Namarupa Issue 03 by Namarupa

FREE SOUNDWALK CD TOUR OF VARANASI NARRATED BY DR. ROBERT E. SVOBODA

FALL 2004

“WHY YOGA?”

IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS WITH

T.K.V. DESIKACHAR B.K.S. IYENGAR K. PATTABHI JOIS

PHOTOGRAPHY ISSUE FEATURING DINESH KHANNA MARTIN BRADING T.S. SATYAN MAXINE HENRYSON MARK PAUL PETRICK SUCHITRA VAN

US $10.00 CAN $13.95 DISPLAY UNTIL JUNE 05 www.namarupa.org

CANNIBAL GARDEN BY PETER LAMBORN WILSON THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN PATANJALI BY SHYAM RANGANATHAN

& MORE

PHOTOGRAPHY ISSUE FALL 2004

COVER Hanumánji. Photo by Martin Brading. GATEFOLD Aruóácala pradaküióa. Photo by Martin Brading. 3

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHERS

CONTRIBUTORS

Letters to Contributors

An exchange about an article in the Winter 2004 Issue: SAíKHYÄ & YOGA: ONE DARúANA OR TWO?

R. Alexander Medin; Deirdre Summerbell

3 GURUS, 48 QUESTIONS Matching interviews with SRI T.K.V. DESIKACHAR, SRI B.K.S. IYENGAR & SRI K. PATTABHI JOIS

Ram Alexander

DEATH MUST DIE (Based on the Diaries of Atmanananda) A Western Woman’s Lifelong Spiritual Quest In India with Sri Anandamayee Ma

Suchitra Van

Photographs of a Remembered India ESTRANGEMENT

Shyam Ranganathan

The Role of the Teacher in PATAìJALI’S YOGA SÇTRAS

Mark Paul Petrick

Photographs 1998-2002 AN INDIA

H.H. Sri Swami Satchidananda

REMOVING THE SMALL CIRCLE

Eddie Stern

From the new Soundwalk CD VARANASI - THE CITY OF LIGHT

T. S. Satyan

UNITING WHAT LIFE HAS DIVIDED

James Mallinson

A new translation of the GHERAîöA SAéHITÄ Chapter Seven: Samádhi

Dinesh Khanna; Pico Iyer

LIVING FAITH: Windows into the Sacred Life of India Reviewed by Sharmila & Shankar Desai

George van den Barselaar

SWAMI LAKSHMANJOO: MEDITATION IN KAûMIR úAIVISM

Peter Lamborn Wilson

CANNIBAL GARDEN

Maxine Henryson

BABY SPECIAL DIAMONDS

Shyam Das

YAMUNA’S STORY

Photo Essay: One

Photo Essay: Two Interview

Photo Essay: Three & Interview Scripture Photo Essay: Four & Book Review

Photo Essay: Five

BACKCOVER Káùà Mirror Map

úrà Aruóácala Akùaramanamalai The Marital Garland of Letters 222 úrà Ramaóa Maháäüà 222

1. You root out the ego Of those who in their heart Dwell on you, Aruóácala! 13. Quintessence of Om Unrivalled, unsurpassed, Who can comprehend you? Aruóácala! 27. All-engulﬁng Sun of bright rays! Make my mind-lotus bloom, Aruóácala! 43. Indeed Self is The principle supreme; Reveal this yourself to me, Aruóácala! 46. Of what use this birth Without pure knowledge? Do come and fulﬁll it, Aruóácala! 57. When will thoughts cease So that I may attain you Who are subtler than space, Aruóácala!

Aruóácala Mountain,Tamil Nadu, South India Sketch by úrà Ramaóa Mahárüà “Getting rid of the ‘I am the body’ idea and merging into the heart to realize the Self as non-dual being and the light of all, is the real significance of the darùan of the beacon of light on Aruóácala, the center of the universe.” - úrà Ramaóa Mahárüà. Aruóácala is one of the oldest and most sacred of India’s holy places. The Skanda Purana declares: “Of all, Aruóácala is the most sacred. It is the heart of the world. Know it to be the secret and sacred heart-center of úiva.” This photograph shows pilgrims performing pradaküina [circumambulation] of Aruóácala on pâróima [the full moon] night. The photograph was taken near the Yama Liïgam on the southern side of the mountain and is looking northwards. Photograph by Martin Brading.

Publishers & Founding Editors ROBERT MOSES & EDDIE STERN Advisors DR. ROBERT E. SVOBODA MEENAKSHI MOSES JOCELYNE STERN Senior Editor DEIRDRE SUMMERBELL 2 Diacritic Editor ISAAC MURCHIE Assistance from SPIROS ANTONOPOULOS ERIN FLYNN DEBORAH HARADA PASCALE WILLI 2

NÄ M A RÇ PA, Categories of Indian Thought, is a journal that seeks to record, illustrate, honor, as well as comment on, the many systems of knowledge, practical and theoretical, that have originated in India. Passed down through the ages, these systems have left tracks, paths already traveled, which can guide us back to the Self, which is the source of all names [NÄMA] and forms [RÇPA]. NÄMARÇPA seeks to present articles that shed light on the incredible array of DARúANAS, YOGAS and VIDYÄS that have evolved over thousands of years in India’s creatively spiritual minds and hearts. The publishers have created this journal out of a love for the knowledge that it reflects, and desire that its content be presented clearly and inspirationally, but without any particular agenda or sectarian bias. The aim is to permit contributors to present offerings that accurately represent their own traditions, without endorsement or condemnation. Each traditional perspective on reality is like a different branch on a vast tree of knowledge, offering diverse fruits to the discerning reader. Though NÄMARÇPA begins life as a tender sprout, it will, as it grows, offer shade, shelter and sustenance to its readers and contributors alike, it is hoped. Now, though, it needs nurturing with articles, images, ideas and contributions. We invite you to support us in any way that you can. Please visit our website at: www.namarupa.org

THE FALL 2004 ISSUE OF NÄMARÇPA HAS BEEN MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS GRANT FROM SONIA AND PAUL JONES.

NÄMARÇPA, Categories of Indian Thought, is published by NÄMARÇPA, Inc. Editorial offices are at: 430 Broome Street, #2, New York City, NY 10013, and production offices are at: P.O. Box 271, Dublin NH 03444. Subscription Rates: Single current issue: US$10.00 + US$3 s&h. (+US$4 Canada + US $8 all other countries). 1 Year (2 issues): US $19.90 includes s&h (+US $6 Canada + US $14 all other countries). 2 Years (4 issues): US$34.85 includes s&h (+US$8 Canada + US $25 all other countries). 3 Year (6 issues): US$50.00 includes s&h (+US$10 Canada + US$36 all other countries). All payments in U.S. $ drawn on a U.S. bank. For bulk orders, distributors, subscriptions and other information, please email: subscriptions@namarupa.org. Send all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc. to: NÄMARÇPA 430 Broome Street, #2, New York City, NY 10013. Send all production mail, advertisements and address changes to NÄMARÇPA P.O. Box 271, Dublin NH 03444. Manuscripts, photography, and all art work must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. ©2003 NÄMARÇPA, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without permission is prohibited. Printed in the USA.

NÄMARÇPA uses diacritical marks, as per the chart shown to the right, for the transliteration of all Saêskäta words. While many of the articles do contain these marks, it is not a universal occurrence in the magazine. In those cases where authors have elected not to use diacritics, Saêskäta words remain in their simple, romanized form.

FALL 2004

Ç ÇŸ Ñ Ö Ü á à â ƒ‚ ƒ· ä ã å ç ÇÄ ÇÅ é ê í î ñ ò ö ú û † ¢ § • ß ® ™ ¨ Æ ∞ ≤ ¥ ∂ ∏ ∫ º æ ¿ ƒ ∆ À Œ – “ ’ & ◊

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

a á i à u â ä ã å ç e ai o au aê aë ka kha ga gha ïa ca cha ja jha ña ôa ôha õa õha óa ta tha da dha na pa pha ba bha ma ya ra la va ùa üa sa ha küa tra jña

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHERS

HE OFFERINGS OF THE INDIAN SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS come in all shapes and sizes. From an outsider’s pointof-view, we may think we see a formula for realization, but what we are actually seeing is merely a template, a directional map, for our perception of reality and personal expression. In the West (or, at least, in places where it snows), it is commonly said that “no two snowflakes are alike.” In India, this sentiment can be expanded to include temples, pujas, garlands, philosophical interpretations, and self-realizations, no two of which themselves are alike. India has made room for each individual to seek out his or her connection to life and to what sustains it. The rishis of yore and the endless numbers of texts and teachings, in fact, constantly attest to this truth: that reality is real and it can be discovered. Originally, NÄ M A RÇ PA Magazine was created to investigate and explore the territory of names and forms that act as signposts of this reality. However, what is sustainable and desirable at one moment in time is not always sustainable and desirable in the next. Because matter is constantly in a state of flux, each and every form, after taking shape, decays and takes on a new form. And NÄ M A RÇ PA too, though only two years old, has itself begun to shift and to move away from its format as a magazine and to explore a range of other possibilities. Our imprint will continue, of course, just as it will continue to reach into the rich diversity of India to find inspirational and traditional material to send to you. But the next issue of NÄ M A RÇ PA you receive will not necessarily be in the form of a magazine. Instead, it may be a small book, a CD or DVD, a poster-sized fold-out—or even a big packet of incense and flower petals from an Indian temple. The possibilities, in other words, are endless, as endless as the myriad numbers of names and forms. We are excited to begin producing a variety of offerings that delve into the categories of Indian thought by means of all manner of instruments of knowledge, inspiration, and devotion. We sincerely hope that you will continue to accompany us as we evolve into more formula-free and manifold manifestations. For those who wish to continue reading traditional magazine-style content, we will also begin posting articles on our website in December of this year. New articles by Shyam Das, Abdi Assadi, Edwin Bryant (and more) will launch this initiative, so we invite you to visit www.namarupa.org to explore and enjoy the new NÄ M A RÇ PA in one of its manifold new forms. With kind regards, Robert Moses and Eddie Stern Ranganatha, Mysore, South India, 2001. Photograph by Maxine Henryson. FALL 2004

CONTRIBUTORS Ram Alexander met Sri Anandamayee Ma in 1972 and remained in India for the next twelve years, much of which time he spent as a contemplative monk in Ma’s ashram. He later had the darùan of Mt. Kailash. He currently resides with his wife in their hermitage near Assisi, Italy. Martin Brading is an English-born photographer who has been taking pictures professionally for the last twenty-five years. He was a collaborator on The Art of Yoga and is currently working on several projects related to India and Hinduism. Both he and his wife, Barbara Boris, are students of yoga acárya B. K. S. Iyeïgar. Maxine Henryson photographs the atmospheres and color tonalities of contrasting social landscapes and the spiritual aspects of culture. Her artist book, Presence, was published in April 2003. She lives and works in New York City. James Mallinson is a graduate of Eton and Oxford University, holds a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and returned to Oxford for his doctorate. He has also spent years in India, living amongst the yogis. R. Alexander Medin has been an avid practitioner of yoga for the past ten years. He also holds a master’s degree in Sanskrit and Indian religions. Mark Petrick is an artist and photographer who has made pictures in, and been inspired by the culture of, India. He is a student of the Advaitic philosophy of Ramesh Balsekar and Ramana Maharshi.

His website is www.markpetrick.com. Shyam Ranganathan is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of philosophy at York University in Toronto. He has a B.A. and an M.A. in philosophy and an M.A. in South Asian studies. His current research areas include ethics, philosophy of language, and Indian philosophy. Dr. Robert E. Svoboda While living in India, Dr. Robert E. Svoboda received a degree in Ayârvedic medicine and was tutored by the Aghori Vimalánanda in Ayârveda, yoga, Jyotiü, Tantra and other forms of classical Indian lore. Suchitra Van has taught at Parsons School of Architecture, in collaboration with Linnaea Tillett, as well as at the Kamala Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture in Mumbai, India, and the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst in Vienna. He received his architectural degree from The Cooper Union. George van den Barselaar lived in Kashmir for nine years and studied full-time with Swami Lakshmanjoo. Since 1991, he has worked for the Universal úaiva Fellowship, transcribing the recorded lectures of Swami Lakshmanjoo on Kaùmir úaivism. Peter Lamborn Wilson lived in India and Iran for ten years. He has collaborated on a number of Persian translations, including Drunken Universe, An Anthology of Persian Suﬁ Poetry, with N. Pourjavady, Omega Press, and Sacred Drift, City Lights Publishers.

Cover: úrà Hanumanji, Bundi, Rajastan. Photograph by Martin Brading.

Back Cover: Map by Kailáùanátha Sukula, entitled “A Mirror of KÄúÅ.”

FALL 2004

LETTERS TO CONTRIBUTORS

SAíKHYÄ & YOGA: ONE DARúANA OR TWO? In the Winter 2003 issue of NÄMARÇPA, Shyam Ranganathan wrote an article on the distinction between Saïkyhá and yoga, about which Tim Winship had the following question.

HYAM RANGANATHAN WRITES THAT IT IS the different methods of the Saïkyhá and yoga schools that are usually thought to distinguish them, whereas he finds that they have fundamentally different views of the nature of puruüa and that the distinction between them follows from this. But this explanation contradicts what I understand to such an extent that I can’t resist responding. As I understand it, consciousness and all manifest nature come into being as a result of the inexplicable contact between puruüa and prakäti, but consciousness (manas, ahamkára, and buddhi) is wholly a part of prakäti. (I remember Krishnamurti saying somewhere that thinking is a material process; it was a striking comment, particularly as it was made outside the context of traditional Indian thought, and I didn’t recognize its origins at the time.) Consciousness can reflect the light of puruüa to a greater or, usually, lesser extent, but puruüa is otherwise uninvolved. Both Saïkyhá and yoga subscribe to this view, I believe. Saïkyhá and yoga, as with so many systems, come about from the experience of being alive and from the sense of alienation and suffering, and intimation of an inchoate spirit (puruüa) and impulse towards self-realization, that it entails. Both are responding to the presence of puruüa, however dimly perceived, and offer an approach that increases that presence in consciousness. In both cases, puruüa is indifferent to whatever action is taken. Suffering, longing, intention, and the means to realization are all functions or attributes of prakäti. The idea that ours is a case of mistaken identity, which comes from the intuition of puruüa, leads to the development of sádhana. Saïkyhá’s chosen mode is

reasoning, yoga’s, following Patañjali, the eight limbs. Both occur in the realm of prakäti and, for both, puruüa is a nonagent. Ranganathan seems to conflate the individual person and his will with puruüa and is led by this mistake to his conclusion. When he outlines the similarities between Saïkyhá and yoga, he refers to the shared notions of prakäti and puruüa, but doesn’t emphasize the utter and complete duality that seems so uncompromising (and breathtaking, provocative, and disturbing at the same time). He maintains the strict duality in his assessment of Saïkyhá when he says that the reasoning of the Saïkyhá darùana is extraneous to puruüa and that “the only thing puruüa contributes to life is the light of consciousness....” But he then breaks it down when speaking of yoga by ascribing to his person/puruüa the “ability to gain control...” and to being involved in ”active effort.” I can’t imagine Patañjali attributing such effort to the puruüa. Having created this distinction between the two schools, Ranganathan then finds that this gives rise to an issue of “the greatest moral significance.” To my mind, there’s no basis for his concern, since both Saïkyhá and yoga are working in the realm of prakäti, through different modes of action, to overcome the ignorance that obscures the presence of puruüa. Adherents of both are striving, for better and for worse, and are, to some extent, “in control of and responsible for” their destinies, and so are not mere victims. But maybe I’m missing the boat here, though it has been interesting thinking and writing about the article. And thank you to NÄMARÇPA and to the forum that it provides.

IM WINSHIP LEVELS MANY CHARGES against my reading of the Yoga Sâtra. To catalogue my reply to each is beyond the scope of this response. However, one remark of Winship’s is particularly revealing. In response to my claim that Saïkyhá regards bondage as extraneous to the puruüa, but that, in the context of yoga, the puruüa takes on the task of freeing itself from its real state of

bondage, Winship writes that he “can’t imagine Patañjali attributing such eﬀort to the puruüa.” This encapsulates what I regard to be the error of Winship’s criticism: it fails to take into account Patañjali’s text and defers to what we imagine Patañjali to be saying. The Yoga Sâtra clearly states, at the point I cite, that the puruüa is the “lord” or “sovereign” of the mind (sadá jñátáùcitta-vättayas tat-prabhoë puruüasyáparióámitvát YS, IV.18). Lordship is a loaded idea, which includes, among other things, the idea of governance. To govern is to control. This is the text talking, not me. It is important to note that this is not an isolated reference to either the power or lordship of the puruüa in the Yoga Sâtra. At Yoga Sâtra III.50, the text tells us that lordship over all things and omniscience come about when the distinction between puruüa and the sattva guóa is known (sattvapuruüányatá khyáti-mátrasya sarvabhávádhiüôhátätvaê sarva-jñátätvaê ca). More importantly, the Yoga Sâtra tells us that the point of the conjunction of prakäti and puruüa is to allow puruüa to be “Its own spiritual master, with the power to reveal Its own true form” (sva-svámi-ùaktyoë svarâpopalabdhihetuë saêyogaë YS II.23). This sâtra brings home the empowered nature of the puruüa: it is an agent capable of accomplishing important goals. And the purpose of saêyoga (the coming together of puruüa and prakäti) is to enable puruüa to take a pro-active stance with respect to its own destiny. The Sáïkhya Káriká, at one point, appears to aﬃrm the lordship of the puruüa, but this is a chimera, I believe. At Sáïkhya Káriká 17, Åùvarakäüóa argues that one of the reasons that puruüas must be thought to exist is because something must be the adhiüôhánát—a term which can sometimes be translated as “governing” or “lording over,” but which also refers to something that stands by and observes. Shortly afterwards, Åùvarakäüóa tells us that puruüa is really characterized by percipience (draüôätvam) and “nonagency” (akartäbhava). Lordship and governance are really alien to the Saïkhyá

conception of puruüa. In contrast, the Yoga Sâtra at no point affirms the nonagency of the puruüa. To assume that the Yoga Sâtra agrees with Saïkhyá on this point is to (a) disregard the clear textual evidence that it takes a different view, and (b) to read into the Yoga Sâtra ideas culled from the Sáïkhya Káriká. In short, Saïkhyá agrees with yoga that creation comes about by the confluence of puruüa and prakäti, but denies causal potency to the puruüa, while yoga affirms the causal efficacy of the puruüa in altering its destiny. This is related to two very different conceptions of bondage displayed in the two darùanas. For yoga, bondage is a result of saêyoga, or the intermingling and tying together of puruüa and prakäti. For Saïkhyá, puruüa is never really tied to prakäti, nor is it ever really bound. What is bound is a bundle of prakäti that a puruüa watches over. As the Sáïkhya Káriká notes: “Certainly, no (Person) is bound or liberated, nor (does any) migrate; it is the Refuge-Nature abiding in manifold forms that is bound, is liberated and migrates [tasmánna badhyate asau na mucyate na api saêsarati kaücit| saêsarati badhyate mucyate ca nán áùrayá prakätië SK 62 || ].” Nothing could be more foreign to yoga’s adherence to the reality of bondage, and hence the necessity that a puruüa put effort into Its own emancipation.

FALL 2004

3 GURUS, 48 QUESTIONS MATCHING INTERVIEWS WITH

SRI T.K.V. DESIKACHAR, SRI B.K.S. IYENGAR & SRI K. PATTABHI JOIS Interviews by R. ALEXANDER MEDIN Edited by DEIRDRE SUMMERBELL THE HISTORY OF YOGA1

WHAT IS YOUR THEORY ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF YOGA? T.K.V. Desikachar: Yoga is from the Vedas. K. Pattabhi Jois: We cannot know for sure the original nature of yoga, but according to what tradition tells us, Shiva first taught it to Parvati, then Parvati taught it to Shannmuka and Shannmuka taught it to Narada. And the first yoga found before the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali was when Adinatha incarnated in this world to provide yoga as a means to liberating man from the world of suffering. Also yoga is found in the shastras [scriptures], in the Bhagavad Gita, and in different Upanishads. AND HOW IS THIS REFLECTED IN THE SCRIPTURAL, AS WELL AS IN THE LIVING, TRADITION? Desikachar: There are many references in the Vedas concerning what yoga is. It is referred to not only as pratyahara [sensory withdrawal], but, in some Sanskrit passages, it is understood to be the discipline of the senses of the mind. In the Upanishads, yoga is seen as the discipline of controlling the mind, and Patanjali also focuses on the mind, as Vedanta focuses on God. Pattabhi Jois: In India, tradition is rooted in faith. Without faith, our whole tradition would collapse. And it is the greatness and wisdom of our forefathers that guides us on our path to perfection. To come to realize the depth of their knowledge and wisdom, we need to gain an experience of that to which they testify. This can be very difficult in the times we live in,

but to gain this experience, we need to have faith in what they taught and a willingness to follow their methods with consistent dedication and hard work. It is not easy, but for every sadhaka [ardent seeker], there is profound spiritual wisdom to be rediscovered from our tradition. India has a great history of trying to understand the human mind and its theories of moksa [release; liberation of soul from further transmigration] are something other religious traditions cannot ignore. Some living teachers are good representatives of our great heritage, while others are less concerned with tradition, and do as they please, making up rules and regulations of their own. HOW DOES PATANJALI’S CLASSICAL YOGA STAND IN RELATION TO HATHA YOGA? Desikachar: Hatha yoga is not in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The term Hatha yoga is in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika of Yogi Swatmarama. It is also found in some passages of the Upanishads, but as far as the Yoga Sutras are concerned, there is only one word. And that is not mantra yoga, not Raja yoga, not Laya yoga, not Jnana yoga, but yoga, plain and simple! All other words come from Kriya yoga, and are for an agitated mind that cannot practice yoga. An agitated mind is not free to perceive yoga. For this, one needs mental support or physical stimuli, which Hatha yoga simply acts to provide by preparing the body-mind ﬁeld to be more ﬁt for such perception. Pattabhi Jois: Hatha yoga means the

Dattatreya, Guru of all Gurus

union of the opposing energies of the body and the channeling of these energies into the central pathway. And this comes about when the surya nadi [right nostril] and chandra nadi [left nostril] are controlled, and the vital energy of these two channels merges in the central pathway of the spine. So, when the prana is ﬁnally at rest and no longer moved by the various sense organs, we then realize God inside. That is our Self, our true identity. So, Hatha yoga is experiencing God inside. WHO WERE THE ORIGINATORS OF HATHA YOGA? Desikachar: We don’t know if Shiva composed the Vedas or if someone else did. In India, a lot of people compose works that are then ascribed to ancient sources, but nobody knows for certain who really wrote them. It is a tendency in India to mythologize

These interviews were originally conducted in the early months of 2004 in Mysore, Pune, and Madras, as part of a master’s thesis. The full thesis runs to some 55,000 words, a generous portion of which is made up of the interviews, which appear here in abridged and edited form. For clarity’s sake, answers have been grouped together according to questions asked, rather than to their order in the original talks. Additionally, there are a few instances in the thesis when brief quotes from books by the interviewees have been added to their answers to help clarify ideas or to ﬁll in indecipherable gaps on the interview tapes. These have been retained and footnoted. Not all interviewees, of course, answered each and every question, preferring occasionally to pass a particular one over. Mr. Medin’s work is currently being expanded into a book. 1

FALL 2004

and to ascribe materials to ancient founders to make them more authentic. Even my father, Krishnamacharya, invented parts of his teaching. I know that he wrote down several passages in his early life which he changed in his later life. He also authored works himself, much like, in ancient times, ancient scholars would do and then never acknowledge that they had done so. Divine intervention or not [laughs], these scholars always claimed that texts were by some superhuman being rather than themselves. So, naturally, they would say that Shiva was the composer because Shiva is a supernatural being, rather than just an ordinary individual. And, yes, of course, they talked about subtleties and superhuman powers, but we don’t know how they perceived this. We have to rely on textual evidence and can only assume that there was an esoteric teaching running parallel with their texts. Subtleties such as the nadis [nerve pathways] and various energy channels are mentioned in the Upanishads and it is evident that these people had an insight into them, but it is not easy for us to understand where they derived their knowledge from. Like Shankaracharya, for example, who said he learned everything from Gaudapada. But who was Gaudapada? That’s why they say, gurubhyo param apnoti, which means a person’s clarity should highlight his teacher, not himself. One should never tell anybody where a mantra was received from. Instead, one should only speak of the guru, never of the mantra. That’s the universal law. Pattabhi Jois: I don’t know for certain. I only know what my guru taught me. But many texts mention the rishis Matsyendranath, Goraknath, Vamana, but before them, there were other maharishis. Yoga is at least two to three thousand years old, if not older. WHAT DISTINGUISHES HATHA YOGA FROM OTHER PHYSICAL FITNESS EXERCISES? Desikachar: According to various texts, “ha” means the surya nadi and “tha” means the chandra nadi. When these two energy channels, ha and tha, merge together in the sushumna [spinal nadi], there is a complete understanding of

Hatha yoga. Hatha also means power or force, but whatever the interpretation, I believe that the union of these two major nadis produces a harmonizing influence on the body and hence allows us to experience yoga. Pattabhi Jois: [Laughs] Yoga is not physical—very wrong! Hatha yoga can, of course, be used as external exercise only, but that is not its real benefit. Yoga can go very deep and touch the soul of man. When it is performed in the right way, over a long period of time, the nervous system is purified, and so is the mind. As the Bhagavad Gita is telling us. Yatato hyapi Kaunteya purshasya vipashcitah indriyani pramathini haranti prasabham manah Tani sarvani samyamya yukta asita matparah Vase hi yasyendriyani tasya prajna pratishtita BG 2:60-61 [Controlling all the senses, the selfcontrolled one should sit meditating on Me. Verily, his wisdom is steady whose senses are under control. The turbulent senses, O son of Kunti, forcibly lead astray the mind of even the struggling wise person.] The whole purpose of Hatha yoga is to purify and control our senses. It is the ultimate science of helping us discover what lies behind the apparent reality of body and mind. But look at the world today! There are so many different ways of doing yoga. Everybody says that they are doing it the right way, but what is the right way unless it produces a certain change in people, unless a certain energy is awakened within them? As Swatmarama is telling us, in the last verse of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika: Yavan naiva pravishati caran maruto madhyamarge Yavad bindur na bhavati drdaprana vata prabandhat | Yavad dhyane sahajasadrsham jaayate nanva tattvam Tavaj jnanam vadati tadidam dambhamithyapralapah || HYP 4:113

[Until the prana enters and flows in the middle channel and the breath becomes firm by the control of the movements of prana; and until the mind assumes the form of Brahma without any effort in contemplation, up to then, all talk of knowledge and wisdom is merely the nonsensical babblings of a mad man.] So, we must follow the method that is correct and practice it for a long time. Sa tu dirgha kala nairantarya satkara sevito dridhabhumih [A practice over a long period of time, consistently, humbly, with the best intention, becomes the firm foundation for cultivating a cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.] This can take many lifetimes of practice—even 100,000 years! KRISHNAMACHARYA CAN YOU DESCRIBE KRISHNAMACHARYA IN THREE WORDS? Desikachar: One word: acharya [spiritual teacher]. That is enough! B.K.S. Iyengar: He was a versatile man, an extraordinary man—not of a normal kind. I revered him. He was the master of many subjects. It is hard to ﬁnd people nowadays with knowledge like his. And how men of our low intellect can speak of a person like him, I don’t know! Pattabhi Jois: A very good man, a strong character. A dangerous man. WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF KRISHNAMACHARYA’S LINEAGE AND TEACHERS? Desikachar: You can refer to this in the book covering Krishnamacharya’s life published by our institute. Iyengar: As far as I know, his teacher was Ramamohan Brahmachari of Nepal, but we didn’t speak much about his guru in detail. I knew Krishnamacharya because he married my sister in the nineteen-thirties. What he did before that, I am not too familiar with. But it is certain that, due to his being a great Sanskrit scholar, he met a lot of ancient scholars in India who introduced him to Ramamohan Brahmachari. According to legend, Krishnamacharya studied FALL 2004

Early poster of T. Krishnamacharya and student demonstrating twenty-one asanas. 8

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with him for seven years. But I don’t want to create any false ideas about what happened. I only came to know him after my sister’s marriage and, by that time, he was a remarkable yogi. Pattabhi Jois: His teacher was Ramamohan Brahmachari, a very good man, a strong man, who taught Krishnamacharya many things. All my information comes from my guru and he told me that he studied with him for close to seven years. When he finished his studies, his teacher told him to go and teach yoga, so he left and started giving demonstrations and teaching in various places around India. That is how I met him for the first time in Hassan in 1927. HOW LONG DID YOU STUDY WITH KRISHNAMACHARYA? Desikachar: For twenty-nine years. When I look back at my notes, I think to myself, ‘Wow! What a remarkable man!’ Iyengar: I studied with him for two years when I was fourteen, fifteen years old. When I was seventeen, I went to Pune and, every year thereafter, I would go and show my respect and reverence for him. During that two-year period, he only taught me for about ten or fifteen days, but those few days determined what I have become today! Pattabhi Jois: I studied with him from 1927 to 1953. The first time I saw him was in November of 1927. It was at the Jubilee Hall in Hassan and, the next day, I found out where he lived and went to his house. He asked me many questions, but finally accepted me and told me to come back the next morning. Then, after my thread ceremony in 1930, I went to Mysore to learn Sanskrit and was accepted at the Maharaja’s Sanskrit College. There, I was reunited with Krishnamacharya in 1931, when he came to do a demonstration. He was very happy to find me studying at the college. WHAT DID KRISHNAMACHARYA TEACH YOU? Desikachar: I cannot even begin to tell you what I learned from my father. He was such a great man! Hatha yoga, pranayama [fourth limb of Ashtanga

yoga], the Baghavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Upanishads, various books on Vedanta, Samkhya Yoga Karika—every good book ever written about yoga. And not just once! He taught them all many times over. And then there was Ayurveda and Vedic chanting, and how to perform rituals properly, how to do pujas [homage to and worship of a deity], how to do cremations, how to perform marriages, how to do all kinds of rites of passage. He also taught me how to perform the rites when somebody dies. My father simply taught me everything about ancient rituals in India! And everything he taught me was in Sanskrit, of course. In 1984, when he was ninety-six years old, I asked him “What is your experience of yoga?” And he said; “Today, faith in God is the most important thing for yoga.” Faith in God is the quickest way to reach God. Iyengar: He only taught me a few asanas, and then my evolution came from my own practice. Pattabhi Jois: What my teacher taught me is exactly the same method I am teaching today. It was an examination course of primary, intermediate, and advanced asanas. He also taught me philosophy. For five years, we studied the great texts. He would call us to his house and we would stand outside and wait to be called in. Sometimes, we would wait the whole day. He would usually teach us for one or two hours every day: asanas early in the morning and, around 12 o’clock, philosophy class. He also taught us pranayama, pratyahara [sensory withdrawal], dharana [concentration], and dhyana [meditation]. And, in addition to the Yoga Sutras and Bhagavad Gita, he also taught Yoga Vasishta, Yoga Yajnavalkya, and Samhita. And all in Sanskrit. COULD YOU DESCRIBE KRISHNAMACHARYA’S TEACHING METHODS? Desikachar: What was so great about my father was that he taught diﬀerently as a young man, when he was in Mysore and teaching my uncle and Pattabhi Jois. Then, he taught in one style, but

later on, he changed and began to teach people differently. He began to cater to the needs of the individual, rather than to teach everyone in the same way. He also became a healer of old people. When he taught Muslims, he would quote passages from the Koran and ask them to face towards Mecca, and when Bengalis came, he would teach them in Bengali. His teaching methodology also evolved, which meant that he reduced and adapted it to the needs of individuals, to their culture and mentality. It was not standardization of the “everyone-has-to do-this-asana” variety. First, he would connect to an individual, get to know their background, their religion, their culture, whether they were a woman or a man; he taught women and men differently. But even though he taught people differently, he was still able to reach everybody he would teach, young or old. He was an orthodox Brahmin and, at the same time, invited people to his home for coffee and breakfast. He would always feed and look after the people he taught. So, it wasn’t only about the teaching method, but about him as a human being caring for another human being. Iyengar: In the early days, he was like a militant. He was a fierce, harsh man. As long as I knew him, he was always very harsh and strict. He may have been good to others and other people may speak of him as a kind, loving man, but I never experienced anything other than a very, very strong, demanding individual. Pattabhi Jois: Very strict. If you came one minute early or one minute late, you would not be allowed into class. He demanded total discipline and was very, very tough. People were fearing him, but he had a very good heart. DID IT EVER CHANGE? Desikachar: My father’s teaching changed as he went through different periods of his life. Before India gained its independence, it was different. In 1930, my father wrote a book on Vedic chanting in which he said that women were unsuited for Vedic practice and should marry before puberty. In 1986, he said that women must learn Vedic chanting and that they were the

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upholders of dharma [duty; ethics]. And this when he was ninety-seven years old and even though he was a strict Brahmin and well-versed in the Purva Mimamsa school. Iyengar: I would say probably not, which is why some confusion has developed because what I think his method was may be different from what somebody else thinks. But what I’m teaching came from my guru, though I developed it further myself. What I teach is Krishnamacharya’s honest method. Everyone, of course, wants to prove their authenticity with respect to Krishnamacharya. When Desikachar became his student, he wasn’t even studying yoga. He was working in a company and was supposed to go to northern India, but suddenly took a great interest in his father, who was then seventy. Of course, the difference between a person’s practice when he is seventy and when he is young is quite remarkable. And, naturally, the teachings he would pass on would be quite different. But my style is from the seed he planted in Mysore. It is also from challenges that came up in my own practice and from the need to adapt to people and their needs. I had to question the jumping and vinyasas [synchronized movements and breath] and see what they were. You know, Pune is known for its wrestlers. There is in India no spiritual and cultural center like Maharashtra, and Pune itself was the intellectual Cambridge of India. Now, if you mix this with the famous wrestlers that were here, you can naturally understand why I had to question my yoga tradition and to find out what was particular to it. What was the difference between the physical practice I was doing and the practice of the wrestlers? On what level was it different from normal physical exercise? At first, they would appear to be identical. So, this opened my eyes to really find out what yoga had, particularly with reference to its influence on the body and, most importantly, to its impact on the mind. So, I cultivated this, but the reason for my growth was my guru, though my later development was due to my own hard work. And evolution is evolution, 10

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thank God. What Pattabhi Jois was taught in 1934, he is still teaching now. I’m not saying this is wrong—I also taught it—but the people I talked to said it was nothing but physical movement, callisthenic-style. But now, today, the very same method is spiritual, according to some people. I don’t understand the mentality of humans. But what is important is how we may develop the dormant consciousness within the body, how we may penetrate from this end to that. As I’ve said, how do you understand trikonasana on the right leg? By expanding down into the left leg. In a similar way, I needed to find out what the depth of each asana is and how it works in opposition. I needed to find the bone of the right leg in opposition to the left. Do you know how to elongate it? Is the energy on the right leg equal to that on the left leg? Is the energy straight on the bank of the outer leg? So, these were all the things I had to discover. So, intelligence had to go into how to penetrate the postures to make sense of them. It is not just gymnastics or callisthenic-style—that is not what vinyasa is about. Vinyasa can be different from gymnastics, but then you have to develop it intellectually. And that is what I did. I brought the refinement, but the foundation was from my guru, who provided me with the base that I grew out of.

Pattabhi Jois: I don’t know. As long as I was with him, he always taught the same. DID KRISHNAMACHARYA TEACH EVERYBODY THE SAME WAY? Iyengar: No, which is why there is all this confusion. Even the intellectuals of the world are just like intellectual Hitlers, trying to prove who is most right. They talk in such a way as to confuse and try to build up their intellectual purity to impose their views.

But they create nothing but confusion. Thank God I came up and developed my own conﬁdence. The one thing is discipline—that is essential—and that is what attracted me to the practice—to inquire, to try to understand, and to explore what there is in the asanas. My guru’s mentality was that he was always centered. Even when he walked down the street, he would never sway; he was always centered within himself and wouldn’t look to the right or the left, even if there was commotion or noise. Pattabhi Jois: Yes. WHAT WAS SO SPECIAL ABOUT KRISHNAMACHARYA?

Desikachar: He was not just a yoga teacher. Whatever India represents, whether Ayurveda, yoga, Mimamsa, or the various schools of Vedanta, I have never seen anybody, any single individual, who had such knowledge. When he was ninety-seven, he could lecture on anything. You see, it was not only about the asanas. The yoga my father embodied was manifold. I always thought of him as a circle, as completely stable, and as somebody for whom yoga was simply secondary. He advised people about many things, about farming—he knew how to grow crops—about how to choose a house, about medical things, about aﬀairs of the heart. He was also a great cook and even taught my mother how to cook. Iyengar: He was a great healer. He had the mantra-jaya [the power of the mantra] and was not just a great scholar, but had the divine grace working through him. And that divine grace is something neither you nor I can even imagine. No, it was greater than that: I saw him act as a physician and help people in matters that were unbelievable. He was a divine healer. I even think that the mantras he helped some people with had more eﬀect

than the yoga. He had the power of the mantra—I don’t know how, but he certainly had it—and he had the siddhi [superhuman power], but it intoxicated him. It really intoxicated my guru, I know that. He was also a good reader of human psychology. He could look at a man and tell the exact character of his personality. He could see beyond the appearance of things. Pattabhi Jois: He was not just a great yoga teacher, but also a great Sanskrit scholar. He had studied and completed his examination in all the six darshanas [schools of ancient Hindu philosophy]. He was known as Mimamsa Tirtha [ford across the river of human misery], Vedanta Vagisa [lord of speech], Sankhya Yoga Shikhamani [jewel among Brahmins]. WHY DO YOU THINK KRISHNAMACHARYA BECAME SUCH A LEGEND? Desikachar: I don’t know that he is such a legend, but thank you for saying so. My father never cared for name and fame. And here in India, a lot of people don’t know him. If you ask most people who the source of yoga is, they will say Iyengar. Nobody knows Krishnamacharya, the great originator of modern yoga! It’s a shame. But I am very, very proud of my father. Iyengar: He was the founder of the modern developments of yoga. Because of his grace, the most recent advancement of yoga came forth. He was the giver of the path, but each man would also have to come to know the subject for himself as he engaged with it. In 1960, nobody knew my guru. When I brought out my book and showed my respect for him, everybody started saying, “Oh, there is this Krishnamacharya!”2 It’s the human mentality to always have to look for a better knower, to think that somebody else is the better knower of the method. But that is not important. What is important is that things evolve, things change. But for the human mentality, it’s diﬀerent. ‘Desikachar? Pattabhi Jois?’ it says. ‘Maybe they are the better knowers?’ But we all studied with Krishnamacharya. We were all given the seeds by him to evolve yoga further. We cannot speak of a better knower. We all 2

studied with him at different periods of our lives. And what he was in those early days was a strict disciplinarian. People can’t even imagine the way he was! You could not say one word against him— people could not open their mouths against him. What he said was law and everybody had to follow. If he told you to finish at a particular time, you had to finish exactly then. If he told you to do something, you had to do exactly that. Nobody could question him. My guru’s character was like that of the crazy-wise Tibetan adept Milarepa—my guru was exactly the same. And the encounters between Milarepa and Marpa were probably the same as the encounters between Krishnamacharya and his students! Pattabhi Jois: Because of his knowledge and wisdom. WHAT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING KRISHNAMACHARYA TAUGHT YOU? Desikachar: The most important thing my father taught me was humility. Vidya dadhatu vinaya [teach knowledge with humility].

Iyengar: What he thought me was only a few asanas. That seed was what he gave me and I developed it as well as I could. The seed was very good, which is why I could grow. And whatever he gave me, I simply reﬁned and developed, and whatever he taught me, that’s what I developed too. Evolution came later: how to progress, how to improve the postures, what to do in a correct way. He never taught me much about teaching, but he saw me teach. In 1961, he came to Pune and was teaching my daughter and son. He taught them for many hours, but unfortunately they could not get what he was trying to show them. When I came up and asked what was wrong, my daughter told me what she did not understand about a posture. So, I explained to

her, “You must stretch from this end to that end.” And immediately when Krishnamacharya saw this, he gave me a gold medal known as Yoga Shikshaka Chakravarti, which means “Emperor of Yoga Teachers, Teacher of Teachers.” He said I must teach like this and not just in private, but in public. He said I must become a yoga teacher and pushed me deﬁnitely in that direction. He also had remarkable skills for understanding the human psyche and that’s probably the greatest thing he ever taught me. Pattabhi Jois: When he left for Madras he told me, “Make this yoga method the work of your life.” DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HIS PERSONAL PRACTICE? Desikachar: He would get up at 3 o’clock in the morning, read his books, and then practice. Iyengar: He did lots of pranayama and a little asana. I became the master of asana and he was the master of pranayama. I saw him do shirshasana, padmasana, sarvangasana, but it appeared to me that asanas were no longer that important to him. He used to do what we call aradhana, which means prayer. For more than three hours every morning, he would sit in front of an idol and do various rituals, parayanas [recitation of the names of God], and prayers. He was a free man at the time, under the patronage of the Maharaja, and he devoted more time to spiritual practice. Pattabhi Jois: No, only that he was a master at what he was doing. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR OWN PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH KRISHNAMACHARYA? Desikachar: I saw my father as my father. He was a very disciplined man, loving, caring, but at the same time, a strict disciplinarian. Iyengar: I told you I revered him. Although he was my guru, he was also my brother-in-law. I never called him “guruji” at all, but called him, in our language, tambi [brother]. In my heart of hearts though, he was my guru. Physically, he was my brother-in-law, but mentally, he was my guru. Pattabhi Jois: A normal guru-sisya [disciple] relationship.

Light on Yoga (New York: Schocken Books, 1966). FALL 2004

DID YOU EVER GET TO KNOW HIM PERSONALLY? WHAT KIND OF PERSON WAS HE? Desikachar: We lived together until he died, so of course I got to know him personally. Iyengar: Of course, I knew him personally. I lived with him at his place, so naturally I got to know him. I knew him for what he was then—a terrible dictator in Mysore. How people later came to talk of him as a soft-spoken, mellow man living in Madras, I don’t know. But he probably got mellow after he had to give up the patronage of the Maharaja, when India became independent. Since the Maharaja had no money, he told Krishnamacharya, “It’s up to the government now to look after you and the yoga shala [hall].” But the government, of course, had no money for yoga shalas, so Krishnamacharya probably came to the realization that the temperament he’d had under the Maharaja wasn’t going to work. Whether this is true or not, I don’t know, but after he came to Madras, things deﬁnitely changed with his teaching. He was a master in Mysore, but he had to become a servant in Madras. Now, he suddenly had to look after people and that is probably why some of his teaching methods changed. Pattabhi Jois: Dangerous, but kind. Proud, but very knowledgeable. YOGA TODAY CAN WESTERNERS EVER DO JUSTICE TO THE GREAT HERITAGE OF YOGA? Desikachar: I think there are certain losses, but I am very inspired by the dedication of Westerners, as well as by the care and concern of some people. This makes me very conﬁdent, though at the same time, I know yoga has become a business, money, etc. This is even happening in India. Even so, there are some genuine teachers out there. And for me, as an Indian, the West is a role model that I have great faith in. The wind blows from the West here and I am very happy about this because some of the greatest people I have met have come from the West. And my hope is that yoga masters in the East and West, 12

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whatever form of yoga they teach, can transform yoga. It shouldn’t just be men in India. But the spirit of yoga speaks for itself. We can see this now in the healing field. What is so fantastic, what is so significant, is that people are opening up to the healing benefits of yoga. Even doctors in the medical field are coming to our center these days. But yoga is also a relationship, not a mass movement. It is a one-toone relationship between people, not commercialization. What happens in the West is broad generalizations and informational teaching, and there is little personal contact, unfortunately. And students really must know the value of personal relationships. Iyengar: What is interesting to see is that there was no respect or awareness of yoga when I first came to the West in 1960. And then gradually, as I started to do some demonstrations, the awareness began to grow. And I have given more than 10,000 demonstrations, three hours long—you can ask anybody! This style of direct presentation, which I developed, cultivated an interest in people. And it wasn’t spiritual things— not saying that, by doing such and such, they would get certain benefits—no, it was those direct presentations of mine that attracted people. And now, fifty years of yoga in the West have caused yoga to grow and evolve. But I took it to the masses. I never kept it a secret. Yes, I did teach famous people like Yehudi Menuhin and Krishnamurti, but having taught them, I realized that everybody needs yoga, regardless of their background. There are human qualities in ordinary men and one doesn’t have to be a philosopher or a special man to have your human potential brought out. So, I brought yoga to the people and now the seeds that I planted carry on. Yoga lives. It may go on for centuries. But I don’t think the subject of yoga is something that belongs to me. It is something that continues to live within individuals. Yes, there were many maharishis and great people of the past, but the yoga that we come to now is what we have and that is what lives within us. Pattabhi Jois: Yoga is very good if it is taught with the correct method.

Unfortunately, a lot of Westerners are thinking more about making money than about teaching this correct method. And I don’t know how beneficial that can be for people. When yoga is only for business, it is of no use. People offer fifteen-day courses, even one-week courses, to become a yoga teacher. [Laughs] How good for yoga that is, I don’t know. WHAT HAS THE WESTERN WORLD CONTRIBUTED TO YOGA? Desikachar: I am very grateful to the West. They’ve reminded us Indians about our great heritage. Iyengar: Any Western yoga teacher who teaches with sincerity and is properly trained by a qualified practitioner contributes something good to the world of yoga. Pattabhi Jois: Nobody can contribute anything to yoga, but yoga can contribute something to everybody. HOW IS THE WESTERN MENTALITY DIFFERENT FROM THE INDIAN? Desikachar: What I like about Westerners is their questioning minds. In India, people never ask why they should do this or that, they just do it on blind faith. They don’t question anything—“why are you telling me this? why should I do that?”—they never ask these things. I used to question my father and he was so happy when I did. Questioning is important as it is the key to finding out for yourself. Sincerity and love, of course, also need to be there. Younger people are better at questioning these days, but before it was taboo. People say “guruji,” which is like a slogan we have eulogized. But I believe people have slaughtered “guruji” with false pretences. Iyengar: Mentally, a few differences exist between Westerners and Indians. Westerners try to solve their emotional problems intellectually, but emotional problems need to be solved emotionally, not logically. Westerners developed their system of logic and Indians developed their system of reason. When logic and reason mix together, then humanity can grow. In the West, we see vertical growth and, in India, we see horizontal growth, but when vertical and horizontal intelligence are able to work together,

I believe in the full potential of human development. Pattabhi Jois: Indian people are used to following tradition, to having faith in the system, and to believing in moksha, or liberation. But for Western people, moksha is not very important. They practice yoga primarily for their health, which is okay. But to really understand the heritage of India, one must also understand its ancient traditions, which gave rise to our spiritual tradition. Some Westerners overlook this great heritage and have no idea what the roots of yoga are. IS THERE ANY DANGER THAT THE YOGA TRADITION COULD BE DILUTED? Desikachar: It is already being diluted. My father studied with Ramamohan Brahmachari for eight-and-a-half years. He was dedicated and worked closely with his teacher every day. I’ve also visited Muktinath in Nepal, and the sacrifices people have to make there just to get up early in the morning, when it is cold, are immense. For a normal person, it is of course difficult to get up early to pursue their dedication to yoga, but it all depends on the commitment and intentions of the mind. But the physical side is not the end of yoga. The physical side is only one aspect. Yoga should not be learned by the performance of postures. If you go by the performance of postures, then you dilute yoga, but if you go by the inquiry of the spirit, it is not diluted. Iyengar: Dilution is, of course, a danger. But dilution of any subject is the death of that subject, but not of humanity. Please note the difference. If an art dies, what good does that do humanity? Yoga lives through humanity. As long as there are ardent seekers, I’m confident that the beauty of yoga will survive. Pattabhi Jois: Yes, if people don’t appreciate and take care of the great teachings that have come down to us. SOME PEOPLE SPEAK OF PHYSICAL YOGA, MENTAL YOGA, SPIRITUAL YOGA. IS THERE A DIFFERENCE? Desikachar: Yoga is a relationship. It is not that the body is not important— the body is very important; it is the temple—but a transformation in the

body cannot happen without a good relationship with the mind. Whatever happens in the body affects the mind and whatever happens in the mind affects the body. And whatever happens in the emotional body affects the mind, as well. But the essence of yoga is often not taught through the body. What is essential and needs to be taught is the spirit of yoga, and that people don’t understand. Iyengar: Refer to my books and CD. Asanas are not meant for physical fitness, but for conquering the elements, energy, and so on. So, how to balance the energy in the body, how to control the five elements, how to balance the various aspects of the mind without mixing them all together, and how to be able to perceive the difference between the gunas [qualities], and to experience that there is something behind them, operating in the world of man—that is what asanas are for. The process is slow and painstaking, but a steady inquiry facilitates a growing awareness. Pattabhi Jois: Yoga is one. God is one. Yoga means sambandaha, which is atma manah samyogah, or knowing God inside you. But using it only for physical practice is no good, of no use—just a lot of sweating, pushing, and heavy breathing for nothing. The spiritual aspect, which is beyond the physical, is the purpose of yoga. When the nervous system is purified, when your mind rests in the atman [the Self ], then you can experience the true greatness of yoga. WHY IS YOGA SO BENEFICIAL FOR MANKIND? Desikachar: I started yoga because my father helped a lady from India who had hardly slept for thirty years and I saw the effect. After that, I thought that I had to learn this from him and then I just started seeing in what ways yoga really helps people. Yoga is not for everybody, but for those who experience it and are touched by it, it transforms their lives. They can connect with a spirit beyond themselves that elevates them above many difficulties. I won’t say that every asana will save people. I won’t say that standing on your head is good for everybody, but the inner spirit that yoga awakens is beneficial.

That’s what Patanjali refers to. A lot of people have lost their inner confidence, their strength, and what yoga does is bring this out, which strengthens them again. Awakening this inner confidence is why it is beneficial to humanity. It is our inner strength that helps us endure our difficulties and lifts us through our various trials. And it is this same strength that helps us embrace life in a better way. This is the strength that Patanjali calls chiti-shakti. Iyengar: Yoga is a self-critiquing subject. Only a yogi can criticize himself. A musician, a physiologist or other scientist criticizes their respective subjects, but only a practitioner can come to grips with the Self through

his own practice. Through self-study and self-criticism, he develops his own intelligence and learns to discriminate between what is real and what is not. As the Self grows in him, he comes to understand. The Self alone shines forth and permeates all his activities. That is why yoga is beneﬁcial to mankind because its practitioners may come to understand the Self. It is a development from the gross to the subtle, but we must always start with the gross—that is our point of departure. What better thing can you do in this life than to get to know your own Self?

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Pattabhi Jois: Yoga is good for man because the physical body improves, the nervous system improves, the mind improves, the intellect improves—so, how can yoga not be good? WHAT ARE YOUR PERSONAL VIEWS ON ALL THE MODERN SCHOOLS OF YOGA IN THE WEST TODAY? Desikachar: My view is that if people can benefit from something, fine! Iyengar: I am a yogi. I will not say anything about other schools. I can only refer to the Mahabharata, which tells us about Dharmaraja and Duryodhana. Dharmaraja was a righteous man and Duryodhana was a cruel man, but both of them were present. So, when both good and bad are present, how can I answer? How can I say what is good or bad? People will find what they are looking for. Pattabhi Jois: Let other forms of yoga be there, I teach only Ashtanga yoga, which is real. I know that it is real and everybody who practices it correctly will come to know that it is real also. The essence of yoga is to reach oneness with God. The ego must be understood, contemplated, and released. If you only try to boost the ego, you will miss the greatest fruit of yoga. IS IT OKAY TO CAPITALIZE ON YOGA? IS YOGA AS A BUSINESS ACCEPTABLE? Desikachar: Well, this happens with everything. We are human beings and we have certain drawbacks. We have to accept them. Iyengar: Capitalizing on yoga means commercial yoga and that is not right. But it is the human mentality. The world is like that—“How can I become famous?” “How can I become rich?” And, unfortunately, some people will always take advantage of others. Take for example the instruments I developed. How many centers are there around the world that sell these instruments? Everybody uses them, though I don’t get anything for them. But I don’t mind that either. You see, I’m happy because millions of people have benefited from the advantages of yoga. Without the 3

instruments, some people wouldn’t be able to practice at all, so they help them on their way. Pattabhi Jois: That is the way of Westerners. They are always thinking to make more money. Unfortunately, it is not good when the goal of yoga is money rather than God. Real yoga is not about money. If yoga comes your way, be happy about it. People ask me so many questions: “Guruji, what should I do about this? How should I do that”? I say, “Don’t take your mind other places. Think only of God, then do yoga.” Let things come. If you want to beneﬁt, think only of God, dedicate all your actions to God, and whatever comes your way is a gift—is His gift to you. ON TEACHING WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF A GOOD YOGI? Desikachar: My model is my father. Iyengar: How can you ask a question like that? I will tell you in one sentence: The lunatic speaks loudly, you and I speak internally, and the wise yogi speaks not at all. The wise yogi is silent. Pattabhi Jois: Dedication to yoga and a steady faith in yoga. And a willingness to do hard work and to continuously think of and concentrate on yoga.3 WHAT MAKES A GOOD YOGA TEACHER? Desikachar: A good yoga teacher has to be an example, not just an entertainer. You see, it is not the strength or beauty of an asana practice that makes a great yoga teacher. It is how they are as individuals. Iyengar: A good teacher is one who comes to the level of people and builds them up. He understands where they are, what their position is. This is the right approach for a good teacher to take. I do not demand, but earn respect. Pattabhi Jois: Primarily, you have to learn the practice properly, you have to know yoga properly, before you can start to teach. If you think, ‘I want to become a teacher,’ before you have a

good understanding, that is not good. You need to be a student for many, many years. It is important to have a good teacher to guide you and then, when your teacher thinks you are ready, you can start to teach. WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA TO BECOME A GOOD YOGA TEACHER? Desikachar: Faith in God. Let me tell you about Sri Dharan, my colleague. He used to work as the manager of a bank. He had no desire to move further with his job and, when he retired, he approached me and offered his services here. He joined our organization as our head, but did not want any money. He could have made a fortune as a business administrator in a bank, but he chose to work here, for the service of yoga. That is commitment, and I believe that is what makes a great teacher. Iyengar: One has to work really hard and show the qualities of sincerity, honesty, and virtue. It is the responsibility of human beings to move and act in truly honorable ways and, as Patanjali said, to develop the qualities of friendliness, compassion, gladness, and endless love. When we embody these four qualities, we can begin to approximate the criteria of becoming a good teacher. Pattabhi Jois: As I said, be a dedicated student for many years before you even start to think about teaching IS THERE AN ELEMENT IN YOGA THAT CAN NEVER BE TAUGHT? Desikachar: Yes. That is why the Yoga Sutras say that a yoga teacher is like a farmer. He is not the seed, the soil, or the water, but the farmer who cultivates the land for the growth that is there. A farmer can break the dam so that the water flows, but what happens next is not in the hands of the seed alone. It is a mixture of the cultivation of the land, the watering of the field, and the preparation of the soil. Similarly, one can strive hard to teach the various elements of yoga correctly, but the fate of the practitioner is in the hands of God. One can only help the process along.

At this point in the interview, Sharath Rangaswamy, assistant director of the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore and Sri K. Pattabhi Jois’s grandson, joined the conversation. He had much to say in answer to the questions about teaching and many of his words have been incorporated into Pattabhi Jois’s own answers on the subject. The decision to include his words reﬂects his very close relationship with his grandfather—he is a life-long student of his—and the strength of his English. 14

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Iyengar: Once you have reached realization, the teaching ends. When the seeker becomes the seer, the teaching stops. This is the highest teaching. As long as there is a diﬀerence between guru and student, teaching is needed. But when the diﬀerence between the two disappears, then they become one. So, the greatest teacher teaches the student how to attain the level of realization that he himself has reached. Pattabhi Jois: Only your guru can truly guide you—only someone who has studied the path before you and is aware of all the dangers can truly direct you. And the blessing of the guru is very important too. Without the guru’s blessing, you cannot really progress as a student. And this blessing is to listen to the guru, to what the correct method is, and to have faith in him—to follow and let yourself be guided by him. This blessing cannot be explained. It can only be experienced with the energy and strengths that will flow from within you. This strength from within you will make you firmer, more secure, and stronger. WHAT IS UNIQUE TO YOUR STYLE OF YOGA? Desikachar: It is not a style. It is not a method. It is not Vini yoga. We never use Vini yoga. Those who do, do it for the purpose of business. I have told people that if they do Vini yoga, not to use my name. So, those who come here don’t come to practice the Vini yoga style, they come to see me. Iyengar: Let my students answer that. They see me. Pattabhi Jois: What is particular to Ashtanga yoga practice is what we call vinyasa, which brings together breathing with physical movement. Each posture is connected with a certain breathing sequence, which comes before and after it. This keeps the flow of energy through the spine open. It also safeguards against injury and prevents energy from stagnating in the body. Vinyasa purifies the body, the nervous system, and cultivates the proper energetic field in the body. It

is essential to yoga, we believe, and gives people a direct inner experience of their potential. To feel the energy continually flowing through the spine is the effect of vinyasa. But there is nothing that comes instantly. One needs to practice this system for many years—a minimum of five to ten years—to begin to experience these deep subtle changes in the body. HAVE YOUR TEACHING METHODS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS? DO YOU FOCUS ON THINGS NOW THAT YOU DIDN’T WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED? Desikachar: What I learned from my father was to sit on the floor and to say some prayers—that is what I teach people. My country is changing fast, as you know. We have to adapt ourselves to the context and circumstances we live in, and we need to be aware of what’s happening. The importance of yoga is viveka, or discrimination in action. It is not performance. To know what is now, to know what was yesterday, you cannot go by memory or by karma. You have to develop the discrimination of what is. Pattabhi Jois: No, they have not changed. They have remained the same the whole time. Our method from the beginning has been that a posture needs to be perfected before you move on to more difficult ones. Each posture works progressively to increase the energy level and the opening of the body. WHAT IS THE BEST REMEDY FOR HELPING PEOPLE? DO YOU TREAT EVERYBODY EQUALLY? Desikachar: If somebody asks me, then I will help. But if they will not allow me to, how can I help? How can I fill a glass with water that is already full? Pattabhi Jois: Taking practice! And to make people aware of yama [the first limb of Ashtanga yoga] and niyama [the second limb of Ashtanga yoga], and of how to control their bodies—these are the best remedies. When they are aware, controlling the senses becomes easier. But, primarily, yama and niyama are the best remedies for anybody with an interest in the practice.

WHAT IS THE MOST REWARDING ASPECT OF YOUR WORK? Desikachar: I am an engineer by profession. When I used to work, I would meet people in a professional environment. But in my role as a yoga teacher, I meet people as a human being. I meet all kinds of people—poor people, important people, sick people— and I have developed intimate, friendly relationships with them. That is the most rewarding part of my work. Pattabhi Jois: It is to see the growth and development of students, and to experience the love and gratitude they have when they come here to Mysore, year after year. We see so many students who come from all over the world to study with us. Some of them have full-time jobs and get only four weeks vacation per year, but they choose to devote that time to coming here to practice with us. To see this dedication and to see the happiness in people— that is what is truly rewarding. WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL YOGA PRACTICE LIKE THESE DAYS? Desikachar: Next question, please. Iyengar: I will not boast. Everybody will tell you that I am still practicing. I do my sadhana [meditational practice] and still do the postures. I do all the postures you see in Light on Yoga and do them every day. Pattabhi Jois: I continue to practice pranayama and recite the Vedas for an hour and a half to two hours every day. ON SPIRITUALITY WHAT IS THE MEANING OF SPIRITUALITY TO YOU? Desikachar: Spirituality is not religion. It is to care for one’s family, for society—to heal and look after the interests and well-being of people. To give oneself to the service of humanity facilitates the greatest spirituality within man. All dogmas are transcended by following this principle—that is what I learned from my father. You see, at my age, my father was living in a small house, three meters by three meters square, which was divided by a curtain in the middle. He was teaching in the

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front of the house and my mother was cooking in the back. You wouldn’t believe the circumstances he lived in, but he loved it. And I always think of the generosity he showed. He was so poor and had ﬁve children and yet his teacher had told him to go and be a yoga teacher. He could have been a Sanskrit professor at any university in India, but because he respected his teacher, he dedicated himself to passing on the teachings of yoga, and to living simply and conveying the greatness of yoga through his humble manner. The king tried to give him rewards, but he would not accept them, because he knew that, as soon as he did, he would become a beggar. And the instant a teacher becomes a beggar to the king, he is no longer a teacher. This is what I remember of my father. Iyengar: I have written about this in my books. You can refer to them. Pattabhi Jois: Spirituality means energy and to meditate on that energy is spirituality. So, developing and having faith in this energy is spirituality. What the shastras tell me is what I believe, which is the Indian custom: Tasmat shastram pramanam te karya akaryavyvasthitau Jnatva shastravidhanoktam karma kartum iharhasi BG 16:24 [Therefore let the scriptures be your authority in ascertaining what ought to be done and what ought not to be done. Knowing what has been prescribed by the scriptures, you should act in this manner.] So, the sacred scriptures are the whole foundation of our spiritual tradition. Without them, we are left to our own impressions. But with the scriptures, we are given a guide to follow. In the absence of belief, we can never really lift the veil of our own ignorance and discover what lies beyond it. Thus spirituality is believing. WHAT IS SPIRITUAL ABOUT THE PHYSICAL PRACTICE? Desikachar: If I go to a temple and there is a lot of mess in front of it, I don’t feel like going inside. But if the temple

is clean, like a church, I will go in. It is the same with the body. A healthy body, a clean body, is more conducive to reflecting the mysteries of the soul. If you are suffering and sick and are approached by someone who is even more sick and stinking of death than you, you will naturally feel repulsed. If that person then asks for your mercy and help, you will feel no inclination to give it and will say instead, “Don’t come near me! Get out!” So it is with sickness and old age. When they approach, it can already be too late, if one has never looked after one’s body. So, to fulfill your dharma, you have to honor the body. Iyengar: That is your question—your mind, not my mind. I do not demark differences between the body, the mind, and the self. To me, the body is the biggest self, the mind, a smaller self, and the self, the smallest self. So, they are all interconnected. In my practice, I seek to unite them and to experience how they are all interwoven. You see, the soul is the same for all individuals and nations, but our conditioning and culture determines our predisposition and outlook. The body is the receptacle for the soul and the mind—our operating tool for processing information and for being discriminative. The three work incessantly together, but a greater awareness of the physical body paves the way for a better receptivity to the dormant spirituality within. Yoga awakens the core of infinite possibility inside and confirms to the practitioner the extent of its applicability, rather than restricting it only to one area. The rays of the sun spread out everywhere. Equally, the rays of the soul pervade everywhere in our operational being. All our mental differences and predispositions are limited by time and space, but when we realize and rest in the core of our being, in our infinite potential, we awaken to a consciousness that is universal and no longer limited by our previous identification with it. This consciousness is direct, has no form or shape, and yet is reflected in our body and mind as an energy field, which we are free to interpret. We therefore engage in physical exercises designed to both present potent information to our

consciousness and to expand, at the same time, our level of consciousness within the body. If you don’t know your body, don’t know your hand, your backbone, or your knee, how can you develop this awareness? When performing asanas, the student’s body assumes numerous life forms found in creation—from the lowliest insect to the most perfected sage—and learns that in all these, there breathes the same universal spirit, the spirit of God. He looks within himself while practicing and feels the presence of God.4 So, asanas act as a bridge to unite the body with the mind, and the mind with the soul. Pattabhi Jois: Behind the strength of the body, there is an energy that is spirituality, and that is what keeps us alive. To gain access to the spiritual, you need to understand the physical. The body is our temple and inside that temple is atman, and that is God. HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE PURUSA? Desikachar: I am sleeping and get up in the morning and say, “Why did I sleep so well?” But how do I know this? Because of the purusa, which is something that is not sleeping, but is always present within us, all the time. Pattabhi Jois: Purusa is light, the light that is atman, which is all and everything. Purusa is jiva [the individual soul], whereas prakriti [nature] is maya, or delusion. Due to the confusion that comes from living in the world of samsara [the cycle of rebirth], we fail to see the difference between purusa and prakriti, and treat them, instead, as one. But they are not one. Purusa is the pure, inner awareness of all that is, yet It is never subject to the fluctuations of the mind. DOES YOGA CULTIVATE AN UNDERSTANDING OF PURUSA? Desikachar: Yoga is like a cloud and the practice of yoga moves the cloud. There is disturbance, there is disruption, there are diﬃculties, but the practice of yoga centers the person in his own natural self. Naturally, when we sleep, something subsists beyond our dreams or beyond deep sleep. That is the purusa. Equally, when we think and experience, 4

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something is always there, facilitating our experience. To come to grips with this is the process of yoga. To facilitate an understanding of our mental modes of operation and to finally experience That which is the support of the whole process is also the process of yoga. Pattabhi Jois: Only indirectly. Directly, it is the vrittis [thought patterns] which we come to control by the practice of yoga. It is not the purusa, which is constant and always there, though the practice does give one a clear mind, which may lead to an awareness of It. The actual understanding being facilitated, however, is of the thought patterns, or the vrittis. How they operate, how they bind you, and how you can gradually learn to experience what lies beyond them—that is what we come to understand by the practice of yoga. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE YOGA SUTRA YOGA CHITTA VRITTI NIRODHA? Desikachar: The understanding mind plays a part in many activities. When all these are focused on one thing for a certain length of time, as I am listening to you now, then you are in a state of yoga. Being attentive is thus a form of yoga. Pattabhi Jois: Patanjali’s definition is simple: “Yoga is the process of ending the definitions of the field of consciousness.” But to actually understand this in one’s being is of a wholly different order. To understand words and concepts is easy, but to let the experience of yoga penetrate deep into one’s heart, to realize fully what one is made of, and, finally, to establish the mind in the Self—these are very difficult. Manushyanam sahasreshu kaschidyatati siddhaye Yatatamapi siddhanaam kascinmam vetti tattvatah BG 7:3 [Among thousands of men, one perhaps struggles for perfection. Among thousands of those that struggle, maybe one becomes perfect, but among thousands of men that are perfect, perhaps one knows Me in reality.]

HOW DOES YOUR SYSTEM FACILITATE THE EXPERIENCE OF YOGA? Desikachar: That is up to the student, not to me. Pattabhi Jois: To practice asanas and pranayama is to learn to control the body and the senses, so that the inner light can be experienced. That light is the same for the whole world. And it is possible for people to experience this light, their own Self, through correct yoga practice. It is something that happens through practice, though learning to control the mind is very difficult. Most important though is the practice. We must practice, practice, practice for any real understanding of yoga. Of course, philosophy is important, but if it is not connected and grounded in truth and practical knowledge, then what is it really for? Just endless talking, exhausting our minds! So, practice is the foundation of the actual understanding of philosophy. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE YOGA SUTRA TADA DRASTUH SVARUPE AVASTHANAM? Desikachar: Read my book. Iyengar: Haven’t I told you this before? In asana, there is a centrifugal movement of consciousness towards the frontiers of the body, whether extended vertically, horizontally, or circumferentially, and a centripetal movement as well, as the whole body is brought to a single focus. If the attention is steadily maintained in this manner, meditation takes place.5 Thus, in the advanced practice of asana, the rhythmic flow of energy and awareness is experienced evenly and without interruption, both centripetally and centrifugally, throughout the channels of the body, and a pure state of joy will eventually be felt in the cells and the mind. The body, mind, and soul are then one. This is the manifestation of dharana and dhyana in the practice of asana.6 Awareness that constitutes the very resting place of the soul is sent everywhere throughout a posture. When all the muscles are properly maintained, the atman is reflected in its natural state, without pushing or frowning. So, you see, I just ride the tidal wave of awareness, scale away the layers of opposition, and rest in 5

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the state of equilibrium inside. When something is contorted, awareness can become hard from too much effort, but until there is no distortion, everything will remain the same. Yoga therefore becomes the skill of resting with things in their equanimity and simply exploring what is presented beyond the pair of opposites. Energy then flows without interruption. Some people call it physical, others may call it spiritual. I would say it is a homecoming. Pattabhi Jois: The atman [individual soul; inner Self ] is the same in all people, but we give a name and form to It according to the nature of our mind and sense organs. Taking yoga practice helps control the mind and sense organs so that awareness eventually goes inside, toward this atman. There are two types of yoga, external and internal. Yama, niyama, asana, and pranayama are external. Pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi are internal. As you take practice, you come to see God inside. The Katha Upanisad tells this: Paranci khani vyatrnat svayambhuh Tasmat paran pasyati nantaratman Kasciddhirah Pratyagatmanam aiksat Avrtacaksur amrtatvam icchan Kathopanisad 4.1 [The self-existent Lord afflicted the senses so that they go outward. Therefore, one sees outer things and not the inner Self. A discriminating man, desiring immortality, turns his eyes away (from sense objects) and then sees the indwelling Self.] So, when the sense organs are controlled, you will come to see your true Self, that is atman. WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ABHYASA AND VAIRAGYA? Desikachar: Abhyasa is the effort to persist with something over a long period of time, diligently and wholeheartedly. Vairagya is dispassion for the fruits of such effort. Both are equally important for a yoga practitioner. Iyengar: They are two sides of the same coin. The head is abhyasa, the tail is vairagya. They are eternally connected for the practitioner. Abhyasa

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is a dedicated, unswerving, constant, and vigilant search of a given subject, pursued against all odds and in the face of repeated failures, for an indefinitely long period of time. Vairagya is the cultivation of freedom from passion, the abstention from worldly desires and appetites, and the discrimination between what is real and what is not real. It is the act of giving up all sensuous delights. Abhyasa builds confidence and refines the process of cultivating the consciousness, while vairagya eliminates the things that hinder progress and refinement. So, proficiency in vairagya develops the ability to free oneself from the fruits of action. But a bird cannot fly with one wing. So, we need the two wings of practice and dispassionrenunciation to be able to soar up to the zenith of Soul-realization.7 IS GOD IMPORTANT TO A PHYSICAL PRACTICE? WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF THE YOGA SUTRA ISHVARA PRANIDHANAD VA?

don’t even want to know of Him. But for anyone who practices yoga correctly, the love of God will develop. And, after some time, a greater love for God will be theirs, whether they want it or not. It is true and that is why yoga is real. It develops inside you and helps you to realize the inner light of the Self.

Desikachar: A good teacher sees the commonality of all human beings and helps each individual find his uniqueness. Since this is a light present in all of us, we must honor humanity and let the love of human beings itself be what guides us in the process. So, God is not necessarily Brahma or Vishnu. He is a reference, like my father is my reference and Iyengar is a reference and Pattabhi Jois is a reference too. You don’t know how much difficulty they went through when they were young, how many hardships they had to endure. They are thus models and references for me. I have many gods, but the most important is Isvara [the In-dweller]. Isvara is my model and, because It is, I have to exert more effort and go further and further to align myself with It. Whatever I need to do, I do. Whatever I cannot do, I avoid. That is the meaning of Patanjali’s sutra. Pattabhi Jois: The reason we do yoga is to become one with God and to realize Him in our hearts. You can lecture, you can talk about God, but when you practice correctly, you come to experience God inside. Some people start yoga and don’t even know of Him,

Desikachar: Peace, shanti: that is the goal of yoga. Iyengar: It is to become free of the actions that aﬄict you. When you get rid of these and the body-mind-soul is cleansed, what is left? Yoga! WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE TO YOU?

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THE FUTURE OF YOGA HOW DO YOU VIEW THE FUTURE OF YOGA? Desikachar: I have total faith in the future of yoga. Iyengar: My friend, why do you worry about the future? Leave it to God. He is eternal. If he wants it to survive, it will survive. Who am I to speak of the future? What have I done? I have cultivated, I have built up, I have presented and developed the subject of yoga. Now leave it to eternity. WHAT IS THE GOAL OF YOGA ACCORDING TO YOU?

Desikachar: Shanti. Iyengar: Initially, the practice of yoga, but now, increasingly, it is to present the correct form of yoga to my students around the world. In the beginning, I primarily did yoga to develop my intelligence and evolutional strength. Now that I have the knowledge of that, I’m using it in the best way I can. So, ﬁrst, there was an involution, but now I’m trying to improve the evolution. But I don’t teach for myself. I share things with people. I have a very big heart and what my heart says is, “Don’t keep it to yourself. Don’t let it die.” So, whatever I have, I give to others. When I die, I will know that I didn’t keep any secret in my heart, but let it out. And I am still practicing, so God will probably give me a better life in the next life and I will start from where I left oﬀ.

WHAT IS IT THAT HAS KEPT YOU DOING YOGA FOR ALL THESE YEARS? Desikachar: When I’m travelling, I must confess, yoga has become an addiction to me—a good addiction. I feel sick if I don’t do my practice or meditate. I think that what I am today is because of yoga. I see colleagues from my university and they look so sick, they are so bored, they have no life, no light. Here in India, when they retire, people get bored with life. They get sick. So, how do you generate health? I see my uncle—what an energy he has! And I see Pattabhi Jois—what an energy and strength he has! And I see other people and they can hardly walk. There is something about yoga. And it proves that it awakens an energy in people, that it awakens something beautiful which sustains and supports them from within, and which reveals itself to human nature. Iyengar: The inner intelligence that is continually being revealed.

Based on the Diaries of Atmananda

DEATH MUST DIE by RAM ALEXANDER

Excerpted from Death Must Die (Based on the Diaries of Atmananda) A Western Woman’s Lifelong Spiritual Quest in India with Anandamayee Ma, by Ram Alexander published by Indica Books, 2000, indicabooks@satyam.net.in “Forget the forgetting. Death must die.” -Shree Anandamayee Ma

HEN THE AUTHOR OF THESE DIARIES, the Austrian woman known as Atmananda, died in India in 1985, her frail, saffron-robed body was placed on a flower-decked funeral bier, carefully seated upright in a cross-legged yogic position, and taken in procession through the ancient pilgrimage town of Hardwar to the Ganges, where it was ritually immersed in a special area reserved for sannyasins–orthodox Hindu renunciates.1 She was one of the few women, and perhaps the only Westerner, to have ever been given this honor. This book is essentially the story of how a modern Western woman–a respected pianist and educator–arrived at this destination. Atmananda’s diaries are an intimate record of her spiritual odyssey, in close association with several of [the 20th century’s] most important spiritual figures, particularly her guru, the great Bengali mystic, Sri Anandamayee Ma. The diaries also give a unique account of other Western artists, intellectuals and spiritual seekers who, like herself, made the journey to the East in the first half of the 20th century, and who were the precursors of the many young Americans and Europeans who, from the late 1960s on, flocked to India in search of spiritual fulfillment. Sannyasins are the only Hindus who are not cremated, as they are considered to have died to the world while still alive and thus [to be] free of karmic defilements. The gradual reintegration of such purified bodies into the elements is considered to be auspicious. 1

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Atmananda

The diaries moreover provide a unique, in-depth study of the guru-disciple relationship and the particular problems that arise when a Westerner enters into such a relationship. The presence throughout the book of J. Krishnamurti, the 20th century’s most outspoken and eloquent anti-guru guru, serves to highlight and confront many popular misconceptions of the subject (many of which Krishnamurti himself was directly responsible for), and we are ultimately treated to a face-to-face meeting between him and Anandamayee Ma—the guru par excellence. The traditonal function of a guru has been widely misunderstood and misrepresented in the West, and Atmananda’s quest—from Theosophy to Anandamayee Ma via Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi—gives us a rare, balanced picture of the subject. 20

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TMANANDA’S JOURNEY BEGAN ON June 7, 1904, in Vienna, where she was born into a wealthy Jewish family and given the name Blanca. Her childhood was seriously marred when she was only two years old by the death of her mother, shortly after the birth of her younger sister, and the two girls were raised by their grandmother and a series of tutors. Blanca’s father, although often away on business, took a keen interest in his daughters’ education and was determined that they should have the best of everything. Thus, there was one governess who spoke only French to them until they became ﬂuent and another who spoke only English. A grand piano was also purchased and the best teachers provided. Blanca turned out to be something of a prodigy, giving her ﬁrst acclaimed public recital when she was sixteen years old.

Her father encouraged Blanca’s immersion in the extraordinarily rich cultural life of Vienna, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This was the Vienna of Freud, Mahler, Gustav Klimt, and Richard Strauss, which for one giddy moment had arrived at a pinnacle of Western civilization. But all this splendor would soon come crashing down under the guns of the first World War, during which, along with much of the rest of the city, Blanca would at times undergo near-starvation conditions. It was amid the devastation of this period and its aftermath that the seeds of Blanca’s lifelong mystical quest were sown. She began reading the spiritual writings of Tolstoy, the sermons of the Buddha and Meister Eckhart, the mystic poetry of Rilke, and the esoteric novels of Hermann Hesse and Gustav Meyrink. Then, one day, when she was sixteen and walking alone through a park, one of the defining moments of her life occurred. Suddenly, all matter– trees, rocks, water–was vibrantly alive and filled with a divine light in which there was no separation between the seer and the seen, only an ecstatic unity. This revelation was to be the driving force of her life from then on. She soon discovered Theosophy, which gave an organizational structure and expression to her experience. She immersed herself in this new religion at a time when it was at the peak of its popularity as a dynamic spiritual movement, attending the fiftieth anniversary convention at the society’s headquarters in South India in 1925 and later living in a large Theosophical community in Holland for several years. In post-World War I Vienna, not unlike America in the 1960s, the old social, moral, and religious structures had been discredited and discarded, and youth was a law unto itself. Many found, or thought that they had found, the answers they were seeking in the transcendent wisdom of Eastern mystical philosophy and yoga. But very few had the courage and the vision to pursue the quest as Blanca did. Through Theosophy, Blanca came under the influence of its reluctant messiah, J. Krishnamurti, and ultimately left the

West for good to teach at his school in Banaras. Meanwhile, a fellow Austrian had come to power in Berlin who would embark on a course of destruction and hate-filled racism that would annihilate, once and for all, the world she had been born into, taking most of her friends and relatives with it. In time, Blanca became disillusioned with what she felt to be, for her at least, the inadequate teachings of Krishnamurti, and her search took her to the ashram of the well-known South Indian sage Ramana Maharshi. Although she found great solace with him, her destiny lay elsewhere. Her quest was finally fulfilled at the feet of a divinely beautiful woman, the sublime, Godintoxicated, Bengali mystic worshipped throughout India by her followers as an incarnation of the Divine Mother: Sri Anandamayee Ma. From 1945 until her death, Atmananda’s life became evermore focused on her relationship with this extraordinary woman, a relationship whose sole purpose was to reveal the innermost truth of her existence.

HE FIRST PART OF ATMANANDA’S diaries tells of her spiritual search before she met Anandamayee Ma in 1945, while the major part deals with the evolution of her relationship with Ma and her concomitant spiritual development. This unfolds gradually, even though Atmananda had, in a very real sense, been preparing for it for many years. Nevertheless, everything she had done up to this point was mere spiritual dilettantism in comparison, and she had to be progressively weaned from the world into this altogether deeper level of spiritual commitment. Along the way, she abandoned much of her Western cultural conditioning, as well as the physical and social comforts that are an inseparable part of it. Her diary gives a detailed account of meditation instructions given to her, instructions which, although meant exclusively for Atmananda herself, have an essentially universal application and represent one of the rare instances when such systematic instructions given by Anandamayee Ma, instructions normally kept secret between guru and disciple, have been disclosed.

Although Atmananda was Austrian by birth and never visited England or America, she wrote her diaries in English from the beginning, even before her ﬁrst trip to India in 1925. This was undoubtedly related to her involvement with the Theosophical Society for which English was the language of choice. In manuscript form, these diaries, originally contained in ten notebook volumes of arbitrary length, run to 2,000 handwritten pages in all. SARNATH,2 24 MARCH, 1945 ASKED A QUESTION DURING THE evening gathering and late at night had a long private talk with Mataji, after ﬁrst explaining my spiritual history and background to her. What she said was so completely convincing that there was no room for doubt. In fact, I felt it was not another talking to me, but my higher Self conversing with my self. This cannot be explained. It was an experience beyond words, but all the more real for that. What Mataji said was only the outer expression of something that took place simultaneously on a much deeper level.

Question: Why is it so difficult to decide between two or three courses of action, and how is one to know which is the right one? Anandamayee: It is the nature of the mind, in its present state, to be fickle and divided, to be attracted by one thing and repelled by another. As long as the mind is in this state, the difficulty must persist. But if the mind is steadied and raised to a higher level, beyond this fickleness, where it can view things quietly from above, the choice will become clear. Question: How is the mind to attain to that state? Anandamayee: By dwelling on that which is permanent. Constant change is in the nature of this world and, if the mind dwells on this world, it must also be ever-changing. Question: Then, in order to achieve this calm state of mind, should I seek solitude? Anandamayee: No. For the present,

it is not necessary to leave the world and its activities. The call for solitude will come at some stage, when it will be so imperative that you must obey. For the present, if you do some sadhana [spiritual exercise] for a few hours every day, it will slowly change your attitude towards your world and you will then be in the world, but not of the world. Question: What kind of sadhana do you suggest? Anandamayee: Give about three hours daily to meditation. Start with half an hour at least and increase slowly without straining. One hour in the morning and two hours at night will be excellent. Put yourself into the right state of mind by thinking of yourself as part of the one life which pulsates in every animate being. Imagine that the Divine Light and Grace are showered on you, that you are bathed in them. Become enveloped in this great calm and quiet. Then, when you have become very still and absorbed in this, concentrate on your breathing. Do not hold or force your breath, but simply watch the natural inhaling and exhaling. If your thought wanders, bring it back to your breath. Along with this, practice viveka [discrimination as to the ultimate nature of reality] or vichara [inquiry into the true nature of the Self ] all day long. When irrelevant thoughts come into your mind, remember that what really interests you is Self-realization and therefore dispel them. Throughout the day, try to remember that you are part of that greater life and try to see your work as part of a greater activity. Do not tell anyone about this meditation. Keep a diary and write down daily what experiences you have had, how you feel about yourself, your work, and your surroundings, and how your outlook changes. This will, in time, become the account of a mystic. As a businessman keeps account of his money, so keep account of the spiritual wealth that will come to you. Keep this diary entirely to yourself. Don’t let anyone read it. If you have experiences in your meditation, do not bother about them. Note them, look at them like a spectator, and just go on

Sarnath is the park outside Banaras where the Buddha gave his ﬁrst sermon. It is one of the holiest sites for Buddhists and, even today, remains an oasis of peace and meditation dominated by the remains of an ancient stupa. 2

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with your sadhana. If you feel dejected that you’re not getting anywhere, do not bother about that either, but just go on. If this meditation produces conflicts in your life, so that work and the company of people become distasteful, do not bother about them either. And do not give up your sadhana because the conflict is taxing. If you should feel called on to stop all activity and to live a purely religious life in time, do not blame me, for you have asked me for a sadhana. Meanwhile, do your work, just as you take your bath or change your clothes, as a necessity that has to be attended to. It will then become less irksome and it won’t worry you. Think of your work as part of a larger whole. Just as when you wash your ears or brush your teeth, you do it for your whole body, so your work should be thought of as a service that is part of a bigger service. Keep aloof from others, but don’t let them feel it. In as much as the thought of superiority comes into your mind, you are pulled down. Keep the thought of Godrealization with you as a companion, day and night. If, at present, you are free of responsibilities for others, do not acquire new ones or bother about new activities and better jobs, but stay quietly in Banaras, which is a good place, and get on with your sadhana, as this is your primary interest. When you meditate, sit in any comfortable position. You may change it if necessary, but slowly try to increase the time in which you can comfortably remain in the position that suits you best. You may go on with this even when you’re indisposed or unwell. When you get tired, lie down and continue your meditation and fall asleep with it. But whatever sadhana you do has to be done for God and not for your own benefit. Question: If I notice that thoughts belonging to a certain particular type keep on disturbing the mind, should I attend to this matter or just dismiss them? Anandamayee: Have you any strong attachment? I reply: Music—not for fame, but because it is a natural gift that should

be perfected. Anandamayee: Things like that are not a serious problem, but what is most difficult to get rid of is attachment to persons. These are serious obstacles to this kind of meditation. If it is not affection, it may be repulsion, which is equally bad. Try to realize that the physical is temporary and subject to destruction at any moment, and concentrate on that in others which is beyond the physical. I admit to her that there has been a very strong attachment to a person, but that it seems to be over. Anandamayee says that the marks are still left and stay for a long time: “I noticed, on seeing you for the first time, a strong tendency towards mysticism, which I could detect from the shape of your foot. But I also noticed the attachment, which is in the way.” RAJGHAT, 26 MARCH, 1945 RYING TO MEDITATE AFTER 10 P.M. The concentration on the breath produces an increasing longing, like love sickness, but not for a person, but rather for that which seems to be the origin of breath.

6 APRIL, 1945 Visit to Anandamayee Ma. Ask about concentration on breath. She says that its purpose is only to still the mind and to generate a state of inner rest and peace (shanti); it is only to prepare the ground for deeper spiritual revelation. 3 NOVEMBER, 1945 Question: I find it very difficult to concentrate on the breath and also very boring, and I can only do it when I think of you as the Great Mother who has commanded me to do so. Yet I feel that you had a special reason for asking me to concentrate on the breath. If you can explain this to me, I shall then be able to do it without difficulty. Ma: Through breath, prana vayu [vital energy; wind] consciousness pervades matter. Everything that is alive breathes. When breath stops, you die. Physical life depends on breath. It is through prana that matter becomes alive. Desires

and the wandering mind [ichha and vasana] make breath impure. Therefore I advise the practice of concentration on breathing, combined with the taking of any one of God’s names [mantra]. If the breath and the mind become ekagra [one-pointed] and steady, then the mind expands to infinity and all phenomena are included in that one, all-inclusive point. If you think of God with the breath, it will purify the prana, the physical sheath, and the mind. 4 NOVEMBER, 1945 I was given food by myself on a dirty, unswept verandah and felt extremely upset and decided not to eat the next day. Somehow I mentioned this to someone, who brought it to Anandamayee Ma’s notice, and she asked some ladies to eat with me.3 J.C. Mukerji talked and talked to me and asked me to have food. I was very upset and told him all about the dirty bathroom and the dirt all over, and asked why is it that no one organizes the place? Later on, I reflected that every time I have a somewhat spiritual revelation, it happens in extremely uncomfortable and dirty surroundings. This seems necessary to break the false sense of well-being that cleanliness and order give. Here again it is the same. 5 NOVEMBER, 1945 Last night, during the Kali puja (10 p.m. to 3 a.m.), some change seemed to take place in me, and so I no longer mind the shabby surroundings at all. It occurred to me that, instead of remaining ensconced in my European ego, I should share the life of the others here. If I adopt their customs and manner and outlook, they will forget that I am a foreigner and treat me accordingly. Unconsciously, they must be repelled by my foreign dress and also by my attaching so much importance to the physical. A Mr. Dutt presented me with a white dhoti, which, since I have begun wearing it, makes me feel quite different. I must not go to such place in frocks (which are outrageous to Indians). Immediately, their attitude changed upon my adapting myself.

Traditional rules of Brahmanic orthodoxy, still very much the norm at this time, would have precluded Atmananda, as a foreigner, from eating with higher-caste Hindus. 3

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Anandamayee Ma in Siddhasana

Towards the end of puja, Anandamayee Ma suddenly looked quite diﬀerent and extremely young and beautiful, like a living goddess. I seemed to remember this sight from somewhere...and suddenly it occurred to me that my mother looked like that when she was about twenty-four, just before she died. It made me cry.4 Anandamayee Ma looked like an unearthly vision and, at that moment, I felt convinced that what Ramakrishna had said about Himself to one of his devotees was also true of

Her: “I assure you,” he said, “there is only God in this body, nothing else.” She was changing every second with a radiant spontaneity, and was beautifully smiling and altogether like a goddess. It made me cry a lot and, as I prostrated myself before Her, I felt within: “I have now seen who you are.” This occurred to me just as the Kali idol became fully consecrated and, at that moment, it was overwhelmingly clear that Anandamayee Ma, Herself, was the Goddess.

28 JANUARY, 1946 I asked [Ma] about atmakriya. She said: atmakriya is that which leads you to atma [Self ] realization. When the mind becomes clear, then you see yourself in the mirror. The great moment comes of itself and nothing and no one can take you to this realization. But through the shakti [spiritual power] of your guru, you can be fully prepared for it when it comes. But you must obey Him [or Her]. He is your guru, whom you believe to be perfect and this faith is what makes him your guru.

An essential part of the sadhana process with Anandamayee Ma was the unlocking and releasing of deep-seated psychological trauma.

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12 APRIL, 1946 There must be desire as long as there is the sense of ‘I,’ the mind. “Craving,” (as JK [J. Krishnamurti] puts it) seems to me to be really the only positive thing we have, because it compels us to destroy the barriers of the snug prison of the mind. Craving is really the urge to come back to perfect balance. We simply have to learn how to desire the proper things. Perfection clothes itself with a physical body like Anandamayee Ma’s in order to seduce us mortals, whose perceptions are based on the physical senses. It uses physical attraction to captivate the senses and lure them into the fire of truth. Once we have become irrevocably attached to Her, She disappears and becomes ‘That’—our innermost Self, the ONE. FROM THE LAST CHAPTER: THE FINAL YEARS Y THE TIME I MET HER IN 1972, Atmananda had long since found refuge in her guru and the passionate struggles recorded here were already a distant memory. She was then deeply involved in the translation and editing of books on the life and teachings of Anandamayee Ma, which she strongly felt to be her life’s work. It is ironic that these diaries, by far her greatest work, were written with the firm intention that no one other than herself should ever see them. At the time of Atmananda’s passing, it was observed by those present that her exit from this world was that of a true yogini. The following is an account of that exit and the observances that attended it. On the afternoon of 24 September, 1985, Atmananda arrived from Dehradun by taxi at the Kankhal ashram, where the body of Anandamayee Ma had recently been enshrined in an impressive marble temple specially built for this purpose. She was running a high fever and in an extremely debilitated condition, her throat having been acutely inflamed for a week, as a result of which she had eaten practically nothing.8 Although

quite conscious and evidently not in great pain, life was holding her by the slenderest of threads and she could only speak in a faint whisper. She was taken to the dilapidated dharmasala [a traditional pilgrims’ rest house] where she was accustomed to staying on her visits to Kankha, which was about a kilometer from the ashram and where her friend and fellow Anandamayee Ma disciple, Melita Maschmann, lived.9 The dharmasala is a massive, rundown, eighteenth-century structure, built like a medieval fortress. It fronts on a narrow lane that serves as the main avenue to the local cremation ground nearby, which is situated on the banks of the Ganges. At various times during the day, triumphant Hindu funeral processions pass by, carrying the body of the deceased on a flower-decked bier, the mourners chanting: “Ram nam satya hai [The name Ram is truth].” There was only one primitive latrine, which served all of the ten upstairs rooms (one of which contained a family of five), and which was located some 120 feet from the room Atmananda occupied. Nevertheless, in spite of these inconveniences, the place had its own charm and Atmananda was probably more relaxed here than she would have been at the ashram. In fact, it seems profoundly fitting for someone who had renounced everything, and whose entire life had been nothing if not a pilgrimage, to embark on her final journey from such a humble place.

HAT HAPPENED NEXT IS BEST described by Melita, who was the sole witness to many of these events: “It was early afternoon when someone called me out of my room. There were two young men, one who was accompanying Atmananda from the Dehradun ashram, and the other who was, I believe, the taxi driver. They were holding a large bundle in which, I understood, was Atmananda, although I could not see her. Together, we carried her upstairs and put the bundle down on the cot in the old room and, suddenly, there

she was! She spoke in a very soft voice. I spread her bedding out on another cot and made it as comfortable as possible, and that seemed to make her feel more at home. After that, her voice became a little stronger and she said that she had had a very high fever, but was now feeling a little better. I made her some tea, but we did not talk much, as I guess it was difficult for her, so we just sat quietly. Then in the evening she went to sleep and, later on, I went to sleep too on the second cot. I woke up several times, as Atmananda seemed to be having trouble breathing, but she always fell asleep again quickly. Early in the morning, around 5:00 a.m., I heard her breathing with difficulty and got up and made some tea. I was worried because she looked so pale and hardly spoke. After the tea, she seemed to feel better and we began talking in a low voice about Ma, Her beauty, and Her love, and about how much we had received from Her. But then, suddenly, I became very concerned as her voice became so soft. I ran to find the father of the family who lived in the corner room. He at once got dressed and went to the ashram to call one of the lady doctors staying there. Atmananda was continually repeating Ma’s name, as she had been doing all morning. In spite of her weakness, with my assistance she was able to walk to the bathroom and then was able to manage by herself. [Back in the room,] I helped her into a sitting position, holding her in my arms and softly repeating the japa of Ma’s name along with her. When I could no longer hear her, I went on repeating “Ma, Ma, Ma.” Suddenly, I felt a strange movement in her whole body and I understood that she had given up her life. I slowly laid her down and covered her face, and kept on praying Ma’s name while sitting by her side. A long time passed and still no doctor came, so I sent someone else to notify the ashram that Atmananda had left her body. Then, a big crowd arrived. The Gujarati lady doctor and myself propped her up and arranged her

It was thought she was suﬀering from diphtheria (from which her sister had died at the age of 17). Melita Maschmann is a prominent German writer who met Anandamayee Ma “by chance” in the early 1960s and remained with her in India from that time on. 8 9

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clothes. Later, the body was brought to Maâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s samadhi mandir,10 where the ashram girls washed and dressed it in fresh clothes and placed her in front of the samadhi.11 An hour later, she was seated in an open vehicle, with her body in a crossed-legged position on a chair, and covered with many garlands. Then, she was taken in procession, in the traditional manner for a sannyasin, to a special area of the Ganges reserved for the submersion of sannyasis. Many ashramites accompanied her and when we returned to the ashram, a bandhara [a ritual feast] was given in her honor.â&#x20AC;?12 To the credit of the ashram, particularly to the brahmacharinis [nuns] who made most of the arrangements, in the end, Atamananda was given the full honors due to her as a Hindu sannyasini. To my knowledge, she is the only Western woman to have ever been accorded such an honor and there can be no doubt that she would have been immensely delighted!

The temple that houses the remains of Anandamayee Ma. 11 This would be behind a railing in the temple, where normally she was not allowed to go. 12 From a letter written to Ram Alexander by Melita Maschman in 1986. 10

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SRI ANANDAYMAYEE MA (1896-1982) Written and edited by RAM ALEXANDER

RI ANANDAMAYEE MA WAS ONE of the greatest saints of modern India, believed by her devotees to be an incarnation of the Divine Mother. Although born into a very poor Brahmin family in rural East Bengal, and having received virtually no formal education, she possessed an uncanny knowledge of the most esoteric spiritual practices and processes. This was acknowledged by many of India’s most outstanding scholars, yogis and philosophers. She said that her consciousness had been the same throughout her life from birth (perpetually immersed in the non-dual bliss of parabraman), but nevertheless between the ages of approximately 18 and 28 she underwent what she referred to as her sadhana lila, or play of spiritual practice. During this period she underwent a spontaneous self-initiation process in which various mantras and yantras (cosmic geometric representations) were revealed as well as the vision of speciﬁc deities in whom she would ultimately merge. After this she would remain in samadhi for long stretches of time, often assuming complex yoga postures, and in general was surrounded by a powerful air of the magical and miraculous. This gradually began to attract large numbers of people who fell under the spell of her awesome spiritual beauty and sweetness. She would later say of this period that she had never revealed more than a fraction of what happened to her at this time. Ma would sometimes say, when asked who she was, that she was the atman (the innermost spiritual essence) of the person inquiring, and she would guide those who came to her according to their own unique karmic predisposition rather than by any group method or teaching. Thus there was an experience of uniquely individual spiritual authenticity by all who had entered into a relationship with her. Her mere presence evoked a spiritual awakening in those who approached her and it seemed that her purpose for being was only to give darshan, or ‘the showing’ of this Divine Presence. For me she was Mahamaya – the Great Goddess who creates the appearance of the world and reveals Herself in and through this appearance as none

other than That (the undifferentiated whole – the absolute identity of the macrocosm with the microcosm). As she would often say: “Kahan Bhagawan nehi hai?” “Where is God not?” Like so many others I found her possessed of an extraordinary (one can only say Divine) physical beauty (even in old age) which seduced the beholder into the deepest levels of spiritual absorption and bliss. When asked by an earnest aspirant: “What is real darshan?” Ma replied: “To see that which, when seen, the desire to see anything more vanishes forever; to hear that which, when heard, the desire to hear anything else is forever silenced.” This was indeed the true darshan of Anandamayee Ma. 2 Question: Am I right to believe that you are God? Anandamayee Ma: There is nothing but God; everything and everyone is only a form of God. In your shape also He has come here to give darshan. Question: Then why are You in this world? Ma: In this world? I am not anywhere. I am within myself. Question: Why am I in this world? Ma: He plays in infinite ways. It is His pleasure to play as He does. Question: But I, why am I in this world? Ma: That’s what I have been telling you. All is He. His play is in numberless forms and ways. But to find out for yourself why you are in the world, to find out who you really are, there are various sadhanas. You study and you pass your exam; you earn money and you enjoy the use of it. But all this is in the realm of death in which you go on life after life, repeating the same thing over and over again. But there is also another path—the path of Immortality, which leads to the knowledge of what you are in reality. Question: Can anyone help me or must each one find out for himself? Ma: The professor can teach you only when you have the capacity to learn. Of course, he can give you help but you must be able to respond. You must have it in you to grasp what he teaches. It is you who study and you who pass; you who earn and you who spend.

Question: Which is the best path? Ma: All paths are good. It depends on a man’s samskaras, his conditioning, the tendencies he has brought over from former lives. Just as one can get to the same place by plane, ship, train, car, cycle, etc., so also different ways suit different types of people. But the best path for each is the one which the Guru points out for him. Question: I am a Christian. Ma: I am also a Christian, a Mohammedan, anything you like. Question: How can I get happiness? Ma: First tell me whether you are willing to do as I bid you. Question: Yes, I am. Ma: Are you really? All right, suppose I ask you to remain here. Will you be able to do it? Questioner: No. (Laughter) Ma: You see, happiness that depends on anything outside of you, be it wife, child, money, fame, friends—whatever it is—cannot last. But if you find happiness in God who is everywhere, all pervading, who is your own Self—that is real happiness. Question: Is there no substance to me as an individual? Is there nothing in me that is not God? Ma: No. Even the form of not being is only God alone. Everything is He. Question: Is there no justification in professional or any other worldly work at all? Ma: Occupation with worldly things is like slow poison. Gradually, without your noticing it, it leads you to death. Should I advise my friends, my fathers and mothers1, to take this road? I cannot do this. I say tread the path of Immortality, take any path that suits your temperament which will lead you to the discovery of your Self. But you can do one thing: Whatever work you do throughout the day, try to do it in a spirit of service. Serve Him in every form, regard everyone and everything as manifestations of God and serve Him alone through whatever work you undertake. If you live with this attitude of mind, the path to Reality will open out before you. Question: What is your work? Ma: I have no work. For whom can I work since there is only ONE.

1 Anandamayee Ma generally referred 26 FALL 2004 to people as her mothers and fathers, or brothers and sisters according to their age.

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PHOTO ESSAY: ONE

ESTRANGEMENT Photographs of a Remembered India by SUCHITRA VAN Text written with GEORGE PRADO

S A BOY AMONG BOYS IN MY VILLAGE, I WAS TRANSPARENT IN MY SURROUNDINGS, as indistinguishable from its spirit and rhythm as the sun, the diesel fumes, and the vegetable sellers. I have been carried far away from these moments and from India and, at this distance, I can see that we have both grown in our separate realities. India and I have become foreign to each other, and yet somehow more intimate. Technology and globalization have transformed traditional Indian culture and many activities that I remember as a way of life are now disappearing, even from remote villages. For example, the introduction of chairs into homes which once saw no need for them is redefining social interaction. The simplicity of inviting someone to sit with you on the floor and partake of your life has been altered by their increasingly common presence. The floor itself has been redefined and is no longer the primary arena of social intercourse, but has become instead the less-elevated plane of inadequacy of Western definition. Social interaction is now contingent on the number of chairs in a room, and posture and gesture have inevitably responded to their new disposition in space. So, traditional Indian culture fades into a more modern Indian reality. As a foreigner now, I witness these changes from the dual perspective of memory and observation. Images of a fading way of life reveal themselves to me as emotional and aesthetic moments. It is this sense of estrangement from all that is and was my personal history that has inspired me to document the daily activities, movements, interactions, and habits of this transitioning way of life. In them, I find an echo of the evanescent beauty that once was and, I believe, still is India. Pants drying

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Man brushing teeth with a Neem tree twig

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Man shaving 30

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Man meditating FALL 2004

Woman drying dupatta

Shirts drying 32

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Man with thread

Goat on steps FALL 2004

Underwear drying

Woman drying dupatta

Man offering prayers 34

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Li誰gam carving on rocks FALL 2004

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN

PATAìJALI’S YOGA SÇTRAS SHYAM RANGANATHAN

NE OF THE FIRST THINGS A Westerner learns when attempting to master an Indian art or discipline, whether it be classical Indian dance, music, philosophy, or yoga, is that he or she will need a teacher. The teacher’s position, as is often taught, is next to that of God. Thus māta, pita, guru, deva [mother, father, teacher, God] represent, according to an old Hindu adage, the succession of leaders we come into contact with in life. Before the guidance of God can be gained, we will need the guidance of a guru, or teacher, to help lead us down our spiritual path. This view of Indian learning is also present in the academy. Those who formally study Indian philosophy learn that the dense sūtra texts, which have come down to us from the distant past, were never meant to be studied in isolation, but rather under the guidance of a guru able to decode their cryptic sentences. Against this understanding of Indian learning, you may be surprised to learn (as I was myself ) that Patañjali, author of the Yoga Sūtras, has no explicit use for human, or embodied, gurus. In fact, the word guru appears only once in the entire Yoga Sūtras, and that is to characterize Īśvara, the Lord, or God—and the only teacher Patañjali (repeatedly) urges readers to seek out. If the common “gurucentric” view of Indian disciplines is correct, then the fact that Patañjali leaves out mention of the importance of human gurus is remarkable. Indeed, that he only advocates a divine guru and recommends no other types of teachers suggests that, in the pursuit of yoga, he was skeptical of the ability of human beings to be gurus to each other. To answer the question of why a human guru will not do for Patañjali, perhaps a review of what yoga is for him is in order. Photograph by Philip Miller 36

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SUMMARY OF PATAÑJALI’S YOGA PHILOSOPHY

O PATAÑJALI, THE CENTRAL PROBLEM to be overcome is saêyoga, or the tying of the true Self, or puruüa, to the phenomenal, natural self (composed of the body, mind, thoughts, feelings, desires, and so on), which lies in the realm of nature, or prakäti (YS II.17). Saêyoga is a bondage of our own making and is a function of latent tendencies acquired from past choices and actions. These tendencies bear fruit (prakäti permitting) in the form of desires, goals, and ambitions, which obscure our true natures as tranquil beings and lead us again and again to states of affliction. The solution to the problem is cittavätti-nirodhaë, which is the checking of the character of thought (YS I.1). When the mind is turbulent, our true nature as luminescent and tranquil beings is obscured, and we misidentify ourselves with the roller-coaster emotions and chatter of inane thoughts of our minds. However, by constraining the character of thought to the point of stillness, the true Self, or puruüa, abides in its true nature (YS I.3, 13). Achieving this stillness of mind, which is the goal of yoga, is no small task. Patañjali prescribes several means, the most famous of which are the eight limbs of yoga (YS II.28). Yet included in the eight limbs (under the heading “niyama”—YS II.32) is a practice that, at times, Patañjali suggests is sufficient all by itself for the achievement of the goals of yoga. This is the practice of submission to, and reflection upon, Īśvara (YS I.23, II.45). Īśvara, according to Patañjali, is a special puruüa, untouched by the problems of the saêskáras—afflictions and residual tendencies from past actions, choices, and experiences (YS I.24)—and knowledge in It is infinite. (Throughout the Yoga Sutras, Patañjali uses the neuter gender to refer to Īśvara.) As the first teacher and teacher of other teachers (such as divine sages and exalted beings), Īśvara contains the seed of omniscience within Itself and so, as our teacher, It can presumably

place the seed in us (YS I.25-26). Thus, by surrendering to Īśvara, we put ourselves in the position of becoming recipients of omniscience. Little wonder then that Patañjali would regard submission to Īśvara as suﬃcient for the accomplishment of yoga, for, by means of it, all knowledge can be bestowed upon a seeker, even the knowledge gained by the puruüa when, the mind stilled, the puruüa comes to know itself (and thereby attains liberation). THE DANGER OF BEING AN EMBODIED (HUMAN) GURU

N THE THIRD BOOK OF THE YOGA Sūtras, Patañjali catalogues the various powers to be gained by becoming an adept of yoga. While many of these “perks” would seem to paint the asceticism of yoga in a flattering light, Patañjali makes it clear that they are actually distractions and obstacles which encourage the identification of the Self (puruüa) with the bodily, or natural, apparatus (YS III.38). It is ironic then that the powers a yogi gains on the path of yoga should reinforce a false understanding of the self as an unusual individual amongst mere mortals, as such powers operate in the realm of prakäti. Becoming a person of authority or celebrity is one such natural power that comes entrained with yogic accomplishments. As with other powers, it too represents a danger for yogis as it puts them at risk of being flattered by the attention and invitations of beings of note, whether celestial or earthly. As a result, Patañjali recommends yogis avoid the company of those who would lavish attention on them (YS III.51). By the same reasoning, it would seem that adepts should also regard the guru–ùiüya [disciple] relationship as an impediment to yoga since, in it, the guru is put on a pedestal and treated markedly differently from other persons—indeed, is viewed as a god. This singular treatment threatens the view of the puruüa as a being above social and natural distinctions. In addition, it can erode a guru’s yogic progress and make him or her less competent to lead disciples.

Īśvara, however, by being above aﬄictions and karma, and by lying outside the realm of prakäti, is not vulnerable to such pitfalls. THE DANGER OF BEING THE DISCIPLE OF AN EMBODIED GURU

MBODIED GURUS ARE GROSS—WHICH is to say that they have bodies associated with them, as well as physical skills and a history, all of which are the basis of their authority. As a result, when disciples focus, as they are supposed to do, on the inessential features of such gurus—namely, their learning, practical and intellectual knowledge, and ability to transmit knowledge through social practices—they find themselves acquiring new tendencies and afflictions, new samskāras, which further their state of bondage. To understand why this is so, it is important to appreciate Patañjali’s view of objects, which he divides into two categories: subtle [sâküma] and gross [sthūla]. Gross objects have extension (in space and time), while subtle objects do not, and to meditate on them separately, it would seem, leads to markedly different results. Patañjali calls meditation on any object “grasping objects by taking their shape [añjanatā]...engrossment [samāpatti].” This state of concentration allows an individual to assume the characteristics of the object of concentration (YS I.4144) and is a power that a yogi gains during the process of yogic development. (Such a power, according to Patañjali, is achieved by means of a “perfect discipline of the mind” [saêyama], a discipline which consists of the last three limbs of yoga: concentration [dhárana]; meditation of a religious character [dhyāna]; and absorption [samādhi] (YS III.1-4)) Thus, if an object is gross in nature, then the characteristics a yogi will take on will be gross in nature as well (i.e., in concentrating on an elephant, a yogi will gain the strength of an elephant. YS III.25). But to take on the gross, or embodied, characteristics of an object of concentration is to find oneself precluded from the state

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of samādhi. This is not the case when the object of concentration is subtle in nature. When the object is subtle, the yogi who meditates on it can expect to enter a “seeded” [bīja] state of samādhi. To be sure, all a yogi’s eﬀorts result in samskāras, but seeded states of samādhi give rise to a form of samskāra that acts as an antidote to accumulated bondage and so results in “seedless” states of samādhi (YS I.44-51). Such seedless states of samādhi, moreover, correspond to liberation because arrival at them means a yogi has been relieved of all accumulated samskāras. Thus, meditating on gross objects gives rise to ordinary samskāras and so to further bondage, while meditating on subtle objects, such as Īśvara, contributes to liberation from bondage. TAKING STOCK OF PATAÑJALI’S VIEW

O SUMMARIZE, PATAÑJALI IS skeptical about the ability of humans (or embodied beings in general) to be gurus to each other for two reasons: first, embodied gurus are vulnerable to being flattered and distracted by the worship and honor lavished on them by students; second, students will accumulate additional samskāras by focusing on (and worshipping) the non-subtle features of the embodied guru. But this presents us with an interesting problem: How does Patañjali expect us to learn about yoga, if not from an embodied guru? Indeed, how could we learn about such things as āsanas, which appear essential to the practice of yoga, except through a guru? And wasn’t Patañjali himself a guru to his own students, as he is to anyone who regards his Yoga Sūtras as the definitive tract on yoga? A solution to this problem is to recall that there is more than one type of teacher-student relationship. To avoid the pitfalls that Patañjali seems to believe occur between guru and disciple, a teacher-student relationship must be constrained by the following

conditions: the teacher cannot be viewed as having any authority over the student or derive any primary satisfaction from a sense of intellectual or practical superiority over the student; and the student cannot regard the teacher as an object of worship or as an incorruptible connection to divine teachings. A very good example of such an acceptable student-teacher relationship, I think, is the one that exists between professor and student. While professors are authorities on a topic, they do not have authority over their students. Their pedagogic goal, moreover, is to make colleagues out of their students (or, at least, the good ones), so a safety mechanism is built into their relationship which prevents professors from becoming attached to their relative academic superiority. Students, too, come to learn that, with eﬀort, they can arrive at a place in their scholarship where they can become peers of their teachers and even, perhaps, teach them something in return. This also functions as a safety mechanism, preventing students from enshrining their teachers in a god-like position. As to whether Patañjali was a guru to his own students, I cannot say, having never been a contemporary of his (or, if I was, I have no recollection of it). That said, the question of whether it is safe for us to regard him as a teacher still remains. The answer, I think, is yes, the viewing of Patañjali and other great ācāryas of yore as teachers is relatively safe. This is not because Patañjali and the others are like professors to us, but rather because they are no longer gross objects. Indeed, presuming that the philosophy of Patañjali is correct, it is probably safe to conclude that he and the other great ācāryas are, by now, liberated souls that have divested themselves, through their eﬀorts, of what is inessential to their nature. Thus, when we seize on Patañjali as a teacher today, it is not (or shouldn’t be) as a person that lived some two thousand years ago, but rather as a puruüa that left us brilliant directions on

the road from affliction. In this subtle form, Patañjali is, without a doubt, a worthy object of meditation. Yet one final, awkward issue remains: How are we to treat our traditional teachers, given this understanding of Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras? To begin with, Patañjali does not advocate that we categorically refrain from calling such personages “guru” or “guruji,” or that we shrink from according them outward signs of honor and respect. Indeed, if teachers really have our interests at heart and are willing to share all their knowledge in order to bring us up to their level of understanding and proficiency, then making outward signs of respect is one of the few ways we have of “paying” them for their service (for what need have they of a lot of money?). Such signs, moreover, are a way of signaling to them that we wish them to view us as individuals who can be helped by their teaching. However, for those of us who choose to enter such a relationship, Patañjali does offer this grim warning: Be very careful. Any teacher that thrives, desires, or is flattered by the honor lavished on him or her by students becomes, day by day, less qualified to teach yoga, and his or her development suffers reversal. By the same token, any student that becomes enamored with a teacher as a god will inevitably find himself or herself falling further and further into bondage.1 References to Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras are from Shyam Ranganathan, The Moral Philosophy of Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras (forthcoming). Shyam Ranganathan will be conducting an intensive week-end workshop on the philosophy of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras between January 28-30 at the Patanjali Yoga Shala in New York City. The aim of the workshop is to make Patanjali’s dense text intelligible and to bring to life the philosophical issues it deals with. Participants will receive a course kit that includes a copy of Ranganathan’s translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

All of this depends on the validity of Patañjali’s system, of course. We are bound to get a very diﬀerent answer from Ramanuja’s Viùiüôádvaita which, unlike many other Indian philosophies, places a very strong emphasis on the importance and absolute value of bodies to all puruüas, including God. 1

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PHOTO ESSAY: TWO

AN INDIA

Photographs 1998-2002 by MARK PAUL PETRICK

E RELISH THE LOOK OF LOVED ONES AND REMEMBER THEIR FACES. BUT IT IS more than their appearance that we love; it is something within their appearance, their life, that holds our heart. So, we make pictures of them and keep them as talismans of qualities we adore. These are pictures of a loved one—India—which have been choreographed to convey some sense of her complexity, dignity, charm, ordinariness, contrariness, majestic depth, and mundane squalor—to give a glimpse of her unfathomable beauty which results from a confluence of the plain, the savory, and the hard-toswallow. I went to India to look at common things—temples and houses; people working and worshipping; goddesses and gods; signs, pictures, and patterns; and the places and happenings of every day—and to make pictures of them. Through the simple medium of black-and-white film and the square format (and with self-conscious nods to the history and heroes of photography), I recorded thousands of scenes as I traveled widely about the country, over the course of seven months on three trips between late 1998 and early 2002. These were not my first trips to India, nor are they likely to be my last. These pictures are the result of perseverance—of walking and taking the steps to get to new places, and then of walking some more, while continuing to look with care at the kaleidoscopic face of Mother India. This project is gratefully dedicated to Ramesh Balsekar, whom I met for the first time in Mumbai, just before beginning this project. Since then, Ramesh and his teaching have been a touchstone of uncompromising clarity and wisdom in my life.

Ramesh Balsekar, exemplar and teacher of Advaita philosophy

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Top: Painted ceiling at the úrà Mànáküi Temple, Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Bottom: Inside a úiva temple, Gawahati, Assam.

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Top: Shrine to Ramaóa Maháäüi’s mother, Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. Bottom: Wall-painted symbols of Viüóu at the úrà Raïganáthaswámi Temple complex, Tirucirappalli, Tamil Nadu.

A residential interior, Nasik, Mahara첫tra.

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Top: A boy in costume for his role in the annual Rámlàla festival, Rám Nagar, Uttar Pradeù. Bottom: Visitors touching a small shrine at the Dârgá Temple, Váránasà, Uttar Pradeù.

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Top: A shrine inside the úrà Mànáküi Temple, Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Bottom: Dairyman at Ramaóa Maháäüi’s ashram, Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu.

Sidewalk poster display, Rám Nagar, Uttar Pradeù.

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A group of Ayyappan pilgrims visiting the úrà Mànáküi Temple, Madurai, Tamil Nadu.

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Television goddess, Nasik, Mahara첫tra.

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AN INTERVIEW WITH H. H. SRI SWAMI SATCIDANANDA

REMOVING THE SMALL CIRCLE Ananda Ashram, Khahangad, Kerala, South India

ould you say something about the meaning of ánanda, as your áùram is called the Ananda Ashram. Swami Satcidananda: In English, the literal meaning of ánanda is “bliss.” Bliss has no opposite, whereas if you say happiness, there is unhappiness; if you say good, there is bad. But bliss has no opposite at all. God is called Sat-cit-ánanda—“sat” is existence, “cit” is consciousness, and “ánanda” is bliss—so, real bliss can be had when we commune with God, when we are as one with God, for God is bliss—peace and bliss. But how to get this? Well, there are diﬀerent ways of attaining God. Here, we chant “rám nám.” When we chant this, our minds grow purer and the gross mind becomes subtler. As it becomes more and more subtle, it also becomes absolutely pure and, in the pure mind, we experience ánanda. So, the mind ceases to exist when it has become absolutely pure and, in that condition alone, can ánanda be experienced. Also, when we realize our oneness with God, we gain the experience permanently; the experience becomes stable in us. Many Western seekers come to India looking for enlightenment, as if it is an experience. What is enlightenment? Swamiji: To know what we really are, to know our own Self, is enlightenment. You see, we are in a state of ignorance when we say we are the body or, rather, when we identify ourselves with the body. We have to go beyond the body and identify ourselves with the Self, as that is what in reality we are. If we become established in the consciousness that we are the Self, then we can say we are enlightened.

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Are there any qualifications for enlightenment? Swamiji: Purification, purity of mind. Mind is the only thing standing in the way of our enlightenment. When the mind is working, enlightenment is not possible. The mind has to be stilled and this stillness only comes when we have removed all waves or thoughts or tendencies of the mind. Then the mind becomes perfectly pure, crystal clear, and we get enlightenment. So, sádhana, which is to say, some spiritual practice, is necessary for this? Swamiji: Yes. A lot of work is necessary to purify our minds, as we have gathered quite a lot of dirt from the moment we started out from our original source. You see, it’s like this: we are actually like travelers—we have left our original home. We left our parents there and started traveling, and in the course of our travels and by way of our thoughts and actions, we have gathered a lot of things. We have also been passing through innumerable births. We have been insects. We have been animals. We have been birds. We have been humans. Now, human birth is the gateway to liberation. Having taken human birth, we are now endowed with intellect, which means we can discriminate between what is good and what is bad for us. Using the intellect, we find that there is something higher than what the world can give us, as the happiness we get depends upon certain conditions and happiness is always followed by its opposite, that is, by sorrow. Now, our intellect tells us there must be something more than this—eternal happiness—and we start trying for it. This is the occasion, the turning-point,

in our lives when we begin the effort to return to our original home. We then come into contact with a wise man who knows the truth. He tells us how to go back home by asking us to meditate on our true being or to chant the name of God, or whatever it is that will lead us back. And in the process, we purify ourselves. All our desires drop off, all the effects of our desires and all the effects of our actions drop off, and our mind becomes perfectly still. And when it is perfectly still, we get a glimpse of our true being, which leads us to further efforts to remain in this state until we have been established in it, for it is our real home, our own Self. So, until we are absolutely pure, until we have shed all that we have accumulated during our journey, we will have no access to this original place. When, however, we do, we will return as naked as we began. And this is the condition: that we shed all that we have earned during our journey. Only then will we be qualified to enter our home. It has been said that self-enquiry is the most direct route to realizing the Self… Swamiji: It is one of the ways to go back home. Here, our Master has taught us that devotion is one of the simplest and safest ways to return home. We think of our Self as a Supreme Being who is both everything and beyond everything. We consider Him to be an impersonal Person to whom we give all our love and devotion. This means we aspire to go back to Him. It is from Him that we have come to this wandering life, so we are part of Him, though we may have forgotten this. Now—as our Master has taught us—we must think of Him, meditate on Him, and

when our mind has become pure, our oneness with Him will be revealed. So, devotion is one of the ways. In the beginning, we feel the divine being to be separate from ourselves because we have not yet understood that we are the being Himself. We project; we think of Him as a personality or power outside of ourselves and give all our love and devotion to Him. Then we come to understand that He is seated in our own hearts, that we are not different from Him. Efforts to commune with Him then begin in ourselves and finally we realize our oneness with Him. And it is then that we can say that we have come home, that we can say, “I have joined my Father.” It is like the story of the prodigal son. Is it necessary in the beginning to surrender to someone, such as a teacher, a guru? Swamiji: We can get guidance from the guru. Who is this guru? One who has become one with the Supreme Being, who has reached his original home, who knows what he really is. Then alone can he teach us. When we are actually aspiring to go back home, the Divine will arrange contact with such a person who can guide us. Of course, we have to strive hard to find such an individual, but, at the same time, when we are seriously thinking of or hoping for a guide, He will provide one—at the right time. In the West, we are a bit nervous about surrendering to somebody. Swamiji: In the West, surrender has a different meaning. There, surrender is defeat. Here, if you use the word defeat, it means the defeat of the ego in us. The ego disappears. By accepting that “I have no power,” that “it is Your power that has been working in me though I have wrongly claimed responsibility for it,” the ego surrenders completely. So, you are saying that, when you deeply surrender to somebody, naturally the ego will fall away? Swamiji: “Somebody” means the Supreme Being, the power that controls the entire universe. To that power we surrender. That power and we are not different but, because of the ego-sense, because of the sense of separation from

H. H. Sri Swami Satcidananda, Ananda Ashram, Khahangad, Kerala, South India.

Him, we think that we have that power, that we are doing it ourselves, that we are taking care of this body—that we are doing this, that we are doing that. When we practice surrender, we say instead: “I am nothing, Lord. You are everything. Your power is absolute. It is by virtue of Your power that everything happens in the universe.” Practice like this and the ego becomes thinner and thinner, until ultimately it has no place. That is the way to remove the ego-sense. They say that the ego does not exist at all, so we are ﬁghting something that does not exist. It’s only ego-sense, the

sense of separation from God. Why is this so? Because of ignorance, they say. This ignorance has to be removed. When it is, we know that we are one with God and that we have been one with God, though we have forgotten it for some reason. It is like the king who had a dream that he had become a beggar. So strong was the force of the dream that, even after waking, the king felt as if he was a beggar. He started roaming the streets, begging, and forgot that he was king. People from the palace came looking for him, but he said, “I have nothing to do with the palace as FALL 2004

I am a beggar.” They then took a wise man to see him, who said, “You are not a beggar.” “No, no!” insisted the king, “I am!” So the wise man asked him to close his eyes, which meant to meditate on his self. The king closed his eyes and the saint took him to the palace. “Now, open your eyes,” he said and, when the king saw the queen and the surroundings, he started to remember. “Oh, I am a king, not a beggar.” And that is realization, illumination. So, we need somebody to tell us that we are not what we seem to be. This is why the guru is absolutely necessary for any spiritual aspirant. It has been suggested that the mind must be destroyed for liberation to occur. Swamiji: It is not the destruction of the mind, but rather its purification. Remove all thoughts, all vásanas, from the mind and it becomes still. And a still mind is as good as no mind, which is why they speak of “destroying” the mind, but it is not as if it is really being destroyed, but rather that thoughts and dirt are being removed from it. Then it becomes absolutely pure and a pure mind is as one with the átman. You mentioned the vásanas, or tendencies of the mind. Can you say more about them? Swamiji: By “tendencies,” I simply mean that every thought and every action leaves an impression on the mind, which is why I used the word dirt. Every thought, good or bad, every action, good or bad, leaves an impression, or layer of dirt, on the mind. Try to imagine this by remembering a time when something you did many years ago suddenly came back to your mind. It was there all along and it is among all the things that must be removed before you can say that you have shed everything you have earned during your lifetime. Only then are you absolutely pure, absolutely free, and qualified for liberation. Does it take many years of hard work to purify the mind? Swamiji: Many years of hard work, definitely. It depends upon how much dirt we have gathered. In some cases,

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it is not difficult because not much has been accumulated, but, in others, when the dirt is like a mountain, it takes a longer time. Are there levels of awakening? Once we have identified with our true Self, we can say that we are enlightened. We know what we are. But this is a stage. Then, after our return to body consciousness, we will find ourselves becoming disturbed by the resumption of activity. So, we will be asked to do a little more practice to lead us to a stage called sahaja samádhi, which is when we identify everything in the universe with God. In the first experience, we identify with the all-pervading atman, without touching the manifestation. In the second experience, we are able to see that the entire manifestation is also God Himself in different names and forms, so we identify with the átman and the universe. This is why, when you ask a saint, “Who are you?” he will answer, “I am the all-pervading truth, or átman, and my body is the entire universe.” He has lost his individuality; the ego has gone. The small circle is removed and he is without any circumference. He is as one with the impersonal truth, the nameless, formless átman, and with the entire universe, which is the manifestation. And he lives a normal life. He doesn’t need any more practice because he is already established in It. Is that why it seems that most saints live very ordinary, simple lives? Swamiji: That is right. They have nothing more to do. They have achieved their goal and are as one with the entire universe and with everybody. Their love flows towards everybody, irrespective of caste, creed, or nationality. Can you recommend a practice for people as they go about their daily lives in the West? Swamiji: To remember God constantly, we chant His name and, when we do, we automatically remember Him. Another method is to accept that the entire universe is a manifestation of God, so that whatever we touch, whatever we see, is identified with Him. This means that, when you wake up

in the morning, before you open our eyes, you should pray: “Oh Lord! Let me remember You constantly today. Let me see You in everything I see.” In this way, when you open your eyes and see someone or something, you will be able to say, “This is a manifestation of God.” And in this way, everything you encounter will be identified with God. It may be very difficult at first and you may miss it any number of times, but gradually you will be able to gain more and more success. And by identifying everything you encounter throughout the day with God, you will be communing with Him constantly, as you are when you chant His name, when you meditate, when you work. But this work is not mere work. It is the worship of God. Worship is not merely going to church and praying to Jesus. It is treating everything we do in the world as the worship of Him and combining it with the feeling that all that we do is by virtue of His willpower alone. And it is then that work becomes dedicated work and it no longer redounds to our credit. Otherwise, any work we do creates a reaction requiring us to pay for the fruits of our actions. So, if we do a good act, we have to reap the good fruit and, if we do a bad act, we have to reap bitter fruit. But when what we do is dedicated action, then no results or fruits are to be reaped, as there is no sense of “doership” attached to it. With the remembrance of God, the ego has disappeared—the “I am doing this” is no longer there. Instead we say, “It is God who makes me do this,” and with that, the fruit of our work does not affect us. This is why it is said in the Bhagavad Gàtá, “Dedicate all your actions to Me.” This is full dedication. In India, there is a tendency for people interested in the spiritual life to remain single. But, in the West, this is not the case. Can you say something about this? Swamiji: Those on the spiritual path, those trying to gain God-realization, should be able to observe brahmacárya, that is, should observe celibacy. Celibacy is not merely physical control, but mental control as well. No thought of sex should enter our minds. And, for this, we must keep away from the

opposite sex, as close contact naturally increases the chances that our lower nature will pull us down. Is there anything else that you would say is important in preparing ourselves for realization? Swamiji: What is required for a spiritual aspirant is the constant remembrance of God, and he should adopt ways and means to achieve this. The guru will not be able to give him all the details. He will say, “Remember God constantly,” but it is up to the disciple or devotee to ﬁnd ways to maintain constant remembrance. When the disciple does this, he will be able to commune with God when he is praying, when he talking with others, and when he is working. He will be able to commune with Him always. And the communion with God will not be broken. Over the course of twenty-four hours, our communion with God must be continuous for us to realize Him. This is why, in the early days, people used to sit in caves, away from public disturbances. But whether you are in the company of others or alone, as a spiritual aspirant, you should be able to commune with God. And once you have become a spiritual aspirant, you will naturally develop all the divine qualities. This means telling lies—gone. This means loving everybody because there is divinity in everybody, which is real love. This means service to others. So, when somebody gets something, you feel happy over it—no jealousy. When somebody does some harm to you, you will not dislike them, will not hate them. All these qualities develop automatically when we are on the spiritual path and they serve as signs of spiritual progress. And this is all we have to do. We have to think of Him constantly and develop all the divine qualities, and He will do the rest. Om úrà Rám Jai Rám Jai Jai Rám.

Swami Ram Das (above) was the guru of Swami Satcidananda. In 1931, Papa, as he was affectionately known, founded Ananda Ashram, near Kanhangad in Kerala, South India. After his mahásamádhi in 1963, his disciple, Mother Krishnabai (right), continued serving as a loving mother to all who traveled to Ananda Ashram, until her own mahásamádhi in 1989. Swami Ram Das prescribed Náma Japa, or the ceaseless repetition of the mantra Om úrà Rám Jai Rám Jai Jai Rám, as a means to Self-realization.

ÎF Ã˘¤ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ F Ã˘¤ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ F Ã˘¤ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ÎF Ã˘¤ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ F Ã˘¤ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ F Ã˘¤ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ÎF Ã˘¤ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ F Ã˘¤ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ ú‰æ ú‰æ ¿ŸºÎ FALL 2004

A special CD insert, produced by Soundwalk, in conjunction with NÄMARÇPA

SOUNDWALK–

VARANASI, THE CITY OF LIGHT

An unprecedented audio guide to spiritual India

EDDIE STERN The complete Varanasi, The City of Light CD set will be available in December 2004 at www.soundwalk.com. The two-CD set will include an audio tour with Dr. Robert Svoboda, presented here in the current issue of Námarâpa, in addition to a continuous, seventy-minute music journey mixed by noted DJ Cheb I Sabbah. The music journey CD includes chanting, prayers, songs sung by Ganga boatmen, and ambient sounds of life along the holy Ganga. Also included is a special Varanasi booklet, containing a full transcription of the audio tour and photographs of Varanasi taken by Mark Paul Petrick. “In Banares, every drop of water is a temple.”- Mark Twain

HE BEST DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIAN CITY OF BANARAS, ORIGINALLY named Kashi, later known as Varanasi, is probably “deeply mysterious.” In fact, sacred texts maintain that Banares isn’t even a city at all, but rather a lingam of celestial light, the subtle and cosmic form of Lord Siva, which manifested itself as a city for the sake of seekers of liberation. So, to bathe in the holy Ganga (Ganges), beside the Banaras ghats, is to be purified of your sins. To die in Banaras, as has been said uncountable times, is to attain liberation and to finally bring an end to the cycle of rebirth known as transmigration. Determined to capture this elusive reality through the vehicle of Soundwalk, Soundwalk creator Stephan Crasneanscki and noted Ayurvedic doctor, Robert Svoboda, along with sound engineers Dug Winningham and Tatiana Irvine, my wife, Jocelyne Stern, daughter Lili, and I traveled together to the north of India, where Banares is located, in February of 2004. After settling in at our hotel, the charming Ganga View at the Assi Ghat, we made our first foray into the tumult of the city, and into the teeming life along the river and the swirl of spiritual devotion enveloping it. Through the many introductions afforded to us by Mr. Shashank, the proprietor of our hotel, our circle of Banarasi friends and helpmates quickly grew. Making our way back to the hotel, we set up a makeshift recording studio in Stephan’s room, where, for hours on end for the next few days, Robert would speak at length and at ease in an armoire-turned-sound booth about his long association with Banaras. Below was the chaos of crowds, filth, noise, and smells of a place that is the oldest functioning city in the world and that many Hindus consider to be the holiest site in all of India. How had it been possible that so praised and venerable a city as this, the pilgrimage destination of millions of people, had survived amidst so seemingly immense a madness? And how in the world were we going to succeed in grasping, much less capturing, the underlying reality of such an ineffable place?

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In the early mornings, we would take a boat down the Ganga, plotting the course of the Soundwalk tour. Afterwards, we would endure brutal rickshaw rides down streets that were more a collection of gaping potholes than pavement in order to interview experts on the sacred lore of Banaras and the holy Ganga. These graciously-given interviews would later be incorporated into the CD. In the evenings life on the Assi Ghat quieted down. After the amorous cow that spent her afternoons outside our window, interrupting Robert’s recordings with her mating calls (which can be heard on the CD near the Hanuman Ghat section of the walk), had moved on to another window, local classical musicians would come to our hotel room studio to play, which provided the background to our soundtrack. We believe that the river is the divinity descended to this earth in the form of water. She is mother to us; she is Goddess. And she grants us happiness and salvation, the technical terms for which are bhukti

and mukti. Bhukti is our well-being in this world. We don’t want salvation only, we want happiness too, and then salvation may come at the end. Mother Ganga, to us, is both. –Professor Veerabhadra Mishra, Mahantiji of the Sankata Mochan Temple

HROUGH THE EYES OF ROBERT SVOBODA AND through the words of such great scholars as Mahantji Veerabhadra Mishra, Dr. Rana Singh, and Ananda Krishna, as well as the many boatmen and temple priests who talked and sang with us, our vision of Banaras was ﬁlled in. Day by day, we grew to relish our brief stay by the Ganga and to be content to sit after a day’s work on her banks and let our minds melt into her currents. And this is our great hope for you—whether it has been your good fortune to travel to India or to simply journey there in your own mind by listening at home—that you too will be transported to the currents of the Ganga by this guided tour of Banaras and into the currents of devotion that stream through Her.

Dr. Robert E. Svoboda in Varanasà. Photograph by Stephan Crasneanscki.

Banaras originally was a city where you came either to die or to do sadhana—[it] was not in itself a society originally. It was a place where people came to be alone and, little by little, society accumulated. But the vibration of Banaras is one that encourages the kind of interiority that enables a person to get a better perspective on reality than he might when he is constantly in the current of human life…. Banaras has been a city for 6,000, perhaps 10,000, years. Continuously moving, continuously in flux, even the greatest temple in Banaras, the Vishvanath, has not stayed in one place, but has traveled along, moving as the energies and the focus of the city have moved. The great smashan, the burning ghat of Manikarnika, has not been in the same place for all these ten millennia of history. What has remained, while everything else has moved, is the awareness of the vitality of human life and of the finality of death. In this sense, Banaras is completely unchanged from the moment of its founding. –Dr. Robert Svoboda

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PHOTO ESSAY: THREE

UNITING WHAT LIFE HAS DIVIDED Interview with and photographs by T. S. SATYAN

You have been a photographer in India for the past ﬁfty years. What have the place and the people taught you during this time?

URING MY FIFTY, FIFTY-FIVE YEARS AS a photographer, I have traveled extensively throughout this country and the thing that strikes me the most about it is that, though they may be divided by different states and different languages, essentially Indians are the same everywhere. They are human beings—decent human beings. It is only politicians and administrative arrangements that divide things. And this is even more so when you travel to the villages of this country. There you will find the most hospitable people anywhere in the world. A villager may not have enough for himself and his children to eat, but if you happen to go to his house at mealtime, he will offer you all the food they have. You will be served first and the family will be prepared to go hungry for the rest of the day. That hospitality, that respect that rural people have for their guests, is essentially love. They are basically very loving people and this is one of the important aspects of what you might call the ecstasy and agony of India. Because, in India, you get very ecstatic moments, even in the midst of agonizing situations. Hunger, for example, is an agony. Traveling in the North of India, in places that are continuously the victim of flood, I saw many people going hungry. I saw people standing in food queues in camps and they would ask me if I had had enough to eat. When I would object, they would say, ‘No, no! You are the guest.’ And every year, it is the same: the floods come and the camps open. And every year, the same question gets asked, ‘Have you had enough food?’ The person doing the asking is an ordinary villager whose hut has been blown

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away by a gale and rain—and who is suffering—but who knows he will build another hut tomorrow and this will pass off. It is something he has gone through before, so he is reconciled. He might shout a little at the government if it does not provide temporary relief, but when the water recedes, he will go back to his village and build another hut. And that is what I love: that he has not lost his values, his sense of proportion. Many people say to me, ‘Your pictures show more of rural India. What about urban India?’ ‘Urban India,’ I say, ‘is taking care of itself.’ It is taking care of itself in a magnificent way. I once asked you if you were a devotee of Käüóa and you said you did not believe in idolatry. I wonder if you could speak about that here? Many people ask me if I am a believer in God. I am a believer, in the sense that a man cannot live in a vacuum. He should have some kind of focus for his thinking. But I am very clear in my mind that idols are just elements made of stone or whatever for people to concentrate on, but the stone itself is not God. It is an object, named God or Goddess, and in this sense, I don’t believe in it. It is not necessary to install an idol and then go before it to demonstrate that you believe in God. It is not necessary because God is something we cannot see, but whose presence we feel. He is present in everything. I see God in a flower, in a root, in a river, in the rhythm of water flowing, in a Banyan tree. He is in our eyes, in our noses, and in our very being. And when we pay obeisance to Him, when we express gratitude to Him for making us, for bringing us into this world, we can visualize Him in any form we’d like. For me, the greatest tribute you can pay to your creator is to help others who, just like you, were created by Him. There’s

a lot of disparity between the rich and the poor in society, and God has given you a brain to think with. So, analyze the world around you and see that you are fortunate enough to live in a house of your own, to have a good wife and children, and to have enough to eat— and that it is all due to the blessings of an unseen god. He has created the circumstances for you to succeed in life. So, you pay obeisance to Him by serving people not as well off as yourself—the dispossessed, the poor, the sick, people with nothing to wear or no place to sleep. That is my philosophy. Service to humanity is the greatest prayer you can offer to God. And as a photographer, I am more than ready to take pictures for ordinary people, for those who don’t make headlines, but who really matter because they are the ones that make this world a beautiful place to live in. Therefore, developing a sense of compassion and a willingness to help these people out is important because you have to see God in them. And you don’t need to be a great philosopher, like Dante, to understand these ideas because they are very simple, very easy for everyone to understand. But you do have to practice them, make them part of your life, and by your example, show others. That is how I feel. Do you view your photography as a sádhana, as a spiritual practice? Photography is sádhana in the sense that work is worship, though everybody knows that—it’s become almost a cliché. But whatever work you chose to do, you must excel at it and that is not easy. There must be an effort and that is sádhana. That is how I took to photography. At the time, photojournalism was not at all as well known as it is today. It was still very innocent in the late ‘40s. But I took to the camera, determined to

succeed, and resolved to earn a living with my pictures. So, the first step I took in my sádhana was to believe in my own ability to succeed, though even my own father didn’t believe in it, as he was worried I would not be able to earn a living from photography. And that might well have been the case, but I took the stepby-step-by-step approach to this sádhana: work hard; read books; look at the work of great photographers and get inspired; look at the work of photographers that have come to India and see what magic they’ve created from the Indian ambience, the people, the diversity of the land. And then, look for opportunities that might arise and grab them. So, that is how I met James Brook of Life magazine. He appreciated my enthusiasm. As a professional photographer, he had many cameras. I was working with one backlight camera, which had a broken back that I had to plaster over to stop light from getting onto the film. But the talent of a cameraman does not lie in his equipment, but in the process of selection—the art of omission, as I like to call it—and James Brook knew this. Because, for a photographer, what you don’t take, what you take; what you improve, what you don’t improve; what you shoot, what you don’t shoot—these are all little steps on the way to sádhana. And this is the attitude to work you want to develop because, in simple terms, sádhana is the determination to succeed by doing work and by always improving on what you have done before. How should sádhana affect you as a person, affect your personal development? Well, you work to achieve something in life, but it can have a counter-effect,

at this beautiful picture. It’s by a photographer whose exhibition I saw yesterday”—then that is the greatest joy. And it is even more so when you identify yourself to the couple and they hug you and say, “Please come and have a cup of coffee with us.” So this photography is a passport to friendship and a passport to life. And no award that can formally be conferred on you can compare to that, none. I have been to many strange places all over India—so many places that I have forgotten some of them. But wherever I have gone, my pictures have brought me to people, have made me friends. When people view your photographs of, say, flood victims standing on line waiting to get food, do you want them to be moved, to reach out to the victims? a bad effect, on you if, over time, you begin to feel that you have actually achieved something. This is because sádhana is a never-ending quest for perfection. It is like a mirage: it seems to be close, and yet it is so far. Therefore, it is the act of working itself that must give you a sense of fulfillment and joy, as well as the sense that you’re doing what you think is right. And if you should succeed and society recognize you, well then, your sense of fulfillment will be all the greater, but not because of any great award given to you by the government or some organization, but because of the public recognition. That is the greatest reward a photographer like me can get. So, if I am traveling on the railway from Mysore to Bangalore and the person sitting next to me happens to be reading a newspaper with a picture of mine in it and I hear him say to his wife, “Look

Yes, deﬁnitely. One of the fundamental jobs of a photographer is to tune his art in such a way as to create things that have an impact on the viewer’s mind. And, so, if my pictures showing tragedy move you and make you do something for its victims—if they put in your mind that, Here is a tragedy and I myself am well-placed in life—then, to that extent, I have succeeded. But it doesn’t mean that you can transform the world or change opinions and ideas, no. The ultimate purpose of good art is not just to make you feel happy, not at all. It is to make you feel conscious of something great, of something that can move you in a way that is very diﬃcult to describe in words. So, the job of good art, I think, is to unite what life has divided. And this, to me, is meditation, is sádhana.

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Temple pontiff, Melkote, Karnatka, 1979.

Sรกdhu, Melkote, Karataka, 1979. 54

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Temple musician, Melkote, Karnataka.

Sádhu, Váránasà, India.

Man washing cloth, úringeri, Karnataka. FALL 2004

Boy carrying water, Hoysala Temple, Belur, Karnataka.

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Wedding ceremony.

Gaïgá árati, Váránasà, 1976.

GHERAîöA SAéHITÄ A NEW TRANSLATION BY JAMES MALLINSON CHAPTER SEVEN: SAMÄDHI

HE EXCERPT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ IS FROM A MANUAL of yoga taught by Gheraóõa to Chaóõa, which is the most encyclopedic of all the root texts of Haôha yoga. At the beginning of the manual, Chaóõa asks Gheraóõa to tell him about the yoga of the body, the source of knowledge of the Ultimate Reality. Gheraóõa assents, with the result that the handbook came to be known as the Gheraóõa Saêhitá, or “The Collection of [Verses of] Gheraóõa.” Nothing is known about Gheraóõa and Chaóõa, and the name Gheraóõa is found nowhere else in Sanskrit literature. As with many other works on Haôha yoga, the work is framed as a dialogue, suggesting that it was overheard and then written down, though the identity of the author is not revealed. It is very diﬃcult to be sure where and when the text was composed, though there are indications that it is a relatively late work on Haôha yoga. The majority of its manuscripts are found in the north and east of India and, of these, the oldest was copied in Bengal in 1802 CE. The seven chapters of the Gheraóõa Saêhitá correspond to seven means of perfecting the person, each chapter teaching

a group of techniques which, when mastered, lead to one of the means. The first chapter describes six types of cleansing techniques by which purification, the first means to perfecting the person, can be achieved. The second chapter describes thirty-two ásanas by which strength, the second means, is to be attained. In the third chapter, Gheraóõa teaches twentyfive mudrás [gestures; seals], which lead to steadiness, the third means. The fourth chapter describes five techniques for pratyáhára [sensory withdrawal], which brings about calmness, the fourth means. The fifth chapter begins with instructions on where a yogi should live, what he or she should eat, and at what time of year yogic practice should commence. It then lists ten kinds of práóáyáma [breath control], whose practice leads to lightness, the fifth means. The sixth chapter describes three types of dhyana, or visualization, by means of which a yogi can achieve the realization of the Self, the sixth means. And, finally, in the seventh chapter, which is reprinted here, Gheraóõa teaches six types of samádhi [union with the Supreme], by means of whose practice abstraction is achieved, the ultimate means to perfecting the person.

–PºË¥Æ‰À CHAPTER SEVEN

–ºŸ⁄∞XŸ ¥¿Ë æËíË ∏“‹∫Ÿìæ‰≤ ƒªæ™‰ | í‹¿ËÅ é‚¥Ÿ¥˘–ŸÆ‰≤ ¥˘Ÿµæ™‰ í‹¡∫⁄#™Å || 1 samádhiùca paro yogo bahubhágyena labhyate | guroë krpáprasádena prápyate gurubhaktitaë || 1 7.1 Samádhi, the highest yoga, is attained by the very fortunate. It is received through the compassion and grace of the guru, and through devotion to him.

⁄∆YŸ¥˘™¤⁄™Å —∆í‹¡¥˘™¤⁄™¿Ÿ´º¥˘™¤⁄™º@≤–Å ¥˘∏Ë∞Å | ⁄Æ≤‰ ⁄Æ≤‰ æ—æ ∫∆‰´– æËí¤ –‹ÀË∫≤ŸªæŸ–º‹¥Ê⁄™ –YÅ || 2 Siddhásanam

vidyápratàtië svagurupratàtirátmapratàtirmanasaë prabodhaë | dine dine yasya bhavetsa yogà suùobhanábhyásamupaiti sadyaë || 2 7.2 That yogi quickly attains the most beautiful practice who, every day, has conviction in his learning, conviction in his guru, conviction in his self, and awakening of his mind.

î¢Ÿ⁄Øˆ≤ÙÄ º≤Å é‚´∆Ÿ òÊèæÄ é‹æŸ@´¥¿Ÿ´º⁄≤ | –ºŸ⁄∞Ä ™Ä ⁄∆úŸ≤¤æŸ≥º‹#–Ä◊Ë ÆÀŸ⁄Æ⁄∫Å || 3 ghaôádbhinnaê manaë kätvá caikyaê kuryátparátmani | samádhiê taê vijánàyánmuktasaêjño daùádibhië || 3 7.3 Separate the mind from the body and unite it with the supreme soul. When your consciousness is free from its sundry states, know that to be samádhi.

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Ç“Ä ∏˘“˜ ≤ òŸ≥æËÉ⁄—º ∏˘“˜Ê∆Ÿ“Ä ≤ ÀËé∫ŸéÍ | –⁄cÆŸ≤≥Æ¬¥ËÉ“Ä ⁄≤´æº‹#Å —∆∫Ÿ∆∆Ÿ≤Î || 4 ahaê brahma na cányo'smi brahmaiváhaê na ùokabhák | saccidánandarâpo'haê nityamuktë svabhávaván || 4 7.4 I am Brahman and nothing else. I am Brahman alone and do not suﬀer. My form is truth, consciousness, and bliss. I am eternally free. I abide in my own nature.

ÀŸΩ∫…æŸ òÊ∆ ∫˘ŸºæŸ@ ê‰òæŸ@ æË⁄≤º‹Æ˙æŸ | ±æŸ≤Ä ≤ŸÆÄ ¿–Ÿ≤≥ÆÄ ƒæ⁄–⁄ØÛXŸ™‹⁄∆@∞Ÿ || 5 ùámbhavyá caiva bhrámaryá khecaryá yonimudrayá | dhyánaê nádaê rasánandaê layasiddhiùcaturvidháë || 5 7.5 By means of úámbhavà, Bhrámarà, Khecarà, and Yonimudrá, four types of samádhi arise: dhyána, náda, rasánanda, and laya siddhi.

¥ZŸ∞Ÿ ∫⁄#æËí‰≤ º≤Ëº›ôöŸ@ ò Œ•Í⁄∆∞Ÿ | Œ•Í⁄∆∞ËÉæÄ ¿ŸúæËíÅ ¥˘´æ‰éº∆∞Ÿ¿æ‰™Î || 6 pañcadhá bhaktiyogena manomârcchá ca üaõvidhá | üaõvidho'yaê rájayogaë pratyekamavadhárayet || 6 7.6 The ﬁfth arises through devotion and the sixth arises through trance. This is the six-fold Rája yoga. Understand each of them.

ÀŸΩ∫∆¤Ä º‹⁄Æ˙éŸÄ é‚´∆Ÿ ÇŸ´º¥˘´æ’ºŸ≤æ‰™Î | ⁄∏≥Æ‹ ∏˘“˜ºæÄ B‡{Í∆Ÿ º≤—™& ⁄≤æËúæ‰™Î || 7 ùámbhavàê mudrikáê kätvá átmapratyaküamánayet | bindu brahmamayaê däüôvá manastatra niyojayet || 7 7.7 Using úámbhavàmudrá, bring about perception of the self. On seeing the bindu that consists of Brahman, there ﬁx your mind. úámbhavàmudrá

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khamadhye kuru cátmánamátmamadhye ca khaê kuru | átmánaê khamayaê däüôvá na kiêcidapi budhyate | sadánandamayo bhâtvá samádhistho bhavennaraë || 8 7.8 Put the self in space and space in the self. When one sees the self as made of space, nothing else is perceived. When a man consists of truth and bliss, he is in samádhi.

Ç⁄≤ƒÄ º≥Æ∆‰í‰≤ ∫˘Ÿº¿¤é‹Ω∫é~ ò¿‰™Î | º≥ÆÄ º≥ÆÄ ¿‰òæ‰Æ˝Ÿæ‹Ä ∫‡óÓ≤ŸÆÄ ™™Ë ∫∆‰™Î || 9 anilaê mandavegena bhrámaràkumbhakaê caret | mandaê mandaê recayedváyuê bhäóganádaê tato bhavet || 9 7.9 Slowly draw in air and perform Bhrámaràkumbhaka. Exhale very slowly and the sound of a bee will then arise.

Ç≥™Å—¨Ä ∫˘º¿¤≤ŸÆÄ Ã˘‹´∆Ÿ ™& º≤Ë ≤æ‰™Î | –ºŸ⁄∞úŸ@æ™‰ ™& òŸ≤≥ÆÅ –ËÉ“⁄º´æ™Å || 10 antaësthaê bhramarànádaê ùrutvá tatra mano nayet | samádhirjáyate tatra cánandaë so'hamityataë || 10 7.10 On hearing the sound of a bee from within, there lead the mind. Samádhi will occur, together with the bliss arising from the realization, ‘I am that.’

ê‰ò¿¤º‹Æ˙Ÿ–Ÿ∞≤ŸÆ˙–≤Ë±∆@í™Ÿ æÆŸ | ™ÆŸ –ºŸ⁄∞⁄–⁄ØÛÅ —æŸ⁄ØÛ´∆Ÿ –Ÿ∞Ÿ¿®⁄$æŸºÎ || 11 khecaràmudrásádhanádrasanordhvagatá yadá | tadá samádhisiddhië syáddhitvá sádháraóakriyám || 11 7.11 When the tongue goes upwards in the practice of Khecaràmudrá, then samádhi is perfected without performing any other ordinary practices. Khecaràmudrá

Dhyána means “visualization; meditation,” náda means “sound,” rasánanda means “bliss in taste,” and laya siddhi means “success in absorption.” 1

êº±æ‰ é‹¡ òŸ´ºŸ≤ºŸ´ºº±æ‰ ò êÄ é‹¡ | ÇŸ´ºŸ≤Ä êºæÄ B‡{Í∆Ÿ ≤ ⁄é~⁄òÆ⁄¥ ∏‹±æ™‰ | –ÆŸ≤≥ÆºæË ∫›´∆Ÿ –ºŸ⁄∞—¨Ë ∫∆‰≤Ù¿Å || 8

æË⁄≤º‹Æ˙ŸÄ –ºŸ–ŸY —∆æÄ À⁄#ºæË ∫∆‰™Î | –‹Ã‡óÓŸ¿¿–‰≤Ê∆ ⁄∆“¿‰´¥¿ºŸ´º⁄≤ || 12

º≤Ëº›ôöŸ@Ä –ºŸ–ŸY º≤ ÇŸ´º⁄≤ æËúæ‰™Î | ¥¿Ÿ´º≤Å –ºŸæËíŸ´–ºŸ⁄∞Ä –º∆Ÿµ≤‹æŸ™Î || 16

yonimudráê samásádya svayaê ùaktimayo bhavet | suùäïgárarasenaiva viharetparamátmani || 12

manomârccháê samásádya mana átmani yojayet | parátmanaë samáyogátsamádhiê samavápnuyát || 16

7.12 By performing Yonimudrá, the yogi can himself become one with úakti. In the bliss of sexual love, he can sport in the supreme self.

7.16 Entrance your mind and insert it in the Self. Through union with the highest Self can one attain samádhi.

Yonimudrá

Ñ⁄™ ™‰ é⁄¨™Ä ò©• –ºŸ⁄∞º‹@⁄#ƒ’®ºÎ | ¿ŸúæËíÅ –ºŸ⁄∞Å —æŸÆ‰éŸ´º≥æ‰∆ –Ÿ∞≤ºÎ | Ü≥º≤¤ –“úŸ∆—¨Ÿ –∆‰@ òÊéŸ´º∆ŸòéŸÅ || 17 iti te kathitaê caóõa samádhirmuktilaküaóam | rájayogaë samádhië syádekátmanyeva sádhanam | unmanà sahajávasthá sarve caikátmavácakáë || 17 7.17 Caóõa, I have thus taught you samádhi, which is characterized by liberation. Rája yoga, or samádhi, is the means to union with the Self. Together with unmanà and sahajávasthá, it is a synonym of union with the Self.

ÇŸ≤≥ÆºæÅ –Ä∫›´∆Ÿ ãèæÄ ∏˘“˜⁄® –Ä∫∆‰™Î | Ç“Ä ∏˘“˜‰⁄™ òŸÆ˝Ê™–ºŸ⁄∞—™‰≤ úŸæ™‰ || 13 ánandamayaë saêbhâtvá aikyaê brahmaói saêbhavet | ahaê brahmeti cádvaitasamádhistena jáyate || 13 7.13 Becoming one with bliss, he attains unity with Brahman. By the realization that he is Brahman, non-dual samádhi arises.

—∆é¤æ„Ææ‰ ±æŸæ‰⁄Æ{Æ‰∆—∆¬¥éºÎ | ⁄ò≥™æ‰Øˆ⁄#æËí‰≤ ¥¿ºŸjŸÆ¥›∆@éºÎ || 14 svakàyahädaye dhyáyediüôadevasvarâpakam | cintayedbhaktiyogena paramáhládapârvakam || 14 7.14 In your heart, visualize your tutelary deity. Contemplate it with devotion and supreme joy.

ÇŸ≤≥ÆŸÃ˘‹¥‹ƒéÂ≤ ÆÀŸ∫Ÿ∆Å ¥˘úŸæ™‰ | –ºŸ⁄∞Å –Ä∫∆‰%‰≤ –Ä∫∆‰c º≤Ë≥º≤¤ || 15 ánandáùrupulakena daùábhávaë prajáyate | samádhië saêbhavettena saêbhavecca manonmanà || 15 7.15 A condition arises that is accompanied by bliss, tears, and gooseﬂesh. Samádhi arises and manonmanà follows on from it.

úƒ‰ ⁄∆œ®‹Å —¨ƒ‰ ⁄∆œ®‹⁄∆@œ®‹Å ¥∆@™º—™éÂ | ù∆ŸƒŸºŸƒŸé‹ƒ‰ ⁄∆œ®‹Å –∆@Ä ⁄∆œ®‹‹ºæÄ úí™Î || 18 jale viüóuë sthale viüóurviüóuë parvatamastake | jválámálákule viüóuë sarvaê viüóumayaê jagat || 18 7.18 Viüóu is in the water, Viüóu is on the land, Viüóu is on the mountaintop, Viüóu is in the thick of a garland of ﬂames. The entire universe consists of Viüóu.

∫›ò¿ŸÅ ê‰ò¿ŸXŸŸº¤ æŸ∆≥™Ë ú¤∆ú≥™∆Å | ∆‡’í‹≈ºƒ™Ÿ∆\¤™‡®ŸYŸ ∆Ÿ⁄¿ ¥∆@™ŸÅ | –∆@Ä ∏˘“˜ ⁄∆úŸ≤¤æŸ´–∆@Ä ¥Õæ⁄™ òŸ´º⁄≤ || 19 bhâcaráë khecaráùcámà yávanto jàvajantavaë | väküagulmalatávallàtäóádyá vári parvatáë | sarvaê brahma vijánàyátsarvaê paùyati cátmani || 19 7.19 All the creatures of the earth, all the creatures of the air, all the plants, such as trees, shrubs, creepers, vines, and grasses, and all the water and the mountains: know these to be Brahman and see them all in the Self.

ÇŸ´ºŸ î¢—¨òÊ™≥æºÆ˝Ê™Ä ÀŸÕ∆™Ä ¥¿ºÎ | î¢Ÿ⁄Æ˝⁄∫≤Ù™Ë ◊Ÿ´∆Ÿ ∆¤™¿ŸíÄ ⁄∆∆Ÿ–≤ºÎ || 20 átmá ghaôasthacaitanyamadvaitaê ùáùvataê param | ghaôádvibhinnato jñátvá vàtarágaê vivásanam || 20 7.20 In the body, the Self is consciousness. It is without like, eternal and supreme. Because it is separate from the body, realize that you are free from passion and vice. FALL 2004

ä∆Ä ⁄º¨Å –ºŸ⁄∞Å —æŸ´–∆@–Äé≈¥∆⁄ú@™Å | —∆Æ‰“‰ ¥‹&ÆŸ¿Ÿ⁄Æ∏Ÿ≥∞∆‰Œ‹ ∞≤Ÿ⁄ÆŒ‹ | –∆‰@Œ‹ ⁄≤º@ºË ∫›´∆Ÿ –ºŸ⁄∞Ä –º∆Ÿµ≤‹æŸ™Î || 21

Viparàtakaranà

evaê mithaë samádhië syátsarvasaêkalpavarjitaë | svadehe putradárádibándhaveüu dhanádiüu | sarveüu nirmamo bhâtvá samádhiê samavápnuyát || 21 7.21 Thus is samádhi also free from all ideation. After becoming uninterested in one’s body, one’s children, one’s wife, one’s relatives, one’s friends, riches, and all else, one can attain samádhi.

™^∆Ä ƒæŸº‡™Ä íËµæÄ ⁄À∆Ë#~ ⁄∆⁄∆∞Ÿ⁄≤ ò | ™‰ŒŸÄ –Ä’‰¥ºŸÆŸæ é⁄¨™Ä º‹⁄#ƒ’®ºÎ || 22 tattvaê layámätaê gopyaê ùivoktaê vividháni ca | teüáê saêküepamádáya kathitaê muktilaküaóam || 22 7.22 The truth, the secret nectar of absorption, has been taught by úiva, along with various other subjects. I have taught you an abridgement of them, the aim of which is liberation.

Ñ⁄™ ™‰ é⁄¨™Å ò©• –ºŸ⁄∞Æ‹@ƒ@∫Å ¥¿Å | æÄ ◊Ÿ´∆Ÿ ≤ ¥‹≤ú@≥º úŸæ™‰ ∫›⁄ºº©•ƒ‰ || 23 iti te kathitaë caóõa samádhirdurlabhaë paraë | yaê jñátvá na punarjanma jáyate bhâmimaóõale || 23 7.23 Caóõa, I have thus taught you the precious, supreme samádhi, by knowledge of which, rebirth on this earth does not occur.

Ñ⁄™ Ã˘¤î‰¿©•–Ä⁄“™ŸæŸÄ î‰¿©•ò©•–Ä∆ŸÆ‰ î¢—¨æËí–Ÿ∞≤‰ æËí—æ –P–Ÿ¿‰ –ºŸ⁄∞æËíË ≤Ÿº –PºË¥Æ‰ÀÅ –ºŸPÅ || iti ùràgheraóõasaêhitáyáê gheraóõacaóõasaêváde ghaôasthayogasádhane yogasya saptasáre samádhiyogo náma saptamopadeùaë samáptaë || Thus ends the seventh chapter, called samádhi yoga, in the glorious Gheraóõa Saêhita, a dialogue between Gheraóõa and Caóõa on the yogic technique of bodily yoga, which has seven essential parts. www.yogavidya.com December 2004 ISBN 0-9716466-3-5 $12.95 Makarásanam

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BOOK REVIEW

LIVING FAITH WINDOWS INTO THE SACRED LIFE OF INDIA BY DINESH KHANNA, PICO IYER HarperSanFrancisco, 208 pp., $24.95

Review by Sharmila and Shankar Desai The meaning of “religion,” it’s always important to remember, is “re-binding”; at its heart it is a force that brings us together into something greater than ourselves.... [W]hat Dinesh Khanna has done in these pictures is, I think, something of what India does, at its best: namely, to take the individual moments of worship, private acts of devotion—the soul in solitary colloquy with its God—and somehow bind them into the larger fabric of society and life. - Pico Iyer

IVING FAITH: WINDOWS INTO THE SACRED LIFE OF INDIA, A BOOK

of photography by Dinesh Khanna, both frames the sacred lives of India and exposes the crossroads of India’s various spiritual paths. In a single sitting, a reader can page through the country’s growing faiths; from a lone devotee gazing at the Golden Temple, to twenty women huddled around a fire ceremony, moments of private and communal worship are frozen in Khanna’s photographs. The result is a book that takes a fresh look at India. Thus, amidst almost daily news of religious violence and retaliation, Living Faith discovers three Hindu women praying at a Sufi shrine—their shared religious lives a common sight across the nation, but rarely documented. It also finds quiet, personal moments that call into question the image of India as a noisy, overcrowded country. Khanna eloquently captures, in fact, the stillness within the bustle. In one photograph, a man prostrates at the Jagannáth Rath Yátra in Puri, his head on the floor, hands in prayer, oblivious to the feet trampling past him. Khanna also captures stillness on its own in a solitary, elderly man, spinning a giant Tibetan prayer wheel, and in a closeup of a pilgrim meditating during a solar eclipse. Khanna’s photography thus takes us to beautiful and unexpected places both, where unforeseen stillness is to be discovered. Khanna’s eye, open to ceremonies, notices religious moments as well. His documentation of the faith to be seen in a range of daily activities conveys how faith filters into the fabric of Indian culture. He recognizes it in two men eating a meal away from crowds at a Yátra and in a barefoot old man, walking step by step up a stair after doing Sâryanamaskárs on the gháôs. Here, as elsewhere, the silence of meditation seeps into everyday life. But Khanna’s embrace extends beyond

this. He photographs symbols of worship beyond temples, mosques, and churches—such as a jasmine-flowered pâja perched on a taxi dashboard, and an image of the Virgin Mary painted on the side of a fishing boat in Goa. Embodiments of faith find their way into the range of places people live and work in every day. Thus, by offering a more honest view of where faith actually lives, Khanna’s book separates itself from others. Because the photographs undeniably stand on their own, the accompanying text serves to expand the parameters of the photography, and this is especially the case when the images reflect the intertwined practices of various religions. In a photograph of Hindu women at a Sufi shrine, the text provides the history that made the pictured moment possible: “Sufism in India has many similarities with the bhakti movement of Hinduism that flourished in medieval times…. This similarity, coupled with the humanism and compassion of Sufi saints, has also made Sufism popular among Hindus.” Such descriptions offer a not-commonly-known history of the various faiths and map the routes they have taken over their time in India, adding another dimension to the still photography.

eading Living Faith, we travel into homes, along riverbanks, inside temples, and onto the streets, seeing the diﬀerent forms and expressions faith takes in India today. Khanna oﬀers a window onto how people create sacred space. After closing the book, we are left with a more complete understanding of how age-old religions live in contemporary India and how they inspire a country’s people.

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Puri, Orissa; pilgrims take a meal break during Lord Jagannáth’s Rath Yátra.

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Maheùwar, Madhya Pradeù; a priest dresses up Hanumán’s statue after its daily morning bath.

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Váránasà, Uttar Pradeù; yoga and prayers onFALL the gháôs of the river Gaïgá. 65 2004

Haridwar, Uttaranchal; veranda of the Bengali A첫ram.

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Váránasà, Uttar Pradeù; an old man returns home from the river with a lota full of Gaïgá jal.

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Váránasà, Uttar Pradeù; dying or being cremated in Váránasà is supposed to guarantee liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

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Váránasà, Uttar Pradeù; Dharmaùalas in temple towns offer very basic accomodations for pilgrims.

Váránasà, Uttar Pradeù; a Pippala tree, which has grown through a wall, becomes a small temple. 70 FALL 2004

BrindĂĄvana, Uttar PradeĂš; a miniature shrine, complete with little doors that are shut when it is time for the deity to rest.

Patna, Bihar; anointing symbolic representations of local deities. 71 FALL 2004

SWAMI LAKSHMANJOO:

MEDITATION IN KAûMIR úAIVISM GEORGE VAN DEN BARSELAAR

N THE FALL OF 1980 SWAMI LAKSHMANJOO,

drawing from his own experience and giving numerous quotes from scriptures, gave a series of lectures on meditation and discipline in Kaümir úaivism. These lectures were transcribed, translated into English from Kashmiri, and ﬁnally edited under Swamiji’s guidance. They are presented here as a source from which readers may gain understanding and clariﬁcation of their own spiritual lives. For the complete text of these lectures see Swami Lakshmanjoo: “Self-realization in Kashmir Shaivism,” John Hughes, ed. (Albany New York: SUNY Press, 1994).

HIS IS A DISCOURSE ON THE WAYS which, if followed and adhered to, will lead an aspirant, a sádhaka, to one-pointedness in meditation and to the awareness to which he aspires. The first requirement for achievement of this goal is that the mind, manas, be Swami Lakshmanjoo in meditation. absolutely clean. A clean mind is one which knows no duality; a mind which has feelings of sameness for everyone. This sameness is known as samabháva, which means that you do not overexpress or under-express love for any one person in particular. Furthermore, you should not possess animosity, vairabháva, against any person. If you do not have the sense of feeling sameness towards everyone, and if you do not shun feelings of animosity towards everyone and anyone, all your efforts to achieve the Truth and the Absolute in meditation will be totally wasted. All your efforts will go unrewarded as if you 1 In a broader sense Swamiji is were carrying water in a wicker basket to pointing out that one should nowhere.1 not be critical of others. In fact, In meditation there is no room for in the monistic philosophy of coarse feelings. The mind must be Kaümir úaivism nothing should absolutely clean and purged of the acts be viewed as separate from of “seeming love” and “showing hate.” Lord úiva. Therefore to criticize Both are evils. Only when the mind has anything is to criticize Lord úiva been purged of them can you meditate directly, which creates coarse with confidence. Only then will you feelings that are obstacles to the be glorified by the fruits of this divine subtle realms of meditation. exercise, meditation. 72

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Now I shall explain to you how to enter this domain of meditation. This is my advice. When you have decided to meditate, the first important matter to be settled is the ásana, the place where you choose to sit in meditation. On this seat you have to sit still with no movement of your body. It is advisable that you remain absolutely motionless, like a rock. You should not twitch your eyelids or move your lips or scratch your ears or nose. You should be like a frozen body, absolutely motionless. You should not yawn or belch. It matters little, in the beginning, when you are settling into your ásana, if thoughts continue to stream through your mind, rising and passing away. At this point you should simply avoid physical distractions such as moaning and sneezing. In an hour’s time you will feel that your mind has started softly settling into a subtle state of thought and mood. Gradually you will experience your mind moving quickly into the domain of meditation, filled with peace and rest. Here your mind will become one-pointed, ekágra, and subtle, sâküma. In the Bhagavad Gàtá the Lord says, yato yato niùcarati manaùcañcalamasthiram / tatastato niyamyaitadátmanyeva vaùaê nayet // Bhagavad Gàtá 6, 26 As the wandering mind will never remain on one point, you must be ever vigilant. Whenever it strays bring it under control and fix it again towards God-Consciousness. You need not struggle to fix your mind upon that point from which it has begun to waiver. You need only sit still with one-pointed effort, ekágra, in the initial stage of your exercise. In one hour’s time you will understand and experience through one-pointedness the bliss of the dawning of awareness.

As it is further stated in the Bhagavad Gàtá, samaê káyaùirogràvaê dhárayannacalaê sthiraë / saêpreküyanásikágraê svaê diùaùcánavalokayan // Bhagavad Gàtá 6, 13 You must sit erect for meditation with enough strength to maintain that position and, at the same time, you must fix your gaze in the direction of the tip of your nose in order to restrain your eyes from wandering. The posture has to be quite steady, straight and motionless; one-pointed, with the mind fully concentrated on the guruùabda or gurudháraná. By guruùabda is meant the word of the Master, the resonance of unlimited Iconsciousness which He embodies and which is to be found in the junction, sandhi [defined further on]. For though the literal meaning of the text is that the sádhaka should direct his sight in the direction of his nose, násikágram, it may also be taken to refer to concentration on the guruùabda.2 This state of concentration can be achieved if you have freed your mind of all domestic worries, have finished your daily routine activities, and have had your full dose of sleep. Your mind must be absolutely free from all preoccupations. Then alone will you be able to meditate without deviation and see inside yourself. In the Bhagavad Gàtá the Lord says further, praùántátmá vigatabhàrbrahmacárivrate sthitaë / manaë saêyamya maccitto yukta ásàta matparaë // Bhagavad Gàtá 6, 14 At the time of meditation your mind must be serene, free from the intimidation to meditate, determined with devotion to discover God-Consciousness. In this state your mind is to be continuously directed toward God-Consciousness. In this verse the Lord is telling you that you must be serene, fearless, and determined in order to achieve your goal. You should be subdued in mind, harmonious and at peace; you should meditate with vigor and devotion.

There should be no outside pressure on you to meditate. Meditation should be an out-ﬂowing of your own desire. Brahmacárivrata means full of devotion and absorption in thoughts of God. It does not mean that you have to embellish yourself with a saﬀron costume or keep a long choti on your head and a large tàká on your forehead, or wear a garland and cover your body and forehead with ashes. ‘Svarâpánusandhánaparáyana’ refers to full devotion in the act of meditation leading to onepointedness and ultimate awareness.

N ADDITION TO THE PHYSICAL POSTURE —the ásana—for meditation, there is also an internal posture—the ántarika ásana—which enables the mind to be one-pointed and in awareness. madhyamaê práóamáùritya práóápánapathántaram / álambhya jñánaùaktiê ca tatsthaê caivásanaê labhet // Netra Tantra 8, 11 On the pathway of your breath, maintain continuously refreshed and full awareness on, and in, the center of breathing in and breathing out. This is force and this is internal ásana. The concentration has to be on the ‘násikágram’, the center. You must focus on the junction of the inhalation and the exhalation. This junction is called sandhi in Saêskäit, sand in Kashmiri. You must concentrate on guruùabda, in the center, with full devotedness. You should be aware of the center at the point of inhaling and exhaling the breath. You should not only concentrate on the center when the center is reached, but from the beginning of the breath until the endpoint of exhaling. The eﬀort is to be one-pointed in the center. If you do not meditate in this way all your eﬀorts will be wasted. In further explanation, exhaling and inhaling also refer to day and night. You should not practice meditation in the day or during the night. You should practice in the center of the two, the points between day and night; in the morning when the goddess of the dawn, sandhyádevà, meets the day, and in the evening when the dusk meets the night, when the sun seems to kiss and sink into

The literal meaning of ‘násikágram’ given by most commentators is that “one must concentrate on the tip of ones’ nose,” In Swami Laksmanjoo’s “Translation of Bhagavad Gàtá with Abhinavagupta’s commentary,” (Universal Shaiva Fellowship audio library), Swamiji explains that the word ‘násikágram’ means “One should meditate on that point which has been prescribed by one’s master. It may be between the two eyebrows, at the throat pit or heart, or even the tip of nose. Whichever concentrating point has been explained to you by your master, that is násikágram.” 2

Swamiji advises that when you sit for meditation you should feel that this whole world is ﬁlled with Godconsciousness, so there is no fear. You should not think that God is far oﬀ in some seventh heaven, or that you will achieve something in meditation at some future time when your circumstances have improved. God-consciousness is eternal and omnipresent, therefore it is available here and now.

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Svámi Rám

the horizon. I swear by Absolute Reality that if you practice meditation in this manner you will never fail. There can be no anusandhánaikágratá, no one-pointedness of continuously fresh awareness in absolute day or absolute night. Even if you remain conscious while exhaling and inhaling you will achieve nothing. na divá pâjayeddevaê rátrau naiva ca naiva ca / arcayeddevadeveùaê dinarátriparikáaye // Tantráloka 6: v. 99 commentary Do not worship the Lord during the day. Do not worship the Lord during the night. The Lord must be worshipped at the point of the meeting of day and night. Do not worship God during the day or during the night. Do not meditate during the day or the night. Do not maintain awareness upon exhaling (day) or inhaling (night). Concentrate on

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the center. The Lord of Gods must be worshiped where day and night meet. This is meditating on the sandhi. When my Master ﬁrst told me about this meditation I immediately started doing it. I began hurriedly and abruptly without understanding it completely. Just as when I tell one of my devotees to go and do something for me, he immediately runs hurriedly to accomplish what I have ordered him to do, without understanding what I really meant, simply rushing to do it in excitement, so in the same way, when my Guru said that I must meditate, I immediately rushed oﬀ to begin in a hurry and in haste. I did not wait to ask my Master the means and method for doing it. I just did it. I was exhaling and inhaling but to no avail. I became dismayed. I cried in my failure. I felt so sad for not having achieved anything. Once, in this disappointment, I felt drowsy and quickly fell asleep. I

had a dream in which I felt myself thinking, “Let me go to the ashram to seek the guidance of my Master.” In this dream I went to the ashram. But at the ashram I saw not my Master but my Grandmaster, Swami Ram. I appealed to Him, saying “Sir, I feel as if I am achieving nothing. My efforts are going to waste.” My Grandmaster told me, “You should practice sand [the junction].” My dream abruptly ended and I opened my eyes. The next day I went to my Master and told Him about the experiences I had had in my dream. I told Him that I wanted to know the meaning of the words, “You should practice sand.” My Master said, “Yes. You started in a hurry and in haste without proper understanding. You have to learn this practice properly.” In Kashmiri, the word sand is used for the Saêskäit word sandhi. Sand is called meditation, and being aware is not an ordinary affair. You have to be aware at the door of the Brahmapurà, the center. yuñjannevaê sadátmánaê yogà niyatamánasaë / ùántiê nirváóaparamáê matsaêsthámadhigacchati // Bhagavad Gàtá 6, 15 If you meditate upon your Self ceaselessly, remaining always attached to Me, thinking of Me only, you will gain that peace which is residing in My own nature and which will effortlessly carry you to liberation. You must have full and complete attachment to meditation. It must not become routine. When you are about to meditate you must feel excitement, harüa, and be thankful to God that you have received this opportunity to begin meditation, abhyása. Unless you fall in love with meditation—unless you are totally infatuated, with complete attachment and longing—you cannot really enter into the realm of awareness. All your efforts to achieve awareness are bound to fail. They will be useless and futile. Only the sádhaka who is pledged to a glorified state, by maintaining peace and harmony, will attain that nirváóa which abides in the Kingdom of the Lord.

You must unravel all the various knots which exist in your mind. For example, if you feel jealously thinking that Swamiji is concerned with him and not me, you are thinking improperly. You should not think this way. Thoughts of this kind are full of avarice and jealousy. Through these you deviate, to wander adrift in the desert. You have to see Me and not him. You must concentrate on your Guru and not on your Gurubhai [your fellow disciple]. You should not see whom your Guru is looking at. You should concentrate on your Guru alone. Keeping your mind3 absolutely pure, you should follow what I have just said.

OW I SHALL INSTRUCT YOU regarding the nature of ásana. Although ásana is generally deﬁned as the erect posture assumed in meditation, this is not its central or essential meaning. When I use the word ásana I do not mean the various forms of ásana such as padmásana, vajrásana, svástikásana, or bhadrásana. By ásana, I mean something else, and this is what I want to explain to you. First let me speak to you about breath—about the inhaling breath, apána, and the exhaling breath, práóa. Breath is extremely important in meditation, particularly the central breath, called madhyamapráóana. Madhyamapráóana is neither práóa nor apána. It is the center of these two, the point existing between the inhaling and exhaling breaths. This center point cannot be held by any physical means as a material object can be held by the hand. The center between the two breaths can be held only by knowledge, jñána. By jñána is meant not discursive knowledge, but knowledge which is awareness. When the central point is held by continuously refreshed awareness, anusandhána, which is jñána, and which is achieved through devotion to the Lord—this is, in the true sense, settling into your ásana. Äsana, therefore, is the gradual dawning in the spiritual aspirant of the awareness which shines in the central point found between inhaling and exhaling. The prerequisite for this glorious achievement is the puriﬁcation of

Cittaê mantraë—“mind is mantra”. Here the word mind means ‘that by which you become aware of supreme consciousness.’ See: Lakshmanjoo: úiva Sâtras, The Supreme Awakening, ed. (John Hughes, Universal Shaiva Fellowship 2002). ch.2, pg. 74. 3

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your internal ego. This awareness is not gained by that person who is full of prejudice, avarice, or envy. Such a person, being ﬁlled with all such negative qualities, cannot concentrate. The internal ego must become pure, clean and crystal clear. After you have purged your mind of all prejudice and have started settling with full awareness into that point which is between the two breaths, then you are settling into your ásana. práóádisthâlabhávaê tu tyaktvá sâkümamathántaram / sâkümátàtaê tu paramaê spandanaê labhyate yataë // práóáyámaë sa nirddiüôo yasmánna cyavate puna˙ // Netra Tantra 8-12,13

Swami Lakshmanjoo

When, while breathing in and breathing out, you maintain your awareness continually on and in the center between the incoming and outgoing breaths, your breath will spontaneously and progressively become more and more reﬁned. At that point you are driven to another world. This is práóáyáma.

For the explanation of cakrodaya I refer the reader to: Swami Lakshmanjoo: “Self-Realization in Kashmir Shaivism,” ch. 2, pg. 43. 4

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After the aspirant has settled into the ásana of meditation, the reﬁned practice of práóáyáma arises. Práóáyáma does not mean inhaling and exhaling vigorously like a bellow. Like ásana, práóáyáma is internal and very subtle. There is a seamless continuity in the traveling of your awareness from the point of ásana into the practice of práóáyáma. When, through your awareness, you have settled into your ásana, you automatically enter into the practice of práóáyáma. Our masters have indicated that there are two principle forms of this practice of ásana-práóáyáma, called cakrodaya and ajapá-gáyatrà. In the practice of ajapágáyatrà you are to maintain continuously refreshed full awareness, anusandhána, in the center of two breaths, while breathing in and out slowly and silently. Ajapágáyatrà is therefore anusandhána along with the slow and silent movement of the breath. The inhaling and exhaling should be so slow and so utterly silent that even he who is breathing cannot hear his own breath. To illustrate this form of práóáyáma the Kashmiri saint Paramánanda has said:

ast ast khast pañcálasày so’ haê bhairavabhálásiya / ôokh yuthna ati lagi lálasiy mana sthira kara pâjona prabhu // You must ascend that mountain known as Pancála. This mountain, composed of the glory of God-Consciousness, is the mountain of Bhairava (úiva) and is filled with the mantra So’ham. And this ascent, which is begun after establishing your mind in God-Consciousness, must be accomplished very slowly so that the jewel which is your goal and which lies on the peak of this mountain is preserved and not destroyed. Your awareness during this climb must be strong and fresh and must be held continuously. You must maintain an undisturbed movement of the breath. It should be slow, inaudible, and without break or pause. The continuity of this movement is extremely important and must be maintained with complete awareness in the middle of the two breaths. You must maintain full awareness at the point where the inhaling breath reaches its completion, the birth place of the exhaling breath. And so, also, you must maintain awareness at the end point of exhalation, the birth place of the inhaling breath. The practice of ajapágáyatrà does not allow the missing of a single breath. Your awareness must be seamless, continuously refreshed, and must be fixed in the center of the two slowly and silently moving breaths. This is ajapá-gáyatrà anusandhána. Likewise in the practice of cakrodaya you must maintain awareness which is continually fresh and new, filled with excitement and vigor, in the center of the two breaths. You are to breathe in and out slowly, but, in the case of cakrodaya, with sound.4 According to Yoga Vasiüôhasára, to practice ajapá-gáyatrà you should: hastaê hastena saêpàõya dantairdantáêùca pàõayan / aïgányaïgairsamákramya jayedádau svakaê manaë // Ball your fists, clench your teeth, tense all the muscles of your body, but conquer your mind.

This is the advice of Vasiüôha to Ráma. His teacher tells Ráma that he must first conquer his mind. Unless you have courage you cannot conquer your mind, and unless you have conquered your mind you cannot dare to practice ajapá-gáyatrà. Even the Guru’s grace, gurukäipá, will not help you unless you yourself are determined with full devotion and attachment to maintain awareness and concentration. This grace of the Guru helps those who are simple, and those who have awareness and consciousness are simple. The spiritual aspirant who waivers and becomes disturbed gains nothing. If you undertake these practices without full awareness and concentration and continue for one thousand centuries you will have wasted all one thousand of those centuries. The movement of breath has to be filled with full awareness and concentration. na ùástrairnápi guruóá däiùyate parameùvaraë / däiùyate svátmanaivátmá svayá sattvasthayá dhiyá // Yoga Vasiùôhaë IV: 23, 58. God-Consciousness is not achieved by means of the scriptures nor is it achieved by the Grace of your Master. God-Consciousness is only achieved by your own subtle awareness. The scriptures will not lift him nor can his master elevate him, but when his consciousness is fixed in his own awareness then his soul becomes visible. After you have settled into your ásana through the practice of either ajapágáyatrà or cakrodaya anusandhána, then práóáyáma commences. By maintaining the constantly refreshed continuity of your awareness in the center of the two breaths, madhyamapráóána, you settle into your ásana.6 The movement of your breath becomes very subtle, very refined, as if thin. At this stage you feel like going to sleep, but it is not really sleep. You are proceeding towards the subtle state of awareness, called sâkümagatië. Your awareness will not allow you to fall asleep. At this point you enter turya (the fourth state) which is neither the waking state (jágrat),

the dreaming state (svapna), nor the deep sleep state (suüupti). This is the beginning of parama spanda tattva. úaïkarácárya has said: yadbhávánubhavaë syánnidrádau jágarasyánte / antaë sa cet sitharaë syállabhate tadadvayánandam // Prabodha Sudhákara - 160 If you maintain your awareness at that point which is found between waking and sleeping you will be attuned to that supreme felicity which is the supreme bliss of God-Consciousness. This is the point through which you pass into turya. It is this point which is found at the ending of wakefullness and the beginning of sleep; the point between waking and sleeping. This point or junction is very important, it is the entrance into the state of turya, which has become open through settling into your ásana and undergoing práóáyáma.

Why is there so much importance placed upon meditating on the center or the junction point between breaths? In an earlier book (Swami Lakshmanjoo: “Secret Supreme,” [ed. John Hughes, Universal Shaiva Fellowship, 1985] ch. 16. Seven states of turya, pg 107.), Swamiji points out that everybody touches this junction as they pass from waking into dreaming, and again from dreaming into deep sleep, though ordinarily we are not aware of this junction. This junction or gap is the fourth state called turya. He added that entry into this fourth state takes place ﬁrst in the dreaming state, and not in the state of wakefulness during meditation. And even this entry via the dreaming state takes place by the grace of your previous practice of centering your mind between any two movements or any two breaths. 6

N THIS CONNECTION I COMPOSED THESE lines long ago: There is a point between sleep and waking Where thou shalt be alert without shaking. Enter into the new world where forms so hideous pass. They are passing. Endure! Do not be taken by the dross. Then the pulls and pushes about the throttle, All those shalt thou tolerate. Close all ingress and egress, yawnings there may be. Shed tears, crave, implore and thou wilt not prostrate. A thrill passes and that goes down to the bottom. It riseth—may it bloom forth! That is Bliss. Blessed being! Blessed being! O greetings be to Thee!

For more information about the teachings of Swami Lakshmanjoo and Kaümir úaivism, please visit: www.universalshaivafellowship.org

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CANNIBAL GARDEN PETER LAMBORN WILSON

DISCLAIMER

EFORE ANY READER LEAPS UP TO

comment critically on the “false consciousness” of this memoir, let me be the first to admit that the India in which my friend James and I were traveling, or “sauntering,” in 1969, ‘70, and ‘71 was, in some senses, a hallucination, a consensual hallucination. Orient-intoxicated hippies constituted a sort of wandervogel-ish, lateRomantic epiphenomenon that was dialectically deficient and utterly devoid of post-colonial theoretical rigor. Yes, we’d expected a revolution in 1968 and, yes, we’d been bitterly disappointed, but we were self-exiles really, corrupted by Hermann Hesse, Timothy Leary, and Aldous Huxley, and lost on some nonevolutionary limb or sidetrack with no exit, dream-struck and basically wrong. All of which is true. But if so, perhaps we were wrong in an interesting way, which ought to count for something. In any case, if we were mistaken, then the mistake was shared by many generoushearted and well-intentioned Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalese, Afghans, Iranians, etc., who welcomed us and assured us that we were onto something real. The “something real,” as far as they were concerned, consisted of a varying complex of culture, art, cuisine, poetry, mysticism, and “popular religion.” They valued it highly and appeared willing, even eager, to share it, as the value of cultural goods increases with sharing, unlike other more “material” goods. Elsewhere, I’ve called this complex “Oriental Romanticism.” It had a tremendous impact on our own Romantic movement and was already a shared culture by the late 18th-century, when William Blake read the Upanishads in a version translated from Sanskrit into Persian and then into Latin. Perhaps this complex constitutes nothing more than an oriental “blue flower,” an ideal, unobtainable dream, and therefore

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Bal Shiv

a sadness. If so, then the sadness belongs nevertheless to a real Orient; it’s not at all the same thing as the “Orientalism” condemned so correctly by Professor Said et al as being a mask of imperialist espionage. Romanticism, whether oriental or occidental, paradoxically desires both solidarity and diﬀerence, and stands opposed to all separation and all sameness. In this sense, it transcends its own tendencies toward false consciousness—not by reasoning, but by feeling. The syncretism of “the 60s,” with all its exoticism and escapism, was nevertheless a form of action against the totality of banality, and for the human spirit. Such actions may fail— Romanticism is very good at failure—but they are never wasted.

NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2003

BAL SHIV

FTER SEVERAL YEARS IN INDIA—AND after having read maybe 200 books on Tantra—more years went by, hair turned gray, and yet somehow I’d never heard of Bal Shiv. How strange. Just this last October, I found a color postcard at Dharmaware, an emporium of orientalia in Woodstock, New York, depicting a plump young lad deity with blue skin. At ﬁrst I thought it was Bala Krishna, the boy Krishna, a very common icon—but then I noticed all the accoutrements: the trident, the moon tangled in dreadlocks, the cobra, Nandi the Bull, the tiger skin, the green ice lingam, the chillam, etc. It was Shiva— as a child.

The shop’s proprietor (an American sadhu also called Shiv) had spent many a month amongst the sadhus of India, and told me what he knew about Bal Shiv. Among any group of sadhus, the youngest (sometimes as young as nine or ten) is always called “Bal Shiv” (all sadhus “are” Shiva in some form); he lights the chillum for the whole circle, and is treated with great aﬀection. Bal Shiv’s present form may have emerged from the tantric-bhaktic cults of the 17th-century, and may be based on the form of the boy Krishna, but historicity in such matters counts for far less than visionary experience. Sooner or later, “real” archetypes demand to be realized. Paganism can always make room for yet one more. In the technical jargon of academic “history of religions,” Hinduism (like Taoism) is not really a religion in the strict sense, but a “congeries of cults.” Both Hinduism and Taoism (which are overly-reiﬁed terms of limited epistemological value) demonstrate their vitality and structural openness by constantly giving birth to new deities. No doubt the same held true for living paganisms in the old Occident. And the same process goes on even now in Afro-American cults, such as Santeria and Candomblé. The existence of a nine-year-old boy smeared in cemetery ash, draped with snakes, sporting the paraphernalia of Bhola Shankar (Shiva as lord of ganja-smokers, outcastes, ghouls, and djinn), struck someone somewhere, at sometime, as absolutely necessary and obvious. After all, it’s never too late to acquire another guru from the Unseen World, or to add another image to the altar. Om Bal Shiv—Bom Bom Bhola.

MAGPIE RELIGION

ERHAPS IT’S NOT QUITE ACCURATE TO say that the real religion of India is syncretism. But Hinduism itself appears to consist of a syncresis of Indo-Aryan Vedic tradition with indigenous Dravidic cults, such as those of the Nagas, or serpents, and the cult of Shiva himself. He is already depicted on seals from Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, and then appears as Rudra in the Rigveda, the

somewhat un-Aryan deity devoted to black magic and poisonous drugs (i.e., intoxicants other than soma). According to Shiva’s modern (post-Puranic) adherents, he has “taken over” soma from the Vedic war-god Indra, hence the moon (soma) tangled in his locks which flow with nectar that becomes the Ganges River (does Ganga = ganja?). Soma, the mysterious psychedelic plant of the Rigveda, was long ago “lost,” but it’s intriguing to note that Shaivite sadhus nowadays prepare bhang (drinkable cannabis) in precisely the way soma was treated in the Rigveda and its commentaries. The plant is washed and pounded with a mortar and pestle, then strained through a cloth with water. The Veda sometimes describes the resulting liquid as “green” or “green-gold.” Of course, I defer to the experts who have identified soma as amanita muscaria or even “Syrian rue”—but it seems clear to me that, if nothing else, bhang partakes of the soma-function. In Indian folk Sufism, the patron of bhang is Khezr (Khadir), the famous Green Man or Hidden Prophet, a kind of immortal guru and nature spirit, inherited from ancient Mesopotamian sources by Islam. The cult of cannabis certainly provides India with a conceptual space, so to speak, wherein syncretism thrives. The dervishes are as devoted to it as the sadhus. Thus we 20th-century hippies found our place at once in a tradition perhaps 10,000 years old, which had long ago (during the Bactrian and Kushan empires) absorbed the Greco-Egyptian gods of Hellenism (Dionysus recognized as Shiva, for instance). Later, this great melting pot began adding Islam to its stew. The “high” and literate level of syncretism in Mughal India—such as the famous Din Ilahi of Emperor Akbar— was always supported from the “low” base of popular culture, while the base was always enriched with images and influences from learned mystics, poets, and princely patrons. “Their Vedanta is our Sufism, and our Sufism is their Vedanta,” as Prince Dara Shikoh put it. Hindu-Moslem sects, such as the Kabirpanth and the Bengali Bauls, arose

from the cross-fertilization and mutual feedback of learned and popular levels.

N INDIA, I MET YOGIS WHO ADORED the Persian Sufi poet Hafez. In Pakistan, at a Sufi shrine, I met an elderly dervish who cursed Partition because “in the old days, the Hindus used to come here too, and venerate our saint.” Elsewhere I’ve written about Raihana Ben, the aristocratic Moslem lady I met in New Delhi who followed Gandhi and worshipped Krishna. The great psychedelic guru Ganesh Baba, whom I met in Darjeeling, told me that some of his best friends were Sufis (more on Ganesh later). Narrow Hindu chauvinism and Islamic fundamentalism are very late, 19th-century phenomena in India, and are actually both reactionary forms of modernism (like fascism, which they resemble very closely and by which they were very strongly influenced). Syncretism may die out before the leveling onslaught of one-dimensional religion, zero-dimensional globalism, electronic media-wash, and ethnic cleansing—but, for me, it will always remain “the true India.” Jesus Christ and Imam Ali are both avatars of Vishnu (and appear as “idols” in a temple in Banaras), and even the Olympic pantheon lives on in Hindustan in various disguises. IO Bacchus—Bom Bom.

THE PAST IS NOT ONLY NOT DEAD, IT’S NOT EVEN PAST

N INDIA, THE PAST PERSISTS. WHILE I was there, I read in a newspaper that a group of Brahmins somewhere in the south had actually performed the Vedic “Horse Sacrifice,” an immensely complex and costly ritual theoretically intended to maximize the potential for the emergence of “just rule.” Though the Horse Sacrifice had not been carried out for centuries, these pious vegetarians managed to accomplish everything perfectly, but were unable to bring themselves to kill the horse in the end. Once in Rishikesh, my friend James and I witnessed a Vedic sacrifice of some kind (on Durga Puja, I think): Brahmins

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chanting endlessly and feeding a fire with spoons of ghee. (We found it very magical—but unfortunately Brahmins are not the most approachable people.) Later, while wandering in the hills outside Rishikesh, we met a very friendly old yogi who was about to leave for a yoga convention in Delhi and offered to let us stay in his meditation cave in the jungle. Not too far away from his cave, down on the bank of the Ganges, was an agreeable vegetarian restaurant, so we lived as troglodytes on take-out curry for a few days, quite content. Except for one thing: we’d run out of ganja. Rishikesh is devoted to clean-living Vishnu, not Shiva, and so is very unfriendly to the tantric comforts of meat, wine, and cannabis. Where to score? In desperation, we stopped at a tiny, countryside tea-house and asked the genial proprietor. “I don’t have any,” he said, “but there’s a whole field of it down the road.” Sure enough: a whole field of ditch-weed, hardly more potent than rope. But our systems were clean and, as we used to say, “there’s no such thing as ‘bad dope.’” On the way back to the cave, we saw a giant lizard, like a Komodo Dragon. As far as I know, there are no such lizards in India, so perhaps we hallucinated it. In Darjeeling, I’d been taught certain tantric meditation techniques that, according to my guru, required psychic fuel in the form of either brandy or ganja, or both. Now I began to really use our meditation cave for meditation, and was soon able to convince myself that Kundalini yoga was extremely real, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with this reality. So, we left the cave and wandered on up the upper Ganges, hiking alongside the frigid glacial torrent. The whole region, we discovered, was in the throes of a famine, and we had nothing to eat for a week but pumpkin and chapattis. We slept out in the rain one night and got eaten by bed-bugs the next. My feet were bleeding and infected. The locals thought we were spies. At last, we reached a little town with a Sikh restaurant. I can still taste that mutton curry. The Tantrics are right: under certain circumstances,

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meat can give you an amazing rausch. Everything is psychotrophic and hunger (as I learned and re-learned in India) makes the best spice.

THE CIRCUS

PEAKING OF BEING LOST IN TIME, THE OLD hill station of Ootacamund in the Nilgiri Hills of South India seemed to be stuck in precisely 1947, the last year of the British Raj. Since we’d arrived there via the back waters of Kerala, an elephant sanctuary in the jungle, and the medieval temples of Madurai, “snooty Ooty” seemed quite modern enough to me and James. We loved the 1940s cars, the old Anglo-Indian gents in their solar topees, the shops selling archaic English stuﬀ like Bovril and Maj. Grey’s Mango Chutney, the shady Anglican graveyard, “the highest racetrack in the world,” where Himalayan ponies could be bet on for two rupees (and where we met a ruddy old British type who swore he’d “been in India for forty years and never once tasted curry”), and the cool, rainy, eucalyptus-scented air. One evening, as we were eating supper in a cheap café, a middle-aged Moslem customer sidled up to our table and said, “Excuse me, but can you please explain to me the philosophy of hippyism?” Now, people are always coming up to you in India and asking the same old questions (“What country you

belong?” etc., etc.), and lots of hippies would get so tired of this that they’d respond rudely or facetiously. But we’d recently taken a vow to try to be patient and polite, and besides, this was a new and even interesting question. We told him that some hippies, at least, were serious spiritual seekers, which pleased him. Our new friend turned out to be a professional daredevil motorcycle rider with the New Grand Circus, which happened to be in town. He was himself quite a philosopher and very nice, and he gave us comps for that night’s performance, which saw him fly his antique Norton through a hoop of flame. We fell in love with the New Grand Circus, a perfect anachronism of a small, sad, one-ring English or American circus, circa 1947—i.e., our childhoods reborn. We met the pompous ringmaster and the wisecracking dwarf clowns. We fell even more in love with the little girl acrobats and contortionists, especially one star called Kumari, named after the Hindu virgin goddess. (In Kathmandu, we’d seen the living incarnation of Kumari drawn in procession on a “cart” that was actually a complete wooden temple on wheels. She was about ten years old and encrusted with jewels. As soon as the Living Goddess menstruates, she’s replaced with another little girl, and then usually takes up the profession of prostitution, or so they say. We also saw her once staring wistfully out the window of her palace.) We got jobs (unpaid) with the circus. I was supposed to paint posters, but I’m not much of an artist and, anyway, couldn’t find good paints in Ooty, so that didn’t work out. But James is a real musician and he even found a piano in Ooty. It belonged to some Anglican nuns who ran a girl’s boarding school. They adored James, had the piano tuned, persuaded him to give a recital for themselves and the girls (mostly Chopin, as I recall), and actually paid him fifty rupees! The circus band certainly needed help. They had anarchic verve, but little technique. For instance, whenever an act came to a halt, they simply stopped whatever they were playing in the

middle of a bar and went on to the next tune. The first thing James taught them was the big TAA-DAH! with drumroll, and they loved it. Everybody loved it. Even the opium-doped elephant perked up. We followed the circus to Bangalore, then wandered off on our own to Mysore, a nice, cool city which smells of sandalwood. There we enjoyed another ringside seat— our hotel balcony—for the marriage of the local crown prince, who rode past us with his bride in a gold howdah on the biggest elephant in India, the famous “Maharaj” (now deceased), followed by a solid silver carriage drawn by six white brahma bulls and troops of retainers in full medieval drag and regalia, several brass bands and shenai (North Indian oboe) ensembles (all playing different tunes), while, in the background, the royal palace was lit up with fairy lights. Later, we went out for some Mysore Pak, one of India’s most delicious, sweet local specialties, and found the little Shiva temple where ganja and opium were sold. There we met and chatted with an old Sufi dervish who told us that he’d once walked all the way to Persia and back.

Tolstoy and Gandhi, he was known to his many pen pals as the “anarchoSwami.” The Swami self-published charming little pamphlets on Hindu anarchism, and ran a rural ashram where he acted as patron saint, doctor, and soup kitchen for the local Nilgiri “tribals,” who were not even Hindus, but “animists” of some sort. Over the years, I sent a number of American seekers to the swami, who taught them how to make fabulous tomato chutney (as “karma yoga” training), but I never met him myself. After a long and beautiful life, the Swami decided (in 1997, I believe) that he preferred a conscious yogic death to old age and sickness. He told his disciples of his intention, but word leaked out and found its way to the Indian newspapers. A huge scandal ensued, with the result that the police threatened to arrest and imprison Swami Nirmalananda to prevent his “holy suicide.” But he tricked them. A week before the announced date, he slipped into samadhi and left his body—by all accounts a happy man.

A NOTE ON THE NILGIRI HILLS

INDIA ON FIVE RUPEES A DAY, OR THE ART OF SAUNTERING

“S

EARS LATER IN NEW YORK, I BEGAN corresponding with Swami Nirmalananda, who lived in the hills not far from Ooty. A disciple of Thoreau,

AUNTERING” WAS A FAVORITE WORD OF Henry David Thoreau’s. The traveler who saunters should always be in a good mood. Nothing is more disheartening than

the new kind of PoMo (postmodern) travel book, written by someone who’s been there, done that, and had a vile experience. It’s the modern equivalent of the sneering imperialistic or even racist travel books of the 19th century—only usually much more boring. One of my own private rules of travel was never to believe a negative report on any place I might plan to visit. I reasoned that people in a bad mood project it outward onto “strange” places and other people. Travel is an art of reciprocity. Anything else is tourism. In the East, in the 60s and 70s, the modern media had not yet totally replaced the old, old sport of peoplewatching. I found that people looked at me and were very sensitive to my moods (sometimes to the point of “telepathy”). If I felt tired, depressed, alienated, lonely, etc., all of it would be reﬂected back at me from the people around me. It wasn’t their fault I felt bad but, by reacting (mostly unconsciously) to my mood, they made it worse. If I felt cheerful, attentive, energetic, and open, however, then (most) people would react positively and this “feedback” would augment my own pleasure in travel. Therefore, whenever I fell ill or tired or depressed for any reason, I’d hole up in a hotel or beach resort and sleep and read. New places should be tackled only in “strong” mode. Every once in a while, I’d attain a sort of Zen state of

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travel in which everything went “by itself;” empathy, or the ability to give rather than pay attention, was attained, became a kind of effortlessness. In this state, fascinating “coincidences” would occur and strange adventures would unfold. In the 60s, many of us were not so much engaged in travel (from A to B) as in “aimless wandering” (as Chuang Tzu put it)—fearless, footloose, low-budget, unplanned, spontaneous vagabondage. Hence our great unpopularity amongst government officials. No one knew where you were; you were off the reservation, somewhat lost (but so what?) and somewhat intoxicated by freedom. For a time in India, I traveled entirely according to directions given to me by various tantric or Sufi advisors—a sort of randomwalk pilgrimage. No doubt there actually existed a book called India on Five Dollars a Day but, in the 60s, you could get by quite well on five rupees (or 50 cents) a day. In bad periods, I lived on two rupees a day. Once in Banaras, I tried panhandling with miserable results. In Calcutta, I slept on the street with lepers and rats. In good periods (say 50 rupees, or $5, a day), we experienced riotous, hedonistic, Raj-sahib-style, high living. In Bombay, I remember James and I had raw silk suits made and, with our pal Rashid Bhai, the Pathan gangster and opium-den proprietor, we attended the horse races in a Victorian carriage. I’ll pass over the story of the source of our prosperity, but moralists will be glad to know that it didn’t last. A bout of luxury in some Somerset-Maughamstyle hotel was always followed by a fall into hard-up-ness and ill health, just as periods of spiritual quest were always interspersed with binges of sloth and self-indulgence. Has no one yet written a history of this era?—the time of the “overland trail” to India, of the ex-pats, lost boys, junkies, poets, and old India hands, like Eight-Finger Eddie of Goa (I hear he’s still there) or Marilyn Stablein (who recently published her terrific India memoirs, Sleeping In Caves) or Baghwan Das, the young, blond, used-car salesman from California, who became a sort of super-hippie and genuine sadhu.

Decades later, I ﬁnally met Baghwan Das in upstate New York and discovered that we had almost crossed paths in India many times. Everything I did in India, Baghwan did ten times more. For instance, I was initiated at midnight in a cremation ground; Baghwan spent twentyfour hours sitting on a corpse surrounded by a ring of bone ﬁres. A few years ago, he also published his memoirs (Rudyard Kipling would’ve keeled over in shock). East and West do meet. In very strange ways maybe, but they do. The Americans among us were all following in the footsteps of Allen Ginsberg

Lord úiva. From the collection of Maria Rubinate. 82

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and his wonderful India travel journals. Again, decades later, I ﬁnally met Allen and got to know him while teaching at Naropa, in Boulder, Colorado. I had the chance to thank him for all the useful lessons in his book (for example, the ideal number of travelers is three; one to buy the tickets, one to fetch the tea, and one to sit on the luggage). Ginsberg was our poet laureate. Incidentally, although as everyone knows he became a Buddhist, he once told me that he also considered himself a Hindu, and that his ishta devata, or personal deity, was Ardhanarishvara, who is literally half

male (Shiva) and half female (Shakti), like Madam Adam, the carnie sideshow hermaphrodite.

THE SKULL

HE FIRST TIME I VISITED BANARAS, I arrived after a sweltering, twoday train trip in the grip of withdrawal from a little opium habit I’d picked up in Bombay. I checked into the Railway Hotel and spent another twenty-four hours shivering and writhing, then arose quite well and refreshed, and rushed down to the Ganges in a bicycle rickshaw. There I met a little group of alsorecently-arrived youth (I think some of them were runaways from the American diplomatic high school in Delhi) and we rented a small boat to go for an excursion on the river. We rowed across to the “other side,” a completely uninhabited sandbar, empty and desolate. Every day, all day, many heavy, archaic black boats with red lateen sails ply back and forth across the Ganges from Banaras to this other side and back again. Hundreds of very poor workers, mostly women, ﬁll straw baskets with sand, load them onto the boats, and then unload them in Banaras, basket by basket. Thus, the banks of the cityside are shored up against swift Ganga’s erosive currents; and thus have matters proceeded since the dawn of civilization. The workers were paid two pice per basket, I think— one little coin for each load. They ran, they sweated, they staggered. Later, in one of my low periods, I used to eat dal and bread at a tiny restaurant patronized by these skinny people. We jumped out of the boat into the water for a sacred swim. Suddenly, we noticed—perched on the gray sandy beach in front of our eyes—a human skull. We freaked and clambered back onto the boat and, in a somber mood, rowed back to the ghat. Hindus believe that cremation in Banaras ensures a good reincarnation, so people come here to die. Banaras is Death City. After a while, you get used to it (see Diana Eck’s masterpiece Banaras for the whole story). I spent a night at the huge Dantesque burning ghat with sadhus and doms (the Untouchable corpse-

burners). I went for a swim every day and watched the occasional half-burnt corpse float by, with buzzards riding it like a surfboard. Never have I seen so many different kinds of carrion-eating birds as in Banaras, not to mention the bizarre toothy dolphins, a species found only in the Ganges. Hippies lived in “houseboats” tied up alongside the ghats. We had no furniture, no running water, no electricity, but we had the whole panorama of the river by vibrant day and velvety night: the masses of pilgrims; the astounding water buffalos, like angry, brainless, black, rubberized tanks steered by little boys; the Vedantic athletes, chanting and hurling huge clubs like Hanuman; the noisy obnoxious Brahmins with their megaphones; the white-clad widows, living crammed into a tiny room on the ghat, invoking “Ram Ram” all day, waiting to die. At the top of the ghat’s stairs, we had a tiny, south-Indian-style, vegetarian “hotel” (meaning restaurant), where delicious idly and masala dosa were served for a few pennies. Narrow medieval streets with miniscule shops were lit at dusk by biblical oil lamps, and populated by sacred cows and devileyed goats. And then there was, of course, smoking with the sadhus: hemp and opium were legal and sold in green Government Shops. As Shiva’s city, Banaras loved bhang, even in its ice cream.

NE NIGHT, SOON AFTER THE SKULL incident, I was on my way back to the houseboat and, passing along one of those ancient streets, I found a miniature Shiva temple—a large niche really, opened into the side of a house—where a neighborhood puja association was performing its rites with drumming and chanting. The plaster image of Shiva suddenly seemed to spring to life (an effect of flickering lamps and bhang, no doubt) and I was hit by a swift realization. I was an Episcopalian “Anglo-agnostic,” I was a minister of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America (a “psychedelic religion”), and I was looking for Sufis because I suspected I might be one of them. But now, unexpectedly, I discovered I was also

a Shaivite. I bowed to the image and vowed to pursue this thought.

FROM THE PLACE OF THE THE THUNDERBOLT TO THE PLACE OF THE DIVINE YONI

’D WANTED TO VISIT DARJEELING EVER since I learned that the name (Dorjeling) means “place of the thunderbolt.” The city is another charming Victorian hill station, blessed with cool weather and colonial nostalgia, and cornered by Bengal, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan. Its cosmopolitan bazaar buzzes with AngloIndians, Tibetans, Bengali Hindus and Moslems, tribal Lepchas, aged British exiles, and Chinese merchants. It has (or had) the world’s steepest, highest, narrow-gauge railroad, a train buff’s delight. It also has the oldest Tibetan monasteries outside Tibet, with the snowy Himalayas, including Kanchenjunga, one of the highest, as their backdrop. Monks at sunset honked on eight-foot-long trumpets from roofs of temples. There was an English library, where I discovered the worm-eaten works of “Arthur Avalon,” aka Sir John Woodruffe, the Calcutta “hanging judge” and an expert on Tantra. But I knew very well that books were not enough. I met Ganesh Baba, the psychedelic guru, in Darjeeling. In later years, Ganesh came to America and acquired many admirers and disciples (including my comrade poet, Ira Cohen), but, at that time, his fame was confined to India. He smoked more ganja than anyone I’ve ever met anywhere. Short, plump (like his ishta devata) and grandly bearded, Ganesh spoke with an almost-flawless Oxbridge accent, and did it non-stop. Everything he said was witty, sometimes profound, sometimes stream-of-consciousness. He’d appointed himself guru to the stoned hippies and gave good advice, such as how to dress in India in order to be taken seriously, how to behave well, even when wasted, how to play spontaneous games with street kids, how to suddenly attack a passerby with an umbrella for no

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úakôa Shrine with Triùul. Photograph by Martin Brading. 84 FALL 2004

apparent reason, how to sit up straight, and so on. His table talk and aphorisms have been collected (some in Orgies of the Hemp Eaters, Autonomedia). Only after he died did I learn that he was an immensely respected guru in one of the oldest sadhu orders and the author of voluminous works on yoga philosophy. I hung around Darjeeling with Ganesh every day until he departed for somewhereor-other. Before he left he said, “Since you’re interested in Tantra, let me introduce you to my old friend, Sri Kamanaransan Biswas.” Mr. Biswas turned out to be a mildmannered, diminutive, clean-shaven, middleaged, low-level, rumple-suited, West Bengali government clerk. I was immediately impressed, however, to learn that he’d once been a member of the infamous Bengali Terrorist Party, that he’d inherited a Bengali “family tradition” in the Tantra of Tara (one of the Ten Fearsome Forms of Kali) from his grandmother, and that he could foretell winning lottery numbers. On Ganesh’s advice, I at once became Mr. Biswas’s disciple. Every day, while Mr. B. created more reams of brittle paperwork in some bureaucratic hell, I pored over Woodruffe at the library and then, every afternoon, I’d walk down the pine-perfumed, mountain-misty path to Mr. B.’s little green rented cottage. There, I learned about Tara, the star, the savioress, with her specific weapons, attributes, and skin “the color of monsoon clouds.” (The monsoon was in fact just setting in.) We drank cheap ritual brandy together and Mr. B. encouraged me to smoke ganja as well, since it makes an excellent offering to Her and puts one in the mood for puja with incense and flowers. I learned the mantra. I studied the yantra. At a little temple to the Hindu Mars, I received an initiatory name and a tantric ring made of a bent horseshoe nail. I was also given a miraculous lithograph of Tara that had survived the Siliguri flood and floated on the water. Eventually (fleeing the Iranian Revolution in 1979), I lost most of these things, but I still have the mantra, the mystic name, and the memory.

HE MONSOON IN THE HIMALAYAS IS magniﬁcent: the mountains disappear in a mist worthy of a Sung landscape scroll.

But landslides keep the road and even the railroad closed for a month or more. We had to leave, me because my Darjeeling Permit had run out, Mr. B. to spend the season at home with his family in Siliguri, and to finish my initiation. We left Darjeeling in a rainstorm with seventeen passengers crammed in a jeep and careened down spiral mudways to the flat plains, the land of disasters, the floodplain of Bengal, hot and humid as a hamam, below. We visited Mr. B.’s wife in Siliguri Hospital. The whole building had been inundated in the last great flood, drowning most of the patients, and algae still grew on the walls. Mrs. B. was lying on a mattress in the middle of a dark corridor, along with lots of other sick people, because there were no available beds. Mrs. B. looked angry as well as sick, and said nothing. That night, we visited a humble Kali temple in the middle of some flooded rice paddies near Mr. B.’s bungalow. The statue of the goddess was horrendously bloodthirsty and the villagers were pounding dhols (a traditional drum with roots in the Indian province of Punjab) and drums in a kind of syncopated counter-rhythm that, very loud and intense, sounded almost African or Haitian. (I never heard drumming quite like it anywhere else ever again.) Then, we went to the burning ground for midnight brandy and initiation, after which we reeled drunk back to the house. The next day I was to cement the deal, so to speak, by setting out on a pilgrimage to Kamkhya in Assam, where a high holy day of Tantra was about to be celebrated. The next hungover, already-boiling morning, Mr. B. sent out his son for a rickshaw, granted me permission to spread the cult of Tara in the West, and bade me farewell (forever, as it turned out). On the train to Gauhati, I realized I didn’t have an Assam Permit. That meant I’d have to jump off the train before it stopped at the station, to evade the police, and find a hotel too degraded to demand my passport. Arriving at Gauhati late that night in a monsoon downpour, I leapt off the train into a sea of mud.

The next morning, I was too weak to climb the hill to the temple of Kamkhya, so I splurged on a rickshaw. The whole way up the hill was thick with pilgrims, hundreds of thousands (lakhs or crores, if you like—India never does things by half ) of them. The vast temple complex acted as a stage for hundreds or perhaps thousands of wild super-sadhus from heaven knows where, with huge tridents, whole necklaces of human skulls, and seated on real tiger skins in various weird asanas. The temple Brahmins tried to prevent me from entering, but the Tantrikas defended me and whooshed me inside. Dozens of simultaneous animal sacrifices were in progress. Officiants with scimitars were whacking heads off goats and doves by the gross and blood was literally flowing in the gutters. The time then came for the pilgrimage’s goal, the underground cavern where the yoni of Shakti was venerated—possibly the most important relic or image in Shakti Tantra and holy to all Shaivites. In fact, it felt like all of them were there at once, surging down, down the rock-cut, spiral steps in one, mad riot or human maelstrom, bearing me along like flotsam on a human tide, down into a claustrophobic wombcave reeking of the sweat and incense of millennia—and then around and around, circumambulating a fivefoot stone cone, dripping with ghee and ochre and wreathed in a million marigolds. Not sure how I got out.

RITUAL CANNIBALISM

CAN’T REMEMBER HOW MANY TIMES I visited Banaras, but James and I were there together in one of our very poorest periods, the time when I was reduced to begging and eating at the Sand Peoples’ restaurant. No money even for a houseboat, we were sleeping free at the Sikh gurudwara, along with about 200 other homeless waifs and poor travelers. Bless the Sikhs!—but still, you had to be up and out at dawn, and couldn’t come back till nightfall. So, we spent all day, every day, looking for ways to escape the sun—and the incessant hordes of humanity—and all the hassles of the street. “Some

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place shady and quiet” took on for us a Grail-like aspect, alluring yet seemingly unobtainable. One daytime retreat I remember with fondness was the Banaras Theosophical Library—a long, hot walk out to the suburbs, but worth it. Musty and dusty old cantonment-style mansion with garden and shaded verandas, it felt like Madame Blavatskaya herself might have just left the room, Colonel Olcott or Bishop Leadbeater have just flitted away, leaving behind their books, worm-eaten and crumbly, along with a staff of elderly, amiable, vague Indian Theosophists to linger on into the twilight of the Kali Yuga. They were generous with tea and let me drowse in the garden during the afternoon, when the library closed and everyone else had to leave. Bless them too, and also their marvelous books, with their alluring color diagrams of auras and vril and cosmic thought-forms. I never actually read any of them, just looked at the pictures. But I devoured the whole shelf of Sufism and discovered Ibn ‘Arabi for the first time in yellowed editions of Affifi and Khoja Khan. The whole idea of pantheistic monism swept me away, and the glow has never quite faded, even now. We were afflicted with malnutrition, various sorts of dysentery, jaundice, sun-burn, unhealed sores, etc., and addicted to little government-shop balls of opium. I mention this not to elicit sympathy, but simply to set a scene. After all, we didn’t have to be there. As that obnoxious German hippie told me, when I tried to hit him up for a few rupees in Chandni Chowk, we could always turn ourselves in at the U.S. Embassy and demand repatriation, claiming medical emergency, and be flown home. No, let’s face it: we were enjoying ourselves in some bizarre way. One day, we were walking through little suburban streets between the city and the university, where we had some friends in the music department. Perhaps we were returning from a visit to old Doc Chatterjee, an eccentric Bengali pharmacist who reminded us of some character from Naked Lunch, or perhaps we were just wandering around

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looking for someplace to lie down. We were starting to feel sunstrokish, like mad dogs and Englishmen, when we came upon an old-fashioned garden gate. It was open. We peered in and beheld a little garden with a “tank” of water and lily pads, a patch of grass, and a shady tree or two. Paradise now. We knocked. We hallo’d. It seemed like no one was there. The tiny gatehouse was empty, the garden was empty. We crept inside and partook of the shade (a substance palpable as water). We waited; no one appeared. We nodded. We dozed. Evening came and still not one person intruded on the peace and quiet. In India, you’re never alone and yet we were alone. Mystiﬁed, we departed and walked back to the gurudwara. Next day, of course, we returned. But this time we found a gatekeeper there, an old chap in ordinary Hindu garb, who welcomed us with a gap-toothy smile into his garden. He spoke some English. “We were here yesterday,” we explained, “and found the gate open. We spent the day here. You see, we were desperate for some cool place to rest. We hope we did no harm?” “No, no. You did right. Welcome! I always leave the gate open whenever I’m away for just that very purpose, so that passersby can enter and enjoy. I was visiting my guru, you see.” “That’s extremely generous,” I said. “I’d expect many people to abuse your hospitality. Everywhere we go in Banaras, there are so many people! And yet we spent the whole day in this delightful spot—and not one other person entered. How can this be?” The gardener burst into loud and jolly laughter. “It’s true!” he exclaimed. “No one ever comes! They are afraid, you see. Ha ha ha!” “Afraid? Is the garden haunted or something?” “Yes, they think! They are afraid of us. They say we are ghouls, corpse-eaters, cannibals! And, of course, they are right!” (Another gale of laughter.) “Is that so?” “Yes. This garden belongs to the Aghoris. You have heard of us?”

HAD HEARD OF THE AGHORIS—THAT they wander about naked, with nothing but a human skull for a begging bowl, that they live in cemeteries and smear themselves with ash, practice extreme yogic and tantric asceticism, use huge amounts of weird drugs, including datura, and (as part of their initiation) eat human ﬂesh stolen from funeral pyres. They do this to overcome fear and disgust. The gardener told us that his guru ran a leprosarium in Banaras. Lepers constitute a kind of zero-point of ritual impurity in India. I’d never heard of a guru like this before, and I was impressed. I asked if we could meet him. “He is making his annual retreat now,” the gardener told us, “and is therefore unavailable for forty days. He meditates in a bamboo tower forty feet high, with just enough space to sit in, but not lie down. The tower is over on the ‘other side,’ where no one will bother him. Every few days, I take some rice and he pulls it up on a string. That’s why I wasn’t here yesterday.” (Note: You can ﬁnd mention of the Banaras Aghoris and their leprosarium in Robert Svoboda’s wonderful book Aghora.) Unfortunately, we couldn’t wait forty days (having to go to Delhi about bad visa problems), so after another shady afternoon spent chatting and drinking tea in the Cannibal Garden, we said goodbye and left the next day (on top of a truck, the cheapest mode of travel available, whose driver was obviously stoned on opium) for Allahabad and Luckow. But I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for those ghouls, the Aghoris.

Samartha Hanuman in Rรกmadasa Mutt, Karthik Chauk, Ujjain. Photograph by Martin Brading.

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BABY SPECIAL DIAMONDS MAXINE HENRYSON

Balancing, Mahรกbalipuram, South India, 1999. 88

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Blossoms, Mysore, South India, 2004. Trees against the sunlight, Mysore, South India, 2004.

Monk emerging, Seraje monastery, South India, 2001. The complexity of pink, Mysore, South India, 2004.

úaïkarácárya of Hebbur, Temple opening, Kaushika, South India, 2001. 90

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Waiting, Kañcàpuram, South India, 1999. 92

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Baby Special Diamonds, Mysore, South India, 2001. FALL 2004

Feet garlanded with jasmine (priest and Guruji). Kaushika, South India, 2001. 94

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YAMUNA’S STORY SHYAM DAS

FEW YEARS AGO, I MADE A PILGRIMAGE to Yamnotri, the source of the Yamuna River high in the Himalayas. It is a wonderful spot, with thermal springs and enchanting forests, where it snows seven months of the year. From there, I appreciated the vision of Sri Yamunaji flowing from the nectarine heart of Narayan, the sun god. After she cascades brilliantly from the summit of Kalindi Mountain, she flows furiously towards Vrindavan, the abode of her beloved, Krishna. On the plains below the Himalayas, within the sacred lands of Braja, Sri Yamunaji’s most ardently devotional form can be seen. This is why I now choose to live by her banks in this sacred realm, in the small town of Gokul. I often wander these banks, reflecting on the nature of her divinity and on the perfect results of Hari’s creation. And by her waters, it becomes very clear that the world is not simply an illusion. Mayic illusion results from a false perception and conceals the true quality of the thing itself. Creation seen correctly becomes a divine play, a lila, and Sri Yamunaji is in charge of the lila arrangements wherein every virtue finds a place in her service. By her flowing current, all life seems to be especially alive. Sri Yamunaji has three forms: she is a river, seen by all; a purifier, known by her followers; and a grace goddess, seen by her blessed bhaktas. The river, the transformer and the personified grace goddess all exist within each other and are truly a single form. Not only is Sri Yamunaji Lord Krishna’s most beloved, but she also freely shares that sacred relationship with her bhaktas. When her waves lap her banks and spread their waters across the sands, at that moment

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is it possible to see shiny, pearly bangles adorning her hands and the high banks become her hips. This divine form of Sri Yamuna is held to be nirguna, that is she transcends every material virtue and is comprised solely of pure ananda, or bliss. She is Hari’s beloved and grants sacred relationship to her bhaktas. Sri Yamunaji takes on numerous forms to relate with each of her yearning bhaktas uniquely. Because she is a grace goddess and unlike other rivers that flow into the ocean, Sri Yamunaji flows directly into Sri Krishna’s bliss form, and like him, becomes replete with lordliness, potency, fame, beauty, wisdom and renunciation. By her banks, I have come to realize some of the differences between lawful practices and those that are grace-filled. Paths that follow particular rules and practices necessarily involve a review of our precision throughout, whereas the grace-filled path is different; it moves as an unrestricted flood of favor. Lawful practice is attained; grace is given. Just as India is the locus of various currents that converge both within her lands and within her devotees’ hearts, those who are on the path of grace revere the lawful flow only after it is mixed with grace, otherwise pride of practice may arise.

OD’S GREATNESS MAY BE ESTABLISHED in scripture, but actually tasting Sri Hari’s essence is what it is all about. To bow towards Sri Krishna’s playground brings knowledge of his greatness, which is then followed by an awareness of our own sacred relationship. With this, our actions are transformed and become infused with wisdom. When thought and action blend into a single oﬀering, a dedication to his pleasure arises.

Desire, fear and hatred are usually obstructions to attainment, but with the power of grace, anything can be transformed. Kamsa merged with god through fear, while Shishupal arrived through hatred. And it was through their desires that the Gopis of Vrindavan found the supreme reward, a dance with Sri Krishna. Sri Yamunaji is the goddess of transformation, and her mere proximity makes souls like the Gopis beloved to Hari. Because his connection with the form and the lila is direct, Sri Vallabhacharya’s teachings on Sri Yamunaji are full of truth. He ends his “Yamunastkam,” the eight verses in praise of Yamuna, with the words: “All devotional powers are attained through you, and Sri Krishna is pleased. You transform the nature of your bhaktas, beloved of Hari.” This is the process of nirodha, that is, of becoming perfectly bound to God. It arises from an addiction that comes from love and attachment. Nirodha is the reﬁned reward that brings the bhakta directly to god’s playground. It frees the practitioner from all constraints. Where there is nirodha, there is nothing else to attain. Every sense and every pore of the being is directed towards blissful brahman. Sri Yamunaji’s devotional empowerments are about nirodha, and there is no mantra, knowledge, meditation, prayer or holy ground that surpasses it. “Yamuna Maiya Ki Jai.”

The complete article and translation of Yamunastakam by Shyam Das can be viewed at www.namarupa.org.

This map by Kailáùanátha Sukula, entitled “A Mirror of Káùà,” was printed in Váráóasà in 1876 by the Vidyodaya Press. Four wooden blocks were used to print the 79 x 92 cm map on cloth, as well as on paper. According to Kailáùanátha Sukula’s own indications, the map’s representation of the sacred topography of Váráóasà is based on puráóic textual sources and was meant to make Káùà eternally visible to people wherever they may be.