I first saw Gurudeva in Hawaii on the island of Oahu, striding swiftly toward a public library in Honolulu where he was scheduled to give a lecture on yoga. It was a hot, tropical, Sunday afternoon in late June of 1970. The two of his monks he had chosen to travel with him on that day were hustling to keep up.
I instinctively waved to him from across the street even though we had never met in person. He waved back like he was hailing an old friend. As I walked up to him, I felt unusually calm, considering how long I had anticipated this first meeting.
Movie star lean and handsome in his all-white outfit, he beamed a broad smile as we shook hands. The strength of his grip surprised me and accentuated the power of his presence. Even though he slumped slightly in a stylish sort of way, his long, muscular legs made him seem taller than his six feet, two inches. His shoulder-length hair was salt-and-pepper grey, combed straight back. Although his eyes were dramatically piercing, his body language was smooth, easy and friendly.
“Nice to see you,” he said. He spoke with such a relaxed familiarity I almost expected him to say my name, even though I knew he didn’t know it. I stammered out an awkward “aloha” as his two monks stepped forward to yield their introductions and inquire about me. All of this happened quite politely in the space of about three minutes as we sauntered into a classroom-size hall adjacent to the library.
For about eight months, I had been working as the house drummer for Don Ho at the Polynesian Palace in the Cinerama Reef Towers hotel of Waikiki. Don Ho was easier than easy—a soft, benevolent man, forever kindly in his own laid-back way.
I will never forget that uncommonly happy and carefree period of time in my life. During the day I would draw with pencil and ink, paint with watercolor and oil. At night I would play music. I was living in a paradise of sorts, no doubt about it. But such living wasn’t why I had come to Hawaii. I was there to see Gurudeva.
I had first heard about Gurudeva some two years before, while I was attending Indiana University in Bloomington. There, I was introduced to his teachings in yoga classes conducted by one of his students.
In the several phone conversations I had with Gurudeva during that time, I expressed my sincere interest in the monastic program he had established in his Hindu monastery. During those phone calls, he urged me to come to Hawaii to meet him personally and to see the land he had just purchased for his monastery/church on Kauai. So there I was in Hawaii, finally, fulfilling the first of those encouragements.
To my surprise, the two monks—not Gurudeva—delivered the scheduled talk at the library. Although they took turns speaking with a coordinated ease that was most pleasant to observe, I had to resist an inclination to turn around and look back at Gurudeva who was sitting behind me. After all, I come to see and hear him, not his monks.
When the talk was over, a few of the approximately 40 attendees left. Those who remained tried to look casual as they—like me—waited to talk with Gurudeva. One by one, each took a turn. I figured if I placed myself last I might be allowed more time for a conversation that didn’t feel rushed by others waiting. When it finally looked like my chance to visit might be coming up soon, one of the monks held his wristwatch up in front of Gurudeva to indicate it was time to leave. My heart sank.
As Gurudeva passed by me on his way out of the room, he touched my arm ever so lightly. “Would you like to chat for a minute?” he asked. Before I could nod “yes,” we were moving gracefully through the front door of the building out into the shade of a nearby tree. The two monks disappeared to arrange transportation, and Gurudeva turned to give me his characteristically undivided attention.
Now was my chance to talk, but my mind was blank. Still, I felt impelled to say something. Just as I was about to blunder my way into an awkward babble, Gurudeva spoke.
“You could quite easily move your awareness into the source of all that exists right now because you’ve only just been introduced to the very idea that is possible,” he said. “It will become more difficult later as you learn more about it.” This was the first of a great many unexpected answers to unasked questions I would receive from Gurudeva through the 30 years that followed.
When the monks returned, Gurudeva invited me to join him for lunch. About fifteen minutes later, ten of us from the lecture were sitting huddled around Gurudeva at a table in a nearby vegetarian restaurant. It was a delightful experience. There we were—sipping spicy tomato soup, munching delicious avocado sandwiches and talking about “looking at the world from the inside out,” “holding mountaintop consciousness” and “living with the feeling that nothing is happening.”
Just as I was wondering to myself, “Is this man from another planet?” one of the ladies at the table asked Gurudeva what he thought about extraterrestrial life. Gurudeva turned to me and said, “Actually, I came here from another planet, but I think I got the wrong address.” Everyone at the table laughed—except me. I thought he was serious.
During our conversation right after the Honolulu lecture, Gurudeva had asked me if I might be interested in attending a two-week yoga intensive at his monastery/home on the island of Kauai. The event, entitled the 1970 Hawaii Innersearch, was scheduled to begin only ten days hence. I happily consented, seeing this offer as an opportunity to make my first pilgrimage to “the garden island” where Gurudeva lived and worked.
At the time, this travel/study program, informally referred to as “Innersearch”—which combined classes in Eastern spirituality and yoga with sightseeing—was a fairly new venture for Gurudeva. During later years, he and his monks would conduct a great many of these mystic tours, traveling primarily to India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, but also to Nepal, Tahiti, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, England, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
I joined the 1970 Hawaii Innersearch not as a paying student but as a member of what Gurudeva called the “Taskforce.” The four of us on this program lived in monk’s quarters, trading work and service for room and board. Although we attended some of the ongoing Innersearch classes, we spent most of our time sweeping, cleaning, setting up tables, moving chairs, serving food and washing dishes.
Because the resident monastics were also performing these daily chores, we taskforcers had a great opportunity to see what monastic life was like by closely observing the monks themselves.
Gurudeva’s monks were constantly “working with themselves,” as they put it—striving always to subdue negative emotion, restrain frivolous conversation and maintain “control of awareness.”
Understandably, the two weeks of Innersearch passed quickly. Although we labored hard, it was not hard labor. There was magic in the air. Absolutely everyone felt inspired in one way or another.
It was a joy to attend Gurudeva’s Innersearch lectures. I loved his simple clarity and hands-on pragmatism. Within the first minutes of his first lecture, he defined the ultimate goal of yoga as the fundamental purpose of life.
“You’re here to realize the Self,” he proclaimed. “There is no other reason for your existence on this Earth. You have lived many lives, all for this one purpose.” As time went on, I came to realize this was his pivotal message to every spiritual aspirant he met—from the wholeheartedly sincere to the vaguely curious.
It did not take time to get to know Gurudeva. It took sincerity. For those who knew him well, his manner was purposeful but informal. For those who did not know him well, his manner was kindly but formal. Yet, every life he touched was changed for the better, even though such change might not have been immediately apparent.
The teachings conveyed during the 1970 Innersearch classes consisted of principles and practices. In the free time between classes, students gravitated into two camps. One camp discussed the principles. They were the thinkers. The other camp jumped into the practices. They were the doers. The doers could have used more thinking, and the thinkers could have used more doing.
The thinkers were forever asking questions like: “If seeking Self is the central purpose of life, why are most people seeking just about everything else instead? And what is wrong with this diversified seeking that seems to be society’s norm? What is wrong with all of those other obviously valid life-pursuits—like finding a good job, getting married, raising a family and becoming a responsible member of society? Aren’t these at least as important as seeking Self?”
The doers were forever calling such questions “negative nitpicking.” It was their contention that just putting the teachings into practice should supersede the time-wasting cultivation of critical thought.
Certainly, those doers must have been surprised to hear Gurudeva apparently condone the nitpicking by saying, “Let your mind try to disprove these teachings.” Yet just as certainly, they must have also been encouraged when he added, “Just remember, one of the biggest obstacles to Self Realization is an overdeveloped intellect.”
Toward the end of the Innersearch, the doers were thinking more, the thinkers were doing more and Gurudeva was observing it all. While we were learning from him, he was learning from us.
As I pondered Gurudeva’s central theme of Self Realization, I discovered what I recorded in my yoga journal as “a long-awaited zest for life arising from a worthwhile quest for the intrinsic essence of all.”
Admittedly, I was a charter member of the doer camp. All I ever wanted was to start right away preparing for monastic life, since to me being a monk meant—to my way of thinking then—devotedly seeking Self Realization. When I enthusiastically made my ambitions clear to Gurudeva, he surprised me with a warning.
“Take it easy.” he said ever so calmly. “This isn’t a race. There’s plenty of time.”
I stayed on Kauai after the Innersearch to talk more with Gurudeva about becoming a monk. During those talks, Gurudeva was calm, balanced and objective. He did not push me away, nor did he pull me in.
“Your dharma is your highest life path,” Gurudeva said during one of our more intense conversations. “It is, for you, an optimal way of living determined by your inherent nature as that nature gets filtered out into your everyday experience. Although your inherent nature is pure, simple and good, the body you were born into is an instinctive animal with a thinking mind.
“The body and mind are not bad. They serve a very important purpose. Their purpose is to provide a vehicle for the fulfillment of a fundamental desire we all have to experience all that life has to offer. Following desire, we move away from our pure, inherent nature until finally we have had enough and want to move back. My question to you now is, “Are you moving away, or are you moving back?” If you are on your way back, you will do well as a monk.
“Even if you have a keen interest in following a monk’s dharma, you’ll still have a backlog of unresolved karma to deal with, and we are prepared for that. What is important right now is your intention.
“In a broad sense, what we are calling ‘your karma’ is your past, the sum total of all you’ve done through many lives. If you’ve made a lot of messes, your karma will be heavy and clouded, and your dharma will be unclear. If you’ve done well in cleaning up your messes, your karma will be light and your dharma will be obvious.
“To understand your karma so you can determine your dharma, study your tendencies. What do you have a tendency to do? What is the nature of your desire? Ask yourself these questions honestly. Then, finally, ask yourself this question: ‘Is it my dharma to be a monk?’”
I hesitated.
“Give it a little time,” he said, gracefully alleviating my immediate confusion. “Meanwhile, let’s talk a little bit about yoga. I know that’s what’s really on your mind.”
I had to marvel at Gurudeva’s cool expertise in working with people, his easy way of moving in and out of sensitive conversations.
“In a deeper practice of yoga we strive to be aware of being aware,” he said. “This is easy to accomplish if you don’t complicate your effort with too much thought. Just mentally say to yourself, ‘I am aware,’ and be aware. Then, mentally say to yourself, ‘I am aware that I am aware,’ and be aware that you are aware.”
I shut my eyes and tried to do as he said. It seemed like maybe I was doing it. Then I thought to myself, “Maybe I’m not doing it.”
“Don’t doubt,” Gurudeva said, answering a question just starting to form in my mind. “It’s simpler than you think. Awareness is backed by a certain feeling—the feeling of being. Yoga is simple, but it’s not easy. Just take it one step at a time. Progress on the spiritual path, as in life, comes through a great many little successes. There are many little realizations on the way to the one big Realization.”
To round out this introduction to monastic life, Gurudeva had a couple of senior monks guide me through the structure and function of Saiva Siddhanta Church and its school, the Himalayan Academy. They were kind as they patiently answered my unsophisticated questions.
Once Gurudeva felt I had caught the general gist of what life in his monastic order would be like, he left the path choosing to me. At no point did I get the sense from him that I should or should not be a monk, or that I was or was not suited for monastic life.
In the end, I was still unwavering in my commitment to live the monastic life. None of the people I worked with back in Waikiki could believe I was giving up a happy, easy and lucrative professional life for what appeared to them to be a stark existence of renunciate austerity. Yet, in my mind, there was no going back. I wanted to be a monk.
So, Gurudeva gave his blessings for me to begin a six-month program called the Aspirancy. This half-year dose of monastic life was designed to give a young man a chance to settle into a monk’s way of living long enough to get past what Gurudeva liked to refer to as “a natural fascination with novelty.”
At the commencement of this Aspirancy, I took two vows: the vow of humility, a promise to fit into monastic life “like the nameless one,” and the vow of purity, a promise to be celibate while remaining physically and mentally virtuous.
Lifetime monks take three more vows: the vow of obedience, a promise to live by the rules of the monastery and directions of its guru; the vow of confidence, a promise to not divulge private monastery information; and the vow of poverty, a promise to embrace a renunciate life in which all sense of personal ownership is relinquished.
After my initiation into the Aspirancy, life suddenly got busy. Within days, I was on a plane to California with instructions to live at our San Francisco center while serving in the Silent Ministry, a monastic program in which monks worked incognito as waiters in restaurants.
Waitering is a humble enough job—and far more difficult than those who have never tried it might suspect. Adding in the demands of Silent Ministry made it even more challenging. In addition to being good waiters, we Silent Ministers were expected to be inconspicuous dispensers of blessings.
As it turned out, now was actually not the time for me to fully experience this particular monastic discipline. Just three days after I had gotten my first job in a restaurant (as a bus boy), I was given instructions to move to our third center in Virginia City, Nevada, where the Church maintained a press shop dedicated to publishing Gurudeva’s books. I was told the reason for my rather abrupt relocation to this desert place was quite practical. I had previous training in the field of graphics and design and was needed on the press team.
So, there I was traveling again. After less than a week in San Francisco, I was now sitting front-seat shotgun in our monastery car, a Citroen, heading for Virginia City with two other monks.
As we began our drive, the late October weather was noticeably cool, but not uncomfortable. When we arrived at our destination four and a half hours later, it was excruciatingly cold. Winter had arrived in Virginia City and the winds were fierce.
Our jackets weren’t nearly heavy enough to withstand the icy chill that stunned us with a shock as we got out of the car. It was all we could do to grab our sparse luggage and hurry up the cracked wooden stairs of the old town brewery Gurudeva had recently purchased to serve as our Virginia City monastery.
Two hardy monks greeted us at the door. They were the valiant fort holders, waiting for us with big grins, all toasty in their thick, down, winter coats. The electricity was out—temporarily we were told. So our hosts were scrambling to create as much light as they could with flashlights and candles. We stumbled inside, tripping over this and that, who knows what, until we finally found a flat space covered with a rug.
After rolling out my sleeping bag, I discovered a bathroom by the flickering light of a dying flashlight I had just been given. There, I brushed my teeth in water that felt colder than ice. There was no way I was going to take a shower. Was there a shower? I started to ask but figured it would be better to just wait until morning to see for myself.
If ever there was a time to lean on a mystic strength within, this was it. We were hungry, tired, cold and apprehensive about what might happen next. The Virginia City Monastery had a reputation for being a tough place to live, especially during winter. Now I could see how that reputation had been well earned.
Just before sleep, I casually thumbed through my yoga journal to an arbitrary page and beamed my flashlight down on a quote I had scribbled out during one of Gurudeva’s Innersearch classes. Wading through my bad handwriting, I managed to read: “Recognizing all experience is but a fading dream, you are closer to a permanence within you that has always been as it is. You can sense this permanence. It is God. It has never changed. And it never will.”
As I lay down in my new bed, completely forgetting where I was, bliss was all I could feel. The next thing I knew, it was morning.
I woke up with the rising sun feeling refreshed and renewed, but not fully awake. I was having trouble getting oriented, partially because I was in a new place, yet also because I had slept deeply. Because the warmth of my sleeping bag was providing a welcome haven from the cold, all I wanted to do right then and there was stay put.
As I lay there somewhat zoned, I vaguely heard some hustling and bustling. Slowly, a fundamental truth of life dawned upon me: This was a shared home. If I wanted to use the bathroom any time soon, I’d better move quickly.
In one long, clumsy lunge, I grabbed my toiletries pouch, rolled out of my sleeping bag and stumbled into the hall. Too late. I had to wait. “Damn!” Whoa! Did I say that out loud?
I would come to know this particular scenario—waiting for the facilities—as an important and often-repeated opportunity to develop patience, humility and forbearance in the monastery. Drawing in a long, deep breath, I wrapped up tight in a heavy blanket and stepped outside onto the front porch. The sharp, windy cold at this high altitude was hard to ignore. Yet there I sat, trying to do just that: ignore a windy cold, while watching a blood-red sky turn ice blue in less than two minutes.
As I looked out upon this strangely powerful scene, I was surprised to find myself feeling very much at home. I didn’t know why—had no idea. It was a desolate looking place cloaked in the scent of desert sage, set against a distant landscape that looked like a watercolor painting textured with sand—not exactly a wonder-winter-land tourist destination. What was it about this place I loved? Its simplicity? Its physical severity? Its purity? To this day, I can’t put my finger on it.
Virginia City is one of the oldest cities in Nevada and one of the most famous boomtowns of the Old West. It appeared virtually overnight as a result of something called the “Comstock Lode Silver Strike,” which lasted from 1859 to 1898.
Virginia City was also the place where, in 1863, a reporter for the local Territorial Enterprise newspaper named Samuel Clemens, first used the pen name, Mark Twain. When the three-story building we were now calling our Virginia City monastery was the town bar and brewery, we were told, it was quite often frequented by Mr. Twain.
Now, Virginia City is an idiosyncratic tourist destination, with a wild west back story. For better or worse, she’s dead or alive—dead in the winter or alive in the summer.
During summer and winter, our monastery schedule was quite rigorous, and subject to change on short notice. For the most part, we were fairly consistent in gathering for meditation and worship observances at 6 am, 12 noon, 6 pm and 12 midnight. The rest of the time, we worked, ate and slept. The liturgy for our ceremonies was conceived and written in a language called Shum.
The language of Shum was unfolded clairaudiently and clairvoyantly to Gurudeva in Switzerland in 1969. For Gurudeva, the arrival of Shum was a long-awaited fulfillment of a long-nurtured desire for a spiritual language.
Back on Kauai, I had asked Gurudeva why he had been so interested in bringing through a special language for meditation. He replied, “English was created for life on the physical plane. So were French, Spanish, German and all the languages of countries. These languages don’t have words for inner states of mind. Their words name things, emotions and some thoughts. We need an language for inner life.”
“Aren’t thoughts and emotions part of inner life?” I asked.
“Certainly they are,” said Gurudeva, “but thoughts and emotions are only skin deep.”
There was an awkward pause. I was thinking his answer would or should be longer. “So, Shum only names states of mind deeper than thoughts and emotions?” I asked.
“Shum has words for everything, but the Shum perspective is from within the deep inner mind, looking out. As a point of reference, it never becomes externalized into thoughts and emotions. It sees things, thoughts and emotions from a distance, somewhat objectively—or from the inside out, so to speak.”
Gurudeva further clarified that Shum would be primarily used in meditation and for conversation among mystics. When I asked him how Shum might benefit meditation, his answer was unique.
“The mind is like a forest,” he said. “When you work your way though a forest and locate a wonderful place, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to find your way back there later? In working with the mind, you can do this with a Shum meditation map. A map like this can record what you just did, or it can propose what you want to do. You can also chant Shum. Shum is a mantra language with a special vibration all of its own. The vibration of Shum alone can put you into a state of meditation. Talking and writing in Shum can help you live in the external world while maintaining an internalized state of consciousness.”
After a short pause, I asked Gurudeva how Shum could be used in striving for the ultimate realization of the Self.
“With Shum you can draw a map through the mind right up to the brink of the Absolute. There you have to wait patiently. The Self is the one thing you can’t get like you get other things, for the Self is beyond the mind—beyond getting. Getting occurs only within the mind. Strictly speaking, you don’t realize the Self, the Self realizes you, for the Self is God. And the Realization of God happens in God’s timing, not yours.”
I once overheard a not-so-serious student ask Gurudeva, “What’s the big deal about the Self. Why is it so important?”
To this, Gurudeva replied, “The totality of all manifestation—spiritual, mental, emotional and physical—issues forth from the one source and essence of all, which is the Self. Sooner or later, all you’re going to want to do is merge with this one source of life. When that time comes, you won’t be asking why the Self is important.”
Gurudeva would refer to this “totality of manifestation” as “the mind.” From Gurudeva’s point of view, life was daringly simple: There was Self and there was mind. Even souls were of the mind.
Gurudeva was taught and taught us that souls are created into the mind with an ingrained program to evolve by following desire to experience all the mind has to offer—everything: the good, the bad and the ugly. At the completion of all this total mind experience, with nothing left to desire, these souls then merge with their truest Self.
“Self Realization is the culmination of a soul’s journey through all of its lives on earth,” Gurudeva would tell us. “Yet only toward the end of this vast journey can a soul be expected to view Self Realization as the primary goal of existence. Up until then, there’s just too much desire to do other things instead.”
Self Realization, Gurudeva asserted, marks a turning point in the evolution of the soul, a point when the experiences of physical life have been so successfully encountered and resolved, there is no longer any need for the soul to be reborn in a physical body.
The way Gurudeva talked about the concept of karma was as practical as it was unique. “Following each of our actions, we must live through an unavoidable reaction and through that reaction learn a little more about life,” Gurudeva explained to his students during the 1970 Innersearch on Kauai. “An important fulfillment of any experience is the understanding that experience yields in its aftermath. All of this takes place in accordance with the law of karma.
“Karma literally means ‘action.’ But action cannot exist without reaction. So the resolution of any experience occurs when that experience matures full circle into understanding. But this understanding is not intellectual. It’s a satisfied feeling, a sense of knowing that arrives when we feel something just no longer needs to be explained. Isn’t it true that excessive thought and talk are simply desperate attempts to achieve this kind of understanding that can only really occur through experience?”
Yet words were important to Gurudeva. Otherwise, he would not have been so driven to bring through a language like Shum. “We all share a one essence,” Gurudeva once said in reference to the creation of the Shum language. “The discovery of essence is step-by-step. At each step, we need to know where we are, where we have been and where we are going. This kind of knowing requires thought, then words—preferably words that are meaningful in reference to introspection.”
My first day in Virginia City was magical, not because of any particular event that occurred but because of the way I felt inside myself. I was filled and thrilled with a fearlessly exhilarating anticipation of an unpredictable future. What would happen next? Would I be moving again tomorrow or the next day? As it turned out, I stayed right there in that brewery-turned-monastery in those stark mountains of American history for almost two more years.
By the time I finally met Gurudeva in person, I had studied his teachings for about two years. All through that time, I could never quite understand why he placed so much emphasis on the cultivation of willpower. Although he strongly encouraged the development of devotion, love, compassion, service, liberation and a great many other such mystical qualities, it was willpower that was pivotal from his perspective.
“Will is the fuel which carries awareness through all areas of the mind,” Gurudeva proclaimed. “It is the spiritual quality that can make any inner or outer goal a reality. You need a tremendous, indomitable will to make real the quest of merging with the Self God. Unfoldment doesn’t take time. It takes willpower.”
From Gurudeva’s daringly simple perspective, will provided the means by which awareness could be moved through the complexity of life to the simplicity of Self. “Even the grace of God,” he asserted, “comes in response to the will of man.”
Living in the Virginia city ashram, I slowly began to understand how Gurudeva’s mystical teaching was more about life than yoga. From his perspective, Self Realization was the ultimate goal of yoga because it was the ultimate goal of life, and—as with the pursuit of any life goal—the eventual attainment of this ultimate Realization of Self was most expeditiously accomplished through the cultivation of willpower. I came to this understanding because absolutely everything we did in our mountain desert monastery revolved around the development and use of willpower. And it was in this cultivation of willpower that we all felt the wholesome blossoming of an invincible strength.
Our ashram building was old and in constant need of repairs that we had to make ourselves. It had no central heating or air-conditioning, and its old, crudely boarded walls were so lined with gaping cracks, they couldn’t stop a breeze, much less a howling mountain wind. During the summer, we were too hot. During the winter, we were too cold.
In addition to all of this, we were going through the birth pains of learning what Gurudeva called “people skills.” After all, we were a group of vital, young men, quite newly acquainted, with very little in common except for our interest in yoga.
Living and working together in tight quarters, we simply had to get along with each other. However each of us preconceived the life of a monk should be, we all had to eventually agree that any life anywhere tends to get bogged down in pettiness, and that dealing with pettiness would somehow have to find a place in our practice of yoga.
Apart from all of this, I have to admit, I kept asking myself “What is the yoga we’re practicing here?” Slowly, it dawned on me. The development of willpower was our yoga at that point in our training.
We all learned quickly there was simply nothing to be gained by complaining to Gurudeva about circumstances or people. He would just smile and say, “This is what you came for. You’re here to learn you can do anything. Where there is a will there is a way.” It was often during the worst of times, when we were least inspired, that Gurudeva would be most inspired to talk enthusiastically about yoga.
Even for the most perceptive among us, nothing was turning out as anticipated. We had to hear again and again, “change is the only permanent reality” and “fortitude is your strongest ally in maintaining peace of mind.” By “fortitude,” Gurudeva meant willpower.
“Feel the energy in the spine,” Gurudeva would tell us when we were tired and wanted to go to bed. “There is no lack of it is there? The more you use, the more you have to use. The power of your spine is the power of your will. Will means this: If you’re going to complete something, complete it. Finish what you start. And finish it well, beyond your expectations, no matter how long it takes.”
When the intensity eased up and we were just relaxing together, Gurudeva would elaborate on the powerful but usually sparse instructions he shared with us during our more challenging times.
“Work with willpower, awareness and energy as three separate items first,” he would say. “Be aware of awareness and discover that. Use willpower and discover that. Feel energy and discover that. Separate these three in your intellectual mind and experiential patterns. After you’ve done this, you will begin to see inside yourself how these three are one and the same.”
Our monastic life was divided into two distinct realms: service and sadhana (spiritual practice). Work was our service. Each monk had specific work to do in some area of service. Yoga was our sadhana.
My assigned work in our Virginia City monastery was in the prepress department of our print shop. I produced art as needed, helped design our various publications, processed photos to film for printing, stripped up negatives and burned plates for our printing press.
Although each monk’s job was different, we all had to learn to be precise, methodical and intelligent in small, practical ways. While maximizing our work efficiency was undoubtedly important to us, being kind and humble enough to live and learn with each other without disturbing the harmony of the monastery eventually became our first priority.
As time passed, we became aware of a certain subtle something occurring in the background of our life. In our own timing, each of us witnessed the other monks becoming better people. This observation was not something we were consciously attempting to achieve. It was simply a natural consequence of our ongoing struggle to meet the everyday challenges of living within monastery restrictions.
Certainly, this process of becoming a better person was quite uncomfortable at times. The lower side of our human nature resisted change and hated trading familiar habits, even if they were negative, for unfamiliar habits, even if they were positive.
“You’re learning to have enough faith in yourself to step off into nothing,” Gurudeva would often say. “You’re perfect. You just don’t know it. Your job is to realize your perfection.”
Occasionally, we worked 24/7 to finish production on press jobs with stepped-up deadlines, deadlines stepped up by no one but us, I should mention, and often for no good reason, other than to create a stimulating challenge. At these times, we tried to sleep little and work more in a bold move to prove—to ourselves and Gurudeva—we had this valuable thing called willpower.
Gurudeva didn’t object to these “press pushes,” as we called them. He let us figure out for ourselves how such impulsiveness came more from emotion than will—and was almost always counter-productive in the long run. During these press pushes, we made more mistakes than usual.
Mistakes were upsetting—and sometimes costly. When we printed a book with one page upside down and it was determined this catastrophe was my error, I agonized for days before going to Gurudeva to apologize.
By the time I finally got up the courage to go see him, I had worked myself into a state of considerable anxiety. Ready for a good scolding, I listened watery-eyed as he said with the kindest of smiles, “The only mistake is a lesson not learned. Just double-check your work. It won’t happen again.”
He was right. I never made a mistake like that again. But we still had to reprint that book at considerable expense, and I had to discover that living with a mistake was a tough way to learn.
Gurudeva was amazing in his ability to gently relieve monastery tension just as it was about to turn negative. At such breaking points, he would take us down to Reno for a show, to the Carson City Hot Springs for a soak or to Lake Tahoe for an afternoon of relaxation. This was rare though—about once every two months.
Gurudeva would cycle through his three monasteries as often as he could. We always looked forward to his coming. It meant fun and good times. Around him there was always joy, even during times of trial. Nothing could get him down. He was the one who was forever calm, content, unruffled and happy. His best teaching was his example.
In Virginia City, we had a dog. I’m not sure if he was bought, found or given. He was already there when I arrived. His name was Babashum. In the Shum language, baba means “dog,” and shum means “pleasant.” Although this dog was certainly a baba, he was by no means shum. Still, we all loved him, for he was a fearless warrior and a mighty sentinel.
Babashum was not large. In fact, truth be told, he was rather small—especially compared to the other Virginia City canines. He stood 18 inches tall, weighed 20 pounds and was such a mix of breeds not even our veterinarian could accurately identify what he was. When I arrived at the Virginia City ashram, Babashum was ten years of age and had been in so many dogfights he was lucky to be alive.
Babashum looked the life he lived. The tip of his right ear was missing and he was covered with laceration scars, camouflaged only slightly by his long golden brown hair. He walked with a limp one of the monks said he got during a fight with his mother shortly after he was born (I don’t believe this). And his neck was locked in one position, which froze his skull rigidly at a slight angle so that, if he wanted to look back to his right or left, he couldn’t just turn his head, he had to rotate his entire body. His left back leg was mostly numb. So he sort of dragged it when he walked or ran.
Regardless of all this and despite his age, Babashum never missed an opportunity to gallop crookedly along with us on our daily two-mile jog through the sparse residential outskirts of Virginia City.
On one such occasion, as about six of us were out huffing and puffing toward our second wind, Babashum was hobbling alongside us more vigorously than usual. It was a brisk, clear fall day—not a cloud in the sky. Just as I was thinking to myself, “What could possibly go wrong on a day like this?” something did.
Babashum stopped abruptly. Somewhat perplexed by this most uncharacteristic behavior, we stopped too.
Sniffing the air and darting looks right and left, Babashum hopped over a pile of debris and sniffled his way toward a spot he seemed to think was an important place to be. There, he kicked up a sizable cloud of dry mountain dust and cocked his head like a little lion. To his apparent glee, this move prompted a fierce eruption of snapping and woofing sounds from a group of large, mean-looking mongrels basking in the sun about a thousand yards away. Babashum then raised his right leg and released two or three bullish squirts of urine at which point those dogs crossed that thousand yards in what seemed less than a few seconds.
What happened next was disturbingly traumatic. It was the kind of shocking ordeal that can usually only be grappled with in retrospect, since, as it occurs, perception itself seems paralyzed. For me, in my distress, some sort of psychological mechanism took over to scoot my awareness away, as if forward in time, to witness the violent misfortune taking place like it was a memory of an event that had already happened. From that protected vantage point, I was able to observe the drama with some degree of dispassion.
Later, each of us remembered a different version of what had happened. When we were called upon to describe the event, some of us said there were five dogs. Some said four. But we all agreed on one thing: Babashum saw them coming and didn’t flinch.
When it was all over, Babashum was just lying there. He wasn’t dead, but he was close. And he was bleeding badly. The worst wounds were on his head, neck and legs. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. We started to move him, but didn’t.
A woman walked up from a nearby house to offer us what looked like a horse blanket. We covered our wounded warrior with the blanket and thanked the lady graciously. Otherwise, we said nothing.
Two of us stayed with Babashum while the others went back to the monastery for the Citroen. Fifteen minutes later, we were driving to Carson City. One of the monks was holding Babashum, cradled in a towel wet with fresh blood.
The Carson City Vet rolled his eyes and shook his head when he saw Babashum. It was like he had been expecting us and was wondering why we were late. Even his assistants seemed to be just standing there waiting for us. We hadn’t called ahead.
The doctor had us lay Babashum on a high table covered with a clean plastic sheet. Without saying a word, he immediately got to work. A lady at the front desk asked one of us to sign some paperwork. As I watched from the side, I noticed a record sheet with Babashum’s name listed on it over and over. The girl who had helped us bring Babashum in from the car noticed me looking and said with a smile that Babashum had the longest “rap sheet” of any dog they had ever treated. There was a tinge of pride in her voice. After about fifteen minutes, the doctor came out and told us he would have to keep Babashum for a while. So we drove home to Virginia City.
As we arrived back at the monastery, Gurudeva was preparing to go to the airport. He asked about Babashum. We said he would live. He replied, “Probably not for long.”
I remember thinking that Gurudeva seemed remarkably unemotional in a way that seemed somehow appropriate. It was like he cared, but not past a certain point.
When Gurudeva was ready to go, we pulled the car around front for him and loaded three small bags into the trunk. One monk had been chosen to travel with Gurudeva back to Kauai. It was going to be a long flight with a brief stop in San Francisco where some family devotees would be meeting Gurudeva for a quick coffee at the airport. No one ever wanted to miss a chance to talk with Gurudeva.
Just as the car was pulling out, Gurudeva rolled his window down and said, quoting his spiritual teacher, Satguru Yogaswami, “No coming, no going.” After a pause, he added, “All is always fine deep within where there is no coming, no going—just stillness. Be still. Be aware. Be the soul you are. The soul is perfect and cannot die, nor can it be harmed. From the perspective of the soul, the external mind looks like the dream that it is.”
With that, he slowly and gracefully raised his large right hand in a final good-bye wave as the car drifted off. We stood for a moment, forgetting Babashum’s plight, the icy Nevada winds and our own petty difficulties in adjusting to a monastic life of moderate austerity.
As I look back now, I can see what I couldn’t see then: Those brief messages of precious insight from Gurudeva during what he called “psychological moments” were important. They helped us stretch our yoga from a periodic practice to an all-encompassing lifestyle.
We bought Babashum back to the monastery two days later. He was all patched up, more or less. The doctor told us to keep him as still as possible—not an easy task. In about ten days, we took him back down to Carson City to have some sixty or seventy stitches taken out.
After that, Babashum didn’t run with us any more. Actually, he couldn’t run at all. He had to just stay at home.
Babashum’s battles were not over. The local dogs who hated him now sensed his defenselessness and slowly moved in for a kill. Although they were crafty stalkers and scarily quiet, we knew something was about to happen. The nightly barking was no longer as distant and there were new sounds in the sage near the monastery. Sensing danger, we built a doghouse for Babashum’s protection.
Finally, one evening around nine o’clock, the hellish sound of attacking dogs broke the night silence like a crack of thunder. We all rushed out the back door of the monastery, screaming at the top of our lungs and flailing flashlights. The intruding dogs bounded off into the night without a fight. Although they had not harmed Babashum, they had gotten dangerously close.
Babashum gave limped chase to the retreating dogs for about 20 or 30 feet. “That’s right, you guys,” he seemed to be yelping menacingly, all riled for a fight.” You want a piece of me? You know where I live. I’ll be waiting.”
With a little work, we got Babashum inside. One of the monks made a bed for him in the kitchen where it was warm. Slowly, he settled down enough for us to be able to get some sleep. The next day, we built a fence around the doghouse so Babashum could go outside safely. Some time passed without incident. We went on with our life.
About a month later, I woke up around three in the morning for no apparent reason. There was an eerie feeling in the air, as if I had just had a nightmare. But I hadn’t. Also there was no wind. Strange. There was always wind on top of our mountain.
I got out of bed, walked around, went to the kitchen and drank some water. Something was wrong. I just knew it. I went into the living room where there was a rug on the floor and plenty of space to do some stretching exercises. After moving through a series of simple hatha yoga positions, I returned to my sleeping mat, thinking I was relaxed enough to get perhaps an hour of sleep before dawn.
Just as I was about to dose off, I thought I caught a glimpse of Babashum to my right. Yet, when I aimed my flashlight in that direction, I saw nothing. Unsettled and fretful, I lay there on my back staring up at the ceiling. The room was now filling with the soft, red/orange glow of sunrise. Impulsively, I decided to take a walk. As I put on my coat, a cloud of depression descended upon me. I wondered why. As I went outside, all was quiet—too quiet.
Babashum wasn’t immediately visible, but this wasn’t unusual. He was most probably in his little hut, I thought to myself. As I started to walk down the path that led away from the backside of our monastery, I noticed the door to Babashum’s fenced-in yard was open. It looked like it had been knocked loose from the inside. I went in to check his hut. It was empty. I looked around briefly. There was no sign of violence.
Just then, another monk appeared in the back door of the ashram. He looked at me with his hands in his pockets and asked, “How’s our Babashum?” Before I could reply, he saw in my face that something was not quite right.
After trading worried theories as to what happened, the two of us began a methodical search for Babashum, starting from the monastery and working our way out into the surrounding terrain. As the other monks saw what we were doing, they joined in.
In about twenty minutes, we found Babashum up on a hill some two thousand yards from his fenced-in doghouse. There had been a fight—a bad one. This time, the warrior had not survived.
Although the ground was hard as a rock from the cold, we dug a grave right then and there. It took at least 45 minutes. Because of the frozen earth, it was difficult work. We had to take turns digging.
I found an old wood-burning tool in the mail room and etched “Here lies Babashum, the Warrior” on a small board which we nailed onto the unpointed end of a fence post. Even that post was difficult to hammer into the ground.
Eventually, a friend of ours, who worked for a local cemetery, carved a headstone for us. Its simple wording read: “Babashum, the Great—1961-1971.”
Babashum’s death cloaked the monastery in a somber pall for about a week. We talked little, joked less and went about our work rather mechanically. It wasn’t like we were mourning Babashum’s passing. We weren’t. We had been taught and we truly believed that the life of that which dies is deathless.
What stunned us about Babashum’s savage demise was the raw brutality and apparent mercilessness of his killers. The whole affair had forced us to adopt a rather stoic look at life, a look that did not elicit philosophical reflection. One of the monks said, most unpoetically, “I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to see it coming.”
When we talked with Gurudeva about all this, he surprised us with one of his typically untypical replies. “Don’t you live in an animal body?” he asked. “You have the capacity to understand exactly what those dogs did, for there is only one instinctive nature, which we all share. Haven’t you all felt hunger, thirst, greed, hatred, anger, fear, lust and jealousy? Before we realize the Self, we must realize life and all life has to offer.
“Babashum’s departure is a lesson offering an understanding of karma. His loss of his body marks a debt paid for deeds done. Now, he’s a little wiser. We’re always learning from life, even after death.”
This prompted some discussion about karma and reincarnation. When one of the monks ramified off track and asked one of those many unanswerable “Why?” questions, Gurudeva responded by answering another question of his own instead. He was good at this.
“How can we purposely resolve karma?” Gurudeva inquired. “Our external, conscious mind has a knack of not being able to learn from the experiences of life, which is why these experiences have to get repeated again and again. By simply not allowing ourselves the luxury of having an emotional reaction to an experience, we provide intuition with a graceful moment of quiet clarity to do what it does best. Then, any lessons we are meant to learn become self-evident, and the experience no longer needs to be repeated. The resolution of all karmas is finalized in intuitive knowing. Intuition does not need much help. It just needs a quiet moment—a chance to get through. Also, intuition does not conflict with reason. It’s just a little quicker and a lot simpler.”
About three months after Babashum died, we bought an adorable hound dog we named Madika. “Madika” means something in Shum—I’ve forgotten what. That dog was the sweetest, dopiest thing I had ever seen. We couldn’t help but love him. And he was as gentle as a lamb.
Shortly after we purchased Madika, Gurudeva gave him away. When I finally got up the nerve to ask Gruudeva why he did this, his reply was, “Babashum can’t be replaced.”