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| Martin's Writings From India |
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 Martin is the visionary behind Vedic Society. Inspired by the simple, effective and timeless wisdom of India's Vedic Culture, he has set out to make this knowledge more available and accessible to all through the works of the organization. He has traveled extensively and spent much time in both India and Nepal meeting likeminded people working with Vedic wisdom and has had the honour of meeting many a great teacher.
Martin is presently traveling through India and Nepal. As he travels he will touching base with news of his experiences and discoveries. Here follows his news from those travels.
108 Hours in Bombay
It's amazing what is happening in India, something quite incredible and special. I was last here almost a year and a half back and it seems like I am in the same country but something dramatic is changing. As I arrive in Mumbai airport the old airport which was a classical grey-green government bureaucrat design has been replaced by a new bright design with the department of immigration officials dressed in splashy uniforms with a beautiful, bold and proud new logo displayed everywhere. In the backdrop I note an advert for wind energy and as I step out into the salubrious Mumbai evening, just past midnight our government prepaid taxi, the famous black and yellow Bombay cabs, is powered by natural gas. We quickly pull into a gas station and the smell of cooking gas fills the air as he puts in a few litres.
We speed through the Bombay night to Juhu, besides the Indian ocean with coconut palms hanging in the morning air. I adjust my clock to India and realize it's rather late and lay my head to rest and dream of wonders.
Awake in Bombay, the eve of Diwali and I begin my journey with a friendly taxi driver and pull in to the local temple where I offer my prayers and blessings on my visit so all may be successful and this journey may bear fruits for this world. Mumbai traffic is a lesson in patience and surrender and as I sit in the bubble of modern air-conditioned vehicle with filtered air I enjoy the movie of India through the windscreen, the beautiful signs of god everywhere on every car, window shop. One can't forget God for long in this land India, Rama Cell Shack, Sri Gopal Trucking, Govinda's Fine Vegetarian Cuisine.
Yes vegetarian cuisine everywhere, one wonders how one (being a long term vegetarian) could ever consider living in a non-vegetarian country. Even on the flight South African Airways very politely catered pure Indian vegetarian food which I might add was quite delicious. Generally airline food is not this fresh but the curry seemed to blend even better at the pressurised 33,000 feet. Perhaps curry was made in the high Himalayas and suited our avionic altitudes.
Besides me on the plan was a man named Raj from east Delhi. He came from a religious family living simple and pure life and he was going home for Diwali, the festival of light and lights, co-incidentally falling on the darkest moon of the year.
The light of Diwali is the light of our soul that we all carry within our hearts, it is always there, just the stresses of the choices we make and the toils of this world obscure this light. On Diwali we light ghee lamps and set the whole world alight so our mind can remember our souls light. Today I can feel the lamps of the millions of Indians who have lit lamps silently and with prayer in their homes. There’s a special softness in the air that I don't recall from anywhere.
Let there be light, and let the light of our souls fill this world for when this light shines we live in knowledge, peace and bliss. This is the lesson India, this seemingly chaotic society, culminating in it's jams and struggles and dark unlit streets, can teach this world of ours. That one billion people can live peacefully in harmony and with sharing.
We drive past a community of apartments, India is filled with people from the same religious caste living in a building, doing things collectively, serving and helping one other. A true spirit of community and help is here and alive today. Families stick together, look after each other, mothers with newborn’s are not stranded alone but there is family and community around. So children grow up without that emptiness or need for constant distraction as we often experience in the west.
Today everyone is shopping so the streets are truly jammed, Diwali is a festival of giving gifts of sweets. On my errands and meetings today I made a point to visit my favourite sweet wallah in Malad West and get natural sugar free sweets made with raisons and silver and nuts and spice. A delicacy indeed!
In no time we are stuck behind the local milk delivery truck, brash in red with a sweet sign in white pained saying HORN OK Please and then milk delivery van. Four large tubs of milk are bouncing around overflowing with sweet white nectar.
My driver is patient and skilled and we take back roads to our destination to avoid the jam. I close my eyes to meditate enjoying the cool Himalayanesque breezes from the AC vent.
Only to open my eyes and we pass a fruit vendor. I discover papayas are in season. Aren't they always and fill up with some Indian Papita. Great snack for anytime as it's digestive itself so can be eaten comfortably at most times.
Just after lunch we arrive at Sree Sankara Centre for Ayurveda Consciousness, not far from the International airport situated in what looks like any other office block but surrounded with much greenery.
I am met with a large garland which makes me duly blush and a team of manager, doctor and therapists and full keralian moustaches and smiles. Only the Keralias have mastered the art of the moustache and smiles like none other.
Instantaneously I am transformed into a world of Suddha or pure Ayurveda. Shree Shankara is a century old tradition from a keralian family which I have been honoured to associate with most recently having one of the members of this family as my honoured guest in South Africa. I was moved by their purity of preparations and the amazing sincerity of their therapists and doctors when I visited their clinic some years back in new Delhi and thus in my search for the roots of Ayurveda and proponents of Ayurveda that could sincerely do good in this world, I have connected with them.
I was instantly at home. Ayurveda opens the heart and this is the test of true Ayurveda. In no time I was eating red rice with buttermilk and gentle keralian steamed curries and then on the droni (a droni is a medicinal wooden table used for ayurvedic treatments - it is usually a bitter and astringant wood which aids the healing effect of treatments as it mixes with the medicinal oils). I was chosen a rejuvantive oil based on Camphor for my body and an Amla (Indian Gooseberry) based oil for my head. For the next hours I soared in and out of no-mind consciousness, no thoughts, just pure being and stillness as the massage allowed energy to unblock and flow through my body. After the treatment any signs of travel tiredness or jetlag were gone. I then drank a bitterish ten root brew which was further for balancing and grounding.
Within this world of Bombay a city that is a constant cinema and dance of scenes there are so many worlds, so many hearts, so many prayers and pujas. Especially this bright dark night of Diwali where all pray for more light in this world. Ayurveda is a gift of light, it clears our body and mind so our light may shine so we may be the little suns we are.
May the light of the soul shine strong in all on earth.
Martin Gluckman
Bombay, Diwali 2006
An Indian Sweet
I've recently learnt that chocolate is the most Divine annupana (annupana is the name given to the vehicle given with a particular medicine in Ayurveda to enhance it's effect). Chocolate with a classical formulae like triphala seems to enhance and take it's effects deeply into the system - alcohol is commonly used as an annupana in the famous fermented formulations of
Ayurveda known as Arishta's and Asavaha's and thus chocolate's toxicity becomes an ally carrying the medicine deeper and deeper.
It's Diwali, 3:44am and finally it's quiet. The whole evening dogs were crazed as fireworks filled Delhi's skies. Then doctors announced an epidemic of mosquito carried denge fever this month so Delhians were told to do extra fireworks to clear the Dengue - a typical Indian solution. The noxious firework smoke will cloud not just the Delhi air, it's mosquitoes but also all it's inhabitants and plants.
Diwali is a beautiful and soft time to be in India. I had the glory to fly at 9pm on Spice Jet on the Bombay - Delhi flight. For the first time I can ever recall there was no traffic en route to the airport and the airport was still and uncrowded.
I had the great fortune to be placed next to a newly qualified naturopath from Seattle called Tomm who lives on an island just off from Seattle, Washington. He had terrible luck loosing his luggage on route to India when it was sent to Dubai not Mumbai, an easy enough mistake for KLM to make. He was planning a study with Dr. Vasant Lad in Pune in a week or two and my
ears pricked when I heard the name Lad as I had spent some days in the clinic of Dr. Lad enjoying his simple and humorous way of teaching Ayurveda.
Yesterday evening I left Sree Shankara in Mumbai amidst a corridor of ghee lamps lit in my honour. I blushed again as I was not used to this regal treatment. Venugopal, his wife and myself had had the great honour of spending the afternoon and evening in Mumbai's jungle just besides it's large milk colony where Sri Chinmayananda had established his ashrama.
Chinmayananda was one of India's great saints of this century - formerly a curious child asking why to everything, then an academic and freedom fighter until he was sent working as a journalist to interview Swami Sivananda. This transformed him forever and led him further and higher to spend time with a Saint named Tapovan who lived in the Himalayas. It sounds
a familiar story but here he transformed deeply and changed his name to Chinmayanannda and started his work teaching human beings everywhere the simplest of truths of life.
It seemed to be Divine timing as on this auspicious festival of light, just the three of us, Venugopal, his wife and myself were allowed access into the quarters of Chinmayananda where he sat and wrote at his desk, his bed, his clothes drawer, bathroom and meditation room. The quarters had not changed since he had left this mortal world. His presence was still very much there, I felt the soft love, light and humour of this man everywhere, in his walking
stick, drinking water holder, his chair. What a beautiful Diwali gift. Indian's have the tendency to give sweets on Diwali with every sweet shop in Bombay overflowing with people vying for the best sweets. It crossed my mind that this constant flux of festivals in India is one of the best methods of creating prosperity in a nation. Everyone from fruit sellers to the rickshaw man gets more business as everyone is out shopping for gifts and more. Diwali is one of many festivals that come regularly in India. When I lived in Nepal I recall not a week passed without a festival. Perhaps our ancient Fathers designed this for they new the benefits on so many levels celebrations of God and Godliness would bring to our world.
So all people were out in search of sweet gifts to exchange this Diwali. Even myself passed by my favourite Mithai Wala (sweet shop) at the back of Malad and purchased some boxes of raisin sweets with silver foil. But the real sweet was the sweetness in the air of the Chinmayaashrama with it's Ashok trees tall and ever straight, with crows calling from their tops, with it's monks dressed in orange alight with laughter and smiles.
We sat and met one of the ladies who is in charge of their monthly magazine, a friend of the Venugopal family. She told he story of Bhakti how her teacher had come to find his teacher. What stood out from her words was that when I asked her what did Chinmayananda say of his teacher she replied: When he would speak of Tapovonji, he could not speak, he was lost for words. He would just go silent and then tears would form.
Bhakti is the real sweet of India, a sweetness that is so needed in this world today, our world has too much bitterness impulse, we need more sweetness. Let us all come to India at least once and taste this Bhakti for this is her festival of light. I felt blessed by the Divine timing to sit in the quarters of one of India's greatest Saints an this eve of the sweetness of Diwali.
Martin Gluckman
Kamla Nagar, Delhi
PLAYING CRICKET IN THE BRAHMASTHAN
On the night of Diwali I have arrived in Delhi, nature somehow timing my flight that I touch down as the thick clouded Delhi air is filled with fireworks of every kind. Imagine the children of a city of 10's of millions of people all delightfully launching lollypop exploding rockets, spinning
fire wheels, big bang crackers all at the same time. The doctors are delighted with the Diwali fireworks as they say the thick cloud of smoking sulphurous-salt-peter will help to clear the present Dengue (an airborne disease caused by mosquito) epidemic.
My Spice Jet pilot touches down a little roughly and I look right and see the sky constantly exploding with light. What a beautiful flight to arrive on Diwali. Diwali is the festival on the darkest of nights which is there to remind us of the brightest of lights, our very self.
Yogis have spent lifetimes in silence and penance, in caves and besides twirling rivers to come up all with the same conclusion that we are sat-chit-anand or truth, consciousness and bliss.
The Diwali sky is nothing short of bliss and even leaving Bombay the beginning of the fireworks had descended upon it's humid sky that 'eve and we took off with all kinds of rockets a flare.
I can't easily forget the taste of this Diwali in Bombay as that afternoon I had spent with Shri Venugopal my dear friend who manages an Ayurvedic hospital in the Keralian part of this very multi-cultural Indian city. He decided to take me to a very special place which turned out none other than the very former home and ashrama of Sri Chinmoyananda, one of India's
greatest teachers who walked up and down this nation for decades preaching nothing but Goodness.
I often wonder why India has produced so many lamps for humanity whose very messages all speak the same but with a slightly different tone or flavour. From Ramakrishna to Shivananda to Yogananda, Maharishi, Prabhupada, Sai Baba and so many unnamed Saints. How India is a spiritual seekers treasure. A treasure to be discovered; past, present and future.
The real treasure I tell you is in the home and family of India where the love and devotion of mothers, children, fathers, brothers and sisters is something the world can learn much from. This is the glue that ties India together, that keeps it pulsing and thriving with harmony and love.
In no time I arrive at my hosts in Delhi who are a beautiful Jain publishing family living near the university and one of Delhi's biggest lungs and green belts.
I arrive around midnight, and while the Diwali puja (ceremony) was long completed, the feast's leftovers long tucked away into tidy Tupperware's, the children are still launching rockets from the roof and I leave my bags and rush up to the roof to enjoy some of the wonderment of fireworks.
I can't see much difference between a modern day war and the fireworks in terms of sounds and sights as rockets shoot 50 metres into the night sky with a whoosh from every direction only to explode with much glee in flowers of green, red and blue light. Big blast bombs shake the entire four story building I am on the roof off as I am forced to block my ears and hide. This is a true war zone of Diwali glee. The enemy here is the night, the night of
our soul, our ignorance our decent into fear, anger and our move away from spirituality in any way or part of our life. And of course, the mosquitoes.
The Delhi dogs seem well aware of the sounds of this night and they rest silently in cobbled corners and on pavement edges. Her cows continue to hunt through the day’s garbage enjoying papaya scraps and overripe bananas.
I tried to launch just one of the super-extra rockets. Somehow the launch pad collapses at the last minute and it goes hurtling horizontal with the ground in to the neighbouring building. I have visions of starting the ‘GREAT DELHI FIRE of 2006’ but fortunately it lands safely without setting any building's ablaze. That was definitely my last rocket attempt.
At around 4am I return to my quarters and enjoy a bath and change of dress. The night is heavy with sleep and fulfilment of Diwali and remembrance throughout India of our light, our love, our truth, our awareness as souls.
Delhi has changed a lot and it seems to easily be India's most progressive city. Pollution is down so much due to the conversion of all the rickshaws and city buses to CNG or natural gas. The air is once again breathable in most places. The metro is coming along with new lines under construction. There's a feeling of confidence and progression in this city and it is a model to all India for moving forward, transformation and change.
The morning rises and I sleep late to awaken to breakfast in the beautiful old house where I stay, which is very blessed with a very large courtyard or Brahmasthan. In my studies of Vaastu my teacher Dr. Sthapathi, put so much emphasis on this open space being the nourishing cord between the house and the cosmos. There is a special peace in the Motial house where I stay, one feels nurtured, inside of a womb.
The other advantage of the Brahmasthan is that it's the best place on earth for a game of cricket and in no time, Pranav one of the sons of my hosts is out with bat and tennis ball and we are having a South African Indian test match right in the Brahmasthan.
Today I write this some 180km from Delhi in Yamunanagar. I had my first dip in the Yamuna today enjoying the bathing in one of India's holiest rivers. I can't quite explain the softness of the water and the glee one gets seeing so many offerings of flowers and fruits floating in a river which people are worshiping all over India. It is a pity the rest of the world have lost the
art of worshiping a river. The Yamuna truly is as special river. I lay there buried in mud by Dr. Ram my host and dear friend, an Ayurvedacharya from Yamunanagar, I watched the half moon ascend in the East over the rushing river. A coolness descended the entire night, the river enticed me and I dived in again to wash off the mud.
I guess that is what we are all doing here, washing off our mud so we can see who we really are. Not these bodies, or even this mind. But we are the very Yamuna, we are her cool stillness, her reflected moonlight, her joy as she rushes and returns to the ocean for evermore.
Martin Gluckman,
Yamunanagar
November 2006
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| This item was added on Tuesday 24 October, 2006. |
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