Journey to Ramanasramam: Settling In & Finding My Feet

Second in a four part account of a trip to Ramanasramam, making my way across South India from the Tibetan settlement of Bylakuppe two hours west of Mysore in the state of Karnataka, to the city of Chennai on the east coast of Tamil Nadu before heading down the next day to the pilgrimage town of Tiruvannamalai.

Shifted across to the ashram the following morning without too much grief. The Hotel Ramakrishna had been a good place to stay, the double room I’d booked was a decent price, not over the top, whilst the friendly staff and excellent restaurant meant I would have no hesitation in going there again if that was ever on the agenda. The auto rickshaw ride across town cost me 60 rupees which was probably a bit too pricey, but since I was standing outside the Ramakrishna with a rather heavy rucksack slung over my shoulder and no other form of transport in sight, there was only so much time I could spend in attempting to cut the best possible deal. Naturally enough I booked myself in at the ashram office without any problem and after the formalities were completed I was taken to my room, which was perfectly fine, also being located in a quiet part of the ashram. It came with a small attached bathroom, about which I was warned not to waste water because it was now on the cusp of the hot and dry season when such things began to get scarce. Fair enough, saw the point, I also saw there was a framed picture of Ramana Maharshi gazing serenely out at me from the middle of the cabinet opposite my bed. Nice one! This was good, it made me feel that I would be able to sit there and meditate in my room without any problem. After sorting through the usual stuff which goes with travelling in India, precious things such as books to read, notebooks to write in, music to listen to, clothes to wear, toiletries, torch, mosquito spray, I was ready to take a walk down to the meditation hall.

Sat there in the meditation hall, sat on my meditation stool for over an hour, where it was much less busy than the evening before when I had first stuck my head through the door. Happy to report that it was good sitting on the meditation stool which I had brought along with me, having stored it at the bottom of my rucksack before I’d hit the road from the settlement. I was taking in the silence of the hall, its black floor so worn and shiny, the couch in the corner where Ramana Maharshi had sat and upon which now rested a huge oil painting portrait of him, making it feel as if he was still very much there. He always told people before he passed away, that his presence extended beyond his body and into the deeper dimensions of time and space. Just a question of faith as to whether you believed it or not.

Missed lunch more by accident than by design. All meals were in the ashram dining hall, sitting in rows on the floor, where vegetarian food was served on banana leaves. Timings are strict, you have to be there prompt when the doors to the dining hall open, and on that first day I wasn’t prompt, not on the button, so that by the time I got there the doors were already closed. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, all were served to people who were sitting in rows on the floor. So it meant I took a walk outside the ashram to find something to eat, because I was feeling pretty hungry. Food! I guess it is always the case that when you can’t get something for your stomach you want it all the more. The area around the ashram had the usual kind of Westerner related scene and I could see there were plenty of places outside its gates which you might get sucked into and end up as a long term resident; living the life, day after day, thinking you were becoming something you weren’t before, shedding a skin whilst out in exotic India. Yes, those streets close to the ashram had plenty of hang around scenes and after 20 minutes or so of walking in the hot midday sun I came across the Manna Café, from where I wrote these notes –

Guess I am taking a bit too long over lunch but I can excuse myself since it is my first full day in town and things haven’t fallen into a pattern yet. Missed lunch in the ashram dining hall for example and that has slightly thrown me. New kid in town! That is my excuse anyway, could just be the fact I need a break from the ashram already. The Manna Café has this English guy sitting half lotus on the floor, smoking cigarettes and his daughter sitting opposite him, her back leaning against the wall. He’s got the gift the gab no doubt about that, the kind of person who would be able to speak eloquently on any subject at any time, pretty much the opposite of me in other words. Clear he has lived in India for years and years, Tamil Nadu in particular by all accounts, and as he talks on and on it also becomes clear he is in fact the owner of the Manna Café. It has a vegetarian menu which he is proud of as he sits back and smokes his cigarette, a lot of Hare Krishna recipes thrown into the mix as well, or so he says, about that menu. His daughter looks bored as they wait for their food in the heat of the room and he continues talking about this, that and all manner of other things which seem to interest him more than anyone else. I eat a vegetable omelette which is pretty good, although I could eat more if truth be told, but I make do with just ordering a herbal tea after and which is now taking ages to arrive.
Things are slowly, slowly grinding to a halt in my mind…in the heat of south India, now where is that tea I ordered? Where is that god dammed herbal brew? Thirsty now, want that tea, want to drink it down and then get back to the ashram, get out of here, out of the Manna. Out of the range of that guy with his mouth, his cigarettes and his Hare Krishna. Seems like it is still so easy to land myself in situations which I soon want to change if things don’t go my way, rather than sit back and have trust that all is taken care of by a higher power. If I have to wait 20 minutes for my herbal slurp then so what? Simply the way it is meant to be.
Patience is what is needed, patience to deal with those thoughts and feelings of frustration, patience to welcome them in, give them as much space as they require, even if it is all getting rather hot. Give them room to roam! Nobody’s fault but mine that I am where I am, so I just have to live with what is, see it through to its natural conclusion, rather than panicking and wanting to jump ship. Learn the best I can and then just move on when the time is right.
Still here…now drinking that precious tea, nearly an hour after I first arrived. That is OK, I’ll drink it down, this hot herbal liquid stuff, then get back to the ashram, back to the meditation hall, back to the sitting. Hard to believe it is where Ramana Maharshi stayed for the best part of 50 years. How much of his presence is still here? However much you want it to be is the answer to that question.

Into my second day at the ashram and all seems to be going well. Meditation schedule I set myself is being kept up with, slipping into the meditation hall every now and then with my meditation stool under my arm, in the here and now, full of determination to give it my best shot. Got there this morning at 4.15 because it opens each day at 4 am, yes, every day at 4 am the whole year round. No more than 10 people were in there by the time I got through the door, some leaning against the walls with their eyes closed, possibly taking refuge after a rough night’s sleep, or lack of it, down in the heat and heart of south India. Now in the hall at least they have some company, maybe also the presence of Ramana Maharshi in the formless form of the indestructible timeless. But who am I to know that?

Above us spin the ceiling fans. Weather wise I find myself in a hotter situation than what I expected, the demands made on the effort to concentrate, maintain awareness, mindfulness, whatever you wish to call it, are greater than usual and it is up to me, as much as I can, to work with this in a productive way. Eye on the ball, finger on the trigger. Foundation of meditation has to be the ability to maintain concentration on the object and here in the heat the object of meditation is simple – breath tracing, following the simple mechanics of counting the in breaths and the out breaths. Time after time I just try to hit those numbers -108, 135, 162, 216, 243, 270, 324 – always determined by relation to the 108. A round of 108 in breaths and 108 out breaths completes the cycle, and a 108 cycle takes something like 30 minutes, which means if you do a 216 it is usually the best part of an hour spent in meditation. Sat there in the hall till around 5.30, then sounds began to emanate from the rest of the ashram kickin’ into life, no doubt beginning the same routine as the day before in a way which is awesome, relentless, in fact the schedule had already begun when that door to the meditation hall opened an hour and a half before.

Yesterday after the Manna Café I walked back to the ashram in the afternoon heat. In my room I did some stretching and meditation, then wandered round the ashram grounds for more exercise. Took a sweet tea which was made available in the dining hall at 4 pm, where I sat against a pillar and drank it down, bathed in the late afternoon light shining in through the open windows. Lovely, lovely hot sweet tea, felt like I had earned it! More meditation after that and then an early evening walk into Tiruvannamalai, stepping once again into the cacophony of noise, colour, movement and relentlessly belching exhaust fumes that is modern India. Missed the 7.30 dinner at the ashram because I had a serious snack attack on my walk and ate a large masala dosa at a place in town, which killed off my hunger for the evening meal back in the dining hall. So I returned to the ashram after buying fruit, dates, candles, matches, mosquito coil and biscuits, then did a final session in the meditation hall before stepping outside to take another stroll through the ashram grounds, only this time it was under the stars.

Little sleep last night. Unlike in the Tibetan settlement back west in Karnataka, where the evenings always bring cool breezes and relief from the heat, things pretty much stay hot all the way through the night in Tiruvannamalai. Guess I woke up at around 3 am, lying on my bed wearing just a pair of boxer shorts, ceiling fan spinning round and round above me. Nothing else needed apart from shorts, not even those if truth be told, because it was so damn toasty, which the whir of the fan did little to relieve, only pushing the hot air around. Woken up by the sound of traffic, the relentless gear shifting roll of Indian lorries tanking their way into town in the dead of night. Tanking their way in, tanking their way out again; quiet consideration for those in bed never entering the equation, never even once! Fact of the matter is the ashram is pretty close to the main road heading into Tiruvannamalai from the west, from the same direction as Bangalore. Wonder if in the days of Ramana Maharshi the traffic was as bad as it is now? Almost certainly not, is the answer to that question.

One after another the lorries came and went, or maybe it was just the same one doing circuits of the ashram with a mad driver behind the wheel, eyes staring into the deep dark night and cheeks bulging with paan leaf. Who knows? It never seemed to stop as I lay there in the dark, in the sweaty heat. It kind of did my head in after a little while, led to a depths of the night battle with my preconceptions as to how I thought life in the ashram ought to be; where the picture of what I thought it should be like was full of visions of peace and silence. Reality not conforming to expectations? Reality slipping down from the high ground? Well, who is going to be the loser with that one? Thoughts along the lines of the – Well, the sounds of nature are one thing but the filth belching lorries of India on the move through the heat of the night are quite another! – invaded my mind. Such painful thinking for me whilst those noisy lorries pumped out their gunk in that dead of night pollutin’ up the atmosphere, disturbing the sleep o’ da pilgrim.

Realised as I lay there on my bed in my boxer shorts, wishing for all the lorry noise to just please, please go away, that I had been spoilt back in the settlement out west in Karnataka, where there were noises for sure, but they were of the animals and the natural night sounds which you get from being out on the back tracks, away from city life, away from towns choc full of people. This was different, maybe not as different as I imagined it whilst lying there in the dark, where my mind was caught up in amplification, but different all the same, because the sounds of the night traffic were closer to hand and not so easy to ignore. Guess Ramana Maharshi would have been able to handle it without any problem at all, guess he would just, by his mere presence, have been able to settle my quaking mind if I had ever been around him. Now am I missing something here? Yeah, think I most certainly am! If I don’t wake up to the reality of the dead-as-alive guru presence in every single thing I do then I just won’t get it. Nevertheless it did make me think it might be a good idea for the ashram just to pick up sticks, find someplace quieter, out in the country, away from the sound of those lorries and their incessant noise, which caused me feelings of irritation I just couldn’t shake in the dark depths of a south Indian night. But that would have been impossible, the picking up of sticks, more than faintly ridiculous, pure and simple.

In the daytime I didn’t notice just how intrusive was the noise of those lorries, and that was no doubt due to the fact there were so many other sounds around, so many other things to contend with, which meant they just did not rear up and bite into my consciousness in the same way as they did in the dead of night. In the dark, all those other background noises had faded away and those damn bloody lorries dominated my mind, becoming more and more like monsters to me as time wore on. One of the reasons for me getting down to the meditation hall so early in the morning was that I’d had enough of lying there in the heat of my room, unable to stop listening to those lorries, unable to stop worrying about the filth they were relentlessly belching into the atmosphere. Funny thing was that later on in the day sounds were still there meditation hall, but due to not being so intense, they did not bother me at all. Then I found out later that the reason I did not hear those lorries so much was due to the fact they were subject to a daytime curfew, not allowed to enter the town and go about their business until after 8 or 9 pm, probably because in the day Tiruvannamalai was more than busy enough already.