Brahmacharya Vows

On June 2nd I will take the Renunciate Vow of Brahmacharya, joining the Nayaswami Order, and receiving the new spiritual name and title of Brahmachari Tandava. For those of you who read that sentence as complete gibberish I shall attempt to explain.

The Nayaswami Order is a new expression of the ancient Swami monastic order (“naya” means “new”), and was started a few years ago by (Naya)Swami Kriyananda. The purpose is to retain the original ideals, but in a way that is both more appropriate for the current age and interdenominational, open to people on any flavor of the spiritual path. Some qualities you would traditionally expect of a monk -- e.g. celibacy and devotion to God -- still apply, while others do not (I will not be locking myself away in a monastery, for instance). If you want to dive into the details, there’s lots to read on the website, including Swamiji’s entire book, A Renunciate Order for the New Age.

I won’t be a swami in this order, but a brahmachari, which you can think of as a novice swami, or simply as a monk. Brahmachari means “one who flows with Brahma,” and also has connotations of self-control, and the “Brahmachari” part of my name is kind of like calling a Western monk “Brother,” but you don’t have to say it when you’re talking to me. My actual name will be Tandava, which means “the dance of Shiva,” and which has enough interesting things to say about it that it merits its own blog post. For now I’ll just say that it’s common to assume a new name at a time like this, accentuating the transition from one’s former life to the spiritual life.

So what is this all about? The spiritual path is a journey towards finding ultimate bliss in God, which is easier said than done. Even if you’re already on the spiritual path, there may come a time at which it can be very helpful to formalize this goal with a vow, much like two people who have been dating might decide to get married. You don’t have to, but there’s more of a structure there, and community support, and powerful symbolism, all of which can help keep you going for a serious, long-term commitment.

This is an important point, so I want to highlight it: What we tend to notice most about a monastic vow is what is being given up, but what it’s really about is where we’re going.

Here’s a simple example, one of my favorites because it’s one I often find myself needing to work on. Nobody gives up eating dessert purely in order to make themselves miserable (at least, I sure hope not). But people do it all the time because they want to lose weight, or so they can get in shape to run a marathon, or for similar reasons. The goal they aspire to is worth giving up smaller pleasures for. It may be challenging, but they want to do it. If the goal is important enough to you, the challenging part doesn’t even feel like “renunciation,” but rather just sweetens (ha!) your ultimate victory.

Gandhi advised that you should never give up a pleasure until you’ve replaced it with a higher pleasure. Otherwise, you’re just making things difficult for yourself. The search for pleasure leads to the search for happiness, then on to bliss, and thus to God, so you’ll get there in the end, regardless. And the spiritual path -- little though I would have guessed a few years ago -- has joy strewn all along it, so it’s worth the trip however long it takes.

Still, the celibacy aspect of renunciation alarms a lot of people. Let me address it by starting off with some thoughts about families in general.

I was very lucky to be born into a very good family, with deep, loving, spiritual connections. And I hope never to take that for granted, because there are many, many people who don’t get along with their birth families at all. On the other hand, there are people like Quena and Cass who are family to me in every way but blood. There are the enormous Dickerson (step-)family reunions I used to go to, with as many “outlaws” as in-laws. And numerous other people in my life have shown me that, regardless of who you’re born with, your true family will come to you one way or another. The spiritual family of Ananda is another prime example.

This is why I’m not at all concerned about having children. I love children, and I love my new nephew, but I don’t feel the need to personally create any. If I have karma with someone, we’ll find each other.

The question of having a partner is a trickier issue, since that’s been much more of an explicit desire and goal for so much of my life. Some of the same thinking applies, though. Having a partnership as a way to develop love in a deep, focused way can be a very good and necessary thing. But there’s also a time when it’s more appropriate to expand one’s feelings outward, and feel more impersonal love and compassion for humanity as a whole. This is the stage I feel like I’m in these days. My job exemplifies it well -- I’m managing relationships with and among 27 different people, and I can’t even imagine hauling my consciousness over to focus specifically on just one relationship, the way I would if a romantic situation were to develop. I’d rather keep expanding it outward.

It’s also just as simple as the fact that I’m currently single and quite happy to be so. I work and serve and meditate as much as I’m able, and I come back inside myself to recharge my batteries. It’s a good arrangement for me right now, but there’s not really any spare energy lying around that I want to direct to a relationship.

But still, one’s relationship with God is always personal and independent of outwards vows and symbols. So why actually bother to do this, when I can still be single, meditate, serve, etc., even without it? I’d been thinking about it for a while, but it was my brahmachari brother Amit who pushed me over that particular fence on New Year’s Eve. That’s when he took his vow, and that’s when it finally clicked for me. We have a lot of Nayaswamis here in the Palo Alto community, but there were only two Brahmacharinis, and both were older women -- not really my demographic. So I never really had much of an image in my mind of someone more like me doing this. As soon as Amit provided that, I realized I was ready.

The inspiration that night was palpable, and that’s something I too want to be able to provide for others who are ready to receive it. I want to be an example of how you can dedicate your life to God, even as a young ex-Stanford, ex-Googler in the middle of Silicon Valley. So for me, that’s a huge reason for adding an external form to something that’s already going on inwardly.

So that’s the news on the life-changes going on over here. I just wanted you all to know about it so if you see someone who looks an awful lot like Graham but is wearing yellow and called Tandava, it’s still me.

Experiments: Food, Sleep, and Energy

A few months ago a new book in the Wisdom of Yogananda series was published: How to Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality. It’s packed with useful tips and ideas, enough to seem overwhelming until you remember to just relax, find the ones that seem relevant to what you need right now, and focus on those. I’m not often one to drastically tweak my daily habits, but this book got me inspired into a few interesting experiments.

In the food department, the idea that most intrigued me was that of eating monomeals. In spite of my spell-checker’s insistence, these are not one-term algebraic expressions, but rather meals in which you eat only a single (raw, natural) food, and as much of it as you like until you feel satiated. It’s actually much easier for your digestive system to handle a consistent batch of a single food than to deal with a mix of many different ingredients that digest at different rates and in different ways. It takes less energy for your body to process the food, and you’re also better able to tell when you’ve actually eaten an appropriate amount.

I’ve always liked the idea of fasting as a cleansing “vacation” for the digestive system, but I really don’t like fasting itself at all. Monomeals seem like a good compromise to me. I’m currently doing one or two a day, most often with apples, bananas, melons, or other fruit. I’ll usually throw in a “monosnack” of almonds or something similar in between, too. If I save a full “regular” meal for the evening, I manage to skip most of the afternoon energy slump.

Also in support of the energy levels, I’ve been increasing my the Energization Exercises two or three times a day. In addition to the book inspiring renewed will power and concentration, I also discovered an interesting refinement to the mental technique. Instead of visualizing the energy flowing to the various body parts as I activated them, I imagined it moving just ahead of what my body was doing. If you can get into that flow, it becomes much more an experience of tapping into existing energy rather than generating it all from your own little self. Fun to play with.

The final area I’ve been experimenting in is sleep. I don’t think it was in this book, but I’ve read elsewhere Yogananda’s comment that six hours of sleep a night is plenty for most people, and you don’t want to spend more time subconscious than you need to. I’ve always felt very attached to my 7.5-8 hours a night, ever since Dr. Dement’s Sleep & Dreams class in college, but by the time I got through this book I felt like I might actually be able to change that habit.

So I’ve been gradually trimming down the amount I sleep, and have gotten to the point where I can do 6.5 hours a night pretty regularly without any trouble. Still working on the last half hour, but I feel like I’m almost there. And interestingly, even though I often took short afternoon naps before I had a full-time job, now I find that even if I try to nap on a weekend, I often can’t. It’s a little harder sometimes to get up in the mornings on weekends, but once I am up, I’m fine. And I can sense a difference now between needing sleep and merely wanting sleep, which I never particularly noticed before.

The concurrence of the food experiment has actually helped the sleep part a great deal. For instance, if someone brings cookies to work and I eat them (because I can’t help myself, even though I usually try to avoid sweets until the weekend) I can much more dramatically feel the sag in my energy level. But I can tell that it’s not due to lack of sleep (which might otherwise be my first assumption) because if I sleep the same 6.5 hours that night, without any extra, I still feel fine the next day. So I can tell the amount of sleep is sustainable in and of itself, but other factors can try to fool me into thinking its not.

It’s nice to have the extra couple of hours in the day, though I’m still getting used to being awake that much. I’m using some of the time for extra sadhana, including getting myself to a couple of the hour and a half morning meditations in the community temple, and doing some yoga on other mornings. I’m also spending a little more time reading just for fun, so it’s not all “virtuous and productive” as Mom would say, but it’s an okay balance at this point.

[Another intriguing sleep concept I came across recently is segmented sleep. Sounded to me a little trickier to make useful, though, and one sleep experiment at a time is enough.]

An interesting facet to everything in this post, aside from just the fun of experimenting with how human bodies work, is the sense of attunement. Taking instructions from my guru into the most basic aspects of my everyday life -- food and sleep -- is a good way to practice feeling the discipleship connection at all times. So it’s all worth it just for that perspective, even if nothing else.

The Next Chapter: East West

Well. This is the closest I’ve come in 9 years to going an entire year without blogging, and it didn’t seem like I ought to let that happen, so here we are.

One of the main reasons for this silence is that I have vastly less (can you do that?) free time to write these days, due to the fact that I have a new job. And despite what I said back when I started my last tutoring job, this one is full-time. “What could induce you to do such a thing?” I hear you cry. Well, I’m glad you asked.

East West Bookshop in Mountain View is owned by Ananda, so over the last few years I’ve gotten to know a number of the folks who work there. Tushti and Surendra have been the managers for the past 9 years, and earlier this year asked me if I’d like to take over for them when they move to Oregon in January.  After a bit of time spent wrapping my head around the idea of doing a very different job than I ever expected to, I decided it would be a fun new adventure. I’m joined in this by my new co-manager Nooshin, and the transition is going quite well. And we even have our photos in the new edition of the East West Magazine, so it must be official!

I feel immensely fortunate to be given this opportunity. I’ve spent a lot of the last few years of my “temporary retirement” doing increasing amounts of volunteer service for Ananda, and loving it. But there’s been a little part of me worrying in the background about the possibility of having to go elsewhere eventually, and work for a cause I believe in less, just to make money. So this job feels as much like a gift to me as a service to God, gurus, and all spiritual seekers of the Bay Area.

In other, less dramatic news, I got a hold of Pa’s ukulele recently, and have been having a surprisingly good time with it. It’s strangely addictive, actually. This is one of those cases where I can get a sense of what Yogananda meant when he said that “thoughts are universally, not individually, rooted.” The current ukulele fad that’s going on these days feels very much like a thing that I hopped onto for a ride. I’m enjoying it, but it doesn’t entirely feel like it came from my own head.

P.S. Okay, technically I have been blogging more than once a year, since I post to the Ananda Family News blog fairly often. But the word “blogging” for me will always default to my own little corner of the internet here on WhistleDance.

Christmas Card 2010

Cheryl and I sent out Christmas cards this year, but due to the sheer, overwhelming number of wonderful people we know, we inevitably missed some of you. But never fear! Now you can print out your own card at home! It's even customizable — just check the boxes that best suit your desired holiday experience and voilá! Enjoy!

L.A. Pilgrimage

Mom and I spent three days of the long Thanksgiving weekend on a trip to Los Angeles, to see all the SRF-related sights, and to visit the new Ananda ashram house for one of Swami Kriyananda's talks. I had never seen Lake Shrine, Mt Washington, etc., and Mom hadn't been there since the 80's, so it was a fun new adventure for both of us. I put a few photos up here.

I loved finally getting to see all the places I'd read about in the AY, many of which seem as though they've simply dropped in today from 6o years ago. Hollywood Temple, for instance, is completely surrounded by giant Kaiser buildings, which makes the already small church look even more miniature. But SRF has a knack for creating beautiful places,  thanks in equal part, I expect, to our guru's vibrations and their gorgeous landscaping. You can still meditate on the temple grounds, blissfully unaware of the surrounding skyscrapers.

We also went to Forest Lawn, where Yogananda's body is in the mausoleum. Not much to see there, of course, but kind of incredible to think that the only thing actually separating us from him is a few inches of marble. Similarly, I enjoyed getting to meditate in the Temple of Leaves, and do the energization exercises on the Mt Washington tennis court, knowing that he had done those same things on those same spots. We even got to stand in the very room where a young Donald Walters was accepted by Yogananda as a disciple. The spiritual aura of these places is palpable.

The Ananda visit wrapped up our trip, and it was fun to show up as a surprise to our friends there. The quartet of singers we've got down there is sounding amazing. (Ananda music is always good, but that morning it was write-home-about-it good.) Swamiji gave a great talk, and even stayed around for a blessing line for a while afterward. I took the opportunity, appropriately for the Thanksgiving weekend, to quickly just thank him for everything he's done and created that has had such a profound effect on my life.

On a related-but-unrelated note, I've just heard that Daya Mata, president of SRF, passed away last night. Aum and blessings to her soul....