Banshidhar Medeiros: “Soul Surfer”
Photo: Dave Sanders
This week the New York Times devotes its “Character Study” column to an intriguing character indeed:
Now that beach weather has finally rolled round, Banshidhar Medeiros, 59, a factory worker from Queens and a lifelong surfer, can be found paddling out at sunrise on almost any day the surf is up.
“There are a lot less distractions out there in the winter,” Mr. Medeiros said. “It becomes a form of meditation. You fix on one point, the horizon, and you start to feel at one with the rhythm of the ocean. When you’re in that state and you catch a wave, it becomes an effortless dance, a flow.”
Winter surfing brings out big waves and deters lightweights. It turns a surf session into something akin to an arctic expedition. But when he’s in the right state of consciousness — a state Mr. Medeiros has spent his life pursuing — the icy ocean can become a bubbling caldron of spiritual bliss.
“When it’s cold, it’s more fun,” said Mr. Medeiros, who began riding the waves as a child in Hawaii. Since his teenage years, he has followed the spiritual teachings of Sri Chinmoy, an Indian-born guru who in the 1960s established a meditation center in Queens with a devoted colony of followers. Mr. Medeiros keeps a small photograph of Mr. Chinmoy laminated onto the middle of his longboard — a Hawaiian-made nine-footer.
“It keeps me centered — he’s my guardian angel,” said Mr. Medeiros, who rents a room in a house with other disciples in the Briarwood section of Queens. Mr. Chinmoy died in 2007, but there are still several hundred disciples living here around his old house and following his spiritual path of prayer, meditation, vegetarianism, celibacy and extreme physical challenges.
© 2024 by Harmony Blog