Across a line only the gods can see, the outer landscape shifts and the inner landscape adjusts to the new dance. Tongues curl around sounds in a different picture. Green and lush becomes red and dust. Slowly there is less concrete and fewer cars and more barren earth, bullock carts, and tin-bamboo shacks held together by woven leaves and hope. Here the roots of the banyan tree tangle with the invisible roots of humanities antiquity. Rice cooked over cow dung fires reminds me exactly how much we can loose. The clear, curious eyes that greet me remind me happiness is not dependent on what I think I cannot live without.
Pondicherry- the decay of colonial France meets seaside India. We made one pilgrimage stop to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Aurobindo was a pre-Gandhi Indian freedom fighter turned spiritual teacher who synthesized the wisdom of the world's spiritual traditions, and threw in modern science (especially psychology) for good measure. Thus he is one of the fathers of transpersonal psychology and the spiritual lineage holder of my school.
At the ashram, I spoke the smiling white haired man whose job it is to herd the faithful hordes. We were about to leave and I was feeling a little less enlightened than I was hoping to. The Lonely Bible (our name for the Lonely Planet guidebook) says there is meditation and yoga at the ashram so I ask.
"No," he tells me. I stand there like a lost puppy until he says, "And I'm going to tell you something else. Don't trust people who tell you they can teach you to meditate. They tell you concentrate on this, concentrate on that, your breath, an image, a mantra. But when you concentrate and your mind is crazy with thoughts, who can control your thoughts?"
Not sure if this was a rhetorical question, but always wanting to be the good student I answer, "Yourself?"
"Yes. So you see, don't go to someone else to meditate, just go to yourself."
As I grapple with this, he continues. "Here, you come, you sit by the Mother's samadhi. You know, Mother said 'I am near and I am far.' When you sit next to her, and you are not open, she is far. When you are 10,000 miles away and you are open to her, she is within you." I sense the conversation is over and we leave.
I leave content to add another piece of wisdom to my growing pile and contemplating the paradox. The truth is within and yet so often we need a teacher, or something else that is external to show us this truth. India does not seem willing to give me any easy answers, no teacher to tap on my shoulder and enlighten me with his gaze. Hearing that the answer within me is scary, for it requires self-discipline and the will to say I know what is right for myself. Perhaps in Tiruvanamalai, where Shiva is worshipped as the element of fire, I will find a flame to ignite that kind of powerful self-will.
