Friday 19 February 2010

Happy Losar!







This year the Tibetan New Year, Losar was celebrated at the 14th of February. I was so fortunate that I could visit the Tibetan Settlements here nearby on this particular day. My dear Ladakhi friend, Gurmet took me along with a Chinese yogi from the shala (which was a real act of compassionate and undicriminative friendliness, as the Chinese are not really welcome on Tibatean areas in the last years...)
About 90 kms from Mysore there is a big land which was given to the Tibetan refugees a few decades ago. By now there is a real community which is said the biggest settlement outside Tibet. Little villages spread on a big territory of hills and grass fields. We had long walks in the afternoon sun between the villages, enjoying the emptiness of the fields, the silence of the landscape and the look of the monks passing by on they scooters, in sunglasses and traditional red dresses. It felt like a different country - no crowd, no dust, no dirt, but silence, tranquility and peace of mind.
We visited huge and magnificent Tibetan Buddhist temples with amazing wall paintings of the wrathful and peaceful Buddhist deities, talked to very friendly and ever-smiling monks (they were the first in India who did not want to sell us anything!!!), watched the little kid-monks playing or carrying water and just sat long on the temple-stairs. Sera, a clean and light village of tranquility has only monks as inhabitants, about 5000 of them study here advanced Buddhist studies. It turned out that the first day of Losar is celebrated with family and friends indoor, so besides the temples all shops and restaurants were closed and the streets were quite empty. We didn`t mind at all, after the everyday noise and crowd `outside` it was like a present to enjoy some silence. Thanks to Gurmet who knows the place and some monks quite well, we could visit places which are not open for every visitor: without realizing it first, we were taken by a monk to the residence of the Dalai Lama, which was like the biggest blessing for the coming year. It had a very special energy field.

That day we entered the year of the Iron Tiger - let me citate here the greetings from Tenzin Palmo about the coming year:

`No matter how fierce the next 12 months, as
Shantideva so rightly said, "This world is full of sharp stones and
thorns, and we cannot cover the world with leather to make it soft to
walk on. But we can put leather on the soles of our feet as shoes and
sandals, and that way, we walk everywhere."
However hard we try, we can never make the world perfect and according
to our own wishes. That is impossible. But, the good news is that we
can change our minds, we can change our own attitudes, we can, indeed,
learn how to come back to our own pure awareness where we stop making
judgments and trying to change everything to our own egoistic ideals
and just relax into the present moment.`


Friday 12 February 2010

Mysore, madam!

It`s been almost two weeks ago that I arrived to Mysore, a medium-sized city (about 700.000 inhabitants) in the south of Karnataka where I am spending four weeks and study at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute - one of the main reasons coming to India.
Mysore used to be the seat of the maharaja`s for centuries. They were ruling the whole South-Indian area from here, and the city still keeps something from this historical elegance and respect. It is a city of palaces, the main attraction is an incredibly huge and really wonderful palace in the middle of the town. For the rest, markets, sellers, beggars, crowd, dust and smoke just like in every Indian city - spending one day in the center is like having an attack at my long and respiratory organs.
My yoga school is further away from the center, in a rich suburb area with huge villa`s, broad streets, big cars and motorbikes and elegant Indians. It almost doesn`t feel like India, so clean and neat is the whole environment. But the daily power cuts (reading in the evening with your torch, even preparing food at candlelight), and the lack of water remind me that I am in a different world with different values. I am staying in a little room on the roof, and can use the whole roof as my terrace and enjoy the starlight in the night. Coconut trees all around. It is amazing. In the morning the sun is just rising in front of my door, and the sounds of morning puja`s from the close-by temples make me awake every day. I live in the house of Indians, it`s an in-depth participating experience in their ways and lives. Mala, my landlady taught me how to wash my clothes on her `washing-stone`, hitting out the dirt in their traditional way, provided me with a gas oven to prepare my food on the roof and if the water just stops running from my tap, she is generously sharing her saved water from the big tanks. Once we stayed for two days without running water, doing all our washing and cleaning from buckets - a good way to fully appreciate the fact that we have water at all. Having water is not that evident here than at our side of the ocean - it is usually stored in big tanks on the top of the houses, where it has to be refilled regularly, but like in our case it can happen that it falls out for 1-3 days. So it is always good to have some extra savings and not to waste at all...

The yoga... well, the yoga in this world-famous shala where ashtanga is originating from... is intense... We have morning classes in the so-called `Mysore style` 4 days a week, which means that we are doing our self-practice and the teachers are adjusting and helping around. 2 other days we have led class, when we all move together and the teacher `conducts`, saturdays are free. There are also chanting, yoga sutra`s and sanskrit for those interested. The classes are fully packed, mats right next to each other, the temperature and the energy-level in the room high, and as expected, only the crazy ashtanga-freaks from the West... No Indian students, only the two teachers - the daughter and the grandson of the yogaguru Sri K. Patthabi Jois. Guruji was the person who made up this special structure of yoga asana`s what we call today Ashtanga Yoga. It is a very dynamic, intense, sweaty and yang-style yoga - from those more into the slow-motion hatha directions it is getting critic enough. Still, ashtangais very much purifying, builds up much of strength with a regular practice, and we just simply like it... I feel very grateful that I could come to this place and see how it is taught at the place of its origin.
Life is slow and peaceful here. In the morning we do this intense practice, some days take some filosofy classes till noon, and for the rest just hanging-around... Going to the pool, to the city, reading a lot, receiving many reiki sessions, giving massage, but all in a very slow motion... And the summer is coming closer and closer, which means the afternoons are getting sooo hot that we better avoid doing anything in that critical hours...

Saturday 6 February 2010

Travels

Rikshu!!!
This famous Indian mini-taxis are the absolute favourite way to get from one place to the other... Cute little motorized bicycles, like the Piaggo`s in Amsterdam often having only 3 wheels, and in a tropical style no doors and windows, all is open to the side. This allows you to get a more complete view of the road and all what is happening on the side of it, and of course to inhale deeply the terrible smoke and dust of the Indian traffic. With the driver in front it is most comfortable to travel with two on the back, but this rarely happens, the number pf passengers goes mainly up to 4, like sardinies pushing and pressing each other on the seats, having their bags on the laps, in the neck, hand, wherever possible...
Bargaining is obligatory, and you often make friendship with the driver at the end of the trip by exchanging the following questions (which seem to be exactly the same in every case): Which country? Name? Married? Sometimes some extra questions about age and currency (euro?euro?) are added. Before a bigger trip you may ask a driver to be on time in front of your house, but with the Indians you never know... they often forget being there and you can do your best to catch an other one, especially if you travel at night. Once I asked two drivers, which was silly of me as these two seemed to be reliable and were both waiting for me. But I got my payment as our car just stopped in the middle of the road in the thick Indian full-moon-night. We managed to catch another riksha to reach my train, and Babu, the other rikshadriver we just left behind, was already waving at us with a big smile at the station. I had a vague idea that he knew about our breakdown at the roadside... Here all is possible.