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".
