I want to come back here someday!" and it takes all of my persuasive powers to try to
convince her that she is already here. If you're looking for union with the divine, this
kind of forward/backward whirling is a problem. There's a reason they call God a
presence-- because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find
Him, and now is the only time.
But to stay in the present moment requires dedicated one-pointed focus. Different
meditation techniques teach one-pointedness in different ways--for instance, by focusing
your eyes on a single point of light, or by observing the rise and fall of your breath. My
Guru teaches meditation with the help of a mantra, sacred words or syllables to be
repeated in a focused manner. Mantra has a dual function. For one thing, it gives the
mind something to do. It's as if you've given the monkey a pile of 10,000 buttons and said,
"Move these buttons, one at time, into a new pile." This is a considerably easier task for
the monkey than if you just plopped him in a corner and asked him not to move. The
other purpose of mantra is to transport you to another state, rowboatlike, through the
choppy waves of the mind. Whenever your attention gets pulled into a cross-current of
thought, just return to the mantra, climb back into the boat and keep going. The great
Sanskrit mantras are said to contain unimaginable powers, the ability to row you, if you
can stay with one, all the way to the shorelines of divinity.
Among my many, many problems with meditation is that the mantra I have been
given-- Om Namah Shivaya-- doesn't sit comfortably in my head. I love the sound of it and
I love the meaning of it, but it does not glide me into meditation. It never has, not in the
two years I've been practicing this Yoga. When I try to repeat Om Namah Shivaya in my
head, it actually gets stuck in my throat, making my chest clench tightly, making me
nervous. I can never match the syllables to my breathing.
I end up asking my roommate Corella about this one night. I'm shy to admit to her how
much trouble I have keeping my mind focused on mantra repetition, but she is a
meditation teacher. Maybe she can help me. She tells me that her mind used to wander
during meditation, too, but that now her practice is the great, easy, transformative joy of
her life."Seems I just sit down and shut my eyes," she says, "and all I have to do is think of the
mantra and I vanish right into heaven."
Hearing this, I am nauseated with envy. Then again, Corella has been practicing Yoga for
almost as many years as I've been alive. I ask her if she can show me how exactly she
uses Om Namah Shivaya in her meditation practice. Does she take one inhale for every
syllable? (When I do this, it feels really interminable and annoying.) Or is it one word for
every breath?(But the words are all different lengths! So how do you even it out?) Or
does she say the whole mantra once on the inhale, then once again on the exhale?
(Because when I try to do that, it gets all speeded up and I get anxious.)
"I don't know," Corella says. "I just kind of . . . say it."
"But do you sing it?" I push, desperate now. "Do you put a beat on it?"
"I just say it."
"Can you maybe speak aloud for me the way you say it in your head when you're
meditating?"
Indulgently, my roommate closes her eyes and starts saying the mantra aloud, the way it
appears in her head. And, indeed, she's just . . . saying it. She says it quietly, normally,
smiling slightly. She says it a few times, in fact, until I get restless and cut her off.
"But don't you get bored?" I ask.
"Ah," says Corella and opens her eyes, smiling. She looks at her watch. "Ten seconds
have passed, Liz. Bored already, are we?"
42424242
The following morning, I arrive right on time for the 4:00 AM meditation session which
always starts the day here. We are meant to sit for an hour in silence, but I log the
minutes as if they are miles--sixty brutal miles that I have to endure. By mile/minute
fourteen, my nerves have started to go, my knees are breaking down and I'm overcome
with exasperation. Which is understandable, given that the conversations between me and
my mind during meditation generally go something like this:
Me: Me: Me: Me: OK, we're going to meditate now. Let's draw our attention to our breath and focus on
the mantra. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shiv--Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: I can help you out with this, you know!
Me: Me: Me: Me: OK, good, because I need your help. Let's go. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shi--
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: I can help you think of nice meditative images. Like--hey, here's a good one.
Imagine you are a temple. A temple on an island! And the island is in the ocean!
Me: Me: Me: Me: Oh, that is a nice image.
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: Thanks. I thought of it myself.
Me: Me: Me: Me: But what ocean are we picturing here?
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: The Mediterranean. Imagine you're one of those Greek islands, with an old Greek
temple on it. No, never mind, that's too touristy. You know what? Forget the ocean.
Oceans are too dangerous. Here's a better idea--imagine you're an island in a lake, instead.
Me: Me: Me: Me: Can we meditate now, please? Om Namah Shiv--
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: Yes! Definitely! But try not to picture that the lake is covered with . . . what are
those things called--
Me: Me: Me: Me: Jet Skis?
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: Yes! Jet Skis! Those things consume so much fuel! They're really a menace to the
environment. Do you know what else uses a lot of fuel? Leaf blowers. You wouldn't
think so, but--
Me: Me: Me: Me: OK, but let's MEDITATE now, please? Om Namah--
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: Right! I definitely want to help you meditate! And that's why we're going to skip
the image of an island on a lake or an ocean, because that's obviously not working. So
let's imagine that you're an island in . . . a river!
Me: Me: Me: Me: Oh, you mean like Bannerman Island, in the Hudson River?
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: Yes! Exactly! Perfect. Therefore, in conclusion, let's meditate on this
image--envision that you are an island in a river.
All the thoughts that float by as you're meditating, these are just the river's natural
currents and you can ignore them because you are an island.
Me: Me: Me: Me: Wait, I thought you said I was a temple.
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: That's right, sorry. You're a temple on an island. In fact, you are both the templeand the island.
Me: Me: Me: Me: Am I also the river?
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: No, the river is just the thoughts.
Me: Me: Me: Me: Stop! Please stop! YOU'RE MAKING ME CRAZY!!!
Mind Mind Mind Mind (wounded): (wounded): (wounded): (wounded): Sorry. I was only trying to help.
Me: Me: Me: Me: Om Namah Shivaya . . . Om Namah Shivaya . . . Om Namah Shivaya . . .
Here Here Here Here there there there there is is is is a a a a promising promising promising promising eight-second eight-second eight-second eight-second pause pause pause pause in in in in thoughts. thoughts. thoughts. thoughts. But But But But then-- then-- then-- then--
Mind: Mind: Mind: Mind: Are you mad at me now?
--and then with a big gasp, like I am coming up for air, my mind wins, my eyes fly open
and I quit. In tears. An Ashram is supposed to be a place where you come to deepen your
meditation, but this is a disaster. The pressure is too much for me. I can't do it. But what
should I do? Run out of the temple crying after fourteen minutes, every day?
This morning, though, instead of fighting it, I just stopped. I gave up. I let myself slump
against the wall behind me. My back hurt, I had no strength, my mind was quivering. My
posture collapsed like a bridge crumbling down. I took the mantra off the top of my head
(where it had been pressing down on me like an invisible anvil) and set it on the floor
beside me. And then I said to God, "I'm really sorry, but this is the closest I could get to
you today."
The Lakota Sioux say that a child who cannot sit still is a half-developed child. And an
old Sanskrit text says, "By certain signs you can tell when meditation is being rightly
performed. One of them is that a bird will sit on your head, thinking you are an inert
thing." This has not exactly happened to me yet. But for the next forty minutes or so, I
tried to stay as quiet as possible, trapped in that meditation hall and ensnared in my own
shame and inadequacy, watching the devotees around me as they sat in their perfect
postures, their perfect eyes closed, their smug faces emanating calmness as they surely
transported themselves into some perfect heaven. I was full of a hot, powerful sadness
and would have loved to burst into the comfort of tears, but tried hard not to,
remembering something my Guru once said--that you should never give yourself a
chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and
over again. You must practice staying strong, instead.
But I didn't feel strong. My body ached in diminished worthlessness.
I wondered who is the "me" when I am conversing with my mind, and who is the "mind."
I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my
brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it. Then I remembered that
line from Jaws and couldn't help smiling:
"We're gonna need a bigger boat."43434343
Dinnertime. I'm sitting alone, trying to eat slowly. My Guru is always encouraging us to
practice discipline when it comes to eating. She encourages us to eat in moderation and
without desperate gulps, to not extinguish the sacred fires of our bodies by dumping too
much food into our digestive tracts too fast. (My Guru, I'm fairly certain, has never been
to Naples.) When students come to her complaining that they're having trouble
meditating, she always asks how their digestion has been lately. It only stands to reason
that you'll have trouble gliding lightly into transcendence when your guts are struggling
to churn through a sausage calzone, a pound of buffalo wings and half a coconut cream
pie. Which is why they don't serve that kind of stuff here. The food at the Ashram is
vegetarian, light and healthy. But still delicious. Which is why it's difficult for me not to
wolf it down like a starving orphan. Plus, meals are served buffet-style, and it never has
been easy for me to resist taking a second or third turn at-bat when beautiful food is just
lying out there in the open, smelling good and costing nothing.
So I'm sitting at the dinner table all by myself, making an effort to restrain my fork, when
I see a man walk over with his dinner tray, looking for an open chair. I nod to him that he
is welcome to join me. I haven't seen this guy around here yet. He must be a new arrival.
The stranger's got a cool, ain't-no-big-hurry kind of walk, and he moves with the
authority of a border town sheriff, or maybe a lifelong high-rolling poker player. He
looks like he's in his fifties, but walks like he's lived a few centuries longer than that. He's
got white hair and a white beard and a plaid flannel shirt. Wide shoulders and giant hands
that look like they could do some damage, but a totally relaxed face.
He sits down across from me and drawls, "Man, they got mosquitoes 'round this place big
enough to rape a chicken."
Ladies and Gentlemen, Richard from Texas has arrived.
44444444
Among the many jobs that Richard from Texas has held in his life--and I know I'm
leaving a lot of them out--are oil-field worker; eighteen-wheeler truck driver; the firstauthorized dealer of Birkenstocks in the Dakotas; sack-shaker in a midwestern landfill
(I'm sorry, but I really don't have time to explain what a "sack-shaker" is); highway
construction worker; used-car salesman; soldier in Vietnam; "commodities broker" (that
commodity generally being Mexican narcotics); junkie and alcoholic (if you can call this
a profession); then reformed junkie and alcoholic (a much more respectable profession);
hippie farmer on a commune; radio voice-over announcer; and, finally, successful dealer
in high-end medical equipment (until his marriage fell apart and he gave the whole
business to his ex and got left "scratchin' my broke white ass again"). Now he renovates
old houses in Austin.
"Never did have much of a career path," he says. "Never could do anything but the
hustle."
Richard from Texas is not a guy who worries about a lot of stuff. I wouldn't call him a
neurotic person, no sir. But I am a bit neurotic, and that's why I've come to adore him.
Richard's presence at this Ashram becomes my great and amusing sense of security. His
giant ambling confidence hushes down all my inherent nervousness and reminds me that
everything really is going to be OK. (And if not OK, then at least comic.) Remember the
cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn? Well, Richard is kind of like that, and I become his
chatty little sidekick, the Chickenhawk. In Richard's own words: "Me and Groceries, we
steady be laughin' the whole damn time."
Groceries.
That's the nickname Richard has given me. He bestowed it upon me the first night we met,
when he noticed how much I could eat. I tried to defend myself ("I was purposefully
eating with discipline and intention!") but the name stuck.
Maybe Richard from Texas doesn't seem like a typical Yogi. Though my time in India
has cautioned me against deciding what a typical Yogi is. (Don't get me started on the
dairy farmer from rural Ireland I met here the other day, or the former nun from South
Africa.) Richard came to this Yoga through an ex-girlfriend, who drove him up from
Texas to the Ashram in New York to hear the Guru speak. Richard says, "I thought the
Ashram was the weirdest thing I ever saw, and I was wondering where the room was
where you have to give 'em all your money and turn over the deed to your house and car,
