Monkeying around in Hop Bottom:

A meditation on meditation

So there I was: cruising along at 80 miles per hour in a Lexus pumping “4th Dimension Rocket Ships Going Up” by Gift of Gab—member of conscious hip-hop group Blackalicious—seated in the passenger seat as a monk in orange robes switched lanes with one hand, daintily clasping vanilla soy milk in the other. We were on our way to the Quest Center for a student yoga retreat, my second one in successive years, and I was in severe need of detoxification, degenerated through modern existence as I was.

It wasn’t like this past year has been a complete whitewash of over-stimulated, over-output-oriented automation for me. In fact, 2005 has involved a fairly sizeable shift in stress and tenseness levels from Level A (as in ‘absurd’) to around Level K (as in it’s O-“kay” to say “see ya wouldn’t wanna be ya” to the Paper deadline demon. Rather than total workload, it’s been the numbing effect of too many hours typing away at email queues and research papers, indoors, staring at a screen (coincidentally, much like I am now) which has been tearing significant chunks out of my karmic well-being. Or maybe it’s the incessant sound of the hypercritical bug in my head which refuses to stop decrying the wrongness of Big Box America and her multitude of foreign policy sins. Either way, lately I’ve been further removed from society than usual, and a weekend tucked away in Hop Bottom, PA sounded like the perfectly warm, tea-offering partner of a remedy.

During the two-car journey, Amanda, a native Chicagoan and one of three American University students who came up with us, was awe-struck at the site of actual hills. I can’t imagine what she said when a shooting star passed through the night sky later on in the journey. We reached the Center, a small, wooden house amongst the rolling hills of Susquehanna County around midnight.

The retreat kicked off early the next day with morning yoga. Immediately, I called into question my decision to wear fitted thrift store jeans rather than loose sweats, whose great freedom of movement everybody else appeared to be enjoying. My internal yogi would moan softly at the beginning of each full-length lunge, partly at the contracting space around my crotch, but mostly at my troublingly inflexible limbs. Later, as the others twisted arms through legs and around their backs, I would recall many a childhood evening at Tae Kwon Doe practice, touching forehead to foot and other fantastic contortions. Additionally, I began to sweat as if I had been maintaining a brisk three-mile trot through the woods, not holding static (if rather difficult) poses. For the uninitiated, allow me to announce: YOGA IS NO WALK IN THE WOODS.

Later in the afternoon, the group stepped out for a leisurely walk in the woods. But I digress…

I found out who in fact this group of far more flexible yoga classmates were over breakfast. I recognized some faces from last year like Ramona, a Guatemalan-Chinese psychology student and Rakesh, a young Filipino former-punk rocker (one of his bands carried the humorous/disturbing name of “Alcoholocaust”) turned guitar-strumming Dada (Brother/monk). But most of the twenty or so others were first time faces, almost all of them twenty-something college students hailing from universities in Massachusetts and New York. It had been a while since I’ve had breakfast with company outside of he they call “The Washington Post” and I soaked up the warm conversation in between bowls of banana and porridge.

The day would go on split between workshops discussing the science and art of meditation, community building, and personal life lessons interspersed with stretches of yoga, meditation, kiirtan (singing and dancing) and wholesome vegetarian food. The theme of the retreat was “Baba Nam Kevalam” or “Hold only to that which is dearest,” a tenet of Ananda Marga, organizers and progressive offshoot of Hinduism. Within the space of 12 hours, I felt the bonds of community extending out, pulling us closer together, united by a common calling for something greater than the materialist dream. We discussed the iPod/tunes/book-ification of middle class living, Anadi offering “wePod” as an alternative. I admitted to several folks my serious consideration of bringing my laptop to the retreat; consensus held that I needed a break. We reveled in the freshness of liberation from the chains of our cell phones, from disheartening news headlines and the lonely solitude of our non-communities from which we’d momentarily escaped, as opposed to the positive solitude of meditation we continuously entered into. I thought of all the places and mental states I would normally have found myself in around this time of the week: slumming around after a late night in DC, mingling with frat boys at Bagel Place, engaging in a forever losing battle between homework and procrastination. The retreat was a path lined with bliss, and we were gulping it down in great bunches of youthful neo-hippie glory.

After a dinner of pasta, chickpea soup and apple crumble, we held an open mic in the main room, equipped with a small candle-lit stage. Last year’s had been a personally surprising outpouring of talent, involving breakdancing, gospel song, and stream-of-consciousness poetry. This year, though involving no headstands or MC battles, was similarly rewarding. Peter, a tall, lean Dada with a British accent, kicked off the night with a spoken word poem about liposuction, featuring a hilarious Barbie-Doll narrative carried out on a slide show behind him. He prefaced the performance by admitting his embarrassment, facing up to the Toys R Us cash register with a Barbie doll in pink dress, adorned in full monk robes: “It’s for my niece,” he had lied.

Peter completed the act with a group rap he wrote for a colleague in Brazil, with the audience joining in the chorus refrain during the end. They did likewise for my rendition of “Into My Arms,” a classic Aussie ballad by Nick Cave. Following a collection of joyful, occasionally moving, occasionally humorous poems, we were treated to a series of short films. Anadi (Abe), a bright-faced Manhattanite and recent film school graduate played us a documentary called the Kundalini Express. It chronicled a recent 40-day trip around the continent on the famed Ananda Marga bus, during which time the group of Margiis played a whole bunch of concerts and basically spread good vibes throughout whichever town they were in.

There is one scene in which a group of Dadas adorned in full robes and turbans dance towards the camera in front of the bus, tapping tambourines and strumming guitars with broad grins upon their faces. In practically any other context, I imagine that the viewer’s reaction would have been: “What the *&$# are these orange men doing?” possibly followed by “Are they terrorists?” or “Shouldn’t they be in India, and not Venice Beach?” As the situation was, however, we lapped up the presentation receptively, followed by Anadi’s thesis project, a sweet little short about a young Puerto Rican boy’s search for the ocean. After such an intensely full yet relaxed day, eyelids soon began to droop.

The next day, following more morning yoga (this time featuring my pajama pants and an internal yogi’s deeply relieved sighs), more oatmeal mixed with collegiate gossip, a quality mix of song and dances and a workshop on stress management led by a Dada with a Santa-styled beard and a Mario-shaming Italian accent, the retreat was all but over. It wasn’t quite midday and we were saying our "Thank Yous" and inviting the group to stay if ever visiting our respective towns. Like suburban specters of the modern life, we had glided out of our reading assignments and the social toothing of campus weekend nightlife, only to slip back into our usual classroom seat in time for Monday’s 10 am lecture. Others of us would be returning to hospital wards, nursing patients with rejuvenated vigor, one to India to a much deeper spiritual center. Perhaps next year some of us will return, another 12 months closer to absorption into the autonomous regiment of a society at war. But next time, perhaps we will be able to return to the Center from more holistic lives, replacing current disillusion and spiritual voids with empathy and idealism put into practice.

During our five-hour drive home, Peter and I chatted over democracy in America, the daily tribulations of approaching friendships with the opposite sex as a monk, and the shared upliftment of a weekend well spent. Peter, growing weary (yes, monks do get sleepy) pulled over to switch roles. I climbed into the driver’s seat, turned on the blinker to re-enter traffic and gazed into the rearview mirror. Several cars—occupied by steely gazes and carrying muddy motocross bikes—shoved past, blatantly ignoring my effort to return to the highway fray. It was such a mundane, five-second span moment, one I imagine being experienced daily across thousands of miles of highway road each minute of each American commute. And yet when placed in opposition to the numerous five second long events of the retreat: the light electricity of silence following the end of a chant; the strum of Dada Rakesh’s song waking the girls that morning downstairs; laughter following Didi’s “May the Force be with you” reference, the act gained profundity in its symbolism:

“Welcome back…join the flow. Just not in front of me.”

One gaze behind me revealed an endless line of zoned out commuters crawling home along I-83, arguing over radio stations, venting into plastic phones. I only hoped that they started their journeys somewhere as peaceful as the cabin I’d left behind. Alas, something told me most of them probably had not.

But somewhere inside the restless minds of the cynical, the world-weary, the bottom-liners, even the beer-and-football?-I’ll-take-seconds! demographic I can imagine a quiet voice. It even has a British accent. And in whatever inflection, whatever pitch, whatever intonation, whatever language they prefer, it whispers: “Baba Nam Kevalam, hold only to that which is dearest.”

I returned home to a sink full of unwashed dishes and piles of academic papers sprawled across my bed. E Channel was showing “101 Most Starlicious Makeovers.” The Paper-deadline demon reappeared next to my head, hovering over piles of obtuse texts on globalization and regionalism. Emails demanded attention. Senioritis tapped at my shoulder.

But for the moment, I couldn’t pay attention. My mind had a certain chant stuck on repeat, and for once, I was willfully choosing not to change the track.