Ashram days

      I stumbled sleepy-eyed down the pink steps of the pink high rise growing out of the coconut silhouetted backwaters.  Stairs wide enough for two, I believe, I am shocked when an older woman dressed all in white with a shaved head (and therefore obviously much holier than I) refuses to share the passage with me.   She budges not an inch, puts her hand to my shoulder, and pushes me up the stairs to the platform where she can pass me without having to make the slight sideways motion passing on the stairs would have required.  She mutters an "Om Namah Shivaya" as she does this, a little-known translation of which means "get the fuck out of my way."     
     Flashback to arriving at the ashram several days before and being ushered to the soft sand under the gently water-colored sky.  I think I am in heaven.  The sun sets over the Arabian Sea as Amma is asked the question, "what do you do when people at the ashram are getting on your nerves?"  She spends the next few satsangs- talks given by a spiritual teacher- on this question.  She asks us what we think, she laughs when the answers sound too spiritual, she tells us stories.  She is much sillier than I ever remember her being in the San Ramon ashram.  She tells us that we would not blame someone with a physical handicap for their handicap, so why should we take someone who has an anger problem seriously?
     Amma tells a story of a man with a handicap that makes him talk in a nasally manner.  He goes into a store where, unbeknownst to him, the man behind the counter has the very same impediment.  He gets angry because he think the other guy is making fun of him.  He gives him a peice of his mind, and when the man working at the store hears him speaking in the same nasally tone, he thinks he is the one who is being made a joke.  It goes on like this, tempers escalating, until things are about to get physical.  At this point, the store owner comes out.  He listens for a moment, and realizes what is going on.  Amma says we are like this when we fight with someone, instead of having the distance from our own reaction to realize that the other person is suffering.
     Tensions are high at the ashram.  As it nears Christmas, crowds swell.  It's like a flash flood.  Getting anywhere requires jumping into a roaring river of people, navigating down eddies and rapids, then catching the current that takes you to your destination.  Everyone just wants to be close to Amma, who just wants us to know that we are each Amma.
    Like the pigeon mother in our room who warms eggs on the ledge above our steel cots, I begin to nurture a question, still in it's shell, still in need of a soft nest and warm attention.
    People can rise daily at 4:30am to chant the 1008 names of the goddess, they can wear all white and live on sprouts, but what really changes someone's life?  What makes someone a happier person, more able to make the world a little bit happier and more peaceful of a place?  How is the spiritual path integrated into this world?
    With this question in mind, I begin the next step of my pilgrimage: to the master of integration, the spiritual head of the school I just graduated from, to Sri Aurobindo's ashram in the little ex-French colony of Pondichery on the shores of the Bay of Bengal.

Hero's Journey- The Ordeals

     I asked our friend, John-from-Cornwall, who has been to India 3 times, what keeps drawing him back.
     "Because India," he said in his English accent, "more than any other country takes you out of your comfort zone and knocks you upside the head."
    I recognized this answer because I have given it myself.  Yet somehow, 5 years of growing older with memory foam beds and unlimited hot water pressure showers had romanticized my memory of the ordeals of India.
    If you only had one sense, say smell, and your nose was given a 30-second whiff of India, it could take days to process the complex effect that the intermingling of incense, exhaust, urine, coconuts, cowpies, fried samosas, and cardamon has on your nasal cavity.  Now add in the (at least) 5 more senses that we routinely use and 24 hours of immersion in the sweltering, sticky, sweaty pulsation of one billion heartbeats, everything unutterably complex and confusing. Eyes assualted by garbage piles in the holiest of places, tongue tortured by the fire of a green mango pickle, red bumps of unknown origin colonizing whole continents of skin.  Every centimeter of every Indian city is lived and breathed.  If not by humans, then by cows, goats, chickens, pigs, cockroaches.  They forage in the garbage piles in this land where waste and life are not falsely separated. 
     Being here is like being an infant all over again.  Nothing makes any sense and there are all kinds of languages, verbal and non, to learn all over again.  There is the language the constant honks, some cartoonish, some insistent. Auto rickshaws operate on a "see no pedestrian, hear no pedestrian, run over no pedestrian" philosophy and as long as they honk loudly enough, they can drive as insanely as they choose.  there is a honk that says "I am here, don't hit me," one that says "I will hit you if you don't get out of my way" and a special holy honk for the holy cows that rule the streets.  Then there is the language and art of the head bobble.  Does a slight diagonal tilt to the lefthand side followed by two to the right mean "yes" "no" "I don't know" or "what a silly foreigner you are"?
     At this point you might be questioning my sanity or wondering if I am a secret masochist.  And why do we throw ourselves, consciously or not, into these trials that strain the very limits of our capacity as beings?  Why do we choose, as John said, to be "knocked upside the head?" Why must the hero's journey include the destruction of all that we know that keeps us safe and sane?  Is it worth it?
   I'll get back to you on that.  In the meantime, in this experiment, I am finding that the more broken open I become, the more my safety and sanity becomes part of a sacred, special core that I carry with me and less and less to do with clean air and comfort and that amazing latte they make at Pizzaiolo. 

Goan Mosaic

wake to wavesound close enough to touch
   verdant villages vegetationally well-endowed
       pig family garbage snuggle pile
bhaji pau spice breakfast
    chai shop slows clock
         manisha, manager of micky's huts- dark hair lush as the jungle
science of yoga sunset
    hints of Bombay belly
         Grace, curry scented
1,001 shops selling same ali baba pants
    kohl and seymour, adopted tumbling kittens
          pirate party
chesire cat moon smile
     salty playful ocean
          making pilgrims of every heart

Elephanta Island

Insolent monkey!
  
Stole that chili corn cob right out of Grace's hand

   as we climbed the stone teps of Elephanta Island
         lined by the trinkets of India
            ("Very good price, madam")
   On our way to see Shiva

Oh great god,
     who dances the world into being
             who has dreads and smokes a chillum
                     who is worshipped as a stone-cold phallus
This journey has not been easy

Why I gotta fall in love with the Destroyer?

Musings on Leaving Home

The literature on the hero's journey- the journey of transformation that one must take to be the star of one's own life- agrees on four main phases:  leaving home, ordeals, transformation, and the return.  I believe there is another, unacknowledged  part of this process that begins before and during leaving home.  I call it the "Oh, shit, what am I doing" phase.  For me, this part of my journey took the form of thoughts such as:

*Maybe I made a huge mistake by not going to Mexico and learning Spanish instead.  That would have been way better for my career.
*That new Johnny Depp movie looked good, and I bet they won't have memory foam at the guest houses in India.
*If I stayed at home, I could have more time enjoy the jeggings trend.

As difficult as it may be, I believe the task of the "oh, shit" phase is to see it for what it really is, the last ditch effort of the ego to not have to die.  For the only real certainty on the hero's journey is that when the hero returns, if she returns at all, she will be a new person.  Hopefully a more inspired, integrated, whole person and all that, but certainly a person who will need to reacquaint herself with her world.  And that is a very scary thing.