What's a Mountaintop to a Yogi?

June 1st, 2024

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Before departing from Canggu this morning, I paid a visit to Samadi Yoga Center for one more Ashtanga Primary Series class.  Rekindling my familiarity with this ancient routine has been an outstanding highlight of my time in Bali so far.  I hoped to say goodbye to Bu Nengah — she teaches at Samadi on Fridays and Saturdays — for she’s been a truly impactful mentor and friend to me over these past three weeks. Unfortunately, a substitute was covering her class, but that surprise didn’t diminish the rush I felt from pushing my body and mind to its limit.  

The class was underpopulated and intimate: only one other yogi rolled out her mat beside me.  The lack of customers present meant that I received far more physical adjustments than usual, being pushed and guided deeper into nearly every asana.  By the closing sequence of the Primary Series, I was gushing sweat.  My rubber mat might as well have been a lubricated tarp or a slip-n-slide.  I welcomed the extra stability and focus required to compensate for the frictionless surface, though. 

After rising from my savasana, I floated downstairs to Samadi’s restaurant for some breakfast.  Once again, my only company in its dining area was my Ashtanga classmate, seated at another table across the room.  I ordered Kitchari, an anti-inflammatory, high-protein, plant-based Indian lentil stew.  My fellow yogi must have caught a whiff of the dish’s heavily spiced fragrance, for she warmly inched towards my table and began fawning over the bowl.   Born into an Indian family, she confessed that Kitchari is a comforting reminder of her childhood.  I invited her to sit down at my table. 

The yogi introduced herself as Dee.  Unable to suppress the non-sequitur, I blurted out that she shares a name with one of my favorite students.  Every Monday this past spring semester, I picked up Dee Levine — an infinitely cool and talented ten-year-old singer and skater from Brooklyn — from Community Roots Elementary School and gave him music lessons.  As soon as I told Dee from Bali that I’m an elementary-school music teacher, her face grew animated with hope and gratitude.  After thanking the universe for allowing her path to cross mine, she vented about the dire dearth of after-school programming available in Bali and encouraged me to found a surely-lucrative youth music institute on the island.  

That remark catalyzed vivid daydreams that lingered for hours.  The concept of opening a school in Bali energized me immensely.  I embarked on this solo-travel voyage with the intention of soaking up all the wisdom that I encountered, but Dee helped me realize that I have something priceless to offer this community in reciprocation.  New York City, the capital of opportunity and access, is highly saturated with competing child-care and extra-curricular offerings; each teacher currently earning a killing through educating the children of privileged Gothamists stands to make a much greater impact by migrating their services to more disadvantaged communities.  A colorful scene of young Balinese musicians is lying dormant, waiting to be nurtured.  

These thoughts were peppering my mind throughout the entire duration of my two-hour taxi ride to Ubud, the city in central Bali where I’ll be staying in a hostel for the first time.  However, my far-fetched visions and plans were interrupted by my arrival at Sunshine Vintage Guest House, at which point I lugged my backpack, duffel bag, and guitar over its threshold and scoped out my new digs.  Sleeping on the top-bunk of an eight-bed dormitory — filled with strangers — will certainly contrast my experience in the dreamy Canggu villa which Raja invited me to, but I’m incredibly optimistic about this expansion of my comfort zone.  I’ve heard so many vibrant stories about hostel living that I’m viewing this accommodation, which I’ve booked in pursuit of frugality, as an obligatory rite of passage.  

As I was writing these words on the terrace of my hostel, I met three gregarious travelers who’ve just convinced me to wake up at two in the morning to go on a sunrise hike with them.  I obliged!  That leaves me less than five hours to sleep, but hopefully the excitement of spontaneity will keep me energized.  I feel so blessed to be in the position from which I can receive such thrilling invitations.  I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow! 

June 2nd, 2024

Kintamani, Bali, Indonesia

Opening my heart towards spontaneity and abundance has, for the first time since leaving New York, led me towards more share-worthy activities than my journaling ritual can keep up with.  The past twenty-four hours have seen me sacrificing introverted, introspective activities such as diary-writing and practicing yoga in favor of exhilaratingly unpredictable social events.  Life is summoning me.  Declining its call seems foolish and fearful.  Answering it, however, has pulled me towards profoundly enriching escapades.

Last night, as my first impression of my hostel-mates serendipitously distracted me from writing my daily diary entry, I was preparing to verbally depict the scene of the Ubud Food Festival, a community gathering that I attended in the evening:  on the food festival’s grounds, an open-air market united gastronomers from across the Asian continent while giving Indonesian chefs intentional preference.  I sampled a grilled palm leaf wrap filled with rice and squid, a salad of steamed vegetables and tofu tossed in peanut sauce, a cup of Korean fish-cake soup, a bowl of Thai mango sticky rice, a spicy seafood salad, and a chicken satay skewer.  I was patiently nibbling on one of these dishes when three Javanese women sat beside me at my table.  After they incited bubbly conversation by asking how my food tasted, they introduced themselves as architects.  My heart sang, for my sister recently committed to a five-year architecture masters’ program which begins this autumn.  Readily fielding all the questions about my sister’s future which I threw at them, the trio of architects made me feel comfortable and accepted.  We fervently debated about Bali’s greatest architectural feats.  They grieved over their lost ability to enter a building without analyzing its structural design.  

Abruptly, our hooting and cackling was cut off by a masterclass cooking demonstration commencing upon a stage that stood right before our table.  A Japanese chef took the stage and began teaching us how to prepare a grilled fish filet by intersecting his country’s vast culinary traditions with the complex technique of French cuisine.  His prep involved a tedium of detailed steps, and the audience’s attention apathetically wandered away from his performance.  The only thing devoting us to our seats was anticipatory hope and curiosity in the final plating of the chef’s creation.  When he passed around his final product, all I tasted was an uninspiring whitefish cut which could have easily been prepared twice as quickly with unvaried allure.  Still, I enjoyed witnessing the intricate process of a professional chef.

Thirty minutes later, his demonstration was absolutely blown out of the water when seventeen women from Muarajambi, an isolated rural region on the eastern coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, took the stage.  Their presentation of their villages’ traditional meals boggled my mind and livened my body.  The moderator of their demonstration – the sole English speaker on stage – was baffled at the swiftness and immediacy at which the women prepared such perception-altering fare: they completed a full dinner in a fraction of the time allotted for their prep.  Vibrant natural ingredients were their secret weapon, conservation of Indonesian biodiversity their mission.  During the show, it was repeatedly stated that the dishes being made could only exist in Maurajambi given the rarity of the plants they employed.  The women’s signature dish, Hundred Healing Herbs, was an unconvoluted ode to the Sumatra ecosystem: after boiling coconut milk in a wok, the women simply tossed in a bundle of one-hundred-twenty therapeutic green herbs and let the leaves simmer, turning the white liquid green.  Sipping this brilliant soup nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes.  It was an honor to taste such endangered herbs of medicinal strength.  These chefs were simply messengers of Mother Nature, their creations barring distractingly egoic inventiveness but embracing matter-of-fact realism.  

High off Sumatran biodiversity, I hopped on the back of a motorbike which whizzed me back to my hostel in ten minutes flat.  Underscoring my blind faith in the moped’s driver, I closed my eyes and felt the warm humidity of the Ubud air rolling off my face.  Before I knew it, I was climbing into bed and bracing myself to wake up at two in the morning for a sunrise hike up an active volcano. 

At half past three o’clock this morning, my seven hostel-mates and I emerged from the car we’d spent the last hour in, squinting our eyes in an attempt to assimilate to the darkness of early dusk and make out the dim cone-shape of the massive volcano before us.  Ascending the steep incline of crumbly igneous rock which led us to its crater, we pointed bright torches at the ground before us for protection against fumbles and missteps.  Waiving the footpath lit by our battery-powered luminous aids, the waning crescent moon and its posse of flickering southern-hemisphere stars were the only objects visible to our eyes.  At the volcano’s peak, we relished our breakfast of bananas and hard-boiled eggs as we patiently watched the sun creep above the island’s horizon line.  Its light revealed that we were sharing the sunrise with dozens of sniveling monkeys pining for our food.  Watching them play, fight, jump, and screech was a tireless delight, but, fearing violent confrontation, we kept a respectful distance from them and avoided their eye contact.  Meanwhile, white steam rose up from the volcano’s gaping crater.  Our descent back to the parking lot was colored by the rolling green hills of northern Bali.  

Before regressing to the stillness of Sunshine Vintage Guest House, our car made a pit stop at an edenic coffee and tea plantation on the outskirts of Ubud.  Situated in the middle of a clammy jungle, this farm boasted crops of coffee beans, cacao, turmeric root, fresh vanilla, mangosteen, and too many other plants to name.  Its proprietor treated my group to a sampler-flight of all of the farm’s hot-beverage offerings: we tasted sweet avocado coffee, several ayurvedic herbal teas, bitter hot chocolate, and everything in between.  I was enamored with the pungent richness of the drinks’ ingredients; I’d never had such flavorful and intense ginger tea in my life.  Too tempted to bridle my credit card in its leather holster, I purchased four packages of herbal tea bags.  While writing this, I’m taking frequent breaks to refill my hot-water mug with spoonfuls of Pandanus powder, naturally sweetened with coconut sap.  I maintain such high esteem for the plantation I visited today.  I commend them for upholding Balinese biodiversity and elevating tea past my prior conceptions.  

I spent the rest of today at the hostel’s dining table, my recording gear sprawled out across its surface.  The motivation behind this marathon of music production was Lenny, my hostel-mate and volcano-hiking-buddy, revealing her acute musical talent to me.  Once she’d caught wind of the news that I’m traveling with a guitar, she earnestly implored me to let her play it.  Of course, I handed my instrument to her excitedly.  Moments later, while I was on a video call with my parents, her silky and warm music met my eardrums.  Without interrupting her sonic self-discovery, I praised her boundless talent and invited her to record one of her songs on my computer.  The riveting endeavor captivated us for several hours.  Energized by the rich power of vibration, we quickly forgot that we’d been awake since two in the morning.

Lenny is staying at Sunshine Vintage with five of her friends, all hailing from suburban Illinois, all freshly graduated from college, and all born during the same year as I was.  They were the ones who enticed me to attend this morning’s sunrise hike.  I’m so lucky that they’ve welcomed me with such acceptance and enthusiasm.  Thanks to them, my first hostel stay has already been unforgettable.  Our well of chatter seems infinitely deep.  We’ve mutually imparted our respective stories of silly celebrity encounters, exchanged priceless travel suggestions, and exposedly confessed our deepest fears.  The six of them have been close friends since early childhood.  Over the past three weeks, they’ve traipsed across Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia in celebration of completing their bachelor’s degrees.  As such, there is a lingering cloud of existential confusion above each of them.  I can relate.  We’ve been able to offer advice on each other’s routes forward, clarifying our own in the process.  I thank the universe for sending me these six girls; I see a reflection of myself within them.  I lament their departure from Ubud tomorrow, but I maintain gratitude for the intimate moments we’ve already shared.  

June 3rd, 2024

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

“Those who wish to receive this message will hear it,” Kerry Clancey remarked at ten-thirty this morning, as she primed her audience for the hour-long guided meditation that she was scheduled to lead.  “We all have an identical glimmer of light within us.  Does anybody here know what that light is called?”

None of the eighteen students in the meditation hut of Ubud’s Yoga Barn rose to Kerry’s question.  Seated in vajrasana towards the back of the room, I pondered whether “soul” would be an appropriate answer but decided against verbalizing the musing.  The cavernous silence of Kerry’s thoughtless audience amplified the white noise of violent jungle rainfall entering our room through opened windows.  

“The name of our light is… the universe.  Some prefer to call it ‘consciousness’.  Although we may seem different from the outside, the universe is the same within us all.  Nobody can have a stronger or weaker light than their neighbor.”  Kerry pranced around between our yoga mats as she addressed us, underscoring the hope and optimism in her words.  “Please gently turn your gaze inward, closing your eyes.  Place one hand on your heart.  Quiet your analytical mind; drop your awareness down from your brain into your trusting and loving chest.  With every exhale, release the voices in your head which tell you, ‘I am not enough’.  You are not the voices in your head.  You are not your thoughts.

“Visualize your inner angel.  Acknowledge that it is guiding and protecting you.  With each exhale, allow yourself to sigh audibly.  Recognize that your inner angel is using your out-breaths to free the negative energy which you’ve pushed down into your lower chakras.  See it flow up and out.  Making this space, cleansing your subtle energies, is removing obstructions on the light of the universe which shines within you.  Its aura is glowing around your body.  You are made of light.  You are made of love.”

A smile crept across my face.  I was in Kerry’s world.  I dismissed all intellectualized urges to internally critique and judge her teaching methods, surrendering to her sermon.  As soon as I opened my heart to her, I felt her auditory spells vibrating my soul.  Deluded by placebo or not, I was convinced that I was indeed made of light.  Time stood still as my molecules radiated.

“Take your time, open your eyes, and stand up,” Kerry announced, heralding the shifting gears of her guidance.  “Let’s walk around the room,” she encouraged as we all formed a conga line and snaked around the shala.  “Turn to the person next to you and look deeply into their eyes.  Give them a smile.  Tell them, ‘I see you.’  Give them a nice long hug.”

I was paired with a stranger; a bearded man, he appeared to be six-foot-four and about thirty-three years old.  Our eye contact was so powerful, so wordlessly verbose, that I felt a tear escape its duct and ramble down my cheek.  Our hug was one of the longest and tightest of my life.  

June 4th, 2024

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Sunshine Vintage Hostel is the only home that Nick, its operator, has ever known.  He was born within the walls of this traditional Balinese house, sleeping here every night of his life, besides during his years spent studying in Jakarta and working on a North American cruise ship.  Today, he shares the space with his parents, wife, son, and sixteen patrons. 

He has efficiently optimized the land, surrounding its original structure (the family’s quarters) with two dorm rooms, an outdoor kitchen, laundry facilities, and several dining areas.  Ambitious still, he’s currently constructing three more buildings: another dorm room, a separate lodging for his parents, and an adjacent house for his son to inherit once he comes of age.  The complex’s centerpiece, however, is the gated Hindu temple on the ground floor; spacious and serene, it’s the property’s only area with enough open floor space for a yoga mat.  

Nick elucidated the basis for his intriguing division of square-footage — which skews in favor of devotion — when he invited me into the temple for a shared evening prayer: “First God, then my parents, and then me.  That’s the order of my priorities.  I founded this hostel so that I could transform my parents’ life and my son’s life.  I am very lucky, but I know I’ll be fine if it all goes away.  That’s what this temple is a reminder of.  I will still pray to God no matter how much money I have.”

Hearing his manifesto of humility and selflessness left my heart singing.  I inquired, “How do you feel about the ever-increasing tourism and gentrification of your neighborhood?  I’m sure you’ve seen this place change dramatically since you were a kid!”

“God always brings good and bad in a pair,” Nick remarked.  “The tourists in Ubud are good because they’ve given me the opportunity to start my successful business, but I think the island they’ve come to experience is not as pure as it once was.  I miss the untouched Bali, but I accept the way things are.  I’m grateful.  I love being able to host new people every day.”

“Your hospitality and trust is really admirable and inspiring.  I feel very protected and loved in your home.  In fact, I’ve found the same feeling everywhere I’ve gone in Bali.  Why do you think there’s so much trust and safety, so little crime, on this island?  Is it your religion?”

“It’s because we all know each other.  Everybody in this neighborhood has known me for my whole life.  The elders helped raise me.  Nobody here commits any crimes because nobody could escape facing the people they’ve wronged.  There’s no possibility of anonymity.  We all grew up knowing this place was ours, so we care about it.  Also, yes… we are mindful of our karma.  My belief in reincarnation stops me from sabotaging my future lives.”

When there was nothing left to say, we prayed.  Nick’s version of Hindu prayer involves meditating on breath-awareness: we repeatedly inhaled through our nose, held our breath at full lungs, and heaved an audible sigh in exhale from our mouths.  After a few rounds, Nick left me alone in the temple.  I talked to God for ten minutes.  

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

June 5th, 2024

Seeing how much of Indonesian culture has already been revealed to me through its cuisine, I resolved to take a cooking class on a local rice plantation this afternoon.  Three university students from England, two couples from Germany, one couple from Yonkers (home continues finding me in the funniest places), and I gathered around a grand oak dining table at half past two, awaiting instructions from the Balinese chef hired to immerse us in their gastronomy.  

“Before we go to the kitchen, we must teach you how to make a Balinese offering,” our teacher commanded.  He laid out the components of Sesajen in front of us: coconut leaves, bamboo needles, and five varieties of local flowers.  “The red flower represents Brahma, fire, and creation.  The purple flower represents Vishnu, water, and preservation.  The orange and white flowers represent Shiva, air, and destruction.  The green flowers represent abundance and gratitude.”  

Understanding the symbolism behind each component of the bouquet I’ve seen hundreds of times around the island only brought me to appreciate the importance of the ritual even more: the practice of offering Sesajen invokes prayer towards Hindu deities as well as the tangible elements of the material world.  It was only right for us to bring our awareness towards the beauty of nature before cooking and consuming its treasures.  

My mouth fell agape upon encountering the vast smorgasbord of colorful treasures laid out for us in the kitchen.  The contributing organisms of our meal were four varieties of ginger root, three distinct kinds of peppercorn, several different chili peppers, a dozen powdered spices, a rainbow of ripe vegetables, fresh coconut flakes, congealed palm sugar, shrimp paste, minced tuna and chicken, lemongrass, lime, and too many other components to remember.  Over the next three hours, we chopped, ground, mashed, fried, grilled, sauteed, boiled, and used nearly every discipline of culinary preparation I’ve ever heard of.  

I was amazed at the care, precision, and tedium that went into every dish we assembled.  For instance, Balinese rice isn’t simply dropped into boiling water to simmer.  Instead, it’s washed twice, soaked in cold water for an hour, steamed for fifteen minutes, soaked in hot water off the flame, then steamed again before being served.  Another fascinating detail of the traditional techniques I learned is that the same exact sauce is used in nearly every Balinese dish; it’s created by grinding ginger, turmeric, garlic, candle nuts, peppercorn, shallots, cumin seeds, salt, and chili in a mortar and pestle until a smooth and uniform paste emerges.  We mixed spoonfuls of this buttery condiment into chicken soup, tofu curry, sauteed tempeh, fish satay, and grilled tuna.  

Countless nervous pancake flips, vivacious stirs, nimble skewer rotations, and fastened banana-leaf wraps later, the ten of us were left with a twelve-dish feast of our own composition.  Sitting around our wooden table, cooled by the breeze blowing through the adjacent rice feels, we indulged in our reward.  The Yonkers pair and I sat opposite the three British students on holiday; our lunchtime banter quickly devolved from polite debates about our favorite dishes into vulgar comparisons of the swear-words upon which our respective cultures have endowed virility.  

“We say ‘cocksucker’ a lot in New York.”

“God, I’ve only heard that in movies!  You know, once my grade-school teacher called me a ‘twat’?”

“Well, twat’s not that bad, is it?  I reckon ‘bellend’ is much worse.”

“What on earth is a ‘bellend’?  I’ve never heard that term in my life!”

“It’s that arrowhead part at the end of your penis!”

I was laughing so much that I needed to excuse myself from the table to go urinate.  When I returned, the woman from Yonkers probed at me, “What’s your name, by the way?”

“My name is Etai.”

“Oh, that’s a beautiful name!  Where are you from?”

“I was born and raised in NYC!”

“No, but what’s your nationality?”

“My parents are from Israel.”

A hush fell over the room.  Only the clinking of silverware could be heard.  I’ve been getting that response a lot recently.  In order to resurrect our chatter from its awkward silence, I turned to the Germans at the other end of the table and asked them if they were enjoying the food.  

At dusk, back inside the walls of Sunshine Vintage House, I sat around the hostel’s dining table with Finn from England and Mohammad from Saudi Arabia.  Finn and I were discussing the differences between the United Kingdom’s universally free NHS system and the United State’s industry of private healthcare companies.  

“English doctors always say that the best remedy for depression is practicing daily gratitude,” Finn taught me.  “It’s proven to be more effective than any psychiatric medication.  But our doctors only say that because they have no financial incentive to write a prescription.”

“That’s so mind-blowing to me,” I remarked in response.  “Where I’m from, most doctors prescribe drugs as often as they blink.  I have a hunch that my government even suppresses access to non-monetizable healing resources, like breathwork and meditation.”

Mohammad interjected, “Is there only one way to meditate?”  Interpreting his tone, I hypothesized that he was looking for a viable entry point into the practice.  I couldn’t blame him for his skepticism towards the pompous archetype of asceticism which controls outsiders’ perceptions of meditators.  

Answering him with a question of my own, I queried, “Are you religious?”

“Yes,” Mohammad assured me.

“Do you pray five times a day?”

“Of course!”

“That’s meditation!”

His voice shaking with fragile emotion, Mohammad went on to explain to me that he used to be severely depressed.  Redirecting his prayer, embroidering it with deeper intention and presence, was the cure that saved him.  Only by climbing out of such a dark mental pit was he able to realize how irresponsibly phoned-in and passive his prior habit of prayer was.  

Meditation is simply awareness.  Religion – a majority, at least – is defined by rules.  Tragically, many born into devout religion lose sight of spiritual connection while hyper-fixating on obedience of their commandments.  At its best, however, religion can unite a mortal with the supreme soul of the universe.  From Balinese Hinduism to Mohammad’s Islam to the Judaism I was raised on, all systems are fallible, and yet they endure.  Navigating unfamiliar cultures has taught me to stow my cynicism and find the beauty in each tradition.  Everybody needs something different.  I pray that all of us find our path.  

June 7th, 2024

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Among the greatest influences on my growth over the past year is Sid, a teacher that pushed me to my limit – and edged it further – during my yoga-teacher training in Nepal.  Raised in a rural village of southern India, Sid received his eight-limb education in Mysore, the global capital of Ashtanga Vinyasa.  His coming-of-poise atop the mat embodied a stern trial by fire: he was an apprentice to a stubborn traditionalist, a missionary of yoga’s original essence in all its unrelenting standards of anatomical, mental, and spiritual prowess.  Under such strict and meticulous guidance, Sid developed an analogous affinity for uncovering God in the subtlest details of asana posture.  Never before have I met an instructor so observant of my toes, my fingertips, or my eyes.  During one of his workshops in Nepal, he probed me to wiggle each of my toes, one at a time.  Baffled, I discovered my lack of synapses fit for such minute movement.  That day, Sid taught me that – barring acute injury – all muscular paralysis derives from neural darkness, and all mental dormancy derives from unconscious obstruction of inherent spiritual light.  His cosmic clarity booms with bottomless depth.  

Thereby, the expanse of his source material stretches far beyond yoga.  He activated my introduction to Sufism, passing me his phone, which played video portraying a performance of whirling dervishes, one morning as we sat side by side on a bus swerving through Pokhara.  Sensing my awe towards the conically twirling garments of relentlessly spinning dancers, he offered me a wireless earbud, revealing the enchanting and hypnotizing music which accompanied the movement of worship.  I held no prior frame of reference for the sounds I was hearing, yet I drowned in their earnest and vying urgency.  I want to make music like that, I thought.  I profusely thanked Sid for sharing his Muslim muse material with me, hounding him for YouTube links of performances that would permit my private consumption of Sufi music and dance.  I found equal inspiration in his endless quotations of Patanjali, Rumi, Jesus Christ, B. K. S. Iyengar, and countless other sages beyond the realm of my knowledge.  An elusive and mystical amalgamation reflecting nuanced individuality, his essence cannot be pinned down by any isolated school of thought.

Not even Pokhara Yoga School could pin him down.  My first social media post revealing my arrival in Bali invited a swift and enthusiastic message from Sid, informing me that he was on the island as well!  He’d been hired by a former student to regularly teach the Ashtanga Primary Series in her lavish Balinese home.  The serendipity left me in disbelief.  Last night, we finally found the alignment to catch up over some coffee and lychee tea.  

“My student brought me here to drop a bomb on the yoga culture of Bali.”  Sipping his latte between puffs of his cigarette, Sid lamented,  “Most of the teachers here seem more concerned with displaying nudity than honoring yoga’s true ethos.”

I chuckled.  “Listen, I know all about the bastardization of yoga.  I’m from New York!”

Firmly, Sid asserted, “I’d not wish to go to such a violent and corrupt metropolis.”

“Oh, you should,” I urged him, defending my beautifully flawed home.  “How can you judge a city without walking its streets?  I reckon you might even be surprised by the promiscuously nude yoga teachers of Bali!”

Sid looked dubious, politely refuting, “It’s not just New York or Bali.  Even Mysore is commercialized now.  People are paid to call themselves gurus.  It’s the blind leading the blind!  I need not travel anywhere to know what I already know.”

The knowledge to which Sid referred had nothing to do with yoga or cultural relativism.  The simple wisdom of Samadi – union with the supreme, universal, singular soul – that has quenched his appetite for stimulus can only be found within oneself.  

“Touche,” I resigned.  Changing the subject, I blurted out, “Have you ever tried psychedelic drugs?”

“They don’t work on me.  I tried shrooms once.  I ate eight of them.  I felt nothing.”

Our conversation whizzed and zigzagged vigorously, dallying only once Sid caught me stifling a yawn; given our captivating dialogue, I tried manipulating my body language towards engagement rather than fatigue, but my unfailing circadian rhythm humbled me.  Before we parted ways, Sid invited me to join his led Ashtanga Primary Series class the following morning.  I beamingly agreed!

By the crack of dawn, I was sitting cross-legged on my mat before Sid, chanting mantra with my eyes closed.  The ensuing practice nostalgically transported me back to Pokhara.  As Sid’s voice underscored my synchronization of contorted movements with amplified breaths, I recalled the bleating of farm goats, the stillness of Lake Fewa, the majesty of the Himalayas, and the rigorous education which characterized my month in Nepal.  I thanked God for reuniting me with my mentor and inciting this reflection.  

Although I started my day by thanking God on my mat, I ended it by thanking God with my forehead against a Muslim prayer rug.  Mohammad, my hostel-mate from Saudi Arabia, gregariously invited me to join him in holy worship tonight.  There was no hesitation in my enthusiastic affirmation.  He promptly led me to the bathroom sink, where we prepared for prayer.

“First you wash your hands like this,” Mohammad instructed.  “Then cup your hands, slurp some water, and spit it out.  Then do the same with your nose.  Then wash your face.  Now do the inside of your elbow crease.  Now your feet.”

In pursuit of maximal respect, I wondered aloud, “Do I need to take my socks off for that?”

“No, it’s okay!  Just dab some water on the outside of your socks.  Now, wash your hair and the area behind your ears.

“Okay, now we’re clean!  That was our preparation.  Now we can return to the rug and pray.”

During our prayer, I did my best to follow Mohammad’s frequent transitions between standing, sitting, and kneeling.  Beyond that, I accepted my understanding, let alone mimicry, of the holy Arabic words he mumbled under his breath as a lost cause.  

Instead, I pondered the parallels between my daily yoga practice and his chronic invocations of Allah.  We’re pointing at the same light from different directions.  

Unlike Sid, I’d be honored to traverse all the world’s varied lands from which we point.  I can only hope that I’ll enter each ritualistic immersion as my pure self and leave with brighter incandescence.  

Love,

Etai