Home in the body

One aspect of travel I greatly enjoy is the rush of colors and smells and sounds, the intense (and sometimes forced) awakening of what may have become complacent senses. The teaching of Buddhist Tantra is a realization that you are not an isolated chuck of matter, not part of a duality (you vs everything else), but in fact an integral part of the world around you, both seen and unseen. When I find myself dropped into an ocean of new sensations, I feel my Self stretched, while parts of me which I had never before experienced surface and float along on the waves.

The key to unraveling this new world is at your fingertips: it is the language of those humans who inhabit it. What an amazing and seductive puzzle, the codification of similar human feelings and similar human lives into rivers of sound and trickles of ink! Hast du dann eine neue Welt gesehen? While the same physical elements of a life are described, they are manifested differently in the mind, in the vocal chords, and in the mouth: it is the same yet not the same. And if you surrender yourself to the newness of it, if you allow yourself to be swept up in that current…

While we all live along the same path – birth to childhood, receiving from the world then giving to it, achievement and conclusion, quieting and finally death – there are these nuances in how we interpret the travel, and each language learned lets you in on some surprises. Imagine! Someone looking at life in that way! 

In Brazil, the word saudades is often cited as an example of this. It is usually translated as homesickness, or missing someone. But if you are away from home for a while, and tell a Brazilian “I am homesick”, you will not have said that you have saudades. You have to be more than homesick, you must be heart sick; you must identify so much with your homeland and your people and your music and your country’s problems that all of the colors drain out of the scenery, and most of the warmth leaks out of the sun. If you say, ah, guria, eu tou com tanta saudade de ti, you have offered a declaration of love that, despite a distance of thousands of miles, warms the room at both ends of the conversation, as you are talking, like the arrival of a warm front, so that when it ends, it ends in rain.

I have begun the study of Hindi, to begin unlocking the code of a culture and another secret of my own heart. Hindi is the doorway that opens to Sanskrit, which is the language of spiritual attainment and the findings of ancient science, whose words hold nuance and connotation long since lost in the western world, words which were refined over centuries to point with precision at concepts of being and understanding. They say the Eskimos have two dozen words for snow: snow they knew best. Did the ancient Indians have two dozen words for “life”?

Sanskrit is the doorway to Prakrit, the predecessor to Sanskrit and the language of spiritual quest and the ancient scientists. The language of those who quested, in a golden age of thought and perception, for the deepest understanding not only of the mechanics of living, but the purpose of it, the blood and semen of it, the beginning and ending of it. They came before things were decided; they were the seekers and the finders.

In our cultural blindness, in our blindness which is an arrogance, we talk about the dark ages, when people lived in abject poverty, where thought as expressed in Science and beauty as expressed through the Arts were absent or underground. I know a number of famous Evangelists who would be livid to hear me suggest that perhaps, in our current lack of inquiry and insight, and in our haze of wealth and fear of losing it, we are in a darker age than any that had come before. Maybe you would be livid, too.

The other aspect of travel which comes as a great gift, is the opposite of the sensual sea: instead, an extended emptiness, the distancing from habitual places and routines that accompanies any real and meaningful travel, and which gives one the opportunity to leave behind a Self established on rote and stale assumption.

As I write there is an annual Anusara Yoga Immersion taking place at the Yoga Center of Newburyport. An immersion is generally five to seven days of philosophical inquiry and physical practice, its aim to deepen one’s ability to focus, to open with strength, and to live a vibrant live. The method is one of retreat: by creating a structure that one can step into, accompanied by others who are in search of the same changes, you can more easily block out the noise and bustle of your thoughts and responsibilities – which are usually yammering to see which will be heard above the din of the others, and attended to first. In that beautiful stillness, it is quite common for clarity to come concerning important issues and decisions that have been patiently awaiting your advice. Instead of pushing some poorly-spoken resolution into place, you wait quietly, giving a better one the time and space to speak.

Philosophy. There is a word that might scare you, and then not half so much as the word “philosophers”. But in the context of a grounded physical practice, it is not intangible; rather, it adds color and warmth, direction and beauty to what might otherwise be simple exercise. Think of the nobility of thought behind the eastern schools of the martial arts, or the collective training and choreography which is the foundation for success in western sports. The philosophies that bind together meditative or asana practices in yoga are of the same quality and intent. Those who have faced the same human challenges as you yourself face, and who gave their entire lives to the effort to resolve them gracefully, put their thoughts on paper – a trail of words that you can choose to follow.

So I look forward to being undone, being undressed, and left a little raw by this journey. If I return unchanged, then a beautiful opportunity will have been wasted: like the moment you could have spoken to your parent, on a really human level, but you hesitated because you were afraid… and the moment passed, the window closed, and the connection was not made. 

This emptiness of a month should give me the space and time to return to a daily practice of physical and mental training which I have let slip somewhat of late. The demands of the days, of the people who are within your orbit, or who orbit you, and of the tasks you perceive to be essential… they all speak so much louder than your body, which only whispers “I am dying, little by little, I am dying”, that often you listen when it is already too late. I am fortunate to be travelling with Manny, who has also practiced meditation and yoga for years – when you travel in sangha, in a community of like minds, it is easy to fill emptiness with what you really want – and I expect that a strong daily practice will be part of our journey.

Almost fours weeks in retreat! Filled with the best sights and sounds, flavors and textures, stillness and motion that we can imagine. 

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• Food-for-Thought
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