Chanting

I sit, legs folded in front of me on a thin carpet. We are in an auditorium that has been converted to a Krishna Temple. There is a carpet that runs the length of the room in the middle. Then it splits into a T before a horizontal row of steel benches that separate out what in Christianity would be called the pulpit. Men sit on the right. There are only five or six of us. I am by far the youngest. Women sit on the left. They far outnumber the men. There are close to forty of them. Annette sits in the back, her hot pink socks glowing amidst a rainbow of sarees.

They all chant in one voice. I don't understand what they are saying. It has a certain percussion to it. I admire the altar. The auditorium stage has been lined with huge images, in front of a red curtain. I am glad to now recognize each of them, even though I don't know their stories. On the left is a big blue Ganesha. He sits in half lotus, four hands outstretched, each with something different in the palm. In the center is a huge photo of a stone statue of Krishna sitting in front of a river, the mark of the trident on his forehead, torso perched atop a snake. Below the photo is a brilliant display of flowers. And to the right is Hanuman, the monkey god. He has one leg up as if he is dancing, tail dangling behind him.

Before we left Hampi, we went on a pilgrimage of sorts to the supposed place of Hanuman's birth. It ended up being a ten kilometer walk broken up by a river crossing in a boat overloaded with people and motorcycles. It culminated in seven hundred steps to the temple that sits atop a mountain. As we hiked, a monkey howled at me and threatened. I cowered, wondering if the monkey would actually attack me for the bag of bananas in my right hand. “Act big,” Annette reminded me. So I lifted my arms and shouted, “Go away monkey.” And he did. Annette asked me why I didn't give him the bananas we bought at the bottom. “We bought them to give to the monkeys,” she said. I told her I would give them as an offering in the temple. I don't want to encourage that sort of aggressive behavior. The monkey is probably used to people feeding it. The man in his eighties who is limping down one step at a time doesn't seem to be disturbed by him. But perhaps that is because he just got blessed by the monkey god.

We are sweating by the time we make it to the top. But the trip has been long and we are going to get our effort's worth. The trip up was inspired by two new friends – Monty and Bert. We met them at our hotel in Hampi. It turns out they both served in the Peace Corps in India in the late 1960s. If Hampi went from four guesthouse to 72 in the last twenty years, I can only imagine how their villages have changed. Monty is energetic and talkative. This is his first time back to India in more than forty years. Bert wears a gray pony tail. He is quiet and reflective. He has kept in touch with a family in his village. Monty jokingly describes Bert as his spiritual guru. Bert talks about the house he just bought in Peoria, Illinois. They are both ecstatic to be in India. At breakfast, Monty asked Annette and me if we can feel the blessings from the gurus when we visit the temples. We both looked at each other and couldn't say yes, despite out best efforts. Mostly, when we have visited temples, we have stood around awkwardly, not wanting to offend. Not sure whether to touch our foreheads to the ground, kneel, not kneel, where to bow, how to hold our hands.

“The guru in the monkey temple. Man, I could feel the chi when he touched my forehead. It was powerful.” Monty may not have realized it, but he not only made us want to visit the Hanuman Temple, but he also gave us permission to participate at the temples.

At the top of the hill, I follow the crowd. We take our shoes off and wash our hands and feet. Inside the temple are three shirtless men sitting on the floor, drinking chai. There are three small rooms, each with a man inside and a shrine. We go to the largest. Annette goes first. The man there pours a spoonful of water from a metal dish into our hands. He motions for us to put it towards our mouth. Then a handful of sugar crystals. Then the red powder pressed upon our forehead with a blessing. I splash the water on my face. I can only eat half of the sugar, the other half falls to the floor slowly from my dangling hand. The blessing is firm, but there are no firecrackers. Just a man firmly pressing his finger to my forehead. Pressing with intention and clarity. Without hesitation. Perhaps that is the blessing.

We walk past the second small room. There two men are reading from a scripture. I bow. In the third room, I lay a banana on a metal tray next to an existing banana. I kneel and bow. Back in the main room, one of the three men of the temple invites us to have chai. We sit on the floor. A boy of no more than 12 years, pours our chai from a huge steel container. One of the men asks Annette where she is from. Otherwise, few words are exchanged. Just smiles and sips. After ten minutes, we head outside to admire the kingdom below. From here, we can see the river winding through Hampi amidst a brilliant green of banana trees and rice paddies, accented by rose-colored boulders reaching toward the sky.

As I sit and listen to the chanting, I look at the monkey god. I feel pride, that sense of small satisfaction that comes with knowing. With it comes the feeling that there is more to know. I think about the Ramayana I saw yesterday in a bookstore. Eight hundred pages of Hindu epic that tells the tale of the monkey god. Surely it speaks of Krishna too, and Ganesha. I ponder the blog. I am writing it as a record. And I have been moved to write but haven't known what to say in the last week. It feels like it is merely part of knowing, describing, reporting. Food for the mind. Useless in the pursuit of no-mind.

Our first morning in Hampi, Annette found a book on Natural Farming, called The One Straw Revolution. It was written by a Japanese man in his sixties in the seventies—Masanobu Fukuoka. He had given up his successful and important life as a researcher to return to his father's orchards. Now he grows food as part of a life philosophy of no cultivation. “Do-nothing farming,” he calls it. Nature knows how to grow. We interfere with nature and then double our work. We don't need to till the soil. We don't need to use pesticides. We don't need to keep the rice paddies flooded. All of this creates more work, and interferes with nature's way. Right farming, he says, equals an average of one hour of work per person per day. The rest is left for spiritual pursuits, art, music.

I look to my left. A man in white robes is plucking flowers onto a steel dish that sits on an elaborate wooden carved shrine. The flowers are red, orange and yellow. Inside is a framed picture with a string of flower draped across it. I cannot see from here what is inside the frame. I notice my mind wondering. I could wonder for days at the significance of each act, each word in the chant. At the meaning of it all.

I think about Osho. We considered stopping at the Osho Ashram in Pune. The guidebook laid out it's controversy. It is a Western spa, expensive by ashram standards. Hugely developed and commercialized, some argue. The guidebook noted that HIV testing is mandatory for admission. And that Osho was known in the west as the “sex guru.” We decided against it. But on the coffee table at Savitha's house in Bangalore I found one of Osho's books. Truth Simply Is..., the title. Like the Japanese farmer, Osho talks about how we can never pursue the truth with use of our mind. That consciousness is man's greatest gift, his mind his greatest trap. I think about the zen of it all. Our minds like a Chinese finger trap. The harder we try to figure something out, the more we think, the more the trap tightens. I keep thinking.

The chanting continues. I look at the clock. It has been seven minutes since it started. It should last for an hour. My toes are tingling. I adjust my position. Sit on my butt and hug my knees for a while.

“Knowing, knowing, knowing.” That was what the monk said to Annette's questions. Only an hour ago we confirmed our spots for ten days of Vipassana meditation at the Northern Insight Center Temple of Peace in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The monk spoke in broken English, but we understood. February 22^nd at 9:30 a.m. he told us to be there. Wear only white clothes for the ten days. I wondered why. I even asked why February 22^nd was the best day for us to arrive, when we would prefer a few more days lounging on Thai beaches beforehand. But I received no answer. It doesn't matter. Knowing is no help here. The questioning mind only creates more questions, more activity not less. I think about a philosopher in some book I read along the way. He said the question mark looks like an upside-down plow. It churns the soil. That, I think Fukuoka would say, is the problem. I ponder my discomfort after sitting for ten minutes and wonder how I will ever sit for ten days in silence.

The mind determines comfort or discomfort, I remind myself. I think of another small blessing from our trip to the monkey temple. When we had been walking for some time and the sun was at its hottest, I was still feeling good. But then it occurred to me that the temple I saw we were nearing atop a mountain might not be the Hanuman Temple. It might be the wrong temple. When that doubt surfaced in my thoughts, my back and neck began to hurt. Just stiffness, but discomfort nevertheless. Five minutes later, it became evident that we were indeed approaching the foot of Hanuman's mountain. I climbed the steps in perfect comfort. The tiredness, weariness, discomfort disappeared from my body when it disappeared from my mind. Certainly, that will play itself out one hundred times in Thailand.

The chanting continues. A man enters, approaches the altar, and bows. Drops money into the box. Dips his finger into some liquid, or perhaps a powder, and presses it to his forehead. Then he sits in the back, next to me, cross-legged. He looks like he is coming from work. It is 5:12 p.m. I think about how often I have been late for things because I was coming from work. How I have to sit there for a moment to wash the stress of the day off of me. How, even though my body is present, it takes my mind sometime before it is present. Before I am consciously here. I think about how often I probably wouldn't even want to go to the temple after work. How the chanting would seem just like another commitment in an exhaustingly long string of commitments. But that by the end of the hour, I would feel better every time. And that is why I would make myself go. I think about Prabakhar, our couchsurfing host in Nasik. He woke up for work at 5 a.m. His work week was always five-and-a-half days. Most days seemed to be close to ten hours. And he left on time, he told us, unlike his colleagues. All to pay for a wedding, to furnish a small two-room house for his family.

Four minutes have passed. The chanting seems to have reached a rhythm. The male and female voices, the individual voices are completely indistinguishable. Just a mass of voices chanting in one voice. I cross my legs again, rest my wrists on my knees, and close my eyes. My mind wanders to our afternoon. We ate Italian food and it was delicious. At the UB City Mall. Funny how no matter where you are in the world, the malls are about the same. Some nicer than others. Some restaurants better than others, but the mall is an ultimate expression of consumerism. And it shines brilliantly from Accra to Bangalore. My stomach is still full from the food.

I think about Bangalore. It is such a contrast from Hampi. Hampi is ancient and sacred. Mahatma Gandhi Road in Bangalore feels like Times Square. Billboards climb over each other for space. Familiar brands are plastered everywhere – Puma, Reebok, Guess, Versace. The colors and logos are always the same. Undoubtedly, each of these corporations has internally published mid-sized books on the use of their logo and brand. Bangalore, India's silicone city, where burgers are as frequent as temples. Bangalore, where Annette and I had futures and palms read without seeking it out. Both promised great success, long life, happiness, partnership and children. India is a place of great contrast. It is a sub-continent indeed. Far larger than a nation or a country.

I look at the clock again. It is 5:27 p.m. The chanting continues. I think about time. In Hampi, I started to feel like our time was growing tight. We started making plans to return home. Southeast Asia seemed like it would be crammed into six weeks. This afternoon, we booked two tickets. One to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Valentine's Day. And we even booked a ticket home. Ho Chi Minh City to John F. Kennedy. Ironic, given the way those two names came together in history. But as I sit here in this auditorium of a temple, time feels eternal. Ten days in silent meditation may feel like ten years. Yes, we have plenty of time.

Lately, I have been thinking more and more on time. As we have traveled, we have often not known what day it is or what time it is. And when we reflect on things, we reflect on time geographically. When we had a pitcher of beer the other night, it was the first time since South Africa. For nearly a year now, we think of time in relation to place. “Back in Croatia,” we say. This geographic order to time will disappear soon. Shortly after 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 1^st, when a China Eastern Airlines flight lands at JFK Airport in New York City. Perhaps a few weeks after that, maybe a month. Once we are settled back in New Orleans and have started to talk about things other than our travels.

The chanting continues. An old main with a forehead of white paint folds his book of chants and walks toward the front. He brings a steel pail that looks to be filled with rice. He scoops the food out several times. Six, seven, eight scoops, far more than looked like would fit in the steel bowl. He puts a steel plate on top and puts it next to the man plucking flowers. He then places the pail on a table below the Krishna image. The flowers look like a torso. Green stretches out at its base on either side, like legs folded into a lotus position. I wonder if this is intentional. The flowers are some sort of physical incarnation of the figure, I wonder.

I think about our time ahead in ashrams. We used a paper-thin new Mac Book Air at an Apple Store in the mall to e-mail the Hugging Mother ashram and reserve a place to stay for two nights. I wonder what we will do there. And if it matters that we don't know much about Ama, the Hugging Mother, except that she transforms people with her hugs. I think about the huge temple we passed on the bus to Nasik. It was the temple at Sai Baba's birthplace. Not just an ashram, a small city. I think about how Sai Baba's serene image is plastered everywhere, his ears looking more monkey-like than the monkey god's. These images are everywhere. Sai Baba. Ganesha. Like religious sayings in Ghana, plastered on windshields and storefronts. What a place India is. Sacred and profane, modern and ancient, all crammed into the same country.

I think about today's Times of India that I thumbed through this afternoon, while waiting for Uninor to reactivate our mobile phone. Two stories struck me. One was about the prime minister eating meat, despite the fact that he claimed to be a Gandhian. It spoke of the hippocracy of these times and laments the Westernization of India. The second talked about a report on life expectancy in India. At the time of independence in 1947, it said, average life expectancy in India was 37 years. Famine and food shortage was common. Today, it is 68 years. I thought of the little man in the robe and spectacles who insisted on a free India. What certainty he must have shown amidst uncertainty, that India could be such a great nation. That life expectancy could double in two generations. What strength of spirit.

How should we spend our time...in life, I wonder. There was a man we met at the train station in Hospet en route to Bangalore. A couple, actually, from the U.K. They recognized us from some temple or another in Hampi. The man told us a story about an ATM machine and not wanting his card to be taken. I told them we were traveling around the world. I actually started to say this as a precursor to the story of how the ATM in Cape Coast, Ghana only gave me half of  my money. But I never got to the story. He matched our adventures with some of his own. They told me about their sailing down to the Mediterranean in their retirement. He told me about Jews for Justice. And the incredible story of how he gathered a bunch of principled Jews opposing the occupation of Palestine to sail into Gaza, where Israeli boats were illegally blockading ships in international waters. The harrowing tale lasted thirty minutes. I have been meaning to do a YouTube search for it. They ended up doing some jail time and never got the boat back, but they figured that would happen. I wonder, could I do such a principled thing?

Rice paddies around Hampi

One of the many shrines to the monkey god, Hanuman. Note the coconut offerings have been eaten.

The white speck in the distance in the middle of the photo is the temple of the monkey god.

Our ferry...

Rice fields and boulders.

The path to the birthplace of Hanuman.

The view back down.

The temple at the top.

The chanting stops. A man in white robes approaches the center of the altar. He lights incense and then ten candles. I hear drumming and a bell clanging from the back. More chanting as he moves the flame around the flowers at the base of the Krishna image. After several fires, bows and short recitations, the chanting ends. It has been an hour.