Liz on Ashram in Bengaluru

Liz on The Art of Living Ashram in Bengaluru April 12-15

Or Liz’s version of pray in Eat, Pray, Love  with a note on Education.

Shashikumar, GM India friend, colleague and our protector.

Billboard Greeting at entrance to Ashram

Huge Ashram Registration Building

I took Part 1 of AOL (Art of Living), a 3-day course on meditation in an amazing Ashram on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Our GM friend Shashikumar got us checked into a hotel, the nearby Vaishnavi Palace on Thursday night. This is where Mike would bach(elor), while I stayed in the Ashram. The Ashram did not reply to tell me the hotel’s name just their phone number. Without internet booking I was at a loss on this until we got a phone in India and even then I needed Shashi‘s help.


Mike protectively walked me to Ashram Registration and then to my dorm room on Thursday after 6PM. I still wasn’t quite over how the taxi driver hustled us at the airport with phony identification papers. The crook flashed Easy Cab ID and used a phony laminated price list. Then he took a $100 overpayment and left us with a driver who had trouble finding our hotel. Ever since Shashi has worried over our competence and ability not to lose our stuff. 

Vaishnavi Palace

Mike bach'ing it with Kindle.

Neighbors by our Hotel

Neighbors on Other Side of Hotel

Stand near Hotel

Does this indicate Tire Repair Shop?

Taxi near hotel

The walk to and from the Ashram is strange enough that I felt concern for Mike’s safety when he walked back alone after sunset. Uniformed guards are posted at gates throughout the campus to check ID but Mike still had to walk along a strange stretch of road. Mike was not stopped when he escorted me. I expect that since we were among a handful of Caucasian we are the exception at the gates. English is spoken by the educated while guards mainly speak Hindi. Guards do not want to offend us or lose their job over us.

Guard by a Gate

Gate near our Hotel leading into Ashram.

Guard before Kitchen

Guard near construction area

Then my roommate, Kripa, a 32 year old single Indian woman from Chile arrived. I am old enough to be her mother but I enjoyed her company. Kripa works as a translator and imports goods into Chile from India. Her mother traveled with her until a few days before AOL . Her parents maintain close ties to the Indian embassy in Chile. Kripa said that she and her older brother and sister were the only Hindus in Santiago’s international school.

Kripa travels alone which is highly unusual for an Indian woman. Kripa is visiting extended family in India. Her widowed grandfather in Delhi asks her to call him every day. She is independent and not lonely. She plans to travel for up to a year or as long as she feels that she is learning. She will remain in the Ashram all week and take AOL‘s Part 2 class the following weekend.

Nandi, my dorm and also the name of Sheva's Bull

Dorm Bed

Kripa, my roommate from Chile

Kripa and I shared a comfortable 1^st floor room in dorm, Nandi. Without air conditioning we felt cool due to 2 ceiling fans. Dorm buildings have a foundation set in the earth and supported with rocks limiting sunlight which is then shielded by draperied windows. To open the door to the room we open a high school style combination locker. No door knobs are on the doors in the Ashram. If the door is not dead bolted from the outside assume someone is in the room or bathroom.

No doorknob on this door to dorm room. A typical door has a deadbolts and combination lock or key.
If door is not deadbolted outdide then you know someone is inside.

Libby, I want you in particular to how Indians have a “live and let live” policy about animals. Due to our building Nandi’s cool peacefulness at any given time 6 dogs laid around outside our dorm. Not once did a dog so much as bark at me. Not that barking is bad, but the dogs just didn't bark. It is a vegetarian institution so what rice or leftovers these dogs eat may make them pretty dull. Some cows walked down the road too.

Dogs sleeping besides Dorm. 3 more sleep under the stairway.

Ashram Street Scene

Cow close up

Drinking Water station

Our 2 AOL teachers, Divya and Nikhilesh began the class with a discussion of expectations. What did we expect? The caliber of the students might imply high expectations. I expected to learn a meditation technique and to meditate with others. But we first learned a Sutra, “Expectations reduce joy in life”.

Ashram Teachers Divya & Nikilisch with Liz

Cushions for sitting crosslegged and doing breathing exercises. Chairs are optional.

AOL Classroom before class. Class has 32 students of all ages. Clasroom is open on 3 sides.
Features include brick ceiling tiles, light fixtures and 6 ceiling fans and.
concrete floor with cotton mats.  

Example of toilet for Classroom.

Classroom bathroom sink is outside. Frost is never a possibility.

The exercise to answer “When will I be happy?” lead to group breakouts. The men in the group said that they’d be happy when their future was secure so that they might stop working or at least not work 10 hour days 6 days per week. They were impressed when I told them how we retired from General Motors, that we were in the right place at the right time and that allowed me to travel there. I also told them how in 1997 GM paid $1000 for my meditation classes . GM was desperate to increase creativity and productivity and reduce health care costs; meditation supports those goals. The AOL students mourned this lack of insight in Indian firms (and I mourn the decline of GM). All I could say is that my salaried retirement is a result of contracts with organized labor and that labor needs to continue to organize in a global way. In the same way that corporations have gone global, unions need to go global. Bill Clinton suggested the UN (United Nations) with all its translation capabilities as the natural body for assisting unions in collaborating. Addressing the needs of labor unions globally is a brilliantly natural application of the UN. When I meditate on the state of labor and the massive erosion of our middleclass happiness, I am glad to married to a dues paying UAW retiree. When we get a chance we will spend a weekend at Black Lake, a UAW retreat and see what we might contribute in the way of coaching or encouragement. Admittedly we are too old to be union organizers but perhaps as travelers we might offer encouragement. The only way the labor movement is to flourish is by developing contacts throughout the world. I can’t say I’ll be happy when everyone is happy but I will do my part for the happiness of others because my retirement has made me very happy.

Then AOL teacher Divya speaking with an Indian mother-in-law accent waxed on about happiness.
I’ll be soooo happy when

I pass those certain exams
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I get accepted in to a certain school
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I graduate from school
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I get a job with a special company
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I get a promotion
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I buy a motorbike/car
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I get my own apartment
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I get married
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I have 2 children, ohh if we just have 2 children
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

We buy a house in the right place
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

My son/daughter gets good grades on their exam
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

My son/daughter gets accepted into a certain school
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

My son/daughter gets hired by a special company
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

My son/daughter gets married
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

I have grandchildren!
Ohhh I’ll be soooo happy!

And the happiness lament starts all over again with the grandchildren.

Our teacher Divya and her husband Sheva lived in the US for 12 years. She is a geneticist by training. Her husband taught high school. They lived in Troy, Michigan and in Minnesota. They sold their American 5 bedroom house in 2010 and have lived in a room in the Ashram for a year.

Why is the Ashram amazing? It is a huge oasis covering miles (or kilometers) with recently constructed buildings. In February the Ashraom conducts an event for 1 to 2 million people. The ashram can feed millions of people 3 meals per day. I am not sure how many thousands ate there while I was there but many people were served. Mike equates the AOL complex’s buildings and land mass to the scale of Oral Robert‘s University. It is designed for weddings or graduations, schools with classrooms all over for every kind of community project. The Ashram is fun for singles and families. A housing complex is going up.

 Sanctuary from top. Pigeons fly inside. It is open to air.

 Sancuary from below

Ampitheater faces Sanctuary, good for overflow and for young students.  

Housing Complex Ad for Ashram

Ashram Housing Project Under Construction

Dinner is served between 8:00-9:00 PM. Mealtime in India is typically 9PM so Ashram meals at 8 are relatively early. Kripa and I eat in the international dining room but we are the only Western females this weekend. April is hot and low season for tourists after all.

4-story Ashram Building called the Kitchen with 40 or so Solar Cooking Panels

Long shaded walkway to the Kitchen.

Food servers in the International Dining Room

Rinsing my plate in the Ashram

 Locals eat in the Kitchen while sitting on mats on the floor. They eat with their hands and/or a spoon.

Have you ever seen a bathtub full of rice? Bathtub sized is the scale for the quantity of dishes served in the local people’s dining room. Later we ask a teacher about other differences between the common dining room and the small international dining room. Since internationals pay 3 to 4Xs more than Indians we get our own dining room designed to make us comfortable. How comfortable would I be without a table, chair, or spoon? A left handed person eating with her hands is not cool. 2 servers serve us offering a choice of spicy or not spicy food. The spices are really so fresh and the food is smartly seasoned. As internationals we do not sit on the floor and balance a plate on our lap or eat with our hands. The plates are aluminum like I have only seen in prison movies. I paid $290 for AOL course whereas Kripa paid $240. She speculates that cost may vary per origin of passport. She thinks locals pay $80.

Kripa and I agree that the Ashram’s vegetarian food is delicious! I reflect that the high quality of the food is due to the use of actual grains and fresh ingredients which is not the case in a US institution. Canned foods are unknown. Perhaps warm milk on cornflakes caused my mild bout of diarrhea? Are the locals served milk and cornflakes with their breakfast? The real staple of breakfast is "kitchery" (spelling guess), a yellow-colored rice and grain mush seasoned with salt and fresh pepper. (No salt-free food is served in Asia.) After eating we rinse and wipe out our plates with dish soap and a scrubber. Then dishwashers run the dishes through a hot rinse.

Breakfast of water, cornflakes and warm milk, Ashram's version on Ovaltine and
Kitchery, a delicious rice and grain mush with fresh pepper.  

On the roof of the Ashram are 40 or 50 solar panels. What is purpose of solar panels? Solar cooking is the answer! Have you ever seen solar cooking panels? It is logical extention of hot water heater solar panels. The panels sit on top of a 4-story building called the Kitchen. Meals for normal sized groups like ours are served on the first floor since the first floor is naturally the coolest floor. We take our shoes off before we enter the building. Shoe minders watch the Kitchen and worship area of the Ashram. Shoe minders are a fixture in temples throughout India.

The AOL class covered breathing techniques. We learn several different methods of breathing for a 40 minute meditation period once per day. One breathing technique started with OHM and then recited So Hum for long, medium and short counts in sets of 20, 40 and 40.

Unlike in TM, in AOL we are not assigned a mantra. A mantra is a word to think while meditating. My mantra is a secret and to me precious word that my very caring TM teacher assigned to me on Feb. 27, 1997. My TM teacher assigned my mantra as part of special TM training he received in Switzerland where he was taught a vocabulary of mantras and to matched the right mantra to each person. I don’t always think about my mantra when I meditate. I like to think thoughts when I meditate. Sleeping, thinking thoughts, doing nothing is allowed in TM meditations. Meditation in TM is 20 minutes in morning and evening as far a part from mealtimes as possible. Effortlessness is central to TM. I notice that when I am stressed or angry I breathe out hard and loudly.

In contrast to TM breathing and breath exercises are central to AOL. Getting a rhythm around breathe was 80% of our AOL class work. I did a lot of resistance exercises simply by sitting cross legged on the floor and breathing all day Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday. The teacher went over basic yoga exercises on Saturday and Sunday starting at 6:30AM. We worked for an hour until breakfast time.

Our teachers encouraged to perform sayva or service, in particular kitchen service. A good night’s sleep is guaranteed when a body is kept busy. When I first walked into the kitchen I grimaced that a good looking and valuable 4-story circular staircase was uncared for and unnoticed. My Teutonic-self was offended because this relatively new and valuable staircase could be gleaming. It ought to last for a 100 years but it was filthy. When the teachers told us the sutra that “responsibility is taken not given”, I took that as the license to use my spare time to clean the most visibly bad parts of the staircase.

The 4-story staircase after I partially cleaned it. Cleaning is my nature.  

Mike dislikes all the donated wealth apparent in the Ashram. He worried that I might wig out and want to give all my money to the cause. He only half jokingly threatened to slap me if I came out weird. Photos of the founder, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar are throughout the Ashram. Due to his effort AOL is in 150 countries and spans many languages. The common identifying word is Jai Gurudev after the founder. The founder is lovingly called Guruji. He was born in 1956 (me too). He was a child prodigy graduating in Vedic Lit and Physics by age 17 (not me). On Sunday towards noon our male teacher began to wax about his wonderfulness. I had a brief case of diarrhea and decided to depart. I misread the check out time as 12:30 on Sunday (whereas it was actually Monday). I felt glad to escape and miss the bus tour of the Ashram. I might go back for Part 2 if I had a friend to go with but not now with Mike intensely disliking this type of course and any and all TV preachers in the US or India. However Mike quotes author Jerry Pournelle who says the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. The Ashram like Thailand with the king is a well run benevolent dictatorship. Smooth succession is the issue. As they say in Thailand, "Long live the king!' 

Ashram lead symposium on missing female babies. Like China sons are preferred in India.

Ashram has lots of businesses on sight. They sell medicine, health care products, bath products, books, etc...

Map of Ashram. It is huge

AOL classes are much more expensive in the US than in India. Even TM (Transcendental Meditation) costs $2500 in the US today. 15 years ago TM cost $500- 600. When I was in college in 1974 TM posters on campus in Chapel Hill, N.C. promised that if you took TM your GPA would go up one letter grade. I believe that my long practice of TM sharpens my focus. Yes, I am basically vague and uncertain. I got raises, promotions, formed a great marriage and then retired to travel. Mike sees the scientific merits in meditation, yoga and community support but his idea of meditation still involves a cigarette break.

25 years ago I became interested in meditation due to the eleventh step of the 12-steps. The 12-steps are the basis of a spiritual program originally created by AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). The eleventh step says “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out”. 12-step programs like AA, NA, Alanon, Codependents Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous are spiritual programs that supplement primary religious programs or even assist nonbelievers. God is defined subjectively as “God as we understood God“, whether as Jesus or as good orderly direction. The first 3 steps are a path out of denial. Steps 4 thru 9 clean up the past and give a person perspective on errors and a fresh start, like confession. Steps 10 thru 12 are performed daily by a recovered person. To practice Step 10 we keep up-to-date with issues in our life. Step 11 is to pray which is to talk to God while meditation is to listen. Step 12 is to practice these principles in all our affairs and carry this message to others, hence this closing paragraph on how I came to meditate in an ashram in India.

Shelves for shoes outside Kitchen

Note: We take off our shoes all over Asia whenever we enter temples, restaurants and even some hostels. Mike has sandals just to save time tying up his Nikes.