Ask the Yoga Master.
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I was busy on our front porch one rainy afternoon, sticking my thumb into our cat’s mouth and springing his fangs with my fingernail, something he never tires of, when my wife interrupted us.
“I’ve asked you not to do that,” she said impatiently. “You’re going to break his teeth, and then we’ll have a toothless cat.”
“He likes it,” I said. “Besides, I think it strengthens his teeth.”
“Oh, never mind.” she said. “Look what came in the mail. It’s the Yoga magazine, and your friend Barron’s in it.”
She has called him my friend instead of our friend ever since he dug up his mother’s flower garden and replaced it with a root vegetable garden.
“Barron? What did he ever do to become newsworthy besides spend half the day on his mat exercising and meditating?”
“He hasn’t done anything, but he’s writing an advice column for them.”
I was so surprised that I jumped out of my seat and our cat scattered pell-mell. I had been sending stories to the magazine for more than three years and been ignored, never even receiving a rejection letter.
“An advice column? What does Barron know about advice?”
“Honey, Barron is the kind of man who, when he asks if you want a piece of advice, it doesn’t matter what you say, because you’re going to get it anyway.”
I snatched the magazine from her hands. It was folded back to the full-page column, and staring me in the face was a picture of Barron Cannon, standing on his head in the middle of his parent’s backyard, where he lives in a yurt.
I fell back into my chair and began reading Ask the Yoga Master.
*****
Dear Yoga Master:
I enlisted in the army last month to defend our country and fight terrorists. I expected basic training to be hard, but I was ready for the challenge. Now I find out that Yoga is going to be part of our fitness training.
Our drill sergeant says it will keep us flexible instead of bulked up, and meditation will keep us calm when things get nerve-wracking. How can that be? Yoga is for chicks, isn’t it?
I need to know the right way to hold my rifle, not the right way to touch my toes, and I need to shoot when I see the whites of their eyes, not get in touch with my third eye.
Signed, Dismayed in Fort Hood
Dear Dismayed:
Not to worry. After Osama bin Laden was killed and thrown into the ocean, Gaiam Life, the leading Yoga accessory manufacturer, issued a special edition Yoga mat, thanking Seal Team 6 for taking care of business. There are lots of Yogis going heavy.
Even the Dalai Lama says that if someone is going to shoot you, shoot back first. Many people are skeptical about the power of Yoga, but not the Navy Seals. When interviewed, they often mention how closely Yoga training resembles their own.
Some Seals have even set up fitness schools, blending Yoga exercise with combat techniques. Since you’re just a runt in boot camp, you’re not going to argue with the Seals about the power of Yoga, are you, grasshopper?
Signed, Your Dutch Uncle
*****
It sounded just like Barron Cannon. In other words, it sounded deific and snippy. It didn’t sound like the glossy Yoga magazine, which knows how to trim its sails.
And, what did he mean by Your Dutch Uncle?
I had to get to the bottom of how Barron Cannon, who lives off the grid, had got his scribbling onto the pages of a magazine with millions of subscribers as well as more ad pages than pages of anything else.
I couldn’t understand how anyone like him, who, if he had deigned to be on Facebook would never get a Like in his life, could possibly have got a for-profit business to pay him for his opinions. To say he was curmudgeonly was to understate the obvious.
It had stopped raining, so I rolled up the magazine, stuck it my back pocket, and took a walk the two-or-so miles up Riverside Drive to Barron’s yurt on the heights of Hogsback Lane overlooking the Rocky River.
Barron and I were soon sitting on the edge of his parent’s backyard, on a pair of plastic Adirondack chairs he had scavenged somewhere, while he unrolled the magazine and admired his handiwork.
*****
Dear Yoga Master:
I have been married for 12 years and have three children. I love Yoga, but my husband has never had any interest in it, so I have always gone to the studio without him. He enjoys sleeping, eating, and watching sports on TV.
In the past year, I have fallen for a man with two boys who also passionately practices Yoga at my studio. He is very fond of me, too. His wife is ignorant and irresponsible. I think he would be a wonderful husband and a great father for my children.
Should I take the plunge, leave my husband, and start a new life?
Signed, Troubled in Minneapolis
Dear Troubled:
Have you completely lost your mind? First of all, do you realize there are five children involved in your so-called Yoga romance? How do you think they are going to feel when not one but two families are broken up?
Secondly, what does Yoga have to do with cheating on your husband, besides breaking most of the principles by which it is practiced? There is more to Yoga than standing on one leg, which you seem to be doing quite well.
There is no reason to be unhappy, certainly, but dump the Yogi lothario and try helping your husband off the La-Z-Boy. Maybe there is a reason he is such a slug. Living to eat and watching sports 24/7 is living the life of the undead.
Get him off his butt, on his feet, and off to the Yoga studio with you. It might be a way to bring him back to life, and your marriage, too. When you help him, you help yourself as well; it might also bring you back to your senses.
Signed, Your Dutch Uncle
*****
After Barron’s long-suffering mother had brought us coffee and scones, I came right to the point.
“How on earth did your words of wisdom make it into the magazine?” I asked, incredulous.
“A word to the wise isn’t what I’m doing, since it’s usually people on the stupid side that need me the most,” he said.
“I would have thought offering advice about the day-to-day was beneath you.”
Barron Cannon has a PhD in philosophy. He lived off the grid because no sooner had he won his diploma than he realized politics had replaced philosophy in the modern world.
“It’s not really advice,” he said. “Advice is free, but since it’s in a magazine that people have to pay for, it’s more like counseling.”
“You don’t sound like the friendliest counselor in the world,” I pointed out.
“I’m not trying to be their friend, because no friendship could stand the strain of good advice for too long,” he said.
“Which is it, council or advice?”
“It’s both,” he said. “But don’t worry, I never give them my best council, or advice, or whatever you want to call it, because they wouldn’t follow it anyway.”
*****
Dear Yoga Master:
I practice at a large Yoga studio and often hear our various Yoga teachers say things like Live in the now and It’s all good, it’s all Yoga. But, what about learning from the past and planning for the future? And, it can’t all be good, can it? Some things have to be right and wrong. Don’t they?
Signed, Baffled in Boston
Dear Baffled:
It is obvious you don’t understand yoga, which is our most beloved Eastern philosophy because it is so accepting of SUVs and Ayn Rand. It is also obvious you have not read the Bhagavad Gita, one of Yoga’s most important guidebooks.
In the book, which is a long poem from a long time ago, a warrior named Arjuna doesn’t want to go into battle, telling his chariot driver, who happens to be the god Krishna, that he doesn’t see the sense of it. He decries all the slaughter leading to nothing but disaster and ruin.
Krishna has his own agenda, which is revealed later in the story, so I won’t ruin the surprise. Needless to say, he musters many top-down arguments to convince Arjuna he must go to war, including the Be Here Now and There Is No Evil arguments.
The newest translation by Stephen Mitchell is the best and most accessible, and I recommend you get and read it as soon as possible. All will be revealed.
Signed, Your Dutch Uncle
*****
“If you’re sensible enough to give good advice, you should be sensible enough to give no advice,” I said. “So, what is it you’re trying to accomplish?”
“I say a good scare is better than good advice, so maybe I’m trying to throw a little scare into them,” he said.
“But, it benefits me, too. Living in mom’s backyard suits me, but I’ve been thinking of finding a girlfriend, which means I need some ready cash. They’re paying me for telling people the best thing they could do when falling is not land, and that’s a gift horse I’m willing to look in the mouth.”
When I heard the words girlfriend and money come out of Barron Cannon’s mouth, I almost fell out of my chair for the second time that day.
Barron had been living a no-expenses life off the grid since graduation. He had sold or given away almost everything he owned that he didn’t consider essential. He lived off his root vegetable plot, some fruit trees, and a solar array.
He practiced Yoga and meditation, read only e-books on the Lakewood Library site, and went for long hikes in the Metro Park.
“Don’t look so shocked,” he said.
“Having a girlfriend doesn’t necessarily invalidate my criticism of the capitalist mode of production. I just need a few dollars to take her out to lunch.”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know, yet. She brings a group of schoolchildren to the Nature Center every Friday.”
*****
Dear Yoga Master:
After I moved across town and changed Yoga studios, I noticed that more and more of my friends from my old studio fell to the wayside. I had two long-time friends who disappeared from my radar screen completely. My question is, do I just let these good friends slip away?
Or do I try to save our friendships?
Signed, Confused in San Francisco
Dear Confused:
I don’t blame you for being confused. It is one of life’s most common problems, when all of a sudden you are not so close to friends anymore. Friendships increase the quality of our lives. What to do? Give those old friends a call. Invite them over for dinner or go out on the town.
Catch up with what they have been doing. When you visit with your friends, you do something good for them and yourself.
Here is what the Buddha said about friends: “He gives what is hard to give. He does what is hard to do. He endures what is hard to endure. He reveals his secrets to you. He keeps your secrets. When misfortunes strike, he doesn’t abandon you. When you are down and out, he doesn’t look down on you. A friend endowed with these seven qualities is worth associating with.”
I wish you the best of luck reconnecting with your friends. If it doesn’t work out, remember you can always make new friends at your new studio. After all, that’s what old friends are for in our modern age, aren’t they: to get rid of?
Signed, Your Dutch Uncle
*****
“How is your column doing?” I asked. “Is it doing some good?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m dealing with people for whom the worst advice you could give them is be yourself.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying the sky.
“Good advice is always going to be ignored, but I just ignore that, so it doesn’t bother me. After all, they’re paying me, so there’s no reason to not pontificate.
I try to stay aloof to whether or not anyone pays any attention to it, and I don’t persist in trying to set anyone right. After all, like Sophocles said, bad advice is hateful.”
Barron could never resist being pedantic.
“What is that business of signing yourself as someone’s Dutch uncle?”
“Firm, but benevolent, my boy, firm, but benevolent,” he chuckled.
On my way home, I reflected on the irony of my many hours researching articles that never got published, while Barron Cannon, a proto-Marxist, simply spouted off, got into print, and got paid as well.
Once at home, I searched out my wife, who was doing yesterday’s dishes, and asked her how I should resolve what I saw as an unfair state of things.
“Honey, if you’re asking for my advice, that means you probably already know the answer, but wish you didn’t. Why don’t you go play with the cat? I’m sure it’ll come to you,” she said, “just don’t do that thing to his teeth.”
*****
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