Jaimal Yogis is the author of the book Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to find Zen on The Sea. Equal parts spir­i­tual mem­oir and surfer’s tale, a chron­i­cle of find­ing med­i­ta­tive focus in the great salty blue. We ask him a few ques­tions.

What was grow­ing up in a spir­i­tual house­hold like for you?
It was cool. My par­ents were both very spiritually-minded – med­i­tated and did yoga – but also pretty grounded in the every­day world too. My dad was in the Air Force and my mom was a French teacher and they both loved to travel and be out­side too, which was just as much a part of their spir­i­tual lives as any yoga or med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. I feel espe­cially lucky that we were exposed to dif­fer­ent ways of approach­ing a spir­i­tual life. For a while, we all went to an Ashram where yoga phi­los­o­phy was taught, but teach­ers also read from the bible. Other times, we went to Buddhist med­i­ta­tion classes. Sometimes we went to Christian mass, and other times we didn’t go to any for­mal spir­i­tual places, but we worked in the gar­den or went to the beach. They always let us know that it was ok to fol­low any path as long as we could also think for our­selves too. We openly dis­cussed the pit­falls of reli­gion and the ben­e­fits, which I think is a great thing to do with your kids so they can choose for them­selves what path they want to follow.

When did you get your first surf­board?
I bought my first surf­board when I ran away from home to Hawaii when I was 16. It was a 6’6” board that appar­ently belonged to Christian Fletcher at one point and I paid $100 for it on the north shore of Maui. It had prob­a­bly snapped at least once and it was way too high per­for­mance for learn­ing. But I even­tu­ally learned on that board and rode it until it barely floated.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
I used to rent a board on our vaca­tions to Florida when I was pretty young and I’d stood up on a long­board a hand­ful of times on really small waves. I felt a sense of accom­plish­ment from these lit­tle rides, but I didn’t really get the full feel­ing of surf­ing until I first stood up on that 6’6” and dropped in on a real wave in Maui. I was out alone in a rain storm on Maui and my dad was watch­ing me from shore. I couldn’t believe what was hap­pen­ing when the wave picked me up and I was drop­ping full speed down the face. It felt both effort­less and so pow­er­ful – like fly­ing in a dream. The wave seemed mon­strous even though I think it was about waist high. When I came in my dad gave me a big hug. We’d been hav­ing a hard time in our rela­tion­ship, and since surf­ing is always some­thing we’d wanted to do together, it felt so good that he’d seen me and was as stoked as I was.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
My cousin Jim Klar was ram­bling around with his best friend Varsh in a VW bus, play­ing music and trav­el­ing the globe when I was in my teens. They were so happy and kind hearted and cre­at­ing art. They were a huge influ­ence on me. Jim is cre­at­ing music for the

Saltwater Buddha film and he’s still one of my heroes. I had tons of well-known heroes too: Jack Kerouac, Jaques Cousteau, Michael Jordan, The Dalai Lama, Bono, Rob Machado. I just looked up to peo­ple who were really focused and ded­i­cated, but also seemed happy, like they were really liv­ing from their hearts.

Where were you edu­cated?
I went to a bunch of dif­fer­ent pub­lic schools grow­ing up. After high school, I Iived in a Buddhist monastery for a year, which was prob­a­bly the most edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence I ever had. In under­grad, I lit­er­ally attended about five dif­fer­ent schools, stud­ied in India, Mexico, California, and Hawaii, but I ended up with a degree from the University of Hawaii in Philosophy and Religion. I then got a master’s in jour­nal­ism at Columbia in New York.

Of all the inter­est­ing places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out? And why?
The Northern California Coast, from Santa Cruz up to Crescent City, is my favorite stretch of land on this planet, all the more so after see­ing so many other places. I love it here and I can’t even describe exactly why. It’s just home. We have it so good.

Explain how the idea for the book Saltwater Buddha came about
I was in jour­nal­ism school in New York and all depressed because I was super stressed in school and not surf­ing at all. I sat down to med­i­tate one par­tic­u­larly stressed out day and felt like I was drown­ing in my own neg­a­tive thoughts. It was a down moment, but as I sat there I thought about what I would do if I was surf­ing on a really stormy day. I’d just let the waves pass by, not attach to them so to speak. I decided I’d let my stressed out waves pass that day, and it really helped my mood. I’d never writ­ten about my spir­i­tual prac­tice or surf­ing, and was try­ing to be a seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal jour­nal­ist, but I wrote a short

piece for Shambhala Sun Magazine about using surf­ing as a metaphor in med­i­ta­tion. The arti­cle got a ton of hits and was repub­lished in a few mag­a­zines. I started think­ing I should make it into a book about Zen and surf­ing, but didn’t really know how to go about it. Coincidentally, The Utne Reader repub­lished it and asked me what I wanted in my bio. I asked them to put that I was writ­ing a book about Zen and surf­ing. A few weeks after that bio ran with the arti­cle, Wisdom Publications said they wanted to pub­lish it. I couldn’t believe it and I sud­denly felt ner­vous that I was going to have to be an author­ity on the top­ics, but they let me do the book my way, which was just writ­ing sto­ries about my own expe­ri­ences. I felt that was the only way to keep it real. The rest is his­tory.

What has been the reac­tion to Saltwater Buddha?
I’ve been stoked. People write me all the time and tell them that it changed their life in some big or small way. I love that a lot of these peo­ple aren’t surfers or Buddhists. You can’t ask for more than that. I’m excited that it’s being made into a film as well and get­ting trans­lated into a few dif­fer­ent languages.

What is it that makes you such a nice per­son? What code do you live by?
I hon­estly just try to be myself and live by the Golden Rule.

Who/what inspires you?
My fam­ily and friends are my biggest sup­ports and inspirations. But I recently surfed with Bethany Hamilton, the young Hawaiian surfer who lost an arm in a shark attack, at Padang Padang when it was crank­ing, dou­ble over-head solid bar­rels. It was intim­i­dat­ing stuff and she was surf­ing it, with one arm, bet­ter than almost any­one out there, get­ting really shacked and mak­ing every wave. She was really nice and hum­ble too. That was inspir­ing. Thanks Bethany.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
If you’re true to your heart, things work out. Life is magic.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
Of course.

Who are some of the authors you feel are shap­ing the path for surf writ­ing today?
Tom Farber and Dan Duane have been my men­tors for a while. They were my biggest influ­ences to get into surf writ­ing. Tim Winton, Steven Kotler, and William Finnegan have also been really inspi­ra­tional. JM Coatzee, Jonathan Franzen, Steinbeck, Salinger, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, and Melville are authors who have left a huge mark on me too. Oh, and Shakespeare, but that’s kind of like say­ing the bible.

What is in your cur­rent quiver? What is your favorite board?
My favorite board of all time is this 1980’s 5’7” twiny fish by Eddie Dunnavant. It’s part of the old Lipstix series. Magic. I also love Danny Hess’s boards and James Mitchell’s Las Olas boards.

What project are you cur­rently work­ing on?
My main project still seems to be surf­ing. But we’re film­ing Saltwater Buddha (you can fol­low at www.saltwaterbuddha.org) and I’m doing some envi­ron­men­tal type sto­ries for San Francisco Magazine. I’m also work­ing on the next book, but it’s still in its infancy.

The book “Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to find Zen on The Sea” is avail­able here.