Friday, July 17, 2009

Monk Dies over Plate of Lentils by Sri Swami Bobo



The normally serene setting of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center - the verdant gardens and tranquil streams - erupted into chaos this afternoon, when a Monk, Nandamala Samvara, collapsed over a small plate of green lentils and fell to the ground dead. Several visitors at the center who witnessed the Monk’s death were still in shock and many said they heard a “popping sound, like a gun shot or a paper bag being karated.” The police have yet to label the death a homicide, but Captain Gaydos said early leads “point to a Chinese Nationalist or a dark hooded African-American male between 12 and 30.” Medical assistance was slow in being called because the Monks were engaged in silent culinary meditation.

Many of the Monks interviewed following Nandamala’s death described their fallen friend as “too chatty,” a “loud food chewer,” an “elaborate under garment wearer” and “jerk” whose fall to the floor was met with blank stares from one and all except the hysterics of the retreat center quests.


Please consult Monks and a Youth by John Gaydos.

Tragedy on the Rocks by Sri Swami Bobo



Marissa Jones, my beloved student, was injured this past weekend and is currently in ICU at UCLA Medical with multiple face, leg and back lacerations following a fall from a boulder during a photo shoot for Conde Nast Traveller. Paul, her "partner" at the photo shoot, was inconsolable when I spoke with him over the phone, barely able to utter words through sobs of grief. After some coddling, Paul was able to eek out a convoluted description of the moments just before Marissa's tragic tumble.

Paul
It was a (sobs) beautiful day. We were both, um, I mean the sun, the sky, the waterfall, Oh, God Marissa…. I’m so sorry. We had just been lowered by helicopter onto the rocks. I had wanted to shoot inside the Yoga studio, but the director and Marissa thought an outdoor location was more yogic and Zen.

Marissa fearlessly found a grip on the slippery rocks and settled into her amazing Parsvakonasana. Everything was one with nature despite the precariousness of our perch. Marissa’s knee was in perfect alignment, her femur bone dead center, her back inner shin working, her ribs not poking and her gaze soft. If only we had been able to hold that moment!

I turned to admire Marissa’s form and to my horror noticed that her front foot had begun to turn in. She, as always, knew before I did what was wrong and went to adjust, However, she moved too quickly (the cameras pop-pop-pop distracting her), her back foot slid out from under her causing her leg to fly off the rocks, her perfect cheekbones crashing into the rock face. The force of the contact of beauty with hard cruel nature sent her summer salting into the air. Marissa, ever the trooper, tried to approximate the perfect drop back into the water, but the blood from her face laceration caused her to over arch her sacral region, bringing her not into the safety of liquid, but into the most horrid bhujangasana (she collapsed the space in her upper back) on a rocky out-cropping. Her pelvis landed with a hard thud (if only she had kept her organs pulled in) and she slid silently off the craggy ledge and into the murky watery abyss. I think I heard her say just before she vanished beneath the water’s surface: “Oh, but not for the momentary perfection of my asana destroyed by poor form.”

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Mr. Crest and Proper Tooth Brush Holding by Sri Swami Bobo



When I was six, my Father procured me a job at the local Crest factory as a toothbrush holder. Dad had dreamed of me acquiring the prestigious and highly coveted post of Mr. Crest, a uniform and title he had held proudly held from the age of four until, as he would often tell the family, “some little punk red headed tweerp backstabbed me during my ninth summer and stole the greatest job I’ve ever had right out from under me,” but due to my coming down with a vicious case of poison oak my neighbor Stevie Jones won the gig. Dad was not happy and he would often regale my Mother with his thoughts on my current work drive: “No kid of mine is gonna waste his days runnin and playin with those dirty mutts in our neighborhood. He’s sick. Give me a break. If he’d stop scratching himself he might become something in this world. Please, Madge, smiling and laughing can only be allowed after one has brushed and flossed for 10 minutes. The kid is a lazy bum. He sits in the chicken coop all morning playing with rocks and staring at this one bird imitating its head movements. I think the kid may be as soft in the brain as a tube of toothpaste.” He was a good Dad. I still thank Daddy each night for instilling such a good work ethic in me at an early age.

It was my job to teach folks how to properly hold a toothbrush. Gently wrap all four of your fingers around the base of the handle. Be careful not to grab the brush to tightly or to loose. An overly aggressive grip and the wrist will fatigue, a grip to soft and the brushes bristles will not have enough force to clean the plaque from one’s teeth. With a slow upward thrust, bring the toothbrush from waist level up past the chest and toward the mouth. When the brushes bristles are six inches from the mouth, lips pursed about four inches wide, point the elbow at a right angle and begin to move the brush toward your teeth. DO NOT DRAW THE MOUTH TOWARD THE BRUSH! At this moment, excited about the prospect of bringing the toothpaste into the teeth, rookie brushers will rush and grip the base with to much force, causing the bristles to tilt and the golden toothpaste to drip onto one’s chest and clothing. Slow down. Take your time.

I would love to say that I was able to continue my instruction, taking the journey with the individual brusher to the penultimate point of the toothbrush entering the mouth, but that task was the exclusive purview of Mr. Crest. Only my Dad and Stevie Jones know those secrets.

Please consult Monks and a Youth by John Gaydos.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

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………