PROLOGUE: MY PILGRIMAGE BEGINS

Pilgrimage has fascinated me for many years. I think it began on our first visit to England over 20 years ago. My sweetheart and I were big fans of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael medieval mystery novels. We arranged for our driver/guide to take us to Shrewsbury to see a tourist attraction called "The Shrewsbury Quest", a re-creation of Brother Cadfael's herb garden and other scenes from the books and television programs (sorry, but it closed years ago). We of course visited the 11th century Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul next door, the very real setting in many of Brother Cadfael's mysteries.

Our driver/guide suggested that since we would be visiting other places in Northern Wales that we should take a detour to Saint Winefride's Well and Shrine in Holywell. Saint Winefride was a minor dark ages Welsh saint whose relics actually were translated to Shrewsbury, though not quite as was fictionalized in Ellis Peters' novel A  Morbid  Taste  For  Bones. We knew nothing of the real Saint Winefride's story, and had no idea there was a shrine to her, but were very excited to go.

Saint Winefride's Holy Well and Shrine, Holywell, Wales. The Saint herself is on the pedestal. The well is under the arches, and feeds a modern swimming pool in front. Bring your own towels.

The shrine turned out to be a still-active Catholic pilgrimage site from the late 15th century that somehow survived the Reformation. We were absolutely delighted by the well house and other buildings, both with the originals and with later structures done in a matching style. The two elderly nuns were making their own visit and kindly offered to pray for us because we weren't Catholic. We found this very touching. Perhaps I was most moved by the graffiti carved into the walls giving thanks for miracles and healings received by pilgrims who had bathed in the blessed waters. In a small way, this was a pilgrimage for us as well, and sparked our wider interest in pilgrims and pilgrimages.

A pilgrimage is a journey of faith, a religious quest. In a broad sense, anyone who has set their feet upon a spiritual path in any faith is a pilgrim. We are all moving toward whatever goal we seek from our spiritual practice, whether it be divine love, knowledge of a greater power, service to others, or a host of other reasons.

Why am I presenting my own story? As I approach the end of my life journey, I am hoping to reconcile some of the divergent paths I've trod. I wanted to bring all this mish-mash together to make sense of my own experiences. Journaling seemed be a good way to sort out these events.

These articles chronicle some steps on my spiritual path, as well as stumbles large and small I've taken. Along the way I will introduce you to some of the men and women who have guided my steps, either personally or through their teachings. Perhaps some of you will find a moment of inspiration or be pointed to a book or other resource from my journey that will aid you in your own quest.  Maybe you will just get a smile or two, as the odd or humorous adventures are as important to me as my deeper experiences. Besides, to me life is just open mic night at God's big comedy club.

You won't find my name here, and most details about my life have been kept vague. Don't even try to work out who I am, because it isn't worth your time. Working on your own spiritual path is. I am no guru, and claim no special wisdom. Like the author of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, who modestly wrote under the pen initial "M", I prefer to remain anonymous.

Just think of me as Haridas, a devotee.

PART 1: HOW THE SEEDS WERE PLANTED

It might surprise you all to learn that I was not raised in any particular church or spiritual tradition. 

My father had been brought up as a Quaker, and caused a family rift when he left the church as a young adult. I suspect it was less about Quaker piety and silence, but rather more about rejecting his overbearing mother's influence. My mother was raised a Southern Baptist, but left her church when she moved away to her first nursing job and found the congregation in her new town unwelcoming. She dropped active church membership when she married my father.

My minimal exposure to traditional American religion was mainly through courtesy church attendance when we visited my mother's relatives half-way across the country. Two of her many brothers were preachers, which pretty much made church attendance mandatory if we were guests. One of the brothers was a  minister in a rather liberal denomination, and the other was ordained in a super-fundamentalist Baptist offshoot (his family didn't even have a TV). I was told that family reunions could get quite lively when the two brothers started arguing doctrine. My Mid-western relatives (including my parents) would have fitted right into Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon.

My parents found a semi-spiritual outlet through the Rosicrucian Order (AMORC). Maybe you remember those ads in the back pages of popular magazines headlined "What Secret Power Did They Possess?" That's them. The Rosicrucians are not a church. They are actually more of a social organization somewhat like the Masons, except that men and women mix freely rather than having separate lodges. They have strong moral and ethical teachings, largely Judeo-Christian based, and belief in a higher power. The Rosicrucians are open to exploring the teachings of all religions, and welcome members of any faith. I remember that the local group included a Parsi family from India. The Rosicrucians also dabbled in flying saucers and other off-beat topics, but hey, this was the 1950s.

The Rosicrucians' schtick is ancient Egypt. Their headquarters in San Jose, California, is a fascinating "Karnak Disneyland" of lotus-columned buildings, papyrus gardens, and murals of Egyptian pharaohs careening about in chariots. It also includes a really fine Egyptian museum with real mummies and other cool stuff which to a ten year-old were simply amazing. 

A mural from AMORC'S headquarters in Rosicrucian Park, San Jose, California.

In those days AMORC members received the Order's teachings through regular printed lessons called "monographs". (I don't know how they disseminate their teaching now, but I wouldn't be surprised if the monographs are sent electronically.) My parents tried to get me involved in the Order's youth program, the Junior Torch-bearers, by subscribing to their special monographs for youngsters. I read a few of the Torch-bearer monographs, but found them uninteresting. Since I am mildly ADHD, I had a hard time staying in focus with the material, and just stacked them up unread (I did the same thing with Boys Life, the scouting journal, later replaced in my teenage years by largely unread Playboy  magazines -- I did look at the pictures). For several years my parents produced the local Rosicrucian group's monthly newsletter on a messy hand-cranked mimeograph machine kept at our home. The closest I came to involvement  in the order was being drafted to turn the crank.

Everything changed when I was about 17. One day I noticed several digest-sized magazines called Vedanta and the West   on my mother's bookshelf. These magazines were published by the Vedanta Society of Southern California, a religious organization associated with the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in India. Sri Ramakrishna was a 19th century Bengali mystic. Upon his death in 1886, some of his disciples renounced the world and became monks. Their leader was Swami Vivekenanda, the first Hindu guru  of note to teach in America. He arrived as an independent delegate to the World Parliament of Religions in 1893, and took the event by storm with his forceful personality and excellent lectures (to the annoyance of the official Indian delegates, whose own lectures had disappointingly low attendance). Swami Vivekenanda went on to found meditation groups across the United States until his early death in 1902. I didn't know this background stuff then, but I was dealing with a case of spiritual dynamite, and the fuse had just been lit. There will be more about Ramakrishna and his disciples in later chapters of this story.

The first article I read was a transcribed lecture by Swami Vivekenanda called "Fun". In simple terms, his teaching described God as the universal soul or Atman-Brahman, a deity that is not only the source of all creation, but who IS creation itself. He/She is engaged in a great lila  (creative sport), a sort of play in which God is author, director and all the characters.

I was completely floored by this concept. My ideas about God had been formed from popular culture featuring an angry Old Testament deity (think of the movie The  Ten  Commandments). I had never been comfortable with the concept of God as a huge bearded figure on a throne reading from a book recording all our sins, and ready pull the lever on a trap door sending us down to eternal damnation if we didn't measure up. Or maybe it was St. Peter at the Pearly Gates doing the dirty work, as you so often see in cartoons.

Even though I didn't have the background yet to appreciate all the articles in Vedanta  and  the West, I devoured all six issues and took them with me to college the next year. My mother never missed the magazines, and when I later told her I had them she said I could keep them. And keep them I did. They are still on my own spiritual bookshelf, joined by two more issues I stumbled upon over the years. Sadly the magazine long ago ceased publication.

PART 2: THE SEEDLINGS SPROUT

Surprisingly, I attended a small Christian college. It wasn't about doctrine; it was all about the money. They offered me a scholarship package that made their private school a bit cheaper overall than a local state college and living at home, plus I wouldn't need the added expense of a car for commuting. My parents liked that, since we were not exactly flush with cash, and they didn't trust me with a car anyway. I liked it too, since I really wanted to get away from my parents and make choices for myself.

The school was associated with the same "liberal" church in which one of my uncles was ordained. I saw my other preacher uncle, the fundamentalist, a few months before I left for college and told him about my plans. I'm sure he was pleased to hear I was going to a religious-oriented college, but must have privately winced that it would be one run by "those liberals"! Neither uncle could foresee that I would come out of there a Buddhist.

My school required just two classes in religious studies. One had to be either Old Testament or New Testament (or both). The other possible choice was a survey class on the world's major religions. 

I somewhat reluctantly chose Old Testament, but found it fascinating. The class wasn't about doctrine, but really more about the history and literature of the Hebrew people in biblical times. The instructor explained the reasons behind what happened in many of the great Bible stories. He made a lot of really confusing stuff clear, such as how Hebrews taken during the Babylonian Captivity incorporated the Devil into their religion after learning about  the evil anti-god Angra Mainyu  from the Zoroastrians. This sort of detail is often overlooked, misunderstood, or seen as irrelevant and dismissed by many Christians. To me it was pure gold. Our textbook was the outstanding Oxford  Annotated  Bible, a book I wish I had not sold back at the end of the term (I did everything at college on the cheap like a good Mid-westerner).

It was the comparative religions course that really got me excited. With John Noss' excellent textbook, Man's Religions, we explored Jainism,  Zoroasterism, Shintoism, Buddhism, and of course Hinduism. During the Hinduism section, what I had read in Vedanta and the West  really came into focus. Sadly, we ran out of time and didn't get to Islam or Confucianism, and Judaism and Christianity were not in the syllabus. I picked up some knowledge of these faiths through other courses.

Another meaningful class I took was a survey of new and "radical" religions, which included several field trips. I found the experience at a born-again Christian youth house-church we visited to be shallow. One teenager after another stood up and gave testimony about what seemed the most trivial experiences, including "Jesus told me where to find my car keys."

This might be a good place to interject a few thoughts about Chistianity. I am not down on the religion, though I may seem quite critical in these posts of  the way it is practiced today. Jesus was a great rabbi  (whether one believes he was divine or not, he was a rabbi -- a teacher of the Law of Moses). He gave us really valuable instructions on how to lead a meaningful spiritual life, a life filled with love for the Divine and for our neighbors. I truly respect those who try to practice His precepts and spread good in the world. And now back to our story.

Another field trip to an ISKON temple (the Hare Krishnas) in a nearby city was far more enlightening. The devotees invited us to participate in their ecstatic kirtan  (devotional singing) to Lord Krishna and to their guru, Srila Prabupada. Their kirtan was exciting, and very moving, though it would be a long time before I understood the meaning of the Sanskrit  and Bengali verses. Then the devotees stuffed us with their wonderful prasad  (consecrated food). This was my introduction to Indian cookery, and I loved almost every spicy bite. I even choked down the cauliflower (which usually makes me gag). I sometimes returned here on my own for the kirtan  (and for the food). Later in my travels I visited other Hare Krishna temples in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Catonsville, and New Vrindaban. I even stopped in at their temple and restaurant when I in was in London. Twice.

Govinda's in San Francisco, 1986, a Hare Krishna restaurant. Great food they almost gave away, hoping it would bring people closer to Krishna. In the temple next door I enjoyed after-dinner kirtan.

I went on to take as many elective classes in Eastern religions or philosophy as could be crammed into my schedule. Eventually I had enough credits between religion and philosophy for a minor, had the school allowed split minors. They didn't allow splits, but no matter (I majored in sociology, and sociology of religion was my favorite area of study). I was like a kid in a candy store with his first ten dollar bill. This was what I came to learn, and I couldn't get enough.

At the end of my third year just before my 21st birthday, I became a Buddhist. A Zen Buddhist. I have a quirky sense of humor, so the koans  (unsolvable riddles) and the often outrageous doings of  Zen masters greatly appealed to me. Of course, I was completely at sea about what I should be doing as spiritual practice, as I had no roshi  (Zen master) to guide my steps. All I had were my books and a wall to stare at. You can read about Zen as much as you want, but it is hard to get there without the "doing" part, and the "doing" part usually takes guidance.

In those days, Zen was the best known branch of Buddhism in popular America, probably a hold-over from the Beatnik movement. In a typical bookstore the Buddhist shelves would be crowded with Zen books by Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Christmas Humphries (all recommended authors, by the way) and a host of others. Usually hiding somewhere on the shelf was Walter Evans-Wentz's Tibetan Book of the Dead, often the only non-Zen title.

In recent years the situation completely turned around. The only type of Buddhism many Americans think of is Tibetan. This is largely due to the smiling face of everybody's favorite superstar Buddhist monk, the Dalai Lama. No criticism here. He's a very humble guy, and I'm sure doesn't step on the toes of Buddhist teachers from other sects. It's our fault; we're enchanted with his enigmatic smile (me too!). Recently I took an informal survey in a major chain bookstore and found that Zen and Tibetan books were now pretty much equal, but there was almost nothing on other Buddhist sects.

One of my Buddhist-inspired practices was to become a vegetarian. I was already headed that way, after being served a piece of roast beef with an artery big enough to stick my little finger through in the college cafeteria. "Gross! It's just like me inside." Buddhists, even monks, are NOT required to be vegetarians. Monks are only prohibited from eating meat if they know or suspect that the animal was killed specifically to feed them, a throwback to the days when part of a monk's routine was begging for left-overs from householders. But one of the pillars of Buddhist practice is compassion for all living things. Giving up meat was a way I could express that compassion.

Shortly after I embraced Buddhism I had several satori  experiences. This is something I have rarely told anyone about, as they are (a) deeply personal; (b) cheapened by idle talk; and (c) a great trap for the ego. So no details here (I will talk about a couple of them in a Part 4, where I will share some specific lessons I learned). Usually satori  takes years of intense meditation and really, really hard work under serious pressure from a Zen master. Mine were spontaneous, but I recognized what they were from books I had read. No, I was not enlightened, and don't claim any special knowledge came from the experiences. They were more like sign posts along the road of life, but they were life-changing experiences.

I was still at college when I first encountered my future guru, Sri Swami Satchidanana (the swami  briefly seen in Woodstock). He had been invited to give a lecture at my school. I was quite taken with Swami-ji. I particularly enjoyed his humor, and it was one of his jokes that really stuck with me, "If you pick a nail up out of the road, you are serving God by . . .  saving soles." I vowed ( or "wowed", as he said) that if I were to follow a Hindu swami, it would be him. Unfortunately, I lacked a car, or a friend with a car willing to drive the 50 miles or so to his nearest center. No swamis  for me. Not yet. 

PART 3: ZEN INTERLUDE

In my immediate post-college days, I discovered there was a Zen meditation hall in a nearby city, JUST a four-hour bus ride away. It was too far to ride on my small motorcycle, and still didn't own a car. I was occasionally able to visit there for meditation sessions and other instruction, but it was a major undertaking.

This zen center followed the Rinzai  school of Japanese Buddhism, the "sudden enlightenment" style that uses koans as part of the training. There is another Japanese Zen school called Soto, in which the students "just sit" in meditation and try to empty their minds. That emptiness is what Zen training in both sects is all about. The monks and students learn to clear their minds of mental garbage and focus exclusively on "being here now" as the late Baba Ram Dass said. It is usually a very long process.

The meditation hall was in an old church building. Wooden platforms had been built around the walls, and the students sat upon these platforms using as many cushions as needed to stay upright and comfortable. I was told to pick a spot on the floor and not look at anything else. No eye closing, as that invites sleep. The only sound was the padding of tabi-clad feet as students left from time to time to visit the roshi  for sanzen (koan-study interviews). And of course, there was also the equally soft tread of the jiki-jitsu.

During meditation, the hall was patrolled by a monk or an advanced student, the jiki-jitsu. If that sounds like some sort of martial arts master, you are close. He/she carried a cane stick to whack students on the shoulder if they were falling asleep. It is not punishment, but rather an aid to help the snoozer stay awake. In Japan, the jiki-jitsu  decides who needs whacking and how hard. Here this would not be tolerated, and a student must first agree to take the blow. Fortunately, nobody ever tried to hit me with the stick. 

I have never been able to bend myself into a lotus posture, and instead meditate in a simple cross-legged fashion. Without asking, the jiki-jitsu  tried to twist my legs into a lotus. It really hurt, and I hissed through my pain and clenched teeth, "I don't bend that way." He bowed in apology, and helped replace the meditation cushions that I had scattered in my pain. So much for silence during meditation.

After meditation I was usually asked to do a bit of work service. On my first visit, a small courtyard outside the roshi's  quarters was littered with seed pods or some other floral debris from a tree. I was issued a broom, dust pan and a bucket, standard equipment for a novice in many Zen stories, and asked to tidy up the area. It was a gusty day, and my debris piles scattered again before I could get most of them into the bucket. Worse, the wind brought down more debris onto areas I had just cleared. The obvious parallel to spiritual practice in a worldly life was not lost on me. Ah, a small Zen lesson, and on my first visit! I suspected that if the roshi  was watching from his quarters, he was rolling in fits of laughter. I was later told he was not in residence. All that comedy was wasted for lack of an audience.

On my last two visits I did have sanzen  with the roshi . After a half-hour of advancing from station to station sitting on my knees (an agonizing posture for me), I was finally admitted to roshi's  room. Here was a tiny Japanese man with just his head and hands poking out from a huge pile of starched silk robes. Ominously, he was holding another stick. His greeting to me in a thick accent was "Vellly hard to study Zen." Rather than giving me a traditional koan, he said "All things are God, yes?" I agreed, with some surprise since the concept of God is usually far from Zen Buddhism. "If I hit my stick on the floor the sound is God, yes?" Again I agreed. "How do we know this?" he continued. When I didn't give an immediate answer, he again said with a big chuckle, "Vellly hard to study Zen", and rang his little bell to signal the end of our interview. Elapsed time, about two minutes.

A few weeks later I returned and again went through the knee-crunching waiting period. This time I was expected to give him back the question he had previously asked, followed by my answer. Whatever I said, it wasn't right. The roshi  responded, by hitting his stick on the floor, and perhaps trying to make it easier for me, asked "Who is this sound?" That was followed by another chuckle and "Vellly hard to study Zen." Then the bell tinkled again. This was my last interview with the roshi. 

It took me six or so years to solve the question he had given me, "Who is this sound?" The answer came to me during meditation after reading the Buddha's discourse on Dependent Origination from the Dhammapada. In a rather compressed explanation, when the senses encounter a sense object, the sensation is sent to the mind, which is the organizer, judge and storage site for all our experiences. The mind compares the new sensation to past experiences stored there, tags it as favorable or unfavorable, and files it away as the basis for further comparisons with future sensory inputs. These stored experiences are called "aggregates", and are the building blocks for our personality, or "self". Thus what "we" are is a collection of stored experiences, and actually there is no permanent abiding "self",  just a function of mind. We are mentally being "reborn" constantly as new sense inputs bombard us. Buddhist practice in all its various sects aims to stop or at least slow this process of constant mental rebirth into pain and suffering through realizing these truths. And that doesn't just mean reading about them in a book. Rather it means internalizing the mental "emptiness" that the Buddha achieved and described so well as a guide to others.

So my answer to the roshi's question would have been, "I am that sound. I am not that sound." I am that sound as a sensory input that becomes a part of "me"; I am not that sound because that "me" is an illusion. Had I been able to tell him this, the roshi  would likely have chuckled and given me a harder problem taking another six years to solve.

I also attended one sermon by the roshi. I can't remember a thing he said, but the experience itself was quite memorable. The roshi, in all his silky majesty, was carried into the hall on a palanquin by four monks, with a lot of bowing by the rest of us. When the roshi  gave his discourse, he spoke Japanese (he actually could speak excellent English, but his accent was vellly, vellly thick). A translator then rendered the roshi's  words into English, sort of. The translator was a Korean fellow, and his accent was every bit as thick as the roshi's. After each brief speech, the roshi  erupted with that deep chuckle I had heard before. After the translator repeated the roshi's  words in English, the master chuckled again. So who says spiritual practice has to be dour? Not Zen.

There was never a chance to discuss my satori  experiences with the roshi  or anyone else at the zen center, but maybe that was a good thing. Those experiences were in the past, and I likely would have been told to let go of them and to concentrate on the here-and-now.

I was only able to visit the zen center a few times over five or six months. Shortly after my last visit, I was packed off for basic training in the armed forces, followed by an assignment far away. I never had a chance to go back to the meditation hall.

PART 4: SOME THOUGHTS ON SATORI AND KOANS

Satori  is at the heart of  Zen practice. This is the enlightenment experience, the flash of truth revealed that every  Zen aspirant seeks. It is a huge life-changing event. Like  Zen itself, it is something that you can read about, but you can never really understand until you experience it.

Western psychologists have tried to deconstruct satori  and may be onto something, but only in a rather dry, clinical sort of way. Satori  has been described as the rare moment when the subconscious mind breaks through the chatter of the conscious mind. Because we are so used to all that chatter, such an intrusion can be both jarring and memorable. This is particularly true when the subconscious presents us with a different view of a problem, a view that is a solution or at least leads to one. 

A non-Zen example, if anything in life can be called "non-Zen", is found in a story about Archimedes. He had been ordered by King Hiero of Syracuse to discover if the king's new gold crown was a fake, and the goldsmith had made off with the precious metal. As Archimedes sat down in his brimming bathtub, some water was displaced and sloshed over the side. Archimedes immediately saw the answer to his problem. The sage is said to have run naked through the streets of Syracuse toward the palace shouting "Eureka!" ("I have found it."). This was certainly a satori  moment, and it shows how powerful such an experience can be, especially when it offers the solution to a problem. By the way, streaking after satori  is neither required nor recommended.

For most people, such a subconscious intrusion is simply explained as an odd thought or weird feeling, and is quickly dismissed. One example of this might be the deja-vu  experience, that creepy feeling that we have been here before, done this before, or had this conversation before. If this is a similar mechanism involving the subconscious rising to the surface, then satori -like events may be a far more common experience than we usually think, but go largely unnoticed by most people.

I promised more about my experiences, so this is a good time to relate my first satori. It happened when I was about three years old (I was a pretty trippy kid, even then). My parents gave me a Smokey the Bear T-shirt, complete with the big hairy guy in his jeans and ranger hat on the front. On either side of the ursine fire fighter were two "junior forest rangers", a boy and a girl. In the image, each was wearing a smaller version my shirt. When I looked really closely, I could even see the same image reproduced again much smaller still, though it was only a few blobs of color at this level. As I stared at this shirt, I imagined following the decreasing images down, down, down. Suddenly a really odd feeling came over me. For a moment it felt like I was removed from this world. The whole experience lasted just seconds, but was so powerful the details were burned into my brain forever. Much later in life I looked back to that experience and I realized it was a satori, or at least a reasonable facsimile. Was I changed by the experience? I doubt it, since being only three years old there wasn't much to change yet.

Another time when I had this experience I  was taught a valuable lesson. I was walking back to my college dormitory after shopping, and was contemplating some question about spiritual life. Suddenly, I had a powerful flash about how my life should be lived. I said to myself, "That's the secret! That's all anybody needs to do!" Just then a driver behind me honked somebody off. I spun around automatically to see if I was in danger, and I FORGOT WHAT THE SECRET OF LIFE WAS! Just like that, everything was gone. I figuratively slapped my forehead and rued that I could have been the big guru  with all the chelas  (disciples) dancing around me. Wow! What a first-class ticket ego trip I was on. Believers in deities that control our destiny might reflect that God or somebody caused that driver to honk just to keep me out of trouble. I may have lost the Secret of Life, but learned a very important lesson about my ego and how spiritual experiences can be a subtle trap. This cautionary observation is the last thing I will say about my own satori  experiences, and is really the only reason I share the story at all. Back now to at least an attempt at modesty.

Rinzai  Zen students are put into a sort of spiritual pressure cooker by their roshi  through koan  study. The koan  is usually a quirky riddle that has no logical answer. The students will keep trying various rational solutions, all of which are refused by their teacher until a breakthrough into a moment of spontaneous thought occurs. After years of experience the roshi  will know by the student's demeanor if a satori  has happened, and then any answer the student gives will probably do. As a reward the student gets an even harder koan  in sort of a spiritual Super Mario Brothers game, and later still more until the master judges that the student is enlightened.

The most famous koan  is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" You might think the answer to that chestnut would be well known after a thousand years of use, but there is no stock answer and there never will be. The solution IS  the satori  that comes with the effort a student pours into solving the koan.

Of course roshis  are not bound to the classic koans, and can make up new questions for their students to solve. Such was the case with my roshi, though I suspect the question he asked me might have been one he used frequently with new students. 

Dialogs with  Zen masters can be as obtuse and frustrating as their koans, as shown in many  Zen stories. For example:

A monk had just joined the order, and came to the Master Joshu. "I have just entered the brotherhood and am anxious to learn the first principle of  Zen," the novice stated. "Will you teach me?"

Joshu inquired, "Have you eaten your supper?" When the monk answered in the affirmative, the master continued, "Now wash your bowl."

Just in case you missed the meaning here, Joshu could have been telling the young novice to clear his mind. Or he could have been saying that the first principal of  Zen is just being.

So have a bowl of tea while you contemplate that.

PART 5: MEETING THE GURU FACE-TO-FACE

After college I knocked around at low-paying a retail job and later driving a delivery truck. I wasn't quite reduced to the stereotyped grad's first gig delivering pizzas, but it was close. Additionally, I entered into what turned out to be disastrous marriage. All this sapped my energy and attention from doing spiritual stuff.

My spouse was very critical of any spiritual practices, and somewhat rightly pointed out that I usually did them when we were having problems. Good call, but that's when I needed to do sadhana  the most, and we had lots of problems. She wanted to know about my insights and experiences, but her response was usually a waspish, "You don't know!" Gradually my sadhana  fell away.

I was pulled further away from the spiritual path when I joined the armed forces. I remained a vegetarian, and somehow got through basic training on a diet of scrambled eggs, canned peaches, white bread and lettuce. All three field assignments during my service years allowed for family quarters, so diet generally wasn't an issue. I did my best to keep my beliefs to myself, as it doesn't pay to stand out as different in a military environment.

Everything came crashing down as I prepared for my third assignment and orders to another state. My soon-to-be-ex was having a sordid affair with a married man. Worse, he was the son of one of my civilian co-workers. This made for some very awkward moments, though I kept my mouth shut. I knew all about the affair, since she left more tracks than a club-footed cow. My lady probably left such obvious clues on purpose so she could play the drama queen ("adventuress" was the term she used). When my orders arrived, she moved to her own apartment love nest. I was actually relieved it was finally over, and her leaving was the best thing that ever happened in our marriage. Still, I wished her well, packed my junk into my pick-up truck and took off to my new duty station.

A curious side note here. A few years ago my ex passed away from cancer. Her last days were comforted by association with a Tibetan Buddhist study center. I was truly sorry for her suffering, but was pleased to learn that she sought some form of spiritual comfort before the end. It is perhaps ironic that it was through Buddhism, the same belief system she scorned when we were married.

My last assignment turned out to be the worst in my whole military service. My immediate supervisor disliked me from the day I walked into his office. My specialty skill set within my field was outstanding and I had earned excellent performance marks, but he was looking for someone who had strengths and training in certain other aspects of our job, and in those areas I was barely adequate by his reckoning.

Another problem was that I had never developed good leadership skills as I moved up in rank. Two of my previous supervisors had been unstable (that's putting it charitably -- one was a lush, the other was an extreme paranoid). They never helped me develop as a petty officer. At those duty stations, my subordinates and I were friends, and I usually didn't have to give them outright orders. We discussed what needed doing, divided up the tasks, and got the job done, usually without any intervention by our bosses. Now I was supervising some prickly subordinates who openly defied every order I gave, and my new supervisor refused to back me up.

My supervisor then discovered that I was a vegetarian when he saw I didn't have any meat in the sandwiches I brought for lunch. I had no other answer except to explain that I was a vegetarian for religious reasons and that I was a Buddhist (he could have checked my dog tags if he wanted to know). Bad move, though being evasive would have been just as bad. My supervisor was a born-again follower of a well-known televangelist and attended that preacher's super-fundamentalist church in a nearby town. Now he began harassing me in front of the crew, saying things like, "You know you're going to Hell. I can save you, but only if you come to my church." My subordinates loved these exchanges, and their snickering told me I wasn't likely to ever win their respect (I never did).

I would never have dared to say this to my supervisor when I was in the service, but here is my "take that, you turkey" answer to him. 

Without any family or close friends, I had no support system. Every day I dragged myself into work expecting some new indignity. My self-esteem pretty much hit rock bottom. Then Swami Satchidananda threw me a lifeline.

While shopping in the near-by food co-op, I noticed a small handwritten note on the bulletin board announcing a local Swami Satchidananda kirtan  group. I had been looking for a Buddhist center of some kind, but snatched at this opportunity. The next Sunday I was there, with a loaf of home-made bread to contribute to the advertised after-kirtan vegetarian pot-luck dinner. The members of this group welcomed me into their homes and made me part of their spiritual families. It had been a long, long time since I had felt such acceptance.

Each Sunday evening we chanted the entire Integral Yoga kirtan, even the hard parts. I really adored chanting kirtan (Hindu-style devotional singing), as I have never had much success with meditation and had yet to try hatha yoga. It wasn't long before I knew most of the chants by heart, and rarely had to use the little hymnals. I was quite self-conscious about my ability, or lack there of, to sing on key. Our hostess reassured me, "It doesn't matter what sort of voice you have. It's what's in your heart that counts." Wise woman, that lady, though others later would think differently. Some people who should have known better criticized my attempts to sing with considerable brutality, as we shall see. 

I was astounded to learn that Swami Satchidananda actually lived just a few hours away at his ashram  known as "Yogaville". His organization had another ashram  in Connecticut, which they had outgrown and were in the process of closing. The property in Virginia, financed through a gift by a major rock star follower, was much larger and many of the members had already moved there. Work had just begun on Swami-ji's visionary Light of Truth Universal Shrine, or LOTUS, a temple to the truth of spirit central to all faiths.

Satchidananda Ashram Yogaville in 1983 from the hunting lodge patio. The ashram property is to the left of the James River. The view today is much the same, and always inspires.

The ashram  is located in extremely rural Buckingham County, today still reached by some roads that don't even have lines painted down the center. It sits on what was then about a square mile of a former tree farm along the James River. At that time, the ashram consisted of an old brick hunting lodge that housed the meditation room, kitchen, some offices, and a few guest rooms. Another office building had just been built and Swami-ji's quarters were finished. There was also a small school for children from the group's many families. Most members lived in mobile homes (a misnomer, since they were on blocks and weren't mobile at all). Some members had built modest homes on part of the property set aside for a subdivision, while others bought or built houses just off the property. At that time there were about 15-20 monks and nuns in the community, plus around 150 lay people.

So a few months later when Swami-ji returned from his travels, a road trip was in order. Five of us crammed into our hostess' station wagon, along with her border collie, Arjuna the Meditating Dog (he sat in the circle with us at kirtan), and we took off for the wild lands of central Virginia. Why it took eight or so hours to get there is beyond me, other than stops for the dog. We arrived stiff from sitting, but excited. I later went by a different route and it took just four hours.

The hunting lodge, put to more sedate and spiritual uses. Space inside was very tight. There were even offices in the attic under the roof at right. One didn't stand up too quickly, and they were like an oven. Today the building remains in use as a retreat center.

The old brick hunting lodge had a large "solar" added to the back, a room that was mostly windows all around. A very hot and a wicked cast iron wood stove sat right in the middle. I think the room pre-dated the ashram, but it now served as the group's meditation hall, yoga studio, and meeting room. At about 30 by 40 feet, it could comfortably hold 50 or so people sitting on the floor. It was usually crammed with many more when Swami-ji was in residence.

Interior windows between the temple room and the kitchen area allowed parents with small and sometimes unruly children to watch the programs, and listen via speakers. More people could watch on a closed live video feed to a television in another room. All the formal programs with Swami-ji were video taped.

We arrived just as the evening satsang  program was starting. The congregation was chanting the kirtan,  the easy parts I noted, accompanied by a real harmonium. I was in heaven. Then Swami Satchidananda entered the building and everybody stood up with hands joined prayerfully in the namaste  gesture (and when we tried to sit down again, somebody's feet or knees now occupied our spaces). Swami-ji made his way across the room, stopping frequently to greet various devotees, looped around the deadly stove, and took a seat in his gargantuan chair in the corner diagonally opposite the entrance.

Sri Swami Satchidananda in his enormous chair at satsang in  1982, on my second visit. The magic question box is on the table to his right.

That custom chair was built very wide so Swami-ji could sit cross-legged or even in a lotus posture. It was almost big enough to be a love seat. In fact, that might be a good name for it.

By chance I was sitting just ten or so feet from Swami-ji. I don't know if he took particular notice of me, but I had a ringside seat. 

Swami-ji's program began with some anecdotes from his recent travels, recalling things that he had done or people he had met. He traveled frequently to speak at events on the yogic circuit, attend conferences, and drop in at the organization's various other centers. Then he put on his glasses and plunged his hand into a wooden box filled with questions devotees had written on little slips of paper. Some questions he would answer in just a few sentences, but others invoked a story or example and sometimes went on for a long time. I noted he read some of the slips silently and set them aside. Maybe he knew who wrote those questions and gave them personal attention later, maybe they were too hot to handle in public, or maybe they were just so poorly written that he didn't understand what the writer wanted. This went on until about 10:00. The program ended with prayers, and an arati  or offering of light at the altar via an open-flame camphor lamp. This lamp was carried around the room and devotees passed their hands above it and touched their foreheads. Then Swami-ji exited, again slowly working his way out between a double row of devotees with their hands joined the namaste  gesture.

It was an electric evening for me, and I felt sure I had finally come "home".

PART 6: GANAPATI, "THE REMOVER OF DIFFICULTIES"

Even though I plunged into the ashram  and Swami-ji’s teachings, I kept my eyes open to make sure I wasn’t getting sucked into a so-called “cult”. Cult groups were one of my college study areas, and I was well read on popular literature about cults, particularly non-judgmental books written by sociologists and other academics.

“Cult” is/was a pejorative term then widely slung about by “de-programmers” and other detractors of any alternative religions. It usually described any group that didn’t meet super-fundamentalist Protestant approval. Sociologists who took a more scientific approach were in general agreement that a real cult had to meet certain defined criteria, though the list could be a bit flexible: (a) absolute obedience from followers was demanded by the leader; (b) the leader and other top members were exempt from their own rules; (c) members were not free to leave the group; (d) members were not allowed contact with their families or non-member friends; (e) members were required to work for free in various ways for the group; and (f) members had to surrender all their personal property and funds to the group.

Swami Satchidanana’s group scored extremely low or not at all in most of these areas. The biggest exception was that monks and nuns did turn their personal property over to the group, but that is often expected in monastic orders of most faiths. Surrender of property or money did not apply to lay members such as myself, though donations were always welcome. Yogaville visitors might also invited to preform karma yoga  (union with the Divine through selfless service) such as helping in the kitchen, but this was never required.

I became a regular at the ashram, even when Swami-ji wasn’t present. I tried to visit for a weekend at least once a month, and occasionally stayed longer for retreats or other multi-day programs. As dormitory space was virtually non-existent, I usually spent the night tucked into a sleeping bag in the back of my truck. After about a year of visits, I asked for and received formal spiritual initiation, and was given a personal mantra  (a Sanskrit  prayer) to chant silently while meditating. I took initiation in the same "class" as my kirtan-leader's husband, making us something like spiritual brothers.

Back at my work nothing improved. I was still at odds with my supervisor and most of my subordinates. One of the human relations officers suggested that I might profit from taking the Dale Carnegie Course, which was available at government expense. At that time the basic Dale Carnegie Course ran for 14 weeks, and met two evenings per week.

Most people think of  Dale Carnegie classes as lessons in public speaking. That is only partly true. These classes do teach speaking techniques, but are also about building self-confidence, leadership skills and improved human relations. The course material is what my sweetheart (also a Dale Carnegie graduate) describes as spiritual values in a secular setting. Dale Carnegie training is not about “getting your own way” by calling people “assholes” like another self-help course that was popular at that time. One of the most important principles of  Dale Carnegie's teachings is  “You can’t change anyone else, you can only change yourself”.

Not surprisingly, my supervisor was extremely dismissive of the Dale Carnegie material, although he likely knew almost nothing about it, and he never asked any questions. His response was, “You’d better not try any of those Dale Carnegie tricks around here.”  There are no tricks.

Our class materials were drawn from Mr. Carnegie's famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People. The usual format for each evening was one or more two-minute talks (plus or minus ten seconds), usually on an aspect of our lives as called for in that session’s theme. The talk usually had to be about our own success, or failure, in applying a human relations principle -- for example, “The Greatest Human Relations Lesson I Ever Learned Was . . . .”  The instructors and the lessons were always affirming and upbeat. There was lots of class participation, including warm-up cheers and applause. After most sessions, the class voted for the best presentation and the most improved speaker, with those members receiving a modest award (a greatly treasured mechanical pencil) for their accomplishments.

The public speaking part was a snap for me. I’ve never had a problem giving lectures or speeches. I had taken public speaking classes in both junior high and high school, and also had some acting experience. What I did learn was to streamline my talks by using concise language and eliminating elements that weren’t important to the story. I always rehearsed my material, and pared it down almost exactly to the two-minute limit. 

On the other hand, I more or less flunked the memory improvement part. I have always had a difficult time remembering people’s names (thank goodness for name tags in the class), and was terrible with the other memory techniques as well.

I loved the Dale Carnegie classes, and by invitation took the course again for free, with added duties as a teacher’s assistant. 

Although I had become a disciple of Swami-ji, that didn’t mean I was in any way barred from hearing the teachings of other spiritual masters. In fact, Swami-ji encouraged having darshan  (being in the presence) of other teachers, visiting churches/temples, or reading spiritual works from all faiths. Teachers from other faiths were frequent guest lecturers at the ashram, including Tibetan Buddhists, Jewish rabbis, Catholic monks and other Hindu gurus. I was quite comfortable with Swami-ji's liberal views on this.

Swami-ji did recommend against “guru hopping”. If you really want to make spiritual progress you must truly follow only one teacher (darshan  excepted). Sri Ramakrishna used a simple parable to explain this. He said if you want to reach the roof of a house, you can take the stairs, use a ladder, or climb up a rope. All are valid methods, but you will never make progress if you first put your foot on the ladder, next switch to the stairs, followed by trying the rope. You must eventually choose one path, then stick to it. This has always been something of a problem for me, as I have tended to flip-flop between Buddhism and Hinduism as my spiritual needs change. Fortunately, Swami-ji's organization was a "big tent" that included learning about and appreciating all faiths, though his primary teaching was sort of "Hinduism-light" for westerners.

My friend the kirtan-leader had many local contacts in the Hindu-oriented and New Age spiritual communities, and always seemed to know when an interesting event or a visit by a spiritual teacher was scheduled in our area. I took advantage of several such opportunities.

Darshan  with a noted Vedic  scholar, Swami Chinmayananda, was one of these events. The swami  was mainly in town to minister to the ex-patriot Indian community. My kirtan-leader, her husband, and I were the only westerners in the audience. Swami Chinmayananda gave a college-level lecture, explaining karma  and rebirth, with lots of Sanskrit  terms connected by arrows on a whiteboard. Good stuff, but heady. What I remember most about his talk (which was really excellent) was that he had a telescoping pointer topped by lurid pink puff for visibility. When he was not waving the pointer at the board, it rested between the toes of his bare feet as he sat on the edge of the stage. At the end of his lecture, the swami  presented each of us with a really useful book explaining Sanskrit  words and Vedic  concepts. I still have that paperback on my spiritual bookshelf.

Just before my military service ended, my kirtan  friends and I enjoyed several evenings of darshan  with another noted spiritual teacher, Sant Keshavdas. Sant-ji, as he was usually known, was not a swami, but rather was a pundit  or a purohit  (both names for Hindu lay teachers). Sant-ji was a great story teller, and I learned several of my favorite Indian tales from him via his tapes. He was also a master harmonium player and singer. It seemed Sant-ji could almost make his harmonium talk. He frequently inserted lively songs into his stories and instruction.

Sant Keshavadas, 1983, described by a friend as the "Jimmi Hendricks of the Harmonium".

During one of his lectures, Sant-ji taught us to recite a particular mantra  he favored, including how to count the repetitions on our finger joints if we lacked a mala  (rosary beads). Then he announced, “Now you are all my disciples.” A bit presumptuous of him, but no harm done. Yet.

During a break in the lecture, my kirtan-leader introduced me to Sant-ji. After learning my worldly name, he dramatically threw his head back and closed his eyes as if calling for divine inspiration, pinched the bridge of nose, then pronounced, “Garutman, that is your new name.” He certainly did this sort of thing with style. As I stammered my thanks, he wandered off to lay a few more names on the unsuspecting.

I was quite surprised by this name (another monicker for Garuda, the Thunderbird-like mount of Lord Vishnu). I had been contemplating asking Swami-ji for an Indian spiritual name. My friend noticed my discomfort and asked, “It’s the name, isn’t it? He just surprised my husband with a name too. If you aren't comfortable, why don’t you write to Swami-ji to ask him if you should keep the name, or if he would like to give you another.” So I did just that.

On my next visit to the ashram, I encountered Swami-ji’s secretary, who told me that Swami Satchidananda had selected a "lovely" new name for me (everything was "lovely" to this lady). I was to be Ganapati, an alternate name for the elephant-headed deity Ganeasha ("The Remover of Difficulties"). I later heard that when Swami-ji received my letter, he pretty much hit the ceiling. This wasn’t the first time Sant-ji had tried to poach Swami-ji’s disciples. I was told Swami-ji fired off a pretty stern letter to Sant-ji warning him again to leave his disciples alone. In Santi-ji's defence, he had no idea I was Swami Satchidananda's follower. I feared that I had stirred up hard feelings between two spiritual heavy-weights.

The elephant-headed god Ganesha, "The Remover of Difficulties", aka Ganapati. His statue is at the door of many Hindu temples. A small offering to Him is thought to ensure success in prayers to other deities.

Several years later at the LOTUS dedication ceremony in 1986, I again encountered Sant-ji. I fell at his feet and begged him to forgive me for the trouble I had caused him. He graciously reassured me, “There was no problem. Swami-ji and I are good friends.” It was the last time I saw Sant Keshavadas, as he passed away a few months later.

A few days after Sant-ji dropped his "name-bomb" on me, I received word that my billet in the armed forces had been eliminated in a RIF, or “Reduction in Force". I received an honorable discharge, and a few days later was on my way to a new life with Swami Satchidanada at his ashram.