"The gross body which is composed of the seven humours (dhatus), I am not; the five cognitive sense organs, viz. the senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell, which apprehend their respective objects, viz. sound, touch, colour, taste, and odour, I am not; the five cognitive sense-organs, viz. the organs of speech, locomotion, grasping, excretion, and procreation, which have as their respective functions speaking, moving, grasping, excreting, and enjoying, I am not; the five vital airs, prana, etc., which perform respectively the five functions of in-breathing, etc., I am not; even the mind which thinks, I am not; the nescience too, which is endowed only with the residual impressions of objects, and in which there are no objects and no functionings, I am not."
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Who Am I?
We will be travelling from Boston to Bangalore, arriving in the morning, with an entire day to explore. Or rather, an entire day to recuperate from the physical and psychological dislocation two overnight flights are bound to cause. Then we leave for Tiruvannamalai, the place of the sacred mountain, where Ramana Maharshi spent so many years of his life. A pilgrimage is a following after; taking the road another human has taken before, discovering along the way that the thoughts and feelings you have carried are no different than theirs. The Master has walked further and been walking longer, and has given words to the experience. Sometimes the words echo those you have already spoken yourself — ahh, then you know you are really on the right road! — and sometimes they name something within you which has not been named, call it out so it can live in the light.
Maharshi spent his life becoming human; you can read it in his face. This is the road we all should travel, so our decisions may become more solid, our fears less grounded, and our embrace more present every day.
I have travelled away from my home before, sometimes staying away for a short while, other times long enough that the definition of "Home" became blurred, and likely will never come into a sharp focus again. Each time, some dry skin of being dropped away — or rather, was torn away, and not without a subtantial amount of pain — leaving me lighter and younger; and new clothing, like new language or diet or habits, brought out of me some self I had not seen before.
It is hard to imagine the travel we indulge in today can possibly be the same as that of twenty years ago: twenty years of gradually diminishing innocence. But then, who knows who I will meet, when I look into the mirror on that first morning on the far shoulder of the world?
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