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| AHYMSIN Newsletter, Issue - November 2013 | |||||
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Swami Rama Dhyana Gurukulam New Yearby Joanne Sullivan (Divya)Autumn here is a wonderful time. The monsoons have drawn to a close and October has lifted Her veil. The days are sometimes quite hot but more often pleasantly balmy. The arrival of new gurukulam students coincided with Navaratri, the 9 Nights of the Goddess festival. Not the FirstMany years ago in a faraway place called Guyana, Pandit Usharbudh Arya (now Swami Veda Bharati) had a training grounds in the South American jungle, where he would sometimes stand knee-deep in water doing drills with his beloved students. I wish I could get a bird’s eye view of that. This was not the entirety of his travels through the Indian diaspora. Africa, Europe, South America and the island nations of many waters had also called to him. I have met some of these former students’ children and grandchildren, and there is something so at home about them, as if they had been here all along for years. Last month one lady from Toronto, whose family roots are in Guyana, made her first visit to India for her 60th birthday with her husband. It was like light touching light. I wondered if some of what her Mother had taught her as a child was coming home to her— only perhaps more so—because now the teachings of Swami Veda Bharati are drenched in the ocean of the Guru. Since that time, Pandit Arya had met H.H. Swami Rama and the master had given him initiation into the highest samadhi. This could not help but reverberate through him and, at least in some degree, his students, depending perhaps on grace and on their levels of adhikari or preparedness. Swami Veda at Swami Rama Sadhaka GramaHere in Rishikesh at SRSG, there is a different sort of drill going on - yet maybe a strain of the same drills he did in Guyana. Pandit Usharbudh is no more, but we have captured the unicorn, so to speak, in that Swami Veda is here. What kind of drill? Well, there is no energetic young man at the helm now. Rather, there is a very great teacher whose reach draws many people very close. He does not seem to require the power of speech or physical stamina, which many of us have observed in Swami Veda and Dr. Arya over the years. Though, on second thought, he probably has more physical stamina than anyone I know. One physician, after looking at the X-rays of his spine commented that he did not know how this man was even standing, that his vertebrae were like tectonic plates sliding under one another, and that he must suffer excruciating pain. That is only one of a full orchestra of physical maladies he has endured for decades. It is different for every person who comes here. Yet one thing we share is the 1-hour silent meditation with Swami Veda and his guru each evening in his initiation room. It feels like a great blessing to sit with him in meditation. He does not open his eyes. He does not speak. Though he has never stopped teaching. That Presence beyond form at times seems ubiquitous. We are presently drenched in the 5-to-7-year-maybe-forever-silence of Swami Veda Bharati. You may feel it even though you are not physically here. Some people have said this to me---that they feel his presence more now since his silence began---though they are physically far away. And he still takes the people of every continent into the center of his spiritual heart every month on the full moon meditation days, when he sits with the people of different regions from his seat at SRSG in Rishikesh. The next full moon meditation will be the 17th of December. You can find him there. The Gurukulam at SRSGThe Swami Rama Dhyana Gurukulam is in many ways a training ground based on the age-old traditional Indian gurukulam, where students come to study, practice and serve – close to the teacher. October marks the start of the school year for the Swami Rama Dhyana Gurukulam at SRSG. It ends in mid-May and people study for 3 to 5 years, though some for shorter periods. The present group of gurukulam students are a talented, kind and focused group. There is a high level of motivation. I asked each of them to say a bit about themselves. The following based on what they have shared. They come from the cities and the countryside around the world and several have experimented with silence coupled with meditation and mindfulness. All of them come from the working world. Several are returning students. All have studied yoga in one form or another. Holland, Russia, Montenegro, Poland, Switzerland, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, Taiwan, Korea, Italy, the United States, Austria and Portugal---these are the places represented in our gurukulam this year. 3rd-Year Gurukulam StudentsThird year students also teach here. Here is a little about them. Joachim Volger is a Dutch independent carpenter who has lived/studied/worked two years in a Rudolph Steiner organic farm and built a retreat home for himself in Spain. Born in a small village near the coast and the forest, he later moved to Utrecht, where he lived for 9 years. He went to Waldorf schools all his school years and looks back on this time with gratitude. After studying piano for some years, he came to have a strong attraction for yoga. The first yoga class he took, he knew after 10 minutes that this was what he was searching for. He became aware that so much of what he had been doing was about achievement and asking for recognition. “Yoga was not made for that,” he says. “Only one little moment of deep relaxation or stillness is more than enough to keep on dancing on the small path,” he adds. Daniela Citti is from Tuscany. She worked as an Italian labor consultant specializing in labor laws. She came to SRSG for the first time in 2008 during a year exploring alone New Zealand with bicycle and tent, Australia, Thailand including 2 months in a Buddhist monastery in Chiang Mai, trekking the mountains of Ladakh, and finally North India. She stayed only one night at SRSG. “It was enough to change my life forever and in the fall of 2011, I came back as a Gurukulam student and have come back every year since.” She has a deep love of meditation, the Himalayan Tradition, pilgrimage and Catholicism, but also of the Divine Mother in other traditions. Daniela did a solo trek into the mountains to Badrinath and Kedarnath last summer shortly before the cataclysms of last June. She wrote a beautiful story about her mountain experiences for the Ahymsin newsletter; please see http://www.ahymsin.org/docs2/News/1308Aug/02.html. Her passion for the spiritual path traverses openly and wholeheartedly beyond East and West. John Sellinger, a nuclear medicine technologist/physicist whose parents took initiation with Dr. Arya (now Swami Veda) decades ago; John teaches hatha classes here, does sewa for Swami Veda and is a firmly rooted to yoga and meditation as a way of life. Born in Canada, he has also lived in Africa, Australia and London. He came to SRSG for an extended stay a few years ago and then committed to join the Gurukulam for 3 years. He has written “My Experience as a Gurukulam Student” for the AHYMSIN newsletter: http://www.ahymsin.org/docs2/News/1205May/04.html Sung Woo Park: Born in rural Korea (Jinju City) not far from the mountains, the farmlands and the sea, Park grew up in the Buddhist culture, frequenting from birth the beautiful, ancient forest monasteries, some more than 1500 years old. When asked why he came here, he said it is not his will, it is his life’s path that brings him here. He met Swami Veda in 2006 and in 2010 decided to join the Gurukulam as soon as he completed his master’s degree. Earlier, in Korea, he completed law school and went on to study yoga and meditation at another Korean university. He then did a Masters in Yoga Therapy at Manipal University in Mangalore, India. His wife Jihyang Jeong has visited SRSG several times, and he spends the summer months in Korea with her. He also enjoys hiking, cooking and practicing Korean Martial Arts - Dae Gueom Seung Mun in the Maha vajrayana lineage - for over 20 years from a traditional master. He maintains this humble practice along with that given to him by Swami Veda. “At its core, Swami Vedaji teaches the same essence as the Buddhist tradition.” His duty to his family is foremost, and upon his return to Korea he wants to make his wife happy for the rest of her life. So-Young Chung (Chung So-Young) is a 3rd-year Gurukulam student who has a Masters from Dev Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya in Haridwar and is now working on a doctorate in Applied Yoga and Human Excellence from that same institution. Her thesis topic, as it was for her Masters degree is Pratyahara, withdrawal of the senses, which she feels is very important for Koreans. She was born in Seoul. Between age 3 and 7, she lived with her grandparents in a little village in the low mountains near the sea. There was no electricity and there were no cars. They lived close to nature which allowed her to develop naturally. The villagers were like a family. Each family had a cow which provided milk and plowed the land where they grew their own vegetables. So Young was very close to the family cow and loved taking care of her. They were very close and communicated well together. She sang to her cow and showed her flowers. Whenever she found something very strange or interesting she showed it to the cow who understood everything. So-Young listened to the rhythms of the streams, the wind through the trees, and played with her shadow, roaming freely through the fields with her cow. Looking at a leaf and observing how sunlight and its absence made one side of the leaf brightly colored and the other side dark. This taught her about the effects of sunlight. Even thunder and lightning thrilled her, created no fear. This all deeply affected her development. She grew up without fear or negative feelings for the animals and people of that village. These were her toys. There was a lame man in that village with a twisted face, but everyone treated him like their son. At a certain point in her childhood, something broke. This was an important time for her. She realized that in worldly life everything was always changing. In her life whenever she encounters a difficult situation or a troubled person, the memory of those years is with her and is her solace. Because of this, she is not a person who easily gets disappointed. Her foundation is the continual balancing that goes on in nature. She refreshes fast. She was an on-stage actress and photographer for 20 years. She discovered yoga in her late 30’s and met her Korean master, at which point all her questions disappeared. New Gurukulam StudentsThe new students seem to be making themselves at home here. Here is a little about them. Magda and Michal Ptak say that “the turning point for us was five years of philosophical studies at the University in Poland where we graduated in 2008. After these years of absorbing philosophical ideas and concepts we decided to take a breath and think how these teachings influenced us.” They then went to an isolated mountain shelter in Southern Poland where they served as caretakers. This had a great impact on them; they realized that they would like to continue studying philosophy, but that the practical approach was and is close to their hearts. Magda continued, “We also came to a point where we wanted to share life among other people and learn from them too. That thought led us to a small village in western Poland where we taught English and ethics to children from nursery to high school age. At the same time, we wanted to know more about meditation and healing and took a number of courses over a 3-year period. We concluded that we had a strong desire to study yoga further and deepen our spiritual practice. This brought us here.” Maria Miguel Ribeiro, Ph.D. is a Portuguese interdisciplinary scientist/ethicist who, from Vienna (and elsewhere) has promoted multi-stakeholder initiatives in agronomy, management, international trade, and rural development; She has also lived and worked in the Netherlands, Belgium, US, Colombia, Laos, Thailand and Austria. “Someone once told me ‘Home is where the heart is.’ This is true! I feel quickly at home anywhere I go,” adding that this is her first time in India and living in an ashram. “People are so lovely here that it is difficult not to feel quickly at home.” She decided to come to do the gurukulam program after hearing inspiring talks by Swami Veda and Swami Nityamuktananda last year in London. Alan Richard is a French-speaking Swiss physiotherapist/yoga teacher/masseuse with 10 years of diverse training and a successful career in those arts in Geneva. He had a strong positive experience here in February 2013 when he learned about the teachings of Swami Rama and Swami Veda and returned to SRSG to deepen his sadhana and quality of attention. He hopes to cultivate an awareness of the presence of the One and of deep consciousness. He wrote to Swami Veda in his gurukulam application, “I wish to live these experiences at your side because the texts that I have read and the teachings which I followed have given me a feeling of love that I did not know.” Nikki Adams from London has come to turn her energies toward teaching yoga. She has worked as a receptionist and as a coordinator of a small team in reception at a large city college. Nikki has also taught yoga as a volunteer at a London rehab clinic. She was studying for some months at Hamsada Ashram in Nepal, formerly an ashram of Swami Rama. The swamis there recommended that she study at SRSG with Swami Veda in Rishikesh. Janny Hinfelaar is a Dutch practitioner in Voice Dialogue, massage and guided meditation whose other career milestones include that of nurse, mothers, office manager, and personal assistant to a mayor. Her interest in the gurukulam first arose out of a desire to do sewa in India, but after communicating with Swami Veda, she decided to study here first. After classes with Himalayan Tradition teachers in Holland who told her about SRSG, she had a wonderful experience in a 2-day workshop with visiting Himalayan Tradition teachers Swami Ma Radha and Swami Nityamuktananda in Holland and decided to come to SRSG. Ahimsa Ishaya (formerly Dianne McHugh) is from the United States and has lived in Canada, England and Germany. Raised in an orthodox Slovak Catholic family, they observed every fast and feast day. The church was the center of the whole community. People in her neighborhood never said hello and goodbye. Instead, people would greet with the words Praised be Jesus Christ. The reply was always Now and forever! Amen. Two of her elder brothers were seminarians, and had a great influence on her. At age 13, one of them handed her two Thomas Merton books which enlarged her vision forever. Not only her brothers, but also a Carmelite priest/theologian told her “You need to study the traditions of the East. It is an important part of us that we need to integrate.”Over her lifetime, mentors from various traditions reinforced this. “When I read the Ramayana and hear stories and chants from ancient traditions, it resonates so deeply in me,” she says. She appreciates the music of many traditions and enjoys singing. As a child she was in church 6 days a week singing Gregorian chants. Her interests include psychology, philosophy, gardening and practical applications of neuroscience. “Recent research, for example,” she says, “shows that the study of alphabets other than our own contributes to increased neurofunction and remapping of the brain.” Neuroplasticity, by the way, is a topic frequently discussed here at SRSG. Max Maslakov is a Russian linguist/former CEO/editor-in-chief who has studied in Moscow, New York and twice for prolonged stays here at SRSG with his wife and child. He started meditation 8 years ago and was referred here by a former teacher. “I appreciate this tradition for its authenticity and multilayeredness, quite rare to find in this Kali Yuga time of profanity and pure commerce. The tradition is so vast and includes different lineages. I see my studies here as an opportunity to reestablish and firm my base as well as integrate the knowledge and practice.” He is here with his wife Sasha, also a sadhaka, and Savva, their 2-year-old boy. They have lived in Montenegro for the past few years. Mike Ktomi is from South Hampton, England. He has a post-graduate diploma from the University of Warrick, Coventry, England, in Religious Education (Hinduism) with a focus on Advaita Vedanta and has a bachelor’s in Corporate Communications, working in this field for over 20 years. He has also worked as a press officer, magazine editor, and an entrepreneur. When asked what brought him here, he replied “One thing—to wake up.” About 20 years ago he began practicing self enquiry in the stream of Shri Ramana Maharshi. He met Nandini (Grace Bishop), who also is a follower of Ramana Maharshi and an initiate in the Himalayan Tradition and who met Swami Veda as a young child. He realized that Nandini was an authentic seeker and came to her satsangs in Glastonbury. There came a time of great loss for him which affirmed the truth of what he has always known: that karma is very real. Important moral decisions faced him and propelled him clearly in his path. He subsequently decided to join the gurukulam at SRSG. His search began at age 5 after anesthesia (tonsillectomy) when he first became aware of stepping beyond subject-object relationship. He was terrified. He was raised Catholic and tried to find an answer in Christ which ultimately led him to examine other paths. In all his studies he has learned that he knows absolutely nothing and that awakening will only happen with the grace of God. He is father of a beloved son, age 22. They all came to deepen meditation, personal practice and put their philosophies and beliefs into action and stillness. Gurukulam ClassesThe schedules are full and each student learns, according to capacity, effort and grace, how to manage time, plan priorities, and bolster resources and energies, partly through the practices, but also through self observation and, with time, experience with what works and what doesn’t work. So what are the Gurukulam classes like at SRSG? Swami Veda gives silent weekly laptop lectures to guide students in their practice and also teaches during the Kalyana Mitra course. Swami Ma Radha is teaching meditation courses to the 1st- and 3rd-year students. Pandit Chandramani is teaching Applied Psychology which will acquaint students with important cultural norms in North India; he will also teach Sanskrit to 1st-year students. David Rodrigo teaches classes in Sankhya and Vedanta. Students will eventually study from books and videos of Swami Rama and Swami Veda as well. Adhikari Bhoi teaches Swami Rama Philosophy to new students. Gita Bhoi teaches yoga practicum, and Ramprakash Das teaches hatha yoga, both to 1st-year students. Dr. Prabhu, our scientific lab director, offers classes on the scientific aspects of yoga. Siddhartha Krishna of Omkarananda Ashram comes here 3 times a week to teach an incisive 2-hour class on the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali to 3rd year students and to guests; he has taught Vedanta texts, the Bhagavad Gita and an intensive in Sanskrit grammar. There are also morning and afternoon classes in hatha yoga, pranayama, relaxation and meditation. A highlight of the day is a one-hour silent meditation each evening, usually sitting with the physical presence of Swami Veda. For 1st year students, basics in the Himalayan Tradition are taught and discussed. It is exciting to see former and 3rd year Gurukulam students teaching such fine classes. They have truly grown in acumen and comfort level. In fact, not just Gurukulam students, but also our guests receive instruction in Himalayan Tradition teachings --- programs that are individually tailored to their readiness and interests. Gurukulam students participated in the rigorous 2-week intensive Teacher Training Program retreat which also drew students from India and around the world. This fall, already rich with courses, also includes Kalyana Mitra with Swami Veda (silently teaching on a screen with the help of his laptop) and advanced teachers, many of whom travel to distant places to share their knowledge. Teachers who have been initiated into giving mantras are here during Kalyana Mitra and at various times throughout the year. Three Methods of VedantaThree Vedanta methods to attain jnana (knowledge) are present everywhere. The closeness to the teacher is everywhere - both here and wherever you are - if one chooses to see, listen and remember. These are:
Swami Veda has often said this. Cultivating a daily discipline of practices, selfless service and smrti (mindfulness) help to promote these as lifelong habits and as a way of being. Two-minute meditations throughout the day help to sustain this. The gurukulam program is extensive and this article is just a brief overview. Though the Gurukulam schedules are filled with plenty of academic study and interior practice, what students learn here is how to live. Swami Rama placed this phrase in the logo of the Himalayan Institute of his day: Yoga karmasu kaushalam. (Yoga is skill in action.)Years ago, when I lived in Swami Rama’s Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, USA, I remember how time seemed pressed into another dimension. There was not an extra minute. It often felt like one had to choose which action, to speak or not to speak - very concretely, which action was the choice of the moment - decisively at every juncture. It was a powerful learning experience. But then, one can get lazy and forget. Pay attention. Editor’s Note:For more information about Swami Rama Dhyana Gurukulam, please visit the website http://dhyanagurukulam.org/ “Pandit Usharbudh Arya arrived [in Guyana] in 1955 and one of his greatest contributions was the establishment of the Ārya Vīr Dāl, an organization meant for the youth.” – from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arya_Samaj_in_Guyana “The Annual Arya Vir Dal Camp (Shikshan Shivir) of the Guyana Central Arya Samaj has been held every year since the establishment of the first Arya Vir Dal Camp in Guyana (British Guiana at that time), 1956 at No. 71 Village. This camp was conducted by an Arya Samaj Missionary from India, Pt. Usharbudh Arya. At that time Pt. Arya worked under the umbrella of the The American Aryan League which was later changed to Guyana Central Arya Samaj in the 1970s.” – From http://www.aryasamaj.org.gy/activities7.html You may like to read “Kumbha Mela (Part 2)” by Pierre Lefebvre that talks about Swami Veda’s visit to “the Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute. This institution is conducting research on the migrations of Indians throughout the world (Surinam, Trinidad, Guyana, Fiji, Mauritius, etc.) in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian populations having migrated mostly as workers after the abolition of slavery.” at http://www.ahymsin.org/docs2/News/1305May/07.html For more about Full Moon Meditations, please use this link: http://ahymsin.org/main/practice/full-moon-meditation.html We invite you to read Daniela Citti’s articles (click on titles): We invite you to read these articles written by gurukulam students (click on titles):
You can read Swami Veda’s “Creativity - Mindfulness - Key to Enhanced Memory” at http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/Memory/Mindfulness.asp To learn more about HYT-TTP (Himalayan Yoga Tradition – Teacher Training Program), please use this link http://www.himalayanyogatradition.com/ For more about Swami Rama and the Hansda Ashram in Nepal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHwDV9UeyfE
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