7 ~ Looking for a symbol of ‘Peace’.

December 11th. Part 2

I walked back along the river. It was still my birthday. All the peace and everything that felt right suddenly turned into tears. I don’t know how it happened. Sometimes it just does.

I cried almost the entire morning, going through so many emotions: sadness, despair, spirituality, excitement, anguish, loneliness, and a full moon. I talked to my mother, pretending I was having a normal birthday, at a normal moment, in my old normal life in Copenhagen. But nothing could be further from the truth.I was alone and feeling alone—even more alone—going through the hardest moment of my life and still trying to understand what the hell I was doing here.

I stared at the Ganga and at nothing at the same time.

A woman approached me and started speaking in Hindi.

-"Are you in trouble?" She looked at me again and answered herself: – Yes… you are in troubles.

I couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to run away from India, from Rishikesh, from the world in general, and from my own feelings, too.She kept speaking in Hindi, and I kept smiling politely and telling her I didn’t understand a word she was saying.

I walked down a narrow dirt path and saw a humble sign that said "Meditation." There are thousands of Yoga schools in Rishikesh, but something about this one caught my attention. It looked like an old house. I knocked. A man approached.He was a monk. I looked at him.His face reminded me terribly of my father.

He told me to come in. With the hesitation of someone stepping into a stranger’s home, I told him I was in a hurry. In the end, I went in but sat with my backpack on, ready to leave at any moment.

He asked me what I was looking for. I told him I had come to study Yoga and meditation and that I needed to find a little peace—just what half of the million and a half people who come to India must say. Nothing original.

He started talking to me about balance, with the same intensity as the people who spoke with the souls had mentioned it months ago.

He told me that meditation leads us to the question:– Who am I?

– Just what I need! I thought.

I took off my backpack and started looking at him with a concentrated expression. I’m easy to impress. Well, the truth is, we all get easily impressed when we come to India desperate and, for the first time in our lives, sit down to talk with a monk in an orange robe.

The little house was right in front of the Ganga.You could hear the water crashing against the rocks and see the mountains.

He told me that Yoga is much more than just exercises, that people have lost its true meaning, but it is far deeper than simply performing poses.

He started telling me about the eight limbs of Yoga: Yamas (ethical principles), Niyama (personal practices), Asanas (physical postures), Pranayama (breath control), Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), Dharana (concentration), Dhyana (meditation), and Samadhi (enlightenment, the final stage).

He talked about how Yoga changed when it reached the West. Maybe because our minds weren’t prepared for it and couldn’t absorb it, so it was simplified into something we could understand—like a basic equation—and ended up being just the physical part, the material, the visible.Basically, what mattered to the capitalist world of “Order and Progress.”The rest became nothing.Not even something confusing—just nothing, because it disappeared entirely.

Nothing or very little reached us about social conduct, self-care, energy management, prana, or the goal of meditation as a path to happiness.

Too mystical for us, the masters of the mind.And so, we lost the essence, the meaning, the why and the purpose behind all those complex poses that we think Yoga is.

– Now people hear ‘Yoga’ and think of asanas, but that’s just one step on the path to liberation. It has become a sport, a physical exercise, and in that, it has lost its greatest wealth, the true purpose.

He spoke. I listened.

At one point, he told me that was enough for today, that I should go, relax, and Shanti Shanti (peace, peace).He told me to come back the next morning at 9 AM and that he would teach me to meditate.

I asked him how much he charged. Ever since arriving in Rishikesh, I’ve felt that commercialism, the promises of healing, and the overwhelming number of offerings have ruined much of the mystique of finding something truly meaningful.Half the people who approach me to share something spiritual end up trying to sell me something, and it’s hard to connect beyond money.

The monk told me it was by donation.I liked that. He was the first who didn’t ask me for money.That gave me confidence.I told him I’d be back the next day.

In the meantime, I got a call from Kaare—my Danish guru—for my birthday.

Lately, he’s been the person I’ve shared most of this journey with.He recommended places to go, experiences to try, talked to me about spirituality, Vipassana, and Ashrams. He even organized a farewell dinner with Indian food, explaining Hindu gods to me with a slideshow of cartoon images, patiently answering my million and one questions about my project, “Going to India Alone.”And before I left, he read my Tarot cards with an excited and mystical look—like a child inside the body of an adult Danish man.

He spent a long time in an Ashram in Kullu, a small town in the Indian Himalayas. He lived in India for almost ten years, studying meditation and different philosophical traditions. He has an Indian Guru, an old man who lives in a remote village deep in the mountains.And he loves every corner of India with all his being.He is the most spiritual person I know.

As he told me about it, I imagined him in a cave, in the middle of the snow, like something out of Christopher Nolan’s Batman when he trains as a ninja. The truth is, many monks actually do that, undergoing years of intense breathwork training.But, of course, that wasn’t Kaare’s case. Still, that was my mental image before coming here—very different from reality.The point is, his heart beats for India so intensely that he convinces anyone.

He wished me a happy birthday and asked how I was doing.

I tried to sound peaceful and hopeful while telling him I felt like absolute shit, in a full-blown anxiety crisis and desperate.I told him how I felt, that I wanted to escape to the mountains and get away from this city, the motorcycles, the noise, the tourists, the tourist vendors, and the constant sensory overload.

With all the peace and understanding that define him, he listened to me as if I were simply saying it was a hot day. He paused. Then he spoke.

– It’s easy to find peace in peaceful places, in the mountains, in solitude…But that’s not real, nor does it belong to you. True inner peace is being able to find it among people, among your racing thoughts, in the chaos of real life.That is true peace, that is the real achievement.

Or what?Are you planning to live your whole life alone in the mountains?

That was exactly what I had been thinking at that moment.

– True peace is being able to find peace within yourself, despite everything happening around you.Being in the middle of a street in Delhi, sitting on a bench, closing your eyes, going inward, and finding your center—your own peace.

That beautiful feeling you had in the mountains disappears when something disturbs it—because it’s not real.That’s not your peace.That’s just being in a peaceful place with its own peace.

It’s a temporary fantasy, but it doesn’t belong to you. It’s not your achievement and it vanishes the moment you step away from it.

What he said made perfect sense, of course.But at that moment, I just wanted the placebo effect.

I clung to the phone, listening as if his words were a hug.

I was in crisis, trying to manage my anxiety, surrounded by non-stop honking and people approaching me from every direction.

– Why the hell didn’t I just go to the mountains? I kept thinking over and over.

I don’t know why I thought India would automatically give me what I was looking for.

But at least, it’s comforting to feel I’m on the right path.Now I can keep crying—but with a little more pride and my head held higher—on a beautiful terrace with a view of the Himalayas.

The only thing my mind could see was chaos, so all I could do was accept it and sit there, watching the chaos unfold. I kept staring into nothingness from the terrace, my brow furrowed, a feeling of resignation settling in.

Amidst all of it, I saw a Sadhu—one of those monks in orange robes who renounce all their belongings and surrender to a path of austerity and meditation. He was walking along the nonexistent sidewalk, weaving through cows, motorbikes, monkeys, noise, people—India. I watched him from a distance, and he seemed illuminated, glowing amidst all that disorder, the noise. He emanated stillness, as if he could stop time while walking. Like a scene from a movie.

Is this what peace looks like? A steady point held within the anarchy of movement? A moment, just the perfection of a moment—fleeting but showing us a place to return to.

I watched him, and time stood still.

What is his fucking secret? I thought.