More dispatches from Mysore: Patrick sensei, or, Concerning Authorization Redux

Right.  So, I received Authorization Level 2 with permission to teach the full intermediate series on this trip.  After four weeks of hoping I'd be tapped unsolicited, as it were, and months of gentle but insistent prodding from Kino and Tim, I finally broke down and went into the office to ask.  The whole thing played out as a series of anticlimaxes...

Some students here are quite comfortable talking to Sharath.  They can just go into his office and hang out, asking him about this and that, and what they can do to make their asana practice better.  Me, I wouldn't want to approach him to trouble him with my issues if he were watering his lawn and I were on fire.  This is out of respect, mind you, not contempt or fear.  Maybe some fear.  There are pros and cons to each of these ways of being.  On one hand, as my mother-in-law might say: no llora, no mama (the baby who doesn't cry doesn't suckle).  It's good to be clear about your wants and needs and to be proactive about getting them met.  On the other hand, there's the perspective that spans cultures in which the teacher (priest, sifu, rabbi, imam, etc.), while, yes, ultimately being just a person, is on a different level than the student.  If not above (always risky), he or she is at least apart.  In a life-long undertaking involving great transformation, trust, etc., why would you want to commit yourself to an ordinary schmoe for a teacher?  This the vibe with which I'm in tune, for better or for worse.

That said, imagine my discomfort and aversion to inquiring about such a Big Thing as authorization.  I think what finally got up my guff enough to go in, the straw the broke the camel's back, was when my friend and colleague Daylene received her authorization during my third week here, give or take.  At that point I was pretty well aware that I wouldn't be denied if I asked,  and Day's having gone first broke something in me.  I just wanted to get it over with.  The first day I went up to his office was a Thursday, and it unfortunately coincided with a massive influx of new students.  A shift change, if you will.  I had to make an appointment.  That Monday was a moon day, so the earliest I could get in would be Tuesday.  I felt like Frank Pentangeli being forced to wait to see the Don.  So Tuesday came.  I put on my formal wear, which means jeans and knit shirt, and went in.  I began by thanking him for his patience with my practice in the previous weeks, my pesky shoulder thing was forcing me to modify and take various short cuts.  Then, I started in on pleading my case:

Me: Sir (I try not to address Sharath directly if I can help it, and when I do I just call him sir), as I think you know,  I run a Mysore program for Kino and Tim in Miami and I've come to ask for your blessing to teach.  I want you to know I will honor the lin--
Sharath: How many trips you make here?
Me: This is my fourth trip, sir.
Sharath:  Mmm.  Take that form from the printer and fill it out.
Me:  Yes sir.  Thank you, sir.

I filled out the form and brought it back.  He wrote down how much it would cost on a post-it and gave it to me, and assured me there was no rush on the payment.  Then I touched his feet and cut out. And that was that.  There was no pricking a drop of blood out of my finger, or letting an image of the Virgin Mary burn in my hand, no cigars were passed out.  Later, when I got the money together, I thought there might be a photo-op with Sharath, Tim, Kino, and me and the authorization paper.  But no, payment first before the paper gets made, so that didn't happen.  And then, when I went to pick up the authorization certificate, Sharath wasn't around.  Honestly, it's just as well there was no hoo-ha as far as I'm concerned.  Not my style.

Just to be clear, though, despite the low key way things went down I am enormously relieved and satisfied.  This marks the achievement of a goal which was very very far off when I first started all this Ashtanga yoga business.  Much work and sacrifice was involved.  It settled in a few days later at lunch with my new, but now very close friend, Barry.  Barry has been living in Tokyo for the past seven years running a Mysore program there.  We bumped into some Japanese women he knew and he introduced me as Patrick sensei.  I would have bashfully shirked that before, but I just accepted it now.  Patrick sensei.  Teacher Patrick.  One door closes, another opens.  Time to step up.  Time to honor the title and keep doing my best to be true.