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I took my first yoga class in 1980, but like many beginnings, this one had its roots further back in time,
about four years or so, when I was in “grad school” majoring in “Humanities.” To be honest, I was only
there so I could qualify for the GI Bill’s monthly education stipend, tax free money, my reward for 23
months and 6 days as a most reluctant Army draftee. One semester I decided, against my better
judgement, to take what in the Humanities department was widely considered to be the hardest class–
impressively titled “What is Man?”–from the unanimously acknowledged hardest teacher, Professor C,
who looked like a devilish version of David Crosby. I don’t remember much about what we talked about
or read, though I can say I’m pretty sure I won’t be looking at Pico della Mirandola or Martin Buber
again in this lifetime. But there is one book that has stayed with me all these years, Think On These
Things, by Jiddu Krishnamurti.
If this were a typical “How-I-Found-Yoga” story, I would breathlessly announce this book changed my
life forever, and I guess it did, though in a kind of time-release capsule sort of way. Because when I
first slogged through it, I had absolutely no idea what the guy was talking about. This was my first
experience with an Indian teacher–an Indian anything, really–and it wasn’t a pretty sight. I liked to
imagine myself as a sharp fellow, but Jiddu made me feel like a dense 5-year-old trying to puzzle out
the intricacies of 2 + 2. I did my best to do what the title of the book asked me to do, but as Curly
Howard (of Larry, Moe, and ...) once remarked: “I tried to think but nothin’ happened.” When the
final in-class essay test inevitably rolled around, the Krishnamurti question may as well have been
written in Sanskrit, and all I could think of was his famous but to me incomprehensible dictum, “Truth
is a pathless land.” And so I left the answer pathless, or as we say in common parlance, “blank.”
Fast forward now to early 1980, when I was thinking on certain unpleasant things about a girlfriend
who’d just left me flat for a punk rock music producer. One night, as I was moping around picking
through the shards of my shattered emotions, I suddenly recalled the Krishnamurti book, gathering
dust on my bookshelf. Considering my go-round with it, I have no idea why it came to mind at that
moment, apparently the coating on the time-release capsule I’d swallowed in 1976 finally dissolved, so
I dusted the book off and started reading, or I suppose re-reading. Mirabile dictu, the words that once
baffled me had been magically transformed into beautiful pearls of wisdom, and more to the point,
Krishnamurti seemed to know something important about my life that I didn’t, but should.
I was especially struck by the entirely novel idea that perhaps I was contributing in some unconscious
way to my own unhappiness. Up until then I deemed it fairly obvious that all of my troubles had been
caused by other people and/or events mostly out of my control, and that I was only a poor innocent
victim. The suggestion that I had a hand in my own problems, and that moreover, I could do something
to relieve or at least mitigate the situation sobered me right up. Being an intellectual type, I
responded by doing exactly what that type always does, almost instinctually–I went on a book-buying
binge, imagining that if I collected a sufficient number on the appropriate subject I’d assimilate the
information by osmosis and be cured of my misery.
I became an habitue of every metaphysical bookstore in Berkeley, seemingly a few dozen in those pre-
Amazon days. I soon discovered other “spiritual” teachers, and by a circuitous route stumbled on
Robert de Ropp, who informed me in one of his books that no better exercise system than Yoga had
ever been invented (though oddly I’ve never been able to find the exact quote). At the time I was
lifting weights and running 5 miles a day, and my only two encounters with Yoga happened many years
earlier, one during a stay in Vancouver, when a young woman there showed me how to do the
“Butterfly,” which we now know as Baddha Konasana, the other in San Francisco, when a bunch of the
guys, myself included, tried to cajole a friend into revealing his “secret” mantra, bought from the
Maharishi for $35. Anyway, in less than a week the Universe (or so it appears in retrospect) steered my
attention to a small ad buried on the back page of a local newspaper for Berkeley’s Yoga Room, a 15-
minute walk from my apartment. I thought: what can I lose? And so on Thursday, May 1, 1980, at
around 7:40 pm, I performed the first of many bad Trikonasanas and, as they say, the rest is history ...
or as Pa Kettle once proudly observed to Ma, standing on the rickety porch of his tumble-down
backwoods cabin, as he surveyed the scene in his front yard, with the rusted carcasses of prehistoric
trucks, the aimlessly wandering chickens and wallowing hogs, “Built this with mah bare hands.”
So in honor of the man who indirectly launched my Yoga career, I dedicate this website to Jiddu
Krishnamurti (with acknowledgments to What-is-Man, Professor C, lecturing in harmony with David
Crosby, and the answer-less answer). Although I’ve been giving away my copies of Krishnamurti’s
books to friends and students now for about 10 years, I still have about 20 different titles in my library.
The most important lesson I learned from him is that Yoga can’t be contained in any one school or
system, that as a teacher your boundaries, while certainly being selective, should always be
permeable. “That’s not the way it’s done” is not the way it’s done. Here’s how Krishnamurti phrased
it in his famous speech, delivered in 1929.
Think on it.
Feel free to take whatever you like from this website. My title, Homage to the Source, was inspired by
a book by Lanza del Vasto, whose pilgrimage to India in 1936 is recounted in a wonderful book, Return
to the Source, and whose aphorisms are collected in Return to the Obvious.
In my own return to the source, I pay homage to the 1000-year tradition of Hatha Yoga, but at the
same time try to make that tradition viable for the 21st century. You’ll find here information on
traditional practices–asanas, pranayama, mudra–and short essays–some of them serious, some of them
... not–on a variety of subjects directly or vaguely related to yoga. I hope you find something here of
value and enjoyment.
about four years or so, when I was in “grad school” majoring in “Humanities.” To be honest, I was only
there so I could qualify for the GI Bill’s monthly education stipend, tax free money, my reward for 23
months and 6 days as a most reluctant Army draftee. One semester I decided, against my better
judgement, to take what in the Humanities department was widely considered to be the hardest class–
impressively titled “What is Man?”–from the unanimously acknowledged hardest teacher, Professor C,
who looked like a devilish version of David Crosby. I don’t remember much about what we talked about
or read, though I can say I’m pretty sure I won’t be looking at Pico della Mirandola or Martin Buber
again in this lifetime. But there is one book that has stayed with me all these years, Think On These
Things, by Jiddu Krishnamurti.
If this were a typical “How-I-Found-Yoga” story, I would breathlessly announce this book changed my
life forever, and I guess it did, though in a kind of time-release capsule sort of way. Because when I
first slogged through it, I had absolutely no idea what the guy was talking about. This was my first
experience with an Indian teacher–an Indian anything, really–and it wasn’t a pretty sight. I liked to
imagine myself as a sharp fellow, but Jiddu made me feel like a dense 5-year-old trying to puzzle out
the intricacies of 2 + 2. I did my best to do what the title of the book asked me to do, but as Curly
Howard (of Larry, Moe, and ...) once remarked: “I tried to think but nothin’ happened.” When the
final in-class essay test inevitably rolled around, the Krishnamurti question may as well have been
written in Sanskrit, and all I could think of was his famous but to me incomprehensible dictum, “Truth
is a pathless land.” And so I left the answer pathless, or as we say in common parlance, “blank.”
Fast forward now to early 1980, when I was thinking on certain unpleasant things about a girlfriend
who’d just left me flat for a punk rock music producer. One night, as I was moping around picking
through the shards of my shattered emotions, I suddenly recalled the Krishnamurti book, gathering
dust on my bookshelf. Considering my go-round with it, I have no idea why it came to mind at that
moment, apparently the coating on the time-release capsule I’d swallowed in 1976 finally dissolved, so
I dusted the book off and started reading, or I suppose re-reading. Mirabile dictu, the words that once
baffled me had been magically transformed into beautiful pearls of wisdom, and more to the point,
Krishnamurti seemed to know something important about my life that I didn’t, but should.
I was especially struck by the entirely novel idea that perhaps I was contributing in some unconscious
way to my own unhappiness. Up until then I deemed it fairly obvious that all of my troubles had been
caused by other people and/or events mostly out of my control, and that I was only a poor innocent
victim. The suggestion that I had a hand in my own problems, and that moreover, I could do something
to relieve or at least mitigate the situation sobered me right up. Being an intellectual type, I
responded by doing exactly what that type always does, almost instinctually–I went on a book-buying
binge, imagining that if I collected a sufficient number on the appropriate subject I’d assimilate the
information by osmosis and be cured of my misery.
I became an habitue of every metaphysical bookstore in Berkeley, seemingly a few dozen in those pre-
Amazon days. I soon discovered other “spiritual” teachers, and by a circuitous route stumbled on
Robert de Ropp, who informed me in one of his books that no better exercise system than Yoga had
ever been invented (though oddly I’ve never been able to find the exact quote). At the time I was
lifting weights and running 5 miles a day, and my only two encounters with Yoga happened many years
earlier, one during a stay in Vancouver, when a young woman there showed me how to do the
“Butterfly,” which we now know as Baddha Konasana, the other in San Francisco, when a bunch of the
guys, myself included, tried to cajole a friend into revealing his “secret” mantra, bought from the
Maharishi for $35. Anyway, in less than a week the Universe (or so it appears in retrospect) steered my
attention to a small ad buried on the back page of a local newspaper for Berkeley’s Yoga Room, a 15-
minute walk from my apartment. I thought: what can I lose? And so on Thursday, May 1, 1980, at
around 7:40 pm, I performed the first of many bad Trikonasanas and, as they say, the rest is history ...
or as Pa Kettle once proudly observed to Ma, standing on the rickety porch of his tumble-down
backwoods cabin, as he surveyed the scene in his front yard, with the rusted carcasses of prehistoric
trucks, the aimlessly wandering chickens and wallowing hogs, “Built this with mah bare hands.”
So in honor of the man who indirectly launched my Yoga career, I dedicate this website to Jiddu
Krishnamurti (with acknowledgments to What-is-Man, Professor C, lecturing in harmony with David
Crosby, and the answer-less answer). Although I’ve been giving away my copies of Krishnamurti’s
books to friends and students now for about 10 years, I still have about 20 different titles in my library.
The most important lesson I learned from him is that Yoga can’t be contained in any one school or
system, that as a teacher your boundaries, while certainly being selective, should always be
permeable. “That’s not the way it’s done” is not the way it’s done. Here’s how Krishnamurti phrased
it in his famous speech, delivered in 1929.
- I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by
any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and
unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever,
cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people along any
particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a
belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organise it. If you
do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on
others.
Think on it.
Feel free to take whatever you like from this website. My title, Homage to the Source, was inspired by
a book by Lanza del Vasto, whose pilgrimage to India in 1936 is recounted in a wonderful book, Return
to the Source, and whose aphorisms are collected in Return to the Obvious.
- Do not repeat: I think therefore I am.
Ask yourself: Am I myself?
You say you think and so are.
Well, think yourself then, if you can.
Or else be silent, fool, until you can.
In my own return to the source, I pay homage to the 1000-year tradition of Hatha Yoga, but at the
same time try to make that tradition viable for the 21st century. You’ll find here information on
traditional practices–asanas, pranayama, mudra–and short essays–some of them serious, some of them
... not–on a variety of subjects directly or vaguely related to yoga. I hope you find something here of
value and enjoyment.
- -Richard Rosen
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| Richard Rosen |