The 10% Guru - So Close, Yet So Far

Yesterday, I was at a motorcycle gathering here in Chachoengsao. It was the usual scene—rumbling engines, the smell of gasoline, and guys nodding appreciatively at custom modifications. 

Then I met an Italian guy.

We hadn't even finished the initial handshakes before he dropped the headline news: I'm a Yoga Teacher.

Naturally, I was curious. I’ve spent enough time in the world of sound therapy and spirituality to know that "yoga" covers a wide spectrum. So, I asked the obvious follow-up: "Oh? What kind of yoga do you do?"

He looked at me with genuine surprise, almost bordering on offense. In his eyes, the answer should have been self-evident. Apparently, his very aura was screaming Hatha Yoga, and I had simply failed to read the cosmic fine print.

I braced myself. I was hoping for a deep, interesting conversation. I thought we might trade notes on consciousness, energy and philosophy.

Instead, I got the slide show.

For the next 60 minutes, there was no real "conversation"; there was only a presentation. He pulled out his phone, scrolling through endless photos of his muscles. "Look at this definition," he seemed to be saying, as if enlightenment was stored in the biceps. Then came the videos of him doing pretzel-like postures, followed by videos of his Guru, followed by a lecture on why Hatha is the supreme path. 

"Touch this muscle! I never lift weights, it's all about stretching." 

I tried to gently chime in. I mentioned that I had experienced a Kundalini Awakening thirty years ago—a massive, life-altering energetic event....trying to find common ground.

He didn't blink. He didn't ask a single question. He just waited for my mouth to stop moving so he could get back to the main topic: himself.

Then came the test. After showing off his physical prowess, he looked at me with a grin and asked the trap question:

"So... guess how old I am?"

He was clearly fishing. He probably expected me to say 45. He was ready to bask in the glory of his yoga-preserved youth.

I hesitated. "I'm really bad at judging age," I said.

"No, no, don't worry...just guess!" he insisted.

So, I went with my gut. "58."

His face dropped. He looked at me, totally incredulous. "You got it... exactly right. The first time."

The air went out of the balloon. All that flexing, all those videos, and he still looked exactly like a 58-year-old man.

Trying to salvage something from the interaction, I asked one final question to steer us back to the spiritual. "So," I asked, "What is the actual goal of all these exercises?"

His answer was the perfect summary of the encounter.

"Well," he said, "Yoga is basically just 10% of the path to enlightenment. But you know... if you want to go that far, to live a saintly life, you have to study the books, chant and meditate for years, live in an ashram with the Yogis, eat only pure food and do this and that."

I gently pointed out that even the Buddha taught the Middle Way—that you don't need to live in a cave or punish yourself to wake up. Enlightenment is accessible right here, right now, without the extremes.

He just shook his head, dismissed the comment entirely, and moved on to the next picture and video.

I walked away from the motorcycle meet realizing I had learned something profound after all. True spirituality isn't about how flexible your hamstrings are; it's about how flexible your mind is. The guy was trapped by his own belief that awakening and enlightenment are some near-unattainable things that only the most devoted and persistent yogis could attain. 
I didn't feel I had to correct him or even share my own experiences and thoughts. He wasn't interested anyway. So many people I meet love to talk (about themselves) and very, very few actually listen.

This also made me think about my own body. To be fair, his body was indeed amazing. He had muscles I didn't even know existed. I looked at myself, with my jelly-like muscles and wondered why I never felt the need to sculpt it the way this guy does. Laziness surely plays a big role, but there is more to it.
Hatha Yoga is meant to strengthen the vessel so that it would build a solid foundation for the next higher stages of Yoga. ("Mens sana in corpore sano") and facilitate the emergence of more subtle stages. 

For me, having experienced part of that other 90% already, the physical never seemed very important. I was always more interested in exploring that 90% and I certainly don't believe it's something reserved for "special" people with a lifetime of ascetic practices. And if 20 years of Hatha Yoga didn't bring you closer to that truth, then what is the point?