Excerpts from the Reaching for Samadhi Journal by Paul Swanson
27 September 2000; at home
We reach for so many things in the course of an average day: pasta in the cupboard; dishes stacked high; hands overhead in a kundalini class taught by Shelley; to name just a few examples from today.
Right now the Mariners are reaching for a division title. They’re up 5-4 in the 7th in a see-saw game at Safeco. Ultimately, a game that will be forgotten in a string of must-win games we play.
Somewhere reaching becomes striving, which our American society blesses profusely as evidence of diligence, industriousness and a sign of success.
In the bottom of the 7th, Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez and John Olerud are up. The “heart of the order” in baseball lingo I’ve embedded in my speech since early childhood and those pick-up games in the neighborhood horseshoe circle. When the Twins played the Dodgers in the ’65 World Series.
Even deeper as we peer into genetic memories through meditation and dreaming is a vibratory layer of pure samadhi consciousness. A code of nadum yoga tailored to your immediate circumstances and reflecting your past, present and future, all in one. Clues to the nature and the conundrum of trying to understand or perceive the beyond the beyond are best sung, often in Sanskrit, a language of devotion: Gate, gate, para gate, parasam gate, bodhi swaha. The keys to samadhi are ones of resonance incapable of being touched by grasping fingers. The more we clutch, the less we find.
As Gary Snyder (the first and foremost Dharma Bum) observed about meditation: “It’s a birthright of everybody. Animals know all about it. Animals have the capacity for sitting still and tuning in on their own inside consciousness, for great periods of time. And they can restore themselves by doing that; you can see them doing it. The calmness of deer at rest at mid-day is the order of meditation. It’s a curious thing that Western man has gotten so anxious about it and has forgotten what it is and really looks askance on anyone doing it. Most of the rest of the world knows how to meditate and does so in one way or another.” The Real Work, pp. 17-18.
Waiter-Asana
by Kevin Grange
Once upon a time, I lived a double life. I’d spend my deep-breathing days practicing yoga, writing peacefully at my desk and taking long walks along the deep blue waters of Lake Washington. At night, however, I’d trade in my casual clothes and don the black and white uniform of a waiter. For the next six hours, I’d scurry like a squirrel between tables, balancing heavy drink trays, filling my mind with dinner orders and, occasionally, stopping briefly to catch my long lost breath.
For a long time, I believed I could never reconcile these two aspects of my life. After all, yoga demands smooth breathing, a calm single-pointed awareness and held poses, while success in serving tables on the other hand, requires an active, multi-tasking mind and constant movement. As one restaurant manager once told me, “You got time to lean, you got time to clean.” But then one night, an amazing thing happened…
As I reached out across a table to pick up a dish, I found myself balancing on one leg and, unexpectedly, realized I was holding a posture very similar to Flying Warrior Pose. Feeling a rush of excitement, I decided to see if I could find more yoga while serving tables. Indeed, I could. At the next table, standing straight up like a staff, I found Mountain Pose as I took a dessert order. When I started feeling overwhelmed, I used deep resonant breathing to calm me down. And, as if that wasn’t enough, I started thanking my guests by placing my hands in Namaste and bowing slightly.
Over the following months, my job waiting tables transformed into a sort of yoga practice. With an increased attention to my posture my back no longer ached the way it did after a long shift and, being more aware of my breath, I found a calm center that stayed with me on even the busiest nights. Paradoxically, as I slowed down, my table service actually increased. My “spill” percentage went way down. And, if I did drop the occasional fork or glass, my mind didn’t criticize me the way it once used to. After all, a spill was just like falling out of Tree Pose! (give or take some red wine on white linen.)
I found, too, that I could incorporate some of the philosophical beliefs of yoga. As in India, I started thinking of “each guest as divine” and focusing on the process of simply giving great service, instead of thinking about my tip result. It was indisputable that yoga could help my restaurant work. But then I wondered, could waiting tables help my yoga practice? The answer I found was quite surprising.
One of the things waiting on tables taught me was the importance of multi-tasking. As a server you must constantly tend to the needs of a number of different tables, each at different points in their dining experience. Lose track of one, and all the others feel the repercussions. You must maintain an awareness of drinks, dinner and dessert which, in a strange kind of way, is not unlike maintaining an awareness of your body, breath and mind in a yoga class. Like serving, yoga has that domino dependency of one thing upon another. For instance, if you forget about the breath, the body will feel it. In fact, I might even go so far as to say the only route to that one-pointed concentration to which yoga aspires, is by multi-tasking.
In the end, by changing my perspective on two seemingly incompatible aspects of my life, I was able to change my experience. When I saw yoga and restaurant work as separate, they were separate and I felt divided. When I saw them as similar, I felt connected and whole. Suddenly, my life had become my practice, with yoga and serving tables playing two very important parts. Now that’s what I call a gratuity!
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