With Blasphemy So Heartfelt

Sexy Sadie, what have you done?
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
John Lennon

...so...now that the yoga cynic is a totally professional officially responsible certifiably spiritual liability-insured kinda yoga teacher with an actual weekly Yin class...Sunday nights, 7:00-8:15, mere blocks from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, just across the river from the grave of America's preeminent yogi who probably didn't know he was one, Walt Whitman...that even, purportedly, involves getting paid...hopefully enough to cover said insurance...I might have to start talkin' like one....no more o' that snarky irreverence...in the words of the Buddha...if I remember what was quoted on Facebook correctly...say nothing that wouldn't look nice superimposed on a pleasant photo of the sun setting over a tropical beach on a motivational poster...

Everybody's just a little bit homosexual,

 whether they like it or not.

Allen Ginsberg

...on the other hand, just went to see this singer named Jessica Lea Mayfield...whose songs are kinda like country music that's really noisy and dirty and bad for you....she has an album called With Blasphemy So Heartfelt...and it occurred to me that, while I respect that some of my views are offensive to many people's deeply held beliefs, and, therefore, generally (though, admittedly, not always) try not to shove said views in said people's faces, I think it's not said enough that the offended might consider respecting that those views they consider so blasphemous may be every bit as deeply held by me....that the pious have no monopoly on depth of feeling...

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.
Winston Churchill

...most liberal-minded spiritual types, including most western yogis I know, tend toward some form of universalism...seeking to embrace all beliefs with the notion that, ultimately, all boil down to the same thing...having something vaguely to do with love, oneness, and/or mystery...and, don't get me wrong, I find that a very lovely, compassionate, genuinely peace-seeking way of looking at things...even if, logically, it's kinda seems to me like looking at a God Hates Fags sign and saying well, if you just ignore the "hates fags" part....

By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.
Shakyamuni, the (mythic/historical, as opposed to Facebook) Buddha

...the question, it seems to me, is whether it's possible to see difference and neither recoil from it nor try to reason it away....what if they really don't think and feel deep in their hearts the way we do?...does deep difference necessarily imply hierarchies of superior and inferior, require walls to be built, judgments made,  rocks to be thrown, offense to be taken?...could it be that these vast gaps in understanding are signs of an uncertainty deeper than anything we might think we know, believe or hold sacred?...couldn't we, in the immortal words of the Au Pairs, truly be equal but different?...

Notes From a Cold Spring...or, I Have Heard What the Talkers Were Talking: Silent Retreat, Yoga Blog Version

If we become too serious we will lose our way.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

...John Lennon sang I don’t believe in yoga, and, as I believe I’ve said before, I don’t believe in it, either...I practice it...make an inquiry into it...no beliefs involved...

...and I’ve been doing a lot of that, of late...really...you can ask the local Philly yoga teachers....even if my half moon continues to suck...

...as well as returning to a daily meditation practice....

...but I don’t have much to write about it...so haven’t been...in case anybody's noticed...

...and am increasingly irritated by what other people write...so haven’t been reading much...at least, not about yoga...and don’t really get the impression I’ve been missing much...though people sure do keep writing...

I have heard what the talkers were talking...

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

...with all the incessant pontificating, marketing, and arguing going on, been thinking it might be a good idea if all the writers and talkers...from revered gurus to marketers of yoga pants to snarky yoga bloggers...continued to practice...if practice they do...and, really, it's fine if they don't...but tried checking the impulse to jabber on and argue about it...

...a lengthy collective silent retreat...

...starting with me...

...just an idea...

...namasmotherfuckin'te, folks...

Strange, Dusty Roads

...old letters, lots of ‘em...amazing how much got put on paper back in the days before e-mail...and Facebook...and twitter...and texting...and blogs...lots of warmth and color in them, from unexpected people...reminders of years that might not have been quite as lonely as I tend to remember...pictures, scraps, strange mementos...ticket stubs, from a frightening number of Dead shows, but also the Van Gogh Face to Face exhibit, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2/15/01, 76ers vs. Orlando Magic, 1/14/00, Miles Davis at the Academy of Music (strangely double-billed with Japanese pop-fusion group Hiroshima), 6/20/90, Neil Young & Crazy Horse at the Verona Arena (built by the Roman Empire), 1987, David Bowie, Serious Moonlight Tour, 7/20/84, the Who at JFK Stadium (opening acts: Santana and the Clash), 9/25/82...senior pictures of pretty girls from high school, now mothers to other pretty girls, now in high school, whose senior pictures they’ve been putting up on Facebook...a snapshot of that long haired counselor at the pre-school day camp, wearing the hat I gave him...one I took of my dad, looking younger than I ever remember him, with windblown hair, in a parking lot....what looks like a massive amount of stuff when spread out, but, despite its emotional weight, could probably be fit quite easily in a shoebox...

 ...a surprising number of comic books left over from when, broke and stuck at my parents’ house after thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, I sold the bulk of my collection....turns out I mostly held on to the really weird ones...titles like Legion of Charlies, Slow Death, Kamandi: Last Boy on Earth, Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds, Zap, Mr. Natural, and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers...piles of magazines, and some crumbling newspapers, including one from December 9, 1980...I read the news today, oh boy...

 ...enough dust and mildew to cause an allergic reaction I'm feeling a day later...a cardboard sign with an impressively creepy decal of an eye, magic-markered letters reading Jay Winston private eye. If you need him nock....some lovely ceramic paraphernalia...a program for the 1984 Great Valley High School Production of West Side Story, signed by my fellow cast members...a college paper on the theme of death in seven plays by Eugene O’Neill, strange handwritten science fiction stories, wretched attempts at political songwriting, report cards with enough D's and F's to make anyone wonder how I made it from grade to grade, much less to college and grad. school....piles of notebooks...

 ...including the trail journals from the A.T. I'd thought were lost...all four...marking the time from March 31 to September 1^st, 1992....inside the cover of the first, before starting the trail, I taped a panel from a Calvin and Hobbes strip, with Calvin in his spaceship, exclaiming FREE TO ROME THE HEAVENS IN MAN’S NOBLE QUEST TO INVESTIGATE THE WEIRDNESS OF THE UNIVERSE!...and then, in the opening pages, wrote out a bunch of poems, creating a kind of digest to accompany from Georgia to Maine...Shakespeare, Blake, Basho, Snyder, cummings, Frost, Yeats, Kerouac, Thoreau, and, of course, filling the first page, none other than Walt Whitman...Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road...

 ...all of this surprisingly cool stuff making me think...having dreaded so much the very thought of actually going through or even looking at it...that there may be more positive continuity than I thought....last year, to mark my 45^th birthday, at Kripalu, during the yoga teacher training, I was asked to make an affirmation that everybody’d repeat back to me...never much one for that affirmations thing, I struggled a bit, then said stay on the path....our teacher, Devarshi, thought that a bit negative, suggested I am on the path, which I went with....and right now, looking back over so many strange twists and turns, it seems I’ve been on it quite a while...

2011: The Year the Yoga Cynic Goes Legit

I don’t believe in yoga...
John Lennon, God

I don’t believe in yoga, I practice yoga.
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 360.21

...it’s 2011 and I’ve resolved to stop leaving my yoga mat at the studio....that’s not the big news, though...

...up until now, this humble site has reveled in its unique status among yoga blogs...y’know, the one written by the guy who doesn’t actually know crap about yoga....as stated so succinctly in its very first post...

this woman I was kinda sorta involved with said she was curious about yoga and wanted me to teach her some. I told her I’m still working on not hurting myself by overstretching my hamstrings. Hell, I’m still not even sure what hamstrings are.*

...even cluelessness, however charming, turns out, eventually, to be impermanent...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 223:461

...this year, though...specifically in February and March...I’m stepping away from the time honored personal ritual of sitting around depressed until spring...instead heading up to spend a month in the snowy Berkshires, at Kripalu...eating, drinking, and sleeping yoga, while completing...are ya ready for this?...a 200 hour yoga teacher training...

...that’s right, people, the Yoga Cynic’s going legit...

...soon I’ll be able to fill this blog with dry, didactic, and painfully self-satisfied lectures on Real Yoga (i.e. what I learned in my teacher training...as opposed to that crap you do)...as well as to use that legendary inaudible-from-more-than-six-inches-away yoga teacher voice...(though, obviously, I need to come up with a written equivalent to use here)...(perhaps this)...and, generally, to act really egotistical while insisting I’ve overcome my ego...

...or maybe not...though I'll probably find out what hamstrings are...

...seriously, it's gonna be intense and challenging, and I'm excited...hope you all have good stuff coming up this year, too...namaste & all that...


*...this, needless to say, was before Y4C found the magic of ellipses...**

**...Y4C, I’ve decided, is a good abbreviation for Yoga for Cynics...up until now, I’ve used YforC, but everybody else seems to prefer the more succinct YfC...which makes me...and probably everybody else...think of KFC...which, y’know, doesn’t exactly help with the all-important-for-yoga-bloggers vegan demographic...

The Critical Importance of Flexibility

Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted.
(attributed to John Lennon, T. S. Eliot, and Bertrand Russell)

...sleep, I find, is a chore when I need it,
but an indescribable luxury when it’s time to get up...

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever—

this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
Albert Einstein

...similarly, nothing makes writing harder
than having good, solid reasons to write...

Almost all of my epiphanies over the previous fifteen years
had been the same one: I don’t know.
Stephen Cope

...the worst thing to do if you’re trying to be more flexible,
it turns out, is to try to be more flexible...

One Breath at a Time

Beneath the heavenly equator in the valleys where the sweet and saline dew meet, there grows a huge poisonous fungus, and the tasty little edible mushrooms on its cap transform its contaminated blood into sweetness. The deer like to invigorate their masculine strength by nibbling these little mushrooms. But if they are careless and bite down too deep, they ingest some of the big poisonous fungus along with the little mushrooms, and then they die.
Every evening, when I kiss my beloved, I think: it is only natural that one day I will bite down too deep....
Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars [ellipsis in original]

...don’t let them fool you with dope and cocaine;
Won’t do no harm to feel your own pain...
John Lennon

...takes a few frustrating details to irreparably alter the most placid description...memories make me ugly, sometimes...I know alcohol’s not an answer, or even much of a question, but knowledge ain’t always all it’s cracked up to be...

...there’s a song called Boulder to Birmingham by Emmylou Harris, about the death of her friend and mentor Gram Parsons...I’ve always liked a line at the beginning of the second verse: well you really got me this time...thought about that a lot after my dad died...after so many years of fucking with each others’ heads...in protracted and largely unconscious psychological warfare...him a licensed shrink...me, the son of a shrink who’d grown up learning to resist anything anybody else wanted me to do or be like my life depended on it...which it kinda did...I’d say we were evenly matched...until he went and threw down the ultimate trump card...

...every couple years I quit coffee...temporarily...like, for a month or two...usually when it gets to the point that excessive caffeine seems to be keeping me awake and bothering my stomach...meaning that, at this point, I’m long overdue...down to one cup a day for the past couple weeks, but it’s still difficult to schedule that three day headache...

...last week somebody at the rehab called me an angel...I was trying to tutor her in writing, and, with just a couple sentences on paper, she put the pen down and vented to me for about an hour about how she missed her kids and how pissed off she was at their father...apparently, I called her to come meet with me just after she’d gotten off the phone with him and was sitting with the other clients, pretending everything was okay...said she felt she could tell me everything precisely because I’m not a therapist...that I was an angel God had sent to her just when she needed me...

...was late to yoga class this morning...hate it when that happens...walked in on everybody else already in yoga class mode while I was in fuck, I’m late to yoga class mode....after fifteen or twenty minutes in the car, getting pissed off at other drivers...speed up goddammit, I’m trying to get to my fuckin’ yoga class...tryin’ to be more open n’ compassionate n’ shit...get outta the fuckin’ way...

...maybe there’s a reason the women at the rehab can relate to me, even if I’ve never been addicted to cocaine or heroin...they’re struggling with the one day at a time thing...I’m working on one breath at a time...and thankful that I get another chance, every second or so...

Yoga Raving...

...Thursday night at the Do Yoga Philly! festival looked intense: shamanism, Jedi training, three hours of very intense asana practice with yoga legends Ray Crist, John Vitarelli, and Simon Park...and something called a blender bike...not that it stopped me taking a twenty-five mile bike ride in the gorgeous fall weather, beforehand....nearly killed me...but in a good way...

...dreamed that night about yoga...somehow ending up riding in the back of a boxy little red car with a strange blonde haired woman I’d apparently just gotten married to...feeling suddenly terrified, realizing I’d inexplicably gone off the deep end, done something quite possibly irreversible, wondering how I’d gotten myself into something like this...was sitting there about to quietly lose it when realization dawned that it was a dream......felt a peculiar sadness mixed with the relief, though, realizing whatever might have been wouldn’t, and I was never gonna to see her again once I awoke...

Fear says ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
Love says ‘you are safe.’
Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa

...in the morning found out I was on youtube, making smoothies for the yogic multitudes...that evening went to a class with noted teacher and Yoga Journal cover model Marni Sclaroff, who talked about childhood experiences that cause us to contract...I thought that covers pretty much everything from about age seven to seventeen...then, in the past, I’ve tended to think in terms of damage....and when stuff gets damaged, sometimes all the kings horses and all the king’s men can’t even begin to put it back together again....something that contracts, on the other hand, can, with patience and effort, be inspired to open up again...

...the deeper you go, the higher you fly,
the higher you fly, the deeper you go...
John Lennon

...feel like I’m entering a new phase of the yoga practice...deeper...beyond merely looking good in my Lululemon pants*....did sixteen hours or so of yoga over the long weekend...including seven and a half on Saturday...culminating in something called avatar yoga, complete with black light, pounding yogic techno, and a roomful of people whooping it up decorated in glow-in-the-dark body paint....kinda like a yoga rave...acid without the acid....(it could be argued that, deep down, I’m still some kinda hippie freak)....(but definitely one hardcore yoga dude)...



* note: the author doesn’t actually own and has never worn a pair of Lululemon pants...he’s not even sure they make them for men...

Dreaming.....................

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Alfred Lord Tennyson

...was taking a walk, trying to figure out why I’m writing so little, lately...but mostly got lost in daydreams, as I have quite a lot, of late...which, I thought, might be exactly why I’m writing so little...

Dreams are like paper. They tear so easily...
Gilda Radner

...to really get down to it, there’s probably very little I’ve spent more of my life doing than daydreaming...if usually while also doing something else...find it’s difficult, otherwise...even if it’s easier than just about anything else....told somebody a few days ago that walking is my absolute favorite thing to do...and biking’s high on the list, as well...but both, really, along with kayaking, cross-country skiing, or driving on open road, are, more than anything, highly effective vehicles for daydreams...all involving simple motions...allowing lots of space to let the mind roam...

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
John Lennon

...daydreaming, as such, could be seen as the opposite of mindfulness...but, then, it also might be essential for creativity...

...art, maybe, is what happens when you’re mindful about your daydreaming...





*my latest at Elephant Journal: Dharma Cats*

Fools Rush In (Semi-Obligatory April Fool's Day Post 2010)

He’s as blind as he can be, just sees what he wants to see...
John Lennon

‘Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind...
William Shakespeare

...this old king had three daughters....two of them...one with a name like a venereal disease, the other a dead president...filled his eager ears with empty flattery...stroked his vanity with ridiculous lies...fed his ego with pretty crap...which, as it turned out, was exactly what he wanted to hear...so he split his kingdom between them...

...the other daughter...named, apparently, after a character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer...told him the truth...unvarnished...a bit harsh, perhaps...and got nothing...was banished...disowned...

...and they don’t call this stuff tragedy for nothin’....suffice to say the story turns out very VERY badly for everybody involved...particularly that foolish old king...

...but isn’t he a bit like you and me?

Famous Yoga Dude

Fame—

What’s your name what’s your name what’s your name?
David Bowie/John Lennon

...as you’re no doubt aware, this once-humble blog has hit the BIG TIME...prominently mentioned...in between Lululemon ads and photo-spreads of nubile yoginis performing asanas in exotic locations...in the August, 2009 issue of...Yoga Journal...

...that’s right, sisters and brothers...Yoga...Mother...Shut Yo Mouth!...Journal...

...and so I join Sting, Russell Simmons, and Bikram Choudhury on a plane of consciousness inhabited only by that unique, highly enlightened caste known as...The Famous Yoga Dudes...

...upcoming posts...written by the most able members of the Yoga for Cynics™ professional staff...probably outsourced...cheaper that way...will chronicle my planetary journeys by private yogajet...demonstrating chattaranga in Melbourne...addressing multitudes in Mysore...adopting babies with Madonna in Africa...

...and get ready for a brand spankin’ new line of Yoga for Cynics™ merchandise!...I’m thinkin’ cheap styrofoam visors and plastic key chains...



...in all seriousness, thanks to Yoga Journal and particularly Lauren Ladoceour...who, it should be mentioned, also had the wisdom to mention my good blog friend Brooks...

The Obligatory Happy Christmas Blog Post

Tell me what you think about your friends at the top,
Now, who d’ you think besides yourself was the pick of the crop?
Buddha was he where it’s at, is he where you are?
Could Mohammed move a mountain or was that just P.R.?
Judas Iscariot (Tim Rice, Jesus Christ Superstar)

The letter killeth....
2nd Corinthians, 3:6

Is there any word in any language more devalued by misuse as peace? Love would, at the very least, be a close runner-up....might be interesting if somebody did a study of how many people have been killed for peace vs. the number killed for love....then, it’d also probably be pretty depressing...and the number killed for some peculiar combination of both would most likely eclipse the individual totals, anyway....

...so I’m not gonna say anything about either peace or love...or any creative mixes of the two....in fact, I think it might be a good idea to strike both words from the dictionary...along with any and all synonyms...that way, if you want to signify peace, you'll actually have to be peaceful, and, likewise, if you want to signify love, you'll actually have to be loving....

Happy Holidays from Yoga for Cynics....

Sickness, Health, and Some Serious Yoga Crap

This has been a rough summer for a lot of people I know—first one friend broke his fibula, running, then another, who plays guitar for a band called Drums Like Machine Guns (the one time I saw them, they did a seven minute set of...well, you pretty much have to catch one of their gigs yourself), was crowd-surfing in a mosh pit until he got dropped—compound fracture, two plates and 14 screws in his left arm. So...I’m riding my bike in the park, thinking about how my mom says "bad things come in threes"—I'm not at all superstitious, but, for some reason, seem to believe in this—and really hoping one of these bumps in the road doesn't make me number three....but...I make it home and see there's an e-mail from another friend who, as it turns out, is laid up with pneumonia. So, much as I sympathize with her and the other walking wounded, I start thinking cool, I'm safe. But then, who do I hear from but my friend who's hiking the Pacific Crest Trail—except, at the moment, he's not hiking anywhere because he’s got a staph infection in his left foot from doing forty-mile days on a major blood blister. I tell this to the guy with the plates in his arm, and he, with the wicked smile of the already-afflicted, responds "they're coming in sixes, now. Two more to go....."

The best way to find out if yoga’s really doing anything for me is to stop for a little while...even just do less—go to class once a week instead of three times, skip the usual don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it morning practice for a couple days, stop trying to be mindful—I find myself thinking “jeezus, did I really usedta feel this crappy all the time?” Then, other times, going the opposite direction, I’ve gotten really buzzed—like John Lennon sang—the deeper you go, the higher you fly, the higher you fly, the deeper you go (though he was singing about hard drugs, not yoga) (seriously—you think “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” is a cute song about a guy and his pet primate? Try googling the phrase “monkey on my back,” then listen to it again). (Then, according to this hippie freak I know—he goes by Jedediah—yeah, that kinda hippie freak—if you meditate from the time you take a hit of acid until you start getting off, it really takes the edge off). (Whatever). Of course, the trouble with any kind of flying on the ground is that you’re bound to crash, eventually. But, I guess, even that’s part of the process...and the experience does leave behind the knowledge that a fresher, more vivid state of mind is possible...and that it’s better and lasts longer if you get there without the psychedelic drugs.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?
Steven Wright

I’m not even close to being an expert on the yoga thing—even though I have a blog with yoga in the title—I just go to classes, read books, think a lot about the stuff, and, even if the Hindu metaphysics don’t really do it for me, it all seems to be moving me toward much better physical and mental health. Basically, I see yoga as about opening, and cynicism as about closing, and wonder if humor might be a bridge between the two...we’ll see.

such an agnostic stance is not based on indifference. It is founded on a passionate recognition that I do not know.
Stephen Batchelor

Thanks to those who’ve left all the wonderful comments—including a person named Gina who said she spent all morning at work reading through past posts. Honestly, nothing could make me happier than to hear that people are reading Yoga for Cynics when they’re supposed to be working. Also, disagreement is more than welcome—half the time, I probably don’t agree with me, either.

Flakes of Wrath

Contrary to what your more irritatingly blissed out yoga practitioners in their designer label “Live Simply and Let Others Simply Live” t-shirts say in between expensive spa treatments, there’s a lot to be pissed off about.

Sure, forgiveness is a good thing, one might even say divine. And, apparently, it’s good for one’s mental health:
Forgiveness is an act of letting go. It is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves....We do not release them from accountability by forgiving; we free ourselves from the burden of bitterness. Gordon Livingston, M.D.
Things get more complicated when you away from the personal, though. A long time ago, when I was an angry self-righteous young political activist, my Dad gave me a book by Eric Hoffer called The True Believer. Hoffer said that people who want to change the world are simply trying to avoid changing themselves. I thought: if King, Gandhi, and Mandela did what they did to avoid working on themselves, we should all be grateful for that.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark as human gods aim for their mark to make everything from toy guns that spark to flesh colored Christs that glow in the dark; it’s easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred.
Bob Dylan

Here’s what’s pissing me off at the moment (as opposed to ten minutes from now, or ten minutes ago): Republicans. Cindy McCain said “In Arizona the only way to get around the state is by small private plane.” Phil Gramm says people should stop whining about the economy, since, presumably, nobody he knows is so strapped that the private plane is on the block. Karl Rove says Obama is just like that snooty guy “everybody” knows from the country club that, presumably, “everybody” is a member of. And yet, find a picture of a Democratic candidate wind surfing or admitting that he reads a book now and then, and an Andover graduate son of a president who used family connections to keep out of Vietnam only needs to clear some brush in front of a Fox News camera and mispronounce big words to be a man of the people. Of course, these are also the people who’ve taken on the mantle of “morality” to the point that when the word “values” appears in the mainstream media, we can assume it means “right wing fundamentalist Republican values” even as they’ve fucked the world with their ideology of avarice, bigotry, paranoia, and unbelievable greed (though, admittedly, what pisses me off almost as much is that democrats/progressives/liberals let them do it...since, y’know, we’re too postmodern to use that kind of terminology).

Keep you doped with religion, and sex and TV, and you think you’re so clever and classless and free, but you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.
John Lennon, “Working Class Hero”

On the other hand, King et al didn’t, as far as I know, spend a lot of time sitting around stewing in their own rage. I have friends who can barely sit still over a beer thanks to their visceral hatred of George W. Bush. I’ve also met incredibly privileged people who spend hours every day gritting their teeth with rage as Rush Limbaugh rants about the possibility that a few of their tax dollars might go to healthcare for people with nothing. I spend a ludicrous amount of time and energy coming up with angry political rants (see above), ending up emotionally drained and, thus, actually less likely to take any significant action about anything.

There’s a scene in the movie Gandhi, where Gandhi’s on a hunger strike to get the Hindus and Muslims to stop killing each other. A distraught man enters the room, throwing a hunk of food onto his blanket. “I’m already going to Hell,” he says (all dialogue is from memory), “I won’t have your death on my conscience, too.” When Gandhi asks why he’s going to Hell, the man recounts that, after the Muslims killed his family, he bashed a Muslim child’s head in. Gandhi says “there is a way that you can escape from hell. Find a child who’s lost his parents in the fighting. Take him with you and raise him as your own.” Then, after a pause: “One more thing: he must be a Muslim, and you must raise him as one.” The point of this is not that the guy needs to make some bizarre and, most likely, impossible penance to keep from going to Hell after death; it’s that he’s already in Hell because of his hatred for the Muslims for what they did and for himself for what he did because of that hatred. The only way out is to break the cycle.