Holy moly, where does the time go?

The Practical

Tomorrow is my last day in Mysore. This is slightly unbelievable to me. The place is slowly emptying out as yoga season draws to a close, and my extracurricular activities are winding down. Last week was Jayashree-less, as she went to do a workshop in Goa. Yesterday was my last dance class and last Kirtan. Martina left last week, and a few more people disappear every day. Tomorrow morning is my last practice at the shala. The ticking of the clock is deafening.

I fly to Mumbai on Wednesday morning for a vipassana course at Dhamma Giri, then I'll be home on April 11.

I had breakfast with Anita this morning and she asked if I was happy or sad about leaving. I gave the same answer I gave about leaving to come here: "both". I still can't believe it is possible to feel two such conflicting emotions so fully about the same situation. I will be overjoyed to be home and reunited with what I have waiting for me there, but I feel so connected to this place in so many ways that it is hard to imagine leaving it behind. Marika and I were on the bus the other day, (crouching on the wheel well between two seats, crammed in amongst a throng of women in saris) and she mused wistfully, as only a Swedish stage actress could: "how is it possible to love a country so much? It's just so ALIVE".

I'm trying to run around in my last hours taking all the pictures and doing all the shopping I didn't get to over the past few months because I had PLENTY of time for all that and much more important things to do...

On the very short list entitled "things I will not be sad to leave behind" are the mosquitoes and the heat, both of which are getting pretty oppressive. On the much longer list of losses to mourn are the food, the animals in the streets, the vibrant, pulsating energy that surrounds you at all times, the intensity of the practice, the opportunities for tapping into rich lineages of ancient wisdom that surround you everywhere you look, and the scores of incredible people that I have just met but feel profoundly connected to.

On the other hand, I'm going home! To Pete! To a whole different set of comforts and experiences and opportunities! To other scores of incredible people! "There is too much good in life and why can't it all be in one place": this is not a terrible problem to have.

The Practice

Working, playing, breathing, sweating, observing, practicing, practicing, practicing. Getting glimpses of this beautiful state, here described by Muriel Barbery in The Elegance of the Hedgehog:

"[his] movements are freed from the shackles of his will, and he goes into a light trance which gives his gestures the perfection of conscious, automatic motion, without thought or calculation ... [he] delights in the forgetfulness that movement brings, where the pleasure of doing is marvelously foreign to the striving of the will. This is eminently true of many happy moments in life. Freed from the demands of decision and intention, adrift on some inner sea, we observe our various movements as if they belonged to someone else, and yet we admire their involuntary excellence."

Ever-so-brief glimpses, mind you. And certainly not in my newest postures. Last week I was assigned ustrasana and laghu vajrasana. Then Sharath told me on Thursday that I would be doing kapotasana today, but after watching my attempt at coming out of laghu vajrasana he decided I wasn't ready. I could have told him that! (Interesting side note: he communicated this by yelling across the packed room: "you're not doing it correctly!" Once upon a time this would have mortified me to the point of paralysis, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover now that I didn't really mind. I was quite amused, actually. Three cheers for the slow but steady shedding of past conditioning!)

The Path

I got an email from my mother early in my trip here delighting that I really seemed to have found my "spiritual home". Indeed. I have found symbols that speak to me very powerfully, connected to teachers who astound and inspire me, and engaged in practices that give me an experiential understanding of what was formerly just words. The world makes more sense to me every day, from the sacred to the mundane. I have actually caught myself laughing out loud a few times from the sheer joy of it all. Not a bad place to be. Thank you, Mother India.

Dance, learning, and life

The Practical

You may have noticed it's been a while since you've heard from me. This is partially due to the electricity situation: apparently now that it's summer the power is turned off in 90-minute intervals throughout the day for energy conservation. These are just the planned outages, there are random bonus blackouts on top of these. As you can imagine, this makes electronic communication sort of challenging.

This isn't the only reason I've been slacking on the computer, though. There are plenty of times that I have electricity and think maybe I'll write something but just can't summon my own power source and take a nap instead. Goodness gracious, how did I get so BUSY?

I think I am overdoing things a tiny bit. I am just acknowledging this, without any real plans to change anything for the next few weeks... because everything I am doing is just. so. cool. that I can't help myself. There are the basic non-negotiables: sleep, eat, meditate, bucket bath, etc. Then of course there's the yoga, which is why I am here. Our shala time is now 4:30am and I am taking about 2 hours to get through my practice. I could easily live a full life here just doing these things plus writing and resting.

But then there is Jayashree, Narasimhan, James, and Sindhu. Jayashree is a Sanskrit scholar and bright light of a soul who leads daily courses in chanting the yoga sutras in her house in town. Her cousin Narasimhan then expounds on their philosophy from his vast storehouse of scientific and academic knowledge and profound personal spiritual experience. I sit and absorb in awe. This is a few hours every morning. James is a long-time transplanted Brit doing an MA in Sanskrit. He is a master storyteller with an incredible voice, and he leads kirtans twice a week and teaches classes on the Bhagavad Gita twice a week. He's in another part of Mysore, and this is another few hours on those days. Sindhu is my dance teacher, and I am keeping up with her one hour a day here in Gokulam. It's a lot to be doing, especially with the weather getting so hot that even the Indians are starting to comment on it. But I only have a few more weeks here, and who knows when these opportunities will come around again? So I sleep when I can and I blog, um, casually.

The pictures today are all courtesy of Martina, who has the very sweet habit of sneaking pictures of me on her iphone when I'm not looking and emailing them to Pete so he can get a little glimpse of me every day. So here I am: patiently waiting for second breakfast at Tina's breakfast place (fenugreek rotis with tomato chutney, yummmm), posing as the Nataraj form of Shiva so James can explain its symbolism to us, listening intently to James saying something smart, sharing my post-practice coconut water with one of the street dogs who hangs out by the shala, and investigating a (flock? herd? swarm?) of bats from the roof of Anu's Cafe. Good times.

The Practice

I am finding practicing really, really fun these days. I wake up looking forward to going to the shala and picking up where I left off yesterday. I feel like a little kid going to the playground. It is still hard work and there are still things I struggle with, but I am watching my attitude shift completely away from getting frustrated with what I can't do to tuning into all the little victories and surprises. The system is really starting to make sense to me from the inside and I love it more every day. So that is cool.

Martina has been taking really good notes from the Sunday conferences and posting them on her blog, if you want to know what Sharath has to say for himself.

The Path

One of the themes that keeps coming up in the philosophical discussions around here is that life is all about learning. We are, each of us, consciousness learning about itself. Everything in samsara is ultimately for our enjoyment and our education, if we approach it with the proper attitude. Everything that happens to us is to teach us something. This, and a few other conversations I've had lately, have me thinking about the process of learning.

I was talking to someone who had taken the harmonium here. She said she showed up to class one day really struggling with something she had practiced until she was dripping with sweat. Her teacher said, "did you practice?" She said yes, I practiced so hard. He said, "did you do it 100 times?" She stared at him in shock, but he was completely serious. There is so much to be said for that. Just keep doing. And doing. And doing. Whatever you are trying to learn, whether it's play the harmonium or be a nicer person, just keep doing it. Way more times than you think you should have to.

Then I was talking with Sindhu about the process of learning Odissi. Some actual glimpses of dance are starting to emerge from our endeavors together and she was giving me encouragement. "First, you learn each of the pieces. Then, you learn how to put them together. Then, you practice until you can do it without any tension. Then, you learn how to make it beautiful."

Wow. This is certainly not the educational philosophy that was inculcated in me through the New Jersey public school system. But what if we approached everything in life like that? And why not, isn't that what life is for? Everything from dance to your daily routine to how you walk down the street to how you interact with other people to how you understand yourself... keep finding the pieces. Keep trying to fit them together. Keep practicing to do it with more ease. And keep trying to make it beautiful.