Ashram Life at Phool Chaati


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June 1st 2011
Published: June 29th 2011
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Ashram Life



I spent the following week at Phool Chaati ashram, 5km north of Lakhsman Jhula in Rishakesh. An ashram is a sort of live in temple where people can stay to worship, or to learn. Ashrams offer many topics of study, ranging from yoga and meditation to tantric sex. At Phool Chaati I was studying a 7 day beginners course in yoga and meditation. The ashram was set out of town, away from the road down by the banks of the Ganga. Surrounded by lush forest the place was utterly serene. Silence was observed from evening meal until after lunch the following day and there was no noise from outside as we were so secluded. Bright blue birds of paradise nested in the trees outside the gates and the ashram had 4 dogs, including an incredibly cute and fuzzy 3 month old German shepherd puppy. The yogis (teachers) there were incredibly relaxed and peaceful and the group I shared my time there with was wonderful. Everyone was very intelligent, well travelled and worldly – everyone had gone there to seek a better understanding of themselves and of the world and was keen to learn. A couple of people in the group didn't get too involved and some opted to stay in silence for the whole week, so we had to avoid speaking to them, although Jeremy, a photographer from America, opted to be in full silence but then was the first to break the silence every morning – he didn't take it very seriously at all! I shared a room with an Aussie girl called Kat. She was nice, although a little whiny and occasionally grumpy. One morning I was in the shower when my alarm went off. Instead of turning it off she just lay there and let it go on and on, then was in a grump with me all morning; though we were in silence so it was a pretty passive grump! On the whole though the room share was pleasant enough, and 1000 rupees cheaper than having a private room.

The routine was set for the week and was fairly intense. Each morning the wake up gong would sound at 5.30am and we'd have half an hour to get ourselves together and get to the yoga hall for morning meditation. This was thirty minutes each morning and was very difficult for me, as the course was so intensive I was always tired and would often doze off. I wasn't the only one, snoring was common in this session.

After meditation was the neti Pot cleansing session. A neti pot is a small pot with a spout coming from the bottom with a large end on it. It's filled with warm salt water and placed into your nostril. You then tip your head over and pour the water in. The water flows through your sinuses and out of the other side, completely cleansing your nasal passages and opening up your airways. Each day I would take my full put and find a quiet spot in the ashram garden overlooking the Ganga where I would thoroughly cleanse my sinuses. After the pot you blow hard through your nose repeatedly to fully open all the airways. I've never come across a better way of dusting off the cobwebs and waking up; I soon began to look forward to it.

After cleansing was the morning yoga session. We'd start with basic stretches then some breathing exercises, where the benefit of using the neti pot became quickly clear. At the start of the week the exercises were very light with more intense postures in the afternoon sessions. As we progressed, the afternoon postures became the morning postures and the later sessions got increasingly difficult.

Once the morning yoga was done we'd have breakfast. Each day we had a mountain of fresh tropical fruit, some biscuits, chunks of watermelon and as much porridge as we could eat. We then had half an hour to ourselves before karma yoga. All the fruit and vegetables were grown in the garden of the ashram and the milk came from their own cows, which were fed heartily on the daily left overs, plus bags of excess vegetables from the town.

Karma yoga is another key part of the “yogic path” in which you devote time to service for others. In this case, it was cleaning all the communal areas in the ashram, though you were never asked to do a toilet two days in a row. This lasted thirty minutes each morning and was done in silence. It was very satisfying getting something clean and doing a few chores, when travelling in India everything is done for you ninety nine percent of the time – even finding a kitchen to use is nigh on impossible.

The yogic path describes 8 'arms' on the path to enlightenment, to full awareness. In the west, yoga concentrates on just one of these, which is the Asnas (postures and physical mastery) – the focus on yoga as a spiritual path to contentedness has been lost entirely. The cleansing exercises and meditation make up a further 2 of the 8 arms.

After karma yoga we would gather near the garden for our daily meditation walk. We'd walk out into the hills around the ashram, to stunning waterfalls in the mountains or crystal clear warm pools in the valleys. The aim of the meditative walk was to focus on the feet, using the sensations in the feet as an object of concentration and ignoring the distractions of the world beyond. I found this very difficult, as the scenery was so stunning it seemed a shame to try and keep my focus elsewhere. One day I managed it and felt oddly detached from what would normally be an impressive place. I was reassured this was the point, that it was not something to do all the time, but was instead an exercise designed to enhance the ability to concentrate despite distractions. We'd spend around 30 minutes bathing in the pool or waterfall we'd reached before walking back for dinner. On one day, we each took a flower from the garden and walked along the Ganga to a secluded beach, where we chanted a mantra and set the flowers on the water as offerings. The Ganga is considered to be the holiest river in India and by many is considered to be an actual god. We bathed in the Mother Ganga before meditating in the sun on the banks.

After the walks we'd have lunch, sitting on the floor in the dining hall in silence. Lunch was a hearty meal of daal, rice, curried veg or fruit, pickle and chapatis, as much as you could eat with as much chai as you could drink to follow. With chai came the end to the silence and the start of 2 hours of free time. Most days I'd spend a little time doing laundry or sorting out my things before wandering off with the other guests to bathe in the river or wander into the mountains. We got to know each other really well during this time which made the silences easier. Being in silence was actually really pleasurable most of the time; I realised just how many pointless things I say every day and had plenty of time to reflect on what I was learning while I was there.

After the free time came an hour of lecture and discussions, where we'd learn about the teachings of the yogic path from 2,500 years ago and discuss how they relate to the modern world. We'd get deep into philosophy in our groups, analysing the things in the modern world that have become the obstacles to knowing yourself. Then we'd get straight into a couple of hours of intense yoga, during which time we'd work on more complicated postures. I mastered the headstand by mid week and managed to hold one in perfect balance for over 5 minutes one day, it was great fun.

As it was a working Hindu temple, we'd then have the evening sunset worship ceremony, the puja, where bells were rang loud as the devotees chanted worship to the Hindu gods. All the dogs would howl along with the bells and the atmosphere would be charged. After the formal ceremony we'd all sit in the courtyard on big rugs in a massive square and each be handed an instrument. Then, Lalita Ji, the woman running the ashram, would lead a song to which we'd play along with our instruments. For most of us this wasn't an act of worship as much of an immersion in culture and a chance to take part in something we'd never normally have any sight of. Some days I would play no instrument and simply close my eyes and focus on the sounds, other days I'd play a big bongo drum and try and add some beats to the proceedings. It was always an interesting experience.

Then it was dinner time; another hearty meal with as much as we could eat, then chai in silence afterwards before evening meditation.

I'd gone there mainly to learn to meditate properly so this was the big event each day for me.

The evening meditations were guided, each night we'd use a different technique. Our meditation teacher was a guy from America called Brandon, a fairly young guy that was travelling Asia, himself still a student of meditation, but very experienced and knowledgeable none the less. I had some very pronounced experiences during meditation; sometimes visual, others audible. The most notable of the experiences I had was neither, it was just a though that I didn't actively put there, but when I saw it I managed to answer a good few questions. I spoke to Brandon each day about my experiences as each night it was different from the last but still very strong. He told me that very few people get to the stages of concentration I was reaching in their first year, let alone their first few days. He called it a gift and encouraged me to try and do a little more when I could; to strike while the iron was hot as it were. I found Brandon really helpful, I'd never experienced any of these things before and to be honest, focusing hard enough to be unaware of anything outside of your own mind is a little weird, so having someone there to tell me it was normal and just the first steps was great. He was also able to clarify a lot of the intricacies of the techniques which really helped my understanding.

The evening meditation was 30 minutes, but I would stay behind each night after the lights went out and everyone left and it was then that I was really able to focus. Some nights one or two other people would stay behind a little while, but more often than not I'd have the place to myself and have total silence in which to focus. I'd stay there until either something strong happened in my meditation, such as a powerful image or thought that needed processing, or until I felt bed time coming. Usually I stayed back for half an hour to an hour and this was normally enough. I spoke to Brandon about other places to go to further explore meditation and on the day before last in the ashram, I took a share Jeep into Rishakesh and went online to book a place on a 10 day Buddhist mediation retreat in McLeod Ganj, near Daramshala, my next destination.

On the final full day in the ashram, there was no silence after the morning sessions. The afternoon was spent in group discussion, talking about our individual experiences and feeding back about what we thought of the course. Everyone in the group was full of praise for the place, each of us had had a fantastic time there and the gratitude flowed heartily to our two teachers. Our karma yoga session that day was to go down to the river and collect all the driftwood and dead trees we could find and make a big pile by the water. After dinner that night we went to the river in the dark and lit a huge bonfire, sitting around it on rugs on the sand chatting away, laughing and joking with each other and fully making the most of the lack of silence. There were people from all over the world and we were asked to group ourselves by nationality and prepare a song for the rest of the group. There was 4 of us from England and after much debate we decided to sing 'We're all going on a summer holiday,' but we modified the second verse to suit the occasion. “We're all going on a yoga holiday, no more worries for a day or two, silence and laughter on our yoga holiday, and meditation too-oo-oo. We're going were the sun shines brightly, we're going were the Ganga flows blue, we've seen it on the internet, and now we know it's true.” We sang in the style of a barbers shop quartet and it went down a storm, greeted with rapturous applause. A lone Russian girl that was there spoke very little English, so instead she tried to do some Russian dancing, which was hilarious. A Swedish girl got a bunch of people up to do the midsomer frog dance, a celebration I'd seen for myself on a little island near Mariestadt when I'd been living there a couple of years previously and experienced some of the warmest hospitality of my life. We sang and danced for several hours, until 10pm which was late by the standards of the week. Everyone went to bed very happy that night.

On the day we were leaving we had breakfast 2 hours early and after waiting for an intense rain storm to subside, we loaded ourselves into Jeeps that were waiting outside. Those of us with waterproofs on were piled into the back of an open pick up truck; 14 of us standing in the back of a truck as we weaved our way through the mountains for half an hour, driving up into the clouds through some fantastic scenery. Across the valley we could see clouds forming on the hillsides from the water on the trees. Above us we could see mountain peaks in the small gaps in the clouds we were driving through. We joked about the health and safety failings going on all around us as we turned tight bends and held on for dear life as we passed other Jeeps on a single track road high up on the steep mountainsides. It was a little scary at points, but a fantastic way to travel.

We stopped just as the skies were clearing, high up in the hills. As we climbed down from the back of the truck, the sun began to creep through the clouds, warming us and illuminating the morning in the hills. Across a small valley from us, hundreds of bright white steps marked a path up the hillside to a temple sat on top of a mountain peak. We carried our packs and each took some of the supplies four our lunch and set out across the valley. I talked with Brandon at length about photography as we climbed the hundreds of steps, 250 or so in total, stopping occasionally to remove layers of clothes as the sun and exercise rapidly warmed us all.

At the temple on top of the mountain we took photos of the towns and valleys below us, flanked on all sides by lush green hills dotted with small villages. We were then asked to remove our shoes and go inside the temple to observe the morning Puja (I'm not sure about the spelling, but a Puja is a loud and vibrant ceremony of worship for the Hindu gods, as we'd done each night in the ashram). After the Hindus had completed their singing, bell ringing and offerings, we were each asked one by one to go and sit in the shrine with the priest, where we were each given a blessing and a bindi (red dot on the forehead). After this we had the fire ceremony. Outside the temple, under a corrugated tin shelter was a concrete platform with a square pit in the centre. Rugs were laid out around the pit and we huddled around it in our group. We'd each been asked to write down on a piece of paper something we wanted to let go of; a memory, a personality trait or an emotion we felt added no value to our lives. I chose mine and kept the folded paper in my pocket ready to let it go. We were handed a small container of sawdust each, made from 12 different woods, a sacred combination. We'd learned mantras during the yoga sessions each week and as we lit the fire we began to chant. After each chant of the chosen mantra, we'd say “burn” in Hindi and throw on a little of the dust. You were able to use only your thumb and middle two fingers to do this. We repeated this 108 times, as Lalita Ji counted the progress on a set of prayer beads. This took a long time, but for the most part I had my eyes closed, chanting without thinking and focussing hard on my chosen thing to let go. After the last chant, we threw the rest of our wood on the fire and as it roared to life and the scents of the 12 woods filled the air, we threw our pieces of paper into the searing flames, each making a personal vow to let go.

We spent the afternoon on top of the mountain, enjoying the best food we'd had all week (it had been fantastic all week so this really was special – especially as it had been prepared on top of a mountain!) and making plans to meet up that night in Rishikesh. We sat for hours chatting away in all manner of broken English, I again realised I'd managed to get sunburn and went to have a little nap on the temple floor while the midday sun raged outside. We drank chai and relaxed thoroughly before heading back down to the Jeeps and another white knuckle ride back to the ashram. The monkeys seemed as baffled as the locals at the sight of a pick up truck crammed with white people winding it's way along the m0untain passes.

When we got back to the ashram we gathered our things and booked a Jeep. Brandon approached me and said he had a room arranged in Rishakesh and offered me to share with him for 80p a night, which I agreed to. I thanked Lalita Ji and bought myself a Neti pot to take with me and continue the cleansing each morning.

Each of us left the ashram a little wiser and more self aware (and more flexible) than we'd arrived and each very thankful we'd found our way there to experience it.



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