transit(ion)

(The following has resulted from my conversations with Nancy as of late, and is also in response to some asking "How are you feeling?")

I have been feeling as if everything is at once deeply meaningful and at the same time transitory, and I have been aware of an intensity for all of my experiences and feelings lately. I think this is what happens naturally when one is outside the comfort and confines of the daily grounding routine. Insights into personal situations perhaps come more clearly, or at least the questions of 'life' come into sharper focus if not the answers to them.

Traveling is an obvious metaphor for transition and change and it's only natural to make the association with metaphysical change in one's life. I think because of this exposure or sensitivity to emotional and existential transition stirred up by the physical act of movement, this is a deeply meaningful period. It's not that other more stable times in one's life aren't also meaningful, but I think the emotional rawness one feels in these times of transit(ion) are what helps to put us deeply in touch with ourselves and others. This emotional rawness pervades my daily existence and there are many times when I feel as if I might cry. Those are the moments that I live for... they let me know that what I am experiencing is real and deeply personally meaningful. The uncontrollable physical upwelling of emotion that seems to come from nowhere, start from almost nothing, and then takes over my vision with tears and my throat with the closing off of words... that is when I feel most connected to the people, places, and moments that for me are imbued with meaning for my life. I feel most in touch with the truth and depth of universal oneness... unqualifiable, unquantifiable, inseparable, indescribable oneness.

I feel like my entire life is opening up with any and all possibilities. I feel happy, really really happy. I feel secure and stable despite constantly moving from place to place. I think I'm learning confidence and gaining clarity through simply participating with awareness in life as I move through the day. Making decisions for myself about when and where I want to go, instead of doing what someone else tells me to do, is incredibly powerful. Self-empowering. After having worked for someone else for almost 10 years, and as a result allowing myself to be lulled into a selflessness by the very mind numbing act of prioritizing another person's will before my own, I know that I can never go back to that situation ever again. I feel as if I am waking up from a self-suppressed dream state, and I'm slowly assembling the little pieces of me that were left behind, forgotten, pushed aside, or ignored.

We all have a choice in the direction our lives take, and a level of awareness that either consciously or not allows a choice to be made. That's not to say that randomness and circumstances don't play a huge roll in what choices become available to us, but I think our freedom lies in what we do with the situations and circumstances that do present themselves. And therefore I think the key is self-awareness. Awareness of what we would like, or need really, for ourselves, awareness of our affects on others, awareness of what is our deepest truth. It is that deep personal truth that I'm trying to tap into and the experience of traveling forces a confrontation with my self at every step.

You can try to make a personal change by pulling a geographic... feeling like somehow your life will be better over there once you do this or that thing and set up your apartment just so... but YOU are always there no matter where you go. You can't avoid your self. I don't feel as if I'm running away from myself by traveling but instead I'm trying to find my self by forcing hyper-awareness of me everywhere I turn. I can't get lost in the day to day rhythms of the habit trail because nothing is ever the same.

dotting the i's

Hinduism is seemingly very much alive and well and an integral part of the everyday lives of almost a billion of Indians. I also get the feeling the religion hasn't changed much for a few thousand years, but Indians do seem to have made the ritual and observance a part of their increasingly modern lives. I finally heard a good explanation of Hinduism just the other day at a Kathakali performance in Kerala (classical Indian dance which I'll explain in a later entry), at least an explanation that made sense to me in my limited ability to understand the vast manifestations of practice and devotion.

As I now understand it, Hinduism is not simply a polytheistic religion... it is as well monotheistic, pantheistic and henotheistic (devotion to a single God while accepting the existence of inferior deities). Ok, ok, so that doesn't sound easier to understand but, as described to me in the simplified form, Hinduism is monotheistic with Brahman as the Supreme Being and a trinity of main deities or representations... Brahma (beginning), Vishnu (life), Shiva (end/destruction).

As Hindu's seem to believe, because no single image or representation can describe the Supreme Being, therefore anything and everything can. The many deities that are associated with Hindu belief and mythology are merely incomplete representations of an aspect of the Supreme Being with human qualities and frailties (much like classical Greek mythology). Because no one thing, or indeed even anything, can stand in for the formless and boundless and indescribable God, Hindus are free to use their imaginations to worship whatever they see fit... a coconut can represent God, or a flame, or a stone, or whatever. It's all up to your own imagination and creativity.

Of course many representations have been codified and crystallized over the several thousand years which is where the crazy 6-armed and elephant-headed deities come into being... and so you get many different temples dedicated to those particular aspects. Hindus choose which of those representations or aspects they would like to offer goodies in the form of sweets and flowers and prayers in order to receive the blessings which that particular aspect is able to bestow. Because Hindus are free to use their imaginations, the exact form of these representations can vary depending on the region... Shiva in Delhi appears differently (slightly) than Shiva in Tamil Nadu.

I visited Madurai in Tamil Nadu with the expressed purpose of visiting one such Dravidian (crazy ornately figural southern Indian architecture) Temple complex devoted to Shri Meenakshi, the fish-eyed goddess (one of the very few female aspects in Hinduism)... and the temple was drowning in the rituals of devotion. Non-Hindus weren't allowed inside the inner sanctums but the outer complex was swarming with pilgrims and devotees all performing whatever form their worship took on... arranging flowers in a particular pattern on the floor with offerings of oils and coconuts; slathering stone carvings with colored pastes and burning incense while muttering devotional mantras; ringing bells and marching around the complex in a small troupe blaring a long horn and accompanying a pallate carried idol dressed in extravagant fabrics. All of this all the time and all at once.

I also made the pilgrimage down to Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India ... along with several other thousand Indians... to watch the sunrise over the water where the Indian Ocean meets the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. I arrived on an overnight train at about 5 am and having had enough after about four hours I jumped on the next train north to hit the euro-touristy cliff-side beach town of Varkala in Kerala.

the who's of whoville?

The Aurovilians of Auroville. Auroville is this crazy '60's utopian community set up by an Indian guru named Sri Aurobindo and his 'partner' a French woman who went by 'The Mother'. They started this project with many of the 'hip' ideas of the '60's, including education, farming, sustainability, environmentalism and community, and it's still growing today, albeit slowly... this is India after all. They have managed to build this huge golden golf ball of a structure called the 'Matrimandir' which is the soul of Auroville. It's a community meditation chamber without any idols, rituals, or requirements, and the only object occupying the space besides people is a large crystal that is lit by a sunbeam using tracking mirrors on the top (during the day of course, at night it's lit electrically). I couldn't get in to see inside of the Matrimandir chamber because it's not a tourist attraction, but I love the idea of this place.

Their 'charter' states:
1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

You can check out more if you have any interest at http://www.auroville.org/

I have to say that I really found much of what 'The Mother' said and wrote inspiring and much of it felt true to me as a person and felt right in what I would like to see the world strive for. "Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity." - The Mother. I love that someone out there is at least trying this experiment, and I hope more are joining each day, but there's something about it that just isn't quite right for me.

I think what I just can't swallow is the fact that it's a group. I can't get past the group 'think' and the group 'speak' that goes along with belonging to a group, any group. I know, I know, we all belong to some group and that culture determines what we think and how we say things to a large degree, and the group think and speak of my born-into culture is perhaps more insidious, and at least the people who live in Auroville are making a conscious choice to determine their own values and morality and act in accordance with those, and I know that it takes a group of people to accomplish much of anything, but I just wouldn't be able to shake the feeling of buying into something or being coerced and manipulated by the group will.

For me, what they ask of you is too great a price. You are required to serve the Divine Consciousness and I don't believe this is a 'group' activity. True, the whole point of a universal oneness is that it's a 'group' connection with the irreducible oneness of everything, but I think as soon as a name is given to this underlying abstraction, and language used to describe the concept, it becomes limited by and manipulated by those who determine the language. I prefer my devotion and connection to the 'divine consciousness' indefinable and individual, experiential not linguistic. I wish there was a place like this that didn't require me to sign any agreements for conformity... although obviously in order to function a society requires a contract for actions, and whether we physically sign a piece of paper or not we consent (for the most part) to this system, but I just can't agree to any contract that requires not simply a certain way of 'acting' but also a certain way of 'thinking'. I wish they would have just let me come and go as I pleased. Now I feel left out of the group and I want in... but on my own terms and not theirs. Of course that's not how it works is it.

french fry

It's really hot in Pondicherry. It's funny to me how much a little French makes a huge difference to me in whether or not I like something. There's a completely different vibe in Pondicherry from anywhere else in India, obviously because it was a French autonomous region until the 1960's, and I really enjoyed the mix of South Indian 'laziness' with the French laissez-faire. Actually, the South Indians of Tamil Nadu aren't so much lazy as they respect the heat. They take breaks during the day from around 12 until 4, and they get done what they can in the cooler times. Pondicherry reminds me of New Orleans. I loved riding my rented bike around the colonial streets and snapping up quirky blends of modern architecture mixed with the Indian exhuberance for color and pattern and intermittantly tempered (only slightly) by Catholic reserve.

diwali

The overnight train to Varanasi passed uneventfully and without much hassle, and I actually thought I had gotten away without being set upon by a gaggle of young boys as is usually the case with me... until they found me out in the last hour. Actually, a very nice and very well-spoken 13-year-old boy came up to me in the morning about an hour outside Varanasi and so we started speaking in the usual manner.... what was my name, what was his, where was I from, what did I do, etc. I learned that he was from Varanasi and was attending a very prestigious boy's boarding school near Gwalior but had been given a few days leave to come home for Diwali, the Hindu New Year and Festival of Lights (basically one big excuse to set off really big fireworks seemingly in each others faces without any reagrd for personal safety or that of passersby). Kushagya's (that's the boy) friends from school soon joined the conversation and we spent the last hour chatting about their interests (Cricket of course) and mostly about the more outgoing boy in particular... who was also very polite and well spoken and really very funny. Kushagya stayed more in the background, but when it came time to leave the train he offered me a ride to my hotel so that I wouldn't have to fight through the rickshaw wallahs vying for their chance to rob me. I accepted not really knowing what to expect. He said it was no problem, that it was on his way, and that he would have his driver drop me off. His driver?

I soon found out that Kushagya's father is a devloper and comes from very old money in Varanasi. His great grandfather was an extremely wealthy landowner and philanthropist who donated much of the money to build the renowned Hindi University in Varanasi, as well as a major non-denominational temple. On the way to my hotel, Kushagya phoned his mother on his cell and after the briefest of introductions (of which the only word I caught was 'architect') handed the phone to me. Kushagya's mother was delightful and she invited my to their house the next day for Diwali... hooray!

The next day I phoned their home and his mother gave me some directions and a time to come over at 6pm. Jen and I set out in an auto-rickshaw and we had him drop us in what we thought was the right area. After a few wrong turns in the dark, and a few awkward wrong doorbells and some more awkward questions, we started walking down a pitch-black lane towards what was supposed to be a music school. Suddenly headlights of a jeep came careening around a corner and skidded up alongside us... a hand reached out from the passenger side and a boy's voice said "hello doug"! Kushagya and I shook briefly before Jen and I jumped in the back for a quick u-turn (his driver/friend was behind the wheel... he is only 13) and a short ride back in the direction we had been headed to their house.

Kushagya Gupta's extened family lives in a beautiful modern Haveli built by his great grandfather, and where I met his mother, father, one older sister who is studying journalism in Delhi (another is living in California studying law and is married to a nano-technology researcher), a much older brother, a grandmother, an uncle, cousins, nephews, etc. They all shared the house in comfort and closeness. As it happened, an older couple from Vancouver was also present and had found themselves there by similar auspicious means. We spent the rest of the evening nibbling on sweet cakes, sipping tea, discussing modern India, and watching the kids shoot off fireworks, all followed by a lovely dinner.

The main discussion revolved around the increasing rise of the new Indian middle class, and the specific cultural influences making India unique in the developing world. Mr.Gupta, the father, who had clearly grown up in a privaledged house, seemed at a bit of a loss as to how to function for a few simple tasks because almost all of his house staff had gone home to their families for Diwali. This turned out to be rare or impossible in past years because of a lack of money. However, more and more poor Indians are starting to be able to afford things like train or bus tickets and I have certainly met quite a few on the trains.

From what I can discern thus far, the two most powerful forces of Indian culture are an uncompromising devotion to Family, and an equally living breathing devotion to the Hindu dieties as strengthened by direct experience and application in everyday life. The Family is the center of life, and one can not exist without it. The extended family usually lives together in the same house for their entire lives, marriage is almost always determined by families by arrangement and not love, married women go to live with their husbands family, a seperate house seems unheard of. On the plane to Chennai I met a young Indian woman who had just been in Delhi visiting her family for Diwali. She had been working in Chennai for a year and had already put in for a transfer back to Delhi. It wasn't just that she didn't like Chennai (which I completely understand) but that she missed her family and wanted to be with them. Most I've talked to about this find the western experience of leaving the family house a sad and empty existence. They want to be close with their families and can't imagine the alternative. I, of course, can't imagine living as they do on top of each other. What I see as stiffling, they see as comforting. Where I see freedom they seem to find emptiness. Most, of course, aren't any where close to being as comfortable as the Gupta's.

ganga puja

In Varanasi everyone does anything and everything in the Ganges (Ganga)... it is their cultural and spiritual center. They swim, bath, wash clothes, make offerings to the mother river, cremate their dead on her shores and spread the ashes in the water. The river is life and death and everything in between.

About the cremation, apparently bodies must be cremated within 24 hours of the person passing away, which makes for a steady stream of bodies and funeral pyres and there are stacks upon stacks of wood for the burning. A body requires 350 kg of wood in order to be completely cremated and the process takes 3 hours to complete. Wood is expensive and so a local group takes donations to help pay for those who can not afford. Varanasi is said to be a most auspicious place to die, and many Hindus believe that if they are spread in the Ganges then all of their past lives' sins are washed clean and they are relieved of the burden of reincarnating for another cycle. Because of this many come to Varanasi at the age of 65 and simply await death... volunteering their time to serve others, and begging. Babies are not burned, nor are pregnant women, because a child is born clean and has not had the chance of life. Sadhu's are also not burned as they have cleansed themselves in this life by abstinance from pleasures. These bodies are all simply floated out into the river and sunk with stones. Women family members are not allowed at the burning Ghats because there is still the fear of Sati (expectation by a family that the wife throw herself on the burning pyre of her dead husband) even though it has been outlawed for years.

Every night in Varanasi some city cultural/religious organization puts on a puja at the main Dasaswamedh Ghat for all to experience and participate in the blessing of the mother Ganges. The ceremony begins after dark with a blast on a conch shell and involves 7 men dressed in pink/orange tunics with ivory sashes, accompanied by a harmonium, a tabla player, and some chanting, and going through a repetative circling with various instruments of faith and devotion... a flaming candelabra, burning incense, a peacock feather. All manner of tourists, both Indians and foreigners, locals, beggars, street kids, cows, goats, and sadhu's are present. It's the most spectacular people watching in India. The sadhu's circulate with offering plates for donations and try to swipe your forehead with a spot of red powder every chance they get. We tried to avoid the blessing but, despite our wishes to be damned, Jen and I were saved by Mother Ganges.

There are street kids everywhere down at the Ghats, most of whom are hustling for a Rupee, and most of whom are both beautiful and sad at once. I saw this one girl (10ish?) with her two brothers (pictured below... the boy in the middle is making a face, that's not how he looks normally fyi) each of the three days we went to the main ghat. I think she lived there. We also saw a woman who looked unmistakably like their mother each time... she was often floating around nearby but was mostly uninvolved in their doings. The kids were sweet but definitlely toughened by the necessities of their lives. The girl got into a fist fight with a slightly older and bigger girl right next to me and, although her mother quickly came over to stop it, I could see that there were many complexities to the heirarchical social structure and territories. One morning I watched as the girl dressed several cuts and scrapes herself... one on her upper inner right thigh, another on her left ankle, and a third on her left arm. From somewhere, to my great surprise, she produced an antibiotic ointment along with some gauze and medical tape, which she used quite deftly to clean and dress the wounds. Each of the kids said hello everytime we saw them, and they didn't ask for anything after our initial meeting, only a smile and a handshake and maybe a funny face with a laugh and then they were off. They seemed happy, intelligent, curious, open, strong, and it was only me that felt sad. Had it come to it, I would have defended these kids as if they were my own.