On Meditation

Boys and Joys - most of you know that I've been exploring meditation over the past few years.  

It certainly hasn't been a linear path in progress......sometimes 2 steps forward, then 3 steps back, crabwalk sideways, full fist in your butt (~Maya Angelou).

But as I learn more about meditation and my own mind, I'd like to share my learnings with you.  

Most of these are addressed as letters to my meditation teacher, Ekta Bathija, who I'm almost positive is not a human. (for more on that, stay tuned)

Anyway, today's sharing was written after a weekend retreat with this guy - one of the world's foremost huggers.  

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I never understood why people became wild primates whenever Sri Sri was near.  It was like Bono x Bieber at Mardi Gras, if Bono x Bieber wore a kurta.

He says our natural state is love; but eyewitnesses of his groupies say our innate state is animal. (At least that's what's released every time DJ Sri Sri walks into a party).  But in last week's "Get Happy*" course, Dr. Guruji medicated us with a meditative talk that tamed all our inner tigers and tied itself to our memories.

Except my memory expires in 10 minutes ago, so quickly here before I warp it further into fairy-tale:

(Timeout - let me preface that we've all heard these points before, but sometimes returning to kindergarten lets the legos spell out new truths - also, I'm writing this from a bakery and no treats were harmed in the making of this email)

1) "If it's not a hell yes, it's a no. But if it's already happened, it's ok. Be ok with everything that happens."  This is a Daily Reminder that goes off on my phone every morning. It was mainly meant to apply to situations/events, but Drinks expert Sri Sri added a lemon twist - "Let everything flow in the same direction, even conflicting thoughts." Being ok with everything means even being ok with your thoughts; and anyway, they live in a Dressing Room, so why react adversely to an outfit you know they'll change out of anyway? 

2) Speaking of changing, the same goes for everyone else's thoughts too -- their thoughts are made of the same star stuff and have the same knack for change.  Yet the ego, and its insatiable craving for respect, thinks it can kidnap people's opinions and freeze them in time.  But opinions like thoughts like minds are all slippery fish that aren't meant to be held for long.  So what does it matter what anyone else thinks? 

After all, the only constant is that everything is changing. 

3) Meditation is not just about concentration; it's also about relaxation. If we're so focused on concentrating, we cut off innocuous thoughts from sharing our lane, which only inspires road rage and revenge on our attention. 

4) "Most of the day we try to impose our will on nature - Meditation is the time of day where you listen to what nature has to tell you." 

While it doesn't happen every day, only in deep meditation does nature whisper in unquestionable clarity. We already have all the answers; it's just hard to hear over our mind's whining.  And these minds mistakenly point us to the outside for advice; but look within because "advice is that thing you ask for when you secretly know the answer and wish you didn't." 

5) About 5 or 6 years ago, I had a drunken debate with a friend about if humans were supposed to seek out happiness or focus on influence.  I fought hard for influence, contending happiness was selfish...and that crabs were shellfish.  But Sri Sri Shakkarpara tipped that flimsy point over with his skinny stick....... in fact, my friend and I were arguing for the same thing.  After all, everything we do is for happiness - even ambition, even legacy, even influence; it's for happiness. So instead of aiming for influence/respect to make us happy, be happy first and the rest will follow. 

5) "Think about how your time is spent amongst 80 years of life. 40 years is spent sleeping, 10 years eating, 5 years in the bathroom.  And then all that time we spend THINKING about sleeping or eating or bathrooming. So we must find a way to sleep happily, drive happily, BE happily," and remember that thinking is the opposite of living.

At the course a few months ago, I had a profound realization in meditation - the kind that gives unquestionable clarity.  The meditation takes you through all phases/ages in life -  "Remember how things were at age 5 in the sandbox, then age 10.... now you're just beginning high school..........now you're 40, how do you feel? Now you're 0, imagine what's around you, and imagine your emotions."

I'd come to terms a while ago that money has no correlation with happiness; but my ego still felt that "You know, I've made a lot of people smile in a lot of countries......I need to achieve something that etches that in record - whether that be through writing a book or making a movie or winning an award, or just SOMETHING that makes me 'deservedly' known to a larger audience than just the people I'd encountered in person." 

Going through that meditation, there my 50-yr old self sat, imagining having accomplished and achieved everything that I've ever wanted to accomplish and achieve. 

It wasn't half as satisfying as I'd always imagined it to be.  I understand why now -  accomplishments/achievements are small peaks in this life's mountain range.  Most of life happens in between the big events, and if we're just looking forward to the pretend peaks, we're going to miss most of life.  So as our mind continues to sew together meaning out of past acts, know that our true purpose is whatever we're doing right now.  Take pleasure in every moment by giving it your undivided and smiling attention; and remember that it's our responsibility to spread smiles in every moment we're around others.

In college, I wrote my purpose to be "to make as many people as possible, happier." Professors forewarned that "as many as possible" was a never-ending number, and that this lofty goal would need a larger platform.  But now I know not to care about reaching an end or a number; the only number in time is Now O'Clock.

*you can't "Get Happy," just BE Happy

Title

As most of you know, I recently completed a road trip from Germany to Mongolia - 7803 miles to be exact and all the dirt road you could eat.

We picked up hitchhikers, camped in the dessert, drove through rivers.....even danced with Uzbeki nanis.  

And somewhere between nani hopscotch and deep sea driving, I witnessed some of our spiritual teachings in action.  Thought I'd share my findings:

1) You see, at my day job here, I'm the only one at our small company to do the sales....via calls/emails/candy/etc.  During the 5 weeks I was gone and nobody doing this in my absence, our sales actually went UP.  Proof that not only am I not the doer, I'm not even the seller. 

2)  Doing seva/being around people whose problems are exponentially greater than mine takes the mind away from personal memories and anxieties and into the present moment with their presence. 

3) Though the one place that even Ashtavakra would agree it's ok to move your mind away from the present moment is a 3rd-world country's public bathroom. 

4) People's expectations from strangers are low, but that's almost a good thing - you see, that means it's easier than it should be to bring them joy.  Just by blowing bubbles and passing out soccer balls to unexpectant families, the adults' smiles along our path were even bigger than their kids'. 

5) And both kids and adults alike around the world unanimously know one english word and one word only: "selfie"

6) Russia, which I imagined to be covered in a grey cloud of communism, was actually shockingly beautiful and friendly. That country just needs a better publicist.  

When I asked one Russian if people in the bigger cities are just as nice as in the smaller towns, they wisely responded, "People are nice everywhere. It depends on you, not them." 

7) It was easy to noticeably follow the flow of life's river when I was on a journey where every day's location and adventure were different.  It'll be harder to notice the same flowing river back home where the scenery changes...less. But that's why, wherever we are, we just have to be aware of the adventure that's happening around us. 

Hugs and kisses,

Mojikistan 

PS in case you're interested, below are some photos:

On the way from Urgench to Bukhara (Uzbekistan), we saw some russian-looking hats on display off the roadside. Nobody was around, so we walked around back, and accidentally woke up the sleeping couple. We didn't buy anything, but these people with almost nothing offered us their single cucumber and half a piece of bread - we handed them money, but they refused to take it:

At the Kazakh/Uzbeki border, which took a little longer than forever to cross, the locals were beginning to get cranky in the heat, so we blew up a bunch of balloons for them and they wiggled with appreciation: 

We had to spend 2 nights at the Russia/Mongolia customs crossing due to don't get me started, but it ended up being a huge blessing in disguise. We were stuck there with a group of Italians who've spent the past 5 years driving around the world showing movies to kids in villages who've never seen a movie before, and a German couple who are on a year-long global road trip to cook a meal for at least 1 family in every city they stop.  We spent the last 10 days with both groups, and collectively agreed to split the money we'd raised for charity with the Italians for their awesomeness and shared vision to bring more smiles to the world:

And last but not least, my new best friend is this monk who I caught gossiping with his girlfriends:

Cravings and Aversions for Breakfast

Fellow YV Marathoners, 

Some of you may know that I recently did a 10-day Vipassana silence course, mainly for the girls and food. 

EXPOSED on both fronts -- I just assumed Vipassana was like the bhatura to Art of Living's chole, but in fact Vipassana doesn't even serve ANY food (after 1130am each day).

They did, however, serve some lessons. If you're a good boy and wait til Mommy's done explaining some background, I'll tell you all about them. 

THE PART WHERE MOMMY EXPLAINS SOME BACKGROUND: 

Vipassana meditation is Buddha's original meditation -- the goal is the same as AOL, but the path is quite different. To be completely honest, I didn't know I was cheating on the AOL community until Vipassana dimmed the lights and revealed her true intentions. In fact, the two styles can actually complement each other quite well. For example:

1) Vipassana, too, also believes that the mind is constantly pulled out of the present by a nonstop string orchestra starring Cravings and Aversions (and co-starring more Cravings and Aversions). I can't tell you how many times from 4am-9pm I heard Ekta's voice echoing "raagas/dweshas/raagas/dweshas." By day 6 of the diet, raagas and dweshas were turning into "ragu" and "queso" and my thumb into a butterfinger/chum chum. 

2) But instead of observing the cravings/aversions at the thought level, VP's M.O. is to objectively observe the sensations on and in the body. You see, it's not the car or the woman or the money or you desire; it's the sensations (feelings) that those things create on and inside your body that the mind craves. So just like Guruji says in his bestselling "Long Kriya" to "be with the sensations," that's what we did at sensation camp, except in military doses.  See, emotions are sensations before they're thoughts and emotions are generated by reacting to the sensations, so if you can observe the sensation without reacting, then the emotion (that is, craving/aversion) will never happen.

Essentially, instead of making thoughts the feature presentation, you make your bodily sensations the feature presentation.  It's two paths to the same Salvation Fairydome, with both on duty as after-school programs to keep the mind out of trouble. 

Here's the cool part -- each bodily sensation is also hard evidence of a tangible change in the body. And change is happening in the body and around us all the time, that is "everything is changing."

THE PART WHERE MOMMY EXPLAINS HIS LESSONS:

...1) so if everything around us is changing, including people, situations, and things, that means everything is impermanent. So trying to find happiness in ANYTHING outside of us is a flimsy model........it's like hooking your rock-climbing clip into a mudslide. Or buying your 1-yr old a lifetime membership at Kids R Us.  Or relying on our kids for our smiles. 

2) Writing out recurring thoughts is a cleansing experience, like pulling a hair out of your cereal.

3) Bring joy to the greater good without worrying about upsetting a few. If you upset them, have compassion for those who are controlled by their mind, but untimely compassion is only heard as ego. 

4) Living in constant awareness/equanimity without reacting can conceptually be defined as the "Neutral Now."  And while the Neutral Now sounds as fun as water-flavored ice cream, recognize that the taste experience comes and goes in a fraction of the time than the fireworks saga imagined by your mental craving.

**You can tell by all these food analogies what effect no dinner for 10 days had on the mind. Now please pause for a short commercial break while I eat my screen.**

(we now return to regularly scheduled programming) 

5)  With limited food and no noise, the body can adapt and the mind can collapse. And when there's no sparring partner for distractions and games, the infantile mind self-imposes nap time. BUT....

...6) these naps are a temporary fix like trying to hold a balloon under water. Instead, objectively observing the mind and sensations in the playpen allows the self to notice thinking patterns whose futility all of a sudden becomes laughable.  This is when I've found it easiest to change the changer.  

Yes, silencing the mind is a natural high, but if you kill the suspect, then you learn nothing about the motives.

I also became more aware that the main conversation in my head happens because "I" think that everything/everyone revolves around me. But life is not happening TO me, life is just happening, and I'm the witness. 

As I walked into the cafeteria every day for the Daily Meal, I could hear my mind running its mouth: 

"Don't sit at the first table, people are going to think you're anti-social." 

BUT BITCH NOBODY'S TALKING." "So sit next to someone new, someone who's lonely and sitting by themselves."

 "BUT THEY'RE NOT GOING TO UNDERSTAND WHY I'M PUTTING BUTTER IN MY TEA." 

After a few days of this colorful nonsense, it became clear that, more than I've ever cared to admit, I do care what people think about me  -- or rather, that they don't think what I don't want them to think about me. My decisions had been designed to portray a certain decorated self, like painting an egg........the looseness of my clothing, the pace that I ate, the intentional tardiness.  And the biggest deterrent from taking chances had lied in a fear of risking cracking this imaginary painted egg of myself in other's heads.  But this egg has has been created by my mind and imagined to be in others' minds, when really the shared consciousness is an eggless cake. 

This email is getting long, and don't worry I'll still accept your thank-you notes for helping you kill time at work, but before you return from your bathroom break, one last thing -- I want to quickly share the transformative experience that happened every night as a group of us stood outside and stared at the stars.  Each night, while staring at these balls of fire that are so far away that they may not even be there anymore, their distant existence got closer to the heart. And each night, the realizations built upon the last:

NIGHT 1 - It is incredibly random (or is it) that we are all living on this tiny planet which in comparison to the universe, is the size of a sock hole.

NIGHT 2 - So if we're sharing this small space, life must be about helping others. 

NIGHT 3 - But also making enough money so I don't have to listen to others.

NIGHT 7 - I could see how these stars could've been motivation for the possible fabrication of God's existence. 

NIGHT 9 - We're randomly sharing a fairly small space - if it's not God's social experiment, we're all incredibly lucky to be here, and that at the same time. So we must constantly be doing things to make each other smile.

NIGHT 10 - I may be small in this universe, but I'm still bigger than my mind. 

Now please excuse me while I take my mind for a walk. 

Love,

Hungry Moti

Kashmir Kush

A postcard of Paradise usually shows off palm trees, umbrella drinks, and turquoise waters. 

What if I were to tell you that the real Paradise is a cold desert, dry without booze? 

That Paradise goes days without internet when the nearby war gets spicy?  

That Paradise's winters are so cold, your pee freezes midstream while nutsacks flirt with frostbite? 

That Paradise is called Leh Ladakh in Kashmir, 16000 ft above sea level and that much closer to contentment, filled with characters walking along the same plane, free of intention to fly above their playmates.  

Fly your eyes along these lines, and I'll prove it to you:

1) Meet Norgyal (half Seagull half Viking) with borderless beauty, and an even bigger heart.

Norgyal is 8th Generation Ladakhi (7th generation is his Mom - seen above making us breakfast), and lives in a village filled with Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians.  Whenever someone in the village comes down with a cold, one person from each family comes to visit with a remedy called Community.  

I met Norgyal one morning in the city. But after a day driving together through the highest motorable road in the world at 18000 ft, I was windless and ready to wind down, without Winding-Down-Formalities. 

#SocksOn

As we shuffled in the starry dark through Norgyal's village, he warned amongst our exhaustion to  "watch out for bugs."

"Oh are there big ones out now?"
"Big or small, we must not step on them." 

In my exhaustion, I found his discipline impressive, but it was the next evening that I found it extraordinary.

fter another long day, we reached town an passed a cow whose legs were tangled in wire. My mental wiring sprung "shit that sucks," but his took tangible action. He pulled over immediately, and along with a few others who stopped to join, freed the cow from entanglement.

Seeing my awe in entanglement, Norgyal unraveled it: "We have to help each other. What makes us human is that we know how others feel. Animals do not, but since we and we alone have this power, our actions should reflect the best interest of everyone and everything around us.  Otherwise, what's the point of being human?" 

His point won all the points on Humanity's Scoreboard.  But Norgyal wasn't an anomaly.....

....2) Meet Nordan, self-dubbed as "Michel Nordan", collectively referred to as "Doc"

Michael Nordan is an Oxford-educated physician, with a laugh like Santa on hiccups.  

The first day I met Nordan, he asked what I wanted to do.  I suggested some things I'd seen online.

"That stuff is for tourists. What are you REALLY interested in?"

"People. Understanding people.."

"Then come with me tomorrow to a labor camp, you can interact with the local people while administering medical exams."

Sounded perfect, practicing medicine with my English literature degree.

One after another, I asked 150 of these $150/month laborers, who literally lived in shipping containers, "Anything you don't like about your job? Any dessert you've been craving? Are you missing your kids?"

"(smiling) How? What an opportunity!"

"(smiling) How? The chapati and daal are more than enough!"

"(smiling) How? They already know how much I love them!" 

I was hunting for complaints, realizing it was through shared complaining that I hunted for connection.  And yet, they didn't care for the stage to tell sob stories; rather, when visiting them in their shipping containers, they staged off who made the best chai.  That was how they bonded, through cooking for each other, through rich chai.  Meanwhile, I realized that my mind's complaints about their lack of complaints made me the poor one. 

And through all that, there was still Nordan the constant, Nordan the Brave.......busy running medical exams, fielding calls from the hospital, in between checking in on his kids, and all the while, whistling to himself. 

I had to ask him, "You have so much on your plate. Does it ever feel like too much? How do you not get irritated?"

Nordan didn't even know the word, nor the emotion.  Under a layer of annoyance, I introduced Nordan to Irritation.  And Nordan irrigated my irritation with a hug nd a smile

I had to wonder, what was their secret.......their secret to Paradise? 

One theory relates to the altitude.  Most meditation techniques manipulate the breath, slowing down thoughts by slowing down oxygen to the brain.  

Maybe the lack of oxygen meant less fuel for innocuous thoughts, and thus more space for Paradise of the Mind? 

Maybe the size of the surrounding mountains served as constant reminder about their servitude to Nature? 

Maybe they just liked each other. 

All the while I was just trying to record each monumental moment, storing canned soup for Irritation Hurricanes hiding over the horizon.

But hedging memory of the moment is far from being in the moment.  And if planning gets in the way of enjoying, then plan on not truly living.

Kashmir - you beautiful Goddess - another trip for the ages, another 15000 miles traveled. And while no age or mile-coun can silence your mind,

ashmir can certainly shush it.