We're in Amsterdam Safe & Sound

Though our entries have not caught up with where we really are, we wanted to let you know that we are safe and sound in Amsterdam, after being diverted to Belgium (just moments after the plane crash here.) We spent a few unplanned hours in Belgium and returned and are now enjoying a beer in Amsterdam.

Shiva Temple Thiruvannamalai

Sathya took us to the Shiva Temple, which Marty had been talking about going to since we were in Nepal. As non-hindus, we weren't allowed to go inside the depths of the temple in Kathmandu, but Marty insisted we'd be able to in Tiru. He was right and it was a powerful experience.

Outside of the temple on the ground were many designs, which I learned were called rangoli, traditionally created by women out of colored rice powder that decorate homes and temples as a form of thanksgiving, an adornment of the earth that nurtures us.

The Shiva temple is over 1000 years old and is carved in solid rock ornamented with hundreds of figures of gods, people, animals and plants. There are towers outside for the lower castes to who weren't allowed to enter the temple itself, but could worship from the outside.

We passed through a number of pillared halls called mandapam, to an inner sanctum (Marty says think of Indiana Jones with flaming torches for light) where the temple's main deity is housed. We were able to easily pass through the line, as we were with a Brahmin.

In this temple there were two inner sanctums, one with a Shiva lingam (a phallic shaped stone which represents the very instant of creation, or rather of regeneration, when the perishable regenerates itself in another form) and another inner sanctum where worship to the "mother goddess" was going on.

In in each tiny inner sanctum there were four or five priests elaborately adorned and covered in ash, performing rituals, offering, and chanting in front of each deity. It was dark, hot, stuffy and wild in there. And the energy was palpable. That's why the video camera was so shaky!

We weren't allows to photograph inside the temple so this is a scene from the outside (though inside the grounds.) Just to put it in perspective, the temple itself has an 20' high and 6' thick outer wall that runs 1/4 of a mile by an 1/8 of a mile. It is a huge space. In the video, you'll see the temple's elephant, Rukmini, whose mother had killed someone the day before Marty happened to visit the temple before in 1993. He was a bit fearful of getting near the elephant, and this video captures his relief and almost ecstatic smile after his darshan with the elephant.

The temple's cowshed housed many baby cows ( I suppose they use the milk the mothers for the services). I loved feeding them, some of them were only a week old. Their sweet demeanor and big brown eyes truly reminded me of my dog TT who passed a few days before we left on this trip.

We're currently posting this from London. We leave for Amsterdam this morning. We have a lot of great video from the Ganges river in Rishikesh. If we have the opportunity, we'll post it before we get back to Arizona. Here's a photo from our room in Rishikesh. More later.

Parotas, on the way to Tiru

After we left Ganeshpuri and the Nityananda shrine, we flew from Mumbai to Chennai (now Madras), in the state of Tamil Nadu. We spent the night at the Radisson, a good choice in India. That's where we discovered India is in love with Jon Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams' music. The server in the Regency Club played it loudly over and over and said it was the latest rage.

The next morning, after I received an ayurvedic foot massage that came complimentary with the room and Marty ate another dosa, we set off for a four hour drive to Thiruvannamalai (known as Tiru). Tiru is a small town in southern India, famous for its gigantic Shiva temple, Mount Arunachula, and the ashram of the great sage, Ramana Maharshi who died in 1950.

Along the way, our driver, another man named Ganesh, continuously beeped. It was so irritating that we were so relieved to pull off to a road side chai shop. Marty decided to eat whatever the man at the grill was making, because it was in the shape of a pizza. These "little pizzas" were later identified as parotas. This lunch was proving to be both fascinating and dangerous for our health.

The whole time the cook is making the parotas, you'll see a man brushing his teeth and washing up right behind him. Watch how the cook 'manhandles' the food after and serves it to us on a banana leaf.


We also ate the guavas that a woman was selling by the road. YUM! The chai was delicious too. We'll have a video on how to make that later from Rishikesh. We eventually made our way to the Sparsa EcoResort, a perfect place to stay while visiting Tiru.

Sparsa Resort in Tiru

We stayed at the Sparsa resort, a gorgeous eco resort about a mile from Ramana's ashram that we learned about from our friend who had just been to Mukti from Boston.

We watched the traditional pottery making technique, and got a parrot and rat astrology reading (the rat turned out to be a guinea pig.) These two creatures lived next to each other in a tiny divided wooden cage. When the door to their cage slid open, they were trained to run to a spread of cards and each chose one. The cards were pictures of various Indian gods. The ones the guinea pig and parrot chose apparently indicated that I'd have a strong body until I was 90 and that March 22nd of this year is a start of a long period of good luck (it's also our 6th wedding anniversary.) Marty isn't that into parrot, rat, or any type of astrological readings.

In Tiru, we met up with our friend Corrine's husband, Sathya, a Brahmin who's lived in Tiru for 14 years. We ate lunch a delicious lunch of spicy rice and yogurt and dahl at his home that his brother Krishanmurti made. After that he took us to the guest house he was building adjacent a rice field, and toured us through Tiru with his own private tuk tuk and his brakeless car.

Along the way, we saw many, many ashrams either newly built or just being built for followers of the 'living gurus' springing up around the area. This seems to be primarily because of popularity of Ramana's teachings and the people coming from the west to see where he lived who bring a readiness to seek enlightenment and willingness to spend money. In 1993 Marty stayed in Ramana Maharshi's ashram, it was much less crowded than today.

Ramana's Ashram

We caught a ride from Sparsa in a tuk tuk about a mile to Ramana's ashram. We passed an array of monkeys, dogs, and sadhus (covered in sacred ash in a variety of ways), worshippers of Shiva. They lined the roadsides and, napping just about anywhere.

We spent the afternoon at the ashram. It's very peaceful and in addition to the many Indian pilgrims, the ashram we saw many Americans and Europeans. People can stay there for a period of up to two weeks. Ramana's ashram provides a daily free meal to the sadhus, so they line up outside of the ashram gates, waiting.

The routine there consists of Brahmin boys chanting vedic mantras around Ramana's burial site (in the temple) and people circumambulate the shrine. In the video you'll see a very small room where Ramana actually died, or took mahanirvana. We found that we preferred meditating in the old hall where Ramana sat when he wasn't walking around the mountain (Mt. Arunachala) in his later years.

Like Nityananda's, Ramana Maharshi's appeal crossed numerous cultural and religious boundaries. So even though their temples are Hindu based, the teachings transcend any religion. It's the discovery of the Self that is the main emphasis.

Ramana's Enlightenment Experience at the Age of 16

Ramana Maharshi was an Indian Sage (1879 – 1950) best known for his teachings of self-inquiry. The most popular book he wrote was called Who Am I?

Ramana was born to a Brahmin family in the state of Tamil Nadu. At the age of 16, he had a life changing experience during which he spontaneously initiated a process of self-inquiry that culminated, within a few minutes, in his own permanent awakening.

He left his home for a mountain named Arunachala in Thiruvannamali where he lived in a cave for many years. He radiated a powerful silence which attracted followers and quieted minds. When asked for advice, he recommended self-inquiry as the fastest path to liberation, or moksha. His primary teaching is associated with Vedanta, and Jnana Yoga, and he recommends a variety of paths and practices.

Below is the video of his words as they are posted on the wall in the ashram. The sounds you hear as you read it are the sounds of the peacocks that surround the ashram.

Here is the transcript:
"It was in 1896, about 6 weeks before I left Madurai for good (to go to Tiruvannamalai - Arunachala) that this great change in my life took place. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it nor was there any urge in me to find out whether there was any account for the fear. I just felt I was going to die and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or any elders or friends. I felt I had to solve the problem myself then and there. The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: 'Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.' And at once I dramatised the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out still as though rigor mortis has set in, and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, and that neither the word 'I' nor any word could be uttered. 'Well then,' I said to myself, 'this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burn and reduced to ashes. But with the death of the body, am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert, but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of I within me, apart from it. So I am the Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.' All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truths which I perceived directly almost without thought process. I was something real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with the body was centered on that I. From that moment onwards, the I or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death vanished once and for all. The ego was lost in the flood of Self-awareness. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time. Other thought might come and go like the various notes of music, but the I continued like the fundamental sruti [that which is heard] note which underlies and blends with all other notes."

Mumbai (Bombay) to Ganeshpuri

While writing this entry, we hear that Slumdog won eight Oscars! The movie is about Mumbai, otherwise known as Bombay, a city that 19 million people call home (almost 3 times the population of Arizona). We are no longer in the state of Rajasthan, we flew Jet Airways to Mumbai in the state of Maharastra (one of the 24 states of India).

You'll see in the short video below that there are a LOT of slums, sidled right up to the new construction of huge highrises. The insanity of Bollywood's home is profound - tens of thousands of stray dogs, beggars, cows, mothers and children all competing for food in the garbage dumps, which are everywhere and mostly consist of plastic bags. This is the other side of India: it's living close to the earth.

There is a huge, thick layer of dirt that has landed on the plastic bag roofs of these huts and hangs in the air from the burning of diesel fuel, and the soundtrack to this place is the constant, high-pitched horn beeping. Beeping isn't done to get someone out of the way, it's mandatory if one is passing another cow, dog, person, bicyclist, truck, bus, car, or tuk tuk (the three-wheeled rickshaw.)

As we began this 1.5 hour ride north from Mumbai to Ganeshpuri, a tiny village where Marty lived in 1977, we listened to our Om Mane Padme Hum CD from Nepal. Then, we suggested our driver, Ganesh, who spoke almost English, choose the music. Between the incessant beeping and the Ganesh's favorite Bollywood song, the trip seemed like its own movie.