An Illusion?

It's called the Magic Tap

It's at Aqualand in Cadiz




Can you figure out how it works? Don't spoil it for yourself by googling it :)

Jai Gurudeva!
love
bawa  

The Deccan Queen

From Kanyakumari to Mumbai to Poona in the space of a few hours... Then 3 superb courses in Poona and we were planning on how to go back to Mumbai... and decided that the weather was just simply too beautiful to go any other way than by train!

We traveled on the venerable Deccan Queen... The first train ever to run between Mumbai and Poona. Amazingly it still takes the same amount of time as it did back in the 1800s. The engine was not as powerful as the one used now, but the train size was very small... now its a powerful engine that pulls a very long train up the steep and gorgeously beautiful Sahyadri mountains... There was fog and rain and thunder and nature really flaunting herself in all her monsoon glory as waterfalls big and small crashed all around us... some splashing right into the train...

What a feast!

Here are some photos...








I have decided, we have to make this trip every year at this time... What a wonderful planet we live on! :)

Jai Gurudeva!
love
bawa  

Alibag

Whats to write about our (very short) trip to Alibag... Here are a few pics... the sea was warm and the pool was hot! The hammocks were lovely to sleep in, the food was terrible :)

Upasana hanging around:



Me with cap and me without the cap:



Vishu the Bathing Beauty (?)



Dinesh in (well actually out of) the sea:




In the Pool: Me, Dinesh, Vishu and Pooja



Please do show this post to anyone who says Art of Living Teachers dont have fun! :)  

The Punjabwich Chronicles

I am finally initiated into the blogging rite; after lots of coaxing and cajoling, warnings and threats, bribes and brickbats, mild protestations and wild insinuations, having my ego pricked or pumped, dropping hints and offering bargains (the last one by Natalie – “if you commence blogging, I will start my 8 minute Ab exercises which I had taught them in california).

I must say, it feels good though, being here, being back, going forward with you all…

Bawa with his superb Spiderwicky narration inspired me to post one on Punjabwich Chronicles. (wich in Punjabi language means ‘in’). Punjab truly is the land of the lions. All men put a Singh at the end of their name which means lion. Even the women are extremely strong (though they add a Kaur at the end of their names); you can’t but be strong if you have to make so many parathas (the best and healthiest Indian rotis on the planet) everyday and work in the fields. Farming is the primary occupation of the state and dancing comes a close second. Laughter comes under preoccupation.

We stayed at Prince’s (he is a guy, in Punjab they have names like that, montoo, prince, honey, silky, etc, their dogs are called rajesh and deepak) place. Now this guy has a heart of gold (24 carat). He and his sister Minie (well, you are not a punjabi if you don’t have a nickname), infact his entire family welcomed us and the rest of Jalandar in their farmhouse with the love and hospitality that is truly the hallmark of rural India. I felt like doing yoga at soon as I reached his house – I figured out soon it was ‘cos the ride to his house (thanks to the road) was like a proper pre-yoga warm up and loosening up of all joints. At his house, one had a choice of the pool outdoors or a pool table indoors. Avinash taught me tricks on the table and I was soon pocketing balls left, right and centre. In between volunteer meetings, Guru story sessions and paratha parties, Mr Ravishankar (imagine having that name!) taught us dance - some classical Indian and Bhangra (traditional Punjabi) with lots of humor and style. Raviji was mentioning a conversation in one of his dance classes where someone remarked Punjab having no culture. He said, “No, we have one. Its called agriculture. We agree with everyone’s culture”. Ha ha ha (3 minutes laugher). The Sardars(the Sikhs, I think it means commanders or warriors) are the butt of most jokes in India. They enjoy a special place in Indian joke-dom like the Irish, or the Jews, or the Germans, or the blondes... do elsewhere.

The Sikhs have contributed immensely to Indian ethos. They valiantly resisted the Mughal Invaders’ conversion drives and the subsequent genocide (done in millions; the Jewish holocaust or Spanish Inquisition pales in comparison). The Sikh gurus combined spirituality and the fighting spirit (to defend their country and faith). Avinash (a Kashmiri Pandit himself, one of the 3,50,000 Hindus driven out of their homes in Kashmir – one of the worst human rights violation in the world in modern times) mentioned that had it not been for the Sikh Gurus, the Kashmiri Pandits would not have existed today.

Shakti and Bhakti (Strength and devotion) runs thick in the Sikh blood. Seva-bhav (the spirit of service) is deeply ingrained in their consciousness. Many a times you see a Sikh getting out of his Mercedes and taking care of people’s shoes at the Gurudwara temple. Besides, the Sikh feed people in the thousand on festival days or holidays.

One saddening part is that because Punjab was the epicenter of the Agriculture revolution in India, its prosperity grew quickly. People ended up with pots of money and lots of time, not knowing what to do with it. So, many youngsters gravitated towards cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. Even today, it remains as a major problem. And the solution in sight seems to be a revival of spiritual values in the land. Thats where Art of Living steps right in, with the YES!+ and Utsav course. Our first Utsav in Jalandhar had close to 3000 young people in rapture.

Utsav Act I: Feel more alive. The tag line seemed redundant for Punjab, the youth embodied life. It didn’t take much to get them on their feet and into action. In Satsang, before the first word of the song escaped the tongue, they would be up and about, dancing. Nothing deterred them, not even the fact that at times we had not so good (read horrible) singers. Which made Bawa comment, these guys would dance to anything, they dont need music, just put an electric generator on...

The Golden Temple was a treat, to the mind and the soul. Bawa wrote all about that... We got treatment usually granted to saints. I truly felt like an ambassador of Guruji.

Overflowing with gratitude and contentment we moved on to Delhi and then to Mumbai...  

Shivaratri: a trail of miracles...

Let me do the Sri Ganesha on this blog with our account of Shivaratri. After a fabulous PDS (Pranayam Dhyan Shibir) in Mumbai with Guruji which was full of meditations, miracles and early mornings, we felt a nagging sensation in our heart that we did not have enough. (He mentions somewhere it being a sign of love and Seva – a feeling of ‘not enough’). So we decided to join the caravan onto to Surat for Shivaratri.
The noon before Shivaratri, on the way from Dadar to Bandra station to catch our train, we took a divine detour so as to say goodbye to Guruji in Ghatkopar. As we went to his place, he was giving a video byte to Zee TV. As we were already running late, I gestured to him with palms going round and round indicating ‘railway’ and lip-synched Surat. He acknowledged with a raise of his eyebrows and an impish smile (everything reveals itself in good time). We somehow caught the train in the nick of time, rather the train stopped and caught up with us and took us to Surat… but that’s a story I will leave for another posting☺
For us, Surat is synonymous with Jigish. Bawa’s tryst with this city goes back to 1994 when he would conduct Basic courses at an unbawa hour of 4am with Jigish assisting. Foreseeing Jigish’s 3 bedroom small house would expand magically to accommodate 56 people during the shivaratri festival, we opted eventually to move to Jyotika and Bharti’s house. That house, like most of Gujarat has mastered feeding to an art-form.
People say shivaratri was blissfully divine. For Prasanna and me, it was chaotically divine. We were supposed to give a live commentary on TV of the puja proceedings. The presence of the Governor, accompanied by his paranoid security, sealed off our location settings. Then Sanskar TV’s bit of video and lot of audio decided to give up on us. So we ended up doing ‘Nishkaam Karma’ – fruitless effort, not to mention we had rollicking fun in the bargain.
Towards the end of the puja, we just dropped everything (read surrendered), and settled down to meditate. The bhajans started, and their tempo kept ascending until at it pinnacle, Guruji went into a soumya Tandav (Shiva’s Dance). The moment it begins, truly the entire universe comes to a stand still, the whole body is flushed with a million volts of energy, every cell in it is alive with sublime sacredness, and the very soul resonates with vibrant silence. In that very instant you know, you have done boundless benevolence to be there or have been showered with unconditional blessings to be physically present there.
He conducted ‘Hara Hara’ meditation with the invocation mudra and invited the divinity to settle here and now with all of us.
What Guruji said was…
The amazing journey from duality to devotion and devotion to oneness is shivaratri. For Love and Devotion there needs to be two, duality is needed… but Devotion when intensified leads to the Knowledge that there is only one!
The ancients texts asks us to become one with shiva and then worship him. So we do puja after enlivening the Shiva Tatva in every cell of our body. Shiva is the embodiment of innocence and we sit for puja with that innocence and fullness.
Shiva is worshiped with flowers and thorns. He accepts both. We too surrender both our positive and negative qualities. We offer ‘good’ qualities so we are not afflicted by its ego, and the ‘bad’ qualities with which we start identifying ourself.
Neelkanth and Bhadra – Shiva’s throat turned blue when he drank the dreaded poison signifying that we too have the power to take on negativity and transform it into benevolence. Offer all the anger, hatred and self-deprecating qualities. Shiva will only give something good and beneficial in return.
Shiva is also fury personified – he shows anger towards injustice and wrongdoing. It is a crime even to tolerate injustice. In that sense Shiva is complete.
At the onset of puja, we take a sankalpa for peace, prosperity, success and happiness for all those present in particular and for the whole world in general. It is a beautiful process of taking sankalpa by bringing into our consciousness the vastness of space and time and collapsing that into the here and now. A sankalpa taken in this charged, full-of-feeling atmosphere bears fruit easily.
Usually people go to places of worship with lots of demands and wishes, but people usually come to Guruji full of gratitude… no demands here, people are content and fulfilled already… That’s the specialty of Art of Living. And that’s what makes a Pooja with Guruji so much more potent and powerful!
Shiva is also the lord of the 5 elements (Bhootnath) - earth, water, air, fire and space. Honoring the elements is true worship of Shiva. In today’s age, people are most concerned about the environment. Being sensitive to the environment has been tradition of India since time immemorial. We respect the earth – before digging for a construction site, we do Puja. We worship the rivers and mountains… Infact puja itself done with all the 5 elements - flowers, water, rice, fire, fragrance everything is used. Awakening of the principles of these elements in us is puja.
The next day we did the Rudram again at 4:30 am and divinity seemed to talk hold of the very air and infuse it with sparkling joy.
The PDS started with Pankaj conducting Yoga gracefully, enthusiastically and with laughter and lightness. Guruji would lead meditations 30-35 minutes and they never seemed more than 5-10 minutes. People in hundreds experienced healing from illnesses, pains and sufferings. The sharing by participants brought out how Joy and good luck increased dramatically for countless many.
The arrangements were pretty smooth and things seemed to move with clockwork precision with hardly any friction. Rishi Vidyadharji seemed to be behind this organizational miracle. There were 26 teams altogether for Guruji’s visit and the man-in-charge Rishiji has absolutely zero conflict with anyone. That’s the power of Sattva. He would do Gurupooja everyday and meditate with everyone together. Guruji later on said that Karmaphal ki siddhi hoti hai sattva se. Aur sattva aata hai silence aur sadhana se. (Any action bears fruit only with Sattva. And this Sattva comes only through silence and meditation).
There was also an advance course being attended by 3000+ people being conducted by Rishiji…
Guruji sparkled with humour and Wisdom during the Youth Meet, and answered questions while playing random notes on a synth that was on stage… The notes somehow sounded fantastic…  

Amritsar and The Golden Temple

Shavina was teaching a course in Amritsar and so we decided, that instead of going to Delhi from Jalandhar, we would goto Amritsar and spend a few hours there and come back to Delhi with her by train.
We left Jalandhar at noon and went through the very beautiful Punjab country side. There are fields full of wheat, swaying in the wind, getting ready for the harvest... It was the first day of the month of Baisakh, called Baisakhi... the herald of the coming of Spring, of Harvest time, and throughout the road, there were many, many people celebrating, dressed in vivid colours, cooking on the roadside and giving out food in gratitude to whoever stopped to eat.
Dinesh and Vishu wanted to goto the Wagah border. Thats the border between India and Pakistan. Did you know that Amritsar in India and Lahore in Pakistan are almost twin cities? There is hardly a distance of about 50-60 kms between them... I was not keen on going there at all :) and only wanted to visit the Golden temple, the seat of the Sikhs in Amritsar... and so, events arranged themselves so we could only go there :)
We reached early afternoon to Anish’s home in Nanak University, where we had a bit of a lunch. Neetu, his wife had made very interesting nibbles: a generous chunk of very mildly spiced paneer, with a small chunk of pineapple and half a juicy strawberry, on toothpicks. Looked very festive and tasted delicious!
Then we had a Knowledge session with the volunteers and some of shavina’s brand new YES+ graduates... It was very nice... Dinesh has taken notes and i am sure he intends to post about that very soon! But i will tell two things here:
Give a motivational speech to the volunteers.
I said,”Next...”, and everyone laughed... Then i said that’s what volunteers should keep saying... Next, Next... ok this is done, now what?!
and another question was define Devinity (spelt wrongly) in one sentence. So i promptly replied,” Devinity is a spelling mistake!”
Rest of it i will leave for dinesh (his email is dineshg@artofliving.org please do write to him and post on the blog also asking him to start posting! i think a few pressure tactics are needed now:))
Then after that session, there was just enough time, either to goto the border, or goto the Golden Temple... it was obvious where we chose to go! The Golden Temple...
On the way we passed the Khalsa College. The building is magnificent and graceful. Bansal commented anyone studying here would really not like to graduate! Its supposed to be more than 300 years old and its a huge red brick palace with lovely domes and minarets, straight out of a fantasy novel set in ancient India... There were some Temple officials waiting for us, so we didnt have time to explore this really pretty place, and just took a round of it and drove on to the Temple itself...
We reached the very imposing white structure in just a few minutes drive from the University. There were loads and loads of people... in colourful turbans, and vivid Salwaars, almost everyone was in a great mood, smiling, laughing and super disciplined!
We were met my the Temple Officials and were taken inside by them through a short cut to be able to avoid some of the rush. You have to cover you head in the Temple, i donot know the significance of this, and forgot to ask... even Parsis cover their head in the Fire Temple. As you enter you wash your feet in a trough of water... and pass through massive gates, and there on the lake you see it. It looks awesome! And as soon as you enter, you can feel the energy of the place, pulsating and vibrant!
The Akal Takt, the political seat of the Sikhs is also here and its built at an angle to the Temple, to show that though its in the hallowed grounds of the Temple, politics and religion dont mix.
The Lake is supposed to have healing properties, especially for the skin, and its very very deep, and really really clean. big fat goldfish and catfish swim in it. There is a place where you can take a dip which is cordoned off by rails. The water is sweet and cold and inviting. We didn’t take a dip, but went in all the way to the Knees and listened to the Chanting from the Guru Granth Shahib, The holy book of the Sikhs, which is also considered their (last) Guru. The entire walkways around the lake and the walkway to the temple itself is made of white and black granite and marble. With beautiful designs. And amazingly, even with the thousands of people who had come to visit on this very holy Baisakhi day, it was spotlessly clean! We went on to the Temple and as we got closer, i could feel the intense devotion of people in the air. When you enter the temple (its quite small), there was a group of people sitting on either side of the Guru Granth Sahib, some listening with rapt attention, others lost in devotion and meditation... and One Sardarji, who may be the equivalent of the High Priest there reading it, chanting it, with a beatific smile on his lips. He had deep, soulful eyes and the whitest, fluffiest beard i had ever seen. He embodied devotion... There was a kind of hush around him, as well as an air of celebration...
We did our pranams there and moved out of the sanctum to goto the first floor of the temple where a huge Granth Sahib was being read by another person. This one though was hand written, and had quite an aura about it. Then we went to the terrace and had a lovely view of the entire campus. The white imposing welcoming structure of the gates to the Temple, the walkway, the gently rippling lake, all lit up festively for the Baisakhi Celebrations.
They have huge kitchens in the temple where a Langar (communal getting together and eating) happens everyday... very tasty food. Our guide informed us that today more than 10,000 Kgs of rice had been consumed!
We left the main temple premises via the walkway on the water and then did a parikrama (walking around) of it. On the way, we passed the Samadhi of Deepji Sahib. He was a fierce soldier, and he had only one wish, that he would like to die at the feet of his Guru. He was fighting 27 Kms away from the Temple, the place where we were standing, and he was beheaded. Legend or History says that his devotion to his Guru and his wish was so strong that he rode the 27 Kms, holding his head in his hand, and came to where his Guru was, and died at his feet!!
The sikhs have been a very brave people, and repeatedly they have protected India and Indian interests. In fact when the muslim kings went on rampant conversion drives, the Hindu priests had gone to the then Guru of the sikhs to help them. He did. He was killed by auranzeb (a monster to rival the most notorious dictators of history, its quite strange how we in India have actually named a road after him, he was responsible for killing more hindus and sikhs and others (in millions) who refused to convert to islam, than a few European dictators put together) gruesomely, and his young son was entombed while still alive. A huge Salute to the Sikh community, to have such open hearts, such humour and such commitment to India!
We posed for a few photos, one is attached :)
And then, too soon it was time to leave... We were given gifts, a beautiful photo of the Temple and some books about Sikhism, which i still have to read up. Will post about that once i do... Btw, if i got a few details wrong, please forgive me, but i was so caught up in the waves of devotion and gratitude that permeated the Temple premises, that maybe i didn’t remember everything and the above is only what my impressions were... may not be totally accurate :)
My quest for the shoes finally ended in Amritsar. I must tell you, there is a Reebok shop opposite Khalsa College and we went there to see if they had the shoes i wanted. They didn’t. I asked the owner if he could find out if some of the other Reebok branches in Amritsar had the shoes i wanted. He called and said no they didn’t. I had a feeling he was lying... turned out he was! I was pretty amazed at his behaviour. All over the rest of the country, the people in the shops have always obliged by calling other branches and giving accurate information... in any case, we went to the shop on Lawrence road, and finally found a pair of shoes that i liked and that fit! :)
If you are ever in Amritsar, do visit the Golden Temple. Give yourself at least 2-3 hours over there... We didn’t have time to meditate or do Kriya... There was too much rush, but shavina says when you go there on other days, its not so crowded and you can easily get a corner to meditate...
As we left the Temple, there was a superb display of fireworks, bringing a perfectly beautiful evening to a grand close...
The train we took to Delhi was coincidentally called “The Golden Temple Mail”...

Jai Gurudeva!  

Surat

Surat!
was it really 3 days we spent there? it seems to have gone at breakneck speed...
Rudra Poojas during Shivaratri, early morning Kriya and meditation with Guruji, sneaking past all the "security" to meet Him, few glances and seconds with Him, Knowledge ranging from studying and scoring well on exams to the sublime Karma Yoga chapter in the Bhagwad Gita, glasses of cold sugarcane juice, hot sweltering afternoons, ridiculously cold mornings, Guruji playing the synthesizer on stage with wild abandon, shoes getting stolen, LCD screens not working, fasting on Shivaratri, mad rush to catch the train to surat, even madder rush to catch the train back to Mumbai... and its already time for the Mumbai events to take off...
Its an absolute whirlwind when He is around and if you are not centered, you get thrown all over the place :)

Will write more later... its off to see Him here in Mumbai now...

Jai Gurudeva !
love
bawa  

Guruji in Mumbai on the way to Surat

Saw Him at 3:00 am today morning at the airport... am really proud of the way all our Mumbai devotees were over there... all disciplined and bursting with joy... He met everyone there, and then did a repeat of meeting everyone downstairs at KK's house... He flowed into the hearts of all of us there all over again... gave me and dinesh a naughty wink and a glorious smile...
went to meet Him at KK's home right then and He gave me a hug, some really yummy German Pastry which we shared and shared with so many people and it still refused to get over (i have some still left in the fridge) and a BIG loaf a really super German Bread which i am going to have for breakfast!
Booked in a train to Surat for Shivaratri leaving in an hours time...
If there is a net connection there, will write and tell all :)
meanwhile, ciao!!
Jai Gurudeva !
love
bawa