“Nirvana Satakam” [i]
mano-buddhyahankara cittani naham
sa ca srotra jivhe na ca ghrana netre
na ca vyoma bhumih-na tejo na vayuh
cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I am neither the mind, nor the intellect,
memory, nor ego. Nor am I ears, nor
tongue. I am not the nose, nor eyes, nor
the earth, space, fire nor wind. I am the
limitless consciousness and pure self.
We drove south on Route 285, the Rocky Mountains still snow-capped in the dark blue of dawn. Even in April winter could grip Colorado by the neck.
“Are you sure you want to go in?” Sam asked, as he pulled into the gravel driveway of the log cabin convenience store. “I don’t mind runnin’ in,” his Texas accent was strong and curled my hesitant smile.
“Yes, thank you,” I said in a gravelly voice, mine, but not quite. “I’ll just get some water and orange juice. You want anything?”
I pressed against the passenger’s door. It seemed unusually heavy for an Audi. I pushed again–my bones wavered like windchimes against the leather. I caught my reflection in the window, an echo of myself, buried in an oversized white wool shawl to muffle my emaciated frame.
“You sure?” Sam circled around to hold the door and held out his hand. So Texas. His green eyes were soft and too tender. I could feel his concern and bristled against it like the cold. I couldn’t manage the weight of his worry.
“I said I’m good.” I swung my legs out and set my feet squarely down. The bandage on my left foot, still stained with blood, unravelled. I tucked it in my sock and avoided his gaze. I am the limitless consciousness and pure self.
“Okay, baby.” He leaned against the hood of the car and crossed his arms, “I’ll wait right here.” Five years into our relationship, that Texas accent melted me every time.
We left our home in Lyons before the cold Colorado dawn. Destination: Mt. Princeton Hot Springs. Heaven on my earth. At this rate we’d be there by nine and I’d be soaking in the warm, healing mineral springs by noon.
I lugged the gallon of water and OJ to checkout, plopped it on the counter and looked up. “Is this all for you?” the cashier asked. He searched me with a spotlight glare and furrowed brow. It amplified my unease.
My hand moved to where his eyes landed on my shoulder. I looked down. A chunk of my hair, a pile of soft black curls, had fallen on my white shaw. The contrast was startling. It looked like the nest of an exotic bird, dropped from another dimension to balance circus centre on my shoulder. I heard an imaginary crowd gawk from the shadows. I looked up at the cashier and back down at the disconnected curls. The earth tilted left and started to spin.
“Oops,” my voice trailed a thousand miles away.
Oops, as if I’d dropped a pencil or a pot of soup. Oops, as if I’d make some silly white lady mistake. Oops, I brushed the hair off my shoulder with mock causality and watched it fall in slow motion to the floor, tumbling end over spiralling end. It landed soft between my feet like a curled creature on the moon.
The cashier looked horrified. “Are you going to pick that up?”
I gazed down, dizzy and perplexed, windchime-bones clamouring. I flashed back to the temple of Kali Ma in India, where just a few weeks ago, I had practised true yoga and learned the ancient chants: Just repeat, says Mataji. I see black rivers of curls rising at my feet, Ganga Ma, Goddess of the Ganges rushes in. I’m climbing bowed concrete stairs, worn over thousands of years, to see a fire that the Brahman Priest said has been burning since the beginning of time. I smell sandalwood and hear a thousand tiny bells twinkle, forests of blushing rhododendrons stretch as far as my eyes can see with blossoms as large as me and Mataji—my teacher, my treasure—she’s here, singing to me, bathing me, in sacred sound immersing me. At the bank of the Ganges, I’m submerged, one note at a time, layer upon melodic layer, in ethereal sound. And I, at the loom of my heart, return each day to the temple to weave another sutra, another thread, another sound, through the eye of a needle I must pass, stripped bare, swept up in the current that reaches through teacher to student, burning like a fire since the beginning of time—Repeat, she smiles, just repeat—I do, again and again. Wed to this tapestry of intonation, I’m strung up to my soul and see a thousand lifetimes passing below—just repeat, the chant, the elixir of life alchemical, long sought and now found. I’m in deep, christened, in sound unceasing. I am the limitless consciousness and pure self.
“I said are you going to pick that up?”
“What?” I asked, dazed in the fluorescent lighting. I saw the water and OJ on the counter and dug into my pocket, extended a five dollar bill. The cashier hesitated to take it. Our eyes locked, and for a moment I saw my reflection through his eyes, an ashen grey, balding white-ish woman with sunken eyes, with a pile of dark curls at her feet. A ghost of a self.
I left the five on the counter and shuffled out, the bloodied bandage from my foot trailing behind with a black curl stuck in tow.
*****
na ca prana sanjno na vai pancha vayuh
na va sapta dhatuh na va panca kosah
na vak-pani padam na copastha payu
cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I am neither the five pranas nor the life
breath. I am not the seven constituents
of body, nor am I the five sheaths. I am
not the organs of speech nor am I hands
and legs. I am not the genital nor anus.
I am the limitless consciousness and
pure self.
*****
I had been dreaming of India for over a decade before I made it there in 2010.
I pressed my forehead against the aeroplane window and gazed below. Mumbai sparkled like a long-lost lover lounging in the Arabian Sea.
I’m here, I whispered, watching her landscape rush up to meet me.
For a decade I had studied and practiced, taught yogic disciplines and meditation in my community. I was dedicated to the spiritual path of yoga as a way of union with the Divine. In Sanskrit, Yoga means union or to yoke, as in, to yoke together. As in, yoking together two bulls to pull a plough. The yoke allows the driver to harness the power of the animals in service to a larger purpose: to cultivate the ground to feed the community. Similarly, yoga allows the practitioner to harness the power of self for a larger purpose: to cultivate the soul to serve the world. This was my prayer, to devote my life to service, purity, and the path of realisation like countless yogis before me.
The path of realisation has been laid bare by many master teachers. Realising God is distinct from studying or believing in a great Being or divine idea. Realising God is knowing God through direct encounter, experiencing God’s transcendent yet imminent presence, feeling God with as much certainty as the cup in my hand.
Over the years, I studied translations of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, a quintessential yogic text, along with the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda and Sri Yukteswar. I pondered upon The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, The Dhammapada, attended satsangs with Swami Amar Jyoti in Gold Hill, along with countless spiritual trainings. I had over a decade’s worth of questions and answers, highs and lows, moments of ecstasy and months of chaos.
My yoga practice and my life shifted many times, a Rubix cube turning toward greater alignment. My practice was a living companion. We discovered each other, evolved together. The postures had a life of their own, making and moving me with lithe effortlessness ease. My sense of strength and flexibility was addictive. I knew I was becoming attached to my physical practice and to the body it gave me, an addiction that simultaneously attracted and repulsed me. I was bound to it. I knew enough to know that yoga was intended to liberate souls, not tighten abs and asses but even so, the sensation of physical practice was difficult and deeply pleasurable.
I struggled with the contradiction, knowing that practice was intended to release the bonds of attachment, not strengthen them. Even my meditation had grown deep, but unstable. I vacillated between blissful hours of silence, and demonic images that flashed behind my eyes to terrify me. I didn’t understand, and sometimes, I was afraid to close my eyes. I couldn’t trust my own mind.
I reached a platitude that seemed dangerously enticing. I could continue to practice comfortably in my beautiful temperature-controlled yoga studio, learn to manage or medicate my invisible instability, and promote myself as a yoga teacher—or—I could turn away from the appearance of things toward a less-known path of yoga, forge a willingness to leave my attachments behind, renounce a worldly life, and seek union with God.
When I arrived in Rishikesh where I met my teacher, Sadhvi Abha Saraswati, lovingly referred to as Mataji, I had already been travelling for two months throughout India.
From Mumbai, I travelled south to the jungles of Trivandrum to find Swami Isa. I stayed at his ashram for weeks, studying his practices and listening to his lectures. He was luminous. I marvelled at the light in his eyes, the truth he conveyed and the miracles he performed. I lingered overlong, almost stayed forever.
I departed to Kerala in Fort Cochin, a gorgeous fishing town off the Arabian Sea marked by its Portuguese, Dutch and British architecture, narrow streets, and 14th-century Chinese fishing nets still in use. Sri Aurobindo, a renowned yoga teacher, had his ashram there and I imagined him strolling along those cobblestone streets beside me. Fort Cochin is also the village where, in 52 AD, the Apostle Thomas arrived to share stories of his beloved friend and teacher, Jesus the Christ, whose presence was ever nearer.
I visited Swami Yukteswar’s Ashram further north in Puri to pay homage and pray, then caught a train and a midnight bus to Tiruvannamalai to Ramana Maharshi’s resting place. I stepped off a rickshaw after a rough midnight ride to see Arunachala at dawn, a holy place I’d seen only in picture books. The beauty almost knocked me clean out of my body.
So by the time I made it to Rishikesh, I was wrung out, feverish, saturated by the sacred ground. My feet had started to bleed due to my connective tissue disease. I could barely eat, and anyway, food seemed absurd, too solid. I was enraptured, enchanted by India and longing to dissolve with her.
It was cooler in the north. Winds from the Himalayas were steady, rhythmic, settling. I strolled along the Ganges River on the first night, dazzled. I’d heard rumours about the water, that it was holy, that it had healing power, that it could reverse karma. But nothing prepared me for what I saw. The water had a radiance, a lucent quality, and its roar sounded like a thousand bells. Unreal, supernatural even. I had never seen or heard anything like it, and haven’t since. I wandered down close to the banks but couldn’t get close enough. The Ganges is the embodiment of a goddess and she moved like one, roiling and tantalising. I wanted to touch her, be touched by her. I slipped my hands in.
And I heard it, a melody rolled down the banks to where I sat with my hands in the river. A song I’d never heard but somehow knew. Rhythmic, pulsing, flowing like the Ganges. Sas this lilting lovely song coming from beneath the waves?
I saw the smoke from a fire further down the riverbank. It seemed a crowd had gathered for puja, the evening ritual. I wandered closer.
There was an enormous concrete statue of Shiva covered in orange marigolds. At the foot of the statue was a fire, encircled by a group of young boys. They were dressed in saffron robes with red paint on their foreheads and they were tossing things into the flames. I searched the crowd, scanning hundreds of faces for the source of the sound until I spotted her, there, sitting on the white marble steps, nestled in a cluster of people, a woman was singing. She was wrapped in orange robes, the sign of a renunciate. Her long grey hair hung to her waist and swayed as she chanted. I watched, transfixed, shy in the shadow of Shiva, but steadied by the sound. The chant was melodic yet rhythmic, driving yet soft, enrapturing yet simple. I closed my eyes to get as close to the sound as I could, and swayed as she chanted.
The ritual ended abruptly. I strained to see the woman through the flood of the dispersing crowd. I pressed into the pack of people and caught a glimpse of her walking through the white gates of the ashram. I followed, eager to see where she went, but too shy to catch up. She walked alone, seemingly a few feet off the ground, her orange robes flowed like flames behind.
I darted back out through the crowd. Ran down along the river to the room I had checked in a few hours earlier, grabbed my backpack, checked out, ran back up the dirt road on my bloody feet and headed to the ashram.
Each morning I’d go to her door, knock, and wait. Some days she’d answer and I’d offer to help with anything. Sweep the floors? Carry your shoes? Anything at all? I wanted to be as close as I could to her and the chant that seemed to hum in her presence. I wanted to prove my worth as a dedicated student, not just a curious westerner here to pirate practice but as a pilgrim. The sound was holy and I wanted to be entrusted with it.
And one bright morning, she simply let me in. She asked a few questions about who I was and why I wanted to chant, and that was that. I became her student.
She recommended we travel further north for intensive training. So we did. High into the Himalayas, close to the border of China, we went to a temple where the Brahman explained that they’d been tending the fire since the beginning of time. We paid homage to Kali Ma at Kalka. Visited temples in the dark dawn and read from sacred texts at night. But mostly we chanted.
We chanted each dawn, every afternoon, and always at night. We chanted on the terrifying car rides across roads crumbling down the Himalayas. We chanted at the mouth of the river Ganges where the Goddess Herself emerged from rock. We chanted in a red rhododendron forest with colour as far and blushing as the eye could see. Just repeat, she would say. Repeat her sound, again and again, until her sound became our sound, became the sound, again and again, until the sound became one. I heard it constantly, and felt the vibration reverse my bloodstream and heartbeat.
*****
na me dvesa ragau na me lobha mohau
na me vai mado naiva matsarya bhavah
na dharmo na chartho na kamo na moksah
nidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I do not have likes and dislikes, greed
and delusion. I do not have pride.
Nor do I have jealousy. I do not have
pursuits of duty, wealth, desire or
liberation. I am limitless consciousness and pure self.
*****
I arrived early for the first Monday morning meeting at the Office of Social Justice, Inclusion and Conflict Resolution at Rowan University. Parked my bike out back and walked tenderly on my scarred feet to the conference room. A few familiar faces streamed in. We exchanged casual hellos. I was proud to be a new addition to this office, proud of the diversity and inclusion practices that the office represented, proud to integrate my spiritual identity with ideals of social justice.
I found an empty seat in the corner and sat quietly. Pulled out my notebook and pencil. Tapped my thumb on the cover.
I was a non-traditional student a couple decades older than my peers. I wore it awkwardly. Others laughed at inside jokes, and exuded a familiarity with each other, picking up lines where they had left off. I sat, awkward, observing, waiting quietly.
The Director walked in and right to business.
“Let’s start with introductions? I’m Jamie, she/they/theirs, white, queer performing, FirstGen female. Pass to my right.”
“Hi, ya’ll. I’m Bo, she/her/hers, white, pansexual in a cis-gender relationship.”
I’d never heard introductions like this, and wasn’t sure what it all meant. Were we supposed to identify ourselves based on the sex or gender of our current partner? What if that was different in past relationships? I tried to disguise my panic. The circle crept closer.
“I’m Tai, she/her/hers, Black and queer.”
“I’m Eli, they/theirs, queer, person of colour. Also FirstGen.”
The circle snaked closer to me. Heat swelled in my body. I shifted left in my seat, right, searching for the centre. I’d spent the past decade consciously shedding layers of my identity. I had been trained to identify with my soul, not my form. And here I was, about to declare my identity based on my relationship with my partner’s genitalia? Or is that sex, not gender? I didn’t know the difference. I focused my identity through my skin, not on it. Maybe I could pass. Is that rude? Maybe I could feign an emergency bathroom trip to buy time.
“I’m Alicia, she/her/hers, cis-gender Latina.”
“I’m Mohammad, he/his, cis-gender, Egyptian.”
I’m a collection of permanent spiritual atoms cultivated through thousands of incarnations and held loosely and temporarily together in this current iteration of self-called Isha. I am the limitless consciousness and pure self.
“I’m Kain, he/him, transgendered white male.”
I was next. What was I? How could I participate in this conversation to show support, to be an ally, be an incarnation of my-self, without disparaging my practice of personality decentralisation? How do I simply articulate the twenty years of purificatory practice spent carefully realigning my personality to Soul? How do I explain that I am not my-self. I didn’t want to sound dramatic. I am the limitless consciousness and pure self. My heart thundered. I couldn’t breathe.
“I’m Isha,” I said nervously, “Just Isha.”
*****
Na punyam na papam na saukyam na duhkam
Na mantro na tirtham na veda na yajnah
Aham bhojanan-naiva bhojyam na bhokta
Cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
There is no vice or virtue,
happiness or sorrow for
me. Nor mantra, holy
place, scriptures,
or sacrifices exist for me. I am neither an experience, nor am I the object of neither the one who is experiencing nor the one who experiences. I am the limitless consciousness and pure self.
*****
By noon I was warm in the hot springs, my ashen-coloured cheeks blushed pink, soaked head to toe beneath the huge Colorado sky. I wandered down to the river where the hot spring water bubbled up between the rocks. I found a spot to nestle between the warm stones, a steady stream of heated water gushed over me just as it started to snow. I laid back, immersed in the river with only my face exposed, and watched the sky drop diamond snowflakes in my eyes.
My hair had started falling out as soon as I got home from India. I barely noticed it at first, just a little extra hair in the drain. I had plenty to spare. My hair was always a huge black curly mess. But soon chunks fell out a time, sometimes whole curls would fall in my hand when I turned my head.
I didn’t want to come back to the States. I felt at home in India. Home in the rhythm of ashram living. Up at 4:00 a.m. for yoga and meditation. To the Ganges at 6:00 a.m. for morning aarti and chanting. Breakfast at 9:00 a.m. Karma yoga and community service then lunch at noon. Optional afternoon lectures or more karma yoga. Back to the Ganges at 6:00 p.m. for evening aarti. Dinner at 8:00 p.m. Bedtime chants and off to sleep. Until 4:00 a.m. arrived with another round of practice. I loved it.
Back home in Colorado, I struggled to fit back into my community spread across the Front Range, from Fort Collins to Boulder and Lyons. I hesitated to resume classes at my yoga studio. I’d outgrown what I’d done before, but hadn’t yet embodied the new teachings I’d learned. I couldn’t offer what wasn’t yet mine to teach, so I steeped in solitude and in practice. Woke at 4:00 to continue my rhythm, and did, until my body started to fail, turned gray and sunken. My doctors tested me for everything from parasites to heavy metal poisoning, viruses, bacteria, STDs (though I was celibate), and a host of other flus and system errors that roamed the bodies of international travelers. My blood always tested clean.
And I continued to practice, unafraid because: I am the limitless consciousness and pure self.
The systems of my body started to collapse, my adrenals were shot, and with no help from my Western doctors I reached out for acupuncture, ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, massage therapy, and hydrotherapy. I went to the hot springs every other week to soak and pray.
Finally, I wrote to Mataji and she quickly wrote back:
Dear Isha, I’m so sad to hear your body is sick. I wonder if you are practicing nirvana satakam everyday? If yes, stop. Chant only the other mantrahs, slokahs, stotrams, and especially sayana mantrah. When you resume nirvana satakam in time, do so slowly, and keep an ice pack on your head. Love, Mataji
Within a month my colour returned, my digestion restored, and the rest of my thinned hair stayed in place.
In time, and slowly, I resumed the Nirvana satakam.
With an ice pack on my head.
*****
Na mrtyurna sanka na me jati bhedah
Pita naiva me maiva mata na janma
Na bandhurna mitram gurunaiva sisyah
Cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I do not have death, or doubt, nor do I
have any caste differences in me. There
is no father, mother, or birth for me.
There is no student, no teacher, no
relative and no friend for me. I am the limitless consciousness and pure self.
*****
“I’m Isha, just Isha.”
Thus began my accelerated course in Social Justice 101.
I had spent the majority of my life stripping away personality preferences and repulsions. I had studied ancient texts like the Vedas, Upanishads and Yoga Sutras, studied Torah, the New Testament, Gnostic texts and the Bhagavad Gita, mysticism and the occult, tried to abide by the teachings of Buddha and adhere to theosophical principles of right living. I was ordained as an Interfaith Minister.
And yet, in a room of my peers, I had no idea how to introduce myself.
In Sanskrit, Yoga means union or to yoke, as in, to yoke together. As in, yoking together two bulls to pull a plough. The yoke allows the driver to harness the power of the animals in service to a larger purpose: to cultivate the ground to feed the community. Yoga allows the practitioner to harness the power of self for a larger purpose: to cultivate the soul to serve the world. This I knew.
In English, white privilege means I was not accustomed to being described or defined by my race [ii]. Sex is assigned at birth and gender is socially constructed and I didn’t know the difference because my sex and gender match. Another privilege I didn’t understand.
I didn’t grow up through academia with a context for a socially constructed identity. I came from white working-class midwestern folks, descendants of immigrants all fleeing one hardship or another, whose pride was based on hard work and independence. Bootstrap mentality. Rugged individualism and don’t you dare ever ask for help. So I ran away from home at 18 to find another way, a way that I came to know as limitless consciousness and pure self. This spiritual identity is a daily practice of identification with the soul, wielding energies and forces to radiate love through every living cell in my body. This practice is through my form, not on it. This practice aligns with the infinite, not the fleeting and finite.
And yet, if this practice couldn’t include the complexities of myself in time and space, my messy contradictions and mounting traumas, my participation in a society built on white body supremacy and crushing materialism, then I wasn’t doing it right.
The practice begins again, now, every day, and will just repeat, until an alignment with the limitless consciousness and pure self flows alongside my identity as a white, cisgender, queer, disabled, American woman—and this identity in unimpeded relationship with all other identities. My whiteness comes with privilege and responsibility to repair. To dispel the illusion of rugged individualism and bring interconnected healing, justice, and a way forward. And to do that, I would need to understand where I’ve been.
That would require travel to the one place I didn’t want to go: my childhood.
*****
aham nirvikalpo nirakar rupah
vibhuttvatccha sarvatra sarvendriyanam
na ca sangatannaiva muktirna bandhah
cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I am free of thoughts and free of forms.
I am connected to all sense organs as I
pervade everywhere. I am not connected
to bondage or freedom. I am the
limitless consciousness and pure self.
*****
My grandparent’s farm in Indiana was where I learned to ride horses and pull freshly born kittens out of haystacks. It was where the pond froze for ice skating in winter and warmed for swimming in summer. Where I learned to construct cloud animals in the sky and dig sassafras roots underground, pick blackberries without getting thorns and run with deer in the woods without getting lost. And it was where me and my big sister got bunnies for Easter. And sometimes ducks.
Ohio is where I was born but my grandparents, with whom I spent most of my childhood, lived west across the border on a 75-acre farm in a rural Indiana town called Moores Hill. When my mom left, I was about seven years old. My grandma became my primary influence, just as her grandma had been hers—”half-hillbilly and half-Indian,” is how my grandma lovingly referred to her grandma.
Moores Hill is a tiny town with one grocer, a tractor supply store, and a pump-it-yourself gas station. They lived down a series of long winding dirt and gravel roads. That’s where I learned to drive.
I was eleven or twelve when Dad said, “Wanna drive home?”
I looked up at him wide-eyed, “Really Dad?”
“Sure thing. Lemmie pull over here on the side of the road,” he said. Dad was a moustachioed firefighter, huge to me, with dark curly hair and a booming voice. When mom left he was stuck raising me and my sister, and with the help of my grandparents. I guess it went okay. He eased the truck onto the side of the empty country road and turned it off. “I’ll grab a cold one and you get in the driver’s seat. Slide on over!”
I pushed the armrest out of the way and slid into the driver’s seat, grabbing onto the leather-covered steering wheel with both hands. Dad grabbed a beer from the cooler in the backseat and walked around the truck. I turned my saucer-wide eyes on him when he climbed in the passenger seat.
“Alright,” he cracked his beer and cleared his throat, “See that pedal on the right? That’s your gas. Go easy on that one. The one on the left is your brake. Easy on that one too. Don’t get em mixed up. Put your foot on the brake and turn the key to start.”
I stretched my tiptoes toward the floor. Dad grumbled and slid the seat forward so I could reach. “Now try,” he said. I stomped the pedal as hard as I could.
“Not so hard,” he barked, “you don’t have to crush it, just hold it down gently.”
I nodded ferociously, curls trembling. I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t do it. I stepped ever so lightly and turned the key. The truck purred to a start.
“Good. Now, before you put it in drive, you gotta look all around. You gotta know what’s around in every direction.”
“Nope, no cars anywhere,” I chirped.
“Right, not yet. But there will be and you gotta know how to do more than just look straight ahead. You gotta use all the mirrors.”
Dad told me to reach out my window and tilt the outside mirror so I could see the lower left side of the truck, then he adjusted the other mirror.
“Now the rearview mirror, tilt it so you can see outside the back window. Good. Now check in all your mirrors and tell me if you can see all the angles of the truck.”
“Yep. Got it. I can see everything.”
“Alright. Now, keep your foot on the brake and ease it into drive. That’s right. Good.”
The truck rolled forward and I giggled. Me, pilot of an intergalactic spaceship, surging through the cosmos to the farthest reaches of space. I tingled with excitement.
“Alright now, let’s get it going,” Dad said, “you’re just idling here, you gotta find that gas pedal.”
I found it a little too fast and the truck jumped, “Easy, I’m gonna spill my beer!” Dad said, tilting the bottle up and draining it down. He reached back in the cooler and cracked a fresh one. “Nice and easy there. Just keep it on the road.”
We rolled along the backroads, Dad whistling out the window as he sipped his beer. Occasionally he’d say a little left you’re off the road, and I, whiteknucked, would ease left. Too far, get right, he’d say, and I’d weave back. Back and forth I weaved my way steady, saucer-eyed.
“Great job! Now I’m gonna explain the blindspots.”
“The whats?” I asked.
“Every car’s got blind spots, you gotta know about blindspots.”
Dad explained that it wasn’t enough to look straight ahead through the windshield and it wasn’t enough to occasionally check the mirrors. You had to know the places on the car you couldn’t see, and the only way to see those places was to look closely.
“Now sit up real tall and look back over your right shoulder. That’s the only way to see the blindspot on that side.”
“But how can I keep going forward if I’m looking backwards Dad?”
“You’re going straight ahead real good, just hold the wheel steady, sit tall, and look back over your shoulder. You’ll keep going forward.”
I held my breath and the steering wheel tight, sat tall, turned to my right and looked back. I saw a space at the back third of the truck hidden in my blindspot, “I did it!” I spun back around to see the road.
“Yes you did. Now check the left side.”
“I can see!” I said twisted to the left.
“Good. Never forget to check those blind spots.”
Confidence bolstered, I rolled onward with greater speed steady along the centerline, mirrors checked, blind spots examined.
That’s when, at about 45 mph, I didn’t see the railroad tracks up ahead and ramped the truck, caught a couple of inches of air, landed hard, slammed the breaks, and screeched to a halt.
“Dammit,” Dad said, wiping beer off his shirt, “you gotta remember to look straight ahead too.” He polished off what was left and grabbed a fresh beer. I eased back on the gas—eyes peeled in a thousand directions—shocked into awareness that in this truck I could accidentally cause harm, spill beers, and maybe worse. I strained to see the hidden places while trying not to forget what was right in front of my face. I needed to see both.
*****
I am the limitless consciousness and pure self.
And I get to be, for a fleeting moment, a limited self in relationship with all of the world.
*****
Endnotes
[i] Prayers & Mantras, Parmarth Yoga and Meditation Center, Parmarth Niketan, Rishikesh, India
[ii] https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really
