Life in the Ashram

October 25, 2006

Two days into the trip and, as I previously mentioned, two years of living done. You know how to live longer? Travel, make yourself new, open up to new sights and sounds and people. You may pass away at the same second of the same minute of the same hour and day and year as you would have otherwise have died… but your life will have been immeasurably longer, and maybe you die knowing you had really lived.

I am finding it difficult, with so much shifting sand, to be earthly in my journal. So I’ll try to come a bit to ground – patience, patience! We woke early yesterday morning and practiced yoga before heading being carted off in an autorickshaw – small three-wheeled wagons that fit two people with gear (in the lap), powered by what might be a 100cc motor. It’s all in the gearing, I guess, but the secret is in momentum: you can’t let these little things wind down too far, or you’ll never rev them up again. This explains a lot about traffic in India. I tried to take a little camera-video of a drive to the botanical gardens yesterday, but the batteries were dead; and on the way to the bus terminal it wasn’t worth shooting: today is again a holiday, the end of Ramadan, and the streets are nearly empty. Bangalore became still for our entry and our exit, and for that I am grateful to two major religions, Hinduism and Diwali (festival of lights), and Islam’s breaking of its month-long fast after Ramadan.

The bus terminal… ah. Well, the hotel manager said “Oh, no problem, the bus terminal is very easy to find where to go.” This was perhaps an understatement, or hyperbole. Or pure exaggeration or nonsense. Whatever the case, it lacked any semblance of reality. We arrived at the front gate without difficulty, but inside the busses were so tightly packed and massed that it was more a corral of milling cattle than an ordered arrival and departure of vehicles. Not that there wasn’t an order, but it did not follow a logic that was easily decipherable by me.

Or, I might add, by anyone. We asked at least a dozen times where platform 25 was located. Most people said, “Oh, just follow the numbers.” We did, and they ran out at 15. We asked again, and were sent back to a bus burial ground. We asked again, and were sent to the opposite corner of the sprawling terminal, where we found platform 24.. all by itself. We asked again and were told to go underneath that lamppost, where it was not. We asked again near the lamppost, and were told “just wait right here.” India, like Brazil, is an exercise of approximation, which has its own beauty I suppose, so long as you stay open… and give yourself plenty of time.

The ride our of Bangalore took almost an hour winding through the streets of center city, then through the streets of the outlying suburbs, and finally – what a relief! – into the countryside. I am at home on the planet, not in the city. Everything became peaceful, more peaceful, and the air cleared. The bus moved onto smaller and smaller roadways on the way to Tiruvannamalai, our first real stop. As the thoroughfare constricted, the traffic thinned… but what remained still had to fit in 1.5 lanes, and the nerve-wracking weaving into and out of dangerous situations continued for a couple of hours. Still, if you looked to the side instead of to the front, the watery rocking from side to side was almost pleasant, the times we hit the brakes hard enough to avoid causing fatalities were relatively few and far between (well, not so far between, since we were travelling at 60 km/hr, maximum), and the countryside fascinating.

So much familiar from my travel to Indonesia and my years in Brazil: Melati trees, Eucalyptus, Aurocaria, Acacia, Flamboyant (Flame Trees), Maracujá (Passion Fruit), Bananeira (guess), Cana de acucar (Sugar Cane)… Papaya and coconut trees… and what’s that, I know that leaf… ah, mango groves! The soil itself seems depleted, or never very strong, and the short mountains that reach up in random peaks over the plains look ancient, not the jagged edges of new ridges, but exhausted stone, cleared of soil, ruined remains of some great giant city.

The bus dropped us directly at the gate of Sri Ramanasramam, Ramana Marharshi’s ashram, which was built at the base of the mountain he called home. It is visited annually by the great and the meek, by thousands upon thousands of seekers and devotees and tourists, both national and foreign. Because we requested lodging far in advance, we are guests of the ashram, and stay within a small apartment just off the main campus. We are able to participate in the daily activities of the community – ritual and practice that has been carried on here for a half-century:

06:45 Milk offering to Sri Bhagavan at his Samadhi (burial place)
07:00 Breakfast
08:00 Chanting of the Vedas in the Sri Bhagavan Shrine
08:30 Puja at the shrine of Sri Bhagavan and the Shrine of Mother
10:45 Narayan Seva, food served to the poor of the area
11:30 Lunch
16:00 Tea or milk
16:30 Reading from Sri Bhagavan’s works in English
17:00 Chanting of the Vedas
18:00 Puja at the shrine
18:30 Tamil Parayana or Sanskrit compositions
19:15 Music at the Shrine (usually solo sitar)
19:30 Dinner

The food is served seated on the floor, rice or idly (a cooked rice cake) ladled onto a plate made of leaves stitched together with grasses. Then a dal or other sauce is poured over the rice, and some sambal or other topping is given on the side. There is water or chai to drink.

Sri Bhagavan asked: do you live to eat, or do you eat to live? Yesterday we had nothing for food between our early breakfast and dinner, but were not hungry. We had one cup of chai at the four o’clock tea, and felt complete.

How not to be changed by that? I think of the portions we are given in the States – portions which serve the restaurant’s profit margin better than the health and lightness of its clientele – and can only shake my head.

So many lessons to be had, if one only steps out, and risks what is known for what is not known….

Here I am typing away, and Manny – a man of many excellent words, but most of them spoken, not typed – is off somewhere resting or reading or patiently awaiting some company. Good companions are hard to come by: one more reason for gratitude. I’ll have to write a journal on gratitude soon, or begin to overflow with unspoken thanks.