Yogatations—Or Not

Eldridge Hanes

Two questions were recently posed to me. First, “What activities help you feel centered and satisfied.” Next, “What is it that helps you find a modicum of inner peace.”

Both are interesting. Both require much thought, but added to these was a request: should I be so inclined, would I make some comments on my thoughts. My questioner knew full well that I can resist many things, but a request to comment on any subject either in writing or verbally is a challenge that I have never been able to resist. We begin.

Activities are either of the kinesthetic sort, those that are physical and require active participation, say skiing, or those of the more sedentary sort, like fly tying. Both bring satisfaction. One I no longer participate in for clear reasons, such as my physical well-being; the other still gives satisfaction. I am easily satisfied, but centered is a different matter. Centered is more complicated and needs the most thought, and, heaven forbid, insight.

The second of the charges, finding inner peace, is the most intimidating. I’m going to assume for this exercise that finding inner peace involves listening to one’s internal conversations.

“Redge, why the hell did you say that? Who do you think you are? What are you going to do now and what will people think? What people? Do I really care?” That’s the rub. Yes I do care, and so do most people. What people think about us is always a guess, which is to say, what they really think about us, but this does not address the “inner” part very well. And that’s the one that matters.

I’m not absolutely sure what centering means, at least not in the human philosophical sense of the word. If I was a potter then I would know that centering meant placing the clay in the middle of one’s wheel prior to turning it into a bowl or similar vessel, but centering for a human seems quite different. I have had the impulse when my children were young to grab them and plant them directly in the center of their chair as if I was about to turn them into an inanimate object, but patience won out and they came through with flying colors. I’ll get to human centering shortly.

Viewing centered and satisfied as two different objectives gives focus. Being more inclined toward the kinesthetic, I first considered all of the physical activities that have given me and still give me satisfaction . . . fishing, in particular the kind that requires casting a hand-tied fly into a crystal-clear trout stream or the edge of a mangrove swamp from the front of a beautiful flats boat, gives me great satisfaction. Especially if I’m the one who, while bending over a table filled with feathers, yarn, and spools of thread, tied the fly.

Next would be sitting in a duck blind just before dawn and listening to the marsh wake up. The sun, deep red and orange, peeks over the horizon signaling the vast array of birds that live in and from the marsh to wake up and speak to the new day. First the red-winged blackbirds, with their long melodic trills call out, then the gossipy female mallards fill the air with a long string of quacks and clucks, and finally massive lines of geese and swans fly honking and yelling at each other as they swirl around looking for their daytime resting places.

From there my mind goes to a pine-studded field in Georgia or the Carolinas where I watch a black-and-white English pointer as it stops and sniffs the air, then slowly moves forward nose still raised and tail held high and rigid. He, or even better, she, moves forward following the scent of the scurrying covey of bobwhite quail as they run through the blackberry thickets.

These are but a few of the things that bring satisfaction both in the doing and in the remembering. Not enough time or ink exists to convey all of the beautiful daily activities that give me satisfaction, but there is one activity that conveys both satisfaction and what might even be called centering.

Writing, the thing that I’m doing right now, is my most satisfying activity and the only one that helps me put all the daily random thoughts, anxieties, and confusions that badger me into that bare closet where I store all of my old tears, fears, and failures.

If one is a writer, or imagines the possibility of being a writer, then it is visible in his or her actions, and even predictable from an early age. My own inclination to speak even when not invited, to tell stories and jokes both real and imagined, and to read with inexplicable curiosity all manner of printed material, both literary and ordinary, destined me to be a writer, a spinner of yarns and teller of stories. True or not, I enjoy telling myself all of that.

So much for satisfaction. How do I get centered? What the hell is centered? If a plumb bob was anchored to the top of my head, the bob would end up in my right-side front pocket. I ain’t got a center. One of the dictionary definitions of centered, as an adjective, is “calm or composed in manner or temperament.” Whoa! Me, calm and composed in manner and temperament. Now this is a desperate challenge. As I have said above, I am the kinesthetic sort. Calm and composed may be a bridge too far, but I’ll give it a try.

I had a friend a long ago who tried to guide me toward meditation and yoga so that I might sublimate the anxious competitive side of my inner self and float through life with a candid and perpetual smile. He was a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the creator of transcendental meditation and a believer in what I later named Yogatation. This was the ability to sit in a position that is both unnatural and excruciatingly painful while at the same time keeping a serene smile on one’s face while meditating on the secrets of the universe, or maybe just wondering why the hell people watch TV shows like The Housewives of Los Angeles.

Think of every picture you have ever seen of the Buddha, username Siddhartha Gautama, and remember his expression. This was my objective when I agreed to go to a training session of “Yogatation.” Even though I told my friend that I wasn’t a good candidate for this sort of activity, he insisted. He also said that if I really studied hard and applied myself, I, like him, could learn to fly.

Now you must believe that when I say I wasn’t a good candidate I truly meant it. I am not your poster boy for yoga. I am, to be kind, a hefty lad. Not rolling in blubber nor thin as a rail, but hefty. I shop in the well-muscled, big boy shop. Therefore, only the devil can make me do the lotus position for eternity. Putting my right foot on top of my left thigh and vice versa is not only impossible without skilled trainers assisting but perhaps even mechanically impossible for me.

Still, the concept of flying amid all the stretching and suffering was an experience that I couldn’t pass up. After reacting to his claim in a less than centered way, I realized that he didn’t mean fly like a bird or airplane; rather he meant a kind of physical “hopping” while deep in meditation. He would supposedly be sitting on the floor in the lotus position and while deep in a meditative state, his whole body would levitate a few feet up and forward or sideways. I told him that I had already done that one night after a rather raucous party, but he allowed that that wasn’t the same thing since I had merely pushed myself into the air in a somewhat inebriated state and not while in a meditative trance.

I finally said that I would come to one of his sessions if I could watch him fly, you know, I wanted to put my hand into the wound. He allowed as how that was not proper procedure, that I needed to be initiated and trained before seeing or experiencing the mystical secrets of yoga and meditation. So, I was invited to attend a session and was instructed to bring a cushioned pad for the floor, a Baby Ruth candy bar, a white scarf, and something else that I can’t recall. He never explained the reasons for the Baby Ruth or scarf, but they must have been something the Maharishi enjoyed.

Even though I came prepared, it didn’t go well. What with my natural incredulity and poor laughter discipline, I was deemed unteachable and understandably, incorrigible. It was also pointed out that my lotus positioning was less than textbook.

All this being said, I’m still curious about the powers some say accrue to meditation in helping to find inner peace and understanding. Perhaps “understanding” is what is meant by “centered” other than simply being calm and composed in manner and temperament.

I recall reading a poem many years ago that has stuck with me ever since. Perhaps you know it, but if not, I shall reproduce it here since it is worth thinking about and has been for me a life lesson in the human mystery. It’s called “Richard Cory,” written by a favorite poet of mine, Edward Arlington Robinson.

Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked,
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I imagine that the friends and family of most suicide victims have a hard time wondering what happened to cause such radical self-harm and why. What bitter mystery was it that pushed their friend or loved one to finally open a dark door that was no longer closed to them. Richard Cory was tall, maybe even gaunt, well dressed, always with a friendly hello and smile for those who passed him on the street, but underneath, down in the dark tunnels that are inside of everyone, something was out of balance. He came upon a hole that he could no longer jump over. He had lost his center. He was driven to kill his inner self, snuffing out that part of him some might call his soul.

Every human needs something to give them peace, to assure them that everything will be okay. Most of the great thinkers of the world, Plato, Socrates, Cicero, Confucius, Kant, Big Bird, and Mr. Rogers, have written and wondered about the meaning of life and what energy keeps each of us striving forward.

One truism is that there is no inner peace if there is no belief in something bigger than oneself. Every religion invented or followed is designed to give some comfort to those who seek help. Our Yogatations folk who meditate on the mysteries of the universe are really wondering what comes next. I see the stars, planets, asteroids, and unsightly belly fat, but what does it all mean? Where are we all going?

But since this is by and about me, I shall answer the question posed by the editors, “What is it that helps you find a modicum of inner peace?” I look to Corinthians:

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part: but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Herein endeth the lesson. This gives me a modicum of inner peace.