Journey to Ramanasramam: From Crisis To Renewal

Third 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.

Breakfast on my second day was the first meal I had taken in the ashram dining hall. Instead of doing the sensible thing and sitting at one of the wooden tables available to those whose knees were not that bendy, I went and sat on the hard granite floor. Pure ego made me do this because I wanted to look and feel like all the other ashram inmates, or at least the vast majority of them, despite the fact that as far as sitting with my legs crossed is concerned, my knees are completely and utterly shot to pieces and have been for years. Somewhat inevitably I was unable to cross my legs, only tuck them under my meditation stool which I had brought with me and the pain from doing that was intense, very bad indeed. I had to contort myself into a very strange position, the only one which enabled me to pick up my food from the banana leaf and put it in my mouth without spilling the whole damn lot over my clothes. This contortion of my body meant having to seriously twist my stomach, something which I knew was not going to be good for my digestion, not good at all. Under considerable pressure to keep it all together, I gave myself a lot of unnecessary stress over it and did not enjoy my breakfast at all. I was sweating over my physical posture the whole damn time, trying to make it work but failing, which was a pity because the food served was both tasty and delicious.

Took a walk to the ashram office after breakfast to see if it was possible for me to stay on for an extra two days after my allotted time there. The night before I figured that my travel schedule would allow me to do this and since I felt that I was now settling into life at the ashram, it seemed like it would be a great thing to do. This was despite the almost constant nighttime disturbances of my mind those lorries caused and daytime ones which came from trying to sit on the floor of the dining hall at meal times. I was to be disappointed however, because the man in the office almost laughed and told me there was no chance of me being able to stay any longer than what I had booked for. Fact of the matter was the ashram was more or less completely full all year round, which was why it had been necessary for me to write to them a couple of months in advance. I walked away pretending not to be hacked off about it, but in truth I was more than a little bit gutted because I’d already got it into my head that I would be able to stay there two days extra, falling victim to what had turned out to be little more than deluded expectation.

It now raised the question that if I wanted to hang around town for an extra couple of days and continue to visit the ashram, where was I going to stay? Back at the Hotel Ramakrishna? That was possible but it was at the other end of town and although good, it was still 1400 rupees a night, which after the free accommodation of the ashram suddenly seemed a bit of a tough pill to swallow, a bit of a financial spanking which would also more than blow a serious hole in my budget. On top of that I couldn’t imagine walking through town with my meditation stool under my arm a couple of times each day whilst going to and from the ashram. It was too busy, too damn busy by far, so it would have to be by rickshaw, which of course would mean more expense, over 100 rupees each day, making the idea of Hotel Ramakrishna seem not so attractive.

From the ashram office I got the names of a couple of places close by that I could possibly stay in and after a little while I ventured out of the ashram to check them out, but soon found out they were all full. This did not really surprise me as there was clearly a little bit of a scene going on as far as Westerners were concerned in that part of town. Many must have been in Tiruvannamalai on a long term basis before hauling themselves to someplace else further down the line, or in fact hauling themselves to nowhere else down the line because they were happy staying exactly where they were. The only place which had rooms was a hotel by the name of Ramana Towers but it was expensive and I didn’t like its soulless vibe, even though it was relatively convenient, being well within walking distance. It had probably been built by business investors looking to cash in on the popularity and name of Ramana Maharshi, not built by Ramana Maharshi devotees or anything like that, only by people out to make a buck. That at least was how it seemed to me. All the same, through sheer lack of other alternatives, I gave the guy on reception at the Ramana Towers my name and told him I might want a room in a few days time and therefore would possibly be back.

All this was done by 9 in the morning so I returned to my room and had a shower because it was already pretty hot. Then it was more meditation, back in the morning heat of the meditation hall. Awareness was OK but at certain points it felt like my body was on fire, which in turn produced bouts of shallow breathing making it difficult to concentrate. The breath sensation being what might be described as unpleasant. Breath tracing, always the breath, eventually I found a steady rhythm I was able to follow and sat with it on and off for an hour or two, but it was tough for me in the mid-morning heat. Still the biggest challenge was pushing away drowsiness, a lack of energy which can come over me in a dark cloud and send thoughts swirling upwards into half-dreams which make no sense. Guess I will stick it out for as long as I can, hope to stumble across periods of clarity where thoughts are chased and made to disappear, but sometimes it can be a tough old business. Chasing down those thoughts is the only way to go however, they are merely mind junk at the end of the day, of no use whatsoever in the quest for inner peace, something which lies elsewhere, away from thoughts. Got to embrace the dichotomy of thinking but not thinking, awareness without words.

Lunch in the ashram was worse than breakfast as far as my knees were concerned, much worse because again for some idiotic reason I ignored the safety of the tables and sat on the floor. Difficult to find the words which adequately conveyed the stress I felt when scooping up my food from the banana leaf and putting it in my mouth with my right hand whilst trying not to spill it all over me. The result was severe mental suffering along with the certainty that later on I was going to get serious stomach problems due to the ridiculously twisted position I had to adopt. Guess on my part it was just plain dumb. Emerging from the dining hall it felt like I was already half crippled as I stepped barefoot into the bright light of a midday sun which almost knocked me sideways whilst I tried to put myself back together again.

In the early afternoon I went to check a place called the Arunachala Ramana Home to see if they had any spare rooms available in a few days time. Got mixed messages as to whether they had any because the manager was not there and the man filling in for him had very limited English, but from what I understood, I was to come back later and try again. Obstacles it seemed were now appearing as to whether or not I was going to be able to stay on for an extra couple of days in Tiruvannamalai without it involving hassle, money, or both. Back to the ashram then and more meditation in the heat, shallow breathing along with aches and pains being the order of the day, where the struggle to keep up with it left me feeling weary, very weary indeed. I was glad to get to 4 o’clock and have a break for another hot sweet tea. It was a great relief to lean back against one of the pillars in the old dining hall and drink from a large steel cup whilst savouring each sip. Sweet chai and sweet relief was what I felt in the slowly lengthening shadows of the warm afternoon with golden sunlight once again streaming in through the open windows.

Not long after the tea break and still feeling pretty shattered from all my meditation in the heat I had a chat in the ashram grounds outside the dining hall with an Indian guy who was staying in the room next to me. He was down from Chennai for a few days and I have to say that he was a pretty intense fellow, telling me that it was purely down to the grace of the guru as to whether he came to the ashram or not and that Arunachala, the hill behind the ashram, was Siva. He said that everything completely and utterly relied on faith and the saving grace of the guru. Whilst there was nothing I could say to disagree with him, the fact that my stomach was feeling a bit dodgy meant that what he was saying, along with the way he said it, with eyes staring straight into me, started to make me sweat. He went on to tell me a little bit about his life, how he had done bad things to people in the past, but now he was learning from his mistakes and trying to be a better person.

In fact he went on to tell me he had been ill for a number of years and had not been able to visit the ashram for a long, long time. It was down to the guru’s grace that he was able to be there now and in the same way, he told me it was due to the grace of the guru that I was there as well. The more he talked the more I began to wonder if his illness might have been mental and not physical; with his eyes constantly fixed upon me I felt very relieved when our conversation was over because it was sending my head into a bit of a spin. Coming as it did on top of my struggles on the dining hall floor when I went to eat, and those sweaty meditations of mine in the heat, it all added up to make me feel quite stressed. As we parted he delivered a sucker punch and told me he would give a knock on my door later on that evening in order to continue our conversation, something which did not fill me with any kind of sweet anticipation, something instead which I would definitely take serious measures to avoid.

Funny how in India when your energy is low things can quickly come along and compound the matter. This particular conversation unsettled me and now made me wonder if I was at the ashram for the right reasons. I had come purely for meditation and spending as much time as I could in the meditation hall, the same place where Ramana Maharshi had sat for many years as guru to all. However it was now becoming clear to me that the ashram was very much a place of faith and devotion for many of the people there, in fact probably for the majority of the people there. To surrender and to have complete faith in that other power in the form of Ramana Maharshi, Lord Siva, or whoever, was clearly for a lot of people a very big deal. Bhakti; pure devotion in other words. I hadn’t really thought of all that in any way whatsoever and I have to say it caused a little bit of a freak out, left me feeling that I was beginning to stick out like a sore thumb, wearing the wrong kind of clothes, not finding enough belief within myself, not bending low enough to pass through the door.

Clearly the levels of faith and devotion were very high amongst the vast majority of people in the ashram or at least that was how it now appeared to me, so it felt like I was now exposed as some kind of imposter. Devotion involves supplication, the giving of oneself over to a higher power through actions of body, speech and mind, having complete faith in that. Intense stuff and it began to get to me, that I was in the ashram with my meditation stool tucked under my arm for all the wrong reasons, suddenly feeling I shouldn’t be there at all. It was a bit weird because the day had begun with me feeling disappointed that I was not going to be able to stay there a little while more, but now as it wore on I began to have doubts if I would be able to stick it out for any longer than the next morning. Seemed like a long time since I had been in such a situation and it was more than enough to get me sweating!

Late afternoon, early evening I got the idea of shooting back to Bangalore right after my time at the ashram was up. Forget about staying an extra two days in Tiruvannamalai and then going to Chennai to get the Shatabdi Express back to Mysore as per my return ticket booking. Instead of all that I could just get a car straight to Bangalore from the ashram. I took it as a sign that, as I had not yet been able to find a room for those two extra days, or at least a room to my satisfaction, at the end of my ashram stay it would definitely be time to leave and not hang around. It seemed to make a whole lot of sense just to split after my time at the ashram was up, see out my 5 days and then make a break for it. Other thing to bear in mind, which was by no means unimportant, was the fact that it would also be a great deal cooler come evening time back in the Tibetan settlement of Bylakuppe, which in turn might mean that a decent night’s sleep would not be too far away for me either, something which was most definitely not to be underestimated.

Next thing I knew I was walking out of the ashram again, this time looking for a travel tour office, which in that part of town was not hard to find. It only took a call on a mobile from the agent to be told the price for a car from Tiruvannamalai to Bangalore would be 3,000 rupees. Sounded pretty good to me, cheaper than getting a car back to Chennai, which came as a bit of a surprise because I had thought it would have been a whole lot more expensive. So, I fixed it in my mind that I would now get a car back to Bangalore at the end of my ashram stay and not hang around any longer. Later on I also spoke with my brother in law Sonam Tashi on the phone and asked him to book me a seat on the Tibetan bus which left at 2 pm each day from Bangalore central railway station going straight to the Tibetan settlement in Bylakuppe at a cost of only 200 rupees. That would give me plenty of time to get to Bangalore from Tiruvannamalai if I set off in the taxi early enough on my final morning in the ashram. Done deal then, that was now the plan!

After my blow up of insecurity and anxiety over things seeming not to go in the direction I wanted them to, I now felt I had come to the right decision. Since there was no chance of staying on at the ashram due to it being fully booked, it was better just to cut loose and move on. Keep things clean, keep things simple! No use in going into complications by trying to hang around on the fringes of the scene, pretending I was all of a sudden going to adopt a new way of living, possibly talking spiritual bollox with people I had never met in my life before and thus risking the dissipation of whatever energy I had stored so far from my days in the ashram meditation hall.

Strange thing happened later that evening after sorting out what it was that I was going to do. I went for a walk outside the ashram after dinner, a meal which saw me again sitting on the floor and paying the physical price, but I didn’t manage to get very far because there was a power cut which plunged everything into darkness. This made it impossible to walk on the street unless that is, I fancied a broken ankle, and because I had come out without any form of light, in other words I’d forgotten my torch, I had no choice but to return to the ashram. Since it was too early to go back to my room, I found the only place where I could comfortably walk was around the Ramana Maharshi samadhi shrine in the hall of the Main Temple with all the other devotees, or at least quite a few of them.

There was something about walking barefoot on the cool granite floor which I liked very much and as time wore on a part of me opened up to this thing about devotion which had been threatening to derail my whole venture. I realised it was just a question of letting go, handing myself over to a greater force, which ultimately I was very much a part of, and surrendering to that. In the process of walking round and round the Ramana Maharshi samadhi shrine, spaces opened up in my mind, spaces much needed after all the inner punch fights I had gone and put myself through. It was a good feeling, walking round and round that samadhi shrine, good to walk, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, good to also watch others, no matter what it was they did, whether they had their hands clasped together in prayer or were stretching full length flat on the floor in prostration.

After all, I had not made the trip because of them, they were strangers to me, really of no concern whatsoever, they could do what they wanted without any of it having to form any kind of major distraction to what it was I came for. Yes, they were perfectly free to do whatever they wanted, of that there was no question. How could I possibly judge them or pretend to know anything about them in any way whatsoever? The more I walked, the better I felt, simply walking round and round and round the samadhi shrine. The scene in the Main Temple hall became entrancing; the shuffle of bare feet on the cool granite floor, the whir of the fans suspended from the ceiling above pushing the warm evening air around. There was the silence of the people either walking round samadhi shrine or sitting in the shadows with their backs against the wall and their eyes closed, wiped out from the heat or in deep contemplation. People sitting on the floor at my feet, or on ledges in front of open windows to the back of the shrine. All of us were there in our own individual ways from wherever it was we came from; a sense of supplication in our hearts, pointing to something greater, something indescribable and yet at the same time totally incredible. For me it really was a buzz, that shrine walking time, something of a bolt from blue which most definitely picked me back up off the floor after all those doubts and remonstrances I had blindly wondered into earlier in the day and which had given me so much grief.

Late night back in my room, I began to really pay the price for having sat on the floor to eat my ashram meals, having put myself through a lot of unnecessary suffering due to my ego, when a little bit of common sense could have saved me a load of stress and hassle. Lay on my bed under the ceiling fan experiencing intense pains in my stomach, and I knew it was possibly going to go either way, in that I might be able to shake the whole thing off or it might develop into something full blown belly-wise which would knock me out for a couple of days. Fortunately by about one in the morning I was on the can in the attached bathroom shitting my guts out as if my life depended upon it, and after a long, intense and very sweaty session I felt a whole lot better. I knew the pains had only come from having twisted my stomach because of my foolish insistence on sitting on the floor in the dining hall and not from having eaten anything dodgy, so it was all very much a self-inflicted wound.

After I was finally done, I went back to bed determined not to get ill because I simply did not have the time for any of that, I wanted to stay fit for my meditation and now I knew that if I continued to feel rough I had plenty in reserve to fight it and to not go under. As it was I woke at 5.40 am the next morning and felt perfectly fine. My sweaty visit to the toilet in the middle of the night, when my eyes had nearly popped out of my head whilst shitting on the can, had done the trick and I was happy it was now the beginning of another day, feeling that more than one personal crisis was over and done with. It had been a chaotic 12 hours or so, but clarity was now dawning. Guess it was just the kind of thing which went with the territory, ultimately nothing to get too excited about, best see it through to its natural conclusion and then move on.