Saltwater Buddha by Jaimal Yogis

Author:Jaimal Yogis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Published: 2010-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

17.

DURING THE NEXT MONTH, we surfed Third Bay a few more times on relatively small days like that. And each time we surfed, I saw that the idea of Third Bay was more scary than any actual wave itself—at least up to a point. (For those who have surfed it when it’s big, I make no claims to even imagine what that’s like.)

One day when Rom was working, I went alone. From the parking lot, I could make out a silhouette of a single bobbing surfer against the horizon. The sun would be setting in an hour and a half and it didn’t make much sense to brave the twenty-minute paddle. But I guess I wanted to show myself that I didn’t need Rom to come with me to Third Bay every time.

When I arrived, I saw the single surfer: a middle-aged man with bright green eyes and a deep scar across his forehead. His leathered skin and beat-up big-wave board made him look like he’d been drifting on ocean currents for twenty years.

I nodded, and he gave a wide grin revealing a few missing teeth.

“Small today,” he said, “mostly just a drop.” He pointed to the horizon. “But it’ll change. You see ’em out there?”

I didn’t see anything but big white clouds.

“Who?”

“Dragons.”

“Sorry?”

“Dra-gons. Been watching ’em. Sort of a hobby.”

Had we been sitting at any other of Pohoiki’s breaks, I would have welcomed the man’s visions. But on my first day at Third Bay without Rom, surfing with a guy having acid flashbacks was not my idea of fun. I considered paddling back, but I was tired. I decided to catch my breath for a few minutes.

“They’re in the clouds—Lono,” the man said, referencing the Hawaiian god who rules over storms. “That’s the way they appear. Lot of messages in the clouds.”

The clouds did seem unusually huge and the outer edges of the billows formed clean hard lines. The low sun was turning the backs of the billows into a velvety rose color. It was easy to see any number of mythological creatures writhing inside: dancing, fighting, mating.

At that point, a set came through with the usual ferocity. I thought the old man was too late, too deep, but at the zenith, he stood gracefully, pulling a smooth bottom turn then gliding off the back.

I still felt uneasy around the guy and I watched my mind start to make up stories—what jokes I would tell Rom the next day. But I stopped. I remembered how fun it was to make shapes out of clouds when I was little… and that reminded me of a Zen teaching that real insight comes from letting go of fixed views: assumptions that the world is a certain way. Rather than constantly spinning out a web of assumptions, Zen teaches to be with what actually is, moment to moment. To watch how everything changes, how everything comes into being and passes away.

And in that moment, the clouds did look something like dragons. It would’ve been an assumption to say they were dragons, but also an assumption to say they weren’t.

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