Monks and a Youth by John Gaydos

When I was fifteen I got my first job bagging groceries. It was very repetitive but paid well so I liked it fine. When something’s repetitive, you get good at it. Believe it or not – there is a technique to opening a paper bag quickly. You hold the bag in one hand with your thumb just slightly inside the bag – your other hand is flat, fingers together like a “karate chop” and you slide the karate chop hand in to the bag and spread your fingers quickly. The bag pops open, ready for egg cartons, broccoli, etc.

That summer, I went to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center with my family. We’d been going there for a couple years as guests in the summer. We’d usually eat meals in the main dining room, but at lunchtime you could pack a lunch and take it with you, hiking for the day or going to swim in the creek. There was a table with various foodstuffs so you could pick and choose what you wanted. One day, I decided to pack a lunch. When I walked to the table I noticed three monks sitting on a bench near the dining room. They were sitting very still and quiet. Even at that age I had a meditation practice so I was very interested in how older practitioners behaved – how they channeled their energy. They seemed to be in their own world – unattached to all the activity around them.

Without thinking about it I picked up a lunch bag and did my “karate chop” thing and the bag made a satisfying popping sound as it opened. Instantly one of the monks riveted me with an energetic stare. It was unlike anything I can put in to words…… it seemed to say – “bag opening, no thought, no ego, no past, no future, now is now. Are you realizing this, 15 year old boy?”

I will never forget it. You can go for long stretches where it feels like nothing important is happening – and then the thing that happens can be really, really simple and impossible to put in to words.

Yoga is like that. It’s so easy to get caught up in the words – but they will never explain the experience. I tell my students – “you never need to explain or defend your yoga practice to anyone, if you feel something happening, it’s real.”

So what happened? Did I get something from the monk? Yes. Did the monk get something from the paper bag? All these years I never thought about it until I had to write something for this newsletter. Then it occurred to me that the monk definitely got something out of it – it always goes both ways.

That’s all I have to say.

Next month: How I spilled gravy on a nun. And what she did about it………