All Our Waves Are Water

Starred review from April 24, 2017
Yogis, a surfer, journalist, and spiritual seeker, revisits and expands on the terrain of his previous memoir (Saltwater Buddha) in a quest that blends his search for surf and enlightenment in captivating ways. Descriptions of surf sessions in Indonesia, Mexico, and San Francisco are beautiful interludes. But the book’s power is in Yogis’s description of the seeking mind caught in its own currents—and occasionally transcending them—in places such as the Himalayas, a Franciscan friary in New York, and the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In this personal study on the elusive nature of mystical experience and its ability to evade the intellect, Yogis weaves together scientific research, the words of religious scholars and poets, and the wisdom of surfers and monks. From a Tibetan monk he learns how to reside in his own sadness and loss. Later, he discovers that even a “tropical beach in Mexico with a beautiful woman, nothing much to do except surf, be creative, meditate, and eat tacos” won’t bring him lasting peace. On Ocean Beach, he seeks balance between life as a journalist and his spiritual path. Yet Yogis finds wisdom everywhere. Yogis shows that the search for enlightenment, with its storms, lulls, and occasional thrills, is not much different from the search for the perfect wave.

May 15, 2017
Eastern mysticism and Western rites of passage inform this second volume of memoir from the San Francisco-based journalist.In his latest, Yogis (The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Survival, Success, Surfing...and Love, 2013, etc.) picks up where Saltwater Buddha (2009) left off. Toward the end, he writes, "somewhere along the line I realized that this book was Sonam's book--a homage to my old best friend and teacher." He had met the man who would become something of a spiritual mentor when he was in his early 20s, on a trip to India, trying to find himself and recover from the sort of heartbreak common to a young man who is torn between commitment to another and discovering his own true path. A Tibetan in exile, Sonam not only put his young friend's problems in perspective; he imbued him with a new attitude. Yogis and Sonam spent a lot of time singing John Denver's "Country Roads," adapting the verses to their own situation, and Sonam greets the day by saying, "Dis morning, I bery happy," and ends the day with, "Dis night, I bery happy." The book does more than reduce the wisdom of the East to "Don't Worry, Be Happy," but its glibness occasionally veers toward spiritual parody. When the author reunites with the girl who had broken his heart, he realized, "Sati could not glue me back together again. We were two ripples on the sea that had drifted together and crossed through each other. Exchanged molecules and skin and ideas. In a way we'd always be together. But the winds had sent us in other directions now." So Yogis went back to school to study journalism, to learn a trade as well as Eastern religions, and to the beach to surf and reflect on the notion that "God is the sea"--and eventually to a wife and children, otherwise barely mentioned until the end. For fellow seekers, Buddha-nature on a surfboard.

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