My Zen Journey. ありがとうございます Kyoto!

I just returned from a lovely trip to Tokyo and Kyoto. And the trip was everything I needed and so much more. If Bali has a gentle calming effect on me, Kyoto had the more absolute zen vibe to it. When I travel to places, I want to do much more than just tick off the 'must-see' places. Ideally, I'd love to walk around streets or neighbourhoods that aren't frequented by tourists and live like how locals would. And I got to do a lot of that in Kyoto, which also led to me not seeing everything I should have, including the Kinkakuji, or the Golden Pavilion temple, which I agree is a very shameful thing to say!

But I walked loads, drifted into the woods and followed trails that lead nowhere in particular. Irrespective of sun or rain, I slung my Bourke Street Bakery bag over my shoulder and started the day being super excited about everything that I was going to experience that day.

More detailed version and experiences of my trip will most probably feature on my other blog. The purpose and reason for this post is more spiritual than anything, I'll reserve the discussion around gorgeous meals I had in Japan for another day :)

Like i mentioned earlier, if bali (and ubud more so) invites you to discover your spiritual self and get to know the one person we run from always (our inner self), Japan (and Kyoto more so) doesn't give you an option, you're forced to be calm, at least that's what I feel. There is so much quietness and solitude and zen all around you that you can't not get engulfed in it. In most of the shrines and temples I visited, I felt this urge to sit down on the tatami mats to meditate. And in many I gave into that urge to just go with the flow, which was the entire point of my trip anyway. One temple that was especially beautiful was the Eikando shrine. Either because of how quiet it was or it's sheer beauty with leaves on trees almost changing their colours in preparation for autumn, i don't know. What i do know is that I could sit for an hour leaning against a pillar with my eyes closed, letting time go by. I had no where to go, no one to meet, nothing to complete, no agenda at all.

These last few months, I've traversed the path of life with very unsure and hesitant steps. My physical asana practice has been strong yes, but not fulfilling enough. Even as I lay on my mat during Shavasana, my mind would be like this small bird whirling all over my brain. Always making plans, dividing days into one hour slots for things to do, making sure I was squeezing out every last bit of juice from life. Almost like filling up my life with things to do, would make me quieten the mind or so i could run away from the thoughts that would be with me when I did eventually sit down to do nothing. Which is pretty crazy, because I pride myself on the fact that I can be alone with my mind and that I don't necessarily seek the company of people to entertain myself or fill my empty hours. But here I was, unconsciously doing the exact opposite.

So when Kyoto forced me to take a step back and be ok with not being able to see everything I had planned to see, or eat at every ramen place or try the desserts from every famous kyoto bakery, I had no choice but to let it go and be ok with it. So Kyoto, among many other things, was a lesson for me to slow down. To be patient. Patience is a virtue I am yet to master, if anyone has ever done that successfully. If I have a dream, I want it to happen now. If I have a recipe in mind, I need to bake it now. And maybe that is why I wasn't able to fully pause and reflect back on this year and see everything I had achieved, all the beauty that I was exposed to everyday, all the friends I had made, all the trips I had been to, all the lessons I had learnt :  good/bad/ugly, happy and joyful or steeped in tears and sorrow. I just wasn't living in the present or being here now. And it wasn't like I wasn't trying. I was, but I was incapable of making it happen. No meditation, no talks with friends helped. I have opened this blog many a time to write about it, but inspiration didn't flow through me and everything I wrote seemed contrived and fake.

It was while sitting on those tatami mats, while walking through those long never-ending lanes from temple to shrine to garden, while staring out of a train window at miles and miles of clear blue skies dotted with white cottony clouds, I realised what I had been missing out on. This ease that I had known before, that I had lost, i finally saw traces of it coming back to me in Kyoto. After agonizing on my dying (and eventually dead) phone battery late one evening, I realised, I had nothing to worry about. I knew where I had to go, enough resources to get there, and people along the way to help me, so this feeling of "I'm all alone and I am stranded in an unknown place" was my own mind trying to scare me.

And I had been very successful at scamming my own self to believe that here i was in a world that doesn't get what I am trying to say, with a dream that I can't seem to go after right now, alone and unhappy. While actually, I knew I was doing what needed to be done to get me closer to my dream, I knew where I had to go and how i will get there, I had the resources to reach there and most importantly, in case I ever got stuck, I had people I could fall back on or seek out for advice. I wasn't lost. And i wasn't alone. And I was in no hurry to get where I wanted to go. So every time I picked up an article about an entrepreneur or see friends of mine starting to work on their true passions, I'd feel dejected and count my life in the number of hours I was losing by not doing what I truly wanted to do. So indeed life ended up feeling like a sacrifice, a "i could be somewhere else, doing something else" regret. And that's the last thing you should have: regrets.  In every sense, I had turned out to be this individual which was as far from what i am and who i want to be.

In Japanese shrines, they have this fortune telling cylinder, that has a small opening on one side. And this cylinder is full of tiny bamboo sticks, that have a number written on them. So you shake that box and a stick comes out, you read out the number on it to the priest and he will seek out a sheet of paper associated with that number, on which is scripted your supposed fortune. Very popular with school children in some shrines :) They would all shriek with either glee or sorrow on their blessed or doomed fortunes. I did it in two shrines, the first two that I visited in Tokyo and they said two things. One was a couplet that asked me to appreciate each day and live in the present and let go of what has happened, for the past serves no one. And the second asked me to be patient. That the situation I was waiting for would indeed arrive, i just had to trust the plan.

And so, I need to believe that exactly how I reached home safe and sound without being guided by Google Maps every single minute, similarly, I need to be patient and trust and believe and I'll reach home. Eventually. A little bit of effort, a little bit of trust and a little bit of faith.

This week, I decided to sign up for my teacher Michael's workshop at Pure Yoga : 7 days of transformation. And I love it already.Maybe because it comes after this trip to Kyoto, or the fact that i absolutely admire Michael and his teachings, and or that I feel like I am back at my teacher training with my 28 other friends, sitting down on my mat mediating for a bit, chanting for a bit, practicing for a bit. It's just absolutely beautiful. We don't crazy asanas and restrict our practice to surya namaskars, but frankly that itself is a good enough 'workout'. I try and make it for Michael's Universal classes at Pure on Saturdays as much as I can, and his surya namaskar 'warm-up' has to be the best warm-up routine I've seen in a yoga class. I once tried it for one of my own classes at work, and i had folks panting and sweating profusely after it. And when I ended with : and that was our warm-up, I'm sure they would've thrown things at me! So suryanamaskars by themselves are excellent to ready your body for further tougher asanas, and they're great for meditation.

I can't meditate without moving for a bit first, it just makes it easier for me to calm my mind down and prepare it for meditation, and also warms up my body to sit for longer periods of time without cramping up. The beauty of the asana practice is that that in itself can be your meditation. And in Michael's classes they often are. He encourages you to close your eyes as you flow through a vinyasa and that is what my teacher Deborah does as well in her Universal classes, and I have seen huge benefits of doing that. When you're not seeing with your eyes, you actually 'see' more (!) and feel your body more. It also helps me to get a sense of how my body moves in space. And for me, it ends up being a dance, the sweat doesn't bother me, I'm not wondering about how I am looking, or if I can push more in a particular asana, I'm just........ flowing.

It's just been two days in the workshop and I am slowly beginning to get back that sense of peace that I used to find in my practice.  I no longer wander around in my head during shavasana, I am actually resting and my mind is quiet.

Here are two pamphlets I found in the famed Nanzen-ji shrine that stuck with me and i might keep referring back to them in times of stress or if I feel rudderless in this 'always-on' world and I hope those of you reading it take something from it for your own lives as well. I can't bring back the serenity of Nanzen-ji in a blog post, but i send a prayer out for each one of you reading these poems, may you be happy, may you be well.

~ 

नमस्ते