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.

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.