12 Year Secrets From The Sadhu's In India

Hello and welcome once again.

My name is Douglas Grummans and I'd like to share a few insights with you over this conversation I had last night at Drum Circle with a friend of mine.

His name is Simba and his wife Bree.

We have Drum Circle at my house and we kind of go off into the back patio and have these enlightening conversations.

But last night Simba and I were sharing the experience of the 12 year cycle.

And he was,

Alex was telling me that the Sadhus in India,

They're basically mountain men that don't wear clothes.

They cover their bodies with ashes and they only come down to the village once every 12 years to share the hidden secrets of the mountain men.

You'll find as you go throughout your life that generally to get really,

Really good at something takes a few years.

And generally it's around about a 12 year cycle that it takes us as human beings to get really good at something.

So with surfing,

I moved to the East Coast around 1998 and this surf spot in Virginia Beach called First Street is kind of heavily localized.

And I've wanted to surf the wave and I found out basically if you pay your dues that they'll let you surf the wave.

You might have to surf scraps and leftovers over on the shoulders for many years,

But eventually if you keep paying your dues over and over throughout time,

You'll gain respect of the elders or the guys that kind of rule the point.

And after about seven years,

I had maybe one or two people say hi to me in the water at the most.

It wasn't very much.

But I kept at it and I kept at it and I paid my dues and I got to be a better surfer and improving all the time,

Watching the other guys and girls too.

There are a few girls that came out.

And as you pay your dues,

You experience what it's like kind of like to be on the inside of something.

But after about 11 years,

I had gained a few more friends out there.

And by the 12th year,

I was kind of considered as one of the inside guys.

I'm not saying I was the best surfer out there,

But there were days where I was the best surfer and then there were days when I was the worst surfer.

It just depended on who came out.

But in this cycle,

In this circle of friends that I had made,

You had to be there every day.

You had to really give it 100% your all.

And if you missed a day,

Then you missed your spot in the lineup.

So you pretty much had to put surfing first in your life,

Before family,

Before friends,

Before anything,

If you wanted to be part of this group,

If you wanted to be on the inside circle.

And it took me about 12 years for me to be considered just one of the guys.

And in Aikido,

It was kind of the same thing.

When I first started studying Aikido,

It was probably about 1989,

And I was in Northern Virginia and I went to a guy's school in Alexandria.

I also went to his teacher's school,

Which was in Maryland,

On the north side of DC.

I found out that basically they have circles within circles of Aikido students.

You don't get taught the really good stuff until you've really paid your dues.

To get into those circles and be considered one of those things takes a long time.

Everybody in America wants everything now and they want it right away.

They don't want to have to pay their dues.

They don't want to have to do what it takes to get that 12-year cycle.

Surfing nowadays has really changed up because these softboard manufacturers have mass-produced cheap softboards that don't hurt if they hit somebody.

A lot of these young cats just go out and destroy the lineup now,

Especially in Virginia Beach.

I was told by a friend that it's just total chaos out there now.

It's also Virginia Beach's own fault because in the summertime they cram everybody into one or two small areas for surfing.

In doing so,

You can create chaos.

But the order was kept by the old guard.

It's just interesting in life that it takes so much dedication at a certain thing to get really good at it.

The same goes with skydiving.

If you want to get really,

Really good at skydiving,

You've got to really pay your dues,

Give it 100%.

It's almost impossible to have three or four hobbies at a time.

In fact,

My Aikido teacher told me that many years ago,

That you should really focus on one thing at a time.

I had a little more patience with the things.

I didn't want to give up surfing because that's my number one love.

But I also wanted to get really good at Aikido,

Too.

I know my marriage suffered from all this,

But my wife endured my passions and my hobbies.

What I was getting at after telling you all this about the 12-year cycles of everything is to give you an understanding.

What possibly could these mountain men come down and share?

They share the hidden secrets of their teachings once every 12 years.

In Zen,

It's kind of the same thing.

The Zen monks would give their students these things called cones.

A cone is basically a riddle that cannot be solved.

There is no answer.

With it having no answer,

It can lead your mind on many paths trying to figure it out.

It could take up to 12 years before the mind totally gets exhausted.

Masters use this cone.

There are several cones,

But one of the cones is,

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

My mother had a friend that she worked with in Northern Virginia.

He boasted that he had a fourth dan in Tae Kwon Do.

I was only a shodan.

I just had one dan.

I never got very high up into my rankings because Aikido is different than Tae Kwon Do.

In Aikido,

It takes 15 to 20 years before you get your shodan sometimes.

Maybe 10 if you practice every single day and really pay your dues.

I told my mom to ask her friend,

This fourth dan in Tae Kwon Do,

I said,

Can he answer the sound of one hand clapping?

My mom busted out laughing.

I said to her,

What good is a fourth dan if you don't know the answer to this riddle?

There is no answer.

What happens is that in Japan,

There was this one master who would tell this cone to his students.

Every time a student came in with some kind of answer,

Like maybe the sound of one hand clapping is one hand hitting up against a wall.

But that's not really one,

That's really two.

You're using a wall as the other hand.

Or if two people got together and each had one hand clapping,

Then it's still not one hand clapping,

There's still two there.

So really,

There is no sound to one hand clapping.

It's a cone.

It's meant to make you think until you're extremely exhausted from thinking.

When you become extremely exhausted from thinking,

The mind takes a break and it stops thinking.

So there's basically two ways to have the mind not thinking.

One can be sudden,

Like if you get into an accident,

A car accident,

A bad accident,

And you won't be able to think.

Your awareness is brought all the way to the present moment.

It's not a panic state,

But it's just that the mind becomes still when you're completely aware and awake.

So that can be a sudden awakening.

And the other one happens from exhaustion.

And that's what happened to Buddha when he became enlightened,

Was he studied for six years under all these different masters.

Every technique,

He was the most profound student that ever came around.

Even with all his wisdom,

He couldn't figure out what he was looking for,

This enlightenment that he found.

I guess he suspected things about it,

But it kept avoiding him because he kept using his mind.

He kept trying every technique that the masters would tell him.

And then one day when he was completely exhausted,

He sat down at night and instead of going to sleep,

He just dropped everything and said,

I'm not going to try anymore.

I'm just going to relax.

And at that moment,

He relaxed totally.

And then his enlightenment happened.

They say it's the last star in the night started fading away is when he became enlightened towards the morning sun.

And it was through this exhaustion.

And I'll explain it like this.

It's like any thought becomes like a ripple in a lake.

Even the very last thought,

The last thought of God being there in front of you or Buddha appearing and Krishna playing on his flute or Mohammed dancing in the ashes or whatever.

If any of these things come into your mind,

It's not the end.

It's not the true end result because the true end result is to have no ripples in the lake.

And when you have no ripples in the lake,

Then the magic happens.

Then you can see the reflection in its entirety.

You can see what godliness is.

But even the appearance of God is not the end.

It is a distraction.

So if you have all this light and all this awareness and all these beautiful thoughts,

No matter how beautiful the thoughts are,

It's not the end.

The end only comes around when the mind becomes completely still.

And stilling the mind might take 12 years.

I know that sounds crazy.

So what I'm doing by giving out this information in a way that you don't have to take 12 years,

It can,

Like I said,

It can happen suddenly.

That is the art of Zen.

A Zen master would strike his student after he said,

If the student came in and said,

The sound of one hand clapping is a cuckoo's nest or something.

He would slap him on the head or he would kick him in the butt.

And many times in the Zen lineage,

Students or practitioners of Zen would become enlightened instantly as soon as the master smacked them.

There's a famous story about a Zen master who kicked his student and his student became enlightened instantly from the kick.

I know that sounds harsh and kind of weird to us in the West,

How this,

You know,

This most seems like violence,

But it's not violence.

It's the master's acting spontaneously.

He didn't prepare anything.

He doesn't do it for every student that comes in and says that,

You know,

Tries to give an answer to the cone.

He has the same smack or the same gesture.

Some masters have even thrown their students out of the windows of the buildings.

And then the student gets the point that you should get out of your mind.

And that is the 12th teaching.

This is what the sadhus are trying to come down from the mountains every 12 years and try to impart on you is that you need the stillness of the lake.

You need that complete calmness,

Not even one ripple,

No ripples,

Just complete calmness.

And then you'll see the true reflection of the moon.

The sadhus with their 12 years are just fingers pointing to the moon.

So anyway,

I thought that was very interesting and talk about how everything goes in cycles and how we learn and sometimes what it takes to unlearn,

To drop,

To just be.

One of my friends put up a post on Facebook where she said she's been studying and been on her awakening journey for five years and studying Reiki and all these other spiritual qualities,

I guess you could say.

But she was kind of frustrated and didn't know.

I guess she was frustrated because she said she doesn't know how to help others yet.

Even though she's studied hard and did all these things.

But if you think about the 12-year cycle and the people that are societies that have evolved around these 12-year cycles,

They all have paid their dues.

Someone with only five years in the making of developing themselves can get frustrated very easily because they don't have the answers yet.

They don't have the experience yet.

They haven't evolved and grown enough.

It's kind of like a plant that's just breaking the soil and it's got a few leaves on it.

It wants to be shade to the other trees,

But it's just not there yet.

So be patient with yourself.

If you can't find Zen and sudden enlightenment,

Then you'll have to go to the other extreme and exhaust your mind.

Go completely until there's actually no thought left.

Exercise it.

You can do exercises like gibberish.

You can just shout a bunch of gibberish for as long as you can until your mind almost freezes up.

There's also chaotic breathing techniques you can do where if you just keep changing the pattern of your breath,

Like for a few seconds go really fast.

Real fast.

In and out.

Boom,

Boom,

Boom.

And then go slow.

Super slow.

And then fast again.

Slow again.

There's that and that can help exhaust the mind if you do it long enough.

There's running in place or going for a run.

When a runner runs on long distance runs,

After about three or four or five miles,

Then something kicks in.

They get their second wind.

But also what happens is I guess your body starts releasing these endorphins and serotonin or whatever and you become at ease.

You become calm and you can run without no thought.

Once you get up into the 15 and 20 mile ranges,

You go through several cycles,

But it keeps getting deeper and deeper.

Zen happens through running.

It can also happen through surfing.

Surfing,

When we're just out there staring at the waves,

We become completely silent.

We get absorbed by watching the ocean.

And you learn so much in life just from watching the ocean.

There's so much to being a surfer.

There's so much depth in all these guys that have made it a lifelong passion.

You can go up to any one of them and ask them,

How'd you get so good?

And they'll all say,

You have to pay your dues.

There was a young lady a couple of days ago in the water.

My girlfriend and I went out surfing and this young couple came out and passed us by on the beach and they went to the middle between the two jetties.

And here in Galveston,

If you want to get out to the outside,

If it's big in the middle,

It's going to be extremely hard to get out.

And this day had a little bit of size,

So I watched as these two young kids couldn't really find enough energy to get and break out to the outside where the waves were.

So they had to ride the inside waves.

And that's okay.

Ride the inside waves for a while.

Learn what it feels like to be on the motion of a wave and learn what it feels like to try to get to your feet while you're focusing on everything.

You have to use your mind for all these things,

But eventually when you become a really good surfer,

It's almost mindless.

There is no thinking.

You just go out,

Watch the waves,

Turn,

Take one,

And if you can drop the mind while you're doing this,

Then your consciousness kind of takes over and your consciousness will guide you down the wave.

There are lines on the waves that can be drawn.

If you find a good line,

Then you flow with it.

Then everything happens in harmony and in sync with the existence.

You really feel a Zen moment from that.

But anyway,

These two kids,

I felt sorry for them.

I watched them.

So I rode a wave over to where they were kind of standing in the water,

Dumbfounded like they don't know what to do.

I decided to give them a prompt to surf lesson.

I pushed the young fellow named John a couple of times into the waves.

He was very brave.

I was really proud of him because when I told him to follow me out at the jetty,

Him and Ashley,

His girlfriend,

When I told them to follow me out,

Just do what I do.

So they followed me to a point.

Ashley got scared and cut away from us and went back to shore.

John went out past the heavy breakers at the end of the jetty where it's pounding.

It's hollow and it's pounding.

I just told him the secrets of how you get past that pounding.

You get around it by going really close to the jetty.

It doesn't break as hard right up on the jetty because there's not as much sand around the base of the jetty.

The sandbars form about 10 feet away from the jetty,

Which gives us great waves.

I was very proud of John.

I pushed him into a couple of waves on the outside.

He was kind of missing them,

So I had to give him a little nudge.

I surfed over to Ashley,

His girlfriend.

I pushed her into one wave and she got right to her feet.

I'm like,

Oh,

That's pretty good.

What happened was she put all her weight on her back foot.

I was like,

No,

No,

No.

That just won't work.

I told her,

Look,

When you're driving the board down the wave face,

You need about 60 to 70% of your weight on your front foot.

If you keep driving the front foot down,

You'll keep going.

The board will keep accelerating.

That's your gas pedal.

Your front foot is your gas pedal.

That's a tip for all of you guys getting into surfing.

The whole point of all this is that there are mentors out there that will help guide you along the path.

Don't get frustrated because you are still in the mind.

You're still trying to think everything through and be reasonable and try to impart some understanding that you've gained.

I know it's all beautiful and it's all light and airy and there's so much light.

It's just overtaking you with joy.

That's good.

That's not a bad thing.

That's great.

I think that you will have to pay your dues before you can really share with other people.

I started my spiritual journey in I think in 92,

93,

94,

Somewhere way back then.

I've studied hundreds and hundreds of books and meditated for hours upon hours.

It's come to a point now where it's not so much about me anymore.

I hardly even meditate anymore because I've meditated so much that my essence became a meditation.

Everything I do is a walking prayer to God.

Everything I do is a walking meditation or a physical meditation.

It's just awareness as much as we can physically give out or do.

So anyway,

That's about it on the 12-year cycle.

This is my input and I hope this talk encourages you to go a little deeper.

Pay your dues.

Do what it takes to get really good at something.

If it's not spirituality,

Do something,

At least one thing that will help you to excel and get to the point where you're free of the mind.

There's no ripples in the lake.

It's just completely calm.

Anyway,

Thank you again for joining me.

Y'all take care of yourselves.

I'm Douglas Grumman and we'll talk to you again soon.

Bye now.