When to Live and Let Live --and Let Go

My daughter is a devotee of Siddha Yoga. Lately, for the first time in a long time, I saw her at the ashram, the Siddha Yoga Foundation Meditation Center in Santa Monica, where the air is sweet, the sky is a delicate eggshell blue and the Pacific surges at the foot of the center. I see her rarely, for she lives in a little town in New Mexico alongside the brackish waters of the Rio Grande River.

She is as devoted to her religion and philosophy as a barnacle is to a rock. She has given up a great deal for her chanting, her meditation, her lessons--gave up a career in any one of the arts, a scholarship.

By the time she was 18, she had read a vast number of books. Now she reads only her lessons and considers most reading material corrupting. She sends these lessons to all the people she cares about.

She is the mother of two small children. I confess she is a good mother. They are good children. They will chant along with her for hours or sit like twin mice in hiding on the nights when she uses her home as a meditation center.

All year she works, giving psychic readings. She will do any work that will earn her enough money so that she may follow the guru wherever he may be, India, California, upstate New York, Florida.

I know she would scrub floors for the privilege of following the guru, and perhaps she has. She is like an arrow in her quest.

Once she was married to a brilliant young architect, fulfilling all my middle-class values. Now there is no husband. There are only the children and the practice of her philosophy. I worry about which comes first.

On the day we met, I found her in a blissful mood, unlike the worn woman I had last seen in New Mexico. Back in New Mexico a neighbor was taking care of the children. Holding our shoes in our hands we walked along the shore, welcomed the warm sands running between our toes and then retreated into a French-style cafe to talk over a cup of coffee.

She had a free day except for an hour of chanting. She had been getting up at 4 a.m. each day to chop vegetables in the ashram kitchen. Each devotee staying at the ashram gives two hours for these “labors of love.” She was tired but relaxed. I offered to accompany her to the chanting in the great meditation hall.

“Good,” she said, “the coffee has raised your blood pressure; the chanting will bring it down.”

Off Go the Shoes

If you can’t fight them, join them. I decided to do just that. Again we took our shoes off. No one enters the hall in shoes. We sat on the thick gold carpeting close to a group of young people who nodded quietly to us as we joined them in the chant. Om Nimeh Shivaya, Om Nimeh Shivaya . . . Surprisingly, I soon found the chanting relaxing, even pleasurable. After the hour we went back to the cafe to continue our talk. My daughter’s green eyes were sparkling. She opened up to me with more trust than I had experienced from her in years.

“What about nuclear war and world survival?” I said. “The Catholic Church concerns itself with this all-important issue. Why not the Siddha Yoga followers?”

“Our philosophy goes beyond that,” she replied. “There could be no wars if everyone followed the dictates of Siddha Yoga.”

I talked about her birth, how thrilling it was to be told I had a daughter, how I had said out loud, “I have a friend.”

“It was really a wish and perhaps the wish has come true now,” I said.

She laughed; “We’ll never wear matching T-shirts, but perhaps we can stay friends.”

She is my only daughter.

For once there were no taboo subjects, subjects that in the past had fired her with hatred of my values, perhaps of me. We were flowing together in a reservoir of good feelings. Gently she reminded me that I had never read the lessons she had sent me. I admitted it and promised to read them before I saw her again in New Mexico.

“Please,” she said, “keep an open mind when you read them, you may find them beneficial to you, no matter what religion you practice.”

On her invitation, I came the next day for the birthday feast for Nityananda, the guru. He made an extemporaneous speech to an audience of well-dressed, well-mannered people, mostly young. I found him intelligent and witty. His speech was hardly spiritual. His audience rocked with enthusiasm; they were delighted with him.

The food was good, made with “TLC,” my daughter said. Afterward, she and the other followers waited in a long line to pay their respects. I watched sadly as she prostrated herself before this healthy-looking, cheerful guru. The worship of any one individual has always seemed a dangerous thing to me. I remembered the Jim Jones nightmare. It had haunted me for months. Her guru looks like he likes life and lives well. Thank God!

My daughter had used two of her three remaining dollars to bring a birthday card and a perfect pear as an offering to him.

After the feast she walked me to my car.

“God go with you,” I told her.

“I was never sure you believed in God,” she told me. “You gave me little religion.”

“It’s stupid not to believe,” I said. “I’ve called on him so many times. Yes, I believe.”

We hugged. It was an amazingly tender moment for us.

“I love you,” I said.

“I’ve always loved you,” she answered.

“Let it be true. Let it always be true,” I prayed silently.

I’ve learned to live and let live and to let go.