eat pray love [part 2]

My father sat me down a few days before one of my trips and asked, ‘Are you going to be a monk?’ In part 2 of my three-part series on Eat Pray Love, I will not recount my time at an ashram for 30 days. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t contemplate it. Perhaps someday.

When I realized my Dad was being serious, I chuckled, and said “I would, but I’d have to cut my hair, so no.” Jokes aside, I deeply admire those who choose the path of monkhood.

However, I think my Dad's question came from being puzzled about how my interests have changed in recent years.

You see, my Dad generally observes me spend my time at home watching sports and being out late with friends. Or as a kid, slipping into the vortex that was my Xbox 360 or Runescape.

So, it’s no surprise that during this intermittent period at home, he was taken aback by my newly adopted habits.

One of those habits has been reading. I’d wake up early, and while my family watched the news and got ready for work, I would hole up in the library with my cup of coffee reading The Daily Stoic and other spiritually aligned texts such as The Bhagavad Gita, The Prophet, and Siddhartha.

Needless to say, I was grateful for the respite from the 9 a.m. Zoom standups.

There’s much to glean about this world through Marcus Aurelius’ journey entries, Krishna and Arjun’s dialogues, Almustafa’s words to the people of Orphalese, and the idea of being “our brother’s keeper” from the Book of Genesis.

I never thought of myself as religious, especially since I grew up in a household that was indeed quite religious. Our family was devoted members of the Hindu Temple in Richmond. At home, we would perform pujas (rituals) on a frequent basis.

But growing up, none of this really clicked. I never grasped the ‘why’. The only ‘whys’ going through my mind were why I am up this early, why can’t I eat meat on Tuesdays, and why do we have so many gods?

I hold no blame towards my parents here, as I’m sure they tried countless times to explain the reasoning behind religion. I know I wasn’t the easiest child to deal with, and I was too distracted by friends, playing outside, and getting any girls’ attention to care about what went down inside the Temple.

The devotion to religion is even stronger for my family in India. As I mentioned in this post, my ancestors go back to the first people who wrote down the Vedas, one of the prominent Hindu scriptures.

Most of my family abstain from meat and alcohol and certainly don’t have a fondness for mint nicotine pouches.

During this India trip, my family would sit and talk for hours about the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, two ancient Indian poems that are highly significant in Hindu literature and culture.

They would often site the shlokas (verses) verbatim, and it was quite enthralling to hear each one’s interpretation of the text as I sat in silence.

I was unqualified to engage in these discussions. I was still in pre-K when it came to my understanding of our ancestors' texts; despite my mother's persistent urging over the years to delve into the Gita, life events such as striving for a promotion and falling in love kept the book gathering dust on the shelf.

Despite my parents' efforts, a teacher can only be as effective as their student is receptive.

There was a shift over the past five or so years in my response to the question, “are you religious?”. The “no I’m not” evolved into “I’m more spiritual than religious”. This shift towards spirituality was influenced by my interest in yoga. I’ll delve into that shortly. But first, what does ‘spiritual’ mean?

A study from Pew Research (cited here in NPR), has myself in the camp of 22% of U.S. adults who say they are “spiritual but not religious”. I’d also fall into the majority (74%) that define it as “being connected to something bigger than myself.”

‘Connection’ seems to be a common thread in the interpretation of ‘spirituality’ - whether that’s a connection with nature, other people, open-mindedness, or continuing family traditions.

My origin from this ‘connection’ stemmed from my time on the mat. I felt an instant attraction to the yoga practice after attending my first class in 2015 at a brewery in Charlotte, NC.

Two years later, I dove into the practice more as I moved to Los Angeles and frequented many of studios the westside had to offer.

Class after class I began to develop a deeper awareness of both my physical and mental being. I’d walk in with a whirlwind of thoughts and depart with clarity and a body drenched in sweat.

Yoga taught me to appreciate my body and treat it with love (see ‘eat’ for more on this). In the words of B.K.S. Iyengar, a renowned yoga teacher,

Five years later I found myself in a classroom commencing a 200-hour yoga teacher training course at Hot Yoga East Nashville. The very first term our instructor wrote on the board that day was “Vedic Brahmin” and she talked about how the origins of yoga can be attributed to this caste and Vedic period, which is the early time of ancient Indian history characterized by the composition of the Vedas.

It was eight in the morning, but I distinctly recall a surge of energy coursing through me as Brooke elucidated the origin stories.

My family belongs to the Vedic Brahmin lineage, and now I’m discovering they played a prominent role in a practice that has transformed my life. Wild!

I wasn’t going to be that guy (I was the only guy in there for that matter) who raised his hand and said ‘that’s where my family comes from’, but I remember calling my girlfriend at the time and my Mom during a break and talking about how excited I was to hear that.

It was yet another paradigm shift moment where I resolved to delve into spirituality and educate myself about my origins.

The next day, I picked up the Gita, albeit an abridged version.

Another lesson gleaned while traveling was to commence a new destination by attending a yoga class. Whether that entailed heading to a studio in Amsterdam directly from the airport or participating in a Bikram yoga session in Buenos Aires taught in Spanish, this new ritual allowed me to anchor myself and connect with the new environment and adventure I was embarking on.

Engaging in yoga, reading, and meditation enables me to unravel the chaos in my mind. While each practice is distinct in its own way, they collectively inch me closer to understanding my true self.

Every inch closer to your true self results in a stronger intuition and a strong intuition requires less validation. Signals from our true self allow us to guide our own compass without the noise, and sometimes bias of other players in the game.

It’s worth consulting your close confidants, but at the end of the day, you’re holding the controller.

Inevitably, we veer away from that center as we are only human. Yoga, reading, and meditation serve as tools in my arsenal that I can wield whenever the currents pull me slightly off course.

Everyone has their own version of prayer. What mine is today may not be what it is tomorrow or ten years down the line.

Today, I see it as a ‘grounding’ mechanism that gets me closer to myself and puts an invisible armor over my body to tackle the day.

All of those passport stamps in 2023 and discovering patches of light during a dark period have instilled in me faith in something greater than myself, and in the notion that we are, indeed, our brother’s keeper.

The final post in this three-part series will be about love. You already know it will be my favorite one to reflect on because we love, LOVE.

Haven’t read part 1? Check it out here

Talk soon,

C