We Will Surf Again Jax Beach
JACKSONVILLE Beach - Afterward 47 years away, the Surfing Swami is back on the beach where information technology all began, ready for another morning surf session with some old friends from the old days.
Jack Hebner is early. But of class he is: Later several decades as a celibate Krishna monk, he's used to waking up before dawn to chant and meditate.
The waves aren't much. One human foot and junky. But the Surfing Swami is not disappointed.
He smiles. "That East Coast lord's day, right in your face up. Information technology's very reminiscent."
Besides, he's not going to let the 50th anniversary of his surfing life become by without paddling out. And he'll shortly be back habitation in the waves of Republic of india, in his saffron robes and his multicolored surf trunks. At that place are vii,000 kilometers of coastline there to explore, well-nigh all of information technology to himself, apart from an occasional elephant on the embankment.
Such is life for Jack Hebner, aka Swami Bhakti Gaurava Narasingha: The Surfing Swami.
It is a story that is well-near irresistible. Google the Surfing Swami and you'll discover article subsequently article on him, from printing around the world.
They tell how he left Jacksonville to chase waves, becoming a devotee of the Hindu god Krishna. How he wandered the earth and explored the beaches of India, surfing where no one had surfed earlier.
How he prepare upward an ashram at the beach for travelers willing to give up alcohol, meat and sex during their stay. In return, they get waves and a glimpse, perhaps, into a deeper understanding of their world.
How he taught some Indian boys to surf - after first teaching them to swim, in a nation where few take to the water. How surfing is slowly growing in Republic of india, and how the Swami Narasingha, who now has a surfboard importing business organization, is the man behind it all. The pioneer.
Lighting the burn down
The Surfing Swami has changed lives.
Consider this quote, in the Asian edition of Sports Illustrated, from a 22-year-quondam Indian surfer: "If (he) had non introduced us to surfing, we probably would never have experienced this unalloyed joy."
Unalloyed joy.
Isn't that what surfing'southward most?
It was for teenage Jack Hebner, a Westside kid from Nathan Bedford Forrest Loftier. He was hooked the minute he saw someone ride a surfboard, in the summer of 1963.
No car? 20-plus miles to the beach? No problem. He and neighbor Boyd Emerson would hitchhike, with their boards, across town, merely to surf. Once Boyd, on his own, was stuck, really stuck, until filmmaker Bruce Brownish and his "Countless Summer" crew, on tour with the picture, came along in a motor abode and helped a fellow surfer get to the beach.
Talk about unalloyed joy.
"That was such a stoke for usa," Hebner says. "Information technology lit the fire."
Just a few weeks from his 68th birthday, that fire still burns.
"It did dim, at times," he says, "but it never went out."
'Always looking'
Hebner came to the pier Th morning after visiting his mother, who's turning ninety, in Orlando. Before that he was in an ashram he helped found. Information technology'south in the highlands of Mexico, where y'all can kayak in h2o as blueish, he says, as the heaven over the Jax Embankment pier.
Hebner has spent most of his time since the 1970s in India. The U.Southward. feels foreign to him now.
Just as his quondam friends - Boyd Emerson, Beak Perry, Byron Colley, Glenn "Gordo" Guthrie and Tom Grizzard show up - he slips easily into the old stories, when they were all skinny and bleached blond past the lord's day.
Emerson grew upwardly downwardly the street from him, both of them the sons of Navy main petty officers.
As a surf-crazy teen, Hebner got a job fixing dings at Harry Dickinson's surf shop; Dickinson sometimes let him and Emerson stay overnight there. The Swami's memory is fuzzy on this story, but Emerson likes to tell how Hebner schemed to dig out a cavern under the shop; that way the two Westsiders would have a permanent Beach habitation.
"He was e'er looking for something," Emerson says. "Jack always had a programme."
He had a wandering soul too. He and some buddies made the trip to California a few times, piling into $125 cars, never dreaming anything could go wrong.
He left Jacksonville for practiced in the jump of 1966, and somewhen fabricated it to Hawaii. He got waves, certain. But he also found a deeper kind of enlightenment there, taking upward yoga, getting his body and mind clean, joining the Hare Krishna movement - orange robes, shaved head and all.
He was serious: Presently he swore an adjuration of celibacy and traveled the globe as a Krishna monk. He went all over Africa in those robes, taking photos and writing stories for the motion's magazine. He became something of a Hare Krishna celebrity.
But he grew disenchanted with the Hare Krishna bureaucracy - every organization has some sort of hierarchy, he notes - so he lit out for India. Solo.
Slowly, followers were drawn to him, equally he was drawn to the waves at that place. Decades passed, and the story of the Surfing Swami grew.
A family unit, over again
Of class, whatsoever time you have one path, you have to leave some other behind.
Hebner hasn't seen many of his erstwhile friends since the 1960s. And at one indicate, he spent 26 years away from his family.
Information technology was sometimes difficult between him and his Navy father. Being a Hare Krishna made him - and here he jokes - the "orange sheep" of the family unit, a family that included a younger brother, Scott, who joined the Navy and became a rear admiral.
Just he reunited with his father before the one-fourth dimension chief petty officer died, and things came easily. In fact, information technology felt like family. The Surfing Swami is glad for that.
And he'southward glad for his 2-mean solar day trip dorsum to where it all began, glad to paddle out with Colley, his old friend, to catch a few imperfect Florida waves.
After 45 minutes or and so, they leave the water and rejoin their buddies in the shade of the pier. The other guys don't surf that much these days, perhaps. But they're all eager to talk well-nigh one-time friends and sometime times - the road trips they took, the girls they chased, the all-yous-can-eat restaurant that was woefully unprepared for young men with such appetites as they possessed.
The Swami smiles. He's satisfied: Out in the Atlantic, in those humble waves, with that eastern sun in his face and the pier to his left? He's 18 again.
matt.soergel@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4082
Source: https://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2013-08-11/story/surfing-swami-finally-back-home-jacksonville-beach-where-it-all-began?mmo_ccc=xfinity
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