by Saeeda Hafiz
My grandfather was staring off into the distance. I wasn’t sure if I should ask another question. I was so curious, yet I didn’t want to cause him any unnecessary pain. Then I blurted out, “Tell me more about your brothers and sisters.” Granddad started a story about his younger sister, then stopped. I saw that his eyes were beginning to well up. Then again in that mumbling voice he said, “My sister was killed by a horse.”
The way he said it, it didn’t sound like an accident. Sure, it was more common for people in the early 1920s to have accidents while riding a horse, but his voice was in pain. His face looked confused. Then he said, “Why you asking me all this?” He was on the verge of manly tears. “Why you bringing up the past like this?”
“I just want to get to know you better,” I said.
“Well, my dad built houses. He was respected. They didn’t call him boy. They called him uncle. That was the highest respect a black man could get. And your dad wanted to go and change his name from Quarles to Hafiz. Why?” Again, his eyes showed hurt. “If I would have treated your dad the way he has treated y’all. Oh, my. He just ducked from all of his responsibilities.”
When I listened to my grandfather, I was part his granddaughter and part historian understanding the bigger plight of black people in the United States. When we sat and just talked about his life, I was not mad, but understanding. I understood that we were all victims of victims.
* * *
My grandfather watched my independent spirit move about the world, traveling, getting a college education, biking up and down hills, choosing vegetarianism. One day he blurted out, “Too bad you’re not a boy.”
I smiled. I should have been mad, but I think that was the highest compliment my grandfather could give me. Then he described the kind of life he imagined for us: “If you were a boy, we could have really done some things. Your dad didn’t want to do the real estate plan I had in mind, so…,” he paused and then continued, “you and I could have built a nice little business together.” I just listened to him, smiling internally. Perhaps he was right, but we will never know because I am not a boy, and I am following my own path anyway.
Later, my granddad must have known his end was nearing. He asked me to be the executor of his will. I wanted to help out, but being in the middle of a discussion between my dad and my aunts would feel like a person being in a head-on collision between two Mack trucks. I politely declined and I secretly realized that he didn’t care that I wasn’t a boy. I felt extraordinary because he saw all of me.
Each visit was a little more precious. He called me and said, “Come visit when you want. Remember, you don’t need an invitation.”
I could sense the words between the lines saying, I might not have that long to live.
My grandfather died in the spring of 1993. Visiting him every few weeks was strangely reassuring. It allowed me to forgive him, understand my dad better, and connect even more to my cultural heritage.
At his funeral, I watched his body lying still and prideful. He was physically dead, but I was connected to him spiritually. I sat in the back pew, but I knew that I was the closest person to him. And in that moment I understood why that voice had told me to get closer to my grandfather—it was so that we could fully see each other. I was a girl who was fully capable of jumping out of airplanes. He was a black man who wanted to farm his own land. He was a young man who’d left town when danger appeared, and I was a young woman who needed to leave town to explore my destiny.
It was a significant year. With my grandfather gone and my siblings strung out on drugs, I was ready to leave Pittsburgh and end my nine-year climb up the ladder of a banking career.
The voice and the path were clear: “You’ll be teaching this one day.” So I enrolled into Sivananda’s month-long yoga teacher-training course in rustic upstate New York.
CHAPTER 8
Yoga, Upstate New York
I LEFT PITTSBURGH, the smoky city, only to arrive in a different cloud of smoke. The Sivananda Yoga Center in New York City was filled with S-swirls of incense smoke dancing from one end of the room to the other. Pittsburgh had a wide range of smoke, everything from my dad’s small marijuana puffs to the large steel industry billows that made the city look gothic. But Nag Champa, the perfumed frangipani and sandalwood incense blend, seemed to cleanse the air I breathed, instead of triggering my asthma like the smoke I was accustomed to.
Our group of teacher-training hopefuls had arrived at the New York City yoga center for our orientation, an evening meal, and a Satsang—a two-hour session of chanting and meditation—before heading upstate. We were told that not all of our luggage would fit on the bus headed to the ashram, and we should only take what was essential.
Groans and moans came from the crowd.
“When will our other bags arrive?” one student asked.
“Not sure,” an attendant answered. “We’re still trying to work out the details.”
I heard whispers. “This place is so unorganized.” “They don’t have their shit together at all.”
“I heard it gets cold at night. I need my flannel pajamas,” a woman said.
“My hairdryer is expensive, I don’t have to take it, but I also don’t want it to arrive broken,” another mumbled.
“I need my eye mask to fall asleep. I guess that’s essential.”
“I only brought one bag,” I chimed in, feeling superior.
I’m not sure how it all worked out, but we managed to adapt and cooperate.
The ashram followed a structured routine that was similar to that of the ashram in California, but with less free time. The days and nights were intense. One day played into the next rhythmically, probably because we started and ended each night with Satsang, meditation and chanting. Five days passed, and the swami asked, “How are you all managing without your stuff?”
“I’m actually wondering why I packed so much,” someone blurted out. “Yeah,” the crowd responded in unison.
“You all seem to be doing quite well without your…” he paused and put up air quotes, “baggage.” We all chuckled. Then the swami said with a smile, “I have good news, your bags have arrived.”
I don’t remember which arrived first, the physical baggage or the emotional baggage. But not long after being at the ashram I realized that whatever problem, conflict, or weakness I needed to work on, there was somebody or something giving me the opportunity to work it through. We were fifty-odd people, thirty days, twenty shared rooms, two tents, and a lifetime of personal issues all living in one remote ashram.
When I told my friends and family that I was going to leave the corporate world to go live on an ashram for a month, they had one of two responses. “Are you going to become a Hare Krishna, shave your head, and be part of a cult? You’ll never be able to come back.” Or: “Wow. You are going to be so blissed-out for thirty days. Must be nice to just stop life.”
Neither one of those situations quite happened to me. Instead, every person I met, every spiritual book I read, and every lecture I attended brought up a present-day issue that I needed to work on.
On day one, I walked into my room and introduced myself to my roommate, who gave me the once-over. A round, pale girl with dark blond hair, she seemed kind, but I wasn’t quite sure what she was thinking. For some reason, I felt judged.
Later in the week she asked me, “How do you stay so long and lean?” “I don’t know. I eat vegetarian and do yoga, I guess.” I responded.
After the first week, the temperatures dropped, and I pulled out my green cardigan sweater.
“Nice sweater,” she said.
“I got it at a flea market in D.C. when visiting a college friend,” I said. “It’s really a man’s sweater.”
“I thought it was a bit big on you,” she commented.
“Yeah, but it’s warm.”
“Let me try it on,” she squeaked. “
Perfect. It fits me perfect.”
“It does look good,” I said, but something in that moment made me feel that her energy was a lot like my mother’s energy. She wanted something I already had. In my mother’s case, she wanted something I had accomplished. It was eerie, because I didn’t really know this girl.
Unpacking that green cardigan at the ashram was like unpacking my main issue with my mother. On day four, I got seriously annoyed with my roommate. We were given instructions to not talk to anyone until after the morning meditation. This technique was to encourage us to listen to our own morning chatter. It also was to conserve our morning energy after a night’s sleep. Ancient yogis felt this was a great time to deepen stillness within. I wanted this kind of peace and self-mastery, but my roommate insisted on thinking this rule was dumb and tried to talk to me every morning. I didn’t want to snap at her, so I grunted a few “hmms” and “uh-huhs.”
On day five, I had had enough. I said sternly, “Stop talking to me in the mornings. I paid my money and I want to get the full experience of this place. I will probably never get to do this again in my lifetime. I want to follow the rules. I want to see if something magical or transformative can happen to me.” I paused and took a deep breath. I realized that I just snapped. “Look, we can talk after meditation or at lunch.” I felt weird afterwards because I wanted the boundary, but also didn’t want her to think that I was an unfriendly black person. I could see in her eyes that she felt rejected, but she understood me.
The second week at the ashram, I encountered a good-looking African man. I thought he was Nigerian. He looked a lot like my dad and the men in my family. I noticed him the first week, but he was always talking with one particular brunette girl who had a kind, round face. Her eyes seemed to sparkle, as did her spirit, especially when she was sitting next to him. They looked cute together.
During the second week, he sat down next to me at brunch and I asked, “Where’s your girlfriend?”
He said, “She is not my girlfriend, but we are friends.”
“Hmmm,” I said, not knowing whether to believe him. I wasn’t really interested in finding romance while at the ashram, but I also wasn’t trying to block it either. Mainly, I wanted to immerse myself in the ashram life and, for lack of a better explanation, burn up negative karma—even though I wasn’t clear on what karma was.
“Do you want to go for a walk after dinner?” he asked me.
The evening air was crisp. The leaves were yellow, red, orange, and brown. The sunset made the Catskill Mountains appear mythical. We went on a long, slow walk while having a deep philosophical discussion about life and destiny. It was nice. We returned to the ashram, refreshed ourselves, and went to meditation. This happened for three days in a row.
On the fourth day, he asked me to go on another walk. The evening air was colder, the wind blew a little harder, and the leaves were in fact falling off the tree branches. I was moving deeper into my own soul and away from the world’s outside physical stimuli. I could see why people end up living at an ashram. It’s like diving into an ocean. The deeper you go down, the more you discover. I realized that if your life is always spent at several thousand feet above sea level, you might not think the other direction has anything to offer, but it does.
He reached out his hand to hold mine, and I pulled away as if touched by something surprisingly hot.
“Come here,” he commanded softly.
“No. I am not ready to be touched by you,” I said. His nostrils flared and his eyes became beady. “Fine,” he said calmly.
On the fifth day, I agreed to go on another walk.
Again, he reached out his hand to hold mine, and again I pulled my hand away as if it had touched something hot.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Why do you keep pulling away from me? You’re going to make me not desire you,” he said.
“Look, I just don’t want this here,” I said. I was attracted to him, but I didn’t want a fast and furious romance during my ashram stay.
Day six, the same routine followed.
“I want to ask you a question,” he paused.
I was prepared for the question “Are you gay?” since I had the ashram as my priority, not him.
“Can you give me $50?” he asked me. My teeth clenched tight. “I’m in a bind,” he said, starting to give an explanation that felt like a lie.
To avoid confrontation, I agreed to give it to him.
I quickly reviewed the past few days, and I felt like I had been set up for a heist. I let this happen, and I was too caught off guard to tell him to go to hell. Part of me didn’t want to think this was happening to me at the ashram. I also thought if I gave him the money he would move on. This man, like my dad, moved through the world painting the picture that he is the ultimate victim and that the world owed him something. He didn’t realize that he was causing a lot of pain, harm, and confusion to others or worse—and he didn’t care.
Day seven, he was sitting down next to someone new.
* * *
Week three. I settled very well into my karma yoga job. Karma yoga, known as “selfless service,” is a volunteer job; one does it without expecting anything in return. My task, computer database entry, fit with my corporate persona. This job did help me get to know my swami better. Swami Shankara was a white South African at a time of intense anti-Apartheid struggle in his home country. He had a rugged build and was so down to earth that the yoga students affectionately called him Swamji, a friendly, less formal term of endearment for our guru.
“Saeeda, you left your corporate job to come and learn how to teach yoga?” Swami Shankara asked me.
“Yes, Swamji.”
“Big step, huh?” said Swamji.
“Yeah. I knew that I was headed this way when I started describing my corporate marketing work in yoga terms,” I said. I wanted to tell him about hearing the voice in my first yoga class, but I did not want to sound too freakish, even at the ashram.
“Oh?”
“My boss promoted me, and I became one of the youngest corporate banking officers. My boss asked me what I thought about the promotion. I said, ‘Well it’s like yoga says, do the hard work that it takes to get yourself into the position, then once you are there, relax and let intuition take over.’ ” Swamji laughed at this story and walked away.
Swami Shankara didn’t say a whole lot, and he was a gentle soul. He told us stories of how he had found love and respect for his guru, this brown man, Swami Vishnudevananda. Swami Vishnudevananda was known as The Flying Swami in the 1960s because he promoted peace by doing dangerous stunts such as traveling in a hot air balloon over troubled areas in the world like Belfast, the Suez Canal, and the Berlin Wall. He risked his life to spread the word that we should all live in peace. By watching Swami Vishnudevananda, Swami Shankara was transformed from his racist white South African roots.
Swami Shankara was a true example of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. He knew how to challenge each of us without letting his ego or personal weaknesses or insecurities get in the way. He didn’t even let his value system manipulate ours. Swami Shankara was one of the first people I trusted unconditionally. Most of the other people I met in my life seemed to have an agenda for me to follow.
“Swamji, I didn’t expect to be so sore.” I said.
“Doing two physical yoga classes a day can be tough. I found that using tiger balm soothed my achy muscles when I was going through my teacher-training course.”
“I’ll try it.”
“It’s tough, we know. Keep doing the yoga, use the tiger balm, and get to bed by 10:00 p.m. The aches will eventually go away.”
Around day seventeen or eighteen, situations continued to challenge me. Shiva Kami was a senior yoga student in her mid-twenties who was on a power trip with her authority, real or imagined. In this sanctuary, where everyone was trying to grow, she see
med to always start some kind of fight. She had a controlling way of calling us all together to bless the food. In the kitchen, she’d look over everyone’s shoulder with some comment to make sure we were doing it the right way, her way. I usually just ignored her. But one day as I was helping out in the kitchen she barked at me, “That’s not how you cut those carrots!”
I replied “You don’t have to talk to me like that. We’re all just tryin’ to get the work done.” I paused. “Look, I’m not gonna take your crap.” I’d wanted to say shit, but I stopped myself. I didn’t expect to have so many confrontations at the ashram. The environment of heightened awareness was causing me to make different choices from my usual preference for suppressing my desires to avoid a fight.
I wasn’t sure what internal issue I was to work on, but I told the ashram leadership about Shiva Kami’s behavior. “First, I tried to work with her diplomatically,” I explained. “Next, I ignored her. But I refuse to take her abuse.”
“Shiva Kami?”
“Yes, Swamji.”
The swami and his assistant nodded, and I left the room.
The next day, Shiva Kami was assigned new duties, gardening alone. Within a short amount of time, I realized that the ashram, especially if you are not on vacation there, was a Petri dish where living organisms grew at a rapid clip. In thirty days, we were challenged to grow rapidly and organically. It was a controlled environment that gave us tools to stay somewhat intact while we went into our souls’ untapped crevices. My interaction with Shiva Kami taught me how to confront a disagreeable force head-on.