Reductio Absurdio: The Trip In The Ever-Popular Listmania Format

John's India 2005 Top and Bottom 10

Bottom 10
10. All manner of biting and infesting bugs.
9. If the old slogan "honk if your horny" is true than India is perhaps the randiest nation on earth. There is an everpresent cacaphony of noise, often loud.
8. Trashy streets, trashy yards, trashy lots and no trashy lingerie. How bad is it? A wastebasket has to be dressed up like a 5 foot rabbit to get any notice and thereby use.
7. Slow, insidious death by rupee. At every interface there seems to be someone trying to get those rupees from your wallet by all manners and means (begging, services, etc). And whatever you thoughtfully deliver is never quite enough. This seems to happen over and over again as you go through your "errands".
6. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust; Mother India is Dust Bowl champion again.
5. Teeming masses and seething poverty - reminiscent of Dante's imagery of hell with thousands of desperate, wailing souls in foreground and background.
4. Caution: when traveling the rough and bouncy roads of India it is helpful to not look forward. Why? Because it is too emotionally draining to constantly have your entire freakin' life flash before you eyes. How many close encounters with the grim reaper do you need in one trip to the post office? If you haven't gotten it yet, these guys drive like Matrix wannabees, that is, totally nuts and risk-taking.
3. Welcome to St. India's Nationwide Rehabilitation Hospital. Its bold concept is to actually have no physical plant or patient rooms: all the deformed, mutilated and paraplegic patients will have the freedom to roam or slither everywhere. We call it patient empowerment.
2. Last I checked seeing the air you breath is not a good thing. I might be funny that way, call me a renegade, I just feel that air should be breathed and not seen.
1. Yes, lets march to free the farm animals; lets not forget that you can't free the animals without freeing the animal poo too. Needed road sign in India: Watch for falling cow dung. One false step and your up to your ankles in warm, soft, slippery and stinky stuff. Now that makes for a lovely day, doesn't it?

And now the top 10.
10. Where else can you get a full and tasty breakfast for 23 cents?
9. They love flowers and put them everywhere - cars, food stalls etc. Its a very nice touch.
8. Truly awesome tea or chai, as its known there.
7. The blessing of just about everything all the time.
6. Yogis and yantras, pundits and puranas, mantras and mudras, Ganeshas and gurus.
5. The desire to please is so prevalent, almost to the point of being displeasing. They, the Indians, really seem to care that you are enjoying their services and goods. They don't "mail it in".
4. Real Pilgrims. Thousands walk hundreds of miles often barefoot to the holy shrines for their spiritual sadhana. Inspiring to say the least.
3. Smiles. There, there is mainly the Now, they live in the present which increases the Presence and its byproduct: smiles.
2. Living life in the symbolic realm, so much so that one loses the distinction between the map (symbol) and the territory (material reality). This can lead to intoxication... God intoxication.
1. Yoga.

India-a-holia

How ironic is it that this birthplace of so many of the worlds religions has managed to induce utter a-hole behavior out of one somewhat peaceful minded guest? The sad fact is, what with the language barrier and sheer desperation of the masses here, the only thing that seems to work is a skillfully blended combination of "stink-eye", "silent treatment", and "snarl" with an occasional forceful "no". There is eternal fixation on the rupee mixed with the petulant demanding of the offering of a particular service like carrying a bag 4 feet, turning on the AC in the car, catching a short ride in a very slow and diesel dust spewing tricycle kind of thing. OK, so the nice relatively rich Westerner gives in, offers a smile and asks himself, "why the hell not?". This is followed by the exhortation of a "tip" (in my mind/culture that means optional) - with the rupee number well out of line with prevailing wage and remuneration patterns. So I offer a fair tip in consideration of said patterns which is met with a growl, howl, and mean threats which while mysterious in content (I don't know word one of Kannadian) are quite obvious in tone. I am reduced to walking around ignoring the people's faces; less engagement, less chance for these heart-hardening, feather-ruffling interactions.

"You Come.... Next One..... You Come... Yes, Next One...."

And so it goes for hours.


This is the sound of dawn in Mysore at the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga Research Institute. The non-Indians are up before the Indians and breathing/sweating with abandon and verve. I could call them Westerners, but there are a number of Japanese in our midst. Perhaps first worlders would be more appropriate. We have come with visions of yogic bliss and impossible backbends in our psyches. We have the strong idea that these two very different things are, in fact, the two ends of a chemical reaction. Backbends lead to bliss and bliss returns the favor and propels the backbend into ever and evermore anato-geometrical absurdity.

It goes like this: 65 minutes of intense postures with jumps, lifts, floats, flattenings and twists. The breath is controlled, often poorly, with "ujjayi" pranayama. The gaze is softened with previously agreed upon focus points known as the drishti. The mind is harnessed with intense concentration on posture, breath, gaze and perhaps "Ishwara Pranidhana" (praise, honor to the Higher Power de Jour). Guruji and family reitereate the call for the next first worlder to come in from the waiting room. They are sequestered there, watching their fellow aspirants tackle the pratice (sadahana) through an opened, completely regular-sized door. The watcher-waiters wonder if they are next or not. Like so much of the Indian experience what appears random is not and what appears orderly is not. Its never what you think it is so you learn rather quickly not to think. As far as I can tell there are no "Policy and Procedures" notebooks sitting anywhere in the land otherwise known as Bharata. This keeps you guessing until the mind finally gives up on guessing. I find that when I give up guessing what's next, there is not as much going on upstairs. Its like your apartment neighbor has finally given up the lively and loudish arguement he was having with the wife and some peace ensues; as above, so below. And then that ephereal state of beingness ensues or, paradoxically, complete idiocy and resultant "deer in the headlights" state of awareness.

"Next One", Guruji call out in the Kannadian accented English. Another backbend victim has just been felled like some kind of Redwood behemoth in the forest. For at the end of the 70 or so minutes comes the backbend sequence which I still haven't fully figured out. They "help" (fine line between help and hindrance here) you do three dropbacks with your arms crossed across the chest. Scary? You bet it is, especially since they don't speak English! On the fourth pass into the world behind your head you are gestured to grab your feet, calves etc. Do the geometry. A compromising position, indeed. In a flash you are upright and motioned down to the mat sitting. Whereupon, with enthusiasm and glee they press your shoulder blades to your knees with purposeful, workmanlike action. This is not a subtle adjustment. Then comes the yoga mating call, "You come". You are given the nod and sent to the changing room to finish off your practice with about 10 more postures.

"Next one".

"You come".

"You come".

It goes on and on for hours, and I know each "next one" represents one of us Indian-sort-of-wannabes who has just had his back mashed like a polywog in some 4th graders' science experiment.

Blissed out yet?

From Arunjuez to Kaivalyam

Recipe for a spiritual experience.

One music player with Rodrigo's Concerto De Arunjuez, some decent headphones, a sense of wandering with no particular place to go, back alleys with black and yellow cows, hundreds of Mysorians all about their day, no street signs or identifying landmarks, the only recognizable words are the various names of the Vedic pantheon, the sun is shrouded with haze, smoke and dust; add one's own personal sense of Presence.

Bake and let sit for awhile, perhaps even stew a bit, come back to the breath again and again and feel the slightest of smiles, be in that place of awe with awareness of karmas and Self. See the generational rock-crushers, feel the presence of human messiness with great meandering trees reaching for dingy skies on your path.

So alone and yet so very much together; one may dare to venture a suggestion of that yogic sweet spot known as Kaivalyam. Dare I be so bold? And at the moment of grasping at epiphanies, it falls like a house of cards back to Earth, back to profanity.

Now where is that auto-rickshaw when you need one?

Gee... Guruji

Appreciation for what I have.

This entry is dedicated to my teachers in Santa Monica, California; notably Chuck Miller and his partner, Maty Ezraty. I have been in and out of their classes for the last 6 years. After being here, in Mysore, I am all the more impressed with how they have taken the practice as taught in the Ashtanga yoga shala (shala means school) and refined and evolved it. They have taken it to a higher level with Maty's emphasis on alignment principles and Chuck's philosophical discourses. And I have benefitted from their tireless dedication to the practice and their students. It is through the guidance that they have given me that I have learned that the nature of Yoga is through the "creative frustration" that churns in the body and mind and whips up what in Sanskrit is called tapas or heat. It is through this that the habitual grooves of movement and thought are partially - ideally totally - diminished and one can move freely in the world as a spiritual being. In my heart of hearts, I thank Maty and Chuck for their gifts.

I look forward upon my return to their continued guidance.

Maroon Robes of Sadness

We got up at 4 am today.

They were most likely already up as a group of seven of us Ashatangis entered the SUV. We journeyed across dark Indian countryside to the encampment of Tibeten refugees about 60 miles north of Mysore. Its name: Bylekuppe, the first settlement granted by the Indian government after the Chinese overran Tibet in 1958. (Where was my country then?) We arrived at dark and watched the sunrise in empty and massive temples.

Amazing; and I at last had my contemplative temple experience in India courtesy of Tibet.

Around seven am the grade school boys filed into a smallish temple and began the chants. Armed with clickers, bells, their voices, one huge drum and 3 or 4 wild sounding horns they recreated the music for the end of the world for an hour and a half. Their sweet discipline, their young faces, blended to create a sense of hope for their future. As well as sadness that they shall not know their true home in the roof of the world.

Boycott Chinese goods.

Is that even remotely possible? What isn't "made in china"?

One thing is for certain: injustice in a deep shade of burgundy and saffron.

The First Mysore Moments

Its here. I'm here.

I write this from the infamous Green Hotel, a mile or so from Guruji, aka sri K. Patabbi Jois, and his Yoga Shala. I made my offering (or tuition) in rupees and dollars and let it go. I gave him the gifts and notes I had been carrying from times and time zones afar. He asked about Chuck, "is he still teaching?", I said "yes, at least in Santa Monica until May or so" as I looked at the soft hands draped in gold. I felt nervous, a little tight in the gut - was it true? Had I really become another devotee who traipsed across oceans and mountains to leave his dough at the feet of a 90 year old "Master"? Is this the man of a rational school of thought? And yet for so long I had wanted to come this way to see him before Yama claimed him for himself; so in a sense I have accomplished my goal - to be with Guruji in Mysore whilst he still is clear and present.

A few times I asked myself, "what have I gotten myself into?" Thoughts appeared - hey why don't you just go home to sweet, friendly and familar Santa Monica and let go of this nonsense - and I let those thoughts go, just normal trepidation.

"You come tomorrow at six-thirty".

Ok. I'll see you then Mr. Guruji and I'll be trying my hardest not for perfect asanas (thats too easy) but rather to not have any expectations.

The blog is not dead.

Meanwhile back at the Indian ranch....

The journey in the Southern sections of India continues. I have not been able to write much due to answering e-mails and driving through this vast country at about 20 miles per hour. A bike might have been faster. Yet this is Mother India, so where is the need for speed, it is the big wait, it happens at its pace and has little concern for your petty schemes. It comes in big detours, small detours and then just as you are about to give up the ghost, she offers such a pearl, such a jewel, such a fantastic shortcut that faith and hope are restored.

We have seen the pilgrims, this is a male endeavor. Those followers of Muruda wear a bit of orange and walk barefoot to Palani?. Other are devotees of Ayappa and travel (barefoot) to a deep jungle forest temple in the mountains and mostly wear black. And I reflect on my quasi-pilgrimage. In comparison, so soft, so Western, so much on my terms. Yet I have come the farthest, nearly half way around the planet. And I don't know what I'll find in Mysore. In essence, what I have learned here is not to expect, not to project and just be with whatever comes up in each passing moment. The conjured up images derived from conversations, media, desires, myths and archetypes rarely match the reality - why would this be any different?

The mantra I have received here is not in Sanskrit, it is simple, it is: it is what it is.