India 11: on time (or not)

The suggestions the other Americans made for improving the school led me to some reflections about time in India.

It began when Sarah responded to the outsiders' plea for a structured daily schedule, regular field trips, additional after-school programs, and so on, by saying, "I cannot ask my teachers to do more. They are already working long hours for reduced salaries. My teachers do what they do for affection, for love, not for money."

Values are different in India. Traditionally, it has been more important to ask after the family of the neighbor or relative you meet on the street than it is to get somewhere on time. Affection, caring, is of greater value than money or time. So, since many people still agree that responding to the need of the moment with love is more valuable than arriving on time or getting work done, the imposition of the Western values of efficiency and hard work is not always effective.

Values are shifting, however, as the Boom proves - young people are rapidly rejecting traditional value systems in favor of current fashion. All those new buildings are rising on schedule and the IT industry is delivering on time.

Nonetheless, I hope the person calling on that cell phone ringing in the temple of the sacred deity is asking about the family of the smiling young woman answering it.

India 10: Visakhapatnam

Here's a letter I sent friends from Vizag:


Roxanne and I are in Vizag now, going to pieces of the wedding almost every day and hanging out at the school for developmentally disabled children the rest of the time. Another group of Americans is here, too, an advisory committee trying to help the school by giving a lot of advice and no money.

Vizag is very modern. So different from Benares and Bhubaneswar. Yesterday we went shopping for shoes to match my new saree for the main ceremony of the wedding, which is black and gold, very elegant (and only cost rs 1500). Driving through the shopping district with Sarah we saw a rickshaw - and it looked totally out of place. In Benares, you're often riding in a rickshaw seeing nothing but other rickshaws, bicyclists, and cows being herded through the streets. We went to a meeting at Andhra University, which almost could have been an American university. There are new high-rises everywhere, the streets are wide and clean and cell phones are totally ubiquitous. People chat away in the holiest places. Roxanne tells them to talk somewhere else in their native tongue, which usually shuts them up fast.

India changes both faster and slower than the rest of the world. The saree, which is almost the only clothing women wear here in the south, hasn't changed much in thousands of years, the food, which is still eaten with the fingers all over India, is uninfluenced by outside cultures as far as I can tell. But technology! After dinner at Devipuram, which is an ashram an hour and a half's drive from here, deep in the jungle, everyone watches TV after dinner. They have a satellite dish. Guruji, after sitting in a hut giving out mantras to infertile couples while overseeing his students as they practice ancient rituals all day, logs on to his computer in the evening. He showed us his group's latest productions on the TV, too, a very sophisticated animation about the chakras. All this was true last time too, but now it's not new; it's just part of everyone's life.

It's been very enlightening observing the other Americans. They make almost no attempt to assimilate the culture. They wear their Western clothes, eat with forks and knives and ask that the food be modified to their taste - then they adapt it to make it fit their categories, eating the dal with a spoon and calling it "the soup" instead of pouring it onto their rice, sweetening and cutting fruit into their curd and calling it yogurt instead of salting it and mixing it with their other food, making jokes about "where's the steak?" When we went to the tailor's to have Roxanne's and my blouses made, they commented "some neighborhood!" when it was quite an ordinary street of small Indian businesses. One couple went to church on Sunday and another woman refused the chairman of the psychology department's invitation to dinner because she doesn't eat dinner after 7 PM.

At the conference yesterday we each had to speak briefly (embarrassing Indian custom, but part of the culture around guests). Roxanne spoke on cross-cultural communication, emphasizing the importance of being sensitive to the perspective of the other. I hope our American companions heard her, but I suspect they are already doing their best. After all, they are here, trying to help. What is painful to me is that the solutions they offer are so based in their own culture that all the people at the school are hearing is how inadequate their facilities and pedagogies are. All the American solutions are about getting more things, about doing more, and about cleanliness. The Americans don't see that their solutions either can't or won't happen here because the values are different and because time runs differently here. The children don't need the constant stimulation they are recommending: they need to know how to "be" and well as to "do", because in their lives, being is an important skill. The performance impressed that idea on us - the children sat perfectly still watching their compatriots dance, sing, play instruments for hours. American children could never have done it.


So much of this part of the trip has been about watching East and West interact, and I have to say, the Indian side comes off as gracious, generous, and accommodating, and the American as inflexible, limited by their own perception of what is right, and rude to the point of being racist. They treat the Indians like children. It's painful to see.

This morning we saw the groom Srihari's feet painted and we took part in a blessing which involved putting rice and turmeric on his head! He's gentle and interesting young man, a drummer for the dance troupe his mother runs. After the ceremony his younger brother, who's the lead dancer, and his friend took us back to the school on their scooters. We took the road along the bay, which is very beautiful, riding sidesaddle with our bags in our arms and our scarves flying out behind us.

Tomorrow evening is the main ceremony of the wedding.

India 9: clean air and good food in Bhubaneshwar

A clean world met us at the train station in Bhubaneshwar. A storm so intense it dropped hail and broke branches off trees had just passed through, making it possible for us to breathe freely for the first time since we'd arrived in India.

After getting settled in at Siddhi Mandap, we took a walk through Old Town. Raj pointed out the temples and tanks that are getting cleaned up, the new walls, plazas and plantings around the main pond. A pretty different scene from Benares, where the much beloved Ganga Math was replaced by a shopping mall.

How come Bhubaneshwar has the sense to preserve its Old Town, I asked, when so many other places in India are letting the boom take over? It's Ileana, said Raj. She has influence in high places. Ah.

The next day we had food at one of the main temples, Mahaprasad, sacred food of the highest order cooked by Raj's family, longtime priests of the temple kitchens (which feed 3000-5000 people a day!) It was - as it was the last time we were there - probably the best food we ate on our whole journey. Mmm.

doorway to Ganga Math, East/West center at Assi Ghat, Benares, 1968-2007

Religion is local, but...

As these things happen, on the day I brought home a wonderful picture of Ganesh Baba (given to me by Hari Meyers), a brass Ganesh I'd bought arrived from India. The two are dancing to the same rhythm, no doubt amplified by the Ganesh mantra I've been using lately.

Ganesh Baba told me, and he says it in Crea Sadhana too, that there comes a time in everyone's spiritual practice that it's necessary to choose a single figure to love with your whole heart. It doesn't matter who you choose, Jesus, Mother Earth, Krishna, Bastet, Osho, whoever. It's a matter of giving your whole heart.

Maybe because I was raised in such an anti-religious family, I've always balked at the idea. I thought the best I'd ever be able to do was revere my teachers. Bhakti, religious devotion, was not a place I would ever try to go.

Which is why I am coming to it through the back door - the intellectual tussle I've been having with myself over whether religion is local or universal. What I've come round to thinking - and feeling, not incidentally - is not new, even to me, but lately my understanding is deeper: religion is local; spirituality is universal.

The understanding of ego and consciousness Tolle is talking about is very much aligned with Baba's teaching. What they share is universal. These new, very lovely manifestations of Ganesh that are showing up now, this new beginning just at the spring equinox, is my personal doorway to the universal.

What more could I ask?

India 8: the boom hits Vindhyachal

Three years ago I wrote a post called "Pilgrimage to Vindhyachal".

This year we made the same pilgrimage, but it took half the time to get there because now there's a modern highway leading up the Ganges.

Of course, highway driving in India is not the same as highway driving elsewhere. In India, there may be traffic rules on the books, but people follow the same rules they have always followed walking in crowds: look forward, fill any empty space, and don't bump into anyone. It's pretty amazing how well it works in crowds of people, cattle, rickshaws and an occasional scooter. Speeding along a four lane road, however, it is very scary! The double line at the center means nothing; a median strip only means its harder to get back onto the other side.


But the gods were with us and we arrived safely. The temples were crowded as always, but we had a wonderful meal served on banana leaves as we sat cross-legged on the ground at a traditional rest house for pilgrims.

Our visit to Dinesh Baba's house brought the biggest surprise, though. Atop the ruin he and his family have made into a pleasant home is a satellite dish! Indian MTV poured out of the open doorway as we sat around the dhuni chatting. Dinesh Baba himself sported a fresh haircut and had stopped drinking and smoking. The happy result of this effort at fitting into the mainstream is that his daughter is engaged to be married. Who would've thought.
Dinesh Baba in 2005

A New Earth

Home now, I'm listening to Eckhard Tolle's new book as I clean house.

This information going out into the larger world through Oprah is a very good thing. So many people are being initiated new levels of consciousness through it.

There is hope.

India 7: manifestations of Shiva

One evening in Benares we took part in a puja. We climbed up the long steep stairs from the river to a high red gate. A low door opened; we had to bend down to enter.

Inside was an open area with a dhuni near a sacred tree. Under the tree a high wooden seat looked out over the Ganges. At each of arms of the chairs was a high stake capped with a skull.

A dozen or so of us sat on straw mats around the fire while a young man led us through a long ceremony, reciting countless rhythmic verses in Sanskrit as we tossed grain into the fire. The sound was so beautiful, the fire so entrancing, that I didn't notice the sun setting behind the buildings.

When I finally looked up, I saw a figure coming out of a door. Surely it was the god Shiva himself: a near-naked ash-covered sadhu with knotted hair and beard. He left through the little red door. Some time later I looked up again and there was Shiva again, now on the seat under the tree. The third time I saw him, he was headed toward the gate again. As I watched, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his lungi and lit one.

After the puja another manifestation of Shiva showed up, this one a young baba, fluent in English, who was wearing so many malas they formed a great shield on his chest and his chin was forced upward. The incongruous thing about this guy was that he was wearing eyeglasses with very up-to-date frames, and he had a cell phone hooked to a string around his waist.

Only in India.

India 6: expanding awareness in Kashi

The Sahi River View Guest House in Benares is right on the river (or was, until the dam was built - now it is above some mudflats which are being rapidly transformed into a fancy plaza). Still, it is easy to get up early to see the sun rise over the Ganges. Our first morning there, we were out on the ghats before dawn.

After tea at an open air tea stall on the steps, we stopped in to visit Mark Dyczkowski who told us that after many years of studying Kashmir Shaivism, he was just beginning to teach. In fact, at 5 PM that very evening he would be giving the first of a series of classes on Trika yoga: a short talk and then meditation.

As the sun set that evening, Mark began with several outwardly simple propositions.

Everything is consciousness.

Consciousness is contained in three states: creation, persistence and destruction; and these three are all contained in a fourth state: eternity. This three-in-one is what is understood as Lord Shiva, or God.

Everything is God.

Trika yoga is a practice in which you realize your own Shiva-nature by becoming increasingly aware of your own awareness.

When you are aware that everything is consciousness, when your attention is fixed on your sense of awareness, when you are in the pure state of "I am" however briefly, you are one with Shiva.

We practiced being aware of our own consciousness with eyes closed and then with eyes open.

It is easy to reach that state for an instant, but it is very hard to maintain it.

And that is the basis of the practice of Trika yoga.

I was very moved by these ideas and continue to reflect on them. When I came home, I downloaded Mark's lectures from his website. I'm loving the practice and the understandings I am gaining from the talks.

India 5: The Boom Hits Bareilly

When I was in India three years ago, I attended a dinner party at Vikram Soni's house in New Delhi right before leaving. The conversation came round to the Boom in India. Geeti Sen, who was seated next to me, took it philosophically. "India survived the Moguls, India survived the British, and India will survive Western culture," she said.

By this visit, the Boom was so pervasive that it was easy to wonder if India will survive. The shopping block near Vikram's house full of Western-style shops: TGIF, The Gap, KFC. Western clothing is as common as Indian in many parts of the big cities. And cell phones have become a real nuisance.

But who would have thought it would have reached Bareilly? It turns out that Bareilly's location between Lucknow and New Delhi makes it a very hot place for development.

In fact, the Boom even hit Alakh Nath Temple. Imagine our surprise when, on reaching the Temple just after dark, we were greeted by a brightly lit statue of Hanuman at least sixty feet tall. (As it turns out, the statue is the work of Harish Johari, who was from Bareilly, and a long-time friend of Ganesh Baba's.)

More changes greeted us inside the temple gates. Even in the dark, you could tell things were cleaned up. And there at the main dhuni, sat Balak Baba! Though he's aged considerably since Peter Meyer took this picture, Balak Baba's loving energy affects the whole akhara. It's full of joy!

Not to mention new buildings. We sat at Saloney Baba's dhuni, too, laughing, smoking, and listening to stories, and there we met the young man responsible for all the changes, a local fellow in the business of building shopping malls but completely dedicated to the babas. Anand Akhara found an angel!

India 4: How will you know who the father is if you don't ask the mother?

"How will you know who the father is if you don't ask the mother?" is a line I've been crediting to Ganesh Baba for years. Now I know that he was quoting a song by the great Baul singer, Lalon Shah.

One evening in Dehradun we watched a very beautiful Bangladeshi film Lalon, which, unfortunately, is not likely to make its way to the West any time soon. How I wish it would. Such stunning cinematography, such fine use of Lalon's songs to tell the story and to pass on the teachings, and such delightful caricatures of the people who didn't understand Lalon.

The Bauls are the wandering folksingers, singing sadhus, of Bengal. Their lineage, practice, and philosophy crosses the lines of traditional Hinduism and Islam, closer in some ways to Sufism, but a unique variant. Like all Tantric lineages, the Bauls believe that the way to God is through the human body.

I found it a tremendous relief to see the film after days of exploring the differences between belief systems rather than the commonalities. Here, among such poetic images and terms, I found myself sitting on my own magic carpet once again.

India 3: Tibet in Dehradun

February 10 - 14

While in Dehradun visiting our friend Jayant Gupta we also visited Tibet. We went to the vibrant Tibetan settlement.

We'd heard that Mindrolling Trichen Rinpoche had just died, but we didn't know that he was still in samadhi, sitting up straight, surrounded by his people, and that he wouldn't be considered really dead until he fell over, which could happen soon, or not for a couple weeks. The presence of thousands of followers sharing in the rituals going on around him meant that we couldn't go to the main stupa, so we visited Jayant's friend the weaver and his wife instead.

The couple lived in a small room mostly filled with an elaborate altar stacked with neat piles of baked offerings for the lama. After a requisite sharing of some whiskey, the weaver showed us some of his things: his drums, his yellow dragon hat, and his flute made of a bone. He played for us and he chanted, blessing us over and over again. It was soon evident that this humble man was much more than a weaver. We went to the temple and saw the special dice used for divination and the ancient book of interpretations. We were there for a long time, taking in the sounds and colors of Tibet.



By the time we left, I think we all felt as honored as if we'd had the darshan of the lama himself. And perhaps we had.

India 2: the rug is pulled out

February 9, 2008

It is only by grace that one meets people like professor
Dr. Lokesh Chandra. How lucky for me that Roxanne cultivated such a deep friendship with Dr. Chandra, who is the uncle of her first husband. This was my second visit there; my photo of him in Wikipedia was taken three years ago.

Since the purpose of this visit to India was to gather information that would help me write the commentary for Ganesh Baba's manuscript, I showed the professor what I had finished so far and asked for his comments.

His response totally threw me. After remarking that the layout looked very nice, he told that he disagreed with the basic premise. Let me share the synopsis I sent to the publisher:

"Ganesh Baba (Shri Mahant Swami Ganeshanand Saraswati or Giri, c.1885 – 1987), the ever-edgy embodiment of Lord Ganesh and original outrageous Psychedelic Swami, left behind three book-length manuscripts, all serious works: carbon copies of carbon copies covered with his handwritten corrections and commentary. Crea Sadhana, a manual for spiritual practice, is the first of these to be published. Written at the height of the sixties, Ganesh Baba’s message of systematic synthesis of the spiritual and the secular through ancient and modern science is more relevant today than ever before.

Crea (for “crea”-tive) Yoga is a unique set of exercises and understandings evolved from the tantric practices of traditional Kriya yoga carefully culled for contemporary students, particularly those whose path includes the use of marijuana and other entheogens. A balanced, accelerated, self-perpetuating process of physical, biological, psychological and spiritual integration, Crea is based on a deceptively simple numerology and the open-hearted belief that all religious paths have the same end.

Crea Sadhana contains the core of Ganesh Baba's teachings, beginning with conscious control of one's posture, breath and attention, and extending to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Like the god whose name he bears, Baba's words and diagrams break through the barriers of current cultural and personal thought patterns, and continue to reveal their secrets long after one finishes reading."

The part with which Dr. Chandra disagrees is that, at an essential level, all religions share their genesis and goals. That idea, he explained, rose out of the linking of East and West in Calcutta during the decades before and when Ganesh Baba lived there, a convenient new concept arising from the need to get along, and not one with a longer history or any real credence. He gave me the names of the Brahmo and Arya Samaj to look up, and talked about the Bengali Renaissance, and suggested I read the history of the Theosophical Society.

I responded politely but the rug was gone. I stood uneasily on the rough floor wondering how I would ever regain solid footing.

India 1: The power of dreams

February 6 - March 7, 2008

The morning I was due to fly to New York and from there to New Delhi, I dreamed I couldn't pass through a room full of people with their arms and legs in braces. Wires crossed every possible path and the space sparkled with flashing LEDS. I had somewhere to go but I couldn't get there.

When I woke, the phrase "encumbered by technology" rang in my head. With some reluctance, I repacked my bags, leaving behind my laptop, the video camera and all their paraphernalia. It seemed the obvious thing to do. I kept my tiny digital camera in its little case in my handbag, but I left the wires to connect it to the computer. My luggage much lightened, I felt great.

The flight to New York was fine, and I spent a delightful day and a half at my daughter's place in Brooklyn, and then I met my friend Roxanne Gupta at the airport at Newark. Our flight left around midnight.

My month in India was full of revelation and profound lessons, as always. In fact, it went extraordinarily well with one exception: near the end of the month, my little camera was stolen.

So this journal does not include the many photos I took. Words and an occasional borrowed image will have to do.

What can I say? I tried to sneak past the gate and I got caught.