About JAIMAL YOGIS As an award-winning journalist and photographer, Jaimal spends much of his spare time surfing and traveling the globe.  With a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University, his work has been published in The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Toronto Star, The Surfers Journal, Belief.net, Tricycle, San Francisco Magazine, and many others.  His first book, Saltwater Buddha, has been internationally praised and is the subject of a forthcoming PBS documentary. Nevertheless, he is currently working on a second release, while also traveling on an extensive book tour (along the coasts of course).

LM: Your book is a delight to read.  I came away with similar feelings I had come away with when reading Siddhartha.  There were so many ‘A-haa’ moments that I experienced.  Without forcing it on the reader, you  share some beautiful prose and help us all to focus on what is truly important — living more mindfully, being aware of our own happiness.  Have you always been on a quest for spiritual understanding?  When did this interest first strike you?

JY: It goes back as far as I can remember. I wouldn’t have called it spiritual when I was really young, but I’ve always had the desire to know what is “behind” so-called reality. I’ve always wanted to know the source of everything, why we’re here and all that.  When I was about 10 years old I was a little pretentious and even created my own religion called Jaimalism. The only tenant was that whatever you firmly believe would become your reality, afterlife included. I joke about it but I guess I’m still basically a Jaimalist.

LM: As a Junior High student, you ran away to Hawaii, equipped with little more than a copy of  Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.  Can you share with us the reason for your trip?  Before this time, had you surfed, or was this your first experience?

JY: I had this impulsive feeling that running away to Hawaii was going to save my life. I was running into a lot of bad stuff in my hometown – drugs, trivialities, stagnation. I felt bad for putting my parents through all that worry, but running away really was the beginning of my spiritual path and the beginning of a quest to follow my heart, a quest I’m still on. I’d surfed a couple times before that in Cocoa Beach and I’d body boarded a bit, but as I write in the book, it didn’t prepare me for what I found in Hawaii. I had to get pretty beaten up before I even started to learn the basics.

LM: In your book, “Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea” (Wisdom Publications, $14.95), you trace your steps through the islands of Hawaii, while also discussing your travels to Mexico, UC Santa Cruz, India and a Berkeley Chinese monastery known for its strictness.  Of all the places you have visited, can you share with us the most spiritual of journeys you have taken thus far?  What was it about that specific trip that left you with a feeling that you were no longer the same person you were when you first stepped out on that quest?

JY: The cool, and sometimes difficult thing about traveling, is that you always come back a different person. The people and places literally become a part of you and you’re never the same. I can’t say any of the places were more spiritual or more life changing than the other, but India – specifically becoming very close with a Tibetan monk named Sonam, which I write about in an upcoming Shambhala Sun article – stands out in my mind as one of the happiest.  Perhaps it was because we were in the Himalayas. Those mountains will change anyone. Plus, I was coming out of a very sad break-up and just starting to feel my freedom and stability again.

LM: As a journalist and photographer, did you set out to document your story, thus creating Saltwater Buddha or did the idea for the book come about more organically?

JY: It arose organically. I was meditating in my room during graduate school in journalism, very stressed about deadlines, and I felt like I was drowning in bad thoughts: “You’re not good enough, etc.” I was able to pop out of that bad state by imagining that my bad thoughts were just really ugly waves that I could let pass over me like I do in a stormy surf session. I didn’t have to ride any of them, or identify with them. I wrote an article about this kind of surfing-meditation metaphor and that article became really popular online. One of the magazines that republished the story asked me what I wanted in my bio, and I said, “why don’t you say I’m working on a book about zen and surfing”.  I had only started the book in my head, but a few weeks later, Wisdom called me and asked if they could publish it. I said, “Sure, I just have to write it.”

Surfing Buddha By Brandon Duke

LM: You have many friends who consider themselves avid surfers, while also being practicing Buddhists.  Do you see Buddhism being a commanality amongst the surfing community?

JY: I didn’t realize how prevalent surfing Buddhists were until I wrote the book, but it’s incredible how many I’ve met since Saltwater Buddha hit the shelves. We’re all over the globe. It seems to be a burgeoning community which is really exciting to me.  Most surfers consider surfing spiritual, but a lot of us haven’t learned to take the peace we get from surfing into our land lives . Buddhism offers practices that teach you to maintain mindfullness in any situation, surfing included.  I think they’re a great combo.

LM: With all the places you have travelled to, what is your favorite place to surf and why?

JY: I still love surfing most in San Francisco with my friends. The water’s cold but I just feel at home there. There’s nothing like feeling totally at home while floating in the vastness of the ocean.

Dharamsala by Kenji Babasaki

LM: While in India, what did you focus on? Was it a spiritual quest, were you travelling throughout the country?  What was the one thing you remember when you think back to your travels to India and her people?

JY: I was studying journalism and finishing my undergraduate degree in religious studies, but my main goal was spiritual.  I spent about a month in silent retreat up in the Himalayas and met some incredible hermits.  Getting one hermit’s blessing was a life-changing experience.  He approached me randomly on the street in Dharmasala.  I’ve never seen such compassion in a human’s eyes.  It solidified my faith in meditation and prayer as a vehicle for improvement and freedom.

LM: If there were one goal you want readers to come away with after reading Saltwater Buddha, would it be that we each need to follow our dreams, live our dreams, create our own destiny?  If so, why do you feel that this is important to each of us as we travel down this road called life?

JY: Yea, I’d like everyone to have the faith to follow a dream. But I think it’s important to do so without being caught in a narrow result. To follow a dream, or to follow your heart, and not be attached to the outcome, remain open to life and what it brings, is an art I’m still working on. But I have a hunch that that art is ultimately how we can be free and happy while still living in the world.

On December 8th, the First WORDBRIDGE FAIR is being held in NYC.

Plant consciousness crosses roads with speculative fiction and a contemporary art show. It’s set to be an all day program with authors, artists and plenty of fun. Relaxed ambiance and music for art viewing, book signings, along with scheduled readings which are sure to be a delight!

FREE OF CHARGE
All day from 3 to 9 pm,
Saturday, Dec 8th 2007.

Salomon Arts Gallery, 83 Leonard Street, 4th floor. 212.966.1997

[Read more →]

Come, oh come, yea tea thirsty

Restless ones; the kettle boils,

Bubbles, and sings, musically.

–Rabindranath Tagore (as quoted in Tea: Legend, Life and Livelihood of India)

Tea is such a part of India’s culture, it’s hard to imagine daily life without it. As scientific research continues to establish the beneficial qualities of tea, it’s popularity continues to soar. The history of tea in the country of India is as fascinating as is the tea industry’s important role in the socio-economic life of the people.

Thanks to Tea: Legend, Life and Livelihood of India, the history now comes alive. [Read more →]

From the acclaimed author of The Epicure’s Lament, comes a grand new novel of literary contention in which two competing biographers collide in their quest for the truth about a great artist.

Oscar Feldman, the “Great Man,” is a New York city painter of the heroic generation of the 40s and 50s. Rather than focusing on abstract canvases like Pollock and Rothko, he stubbornly holds to painting one subject alone—the female nude. Upon his passing in 2001, he leaves behind a wife, Abigail, an autistic son, and a sister, Maxine, herself a notable abstract painter. [Read more →]

“Rather than look for miracles, see the miraculous in everything.”

Prior to the birth of Jesus, in ancient China, Lao-tzu dictated 81 verses, which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of our existence. The classic text of these 81 verses, called the Tao Te Ching or the Great Way, offers advice and guidance that is balanced, moral, spiritual, and always concerned with working for the good. In Dr. Wayne Dyer’s latest book, Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao , Dr. Dyer reviews hundreds of translations of the Tao Te Ching and has written 81 distinct essays on how to apply the ancient wisdom of Lao-tzu to today’s modern world. This work contains the entire 81 verses of the Tao, compiled from Wayne’s researching of 12 of the most well-respected translations of text that have survived for more than 25 centuries. Each chapter is designed for actually living the Tao or the Great Way today. Some of the chapter titles are “Living with Flexibility,” “Living Without Enemies,” and “Living by Letting Go.” Each of the 81 brief chapters focuses on living the Tao and concludes with a section called “Doing the Tao Now.”

One of the key teachings I keep returning to is, ” There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” It’s all a matter of changing our state [Read more →]

Russell Simmons, the godfather of hip-hop at the helm of Rush Communications, a $300+ million conglomerate reaching beyond music to include clothing companies, arts, nonprofit organizations, and diamonds, who in the past has used street smarts and a bling bling Rolodex to achieve social and political goals ranging from overturning certain restrictive New York State drug laws to encouraging voter registration, has published a new self-help book, Do You!: 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success. In it, he explains how readers can use yoga and Buddhism to find what he calls the “sweet spot”: one’s life’s work and mission. Simmons preaches about the practice of love and encourages readers to listen to their inner voice.

For those of us trying to travel to the beat of our own drum, Elizabeth Gilbert’s down to earth writing in, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia is definitely worth checking out. This book is delightful, funny, at times sad, but an inspiration throughout. Elizabeth takes you along for the ride as she searches to find herself: through food, prayer and love.

Sharing in the gastronomical delights of Italy, searching for spiritual discipline and joy in the majestic lands of India, seeking love and balance in the exotic Bali…you are sure to be transported.

As Kan Lamat so eloquently states, “As a hitchhiker thru many lands, my wanderlust delighted and splashed in the puddles of scenic descriptions and friendly faces that fill this book. Many memories resurfaced, particularly in India, and future plans were altered to taste in a bit of the lovely author’s experience. As a holyman, I love watching myself and others be dragged, kicking and screaming, by our divine guidance to a more healthy, holy self…As a walking advertising campaign for everything I love, I have found that I can turn anyone onto this book simply by handing it to them with the words “pick a paragraph… any paragraph.” I have yet to have anyone simply shrug off what they randomly read.
I second that one Kan!

A dear friend of ours recently turned us on to a great new book called Visionary Plant Consciousness: The Shamanic Teachings of the Plant World In it, 23 leading experts reveal the ways that psychoactive plants allow nature’s “voice” to speak to humans and what this communication means for our future. Exploring the relevance of plant-induced visions and shamanic teachings to humanity’s environmental crisis, the book comes complete with winning contributions from Terence McKenna, Andrew Weil, Wade Davis, Michael Pollan, Alex Grey and Katsi Cook to name just a few.

Visionary plants have long served indigenous peoples and their shamans as enhancers of perception, thinking, and healing. These plants can also be important guides to the reality of the natural world and how we can live harmoniously in it. In Visionary Plant Consciousness: The Shamanic Teachings of the Plant World, editor J. P. Harpignies gathers presentations from the Bioneers annual conference of environmental and social visionaries that explores how plant consciousness affects the human condition. Twenty-three leading ethnobotanists, anthropologists, medical researchers, and cultural figures present their understandings of the nature of psychoactive plants and their significant connection to humans. What they reveal is that these plants may help us access the profound intelligence in nature–the “mind of nature”–that we must learn to understand in order to survive our ecologically destructive way of life.

J. P. Harpignies is associate producer of the national Bioneers conference and coproducer and founder of the Eco-Metropolis conference in New York City. He is the author of Political Ecosystems: Modernity, Complexity, Fluidity and the Eco-Left and Double Helix Hubris: Against Designer Genes, the editor of Visionary Plant Consciousness: The Shamanic Teachings of the Plant World, and the associate editor of Ecological Medicine and Nature’s Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies (The Bioneers Series). Interested in hearing more from JP? He will be at the Open Center in NYC on Friday, June 22^nd for a booksigning & evening lecture.

“The one thing, on which we can all agree, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor. God is in the slums and in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. 6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.”

–Bono

This small book, based upon the speech given by Bono at the 2006 NPB, delivers an inspiring and powerful message. Here, in Bono’s own words, is a reflection on his own faith and a challenge to people of all faiths to reach across boundaries and come together on behalf of what the Scriptures call “the least of these.”

SEE ON THE MOVE

BUY ON THE MOVE

BUDDHA
A Story of Enlightenment
By Deepak Chopra
Harper Collins

Deepak Chopra has just written his latest…offering his remarkable insights on the inspiring life of the Buddha. In the book, Chopra shows the iconic journey of Prince Siddhartha who abandons the palace and all noble and worldly
titles to find the true self. In this process, he transcends bodily pain to reach the highest state of learning — Enlightenment. Chopra beautifully reminds us how the lessons of Buddha continue to influence every corner of the world.

Read an Excerpt