Earlier this week I had the thought that I would like to visit one of the homes of our tradition of Vedic meditation, the ashram of the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math in Northern India, jumping back a few degrees of separation in the teaching I have received and doing some independent research on my own. That same day, my friend, M, asks me would I like to drive to San Francisco to get an Indian visa for his wife that she may accompany one of her teachers, Rinpoche _________ to Dharamsala in India. Immediately. My calendar is clear. Sure. Let's go. First day into our trip, Adele writes me about someone we know who has taken a motorcycle tour over the highest pass in India. She sees footage of their trip. You should do this, she says.
This morning (Friday) we take the passport to the Indian consulate and drop it off. It will be done by 5:30, they say. Oh. Another day in San Francisco. So we head over to Chinatown to visit City Lights Bookstore, a pilgrimage spot for all former beats, hippies and immediate post-hippies. Getting out of the car we have a conversation with a cop on a bicycle. He's been to India. Took a motorcycle tour with a friend for a month there in Northern India. Wants to go back. I said next time he should visit the Valley of the Flowers. And I tell him the Royal Enfields are much better now. They've actually updated the design, which had been the same from about 1965 to 2005.
At City Lights I look for a spiritual book of some sort. Not exactly what they're known for, but I look. Some Buddhism, of course, as this has always been a home for Allen Ginsberg and his poetry, but much more political than spiritual. Nothing catches my eye. Then I see, on a bottom shelf in the basement, a book about the teachings of one of the other Shankaracharyas, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Swamigal, Shankaracharya of Kanchi.
(Sidebar: By the 8th or 9th Century in India, Buddhism had nearly replaced the Vedic tradition. A figure by the name of Adhi Shankara came upon the scene and systematized the Vedic teachings of non-dualism, oneness, completely reinvigorating it among the populace. Because of him, we have our meditation. We have many of the Vedic teachings and writings which had fallen by the wayside. Shankara established five ashrams to hold and organize the teachings and advance the wisdom of our tradition. The teacher of my teacher's teacher was the Shankaracharya of one of them. In the North. And now here was another one.)
Given that the living teaching of the Veda is by and large an oral tradition, this was a rare find indeed.
M. and I meditated in a sunny reading room at City Lights. Had a late lunch. Went to the consulate early, hoping for the best; for we have a 6:15 p.m. deadline to get to FedEx at SFO Airport.
At the consulate, they say no. Sorry. 5:30. I take a walk to get a coffee as M. stakes out the consulate, and I find three women dancing on the side of a building ten story building, held by ropes. Beautiful. They finish. I walk back. M. is coming out with the visa. We get on the road.
Friday afternoon. Rush hour. From the city to the airport. Free-flowing traffic. Unheard of. We're actually going to make it. We get to the FedEx shipment center, out in the middle of these industrial wastes near the airport. We have to go through a gate. The guard comes out to speak with us. He waggles his head as he smiles. His Indian accent is so thick that he is not easy to understand. I start to laugh. He smiles and laughs, too. He doesn't know why. But I am laughing because...
In the west, when things seem to line-up properly, when coincidence occurs a bit too perfectly for us easily to ignore, we call it 'synchronicity,' which is defined as 'the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.'
The Veda says 'all things are infinitely correlated.' To give significance to the series of overlapping experiences and ideas listed above may to you sound silly, but to me it is the play and display of consciousness, saying yes. Yes, have life. Yes, have fun. Yes, go to India and ride a motorcycle over the mountains and visit an ashram and connect more deeply with your spiritual roots. Yes, drive with your friend someplace just because it feels right. Yes, listen to the ideas and desires that come to you. Fall in love a bit with life and become enamored of the simplest things, like watching a new lover sleep. Like seeing your newborn's first smile. Enjoy this thing now. Don't wait until you've collected enough of whatever it is your collecting before you let yourself be happy. Be happy now. The collecting will wait.
And for us, three hours further down the coast and a late evening at Esalen, another spiritual center, much closer for us and with hot spring pools on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific, the waters of which undoubtedly will help to ease the road weariness from my bones.
Today I will look for evidence of a sense of humor in nature.
