Ramanashram/Arunachula
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2007
1
15
17
Trip End
Oct 23, 2007
Tiruvannamalai,
India
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
I made it to Arunachula after all. I guess Amma wanted to fulfill my desire to come here. My last darshan with her was very nice. She went until 3:00a.m. and said she wasn't going to give westerner's darshan. I was heart broken, but decided it was okay and connected with another westerner and in the meantime came to find she had changed her mind. How sweet. I then got one or two hours of sleep, woke up did the ashram archana (Thousand names etc.) one last time, did my morning recycle seva, cleaned my room, packed and left catching an auto rickshaw to the train station. Then I: Caught train, slept, arrived at 3:00a.m a Katpadi junction, grabbed another auto rickshaw and he chased down a bus that was coming here too Arunachula, flagging it down I hopped on and it was around 5a.m. I knew at Amma's ashram they were doing Archana so I decided to join in and follow along with my MP3 player. It was a really bumpy ride. I'm surprised I didn't get sick reading for an hour. I felt Amma just set that all up. It was perfect and not stressful. Things like this happen when you hang out with these beings. Life is always smooth and worry free with their grace. It makes me wonder how much am I really doing. The best I can ever do is just get out of the way and let them work their magic. Life is magic when this small "I" is surrendered. It takes patients and perseverance as most of us know and struggle with. We do what we can and then realize we're not doing anything and that it's all grace.
Arunachula
What a cosmic joke. It is a good joke if you get it, but when your stuck in it...I know it can suck, but then again when you wake up to it again the peace acquired is well worth it. In fact, we are that peace. Our nature is absolute freedom and love. It just gets deeper on it's own accord after that realization, or not. The sooner I let go and surrender the sooner the peace is there. I guess if there is free will it is to surrender or not. Amma says the only thing God did not create is the ego (which isn't real anyway). That makes everything God. How could it be otherwise? After walking through Ramanashram's main gate I immediately felt a deep peace consume me for about a minute or two only. Then the mind started thinking again, "What is the next thing to do"-future creeps in. I went to the office and set down my bags that now weighed about 70lbs all together. I gave the ashram my letter of invitation that he wrote me in reply to a friend of friend who stays here often. The letter was an invitation for Sept. 16th, a little late, but hey it is India after all. He approved my two day stay and gave me my room key. First I had breakfast, it was now 7:30a.m. The food at the ashram is magnificent. My friend Advait told me this and he was right.
Eating at temples and ashrams is the best. Besides being clean, the food has a powerful vibrational energy. It is all offered to God chanted over with mantra's and served to the guest who is seen as God.
Ashram peacock
Then you eat it and your eating God. After eating and finding my room I took a tour of the ashram temple and inner sanctum. The stone carved pillars and walls were so amazing and the energy here is pure Shiva (Shanthi-Peace). Everyone here seems to circulambulate everything. Which means honor by walking in a clockwise fashion around deities, arunachula (takes four hours, which I hopefully will do today), and the temple. When in Rome...you know. I had the opportunity to hike to to the small shrine where Ramana spent his earlier days on the slopes of the mountain. It took about 40 minutes. It was very serene. I felt waves of peace at time and got to sit in the shrine and meditate along with some other Westerners. I then started thinking of my plans again and of booking my train ticket for the next destination, and on the story goes. I left the shrine and made my way back down the slopes. There was a man named Raman on the hill who was carving deities vigorously out of stone. He was doing some nice work and the prices were good. I wish I had more room in my bags. I may get a small thing or two.
I went to the ashram office and inquired about the next town I was heading to, for a retreat with Karunamayi. Lucky for me a man in the ashram store lived in that town and knew Karunamayi. He helped me figure out my next set of plans. I thenhad an excellent temple meal and sat for some meditation in the inner sanctum where the Veda's (ancient Hindu scriptures) were being chanted alternately by the male's and female's who were separated on both sides. In behind them sat a stone statue of Sri Ramana that many devotees circuambulated. I joined in. Afterward I read a big sign describing Ramana Maharshi's simulated death experience at the age of sixteen which freed him from identification with mind permanently. Some of which went like this: Ramana Maharshi had a spontaneous awakening at the age of 16. Gripped by the fear of death, he stretched out like a corpse, stiffened his body, and said to himself, "Well, my body is dead. I see it. It will soon be cremated. But who is it that dies?" His intense inquiry into this question resulted in the realization that the body dies, but Self-Awareness never decays. This Self-Awareness, he later said, "is unrelated to anything. It is also self-luminous. Even if this body is burned, it will not be affected. Hence He realized, that "I" was that Awareness."
I then sat for a peaceful meditation in the temple.
I don't know what this last day will bring here in Arunachula but one things for sure, it'll bring what it'll bring. Ha ha. Be in touch soon.
Comments
Ramana Ashram
I read a book on Ramana Maharishi By Arthur Osborne and my life has been touched and changed in a way that is incredible!
The pictures and writings are very nice!