I was the only vegetarian in a German beer garden, waiting for my editor, Arjuna. Irony had never been so resonant in what otherwise seemed to be a fairly run-of-the mill October. Here I was, the quintessential vegetarian, waiting for my native German editor with an Indian name, to fight for the cause of non-vegetarianism in a beer garden replete with the sound of Weisswurst being sucked by the local veterans for their second breakfast of the morning. The only reason I could think of why he had chosen this venue for our meeting was that he thought that I was not vegetarian enough, and that the aura of a beer garden at Oktoberfest, would help me to actually get there.
It had taken years of mental acrobatics, but I thought I had finally figured out how to create good karma in my life, when I was asked to author this particular book on Ayurvedic Medicine. The Vedic Sciences were definitely my cause, and writing about them seemed like a reasonable way to affect those who were interested. The readers obviously represented those who mattered. Since I had been told by the Pundit-ji of my childhood, that every ripple I created in the pool of karma would eventually affect someone else, I was delighted at the opportunity to shatter the ludicrous misconceptions out there about Ayurvedic medicine, and the notion that it was a vegetarian philosophy. Being vegetarian myself had nothing to do with the fact that I wanted to be a loudspeaker for the truth about Ayurvedic nutritional principles. This, I had decided, was my own karmic cause.
I stepped into the beer garden and surveyed the scene. Where would Arjuna be? I was looking for what I thought would be the only local eating spinach and sipping on chamomile tea during Oktoberfest. Arjuna -- the very thought of his name always sent me into a déjà vu of pre-conceived negative opinions about Indophiles. How, or rather why had he come to be Arjuna? Was Hans or Schmidt not good enough?
“ I was born Hildefuns,” he had told me in our very first conversation, “but this means "Ready for battle". Something that would wreak quite bad karma, no?”
Arjuna did not come across as an overt battle-axe. Nor did he appear to be the kind of guy that would "wreak" much of anything, at 5 ft 2”, with translucent Caucasian skin, and a physique no thicker than a wisp of wheat grass, although he was firm when it came to his beliefs. I could not tell whether this was a sign of a steadfast mind-body constitution, something that in Ayurvedic medicine we call a "Kapha " mental state, or whether it was simply a German thing, that a lowly foreigner was not expected to appreciate. But since he was my editor, it was safer not to judge him. It was a good call because very quickly into the process, he asked me to cut out all references to fish and meat.
“Promoting non vegetarianism would be entirely distasteful. Meat is considered a bad food for humans, no? From a karmic point of view. Wouldn't you agree?”
Right then it became clear why he had changed his name. 'Arjuna' meant "lucid, pure, white light". It was the name of an ancient Indian prince, a representative of the Gods who symbolized the white light of Spiritual Good winning over the darkness of Evil. This particular Arjuna wanted to be a do-gooder too. His "lucid" karmic intention was to be vegetarian, and not kill animals, so he could accede to the old purist method of representing the gods. Why, though, had he never considered Gustave instead of Arjuna? It meant "Staff of the Gods", it was German and he could have retained his initials. But Arjuna, had preconceived notions of me too. Perhaps, that I was a dark force of evil in the clear light of his day. I never really thought of myself as creating much impact on anyone or anything, so the notion was actually quite flattering.
But karma means "action", in fact, a series of actions, infused with all that we do and all that we are. More specifically it implies that the cause of each action is affected by previous actions. So, choosing Arjuna would no doubt precipitate an entire slew of Indophilic actions and resulting reactions that could not be brought about by Gustave. But what he did not realize was that I too had my own karmic point of view. By no means was I going to deceive readers into believing that Ayurveda was a vegetarian philosophy, when it fact it was not. A brutal lie would surely condemn me to live in misery in my next life. Given global warming, terrorism and the fact that one has to think consciously these days about where food comes from, I was pretty sure that I did not have a head start on good karma anyway.
