Meet me at the Dancing Shiva

Warning: this may get heavy…

The most amazing thing about this place is the people because they remind you of what is important every single day! First and foremost is Swamiji who has a way of looking at you and only seeing the light. When you walk away from just even a passing moment with Swamiji you are giddy like a child, all energized and without worry or fear. I believe that I feel my best, at my peak near Swamiji because all he sees is the very best in me, the light, the divine.

Then there are the people I work with. Alka and Bhagwati are both my sisters and mothers. These two women have devoted their lives to the ashram and its charitable and humanitarian works by doing everything asked of them by Swamiji and with only the help of a few other supporting sevaks like myself or others who may come and go. They are both brilliant intellectually but they are WISE as well. I cannot really begin to explain these women but they teach me not only through example but also in little tidbits of lessons each day.

And finally, there are the visitors. Some are simply spiritual visitors seeing the nationally broadcast Ganga Aarti in person for the first time. Some are simply foreign tourists looking for a nice place to stay. All of them have their lessons for me to figure out.

But those that have come recently are the most touching. Just in the last few days I have felt my eyes well up unexpectedly when I hear even just a sentence about the tragedy that has brought some people here. Parmarth is such a welcoming place and many people direct their friends here when they have lost a loved one and want to immerse the ashes into Ganga, the ultimate resting place for a Hindu and a beautiful place for EVERYONE to rest. Just moments ago a girl about my age was here to do a puja for her sister who died last year of a brain aneurism. While my mom died over a year ago ultimately of a brain aneurism as well, my heart breaks to think that this girl’s sister was taken so suddenly and so young.

I got to say goodbye for two years. My mom’s death was not a tragedy.

She is welcomed with open arms to bask in the loving spirit of this land, to receive the divine hug from the mother Ganga and begin to understand and feel the presence of the departed within and around us.

My mom cannot hug me with her arms anymore but at least she can hug me with her spirit which can be with me everywhere and all the time…I just have to realize it, feel it, sense it.

And the other day another girl a few years younger than me was here with her in-laws. Her newlywed husband committed suicide last year after an argument. He was only 19; young marriage, maybe too young. She and the family are of course still struggling but she seemed so put together. I know she has her moments; apparently she can’t sleep because she just keeps envisioning that last argument and the scene of finding him. When I imagine her situation it makes me nauseated and want to weep for her and all those who must deal with such excruciating pain.

At least my pain of loss is destroyed by the completely loving and positive life and relationship I had/have with my mom. I can hang on to that ultimate relationship of love down to the last minute she was in her physical body and I got to serve her and hold her hands. I can only hope that we all have relationships like that so that when the inevitable day comes when death is now, we are not upset but we celebrate the release from our arms into our spirit.

Set in the foothills of the Himalayas, Rishikesh is a divine land infused with the sadhanas (spiritual practices) of many saints, swamis, and sages over hundreds of years. There are still many babas who live their lives in caves on the side of the mountains or just down the street from me on the Ganga. In Paul Brunton’s book “A Search in Secret India,” he describes his collection of the definition of a ‘yogi’ which provides a little insight into what Rishikesh is:

“. . . I can hardly tell you, in a single definition, what constitutes a Yogi. No doubt, a dozen . . . men will define the word in a dozen different ways. For instance, there are thousands of wandering beggars who pass by this name. They swarm through the villages and attend the periodic religious fairs in droves. Many are only lazy tramps and others vicious ones, while most are totally illiterate men, unaware of the history and doctrines of the science of Yoga, under whose shelter they masquerade.”

Go, however, to some place like Rishikesh, over which the mighty Himalayas keep eternal guard. There you will find a totally different class of men. They live in humble huts or caves, eat little food and constantly pray to God. Religion is their breath; it occupies their minds day and night. They are mostly good men studying our sacred books and chanting prayers. Yet they, too, are called Yogis. But what have they in common with the beggars who prey on the ignorant masses? You see how elastic the term is! Between these two classes there are others who partake of the nature of both.”

Amidst all this energy and in the immediate presence of swamis such as Pujya Swamiji Chidananda Saraswati, visitors are often overcome with a sense of peace, light, and joy just living here. When you bring 500 people from all over the world to this little town in India you see all of them transformed within just a few days. Truly beautiful and amazing…

But they don’t all start that way. Some so-called ‘yogis’ certainly don’t act that way after 48 hrs of travel into a foreign country which is at the same time welcoming and startling. So that was the challenge of running registration for these people with very limited resources and many unexpected challenges. But of course it all ended up ok and those that were nearly crying across the desk from me when they arrived where hugging me with thanks by the end of the week. To make a long story short, most people from the west expect things to be a certain way in their life. When things don’t go their way (their room is not perfectly as they envisioned it, registration took more than 30 minutes, they have a roommate they hadn’t expected to have..) they tend to freak out. After some yoga they do a lot better…..

Anyways, the point is that I have never been so absolutely exhausted and yet pushed through. Not even with crew, not even with late and constant hospital visits for Mom, not even during my 80+ hour work week last fall. Running registration with the help of a few other amazing sevaks (volunteers) was the best example of yoga in my entire life. Somehow through it all, with only minor emotional breakdowns, I kept it going and with a smile the majority of the time. I was impressed with myself much less Thea and Sat Siri, my trusty gifts from God for the week…

The IYF started about 9 years ago with a small group of people from around the world gathering at Parmarth for a week of yoga together. It has grown from that original small group, maybe 20 people, to over 500 delegates this year. It provides a range of different styles of yoga asana (the yoga of movement that most Westerners are familiar with) as well as meditation, pranayama (yoga of breath control), yoga nidra (yoga of active relaxation), nada yoga (yoga of sound), satsangs with swamis and saints, lectures, and time to meet people from all over the world (33 countries to be exact). Swamiji has said the following about yoga which I could obviously not say any better than he:

Yoga is not a religion. It does not require you to believe in a certain God or to chant certain mantras. It is an ancient science which leads to health in the body, peace in the mind, joy in the heart and liberation of the soul.

These days people take yoga classes to learn all about the various techniques of hatha yoga, pranayama and meditation. But yoga is more than that. Yoga is a way of life, and its teachings should penetrate every aspect of your being from your actions to your speech to your thoughts.
A hatha yoga session has a beginning and an end. You start at 8:00 for instance, and you finish at 9:00. Your pranayama has a beginning and an end. You start at, say 6:00 and you finish at 7:00. Even meditation at least in the beginning has a fixed starting point and a fixed ending point. You sit in meditation for a certain number of minutes or hours each day.
Yes, yoga does encompass “asana” (the postures) and “pranayama” (the breathing exercises), but ultimately the word “Yoga” actually means Union. Union of what? Union of self to the Divine. That one –ness with the Divine is what we are striving for in our lives.
Lack of unity is the cause of all problems in the world, both on a personal level and on a global level. Personally we are not united with ourselves. We are constantly at war between our mind and our heart, our desires, our fears, our confusions. There is no balance, no harmony, no unity within ourselves. We are not united with God. We feel alone, we feel scared, we feel that everything is on our own shoulders. The divine union is not there.
In our families also, unity is not there. So frequently we are fighting with each other, manipulating each other, criticizing each other.
In our communities also unity is lacking. “I do Iyengar Yoga.” “I do Anasura Yoga.” “ I do Bikram Yoga.” “I do Kundalini Yoga.” “My type of yoga is better than your type of yoga.” Even though we are all practicing the art of Union, we are divided!!
And of course, in our world we are divided by nations, by religions, by color, et.
Yoga, therefore, in the fullest and most complete meaning is truly the panacea for al that which ails us, for all that which divides us, from the most basic personal level to the most complex global level.
But to find that union? How to become united?

Ok, so it was not just any hug but a hug from Amma, the Hugging Mother. This woman has been hugging for a few decades and counts over 4 million hugs given without reservation to anyone who asks. She is one of the “great gurus” of India that people know of instantly like Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, Swami RamDevji, and a few others. Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji from Parmarth is not on that celebrity scale which I really really appreciate because I can talk to him if I want to, see him daily, and not have to wait in a line for 8 hrs to be near him. More on him later…

This picture shows the thousands of people that gathered to have her Darshan (her blessing by way of a hug) in Jaipur. Somehow we were lucky enough to only be joined by maybe a thousand other people in Delhi so we only waited a few hours for our hugs instead of all night. This was a big surprise as you would think in Delhi, the capital of the country, there would be a hug crowd. Apparently there was the next night but we were back home in Rishikesh by then.

Her hugs are not from a wilting lily; she squeezes each person and gives them a message if they need to hear it. She always hugs you on her right side and has actually callused her face a bit from it! It is really something to watch her hug person after person; it kind of put me into a meditation or half sleep at midnight watching her hug person after person. She just grabs them in and holds tight for either a second or for some it lingers longer depending on what she needs to give them. This article from CNN sums it up relatively well for us Westerners trying to figure it out: Click here to read at least the first few paragraphs.

“I want to awaken motherhood in both men and women,” Amma says, referring to selfless love. “Motherhood is something that is fast disappearing from the world.”

Tell me about it..hehehe. We really all could benefit a lot from being more motherly, to each other and to ourselves. The world could certainly use a hug, a cup of milk, and a cookie (or in India, a roti and chai). Can you think of anything better for anyone’s ‘down days’ or just every day?

AMENDMENT -I have since visited Delhi with a wonderful host. I am sorry I called it “a horrible horrible city” below. I was emotional from the plethora of bad ideas I had experienced. Give it a try; you live and learn. – Suzanne 4.14.09

This is the first of my stops to on my spiritual journey. This will not be chronological so let’s start in Delhi:

This is one of the stops on my spiritual journey – McDonald’s in Delhi. The ice cream tastes EXACTLY the same in Delhi as in Virginia. And if you ask for extra extra chocolate, it is only 10 ruppees for each additional squirt of chocolate! I got two extras totaling my treat to a whopping 50cents of indulgence, McD’s style.

No, that is not me with blond hair. That is Sat Siri (Rachel Dougherty) the world famous ballerina (or Yogarina) from the Australia Ballet who is my roommate and FaceWashGuru. (Please pick up on how nearly nothing in the last sentence is fully true). She has taught me not just kundalini yoga every day but also how to properly wash my face with something other than a bar of soap. Apparently using hand soap on my face is not really that good for my skin?! She happens to have an incredible sense of humor, adventure, style, and grace. So I was very excited when she asked me to go with her to Delhi last week after the International Yoga Festival ended (tackling that story for another day). We headed to Delhi for 24 hours in order to get a hug. To be honest, I am still contemplating if tackling Delhi was worth the hug. I will explain the hug and its significance in the next post.

It was at least worth the adventure which is what you must remember when leaving the airport or train station and actually going into Delhi. It is a horrible horrible city which makes everywhere else in India feel like a ride down the lazy river at WaterCountry. I shouldn’t be so critical after such a short stay but I will allow others to describe any positive aspects of the city if they know of them.

We arrived in Delhi on the morning train so we had half a day to kill before going to get our hugs that night. At the advice of a friend we dropped our bags at a shanty little hotel near the train station and headed toward Connaught Circle for lunch, not at McDonalds. We ate near McDonald’s as it was our landmark for the restaurant our friend suggested. Unfortunately that meant asking “McDonald’s?” about 5 times which made me cringe in self-disgust that I was embodying the ‘ugly American’ image each lucky local wanted to confirm by my question. So after our lunch we were no cooler so we decided that soft serve sundaes from McDonald’s would not be the worst choice of the day (we didn’t know that at the time). So we enjoyed our little piece of Americana quite impressed with the lightning speed of service, incredible tidiness, and smiles all around. Were we really in India?

We were quickly reminded of reality as we stepped outside and our decisions went from bad to worse.

We decided that being in the big city of Delhi, we would further take our friend’s advice and splurge on a pedicure. After walking around without shoes and generally living in a filthy country, this didn’t really seem too extravagant for an afternoon. We got advice from a few ladies as to where to go but 2 hours later we were still outside without our feet up.

Bad choice #1 – going to Delhi without a full night’s rest or an air purifier or personal car

Bad choice #2 – ice cream on a hot day and then walking around for 2 hours inhaling exhaust. In the immortal words of Ron Burgundy “Milk was a bad idea.” Actually, I think eating in India outside of my ashram might be a bad idea.

Bad choice #3 – looking for pedicures at the advice of a man. Really this is the only time I have doubted Sat Siri’s judgment. She asked a man for a salon. It was not till we left the “beauty parlor” later that we realized that he had charged us 20ruppes for a rickshaw ride literally to the back side of the block! We were exasperated; I forgive her.

Bad choice #4 – actually agreeing to a “facial” and “manicure” when we found out this dive of a beauty parlor didn’t have pedicures.

Bad choice #5 – closing my eyes and letting the “facial” continue until there was grit and lotion in my eyes and mouth, lotion dripping down my front, and then paying something just to get out of there without blindness or an allergic reaction

I wish I had pictures of the horror or comedy that this “beauty parlor” experience was. Instead, I have the memory of me moaning under the vigorous hands of my torturer to confirm Sat Siri’s “Suzanne, do you want this to end now? Should we just leave now?”

This experience was made even better by the fact that we had only days earlier been treated to the most luxurious spa experience of our lives at Ananda in the Himalayas. This is also a story for another post.

Moral of the story – Don’t be anymore adventurous than you need to be in Delhi; just surviving is enough of an adventure. I am sure that the spiritual growth of that day occurred under the dangerous hands of a woman at a beauty parlor, not eating ice cream, where I learned to breath through lotion and pain.

More tomorrow . . .