Take Off Your Shoes Read online

  When I arrived at Ashram Munivara, the sky outside had faded to the pale lavender of dusk, and stars began to sprinkle the sky. I jacked the kickstand on my motorbike in the parking area. A stream of young women spoke softly to each other as they exited the ashram. I walked past them, through the arched entranceway of the compound, and descended the stepped pathway lined by coconut palms. The silence, the vast stillness of the place, settled around me. I passed a shrine and a housing pavilion and continued silently to the bottom, where the steps ended at a rushing river. Had I misjudged the time? Was I late?

  Walking back up the pathway, I poked my head into the kitchen and found a man and woman sitting cross-legged on the floor eating their rice dinner. I asked about the class. The man motioned to meet him at the shrine just across the path. I removed my shoes at the entrance and put on a sarong that I had brought with me, local gestures of respect for the sanctity of the temple. I entered silently. A few minutes later, the man arrived with a cushion and sitar. There was no class; it was just him and me.

  He asked me to sit on the cushion with my legs crossed and hands resting on my knees. I had thought sitting would be simple and straightforward. What could be more natural than planting my behind in a seat?

  “Not that way,” he said with a not-quite-Balinese accent that I couldn’t place. “Keep your spine straight up, like an arrow.” He gently held my wrists. “Like this, palms facing up. Relax your jaw and let your lips part slightly. Drop your shoulders. Close your eyes. That’s it. Find your breath and feel it flow through your nose. Inhale and exhale slowly through your nose. There is nothing to think about, just be with your breath and watch your thoughts. When you feel your mind wandering, come back to your breath.” When he judged that I was positioned correctly, he reached for his sitar. “If you have a religious experience while I play, please open your eyes and tell me.”

  I was with him until “religious experience.” Something in me lit up, some emotion that lay between anger and skepticism. Religion was not what I was looking for and not what was advertised. My defenses flared. Had I wandered into a Hare Krishna den? The jaded New Yorker in me wondered if and when he would ask to be paid. At worst, I was being scammed, at best, misled.

  But I stopped myself. Lately, when I felt cynical about a new experience, I tried to be open to it. In her landmark work on personal growth, Mindset, Stanford University’s Carol Dweck explored why some people fulfill their potential while others don’t. I had read the book following a leadership-training course in Colorado. Those who don’t live up to their potential tend to believe their traits are fixed and new skills can’t be learned beyond a certain age. She called that belief system a “fixed mindset” and found that it constrained development. On the other hand, those who believed they could develop new personality traits and even enhance their intelligence had what she called a “growth mindset,” which freed them to pursue passionately what they valued. She discovered that what mattered most when it came to personal development was what people believed about themselves.

  Now as I sat on the floor of an ashram, I told myself to be open-minded. I deliberately lowered my defenses and let fade whatever cultural assumptions I harbored. I sat there for about fifteen minutes with my eyes closed while he played, prepared to accept something wholly new.

  Another English-speaking couple startled me by sticking their heads in the door and, oblivious to their surroundings, loudly asking for instruction on meditation. My guide ushered them into another room. He came back to play for two minutes more, then quickly packed up his stuff and left. At the very moment that I was ready to submit, ready to allow myself to be somewhat vulnerable, I was abandoned. I sat there alone, the daylight having completely surrendered to the dark of night, wondering what had happened.

  I told myself my first foray into meditation was a failure. Confused, I rose and left. I strode back up the stepped pathway to my motorbike, fired it up, and headed toward our villa, more than a little annoyed.

  On my way home, I thought about the guided meditation session and how it felt, well, misguided. I remembered some reading I’d done about brain science and specifically the brain’s ability to reorient itself in response to experience. Not only does the brain shape thoughts; thoughts literally shape the brain. New skills and behavior patterns can be learned and cultivated, and meditation was one path to recalibrating neural networks. The old aphorism that people don’t change was just plain wrong. I believed that if I could deliberately think certain thoughts through mental exercise, I could retune some neural pathways and the way my brain processed information—I could deliberately cultivate a less anxious and more compassionate way of being and gain a sense of ease and equanimity in the process. I had reached a point in my life where I was not only open to change but actively seeking it.

  In studies of the brain, I found a body of research supporting a philosophy developed by Buddhism—a 2,500-year-old tradition—that offered an entirely different approach from the one I had. For an investment as small as a few minutes of meditation per day, I might be able to achieve the peace of mind I was looking for.

  And yet what had just happened at the ashram left a bad taste in my mouth. The expectation of having a “religious experience” was off-putting. The place seemed like a tourist trap, built for visitors to have a spiritual experience they could talk about when they returned home. I was looking for something deeper.

  Once home, I took off my shoes, padded through the front door, and placed my helmet on the front table. Victoria gave me a quick backward glance from the sink where Nava was brushing her teeth before going to bed. “How was it?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Not the epiphany I’d hoped for.”

  “Give it a chance.”

  “I know.”

  “Why don’t you check out Yoga Barn?”

  I opened their website, determined to continue exploring meditation to see if it could mollify my jumpy mind. The only meditation session they had on the schedule was a class called Tibetan Singing Bowl Meditation. I had just missed it, but there was a class every week.

  It would have to wait, though, because we had planned a side trip. Green School, along with the rest of Indonesia, would be celebrating Maulid Nabi Muhammad, an Islamic holiday that marks the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. The weekend holiday coincided with the Chinese New Year, and we decided to head to nearby Singapore for a few days. I told Victoria I’d try meditation at Yoga Barn once we returned.

  eight |

  The next week, the six of us boarded a Thursday flight on a low-cost Malaysian airline. We took our seats at the rear of the plane. As we taxied toward the runway, the pilot announced flight information on the public address system. He ended with the Muslim greeting “Salam” and then “May Allah bless our flight.” Sam and Victoria glanced at each other with a puzzled look.

  On the flight, Sam read about Singapore on his computer. He looked up with a mildly horrified look on his face. “This guy was once caned for overstaying his visa in Singapore. Caned!”

  “And it’s illegal to chew gum on the streets in Singapore,” Victoria said. “How would you like to be caned for that?”

  Nava frowned. “What’s ‘caned’?”

  We had been in Bali only a few weeks but had already grown accustomed to the island’s simple facilities and architecture. Singapore’s glistening airport was anything but. The automatic toilets, sinks, and hand dryers in the men’s room, once common to my boys, now seemed strangely luxurious. On the ride to the city from the airport, Oliver looked around in awe at the tall buildings as if he’d never lived in a city with skyscrapers. Just about every large building had a second-floor shopping mall with an escalator leading into it. The streets were paved straight and smooth, not the shoddy patchwork we had become accustomed to in Bali.

  We checked into our hotel room and found a place to have a late Western-style breakfast. The kids had pancakes on their minds. As we took our seats, Oliver’s jaw hung as he stared at the gia
nt outdoor high-definition TV. A soccer match was under way. Victoria was shocked by the food prices, much higher than in New York, never mind Africa and Bali.

  We walked around, taking in the sights. As we stood on a street corner, Rita said, “We can’t stop here. It’s illegal for six or more people to stand together without permission.” We strolled around some more and, at lunchtime, took Singapore’s immaculate subway to visit a kosher restaurant.

  In our home, we ate only kosher food. The kids knew that access to nonvegetarian options while we traveled would be limited. Our plan was to make periodic trips to places like Singapore that had kosher meat and poultry, but we weren’t certain. In any event, I had a backup plan.

  The previous November, I traveled to the Mehadrin Kosher Poultry processing plant in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. I brought along Seymour, a partner in my firm who, like me, ate only kosher food. As we arrived, three men greeted us. They sported long side curls, scraggly beards, and overgarments that bore specially knotted ritual fringes. These men were the shochets—religious Jewish men who were properly educated and trained in ritual slaughter. They had agreed to teach me to slaughter a chicken in accordance with Jewish law.

  When Seymour and I arrived, two of the shochets invited us to join them for a chicken-farm breakfast of eggs and more eggs. That kind of breakfast seemed like overkill, considering why we were there. We passed.

  They led us to the processing facility, which was being scrubbed and prepped for the day’s work. The lifeblood of the assembly line was a stainless-steel overhead conveyor system that snaked around the plant, above a concrete floor, passing from one workstation to the next. I had expected to be disgusted by the facility. Instead, I was impressed. The place was immaculate.

  The shochets led us to a room at the back of the facility. One of them launched into a crash course on both Jewish and US Department of Agriculture rules and regulations. “Most importantly,” he said, “the chickens must be killed with compassion and respect.” He demonstrated how to hold the knife and the bird. When I had the basics down, we headed to the plant floor.

  One shochet stood with me, the other with Seymour. A third observed the other two. The one who worked with me stood at the head of the assembly line and checked his blade. The conveyor belt started up with a whir and a jerk. A worker arrived with the first crate of live chickens. Four assistants stood by.

  One assistant worker picked up a chicken from its crate and handed it to two other workers, who grabbed it by its wings, flipped it on its back, and held it still. Moving quickly, the shochet pinched the chicken’s nape with his left hand to clearly expose the neck. He held his straightedge blade between the thumb and index finger of his right hand and, in one stroke, sliced swiftly. Blood spurted out. With his left thumb, he flicked back the head to ensure that the esophagus, carotid arteries, and windpipe were all clearly severed.

  The fourth worker then grabbed the dead chicken and attached it by its legs, head down, to the overhead conveyor system. Away the bird went, quickly moving along the conveyor system from one automated station to the next, each mechanically executing a single element of the food-creation process: defeathering, gutting, salting, and packaging. A small channel in the floor caught and carried away the blood that continued to drain.

  To inspect the birds, a shochet sat at a station next to an inspector from the USDA. The shochet checked first for quality as regulated by Jewish law, then the USDA inspected for quality according to federal regulation. Any chicken that did not meet requirements was removed and discarded. All told, the three shochets put ninety chickens per minute on that assembly line. It was fast, clean, and nearly fully automated.

  Then my guy turned to me. “Ready?”

  I definitely was not ready, but I stepped forward. I tried to mimic his movements but was too tentative. “Don’t hold the chicken like that. Like this.” He firmly grabbed the back collar. With him next to me, I took the knife and slit that poor chicken’s throat. Like slicing through butter, the sharp blade slid effortlessly across and through the chicken’s flesh. The blood was as fire-engine red as my own.

  I killed two more chickens and stepped aside with no interest in slaughtering any more. While I felt the power of taking a life, I took no joy in it. Taking an animal’s life might be morally sound if it was for food, but because I wasn’t licensed, the animal needed to be removed from the production line and discarded. It was wasted, and I was not okay with that.

  I realized how far removed I was from the very basics of my own food’s preparation—that a bird available and packaged beautifully at a local supermarket was at some point slaughtered, defeathered, and trimmed by specially trained professionals. While I didn’t enjoy the experience of killing a chicken, knowing firsthand where my food, or at least my chicken, had come from and how it arrived at my table made me understand more about local food and the growing local-food movement in the United States.

  My guy pulled me aside. He gave me two items as gifts: a chalef, the razor-sharp knife for ritual slaughtering, and a book outlining the rules and regulations associated with ritual slaughter. Then he made an observation. True training required a lot more than half a day in a slaughterhouse. “If you’re serious about this,” he said, “have somebody else do it.”

  I thought about using that chalef, which I had packed carefully and carried with me to Bali, when my kids were having a tough time adjusting to Indonesian food. After all, in Bali, chickens were ubiquitous. They clucked and strutted along our street and flew to the sides as my motorcycle sped past. Some of Bali’s roosters were hardened killing machines in the local cockfights, which were illegal and dangerous but nonetheless easy to find. I was confident I could take down one of those birds and do the grisly work necessary to put it in a pot. But I didn’t know if the connection between the bird on the road and the food on the table would be too obvious for my children to stomach. Now that we were in Singapore, though, the urgency had abated, at least for the time being.

  Lunch at the restaurant on Waterloo Street would be the kids’ first taste of meat or poultry in over a month, but Nava grew grumpy. She loved animals and cried upon hearing the reason that Nyoman was fattening up the pig in his compound. She hated that people killed and ate animals. Ever since Africa, she had been on what she called, in her seven-year-old way, “extra human offense, extra animal defense.” That’s how she now referred to people—the “humans.”

  As we sat to eat, she put her head down and fumed through her nose, pretending she was a dragon expressing her anger. In an impetuous tone, she announced that a Chinese girl in school was no longer her friend because the girl wanted the kitchen staff to cook her a grasshopper. Nava clearly wasn’t planning on eating the chicken nuggets we’d ordered. Before either Victoria or I could say anything, Sam started talking to her, somehow connecting to her childlike logic and convincing her that the chicken had, in a dignified way, committed suicide. She began to eat.

  Sam had become very tuned in. Back in New York, he barely spoke to his youngest sister, not because he thought she was inferior or unimportant, but because he was so caught up in his own thoughts and needs. Now he was changing. He developed an easy sense of humor. And he used it, as he just had, to connect with the rest of the family in a new way.

  The other kids wolfed down as much as they could. Even though the vegetarian food in Green School had been fresh, tasty, and abundant, they had been tempted by the smells of forbidden dishes that wafted from the school’s kitchen. Sam began to reminisce about meals back home, where it was easy to obtain kosher meat and poultry. Then he shoved three more nuggets and two hot dogs down his gullet.

  I had no interest in the food. My mind was elsewhere. Singapore, even in the midst of the Chinese New Year holiday, was a busy, dynamic city, a global financial and business center. Simply being around the distractions of big-city life brought my mind back to my career. It was February, and I still had not quite disengaged. Part of me fantasized about being back in the thi
ck of things. I ruminated about my decision to take myself out of the game and how it might affect my career, for a while or forever. As I reflected, I noticed what I was doing and wanted to stop. I was dwelling on the past, which in addition to not serving me was working against me. But in that business hive, I felt powerless against the impulse. As if I needed a reminder, I recommitted to finding a different way to deal with my inner monologue. I made a mental note to attempt meditation again.

  I emailed Hubert, Take-Two’s Asia regional director, who was based in Singapore, and asked him to coffee. He must have been surprised to hear from me but readily agreed. As he and I sat in the lobby of the Hyatt hotel, I avoided confidential topics or those that would be difficult or inappropriate for him to talk about. We spoke for nearly two hours while Victoria took the kids for breakfast and wandered around downtown. Somehow Oliver convinced her to return to the pancake restaurant, his interest in watching sports on the big screen trumping her horror at the prices.

  I asked Hubert about projects we’d worked on together, about coworkers, and more generally about developments in the video game business. It was a huge industry undergoing a lot of change and replete with strategic issues, challenges, and opportunities. It surprised me how much I was still interested in the operations of the company. He too seemed puzzled and finally asked if I regretted having left.