RiversGrace

Navigating the Sacred and Mundane

Friday, April 27, 2007

Sanskrit Syllables



There are few love songs that stay with me. Driving through back roads between Illinois and Wisconsin in my early twenties, passing local bars that we could finally, legally enter, my gaze held steady to the road, in love with seed syllables, Sanskrit vowels, resonating from my car stereo:

Sanskrit vowels and vowel diacritics

Just back from India, what could I say to anyone back home? So I drove and once outside of town, I returned to a place with a cave, where the day started any time after midnight, that by sunrise you'd have already missed some major teaching or practice. Sometimes alone in the night or the cave or in the shrine, or alone in the hills where so many ancient teachers walked, I was frighteningly, wonderfully alive. Sometimes, by 11am, ten thousand pilgrims had gathered to chant and worship, and by 2pm all were fed and blessed.

I had the great good fortune to live in the house of an awakened teacher, one who was recognized when she was four years old as an avadhut, the one in whose glance and grace I found (or returned to) my place. The teachings were everything I asked for....but how could I possibly hold onto them then?

One early morning in particular, in the middle of a week-long meditation intensive, I sat in the dark cave. Four hours of silent meditation, an hour of chanting the mantra, returning to silence for an hour. On and on like this. Far into reaches of consciousness that I never knew existed - or I did, but never had the context or the map, a guide, or a vision of the meaning of that landscape, until I was made to sit and go there by one who had gone way before me. And then there was a speaker, one of the foremost American scholars of Indian philosophy, who took the mic in the dark glow of that space and spoke in a tone that soothed all the restless molecules in my body. He had studied the complexities of ancient scripture and texts for so long, but never had a teacher until he met my teacher that winter. And he was being transformed - it was in his voice, in his eyes. You would change simply from the bare impact of his words. I did.

I went on to study Sanskrit for five years. I drove from Boulder, CO to Denver every Thursday to meet with an old professor. What could I really do with that? In my way of trying to find normal happiness, all that stuff just drifted and fell away.

Almost twenty years out now, River sleeps in back yard, and I'm trying to figure how to write.

Last week I went Peet's in between packing and ran into a new acquaintance who mentioned that a great scholar, Paul Muller Ortega, was coming to speak at his yoga center that weekend. I went home and registered. Calling out to Steve from the other room, "Hey, would you please come to a lecture with me on Saturday?" And so we went.

To say that I was ecstatic is not exactly true. Longingly disoriented is more accurate. In the room full of young, aspiring yogis, I felt so middle-aged, so suburban, so fat. As soon as I saw him I felt all those things, but also present and ancient and completely at home. Before he spoke he sat with a quality of silence that makes people uncomfortable. No striving, nowhere to be, nothing to prove. I could finally breathe, so content in that kind of calm.

Skillfully and beautifully and so normally, he led us into a realm of the highest mysteries, translating in the most accurate, understandable, attainable way. Down the rabbit hole with an exquisite guide, passionate in his way of seeing and naming all the subtle layers and hidden doors and stunning plateaus on the path of yoga.

My husband chanted a Sanskrit mantra next to me (with gusto). It's the first time since knowing him that we have sat with the teachings that shaped me. I go to church with him, I listen to all his thoughts about Christian doctrine. I nod my head yes as my toddler talks about baby Jesus. And yet.....in my mind I am looking to the horizon, nodding to those dedicated ones so dear and true to me - the monks and sadhus and nuns who mapped out the journey in the Rig Veda or the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

I looked over at Steve a few times and in his eyes, a fire. I smiled. Go deep enough in the well and the ancient teachings begin to sound the same. Ideas and experiences that he had read from his theological books were being unfolded almost identically from the Indian perspective.

Finally, from two sides of a river, we came upon a bridge.

On Sunday I went alone. Paul started the day by talking about one particular morning in India, 1989, when he sat for four hours in meditation, chanted for one hour, returned to silence, over and over. While in that silence he was shown a pattern of light, a matrix, the true nature of a sutra he had been studying for years. It was revealed to him, hour after hour. He looked over at his teacher and in her eyes he saw that she knew exactly what was being given, in her reflection he experienced a glimpse of her state, and he fell back into silence with closed eyes, deeply grateful, forever changed. And then he got up and took the microphone in the dark glow of that space and began to speak about this most amazing territory.

I wept and leaned over the woman next to me whom I didn't know, and said, "I was in that room with him. I was in that room." I had to tell someone.

At the end of the day I walked up to Paul and shared that I was there in 1989 on that morning. He said, "Oh my god, you were there. I thought I saw recognition a few times in your eyes as I spoke today. You were there..."

During question and answers, following a string of questions about meditation and philosophy, I shared that I felt my greatest 'forgetting' happens in my role in marriage and motherhood. He laughed, everyone laughed, except the young, single, childless, aspiring yogis.

Driving home, I put on a chant, in love with the Sanskrit vowels, and wondered why I have wandered so far from home. Home being teachings that I know are truly my path. Why did I want a relationship and child over my own happiness? Why did I think the two had to be separate? Why do I watch night time TV and eat too many oreos when I really want to be doing yoga?

The heroine's journey never really ends. We hear a calling and we leave a first home, we journey out, get caught up, find some teachings, slay the dragon, return home. But the wheel keeps turning. And sometimes we are on more than one track at a time - the wheel has dimensions, depth, the whole space/time thing not so relevant. Coming and going, and then standing still, we're also coming and going. And then in motion, we're going nowhere. It's all just now.

I've been walking around for a few days in a sort of high. My vision is different, slightly askew. I'm changed again. Just a few hours of what I totally love and I'm different. And I don't know how exactly to walk, what to say, what to write.

In respone to my question, Paul reminds me, "Every sunrise in the Indian tradition marks a new beginning, a return to the same practices, a gesture of remembering again. It's ok to forget. It's ok to forget. The long-time practitioners return and return again. You are always invited to take your place beside them."


7 Comments:

Blogger holly said...

So, so, so much in here, Prem. I read it three times and got another level of depth in each read.

Like Carrie says, there are no accidents. How amazing that you stumbled into this lecture and landed two decades back in a room with the speaker that becomes a room of today. I'm with you - It's all just now.

And this line gave me chills: "Finally, from two sides of a river, we came upon a bridge."

Then chills again in the next paragrah hearing you listening to him descibe your experience.

Welcome home, girl. So glad your path leads back to itself.

6:48 PM  
Blogger Jess said...

I feel really incoherent right now, but I can't leave here without saying how much I loved this, how much I want to read it ten more times. Beautiful beautiful writing.

There IS so much here. Some that feels very familiar to me, but more that is just you.

The wheels keeps turning, yeah.... And yes you can have your spiritual path and your happiness while you have motherhood and marriage (not that I would know, but I'm telling you anyway).

I'm so glad Steve went with you. :) I'm so glad you had this opportunity to revisit this part of your life, and not without huge synchronicity.... And I am so glad to be on this path with you, and just glad to read your words.

Much love.

9:32 PM  
Blogger Suzy said...

Your writing has so much depth, I have to print it out and read it over and over and because of it's depth. My comments may seem trite at times, but your journey is what inspires and illuminates me. You continually seem to replenish yourself in so many beautiful ways and you bring back more of your incredible journey to share and show others.
Love you Prem.
Suzy

6:19 AM  
Blogger kario said...

You are such an amazing teacher, Prema! Not only do you truly embrace and believe in these practices, but you are able to communicate that in a sensible yet alluring way that draws me in and makes me never want to leave.

Thank you!

1:21 PM  
Blogger Carrie Wilson Link said...

Ditto everyone. That line that Holly quoted got me too. Wow. Nothing's easy, is it? Yet the hardest to do is the least complicated... I think there is NO greater practice than motherhood and relationship. ANYONE can "get it" on retreat, in meditation, with other like-minded deep souls, but the day-to-day minutiae is where the real challenge lies.

3:45 PM  
Blogger Kim said...

This post is so beautiful, and hit me so deeply, that I have read it several times and slept on it and still don't know what to say.

I have only dipped a toe into the spiritual universe where you live, Prema, but I still understand that struggle so powerfully--between that which truly nourishes us and those things (TV, Oreos) that I think of as pillows to rest our brains.

Your writing cuts so deeply, and is so moving. I am so glad you saw Paul. "Every sunrise...marks a new beginning." So wonderful!

And the line about the bridge completely took my breath away.

11:10 AM  
Blogger Amber said...

Wow! Like everyone, I don't know what to say, because I am thinking so much about your words. Look how you touch people with the way you share your journey! Wonderful.

I love what Carrie said about it being easy when you are around other deep souls, all looking for the same things. It IS a different game when you are a mom and a partner to someone. this is where we really find our way, in these moments of "regular" life. I feel tested ALL the TIME to be the soul I want to be.

I love what this teacher said about everyone falling away and comming back. It sounds so much like one of the most beautiful parts of my own Christian faith. The beauty of Spirit never being far away-- it is us who leave now and then.

And I was moved by your words about the ancient faiths being the same words. YES! I have been saying this forever to my Christian friends who freak out that I study the Tao, or read about other ways. Many paths...One Spirit. Yes...

You are so brilliant.

:)

7:09 PM  

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