INDIA(LOGUE)
"The Self is the Auspicious Moment,
devoid of the auspicious and conspicuous time [...]
The Truth which is homogeneous is of the form of the sky."
- Avadhuta Gita, VII:11
"Goodness is the miracle which turns the tumult
of chaos into a dance of beauty [...]"
- Rabindranath Tagore
January 15, 2002 - Darshan - Very short - Swami favors men's side. Male devotees throw themselves at Swami - SWAMI COLLECTS MAIL ... Swami ignores 80-90% of the daily mail, including a beige booklet flapping in the melee - Swami departs 'early' - Hall empties, except for those hanging on for bhajans (devotional songs)
God runs a CIRCUS - The clowns and performing animals are us, the ones circling under the big tent of the sky - sunny by day, starlit at night. The circus moves to and from Puttaparti, to and from the backup ashram at Whitefield (outside Bangalore) - packed and shipped by car, bus, and truck - The beggars are said to follow the circus by busMANDIRS & STUPAS - Prasanti Mandir (c.1949) - Ganesha Mandir (c.1949) - Sarva Dharma Stupa (1975) - Subramanya Mandir (1997) - Gayatri Mandir (1998) - Sai Kulwant Hall (c.whenever, said to seat 20,000)
Seva Dal (Sai police) - rotated like wheels - blue & yellow scarves - 7-15 days on/off
RULES (written and unwritten) - No cameras, no cigarettes, no socializing, no unauthorized singing, no gossip, no self-aggrandizement, do not give beggars money, do not eat or shop outside the ashram (i.e., do not patronize local restaurants and shops), stay inside the ashram, give only to registered charitable trusts (i.e., the Sai Trust)
January 16, 2002 - Swami leaves - At 4 a.m. SWAMI DEPARTS for Whitefield in a black, luxury sedan w/ police escort (a jeep with armed soldiers riding in the back) - Those waiting in line for darshan are locked inside the ashram, as his entourage hastens to leave Puttaparti - Those in the know have packed and lined up cabs for the trip to Whitefield
Sathya Sai Baba was born in 1925 or so in Puttaparti - The village had perhaps 50 families at the time - His former birthplace (the house is gone) is now a shrine demarcated by a double wrought-iron enclosure - No one seems to go there - It is preternaturally quiet in the middle of the afternoon
Arrived in WHITEFIELD, 16 kilometers from Bangalore, at just before 10 a.m. - The circus has moved en masse - The vendors' makeshift stalls are being constructed alongside the main road outside Brindavan, the ashram, as we arrive - The town center is more affluent and newer than Puttaparti. The outermost layer of buildings alongside the Bangalore Road, outside the ashram, but on the opposite side of the road, have been demolished and the roadside is a several-blocks-long rubble field. Two pedestrian passages pierce the outer wall of the enfilade of buildings lining the roadside. These lead straight to the commercial heart of Whitefield. New buildings are going up in town. The canalized stream that runs through Whitefield is an open sewer, sickly green, clogged with plants and garbage - A truck with a loudspeaker rolls by announcing the other circus, the traditional one, is also in town. Colorful circus posters are plastered on the walls of the compounds lining Bangalore Road.We secure the penthouse at SRI RANGA GUEST HOUSE, one of the last 'decent' accommodations left in the center of town. The penthouse is one small room, plus bathroom, with the roof of the hotel as terrace and an array of solar panels, mattresses, and laundry lines here and there. Sri Ranga is a three-storey building with all rooms roughly 15' x 15'. It has a small restaurant opening to an alley and a narrow room facing the alley stocked with computers for Internet access. The computers are rigged to a battery of car-type batteries for power during the frequent power out(r)ages that roll through India on a daily basis.
On reflection, I decide that Swami is some part/not part of me - which I do not fully understand. I suspect it is the same figure I saw dancing in the fireplace when I was very young and would curl up on the couch in our living room after awakening from a bad dream, the same figure that prompted me to paint "Master Your Existence" on the brick mantel of my own fireplace, when in college, many years after first "seeing" this holy ghost.
This circus is also a part/not part of me that I understand all too well and try to laugh off - it is the race, the contest, the war of competing concerns, individuals, and mendacities. It swirls around Swami, like dust, a sign that our petty selves are the obstacles to realizing that Self of the Vedanta - that part of us that is formlessness and form at the same time. The circus travels everywhere we go, individually and collectively. It is Life Itself. The poor and the beggars, the shopkeepers and the street urchins, the high and the low, are all players in this three-ring spectacle - I/Thou/Nothingness. The fourth ring is 'outside', 'over there', 'up there', in the so-called space of appearance of concepts - the chora perhaps (pace Plato). Yet the fourth ring is also an illusion and does not exist apart from anything (everything) else.
Our almost-private rooftop terrace - Were we put here to find a space above the circus? To enjoy our own circus? To find the fourth circle, the sky - the space/place to behold creation almost dispassionately? Above the turmoil and tumult, still within earshot of the circus but not of the circus ... No, this is not yet the place of freedom - Hawk circles ashram, red wings radiant in the late sun
The VEDANTA - the philosophy (harsh metaphysics) of the Vedas - is the so-called path to self-realization and freedom. It demolishes dualism, over and over, and is a punishing discourse on nonattachment. It invokes a state of Being, versus Becoming; i.e., the professed true state of Self beyond form and formlessness. It renounces all - even meditation and samadhi - or every conditional thing, concept, and principle, including language and mind. But it requires mind, as a vehicle (a ladder climbed and thrown away), to travel 'there', which is nowhere. The mind must find the place of its emergence through retracing the steps of the manifold to unity. This paratactical 'other' - this empty mirror of the manifold - is the last step and is, too, discarded. The path is singular (solitary) and timeless (nowhere).
January 16, 2002 - Morning ravens (blackbirds) alight on the masts of the rooftop water tanks - Silent coconut palm fronds etch low fog - 7 a.m.
Access to morning darshan without metal detectors, and, instead, a cursory frisking of anyone entering the hall, excepting Sevas of course. Part way into darshan/bhajans (they are combined today) an altercation occurs in the men's section within the hall and an Indian man is whisked away. Apparently, a very long dagger was produced out of thin air and the culprit was pounced upon by vigilant Sevas. All of this is hearsay (and disputed), given that the hordes have arrived, the hall is smaller than at Puttaparti, and there was a heavy fog this a.m. A 'Roshomon' incident, perhaps. Yet another sideshow in the Great Circus.Coffee, 10 rupees at Sri Ranga - War continues over how cheaply one can live in India - 12 rupee water still unacceptable expense - 750 rupees okay for devotional CDs - Sari, shoes, writing paper, extra laundry/dish soap, pictures of Sai Baba, small idols and knicknacks, books, etc. okay as well
River in front of penthouse door from overflow pipe of rooftop water tank rerouted after several complaints to "management" - 6 centimeter lizard (gecko) chased out of room - Bedroom mirror re-hung on clothes hook in bathroom above sink at rakish angle for shaving - Duct tape at the ready for next invasion of wildlife through gaps in the ill-fitting windows - "Management" put on notice that guests are unhappy with state of affairs
Inductee to private circus appears periodically - He was enlisted during the taxi ride from Puttaparti to Whitefield - All admonitions to calm down to Agent Provocateur #1 go unheeded - The war continues
A Road Guide to India* - "Bangalore" - "Sri Sai Baba's Ashram: The goal of thousands of INTERNATIONAL SOLACE-SEEKERS drawn by accounts of the Sai Baba's supernatural powers. The modern Indian spiritual guru, Sat[h]ya Sai Baba, easily recognizable by his Afro-hairdo, receives floods of visitors anxious to see him or witness one of his miracles." - *(Chennai: TTK LTD, 2001), p. 60
The HYPE, the SPECTACLE, the STORIES - "The tax collectors come to see Sai Baba ... He says, 'Yes, I have lots of money.' and shows them a door. 'Open it,' he says. They open it and find a room full of gold and etc. They are dumfounded and shaken. 'How can we tax God?' Sai Baba says, 'Go look again.' They return to the room, open the door, and the room is empty."
Circled the outside of the compound at afternoon bhajans and passed the Whitefield rail station as a rusting locomotive sailed past. Only the southwest side of the ashram has developed. The backside is full Indian squalor with one or two shops. Beyond this is full Muslim squalor, with mosque. The ashram wall is even less attractive here, without the decorative flourishes along the Bangalore Road. It is perhaps taller, 15' or so, and topped with rusting barbed wire.
The PRESS ARRIVED at about 4 p.m. and set up outside the gate, dodging traffic and filming the comings and goings of the "international solace-seekers" - Little girls (8-10 years or so old) are hawking rose blossoms ... 10 rupees, 4 rupees, 2 rupees ??? - Everyone is hawking darshan cushions - There are simple flat versions and de luxe folding versions that open up into a small sturdy chair - Local shops are catching up finally, almost fully stocked, though the ice cream was late arriving - The circus is in full swing
International Solace-Seekers - At a minimum we have on hand representatives from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Holland, Britain, and the USA. Australians and a handful of Japanese and Korean devotees round out the demographic. Indian daytrippers easily outnumber foreign devils, and they make no bones about owning Sai Baba. They swarm into the ashram and push their way to the front of the hall, ignoring the nasty Sevas. They stand up in the middle of the hall, blocking the view of others, and are the first to leave when Baba glides back into the mandir after darshan. No doubt many of them have to go off to work.The governor of Rajastan has a nice villa adjacent to the ashram. It has a nice perimeter wall, iron entrance gate with guard house, a gravel court d'honneur, and lattice shade structures set in the garden and stuffed with potted plants. Blood-red Bougainvillea splurts over the wall of the compound along the Bangalore Road.
Swami's own house is engulfed in a garden at the far end of the ashram, south of the darshan hall. His compound is contiguous with the darshan hall, such that he may appear at any time. The glorious mandir in Puttaparti, which is the figurative center of the beehive, is here matched by a poor second cousin twice removed. But it still functions as a symbolic hinge between his world and our world. It is from its several portals that he appears and disappears. The Brindavan darshan hall resembles a modifed airplane hangar.
Unlike Puttaparti, the greater Whitefield ashram is off limits to anyone not staying within. Perhaps this rule is relaxed at times, or perhaps it is quite simply one of those sublime, arbitrary things that come and go like Swami.
LOTUSES are now for sale in the streets ... They were in bloom in the lowlands along the way from Puttaparti to Whitefield. These are rose-colored, not white. They are an astonishing presence - bursting as they do from muck and mire - and so different from the airy, delicate garlands sold outside the entrance to both ashrams, made of small, interlocking cream, soft-orange, pink, and lemon-yellow flowers resembling hand-colored Laburnum blossoms.
"O beloved friend, how
shall I bow to my own
Self in my Self?"
- Avadhuta Gita III:2
The main Sathya Sai Baba institutions are free of charge - the "super-specialty" hospitals and the lower and higher schools. Admission to the schools is said to be rigorous. The hospitals - at least two - are reputedly built according to the mathematical principles of sacred Indian architecture. These structures are also typically bombastic, with huge, false facades hiding a double-loaded box. They often have a central dome or rotunda to increase the sense of grandeur. One story told about the latest hospital (funded by the man who founded, then sold, the Hard Rock Cafes) typifies the mythology of the Sai circle. Tradition requires that during groundbreaking a mandala is to be drawn on the ground. Eagles are necessary at such auspicious events as salutary sentinels. On the day of the event three eagles appeared on cue and hopped around on the ground throughout the ritual consecration of the site. Sai Baba then discharged them, after thanking them for heeding his invitation.
The ashrams are not free, but dirt cheap (as it were) - 3 rupees per day for a bed (shared room, bring your own mattress), 10 rupees for a slice of pizza, 2 rupees for a bag of Sai popcorn, 6 rupees for a South India meal served by surly Sevas and eaten with your fingers, prison cafeteria style (left hand, right hand in lap) - Outdoor showers, canteen, bookstore/shopping center, accommodations office, Air India office, and Post Office round out the guest facilities in Puttaparti.
[end part two]
GK (2002)
PART THREE always already forthcoming ...
The Same /Sky/ (RTF)
