ornaments, the trees were packed with bright yellow, red, and white flowers.  At the base of the bigger tree, instead of presents, was a three-foot high sort of alcove, like a small canopy bed, and in the "bed," nestled in more flowers, was a gilded portrait of the baby Jesus.  On top of the "canopy" was something very similar to a small flying saucer, with colored lights flashing around its rim like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Coming out of the top of the flashing metallic UFO was a spinning boquet of hundreds of translucent fiber optic cables, each glowing in a different color at the tip, like a thousand-headed Patanjali on acid.   It was as if the Roman Catholic Church had outsourced its altar decoration work to India.   

After the traditional bhajan chants to Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Devi in Sanskrit and Bengali, a saffron-robed monk read in English what amounted to something like The Bible's Best Hits, including many of my favorite sayings, like "Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all else shall be added unto you."  Then, amazingly, in this Hindu temple there was a Jesus bhajan.  Not a single empty space could be seen in the large room, as the enthusiastic, overflow crowd sang songs like "Silent Night," accompanied by harmonium and tablas.

I was moved.   I tried to imagine a Christian church back in the States, with a congregation bursting into chants of "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama" to celebrate the immanence of the divine everywhere and in all religions.   Or a Shiite mosque in the Middle East, where even other Muslims, like Sunnis, might feel welcome, or vice versa.  I hope places like that exist, but I doubt it.   It's that monotheism thing, I guess.   In any case, Christmas Eve in Mysore is good.  All is calm;  All is bright.

Mysore was so beautiful today

Rains and wind have cleared the city of pollution.  The air and skies are clean and fresh.  The sounds of fireworks from the October festivals have given way to the steady dull plonking of coconuts that fall on rooftops, including mine.  On the short-cut road between KRS Road and Vinoba Road, where the trees are so expansive and leafy that you can feel the cool oxygen flowing down onto you as you drive by, I noticed the women harvesting paddies of dried cow shit that, when wet, they had pasted onto the tree trunks.  I believe the final product is used as fuel for ovens and stoves.  On the way to Metropole, to meet a new employee and his wife for a delicious buffet lunch, I was behind a very tall moving van.  Leaves and flowers cascaded onto me as the top of the truck greeted the tops of the trees.  These falling presents were then blown off by the cool breeze.  Speaking of trees again, many of the ones in Mysore are spectacular, with trunks curving in all directions and branches spreading to cover entire streets. At  5:30, I walked with a local friend around Kukkarahalli Lake, near the the University.  It's a wonderful get-away from traffic, with only the sounds of thousands of white egrets, gathering in the treetops.  What are they chattering about?  I assume sex, but maybe it's just for the sake of chattering.  Perhaps they know something we don't, or I don't. Today I vowed, yet again, to try to devote myself to god-realization, out of awe at whoever or whatever created all of this. 

Notes from Day 10 Dharma Talk

Notes from talk by Thich Nhat Hahn, June 10, 2006:

The only way for a grain of salt to find out how salty is the ocean, is for the grain to jump in.  Our practice is the contemplation of the body in the body, the feelings in the feelings, the mind in the mind, and the mind object in the mind object.  The observer must be one with the observed.

This does not mean that you should become identified with the object of the mind.

Yet mind and matter are extensions of each other.  Consider this quote from Albert Einstein:

"A human being is part of this whole, called by us the Universe -- a part limited in time and space.   He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desire, and to a passion for a few persons nearest to us.   Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

We have read from recent reports that Einstein was unable to apply his vision to his interactions with his own wife and son.   This is because he did not have the practice that is available to us.  Our practice helps us walk, and sit, and act, in the spirit of non-self.

Practice when you are driving your car.  When you are drinking tea, know that you are drinking the clouds.  When you wash dishes, do it as if you are giving the baby Buddha a bath.

Day 10 -- Stop the Presses -- Insight Meditation Leads to Insight!

Another post from my notes at Plum Village monastery, these from June 10:

Had a rough patch yesterday.   I would like to think, and I am probably right, that hay fever was to blame.  Dharma Talk was difficult.  Mostly about reconciliation and the so-called "war on terrorism."   Good ideas, but repetitive, and nothing new (this from the department of redundancy department).   Found myself desperate for the talk to end, with back hurting, and mind agitated and tired at the same time.

Gays and lesbians met for breakfast at the bell tower.  It was first mistakenly announced as a meeting for persons "concerned about, or interested in, homosexuality."   Sounded like a convention for homophobes, or people wanting to try something new!   I went to the event, and was happy to see stunningly beautiful and wonderful so-and-so there.  It felt good to sit close with him and have a friendly talk with him.  It made me proud to be gay, and I examined the glaring errors behind this.

I feel that I have had some insights during meditation.  For example, the truism is finally just beginning to sink in that I am good and valuable regardless of the approval or disapproval of others.  I should be absolutely fearless.  For another example, I am trying to look deeply into the sources for my high-school-style attractions to certain kinds of men.   

My father was a very handsome young man, whom I could not have.  I obviously craved his love, especially as a gay male child would, and my craving was never satisfied.   Perhaps nothing short of samadhi could have satisfied a craving like that.   I wonder if when I was a child, I even attempted to be intimate with him, and what his reaction would have been.  Probably not good!  (He was a Republican, enlisted in the Army, and I don't mean the Irish Republican Army!)  In later years, I was staying with a friend, whose 10-year-old child walked into the guest room and tried to climb into bed with me.  I asked him why.  He said, "you know why."  I did not let him.

My own attraction to certain men, who (surprise!) usually look like my young father did when I was a child, repeated itself in my adolescence and young adulthood.  This was the 1970's, in the South.  (See the movie, "Dazed and Confused.")  If gays had been treated equally, I would have been dating up a storm, taking a guy to the prom, and maybe planning a marriage.  But these things I could not have.   I'm not complaining.  (Okay, maybe just a little bit!)  This situation helped to make me an "outsider," and outsiders have a role to play -- one that I have reveled in for decades.  Instead of dating, I was reading philosophy and running an underground newspaper.  But my craving, instead of being smothered by fullfillment, or even by good old all-American domestic boredom, instead continued to spiral on, in ever-repeating efforts re-enact unfinished business from my childhood.  The same has been the case, even when I have been in relationships, because I always pick the wrong person, based not on who would really be good for me, but upon some compulsion to repeat cycles of attraction meets repulsion.

The point is that if my childhood situation is the objective source for my disturbing mental formations, then these desires do not suggest anything inherently wrong.  I am not, and will not become, a "dirty old man."  Any more than I am a weak or immoral person because I sometimes want alcohol.

I talked to Tei-Man, from Viet Nam, about Viet Nam.  I apologized to him for supporting the Viet Cong.  He shared in our dharma discussion group yesterday about escaping execution and torture at the hands of the communists, by fleeing with his brother in a fishing boat, the two of them hidden in a fishing net.   The sharings yesterday were especially strong.   One man cried uncontrollably, revealing how pesticides had rendered he and his wife childless.  A woman confessed that she was lonely and wished she were home.  Another member of our group tearfully told the story of how, as a child, he had to take the witness stand in a criminal trial, to testify against his father for sexually molesting him.  I briefly and irrationally wondered if he saw his father in me, and therefore disliked or even hated me.  But I did not allow this paranoid notion to take hold.  Even if this crazy idea of mine about him were accurate, such that he actually did feel that way about me, it would say nothing about me.

Hay fever hit hard in the afternoon, and I briefly entertained the idea of hitching into town for a drink.  One of my tent neighbors had suggested it earlier in the week.  I nicely asked him to stop asking.

In Praise of Led Class!

Hey, somebody's gotta do it.  Like many others, I have not been a big fan of led class, ever since I discovered "Mysore" style years ago.  This is even though led classes are what "led" me to Ashtanga and India.  But I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Guruji's led class last Friday. 

I tried to get in last, as usual, in hopes of semi-hiding in the waiting room, but since there were two led classes that day, there was no escaping the availability of spaces in the main room.  I love practicing in the main room, Mysore-style, but with led class, I usually feel like I stick out even more like a sore thumb.  It reminds me of my first classes at the Puck Building in New York, during one of Guruji's tours, when he could spot me with my head up in paschimatanasana (and other poses) from a mile away.  He would come over repeatedly, with his feet making the floorboards creak in advance to warn me, and then he would sit on me, leaving no wiggle room, and butt marks on my back. 

I guess others had a similar feeling Friday, because even though all of the spaces in the very back and middle were taken, there was still a space or two in the very front row, nearest the master.  Maybe Guruji has been behaving this way all along, in which case I apologize for not paying attention, but for an already very accomplished man of 91, he was unusually interested in what people were doing, and not doing.  For the most part he sat in his chair on the stage, behaving like a symphony conductor, constantly waiving his hands to indicate every up, down or sideways, but also barking out interlocutory commands to people who were not in step.   Occasionally he would leave the stage to enforce order and/or make adjustments to people.

I have to say that I was totally in awe that he could be, at 91, so passionate about something he has been teaching nearly every day for over 60 years.

The skeptics say, mistakenly I think, that the led classes, usually held on Sundays and Fridays, are designed to make things easier for Guruji and Sharath, because the total class time is less, and there are less adjustments.  First, given the track record of these two, I would dispute the premise that they are trying to make things easier on themselves.  They both have devoted their lives to Ashtanga yoga.  Second, the stated reason for the led classes, which is to ensure that students are following the series, makes sense to me both in theory and practice.  Especially when I have finished the poses I can do, and when I have few better things to do while waiting to join everybody else for finishing poses, I can see Guruji and Sharath watching everyone with eagle eyes, and making adjustments.  I know that when I am practicing "Mysore-style," I deviate from the series all over the place, and it is not always intentional.  But in led class, with not only teachers watching and easily seeing and correcting the sore thumbs sticking out, but also the practice of relatively advanced ashtangis always nearby, I seem to learn some new detail every time.  I also am freed from those endless internal mental debates about how long I will hold certain poses, or whether I will skip certain vinyasas or even poses, or how fast or slow I will go.  In led class, there is no debate!  Just obedience, which as Thomas Merton said, can be liberating.  At least if it frees the mind to concentrate on more important things, such as God, or our true universal selves.  Which is not to say that I am always doing that in led class (ha!), but the option presents itself.

Okay, I admit I often still "hate" led class, and usually I prefer my own Mysore-style practice, like some people apparently go to Burger King to "have it your way."  (Wow, what a ridiculous analogy.)  But led class Friday was good, and so was yesterday (Sunday), so maybe I'm learning something.

"Buy the best COCK"

Believe it or not, this is the wording of a large printed advertisement draped over the front gate of the boys' high school near the shala.  It refers to "Cock" brand fireworks, which apparently are the best.  We are in the middle of the Diwali festival, in which the igniting of fireworks and even small bombs is practiced with religious devotion.

Another favorite brand of mine is "Intellectual Hair Perming Irons," on sale now at "Loyal World" in Mysore, "where shopping is a pleasure."  In fairness to India, I should note that this fascinating product comes from China.  It is good to see, after the Cultural Revolution and its repercussions, that intellectuals are now respected there.

But back to the topic of the best cock.  Robert Wright wrote a controversial book, "The Moral Animal," arguing, among other things, that women are biologically driven to an attraction to financially successful males.  I will not go there.  In part because I have several female friends who are attracted to outstanding guys who are deliberately or otherwise living in poverty.  But I do wonder why some young Indian guys are surprisingly attracted to me, even physically.  I wonder if my white skin ("fair" skin is very popular among some Indians), and my perceived wealth (I am not really wealthy at all), is actually a turn-on, rather than just a magnet for gold-diggers. 

Shameless Flaunting

Guruji's led class Friday was like getting hit by a bus -- but good!  My fault for going out on a school night.  Also, apologies to those who actually have been hit by a bus.   One consolation to having a kick-ass yoga session at 5am is that there is time for a nap before work.   Sharath came by the office later, which was cool.  (Don't you just hate name-dropping?)  He took me for a ride in his new safari-mobile, complete with new car smell.  We went by my company's new office building in Kuvempunagar, to look at the signs on top.  All hail Saskia!  She designed them, as well as Sharath's web site.  I was happy to brag to Sharath that we're the only multinational in Mysore with plans for a yoga and meditation room.  He asked who is going to teach.  I told him there was a job opening for him.  What any of this has to do with yoga I am not sure.  But there's still time to learn!

Nike sucks, but they're right

All-or-nothing-ism is a bane.  It's the crime of my existence.  The very idea of trying to style myself in my grasping, delusional, self-sabotaging mind as an ashtanga purist, is so beyond pretentious as to be laughable.   I spent over a week in Mysore, not registering at the shala, because I was not "ready."   For those who do not have the opportunity to be here, this is no laughing matter -- I should be flogged.  Yesterday, when I finally showed up, thinking it was such a momentous occasion, Sharath said I didn't need to register -- I'm a permanent registrant.   Ha!  When the worst student in the history of Mysore doesn't  have to register, that should say something about perfectionism.  It is a wall that has to be dismantled, brick by brick.  Where to begin?  I should practice late, even in the blazing afternoon if I want, and yes, even at home.   It's better than not at all.  Practice on a full stomach, or even shit-faced.  Practice when there is not enough time.  Especially then!   I should do it when I am so wired that Í think I need to check my email, or add to my to do list, in between every half pose.  Do it like one of my former teachers does the second series, while talking on a cell phone.  If the room is not hot enough, even if icicles are forming from the a/c, I should get on the mat and stop listening to my false whining.  I have figured out that I want to practice ashtanga, and so I should do it.  We should do it if we are fat, or if we don't have the right yoga clothes.  Do each pose we are doing, regardless of the ones we think we cannot do.   Do each one we are doing as if it were the key to the universe.  If ywe can't do all of our asanas, we should try some of our yamas, or maybe our dhyana.   If there are no spaces available at the Mysore shala, do your asanas on the stage, or on the dirt in the road with the wild dogs, for Christ's sake.  Don't worry about how many of the eight limbs of ashtanga you have.  For crying out loud, do it if you have only one physical arm, or one physical leg.  SKPJ reportedly taught someone with one leg the entire primary series.  That says it all.  Fuck alignment.  All is coming, er, um, it's already here.

Day 6 -- I Get the Nerve to Ask Thich Nhat Hanh a Question

(still in Mysore, but back to reporting on the 21-day "Breath of the Buddha" retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh at his monastery in Plum Village France last June)

Woke up late, shocked that I did not hear the morning bell.  Wow, what a great sleep, considering I am in a pup tent with no mattress and no bed.  But I am up in time to begin the trek to Lower Hamlet at 6am, for Thay's "Questions and Answers" dharma session at 7.  A monk had announced it would be a half-hour walk.  Whoever said that either has never taken the walk, or did it on roller skates.   At a very brisk pace (4 paces for each "in" breath, 4 for each "out"), I need the entire hour to get there at 7 on the dot.   As Thay's car, a Toyota Prius Hybrid, whizzes past me on the country lane, with beautiful vistas on either side, I have a nice smile on my face.

THE Q & A BEGINS

There are over 1000 people in the hall.   About a third are monks, nuns, or ordained dharma teachers.  The rest are very experienced practitioners.  And then there is me.   I have lots of questions I would love to ask Thay, but I decide to let them go.  Surely the other people could ask better ones.

The announcement is made.   If anyone would like to ask a question, please come to the front of the hall.   No one moves.   My jaw drops.   I take a deep breath in.   Still no one moves.  So I guess this is it.   I get up out of my chair, way in the back, and start walking down the center aisle.   I feel a thousand sets of eyes on me.   Apparently some others conclude that if an idiot like me can do it, so can they.   And so about a dozen or so other proposed questioners start getting out of their seats and moving to the front.

In the front are two chairs, side by side.   Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) is in one of them, fully miked.   Two professional video cameras on tripods are trained on the two chairs.   As the rest of us sit cross-legged on the floor, a young woman is invited to sit in the chair next to Thay, to ask the first question.   Below is a summary of some of what happened.  It is not even close to a transcript!

QUESTION 1:   Thay smilingly nods to the young woman, signaling that she may now ask her question.  She takes a couple of breaths, and asks a question that brings her and many others, including me, to tears.   She says that she sees so many of her friends finding life partners, yet she has not found one.  She says that the pain of not having a partner with whom to share her life is sometimes all-consuming, and that she does not know how she can bear it.   She asks Thay how to bear it.

ANSWER:   Fear is in all of us.   We all fear that our desire to love and be loved will never be satisfied.  To truly love is to offer understanding.  Develop that, and the entire world can be your life partner.   One person is never enough.   Look at the Buddha.   He had a wife, but she was not enough for him.  He had to embrace all beings as his partners.   If you develop the capacity to understand and love, your fear will disappear, and with it, the pain you describe.

QUESTION 2:   A second woman asks a question, reading from a piece of paper.  She seems nervous, as if she knows the question will be controversial.   She says, "You are one of the most emancipated men on earth.  In the future, do you think it possible that your work will be carried on by a woman?" 

Audible gasps and murmurs emanate from the audience.

ANSWER:   Thay waits for a moment, looks at her, looks at the crowd, waits another moment, and then looks at her again.  He then says to her:  "You're the one!"

QUESTION 3:    Do you think?  And if so, how does your thinking relate to your meditation?

ANSWER:   Thinking is often useless.  It often leads to confusion.  But Right Thinking, as prescribed by the Buddha, can help in meditation, and it can help the world.  (Sorry, I cannot remember the rest of the answer.)

It is now time for me to ask a question.   I take the seat next to Thay.  I try to avoid looking at the vast audience, like a novice mountain climber might want to avoid looking down.   I look at Thay.   One of the nuns is telling him that it is time to take a written question instead, so Thay motions to me to stay and wait.  It is all for the better, because I need time to breathe and calm down.  The nun reads the written question, to which I cannot give justice, because I stop taking notes and concentrate on my breathing.  After Thay answers, and nods to me to pick up my microphone and ask my question, I can actually observe myself asking the question, and I am amazed that can pull it off without notes, and without stammering.  Here it is:

QUESTION 5:   "Thank you, Thay.  I am grateful that the first words out of my mouth this morning are a question to you about right livelihood.  It seems easy for me to understand how some professions, like that of a butcher or a suicide bomber, are incompatible with our practice.  I have much more trouble with a profession such as that of a lawyer.  In that profession, for example, one may not be killing others, but in order to do the job, as the clients usually want it done, there is often no getting around the fact that the lawyer must represent the interests of one person against the supposedly different interests of another.  What guidelines could you offer to determine whether someone in such a profession should consider quitting?"

Before I give you a bare summary of the full answer, which lasted over 15 minutes, I want to tell you that this was perhaps the most profound moment for me in the last 20 years or so.  Thay directed most of his answer not to the cameras or to the audience, but to me personally.   

(SHORT SUMMARY OF) ANSWER: 

This is a difficult question, an important question.  Many years ago, when Plum Village was under construction, a gentleman from California requested an appointment.  At the time, which was during the winter, we had no heat other than wood stoves, and in the room where I met him, we had no seating other than wooden benches.   His wife chose to wait in their car, with the motor running.  The man worked for the U.S. Defense Department, and he was in charge of the placement of nuclear warheads on inter-continental ballistic missiles.   He wanted to know if he should resign, in view of the fact that he considered himself a Buddhist.  I took a long time before I could try to answer his question.  I told him that he should stay on, but do so with the practice of mindfulness.   I told him that a decision to resign could be an easy one, but that a decision to stay on, and to try to bring an increased consciousness to his job, would be far more difficult, yet perhaps more effective.   I reminded him that if he quit, he most likely would have been replaced by someone who has little or no awareness at all.  So what would be accomplished by his quitting?   In the case of being a lawyer, you actually have an opportunity to be a dharma teacher.  You can help educate your clients, heal divides, and thereby alleviate suffering.  It is possible that you will lose clients in some cases if you practice this, but in most cases I think it will lead to more clients.  In any event, it is vital that you bring your spiritual dimension into your professional life.  And that you not compromise on that.  If by bringing your mindfulness practice into your legal practice, you lose some clients, then let them go.  It is far more important that you stay on your spiritual path.

QUESTION 6:

In the list of 51 mental formations, I did not see one corresponding to a sense of humor.  Did I miss it?

ANSWER:

If it is not listed, then it shoud be.  Let's make it number 52!

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More later.  Gotta go!  (to sleep)

From Borat to Sharath

We temporarily interrupt this program, about the Thich Nhat Hanh retreat last June, to bring you, direct from Mysore, more reports about my strange life.    Last Thursday I was with my client, "Borat," at the White House and the Kazakhstan Embassy.  The next day I was on a plane to Mysore, for my fourth year of attempting to learn the Ashtanga Primary Series.  I landed in the crazy climax of the annual Dasara festival, celebrating the triumph of Good over Evil.  This is accomplished by, among other things, smashing pumpkins (now I know where the band got the name) by the tens of thousands all over the city.

But back to Borat for a minute.  His upcoming comedy, "Borat:  Cultural Learnings of America Make for Benefit of Glorious Kazakhstan," has upset the dictatorial leaders of that country so much that not only have they threatened to sue for libel, but they also arranged a meeting with President Bush, and even with Bill and Hilary Clinton, to complain.  Of course Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's second most famous character after Ali G, had to be there, to hold a press conference at the Embassy, and to try to crash the White House.

The entire front entrance of the Embassy was blocked by a swarm of national and international news media surrounding Borat, who announced to the world that the recent massive Kazak publicity campaign, including, for example, reports that women are fairly treated in Kazakhstan, is a despicable lie, engineered by Uzbekhistan to defame the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. He announced that  Kazakhstan would launch a military strike if necessary to stop this libel of his beloved country.

The media people tried their best to act professional, but this did not work. Just about everyone was laughing, except for all of the dark-suited Kazak officials lurking about on the street, in parked black vehicles, and behind Embassy windows.

Borat escaped arrest, first thanks to the delay caused by our offering of a film permit, and then by Borat moving the whole mass of reporters with him to the White House, after the police realized that nobody except the press were actually filming anything. As the police quickly began to realize that we had no authority to be there blocking the Embassy, Borat announced, "Now I go to the White Houses for to meet Premier Bush. Can someone tell me where are these White Houses?" Someone pointed the way, and Borat briskly walked off in that direction, with the throng of media in tow.

My favorite scene was that of "Senior ABC News National Correspondent" Jake Tapper running down the street like this was actually a news story.    A few dozen feet behind him was the ABC News cameraman, yelling "hey, stop running. I'm not being paid enough for this bullshit! "  Jake had to put his arms around the guy and beg him to keep running.

At the White House, Borat tried to get in, telling security that it was a matter of urgent international importance, and that "Premier Bush" was waiting for him. You had to be there. If somebody begs, I'll post pictures.

After that, he basically started wandering around Washington, with much of the media still following.

Needless to say, I have never seen this kind of press promotion of a film ever, and certainly nothing even close to it over a month before the release date.

This blog post was supposed to be about lovely Mysore.  Oh well, I''ll try again tomorrow.

Day 5 -- The Stepford Monks?

I remove a tiny pebble from my shoe. It is amazing how much happiness can result from such a small action. It is very cold in this very early morning, both outside and in the dining room.  But it makes me all the more happy to be holding and sipping hot chamomile tea.

Let’s try an experiment today. No pursuit of attractive guys! Don’t even look at them. Avoid them whenever reasonably possible. Did Gandhi really fill up his bed with beautiful young female devotees, just as a test of discipline? Why on earth?

Today is “Lazy Day,” meaning no schedule, other than meals and an hour or so of working meditation. I remember dreading this when I first saw it on the calendar. What would I do, without phone, email, or computer, and without any friends here? Now I am grateful. Time to read “Old Path, White Clouds.” Time to practice the Ashtanga yoga primary series! Time for an extra meditation session, maybe even a long walk! Maybe even visit the monastery bookstore! It is all so exciting. I am not being facetious.

I’m reading about the care with which the Buddha selected his place of practice. Thinking about putting some attention and care into my home. The sun is starting to rise through the trees, illuminating leaves, as well as dandelion feathers, floating on a breeze. Someone is playing a piano, gently, magically. I’m sipping my third cup of chamomile tea. Life is good.

I had a chilly, but nice and quiet meditation at 6am, earlier this morning. Then a nice, leisurely breakfast. No lines, no crowds, no worries about the food running out.

After tea, I leave Plum Village (something that is "discouraged"), for the open road. Magnificent rolling hills on either side, bracing wind, brilliant sun, lush greens in the vineyards, forests, pastures, and meadows. I run out of walking meditation mantras (not really possible), so I try saying “I have arrived, I am home” in French. I repeat, over and over, “J’ai arrive, je suis un chateau, ” but it probably means “I have an arrival. I am a house.”

Back on the monastery grounds, an older gay dharma teacher holds court with a bunch of cute young guys, who are practically sitting at his feet. I remember my silly vow, and quickly look the other way. Was that me in 10 years? Pathetic, or good?  My pen suddenly runs out of ink as I ask these questions, as if to tell me that they are not worth asking.

I have a great Ashtanga yoga session in the “Transformation Hall.” A little bit shocked at how blatantly I want the other practitioners to appreciate what little skill I do have. Why? Why? Why? Why on earth do I want anyone to see me doing headstand? By the time most people leave, my practice becomes less polluted. It becomes a major treat. My first full, unrushed, downright luxurious practice in months.  I should do this every day! Duh.

For lazy working meditation, I am assigned to work with Reuben, whom I like very much. He is a bit shaken to find out that I’m a lawyer. Since he dresses somewhat conservatively, with a bit of a British buttoned-down look, I am even more surprised to discover that he is a MIME CLOWN.  So far, at the vegetable chopping table, we’ve several professors, a priest, a pathologist, a gaggle of lawyers, and a mime clown. And that is only in my chopping group.

 

THE WORST LECTURE IN RECORDED HISTORY

In the evening, I attend an optional presentation on “beginning anew.” The monk who speaks means well. Unfortunately, it does not turn out well. The following is essentially what he says, v – e – r – y   s – l – o – w – l – y,  and in a   m – o – n – o – t – o – n – e:

Beginning Anew means to get in touch with your happiness. To do that, you must appreciate that within suffering is happiness. Within suffering, there is happiness. Within happiness, there is suffering. Within happiness, there is suffering. Suffering contains happiness. Suffering contains happiness. Happiness contains suffering. Happiness contains suffering. To start anew, you must first touch your happiness. Happiness is present in suffering. Suffering is present in Happiness. The key is happiness. Happiness is the key. You must touch your happiness, to begin anew.

Repeat three or four times, then go insane.

Someone politely asks him if he would offer some practical examples of beginning anew, but he simply restates the points above. When another person raises his hand and prefaces his question with praise for the brother’s “wonderful talk,” I can hardly take it any more. I begin to think I am trapped in a roomful of Stepford Buddhists. The brother at the podium mentions, with some apparent satisfaction, that he gave the same talk in Russia, where half the audience reportedly was in tears.   By this time, I am actually seething with anger. I want to stand up, raise my hand, and say, “Brother, don’t you know why they were crying? Under the Geneva Convention, your lecture would qualify as torture!” Instead, I walk out.

Actually, I learned much from the experience. I learned how even the most trivial inconvenience, such as having to sit for an hour without accomplishing anything of so-called importance, can cause my time-driven, egotistical mind to become enraged for no worthwhile reason. (There never is one.)  I shared this in our dharma discussion group the next day. Several lay people said they had an experience similar to mine, while trying to endure the lecture. One of the three monks in our group offered that it was important to “recognize” the feelings that I expressed about the lecture. None of them expressed any such feelings themselves. None said that they shared mine. But after dinner, one monk called me aside, came close, and said to me very softly, “I want to thank you for having the courage to say what you said. Please keep saying things like that.” I wondered what “courage” had to do with it. Does not courage involve being unafraid of bad consequences? What punishment was I risking? The monk smiled and said again, “please, keep speaking up.”

Day 4 -- I Am a Squirrel

So far, so good.  A lot of pain in my hips during 5:30 a.m. meditation, but I was able to maintain a natural half-smile, and more importantly, stillness.  Thanks to the pain, I did not sleep while sitting -- that would have been impossible.  On the way into the hall for Thay's daily dharma talk, I spotted the guy I'm calling "Rufus," the mystery angel Boddhisatva guy who silently gazed into me yesterday and rooted out my depression.  I walked up behind him.  I put my hand on his shoulder.  He turned, smiled, and placed his hand on mine.  I smiled back, lifted my index finger, and placed it on his.  Then I found my seat.  This time on the first try.

NOTES FROM DHARMA TALK BY THICH NHAT HANH

In your past life, you have been a tree, a rock, a squirrel, a river, a deer.

This is not a matter of belief, but rather of scientific fact.

We smile to all of these things and beings.  We want to protect them, both inside and outside of us.

This is because we still are a tree, a rock, a squirrel, a river, a deer.

Just like a rose is a formation of a cloud, water, gardener, sun, and soil.

Fear, anger, distress, love, joy, are all but mental formations.

If you are angry, try this.  While breathing in, recognize that your anger is there.  When breathing out, smile to your anger.  Don't repress it, and don't identify with it.

Your mind is like a living room.  Sometimes guests arrive and sit down.  Sometimes you realize that you don't like them, that you don't enjoy their company.  Eventually they leave.  And you vow to be more careful about the people you invite.  Learning whom to invite is an art.

We often invite the wrong mental formations into our minds, sometimes without knowing it.  For example, if we are lonely, we might turn on the television, to try to cover up our loneliness.  Then we often nourish negative elements in our mind, inviting them in from the messages on television, making the situation worse.

If you cut off the nourishment for depression, the food for depression, it will die.  Nothing can survive without nourishment.

REMAINS OF THE DAY

The good thing about hay fever attacks, when one is not on drugs, is how nice it feels when the attacks subside.  I'm sitting in the Buddha Garden, wondering about Rufus, a/k/a smiley angel, who I know is somewhere nearby.  I'd sort of like to chat with him, since we've both got an hour and twenty minutes to kill, before working meditation.  But part of me says no, it would be so much more interesting for us to become best friends, but never speak even once.  Tomorrow, during "Lazy Day" (when we have no organized activities, other than observing what we choose to do with the time), I'd like to take his hand and go for a walk.  Perhaps a hug, maybe a kiss.  I did not see anything in the rules about that.

Thoughts are turning to work, especially our India office.  I'd love to collaborate with some of the more "spirtual" employees and develop some ecumenical mindfulness practices in the office.  Bowing with folded hands before speaking, while in meetings in the conference room.  10 minutes of silence before every such meeting.  Establishing a rule that every one pauses for a few seconds of silence, every time a phone rings.  Maybe even group meditation at the start of each day.  Daily deep relaxation sessions in the afternoon.  Is this a power trip, or am I really wanting to help?  I'll chalk it up to enthusiasm.

My old friend Gabriel, who stayed with me for a few weeks in Ireland, marveled at my ability to agonize over things.  I liked what someone said in dharma discussion yesterday, as we went around the circle saying what "cows" we would like to release.  He said, "One of my cows to release might be the concept that I have cows to release.  I've spent so many years trying to improve myself, and I'm finding that it does not necessarily lead to improvement.  I'm coming around to the idea that I should like myself as I am."  Good for him.  I would have to release a whole herd of cows to be in that state.

Working meditation was fun.  Our assignment was to mindfully chop vegetables for dinner.  Lots of laughs.  After silencing us all with the bell a few times, the monk who was serving as work leader finally took my knife away, as punishment for incorrigible talking.

It is now near bedtime.  Monks and a few lay people are now playing soccer, near my tent, in Summer's late twilight.  Does a soccer game sound different when it is being played by Buddhists?  Yes.  More laughing.  And more cheering.  Because both teams cheer when anybody gets a goal, or blocks a goal.

Day 3 - A Carnival Ride through the Freak Show in My Mind

Sitting in the meditation hall, about 5:45 a.m.  I'm over an hour early for the daily dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh (affectionately known as "Thay").  Spent the last 10 minutes maneuvering for position.  Maybe even jockeying.   

Should I be in a chair or a cushion?  A cushion would be closer to Thay, since the cushions are arrayed in front.  But I just finished a half hour of seated meditation on a cushion, so a chair would be easier on the knees.  I decide to find a cushion.  But one of the higher ones, to ease the pain.  I find one, 15 feet from where Thay will speak.  I eagerly sit on it.  But Thay tends to speak quietly.  What if I can't hear?  Unfortunately, there are no high cushions in the very front.  Maybe I should move closer to one of the loudspeakers, even if I'm further back.  I look at my watch.  Nearly an hour before the dharma talk.  What if he talks for 2 hours?  I don't want to be on a cushion for a total of three and a half hours!  I find a chair, in the first row of chairs.  I sit down again.  Uh-Oh.  Now I'm near the German translator.  I don't want to spend the whole time listening to someone muttering in German.  People are starting to fill up the place.  I'd better move again.  Okay, there's one high cushion left.  I take it.  Then, another bright idea.  Instead of waiting for an hour on the cushion, I'll put my notebook on it, to reserve the space, so I can do walking meditation outside, until the talk begins.  Oops.  Too cold outside.  So I come back in.  I pace back and forth along the back of the hall.  No talking allowed.  The place is nearly full.  Wait.  There's a small row of three chairs in front.  They're way off to the side, but right next to a loudspeaker.  I sit in one, to test the view.  Looks like it'll be a great side view of Thay.  Hard to see the writing board, but he'll say what he writes on it anyway.  Too bad I have nothing to use to reserve the seat.  Even if I did, I'd be reserving two seats at once.  It's obnoxious enough to be reserving even one.  So I go back to my second cushion, pretending not to hurry.  I take my notebook off it, and make a beeline to my second chair.  Will I get there in time?  People are moving in that direction.  Shit. I guess I deserve this impending fiasco.  But then I get lucky.  The people moving that way are looking for cushions, not chairs.  I take the chair.  Whew!  Then I notice another one.  It has a view of the writing board.  So I take that one instead.  But the glare from the film camera lights makes the board unreadable.  Besides, now I'm further from the loudspeaker.  So I quickly move to one of the very few seats left, a chair right in front of the loudspeaker.  It is the chair that is in the extreme right front corner of the room.  This is my fifth chair, and my seventh seat.  The dharma talk is still 20 minutes away.  Still time to move again, like a jumping frog.

THE DHARMA TALK

The following are my notes.  These are not even close to a transcript of the talk!

Breathing is the royal entrance to the body.

During the first two seconds of following the breath, your mind touches your body.
Following your breath allows you to touch the miracle of being alive.  You are resurrected.

Mental discourse is the source of suffering, sorrow, and anxiety.  You are like a tree caught in a storm.  Your emotions and thoughts are like the upper branches, swaying in the wind.  Take your concentration downwards, to the steady trunk.   

Your sorrow and anxiety can be healed.  The basic condition for healing is rest.  We humans have forgotten that.   Animals still remember.  That is why a wounded animal always seeks a quiet spot to rest, and even to fast, until healed.  Learning how to rest is a crucial part of our practice.

Your meditation on the breath should not be work.  It should be enjoyment.  No need to worry about whether each breath is long or short.  Simple recognition is enough.  Make your practice a joy.  Life already has enough suffering.  Why create more of it?

While enjoying, we smile.  Smiling is a practice, but it is not forced.  Smiling is the yoga of the mouth.  Smiling is like kneeling, or putting one's hands in prayer -- it is allowing the body to take the initiative. Breathing in, be aware of your half-smile.  Breathing out, you can smile to that smile.  You can have a double smile!

We've been mistreating our bodies.  We should be reconciling with them instead.  If the CEOs of corporations were wise, they would offer deep relaxation sessions for their employees.

The collective energy of multiple people mindfully breathing is very powerful.  It can penetrate us.  I can heal us.  That is the sangha.  (sanskrit for spiritual community)

You also need to learn how to release your cows.    One day the Buddha was sitting in the woods with thirty or forty monks. They had an excellent lunch, and they were enjoying the company of each other. There was a farmer passing by, and the farmer was very unhappy. He asked the Buddha and the monks whether they had seen his cows passing by.  The Buddha said they had not seen any cows passing by.  The farmer said, "Monks, I'm so unhappy. I have twelve cows and I don't know why they all ran away.  I'm suffering so much, I think I'm going to kill myself."  The Buddha said, "My friend, we have not seen any cows passing by here. You might like to look for them in the other direction."  So the farmer thanked him and ran away.  The Buddha turned to his monks and said, "My dear friends, you are the happiest people in the world.  You don't have any cows to lose.  If you have too many cows to take care of, you will be very busy."

That is why, in order to be happy, you have to learn the art of cow releasing.  You release the cows one by one.   You once thought that those cows were essential to your happiness, and you tried to get more and more cows.  But now you realize that cows are not really conditions for your happiness; they constitute an obstacle to your happiness.

Take a piece of paper, and call your cows by their true name.  List, as "cows," all of the things you think you need for well-being and happiness.  You don't need them.  Let them go.

A TURN FOR THE WORSE

I thought the dharma talk was excellent.  As they say, Thich Nhat Hanh's words were falling on me like dharma rain. 

But now I'm feeling very down.  I'm not sure why.  I know the feeling will pass.  I hope the feeling will pass.  Here are a few of my mental symptoms ("formations"), none of which are worth being depressed about, but here they are:

1.   I'm angry at the rushing required to get to breakfast in time to avoid arriving after all the porridge has run out.  I'm annoyed that there was no soy milk today, only cow's milk.

2.  I'm pissed off that once again, even on retreat, I'm becoming attracted to guys, and to the kind of guys who will barely say hello.  Everybody seems to be making friends except me.  I know this is false, but it feels true.

3.  I took a picture of Thay and the group at the start of walking meditation.  It made me feel like a selfish, anti-spiritual tourist.  Imagine if everyone did what I did?  The retreat would descend into chaos, before totally self-destructing.  It did not help that all of the people clustered around Thay during the walk this morning seemed like angry, men-hating women, glaring at me for ruining their special moment.  Another untruth, and one that is inherently contradictory, since as a technical matter, Thich Nhat Hanh is a "man," but there it is.

4.  Hay fever is acting up again.  I don't like being around snivelling, dribbling, sneezing, wheezing people.  I imagine no one wants to be around me either.  Besides, during an allergy attack, I am just miserable.

5. I cannot seem to find a good place, or a good time, to do my ashtanga yoga practice.

6. I am tired.

God or whatever, please allow me to feel better.  A lot better.

I'm off to lunch now, perchance to eat.  I'll probably eat a lot. 

A TURN FOR THE BETTER

At lunch, I decide to accept my depression.  I decide to sit down by myself, and wait it out.  Most people are happily (and silently) eating in the beautiful outdoors.  This means I have a long table in the dining room, all for me and my bad mood.  Then a handsome guy, who looks like Rufus Wainwright (the singer/songwriter/musician), comes over to me.  He stands in front of me.  He sits down right across from me.  As he does these things, he smiles at me, and gazes determinedly into my eyes.  I gaze right back.  We eat in silence, following the rules.  When he finishes his plate, he stands, staring and smiling at me again.  We look smilingly into each other's eyes for a long time.  He has lifted my spirits.  He's like an angel sent to do just that.

Then of course come the stupid, negative thoughts.  "He's helping me the same way he probably volunteers to hold hands with people dying of AIDS."  At this, I laugh out loud. 

First, because it actually could be true that people mean what they say when they say they like me, or even that I am wonderful.  Second, even if "Rufus" sees me as a charity case, good for him!  Why can't I just learn from that, and be like that?  Or maybe he's stark, raving, barking mad.  If so, why can't I be insane like that?  If I could learn to be charitable or insane like Rufus, maybe I'd be happy.

By the way, the sexes are segregated into different "hamlets" here, to avoid precisely the kind of sexually oriented distraction that I'm facing nearly all the time.  How ironic.  So the Order of Interbeing has arranged it so I'm living in "Upper Hamlet," in close proximity to all of the handsome, sexy guys at the retreat.  Ha!   But what else could they do?  They obviously can't put all of us gays and lesbians in one hamlet together.  That would be even worse.  Conundrums like these remind me of that old saying.  "God must have a sick sense of humor."

DHARMA DISCUSSION

I have a great dharma discussion family.  (The "Snow Cherries.")  So many wise people.  So many open people, all seeking truth.   We were asked by the monks to identify our cows.  I said that most of mine were too embarrassing.  Then I blurted out that I'm an alcoholic, even though I am not fully convinced that this is true.

It felt somewhat good, but mostly bad.  Like putting my head out on chopping block.  It was at once like saying, "hey, look at me -- my problem is more dramatic than all of yours," while also saying "hey everybody, I'm damaged goods, so don't waste your time on me."

Which leads to the question.  What do I want?  Clearly, I think I want to be popular with the kind of people I like.  I think I want to be impressive.  I think I want attention.  I think I want to IMPROVE physically, mentally, spiritually, financially, and socially.  But why?  For what?  All of these supposed wants are mistaken.

Can this retreat of 21 days ignite a transformation of my diseased mind?  I actually like the word, "brainwashing."  My brain needs to go through the Super Wash cycle.

Day Three is over.  Evening meditation was good.  Feeling calm, peaceful, and hopeful.

[For you web surfers and other readers who have no idea what I'm blogging about, these are my notes from the 21-day "Breath of the Buddha" retreat last June, with the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, at his monastery in Plum Village, France.]

Day Two -- Froglessness, and the Biggest Film Ever Shot in India

The day began at 5am, with no light, but lots of sound.  The sound of a two-ton bell being repeatedly hammered by the swing of a battering ram suspended from ropes.  Then silence.  Morning meditation in a large hall, followed by a two-hour dharma talk by a modern hero and legend, Thich Nhat Hanh. 

He said that the first fruit of the practice is froglessness.  We become happy with what and who we are, no longer jumping off like a frog put on a plate.  Thay (that's his nickname) talked about his personal struggle to practice amid the war in his homeland (Viet Nam), death and destruction everywhere, and rifts in his spiritual community.  I was surprised, and moved, to hear him also talk about how he suffered from depression, and how the practice freed him from it.

In this first talk at the retreat, he spoke about the nature of inter-being.  I am, because you are.  We inter-are.  No birth, no death, no coming, no going -- only the ultimate dimension truly exists.  Like the Zen master that he is, just after reminding us that there is no birth and no death, he said that through our practice, we can touch our birth and be born again, and touch our death, and then no longer worry about death.  Time and space disappears.  Ocean waves seem to have a beginning and an end, a here and a there, but in truth they are all one body of water.  Like the waves, we do not have to be born or die, or go here or there, in order to be water.

With a twinkle, and a lot of animation, Thay talked about a project that he had just announced at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival.  Indian industrialist B.K Modi, after his life was changed upon reading Thay's book on the life of the Buddha, "Old Path White Clouds," decided to invest $120 million for the making of an epic film based on the book.  It will be the biggest film ever shot in India, and will feature the story of the Buddha as told by a low-caste Indian buffalo boy.  (The U.S. announcement will be made soon in Los Angeles, at a joint press conference to be held by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama.)

I normally associate the Cannes Film Festival with lots of fun and partying.  Thay told a different story.  He said that he and his entourage of monks did not attend a single film or opening party, but they observed much suffering among the celebrities and celebrity seekers, nearly all of whom were obsessed with fame, power, and wealth.  The young monastics on the trip reported to Thay that after looking at the behavior of the crowds in Cannes, they were much more happy to be monks. 

Thay offered the motion picture rights to his book to the filmmakers for free, as a gift to both the Buddha and the young generation who suffer so much.  But there are strings attached.  For example, he stipulated, regarding the movie stars who will play the Buddha and his disciples, that instead of allowing them to pretend to be enlightened, he will require them to come to Plum Village and practice, so that they actually will be enlightened.  The film project itself will be a sangha.  (spiritual community)

He also is requiring that the film show the Buddha as he was, a human being who suffered, not as a miracle-working deity.  The film will be a dharma talk, but the audience will not feel like they are attending a dharma talk.  It will reach out to the world with a message to dispel illusions about the pursuit of power, fame and money.  Thay mentioned that President Bush, for all of his trappings of power, is a helpless man.

I've called this Day Two of the retreat, but in many ways, it was Day One.  Yesterday was mainly setting up my tent and getting situated.  Today was jam-packed, with morning seated meditation, an inspiring dharma talk from a living Buddha, a long walking meditation with him through the countryside, working meditation outside the kitchen (chopping vegetables), three mindfully silent meals, a two-hour dharma discussion in my practice group, and evening seated meditation.  My mind was still jumping like a frog throughout the day, but thoughts of work mostly disappeared, as did any urge to drink.  I did not miss the world of emails and telephones.

I did have a bit of a panic attack last night.  What was I thinking when I purchased a sleeping bag that was called "mummy-style"?   I do not know why it did not occur to me that trying to sleep in it would make me feel like a mummy.  The claustrophobia was unbearable.  So I unzipped it, and slept on the hard, uneven, rock-like floor of my tent, using the former bag as a blanket.  All was fine.  I slept all night.  I realized that my  early years of experience in getting drunk and passing out on the floor had prepared me for this.  Sleeping on the hard ground was no problem.

For some reason I felt compelled to share this with my dharma discussion group, the Snow Cherries.  Everybody had a good laugh.  So I was glad to be able make that small contribution to the group.  Since we were supposed to be discussing Thay's dharma talk, I also mentioned how struck I was by hearing Thay talk about froglessness, and the analogy between our minds and a frog jumping off a plate.  This was truly enlightening for several people, who, it turned out, had not heard what Thay said.  One thought Thay was talking about a fox, and could not figure out how the fox could be put on a plate, much less jump off of one.  Another mistakenly heard him talk about a fork.  So we all had big laughs about foxlessness and forklessness.  I decided that I really like my Snow Cherries group.

Without breaking into groups, the retreat would be unmanageable.  There are a thousand people here, including over 100 monks, nuns, and dharma teachers.  Our Snow Cherries group is 18 people.  They include a preacher, an airline captain, a software company executive, a singer/songwriter, a political activist, some teachers, some students, three monks, a lawyer, a law student, and a mime clown.  We've got people from about 10 different countries, and every age group older than children.

By 10pm, after a non-stop day that started 17 hours earlier, I was sound asleep in my tent.

Day One -- of 21-Day "Breath of the Buddha" retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh

I'm here. Somehow I got most of what I needed to do done.  A flurry of last minute emails and a few final cell phone calls. Lost my passport and found it. Thankfully made it to "La Gare" (train station) on time, and I somehow got on the right train. (Nobody speaks English or otherwise helps in Bourdeaux.)

It took about two hours and four people to put up my little pup tent, but it is up.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing here.  Or what I'm expecting to achieve.  I overheard some people on the train, and in the van from the train.  They were talking about "transformation."  That is what I want.  As for what I actually expect, I guess a taste of it.

I am in a pup tent.  Compared to my house in India, or the hotel room in Bourdeaux, or my house in North Carolina, this is real deprivation.  I am seriously afraid of being miserable.

I am also hungry, and it is not time to eat.   In India or America, I would simply get something to eat. Wow, a big ham and cheese sandwich, with lettuce and tomato and mayo, sure would be nice right now.  I am so spoiled, to the point where this writing is utter self-indulgent drivel.

So why am a writing this crap?  To take a mental crap onto the page.  To evacuate my constipated brain.  Also to make a record of what an asshole I am, so that I can look back and say, "what an asshole I was."

I sat next to a super-cute international bright young thing in the van.  I tried to chat him up, or at least exchange a greeting.  Not a chance.  Like I said, I need a transformation.

I also need to move this tent to shadier, cooler ground.  Maybe tomorrow.  Too lazy now.

I'm wondering if this retreat will be like the AYRI shala all over again.  I make fun of people like the guy on the train, who told everyone in the First Class section that he was enlightened, but I'm no different.  I want everyone to know that I am "spiritual," that I studied yoga in India, and that I am on a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh.  I am out to impress.  I am a phony asshole.

Now I'm gong to read Thay's book, "On Anger."  Hopefullly to transform myself, at least a little. The driver on the way to Plum Village said something very simple, maybe even stupid.  He said that transformation is like boiling a hard potato.  It takes time.

Reading Thay's book was helpful.  I'm feeling a lot better.  More peaceful.   More hopeful.

I have many errors in thinking, and I think I can fix them.  For a glaring example, I saw an extremely handsome young man here, and I immediately concluded, "Okay, this must be a good retreat. Because he's here.  He could be out in the world, having sex, being popular, having a great job, being incredibly happy -- but he is here."  Despite a ton of evidence over the course of my life, I still cannot seem to understand, without some transformation, that supposed physical beauty does not equal happiness or superiority, and that the predominance of a lot of superficially less attractive people at a retreat does not signify a gathering of losers.  Most importantly, I am not a loser.  I have to stop despising myself.

Okay, time for dinner.  I will probably eat a lot, because I am so scared of  being hungry, and for many other reasons.  I have so much to learn. But I am here.  Here to learn. 

I am waiting for the dinner bell. Why?  Another error in thinking.  I think that if I go to dinner too early, I will be in the dining hall with nothing to do, and I'll look like a dork.  How silly I am

As it turned out, dinner was great. I ate with my assigned "family," called "Snow Cherries," because we meet near a Snow Cherry tree. One of the monks leading our family acknowledged that "we have no snow."  The sign at the washing and drying tables said that the white towels are only for "plates, utensils, and cubs." People laughed when the monk said, "but we have no snow."   No one laughed when I asked if the reference to "cubs" meant that there were lions, tigers, or bears here.

An Embarrassment of Riches

Hey everybody,

That is, if there are any readers left, after 3 months of blog sloth.  There's been no shortage of things to blog about, including New York venture capital investors stepping forward to put $20 million into our Mysore company, and more importantly, a mind-blowing 21-day retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh at his monastery in France.  To keep the twenty-something theme going, twenty or so years ago, a long-lost friend of mine, composer/musician Fred Lonberg-holm (Freddie -- I hope you're googling yourself! -- if so, email me!), who was then twenty-one, said the following about one of our twenty-something bohemian friends who could not stop talking about how well she was doing: "She's acting like a suburban housewife who just won a Cadillac."  Well, I'll just have to take that risk.

The main thing I want to blog about is the "Breath of the Buddha" retreat with zen master, peace activist, poet, and scholar Thich Nhat Hanh at his Plum Village monastery.  It changed my life.  Or at least it seems so, and I hope so.  I've got 61 pages of notes, single-spaced, and those are just the highlights.  I wanted to post the whole thing at once, so people could see the entire story unfold without having to wait for me to tell it all in installments.  But it has been over a month since the retreat ended, and I have written nothing.   So I guess installments are better than nothing.  The next post you see, if you look, will be an account of my first day at the retreat.

Guruji at Our Inauguration

Brief Update:  Guruji spoke at the inauguration of our Mysore company, and someone slighted the Mayor by referring to Sri K Pattabhi Jois as our Chief Guest.  It was an easy mistake to make.  He had more star power than anyone in the room by far.  Although he said nice things about our company, please don't worry.  He's not gone corporate.  He simply added a needed spiritual dimension to an otherwise grossly commercial event.

Thanks to Alan Little

Alan Little, the original Mysore blogger, whose blog launched a million Mysore blogs, has kindly posted a beautiful photograph of the old shala that I was talking about, where SKPJ and the two Iyengars studied under Krishnamacharya in the 1930's.  Go to http://alanlittle.org/weblog/OldShala.html

The following statement has become almost a cliché, but without Alan and his pathbreaking online diary of his adventure here, there is no way I would have had the nerve to come to Mysore.  The same is true for countless others.  Thanks again Alan!

Guided By Voices

Is it just me, or do other supposedly sane people hear voices in their heads?  After all the talk about T. Krishnamacharya, Sri K Patthabi Jois, BKS Iyengar, and Sharath Rangaswamy, I'd like to mention that during every practice, I hear the voices of several not quite as famous teachers whom I have been lucky enough to encounter.   

Every morning I hear my first yoga teacher, the inspiring, life-changing Jolie Parcher, (who does not teach Ashtanga), saying "okay, you've found the posture, now find the ease."  That's when I really sink into a pose, rather than only struggle with it.  As soon as my first vinyasa, I hear my first Ashtanga teacher, Stan Woodman, telling me, "shoulders back, shoulders back."   When I jump and extend my legs, I often hear Lino saying, in his charming Italian accent, "your lefta leg -- it seemsa... dead."   In chataranga and upward dog, I always remember, with much gratitude, Lois Nesbitt advising me to "put the weight on your fingers and under your knuckles, not on your wrists."  As soon as I get to padangusthasana, I remember what Olaf once said: "Things get a lot better when you realize it's not necessary to pull your toes off during every practice."  Then there is Rolf, saying "hips down!" during surya namaskara b, and Marci telling me, in parsvottanasana, "straighten your leg, or you'll miss out on the stretch!"

Sometimes I even hear teachers debating.  In utthitatrikonasana, I hear Eddie Stern saying, with a mischievous laugh, "grab your toe!  grab your toe!  trikonasana is sanskrit for 'grab your toe'!""  Then I hear Jolie warning, out of well-placed concern for me and my ultra-beginner's status at the time, "I strongly urge you not to grab your toe."  Or if I am practicing at home, I nearly always hear a particular certified Ashtanga teacher saying, "why don't you use your sweatcloth as a strap?  [in poses where no amount of pulling or pushing on the part of a teacher will let me bind]  But please don't tell any teachers at the shala that I said that."

The Ashtanga asana practice is not always fun or easy, but each time when it's over for the day, I am filled with gratitude for all of the teachers who have helped me, or who at least have tried!

Some day, maybe in another life, I might stop hearing voices, improve my concentration on the breath, and sail through the poses without thinking.   But for now, I'm grateful for the advice.

More On Where Our Teacher Learned

As I mentioned in the last post, a friend took me yesterday afternoon to the old yogashala, in the old part of Mysore, where T. Krishnamacharya taught Ashtanga to Sri K Pattabhi Jois in the 1930's.  It's at the center of the ground floor of a huge white palace building that is at once stately and deteriorating, in a sort of charming way.

The history books have it that Krishnamacharya was summoned to Mysore in 1926, by Shri Krishnarajendra Wodeyar IV, the then Maharajah (or "King" of Mysore), who had become gravely ill.  Krishnamacharya cured the Raj with yoga, and was then granted this yogashala on the Jaganmohan Palace grounds.  Early students included not only Pattabhi Jois, but BKS Iyengar, who arrived at the age of 15, suffering from malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid and malnutrition.  Iyengar was also cured.  The yogashala was closed in 1941, as fighting in the streets of Mysore broke out in the battle for Independence from Britain.

Walking into the building, and onto the very floor where yoga titans Jois and Iyengar were taught by the most influential hatha yoga teacher in the world, I got goose bumps.   History was seeping out from everywhere.  I imagined going back in time, and showing up here to learn.   I imagined how I probably would have gotten my ass kicked.   Although the ground floor is now reputed to be a mutt (or math, a kind of Hindu monastery), it looks like hardly any maintenance has been done since 1941.  I did not encounter any monks or devotees or anyone or anything alive other than spirits and pigeons.  The latter have left droppings all over the tiled practice floor in the center.   The practice area is smaller than that of SKPJ's shala in Gokulam, but the room is enormous.   With the ceiling about 30-40 feet high, no chance of hitting your hands on it while doing Surya Namaskar A!   Pillars, balconies, and walls were painted in a dozen different colors.  There is no electricity, or lighting, other than beams of sunlight streaming down through the dark air.  My friend told me that the word "guru" means light meeting darkness.

Upstairs is the shala of BNS Iyengar (not to be confused with BKS), another of Krishnamarchya's students.   In appearance, and I am told in many other ways as well, BNS's shala is the opposite of Pattabhi's.   It's dark, dingy, and ramshackle.  In the West, it would be called shabby chic.  People would be organizing rave parties there.  On one of the old rugs, a homeless man was sleeping. On the walls are amazing photo albums, showing Krishnamarcharya perfecting some of the most difficult poses imaginable.

The whole place is like an unkept museum, with no locks on the doors, and no security.  Amazing, considering that at least the ground floor should be considered perhaps the most historic location in all of hatha yoga.

Slipping, Tripping

I met somebody at breakfast the other day who said the biggest scenes in New York right now are Ashtanga and AA.  There might be some truth to that.  An Ashtanga friend from there announced to me that he joined AA because he was concerned about his occasional habit of having two drinks in a row, and acting silly.  I wish I had joined AA when I was at that stage.  It would have been odd to be the only 14-year-old at meetings, but it could have saved me a lot more than silliness later.

Related to that, I finished "A Million Little Pieces," by James Frey yesterday.  That's the controversial non-fiction bestseller that turned out to be a novel instead.  It's a scary and possibly dangerous book.  Scary because it portrays the depths of alcoholism with such gory detail that it makes an alcoholic reader start to think about things like burial plans.   Dangerous because the author is trying to suggest that by force of will, with some help from reading "The Tao," a hardcore alcoholic can fully recover without AA.  Frey claims he did, and he might or might not be right.   But now we know that his supposedly true story is filled with fabrications, so I wonder if he's back to booze and the rock by now.  He's certainly got enough money now to buy all he wants.

I was going to go to a meeting in Mysore the other night, but I had a massage instead.  I think massage is no more a cure for alcoholism than is reading the Tao.  I felt so good after Enzo's magical treatment that I celebrated by getting trashed.  Luckily, "trashed" for me now means having a few drinks -- arguably a significant improvement.  But it was enough for me to miss class the next morning.

I practiced at home instead, when I woke up around 11.  It was a good, slow practice, but my housemate said I was tripping.   We have a 20-foot ceiling part of the living room, and I practiced there, under a blazing skylight.  After Matsyasana, while flat on my back, I spaced out for a couple minutes and stared at the sunlight radiating from above.  I noticed that because a railing was blocking part of one of the crossbeams in the skylight, the clear effect was that of a Christian cross, with powerful rays shining out from all around it.  What's more, coming from the center of the cross were twin electrical wires reaching down toward me.  My first thought was this is like bad 80's art.  I decided to forget it.  But when I mistakenly closed my eyes while doing a vinyasa, the cross reappeared, even though I was facing down.  This time it was surrounded by blood red.  Sort of like Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, except the Cross was submerged in glowing blood instead of urine.  My next thought was this is lke a schoolboy's bad experiment in optical illusions.  So I opened my eyes, but the Cross would not go away.  This time it was on my green AYRI mat, surrounded in a non-existent haze of blue.  By the time I finished Sivasana, it was gone.  I thought about going to St. Philomena's downtown to look for crying Virgin Mary statues, but decided I had seen enough.

Obsessions

Wassup with the “Yoga Obsessions” sticky mats? After thinking that true yoga is supposed to be the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind, I was surprised to see these things being sold in the shala, with “Obsessions” printed in large letters. Oddest choice of a name since “Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men,” the fragrance that I think came out just around the time that Calvin himself was going back in (getting married to Kelly and otherwise pretending not to be gay).

I would ask Sharath or someone at the shala about this, but I’m too busy trying to be a suck-up.

Speaking of sucking up, I want to say very nice things about Enzo and his Thai massage. I’ve been seeing him once a week for four weeks, with great results. I walk in to his massage room with shoulder pain, or unbelievable work stress in the neck, and I leave without them. I can see why people call this kind of massage “the lazy man’s yoga.”  I do nothing, Enzo works up a sweat, pulling my body (very artfully) all over the place, and I feel great. On top of that, what I loosely refer to as my Ashtanga practice is “advancing” faster than ever before. There is no other explanation except Enzo. Of course it’s a team effort, with Sharath and I also working on it, but it’s been different and better since Enzo joined. For example, until yesterday, I never touched my head to my knee in all of Janu Sirsasana B and C. If you are in Mysore, or coming to Mysore, and want to get a fantastic Thai massage, call or text Enzo at 98454 05963, and book early!    Price is 1000 Rupees for an hour and a half, or 2000 for 3 hours.

The Unlikely Businessman

The strangest thing happened to me on the way to setting up a business in Mysore.  I became a “businessman.”  Even stranger, if something can be stranger than the strangest, is the fact that I’m sort of liking it.

In my youth and young adulthood, I was, in no particular order, a socialist,  communist, transcendentalist, stoner, activist, hippie, hipster, union leader,  nightclubber, wannabee artist, dilettante punk, and rebel without a cause. Even when I went to law school, it started with some notion of training to help save the world from the rapacity of the capitalists. After I soon gave up on that and went into private practice, I at least felt proud that I never got involved in marketing, or got too caught up in office administration. While other lawyers were trawling for clients or holding business meetings, I was off to yoga class.

During my first two trips to Mysore, I of course was aware of out sourcing and off shoring. My impression was not positive. Like most people who are not exactly pro-business to begin with, I saw large companies ditching their loyal employees in the West, all to fatten profits by hiring relatively poorly paid people in the East.  In Mysore, I saw these corporations luring young people like they were lemmings, inducing them to leave their families and abandon their culture and religion, all to earn two bucks an hour in Bangalore and other big, congested, semi-Westernized cities. There, many of these new employees live the superficial lifestyle of cell phones, designer jeans, disco-hopping, and Domino’s Pizza, (in Mysore we do have one Pizza Hut), often paying for the privilege by working all night, answering telephone complaints or otherwise doing less than fulfilling work.

Speaking of work that is not always fulfilling, one Friday, back in the States, I was swamped with a litigation matter.  I needed to get some subpoenas drafted and served by that Monday.  Because I was not much of a businessman, much less a natural at being a “boss,” I did not direct one of our junior associates to work on the weekend.  Instead, I gingerly asked one of them if he “wanted” to work on the weekend to get the subpoenas out.  His response was, “honestly, no, I don’t – I’ve got plans.”  The first thing that popped in my head was the memory of one of my local friends in Mysore, who was trying to work his way through his university, and who was always asking me for a job.  I called him up, emailed him the details, and he happily did the work for a dollar an hour, as he requested, which is more than the going rate for Mysore students.

A few months later, the Manhattan office of our firm was having a problem.  The immigration department, which handles visa applications for producers, entertainers, artists, and others who need to come to the U.S. on business, was finding itself extremely short-staffed.  Too many chefs bringing in and managing clients, in relation to the number of cooks needed to process the work.  It then occurred to me that rather than move to bigger and expensive office space in the city, and hire more staff there, we could promote our secretarial staff to immigration paralegal jobs, while hiring secretarial people and even more immigration paralegals in Mysore.  With an extra office in Mysore, we could handle thousands of visas a year, instead of hundreds.

I figured Mysore would be ideal, because as a university town, it has plenty of talented job candidates, while at the same time a much lower cost, and higher quality of living, in contrast to India’s big cities. My local friends confirmed that if decent jobs were in Mysore, most graduates would prefer to stay in their home town, and live with their families. Families, especially extended ones living together, are a big deal here.

So I went online to find a few things to send to my law partners about Mysore.  I discovered that my idea was hardly original.  Astute business analysts from India and all over the world already have concluded that Mysore is an ideal location for business – the next Bangalore, but hopefully without the congestion, and the lack of planning that led to it. The traffic in Bangalore is so bad that it can take two hours or more just to go across town. Once the widening of the Mysore highway is finished, most people in Bangalore will find it faster to drive all the way to Mysore, than to get to their jobs in Bangalore. 

Anyway, my unoriginal idea about setting up offices in Mysore kept growing and growing. The more I learned about out sourcing and off shoring in India, the more I realized that all of the work we do in New York, Los Angeles, and London, with the exception of getting clients, strategizing about their situations and ours, providing legal advice, and once in a while showing up in court, can be done better and more efficiently by talented, highly educated people in Mysore.

After even more research, I convinced my firm to establish a full-blown off shoring subsidiary here in Mysore.  We ran an ad campaign in the local and national newspapers, sifted through over 500 job applications, interviewed 30 of the most qualified candidates, and signed a lease for some great commercial space (which costs much less than our monthly bill in Manhattan for ordering coffee).  We are about to hire our core group of 7 managers (including a general manager, an assistant manager, and 5 department managers, including an IT administrator, a lawyer, a professional employee training expert, an accountant, and a bookkeeper). They’ll then hire the next wave of employees themselves.

During the interview process, there was no shortage of comical moments. Like when applicants responded to our request for writing samples (to demonstrate  proficiency in English).  Instead of sending letters, articles, or papers they had written, a few people sent pieces of paper with a line or two of handwriting, showing their penmanship.  Another source of amusement was my learning curve regarding Indian culture, as exemplified in the first interview.  I got off to bad start by attempting to shake hands with a very embarrassed female applicant in front of husband. In the U.S., this apparently would be like trying to fondle her breasts. I also thought it was funny when one especially aggressive applicant simply refused to leave the interview room, for at least an anxious minute or two.  I did not realize that for some people, attending a job interview is somewhat similar to begging on the street.  My assistant, Sree, who organized the whole process, also got a kick out of the fact that people were calling him “sir” for the first time in his life.  He further enjoyed it when one of the applicants telephoned him with a bribe offer.

So why am I liking all of this?  For one thing, to my great surprise, it feels extremely creative. During one of my youthful phases mentioned above, when I tried to pretend to be an esthete, I thought that business sucked, and only art mattered. Even if it was Iggy and The Stooges, or making bullshit videos in the Lower East Side.   Now, the putting together of this group of remarkable people with different talents and personalities, in the creation of a brand new company, feels like real artistry.  Or a little bit like being both the playwright and casting director for a play, but without the casting couch!  Didn’t Shakespeare say all the world’s a stage?  Okay, so I’m just one of the “players.”  But I like being a player, even a world full of them.  It sure beats lying around on the floor whining about being bored, or wasting time drinking.  I can hardly wait until after the opening puja is finished, and the new employees start working together for the first time.

From the spiritual point of view, a lot of people will say that the only thing that matters is God-realization. But where do we find God?  Yes, within, but I’m sure most sages, gurus, and mystics agree that divinity is not just within what you think of as yourself, but within your true self, i.e., the whole never-ending swirl of everyone and everything.  So sure, look within, but in doing so, I don’t think we need to renounce the rest of the world. The Buddha, in arriving at the Middle Way, a road to liberation that stays clear of both gluttony and asceticism, came up with the Noble Eightfold Path. One of the eight folds is “right livelihood.”  I’m guessing the Buddha felt that liberation was not to be achieved by being a yoga bum.

In particular, I admire people who practice seva, or service. I should do some of it myself. But I think there also can be service, and spiritual practice, in doing just about any non-harmful job well and conscientiously, or mindfully.  “Buddhists have regarded manual labor (even cleaning toilets), as essential to enlightenment for a thousand years.” (Mindfulness and Meaningful Work, forward by E. Callenbach.) I don’t know if using a keyboard is manual labor, and we certainly are not including Enlightenment or toilet-cleaning in the business plan, at least not in detail, but I’m convinced that engaging in the world of work and business is an opportunity to practice.

I recently read a story about two Buddhist monks who wondered if it was okay to smoke during prayer time.  They each asked their superior.  One of them got yelled at, but the other was allowed to smoke. The scolded one asked his fellow monk how this happened.  His friend told him that he simply asked the superior, “Would it be permissible to pray while I smoke?”  As Jean Kinkade Martine noted in her essay, Working for a Living, “Maybe this is the kind of care my work needs. To pray while typing, while answering the phone – would it require a different kind of praying?”

Some day I’d like to write a book about this, not because I know how to implement the eight limbs of Ashtanga or the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path in the world of work, but because I don’t.  I went to a retreat once, where the Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg, talked about her book, Faith.  She said she wrote it because she didn’t have any.  By writing the book, she proposed to learn.

On the subject of this new Mysore company, I’m realizing that at least there is service that can be done. For one thing, rather than splitting up families, we’re reuniting them. Our general manager will be a woman who felt compelled by her career to go to Bangalore and leave her child behind with her parents in Mysore.  Two brilliant young men, one who will head our accounting and tax department, and the other who will run the legal departmen, also left their families to find their fortune in Bangalore. Now, all three of these new employees are happy to be able to return to their homes, without sacrificing their careers.  We expect to see this story repeat itself hundreds of times as we grow.

We’ll also be helping to raise the local wage rates and standard of living, as we hire away people from other companies who don’t pay as well. Although some locals have told us we are crazy to do the following, we are also going to be giving employees shares in the company.  Not a radical concept in the West these days, but here it seems unheard of.

It’s also worth noting that everybody in our U.S. offices who is affected is being promoted, not fired.  The “non-professional” staff are becoming paralegals, and the lawyers are being freed up to practice more law, and to do so under less time pressure.  I know, you’re probably thinking, lawyers are not exactly underprivileged, much less oppressed, so who cares?  Well, speaking as a lawyer, I think that given the enormous amount of unhappiness that lawyers are able to inflict, it is better to have happy lawyers, so they don’t take out their misery on others.

Some good will be done for our clients too, in the way of cutting costs and improving quality.  As those clients are therefore allowed to grow, I would hope that their employees would benefit, rather than be trashed.  At least that's our model.

I know that none of this is exactly eliminating world suffering.  But I think that if we can make our clients happy, and get a lot more of them, without compromising our way of doing business, it could be a little step forward.

If Shakespeare were around today, he might say “all the world’s a corporate cesspool.”  So if a company can succeed while doing some good for its employees, its customers, and hopefully its customers’ employees, I wonder if that might be just as valid as other kinds of service.  Or maybe I’m just trying to convince myself.  In any case, the work I’m doing makes me feel alive and engaged.

Kahlil Gibran wrote about work in The Prophet, using much more lofty terms.  I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I can even come close to living up to his words some day:  “When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. To love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret. All work is empty save when there is love, for work is love made visible.”

 

No Escape

Some yoga students have talked about how the practice causes them to be so finely calibrated that the slightest misstep or deviation in their personal life can be reflected on the mat the next morning.  One teacher once told me she had become so damn healthy that if she ate one cookie the night before, she would feel it in her practice.

I did not need much calibration to know that my practice this morning would suck.  An excess of masala dosas, mounds of biryani and a delivery from Pizza Hut made sure of that.

We had a special led class this morning, after a surprise two days off. Before the unexpected hiatus, I was making small but steady “progress” in the physical poses, getting smiles and praise from Sharath (“very good!”).  So this morning, I did not look forward to letting him down.  As usual for led class, I was last into the shala, but this time, even the spaces in the waiting room, and on the stage, were full.  The place was completely packed – except for the finishing room!  The men’s finishing room is a dark place off to the side, with a relatively narrow doorway.  What a perfect place for me to both show up for practice and hide at the same time!   With Sharath calling out the breaths and poses in the main room, surely he wouldn’t leave the class and come into the finishing room.

Wrong.  I should have known there would be no escape.  When my problem poses came up, Sharath left the main room and just walked right in. In between pulling my arms in the obscurity of the finishing room, he stuck his head out of the door and shouted the instructions for the rest of the class.  As always, he did not seem to be bothered by my retardation. He thought the whole thing was funny.

By the way, I spoke way too soon when I said the shala was getting extremely hot, and that this seemed to signal the approach of Summer.  If Summer was approaching, then lately it has been in full retreat. Mornings have been downright cold, at least on the way to practice.   Stay tuned for further fascinating meteorological updates.

minimalism

It's getting hot again in the shala.  Summer is approaching.  It's still cool and dark on the way to class, but the sweaty hot air hits you in the face as soon as you walk through the waiting room door.  I'm sweating like a pig during practice, I think, but actually I've never seen a pig sweat.  And it’s not from any lack of pigs running around all over my neighborhood.  Anyway, when I roll up my sweaty mat after finishing, and stuff it in my mat bag with my sweat-soaked yoga clothes, I could swear that the bag is five pounds heavier than when I started.  Is it possible to sweat five pounds of water in an hour and a half?  I don't know, but the sweat not only drips, it pours.

The more I sweat, however, the "better" I practice.  I've always felt that Ashtanga, with its quiet, steady iteration of the same poses every day, riding on the continuous rhythm of the breath, is in some ways similar to a concert of minimalist music, like that of Steve Reich or Philip Glass.  One of the things I like about minimalism is that it is at once hypnotic and exciting. Long-repeating melodic figures mesmerize the listener, and then give way to a rush of energy that flows from the tiniest shift in the pattern. It is only because of the backdrop of steady repetition, that you appreciate the variation, when at long last it grabs hold of you and lifts you up.  In Ashtanga, you can get a similar effect, no matter how “advanced” or “behind” you are. I am a perpetual beginner.   Every day, the steady, slow additive and rhythmic process of Ashtanga allows me to see the tiniest shifts in the pattern of my practice, and revel in them.  Yesterday, I came out of headstand without creating a large thud. Today, my hands went down another half-inch toward the floor in Pavritta Parsvakonasana.  Tomorrow, I might be able to barely keep myself up in Utplutih. Whatever. I always notice the tiniest “advance,” and I like it.

A few months from now, my practice might fall apart again, requiring me to start over. So what? Would I complain because after a CD is finished playing, and I put it in later to listen to it again, it is the same music?

After a “good” class today, on the motorcycle ride home, the cooling wind was bliss.  No cooling without sweat, no sweat without heat, no heat without practice, no appreciation of variation without repetition, and no bliss without appreciation.

Speaking of appreciation, thanks to Joseph again for throwing his annual Capricorn birthday party lunch by the pool at the Southern Star hotel today, where it is promised that “goats will wear bikinis.”

 

With Apologies to Lennon and McCartney

Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged old thoughts across my head
Found my way to the shower, and nearly threw up,
And looking up, I noticed I was late

Found my pants, and grabbed my mat
Made it to the shala, in seconds flat
Found my way inside, nearly had a stroke,
Guruji spoke, and I went into a dream

Ah, ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah…

I read the Outlook Magazine news today oh boy
Three thousand yogis in Mysore India
And though the yogis were eating dal
They had to count them all,
Now they know how many yogis it takes to fill Kalamandiram hall.
I’d love to turn you on......

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060116&fname=Yoga+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1

8 Tips On How To Get Sharath To Know Your Name

In the past few days, two long-time students told me that Sharath still does not know their names.  One is among the most advanced students in the shala.  Neither seemed particularly bothered, but I have nothing else I feel like writing about.  So in case any of you are concerned that Sharath does not know your name, and if you wish to solve the problem without waiting to achieve samadhi or nirvana, here is a proven method:

1.  Show up for class with last night's vodka coming out of your pores instead of sweat.

2.  Exhibit a truly retarded physical practice, preferably on the stage during led class.

3.  Be notoriously gay.

4.  Tell Sharath that with his new beard, he looks like a terrorist.

5.  Keep coming back every year, but don't just come back.  Gain 30 pounds before you do, so that Sharath has to start all over, congratulating you yet again on binding in Marichyasana A.

6.  Each time you come back, have a motorcycle accident without a helmet, so that you can walk into the shala with a bloody bandage wrapped around your head.

7.  Ask Sharath if you can post a flyer for Alcoholics Anonymous on the official AYRI bulletin board.

8.  Skip classes.  Lots of them.  This is the point where you will really start to see results.  As in "John, you not in class yesterday.  Why not?"

You may not need to follow all of these steps.  But I can tell you that they are guaranteed to work.  This year I'm for the most part a goody-two-shoes, but that's okay, now that Sharath already knows my name.

Haircut

"You need a haircut!  That's all you need!"  That's what right-wing Alabama Governor George Wallace used to yell to anti-war protestors who heckled him when he ran for President.  It's funny how I forget so many relatively important things, like my bankcard PIN numbers, or where the clutch is on my motorcycle, but remember so much trivia.  Anyway, Governor Wallace's snarling drawl had been ringing in my ears ever since I arrived in India.  So yesterday I finally dragged myself to the 30 rupee barbershop off Contour road.

I had been planning to take my local friend Sree with me to tell the barber what I wanted done.  But Sree was unavailable.  I decided just to get it done.  I drove to the shop and pulled open the curtain in front of the door.  There was an empty barber chair waiting for me.  I started to use my fingers to try to explain to the barber, then just gave up.  Instead, I said "I need a haircut. That's all I need."  He gave me a haircut.  It was good.

It was one of those learning opportunities.  I learned to just let go of trying to control something as insignificant as the outcome of a haircut.  A feeling of peace washed over me as I sank back into the chair and gave myself over to the barber.  Now I'm looking forward to letting go of some other things. 

Back in Mysore

It's great to be back.  I had thought I would not be able to get here from Bangalore in time for weekly registration on Monday.  I figured that would be good, since it would give me a week to settle in, before setting a shaky foot in the shala practice room.  Imagine my chagrin when we arrived with plenty of time to register!  Unable to think of any good excuse not to, I hitched a ride with Fábio to collect money from an ATM and go to the shala.

Just like last year, I had a paranoid thought that when I tried to register, Guruji would not allow it, saying something like, "No, you not allow here.  You not serious student."  Of course, nothing of the kind happened.  Sharath even gave me a present.  (a new official AYRI yoga mat).  I think the yoga world may be the only place where the class fuck-up becomes a teacher's pet.

The welcome I received from Sharath, Guruji, Saraswati and their staff helped quickly dissipate some other weird feelings.  Re-experiencing some of the sights, sounds, and even smells of Mysore, my neighborhood, and my house had a haunting effect on me when I first got back.  They revived memories of strange occurrences from my first two trips, not all of them pleasant, and a lot of them regrettable.

After two days, including two luxuriously sweaty practice sessions, whatever was left of that negativity has been excorcized.  I'm feeling happier than ever before.  The sun is shining from a cloudless blue sky, and my housemate is cooking Gnochy for lunch.  (Gnochy is not a fellow student, an animal, or even Indian food -- it's a vegetarian Italian dish.)

Yesterday we had lunch at the home of one of the Brahmin women who cook wonderful endless meals for ashtanga students, at about the equivalent of $1.30 each.  The following was overheard during lunch:

Student A:  "You know, 80% of the Buddhist monks don't even practice anymore.  The monasteries are full of homosexuality."

Student B:  "Well at least they're practicing something!"

Perhaps another reason I'm happy is that I don't miss the ice storms in the mountains of Western North Carolina.  Before I left, it was sub-freezing for days.

One thing I do miss is our weekly sangha in Waynesville, so another Mysore sangha is being organized.  If anybody is interested, please call me on my cell at 9880 016 441.  We have not yet set the time or day.  Here's the low down on the sangha concept, from last year:

The idea is that it is good to have a gathering of ashtangis and others where we do not sit at different tables or in different neighborhoods, where we can meditate together, and unburden our crazy minds in a space that is perhaps more conducive of respect than a café, a party, or a coconut stand.

Sangha (or “sangam”) is Sanskrit for “community” or “meeting.” It once referred to a gathering of buddhist monks, but now has a broader meaning. I belong to one in North Carolina, and the meeting of the sangha has become an important part of my week.  In this case, it means a weekly gathering where we do a half-hour seated meditation, a short walking meditation (indoors), a short reading from a spiritual text, and a respectful discussion of anything.  It usually lasts for an hour and a half or less.  There are no “leaders.” Just a rotating “ring-reader” who rings the bell and does a reading of his/her choice.

All are welcome!

(For anybody worried that this might be a forbidden and dangerous pranayama class, or something like the Dead Poets Society, it is not. Sharath read the notice in advance, and said "this is good.")

Mysore Unbound

In Bangalore now, happy to be bound for Mysore tomorrow.  That's the only binding going on.   When I left the shala last summer, I was binding in Mari C, which seemed like a big accomplishment at the time.  A bigger accomplishment might be to muster the nerve to return for a third trip, because now I can't bind in anything.  As usual, for a variety of reasons, my practice fell apart again after I left India.  I think it is my dharma to be, among other things, a poster child for misfit ashtangis.  If that's true, then I’m on the right path. 

One of my inspirations for returning was the story of the Indian saint, Ashtavakra.  His name means “bent in eight places.”   He was born deformed that way, because of a curse.  When he was eight years old, he went to the palace of King Janaka, to seek a favor for the one (his father) who gave him the curse.  As he dragged his deformed body through the palace doors, the various senior advisors and other of the king’s men laughed at his limping deformed limbs.  “What are you doing here?” one of them said.  “I’ve come to speak with the King,” Ashtavakra replied.   The important men of the Kingdom laughed even louder.  Then Ashtavakra started laughing as well.  One of the dignitaries then said, “We know why we are laughing, but why are you laughing?”  Ashtavakra responded: “I’m laughing because I’m the only one, in this room full of knowledgeable people, who knows that I am not my body.”

Superficially, I’ve accepted this lesson for a few years, but not really.  The truth is that I almost decided not return to the shala, for the simple reason that I thought I could not stand the embarrassment of being so "out of shape," despite nine months of previous practice in Mysore with the masters.  But any embarrassment would have nothing to do with yoga.  As I understand it, physical yoga is designed in large part to get the body, and our mental obsessions about it, out of the way.  The aim of course is not physical perfection, but the consciousness of Samadhi.  Or, as Sri K. Pattabhi Jois puts it, “the realization of the non-difference between the jivatma or indwelling Self of the individual, and the pavamatma, or Universal Self.”  So I decided to check my ego and deflated pride at the door, and walk into the shala the way I walked into ashtanga four years ago, with beginner's mind, beginner's body.  Considering the wonder and awe that I felt for the practice back then, this is not a bad state to be in again.

I even told Sharath that when he sees me in the waiting room before practice, he should call me “new student” rather than “old student.”  (That’s the determinant of who goes in first, and who has to wait.  As in “you old student, yes, you come,” or “no, you new student, you wait.”)   If he laughs at me when he actually sees how lame I am, which is unlikely, I’ll laugh right back!

Thich Nhat Hanh

Imagine being around thousands of years ago, and having the chance to spend a few days with the Buddha or Jesus Christ.  Or going back to the 1800’s, and hanging out with Ramakrishna.  That is how it felt to be with Thich Nhat Hanh during his 80th birthday this week.

In case anyone was wondering, the trial mentioned in my last blog post was settled on the eve of our picking the jury.  The settlement was very fat.  Our previously wronged client was set right.  With lots of fees flowing toward me like a waterfall from the mountains after a thaw, I wondered if I would take the opportunity to change my life.  Or squander it.  In India, and in some other countries more spiritually-oriented than the United States, there is a tradition, for people other than priests and monks, to spend the first half of their lives getting situated in the material world, and the second half on transcendence.  I’ve been looking forward to the second half.  No more excuses!

A few days after the money came in by wire, so did an email, announcing a surprise visit by the living Buddhist saint, Thich Nhat Hanh, who many believe is the closest thing we now have to the Buddha himself.  He was coming for a retreat at a monastery in of all places, rural Mississippi.  I’ve belonged to a Thich Nhat Hanh-oriented sangha in Waynesville, North Carolina for about two years, so this news was like a benevolent bolt of lightning.  Several of us, those who could get out of work, jumped all over it.

After nine hours of driving, we arrived at Memphis International Airport, eager to meet and greet our teacher.  He was flying in from Los Angeles, where he recently had led a silent peaceful peace march of thousands who carried no signs and shouted no slogans.  The flight was due in at 6:28 p.m.  As we had counted the miles to the airport (100 miles to Thich Nhat Hanh, 10 miles to Thich Nhat Hanh, etc.), now we counted the minutes.  I guess we were not living in the moment. 

By the time the arrivals screen quietly announced that the plane had landed, a crowd of about a hundred people had gathered as close as possible to the gate, from States all over the Southeast. A monk distributed yellow roses, one for each of us to hold.  Travelers began emerging out of the corridor from the flight, perplexed at all the smiling people holding flowers.  One passenger, probably a Hollywood agent, raised his arms and laughingly pretended to greet his followers.  When it looked like everyone had arrived except the one we were waiting for, we knew better.  We had heard that Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh’s nickname, pronounced “tie”) walks mindfully in meditation wherever he goes.  He wisely does not believe in hurrying for anything.

There was a bit of a commotion.  Someone said, “There he is!”  I could see some of the monks in Thay’s entourage coming toward the arrivals hall, but I could not see Thay anywhere.  I mistakenly had overlooked the little man with the brown wool ski cap.  Sticking out from under the cap were his funny ears.  His mouth showed a faint smile and buck teeth.  Brown robes stuck out from under a brown winter jacket that was about as big as he was.  Below the brown robes, he wore little brown socks and little brown clog shoes.  He paused at each person, looking him or her in the eyes and nodding in gratitude, as he accepted a rose from each.  The look he gave me was unforgettable, and beyond description.  Call it wishful thinking, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, or even a cliché, if you want, but it seemed as if in Thay’s small brown eyes was the answer to all of life’s questions. 

The whole time in the airport, as he personally encountered dozens of us one by one, not a word was spoken by anyone.  I was to learn later that this is an important part of Thay’s teaching.  Although he has written over 60 books, he believes that words, like thinking, often become an obstacle.

The next day, in the sticks of Mississippi, the retreat began.  On the back roads along the way, we thought about the civil rights workers who were killed there, and about the contrast between our good fortune and the hardships endured by others.  We thought about how Thich Nhat Hanh had stood shoulder to shoulder with Martin Luther King, Jr. during those times, and about how he had convinced King to oppose the war in Thay’s native country,Viet Nam, perhaps leading to the ultimate end of that war.  No wonder King nominated Thay for a Nobel Peace Prize.  In the parking lot of the monastery, we ran into some earnest young people from Mississippi who knew very little about any of this, but who were drawn to the retreat for other good reasons.  They said that in the Mississippi public schools, they were taught that the civil rights struggles happened elsewhere.  One nice aspiring Buddhist boy from Hinds County did not even know that in his own Mississippi home town, civil rights leader Medgar Evers had been shot to death.  This made me feel not so much more knowledgeable, but old, which is fine!

Anyway, back to the retreat.  There is so much to say about it, but I think the gist can be encapsulated in just a few stories, or probably less.  One is our first walking meditation.  The bell rang, the people gathered, and Thich Nhat Hanh said, “come closer.”  He said that during the walk, when we breathe in, we should say to ourselves, “I have arrived,” and that when we breathe out, we should say, again silently, “I am home.” He then started walking, two steps for each breath.  It was a surreal event, with morning mists rolling in over dew-covered, green fields.  Laughing children intuitively knew to come close to him and hold his hands.   He led us in a very long, mindful, silent trip through the fields, down rocky gullies, through trees, and again through more fields.  At one point, he sat down in the wet grass, and we all sat around him.  Thich Nhat Hanh, an oft-quoted scholar and former professor at Columbia and the Sorbonne, led us in what some might say are unbearably silly songs, but which I now am convinced are profound.  Here are the lyrics to one of them:

"Breathing in, breathing out,
Breathing in, breathing out,
I am blooming as a flower,
I am fresh as the dew.
I am solid as a mountain,
I am firm as the earth.
I am free.

Breathing in, breathing out.
Breathing in, breathing out.
I am water, reflecting what is real, what is true.
And I feel there is space, Deep inside of me.
I am free, I am free, I am free."

Later in the day, we all had a silent, mindful lunch with Thay in the meditation hall.  That was followed by Dharma discussions in the afternoon, silent dinner, and then talks on “The Five Mindfulness Trainings,” also known as The Five Precepts.  At one point in a ceremony, Thay dipped a rose upside down in a glass of water, and patiently and slowly walked throughout the hall, dripping water from the rose onto the tops of each of our heads.

At a previous retreat, someone said, “I have begun to hate our silent meals.” He or she asked, “How can we draw energy from the Sangha when we, mostly strangers, are stopped from developing the relationships we need to be a Sangha?”  This is a condensation of Thay’s answer:

“Dear friends, you have been eating and talking for many, many years.  We only have twenty-one days to practice together.  We shouldn’t believe that talking is the only way to communicate;  talking may be an obstacle to communication….  When we share a meal in mindfulness, the object of our mindfulness is the food.  We communicate with the cosmos and recognize the food as a gift from the cosmos.  If we are careful, we can communicate with the sunshine, the clouds, the Earth, with everything….  The second object of our mindfulness is the person sitting with us….  You don’t need to talk to communicate.  If you sit and radiate peace, stability, and joy, you are offering something very special to the other person….  True communication is possible in silence.  Silence can be very elegant.  It is a method of training.”

The next day, before walking meditation, Thay said nothing at all.  Once again, we mindfully and meditatively followed him through the fields and forests.  This time, by luck or whatever (I hope it wasn’t pushiness), I ended up next to him for most of the walk.  Once again, after much walking, he picked a place in a meadow to sit down.  By virtue of my lucky position, I ended up sitting a few feet across from him.  This time, he said nothing. 

As we all sat in the morning fog, I watched him pick a blade of grass to play with a grasshopper.  As we all waited eagerly for any pronouncement that he might care to make, he took the blade of grass, stripped it in half, rolled it with his fingers, put it in his mouth, and blew it like a toy whistle.  That was his only pronouncement for the morning.  Everybody laughed. 

We then sat in silence for a long time, as Thay alternately played with the grass in front of him, and looked deeply into the faces around him.  He did not look at me, although I wanted very much for him to do so.  In the long, long silence, I looked down and became lost in thoughts of contracts for film shoots, unreturned business emails and phone calls, and the like.  After a very long time, I woke up from my diversions, looked up, and saw Thich Nhat Hanh staring directly at me. This was as if to say, "Russell, whenever you are finished with your useless thoughts, we’ll go."

I looked into his peaceful eyes, and forgot about my thoughts.  He then stood up, and led us on a long, wonderful walk back to the meditation hall. If there was a recurring theme for me during the retreat, it was that whatever I want or need, it is always under my nose, without me being aware of it. 

I wanted and needed Thay’s gaze, and it was there without me knowing it.  When we were late for breakfast, I was pathetically scraping a tray like a hungry ghost, for the tiniest bits of mashed potato, out of fear of being too famished to appreciate the retreat.  I failed to realize that at the end of the breakfast line was a big pot of stew, full of potatoes and other more tasty vegetables.  Later, I regretted not bringing a camera, and wondered if I could possibly ask for an autograph from Thay to memorialize the event.  I agonized about it, not wanting to act like a tourist, and ended up not having the nerve to ask.  Later, after I agreed to accept The Five Mindfulness Trainings, there was an elaborate ceremony in which Thay issued to me (and several dozen others who agreed to take the plunge into aspiring Buddhahood), a “Five Mindfulness Trainings Certificate,” signed by him as my “Ordination Teacher” and addressed to me personally, even giving me a “Dharma Name.” 

So what is the lesson?  It’s the same old one that I’ve been trying to learn and relearn like a bad student for a long time.  To paraphrase the Bible, “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all other things shall be added upon you,” including, but not limited to, gazes, potatoes, and autographs.  Or as Sri K Pattabhi Jois puts it more succinctly, "Practice, and all is coming."  Thay teaches that by mindfully breathing in, and breathing out, we can eventually and fully realize that there is nothing to achieve -- a realization that is the greatest achievement of all.

Trial

In four days, I'll be picking a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. What does this have to do with ashtanga?  In a way, everything.  In preparing for trial the last couple of months, my practice fell apart.  I learned a lot from that.  Does depression lead to a lack of practice, or does a lack of practice lead to depression?  I don't know the answer to that, but I suspect it is yes to both questions.  What I have learned is that without my practice, and my meditation, I am lost. I'd like to think my gurus are Sri K Pattabhi Jois and Sharath Rangaswamy, but in a way, my guru now is United States District Judge Laura Taylor Swain. By setting the trial early, she has become my personal trainer.  Without my practice, I know I cannot do this job.  I tried to do it without ashtanga, and I degenerated so rapidly that it scared me.   So I am back to the mat again in earnest.  Even though I am no more superficially "advanced" than I was before I spent 9 months in Mysore, I can tell that I am more "advanced" in ways that matter.  I do each pose as if it is the only pose.  For an hour and a half or so, I forget about who needs to be subpoenaed, or how we will get Exhibit K or W into evidence.  Through practice, I remember that life is not good or bad based on winning or losing a trial.

So I am going to call this trial an ashtanga trial.  I wonder if I will be the first attorney to be practising ashtanga every day during the stresses of trying a case in front of a jury.  I doubt it.  But in any event, I have a feeling that no matter what happens, ashtanga will win. In a flash of insight during practice, I realized that the worst possible scenario is that I get stage fright and lose the case.  So what?  This is not a case about life or death.  It's all about money.   I am more likely to win with a steady practice, but if we lose, then the universe and I will be just fine. 

On another note, I get a laugh from the fact that this blog has become an epicenter for Indian gay boys who want to hook up.  At first I deleted the deluge of personal ads about dick size in the form of "comments."  But then I got lazy and just let all of the "comments" go on.  Now there are over a hundred "comments" from gays in nearly every state of India, asking for sex from just about anyone reading.  To amuse myself, I did a Google search using the terms "gay" and "mysore."  The first result was a link to this blog, followed by other links to it.  I think it is funny that this little journal of my trips to Mysore has become a part of Indian culture, or counter-culture.  Hey gay boys, have fun!

Welcome Back, Anonymous

It's been said that life's a bitch, and then you die. But it seems that the bitchiest things in life are opportunities to practice one or more of the eight limbs of ashtanga.  I was about to leave for my weekly sangha (group meditation) in Waynesville the other day, and pick up my friend Sara, who needed a ride there, when an email arrived from Delaware, announcing that one of the exhibits was missing from a court filing by our firm that was due that day.  Damn.  How many times have I told myself that meditation is the shit (as somebody else once said), and that I should put it above all else?  After all, scholars say that hatha yoga was invented simply as an aid to meditation.  I think physical yoga exists only because meditators five thousand years ago, like those today, had sore knees. 

So what happens when you have conflicting obligations, and both are important?  What happens when your obligation to yourself, and to your conception of divinity, conflicts with your obligation to a client who is counting on you, and paying you, to do your job?  I decided to be a half hour late for sangha, and a half hour late in picking up my friend.  I felt like a workaholic, type-A asshole.  It was only in the car, talking with Sara, that I realized there was no conflict.  Instead it was an opportunity to call Sara and some other friends that I always want to impress, and confess to them once again that I am not perfect, and that I need their forgiveness.  At the sangha, during the sharing after the meditation, Jackie the host confessed that she has been compulsively angry with people in her life who have been late, that this was the first time she was able to let it go of it, and that this was a liberating experience.

It reminded me, in a strange way, of situations with bitter courtroom adversaries, when one of us screws up and needs a break from the other.  Whether you are the confessor and requester, or the listener and giver, it is always a wonderful moment.   It is then that we catch a brief glimpse of the fact that we are not separate. 

Speaking of adversaries, I was glad to see another comment from Anonymous, who I guess is still reading this blog.  He (i'm convinced that Anonymous is male) took the time to mention how "you are SO full of yourself," and "you are missing the fundamental truth of yoga," and "you are still a drunk."  I love Anonymous.  He is right that I am full of myself, and that i still drink.  As for the fundamental truth of yoga, I am glad that it is still out there for me to learn, because the little that I have learned so far has been pretty nice.  I only wish Anonymous would email me, so we could chat.  Hey Anonymous, if you won't email me, would you please tell us what is the fundamental truth of yoga?

The New Rule

Believe it or not, this does relate to Mysore, and not just because everything relates to everything.

A friend gave me a Rumi poem, hidden on a sheet of paper folded in half.  He told me to read it later. I put it under the floor mat of my car, because the car is a convertible.  I did not want the wind to blow the poem all over Interstate 40.  So when I got home, I forgot the poem was there.  That night I had a horrible dream.  I'll spare you and me the most embarrassing details, but they involved lust, drunkenness, losing all my money and "position," and otherwise hitting bottom.  In AA terminology, hitting bottom means sinking so low that the only direction left, other than death, is up.  In the dream, I was staggering in the street, penniless, covered in blood, stinking of whiskey, my teeth all knocked out, and my pants falling down.  I saw a policeman and began sobbing, begging him to take me to rehab.  He got on the police radio and started making the arrangements.  He said there was a spare bed at a rehab available, but I would have to share a room with three drug-addicted Viet Nam vets who all had a contagious case of Agent Orange disease.  I was so far down, that I felt tremendously relieved and grateful for the chance. When I woke up from the dream, I shuddered.  I sat up in bed and said to myself, "wow, i've just experienced what it is to fall to the very bottom of the hole."  That morning, I remembered to read the poem.  I went out to the car, pulled the folded paper from under the floor mat, and sat in the car to read it for the first time.  Here's the poem:

THE NEW RULE

It's the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad:  He falls into a hole.
But down that hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.

Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks.  Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.

Here's the new rule:  Break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower's breath.

-Rumi

The words moved me, not only because of the dream.  Lately I've been finding out some things from non-striving, or falling.  Lots of strange events have been happening to me that suggest there is really "nothing else to do" -- that I am "falling" down a path, whether I like it or not, "toward the glassblower's breath."

Here's an example.  Longtime readers of this blog might remember how it all started when I went to India for the first time with Naomi, my ashtanga friend from New York.  We had planned to stay in Mysore for three months, but I stayed for five and came back a year later.  When I came back, Naomi was still in India, teaching Ashtanga to Tibetan monks, traveling throughout South Asia from one holy place to another, and practically becoming a Buddhist nun.  I've since moved to the mountains of Western North Carolina, near Asheville, while keeping my office in Manhattan.  I also quit AA, but that's a much longer story.  Anyway, a few weeks ago, I got a call from Naomi.

It was great to hear from her.  She's recently been managing the Shiva Shala in New York, and I was nearly giddy with news of my own.  One thing I started to tell her was the news that I heard from my building contractor, confirmed by a huge front page story in the local paper, "The Mountaineer."  It was about a yoga-oriented spiritual community being constructed only about 10 minutes by car from my new house.  Called Mount Soma, which you can see in the distance from my living room window, it is being bankrolled by an unusual real estate development company.  They are building 70 eco-friendly homes, a yoga shala, and a meditation center, all based on Indian Vastu principles.   Needless to say, everybody in this economically-depressed, rural farming area is abuzz about all of this.  Because I've got photographs of Ramakrishna, Krishnamacharya, and Guruji in my house, and an om sticker on my car, my contractor wondered if I had something to do with the sudden increase in things Indian coming into Haywood County.  (He's the good ole boy who offered to build me a whiskey still in my basement.)  I laughed at his question about Mount Soma, and told him I had nothing to do with it.  Which I thought was true.

But when I started to tell the news to Naomi, she interrupted by saying, "why do you think I called you?"  Turns out her father is the 700-acre landowner/developer, and it was Naomi, after her long trip to India, who convinced him to make the mountain into a spiritual community.  So out of all the places in the world where Naomi might have landed, she is touching down in the sticks of Haywood County, and will have a cabin a few minutes from my house.  As if that were not a strange enough "coincidence," Naomi has joined AA.  (She gave me permission to blurt that out.) She wants me to take her to all the local meetings.  As Naomi put it, "you're going to be in recovery whether you like it or not. Your karma is bringing me down there, so get used to it!"  Still in a state of shock, I jokingly asked her if she would marry me.  She turned me down.  I guess she doesn't feel like creating a bad, mountain version of "Will and Grace."  Besides, she's dating a model.

Okay, here's another example of how I seem to be falling down a path, regardless of whether I try to follow or not.  Like every year around this time, when I have not been with my ashtanga teachers for months, and when my Winter trip to Mysore seems far away, my daily "self practice" starts to degenerate.  I should go to some classes in Asheville, but with teachers in India like Sharath and Guruji, not to mention Lino, I guess I've become an ashtanga snob.  This is a truly remarkable achievement, when you consider that I am still a beginner who can't even do the full primary series. Call me crazy too, but I don't want to do a one-hour led class at noon in North Carolina with a teacher who probably has  never been to Mysore.  No doubt there are other local classes that are decent or even good, but I have not bothered to investigate, maybe because I am a spoiled ashtanga snob, or maybe because I simply miss Mysore.

However, just when I was despairing of ever recovering the enthusiasm and discipline that once sustained my practice, weird events came to the rescue.  Our firm has been counsel to a movie being filmed in Asheville, and the director and producer were curious about my trips to Mysore.  When I told them more about it, they mistakenly thought I was qualified to teach ashtanga.  I suppose I added to the confusion by mentioning that I would teach them some poses "one of these days."  I said this the way people in L.A. are always saying "we really should do lunch."

But they would not let go of it.  They said they wanted to drive out to my house the following Friday morning, and have an ashtanga class, followed by a veggie lunch that they would bring.  When the day arrived, I was hungover.  The director and producer were a bit late, and by the time I finished showing them the house and the views, it was nearly lunch time.  I asked if they would not mind terribly if we did the yoga another time.  They said no problem, and we had a nice lunch.

But they still would not let go of the ashtanga thing.  They persuaded me to come by the film studio in Asheville the following week.  Feeling like an imposter, I was dreading it.  When I got there, I was surprised to see that in addition to the director and producer, most of the production staff were also there, seated cross-legged on a cleared-out wooden floor, ready to learn ashtanga.  Everybody was a total yoga beginner.  Most did not have mats.  One young couple shared a large, sheepskin rug.  Two other students were wearing jeans.  Another still had his shoes and socks on.

I sat down in front of the group, and told them what David Swenson told me about teaching.  I had taken part in what used to be called a "teacher training" course with David.  One of the would-be teachers had asked him if we could eventually get teaching certificates.  David said, "I don't give out teacher certificates, but I'll be happy to certify you as a student!"  So I told my beginners' ashtanga class that I was a certified student.  I told them one of the translations of "namaste" ("the guru in me bows to the guru in you"), and that everyone who knows anything is a guru, with something to teach, even if they are are not teachers. I told them that I would try to teach them what I know, and that I would not try to teach them what I do not know, which is a lot.  Amazingly, nobody left.

I've been "teaching" this class, Mysore-style, for a month now.  The one who has been learning the most has definitely been me.  None of my eight students has progressed beyond Pavritta Trikonasana, but their wonder and dedication has been contagious.  Before each class, I do a little "show and tell," with things like photos from Mysore, stories about Guruji, stories about what ashtanga has done for me, or even a short film ("Ashtanga, New York").  I seem to whip up enthusiasm, not only in the students, but most of all, in me.  To put it crudely, I am believing my own shit!  Thanks to the class, I am back on the daily mat, doing my own practice at home.  In addition to reminding me of why and how I got hooked on ashtanga in the first place, the class has spurred me on to finish learning the full primary series.  If I don't learn it, there'll be no one to teach it to my class.

So once again, notwithstanding all of my laziness, disease, and self-sabotage, events are conspiring to pull me along the path where I should go.  Even when I fall down into a pit, at the bottom there is always "something shining."  Even when "everywhere is falling everywhere," we all "fall toward the glassblower's breath."  Nothing else to do!

Missing in Action

Hey everybody who asked or wanted to know,

Sorry to seem so mysterious. My "missing in action" was due to a number of things, mostly a shitload of work, finishing and moving in to a new house in the mountains west of Asheville, a silly feeling that i should not post anymore unless i've got something terribly profound to say, and the fact that it feels weird posting on a "Mysore blog" when i am not in Mysore. But Mysore is a state of mind too, so i'll try to get back to posting, and i'll try not worry about whether it is drivel. I've got a trial in September, and hope to be heading back "home" to geographical Mysore as soon as it is over!

Report from Haad Tien, and New Old Mysore Posts

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ’n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel myself a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

-- “Woodstock,” by Joni Mitchell

I woke up this morning and involuntarily, but calmly and quietly, began mouthing Joni Mitchell’s words in what felt like a mild drug overdose. This is despite the fact that I have been as clean and sober as a churchmouse. It may have something to do with the fact that I have not eaten in five days. Unless you count shakes made of watermelon juice, clay, and powdered psyllium husks, or nightly bowls of broth.

Haad Tien is not Woodstock. Jimi and Janis have been replaced with ubiquitous Asian trance techno fusion music. The hits of bad “brown acid” have given way to shots of wheatgrass juice. Nobody is playing in a rock’n’roll band, or camping out on the land.  Some may be setting their souls free, but many more are cleansing their colons.  We are nowhere near “half a million strong.”  More like a couple hundred.

Actually I doubt that even Woodstock was really Woodstock. I think it was held in Bethel. In any case, there is definitely a sort of updated hippie feel to Haad Tien, and it must have reminded me of Joni Mitchell. I’m staying at the main attraction here, “The Sanctuary: An Alternative Resort,” where nobody wears shoes, and where guests with flip-flops are required to take them off everywhere. Many of the guys have long hair or dreadlocks or both, and most do not wear shirts. The favorite activities, at least the ones I know about, seem to be fasting, yoga, sun worshipping, meditation, getting massaged, eating vegetarian food, colonic irrigation, and partying all night long.  On each receipt, all of the cash registers here automatically print "MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR." The sweet smell of marijuana is often in the breeze.

I knew this trip was going to be unusual for me, soon after our plane from Bangkok arrived at the “Airport Terminal” on Koh Samui. Samui is the only nearby island that is big enough for airplanes. The “Airport Terminal” is a collection of large bamboo and wooden huts. To get to Haad Tien, you get a ferry to Koh Pha Ngan, look for a flatbed truck, hop in the back with a bunch of fellow backpackers, go across Koh Pha Ngan to Had Rin, and then look for one of the many old-fashioned, wooden, fishing longboats, and pay a fisherman to take you to Haad Tien, provided that the waves are not too big that day. It’s all so romantic. But I had been traveling all night. I was not in a romantic mood. I went directly to the nearest beach and hired a nice young Thai who did not know much English but had a speedboat. He took me straight to Haad Tien in less than a half hour. This was even though he did have to stop the boat once in the middle of our trip, to allow a large school of dolphins to pass in front of us.

As we approached Koh Pha Ngan, the relatively unspoiled island that hosts Haad Tien, it reminded me of the part of the movie, King Kong, when the expedition boat was approaching Kong’s place. Lush green tropical rain forest mountains jutting high out of the mist. Craggy rock cliffs covered with palm trees. Barely any sign of human life, except for two small villages and a town along the coastline. As we approached Haad Tien Bay, I could see the Sanctuary houses and bungalows, none of which are anything more than palm-thatched wooden huts on stilts, sticking out of the trees on the side of a mountain, and hugging big boulders and rocks.

After the boat hit the sand a dozen feet from shore, I threw my flip-flops on the beach, rolled up my inappropriate long pants, and jumped into the shallow but wavy water. My laptop, yoga mat, and a few other belongings were on my back. They somehow stayed dry during the whole trip from Samui, despite waves splashing over the bow all the time. I made my way to the Sanctuary “reception desk,” which is just the bar at a vegetarian restaurant that serves as the headquarters and main hangout for the whole place. I looked at the rows and rows of liquor bottles. I smiled, because for some reason, let’s call it grace, I have lost all desire to drink, at least for a while. I celebrated with a carrot juice, and the bartender fetched a waiter to show me my house/hut.

To get there, we had to walk up about a hundred yards of narrow cement steps, winding steeply through the palm trees and rocks up the mountain, with bamboo railings along the side of the path. The house/hut is about 30 feet by 30 feet, half of which make up a covered deck. The structure is perched up over Haad Tien Bay, with a stunning view of the crashing waves on the beach below and a large mountain promontory (in Ireland they would say either a “head” or a “finger”) across the bay, heading, or finger pointing, out into the sea. Just to the right of that, the sun rises every morning out of the Gulf of Thailand.

In some ways the most interesting feature of this abode is the bathroom. It's in a cave. It's big and has marble floors, white tile walls, and all the usual bathroom things, but the whole room is deep underneath a huge boulder, which serves as both the roof and ceiling. Other massive mountain rocks apparently have supported the boulder for thousands of years, and I hope they continue to do so.  They stick out of the white walls inside.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story later, if you want. It will include such episodes as, “Practicing Ashtanga on the Edge, Literally, with Rolf,” “Facing a Perfect Storm While in a Little Yellow Dingy with a Blender for an Engine,” “The Cows that Came Back as Frogs,” “I Hike Through the Jungle to Haad Rin and See Myself in a Tree,” and of course, “Listening to Techno Music with Samples of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech, While Naked on My Back in a Colonic Cleansing Room, with a Plastic Tube Up My Ass.”

Meanwhile, if you want more Mysore lore, I just posted two entries that I should have posted over a year ago. One, called Relapse and Rebound (February 9, 2004), I was too embarrassed to post before. I guess now I have no shame. The other, The Days Are Gods (February 13, 2004), involves, among other things, an encounter with a giant bee, and binding in Marichyasana C. I put off posting it because I never finished it. Now I just don’t care!

Goodbye Mysore, Hello Haad Tien

Now that Guruji and family are on their world tour, having closed the shala doors on their way out, I have fled to a small island in the Gulf of Thailand.  I am studying ashtanga with Pattabhi-certified Rolf and Marci Naujoket, and liking it very much.  In between working by email, practicing ashtanga, swimming in the ocean, and not eating (I'm on a 7-day fast -- not eating actually takes more time than eating), I've had some moments to start to reflect on my second trip to Mysore.

In some ways, the second trip was similar to the first, but better.  Far fewer missed practice days (probably about 7 over 3 months), much less drinking and pizza, and closer friendships.  The significant difference is that I seem to be finding a way to be at peace with myself, with the path that I am on, and with my location on that path.  I had another chat with Sharath, and I talked with him about my various struggles, including my occasional missing of classes.  He said, "whatever you are doing, it is enough."  It was good to hear that, and I will try not to misinterpret it!  What I am learning, later than others, is that when I can bring myself to a place of non-judging and non-recrimination, then the things about which I want to judge or punish myself tend to fall away.

So I ended this trip sober and happy.  I am still not binding in Marichyasana D, much less have I achieved sainthood or "Enlightenment."   But that's fine.  Yesterday in Haad Tien (on the island of Koh Pha Ngan), a Mysore shala friend took me to a mountain-top hut for a satsang.  "Sat" is sanskrit for "truth," and "sang" means "company," so a satsang is often understood to mean a group of aspirants getting together to seek and discuss the truth.  In this case, it was mostly one guy standing in front of blackboard and earnestly telling us all about the "awakening" he had when he discovered that there was no point in trying to change himself, because we are all just fine already, and because we can't  be changed anyway.  He said that meditation, yoga, and all of the other methods he previously had used to try to find the truth were all just fine, but totally beside the point, which is that we already are enlightened, and that whatever we are doing in our life, whether "good" or "bad," is just one of a divine series of roller-coaster rides that we should just accept and enjoy.  I am not saying that.  I am pretty sure Sharath was not saying that.

I (and many others -- this is not an original idea) think that human evolution has reached the point where there have been several god-conscious or "enlightened" individuals, just as when the human species was born, there were some apes that had reached the state of self-consciousness, and therefore had become human.  In the category of super-evolved, god-conscious humans, I am of course thinking of the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Ramakrishna, Neem Karoli Baba, and the like.  I am not one of those individuals.  Neither are any of my friends, unless they are keeping it well hidden.  If we are going to achieve god-consciousness or something like it, we are going to have to work on it.  Hey, if I remember my books correctly, even those above-mentioned, highly evolved individuals had to work on it.   The Buddha sat under the bodhi tree meditating for seven weeks.  Jesus went to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.  Ramakrishna and Neem Karoli Baba may or may not have had an easier time of it, but they too had to jump through hoops. 

So coming to accept myself, and learning to be at peace with myself, is not saying that I should forget about yoga, forget about meditation, and instead just go out and get drunk, on the theory that it is part of God's plan, or the divine cosmic amusement park ride.   I am saying that self-acceptance, including acceptance of all kinds of "bad" behavior, makes it less likely that I will engage in that behavior.  More importantly, self-acceptance makes it more likely that I will treat myself (and others) well, that I will make more skillful choices about how to find and stay on the right path for me, and that I will not wallow in guilt-induced defeatism.  Self-acceptance is not contrary to growth.  It is necessary for growth. 

One tiny but perhaps telling example is that after Sharath advised me not to feel guilty about missing class, after I had missed three in a row, I was inspired to climb out of my rut and return to class the next morning.  Otherwise, I might have been too depressed, or embarrassed, to show my face, crazy as that sounds.  I don't need a teacher who is an intimidating, shame-inculcating, authority figure.  I certainly don't need to act that way toward myself.

Wow, that was a longwinded way of making a fairly simple point.  More on good times at Haad Tien later.

What Are We Doing?

Somebody posted a question a while back, asking whether some of my friends and I are practicing Buddhism or Ashtanga. I’ve been meaning to respond, but because it seems like such a big topic, I kept procrastinating and waiting until I had more time to take it on. Oh well, I’m tired of waiting, so here’s a stab at it.

I am by no means a philosopher or religious scholar, but I do have a layperson’s opinion. I don’t see Buddhism and Ashtanga, or any religion and Ashtanga, as mutually exclusive. In his booklet, Suryanamaskara, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois says that the practice of yoga is designed to very gradually lead “to the realization of the non-difference between the jivatma or indwelling Self of the individual, and the pavamatma, or Universal Self.” Although Guruji is a Hindu, his statement is entirely consistent with Buddhism as I understand it. We ashtangis, just like Buddhists, are all seeking to quiet our minds, and to realize our true Universal Self, which the egoic mind tends to keep hidden from view. From the little I know about Hinduism, it seems that its ultimate philosophical underpinning is no different from the teachings of the Buddha, who in fact was raised in India as a Hindu and is considered a diety by Hindus. According to Hinduism, all the manifestations in the universe, including all the dieties and all of us, are One.  That One is Brahman, the divine universal spirit or life force. Within all of us is the same Universal Self that Guruji talked about. Hindus refer to this as Atman, the manifestation of the divine Brahman in each of us. As I understand it, Buddhism is not saying anything different. Buddhism only “cuts out the middlemen,” so to speak, making no differentiation between any of the manifestations of Brahman, and therefore not having different names for them, or at least not for 300 million dieties. Christianity also is not in contradiction with the ultimate reason for the practice of yoga. When Christ said “split a piece of wood; I am there” and “lift up a stone, and you will find me there,” he was saying that everything in the universe, obviously including all of us, is divinity. With yoga, we seek to fully realize this.

I know this is all simplistic, but it’s the best I can do for now. Besides, sometimes the most important things are the simplest.  As for the question of whether I am actually practicing Buddhism, or even Ashtanga, that is not so simple. "Trying" is more like it.

This Is War

If I were a Catholic, I’d be thinking about getting an exorcism. I sometimes feel like Jesus and the Devil are having a war inside of me. I’ve been going to class without fail, but my devilish shadow self has been doing everything it can to stop this. The Devil’s latest weapons of choice, alcohol and pizza, have slowed me down, but I think Jesus is winning. To counteract the fat and calories and other things in the Devil’s arsenal, I’ve been doing 20 Namaskar B’s in addition to my normal daily practice. But sometimes that only makes me misbehave more, which in turn makes me want to step up my ashtanga practice even further. I even thought of climbing Chamundi Hill (1008 steep steps up a mountain) every day, but I figured that would be too much of an escalation of the war. I’m worried that at some point, the whole thing might go nuclear.

Last Friday, my shadow self almost succeeded in keeping me from going to led class. I lingered in bed and took my time with showering and what not, in a barely subconscious effort to make me so late that I would not have the nerve to show up. When I drove by the shala, I saw that the 5am crowd was already out on the street. This meant that my class had started. I was debating whether to go in, using the phony argument that it would be disrespectful of my teachers to arrive late. My friend Fábio (from the 5am class) saw me hesitating and said, dismissively, “just get in there.”

I walked in sheepishly, with my head down, sort of tip-toeing toward the back of the room, hoping that most people would not notice. Then of course Sharath said in front of everybody, in a booming voice, interrupting his calling of the postures, “Russell, Russell, you go here,” pointing to an empty space near the front.

Ironically, it was after this minor debacle that I finally got to know Sharath outside of class. I’ve been helping him with a legal matter (no, he’s not in any trouble), and he invited me into his home for tea that evening. This morning he invited me for coffee after class. I don’t drink coffee, but I did not turn him down. It was nice to just hang out for no reason and talk about nothing. I was happy to be able to confirm what I suspected, which is that he’s a fun-loving guy with a mischievous streak. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy telling me an off-color joke about religion. We also had fun talking about the various things he can smell from the sweat of yoga students in class, including marijuana, alcohol, pizza, and garlic. He told me that he sometimes smells alcohol on my back, but he can’t tell whether it’s whiskey or vodka. He said, jokingly, that Guruji and his mother also smell things, but “they don’t know anything, so they don’t know what it is.” I told him that I had some dirty jokes, but that I was afraid to tell them. He said, “when Olaf comes, we get together and you tell.” Olaf is my currently absent neighbor, a 4th-series ashtanga master and otherwise wild person.

In other news, I decided that when the shala closes for the world tour in March, I’ll go to Haad Tien, a relatively isolated beach on the island of Koh Phangan, near the Southeast coast of Thailand. Rolf Naujokat, one of the best ashtanga teachers in the world (see http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/2001/1-2/2001-1-11.shtml), is conducting a workshop there. I need that kind of structure. If I were to stay in Mysore without any teachers and try to practice everyday on my own, God knows what would happen.

"We Live In A Beautiful World, Yeah We Do, Yeah We Do."

Thanks to Coldplay for those brilliant lyrics, which I can’t get out of my head.  Having a beautiful sober time in the South Indian part of our beautiful world, yeah I am. Practice was so good today that I wished it could go on all morning. The wind has picked up, and the Mysore skies are big, bright and clean. The sun is strong, and people seem happier to me, maybe because I am.  Maybe you're saying to yourself, this blog is a lot more interesting when it's about drunken escapades. Too bad!

Yesterday during the long sunset, I left my motorcyle at home and walked for miles. I stopped on the way at Tina’s to meet friends for dinner, which was good. The vegetable soup was better than I have ever tasted, and there was a spicy potato salad (with tamarind, garlic, onions, and lemon juice) that made me go inside to get the recipe. Then I walked a mile or so to the Ramakrishna Ashram.  A couple of local boys stopped their motorcyles along the way, to ask me if I wanted “a drop,” which I think is Kannada for “a lift.” It was great to see the lit-up portrait of Ramakrishna in his temple shrine again, surrounded by flowers and incense, and better yet, to feel his presence. A new monk was leading the bhajan (devotional chanting), so I was able to learn some new words that the previous monk might have slurred. The new monk also picked up the pace, so the singing, harmonium, tablas, and cymbals were all cascading along nicely.

After the bhajan, I took another long walk to return a DVD (Bertolluci’s The Dreamers) across town. The Friday night streets were full of life. It seemed like all of Mysore was in them. On Temple Road, I passed by a stream of gorgeous displays of fresh vegetables of countless colors, all in overflowing wooden crates, or on blankets on the ground, and/or on wooden tables supported by bicycle wheels. All of the vegetable stands (or sits) were mobbed, and everybody was happy, especially the farmers. The college students on Kalidasa Road were out roaming and laughing in friendly packs, after a week of exams. Even the Tech Video store, which is normally a quiet place to chat forever with Ranjan the opinionated clerk, was crowded with people busily planning their evening at the movies. I took a long way home, through dozens of palm tree covered neighborhoods where I’ve never been. I could see and hear families in their houses, all animated around dinner tables or tv sets. Other people were out for their nightly walks. The night sky was cloudless and smogless, the new moon was out, and the breezes cooled my face and kept me from getting tired.

I like to drive motorcycles and scooters, but you notice so much more when you are walking. I also like a nice big drink, but the world is so much more beautiful to me when I am not wallowing in an alcoholic fog. Yeah it is!

Ironically, after I quit drinking yesterday (for the 100th time, I know), and after I blogged about it, an anonymous commentator chose that moment to post a less than friendly critique of me. He (or she, but I am strongly sensing “male”) said that I am a self-indulgent attention seeker, that I have no real desire for sobriety, and that I am an embarrassment to people in recovery. After all the supportive comments and emails, and after pulling myself back to the mat, this comment sent a chill shuddering through my bones. My first thought was, “what if he’s right?” Then I got angry. Then I deleted the comment. But today I reflected a lot on it. I would like to say, thank you, Mr. Anonymous, for caring enough to take the time to not only read my story, but to tell me your honest opinion. Out of respect for you, I am re-posting what you said, which is this:

“yeh hitting the mat will really get you sober...you are now as you were
last trip, a train wreck in progress, with no real desire for change,
growth, or liberation...just self indulgence, self pity, and probably the
biggest attention suck ever to hit mysore...jesus you give recovery a bad
name.”

Maybe you are right. I am certainly an attention seeker. How could I not be, and have a blog, when I could just keep a journal? I like the attention I am getting, or at least the supportive comments and emails and other friendly relationships that have resulted from this blog, and which help me. I’d also like to think that I am an attention-payer. I am paying as close attention as I can to the world around me and inside me, and trying to learn from it. I am paying attention to the “bad” as well as the “good.” If that is self-indulgent, then so be it. I have never seen a blog that was not self-indulgent. Regarding your sarcastic remark about my belief that practicing Ashtanga will help get me sober, the fact is that my practice did exactly that. It got me sober yesterday, and it kept me sober today. You sound like a very strict AA follower, but what ever happened to “One Day at a Time?”

Ashtanga not only kept me sober yesterday and today, but it also makes me happier, or less unhappy.  One of my sponsors told me that he would rather be an active alcoholic than a sober AA nazi (or “dry drunk”) who is bitter at the world and at everyone in it, even at people who have stopped drinking. Luckily, I don’t think those are my only two options. Ashtanga and meditation may or may not help me successfully make a different choice. I admit I don’t know.  In any case, whether or not I have given recovery a bad name, I thank you, Mr. Anonymous recovery expert, for making me pay attention to the points you raised. I wish you all the best. We live in a beautiful world. I hope you are enjoying it!

Back to the Mat

The best part of breaking up is making up, and the best part of missing practice for a week is the opportunity to begin again. I don’t know why it sometimes seems so hard for me to do something that I love doing. I do know that practicing ashtanga, after not practicing it, makes me want to shout from a rooftop.

This morning it was fear that brought me to the mat. I am grateful for being afraid. It’s a matter of life and death. I know that if I stay on the path of increased drinking and related destruction, I will be committing suicide. I believe that practicing ashtanga is a lifeline. For me not to grab it would be like spitting in God’s face.

So I stood hungover and trembling at the edge of the mat, hands in prayer, not knowing how on earth I would be able to go through the practice, but knowing that the alternative was unacceptable. When I chanted the invocation, I meant what I was chanting. Just like the Muslims, wailing from the top of nearby minarets at 5 in the morning, mean what they are wailing.

When I raised my arms in Surya Namaskar A, I did not know whether my practice would last one minute or two hours. I did not know whether I would bind or touch or jump or do any of the things that I too often have used to measure success. I forgot all that, and raised those shaky arms in an act of simple faith. Of course I ended up doing a full practice. The sweat poured out of me like tears. When I took a shower afterward, it was like getting baptised.

Who knows what tomorrow, or even tonight, will add to this story. But I do know that it feels great now to be back among the living.

Thanks to all of you who commented and sent me emails after my previous post. I also have received unconditional support from several people here in Mysore. In fact, I believe that anyone at the shala would run over and help me in a second if I had the nerve to reach out and ask for it. What a caring, loving, and wonderfully non-judgmental group of people we have in this ashtanga community all over the world. I am so grateful.

All Over the Map

I’ve hardly blogged at all in the last two or three weeks. It does not mean that nothing has been going on with me. If it means anything, it is that I have been all over the mental map, exploring for peace but finding mostly discontent, turmoil and fear. In fact, a lot of “things” have happened in my little life here.

I had the best ashtanga practice I have ever had, the day after I decided to give up striving for “advancement.” I met with Guruji and Sharath separately and asked each of them whether they would ever stop working on me, even if I never progressed, and even if I started going backwards again, instead of forwards. Both of them laughed. Both disputed the premise of my question. Both said they would never stop working on me.

I just needed to ask the question, and to hear that answer. The next day, after I let go of worrying about the topic, and after I gave up any idea of striving to move forward, I somehow bound on both sides in both Marichyasana B and C, such that Sharath moved me to D. I am told that this kind of breakthrough happens in the pretty much the same way to every ashtangi eventually.

But after the elation of that day, of course I started drinking again that night. I stopped drinking, and drank some more. I cut classes, and resumed classes. I had weak classes and strong ones. I overate and fasted. I had days of lethargy, and days when I did 20 Surya Namaskar B’s (about the equivalent of running 10 miles) along with a full practice, once even on our day off. I lost a lot of weight, and gained a lot of weight. I ate right, and ate wrong. I had bouts of asceticism, and one day had so much breakfast at the Metropole that I felt compelled to check myself into a nearby hotel room, because I could not be bothered with walking to the parking lot and getting on my motorcycle. I stayed away from people, and reveled in them. I had my annual Mysore driving accident, again slipping in sand, and this time going to the hospital for stitches on my bloody head, which has since healed. I vowed never to drive again without a helmet, but failed to buy one, and later did. I avoided parties, and hosted two of them in hotel suites. I went on a boring trip to Bindapur national park, looking for some of the hundreds of wild tigers and elephants, but finding only a few monkeys and deer. I illegally walked out into the wild by myself while we waited hours for our bus tour guide. I was half-hoping for the excitement of being mauled by a tiger or run over by an elephant herd, but I came back to my bored friends at the base with nothing new but a sunburn. I did very well in work, getting hired by another major motion picture studio, as well as a huge celebrity of whom I had never heard (one of the stars of “Friends”). I was hired in part because people thought it was cool that I was managing and working at a media and entertainment law firm while sitting in lotus position and otherwise studying yoga in India. While they thought I was doing that, I was laying on pillows around the house watching countless rented Hollywood movies on the dvd player, and renewing my strong personal relationship with the “U.S. Pizza” delivery place. On other days, I wandered through temples at dawn, falling on my knees to pray to any old deity I could find. I also fell in and out of love and/or lust with human beings. I vowed to concentrate on my practice again and stop getting entangled with locals. I then promptly took one of them to Bangalore for a romantic weekend, which also included (fellow ashtangi) Sting’s first concert in India, some reckless shopping, and endless drinking.  Interspersed, or even sometimes included, with many of the above events, were hours or days of crushing boredom, many of them spent laying on the floor, whining to whomever would listen.

My usual reaction is to be sickened by most of this, and to make renewed vows to do better. That never works. It is just a set-up for failure, another round of recrimination, further and stronger vows, and more suffering. Like most everyone, I want to be happy and at peace. I don’t know the answer, but something tells me that constant striving is not it. I am coming back again and again to the notion that if I simply make some effort to do my ashtanga and meditation practice regularly and without judgment about their quality (or about missing them sometimes), everything else eventually will fall into place the way it should. I have nothing on which to base these notions except intuition, faith, hope, assurances of others, and the fact that I seem to have tried everything else.

One thing that I hope will fall eventually into place is acceptance. I just finished “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse, a wonderful novel that I borrowed from Tina's library, and that everyone else in the world already has read.  I previously assumed it was just a recounting of the classic story of the Buddha’s life and enlightenment in India.  It is not.  For you Martians who might not have read it, I won’t give away the plot, but it involves a spiritual seeker who tries many paths and frequently thinks he is losing his way. One of his more dubious paths involves drunkenness, lust, gluttony, and materialism. The book is by no means an authentic text of Buddhist thought or philosophy, nor does it pretend to be.  But here is one of the lessons from the book, spoken at the end by Siddhartha to Govinda – a lesson that I need to consider:

“The world is not imperfect, or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people – eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore it seems to me that everything that exists is good – death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it, and to be glad to belong to it.”

 

Ashtanga Sangha Again

One of Ajay's students thankfully took the initiative to get the weekly "Sangha for Ashtangis and Anybody Else" back on track, after it was aborted a few weeks ago due to schedule conflicts.  She organized the first one last Thursday, and we will try to have it every Thursday at 6:30 at my house.  More details below.

The idea is to have a gathering of ashtangis and others where we do not sit at different tables or in different neighborhoods, where we can meditate together, and where we can unburden our crazy minds in a space that is perhaps more conducive of respect than a café, a party, or a coconut stand.  Last Thursday's Sangha was just like that.

Sangha (or “sangam”) is Sanskrit for “community” or “meeting.” In this case, it means a weekly gathering where we do a half-hour seated meditation, a short walking meditation (indoors), a short reading from a spiritual text, and a respectful discussion of anything. It lasts for a little over an hour, so you could still be in your bed by 8pm!  There are no “leaders.” Just a rotating “ring-reader” who rings the bell and does a reading of his/her choice.

Send me an email if you are interested, at [email protected]

 

All are welcome! 

(For anybody worried that this might be a forbidden and dangerous pranayama class, or something like the Dead Poets Society, it is not. Sharath read the notice in advance, and said "this is good.")

Ashtanga Is My Flywheel

I almost missed class today.  The alarm rang, and I lay in bed thinking, "why do I have to go to class?  I don't feel like going.  I need more sleep.  Why can't I do my own practice on my own time? Who am I trying to please by going to class?  My teachers?  My friends?  If I don't want to go, why should I go?"

These sorts of questions should not be answered while lying in bed.  I thought about the vow that I made to myself, not to anybody else, to never miss class, no matter what else I may do wrong.  I thought about last year in Mysore, and how unhappy I was when I started skipping classes.  I thought about how in any case, I needed to pee.

So I stood up, and things started to get clearer.  Why on earth would I want to miss class?  Ashtanga vinyasa yoga, even in the led classes, is the best thing in my life.  Has there ever been a class after which I did not feel good?  No.  Can I say that about anything else that I do?  No, although drinking a nice big glass of scotch comes superficially close. 

More importantly, for me Ashtanga is the flywheel in my machine.  My fuck-ups have less impact, and they do not allow me to spiral too far out of control, because of the steady momentum of my practice. I agree with those who tell me that with a steady practice, my bad habits slowly are going to fall away, or at least become minimized.  I have to believe that.  I feel like I've tried everything else, and besides, I can see it happening, gradually. 

Also, there is something else I want to say about ashtanga being not a punishment, but a reward.  Yesterday was a day off from class (no class on Saturdays), and I really missed it.  I felt incomplete, lacking in energy.  I fell into slacker mode all day, and was nearly crushed by boredom, although there was so much to do. I even ate a bag of "Masala Munch," with "Extra Chatpata" and "Extra Masti"  (sort of a supercharged Indian version of Cheese Doodles, without the cheese), to try to have some excitement.  I am rambling, I know, but what would a blog be without rambling?  Something with a more pleasant name, i think.

Smoking or Non-Smoking?

Thanks to everyone for all of the sympathetic comments and emails about my little sangha episode.  Actually, I think I made the event seem like more of a failure than it was.  Six people showed up, and many more would have, if not for Guruji's conference.  I did cancel the sangha, because the people who showed did not know about the conference and wanted to go to it, once I told them.  If there was any "failure," it was in my attitude.

Naturally, I used it as an excuse for drinking.  That night turned into one of those wild nights of trying to recover lost youth. I did have a lot of fun. But of course I had nothing to show for it the next morning, except that I had a hangover, a few pleasant memories, and even more of an aged look on my face.  The good and true side of me decided I would keep my vow and go to practice.  My shadow self, however, obviously wanted to stay in bed, and it did its best to get revenge.  In a criminal act of sabatoge, it caused me to eat a whole plate of veg pilao before heading out for 6:15 am class.  For you non-asthangis, this is one of those cardinal sins, even worse than showing up for class drunk or tripping.   Eating before class is like pouring concrete into your engine before starting it.  I decided I would slip into class more quietly than usual, and hopefully get a place in the back where I could hide.  I decided to avoid Sharath, by doing the difficult poses on my own, before he would even have a chance to come over and see how lame I was.  The shala was full, so I figured he might be too busy to notice.

Not a chance!  Every time I thought I had escaped, he came over and simply told me to do the pose over again.  I told him that I was a "bad man," and that I did not deserve his help that morning.  He laughed, and then pulled me into the poses as usual.

Speaking of laughing, Manju had me cracking up.  For example, he would approach bewildered new people as they were entering the crowded practice room, and ask politely, but in that gruff voice of his, “smoking or non-smoking?”  On the way out, I complained to him that I could not find the smoking section. “The seats in the front row; they’re all smoking,” he replied. 

Wobbling

I think that when we try to lean on other people to prop ourselves up, we wobble. Or perhaps even fall on our face. When I decided to take the plunge and try to organize a sangha, which by definition involves other people, I was high on ashtanga and had all the best intentions. But somewhere in the process, things became corrupt. Maybe it was in the printing and posting of the flyers. Perhaps it came with the internet announcements. However it happened, somehow I became personally attached to the event, despite my enlisting of someone else to lead it, and despite other efforts to avoid exactly what happened. What happened was that not only did the thing fall apart, but so did I.   

When Guruji allegedly made his statement to only one student that there would be the first “conference” in months today, around the same time as the sangha, I was disappointed, but I did not worry. In our sangha back in North Carolina, someone dear to me was concerned that we might not have “critical mass.” My response was that if only one person showed up, that would be “critical mass.” Although I was admired for saying this, we never had to test the truth of the statement.   We always had at least 4 or 5 people, and usually 6 or 7. In the case of the ashtanga sangha, I was not worried, because I figured that at least my friends who were not practicing at the shala would show up. I also knew that we could change the starting time for future sanghas to avoid schedule conflicts next time. I was fully aware that the shala people would all bail immediately once they heard there was a “conference.” This is an event in which Guruji sits in a chair and responds to mostly inane questions, the answer to which is often “mula bandha.” Hey, come on, shala people historically have all gathered at Guruji’s feet just to watch him silently read a newspaper.

Well, it turned out that the non-shala people bailed as well, including some “fashion buddhists” and “buddhist tourists” who love their tibetan wallhangings and buddha figurines, but apparently will not darken the door of a house where they might actually practice buddhism.

It also turned out that the alleged “conference” that caused the shala people, including my housemates, to quickly abandon the sangha, never happened. It was just one of those shala rumors. The shala filled up with nearly 200 people sitting and waiting, causing Guruji to say to someone in his office, “Why all these people here?” When he was told that it was for a conference, he was surprised. He took the stage to say a few words, but would not answer questions. I was not there.  I heard this from someone who was.

In short, for no good reason, the sangha fell apart before it ever actually existed.  On our kitchen counter we have a delicious uneaten vegetarian meal that Rajesh cooked for 10 or so no-shows. But the more interesting question, I think, is why did I fall apart with it? Like I said, I thought my intentions were good from the start. I missed my sangha in North Carolina, and I thought it would be nice to have a gathering of ashtangis and others where we did not sit at different tables or in different neighborhoods, where we could meditate together, and where we could unburden our crazy minds in a space more conducive of respect than a café, a party, or a coconut stand. But somehow I started to identify with the success or failure of the event. Since it failed, I failed.

I know the above makes no sense, but the fact remains that these are the feelings I have. I guess that being aware of them, and their falsity, is an important step toward becoming free of them.

In the meantime, if anyone else wants to organize a sangha, please go ahead. I would be happy to attend!

Mysore vs. Kovalam -- Let the Mind Games Begin

It has been said that the Western-style mind always has to compare things.  Rather than being satisfied with the intrinsic worth of any experience or moment, it has to assign a rank, making comparisons with a supposedly better or worse experience or time in the past or in the future.  So, because I have a Western mind, I am confused.  I was once happy with the idea of returning to Mysore every winter, but now I am wondering whether I would have a "better" experience with Lino's crew in Kovalam.  I'll probably end up doing both.  Is that the "middle path" that the Buddha prescribed?  Probably not.

Having been back at the Mysore shala for a couple of days, I do have to say that I am glad to be home.  Although the teacher-student ratio is better with Lino in Kovalam (about one teacher for every three or four students), there is a lot to be said for having a single teacher who knows your practice (in my case, Sharath), even if he or she only has time to assist in two or three of your most difficult postures.  This is opposed to having nine teachers doing a tag team operation on you nearly all the time, which also has its merits.  Lino and his crew are amazingly attentive and expert.  It was a rare privilege to have help with so many of the postures, most of which in Mysore, at least in my case, are pretty much ignored. 

So when Naomi asked me if I would stay another week or two in Kovalam, I had one of those conundrums that only a spoiled yoga brat could have:  Whether to stay in a tropical beach paradise with lots of extra Ashtanga teaching, or whether to return to another magical place that for Ashtangis is our version of Mecca.  I decided that out of respect for my main teacher, I would return to our Mysore Mecca as planned, as soon as the shala reopened.

Now that I am back, I realize that there were other good reasons for returning.  One way of putting it is to say that Kovalam, like Venice, is just not real.  I could be wrong, since I am basing this on just a week's worth of casual observations, but there did not seem to be any genuine community there, even among the yoga students.  As Gertude Stein might have said,"there was no there there."   It seemed that all of the locals and their activities revolved around one thing:  earning a living from Western tourists.  In Mysore, the earth could open and swallow all of the relatively few Westerners, and for the most part they would not be missed.  But I for one did miss them, at least my housemates and other friends.  I heard that at least one student in Kovalam left early due to an outbreak of loneliness.  I can see why.  Although I had enough pre-arranged company there, if it were not for that, I don't know how I would have made any friends.  It seems that there are no yoga student hang-outs like the ones proliferating around the shala in Mysore.  And the Kovalam beach locals all seem to be professional sucker-uppers or other vendors of one stripe or another.  I did not come to India to meet people, but at the same time, if I had to live in this very foreign country with no friends, either local or Western, I would be miserable.

My tentative plan for next year is to come to Mysore for November, study with Lino in Kovalam in December and January, and then come back to Mysore for February.  I can always come running back to Mysore early if I have not yet become enlightened and the dreaded loneliness strikes.

Yoga Vacation

I wish I had some bad news to tell from Kovalam, but I don't.  So this will have to be one of those sickeningly happy reports that always seem so suspicious. 

I thought that Mysore was paradise, but it is not.  Paradise is definitely located on the southern coast of Kerala.  The typical day goes like this: 

Wake up in a beautiful, cool room on the beach, hearing only the sounds of ocean waves and birds, and gazing at the sea from a king-size bed.  Take a hot bath in a sunken tub, and then head off to practice, after checking email.  Arrive at the outdoor, rooftop shala, where there are only about 30 students practicing at a time, and no less than 9 expert teachers working on us, including the famous Lino Miele.  Have a luxuriously slow, Mysore-style practice, with perfect adjustments in nearly every pose.  Enjoy the fact that there is no artificial light, just gorgeous, diffused sun pouring in from the big yellow roof under which we do our yoga.  Feel the fresh, warm breezes that move slowly through the bamboo-screen walls.  Notice the absence of that sweaty locker-room smell. Walk back to the hotel, along a cliff overlooking vast coconut groves, the ocean, and a lighthouse.  Admire the blue skies, and the lack of air pollution.  Join Sree, who has just gotten back from his Ayurvedic massage, and order room service, with the "room" being our private outdoor patio on the ocean.  Do a little work on the computer, while Sree lies in a hammock between two palm trees, and then head for the beach.  After swimming in the sea, have a shower and join Naomi and Sree for lunch at the pool.  Hire a wooden lagoon boat with a native boatman, and go up and down a river in the jungle for a couple of hours or so.  Get back in time for dinner in front of a sunset.  Revel in the absence of traffic sounds or children screaming.  Check email again, have a pillow fight with Sree, and then go giggling to bed and have a wonderful sleep. Repeat six times, with variations.

I would call this a vacation, but a lot of people think I am on vacation all the time.  In any event, I will return to Mysore on Monday, although I am not precisely sure why.