Regular day of satsang and meditation. The guy who speaks in the mornings today was hilarious. He had a flask and bowl and a water bottle next to him. And he was constantly changing water from one to the other and drinking every 2 minutes and laughing every one minute!. :|. All this while talking about some 'deep' topic which obviously is not registered in my mind! Emanuela and I went for a small hike to one of the temples after the class. We assumed that they wanted us in the kitchen from 8-10 the previous day and we ended up missing the yoga class. So it would be okay for us to skip today and go for a hike especially it was such nice sunny weather!.
She is really funny!. We spoke about a lot of things and things like blindly trusting the guru which came up a few times in the staff meetings. Everyone here seem to be following all the rituals pretty blindly and the energy of the whole place in general is more religious than spiritual. I dont know how and why this 'dont question your guru' ever came up in Indian systems. If the student voluntarily does not ask questions because there is something that fascinated him about the guru and he truly beleives the guru can lead him on the spiritual path, then it is a different thing. Guru as a word has to be more strictly used in a spiritual sense I feel and not the literal translation to the word teacher. Because of this blind notion of dont question your 'guru', the indian system teachings are still based on that and we end up becoming donkeys in the class just byhearting all the notes given and are taught to beleive that asking questions i wrong and just accept what is told to you.
Picking a guru as well needs to be one's own choice after applying one's own head. But i realised every one has their own head which they think is right!A weak mind is always influenced by a strong personality. Note I did not say strong 'mind' because that denotes a positive quality and a strong personality does not always mean the same. Even Hitler or a few other leaders have a very strong personality which influenced so many people to follow their beliefs blindly. So how does one determine who is the right guru? in India this one swami guy has sooo many ashrams and is now booked under rape cases and when there was a brutal assault of a woman in India, he and his followers were talking about her chanting a mantra which would have prevented her from entering the bus (where the incident took place) and also stating that if she called the assaulters 'Brother, please save me and let me go' pleading with them, that they would have left the victim!. WTF are they talking about!! It really got me thinking then how can one ever decide who is the 'right' guru? Every person thinks they are right in their way of thinking. So if a person chooses a 'guru' like mentioned above, it is their 'karma' to be led that way?.
As for me, I still have not found my guru so I am still skeptical and not willing to blindly trust and follow any one person's teaching. Emanuela thought it would be confusing if one read multiple teachings and one should trust the guru (assuming one had the intelligence and discrimination to make out the difference between a real and a fake one). Though I partly agreed with her on the trust issue where I feel, if I were to ever be fascinated and feel the positive vibrations around someone's teachings our presence, I might follow intuitively what he/she says. Though it seems not possible in this age to find someone like that. I have read multiple teachings including sivananda, iyengar, sri sri ravi shankar, pattabhi jois, vivekananda and a few others. And not all of them resonate with me entirely!. I do like majority of their teachings though, but not enough that I would blindly follow or agree with everything they say. I would go with assimilating all of the different commentaries and choose what is best for you or even the teachings for the matter. At the end of the day the purpose of all this to realize one's inner true self and oneness with everyone and everything right? Also the vedic scriptures have not been written by one particular sage and are a compilation of verses by multiple sages and rishis. I really like Buddha's teachings too! Following one guru does not mean other is bad , nor if praying to one god mean that the other gods are bad.
We had a decent brunch and did some karma yoga after that. We helped in the kitchen and had the vedanta class with Satyadev and Mai. I ran ten minutes late to the class as I was stuck in the kitchen helping with somethings. The class was waiting for me to talk about all the deities and their meanings. As I mentioned, it may become a little more easier to internalize the qualities associated with the god when you know what they stand for. Ganesha is supposed to be the remover of obstacles and that is probably why he has the head of an elephant, removing the obstacles with his trunk?. He rides on a mouse signifying that if one is egoless his/her weight will be that much lighter. It is the ego that holds us down and is our own prison. I explained a few other meanings of various gods with some of them being my own interpretations and some of them which I read somewhere. Lisa and Maria gave me a compliment that I bring a wealth of knowledge to the class. I wish there was someone teaching who knew more than me, as what I know is a grain of sand in the desert.
I helped a little bit more in the house keeping and went for the evening yoga class and it was for time for dinner. There seems to be no time to contemplate on anything!. I sat with lisa and maria and nicholas. I was talking to Lisa about ayurveda and was telling them about the vata pitta and kapha and how Girish and I went for the ayurvedic treatment in India. So the doctor there had mentioned to me that psoriasis is a kapha imbalance mainly with vata and I was mentioning the same to them during which Bharata steps in and says 'NO it is vata pitta imbalance , I follow the charaka samhita'. geez. He just throws these sanskrit words at these poor americans! They are like oh oh whats thaat? LOL. Its funny and irritating at the same time.
There was a long long satsang today. OMG. There was a big pooja for some occasion and it was again so cute and amusing to see all the non indians chant all the mantras and do the rituals so religiously! They had a few idols in the front and everyone was going and pouring water and milk on them. They gave us a few flowers and rice as well. And it was more than 2hrs of chanting after which the pooja began and I think I almost fainted thinking of it. I finished throwing all the flowers and rice in a few minutes and sneaked away from the hall. Rituals by themselves however they are 'supposed 'to be , are very boring for me and have no significance unfortunately.
It was 10pm anyway and Mail also came after a few minutes. haha. She also sneaked out! She was surprised that an 'indian' sneaked out. I explained to her how the indian traditions have become so rigid that the whole essence of them is lost and all that remains is the method. Emanuela came after some time and she brought some prasad for me since she saw me missing. So sweet!. We spoke about karma and reincarnation. I remember reading about 3 different types of karma:
1. Sanchita karma - the unfinished mass of actions of past births, both good and bad, yet to be worked out and which appear in this birth in the form of desires -- in other words samskaras
2. Prarabdha karma - the result of karma already worked out in a previous life which appears in the present life in the form of fate
3. Agami karma - the karma we are continually making in our present actions and will be making in our future actions.
Interesting right? Atleast for me :). I told them about so many reincarnation stories in India. Em was mentioning that some really old tribes somewhere believe it is only this birth that we make something of and thats it. I personally resonate more with the rebirth till we are liberated from ego. Our mind and actions are way too vast for us to get done in just a lifetime!
Anyway loong day! I had a good restful sleep after the hectic days these days :).
There was a long long satsang today. OMG. There was a big pooja for some occasion and it was again so cute and amusing to see all the non indians chant all the mantras and do the rituals so religiously! They had a few idols in the front and everyone was going and pouring water and milk on them. They gave us a few flowers and rice as well. And it was more than 2hrs of chanting after which the pooja began and I think I almost fainted thinking of it. I finished throwing all the flowers and rice in a few minutes and sneaked away from the hall. Rituals by themselves however they are 'supposed 'to be , are very boring for me and have no significance unfortunately.
It was 10pm anyway and Mail also came after a few minutes. haha. She also sneaked out! She was surprised that an 'indian' sneaked out. I explained to her how the indian traditions have become so rigid that the whole essence of them is lost and all that remains is the method. Emanuela came after some time and she brought some prasad for me since she saw me missing. So sweet!. We spoke about karma and reincarnation. I remember reading about 3 different types of karma:
1. Sanchita karma - the unfinished mass of actions of past births, both good and bad, yet to be worked out and which appear in this birth in the form of desires -- in other words samskaras
2. Prarabdha karma - the result of karma already worked out in a previous life which appears in the present life in the form of fate
3. Agami karma - the karma we are continually making in our present actions and will be making in our future actions.
Interesting right? Atleast for me :). I told them about so many reincarnation stories in India. Em was mentioning that some really old tribes somewhere believe it is only this birth that we make something of and thats it. I personally resonate more with the rebirth till we are liberated from ego. Our mind and actions are way too vast for us to get done in just a lifetime!
Anyway loong day! I had a good restful sleep after the hectic days these days :).
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