i want moksha

It's 3.30 am. I'm oiled hair to toe and I am also immersed in incomparable bliss. i never thought it would be possible for me to meditate and chant all day in the full glory of pujari outfit, and then keep up with daily ayurveda treatment during full immersion retreat schedul, not to mention preparing food according to ayurveda guidelines from dr harikrishnan. but then with guru's grace, full-on support from hwubby, and a burning desire to know my own Self anything is possible. so here i am. 

golden rule. shoes. abhyange

photo by nat

between shoes, golden rule and ayurveda treatment i’m making quite a leap, don’t you think?

okay, here it goes.

to cut a long story short, these walking shoes i got from the store, they are great for my bunions but they are sooooo expensive even on sale. $168 after 40% off. hwubby said, you walk so much better in them, it's worth it. o, have i mentioned that joanna, the mephisto consultant - yes, that's the title on her card - went thru several pairs and brands and then spot-breaking to get to this point. she worked hard. none felt right until this baby. i had no idea what the alphabets 'mbt' on the shoes meant. i thought that's some kind of mephisto. later on i found out that it's a brand on its own. mbt stands for masai barefoot technology. seriously. folks, they develop technology to try to replicate the experience of walking barefoot in paddyfield. okay, back to my shoe story. i hemmed and hawed. finally what cinched the deal was i could return them in 7 days. i thought i would definitely return them. i just couldn't see myself pouring out almost two hundred bucks for sneakers.

photo by nat

next day. i walked around in them inside house. well, i have to be honest with myself. it's refreshing to feel the feet securely and comfortably housed. also standing in these shoes the body naturally and gently rocks back and forth, kind of like aloft over hawaiian waves. still, the price tag gnawed at me. an inner msg came. online. so i did. sure enough midway down the first page of google search results there’s a site that caught my eye. fast forward a few more hits later i am in this online shoe store exclusively for mbt shoes. check this out. the style that i got from the store is half price here. wooohoooh, i am thrilled. immediately the i-love-bargain tendency took me over. ask hwubby. he would tell you, my darling wife loves to get something for a penny on the dollar. yes, i'm proud to call myself cheap. i love hand-me-down. way back when i was living in ashram, there was a room where donated items were placed. guess where i got all my garments. i call it vintage. now i have a generous and gorgeous sister-in-law who happens to be same size of mine, with fabulous taste, and periodically send me boxes of beautiful stuff. i call it heirloom.

where are we? right, shoes. hmmm, i shall return what i have and order online. the mind is totally sucked into this old tendency when all of a sudden i heard loud and clear two words. GOLDEN RULE. i tried to ignore it but it wouldn’t go away for good. it kept flashing big and bold on the mental screen. the stubbornly lodged tendency wouldn’t budge either. this is about a hundred dollars. why wouldn’t i want to spend 50% less to get the same thing. yet, something strange is happening within. i thought this would be a no brainer yet i experience this unease, queasy feeling. something is not totally clear. not yet. there is a real tug of war within. i know enough by now that i decide to let it sit a little bit instead of pushing ahead.

half a day later. as i do my daily abhyange, an ayurveda treatment that involves rubbing medicated oil over joints and body, i feel this squeeze in the heart. i rub a nice scoop of warm oil over the chest, feel better, and i remember something, something that happened years prior but the pain is fresh as ever. you see, i was in mortgage work at one point. i remember i worked hard, jumped thru fire hoops, to get a difficult loan through only to have the borrower walking away just before closing because they found a loan with lower interest rate online. technically they could do that. according to the industry practice none of the effort i put into mattered. yuck. i remember that ugly feeling vividly, as oil quietly permeate every pore of mine. i hate it now as much as i did then.

aaaah, wham. golden rule. don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do to you. legally, technically i could return the shoes. but i would be treating people in the way i don’t want to be treated. i love a big saving but at the end of day this is about me walking the talk, living what i believe in.  as i contemplate this i realize something subtle has shifted. some veil is lifted. the mind, through which i think, speak and act has been cleansed in a deep way. the light of the heart is able to come through. i am able to discriminate, to see what truly matters is that i act from the place of the highest and most sacred self. that's the source of abundance.

so, now, how about i give a shout out to  abhyange. i truly believe that the treatment, prescribed according to my condition and performed authentically and diligently, contribute to diminishing the grip of such an old tendency on me, cleansing the lens thru which i perceive myself and the world. from that state i can see the connection between the teaching from an ancient sage and the situation at hand right now in 21st century.

photo by nat

there is more. it’s not that i didn’t have this realization before. i just didn’t act on it. it's not even that the old tendency comes back no more. far from it. the difference between then and this time is that i experience huge unease when i try to entertain the idea of returning the shoes. it’s a feeling of betrayal, turning my back on my own nature, my highest self. the force of highest self outweighs the opposing tug of old tendency. the pull is so strong that it becomes so easy to decide it’s smarter to yield to it. it's a physical sensation in the body, sickening, almost nauseous. emotionally i can't bear the horrific feeling if and when i return the shoes and say i get a better price online even though i wouldn't even know about this shoe without your expert service. the bottom line is this. the old tendency is no longer in the driver seat. my highest self is. once a patient, after much haggling with dr ramdas over her treatment plan, said, all right, i’ll surrender to you. dr ramdas said, no,  you are not surrendering to me, you are surrendering to your self.

dr ramdas showing me how to churn butter

i love money but, at the end of day, as dr ramkumar says, money is not the driving force. never. welcome, suk wah, to a deeper level of purification. amen.  

that glutton is still in suk wah

before hwubby going away for a week, i pack him up good, i mean, pack up a box of provisions and another of medicine. he's determined to keep doing what we have learned from vaidyagrama and, believe you me, we have been working hard since coming home to implement whatever we can.

well, sure, cut me some slack if you will. there are still some practices i have not put in place yet. like what? like applying warm oil all over and keep it for thirty minutes as early morning practice. really. this is not india and it's winter. what with all the food practices i have to get up at three and do things naked in the kitchen. sorry, call me weakling, whatever.

anyway this is not about me. back to hwubby. bless his heart. keep in mind he is staying with a friend. so, being considerate and sensitive as he is, he makes sure he gets everything done before the friend gets up. it means applying oil, making food including rolling chapati and preparing medicine. granted he says, my chapati is like rubber, you have to give me a chapati lesson. but he cooks mung bean, germ of wheat, quinoa.

then i see there're half of the medicine left. he says, yeah, breakfast i do great but then i just can't keep up with it in the evening. it's hard. either he's out there or he gets in late. since the meds are all liquid we need to get some tiny containers that don't leak so he can take them with him. anyhow he says, i just realize how much work it takes for you to keep both of us going day to day.

what is the hardest thing in keeping a satvic diet? hwubby says, not the diet itself, the hardest is what's going on around us, while in vaidyagram it's the mind that is rambling, but now back in the world triggers and temptations are in your face all the time. true. and it doesn't help he has a history of espresso, lox and bagel, pastries, salad, pastrami. on one hand his palate is fundamentally transformed. he basically doesn't want to have what's offered out there. on another hand, these are entrenched tendencies. there are residual conditioning and they can get at you hard, like the aroma of a fresh croissant and well-made latte.

hey, i am no saint either. i am fortunate. for the most part, i don't have to go to these events and functions. i barely go out at all. still i have weak spots all over the place. for instance, fresh chapati with almond butter and sprinkled sugar. i can hear the stomach say, hmmm, too heavy. but can i cut it out for good? i don't know. i look at that nice, fresh dough and i forget. what can i say. i am really happy with a bowl of congee, with milk or ghee, and veg. it's beautiful. it's deliiish. but...there's still that glutton in suk wah. i see that dough, almond butter and sugar and the mind is insanely overcome with the thought, i have to have it. hwubby is right. get that suk wah in a chinese restaurant she will go nuts. i know. i was talking to a chinese meditator. what were we talking about? comparing notes on traditional shanghainese food. perfectly stewed fiver flower belly. fried and braised eel. spicy beef.

hwubby asks dr harikrishnan, when will it go away? doctorji goes quiet, thinks deeply. in his signature quiet, steady and wise tone of voice, he says, eventually. then another pause before he says, after several courses of treatments. i guess this is kind of like cleaning a very dirty pot that has a lot of hard stains. i have to scrub very hard and i have to do it several rounds. and you know what. i keep at it. the pot is now shining.