the only posts that mean anything to me

These are the only posts that mean anything to me after writing over 100.

To those of you who have this blog blogrolled, please remove your link to this blog -- I'd appreciate it.

toodles -- the Ageless One is dead

Adios.

It's been fun.

I've decided to shut down this blog, however, I will continue Linda's Yoga Journey because yoga is my life. Those of you who couldn't give a rat's furry behind about yoga won't be moseying on over there, so I will say goodbye to the faithful readers of this blog. I am blessed to have met you and known you as much as one can in the blogosphere.

The reasons why are not important, just know and accept that all things are impermanent, that is the nature of reality.

"That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything -- every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate -- is always changing, moment to moment."
-- Pema Chodron

"Come on, sweetheart,
let's adore one another
before there is no more
of you and me."
-- Rumi

The comments are shut down. Please remember to click the widget to feed shelter animals.

Wishing you peaceful hearts and heartful peace, and enjoy my music.

the story of Jack the Yogi Cat

Seventeen years ago I saved him from running down a rain sewer in Texas. We were living outside of Dallas and a neighbor knocked on the door and asked if the gray and white mackerel tabby frolicking in the grass was our cat. We stepped outside and he was running around like crazy the way kittens do and I saw him head toward the long opening of the rain sewer in the gutter. I had seen adult cats jump in and out of that spot but I knew a little kitten probably couldn't jump back out, so just when he was about to dive in I grabbed his tail and put him in my arms.

We already had Sam-Dog, a big black Lab, and Sox (named after the Chicago White Sox), another rescued Texas street cat who lived in a pile of bricks -- a "marmalade" tabby with white socks and orange swirls on his sides. I rescued Jack in July and Sox walked into the house in March, estimated age was 6 months. I could tell you how Sox came into our lives, but this is Jackson Theodore Kat's story.

Not knowing yet if Jack had any diseases that would infect Sox, I put him in the yard with food and water. I knew then he was a cat who was happy just "being." At night he would crawl up on a window ledge and sleep and during the day he would hang out in the yard, he never wanted to leave. I took him to the vet and found out he was loaded the fleas and tapeworms. The vet gave him a shot for the tapeworms and I gave him a fleabath when I got home. I let him stay in the house after he got his shots. The Hubs wanted to name him Smokey but I said everyone names gray cats Smokey, that's boring, besides, he looks like a Jack.

Jack was smaller than Sam-Dog's head and when Sam went up to sniff him, the two pound kitten hissed and the 80 pound Lab turned around and walked away. I knew then he was a fighter, and that fighting spirit helped him through all his physical afflictions.

Sam-Dog, Sox, and Jack all got along and we eventually moved back to Chicago, us and the old Lab and the two rescued street cats. Sox and Jack would always sleep together, they were street brothers.

Jack grew into a big cat, almost 20 pounds. But fat cats are prone to diabetes and fatty liver disease. He developed FLD before he was 10 years old. Just like the link says, he had stopped eating and was losing weight. The vet treated him and when I got him home he still wasn't eating so I had to force-feed him with special food. I'd put him inside a pillow case with just his head sticking out and put a syringe full of special food down his throat. After a few days of this, I think Jack said "enough of this shit" and he started eating on his own. He regained some weight, but was never a fat cat again. He was just happy to be.

I can't remember exactly how he was diagnosed with diabetes but I gave him daily insulin shots for about 10 years. I can't tell you how many all-day glucose tests he's had over the years, and he had been on three different brands of insulin. Just like a human diabetic, he had crashes and I had to rush him to the vet. Once he was being boarded at the vet while we were on vacation and he crashed. To this day I think the vet tech made a mistake and gave him too much insulin because there was another diabetic cat there also named Jack -- I think they almost killed him. In any event, the vet called us and we flew home from New Mexico that day.

When we got to the vet, he told us Jack was recovered but blind. Oh well, I thought, we'll have a blind cat, no big deal. As soon as we got him home, Jack started jumping up on the counters begging for food! I moved my fingers in front of his eyes and watched how his eyes reacted -- he wasn't blind! But at the vet he just stared, unblinking. We're convinced that he faked being blind just to come home! When we got him home it was like he had never been sick at the vet. As it turned out, we could never board him again because he would stop eating, he would go on a hunger strike, and we eventually found someone to come over and take care of the cats if we went away. The reality was that our long vacations dwindled down to none because of Jack. In the last few years, however, I finally found someone who would come and give him his shot, I taught her how to do that.

In the last year, he's needed two insulin shots a day and I saw how diabetes ravaged his body, just like it does a human. He was also arthritic and I gave him shots once a month for that. The Hubs sawed off one side of a litter box so Jack could walk right in, so he did not have to lift his arthritic back legs. We did all that we could and as long as he wasn't showing pain, as long as I could see that he was happy just to be, I let him live his life of eating -- he loved avocados and peas and fresh meat, of course -- and sleeping on his chair. He could not get around too much anymore, his world was the kitchen and the basement. Jackson Theodore Kat was already skin and bones and yesterday he stopped eating, I saw a stagger in his walk. I knew it was time. I think he knew it too because he did not fight getting into his travel case. And he was always a fighter.

The vet sedated him and I kept my hand on his heart. Even with all his ills his heart always pumped strong. As she gave him the death needle I chanted OM MANI PADME HUM. I saw the suffering leave his gray and white face and he looked like a kitten again. Even the vet said she saw his eyes get wide and then he was at peace.

It is a law of physics that energy can neither be created nor destroyed so it follows that what is never born can never die. As a practicing Buddhist, I know this, that is why I do not fear death. My body will die but "I" will never die. I know that Jack the Yogi Cat has already been reborn as a higher life form.

And if Buddhist cosmology is all wrong, there is still that little bit of Christian left inside me who likes to believe that when we die all our pets will come running over the Rainbow Bridge to greet us.

Either way, we will see each other again, me and Sam-Dog and Jack the Yogi Cat.

Jack the Yogi Cat

I put my cat to sleep last night. I will write more about him later, but for now you can read what I wrote about him in 2007 in my yoga blog:

going with the flow

In the picture in this post he looks healthy. When he died he was skin and bones.

Jack was a street cat. Seventeen years ago I saved him from going down a rain sewer when he was a two pound bundle of fur covered with fleas and filled with tapeworms. Please click the "Feed Shelter Animals" widget in my sidebar, and if you are a regular reader, please click it every time you stop by. I do, and Jack thanks you.

we all need prayers

"Pray For Me, Brother" -- "The AR Rahman Foundation presents a movement to eradicate poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals."



If they can get along in love and peace, why can't we?

Don't ever tell me that animals are "dumb" and don't have feelings. They have it all over us in spades.

poem: "concentric circles"

(photo credit: TomMartinArt)

I can not be as you want me to be
now
as you could not be as I wanted you to be
then.

We have run in concentric circles
all these years
having the same center
but barely touching.

Years and years and years
of being together
but always apart.

Always together at the heart
at the center
but always apart
at the edges
of these concentric circles.

We cheat each other in this dice game
as Shiva cheated Parvati
in his game with her.

One day these concentric circles
will overlap and join
never to be pulled apart
again.

(2008)

"Every animal knows far more than you do." (Nez Perce)

Norbert Rosing's striking images of a polar bear coming upon tethered sled-dogs in the wilds of Canada. The photographer was sure that he was going to see the end of the dogs when the polar bear wandered in, but the bear returned every night that week to play with the dogs.

From About.com: "The location was a kennel outside Churchill, Manitoba owned by dog breeder Brian Ladoon, who kept some 40 Canadian Eskimo sled dogs there when Rosing visited in 1992. A large polar bear showed up one day and took an unexpected interest in one of Ladoon's tethered dogs. The other dogs went crazy as the bear approached, Rosing says, but this one, named Hudson, "calmly stood his ground and began wagging his tail." To Rosing and Ladoon's surprise, the two "put aside their ancestral animus," gently touching noses and apparently trying to make friends."

From Rosing's website: "1988 he started his still ongoing project: The World of the Polar Bear. It covers the entire Canadian Arctic from Churchill/Manitoba to Pond Inlet and Cambridge Bay in Nunavut. He captured in his pictures the life of the Inuit, Muskoxen, Atlantic Walrusses, Whales, Aurora Borealis and of course the life circle of the Lord of the Arctic, the Polar Bear."

Remember that Sarah Palin does not believe that polar bears are endangered, she hunted wolves from a helicopter, and she does not believe that global warming is real.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
- Mahatma Gandhi








What incredible images!

Sending bear hugs to you all!

(thanks Existentialist Cowboy!)

India stories: Kodaikanal

I moved on to Kodaikanal after Madurai. Surrounded by temperate forests of pines and deciduous trees, Kodaikanal is a “hill station” that was established by American missionaries. I had read about the greenery and the different climate of the Palani hills, and I looked forward to a change of scenery from the dry, dusty Tamil Nadu I was accustomed to.

The bus ride was once again an adventure. I got on and the only seats left were in the long row at the back of the bus. I have long legs and did not want to spend three hours with my knees up around my chin sitting behind one of the seats, so I sat right in the middle, my legs out in the aisle. We picked up more people and two older men came toward me. I could tell that they expected me to move over to the window at the end of the row. I shook my head and my eyes said not a chance. They shrugged and tried to squeeze past me. One sat next to the window, the other was trying to squeeze in next to me to be next to his friend. He had a hard time doing so because the man on my right would not budge. I got up a little and as the man squeezed in between me and his friend, I shoved him as I would shove someone through a door. “Thank you, madam!”, he said with a big smile.

Within 10 minutes they started talking to me, the first question always “what country, madam?” and then “what job, madam?” “America.” “Yoga teacher.” The man next to me translated for his friend. “We also do yoga, every day,” My old friend, who looked to be in his 60s, told me that just that morning he had done headstand and shoulderstand. They also made sure to tell me that they were Brahmins, the highest caste. I thought it was interesting that people -- always men I realized -- would tell me they were Brahmins.

My other old friend next to the window told me that his brother lived in the ashram of Swami Nirgunananda in Chandigarh, close to Delhi. Before I knew it an address book was pulled out and I had the swami-ji’s cell phone number. Outstanding! Life is all about the connections we make and that seemed especially so in India. That scrap of paper with the swami-ji’s phone number is tucked away in a safe place.

We settled in for the three hour bus ride. I began to read a book that I had bought at the Ramakrishna Math in Chennai, Meditation According To Yoga Vedanta. My old friend next to me asked to look at it and he showed it to his friend. I never got to read another page because I was grilled like a school girl before her school masters.

The old Brahmin next to me looked out the window and waved his hand at the poor people. He said, “What do you think, madam? Why is one man born a king and the other born a beggar? Is that not fate?” I shrugged and said that karma is not fate, it is cause and effect, that karma is karma, no more, no less. I told him that the beggar might have been a king in a previous life, and because he treated beggars very poorly he was reborn a beggar. A man sitting in front of us turned around and said loudly, “She is right! Karma is karma!”, then turned around said nothing more for the rest of the trip. The two old men laughed and discussed karma between themselves, maybe discussing how it was their karma to sit next to an American woman of a certain age who was dressed like an ageless hippie chick and who was reading an Indian book on meditation.

We arrived in Kodaikanal and I was dropped off in the middle of town. My two old friends bowed their heads and placed their hands at their chests and told me that these “two old jivans” (jivan being the individual soul which is one with the Universal Soul) were honored to sit next to me and they hoped I would be blessed for the remainder of my trip.

I stayed in Kodaikanal for two nights and maybe this was too short a time to form a proper opinion. Despite the beauty of the surroundings compared to the dry Tamil Nadu I was accustomed to, I felt claustrophobic and trapped. I was bored and felt on edge but a refreshing change was that I was never hassled by touts or beggars. It was interesting to me how I was in clean, quiet town with the least amount of people so far but I felt very uncomfortable and I never felt like that in maddening Madurai or chaotic Chennai.

I stayed in what was considered a “resort” and it seemed to be more for families and tour groups than for a solo traveler. The center of town was small with hardly anything to do or see, and the connections at the two internet cafes were exceedingly slow. Walking around town I found an ayurvedic store and made an appointment for an ayurvedic massage, hoping it would be as wonderful as the one I had in Chennai. I thought it might be even better because the store was run by an ashram – they had a convincing brochure about their services but I should have remembered to never judge a book by its cover.

I arrived for my massage and I was taken into the basement of a nearby hotel. I was shocked -- the basement was damp and scary. We went into a small, dark room that was freezing and that was the first time I had ever felt cold in India. I looked around, disgusted. The room looked like the photos I remember from the pre-Roe v. Wade days of a back-alley abortionist's office. The “masseuse” put an old, ratty towel stained with massage oil on a table that looked like a doctor’s exam table from the 1950s. There was no way was I going through with this massage.

I told the woman who brought me that the room was disgusting and cold. She turned on a space heater that looked like it couldn’t heat a closet much less a room, and she changed the towel to one with smaller stains. I shook my head and told her in no uncertain terms that I wanted my deposit back. She shrugged, didn’t try to argue, said no problem when she returned my rupees, and I left. So much for my wonderful ayurvedic massage.

I walked around town and met Tibetans for the first time. They were open and friendly and very different from the Indians I met in Kodaikanal. I found a wonderful Tibetan restaurant where I would hang out and enjoy the Tibetan warmth, and I’m not talking about the temperature. The cook made fabulous steamed momos and a delicious soup that was so thick I ate it with a fork, all for less than $1.

I felt an underlying tension in Kodaikanal, an almost imperceptible sense of violence that was waiting to explode. I had never had this feeling before in my travels. I found out later that most of those people selling fruit and trinkets to tourists in Kodaikanal are tribals. The only other source of employment in the area is the coffee and tea plantations and the contracts are usually indenture. The tribals are bonded laborers who try to scrape together a little cash when they aren't picking leaves or beans--it's either that or starve and they live with all the caste discrimination and violence one would expect.

There are plenty of monied interests – hotels, property development, and luxury real estate – and the plantation owners keep a firm hand on Kodaikanal with bribes, violence, and other incentives. I was told that Kodaikanal is a cesspool of corruption and environmental waste, with the people at the bottom little better than slaves.

And here I was.

The next day I hired a car to tour the local sights, such as they were. Most of the spots would be called “scenic overlooks” or “nature viewing areas” in America – and also one golf course, where the only golfers I saw were the monkeys cavorting on the greens. I had my first taste of Indian nastiness on this little sight-seeing expedition.

The driver dropped me off at Coaker’s Walk, a path that winds up and around a hill where on a clear day you can see all the way to Madurai 75 miles away. It was a beautiful clear day and I walked slowly, enjoying the views, stopping to take pictures. The view was fabulous and the air smelled fresh and green, the first time I had smelled “green” in the air in India. Couples and families were walking around, and as usual I was the only westerner. Half way through my walk, two young couples who appeared to be in their 20s walked toward me. They slowed down, stared at me, then pointed and started to laugh. I stopped and looked around thinking that they were pointing and laughing at someone behind me. I did not realize that I was the one they were laughing at. It wasn’t just a laugh or two, it was a steady stream of laughter and talk amongst themselves.

I knew that Indians stared at foreigners especially ones dressed like a “typical tourist” – imagine a man with snow white legs sticking out of khaki shorts wearing white socks with sandals or a woman wearing tight, revealing clothes – but I was wearing loose cargo pants with a traditional kurta and dupatta. At first I thought these people were just strange, but then my blood began to boil. I walked past them, then turned around and confronted them. I was like Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, I did a Travis Bickle. I yelled, “You talking to me? I said, ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?” They stopped laughing and stared at me. “What’s your problem? You got a problem? The hell you looking at? You want a picture? Here I am!” They turned around and walked away and I truly hoped that they thought I was a crazy American and would tell all their friends about me.

My equanimity flew out the window. I was enraged and I told myself to calm down. I could not believe people could be so cruel and ignorant for no reason. In my old neighborhood on the south side of Chicago their behavior would have gotten them a rightous ass-kicking, including the women. Later another westerner told me that Kodaikanal gets many young tourists who now have lots of money and confidence. He said that the people who were rude to me were the young smug newcomers to India's middle class – call center types trying to impress their women, very much like the jaded Upper West Siders of New York sneering at the tourists in Times Square.

The incident put me off the rest of my walk and when I got back to the car I took it out on my driver. I asked him if it was common for Kodaikanal Indians to treat tourists the way I was just treated. I asked him if people here were always so mean. "What's wrong with you people?", I asked him. He acted like he did not understand me, but I knew he did, and we drove to the next stop.

I started to feel better when we drove to waterfalls and into some pine forests. Nature has always been my sanctuary. I’ve hiked the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico, canoed in northern Minnesota. But when I got out of the car and started walking with other tourists in these natural areas, I was struck by how the Indians treated these areas as if they were in a cheap amusement park. These were the most pristine areas I had seen in India, but the ground was littered with empty film canisters, film boxes, plastic trash. I didn’t understand it at all. These hills were beautiful, but there was no awareness or care whatsoever.

We drove to another overlook where there were lots of monkeys and lots of people because tour buses dropped off their passengers. The monkeys were running all over, but as soon as they got close, someone would throw a rock and then run away. I was almost knocked over some boulders by men throwing rocks at the monkeys and then running away from them. The women would also run away from the monkeys, screaming. What was wrong with these people, why don't they shut up and enjoy the view, why are they throwing rocks at monkeys? It made me sick and I sat on a rock and encouraged the monkeys, talking to them out loud – “go ahead, get him; bite him, bite his hand.” I knew that some people could understand English and I didn’t care. I was hoping that a monkey would get fed up with getting hit with rocks and go after someone. The whole day made me wonder why I ever wanted to go to Kodaikanal. There was nothing here for me and being surrounded by hills made me feel trapped. It was the first time that I truly felt alone in India.

There were a few more uninteresting stops and the driver left me at the hotel. I spent the evening wandering around, eating Tibetan food and drinking chai. I slowly walked the three kilometers around the lake back to the hotel. I could not wait to get out of this town.

Early the next day I left for Rameswaram where I would lose my heart to India all over again.

India stories: It's a mad mad mad mad Madurai

The day I left for Madurai I went to a beauty salon to get mehndi on my feet. The salon ladies were fascinated by my tattoos and they were admiring them when the owner walked in. A big woman in a beautiful hot pink sari and heavy with gold jewelry, her personality matched her appearance. She shoved her way through the crowd saying, "I want to see everything!" She stuck her finger in the air and announced, "I want to learn this!", as if learning the art of tattooing is the easiest thing in the world.

They caught a glimpse of my shoulder tattoo. I did not plan to take my clothes off but the owner commanded, "Take off top, BE FREE, BE FREE!" I wore a camisole underneath so I removed the top of my salwar kameez. Everyone gushed over the intricate flower vines surrounding a bright and colorful butterfly.

Then they saw the large sun/moon tattoo peeking above the waistband of my salwar and two women began to pull it down. The moon has eyes and a Nepali woman loved it so much that she kissed her fingers and touched my tattoo. "The eyes is talking to me, the eyes is talking to me,” she said as she repeatedly kissed her fingers and touched the eyes of the moon.

Women took pictures of my tattoos, the mehndi was started, and the Nepali woman drew my tattoos in a sketchbook. She told me that she loves tattoos and wants to become a tattoo artist, but there is no place in Chennai to learn. The women asked if I wanted to get my nose pierced and the Nepali woman confided that some Indian women get their nipples pierced. "But only married ladies after one baby," she said very seriously. I loved that she was so open with me, a westerner whom she would never see again. I was just one of the girls.

That night I left on the 9:30 train to Madurai and as I sat alone in my berth two young men in their 20s came in. When they saw me they looked as if I had lifted up my kurta to flash them. Their mouths dropped open in unison and they did not say a word. I thought their reaction strange and I felt like saying, "Hello, boys, you've never seen a woman before?" I said hello in Tamil and flashed a smile. They sat across from me and as I sat across from them with a half smile on my face they tried to look anywhere but at me.

I’ve been told that sometimes this is typical Indian male behavior when they see a woman, especially one as strange as me -- western, an ageless hippie chick, dressed in Indian clothes, and bold enough to look them in the eye. I've also been told that some young Indian males are starved for any kind of interaction with females -- usually there is no premarital sex and there is hardly any communication between boys and girls at school. Growing up like this leaves men clueless as to how to behave and some Indian men also believe the misconceptions about western women.

An older man came to sit next to me and I said, "We're all going to be just cozy now, aren't we?" The young men again looked like I had not only flashed them but also blew them a kiss. At least the older man had the manners to say hello to me. These boys looked so disconcerted I felt like playing with them during the train ride but thought better of it – I did not want to ruin them for life.


As the train pulled into Madurai in the morning, the older man wished me a nice day and the boys tripped all over themselves in a rush to get out. I was sure that this was the first time they had slept so close to a woman.

After a nine hour train ride I was in no mood for nonsense, but I was instantly accosted by auto rickshaw drivers, so much so that a station security guard told them to leave me alone. I chose one driver and as we walked through the phalanx of drivers they started to laugh and yell, "here madam, here madam, you want ride, madam?" "That's it," I said as I threw down my bag. I spun around and yelled loud enough to make the street dogs run: "ENOUGH OF THIS BULLSHIT!" That got everyone's attention and I never saw a gaggle of drivers shut up so quickly. “No tension, madam, no tension, come with me," my driver said. That was more like it and when we got to the hotel I paid him more than what we agreed to.

I stayed exactly 90 minutes at the guesthouse that was closest to the great temple. I took the recommendation of a well-known guide book and I decided that the writer must have been hallucinating from too many bhang lassis when he wrote the review.

I don't mind cheap hotels in India but I draw the line at towels that looked like they were used to wash a car and greasy hair stains on the pillows. The place was disgusting. It looked like a place for serial killers to hold up during their rampage. The air conditioner in the "deluxe AC room" had its guts hanging out.

The room was considered "deluxe" because you could walk out onto the roof of the floor below for a fabulous view of the temple. However, the window did not lock so anyone on that roof could crawl into your bed. The room also had a frosted glass door so it was not safe for a solo female traveler. When a man tried to get into my room about a hour after I checked in, I asked for another room but it had the same greasy towels and pillow cases. I got out, losing 500 rupees, and moved to a better hotel.

My first day in Madurai and now I knew why some westerners had that glazed "dead man walking" look in their eyes. It's a defense mechanism – act deaf, dumb, and blind and maybe you'll be spared from the incessant touts. I met nice old men who told me their life stories, and how America is a great country, and how their brother/uncle/son/cousin/sister's husband has a clothes/jewelry/art/silver shop with a great roof top view of the temple, "just look, madam, no buy."

The market across from the temple was filled with stalls of all types of merchandise and a great place to see those dead men walking. I ended up telling shop keepers and touts, “I'm a poor yoga teacher, no money” or “YOU buy ME something?” or “It's against my religion.” The last story always worked.

My second day was spent at the Gandhi museum, an inspiring and peaceful place where about 100 schoolgirls were more interested in me than in learning about their own history. The girls were sitting on the floor listening to the curator as I walked in. He immediately stopped talking and all heads turned around at the same time to look at me. I smiled and brought my hands to my chest and bowed. Everyone said hello to me in English, and I responded with a loud vanakkam. They exploded in laughter and with a big smile the curator asked, "What country, madam? America or UK?" "America." "Ah, America!" Bigger smiles all around. Their teachers had their hands full trying to keep order all because of me.

As I walked around the exhibits I felt the schoolgirls’ eyes on me. I turned around and the girls would giggle. "Shhhh," I said, putting my finger to my lips. "Read your history, don't look at me.", I told them with a wink. Occasionally I would feel a light touch on my back and I would turn around and a hand would cover a mouth, a giggle unsuccessfully suppressed.

My last day in Madurai was spent on a tour bus. An Indian tour bus is usually not decked out with plushy seats, air-conditioning, and a restroom – most of our seats were ripped and frayed but adequately comfortable. Sometimes you have the pleasure of listening to music played full blast through a shabby speaker, driver’s choice of music of course. I settled in and waited for the day’s adventures.

Once again I was the only westerner and I noticed that everyone had the same reaction to the condition of the bus. They walked up the stairs, stopped, looked around at the frayed seats, and either gulped or sneered. Off we went, all windows open to the Madurai heat and dust.

I don't remember exactly what was on the tour, I just enjoyed riding around with a bus load of Indian tourists. Every time we stopped the driver would announce in Tamil where we were and how long we would be there. At the first stop I asked him how long and he sneered at me and grunted. I was on my own. I knew that if I did not get back in time, I would be left in the street. Finally a man told me in English “20 minutes” and at every stop I would look at him and he would smile and tell me how long we would be.

I loved the vignettes framed by the bus window. I saw a huge ram with massive horns sleeping peacefully in the gutter while a woman carefully swept the street around him; two flower sellers with their carts, talking quietly, engrossed in conversation as only women can be, as a street goat happily munched the flowers from one cart.

It was a lazy day and the only excitement we had was when the driver took a curve too fast and I felt the tires on my side of the bus lift up for about three seconds. People started to scream and the woman next to me flew out of her seat. She would have landed in the aisle had I not caught her sari and pulled her back down. I practiced equanimity -- if I die in India so be it. I started to doze as the passengers yelled at the driver.

At one stop we were besieged by begging children, girls and boys. I saw that Indians rarely gave to beggars, so when a beggar sees a feringhi it’s an onslaught of constant cries for money. Trapped on a bus, I was ripe for the picking. I sat next to the rear door and it was the perfect place for a little girl to plant herself on the steps in front of me with her hand out with a constant cry that sounded like “ma” over and over and over again.


You need a thick skin to handle the beggars in India, even if they are children. I was not in the giving mood so I ignored her and stared out the window. Occasionally I would look at her and shake my head and tell her no in Tamil, but she never stopped. Every Indian also ignored her, but I had an idea. I pointed to each person on the bus and told her “ask him” or “ask her” and rubbed my fingers together, the universal sign for money. I said, “They give rupees, I give rupees”. She left me and went over the Indians. That finally got everyone’s attention, and when she started harassing the Indians, a woman said something and she left. The bus finally started and as we left I looked back to see the begging children swarm the next group of tourists, like yellow jackets to fresh meat.

Late at night when everyone was tired, hungry, and complaining we stopped at a Murugan temple, our last stop, and most of the passengers did not get off the bus. The temple would have been the highlight of my day because it is a very important temple, one of the six abodes of Lord Muruga, an important Hindu god worshiped in south India. It is huge temple carved into rock, but it was impossible to explore in the time we had, so I had to be satisfied with a quick walk-through. I should have planned my last day more carefully, but I wanted to leave the planning to someone else, even if it was a bus driver who spoke no English. Go with the flow, there will be a next time, and I remembered the words of the Chennai beauty shop owner, “be free, be free.”

We headed back to Madurai, everyone quiet now for the ride home. Despite the heat, the dust, a migraine headache, and the incessant touts that I experienced over the last few days, I again felt at peace here on a bus with strangers in a strange city in a strange land and I almost fell completely asleep.

We were in Madurai and I woke up to people screaming at the driver again. Apparently he wasn't dropping people at their hotels, he was dropping people off wherever he felt like it. It was late, and the streets were crowded with people walking to the temple so the bus driver had trouble getting through the streets. I watched everything with detachment, watching group dynamics and mentally placing bets on who would win.

Every few blocks he would kick people off the bus, and the people would complain as they flagged down autorickshaws. Finally it was me and an older couple. I got off the bus and the husband started to argue with the driver. There was much hand waving and head wobbling, but the driver won and the husband finally got off. The bus left and the three of us stood in the middle of the street. Suddenly they spoke to me in perfect English, complaining about the bus and the driver. How funny that they never said a word to me all day yet we had sat across the aisle from each other.

I returned to my hotel and spent the rest of the evening in the roof-top restaurant, looking out over the temple complex and thinking about what India had taught me so far – more patience, how to be in the present moment, and detaching from the outcome. Anyone on the yoga path knows that these qualities sink a bit deeper into the consciousness the longer one does the work. But somehow, being in Ma India, my heart could open more fully, just as the lotus opens its petals as it rises out of the mud to reach for the glorious sun.

Goodbye Madurai. OM MURUGA, lead me from the darkness and into the light.

does religion make us more divine or deranged?

(photo credit: bhakticollective)


Kaustubha Das asks a very good question. no society is immune from religious fundamentalism, just look at our home-grown fundamentalist Christians. all fundamentalists have the same thing in common: devotion to their god and a belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

in Sanskrit that would be bhakti combined with avidya with a good dash of asmita thrown in. devotion combined with ignorance and ego.


FINDING SELFLESSNESS AMIDST MUMBAI'S SORROW

"When we see innocent people running our city streets, scrambling for shelter from acts of violence committed in God’s name, whether in Manhattan or Mumbai, it’s a good time to ask ourselves whether our religion is making us more divine or deranged. On the verge of 2009, it’s become all the more apparent that the first decade of the new millennium will, in many ways, be defined by the impact of religious terrorism on our nations, communities, families and minds. Times like these call for us to examine how our faith affects our reasoning....

The most relevant questions about religion will address how we approach it. Religion, as a method of self-transformation (or yoga), can purify the heart, free us of unworthy instinct and compulsion, and nurture the best in us. A pure heart is fit to receive God’s grace in the form of wisdom, contentment and compassion. Conversely, a superficial approach sees religion as merely a ticket to salvation via membership to a group endowed with the favor of God. It can result in just the opposite, fostering pride, sectarianism and hate. It can become an instrument for the expression of exactly that which we need to be purified of. Which brings us to the real enemy: not Islam, not even extreme fundamentalist Islam...."

To understand human nature I don't have to read modern western psychology books...all I need to do is look to yoga philosophy and Buddhism. Buddha was the first neuroscientist and psychologist and after his enlightenment he taught how to relieve our suffering, nothing more, nothing less. in fact his teachings were so simple that he almost decided not to teach what he discovered under the bodhi tree because he thought people would not believe him. after his enlightenment he was asked what he was and he merely said "awake." that is all the word "buddha" means.

As Das explains and also asks: "Yogic literature speaks of six enemies (Ari-shad-vargas) which bind the soul: kama, (lust); krodha, (anger); lobha, (greed); mada, (madness); moha, (illusion); and matsarya, (hate and envy). True religion aims at uprooting these terrorists. The sincerity of ones purpose in their approach to religious practice weighs heavily in determining ones success. Will the soul be purified or putrefied?"

Are you your own terrorist or will you choose to awaken?