Retrouvailles is a French word meaning the happiness of meeting again after a long time.
Sometimes, due to distance, time and circumstance, one becomes separated from friends and acquaintances from our past. It had been about 20 years since I last saw Brian Kosinski, and I was amazed how we were able to pick up where we left off. He saw me on Facebook and contacted me to get together to rekindle our friendship. I recommended lunch at the Veggie Grill in San Jose. He ordered the Sonora Bowl that I recommended, I had Meatballs and Polenta and we shared a dish of crispy Cauliflower.
Brian, an electrical engineer is Vice President of Mission Assurance at Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto. He is responsible for quality control to ensure satellites are designed, built and tested to approved standards before they are certified to launch.
It has been said that, “Good health does not always come from medicine or scientific breakthroughs. Most of the time it comes from peace of mind, peace in the heart—through love and laughter, and peace in the soul. ” There have been times, when medicine and science has failed to recognize that the wisdom of the ages were onto something.
Brian's favorite hobby and part time business is distributing books on healing, meditation and spirituality. The company he created back in the day is called “Namaste," which in Sanskrit roughly translated means "The light in me recognizes the light in you."
He and I met in the mid 90s after my book: “Invisible Means of Support: A Transformational Journey" was published. He had seen references in my book attributed to the late Eknath Easwaran, an Indian born spiritual teacher, Fulbright scholar and author of more than 20 books including “Formulas for Transformation," a pocket-sized version of the book I used to carry everywhere. His main teaching was using focusing techniques to calm the mind to reduce stress and negative emotions. Some years later I did a day retreat in Los Gatos led by some of Easwaran’s students. Brian used to drive to Petaluma every Tuesday night to hear the gifted teacher give talks at the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, a non-profit organization Eswaran founded in 1961.
What I always liked about Brian, is we shared similar interests in spirituality even though we were both trained in the scientific method. He is an Electrical Engineer and I was a retired Podiatric Physician and Surgeon. We both believed in the parallels between science and Eastern mysticism.
Brian still owns Namaste’, and currently distributes Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book: "Full Catastrophe Living," to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Stanford Medical Center and the Center of Integrative Medicine and UCSF.
The book is based on a mindfulness-based stress reduction program on how to use medically proven mind-body approaches with roots in meditation and yoga to counteract stress, and establish greater balance in one’s life. Another classic book he wrote that I read in 2001 is called “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life.”Zinn is a scientist, writer, gifted meditation teacher in his own right, and professor of medicine at the University of Massachusettes Medical School, where he was the founding director of the Center of Mindfulness in Medicine.
Postscript: Another classic book written by Easwaran, who was a professor of literature and taught the first accredited course on the theory and practice of meditation at UC Berkeley is called “Words to Live By.” Each page comments on a penetrating quote by the world’s best-known philosophers, saints, writers and scientists.
