R.I.P. Swami Bua

R.I.P. Swami Bua
(12/25/1889 – 7/22/2010)

When you need education
When you need enlightenment
Who you gonna call?
Swami Bua
Swami Bua
The funny little man
All dressed in white
With the great big
Sad saucer eyes
As gentle as a lamb
And tough as nails
The best Hatha yoga teacher
It the whole wide world
Swami Bua
Swami Bua
When I first met him
Some thirty years ago
I was a broken vessel
Shattered by divorce
In so many different ways
Burned out
At the age of thirty
I was referred to him
By mutual friends
(Juliet and Charles Seaver)
And welcomed
Into his ashram
As a welcome guest
And I sat at his feet
For four joyous years
Where I learned how to be
Truly healthy
Where my heart was repaired
And my life was turned around
Begin the day in love
Spend the day in love
End the day in love
That is the way to God
He would always say
After he would greet you
By asking if you were happy
Am I happy? Not sure. I don’t really know
Well if you do not know
Who should know?
He would answer
And of course he was right
When I found the asanas too difficult
He would always be there to encourage
And when we complained
The poses were too hard to do
He would say
I will cripple you
And he was right
The day after some sessions
I could hardly walk
The most gentle and stern
Taskmaster I have ever known
And just to prove he could do as he preached
He would spring into the pose
As if he were made of rubber
When I began to drift away
To pursue the rest of my life
I took his life lessons with me
And when I would call him
To say how much I missed him
He would say that I should come home
He would say that his eyes were aching to see me
And this week I learned that he had died
That he had given up his body
At the age of 120 years
Because death is a habit of the body
And no one can escape death
As he would always say
And he even gave me advice
About how to die
When the grim reaper
Comes inevitably to pay his call
Life is but a bubble in the ocean
So just let it go
he would always say
So just let it go

j.h.markowitz
Philadelphia, Pa. 2011