Autobiography of a Yogi

by Paramahansa Yogananda. This is the man's life story of his spiritual journey in India and America. This is Yoga with a big Y. He begins his life always knowing and searching for a higher power. His run-ins with many saints and the miracles they perform seem magical. The skeptic in me always held a splash of incredulity of some of the tales: saints with two bodies, resurrections, saint who could live without food or water, levitation, curing disease, etc. At the same time, these stories are inspiring, and i don't reject any of it outright. Authenticated by impartial coroners, the power of yoga is such that upon death, Yogananda's body did not decay for one month before he was burried.

Additionally, his overall message of uniting East and West is inspiring. Throughout the book he compares Hindu and Christian teaching showing that they have much more similarities than differences. In America, i've seen all too well the divisive nature of the Christianity. This book is a refreshing look at religion and its place in the world.

Some gems:

It is the Infinite, the Ocean of Power, that lies behind all phenomenal manifestations. Our eagerness for worldly activity kills in us the sense of spiritual awe. Because modern science tells us how to utilize the power of Nature, we fail to comprehend the Great Life in back of all names and forms. Familiarity with Nature has bred contempt for her ultimate secrets; our relation with her is one of practical business. On the other hand, when the seld is in communion with a higher power, Nature automatically obeys, without stress or strain, the will of man.

quoting the great guru Babaji:

'Child, for the faults of the many, judge not the whole. Everything on earth is of mixed character, like a mingling of sand and sugar. Be like the wise who seizes the sugar, and leaves the sand untouched.'

War and crime never pay. The billions of dollars that went up in the smoke of explosive nothingness would have been sufficient to have made a new world, one almost free of disease and completely free of poverty. Not an earth of fear, chaos, famine, pestilence, the danse macabre, but one broad land of peace, prosperity, and widening knowledge.

xie jien jungwo

so, i'm off to thailand (again). this time to study some thai massage in a northern hilltribe village. i'm enjoying my last few days in kunming (southern china). today i went out and bought all the goodies i want to take home with me, including some amazing teas, and a calligraphy set. i met a chinese guy - we hung out all day drinking tea, drinking beer, and throwing the frisbee. we could hardly speak to each other but it didn't seem to matter.

10 things i'll miss about china:
10) ya rong chwar (buttery bbq lamb skewers w/ dry marinade - cost: $.12/ea)
9) cheap warm pijou (beer - cost: $.50/L)
8) cheap good food
7) sean & my friends in beijing
6) cheap accesible chinese medicine
5) the people (they're ａｍａｚｉｎｇｌｙ　friendly)
4) the mountains and rivers of the south
3) the inane engrish T-shirts (my favorite: "the company who always looks safety is like child's lost kitten")
2) the little kids butts poking out of their pants (all the toddlers have holes designed into their pants so when they need to go, they just go. as a result, their little butts are in plain view).
1) the squatters (nuff said)

10 things i won't miss:
10) traffic
9) spitting
8) cheap bad food
7) MSG
6) the music
5) the shitty sunglasses (i'm on pair #4)
4) pollution
3) traveller's diaharea (2 rounds is enough for me)
2) the shitty internet connections and blocked sites (the great firewall as its called)
1）cigarette smoke (its everywhere!)

on da bus - lhasa to chengdu

so i decided to try and save some money. the airfare from lhasa to chengdu is a steep $200, a bus trip is $60. being that i had time (or i thought i did) i went with the bus. i knew it was a long trip, but it turned out to be a lot longer than it was supposed to be.

first, the bus. its a double decker sleeper bus. sean, al, and i took one similar for 9 hours from kunming to lijang. that was the bus ride where we had to buy Al an extra bed in the back of the bus because he wouldn't fit in one. so, the beds are small. they're actually metal boxes about 4'5" in length where you have a metal box for a pillow. they're rough. i knew this. i also knew that the trip was supposed to take "3 days" - whatever that means.

i was mainly excited to travel by bus to see the scenery. it did not disappoint. the first night we drove through high altitude and a snow storm. i could tell we were high because of my pounding headache. i saw glaciers and prairies, and beautiful gorges and a powerful river (that after the rafting trip made me want to kayak it). plenty of lush, beautiful scenery in sichuan, and i saw part of the three gorges dam project where they were relocating entire villages above the flood line. impressive.

i also wanted a taste of chinese travel. the bus did not disappoint on that front either. i was the only non-chinese on the bus, and the other passengers loved the fact that i was there. i went by laowai, which literally means "outside person." the man sleeping in the bin next to me was particularly fond of calling me laowai and once he learned i spoke literally no chinese, he kept trying to tease me. it was fun, for the first 12 hours, but eventually got annoying because even though i didn't understand what he was saying, i knew he kept saying the same thing. some younger chinese on the bus befriended me, but because they spoke about as much english as i spoke chinese, we could hardly communicate anything more than pointing and saying if something was good or not.

the chinese smoke like chimneys at all hours. that was the worst. waking up in the middle of the night because the guy below my bunk was smoking is very unpleasant. a boy sleeping next to me had the most raunchiest of smells emanating from his feet, so i couldn't turn my head to the right. there was also a significant amount of hacking up lung butter and spitting. the women even do this - often. they are also incredibly loud, talking on their cellphones - loudly - at all hours. but they're great to travel with because they're always having fun. they didn't care that the bus was stopped, or broken, or that we weren't eating. they were constantly deriding either me (which i didn't care cause i didn't understand them) or the sifu (the bus driver, literally "master" a holdover from communist days) or each other (i think). we ate sporadically. my friends ordered food for me and we ate nearly every part of the pig (pig ears, intestines, and tails).

the bus meandered on its way. i'm pretty sure the route the driver took was a little more than irregular - we often drove off-road (hard to sleep with your head banging against the window). the bus broke down no less than 3 times. we stopped often for no apparent reason, and no one on the bus seemed to care when or if we would actually ever get to chengdu. at one point, when we were about 100 km from chengdu, we were stopped by police and told that the road was closed. at first i thought what they were saying was that we couldn't go through at all, and we would have to drive another day to get around the construction. in the end though, we just waited adding another 8 hours, and another night of trying to sleep, on the bus. a heartbreaker at that point.

it was definitely an experience. but after 90 hours of being in that metal bin, i had had enough. lucky me, a train is providing much of my descent toward laos. onward.

lhasa nights

they were a bitch to get posted, but here are some pics.

the last night that sean, missy, and nadine were here we went to a "nagma." this is essentially a nightclub where karaoke singers belt out the hits interspersed with some traditional dancing and variety acts. there was a moving stage, smoke machine, and flashy lights. its distinctly chinese in that its extremely shrill and loud. nadine had to put tissue in her ears, and some of the tibetans even did this. we were the only westerners in the place, upon arrival they seated us directly in the front. to forget the fact that our ears were bleeding we proceeded to get hammered on lhasa beer. they serve you beer in these little shot glasses, so its impossible to keep track of how much beer you've had. before we knew it, tibetans near and far were toasting us (note: they drink budweiser almost exclusively here). mostly people didn't dance. until they did. for certain songs everybody got up and danced in a clockwise circle around the center of the dance floor. it was just like being at one of the temples. then the song would end and everyone would go back to their table to sit and look completely bored and sleepy. we were the rowdiest bunch there and once our rafting guides showed up (unexpectedly, and late) all hell broke loose and we proceeded to dance to every song regardless of whether it was appropriate or not. i got a round of applause for a solo dance and later some of the karaoke singers came and sat with us which i think made us a bigger hit. sean, in typical sean form, nearly started a fight in the toilet with a chinese man. but i think overall, we were liked.

the rooftop of the world

after spending two days in chengdu (the capital of sichuan province) eating delicious mau pao dofu and hotpot, checking out panda bears, and taking in a sichuan variety show, it was off to tibet. on the trip were myself, sean, missy (an american i knew from yoga who lives in beijing), and nadine (a german who lives in sean's apartment complex).

we had heard that the first couple days after arriving in lhasa are rough because of the altitude, and they were. lhasa sits at 3650m (12,000 ft) where there is only 60% of the available oxygen as there is at sea level. despite taking some altitude medication, we essentially slept for two days straight. we had headaches, were dehydrated, and short of breath whenever we moved. but we got better and were able to explore the temples of the city.

lhasa is really an amazing place. maybe the holiest place in the world, tibetan buddhists (read: all tibetans) make pilgrimages to the temples the town is built around. we arrived smack dab in the middle of the jokhang, the holist of the holiest of places. all day people circumambulate the temple in a clockwise direction praying, chanting, and smiling. we looked a bit out of place with our backpacks and no idea where we were supposed to be going. lots of pointing and laughing.

the religious devotion is hard to describe and after reading Krishnamurti i found it impressive, but a bit silly. people here are so devoted, and so systematic in their practice. the chanting is really cool to hear. we went inside the jokhang for the evening prayers and got to watch the famous tibetan monks perform their chants. we watched for maybe an hour. so peaceful and mesmerizing.

everywhere we went we were included in the praying. people we happy to show us how to do the rituals. one temple we entered during a ceremony. the place was packed with monks listening to a lamma chanting something. we were motioned to walk right in, and even though the place was packed wall-to-wall with sitting monks, a small aisle was kept clear to we could walk clockwise around the interior of the temple, trying not to step on people. one of the monks even gave me a red cloth to wear around my head. it was intimidating to be there, but ultimately so friendly.

the day before we set out for our big 7 day rafting trip, i got really ill. i must have eaten something but it was coming out both ends and i had a fever. i was in bed sleeping and apparently sean told the guesthouse we were staying at

i won't even try to describe the scenery and hope the pictures can do a little justice to the amazingness that surrounded us daily. we rafted, went horseback riding, hiked, ate lunch in a nomadic yak fur tent with some tibetans, and were intesely checked out by the locals wherever we went. one of the rivers, had only been rafted once before so everytime we passed people they were flabbergasted. whenever we set up camp, we had a crowd of people around us watching us doing whatever we were doing. at one point 30 people just stood around and watched us eat. they were so so curious. it was fun. they especially liked my chest hair. they would pet the hair on my arm and say "yak." which is actually how you say yak in tibetan.

the guides were great and so was the food. the altitude was a bit rough. we started at 4700 m (15000 ft or 50% of available oxygen) and i had a pretty bad headache and shortness of breath. i took some diamox and we decended a bit which cleared everythign up and i was able to enjoy the rest of the trip. until i got some river bug that gave me awful diahrea. but it was tolerable, and i was still in very good spirits and enjoyed the trip immensely. (how do those sherpas do it? everest is 30000 ft!).

i have tons of pictures to go through, but i'll post some soon.

total freedom

by j. krishnamurti. jk was one of the most influential spiritual teachers of modern times. this book was recommended to me by the folks at the yoga retreat and it is really quite an amazing book. its an anthology of jk's most important writings, talks, and discussions.

in summary, his philosophy is that the individual has the power to change the world by becoming totally free from societies constructs and limitations. he shuns organized religions, politics, and any system designed by any group of people. he revokes the notion of an ideal, saying that we have in us, the power to see the world as it really is, not as we would like it to be, or remember it, but as it is now. digging deep down and meeting the conflicts we face through our jobs, relationships, families, and society head on is the only way to understand them and thusly be completely free of them. attempting to solve our conflicts in any other way will eventually only lead to more conflict, pain, and sorrow. with a free mind, one can act freely without an attachment to an outcome. one's life becomes pure action.

it was such an amazing book for me that i could only read one chapter a day, typically in the morning, and write on that which i had just read. it was the only way i could digest it.

here are some ideas that i found particularly compelling:

Conflict
Conflict only exists between two things that are false. Truth and Truth cannot be in conflict. Truth and falsehood cannot be in conflict. Only False and False. The sense of "I" is only a product of the environment. the fears, hopes, longings, prejudices, likes, and personal views which we glorify our temperament are, after all, the result, the product of the environment. So when there is conflict, it is between this "I" and the environment. Struggles of all sorts: job, wife, kids, money - are all a product of the environment. So, because conflict can only arise from a conflict of two falsehoods, the sense of self, the "I" must also be false. This is not surprising when "I" is seen as a product of the environment.

So, you are seeking a means to overcome this environment. For the "I" to conquer the "outside". You do this by attempting to change the environment, or by self-expressing (art, economic adjustment, service to humanity), or creating religions.

There cannot be a perfect environment. Each person has his own idea of what this should be, so it cannot and will not happen. The only thing that can happen is the awakening of intelligence that would allow one to be free of an imperfect environment. Only by questioning the environment can you see that it is false and therefore be free of any environment.

to free the mind, there must be great intensity; there must be this continual alertness, observation, which creates conflict. this alertness itself creates a disturbance, and when there is that crisis, that intensity of conflict, then mind, if it is not escaping, begins to think anew, and that very thinking is eternity itself, ecstasy.

Memory
if my experiences and remembrances of the past are becoming hindrances in the present through their reaction, then i cannot comprehend or live fully, intensely, in the present. if you are aware of that hindrance, aware of it at its depth, not superficially, then the dormant subconscious memory, which is but the lack of understanding and incompleteness of living, disappears, and therefore, you meet each movement of environment, each swiftness of thought, anew.

Loss & Love
so long as there is loneliness, emptiness, insufficiency, which in its outer expression is dependence, there must be pain. and you cannot fill that insufficiency by overcoming obstacles, by substitutions, by escaping or accumulating, which is merely the cunning of the mind lost in the pursuit of gain. you will see how memory creates greater and greater dependence, the continual looking back to an event emotionally, to get a reaction from it, which prevents the full expression of intelligence in the present.

Love
Love is not identification; it is not thought about the loved. You do not think about love when it is there; you think about it only when it is absent, when there is distance between you and the object of your love. When there is direct communion, there is no thought, no image, no revival of memory; it is when the communion breaks, at any level, that the process of thought, of imagination, begins. Love is not of the mind. The mind makes the smoke of envy, of holding, of missing, of recalling the past, of longing for tomorrow, of sorrow and worry; and this effectively smothers the flame. When the smoke is not, the flame is. The two cannot exist together; the thought that they exist together is merely a wish. A wish is a projection of thought, and thought is not love.

Experiment
thinking and feeling without a search for a reward, a result, is true experiment. in real experiencing, real experimenting, there cannot be a search for result, because this experimenting is the movement of creative thought. to experiment, mind must be continually freeing itself from the environment with which it conflicts in its movement, the environment which we call the past.

Resolving Problems
So, the mere search for the solution of your problems is not going to free the mind from creating further problems. As long as this center of self-protectiveness, born of insufficiency, exists, there must be disturbances, tremendous sorrow, and pain; and you cannot free the mind of sorrow by disciplining it not to be insufficient. That is, you cannot discipline yourself, or be influenced by conditions and environment, in order not to be shallow. You say to yourself, "I am shallow; I recognize the fact, and how am I going to get rid of it?" I say, do not seek to get rid of it, which is merely a process of substitution, but become conscious, become aware of what is causing this insufficiency. You cannot compel it; you cannot force it; it cannot be influenced by an ideal, by a fear, by the pursuit of enjoyment and powers. You can find out the cause of insufficiency only through awareness. That is, by looking into environment and piercing into its significance there will be revealed the cunning subtleties of self-protection.

its hot in beijing

from mohawk to nothing

gated communities

awesome

p.s. i can't read my blog from china, i can only post to it. funny that china considers me more dangerous than the new york times.

cultural difference no. 162

so, as you saw in the last post regarding china, some of the culture here can be annoying, but some of the differences are really cool. for one, its common for chinese men to walk around the street after dinner with their shirts pulled up and their bellies sticking out. invariably, their finger is in their belly button. its awesome.

the other thing that many chinese do that is different is that they eat with their mouths open. i was disgusted with this at first, because in the west its obviously considered rude - the sound is a bit gross to me still. but have you ever tried it? i'm not sure if it has anything to do with the olfactory glands, but food tastes WAY better when you eat with your mouth open. i think we've been missing out on 50% of the taste in an effort to be polite. if you are alone, and the sound doesn't ruin your appetite, try it - you'll be amazed.

star wars sucks

so, i was really disappointed with star wars episode 3. i guess in retrospect, there was no way i could have been satisfied after the tradgedies that were episode 1 & 2. sure, 3 was better than 1 & 2. but that's like saying constipation is better than diarrhea. my generation was built upon the ideals of star wars (see the earlier review of sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs), so its disturbing for me to see such a puff piece as a supposed prequel.

Lucas had a tremendous opportunity to show the struggle that eventually turns anakin skywalker to the dark side. i mean this, in essence is what the star wars epic is about. how one moves past the selfish desires and insecurities of the future based on the understanding and good of the greater whole and the understanding of the immediate present. anakin can choose to use hate and fear to try to secure the future of his loved ones, or he can accept that he has no control of the future and love them and all people immediately. This greater story is given short time with a quick discussion between anakin and yoda, and the anti-climactic scene where anakin "turns" to the darkside - an unbelievably emotionally unrealistic 3 minute scene. opportunity squandered. i guess Lucas thought inventing new vehicles for every scene and tying together loose ends that didn't need tying was more important than the actual story.

upon hearing that padame is dead, vader, correct to the cliche, raises his fists in the air and wails, "Nooooooooooooooooo!"

Nooooooooooooooooo, indeed.

a present of presence

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
that the utility of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
that the utility of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
and it is on these spaces where there is nothing
that the utility of the house depends.
Therefore, just as we take advantage of what is,
we should recognize the utility of what is not.

Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching

This is an exceedingly hard thing to do:
recognize the utility of what is not.

The western way is to constantly strive for what one does not have. By so doing, are we ever happy? Are we ever satisfied with what we have now at this point? Can we live in the present without concern for the future? Can we forget the past?
My travels have shown me we are incredibly lucky to be born into the situation that we have, yet Americans are leading the way to our own self-destruction: mental illness, obesity, mass-consumption. And from what I have seen, the world is following our example.

I have no answers, only heartbreak. But this too, is what is not. The world is imperfect, and there is utility in that. Don't you think?

Try this: close your eyes. count each of your breaths (an inhale and an exhale is one). see how far you can get without losing track of what number you are on. see how quickly the past infultrates the present, or how our desires for a future other than the present pull you away from your breath. can you get to 10? 100? its very difficult. but the excercise is very instructive to show you just how well you can be in the present. the happiest times in my life are achieved when i am completely present. that's where happiness lives: in the now.

river town: two years on the yangtze

by peter hessler. peter is a resident of beijing whom sean met at a local book cafe. peter spent two years living in Fuling (in Schichuan Province) teaching English for the Peace Corps. The book is written as two intertwined themes. One, a story of his experiences living and teaching in Fuling, and the other are short stories of the Chinese people he meets. I liked the book because it gives an inside perspective on chinese issues like the three gorges dam, the Communist Party, democracy, america, capitalism, racism, etc. It was also good to get confirmation of my own experiences. Since I had spent the first week in china alone, i had started to wonder if the things i was seeing were as crazy as i thought they were, or if it was i who was different. Hessler's description of honking cars are a great example, and it comes as a complete shock and was one of the first things I noticed (its worth noting that the problem is compunded in Beijing where the population is insanely huge):

[the cars] were always passing each other in a mad rush to get wherever they were going. Most of them were cabs, and virtually every cabby in Fuling had rewired his horn so it was triggered by a contact point at the tip of the gearshift. They did this for convenience; because of the hills, drivers shifted gears frequently, and with their hand on the stick it was possible to touch the contact point ever so slightly and the horn would sound. They honked at other cars, and they honked at pedestrians,. They honked whenever they passed somebody, or whenever they were being passed themselves. They honked when nobody was passing but somebody might be considering it, or when the road was empty and there was nobody to pass but the thought of passing or being passed had just passed through the driver's mind. Just like that, an unthinking reflex: the driver honked. ... the other drivers and pedestrians were so familiar with the sound that they essentially didn't hear it. Nobody reacted to horns anymore; they served no purpose.

Something that i learned early on in Bangkok is that "the simple truth was that you could do nothing about either the noise or the pollution, which meant that they could either become very important and very annoying, or they could become not important at all." To enjoy your time in asia, you must decide on the latter. I've decided to make honking fun. I try to predict when someone will honk. I try to make cars honk on my bicycle. The chinese ride their bikes a lot. They also ride them very very slowly (most don't have gears). So, in comparison, i'm lance armstrong and when i use the car lanes to pass the slow cyclists, any car behind me will honk if i enter their lane. It doesn't matter that i'm actually going twice as fast as the cars (which also go slow because there are too many of them). The predictability and meaninglessness of the honk is hilarious.

Something i've noticed in the states is that the chinese exhibit greater collectiveness and generosity within a family than do americans. Growing up in San Jose, we lived next to a Chinese family where the grandparents lived with their children.

They were remarkably generous with each other, and often this selflessness extended to good friends ... collective thought was particularly good for the elderly, who were much better cared for than in America ... they almost always lived with their children ... doing what they could to help out around the family farm, business, or home. There was no question that their lives had more of a sense of purpose and routine than I had seen among elderly [in America].
But such collectivism is limited to small groups, to families and close friends ... these tight social circles also acted as boundaries: they were exclusive as well as inclusive. The most common [example] was the hassle at ticket lines, which weren't lines so much as piles, great pushing mobs in which every person fought forward with no concern for anybody else. Collectively the mobs had one single idea - that tickets must be purchased - but nothing else held them together, and so each individual made every effort to fulfill his personal goal as quickly as possible.

This behavior permeates every experience in China. There is no sense of personal space, because if you're not in the person's circle, you essentially don't exist. There is constant contact (i.e. collisions) with other people who aren't looking where they're going. When there is an accident or an argument on the street, bystanders will crowd around and watch without helping or interfering. Someone could be bleeding to death on the street from a car accident, surrounded by people watching them wail in pain. I've seen it happen.

China is indeed a crazy place for an american.

beijing

so i've been in beijing for about a month now. it has been really good to be around family (i.e., sean). i've started working at a yoga studio in exchange for free classes. so i've been doing yoga everyday, and i must be improving but can't really tell. i do know i sweat a lot. the classes are mostly flow classes which means there is a lot of controlled movement between poses. this is challenging for me as i was used to my meditative iyengar classes (in san francisco) where we'd get into a pose and sit there for a couple of minutes. there is a saying in yoga that means "fierce dedication without attachment to results." this is a great saying to apply not only to yoga, but to life in general and adopting and living it is really natural, and really freeing.

my anxiety now is almost totally gone. i think the accupuncture had a great deal to do with it. for the first time in a year, i feel like myself, but also feel totally new. different. at peace. its hard to describe, but its great.

i'm working on learning chinese while i'm here. its very difficult. the tones are a bitch to get right. and even when people say them back to back, i have a hard time distinguishing them. still, its useful and the chinese people are wonderfully helpful, generous, and inquisitive. sean's landlord is an elderly chinese woman who cooks for him constantly. being a white person (or waigouren - literally "an outside person") in china is like being the focus of attention wherever you go - even in a big city like beijing that has a huge expat population: people are constantly staring and wanting to talk to you, moreso than the other places i've been.

the chinese can't drive. i'm willing to say that with absolute certainty. i bought a bike for $20 and can cruise around beijing. and people on foot, car, and bicycle really try to hit you. there can be no other explanation. there is no such thing as private space. i was riding my bike the other day, and i was cruising along in a straight line. a woman standing on the curb on the left was going to cross the street. she looked me right in the eye, about 12 feet in front of me, and proceeded to step right in front of my bike. i swerved and just barely missed her. she just kept walking. this happens daily and i really have no explanation for it. you'd really think that people who have been living in such close proximity, in such density, would figure out a way to coexist without running into each other. but they seem completely incapable of it.

its also very polluted here. when the IOC came to check out Beijing for their Olympic bid, the government shut down all the factories and seeded the clouds so it would rain. that's how bad it is. and after a month of being here, after doing anything requiring heavy breathing (running, playing ultimate, cycling, getting out of bed) i end up in coughing fits. these really gross dry coughs. but sean and i are fighting back, creating a little oasis in his apartment of plants that are supposed to remove toxins from the air.

my books arrive soon so i can begin my distance learning classes in ecological design at San Francisco Institute of Architecture. i'm stoked.

the tipping point

by malcolm gladwell. "how little things can make a big difference" is the subtitle. this is a bestseller and i was interested to see his take on phenomena and epidemics. having recently read so many critical accounts of society, agriculture, and economics i was excited to see how things might change for the better via epidemics. recycling was one epidemic i had great experience with growing up. i remember the day that san jose instituted its rather expansive recycling program. one day we were throwing everything into one bin, and the next we had bins for every type of waste; aluminum, glass, newspaper, food waste, motor oil, metals, and yard waste were all separated and laid out on the curb in a precarious rainbow stack. san jose went from not recycling at all, to being the number one city in the world (probably for about a week). i always wondered how this happened.

gladwell breaks epidemics down into classes of people that fuel the epidemic. basically, his hypothesis is that these few people (connectors, mavens, and salesmen) spread the word about an idea or product. once this idea (and the idea has to be a "sticky" idea) reaches a certain critical mass (of typically 150 people) the product tips or explodes into the mainstream. he looks at the stickiness factor of sesame street and blues clues, the massive fall of new york city crime by tweaking very small cues in the environment, the allure of suicide and smoking, and the spread of fashion from a few to the world.

in regards to the new york city crime drop:

the criminal - far from being someone who acts for fundamental intrinsic reasons and who lives in his own world - is actually someone acutely sensitive to his environment, who is alert to all kinds of cues, and who is prompted to commit crimes based on his perception of the world around him ... behavior is a function of social context. [Crime] has everything to do with the message sent by the graffiti on the walls and the disorder at the turnstiles [of the NYC subway].

quoting the evolutionary biologist S.L. Washburn in an attempt to pinpoint the magic number of 150, the "social channel capacity" (note the interesting parallel with Manning's Against The Grain):

Most of human evolution took place before the advent of agriculture when men lived in small groups, on a face-to-face basis. As a result human biology has evolved as an adaptive mechanism to conditions that have largely ceased to exist. Man evolved to feel strongly about few people, short distances, and relatively brief intervals of time; and these are still the dimensions of life that are important to him.

Thus, the figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of people we can "know;" those who we have a genuinely social relationship with. Or, "those people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in the bar."

Gladwell references Gore Associates (makers of Gore-Tex fabric) that take this number of 150 seriously:

At Gore there are no title. If you ask people who work there for their card, it will just say their name and underneath it the word "Associate," regardless of how much money they make or how much responsibility they have or how long they have been at the company. People don't have bosses, they have sponsors - mentors - who watch out for their interests. There are no organization charts, no budgets, no elaborate strategic plans. Salaries are determined collectively.

The short of the long of it is, Gore Associates is one of the most desirable companies to work for: they have a turnover rate that is 33% the industry average, they've been profitable for 35 consecutive years, and they are innovative and they are constantly growing new product lines. Whenever they grow to over 150 people, they divide the company into autonomous divisions. This way, you can work with people you feel a connection to. You know and understand everyone's job and their function. You build a relationship because you depend on them and what they do and they, likewise, rely on you.

yunnan

after playing beijing tourguide for sean's dad for two days (note: all i know how to do is say thank you and use the subway) it was time to hop on another plane to go south to yunnan. i had ants in my pants to hike the spectacular Leaping Tiger Gorge. Its a gorge where a river runs at the base of two 4000 meter mountains that are breathtakingly vertical (that's 2.5 miles high people!). Legend has it that it is so narrow in one spot a tiger escaped some hunters by leaping across. Sean and Al seemed a bit apathetic so i cracked the whip.

After the 3 hour flight, we arrived in Kunming and spent the next day in the pleasant weather. It was nice to be in cool, relatively clean air. (Beijing is as dirty as they say - if you're not choking back sand from the recent sandstorm, you're inhaling some sort of burt coal product or car exhaust.) Being in the south, there are more minorities so people seem a bit friendlier and are more exotic looking (read: more attractive). Getting to LTG was not easy, it required an overnight bus (9 hours to Lijang). Since Al is not a standard issue asian size, we had to buy him two beds in the bus and still the beds were too short, he hung over the edge at his calfs. But we made it there and it was another 2 hour car ride to the trailhead.

The walking was spectacular. We were so high, and the drop was so steep its really hard to describe. I literally almost fainted at one point it was so breathatking. I felt connected to the world. A very small part of it. At this one point the mountain was so large and sheer, you could put your chin on your chest and look down at the river, you could crane your neck back and see the mountaintop (barely), and you could look left and right and just barely make out the ends of the peaks.

All along the way the natives have donkeys to help the tourists up the mountain (because its so steep you have to use your hands in certain parts). I think even if we were to mount the little mules, they wouldn't have supported Al's weight. No asses for us.

We hiked for two nights and stayed in nice Naxi guesthouses. The Naxi are the so called "minority" people of the region. The food was excellent. They had this bread called Naxi Baba which was like a fluffy wheat pita bread that they put all sorts of toppings on: garlic, butter, bananas, chocolate, weed. you name it. it was great. The first night we arrived in the twilight (actually it was dark) and all the beds were full because of the big holiday week in china. It was 1.5 hours to the next guesthouse in the dark, and we were all very tired. The cute Naxi girls, giggiling, made us a bed on the floor and it worked superbly.

The town of Lijang was charming. Courtyard houses and a river running through the old town corresponded to what i thought china should look like.

pictures of yunnan, here

sencha photos

from the retreat

retreat

my blitzkrieg to beijing was motivated by a yoga retreat in the mountains to the north of the sprawling city. sean had signed me up for this retreat, and i was thinking it was going to be a bunch of yoga, but as it turned out it was so much more.

first, sencha is a small village perched in the steep mountains 2 hours north of beijing. when we arrived it was insanely windy and dry, but over the next few days it became warm, green, and calm. it went from winter to spring in those few days, the apricot trees coming into full pungent blossom throughout the hillsides. the retreat was led by cameron tukapua, a kind, warm new zealander versed in the art of accupuncture, chinese medicine, and qi gong. we'd awake every morning at 6:30am with 2 hours of yoga, followed by a wonderful breakfast, a lecture, lunch, a hike and lecture, 2 more hours of yoga, dinner, a talking circle, and then meditation and bedtime. it was ideal. the people were perfect and so was the food. the teachings revolved around a model of being, life, and health that are inspired by the seasons and the ecology of the planet.

for example, the cycle of summer -> indian summer -> autumn -> winter -> spring are analagous to the 5 elements of fire -> earth -> metal -> water -> wood. each of these elements has a connection to various parts of the body as well as personality archetypes, emotions, traits, etc. when we're out of balance in one element, the model shows how it can affect the others. it was a beautifully simple system, and it was exciting to learn about in such a dreamy setting. our lecture on metal/rock was delivered on the great wall itself perched high above everything - we were on top of the world.

when i returned from the retreat i got my first accupuncture treatment by the teacher, and it was really wonderful. i've had a total of 3 treatments and they've all helped in some way or another. while in china i hope to spend more time studying more about this life energy chi which i've felt in small quantities before, but never as strongly as now. the human body is truly amazing.

now sean, his dad, and myself are off to yunnan in the south of china to hike and visit the "minorities" as they're called here.

yangshou pictures

are finally here.

yangshou, china

i arrived in guilin to rain and cold. bangkok was stifling hot when i left and the south of china is just plain cold at the moment. i haven't seemed to acclimate to any sort of weather probably because i rarely stay put.

i took a ferry down the Li River to Yangshou. The river snakes its way through enormous limestone mountains. These are the same mountains that inspire all of those ink scroll paintings you see everywhere. Many of the mountains are named after objects they evoke: elephant trunk, apple, 9 horses, camel, dragon. It was like picking objects out of clouds. Dreamy.

Towards the end of the cruise, some older chinese gentlemen took a liking to me and proceeded to get me drunk on the local beer. Being that i didn't speak a word of chinese nor they a word of english, i drank what they gave me, not wanting to offend them. it was a lot of beer.

i found a guesthouse, Hotel California, and took a big nap.

waking, i went to find food. and find it i did. the street food here is pretty fresh and varied. snails, rabbits, snakes, chickens, fish, bamboo, dog, pork, EVERYTHING. i hope to try a little bit of everything while i was here, so i started in on some snails and vegetables. i need to learn how to say, "no MSG" though as it seems to be in everything. i had some cuhrazy dreams.

the next day i took a calligraphy class and climbed one of the limestone mountains. i got nearly to the top before deciding that i probably wasn't supposed to be up there. i didn't want to piss off any officials. i was using trees and small foot/hand holds to get that high. i got some good pictures though.

i decided to go live the remaining sunny days in yangshou with my calligraphy teacher. he had some extra rooms he rents out and is trying to get an actual hostel off the ground. he and his family are wonderfully kind people. i was able to eat 3 meals a day with them and their son. i hiked to the top of moon hill - this amazing limestone bridge at the top of one of the many pinnacles. i also got to practice a bit more calligraphy, some cheng-style tai chi, and do my first actual rock climbing (note: i suck).

soon i will board a train and in 27 hours arrive in beijing. i'll hopefully post some pictures when i get there.

against the grain

by richard manning. the subtitle to this book is "how argirculture has hijacked civilization" and the book is just that. although i was put off by manning's manic style, i do like the message and the argument that he delivers. in short, it is a must read.

this book is a logical extension of Ishmael in that it discusses precisely what the last 10,000 years of agriculture has grown: poverty, hunger, famine, slavery, corruption, imperialism, war, diabetes, obesity, disease, poisoned drinking water, extinction of species, etc. its a pretty damning account, but the argument is pretty sound. in the modern day, by subsidizing and supporting industrial agriculture and encouraging surpluses, the USDA has encouraged and enabled the growth of what is known as the farming of commodity goods made from wheat, rice, and corn. these grains are then processed into things like flour, high fructose corn syrup, and the like consituting nearly 66% of our caloric intake (add sugar and you nearly have the complete picture of what we eat). because they are commodities they can and are traded in markets just as currecy is. what farms grow is no food, but money. and we are fooled into eating it, pretending that it nourishes us (because we feel full).

in regards to production:

virtually all of the increases in total food production ... [in the US] ... were achieved by expansion of the arable land base ... eventually, though, expansion ran up against the limits of the planet's supply of plowable land.

we have nearly exhausted this strategy [of making a plant the most productive as possible] in a bout forty years, a period in which the world's population has doubled. There is an odd proportionality to that. It took ten thousand years to exhaust the old expansionist strategy of claiming more arable land [to increase total food production].

the farm subsidy itself encourages surplus. whatever the farmer doesn't sell, he cashes a check from the government. the surplus food is typically exported to undeveloped, famine stricken areas, which encourages further population growth, bankrupts local farmers, and adds a resource to parasitic governemnts.

in surplus, we end up with worthless products like Jell-O, "a tasteless blob of reconstituted cow's hooves artificially colored, sweetened [by corn syrup], and flavored."

on industrial ag:

the richest 2% of all farmers - 2% of 1.6% of the nation's population - account for 35% of total farm sales. At the same time, they receive 27% of federal subsidies. As many as 76% of the farms in some Colorado counties would lose money were it not for subsidies.

on fast food:

Americans spent $6 billion on fast food in 1970 and more than $110 billion in 2000. This latter figure exceeds what Americans spend annually on higher education, personal computers, or cars. It's also more than they spend on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music combined.

he even quotes my heroine, Alice Waters, "Every choice you make has consequences for the quality of your own life and good health, but also for agriculture and culture. If you buy food from people who take care of the land, you are supporting a while way of life."

its not all doom and gloom, as manning points to the recent surge in organic farm and farmer's markets as ways to turn the system around. from organic farming leads to sustainable agriculture, to the development of a permaculture. encapsulating the essence of nature in a farm would be ideal. closing the loop and letting the land produce. when people start caring what they eat, and learning about what they eat, they will begin to connect with people of their community and therefore lead happier, healthier lives.