Walking Wisdom

by Gotham Chopra

  “It’s not a bad method,” Papa remarked when I shared with him my strategy. We both settled into thought for a few minutes.

  It was in these moments of reflection though, just sitting and thinking quietly about Michael, that I was getting most down.

  “What’s wrong?” Papa inquired as I sat there, inertly staring at Dionne Warwick getting her makeup put on.

  I shrugged. “Just kind of sad, I guess.”

  Papa nodded. “Yeah.” A beat passed between us. “Let’s meditate for a few minutes.”

  Over the years, meditation had become a panacea in our family. Headache? Meditate. Flu? Meditate. Torn ACL? Meditate. Feeling blue? Meditate.

  The thing was, it actually worked. For me—a practitioner of meditation from the age of five—almost thirty years later, meditation had become part addiction, part refuge. While I might not be able to articulate the exact science behind it, I was definitely an advocate for it. In college, the only time in my life I ever abused alcohol really, I discovered that meditation was a great remedy for even the worst hangovers. I shared this revelation with a few of my friends and brought them into the cult. (Who says that I have not functionally extended the family legacy?)

  To that extent, slipping into meditation in the greenroom at Larry King Live, even while the likes of the Reverend Al Sharpton, musician John Mayer, and others meandered about, didn’t feel so awkward.

  After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and looked at Papa.

  As if he sensed me staring at him, he opened his eyes and looked back at me. “What?”

  “It’s amazing how that actually works.” I shook my head. “How does it work?”

  “Meditation,” Papa responded after a brief pause, “is nonjudgment in action.

  “Letting everything spontaneously unfold the way it should. It’s listening to the universe without imposing evaluation or qualifications.”

  “Like Cleo listening to Tara?” I recollected the prior night with a smile.

  Papa reciprocated, grinning. “Yeah, actually, exactly like that. You know nonjudgment is not only about not judging people and events? It’s emotions as well. It’s okay to feel sadness or pain, anger or enmity. Too often people want to find the quick fix. In fact, not only is it okay, it’s necessary to emotionally and spiritually evolve to go through proper emotional stages.”

  It was all getting a little heady for me. I shook my head and asked Papa for a do-over.

  Papa nodded. “What I am saying is that we’re human beings, not human doings. Sometime it’s okay to just be, not worry or judge your feelings. Not have to do anything. Just witness your self.”

  I signaled for him to stop. That was enough for me. “I get it.”

  Papa smiled, satisfied.

  “Okay.” He got his game face on and straightened his Liberace glasses. An idea seemed to pop into his head. “Maybe I’ll tell the story of our meditation with Michael and Cleo.”

  PAPA, MICHAEL, CLEO, and I probably meditated for close to twenty minutes that night in the Neverland library.

  I remember distinctly when it ended because when I opened my eyes, Michael’s were already wide, staring at me.

  “What?” I said to him.

  “What were you thinking?” he whispered to me.

  “I don’t know,” I said back also in a whisper since Papa still had his eyes shut. “What were you thinking about?” I threw back at him.

  “That I need to pee really badly.” He smiled.

  Papa laughed and opened his eyes. “Then it’s definitely working. You better go.”

  Michael scampered off like a fourth-grader just given permission by his teacher to use the restroom. In a few minutes, he returned looking greatly relieved.

  “Why did you say ‘it’s working’?” he asked as he sat again, warily eyeing Cleo, whose collar I held on to tightly.

  Papa responded, “Because when you’re doing it right, meditation makes you more alert to everything around you, including whatever you are feeling.”

  Michael nodded, pleased with himself. He eyed Cleo again. “How old is it?”

  “Three-ish,” I replied. “She’s around three.”

  “How long will she live?”

  “Not sure.” I shrugged. “Hopefully about fifteen years or so.” That’s about what I had gathered from various online resources I’d researched.

  “Not very long,” Michael noted.

  “Short and sweet, I guess,” I said.

  “We are all on death row,” Papa interjected dramatically. “The only uncertainty is the length of reprieve and the method of execution.”

  “Will she get old like humans?” Michael asked.

  “Sure.” I nodded.

  Anyone who has ever had a dog knows the signs. The general fade of the senses—the hearing, sense of smell, sight. I listed them for Michael.

  He turned to Papa. “If death came for you right now, would you be ready?”

  This was typically Michael, to engage and indulge in the sort of conversations that most did as teenagers at slumber parties. We were now reenacting those missing moments for him.

  “All living things age and eventually die,” Papa noted, “whether or not you are ready when it comes.”

  Silence reigned.

  “Lord Buddha taught us how to deal with death. It is the great consumer and we are its food.”

  “Not me.” Michael shook his head.

  “What does that mean?” I laughed.

  “Just that that will never happen to me. Getting old like that. That’s all.” He shrugged. Looking back, he said it so matter-of-factly that it was unclear how to react. Even my father—so perceptive generally and intuitive on just what to say—seemed a little thrown.

  I broke the ominous silence at last. “I’m tired,” I announced. “I’m going to go to sleep.”

  I said my good nights, clutched Cleo’s leash tightly, and pulled her away.

  As I left, I heard Michael say to Papa, “Buddha, I read about that guy. Tell me his story.”

  Chapter Six

  What is consciousness?

  Really? You expect me to answer that in one go? Every single book I’ve ever written or that I will write is about consciousness.

  Can you sum it up in a paragraph?

  Consciousness is the immeasurable potential of all that is, all that was, and all that will be. It is the source of our subjectivity, and also the source of our objectivity. Consciousness simultaneously differentiates into cognition, which is knowing; perception, which is seeing, touching, tasting, and hearing; but it also simultaneously differentiates into behavior, speech, personal relationships, social interactions, our relationship with the environment, and our relationship with the forces of nature. To physicists I would say that consciousness is quantum entanglement, a super-position of possibility waves for space-time events.

  Is it time for lunch yet?

  It’s the wrong question. Lunch relies on whether you’re hungry, not what time it is. I live in timeless awareness—I wrote a whole book about it called Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. If you’re physically hungry, sure, let’s eat.

  “I’M NOT VERY RELIGIOUS. REALLY MORE SPIRITUAL. . . .” It was a refrain I’d used often in my life. In fact, growing up Chopra, it was a line I’d gotten away with quite a bit. In certain circles—the rarified halls of Columbia, the more New Age blue states, the sound bite–obsessed media—it was actually celebrated as thoughtful and a little provocative. But it didn’t really mean anything.

  The first part, about not being very religious, was actually true. My parents’ religious backgrounds—Hindu and Sikh—never made the migration when they came to the States in the early 1970s. While they weren’t exactly pilgrims escaping persecution, traditional religion and all that came with it just wasn’t that important to them.

  On the other hand, as immigrants without the extensive family they were used to back in the motherland, my parents did value religious culture. How else to imprint their children with
a sense of tradition and family? So, while we never really attended temple, participated in religious holidays, or observed the elaborate rituals that often came along with them, we did celebrate our Indian-ness in other ways. On Thanksgiving, when most American families were playing football before their turkey dinners, we hung with our Indian friends, played cricket, and ate tandoori chicken. During Easter we’d forgo the chocolate bunnies and have a potluck at our cousins’ house, where we’d settle in to watch old Bollywood movies. Only later in life did it become clear to me that my parents were not anti-American, charges I had brought against them in an attempt to get apple pie rather than the sickly sweet Indian desserts that I was used to.

  My mother and father were doing their best to help us patch together this new culture we were growing up in. They wanted us to embrace the great American ethos and yet still be grounded by the India that had shaped them. Not something you appreciate as a child, but looking back, I can see what they tried to do, and I can see how.

  There was family. Even family that wasn’t technically family, like various elders from the community, were referred to as aunts and uncles, and their kids as cousins. It was an expression of the intimacy with which we regarded one another and the familial obligations that came along with it. We might not have lived in India, but my parents and others in the Indian community in and around Boston seemed determined to bring some India to us.

  There was food. Appreciating the intricacies of an Indian meal and its many spices—the differences between haldi and jeera, lal mirch and garam masala, and countless others—is in some respects a way of honoring the many textures and subtleties of our cultural homeland. To appreciate the many tastes and flavors of India is to recognize and respect its spectacular diversity. To differentiate how an eggplant is prepared in a northern tandoor compared to how it is marinated and slowly baked in the south is to honor the spectrum of India in all its glory and complexity.

  And there were stories. Whether it was the epic myths that chronicled not just the countless gods and goddesses but the great dynasties of eras past, or the lesser known narratives of obscure texts and scriptures, Indian stories and fables were the ones I grew up with. Later in life, I would discover that this was the one real parenting technique that Papa actually consciously and purposefully implemented. It wasn’t so much because he wanted us to be Indian, but because he believed the stories resonated deeply and would have a literal effect in shaping us.

  “Great myths are not static,” he once told me. “They retell themselves over and over in our daily existence. The great heroes and villains of mythic lore are parts of ourselves in embryo and they express themselves over and over again in daily life.”

  It was standard Joseph Campbell stuff, celebrating the heroes’ journey, reminding us there’s a reason why certain myths have endured the ages.

  “No, it’s more than that,” Papa insisted. “Reading the greatest stories civilization has ever created is the closest we’ll ever come to truly understanding the outer edges of consciousness.”

  Consciousness. If Papa’s life’s work—close to sixty books, not to mention hundreds of blogs, thousands of tweets, and an infinite amount more of assorted insights—could be summarized in one word, consciousness would be that word. Consciousness and Papa’s dogged exploration of it remained at the core of everything he has written and taught. Even if the vast majority of people never understand it, nor him, Papa is determined to stay the course.

  “Yeah, that’s probably true,” Papa agreed when I proposed it to him on the third hole of the La Costa golf course where he and I were playing. A couple of years earlier, he had become intensely interested in golf—even wrote a best-selling book about it—and I’d gone along for the ride. Expensive clubs and outfits were purchased. Even more expensive classes and courses were identified and played. Stupidly expensive golf vacations were ventured on. As far as Chopra indulgences went, however, golf had been one that captured the attention longer than most. And while in the last year it had waned significantly, we still believed that the game would never truly fade from our lives.

  “Consciousness is kind of a tough word,” I offered.

  “Why?” Papa replied as he lined up his putt.

  “It’s just so, I don’t know . . .” I didn’t know—that was the problem. “Consciousness is such a big word. It’s just so . . . inclusive.”

  “That’s the point.” Papa nodded as he tapped his putt. The ball headed straight for the hole and then bled to the right, ending up about four feet wide.

  “Consciousness is at the heart of all creation. The source of everything in existence, including us. And it’s scientifically provable. It is science.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t really want to engage in a debate either. My mind was veering in a different direction. In recent weeks I had become fixated on how to impart some culture onto my own cut-and-paste kid. It scared me in many ways looking around the neighborhood and culture in which we lived. Aside from it being lily white, it was also not exactly socioeconomically diverse, especially against the greater context of Los Angeles, which is actually one of the most culturally diverse places in the world. The closest these days Krishu was getting to even interacting with people of his own ancestry was Pradeep, the proprietor of the local Indian restaurant, or good old Master Shifu. On the contrary, the only literal stories that Krishu would see in his neighborhood were Truman Show–esque. Things were so clean and concise, almost choreographed to sterility. We lived in a culture so supersensitive to political correctness, so organic, so H1N1 paranoid that it made me fear that my boy would never get the dirt beneath his fingernails that I believed was essential to him. And not just in a kids need to get dirty way, but in a how is he going to operate in and contribute meaningfully to the brave new globalized world of the twenty-first century that we all live in? kind of way. To me, the great Indian myths with which I had grown up, so full of war and conflict between the forces of good and evil, saturated with triumph and treachery amongst the righteous and the nefarious, painted a portrait of a world of contradictions, not just of blacks and whites, but the gray that often loomed in the aftermath. I loved them growing up, read comic books that chronicled them over and over, and sensed at the right time Krishu surely would as well. Still, there were so many stories and fables to choose from. I wanted to make sure that the ones I selected had some purpose to them. It didn’t need to be as obvious as “The moral of this story is . . .” and yet I wanted him to know that there was some method behind the madness.

  Which myths specifically spoke to consciousness? My father announced that there were only four people in the world who truly understood consciousness. These four were all quantum physicists. I am not a quantum physicist. You do the math. If understanding consciousness were critical, then I lacked confidence that I might select the right stories.

  I changed tactics. “Is there a word analogous to consciousness that may be easier to wrap one’s head around?” I tapped my putt toward the cup, missing it, but not by as much as Papa.

  We argued about whose ball was farther from the hole.

  “Love,” Papa proposed. “How about that?”

  It’s not a word that I’d have ever guessed. Then again, that explained once more why I was not among the four people in the world who understood consciousness.

  As if he’d read my mind, Papa continued, this time invoking one of his favorite poets, the Nobel Prize–winning Rabindranath Tagore. “Love is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate force at the heart of creation.”

  He tapped his ball and watched it disappear into the bottom of the cup. Papa seemed quite satisfied with himself, either because he’d managed a double bogey, a respectful score between the two of us, or maybe because he had crystallized a connection between consciousness and love.

  “Find a good myth about unconditional love for Krishu and you’ll be on your way,” he instructed me.

  Well then, I certainly had my marching orders.
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  BY THE MIDDLE of the summer, several weeks before his birthday, Krishu was gripped by the terrible twos. His precociousness and early finesse with languages—English, Spanish, and Mandarin—enabled him to express himself in ways that reflected just how fast his mind was developing.

  “Quiero huevos con queso,” he chirped when we rolled into the kitchen between showings of Kung Fu Panda.

  “Huàn niaòbù?” he’d announce, alerting us in Mandarin that his diaper needed to be changed.

  But it was one early morning when he awoke between Candice and me that he made his most dramatic announcement: “I want to fight Cleo.” We stared at him, unsure how to react. He said it with such clarity and precision, as if it was a decision he’d spent considerable time pondering and debating internally. We didn’t know whether to be humored by it or troubled.

  In fact, it was evidence of a growing trend we’d started to see over the last few months. Often, I’d find him gathering whatever was within reach—pillows on the couch, books off the shelves, food from the tables—and firing it directly at Cleo’s head. Still somewhat spry and agile, not to mention wise to Krishu’s increasingly shady ways, Cleo knew how to dodge her opponent’s advances. She’d leap from her perch wherever she was and scurry away to the safe zones she’d located around the house: beneath the kitchen table, behind the couch, up atop the elevated bed in the guest room. Still, Krishu was relentless. When Cleo’s guard was down, he’d commandeer one of his toys—a dump truck, its trailer full of oversized LEGO pieces—and chase her around the room. Occasionally he’d clip her leg with the plastic truck, or if he was strategic enough, corner her and then commence the heavy artillery fire with the oversized LEGOs.

  The most elaborate and disturbing scheme he’d concocted was, ironically, short of physical aggression. Krishu would squeeze himself behind the couch, running his hands through the significant dust balls that had settled there, and place them squarely in Cleo’s water bowl, presumably to contaminate it and render it undrinkable. It was truly diabolical in nature, evidence of an advanced level of calculated deviousness in the league of supervillains like Lex Luthor or the Joker. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or afraid.