Chapter Eight
After the demise of Now That Everything’s Been Said, Charlie told me he wanted to get a place of his own. He told me this gently as he held me and reminded me that he had gone from living with his parents to rooming with friends in New York to living with me. At twenty-two, Charlie had never lived alone.
At twenty-seven, I couldn’t argue with his logic, but it was little Carol who heard the news, and she wasn’t taking it well. All she—I—could do was hold on to him tightly, as if that would keep him with me. At last, after promising that he would always love me (a promise kept), Charlie stepped back and began to gather his things. As I watched him drive away I blamed myself, yet again, for my inability to keep two people together who loved each other.
At first we remained close. Charlie couldn’t wait to show me the room he had rented over a garage on Stanley Hills Drive. Outwardly I mirrored his enthusiasm, but I couldn’t believe that he had left the house on Wonderland Avenue (read: me) for such a minuscule space. I couldn’t imagine a family of mice living inside it, let alone a six-foot-tall man with an upright bass, a Fender bass, several amplifiers, and a black-and-tan German shepherd named Schwartz. After a while I came to view the little studio as Charlie’s Declaration of Independence and stayed away.
A natural consequence of our separation was that first Charlie, then I, began to date other people. It was 1969. It was okay to love lots of people. Indeed, it was mandatory. But human nature hadn’t changed as much as the sixties had led us to believe. It was painful to think of Charlie seeing other women, and I cried every time I came home from one of my own infrequent dates. I didn’t want to date. I wanted Charlie. Letting go was proving incredibly difficult, and yet I knew it was a necessary step toward empowering little Carol to become the woman she had the potential to be. However, reaching that objective would require me to overturn my generational indoctrination that I needed a man to complete me, and achieving that objective would require me to find my center.
I did find my center, and a man was involved, but not in the way you might expect.
I began taking hatha yoga classes at the Integral Yoga Institute on Benda Place near the convergence of Barham Boulevard, Cahuenga Pass, and the Hollywood Freeway. In addition to hatha poses, called asanas, the classes incorporated meditation, chanting, relaxation, and breathing techniques. I found these practices so healing emotionally and physically that I signed up to teach them to others. I attended discussion groups and volunteered in the kitchen, where my knowledge of vegetarian recipes expanded from nut loaf to include two entrées, three salads, and four desserts. Only a block away from the sea of traffic on the 101, the Institute was a harbor of peace, joy, love, and learning. I looked forward to meeting its founder.
C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder was born in South India on December 22, 1914. He grew up to become a successful businessman with a wife and two sons. After his wife passed away, Ramaswamy left his sons with their grandmother and went on a spiritual quest. He walked through jungles, forests, and caves and climbed mountains until he arrived in Rishikesh, where he found his spiritual master, Swami Sivananda. In 1949, Sivananda ordained Ramaswamy as Swami Satchidananda. The name was a compound of three Sanskrit words (sat, chid, and ananda) loosely meaning “truth,” “knowledge,” and “bliss.”
Satchidananda came to New York in 1966 at the invitation of the artist Peter Max and established the original Integral Yoga Institute in an Upper West Side apartment. Disciples received and disseminated Satchidananda’s wisdom with single-minded devotion. Following customs in his home country, they showed their reverence by calling their religious teacher “Gurudev,” kissing his feet, and surrounding him with flowers. Though he accepted such tributes with grace, he often reminded them that he was simply a teacher. He made no financial requests. There were no requirements for service at the Institute and no compulsory level of practice. He asked only that his students learn whatever they were ready to learn.
Gurudev’s flowing orange robes, hair, mustache, and beard were consistent with what most Americans thought a swami should look like, but the consistency stopped there. He drove a car, wore a wristwatch, and could repair anything from a camera to a carburetor. I was drawn to him because he didn’t ask me to retreat from worldly life but showed, by example, how I could bring the principles of yoga into my daily life. Gurudev asked us to look for service in everything we did, be it folding laundry, smiling at the irritating woman at the DMV, or not getting angry at the driver of the motorcycle who had just aggressively cut us off.
“Karma yoga is action,” he said. “And every action is karma yoga.”
Most people thought karma referred to good deeds that could later be withdrawn from the bank of good fortune. Gurudev taught that every selfless action was its own reward. He also promoted interfaith pluralism. The message that every religion could lead a sincere seeker to the same goal would become the focus of Gurudev’s lectures and actions in his later years. His motto, “Truth is one, paths are many,” struck me as a beautiful way of expressing my wish for everyone to live in harmony.
With the lilt characteristic of his South Indian accent, Gurudev would speak softly at discussions.
“We are all wanting to get to the same place. If you are going one way and I am going another, let us agree that neither way is better. Let us embrace all ways together. Always together.”
And then he would chuckle because he had just made a pun.
Gurudev had a gift for using simple analogies to help people incorporate complex theological concepts into their daily lives. In the summer of 1969 he gave the opening invocation at Woodstock. Whether speaking to twenty people or an audience of thousands, Gurudev exuded a calm, easy confidence. He never proselytized, only spoke of what was possible. He believed that his purpose was to guide people to their spiritual connection with each other and with whatever form of higher power they were ready to embrace—or not.
I was already in tune with most of what he was saying, but I found a deeper connection through his analogy of a candle in a windstorm being blown in all directions, its flame flickering. The owner of the candle is fearful that the flame will be extinguished by the wind. A neighbor gives the fellow a glass chimney to put around the candle. Now the owner can see that the flame will burn steadily and brightly no matter what’s going on around it. Now he knows he has nothing to fear.
“The peace within us is the flame,” said Gurudev, “and the chimney is our awareness of our relationship to each other and to God.”
When Gurudev said “God,” I took it to mean God by whatever name. Twelve-step programs use the phrase “God as I understand God” to cover all the names and concepts people use to describe the life force that animates and inspires them. Gurudev’s analogy of the candle was a reminder that if we have faith in our relationship with everyone and everything in the universe, the flame of our inner peace will remain constant through life and death. My understanding of this concept made me stronger.
Sometimes Gurudev gave me personal advice, but he never took it personally when my inner rebel chose not to follow it. He knew I needed to learn in my own way and in my own time. Gurudev attained Samadhi on August 19, 2002. He was eighty-eight when he left his body. I was one of his many friends, disciples, devotees, and students around the world who mourned his passing and celebrated his life.
By combining Gurudev’s wisdom with principles from my Jewish heritage, reaffirming my dedication to excellence, responsibility, fairness, and compassion, and incorporating all those things into what I hoped was a commonsense approach to theology, I found my center—or so I thought.
I would come to learn that a center isn’t a destination. It’s a journey.