Love
recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to
arrive at its destination full of hope. –Maya Angelou
Until very recently, an endearing picture of a
smiling Neem Karoli Baba greeted me from my computer’s home page. Every time I
logged onto the computer that face was a reminder to me to be courageous and
strong and tender. While I never had the good fortune to meet Neem Karoli Baba
when he was alive, I have read and heard stories of him from some of his more
celebrated Western disciples, including Krishna Das, the kirtan singer; Lama
Surya Das, the American lama and author who started out as a Jewish kid from
Long Island; and Baba Ram Dass, formerly known as Timothy Leary’s partner in
LSD research and experimentation at Harvard, Richard Alpert. To a person, these
men speak reverently of Neem Karoli Baba or Maharaji, as they affectionately
refer to their teacher. According to them, to be in his presence was to be in
the presence of capital “L” Love: unconditional, unfailing, absolute.
It is because of Neem Karoli Baba that I became
acquainted with and devoted to the monkey god Hanuman. Hanuman’s story is not
unlike one of Joseph Campbell’s mythic hero’s journeys. The short version is
that Hanuman was born with great powers. In a single leap, he could travel
great distances, in fact, to the sun and back. Hanuman’s talents—and
pride—angered the gods, and he was wounded. Later, Hanuman had to be reminded
of his powers when he was called upon to save the two people he loved most in
the world, the Hindu god and goddess Rama and Sita. His love for Rama and Sita
was like the love Neem Karoli Baba shared with all of the young, wayward pilgrims
who traveled great distances to be with him during the 60s and until his death
in 1973. In one of his earliest books, Awakening
to the Sacred, Lama Surya Das recounts the time that a group of Western
disciples was seated with Maharaji in his ashram listening to another holy man
read from the epic poem the Ramayana. The poem is a sacred text in India and
tells the story of Hanuman’s devotion to Rama and Sita. As the holy man read
about Hanuman’s love for the pair and his feats of courage and strength
expended for their benefit, Maharaji was so overcome with emotion that he ran
from the room, tears streaming down his face (p. 135-137).
Once, when Krishna Das asked Maharaji how to know
God, Maharaji told him to serve others. The Dalai Lama imparts a similar lesson
over and over again in the pages of his many books and during his extensive
lecture tours. Life is a matter of the heart. If we wish to cultivate more
happiness in our lives, the key lies in being of service to others. At no other
time during the year is this teaching brought home to me more than at the
holidays. From November through January, my kitchen becomes a vehicle for
spreading the love. I imagine it is the same in many kitchens around the world.
For this reason, I have been thinking a lot about a phrase I heard in a radio
interview on my drive to my yoga practice the other morning. The actress Tracee
Ellis Ross, who Sunday night won a Golden Globe Award for her role in the
television sitcom Blackish, was talking about the off-screen work she does to
prepare for her performance in Blackish. In the show, Ross is a working Mom—an accomplished
doctor. But when she returns home, she returns to the quotidian chores of the
home as well. In the interview, Ross was recounting a scene from a recent
episode in which she is chopping vegetables in the kitchen while she and her
husband are engaged in an important discussion. Ross tells her host that this
is a common theme, her character chopping vegetables while in a heated exchange
with her husband. Here she asks a rhetorical question, “Why does my character
always have to be doing ‘lady chores’ during these talks”?
I get it. And I am not an actress of any kind not to
mention an award-winning actress interested in making her character continually
relevant to her audience. It is not easy to go to work every day only to return
home to more work and more people who need and want you to do things for them.
I get it. I get it. I get it. But I also get how we, as in women, have learned
to dismiss this other work that, let’s face it, mostly women tend to do. Ross
did, in fact, say as much in this interview. Lots of women are working women
and lots of women who are mothers also work outside of the home. And, when we
return home, an entirely different world of work is awaiting us there. Women
are largely responsible for completing all kinds of other work, genuine labor
in many cases, which goes unseen or is seen and quickly diminished or demeaned
as menial or not real work. In other words, lady chores. Nevertheless, if our
male counterparts cook dinner or do a load of laundry or go to the grocery
store or make the doctor’s, dentist’s, school appointments for the kids, well,
they have practically redefined Pi. Okay. Yes. I exaggerate. But the point is,
in men’s hands, these jobs are transformed. They are seen for what they really are;
work in the service of others.
Viewed through this lens, we learn to appreciate
this work—all the ‘lady chores’—and the people who perform it. We do not take
it for granted. Instead, we marvel at the well-stocked kitchen shelves that can
assist in delivering to the table just what we wanted to eat. The stack of
neatly folded clothes is a sculpture, a one-of-a-kind architectural structure. Chopping
vegetables is an act that keeps us grounded, present, and grateful, particularly
in light of all that we cannot control in our lives. In fact, the kitchen and the
daily chores I perform in it have restored my sense of the ordinary and how
sacred it is. Time, and how we choose to spend it, is the true cathedral, the
real church of our lives.
There is a Haitian saying, which goes like this: “God
gives, but he does not share.” Sharing is our task, and has been since
Kindergarten. And I continue to learn this simple lesson. Like recently, when I
discovered that my neighbors were fighting the flu again this holiday season, I
made them a pot of red lentil soup. My neighbor thought it was the best soup
she had ever eaten. In my mind, I thought of the many, many, many times I have
made this soup for dinner, and I had to fight the urge—in keeping with my ‘lady
chores’ observation—to render it as nothing special. Instead, I promised my
neighbor that I would not only share the recipe with her, but I would, as she
enthusiastically suggested, incorporate it, along with other homemade gems I
have shared with her and others, into my blog.
And why not? If my yoga and meditation practice has
taught me anything, it has taught me how to bring more joy into my life and,
subsequently, the lives of those I meet along the path. Sharing good food is a
great way to put more joy into the world. Last year, I compiled a dozen recipes
into a slim volume, wrote an introduction and added the poem by Linda Pastan, To a Daughter Leaving Home, and
presented it to two seniors who had been good friends of my daughter’s from the
time she was a freshman. I entitled the introduction to this cookbook “A Word
about Essential Ingredients.” Here is a paragraph from that introduction:
There are 12 recipes in
this slim volume and one poem. Many of these recipes I made during your
cross-country training season in Mammoth the summer of 2016. A few, like the
recipe for Ana’s Snickerdoodles, were added because they have never failed to
make someone happy. And, there it is. The reason I have come to enjoy spending
time in the kitchen making meals and special dishes for my family and friends.
The results make people happy.
Working in the kitchen has taught me how to share
the bounty we have been given. Every time I bring brownies or granola or
gingerbread or lemon bars to share with my fellow yogis after practice, or soup
to a neighbor in need, I am extending that lesson I learned in Kindergarten. If
we look at love as a means of making others happy instead of a checklist of
what have you done for me lately, then all of our chores, lady or otherwise,
are simply a way for us to spread it around abundantly.
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| Neem Karoli Baba |
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