The following is what Suchoo wrote about his "Dhyana Yatra Trip" experience. I thought it worth to sequence the last four of his narrations, in which he talks about his "experience" ('reverence' is what that came to my mind first). I was not a part of this "Trip" - but, on reading the series that Suchoo wrote in this blog, I somehow started feeling that I too should make this trip, if not now, atleast sometime in future. The way Suchoo has recorded the experience is worth a lot of appreciation as he did not attempt to make it look like a travel guide. With such a wonderful recording, I feel the creation of this blog is well served.
Go on and read the sequence, I am sure, it is worth a few minutes of your time....
-Gowri
Silence by Choice (Walk towards the peak - 8)
It is time to record few subtle moments that I enjoyed during the Dhyana Yatra Trip during Oct 2007.....I am in a way relieved as I had already penned down the fundamentals and the non-essentials (I really mean it !!) before touching this area.....as I can get down to the business in this posting & also the next one which is dedicated on Kedarmath...
One wonderful aspect of the tour was the lectures of Sadhguru played with a help of a projector and a Laptop....at least on 3 / 4 occasions during the trip... I never had any idea that his physical absence could be substituted so wonderfully with such powerful lectures videographed during the earlier Visits (in fact he spoke to us for couple of minutes after one of the lectures - over phone - from US....I think it was at Hrishikesh when his voice was heard by all of us wishing us all a safe and wonderful journey!!)...as I never had the curiosity to understand things before things get unveiled at Isha.....be it their yoga classes OR during my volunteering experiences...
The first lecture was played at Hrishikesh at early morning before getting started towards the hills.....He spoke few things that I clearly understood but could not appreciate too much at that point of time....He was telling the importance of being in the space of the majestic Himalalyas & how it can melt down a person & make him feel little....I was so absorbed with that wonderful lecture....which was so deep and abstract in few places and there was a second part of the lecture giving us some basic instructions on taking care of ourselves.....(He was specifically addressing the US people like this....."No helicopters will come for our rescue...& it is important that our US meditators clearly understand that we dont have any external emergency support mechanism except our own Doctors Crew in the tour.....")
I absorbed his every word and his sweet demeanour as usual.....but did not expect myself to be in full tears till the time we reached Badrinath....!!
I was in a bus which contained Salem and Pondy People and just one in the bus known to me already before this tour...The whole group had been coming from Chennai together and were enjoying themselves, playing and few of them busy in shooting snaps outside windows...
I did not have the urge to speak to any one and was cuddling in the last corner seat (so that no one will come to challenge me or my seat !!) just looking up the huge mountains and measuring it steadily from the bottom of the crust....where I could see the River Alakananda flowing bit greenish..silently....The scenic beauty did some thing more than visual taste....!! I got into a very fluid state....wiping my tears which was continuous and found it very difficult not to get into a huge cry annoying every one around.....
I really felt the meaning of Sadhguru's lectures in the deepest possible manner.....which infact was clearly a post mortem analysis after the tears started...I was wondering about the stillness and depth of my perception for a while and it took me at least few hours to start realising the connection of what He spoke and my mental state....I was so sharp even to watch and entertain a small sense of pride of being able to be "fit" in the terms required by his prescription.....!!
I had not prepared my body sufficiently for the tour...inspite of warning that we need to walk for atleast 6 to 8 KM for atleast 2 months....I always had this mental block on physical exercises and remember walking just 2 /3 days in total....promising myself to get started on the next day....During the trekking, I suffered the pain like hell because of this physical shape of mine....but thats later....!!
Here, in the bus, I was silently crying trying to be as soundless as possible....feel like crying louder when few in the bus were busy to take snaps crawling themselves outside the windows....I was sure some of them would have noticed me but I really did not mind.....!! The mountains, the high speed river flowing underneath, the healthy and rugged cattle which obstrused the way here and there..., the innocence in the boy who stood along with his cattle looking at the speeding buses, the formations & reformations of the clouds....there was nothing else to see but it was simply too much for me....!!
Honestly, I would not have felt bad even if the tour had ended after that bus journey which shook me to my spine....!! It was so sensible to remain so senseless.....it was so wonderful to just helplessly watch and cry at the hugeness of the mountains....I had been to Tirupathy, Ooty, Kodai and climbing up the hill is not some thing new to me.....Definitely the great moments at the bus is due to the combination of the wonderful words spoken before the bus journey, my receptivity levels towards the lecture, my identification with the group that travelled, the nice co-travellers who were magnanimous enough not to disturb me....more than Himalayas....
But still, it is so nice that all of them happened as a wondeful cocktail....and here I was enjoying myself.....The deep impact lasted even after we reached the Hotel at Badrinath some time in the evening......!! I was there walking all alone in a busy street leading towards the Badrinath temple....and reached the room by 7 PM in the night only to find my room mate (every where, we shared the room...some time it was 4 people, some time it was 2 /3 people...depending on the room size)....had not reached back.....
I had no sense of complaining and was waiting in the chill air outside the room without sufficient warm clothing upon me.....I was sitting in the floor near the door mat waiting for the room mate who had the keys with him....!!
I did not mind to wait for him.....I needed the aloofness in the chill air outside much more than courteous talks inside the warm room.....For that matter, I could have walked to some other room and had stayed inside with them until our room opened up....I had no urge to do it.....
suchoo
===================
While I was trying to express my lack of urge to speak on my first day at Badri, now I would like to write about my silence for the next three days - forcefully imposed on me after that mind blowing lecture on the subsequent day morning at Badri...
A lecture of Sadhguru was played in the morning in a hall arranged for this purpose at Badri where he spoke about few extra ordinay things about spirituality with special reference to Kedarnath.....!! It wont be too irrelevant to write down the exact statements, but honestly I feel now as if I dont remember many of the things spoken by him.....though I can vividly recall how those words exploded on me....He spoke the speciality about Kedarnath and towards the end of the lecture, he suggested it would be better to remain silent till the time we reach this holy place and as long as we are there.....!! (which I was doing al ready!!)
I had my second innings of hot tears flowing while he was lecturing and realised that it was a great opportunity for me to have joined this tour.....!! I reached back to the room and pulled my diary from the suitcase and wrote down with shivering hands...that I am not going to speak a word from that moment till we reach Kedar (Time was 11.50 AM when I wrote this sitting in my cot with tears in my eyes)......I was not aware that my silence is going to last for 3 full days as our buses got held up on the way due to a landslide...and we were staying in our hotel - enroute - for close to 36 hours.....I did not mind it and remained absolutely silent gesturing to people IF it became unavoidable....
At Kedar, we were adviced to start trekking by around 8.30 AM from the base (which is called as Gowri Kund) and it is very foolish on my part to start walking with just 200 Rs in my pocket....not picking up some more money just in case I needed to hire a horse on the way.....I was walking all alone with the chanting in the mouth (that was adviced by Him......) and there was drizzling thrice during the long 14 kilometre trek....Wearing the rain coat, I was steadily walking towards the Holy Shrine in a steady climbing mountain....though some caution was needed to get away from the horses that was quite a huge traffic....I managed quite well in this first trekking reaching up by around 2.30 PM - late by 1 & half hours ......than the standard time...
After reaching up and getting into a hotel with primitive condition, I started crying partly aloud sitting in my cot...partly due to leg pain and balance due my mental state....After gathering some balance, I walked towards the place where hot hot bondas were served to us with tea....with the usual reverence for the cooking crew, it was quite rare in my experience to eat some thing quite mechanically not really enjoying it too much....!! I asked some one standing there by gestures on the direction to temple.....and was guided by him clearly....
I went to the temple and the first thing that struck me when I reached close to the temple was the size of it....it was too small and deceptively simple to what had been spoken about it by Sadhguru....Not much crowd and I was able to walk to the main shrine within couple of minutes....then started the peak cry......!! I was holding my hands in reverence and the whole rib cage seemed to have become spongy with my drooping shoulders...and I was crying my heart out ...... with my eyes closed.....FOR NO REASON......
Reaching closer to the Lingam, I was still crying, now with decibel level slightly higher without minding the eyes of the head man there...who did not mind me staying there for few seconds extra than others...I could hear an old lady whispering to her husband (seemingly from some rural area) pointing at me and telling him that I am crying (all in Hindi....I was hearing her but was not paying attention to them).....I could see the lady's voice started breaking as she kept telling about me to her hubby and she too started crying.....When I turned back towards the door, a temple guy was literally embracing me asking me to put some money in hundi with my prayer...(he was telling me ..."sab teek ho jayegaa baisaab....chintaa math karnaa!!"...while I obeyed him, I wanted to cry back "sab badiyaaah..hai...baisaab.....!!"....)
when I was out of the shrine, I felt ok.....and really felt the lightness of the body.....Looks like my imposed silence helped me to get a wonderful experience.....Crying is quite a common thing for me but never in front of a deity....!!
I am eager to visit Kedar once again....preferably all alone...without even the comfort of being in a group.....!! Its worth it...I mean, a visit from chennai to North just to visit this temple...and returning back home without trying to dilute the experience with numerous other visits.....!! I am sure to make it....rather, make it available for me once again......!!
suchoo
============================
Walking & Peaking (Walk towards the peak-10)
Before writing about my specific trekking experiences of Dhyana Yatra Tour - Oct 2007, I have to re-emphasise once again on my bad shaped body & the mental blocks I always had for physical exercises.....!! I have recorded on this laziness quite frequently in this series but this needs a special mention in this particular posting as I am going to cover the cramps and leg pains, the mental calculations & physical exhaustion - in this piece....!!
I had walked on 4 days....to and fro Kedar on consecutive days and to and fro Gomuk on another set of two days.....!! Without adequate practise, I fully realise my experience of this tour had become slightly dominant with pains and suffering more than pleasant memories but I dont regret it.....(this is a realy problem, right ??...I mean, the justification mode!!)
We were adviced to have a small backpack holding the warm clothes and rain coat & I started quite briskly holding the bamboo stick that was available aplenty in the lined up shops....which was extremely important for trekking - particularly the novices like me....I still remember that I was slightly amused at the end of the first kilometre at Kedar that it "seemed" to be quite easy & realised the utility of the bamboo stick....though I had started gasping for Oxygen by the time I sighted the sign board showing that I had completed the first kilometre...
The mind started working from that moment and was pushing the eyes to search for the signboards and I started realising the state of my body from 5th kilometre onwards...I could clearly see that the legs get stiffened if I sit / take rest and decided to stand still in a corner of the path ....whenever I was exhausted....!!
After touching the seventh Kilometre, the kind hearted authorities had placed the signboard at the end of 500 metries but it seemed quite longer than the 1 kilometre space that I travelled in the first half....I could see many of my co-passengers overtaking me and few of them deciding to hire a horse but I was not the one to budge and to compromise (I just had 200 rs with me.....that never struck me as I can always borrow from some one of our group....!!)....The right leg, starting from the hip joint to ankle became heavier and heavier and I was limping the last two kilometre just with the energy of the other leg.....
During the initial phase, so much of thoughts were running in the mind and I started wondering if my creativity was taking away huge chunk of the energy levels. So many sentences were coined in the head trying to verbalise the pain & lamenting about the lack of fitness.... (the title to this piece "walking & peaking" was infact conceived during this walk.....which is quite ironical....I was actually drowning but the mind is coining great words to describe it !!)....
I infact remember that when I touched the end of some curve in the path - hoping that I could sight the top from there, I felt like crying to only see that it only lead to another huge streatch making the mind more tired than the body.....I also remember that I had a childish satisfaction to turn back and see once a while to see "how much I had covered"....from the earlier resting point.....It was clearly more a mind game and all my efforts to make it appear "smaller and easier" failed miserably....and I was looking quite jealously at few humble souls who were "just walking" without any ripple of thoughts and without calculating too much....as I was doing....!!
Gradually I started settling down with the pace and the rhythm of the chanting that was going on inside my lips (as adviced by Sadhguru - I was chanting "Shiva Shambo" continuously during the walk) , I could find few of the stretches passing by quite effortlessly as I forgot every thing else except the body movements associated with the walk...It would be a lie if I said that I just melted with the Mantra...(like few people told with lot of sincerity...I had it only in patches) and the distance of 14 km appeared to be extremely long in my experience....shattering all my convictions & persuasions to lift my spirits...
The experience of the second trekking was much more painful as it was quite longer than Kedar and the big difference is that it was quite scenic to look at the mountains on the way to Gomuk than the Kedar visit which was more like a tourist spot....!!
I was amused at the fitness levels of some of the volunteers and the teacher who travelled with us - walking quite effortlessly and who were able to be normal even after reaching the final destination..they needed no rest or relaxation.....Theoretically I can convince that "its all practise" but in the corner of the mind, I do long to reach that physical fitness levels....!!
When I look back on those long four days during the tour when we were trekking, I can distinctly remember the groaning and moaning more than the few moments when I felt walking like a machine without sensing the pain.....!! To summarise this posting on trekking, I realise that I have to go a long way- though some how I reached the prescribed destinations....!!
suchoo
===================
The endless journey (Walk towards the peak - 11)
I look at the various points that I had scribbled down during the journey to be covered in this series....and can see that I have covered just 50 % of what I intended to write...but still I feel fully satisfied and feel like closing this series of postings.....
Specifically, I have dropped out the points that I had noted down about the co-travellers - on their appetite for talking and the helpless temptations that they had to make a "yatra" into a "excursion"....Inspite of Sadhguru's appeal to remain silent, many of them were not able to keep quiet during the onward journey to Kedar...Some of them were so involved in silly jokes and expressing their dissatifaction about the food that was served....!! Inspite of keeping out of such entanglements, my mind was corrupt enough to keep recording them silently and I had scribbled them in my diary during the night before going to sleep....
When I read these points made about "others", I feel bit fed up with my own perversion on making a point of such trivial things... & sincerely feel it would be quite mean & disgusting to prolong this series trying to write about them.....particularly after writing the wonderful moments at Kedar and the view of mountains....!!
This Yatra had been of profound importance to me and I had longed to be a part of this tour for more than a year which got materialised all of a sudden....I wish to thank my circumstances which allowed me a two week long leave from office.....which was considered by me impossible until now...
The whole journey was a process of self discovery - how much I need to go farther in life...!! The process is still continuing once a while - when I get reminded about the majesty of mountains once a while & the memory of the little Kedar Temple comes to me once a while - even after so many days.... !! Even the pains during those long walks appear to be quite bearable now with the space of time....!!
I am approximately half way through the journey of life & when I watch the couple of grey hairs in the head while combing the hair - these days, I have a wry smile in my lips reminding myself to "step up" !! This innings of life is not going to be endless journey & its important that I learn the art of closing the gap between the things that I want to do and what I am doing.....!! Either I learn to close it by "stepping up" on few things OR learn to accept few things that is impossible for me to do by "being graceful enough" on me....It will be nice to die without the face becoming long and serious.....without cursing and complaining the world around.....
I wish the whole of the balance living years become a "dhyana yatra" for me and wish I am humble enough to learn from pains and sufferings also - if they are destined to happen....!!
suchoo
0 comments:
Post a Comment