Happy Wife = Happy Life, or so I’ve been told by someone who might be slightly biased on the matter, so when Sai tells me we’re going to see an Indian yogi on a Friday night in DC, I have no wise choice but to agree. A couple of hours later, we’ve been told that we are each in control of our own joy, so next time I can leave her to it herself. Happy Wife = Her Problem.
Mr. Sadhguru is not at all sad, but I guess he never felt the need to change his name to Joyguru. He’s a highly entertaining speaker, sharing parables and jokes to jolt his audience into an introspective awareness; not to be confused with a higher plane, because everything we experience, from the brain’s interpretation of the sounds and images around us to our emotional responses, are all experienced within ourselves. He even offers some prognostication, foretelling all of our futures. Ending all suspense, it ends with death. Much more entertaining than that horrible Mike Myers character (The Love Guru, though Shrek 4 More Money was also annoying).
Fear not, my friends, the Indian evangelist did not convert me to a new religion, partly because I am a stubborn simpleton, but mostly because he did not intend to. He actually spoke against faith in a future nirvana as a foolish waste of a present opportunity to make heaven a place on earth, more or less. Pardon the paraphrasing of Belinda Carlisle, my plagiarism, not his, but that’s my loose takeaway from his more eloquently delivered message. What good is a theoretical place of angel food cake or countless virgins when you’ve left your taste buds and body behind? Sadhguru wants us to find happiness here, peace here, now, not somewhere else later.
Take your bad day today, and put it into perspective: This morning, the sun rose up in the east, as expected (too often taken for granted, Annie), granting another day of global stability; the planets continued in celestial alignment, with no cataclysmic cosmic collisions; on a much smaller scale, your own existence extended another day, while elsewhere in the world, millions of others blinked out of being overnight. What time is it? More borrowed time before your own demise, so reason to smile. Sure, your team lost to my Eagles, but otherwise, life is beautiful!
The white haired skinny mystic, with the big Santa beard, jollily laughed with a quiet shaking in his big, oversized chair, rather than the red-suited fat man’s ho ho hos, at the center of the stage of the sold-out National Theatre. We generally laughed along, though none so enthusiastically as the Indian gentleman seated behind Sai and myself, who practically fell out of his chair at the slightest provocation. I’d suspect him of being a plant (albeit an active plant), if I was more cynical. However, it would contradict the yogi’s message of not worrying nor finding fulfillment through others. Sadhguru would not need the hysteric guy in the crowd or anyone else to laugh at his own jokes. This could be life-altering, as no one ever laughs at my jokes, so screw you all! I still find them funny.
Besides blasting religion (with logic, and without malice), Mr. Mystic demonstrated general disdain for politics too. He observed that people are infinitely greedy, always looking for something more, when really, we’re all that much better off than we were at birth, when we had nothing. An anecdote he shared was his contribution to a mind-numbingly dull world peace summit, where he challenged the attendees to answer honestly if they felt at peace internally. When they couldn’t affirm as much, he told them that there is no chance for peace in the world until people find peace in their hearts first. Good luck with that one.
Among the ironies of the evening was the fact that my spiritually seeking spouse seemed to struggle to stay awake at times. At first I thought she might be deep in meditative thought, but soon realized that she was drifting deeper into slumber, prompting me to poke and prod and squeeze to prevent her snores from embarrassing herself before several of her coworkers (not that anyone would have likely heard her over the louder laughter of the guy behind us). Sai found inner peace, just not at the appropriate time.
Sadhguru made a lot of good points and almost had me going for a while, but he lost me when he went off on chemical dependencies. He suggested something’s wrong when so many people cannot simply sit contentedly in the evening without an alcoholic accompaniment. Fuck that! Heaven’s for suckers – sure. People are greedy – absolutely. Smiles are good – probably. But beer is bad? Baloney (unless it’s Bud). I recently read a silly Tom Robbins-Lite tale about a psychedelic terrorist who went around spiking the Kool-aids at conventions of Tea Partiers and NRA nuts with LSD, opening their minds to the beauty in the world and blowing away their anger and blow-hard biases via acid trips [History Yoghurt & The Moon, by Jerry Mooney]. Sadhguru is trying to do something similar, sans the pharmaceutics. I’m not endorsing doping others, but abstinence isn’t for everyone either.
Ever the showman, our yogi ended his presentation with a “surprise” encore. Why do bands (and apparently Indian, inner engineering book-promoting, world-renowned gurus) have to tease? Just run through your full set, drop the mic, leave the stage, and turn on the house lights. His encore was a modest offer to lead the crowd in a meditation session, to which seemingly everyone else enthusiastically accepted (I could do without, but was outvoted). Per his instructions, we commenced the exercise of not exercising, closing our eyes, focusing on a point between our closed eyes, concentrating on breathing, heads tilted back, palms open on our laps, while a couple of musicians strummed and drummed along, with the old man chanting. I floated out of my seat, out of my body, up past the upper mezzanines, next to the ornate chandeliers, looking down upon the packed house of hippies, Indians, and sleeping Sai. Can you believe this? Good, because none of it is true. I sat there, going through the motions as instructed, but rather than having a magical experience, I wondered if my neck was supposed to hurt? Would Sai object to me having a beer when I got home? Should I cheat and peek to check if everyone else really had their eyes closed? If they say that if you cross your eyes and someone hits you on the back, your eyes can get stuck that way, would the same apply if you’re cross-eyed while your eyes are closed? (I doubt it’s true in any case, but it’s what I heard when I was little). Sadhguru says he’s trying to teach people to use the tools at their disposal, sharpening their senses, etc. Some of us may be too dull to get his point. I failed him. His younger goal was to reach / teach the world, but decades later, he’s only reached approximately 100 million people (and counting), so he admits he’s a failure. Though he said in the test of life, we all shall pass.
So no, I am not joining the Isha cult, not foregoing beer for happy (non) pills, not meditating regularly, and will instead stay a miserable prick and stick to the ways of Nathaniel Rateliff’s awesome song – Son of a Bitch, get me a drink!
The evening ended with a staged book signing of his recently released “Inner Engineering”, which Sai rushed to the lobby to buy, just to rush back inside to have it autographed by its author. Why would the girl who struggled to stay awake, who has yet to finish an English language book, need this soon to be dust-collecting tome? I wondered, but was assured that it was not because she was a convert or anything, but because the machinations of Miss MBA told her that the signed copy of the book might be worth something someday. Clearly Sai was not buying it either, the whole anti-materialism, less Gordon Gekko, Greed is Good thinking. And that’s okay with me. I wasn’t looking forward to life on the commune. But I left with a smile.
Let me know if you want to borrow (or preferably buy at a marked up price) her copy of Inner Engineering!
Traipse Reports - Trips and Races 