8 Quotes by Jaimal Yogis

So, without telling any of my Zen-snob buddies, I liked to pretend everything was the Pure Land, that my life was already perfect as it was.

But I looked out at the waves far below the bluff. They looked violent, erupting against the cliff. I watched them rising - up, up, higher, higher - then falling, crashing, swirling into chaos, passing away. I breathed deeply. I tried to breathe space between my thoughts, find the space between the anger.

We were both holding on to this thing, this monster between us. And now that I saw it, I could almost feel it hovering there, tangible. It was wrapping its stickiness around our throats - and we were helping it. We were grabbing on to it tightly, believing it was part of us. But it wasn't. It was a thing we'd each created. It was a bad wave we'd caught and it had closed out and was holding us down. All we needed to do was let it pass. All we needed to do was stop grabbing at it.

I felt a taste of that other kind of contentment that doesn't come from acquiring information or getting praise or building a resume, the kind that is just there, like a hidden pearl.

Surfing is kind of a good metaphor for the rest of life. The extremely good stuff - chocolate and great sex and weddings and hilarious jokes - fills a minute portion of an adult lifespan. The rest of life is the paddling: work, paying bills, flossing, getting sick, dying.

But I'd started believing I couldn't do it. And so I couldn't. But now I had experienced it.And so I knew.

I guess even the prettiest things eventually end up stinking. Everything does. We all will die and rot and decay and be reborn as dirt or flowers or worms, or polar bears who will drown because their ice is all melting, or presidents of war-torn countries, or whales swimming around acidifying seas. And then we will rot and decay again. And so it goes.

As on many mornings in Marin, there is this sly strip of fog - water in it's most mystical incarnation - slithering over, around, and through the hills, making everything look ancient and unsolved.