Surfing with Indian Jesuit Zen Masters: Part 1
~ 7 minute Read ~
She rapes your senses, but caresses your soul. Ohh she is not for everyone. But one thing's for sure, there is nothing like her.
A paradise of paradox, Mother India defies logic and time. A maze of truth, myth, and bullshit. A land where god is everywhere — and so is the garbage. Loud and proud, her world seems to include more of life.
More noise, yet more calmness. More sublimity, yet more suffering. More aromas, yet more stench. More chaos, yet more love.
Magically maddening, she’s a richer and rawer drama of life — one that not only breaks man — but also liberates him. A spiritual carnival with 300,000 gods — yet really only 1 — for here nothing is ever easy, but somehow, someway, everything always works out.
And just as certain trees only grow in the Amazon, a man like AMA could only manifest in Incredible India. Within this stupefying dreamworld an orphaned boy named AMA Samy (Arul Maria Arokiasamy) would wander and wander; eventually, somehow, someway becoming India’s first Zen Master.
When I first heard his jaw dropping spiritual tale, it shifted how I looked at my world, my life, and my spiritual journey.
And the beauty of shifting your worldview, is that it doesn’t just change how you perceive the world. It creates completely new worlds!
With that let's explore AMA's world - his pain and doubt, struggle and growth, and love and truth.
‘INDIAN ZEN’: I Meet AMA
My ass took a pounding. Bruised and sore, after 6 hours of catapults on the mechanical bull that is an Indian public bus, I had climbed up the back mountain roads to the refreshing hill station of Kodaikanal.
I was attempting to escape the heat, horns, and stench of southern India’s summer. Trying to find refuge from how she can can suffocate your senses.
Too cheap and stubborn to pay the tourist price for the Jeep taxi, I was hiking the last 4 kilometres up the calve burning hill with my 40lb pack to this Zen meditation center I kept hearing about.
As I puffed along, eucalyptus forests climbed through the sky. Instead of the normal Indian BBQ of burnt garbage, the forest air soaked my nostrils in a crisp minty marinade. Arriving at the flower covered gates, like a dueling piano bar, hundreds of birds were having a chirping musical kirtan.
Was I in India or a fairy tale?
I had made it to Bodhi Zendo, AMA’s retreat center.
The courtyard at the simple yet memorizing Bodhizendo Retreat Center. Nerd Note: if you can get in, epic vegetarian fare and private rooms for $12/day.
But as soon as I relaxed, India worked her magic.
It was day one of my retreat, but also day one of a Hindu festival. From the neighboring temple music started to blare. And in Indian style, those speakers roared and reverberated as only Indians subs can — for 7 straight days. Ohh serenity in jarring noise — India, slapped me with my first taste of Indian Zen.
Roaming Zen rock gardens and lotus ponds that seemed to trap time — was Master AMA Samy. A spry 82, with a salt and pepper beard and a pink Jesuit robe, AMA gracefully glided in sandals and socks —somehow, pulling it off.
Some spiritual souls blaze like the sun. But not Master AMA. For the name his Zen master gave him crystalized it:
Gen'un-ken — ’Dark Mysterious Cloud’.
And like a dark mysterious cloud Master AMA peacefully did float.
Yet one sensed a calm intensity underneath. Like a loving grandfather who was a battle tested man, one felt a storm of another time and plane. A simple and kind man, but one who had no time for bullshit. No time for shallow greetings, hypothetical questions and idle chatter.
After I met and trained with AMA Samy for a month — the story of his realization (awakening), made me ponder...
What if we are doing it all wrong?
What if the way we march through life, growing nest eggs, climbing corporate ladders, accumulating knowledge and experiences — is a false framing that has us miss a lot of the juice in life?
What if instead of grasping for control and predictability — we need to be more like AMA?
How?
By riding waves and making circles.
And with that, it’s time to surf with AMA. Surfing 4 waves with him, we will shift your view of how you surf the uncertainty of life.
And it all starts with an orphaned boy attaining his dream — only to gamble it all on red…
WAVE 1:
JESUIT SKINNY DIPPING — SWIMMING THROUGH FAITH & DOUBT:
The spiritual path can sometimes make you feel like an outsider. And from day 1 in life, AMA was a black fucking sheep.
Born to Christian Indian parents — in Buddhist Burma (Myanmar), they were broke in a broke-ass country. His family was so damn poor they sent him to India of all places (yes India) to live with his grandfather; a caretaker of a Muslim Saint’s memorial shrine. All this during India / Pakistan 1947 independence!
But ‘shit happens — and unfortunately AMA’s grandfather died. Leaving AMA — a non-Hindu child — alone with no caretakers in wild and crazy India.
And I thought my brother shaving my head bald with a Bic razor in the 4th grade was the end of the world.
Fueling his fighting spirit, he put himself through Jesuit school. After monastic schooling and training, at 36 he became a Jesuit Priest.
AMA overcame and achieved so much, yet a seed of doubt only grew in his heart. As he put it, “I felt empty and lost.“
Sound familiar any of my rat race compatriots?
But even with all his Jesuit training, AMA’s heart ached. Not for love, but to see the “face of God”. Not white beard in the sky G. O. D. — but AMA wanted to know his “original face” — his face before his parents were ever born.
AMA didn’t want to LEARN IT, but to KNOW IT. No books and sutras — just the wisdom of direct experience.
This classic Zen metaphor of “seeing our original face” points to our consciousness at our primordial and deepest levels. To understand AMA, and most of us spiritual weirdos, is to understand this curious fire.
And this is what inspires me about AMA. Here he is an orphan who is finally a respected Jesuit priest. He had an identity, social status, a community, a purpose, and a home. He achieved his dream. And then — he said fuck it.
He turned it all in. He dismantled blind faith and fueled healthy doubt. He doubted the known — the books — the church — society.
And instead, he cultivated faith in the unknown. He danced with fear. He listened to his heart-mind yearning for a deeper truth. He knew not the way, but had faith anyway.
And so after surfing one wave, becoming a respected priest, he then had the audacity to gamble it all. Shedding the robes, AMA swam back out to catch a new wave.
A wave would come, leading to arguably to the most famous sage of the 20th century. A man in a loin cloth contemplating “Who am I?”.
WAVE 2:
The SEARCH & NETI NETI
The spiritual path is a lot like dating. Your potential teacher or tradition is not good or bad, but it’s a chemistry thing.
You like this - but not that. He is a “good” teacher, but not my teacher.” Like love, some meet their great love early. Others — have to wait.
In Hindu Advaite Vedante there is an expression for this spiritual exploration. Neti, Neti. Neti Neti means, Not this — Not that*.
*NerdNote: Neti Neti mostly applies as a meditation technique to eliminate all objects (e.g. emotions, feelings, thoughts, intentions etc) that aren’t the ultimate non-dual consciousness that is your “true-self”/ Atman.
A personal example of Neti Neti, I went to a borderline cult in the jungles of Kerala, India after visiting Ama's Bodhi Zendo.
The teacher had a 2 foot beard and wouldn’t open his eyes while teaching because it might “overwhelm you”, all while he was stroking a white poodle on his lap.
It was all a bit much, yet the drama of Question & Answer sessions (Satsang) were like spiritial theatre. You sat across from him in a chair, with 40 people huddled around listening to your intimate questions for 45 minutes. It all felt like spiritual Oprah (and a bit of manipulation and priming).
In the end, it was totally Neti Neti for me, and I won’t be shocked if it’s a sex cult in 5 years.
But here's the rub, I did learn some things in that jungle hut. This is Neti Neti in action on the path of life. Like bad dates or blown up relationships, lessons can still be found in the rubble — about your self and the world.
And for AMA, Neti Neti would become his mantra. Marching along, not quite sure what he was looking for, yet like an OK date, he would know — this “is not it”. He would know Neti Neti.
So after AMA dumped Christianity, where did he go for a hot date?
He found the Upanishads — the 3,500 year old wisdom of the ancient Hindu rishis.
According to AMA, “It opened up my heart and mind”, and so he began walking across India as a wandering hobo (a renunciate sunyasa). With no possessions, no money, he ate only what others offered as he hopped from Hindu ashram to ashram.
Although inspiring, it turned out to not be what he was looking for — Neti Neti.
Next, AMA did Vipassana (Sathipattana Mindfulness) meditation retreats with the legendary Goenke in his prime.
Still, Neti Neti.
Swami Abhishiktananda
Wandering India he met a great Saint, Swami Abhishiktananda. A French christian monk turned nomadic Hindu teacher with a trove of followers. His heart finally found his teacher! He wanted to follow this master as a devotee. Life was glorious.
But the Saint rejected AMA, not allowing him to be a follower!
Ouch — AMA was Denied. Neti Neti.
But the saint intuitively pointed him to the teachings of south Indian Advaitic Sage, Ramana Maharshi.
NerdNote: The Gandhi of the 20th century spiritual world — Ramana was perhaps the greatest sage of the century. Infamous for his non-dual teachings and “Who Am I” inquiry practice, he was also hardcore meditation practitioner. Ramana sat down and did nothing for 14 years straight, resting in deep meditation states. Rats came and bit into his thigh and ate his flesh; it got worm infested and yet still he did nothing. Caretakers managed his body and forced food down his throat. Hardcore Insanity.
Fueled by Ramana’s teachings (and grandma’s leftover rice) AMA eventually settled down as a hermit.
He lived in seclusion at a shrine of a Christian Saint, practicing the meditative inquiry practice of a Hindu master in “Who am I?”.
Relying on local villagers to feed him, AMA sat for 1,460 days in meditative contemplation until AMA Samy saw his “original face” — until he realized his awakening.
And so what does an enlightened AMA do?
Does he relax at the mountain summit in a triumphant lion’s pose? Does he start teaching weekend classes in Goa and Bali?
Hell no. He marches on. He wants his realization to be vetted. He starts a new wave, one that would lead him from grandma’s leftover rice to sushi rice in Part 2.