Ask me no questions and I'll tell y...no wait, that doesn't work....

Before I zoom off into a 5-star sunset, send me your Ask the Blogging Yogini questions, and the answers will arise mystically from the ether on Sunday. No, really.

OK, so you have to email me first, but hey...

Like Mother Teresa Only Better Looking....

Yeah, look, whatever...forget political correctness: I cannot stand running beggars: the ones who chase me, pull at my clothing, or follow me. Not the mild-mannered ones who sit humbly with a bowl and who break your heart with their timidity. But the runners? Hell, I can't stand anyone running after me: salesmen, debt collectors, store owners I've just shoplifted from, children, or anyone related to any of the aforementioned. And only some of them I'm kidding about...

Calcutta is teeming with beggars, and a lot of them are just the plain whiney variety. I had one abuse me recently because I ignored him. I was trying to get in a taxi and he started mouthing off at me. I had to use all the control I could muster to stop myself turning around, pinning him to the wall, and telling him in language he would surely understand but which yogis just don't use (note to self: stop using that language) that I'd rather train pigs in a circus than give him a penny. But I didn't.

Cos he only had one arm.

He was a genuine beggar. But his attitude totally sucked, and as sorry as I feel for his one-armed-status, he could consider for a moment that begging + right attitude = win win, and I would have merrily parted with some rupees in consideration of his very obvious inability to make it in this world. India's not like the west, where you can sign up for disability. This guy had some serious obstacles, but the main one was his attitude. And the thing I hate most about all this stuff is how bad it makes me feel...here's this guy abusing me and I feel bad. Go figure. I mean, of course he's got attitude: his life is one big shitty mess. I'll possibly go back there one day, find him, and over compensate. Because he'll be in the same place.

And now in a total departure from beggars and my refusal to part with the cash (and my growing regret that I didn't), in a move that will make you think, "I don't believe this woman," my husband and I are going to the Hyatt Regent to spend a few days in 5 star luxury. The absolute polar opposite nature of these two paragraphs is not only shocking but is what makes India what it is: abject poverty and overt opulence mixing like dirty street debris and rain in the street, leaving crappy, muddy puddles of obscure contents that you don't know whether to dodge or dip your toe in. It rips your heart out and drowns you in all its riches in one dose, and I love it and hate it. I do feel an exceptional amount of compassion for a lot of these people, but it doesn't change my life. If it did I'd be a Mother Teresa-type fake, and God knows one of her was enough...

ps: Gaelikaa, our Irish friend in India, did a post on the same subject matter a couple of days ago, which she just brought to my attention. It's a very detailed write-up about the flexibility and smarts that beggars in India have...go and have a read...

Monkeys & Winter & November is the best....

It's Monday. Or it was a couple of days ago, I'm behind. And, you guessed it, Monday means something completely different over here than it does over there---wherever you are. Monday means moon day, and it's Shiva's day. Not because he's the demigod of the moon. That's Chandra. See? This is easy if you just know how....so say good morning to Shiva and his good wife Parvati, goddess of material creation -----> Yes, they're a two-career family and they're busy. You would be too if the entire cosmic creation was yours to pl....ok I'm getting out of this while I can.

Winter is on its way. Nowadays the southerly breeze doesn't blow in from the fields through my back window with warm-day scents and the sound of long grass and summer attached to it; now it comes in silently and slowly from the north, the only time of year the snow-capped Himalayas share themselves with us. And, of course, it's the wrong time of year: where were those cool, frost-winged breezes in the melting, melting, month of May? No doubt those winds reached out, eager to spread their love, but were hurled back to their mountain by the oven-door blast of heat that radiated from the plains of the country they dwell above. No one is free to move in the summer here...not even the wind.

Everyone talks about the weather here: it is a hot topic, possibly because it changes so often. We actually have six seasons here, so if you don't like the weather just hang around and it will change after two months, like clockwork. We bitch about the heat, then the cold, then the rain. We do not bitch about November as it is the stellar month, the month of all months, the month that is tightly packed in between October, where memories of the heat might still linger, and December, where those memories are replaced with thoughts of how cold the marble is to the touch, the marble that you can't escape from: the floor, the bathroom, the desk top, the kitchen, or when your outstretched arm goes beyond the boundaries of your yoga mat and the chill ruins your savasana. Summer is a long, long way away. And we like that. (that pic there is the view from my back window, incidentally....)

Outside the birds have gone absolutely nuts, the monkeys are providing a sideshow spectacle outside the neighbor’s house, bouncing up and down on the tin-shed huts outside their window, and someone is doing a cross between a Krishna-influenced love ballad and a Southern jig on a flute in the near distance.

It's pretty quiet for a Monday, and I'm suspicious. Even if it is Wednesday...

Wisdom prevails...

A student asked the master, “How can I cure my terrible temper?”

“Show it to me,” said the master.

“I can’t just show it to you; it comes unexpectedly,” replied the student.

"Then it is not your true nature," the master said. "If it were, it would be with you at all times..."

Ask the Blogging Yogini...

Guess what? I switched days. Just to check if you're keeping up. And possibly because it's the only day this week I'll post, so let's just pretend it's Sunday, ok? Okay. And yes, the picture has nothing to do with anything except I like it. Here's the questions. Put your weapons down and listen:

Blogging Mama Andrea asks, "Can I find out (a) what exactly a true Yogini does, and (b) how long did you train to become one?" I did explain in the last Ask the Blogging Yogini post what a real yogini is, so you can read there to catch up. In terms of what I wrote there, daily I do mantra meditation, I study eastern philosophy, I visit temples, I sometimes go to lectures, I sometimes give them, I speak with others, I chant, I sing bhajans (devotional songs), I seek guidance from spiritually advanced elders, I have a spiritual master, and I live in a holy place that makes these things more accessible and a natural part of daily life. I've been doing it for over twenty years and it's an ongoing process, so I don't think the "training" ever stops.

The delicious Alix asks, "Did you read the book Eat Pray Love? What was your honest impression?" I did read it, and I loved the Italy portion. The book itself was a bit of a letdown, as I kind of felt that something like that should have been inspiring and give its readers something solid. But what is inspiring about a book that says "I can take a year off and indulge myself and in the end not much changed but gee I had fun and now I'm going to tell you about it." Doesn't really do much for me, but when we say that people criticize us for being negative or jealous. I definitely was jealous about Italy :) But the rest? A waste of time. I found the Indian portion particularly irritating, as it was some unsubstantiated yet popular guru-type, and sitting in caves and meditating is something that the uneducated might perceive as a good thing, but which is an illusion of mammoth proportions and just more of that good old Indian trickery and cheating that's been going on for eons. It's not a bona fide process for self realization or anything else: it's just a joke. An elaborate and costly one, but a joke. I was also irritated that the author called the guru at that ashram the person who had contributed the most Indian philosophical literature to the English reading market. This is a load of old codswollop, an unsubstantiated and false claim that can be refuted in one minute flat by anyone with knowledge of these topics. So I didn't like that kind of buffoonery. Typically, the least substantial and most superficial stuff is always made into Hollywood movies. Que sera sera....I hope no one actually thinks it's anything but fiction...

The elusive Blu wrote in regard to the post on Treaty that I had put up, and says, "Sad about the treaty which was a broken promise, so will something bad happen to the men who broke their promise?" As a wise man once said, Blu, "what goes around comes around." Yes, the same ill-treatment will be visited upon those who inflicted it. That's one of the laws of material nature, and it's unavoidable.

Sweta asks, "Is it always vital to know what you exactly want from life, or can knowing what you don't want sometimes make up for not knowing what you want?" Well, sure: the process of elimination leads us eventually to what we *do* want. But I don't think it entirely "makes up for not knowing what you want." As for knowing exactly what you want from life: is there a need? I know people who are clear on exactly what they want, but they're not nice, their goals are superfluous and transient, but their attachment to their way, their goals, their needs are all very overwhelming and put me off. I think it's possibly easier to learn what the purpose of life is, and then just get on with life, knowing that whatever comes at you was meant to be, and maintaining a consciousness that is governed by the spiritual energy, not the temporary, distracting material energy.

That was deep, wasn't it? :)

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant,

and kindness from the unkind;

yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

-- Kahlil Gibran