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Published: Aug 9, 2011
Category: Spirituality
Today is our last day on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Hot? The water in the pool was like a hot tub, the hot tub was like boiling blood, and as for the Gulf, every time I went in I asked, “Is this normal?” Yes, that hot. So it was never hard for our daughter’s newfound friends to find us; if we weren’t in the water, we were sitting in air conditioning, reading.
My wife inhaled her books. Instead of surrendering to Turner Classic Movies, she headed off to the island’s bookstore. Day after day, she has taken a raft to the beach and paddled out, riding the wavelets back, so “Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to find Zen on the Sea” was almost an inevitable choice. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle download, click here.]
We’re fond of surfing in this establishment. My stepson --- an environmental lawyer-in-training --- is sufficiently hard-core to surf off Long Island in January; he’s the one who told us about characters like Miki Dora and got us started. Not that my wife and I actually surf. We fall into the spectator category, especially when it comes to “Riding Giants,” a film that shows the masters confronting 30-foot waves. My wife sees these big wave surfers as fearless Bodhisattvas: “They’ve merged with nature, it’s like they’ve already died.” I’m less eloquent. I simply cannot grok that Laird Hamilton can put his hand against a zillion pounds of water as high as a New York brownstone as casually as if he were resting it on his wife’s ass. [To buy the DVD of “Riding Giants” from Amazon, click here.To buy a download, click here.]
“Saltwater Buddha” is a book that had to happen. Jaimal Yogis, who learned to surf from his father, hit puberty in Sacramento and freaked out. He was hanging out with rich, bored kids, and they got into rich, bored trouble: drugs, vandalism, driving drunk, probation. Eventually Jaimal decided he’d had enough, and, like the young Siddhartha, left home to see what the real world offered. With a few differences: he “borrowed” $900 from his mother’s credit card and flew to Hawaii to become a surfer. Luckily for him --- and us --- he’s sincere and charming. You like him. You want it to work out for him.
Yogis returned home, but he’d seen enough of surfing and water to make a connection that many others have noted. Here’s Thich Nhat Hahn, from Essential Writings:
My ground of being is the reality of no birth, no death. No coming, no going. It is like water is the ground of being of a wave. The wave might be afraid of being or non-being. But if she knows that she is water, she will lose all her fear. Nothing is born...nothing dies. Birth and death cannot really touch us. If you know that, you will be able to enjoy every second of your daily life --- even if you are in terminal illness.
Yogis dives into Buddhism. The reading. Sitting. The monastery life, at Thich Nhat Hanh’s retreat in France, in India, in California. He lives simply; drugs and alcohol fall away. He gains some wisdom. He becomes artful as a surfer. He gets --- bet you didn’t see this coming --- a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University.
The joy of “Saltwalter Buddha” is its lightness. There are great surfer stories and great Buddhism stories. There are false starts and unexpected breakthroughs. There is charm and wit to spare. And when it comes to wisdom, Yogis heads right for the big stuff --- and nails it. Like this:
On this particular day, the waves were like endless frothy barricades. I'd been paddling for twenty minutes and I still wasn't outside. I pushed and pumped and heaved and whined. The sea punched and kicked and jammed sand down my throat. And in the midst of this abuse, I realized how much I loved surfing.
I loved the actual riding of the wave, of course. But I also loved the challenge of the paddle.
It wasn't always like that. And maybe I was just happy to be back in the water after living in India for months. Or maybe my mind was more accepting after hanging with all the ultra-happy Tibetan monks. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized every surfer has to like paddling, at least a little.
This was because extremely little of each surf session is spent actually standing up on your surfboard on a wave --- maybe one percent ---- so if you're looking to have a good time it's essential to find a way to enjoy paddling, or at least good naturedly bear it. And in that way, I thought surfing is kind of a good metaphor of the rest of life.
The extremely good stuff --- chocolate and great sex and weddings and hilarious jokes --- fills about a minute portion of an adult lifespan.
Which is pretty much what my wife concluded after days of paddling out into the Gulf. Empirical knowledge. Real knowledge. Very welcome knowledge.