Hong’s Stories: When the student is ready, the teacher appears
Amituofu friends! I was about halfway through the beautifully filmed documentary “On Yoga: The Architecture of Peace” (Netflix) when I had to pause and transcribe this passage from the film.
A like me fifty-odd-year-old white man starts out, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
The man then describes first meeting his master yogi Swami Satchidananda. The man was eighteen at the time and suicidally depressed, having realized that no matter what he did he would never find happiness. His worried parents (clearly unique by 1970s Dallas standards) brought him to a talk by the Swami.
The Swami’s first words turned the young man’s mind on its head. “Nothing can bring you lasting happiness, but you have it already.”
The man then relates the following that he learned over time from his master:
“The real thesis of yoga is not that you get your health, your well being, your inner peace from outside yourself, which is what our culture often teaches us, but rather we have it already. And then the question becomes what am I doing that’s disturbing that (peace) as opposed to how do I get something that I don’t already have.”
I heard this and immediately felt how despite five years of concentrated practice, I still find myself looking to my life for happiness. To twist a saying, I am still trying to cover the world with leather instead of just putting on my shoes.
You see five years ago my life collapsed for the second time, and I found myself, after twenty years of trying to win the game called Wall Street, divorced, homeless and bankrupt. Sitting at the bottom of the bottom I looked in the funhouse mirror and saw a twisted up version of my Dad: a broken marriage, deeply in debt, and alienated from my children.
At that point, I too had suicidal thoughts. The situation was desperate and one option was to give up. A friend (rest his soul) under similar circumstances at that time did.
But I was protected by my Buddhist practice. At that moment of ultimate crisis after thirty years of study, I finally put my material pursuits down and focused on my search for inner peace. I did not go sit on the side of a mountain and meditate to cut myself off from my desires. But I read my texts and eventually my teacher Sifu appeared.
The core of my practice now is training kung fu as moving meditation to sharpen my blade mentally, physically and spiritually. Through this practice, I learn to engage my world as it is with skill and ignore my incessant mindful of desires, opinions, goals, hopes, and fears.
I still lose myself in my minds noise sometimes, but now trust my ability to catch myself, and kindly and firmly release my mind’s grip. As I watch the thoughts float away, I keep an eye out for particularly juicy/scary ones that need to be analyzed. Once I have let go, I settle back into my saddle and continue down my path.
I take alone time every day to locate and converse my inner peace and heal the self-inflicted sadness built up over years spent trying to to make other people happy so they would finally like me. As I learn to follow my bliss, it spreads to family, friends, community, and world.
Amituofu! More chi! Train harder!
Hong
