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The Hugging Saint 🤗
85 Plays8 months ago
In 2004, I took a Greyhound from LA to Oklahoma and then hitchhiked from Oklahoma to New York City. On my final ride into NYC, the guy who picked me up was going to see his guru, Amma, the “Hugging Saint.”
Wait—what— did you say the Hugging Saint??? She was in a book I read that set my entire trip in motion! #MINDBLOWN 🤯
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Transcript
Introduction to JR's Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome, friends, to life's effing nuts. I am JR, one man's stories and ruminations on being human in an upside down world. Basically, I just tell these punchy little stories from my lived experiences that aim to capture relatable truths about life. I've always been fascinated by these things.
Coincidence vs. Spirituality
00:00:29
Speaker
For me, I don't know about you guys, but
00:00:31
Speaker
throughout my life I've had a series of I guess I guess they're almost like psychic phenomenons or like they're just like it's just I guess they're coincidences that that feel too big to just be coincidences though maybe they are just coincidences but
00:00:47
Speaker
something about them feels like, whoa, like maybe there's something bigger going on in life that I can't fully see. I'm not a quote unquote spiritual person, especially living in the Bay Area. I've encountered a lot of sort of spiritual movements that I do not resonate with
00:01:08
Speaker
To me, what I experience is a lot of magical thinking or simplified thinking or like looking for evidence to prove a theory.
00:01:18
Speaker
Um, so I don't resonate with that, but, and I guess I don't resonate with the way that some people use the word spirituality, but I do experience like I have had these moments, what I would call maybe like part of like some potentially some kind of like spiritual realm or like some, some deeper realm of, of existence, like beneath that just sort of banal mundane.
00:01:46
Speaker
everyday unspectacular sort of thing, uh, ways of life that there's something sometimes that feel like it's beneath that deeper than that.
Youthful Obsessions and Influences
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah. So basically when I was younger, I was very, very, very, very, very impressionable and I had a huge imagination. And so what that meant was that.
00:02:07
Speaker
If I learned about an idea or read about a person that fascinated me or that sparked a feeling in me, I would become almost obsessed with that idea or that person. Maybe even the phrase almost or the word almost is unnecessary there. Maybe I could just say obsessed and because
00:02:35
Speaker
My life didn't make a lot of sense to me when I was younger. Like I just felt sort of in retrospect, felt sort of confused. Things that they were teaching me at school didn't quite make sense. Like none of it quite felt like I related. I just didn't relate to a lot of what was being taught to me or what was being said to me, how I was being parented. Like it just didn't necessarily, it didn't reach me in a deep way. Something felt off about it. Something didn't quite make sense. And at the time I didn't know what it was.
00:03:05
Speaker
And so because of that, when I did find something that made sense, I just glommed
Infatuation with Bob Dylan
00:03:11
Speaker
to it. I was so from a young age, I was so hungry for something that felt real and made sense in an authentic way that like registered in my like deepest parts of my being.
00:03:25
Speaker
that there was some kind of frequency that would vibrate at that, be like, oh yes, that feels alive to me. That is something that feels authentic. And so the earliest example of that was my adoration of Bob Dylan's music and art. I discovered Bob Dylan's music when I was 14 years old.
00:03:46
Speaker
And it was a bit of a slow burn. I didn't get it like all the way into it right away, but over the next several years, I became just infatuated with the music. I bought every single record, would print out the lyrics and study the lyrics, read every book I could about Bob Dylan, started listening to every artist who influenced Bob Dylan.
00:04:10
Speaker
literally dreamt about Bob Dylan, thought about Bob Dylan. His style influenced my style, the way he spoke influenced the way I spoke. The music had such a profound emotional impact on me.
00:04:25
Speaker
The way the music made me feel was so desirable and so attractive compared to my normal state that I wanted to immerse myself as deep as I could into the music and also sort of like the whole mythology that Bob Dylan created with his artistic work over the years. So that's an example. That's not what this story is about. I could tell other stories about Bob Dylan, but that's an example.
Journey into Spiritual Literature
00:04:49
Speaker
Probably around the age of 17 or 18, I started reading, I guess you'd call them spiritual books. I think the first one I got was Be Here Now by Ram Dass. And again, because I was so impressionable, those books like that hit me very deeply.
00:05:24
Speaker
And I read a lot of Jack Kerouac and I read a lot of Ken Kesey and Tom Wolf's book, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which talked about the Mary Pranksters. If you're not familiar with these groups, look them up kind of fascinating stuff, counter-cultural stuff. And so with each book that I'd read from these very sort of far out people and these very far out cultural movements,
00:05:51
Speaker
my life would move further and further in those sort of extreme directions. And the actual story that I'm gonna tell here, I would say sort of culminated in, I think it was 2004.
Road Trip to Liberation
00:06:08
Speaker
I had dropped out of college and went back to live at my parents' house for about four months and hated it, was miserable, was very depressed.
00:06:20
Speaker
And by chance, I took a small road trip up to Sacramento from my parents' house in Los Angeles. And being out on the open road sort of freed my soul and spirit and sort of awakened the alive part of me that had sort of become dead.
00:06:44
Speaker
And I actually spent a few weeks in Sacramento. It felt so good to get out of Los Angeles. I spent a few weeks in Sacramento.
Engrossed in Bhagavan Das
00:06:53
Speaker
And during that time, my uncle had given me this book called, It's Here Now. And it was by a writer named Bhagavan Das. And Bhagavan Das was actually written about in that other book that I'd read, Be Here Now by Ram Das.
00:07:11
Speaker
And Bhagavan Das had actually gone to India, I think, I don't know, long before, but a few years before Ramdas and it had sort of already been doing what Ramdas was doing. Ramdas, for those who are unfamiliar, if I recall, his name was Richard Alper, grew up Jewish and was a, I think a psychologist or psychiatrist, I can't remember.
00:07:35
Speaker
And he got very interested in psychedelics, LSD, in the, I think, early 60s, and then eventually sort of took that journey all the way to India to study with different gurus. And then he wrote about it and sort of brought that spirituality back to the States.
00:07:53
Speaker
And so, like I said, Bhagavan Das, this other guy had already been doing this before Ramdasi. He had already lived in India and been studying with all these gurus. And so, my uncle gave me that book and I just devoured. I would just devour books like this. I could just sit reading them for hours, taking in every single word. And for me also, like I said, everything that they were doing, I felt like that's what I have to do.
Embarking on a Spiritual Quest
00:08:16
Speaker
And so,
00:08:17
Speaker
with this sort of buildup that had happened inside of me between years of listening to Bob Dylan and reading all about his life and sort of immersing myself in that culture and all that Jack Kerouac reading and all that Ken Kesey reading and all these spiritual books and reading books like Into the Wild, John Krakauer, which talks about a young man who sort of wanted to break away from
00:08:48
Speaker
safe, numb society and go be truly alive in the wilds of Alaska and he ended up dying. From my years of just accumulated immersion and all these different ideologies and philosophies and people and energies, I finally decided to set out on the road fully and try and also like Woody Guthrie was a big inspiration. His music was a big inspiration and his life was a big inspiration to me. So I left.
00:09:18
Speaker
I left Southern California and in my mind, I didn't know if I'd ever come back. I left on like a Greyhound bus, I think at like 2 a.m. from downtown Los Angeles.
Hitchhiking to Zen Retreat
00:09:31
Speaker
And in my mind, I vaguely felt like maybe I would try to go to India and sort of follow in the footsteps of Bhagavan Das and Ram Das and do the whole spiritual thing. But I wasn't entirely sure. I didn't know exactly where I was going, but I started by taking a Greyhound bus to Okemah, Oklahoma for the Woody Guthrie Festival. And I only stayed at the festival. I didn't even stay till the beginning of the festival. I arrived a couple of days early.
00:09:57
Speaker
met a whole bunch of people, a lot of really nice hospitality, but then got overwhelmed when the crowd started pouring in for the actual festival and headed out on the highway to hitchhike for the first time in my life. Again, not quite knowing where I was going, but sort of thinking I would maybe try to go to New York from Oklahoma.
00:10:16
Speaker
And I could tell more detailed, specific stories of that trip. I eventually did get to New York. I could tell a lot of great stories from that adventure. But the bottom line is, the thing that I want to focus on for this episode, it probably took me, I would say maybe seven or eight different rides, maybe nine to get to New York City.
00:10:45
Speaker
And actually something interesting, within like 15 minutes of my first time hitchhiking ever on this little Oklahoma highway outside of Okemah, within 15 minutes, this young kid, I think he was like 19, 18, I think he was younger than me, 17, 18, 19, he was driving to New York, to New York, I don't think New York, to New York, I don't know exactly where in New York, to go spend the summer at
00:11:10
Speaker
at some monastery or something like that, some Zen retreat center or monastery. He's like, yeah, hop in. This was literally within 15 minutes of my first type hitchhiking ever. Like I said, for me, I was loosely holding in my mind, maybe I'll go to New York. Talk about, I don't know what you want to call it, talk about luck or fate or destiny, but literally within 15 minutes, this kid's like, oh, sure, I'll take you to New York.
00:11:53
Speaker
And he had also picked up his other hitchhiker who literally talked the whole time. But I was absorbed in everything he was saying, but he literally talked for every waking hour that I was in the car with him. And he very much reminded me of, I don't know if you guys ever saw the Ernest movies growing up. Ernest scared stupid, Ernest goes to camp, Ernest goes to jail, et cetera. There's a whole bunch of them. It's a whole series. And I can't remember the actual actor's name.
00:12:22
Speaker
But he was, this guy in the car was just like Ernest. And he talked the whole time and he told the most amazing stories I'd ever heard in my entire life. And I actually did not go all the way to New York with this guy because I felt like I wanted more, I wanted more unknown. I wanted more difficulty. It felt way too easy. I'm like, I don't want to just go all the way to New York. Where's the fun in that? So I had this guy drop me off in North Carolina and then I think it probably took me
00:12:48
Speaker
about eight rides from North Carolina to get to New York City, if I recall.
Conversations on Mental Health
00:12:53
Speaker
And the final ride, and I'm building up to something here. Hopefully you can trust me on that. And the thing that I'm building up to, as with all my stories, I don't think they're, like I said, they're not jaw-dropping. I just find them interesting, fascinating, noteworthy. The final ride into New York City was with this really cool guy.
00:13:18
Speaker
I remember it was really easy to talk to him. He was very thoughtful. We talked a lot about mental health. And he had talked about being young and really struggling with depression. And then over the years, sort of figuring out how to shift his thinking just to have a better, more productive life. And it didn't feel phony to me. I related a lot to what he was saying. And on his dashboard, he had a picture of
00:13:43
Speaker
I don't think I'd ever seen it up to this point in my life where people put like a picture of their teacher, their spiritual teacher or their guru on their dashboard. And so we had a picture of this woman and I was like, oh, who's that? What's that about? And he was like, oh, that's my, I don't know if he said my guru or my spiritual teacher named Amma.
00:14:03
Speaker
And I was like, oh, interesting. He's like, yeah, actually, I'm going to New York City to see Ama right now. She does these big conferences and I'm going to see her right now. And she's a hugging saint. That's what they call her. You go meet with her and thousands of people come and they line up for hours to go give her a hug. And then.
00:14:23
Speaker
people get hugged and then break down and have these massive spiritual awakenings. It's kind of wild. Anyway, I was like, oh, cool, interesting. Sounds good. Let's go to New York City. I think you picked me up somewhere in Pennsylvania if I'm not mistaken. Then we got to New York City and the first thing I did was walk towards the water because in that book I had read, It's Here Now by Bhagavan Das,
00:14:51
Speaker
And I think Ram Dass talked about this too, that they just were able to get on freighter ships headed for India.
Rethinking the India Trip
00:15:00
Speaker
I don't know how they, and that was in a different time too, I think Bhagavan Dass did it in the sixties. So I don't know exactly how they did it, but I guess they just, I don't know if they worked or if they paid a little bit of money or if they just asked the captain, hey, can I hitch a ride to India? But that's how they got to India, at least how they wrote about it.
00:15:19
Speaker
And so in my mind, I was still thinking like that was the plan, that was the play, go to India. And so immediately upon arriving in New York City, walked to the edge of the water and looked at the freighters and was like, man, how do I do this? And something about it seemed maybe just a little too extreme, like I guess leaving my home in Los Angeles without telling anybody.
00:15:46
Speaker
and leaving a, I left a note that said, I'm going to see a friend in Minnesota, which was a lie. And that's all, I just left a note. And like I said, to me, I mean, I was so crazy and so extreme in my thinking that I thought that the only way that I could achieve like true spiritual enlightenment was to leave anything familiar, anything comfortable and to sort of disavow all attachment
00:16:17
Speaker
in life. And so for me, that included disavowing my relationship with my family. Anyway, so all that's pretty extreme, but for me, for some reason, getting to the edge of this country, being in New York on the waterfront, looking at these big freighters, it just, something just, I wasn't willing to go that far to push it even further.
00:16:41
Speaker
And so I sort of turned around from the waterfront and pretty much decided right then I wasn't going to go to India. I was going to stay in New York. But then my next thought was, you know what?
Meeting Amma: Expectations vs. Reality
00:16:50
Speaker
I'm going to go. That guy who'd taken me into New York City said, like, you can come meet Amma if you want. You know, it's a free conference. So I was like, I'm going to go meet Amma.
00:17:14
Speaker
So I went to that big conference hall. There's thousands of people there. And I waited in this enormous line. And I watched as people would like give her the hugs and then just like break down in tears. You know, probably like every third person would have that experience. And I thought I was like, maybe, maybe some miracle will happen. I had always been sort of like very bottled up inside.
00:17:41
Speaker
and I didn't have necessarily big emotional releases or big epiphanous moments. And I'd always heard about them or seen them in movies, like just these massive epiphanous moments where you just break down. And I thought, maybe, maybe, maybe, by some miracle, I'll hug this woman and I'll just break down and I'll be freed from all my suffering or whatever it was.
00:18:11
Speaker
So I waited for hours in this line. And supposedly she's such a spiritually elevated saint that she doesn't even have to get up and pee. She just sits in this chair for hours upon hour, like the whole day, and just gives hug after hug after hug after hug and doesn't even get up to pee. And so it was a long,
00:18:31
Speaker
arduous day of waiting in line and finally I got to the end part to the front and gave her a hug and she like whispered some prayer in my ear and I felt nothing. Zero, which is fine. The point of this whole story is that later, I don't know when I realized it, but it wasn't, it was a while.
Realizing Bigger Connections
00:18:53
Speaker
I think it might've been like months before I realized, holy shit.
00:18:58
Speaker
Amma is in that book. It's here now, Bhagavan Das. He had written, he spent a significant amount of time with Amma, I think, in India and followed her teaching as part of her monastery.
00:19:12
Speaker
and dedicated like a, at least, I don't know if it was a whole chapter or a chunk of pages, whatever it is. And so I'm like, holy shit, dude, like, I had started this whole journey, sitting on my grandpa's porch in Sacramento, baking in the 100 degree heat of Sacramento, reading about this thing. And it sort of set this journey, this epic journey in motion. And then without me even knowing it,
00:19:35
Speaker
all these sort of dominoes of events led to this final ride into New York City to this guy who is going to see Alma. And so again, maybe you could just say it's random, which maybe it is. Maybe it's just a coincidence. But to me, there's something interesting there that I don't necessarily know how to explain. And I don't know if it means anything, but I've had
00:19:57
Speaker
a whole bunch of situations like that or instances like that in my life that just feel, it feels like something bigger is at play that I'm not, that I don't fully see. And I don't know exactly how to explain it. I don't know how to explain
Balancing Idealism and Realism
00:20:11
Speaker
it. I don't know if it's almost like a psychic phenomenon, I would call it. So that's the story. That's all. And I guess for me, just the thought is like, you know, now I'm older and I almost like, maybe it's kind of embarrassing even, like,
00:20:27
Speaker
You know, when you're young, you look at older people who like don't believe in magic and don't believe in spirituality and don't believe in art. And you're like, those fucking people are crusty and, and, and jaded and, and just like, they're just like reprehensible adults or something.
00:20:45
Speaker
But now I'm 40 years old. And to me, if I come across a young person who's super dreamy and not super tethered to reality and sort of out of touch with the grind of life and the realities of life, I'm like, this kid's fucking lost. And so I don't know exactly where I come out on that.
00:21:09
Speaker
Do I believe in my youthful idealism and dreaminess? Or do I believe more in how I've evolved and grown and matured to where I don't really have that much time for magical thinking or for dreamy thoughts? I'm not sure. I think there's probably a middle road in there.
00:21:27
Speaker
where we can simultaneously be mature, responsible adults and keep that sense of dreaminess and awe and wonder.
Invitation to Blend Dreams and Maturity
00:21:36
Speaker
There's probably a beautiful blend that can happen in there. I guess I don't feel the need to
00:21:44
Speaker
get super wrapped up or enamored by psychic phenomenon and sort of magical things that happen in life. But it still feels kind of meaningful or valuable to just at least try to notice when things like that happen, maybe be grateful for them, maybe in a non-extreme way, nurture them a little bit. I know I read a book not too long ago, probably 10 years ago, called The Celestine Prophecy.
00:22:10
Speaker
which very much sort of encourages, it's a really cool story and it encourages the reader to sort of just pay attention to these little, I guess, what do you call them, lily pads, these little psychic phenomenon lily pads that can happen in life where one thing sort of leads you to the next. And before
00:22:31
Speaker
Before long, you start seeing all these cool, unforeseen connections happening and ideas evolving and developing. But there's something, there's some sense of, I don't know, natural harmony that can occur when we tune in.
00:22:48
Speaker
to some of these magical psychic phenomenon components of life. But I guess for me, I think it's important that I'm nowhere near as extreme as I was when I was young. To do it in a more sort of graceful, gentle, unforced, unrushed, unfanatical kind of way. So I guess that's where we're landing with this story. To sort of blend. I give an invitation to any
00:23:16
Speaker
dreamers or former dreamers out there to try to blend the dreaminess of being young and the idealism and the romanticism with sort of the maturity and gentleness and evolution of being older. That's the invitation to me and to whoever's listening. And that's it. That's what this story is about. Things that are
00:23:41
Speaker
Sort of unexplainable psychic phenomenons. That's it. So I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for another episode of Life's F and Nuts. I'm JR, take care.