Amazing Grace

I listened to this in the car last night, and was really struck by how strongly it rings true for me:

          Through many dangers, toils and snares
          I have already come;
          'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far
          And grace will lead me home.

I have been thankful for the grace flowing in abundance through my life.... but if I had to pick one grace-filled moment, it would be the moment when I was meditating with my teacher and found that my heart had been torn open with light and love.  I had that feeling very strongly as a child, but lost it along the way... and after that experience with my teacher, never lost it again.  (I wrote about that experience in my first post on this blog.)

The hard part is remembering that we are safe, and grace will lead us home.

One Omkareshwar experience - we drove to Ujjain.  As we drove toward Indore, we could see that we were driving into heavy black storm clouds.    We spent an incredibly long day of driving and visiting spiritual sites in Ujjain, walking around in heavy rain, including some stressful times walking with bare feet in water and mud and who-knows-what.  The sites we visited were really interesting, and Swamiji really knows how to tell a story!, but it was a long day.

The day started at 5AM, fast forward and it's now 6PM, and we are looking at a two+ hour drive back to Omkareshwar, and then a boat ride to the island and home to the ashram.   Right around the time we left Indore and headed for home, the storm really ratcheted up.  The rain was torrential, and for added dramatics, the storm threw in massive thunder and lightning right overhead, and tree-knocking-down winds.  (Did I mention that "It never rains in India at this time of year."  Ha.)  The road out of Indore is unbelievably treacherous, with switchback after switchback in the two lane road.  Now add to that the Indian way of driving, which involves passing everything in your lane by darting in and out of oncoming traffic. (This is nerve-rattling on a GOOD day, in the sunshine, with moderate traffic... )  So there we are, nine souls packed into this SUV, in this terrible storm, darting in and out of oncoming traffic.  After about an hour of this, I said to my friend sitting next to me, "Anybody besides me concerned about how we will cross the river in this storm?"  Because in a severe lightning storm, one (seriously!)  does not want to be in a wooden boat out on a river!  We had no backup plan - once we made the decision to leave Indore, we were committed.  We were in the middle of nowhere... it was not an option to just change the plan and stop at the Holiday Inn for the night.

So we talked about this on and off for about 45 minutes.  We discussed the possibility of walking from the village to the ashram (there is a pedestrian bridge) - but that was not a great plan either.  The walk out to the ashram is hilly, with many many sets of stairs - and we were in a pounding rain with lightning, and no flashlights. No overnight options in the village.... and having the nine of us sleep in the car would certainly be less than ideal!  We did mention the fact that Swamiji would almost certainly have talked to us about "Why are you worried?  Have trust... "

And when we reached the village, the rain began to decrease... and by the time we traveled through the village to the boat dock, the rain had stopped.  And the boatwala was right there where he was supposed to be, at the dock.  We piled into the boat, and had a most peaceful crossing of the Narmada... black sky with a zillion stars overhead, and a horizon still lit by remote lightning flashes. (I think that for the rest of my life, the term "relieved" will bring back the feelings I had that night as our boat crossed that river.) When our tired little group made it to top of the long set of stairs from the landing to the ashram, three or four hours later than expected... we were met with warm hugs and great relief by our friends Steve and Michele, who had not accompanied us to Ujjain.  We all headed for our rooms and washed up... and then one by one, still a little worried, we all found ourselves back at the top of the stairs waiting to greet the other group of friends traveling in another car.  They arrived safely about half an hour later.

So.  What did we all learn from that experience?  My friend said that she learned SO much about letting go and trusting the flow.  I wish I could say that I share that... but mostly I learned that I never never ever want to be out in that kind of severe weather, especially on a dark winding road in India! And that thought brings me back here...

          Through many dangers, toils and snares
          I have already come;
          'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far
          And grace will lead me home.

Would it have made a difference if I had been able to trust the flow?  Well, on the upside, it certainly would have made the adventure less stressful. (Swamiji would probably have thought that the adventure was fun, but he thinks *everything* is fun!)  In the end, we were all (thank you very much, presiding deities) safe and sound, and our worrying had not helped one bit to get us to that state.  I don't know.  It's hard.
 

Sanskrit and Hindi

When you hang out with books about Hinduism, you begin to pick up some Sanskrit words... ahimsa (non-violence), sadhana (the spiritual journey), deva/devi (god/goddess).  So when I went to Divinity School, I signed right up for Sanskrit.

Oh.  Oh my.

So here's the thing about trying to learn Sanskrit.

First, it's written in Devanagari (Devanagari means "Writing of the Gods"), so you have to get past that.  Devanagari is easy to identify, by the bar across the top of the letters.... looks like this:

ॐ भूर्भुवः॒ स्वः॒
तत्स॑वितुर्वरे॑ण्यम्
भ॒र्गो॑ दे॒वस्य॑ धीमहि।
धियो॒ यो नः॑ प्रचो॒दया॑त्॥

Second, Sanskrit has interesting rules, called sandhi.  The first two lines of Sanskrit just above looks like four words, right?  Um, not so fast.  It's actually the first two lines of the Gayatri mantra, including eight words, from the Yajur Veda  Transliterated, it looks like this:

Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ

tát savitúr váreṇ(i)yaṃ

bhárgo devásya dhīmahi

dhíyo yó naḥ pracodáyāt

The sandhi rules cause the words to run together....   so, in effect, in that second line,  tat savitur varenyam becomes tatsaviturvarenyam.   (I am absolutely not going to try to explain why specific sandhi rules caused them to run together.  There are many, many sandhi rules.  Dauntingly many.  Staggeringly many.)

Sandhi makes it hard to even identify which words you are trying to translate.  The example above, transliterated ....  has become one long string of characters, tatsaviturvarenyam.  So your first task is to figure out the separate words in that long string of characters.

Third, like Latin, Sanskrit is fully inflected.  This means that every word includes all of the grammatical information about that word in that context.  In English, if we take three words...   Boy throws ball.... and toss them in the air, we have difficulty reconstructing the sentence.  Could be Ball throws boy.  Not a problem with Sanskrit, where Boy would clearly be in nominative case, the subject of the sentence.  Each noun is identified by gender, case, and number (singular, dual, and plural) for each of the eight cases.  This means that there are 24 forms of EVERY noun.  (Mercifully, dual is not used very often... )   Verbs are fun also.

Fourth, Sanskrit is an astonishingly rich language.  One can say the same thing (in English) a dozen different ways in Sanskrit, and one can translate any given Sanskrit into a dozen different English meanings.  I think because of that richness, Sanskrit poetry is unbelievably gorgeous.  In Divinity School, we had a scholar come and read Sansrit poetry for us, and then translate the poems.  That was one of the *best* classes.

But when I left Divinity school after two years of Sanskrit, I gave up.  It was just too challenging.  (One of my friends in Div School had studied Chinese, and said that Sanskrit was *much* more difficult.)

The good news about any of that? I did learn how to read Devanagari, which is also used in Hindi.Sanskrit's relationship to Hindi, is something like the relationship of Latin to Italian.  (Any linguists reading this blog?  Ah, that would be the people yelping in horror about that sentence.)

I have studied Hindi on and off for years... each time I have stopped because it's just too challenging.  The Devanagari is hard.  The sentence structure is nothing like English.... if you are studying a romance language like French, you need to learn many words - but the sentence structures of French and English are very similar.  Native Hindi speakers talk a mile a minute.  (They same the same about English speakers!)

So a couple of things happened when I was in India.  First, I was looking at the Sanskrit for the homa, the fire ceremony.  And one thing led to another, and I found myself talking to a French Sanskritist who put her files on a thumb drive for me.  When I got home and looked at those files - I was fascinated by her work. (And a tiny bit challenged by the fact that the explanatory text was all provided in French, not English.)  Talking with Naniji made me very wistful for Sanskrit.

The other things that happened - I was trying to order a couple of things in a shop, and the shopwala and I were pretty much failing to communicate.  (That ending -walla, or -vala -- means "the person who does this, the person who knows about this.  Can be used with English or Hindi words.  For example, one buys books from the bookwala, or one buys books from the kitaabwala.  One buys chai from the chaiwala, etc.) So after a couple of tries, in some desperation, I decided to try saying it in my clumsy Hindi... and his face lit up, and he got my things for me.   And I got a kick out of being able to read signs written in Devanagari....  including finding many instances where an English word was written in Devanagari rather than being translated at all. 

So I came home all fired up to try - again - with Hindi. Even a little bit... a few words... helps!

Meals and food and eating at the ashram

Meals were very, very simple... breakfast was a bowl of turmeric rice, and lunch and dinner included rice, one or two mild vegetable curries, and usually a chapati (soft flat bread) or poppadum (crisp bread).   We ate from thalis - stainless steel trays - and most folks sat on the floor with the boys.  (We did have a table for the few older hard-to-get-up-and-down-from-the-floor folks... and for most meals, I happily used a chair!)

After prayers (including a few rousing rounds of Hare Krishna!), boys would begin to serve. Boy #1 would offer rice, and scoop some onto the thali.  Boy #2 would offer vegetables.  Boy #3 would offer the other vegetable (if we were having two for that meal).  Boy #4 would offer the bread (again, if we were having bread for that meal).   As Boy #4 moved on, Boy #1's smiling face would reappear, again offering rice.  The food was simple, but there was plenty of it!

Dishwashing was sort of a trip.  Before each meal, each diner picked up a thali and a cup.  The Indians at the ashram ate with their hands.... and for the arent't-they-strange Westerners, a spoon/fork was available.) 

 After the meal, each diner washed his/her own dish, here:

Those taps are cold water.  On a good day, you found a bar of green soap (like Lava) and a plastic scrubby.  This is all a little scary.  The ashram folks do keep an eye on the boys when they are washing their dishes... but even a good rinse with cold water is ... scary.

One night we offered to cook dinner for everyone.  I woke from a nap to find a gang of folks in the guest kitchen chopping vegetables (with the worst, rusty, DULL, bent knives I had ever seen).  I said "What are we cooking?"  They said "Pasta with red sauce."  So I looked at all of the food piled on the counter, where I found about 15 bags of dry pasta, and two (2) small bags of red "pizza sauce." Turns out that the list of requested groceries, and the groceries that were actually delivered, bore virtually no resemblance to one another.    I said to Yvette, "Unless you are thinking that you can pull off the loaves and fishes thing, I really don't see how we are going to feed 60 people with four cups of red sauce!"  And then Michele (I think it was Michele!) had a brilliant idea... we could make pasta aglio e olio... pasta with olive oil and garlic, served with shredded parmesan.  The veggies would all be stir-fried, and mixed with the tomato sauce, and served alongside the pasta.  This all worked wonderfully.  Swamiji got a kick out of our efforts to cook for the community, and really supported us... he had a great time stirring the vegetables and helping us get ready to serve.... but this is a man who finds fun everywhere!  (Photo credit to Josh Hall.)
 

We had to cook outside, because we found out (after we planned and started working on our garlic pasta and onions in the veggies... ) that the ashram does not use garlic and onion.  Sigh.  So we compromised... it was ok for us to use garlic and onions, but we needed to do all of the cooking outside.  I have run into this onion/garlic thing in the past - I have friends who do not eat onion/garlic, and I have cooked for Indian kirtanwallahs in the US who request no onion/garlic in their food. (If you're interested in this, learn more here:  http://kurma.net/essays/e19.html )

We served dinner, bending to put food on each thali.  The second little boy I served stopped me as I served his food... and educated me.  Turns out that the server 1) dips the serving ladle into the pan, 2) scoops up some food, 3) moves ladle over diner's plate, and 4) with a deft turn of the wrist, delivers the food to the thali.  The big spoon never touches the thali.  He and I practiced that move a few more times, and I moved on... a more skilled server than before.   The vegetables were at least somewhat familiar to the boys... different seasoning, but still akin to their usual food.  But the pasta... I was concerned about the Parmesan, a completely new flavor for them.  But when I made my second round of serving, only a very few boys said "no thank you" - which was shown by putting one's hand over the thali, sort of blocking the idea of being served.  Overall, the dinner was a huge success -- fun for us, and fun for the ashram community.  (And I need to figure out a way to get some good knives for that kitchen!)

And a few words about eating and drinking in India in general.  First, there's the water.   I was blessed with a terrific travel nurse before my first trip to India, and she really hammered me about the water.  Don't drink the water.  Ice is water.  Washed produce (like salads) may have water.  The shower is water. (Keep your mouth closed.)  Your toothbrush requires water.  Bottled water is good - but *always* check the seal, because bottles are sometimes refilled and resold.  You want to hear a nice snap when you open the bottle.  If the food is hot enough to burn your mouth, or you opened a container (a bag of snacks, a bottle of water) yourself, you're fine.  In some five star hotels, ALL water is uber-filtered, and completely safe... but the bottled water thing becomes a pretty serious habit.  Street food always looks so good.... and a few times I have indulged - when I could watch the vendor frying my food, so I knew it would be ok.  Not often.  (I bought a cookbook on "Indian Street Food," figuring that if I could not eat it on the street, I could just learn how to cook it!)  The other thing about Indian cooking... if you really like spicy food, you need to work to convince the restaurant folks.... because the going-in assumption is that when an American says "spicy," he or she means a 3 on a heat scale of 1-10.  (This was not an issue at the ashram where the curries were always in the 1-3 range.  We're not talking spicy here!)

I love Indian food.... I like preparing it, I like eating it, I just like it.  It was a treat to eat Indian food for three weeks in India!

Oh, and one more thing... chai.   We had chai pretty much every day, which was very happymaking for me.  I do make chai at home... but whether I grind my own spices or use one of the zillion or so chai teabag options, it's just never as good.  I will admit that I add some agave or honey to my chai at home... but the Indians like their chai sweet (no, really, SWEET), so I try to exercise at least a modicum of moderation on the sweeteners!

Hare Krishna!

The ashram includes an adult spiritual community (usually with guests in residence), plus a school for 500 or so local children, plus a "hostel" where 40 boys live at the ashram and attend the school.  The boys are enthusiastic participants in every aspect of ashram life.   They usually dress in various shades of yellow, orange, saffron, and red.... I asked why, since they are not on a track to become monks.... and the answer was "It's what they want, last year we had lots of blue."  The usual outfit is a dhoti (wraparound fabric worn by indian men plus a shirt... could be an Indian kurta, or a tshirt, or a polo shirt.  (The latter are particular favorites.)

The day begins at dawn at the river.  Around 5:15, one of the staff blows the conch, and that's the wakeup call.  I did not set a clock... but I did wake up many mornings by 5AM, and head right down for the river.  This involved walking down the LONG set of rough-carved steps from the ashram to the landing....alone, in the dark.  I used my cane (as you will read in other posts on this blog, we (apparently) don't need no stinkin' handrails.... ) and a flashlight, and just walked very carefully down the long steps.  Once on the landing, there was only peace... the sound of the river, and faint sounds of bells and conch as the other ashrams on the river also began waking up.  I loved being down at the river to start the day!!!

Around 5:30, I would hear a bit of noise as the boys and staff gathered up at the ashram... then the first round of the Mahamantra would begin...

hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa

kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare

hare rāma hare rāma

rāma rāma hare hare

The mantra would quickly pick up both speed and volume, and within minutes, there would be a cascade of boys heading down the steps, chanting Hare Krishna at full volume and from the fullness of their little hearts.  (I got a kick out of seeing them pouring down the steps in the dark... the very same steps I had transversed one-careful-step-at-a-time just moments before.)  Once they reached the landing, the swami would end the chant and lead them through morning prayer.... and then, with a swoosh of breath and energy, the boys would move back into Hare Krishna, and pour back up the stairs to offer morning worship at the other ashram sites.

A bit later, breakfast.... with prayers, of course... and with a number of enthusiastic rounds of Hare Krishna.

After dinner, arati at the Shiva temple... in arati, the devotees offer light to the deity, and receive that light in return.  (I just spent some time searching for a video to show you this lovely ceremony, but no luck so far.  The best videos are of the massive aratis at the Ganges.... with a large number of priests and enormous lights.. which is not exactly typical of a daily arati!)   So the pujari offers light to the deity, while the gathered devotees sing the evening arati.

 This image (from Google) gives a somewhat more realistic view of what an "everyday" arati might look like!



At the ashram, the evening arati was for Shiva.  At the end of the ceremony, the pujari (leading the ceremony) hands the arati candles to one of the boys, who carefully turns and leaves the temple, taking the light out into the gathered devotees.  The light is offered to each person... and each holds his or her hands right over the flames, then draws that light back across the face and hair.  As the boy completes his rounds, two other boys are picking up the drum and the portable harmonium for... that's right, one more rousing round of Hare Krishna.   The gathered boys and devotees walk around in front of the temple several times, for the first few rounds... while individuals take a moment to bow at the temple.  Then the tempo picks up, and the boys lead everyone around the ashram, ending the day as they had begun the day....now ending the day with prayer and Hare Krishna at each altar.

Then into the kirtan room, where bhajans and kirtan are sung for about two hours.... including just a few more rounds of the Mahamantra.

The ashram at Omkareshwar is not related to ISKCON, and not even particularly dedicated to Lord Krishna... but the Hare Krishna mantra is the heartbeat of the ashram.... every morning, every meal, every evening, every single day. 

Hare Krishna!