Puducherry

February 12, Puducherry

Happy 200th anniversary of the birth of Lincoln and of Darwin.

Happy 50th anniversary of Dr. King and Coretta Scott King's pilgrimage to India--now being retraced by their son.

And Happy Valentine's Day!

One political party here, the Sena, is trying to keep couples from celebrating Valentine's Day because it's further Westernization. Young people are playfully responding, sending Valentines and pink underwear to party members.

We are really glad to be here at the Sri Aurobindo ashram in Puducherry.
We like the pattern to our days. We meditate 2:30-3:00 in the morning, then back to bed. We rise later and bathe with a pitcher and bucket. We make our way through the lively, busy streets and crazy traffic to the ashram dining hall. We have all our meals in the Dining Hall and in silence. The meal is almost the same for each meal of the day and each day of the week and yet it always tastes good to us and is nutritious.

We walk to the ashram library.

The library has a kind of faded glory and books are musty and mildewed,
and still the place inspires a love for learning. The librarians work at old
upright typewriters, sit and read, and talk among themselves about family
and life. Everything seems quite pleasant and relaxed. A learned librarian
guides us and he always says, "it's a pleasure." At the library, we walk in
through the pillars, up the curved wooden stairs to the upstairs locked
collections of the library where we have received permission to view, two
books at a time, a collection of meditations on Sri Aurobindo's visionary
epic poem Savatri. We read a few verses and see the paintings a woman
painted based on the vision of the words described by The Mother. We
sit among sculptures, photographs, fresh flowers and mosquitoes reading
the beautiful poetry and seeing the beautiful images. For people who love
what we know of Whitman's poetry, Emerson's Oversoul, and the vision in
poetry and paintings of William Blake, this is a joy!

This is the way we spend the morning. Then to lunch. After lunch we each
do personal reading and writing and drawing and then an hour of taking
turns reading aloud. At 3:30 we gather with others for Tea Time and
conversation. We've met people from Kolkata and Chennai with whom
we've been very friendly. We ask questions and follow up on their
suggestions. We seem to be the only Americans here. There are
European people, mostly French.

After Tea Time, we return to the library or check email or explore. There
are 300-some buildings of the ashram spread out around the central city.
We walk to them -- cottage industries here include handmade paper,
batik, marbled silk, and by our rooms, incense is made from bark and
dried flowers.

We have classes at 6:00, one in Sri Aurobindo's prose writing Synthesis
of Yoga and The Divine Life, and the other class is in the many volume poem
Savitri. There are evening meditations.

We take off our shoes before we enter the Dining Hall, the Library, the School...

Last night we all filed out onto the playground. A regiment of elders,
all in navy blue shorts and white short sleeved shirts, were drilled in calesthenics. Then we all stood in tribute to Mother India. Then we sat and heard another old recording of The Mother giving a lesson and then sat afterword in silence. Then we filed by an open door with furniture and photographs of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, flowers and candles, a shrine to these two who their devotees see as manifestations of higher consciousness.

Oh yes, we witnessed a new car blessing at the Ganesh Temple--garlands
of flowers draped around the new car.

So far, it seems as if what we are to do here is be open and receptive,
to follow leads, to learn, keep silence, and not let the mosquitoes get us down.

We are so fortunate to have this time.

February 22, 2009

At the ashram we joined the Friday night Om choir. Tell Bryan!

On Sunday we returned with a group of volunteers to Auroville, the city being created with the dream of people the world over living in unity. We filled a bus and drove as the sun was rising, low and full and red in the sky. We drove through red dirt and dust to Auroville's plots of green, sparkling with early morning dew. We filed into the Matrimandir, the Mother Temple. Outside the matrimandir looks like a giant golden golf ball. As you walk up the interior spirialing ramps, the gold exterior creates a rosy glow. The interior is white marble with twelve marble pillars and channels of falling water. We all put on white socks to enter the central room which is carpeted white, under a huge domed ceiling. We sat silently in a circle on white cushions facing a solid crystal (the world's largest). Rays of the sun shine down from an opening in the dome and beam onto the crystal. It is a huge and silent, light-filled space. After 30 minutes, we filed out to work in the gardens. The two of us join a crew shoveling and carrying composte to a conveyor belt on a machine which sifts the composte, making fine dark soil. We worked a shift and then washed up for a meal. After the meal we were given a tour of the gardens by the man The Mother asked in the 1960s to create the gardens. He studied landscaping, gathered seeds and sapplings from plants from around the world to make the desert bloom. He created new flowers which The Mother named for higher consciousness attributes.

We are glad for our two weeks at the ashram. Before we left California, we were given a gift of a packet of folded oragami paper cranes with the invitation to spread peace. Before we left the ashram, we looked up significant people who guided our stay and gave each a crane, wishes for peace, and our appreciation.

We bussed from the ashram in Puducherry to Chennai to catch a plane to Mumbai and then on to Aurangabad and to Ellora. From Ellora we made day trips to Ellora Caves and Ajanta Caves.

Ellora Caves are carved out of rock from the top floors down. They are Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain temples. Ajanta Caves are a Buddhist pilgrimage site--temples hollowed out of rock and adorned with paintings. The Guide to the Sacred Places of Northn India is our companion book. The first morning at Ellora Bill was awake early ready to go with the excitement of a young boy--sculptures, paintings, and caves! Bill with his flashlights and headlamps was ready to explore. Such an adventure!

Wishes of peace for you and so much appreciation,
Love,
Barbara and Bill

February 10, 2009
Mt. Abu

We've spent 10 days at Mt. Abu. It's been good for us not to be in a huge city, but more than that Mt. Abu is a beautiful, magical place. In ancient times it was known as the place that increases joy. After Republic Day week-end, life quieted down here. The air has been clear, the skies blue, the mountains beautiful, the lake lovely, the sun warm, the evenings cool.

We've walked a lot around the lake, early morning when the monkeys also sit bathing in the warm sun, afternoon, sunset, little lights reflect across the lake in the evening. People rent horses, paddle boats, and feed the geese. We've hiked with the young couples and Gujarati youth tourists and families to sunset point and honeymoon point. We've walked to temples. One temple alongside the lake has a little manger of cows and a calf, another has 365 steps.

We've witnessed a lot of the rural and town life here and been friendly with people here on vacation from other parts of India. We've also had good conversation with people traveling from Brazil, Israel, and Germany. So many people have been friendly and helpful.

We've visited the sacred site of the Jains, the Delwara temples with their amazing marble sculptures, intricate, lacy, and extravagently multiple. The temples are called Hymns in Marble.

The Bharma Kumaris have their world center here. They have 7-8,000 centers in 95 countries. They have a university here and we have been students of BKU. We have sat in meditation with them and with their current leader a 93 yearold old energetic woman. BK teachers from aound the world are here for two week periods and they've included us in some meals, a picnic with field day games and dances, in meditations and teaching. It's been good to be included in such an international gathering. We've made nice connections with American and UK BK teachers.

We certainly don't see everything the way they do, but they are sincere and have created communities of meditation, cooperation, ethical living and service to the world. They are devoted to their meditaion and commited to living their values. Last night we sat with 100 BKs on the side of the mountain for an hour and a half, meditating as the sun set. There was barely any movement or sound among us.

Today we toured the hospital the BKs have here - free health care for all BKs and for the local people--all departments of physical health along with nutrition and meditation. They do many cleft palate surgeries for children. Though we are traveling with just a couple of pairs of pants each and a few shirts, nothing that looks professional, we were treated the same as doctors visiting from around the world. The hospital chief administrator met with us. When we said, "Oh you must be so busy..." he said, "I'm not so busy. I have time always for walking and meditating.

The BKs have one facility here to house 25,000 people which has the largest solar kitchen in the world.We will travel tonight on the overnight train to Mumbai then fly to Chennai (Madras) and then get a ride to Pudacherry (Pondicherry).We are healthy - full of gratitude and love.

Puducherry

From Mountain Abu, we traveled by overnight train, plane, taxi, bus, rickshaw, and foot to the Sir Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry in the southern India State of Tamil Nadu.

Night time road travel is daring. Big trucks with huge heavy loads, cement mixers, and fuel tankers with signs that say highly flammable don't have tail lights and of course the bicycles, pedestrians, and animals don't have lights.

In Mt. Abu we wore our fleece jackets and layers of clothes during the cold mornings and nights. In Puducherry we wear our lightest clothes and our mosquito repellant.

The Ashram is not a quiet place of retreat but in a bustling urban area. We walk a few blocks through wild traffic from our room to the ashram dining hall where we have all our meals in silence. We read and study in the ashram's library, meditate with its guests and residents at its flower-festooned samadhi (tomb and shrine of Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa, known as The Mother), take in drama and dance at its theater, take classes in its school.

At night when the city's promenade is closed to motorized traffic, we walk with all the groups of friends, couples, and families along the Bay of Bengal.

Many women here wear streams of flowers in their hair and many women ride bicycles, sitting up so straight and strong. Being in South India reminds Barbara of her Peace Corps years in the Fiji Islands.

We read in the newspaper that 1 million Tulsi sapplings are to be planted around the Taj Mahl to produce lots of oxygen and cleanse the pollution. We've been filtering our own water and not using the plastic water bottles, and we are more conscious and conserving in our use of products and paper. Along the Promenade the lights installed by the city of Puducherry are solar. It's been lovely to walk the Promenade during the evening under the full moon!

On Sunday and Thursday evening the ashram community gathers for meditation at an enclosed playground but open to the sky. A recorded lesson from The Mother who died in 1973 is played followed by silent meditation. After we left the playground, we walked by the Ganesh (elephant-headed son of Shiva) Temple just as the men were carrying out the shrine. A painted elephant leading the procession reached out its trunk and touched us both. Other people were presenting their children to the elephant or bowing to it and the elephant touched its trunk to their heads. We've now been blessed by an elephant.

We visted the nearby Kali temple and Auroville, the experimental international community. Auroville was inspired by Sri Aurobindo and organized by The Mother. It was inaugurated in 1968 when young people from 128 countries brought soil from their homelands, combined and collected the soil in an urn in the geographical center of the community. The dream of Auroville is a utopian community of self-expression, self-development and service to the greater good. Auroville has organic farming and solar power. Somewhere between 1500 and 2000 people are living there from thirty-some countires. The dream is 50,000 people living in unity.

You are in our thoughts. We send our gratitude, appreciation, and love to all.

Love,
Barbara and Bill