The grey-bearded holy man of Varanasi waved as we made eye contact. I had been in this ancient, sacred northern Indian city for a week and had passed by it several times, always sitting on a branch at the intersection of two narrow pedestrian lanes. Did you know I’m having an existential crisis? Could you see it on my face? I sat next to Baba Mehdar Giri, who told me that he had come to Varanasi to die—ensuring that as a Hindu, his death, cremation, and ashes thrown into the Ganges would take him straight to nirvana, or moksha, as the Hindus call it—and until that happened, he would stay on this branch, reading and meditating. As a white cow ran away, he said, “God is not looking at you. Never.” He stopped and looked at me. I felt a jolt of nervousness. “God is not a statue. You have to find God within yourself.”
Then he added, “You must know yourself, and then you will never be born again.”
“Easier said than done,” I told him.
He raised his hand, pointing his index finger to the sky, and said, “The key, my friend, is…” And just then I heard the cell phone ring. Baba took out a flip phone and spoke in Hindi for the next sixty seconds as I waited for his wisdom. “Okay,” he said and hung up the phone. “The key is: consistency,” he continued, pausing and looking deeply into my eyes for three seconds. “The source of suffering is not impermanence, but your inability to recognize that the real cause of suffering is wanting things to be permanent – when nothing in the universe is.” I felt her speech drop and before I could say anything she said, “Truly embrace impermanence and it will shape your life and change the way you live and love.”
And with this sage advice, I thanked him, clasping my hands to my chest, and set out for the holy river Ganges. I was on the flight home the next day and I thought about that conversation a lot and realized that whatever problems I had at that moment won’t be a problem in a week, a month, a year – or however long it takes for them to be resolved. I took this simple advice from an unexpected encounter a sadhuor a holy man, to offer a rope from the pit from which I tried to dig myself out. That moment in Varanasi was a decade ago and I have never lived or traveled the same since.
Travel changes you, as does spirituality. They are companions.
And so went a huge epiphany of my life – one in which travel was the catalyst. Even if you don’t realize it, traveling is a spiritual experience. When you travel, you leave behind not only your family, friends and possessions, but also yourself – your home self – and a different you emerges, perhaps fresher, more vulnerable, more open to new ideas and things. You put yourself in the hands of the world, and you hope, you want them to take care of you. Travel changes you, as does spirituality. They are companions.
An epiphany about impermanence in Varanasi was appropriate, as it is only five miles northeast of Sarnath, where the Buddha first introduced the world to the Four Noble Truths. And since travel can be difficult at times, why not marry our spiritual and physical journeys with the Four Noble Truths of Travel.
The first noble truth of travel: Travel is Dukkha
The word “journey” comes from Middle English work (to work, toil or travel) and the Old French word to work“to suffer”. This word comes from the Latin word, tripaliumancient Roman torture device.
The journey is therefore rooted in suffering. Of course, no one needs to tell you this. You’ve probably experienced it. The delayed flights. The missed trains. The lost passports.
At the age of 29, Siddhartha Guatama set out into the world to see the his name– a Pali word that does not have an exact translation, but can mean disadvantage, error, danger, obstacle – the impermanence of life, which is related dukkha and eventually find the path to enlightenment.
As a food and travel writer, I’ve experienced a lot sukha and dukkha– light and easy – along the way, but often unpleasant and difficult experiences stuck with me: food poisoning in Hanoi from a bad bowl of pho, which caused a particularly bad E. coli infection and sent me to the hospital and left me in bed for ten days; lost and therefore canceled credit cards that left me with little cash in Ethiopia; a bicycle accident in Berlin that allowed me to ride in an ambulance; street hustlers in Mexico City. You get the idea. We have to accept that dukkha or something unsatisfactory will happen when we travel. The best advice is to listen to Baba Mehdar Giri, the Sadhu in Varanasi, and ‘truly accept impermanence’. Life may seem difficult in the moment when bad things happen along the way, but the feeling and the situation are not permanent.
The second noble truth of travel: We suffer when we travel because we perceive it
At Sarnath Buddha said that we suffer because we cling to things when they are impermanent. Attachment is the biggest obstacle to inner peace. And travel has a peculiar way of inducing dukkha.
Living in Rome, I was used to walking into my favorite restaurants and looking for a table, or practicing one of my “travel tricks” by going to the Vatican Museums after lunch when I knew as a local that there wouldn’t be a line. I went back to Rome a few years ago and experienced serious dukkha when I found out that almost every restaurant I wanted to visit again was booked for the duration of my stay. There were lines at the Vatican at all hours of the day. Even in the never-crowded Pantheon, there was a line of 500 people to get in.
If we are not mindful of attachment, it can add a destructive element to our journeys. Instead of coming home and telling your loved ones how great your trip was, you might end up complaining about all the things that didn’t go your way. The Buddhist idea of non-attachment in terms of travel is not about attempting the perfect journey; it’s about not being limited by your attachments.
When things don’t go my way on a trip, I try to remind myself of a favorite quote Pema Chödro: “If you’re disappointed, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It might just be the beginning of a great adventure.”
The third noble truth of travel: The way to a better travel experience
“Let him go or he’ll be dragged.” While traveling, the well-known Zen proverb is on my mind a lot. In his Third Noble Truth, the Buddha says that the cessation of dukkha can be achieved by ceasing attachment, desire, and ignorance.
When I first started out as a travel writer, I went to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, hoping to write about it. I didn’t know much about the city then, but it sounded exotic and interesting to me. After a day exploring the city, I had a meltdown. I didn’t like Zagreb. The city was not as aesthetic as, say, Venice, Prague or Amsterdam; I hated the food; the locals were not particularly friendly. I wanted to leave, but I had just paid for five nights in a hotel in a city. But now, looking back, I realize the true source of my anger: I wanted so desperately to launch my writing career, and Zagreb was not the catalyst for that. It also brought up many buried feelings of unworthiness. I was not angry with Zagreb and its inhabitants; the anger I felt came from within. I was attracted by my own attachments.
I still have bad experiences and unexpected twists and turns in my itinerary and expectations when I travel, but these days I deal with them much differently. I excavate my feelings of anger as close to their source as possible, reminding myself to grasp them and then, like a palimpsest, uncover the emotional layers to get to the core of my displeasure. The Buddha said more emphatically: “The moment you know how your suffering arose, you are already on the path to freedom from it.” After all, pain doesn’t go away when we bury it.
The fourth noble truth of travel: the right way to travel
In his last noble truth, the Buddha shows the way to an ethical life and the development of wisdom. In the case of travel, this means being a better, more respectful visitor to other people’s countries, regions and cities; be aware of our own biases and judgments; being aware of the types of businesses we give our money to (such as supporting independent small businesses to create a more sustainable local economy). We also need to consider having the right mindset to talk to others while traveling.
For example, in 2002 I went to a butcher shop in Rome. After I placed my order, the Filipino butcher asked me where I was from. When he heard that I was from the United States, he asked me what I thought about the US military invasion of Iraq. “I think we should drop bombs on them anyway,” I said. He seemed surprised. Then I added, “But the types of ‘bombs’ I’m talking about are washing machines, flat screen TVs, stereos and other things that make their lives better, not worse. The butcher stared in shock, his mouth hanging open. Then he said, “Are you sure you’re American?” I nodded affirmatively. “I’ve never heard an American think that.”
Clearly, he hasn’t met enough Americans in his lifetime. But the point was, I got past what he thought was the stereotype of Americans: that we all hold exactly the same views as our government and are perfectly fine with war. Some Americans stick a Canadian flag on their backpacks when they travel abroad. My feeling about this has always been: Just don’t be a jerk; be a responsible, open-minded traveler, and you don’t have to pass yourself off as Canadian, but you can help change some minds—in a positive way—about Americans. This applies to any nationality, as no citizen of any country is exempt from nasty travelers.
Artist, entertainer, musician, Prince once muttered, “The only love there is, is the love we love.” That’s true. But when it comes to travel, “The only road there is is the road we’ve taken.”
This path may lead you to a holy man in Varanasi, but it may inspire you to be a wiser, more mindful traveler in the future.
