Skin Deep

by Sung J. Woo

  “It’s the same lake, just the original name. The name of the American Indian tribe massacred to make room for a yoga retreat that now features wifi and women wearing $300 Lululemon outfits.”

  “Lead the way, Dharma,” I said. For about five seconds, he accelerated like a V8, flashing his true foot speed, then he shifted down to my level again.

  “To the path of enlightenment,” he said.

  What started off as a normal trail soon became an unruly route with grass as high as the knees in spots, and after another minute of delving deeper into the woods, I wondered if following a stranger to the middle of the forest was a smart move. I did have my phone with me, so I couldn’t get that lost with a GPS in hand, but still, it was a bit unsettling. Dharma seemed like a decent human being, but all I knew of him was that poster on the wall.

  My fears were somewhat allayed when a trail re-emerged, a faint one. There were even markers every so often, roughly whittled wooden arrows on posts pointing the way, but we also had to jump over a fallen tree and run around another one. It was a path that was no longer maintained, which was a shame because it was gorgeous. Mostly the forest over here consisted of sugar maples, so the leaves were either a mustard yellow or a pale green. Peeking through the more sparse section of the forest was the lake, its still surface mirroring the sky and the clouds.

  “We’re almost there,” Dharma said. I looked toward his voice and saw a blur of white, then nothing. Up ahead was a massive thicket of hollies, and he’d disappeared behind them. I stopped. Birds chirped around me, and to the right, some animal darted away, its feet rustling through the thicket.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” came Dharma’s disembodied voice.

  “Said the guy before he murders and buries his victim.”

  Beyond the natural wall, Dharma’s arm poked through like that of a ghost.

  “That’s not helping,” I said.

  He opened his hand and wriggled his fingers. “Please, Siobhan, just hold my hand and I’ll pull you through. Close your eyes so the branches don’t poke you.”

  There had to be an easier way to make a buck, but too late now. I grabbed his hand, closed my eyes, and felt my body being yanked through some serious brush.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Yes,” Dharma said. “That’s what everybody says when they lay eyes on Ondaga Plain.”

  Standing at the outer edge of Ondaga Plain, the vast field that expanded in front of me was a potent combination of overwhelming and calming. Ensconced within the boundary of wild hollies with their glossy green leaves and bright red berries, these flat grounds stretched about as long as a football field.

  “I don’t remember seeing this on the map in my welcome packet,” I said.

  “I can’t even tell you how much it took to keep it that way. They wanted to turn this sacred space into a concert venue.”

  “Who is they?”

  Dharma sat down and unlaced his sneakers.

  “Krishna, LLC, a limited liability corporation.”

  I sat down, too. There was some grass, but not much of it. Instead, a groundcover plant had proliferated, short and curly dark-green leaves that were surprisingly soft.

  “I like what’s growing here,” I said.

  “Periwinkle. Hardy as hell, totally naturalized now. In May, the entire field flowers, lavender petals everywhere. No need for gas-guzzling mowers to choke our air or chemical weed killers to poison our earth. The hollies make a natural permanent barrier. I helped with all these plantings a long, long time ago. We also spread clover seeds, too, so nothing grows above four inches here.”

  “I hear you’re a Krishna Root.”

  “One of the seven.”

  “So you’ve seen a lot of changes.”

  Dharma put his hands together flat then placed his thumbs against his heart and tilted his head just so, like I’ve seen in some Buddha statues. I had to admit, this guy really rocked this pose. I could see the years he spent meditating in this position, ingrained in him like the lines on his face.

  59

  As the sun slowly set over the row of tall evergreens to the west, Dharma recounted the Krishna story from the beginning. The year was 1960. Guru Dev Krishvananda, who’d come from India to study philosophy at Princeton, quit before completing his degree because by the time he was a sophomore, he already had over two hundred people attend his weekly yoga class. Five years later in Morristown, New Jersey, four men and three women, in their twenties and full of energy and hope, set up an ashram, a spiritual monastery for full immersion into the yogic experience. They formed the Yoga Center of New Jersey, which was set up as a nonprofit and sounded official but hardly was. Krishvananda had rented a large three-floor house and ran his yoga classes in the basement.

  It took just two years for them to outgrow their house. It was an enormous jump to go from what they had to the Meadowlark building, but in addition to being a master of yoga, Krishvananda was also a master of business. The Meadowlark used to be a Roman Catholic seminary, and it was in financial trouble. Krishvananda formally established Krishna as a nonprofit religious order and was able to convince the banks to give him a very friendly loan. By calling on the small army of devotees he’d already amassed, he used volunteering to bring the building to a state where it could house one hundred visitors.

  “The volunteer program is just about the only thing that reminds me of how things used to be. That’s what’s real. Everything else is…shameful.”

  “If I have the timeline right, this is right around when America was in its hippie period. Open your mind, tune out, etc.?” I asked.

  “Our guru was never afraid of going against the grain. He held his beliefs rock steady. Falsity surrounded us, supposed enlightenment by way of chemicals, but Krishvananda knew the true path to a higher level of consciousness was best achieved by the body and mind in clarity and concert.”

  A full day began at 4:30 in the morning, when Krishvananda led the congregation with Krishna Flow yoga, the kind that did not rely on a caravan of set poses like most classes.

  “The closest analog would be jazz—spontaneity within a structure,” Dharma said. “Everyone sitting in that room was connected to one another. It was like we flowed in and out of each other, our individual movements forming a greater whole. Once you experience something like that, your world changes.”

  Meditation was taken seriously, a minimum of two hours each day. The diet was strictly vegetarian, no coffee, no caffeinated tea, not even any processed sugars, so no desserts. The highlight of the day was the time Krishvananda sat with his disciples and guests in the Great Room and answered personal questions and problems.

  “What kind of questions?” I asked.

  “Anything.”

  “So he just sat there like Oprah?”

  “If our guru had wanted to have a TV show, he could’ve had one.”

  “Can you recall what some of these questions were?”

  “When I say anything, I wasn’t exaggerating. I’m having trouble sleeping. I wish I ate less chocolate. I’ve been passed over for a promotion at work. I feel like my life is not my own. Some of the questions were more general, philosophical in nature. Others were extremely subjective and limited in scope. Our guru welcomed them all and responded with humor, insight, and praise.”

  The day ended at nine sharp, lights out and everyone going to bed.

  “Except Guru Dev Krishvananda’s night wasn’t over,” I said. “Even though he was preaching celibacy to his unmarried disciples, I read that he was having sex with a coterie of women.”

  Dharma set his hands on his knees and set his angry eyes upon mine.

  “You think you know all there is to know about that part of the story.”

  “I’m not saying anything that can’t be found through Google.”

  “When the disciples are ready, the guru vanishes.”

  “I remember that phrase in one of the articles.. They s
aid the ashram residents were already on their way of breaking away from your guru.”

  Dharma raised his arms and spread them out. The sun was directly behind his head, outlining his hair in a yellow blaze. “There’s nothing quite as malleable as history.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “It certainly wasn’t the truth for me, and not for any of the other Roots. At that point in our history, we had over fifty yoga instructors and ten bodywork professionals. To think that all those people found instant gratification with the guru’s resignation is firmly in the realm of fiction. At that point in our history, there was a faction who wanted to push Krishna into the mass-market, solipsistic entity that it has become. It was a power grab. They frightened the board of trustees into dismissing our guru, and ever since, it’s been a gradual erosion of the Krishna mission. Once upon a time, we were an organization that asked people to look inward. Now we hold spiritual retreats for corporations, Siobhan. Oil companies that bleed our planet, soft drink purveyors that poison our young, pharmaceutical outfits who provide pills to numb our minds and bodies.

  “And if those atrocities weren’t enough, we are now ushering in technology into our sacred space. Yoga apps that will capture a selfie video and assign a grade to your postures, then showcase on the Krishna website for people to click on the ‘like’ button as if it were a contest. Maybe that sounds innovative, but it is ultimately destructive. It completely ignores the mind aspect of our practice, which is a thousand times more important than whether you can swing your leg over your head. The Krishna Futurists, as that silly department is now calling themselves, have already begun to work with Silicon Valley on augmented and virtual reality equipment, figuring out more ways to dump our souls into the electronic trash. They’ll tell you it’s progress, but it is exactly the opposite. Every step they have taken forward is ten steps backward.”

  I didn’t know if I agreed with Dharma, but one thing for sure, this guy’s faith was unshakable. Every word was delivered with belief so strong that it sort of made me sad. Because, let’s face it, he might have wasted his entire life on believing in a guy who liked being in the center of attention and enjoyed bedding young women. An old newspaper story I’d dug up in preparation for this trip mentioned that Krishvananda earned a quarter of a million per year for the eleven years he was guru, so obviously he liked money, too. In short, he was like most dynamic, successful people, courting the popular triumvirate of power, sex, and cash.

  “So why are you still sticking around, Dharma?” I asked. “From what I’ve read, a number of Krishna-certified instructors did strike out and set up their own shop.”

  He rose slowly, and I followed. He raised his arms and breathed in a breath so big that I thought his chest would explode. His arms were like a valve, lowering ever so slowly as he exhaled with measure and control.

  “Because this is home, Siobhan. I will not abandon my home. Not without a fight. And that time is coming.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After twenty years of self-exile on an island off India’s coast, Krishvananda has returned.”

  “To where?”

  Dharma smiled. “Where else?”

  “Here? Now?”

  “Yes and yes. When the time is right, I’d like you to meet him. Would you be amenable to that?”

  “Of course,” I said, remembering who I was supposed to be. “That’s why I’m here, to capture and relate the complete story.”

  “Very good,” Dharma said. “The sun has almost set, so let us return.”

  On the way back, he told me a bit more about the sex scandal, information that had been purposefully kept away from the public, that Krishvananda had been stuck in a loveless arranged marriage and ended up marrying one of the women with whom he’d cavorted. And regardless of his extracurricular activities, in ten years, Krishna went from a $1.5 million-a-year business to $25 million, almost entirely because of the work Krishvananda had done. He’d worked tirelessly to promote himself and Krishna, and in the end, it was all taken away from him, and for what? Because he fell in love? At least that was Dharma’s point of view.

  “And what’s happening this weekend…we may have reached Krishna’s nadir.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Have you heard of Cleopatra Park?”

  “I just saw her leaving one of the cafés.”

  “For twenty years I’ve done my mindfulness workshop in the Sunrise Room, but because of her, they’ve relegated me to the Orchard Room, which is not even half its size. And for what? Take a look at the schedule for that room for tomorrow morning and you’ll see the embarrassment.”

  By the time we’d climbed up the hill and reached the entrance of the Meadowlark, it was five o’clock, the sun almost done for the day. I was soaked with sweat. Dharma looked like he could sprint another fifty miles.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  “You don’t have my number.”

  “I’ll reach you.”

  He headed down the hall and I headed for the staircase, then thought better of it and stopped at the elevator to the left.

  “Siobhan?”

  I knew that voice. I turned around, and there he was, Craig, suitcase in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other.

  60

  Roses, red ones. I tried to remember when I last received flowers from a man. Since that was taking me way longer than it should, I decided to enjoy the present instead of bemoaning the past. I placed my nose fully into the velvety redness and breathed in.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I finished checking in like thirty seconds ago. Your timing couldn’t have been better.”

  “Perhaps good timing, but terrible presentation. I went for a run, so I’m a sweaty mess.”

  It was actually good to have this excuse, because I didn’t know whether to shake his hand or hug him or what. Still, it was an awkward moment, but I was further saved by the procession behind him.

  Two of Park’s guards were at the head, and following them were Cleo Park, Vera Wheeler, Grace Park, and a tiny mouse of a woman with a tight perm—Christine Collins, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Llewellyn. Her hair was as red as Little Orphan Annie’s. Bringing up the rear were two more guards, the last one being none other than Brent Kim.

  “People of interest?” Craig asked.

  “Or interesting people.”

  They cut across the lobby and headed up the stairs, on their way to the dining hall.

  “I’ll have you know, I did a little detecting of my own to get here,” Craig said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I’d forgotten the name of the place you’d gone to, but since you used my laptop, I searched my browser history and found it. Used the same links to make my reservation.”

  “This might be a second career for you if that lawyer thing doesn’t work out. Let’s get you settled in and then grab some dinner.”

  Like myself, Craig had gotten a room on the third floor, except he was in the eastern wing while I was in the western.

  He laid his suitcase on the desk. “I feel like I’m back in my college dorm.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I’m not sure. I took up more room. I was almost three hundred pounds.”

  Together, it took no time at all to make his bed. With the sheet tucked in neatly, we sat on it together.

  “How did you get so big?”

  “Just ate all the time. It was even easier in college since the dining halls were all-you-can-eat buffets. It’s not hard, at least not for me, to gain weight. Both of my parents are overweight, so I’m genetically predisposed. I bet you’ve never been fat.”

  “I was a fairly chunky baby.”

  “Sorry, but that doesn’t count.”

  “I’ve never been skinny. I’m certainly not skinny now.”

  “But you’re not fat and it’s highly unlikely you ever will be. It’s protection, you k
now? That girth around you. People literally cannot get close.”

  “And why did you want that distance?”

  Craig opened up his suitcase and hung his shirts and pants in the nook besides the mirror.

  “I think I was afraid. Of being away from home for the first time, failing out, the usual nightmares colleges are made of.”

  “The only thing we have to fear…is feeeaaaarrr itself!” I said.

  “I think what we need to fear,” Craig said, “is your FDR impression.”

  61

  Back at the dining hall, I scanned the communal tables for Park and Wheeler. There they were, at the tables by the back wall, four women flanked by six bodyguards. The place was bustling, the line for the buffet snaking halfway down the length of the room. Within a minute of Craig and I joining the line, a dozen people followed us up. As before, everything smelled divine. There was something fried tonight, the scent of grease made my belly growl. I picked up two trays from the stack and handed him one.

  Like lunch, there were two lines, one for vegetarian, one for meat. And like lunch again, I got both the real honey-fried chicken and the fake tempeh-fried chicken.

  “My eyes are bigger than my stomach,” I said.

  “I’ll happily help you with any leftovers.”

  “Mind if we go sit over there?” I asked, gesturing to Park and Wheeler.

  “Is it going to cause a scene?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “Then, absolutely.”

  Each cafeteria-style table sat a dozen, so there were two empty seats at the end. We were still at least ten paces away when two of the guards stood up and blocked our way.

  “There are many other available seats,” one of them said to me.

  “Are these reserved?”

  The guards looked at each other, like maybe they should lie. Underneath their neat white turtleneck and black slacks, they had bodies of professional wrestlers, and they also had similar levels of brainpower.