Marriage & Meditation

Wow, what a great couple of weeks the past few have been! For one thing, I had an amazing, transformative experience at Isha Yoga Center in the end of January. I took a three day yoga/meditation course there and had the most incredible experience. Since then I've been practicing the technique I learned there twice a day each day. My practice time may even exceed lunchtime as my favorite time of the day! :)

The week after returning from Isha was especially great because Deb, a friend and fellow Chennai-based AJWS volunteer, stayed at my place while she was attending a mediation course at Sivananda. We had great conversations about spirituality, yoga and judiasm every morning over coffee and fruit salad before we both headed off to work at our respective NGOs.

Knowing that I'm going to be leaving Chennai soon I've been savoring all my experiences here even more than usual. I've been so grateful for the absolute wonderful group of colleagues and friends who have greeted me so warmly here. Leaving this place for my next adventure is going to be truly bittersweet.

This past weekend in Chennai was my last, and it was definitely a good one. Balaji, a friend from Seattle invited me to his sister's marriage. Wow! 2000 people and three solid days of ceremonies. So many symbols, rituals, flowers, blessings, gifts, people, drums, cameras, and delicious foods. It was a lot of fun. I wore a sari and that was fun too.
A picture of the bride and groom:


A picture of Balaji:

Compassion

At a lot of ashrams in India, short little books on various life and spirituality topics are available from the ashram bookshop. These 20 page packets are great little reads. I wanted to share something I read about compassion and helping others that made a lot of sense to me. This one is from "A Guru Always Takes You for a Ride" by Sadhguru.

"Many times, human beings, once they reach a certain level of attainment, have an urge to be overly compassionate. Misplaced compassion always comes from your ego; you want to be the most compassionate person on the planet. Wherever anybody need anything - reach out. This is not coming from any kind of understanding, wisdom, or awareness... This problem is there among people - they want to be the most compassionate. True compassion is not about giving or taking. Ture compassion is just doing what is needed. You ave no preferences of your own; simply doing what is needed is compassion. Your revving yourself up into a huge amount of emotion and and reaching out to somebody is not compassion. This is just self-satisfaction, devious ways to fulfill yourself. Compassion is possible, genuine compassion is possible, when there is nothing to fulfill in you, you are just doing what is needed."