Life Lessons From the Union Square Hare Krishnas

You know them, if you’ve spent much time in New York City.

Every day from April through October, from 1pm to 7:30, they sit near the Gandhi statue in the southwestern corner of Union Square. Women in saris, men in orange or beige Vedic robes, heads shaved except for a tuft in the back.

They set up a mat and a few thin cushions. Someone plays drums, someone leads the chanting from a small harmonium. A pair of finger cymbals gets passed around. A wooden sign propped up in front displays the words of the maha-mantra in bold: “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare”.

In the winter and bad weather, they go down into the subway stations. Tablas and harmonium compete with the crashing arrival and departure of trains.

One devotee sits at the book table, collecting donations and encouraging passersby to look at the selection of books and pamphlets.

If a crowd gathers or someone stops to watch for long enough, another will walk around offering copies of the Bhagavad Gita As It Is, translation and commentary by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada, as the devotees call him.

I spent a season with Harinama Sankirtana NYC, New York’s most persistent group of bhakti yogis, back when I was younger and weirder. (Younger, at least.)

When I first discovered spirituality, I went through a strange, sweet transition period during which, having cut most of the ties of my previous life but not yet finding my feet in my new one, I floated around observing the world with a childlike joy.

I had a job during this period, 30-odd hours a week at a Korean restaurant in Bushwick, but my memories of the time are all Union Square.

I didn’t know how to meditate but I spent hours trying to at the Three Jewels Tibetan Buddhist center on Broadway. I immersed myself in the library at the Tibet House on West 16^th. In fits of panicky compassion, heart cracked open to the suffering of the world, I walked around looking for homeless people and gave them money, my own hats and gloves, bought them lunch and listened to their stories. I bought spiritual books at the Strand and read them at the Bean across the street on East 12^th.

One day, I sat on the fountain in Union Square and watched the crowds. The Hare Krishnas were chanting. Every so often, someone would stop to watch them or take a picture. The devotee on book-pushing duty was universally polite and enthusiastic, even trying to get the teenagers snapping ironic selfies to buy a Bhagavad Gita.

After an hour or so, one of them came over to me.

It was a sort of odd-duck devotee. I would see him a lot later on. He was at the kirtan every day, and he had the same sikha and fanatical intensity in his eyes as the others, but he dressed in old jeans and flannel.

He would usually sit quietly in the back, rarely chanting. Every so often, a light would suddenly catch in his eyes and he would spring to his feet and twirl across the pavement, as graceful as a trained dancer and light on his feet as if there were strings suspending his weight from the sky.

In a sea of Sanskrit names, he went by George.

So he came to me, crouched down and offered me a book. “This book changed my life,” he said.

It was a slim white paperback called Chant and Be Happy, half Prabhupada and half interviews with John Lennon and George Harrison.

A goofy book, in which George talks about finding God in a samosa and chanting the Hare Krishna mantra as if his life depended on it when an airplane hit turbulence. But for some reason, I stuck around to read it, and when another monk invited me to sit with them, I sat down and started chanting.

I had no idea what was going on, and it felt weird and cultish at first, but something about the syllables resonated in my heart. The chanting felt like coming back home. And I was curious about these strange, orange people.

Over several months of joining the kirtan almost every day, they never asked me what I did for work or where I was from. We sang together, and if we talked it was about the singing, how important it was to spread the mantra and the love of Krishna. And yet, several of them became my friends, in a way.

They certainly had the intensity of a cult but there was something extremely pure in them. They chanted with the same heart whether there was a crowd of 50 people gathered to watch, or if no-one had stopped in hours.

They gave food to anyone who asked. Hungry homeless people got special care.

One time, a band of Christian fundamentalists set up shop across from them, with signs like “Jesus Saves, Sinners Repent” or something. A devotee girl named Madevi Dasi ran barefoot across the pavement to give them a hug.

Day in, day out, filling the corner of Union Square with sacred vibrations.

It’s not every day that you get to rub shoulders with people who live in such single-minded faith, who really believe with every fiber of their being that by singing those sixteen Sanskrit words with enough faith and devotion, they can bring peace to the world.

I guess that’s the type of faith you need to do what they do, just to hold that frequency in the heart of downtown Manhattan.

After a while my life caught up with me and I went to the kirtan less and less. It awakened something in my heart, though, and that has stayed. I pray to Krishna sometimes. My heart jumps when I see a statue or hear his name. When I hear the maha-mantra, I can’t help dancing.

And I learned a few lessons from them.

1.     It’s ok if people think you’re weird.

The next time you want to do something but also don’t want to do it because people will look at you funny, do it anyways!

People judging you is not the end of the world. This was a huge surprise to me. I wish I could say that after this experience, I never again felt limited by other people’s opinions, but it’s not always so easy.

Still, doing something which is outside your social comfort zone is very valuable for showing you your own restrictions.

We all like to think we’re independent and free-minded, but there’s always a point where fear of breaking social conventions kicks in. Why? Someone thinks you’re weird, someone doesn’t like you… so what?

Subconsciously, these concerns can be paralyzing, even if we’re not aware of how strong they are. On some level, we’re often just trying to get people to like us. Say the right thing, do what they will approve of, be what we’re supposed to be in that context.

What if we work on loving other people instead of making them like us?

2.     There are hidden worlds right next to you.

This goes double for NYC but it’s true everywhere.

The person sitting next to you on the train might be experiencing a reality completely different from yours. The New York that I know is nothing like the New York that the “show time” kids on the Q train know, or the Yiddish-speaking Hassidim in Borough Park, or the Hindi-speaking families in Jackson Heights, or the high-powered professionals who I never see on the train because they take cabs.

You can be in a Hare Krishna bubble, for example, and live your whole life going from ashram to kirtan to dharma lecture and back, never brushing against anything that the people ten feet away from you would relate to.

And in a way, that’s true for all of us. Your life is your own, your references are yours and your world is yours.

Most of the time, we share space with people who inhabit similar worlds, so it seems like there’s some single, concrete version of reality out there. If someone perceives a different version, it must be a distortion. After all, my reality is the right one, right?

3.     Being a bit of a cult can be a good thing

My mom, a classical Jewish mother, has a constant fear that I’ve joined a cult.

I can't tell her too much about what I study, because within hours she'll call me up like, "Tasha, I've been doing some research online and I have a few concerns..."

The problem is that if you Google some of my main teachers, people who I know to be wise, selfless, dedicated and deeply realized beings, you get some kind of sketchy stuff.

Strong teachings, that can shake the core of reality and bring transformation, never have an easy time in this world. Bring something mild and easy, some vague stuff about how we should all love each other and be more mindful, and everyone’s happy with it.

The fact that everyone can agree on something means it probably isn’t pushing the limits. And isn’t that what spirituality is about? How much transformation can you get from something that doesn’t push your limits?

I’ve been connected to several paths that seem a little cultish to those on the outside. I actually like this about them.

If it seems cultish, it’s strong. It’s taking you somewhere.

Say what you will about those crazy Hare Krishnas or whoever, you can’t say they aren’t devoted to their path. Their practice is their life. They’re serious about spirituality in the way most of us only wish we were.

N.B. I’m not endorsing fanaticism! I’m not saying it’s good to get into this blind faith thing where everything gets distorted into one narrow worldview and you lose your connection to fellow humans.

However, it’s ok to be a bit of a fanatic sometimes. Be a fanatic about saving all beings from suffering. Be a fanatic about universal love. Be a fanatic about realizing your divine nature in this lifetime.

4.     Hold space for divinity wherever you can

New York City is a crazy place. It’s like the manic, incandescent swadisthana of the world. When I lived there, it felt like the energy was so intense at times, the whole city was a hair’s breadth away from dissolving into chaos.

And then there are the Hare Krishnas, chanting away in their little corner of Union Square every day.

It might not look like much, but they’re sitting on one of the pulse points of the city. A tiny whisper of spirituality is added to the background noise, planting tiny seeds in the subconscious minds of anyone who hears them, even if they don’t give a second glance.

I really believe these little pockets of spirituality are what hold the city (and the world) together.

So where can you bring more divinity into your life? Where is the deepest darkness into which you can bring a spark of light? Where are the wild places that need a breath of peace? The dead zones in your life, or in your soul, that most need a touch of life?

5.     Now is the right time for a spontaneous burst of joy

One of the feelings I got the most from my Hare Krishna days was the sense of closeness and trust with God.

It’s the knowledge that God’s covenant is alive in the heart of creation, the promise that the soul is cared for and will be brought home.

God isn’t just an abstract. The life is in you right now, the call is in your heart.

Sometimes it doesn’t take years of practice or study. Sometimes it just takes love. One moment of surrender. One moment of losing yourself in devotion.

With the Hare Krishnas, divine ecstasy is never farther than a few chants away. That joy is always open to you, always waiting for you to return. In fact, God is yearning for you to merge into Him just as much as you are yearning for that dissolution.

So whenever you feel like flinging your arms up in the air and dancing, that’s the right time.

Into Great Blandness: My Experience of Ohsawa Macrobiotic Diet #7

So I just ate brown rice, more brown rice, and almost nothing else for 10 days.

Welcome to Ohsawa’s diet #7, the classic macrobiotic cleanse.

The basic principle of macrobiotics is that foods are either yin (receptive) or yang (emissive). Most of our diet is very yin, which can make a person kind of soft and mushy, overly sensitive, and weaken the immune system.

Grains are perfectly balanced yin/yang, so if you only eat grains for a while your system can pull itself into balance. Also, since you’re almost fasting, the digestive fire is free to detox and purify your body and energy.

What you can eat:

·      Brown rice

·      Millet

·      Buckwheat

·      Whole wheat

·      Barley

·      Bulgur

·      High-quality tamari soy sauce (in small amounts)

·      Roasted sesame seeds

·      Some teas but not the nice ones

·      Sea salt

I’m not exactly an ascetic person. I love eating and usually eat too much, and I’m hooked on blazing-hot Indian and Thai spices. So 10 days of the blandest food possible seemed like something I actually needed, as well as appealing to my kind of hardcore spiritual athlete ego side.

I first heard about the diet last year and finally got around to trying it. I ended up doing it while my life partner/favorite human Ran was away for two weeks, which added an extra challenge of loneliness.

It was tough. Cool by the end but definitely tough. I took some notes every day, which I wanted to share for the benefit of anyone else who wants to try this diet.

Day 1

Rice, rice, rain. Missing Ran.

Day 2

Rice in the afternoon. Hungry but already have to force myself to finish the bowl. Cabin fever, desperate loneliness, lack of prana.

Things start to turn around when I go into town and drink tea at the Black Sheep. The taste is incredibly strong. I drive to Whole Foods later and feel a sudden burst of inner energy. I’m tired and weak, have to rest in the car and mentally draw in energy, but after kung fu class I feel very strong and clear, almost like the morning after ayahuasca.

Millet for dinner – very exciting to have something different.

That feeling when you realize that if you love someone, inevitably either they will die first and you will have to grieve for them or you will die and they will grieve for you.

Day 3

Woke up feeling like everything was going to be ok. Warm energy in meditation, huge heat in nauli kriya. Called Ran, so happy to hear his voice and then miss him even more thinking about Shabbat.

Burned the millet. Ate it anyways, not really hungry or interested in tastes.

Going towards Shabbat and even though I’ve been feeling pretty down on Judaism lately, I’m thinking wistfully of that silly bread and grape juice. It’s clear how much my food attachment isn’t about food at all. I miss the cooking, the time and space shared with people I love, the jolt of pleasure, the expectation and satisfaction. When I start missing Ran, immediately my thoughts jump towards craving food. I feel like if I was eating normally I could dull the pain of missing him, or if he was here I wouldn’t miss food either.

Day 4

Indigestion and vivid, unsettling dreams in the night. Vamana dauti upon waking up, helped a little but still very low energy, felt weak and almost delirious until eating some millet around noon. Went for a walk in the woods and felt much better, absorbing energy from the sun and trees, then did yoga. In general I’m tired but my senses are very sharp and energy channels open, going deep in meditation and hearing the nada very clearly. I have almost like a fever at times, the cleansing is strong, I’m trying to embrace it – physical and emotional purification symptoms – and do lots of tonglen. This diet is starting to have the feeling of going into a retreat.

Day 5

Woke up at 10:30 (!!!) – sex dreams again – and sleepy already by 9:30pm. Otherwise feeling pretty good. I walked a little in the woods, bare feet in the leaves was like an orgasm.

Thinking wistfully about normal food but not bad. Millet around noon, made whole wheat “pancakes” and rice for dinner.

Day 6

Stronger today and feeling very pure, the soul of the world flowing through me. Listening to lots of Hebrew music and it’s stirring some latent Jewish embers. Ali ruhi ali naphshi ali ali…

Beautiful clouds and snow on the ground.

Deep gratitude for the holy teachings in my life, for being shown that there are ways out.

Day 7

Water has so much flavor!!

“I wouldn’t have sought after you if I hadn’t found you already.”

Day 8

Pleasantly surprised I’ve made it this far.

Lots of energy now. Night yoga until late, woke up around 8. Writing love poems from the soul to the Self and from the Self to the soul.

Enjoying the taste of water and rice, salt, tea.

Some disturbing emotions because Ran is unhappy and his flight is delayed until Tuesday, and we just lost our main writing gig. If I wasn’t on this diet I know I would be stress eating.

Energy crash in the afternoon. My body is yearning for rest, and before I fell asleep on the couch I felt a sort of release, like some deep tension was working its way to the surface. Slept for two hours, in a depression for the rest of the evening.

Day 9

Woke up ravenously hungry.

Heightened sense of hearing and I can smell everything, by which I mean every food item within 100 yards.

I didn’t get to eat dinner until 11pm but I don’t feel so enslaved to hunger and taste as usual.

Day 10

Here I am at the end, and very grateful for this journey. I feel great today, very balanced and sublimated, and also suddenly not lonely anymore.

Went to Whole Foods to stock up on stuff to eat tomorrow, including some treats for Shabbat dinner tonight: black rice and wild rice. Wild rice isn’t technically rice but it is a true grain so I guess it’s ok for the last night.

Hard to believe it’s been only ten days!

Breaking the fast

Ohhhhhhh I can taste the universe in this piece of kale.

Everything is delicious!! So many flavors!

Wowwwwww

End notes

I’m very glad that I went through with this cleanse. I felt so clean and strong by the end and I was having deep meditations, like I was less firmly bound to the material realm. Even now, five days later, my senses are still heightened, especially taste and smell. (My sense of smell was always pretty weak.)

Psychologically, it showed me my attachment to food/sense pleasures and what it’s like to be without it. Instead of grabbing a snack when I felt unfulfilled, I had to go inside and find the source of pleasure.

The enjoyment that we get from food is just a reflection of the bliss within. If I go after the external reflection, it’s easy to miss the direct light.

I had some weird food cravings though. First for coconut oil, then ghee, then red meat. (Plus a constant longing for fresh fruits and vegetables, especially carrots and kale.) I haven’t touched meat in years and never missed it, so it was a strange thing. I even dreamed about eating meat before the last day of the diet.

By the last two days, I was looking forward to my plain rice.

I’d definitely recommend Ohsawa #7 to anyone, especially yogis who want a strong detox and a face-to-face confrontation with the senses. You can (eventually) feel really good and be proud of eating more boring food than anyone else.

On Spiritual Aspiration

A student goes to his teacher in old India. He asks, “When will I reach enlightenment?”

The teacher leads him to the river. He thrusts the student’s head under the water and holds him down. When he is choking, about to pass out, the teacher lets him up.

The teacher asks, “What did you feel when you were under the water?”

“Desperation. Agonizing desire for air. Every particle of my being crying out to breathe.”

The teacher says, “When you want the truth as much as you wanted to breathe under the water, that’s when you will get it.”

We don’t want the truth – not yet. We want to want it. Maybe we want to want it so badly we feel like we could die from wanting. But we don’t die, can’t die into it, yet. There’s still a part of us that thinks happiness lies just around the next turn of the wheel.

Look, we’re all spiritual people here. We know happiness doesn’t come from a new car or a better job. But maybe we think it will come from the next retreat, from finding the right teacher or living in just the right ashram, from this or that meditation technique, from learning all the secret mantras and mudras, from hot tantric men running after you all “OM Shakti” and pressing flowers to your heart.

And the wheel turns.

I don’t know why I’m on this spiritual path. If you ask me off the cuff I would probably give you a reason, but when I look a little deeper into myself I find only bewilderment, a million ideas and impulses and in the center, this not-knowing. Void. Awe.

It started out simple enough. I was 24, lost and alone in my “starving artist” identity bubble, digging myself into a hole of psychedelics. I spent one summer wandering around Brooklyn on LSD, pacing the streets at 3am and wondering what I was looking for. Finally that hole went so deep that I popped out the other side. I found myself at a Buddhist center in the East Village and suddenly I was there every day, meditating with the same crazy intensity.

But now there is a light. This is where my life really started, when I saw for the first time.

The thing is that the more answers you look for the more questions you get. This rabbit hole goes all the way down. Following one clue after another into this ever-expanding labyrinth of chakras and nadis, hidden worlds, laws of karma and flavors of emptiness, bodhicitta, Shiva and Shakti and Christ-consciousness, and experiences further and further from what your rational mind can make sense of, and at a certain point you look at all the pieces in your hand and start to wonder what puzzle this is exactly.

You realize this turn your life took is part of something so much more vast and unfathomable than you could have imagined.

And then you realize others feel the same. You’re looking for the same thing that people have been looking for since there have been people. It’s the same thing that deep down everyone still is looking for, that every being on this planet is looking for. The only difference is you have this itch of aspiration, this crazy drive to know. You won’t be content with anything less than the direct experience, with union with this something that is beyond anything.

Many people think that the spiritual life is some sort of escape, like you can’t deal with the “real world” so you go running off to an ashram or a monastery and sit in a little bubble of shanti shanti head-in-the-clouds wishful thinking.

That couldn’t be farther from reality. It’s easy to stay in the bubble of conventional life, working just to keep yourself safe and comfortable, doing what everyone else is doing and ignoring that tiny, precious, terrifying tremble that goes up your spine every so often and whispers “hey, isn’t there something more?”

It takes courage to let go of your trust in the world you came from, to stop believing what you’ve always been told and what your mind tries to tell you.

It takes courage to go head-on with your demons. It takes courage to see how high you can fly. It takes courage to come face to face with yourself.

It takes courage to offer it all into the divine fire.

I’ve been on the road for over a year now. California, Hawaii, Mexico, Israel… The scenery changes but that something in the corner of my eye is always there. I don’t miss having a home or “normal life” or anything, but I feel a fire in my heart, stronger every day. A longing that is so painful and so blissful at the same time.

Last winter I came to Hridaya. Again something cracks open and the light comes in. I do one 10-day retreat and come back the next month for 17 days.

It was so sweet, all those mornings when I woke up in the dark and sat alone until the sun peeked over the horizon. Eagles floating up from the beach in the afternoon. Staring at patterns in the bark of a neem tree. Catching my breath at the beauty of every moment, too precious even to hold onto.

In the meditations I feel myself falling asleep to the outside world and inside, something is waking up. I am curled up in the womb of the universe and I know nothing, I am nothing, there is nothing to know.

Sahajananda reads poems by Rumi and Hafiz before meditation sessions. There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you? Every night he answers questions that students left on slips of paper in a glass cup by the altar. One night someone writes that she is suicidally depressed. She is alienated from her family and all her friends are drifting away. She says she has lost all her reference points.

“This is a powerful time for you,” he answers. “You can learn from it. If a reference point can be lost, that means it isn’t the ultimate reference point.”

There are times when it all snaps into focus, like for the blink of an eye I can almost see the whole picture but it’s just out of reach. I want to cry and I can’t tell if it’s from joy or heartbreak. Where are my reference points? Who put this magnet in my heart that draws me deeper and deeper into the unknown? What set my life to curve around the divine, like the spirals of a plant or a galaxy reaching for the Beloved?

I pray to God to take everything from me so I can be naked and alone with the truth. Take my mind, take my life. Make me a leaf in Your wind. Make me a finger in Your hand to spread Your blessings. Oh Beloved, take away what I want, take away what I do, take away what I need, take away everything that takes me from you.

At the same time my deep, self-preserving ego prays for the opposite. Lord, keep me safe. Lord, give me long life in this body. Lord, give me someone who loves me. Give me money and sex. Make things how I like them.

And the wheel turns.

Maybe it’s all very simple. Whatever you want, God wants to give to you. If you only want God, if that’s really all you want with every last drop of your being, that’s what you will get.

I keep praying. I keep meditating, practicing yoga and doing retreats. I study. I do tapas. And I listen for that tiny, precious voice that says, “Listen, child, come closer, let me tell you a secret…”

When Yoga Turns You Into An Alien

I lost my keys.

I lost my sweater and my good bra. I lost my flip-flops.

I wrote notes to myself so I would remember things and I lost the notes.

I lost my temper too.

I left my wallet on Fire Island.

I leave a door open and the cats get into the room they’re not supposed to go into. My spell check app doesn’t work and I send an article full of typos to my boss. My boyfriend asks me to help with some errands and, somehow, I mess up every single one. “Floaty yogini,” he says in dismay.

I’m sorry to everyone who’s suffered from my negligence. Believe me, no matter how frustrated you are with my inability to hold onto things, stick to a schedule or follow basic directions, I am twice as frustrated at least.

I wasn’t always like this. That’s what I envision myself shouting as I plunge into an abyss of missed deadlines, lost items, bad decisions and stunning miscommunications.

The fact is that my connection to the material world, always a bit tenuous, has faded in the past few months, and my spiritual practice has a lot to do with it.

It hurts me to say this, because I would never want to say anything that might discourage people from practicing yoga and meditation. I’ve heard many spiritual teachers promise that meditation won’t make you weird and spacey, I think mostly not to scare people off, because it really can make you weird and spacey. At least for a while.

At least for a while, you might feel like your whole life is falling apart. You might feel like the light inside is shining stronger and stronger, and on the outside everything is slipping away.

It’s part of the path, I think. It’s from the same reason that meditative states sometimes feel like a very blissful type of dying.

Think of it like a movie projected onto a screen. Usually, we have our backs to the projector so we only see the image, all the different colors and shapes, and we don’t see the single beam of white light that they come from. In meditation, you turn around to look into the projector beam. The colors and shapes are there inside it, but you only see white.

Going deeper into meditation is a path of uncreation. Reversing the process of manifestation that generates our incarnated experience.

This is the 36 tattvas in Kashmir Shaivism, the branching path through which the divine descends into material reality and the human being ascends to the divine.

The pure “I am” splits into internal and external, the external splits again and again, more concrete with every movement away from the source. The Self identifies with its creation and becomes limited.

And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. You know this story already.

When you go back into the “I am” you are retracing these steps and erasing them behind you. The infinity of creation which emerged out of consciousness dissolves back into it.

It’s not the end. On the tantric path it’s not enough just to melt into oneness, you have to bring oneness into creation. This world is only samsara if you have a samsaric mind; if you have a divine mind, it is Shakti. The mountain peak, where you leave the world behind and fall into God, is one stop on the road, and from there you turn around.

But it’s a place we all have to go. We have to go alone and we must be prepared never to come back.

For now, I’m not able yet to transform this reality but I’m too bound to it to transcend it entirely. The dim lights of this world lose their color and blur together, but the bright light still seems so far away.

It’s like in the Torah, if you look at the story of the Israelites as the journey of the soul. We go out from Egypt, slavery to the ego, towards the Promised Land of enlightened consciousness. Between those two poles, there’s the desert. The vast open space. No markers, no path except what’s right in front of our eyes.

This is the space of spiritual development. Sometimes things seem more clear, sometimes less so.

Things are less clear for me right now. I walk around like a foreigner in the places most familiar to me, talking to people I’ve known for years and wondering, who are you?

I can’t bring myself to care about the things that most people care about. I meditate in the morning and everything comes together into a single point of clarity, and for the rest of the day I blunder around feeling like I just landed from another planet and I have a map from the wrong decade. I barely recognize my own life. Everything I try to do veers off in the wrong direction.

I see now that I can’t trust my own mind. My emotions do strange, crazy things and I’m not in control of them, I have no part in them except what I give to them. The sense of control over my life, the ability to manage things for myself, is a ripening of a certain karma. It’s a grace.

I’ve neglected and disregarded the material world in the past, and so now I experience the ripening of a different karma.

And that’s also a grace.

The times when things seem clear are more dangerous, I think. We’re in the desert here – if you see an oasis, good chance you’re heading for a mirage.

When you’re lost, you can be humble. You can be in that sacred space of bewilderment where everything is possible and all you can do is laugh.