On the phone with Dad:
“We never thought we’d get there
Until we arrived there”

Impossible dreams
Come to life in rented Cobalts.
Staring out windows.

How many of the
best things in your life can you
absorb in one day?

Aloha, Metta-heads! Coming atcha at dawn on a Thursday, after listening to the roosters and the cows get up, I realize I still don’t like

Leanne on the lanai, and yes, that is the ocean

sunrise very much [even here on Maui] but it sounds very dramatic and romantic.

Why am I up, then? Well, we’re engaged in a part of John’s re-creation of Ram Dass’ Bhagavad Gita course at Naropa University in 1974. [RD's book Paths to God is based on same]. And every good yogi knows that tapasya is part of practice, so we’ve temporarily given up coffee, prepared foods, and sugar [insanely easy to do on Maui BTW, we'd pretty much done it already] and are sleeping from 9 to 5 [what a way to make a living]. John encouraged us to do a little mini-tapasya for the duration of the intensive, which is only 3 days, so it all seems very reasonable and natural.

Except. It makes yrs truly wonder, since Krishna is abundantly clear in the Gita that He is present in ALL things: is he not present in a cup of coffee? Does he step out for a breath of fresh air when I sleep in? Is he, say, present in a Wal-Mart? Does his divine blue presence pervade the House of Representin’? I have never understood why we make God this all-pervasive complete manifestation and then pretend like He cares about what’s in our fridges.

As you can see, dear readers, I still have my critical thinking cap on, even in the midst of a reverential and deep practice. And frankly, I’m so groovin’ on the manifest here in one of the most beautiful places on Earth that it seems counterintuitive NOT to enjoy every single one of Krishna’s offerings, including this decadent oceanside sleep, punctuated with gecko-calls and palm-rustling.

Atemoyas, chemoyas and sops, oh my

The food. Oh sweet blue guy, THE FOOD. We have the luxury of staying on an orchard near Haiku [hence the post-title] and we were greeted with a bucket of the acreage’s offerings on our front porch: oranges and limes, so far so good, lilikoi, soursops, papayas, mangoes, atemoyas, and a mysterious little brown kiwi-ish fruit called a sapodilla that I haven’t had the cojones to try yet. I love the abundance of fruit here in the abstract but I’m not a big fruit-lover, which seems like a shame; I still enjoy the IDEA of them growing in the backyard and showing up on the porch. I did sack up and tried a soursop, which was like:

- the taste of a mangosteen
- in the shape of a pineapple
- with the consistency of an halibut.

Leanne ate most of it.

Krishna has also manifested as a fantastic US exchange rate so when we go to Mana Foods and pick up the evening meal [L-boogie's blog has the best description of our division of labour], we are able to get out of there without courting bankruptcy, in spite of the lavish offerings. We’ve been going for local everything where we can, which, again, when you’re in Maui is pretty much as easy as rolling off a log. I made rice paper rolls with local mango and cucumber and salad greens the night before last, and yesterday evening was the brown basmati rice I brought from home in an E.D. Smith jar like a good little hippie, and locally grown rainbow chard and green and red kale sauteed with jalapeno, young ginger, some bouncy young garlic, and gomashio. We bring the leftovers for lunch, as one should, and zip up to the park to eat at the foot of Haleakala. Nice work if you can get it.

We had a great drive around the island with my buddy Geordie as chauffeur and L has pics and a thorough description, so I won’t clutter up the Intertubes with a double-post; I’m sure more thoughts on its intrinsic amazingness will be forthcoming in the coming weeks.

John won the coin toss and kicked off with a brisk practice of…what…7 Urdhvas? yesterday morning. Good hangtime, good field position. Then some key offensive plays, solid ground game: basic meditation practices, brief background on the Mahabharata, how to enter and leave the mandir or sacred practice space. After lunch it’s 3rd down and 23 and J goes for the TD pass…

…AND IT’S INTERCEPTED by RAM DASS who metaphysically runs it all the back to the end zone and in spite of physical limitations,

Le pigeon, c'est moi

spikes it, does a little dance, and leaps over the fence into his adoring fans. Home field advantage, I think is what they call that, and RD is at home in this material, and at home on this island. I had never met him before or [shameful] read any of his books apart from a brief and desultory flip through Be Here Now at Raw Canvas while I was waiting for a latte or something. Well, I’m making up for lost time. Most of the descriptions I’ve heard or read about RD describe simply being in his presence as sufficient study for lifetimes, as well as ecstatic &c., and yrs truly was too much of a hard-nosed empiricist to trust those second-hand reports [much like the man himself in his younger days]. Let me tell you: All true. He is one of those humans who is genuinely radiant, to the point where the air around him shimmers slightly like the sun on hot asphalt. I hope he had a good time with us! He’ll be back on Friday after a little break.

I still have a lot of Gita-related questions like how the concept of dharma fits into the political activism of India during and after Gandhi’s time, and how, since we come to the practice through passionate desire and ATTACHMENT, attachment to desire can be considered un-yogic. Trust me, I’ve heard all the standard answers; I’m looking for the rich creamy high-calorie full-fat scholarly goodness. But in the meantime, and even if I don’t get those questions answered on this trip, I’m having such a tremendous time that this keyboard doesn’t even have the characters necessary to convey the calibre of the time I’m having. I’d have to dip into the Unicode set or something. Off to make breakfast and juice the morning oranges. Mahalo.

3 Comments »

September 26th, 2009 Natasha Says:

I love you and your critical thinking cap! Have you read Open to Desire? Have we talked about that book before? I feel like I’ve mentioned it to you before. That’s the best treatise I’ve read to date on the issue of attachment and desire in Eastern spirituality (and our Western permutations of it,) though I definitely don’t agree with the author on every point.

Looking forward to hearing/reading more! I wish I was in Hawai’i right now too…

September 26th, 2009 kristen Says:

eat the sapodilla!! they’re one of my faves – very sweet tho. in india they call them chicoos (chee-kooooo)
i’m so glad the mother is holding you in her palm, and stroking ever-so-gently. see if someone can take you to the birthing pools, twin falls is rad, and the swinging bridges hike is beautiful.

can’t wait for the de-brief when u get back!!!

May 24th, 2010 Will it float? – North Carolina Haikus | Heavy Metta Says:

[...] be written on location and be accompanied with pics, based on my precedent of two [2] previous series, but I was in no energetic condition to embark on blogging when I attended the Certified [...]

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