Om Shantih

I’ve been back in Shanghai for a few days now — and am trying to sift through my memories to make sense out of my experience this summer. It feels a lifetime ago I left the ashram, those endless acres of rolling green hills and waterfalls and the peaceful security of the Indian countryside. And though I remember thinking myself a complete foreigner in India, in some ways, I find myself even more out of place here in the Chinese megalopolis. Facebook photo album here.

People are everywhere, just like India — but the rapid growth of mass consumerist infrastructure has made local life here increasingly impersonal. It seems like everyone is always on their cell phone, even while mopeding down excessively busy boulevards, offering very little in the way of attention to the going-on’s around them.

The moist summer heat drenches the myriad bodies rushing in and out of metro stations, fighting to squeeze into suffocating subway cars. It’s not really clear why people are in such a hurry — except, perhaps, to keep up with everybody else around them.

Just last summer, I was still surprised every time I saw a Western-looking person in Shanghai traveling via local modes of transport. Now, it seems an everyday occurrence to bump into non-Chinese people on the subway.

While in India, foreigners get gawked at as if they’re from some other planet, Shanghai has seemingly accustomed itself to the increasingly large and diverse ex-pat community. Likewise, the city is quickly transforming to cater to foreign tourists and new residents — while inequality grows ever more intense, poverty is becoming increasingly invisible.

I’ve been spending my days at the Shanghai Princeton Review, taking a course in preparation for the LSAT. The test is the bane of all aspiring American law students — it’s a must for admission to almost all law schools and counts for more than any other element of the application, including the undergraduate GPA. More annoyingly, a high score is extremely difficult to achieve without expensive test prep.

The test is filled primarily with logic questions, which I’ve never been particularly good at — primarily because they’re extremely confusing and annoying. If Ted, Mary, Joan, and Peter each need to work 2 shifts a week and Joan needs to work with Peter but not with Ted on Monday, what days can Mary work with Peter? Frankly sir, I don’t give a damn.

All my training to this point has forced me to look beyond restrictions — whereas this test forces me to play games inside the box. I’ve never been particularly apt at standardized tests, and the LSAT is no exception. My diagnostic test got me a 156, which pretty much guarantees me rejection at all top 100 law schools in the States.

That said, I’m happy to report that I’m not really panicking — just acknowledging that I have a lot to learn in the way of beating this test.

The guys that are teaching me are nice enough. One of them, Ben, is in charge of managing the office. Two years out of BYU Hawaii, Ben plans on taking more time before applying to law school. And he has that luxury. His perfect 180 on the LSAT will, in his words, get him into any law school. He’s understandably proud of his score — only 5-9 people score that highly every year. He spent a lot of his youth solving logic problems, and found the LSAT rather easy. The fact is, he’s quite lucky — most Harvard Law wannabes would die for his testing ability.

But I don’t find myself envying him, interestingly enough. Ben said himself today that the LSAT has become an ingrained part of him and his life. Honestly, I don’t want that for myself. I don’t want to define myself by a number — or a test. Even if my score were not to improve despite the $1700 my parents are investing in this prep course, it’s more important to me that I retain my sense of self.

Happiness is precious primarily because its value is unquantifiable.

The other guy who’s teaching me is Nick, a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill who took a gap year after finishing his undergrad work to teach in Guangzhou with the Princeton-in-Asia program, through which he met a mutual friend, Amy Sennett — the first person I met at Princeton who volunteered with me in China last summer, and who will be relocating to Shanghai for next year some time this month. Small world.

Nick plans on taking another year to study Mandarin here in Shanghai — and then to go on to the University of Chicago to start law school. After that, he plans to spend 5 or so years in corporate law playing with mergers and acquisitions to make himself some money. The way he speaks about his planned future sounds hauntingly similar to what I had in mind only a few weeks ago: sell part of my soul to the voracious corporate demon for a few years to afford saving the world with whatever remains uneaten.

Strangely enough, that path doesn’t sound at all attractive anymore — and I wonder if it’s wrong to want something different for myself.

On the way home today, crammed among hundreds of sweaty bodies trying to make their way home on Metro Line 2, I tried to close my eyes and soham my mind from the noises around me — the woman complaining that her grandchild was being crushed amidst the human traffic, the sharp whistle of the subway car through the dark tunnel, the schizophrenic muttering repetitively to yesterday’s newspaper.

It struck me in my meditation that seven weeks in India have made me a very different person. It’s not that I no longer plan on going to law school — or that I’ve completely renounced the material world. The difference is that I no longer want to suffer to satisfy expectations. It’s not worth it for me to hurt myself to “get somewhere” or “be something.”

Granted, I’m investing a lot of time in this prep course, but I’m also making time for myself to relax, to breathe, to practice yoga, to release fears. I miss the ashram and its soulfulness greatly. I often find myself flooded with memories of that other world — and I feel like something within me will never let go of what I’ve gained there. Regardless of where I am, the Trimbak waters will always flow through me, washing me of anxiety and fear, cleansing me of doubt and worry.

Gandhar-ji emailed me today to remind me to remember that yoga is the art of achieving personal balance in the world of stress. If human existence were not plagued with difficulty and stress, yoga would not exist. The world is filled with irresolvable contradictions, and yet — yoga helps us achieve balance.

He asked me to remember the example he gave the very first day of our yoga program. Lord Shiva is often pictured wearing a cobra around his neck and riding a sacred bull. His wife, the Goddess Shakti, rides a fierce tiger, and their children Kartikeya and Ganesh ride the peacock and the rat, respectively. The snake is always looking to eat the rat, the peacock the snake, the tiger the bull.

And yet, Lord Shiva rests perpetually in a balanced state of meditation, the Goddess Shakti represents divinely compassionate maternalism, and their sons control the energies for other creative manifestations.

In the same way, the external world might appear irrevocably fraught with anxiety and panic — but through our meditation, we can shift our response to that world by altering the patterns of our thought. With this skill, we can achieve a balanced state of mind and a healthy lifestyle regardless of external circumstances.

His words remind me to give importance to each individual moment — to never let life rush past me as I’m hurrying from goal to goal, to remember to contemplate how good it feels to be alive. To be satisfied with what I have instead of longing for what others expect me to have. To be content with myself despite my imperfections, and to dare to be true to myself despite the pressures of the world outside.

To live — honestly, healthily, happily.