#9 - Harjas walked into a Gurdwara and a Taiwanese Teahouse...

1A

There has always been a prayer room in my childhood home, at least since I can remember. However, calling it a prayer room doesn’t really capture its essence. It’s the place where we keep the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book, or our last “living” guru. In the Sikh faith, it’s the book you turn to for any and all wisdom. Yes you can pray inside, but really it’s the guru’s home in yours. That’s why we called it baba ji’s room (the teacher’s room).

The word Sikh itself is both a noun and a verb which means “learner” or “to learn.” So spending time in that room with the Guru Granth Sahib is really a student spending time with their teacher. As a child though, you don’t understand any of this. On your totem pole of priorities, religion or faith intrinsically sits at the bottom, right below cricket, Dragon Ball Z, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and even homework.

Homework was a big deal in my home. My mom used to say that she didn’t do well in school herself and felt that it held her back in life. She was determined to not let that happen to us so she pushed us, me and my brother, to do well academically. But ours was a hospitable home - my grandfather had been a restaurateur since the 60s - so there was a revolving door of visitors always coming and going. Great excuse for a 10-year old not to do homework. But my mom wouldn’t have it. Whenever the house got too busy, she suggested that I study in baba ji’s room. And I never understood why. Not until my late 20s.

1B

On our last day in Taiwan on a recent trip, we visited Jiufen Old Street. It’s about an hour’s drive from Taipei nestled in the mountains which themselves rise majestically over the East China Sea. It’s a popular tourist destination whose marketing literature incorrectly continues to suggest that it is the place that inspired Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. It doesn’t make it any less beautiful. The narrow alley you follow for almost a mile is lined with red lanterns. There is a frenetic energy between the place, its shops and the constantly moving sea of crowds as you get carried with the wave into its winding alleyways. And almost at the end of the main strip is Jiufen Teahouse, the place that started the teahouse culture in Jiufen.

The teahouse came recommended by a friend who had spent time in Taiwan as an exchange student, so we already had every intention of going. What we didn’t expect was it feeling like stepping into baba ji’s room again.

2A

Video games and life are analogous, unsurprisingly. One is a simulation of the other condensed to hours instead of years after all. You start off life simple, on easy mode - cricket, Dragon Ball Z, TMNT. As you get older, you add more, hard(er) mode - education, job, dog, marriage, kids, and hopefully still retaining that childhood simplicity. The reason it gets harder is because you’re packing more and more into the same 24 hours that you had as a child. I went through similar motions, also unsurprisingly. Life got busy, difficult, and noisy. The noise was loudest in the place no one else could hear it - in my brain. And noise was only amplified by any kind of media consumption. Linkedin told me I wasn’t earning enough (despite a thriving career), Instagram told me I wasn’t traveling enough (even though my frequent flyer status said otherwise), Amazon told me I wasn’t shopping quickly enough (21 buyers had the same toilet paper in their carts right now), and every YouTuber told me I wasn’t hustling enough (having only one source of income is stupid apparently). Of course my brain was on fire thinking we’re doing all the wrong things.

When I came to the US at 18, visiting the gurdwara, the Sikh temple, became a way to remain connected to my roots, both familial and cultural. Think of the gurdwara as a scaled up baba ji’s room (or baba ji’s room as a scaled down gurdwara). During these visits, now living life on progressively harder modes, I started noticing something profound. The space of the gurdwara, especially on less busy days, had an amplification of silence. It was as if walking through these doors drowned out not only the external noise but also the internal one. At least in the modern world, we tend to drown out noise with more noise, so this amplification of silence felt like a step closer to the divine. Like my thoughts could breathe, and I could feel this heightened sense of awareness. A lot of life had to happen to find this peace which ten-year old Harjas couldn’t have comprehended.

2B

Jiufen Teahouse turned out to be rather similar. The noise from the Old Street with its sea of people and narrow alleys disappeared and the teahouse opened up into this old 2-story stone building with natural light streaming in. Tea displays and ceramics in the front, a tasting room with stools and square tables in the back. An indoor waterfall led downstairs with koi swimming in a tiny pool. The back of the room led to the ceramic workshop where all the teaware was made by hand. It was a space that drowned out the noise and amplified the silence.

We decided to do a tasting completely giving into the room’s aura. We ordered a lightly fermented Pinglin Organic White Tea. A teahouse staff member brought a pot of boiling water and placed it on the stove in the table where it continued to boil. He then walked us through how to brew the tea, brewing the first batch for us, then helping us taste and understand the flavors. And after hours of noise, which had its own joy, it felt like such a reprieve. To sit there, drinking tea, aware of each sip and the delicate flavors the tea leaves drew out. It felt good to just be present.

3

I wondered sitting there what the point of these spaces was that offered zen and peace. Why were they important? Or why did they feel important? At least to me, it felt like understanding or coming closer to God. And I don't mean that in any religious sense but almost like tapping into a fabric of the universe that I wasn’t noticing before. How could I be aware of that fabric if I didn’t even know it existed? To have found it, I needed that quiet, that stillness. But I wasn’t even looking. Through my mother’s words, it found me.

Since then I’ve continued to notice these spaces around me. Not just physical spaces of stillness but also stillness created through motion. I always equated running to my meditation (I run without anything in my ears) but running being similar to a gurdwara or the teahouse was a newer revelation. I’m aware of every breath while running, like being aware of every sip of tea in the teahouse. I tell my brain "just until the end of this block." It’s almost lying to myself but I’m doing it because I can't think of anything else while running especially when it gets hard. But when I’m done and my body is cooling down and I feel this rush in my head like being bathed in a new light. The noise drowns out, the silence is amplified. But to reach that space takes effort.

The quiet in stillness and motion have the same quality. It’s a feeling of presence, of being fully alive and aware. It's like a flow state. It's a place without judgement. In fact, the opposite of any kind of judgement. Despite the "nothingness" of the time spent in these places - you're not being more "productive" - you come out of them with more peace within yourself. It's more self-acceptance than you walked in with. It’s the experience of existing without needing to justify your existence.

My mother knew this all along. When she sent me to baba ji's room to study, she wasn't just finding me a quiet space - she was introducing me to something I'd spend decades learning to recognize. She was showing me that this space existed without me needing to stumble upon it. I just needed a little more life to recognize that I had the map all along.