Sankata Mochan kripaa nidhaan

Sometimes I go to the Whole Foods near downtown because I think if I go there I will see people I know. Specifically I think I will have a chance to see a girl I use to date. I think out off all the times I have gone to Whole Foods with this agenda I have only seen the girl twice.

Today, after swimming I decided I would go toward downtown near the Whole Foods to get a bite to eat, but I also wanted to visit some bookstores—I was searching for the book The Shack. When I arrived downtown I parked in the Whole Foods parking lot and walked around to the bookstores—where I didn’t find the book for used. So I headed back toward Whole Foods where I was playing to get a cup of coffee, but first I stopped by Cosmic Cantina to buy a burrito.

After Cosmic Cantina I went to the Whole Foods to buy coffee, but by the time I got there I wanted something juicy or sweet. As I stood in the store deciding what to buy a cold chill, some what like a breeze came over me. Then I thought, maybe I know someone in here. So I walked around the store and found no one I knew.

I decided upon an Orange Crème soda. I went outside to the eating area. I found a chair and took off my jacket. Upon eating a large farmer-like looking man walked outside from the Whole Foods. The man was tale and plumb, wearing a red flannel shirt tucked into his pants with suspenders; sort of the stereotypic farmer looking guy. He sat down far from me and began talking to me about the weather. He said I would need a jacket tomorrow because it was going to get really cold. The man began to ask me questions and I mostly said, “Yeah.” Then he stopped talking to me.

Half way through eating my burrito a woman with yellowish grey hair and a lime green shirt comes walking toward the door where I am sitting. I recognize the woman. She is the mother of my once girlfriend from four years ago. She and I and her family have some history, some good and toward the latter part of the relationship sort of rough. I decide to wave to her, but her attention seems to be on someone else, a woman she is meeting.

I realize they are going to be sitting at the next table over from the farmer man. I begin to feel nervous, sort like an odd feeling in my chest, with preconscious questions of how to respond in this situation.

Wanting to be merely sooth I look for my iPod shuffle to listen to Krishna Das (Hindu mantra music, also knows as kirtan). I find the iPod and turn to a track titled Baba Hanuman.

The lyrics are:
Namo... Namo...Anjaninandanaaya
I bow, I bow again and again to Anjani's son, Hanuman
Jaya Seeyaa Raama, Jai Jai Hanumaan
Victory to Sita and Ram, Victory to Hanuman
Victory over the darkness of suffering...
Jaya Bajrangbalee, Baba Hanuman
Victory to the one with the body of a thunderbolt
My Baba, Hanuman.
Sankata Mochan kripaa nidhaan
You are home of all Grace.
Destroy all my problems, calamities and sufferings.
Jai Jai Jai Hanuman Gosaaee
Hail My Lord Hanuman
Kripaa karahu Gurudeva kee naaee
You are my Guru, bestow your Grace on me.
Sankata Mochan kripaa nidhaan,
You are the destroyer of Suffering, the abode of Grace
Laala Langotta, Laala Nishaan
You wear a red langotta and carry a red flag
Hare Raama Raama Raama, Seetaa Raama Raama Raama

As I begin to listen to the song I don’t have a need to look to this woman I am nervous about. I am not nervous. I eat the burrito and look around peacefully. It was an odd thing.

However, I wondered what will I do when I walk right in front of the table where she is sitting? Continuing to listening to Baba Hanuman I walk in front of the farmer man, throw away my trash and realize the farmer man is talking to me. He is confirming I am going to wear my jacket tomorrow. I tell him I will. Then began talking about something different and I realized he wasn’t interested in my response, but it was merely talking to talk at someone. So I listened. Rather than listening and trying to think of what to reply with (because it was irrelevant) I looked into the man’s eyes, deep in to his crystalline blue eyes. The man began to stutter more than before.

Before I knew it I was standing with my back to the ex-girlfriend’s mother. The farmer man kept talking. I realized this man will probably not stop talking as long as I am attentive. I decide to say things that would indicate that I am going to leave, but be kept talking at me. So then I said to him, “Yell, bye bye.” I turned toward the stairs (with the table with my ex-girlfriend’s mother to my right) and walked down the stairs; put in my earbud, and walked toward my car.

Just as I was about to cross the street I realized: I didn’t even think about that woman, I just walked right past her. Hmmm…

"Romantic" Dharma

I do not have much intellectual or mental clarity, but I have a feeling. Perhaps the feeling is enough; perhaps I do not need the intellectual/mental clarity. However, I pressure myself to provide an explanation—an explanation I do not know how to give. I do not know how to give. Perhaps that is the explanation. I do not know how to be romantic.

I once wrote a paper on the matter of romance and relationships. In it I wrote, “Romantic relationships, if truly romantic, are marked by an imaginative and emotional appeal.” I believe I have lost, lost in the sense of ceasing, that imaginative and emotional appeal.

I am here today with no particular motivation to perpetuate my current “romantic relationship” with the girl I have been seeing. I have no motivation to be “special” with her. Now, why does this concern me? As it always is for me, I am concerned about communicating my loss of interest to her; I am concerned about a negative response from her; in a generic sense “I don’t want to hurt her” (which I can’t do.)

When the question of emotional hurting someone comes to mind, I think of Arjuna’s predicament in the Bhagavan Gita. Arjuna’s is being asked by Krishna to fulfill his dharma (spiritual duty) and fight against his family. Krishna says it is his duty, and it is the karma of those who fight to be killed.

If I can make a parallel here… I see my predicament of hurting “her” emotionally similar to the bleak outcome of Arjuna’s battle. Yet, I feel it is my dharma to not be in a relationship right now. I can’t explain that. I don’t know how to explain it. And! If I were to try to explain it I would destroy the feeling, making it in to an idea or philosophy, something stagnate and not alive. Essentially I would be doing the same thing to myself. I would be muting the still small voice within, which says, “This does not feel right.”
The simple fact of the matter is that I don’t feel right about continuing the romantic relationship I currently.