I am the Rain, Part 2 Jan - 31 - 2006
I want to say that I'm reading all your e-mails of love and encouragement, and it's soooo great to read them, so, my apologies if I don't send you an individual reply-- the cyber cafes are cheap, but not always pleasant, and definitely not where I want to spend all my trip :) . Example: last time I was in an internet cafe, I was there for two hours, about fifteen minutes into it, they started blasting bad American pop and house mixes of Bollywood songs, the speaker was right over my head-- I needed a vacation after being in the internet cafe
So, I definitely forgot to add some of the highlights of my experiences at the Gujarat ashram :) One day last week, I broke away from the hum and drum of the ashram and walked down to the river side-- it was breath taking from the beginning, I sat down and practiced a sanskrit prayer I was trying to learn. Getting up after my short meditation, I looked around, trying to decide which way to walk, and I spotted a pink bulding that looked like a temple about a kilometer down the riverside. Reluctantly walking through peoples riverside garden beds and walking past herders and their groups of Brahmin cattle, goats, donkeys and buffalo, I eventually made it down the windy, hilly path to the temple. I walked around and went up to the deity, which was on a second floor of the small open-aired riverside temple, it appeared to be Shiva and Shakti to me, though I wasn't to sure, the deities weren't pictures or fine sculptures, but more of just cylindrical stones, dressed up and basic facial features painted on them--they were really quaint... one young man came up and burnt incense for all the deities there, cracked open a coconut for them and gave me a piece of the coconut as prasad. Coming down from the temple, there was a small area to the side of shops that appeared like a little village business hub, I walked over.... everything was centered around this infinite flight of stairs up the hillside, away from the river. It was like 4 or 5 stair flights on end, I couldn't resist curiosity, so I walked up. What was there? A bigger temple (and two men on a bench at the top of the stairs who spoke in Gujarati, but I'm sure that they were joking with me how tired I looked after climbing the stairs) I looked around this temple-- dark and dusty inside with old, faded and deteriorating posters on the walls, about events and times the temple had made the newspaper. It wasn't lit to begin with, and then the deities laid in chambers that became impossibly dark... the place was simple but had so much mystique to it. I walked to a lookout point beside the temple that had a great view of the river and then glanced inland. About a kilometer or so inland was a *huge* temple. Bigger than any temple I've seen in the US (making it at least a large temple for a rural area)...
I was a little dehydrated, but I decided to go for it, having already journeyed about 40 minutes away from the ashram (the distances are hard to judge, but I'd been gone for over an hour and had done a lot of poking around). The walk went up and down the unimaginable crevices that make up the uncultivated land here. I think the temple was actually a full fledged ashram as there were dorms everywhere, big gardens, and they had their own livestock. I only explored this temple a little bit because I knew I was getting hungry and past dehydrated. I saw the deities, this time fine statues, larger than life and very well lit and open. I think the temples may have been a triplet, the smallest leading to the mid-size, and so on... Regardless, that's how it turned out for me, and it was really magical. I felt like I had "discovered" this huge temple, of course, with about 60 other people there and people coming in droves for the evening satsang, I didn't feel like I'd done anything altogether too innovative :)
They do a special puja here in the mornings and evenings called Agni Hotra-- I'd heard of this puja before and so when I found out they were doing it, I plopped my butt right down... it's supposed to be amazingly powerful and because of the offering, it's not the easiest thing to do at home-- the offering in Agni Hotra is the dried dung of a Brahmin Cow :) I quizzed my roommate about this-- burning the dung is especially auspicious and said to rid the atmosphere of all subtle negative energies... cool stuff, right? He told me that in rural parts of India, they spread cow dung in front of their entrances to keep out bad energies... he even said (anyone care to verify?) that the sub-terranean part of the pentagon is surrounded in petrified cow dung because it would be immune to radiation in case of a bombing. Oi vey! Don't know if I believe the last part, I would hope cow dung encasing national landmarks would be a public ordeal... (I later asked him how he lit the medicinal herbs he gave patients to smoke in a hookah-- "That thing, you use in agni hotra; cow dung" :) )
Anyhow, every morning that my schedule permits, and every evening the finance director, myself, and sometimes some tagalong ashramites are hanging out in the middle of the ashram, chanting a puja and burning cow dung... the first time I did this, I gave myself a laugh--
I hadn't thought it through before hand, and, sure enough, like every other puja, prasad is given-- prasad is that part of the offering that is returned to you after the puja, said to be imbued with that energy of the puja, and the blessing of the divine-- however, in agni hotra, the offering is of course, cow dung, so what was offered back to me by the conductor of the puja was... Cow dung :) ... burnt and crispy-- I froze, not knowing what to do with it; you can generally smear prasad on your forehead, in between your eyebrows, tossing the rest into your hair so as not to waste any or take the prasad directly into your mouth and ingest it. I wasn't sure at all what to do with this most unique prasad, definitely not wanting to eat it for obvious reasons-- What was given to me was a dusty ash, so it wasn't moist enough to smear on my head, so I looked at it and thought logically, "Well, it's been burnt. It's nothing but a bunch of carbon..." and so on. I swallowed my hesitation and tossed the prasad into my mouth, immediately trying to convince myself-- "There, that wasn't bad at all..." A minute later the conductor of the puja turned my way cleaning some things up, and I looked to him to see if there was any sign I had done the right thing with the prasad. And there it was, the smear between his eyebrows-- rich and black, and I choked, thinking "Uh-oh. *He* didn't eat it."
So, I definitely forgot to add some of the highlights of my experiences at the Gujarat ashram :) One day last week, I broke away from the hum and drum of the ashram and walked down to the river side-- it was breath taking from the beginning, I sat down and practiced a sanskrit prayer I was trying to learn. Getting up after my short meditation, I looked around, trying to decide which way to walk, and I spotted a pink bulding that looked like a temple about a kilometer down the riverside. Reluctantly walking through peoples riverside garden beds and walking past herders and their groups of Brahmin cattle, goats, donkeys and buffalo, I eventually made it down the windy, hilly path to the temple. I walked around and went up to the deity, which was on a second floor of the small open-aired riverside temple, it appeared to be Shiva and Shakti to me, though I wasn't to sure, the deities weren't pictures or fine sculptures, but more of just cylindrical stones, dressed up and basic facial features painted on them--they were really quaint... one young man came up and burnt incense for all the deities there, cracked open a coconut for them and gave me a piece of the coconut as prasad. Coming down from the temple, there was a small area to the side of shops that appeared like a little village business hub, I walked over.... everything was centered around this infinite flight of stairs up the hillside, away from the river. It was like 4 or 5 stair flights on end, I couldn't resist curiosity, so I walked up. What was there? A bigger temple (and two men on a bench at the top of the stairs who spoke in Gujarati, but I'm sure that they were joking with me how tired I looked after climbing the stairs) I looked around this temple-- dark and dusty inside with old, faded and deteriorating posters on the walls, about events and times the temple had made the newspaper. It wasn't lit to begin with, and then the deities laid in chambers that became impossibly dark... the place was simple but had so much mystique to it. I walked to a lookout point beside the temple that had a great view of the river and then glanced inland. About a kilometer or so inland was a *huge* temple. Bigger than any temple I've seen in the US (making it at least a large temple for a rural area)...
I was a little dehydrated, but I decided to go for it, having already journeyed about 40 minutes away from the ashram (the distances are hard to judge, but I'd been gone for over an hour and had done a lot of poking around). The walk went up and down the unimaginable crevices that make up the uncultivated land here. I think the temple was actually a full fledged ashram as there were dorms everywhere, big gardens, and they had their own livestock. I only explored this temple a little bit because I knew I was getting hungry and past dehydrated. I saw the deities, this time fine statues, larger than life and very well lit and open. I think the temples may have been a triplet, the smallest leading to the mid-size, and so on... Regardless, that's how it turned out for me, and it was really magical. I felt like I had "discovered" this huge temple, of course, with about 60 other people there and people coming in droves for the evening satsang, I didn't feel like I'd done anything altogether too innovative :)
They do a special puja here in the mornings and evenings called Agni Hotra-- I'd heard of this puja before and so when I found out they were doing it, I plopped my butt right down... it's supposed to be amazingly powerful and because of the offering, it's not the easiest thing to do at home-- the offering in Agni Hotra is the dried dung of a Brahmin Cow :) I quizzed my roommate about this-- burning the dung is especially auspicious and said to rid the atmosphere of all subtle negative energies... cool stuff, right? He told me that in rural parts of India, they spread cow dung in front of their entrances to keep out bad energies... he even said (anyone care to verify?) that the sub-terranean part of the pentagon is surrounded in petrified cow dung because it would be immune to radiation in case of a bombing. Oi vey! Don't know if I believe the last part, I would hope cow dung encasing national landmarks would be a public ordeal... (I later asked him how he lit the medicinal herbs he gave patients to smoke in a hookah-- "That thing, you use in agni hotra; cow dung" :) )
Anyhow, every morning that my schedule permits, and every evening the finance director, myself, and sometimes some tagalong ashramites are hanging out in the middle of the ashram, chanting a puja and burning cow dung... the first time I did this, I gave myself a laugh--
I hadn't thought it through before hand, and, sure enough, like every other puja, prasad is given-- prasad is that part of the offering that is returned to you after the puja, said to be imbued with that energy of the puja, and the blessing of the divine-- however, in agni hotra, the offering is of course, cow dung, so what was offered back to me by the conductor of the puja was... Cow dung :) ... burnt and crispy-- I froze, not knowing what to do with it; you can generally smear prasad on your forehead, in between your eyebrows, tossing the rest into your hair so as not to waste any or take the prasad directly into your mouth and ingest it. I wasn't sure at all what to do with this most unique prasad, definitely not wanting to eat it for obvious reasons-- What was given to me was a dusty ash, so it wasn't moist enough to smear on my head, so I looked at it and thought logically, "Well, it's been burnt. It's nothing but a bunch of carbon..." and so on. I swallowed my hesitation and tossed the prasad into my mouth, immediately trying to convince myself-- "There, that wasn't bad at all..." A minute later the conductor of the puja turned my way cleaning some things up, and I looked to him to see if there was any sign I had done the right thing with the prasad. And there it was, the smear between his eyebrows-- rich and black, and I choked, thinking "Uh-oh. *He* didn't eat it."
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