Saltwater Buddha: A Surfers Quest to Find Zen on the Sea (Paperback)

Fed up with suburban teenage life, Jaimal Yogis ran off to Hawaii with little more than a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and enough cash for a surfboard. His journey is a coming-of-age saga that takes him from communes to monasteries and the icy New York shore. Equal parts spiritual memoir and surfer's tale, this is a chronicle of finding meditative focus in the barrel of a wave and eternal truth in the great salty blue.

“A heartfelt and honest work, whose lively, self-deprecating style enables the reader to empathise with Yogis at every stage of his journey, whether he’s fleeing home, immersed in Buddhist ritual in a French monastery, grappling with surf Nazis in Santa Cruz or suffering for his art while on board a commercial fishing boat. His art proves to be writing, but his embrace of the surfer’s search - he kept the faith by subway journeys to surf New York’s freezing winter waves - is what gets him there.”
-- The Times of London

“Great stuff with the words ‘cult classic‘ stamped all over it.”
-- Alex Wade, Surf Nation