Saturday, June 04, 2005

 

Ashram ... what a funny word

hey, it's good to hear from you. right now i'm in an ashram in india. yea, the internet fad hit these sort of remote spiritual, yogic, mystical places too. They even have like 6 telephone lines and mobiles everywhere. The website is http://vyasa.org.

I'm not into the spiritual chanting, meditation, or religion of it. And I'm only slightly into the yoga. I'm really glad i came though to experience (deeply) another culture for two days, and to be surprised with the similarities I see in this culture to our own. Some of these similarities are:
* People (all over the world) enjoy a good time laughing. That's why they scheduled an hour long Happy Assembly every day here. I went once, and while I was confused with what was going on (some sort of skits, chanting, clapping and OM's) I laughed a bit. And everyone else laughed alot. There were shy people, outgoing people, and picked on people (hence the laughter). Just like at home.
* People (all over the world) can use bugspray (this relevation is from bug-bitten Jillian's Malarian mumblings). Just kidding, she doesn't have malaria--and she leaves a wake of dead bugs all around her with her billowing plume of DEET laden repellant.
* People (all over the world) who are effective either get up early or go to bed late in order to be highly effective. Here they wake at 4:30 and do OM meditation. I slept through the first day's OM meditation (I guess I wasn't highly effective) but today I made it. I got up at 4:30 and went to this hall and (ahem, tried to) sing Sanskrit words and chant OM. Yea, it is like it sounds, OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. This included some "waking up alertness breathing exercises." After OMMMM'ing till 5:30 I went to yoga till 6:30. This consisted of... exactly the same asnas (poses) as yesterday. Following this I promptly went to sleep until 10:30 am, of which I slept through breakfast, more chanting, another yoga, chores and something else which I already forget. (Once again, I wasn't highly effective--yet!) The point is (which I am clearly currently missing) an effective person must spend several hours uninterrupted a day in work, this may be early in the a.m. or late at night.

It's been a good experience here, and I'm througly ready to go. (Although not as eager to leave as Jillian). She's been a very good sport, incidentally. In fact she was more excited to get here than I on the trip to this place. Now we're both ready to leave and go home to the gym and eat our food with forks. (We use hands here. Or I should be correct--the Right hand.)

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