A Long Letter to a Friend from one who left to one who remains in the convent Sarada Karuna Books Santa Barbara, California displayed in eco-print , 2 column, paper-saver format for PDF books Copyright 2004-2006 by Sarada (Ruth I. Tate) Published by Karuna Books an imprint of Human Development Books 133 E. De la Guerra St. #PMB420 Santa Barbara, California 93101 -- USA Printed copies available for $12.00 + shipping at www.karunabooks.net. Explanatory notes, [in brackets], by Dennis Rivers. 2006 eco-print PDF edition Moments in my journey (photos put together by my friend, Dennis). Me, today, with a picture of the Structural Differential (from General Semantics) to remind me not only that “the map is not the territory,” but also that the territory is always more interesting and life-giving than the map. A Long Letter to a Friend – Page 1 August, 2004 to deepen and clarify my “Connection”, and of my failures in this which led me to the breaking point. Your story may have some points of similarity, but Dear Barada, you are still there! I ask that you hear me with This is a belated thank you for your beautiful compassion. First I’ll speak in some detail of my Christmas card of this past December, and it is also family life as a prelude. my apologia , my spiritual autobiography. From age fourteen I had been living alone Your choice of cards is always lovely, but this with my father. My mother, after their divorce, one was special for me in that it included a gracious moved out to the Valley with my one year old sister. invitation to be a guest in the Bhavan the next time I My brother Bjarne, who was four years older than should come out to California. It may appear that I myself, had gone off to study to be a veterinarian. plan such trips at intervals. However, my first visit Up to that time we had all lived together in the same to California, since my being here in Canada, was house, and with a laissez faire attitude towards each seven or eight years ago. I came at that time to see other. I never heard my parents really conversing, my friends and relatives, and all of you in the nor did I observe any hostility or affection expressed Vedanta Convent, after my “mysterious between them. In their relating to me I was never disappearance” of seven years. Since then I’ve questioned as to where I went or what I did, or traveled out West because of special circumstances. advised, rebuked, praised, guided or told what was My sister Jody invited me to come to Hawaii for a wrong and what was right. None of us went to reunion with my brother, after we had lived separate church. Strangely, when people spoke of God I felt lives for many years. Two years later my brother embarrassed. My Catholic girl friend invited me to died. Funds were provided to members of our go with her to Mass. I remember a lot of standing family to be together in Hawaii for a memorial and kneeling and hearing some mumbling up at the service. front. I didn’t go again. I went to Church once with my Protestant girl friend, and I have a vivid recall of At that time I had a small window of the Minister in a deep voice and preacherly tone opportunity to visit with you. I had wished for a saying that, “Jesus was a Jew.” This was in the longer time to talk with you in depth, and to laugh about ’32. Could he have been arguing against a about some of the “old times.” We’re both sorry growing anti-Semitism in his congregation? My that it didn’t work out. During those many years piano teacher was a spinster and very sweet. One together at the Convent we shared the same routines, time she looked at me as though she was about to sat together in meditation, and took part in all the speak of my need for God or religion, but the expected and unexpected events of our communal expression on my face must have stopped her. I was life. Now that we are hopefully wiser and more probably about nine or ten years old, but I think my secure in our life choices, may we not share what reading of her intent was correct. I’ll mention a were our inner lives, our breakthroughs or memory not connected to my responses to church discouragement’s, if not face to face but at least in going. I was probably in the first grade. It seems writing to one another? It was my inner struggles strange that I should have had such a vivid memory that culminated in my leaving the Convent after of the boys running around during recess shouting, twenty-five years. It is possible, but I’m afraid “The Japs are coming. The Japs are coming.” These unlikely, that if I had been open about them I would same boys, as young men, would have been at draft have stayed on. You were dismayed at my decision age after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. to leave and must have speculated why, but nobody asked me why. On the day I left there were muted, I enjoyed my “free as a bird” life, and missed confused and pleading looks. I cried but the nothing in the lack of family intimacy. I was Connection had been broken. I had to leave or provided with everything I needed, and more, for the shrivel up inside. staging of my growing life, these things coming from the “wings” as it were. However, I also lived Barada, now I want to tell you the story of in a larger, stable social world of middle-class how I was drawn to the philosophical and devotional Beverly Hills. Despite what people might have aspects of Vedanta as a way of life; of how I strove considered a dysfunctional up-bringing, the parents Page 2 -- Long A Letter to a Friend of my friends always felt reassured when their girls in the middle of the street, stopped and looked at me. were with “responsible me”! The expression on his face looked to me to be of surprise that I lived there. We got to know each I went through high school when I was living other, and he began coming over in the evenings for alone with my father. It was during that period that I me to help him with his homework. This was a ruse, experienced my first emotional crisis. Following my of course, because he liked me, and I liked him more habitual pattern of keeping my inner feelings private, than I realized. We sat together on the “love seat” it wouldn’t have occurred to me to confide in my with our books on our laps. His knee rocked against father about them. He also had his inner life, and my knee and it was pleasurable. We tussled over the perhaps because of his heritage as a taciturn radio dial—he to listen to Benny Goodman, and I to Norwegian, he too did not speak of his inner the classics. I felt little stabs of delight as our hands thoughts. But he was a very caring father, and he and fingers argued over the dial. The boy’s name wanted to know what was going on in my mind. In was Duke. His ambition was to be a musician and to my desk drawer he found an affirmation type play in a band. He told me that he had received a meditation. I had copied it out from a magazine that clarinet for Christmas and asked “Would you like to I had picked up at a lecture of Ernest Holmes on come over and see it?” He was inviting me to come Religious Science. Discovering in me an interest in deeper into his life. We started across the street religion he revealed to me that he had been an when these “fellas” that my girl friend and I went initiated disciple of Swami for two years. And that out with drove up and hailed me to come with them he had been given the Hindu name of Vireswar. I – and I did! As the car caromed down La Peer Dr. I learned later that he had been a spiritual seeker all turned to look out the back window. Duke was his life! He was planning a trip to his place of birth walking back home. His body was slightly slumped in Norway. He suggested that while he was away I and his head was cast down. In that instant I might enjoy going up to the Vedanta Temple to hear regretted my mindless impulse. I realized that I had the Swami speak – and I did! I had just turned brought pain to him, and I suffered for the first time seventeen. As I took this life-changing step, I did in my life. Duke was too deeply hurt to come over not recall an experience that I had when I was twelve and be with me again. In retrospect I ask myself, or thirteen years old. One rainy day, sitting at home “How, How, was I so stupid as to have jumped into alone and bored, I reached idly for a book on the a car with guys that I cared nothing about?” table by my chair. Opening it at random I read, Suddenly I had been jolted into the world of human “Seek first the Kingdom of God.” I could describe relating with its pain and need for empathy and what happened on reading this as an uprising caring.