Saturday, May 27, 2000
So here's my new daily routine
since leaving the Sivananda ashram. Except for travel days, I've
surprisingly been following it fairly religiously, no pun intended.
5:30 am - alarm goes off. I argue and debate with myself whether
maybe today would be a good day to sleep in, or perhaps give up
this frivolous experiment altogether.
5:45 am - I finally overcome the desire to go back to sleep,
but pretend to do preliminary stretches as an excuse to
stay in bed a little longer.
6:00 am - shower. I've traded in my dental floss for a tongue
scraper. Actually not so much traded in as ran out, and tongue
scrapers are all the rage here, while dental floss is rarer in
these parts than a conversation with a woman.
6:20 am - begin meditation. More accurately, begin practicing
sitting up straight. As this becomes less of a physical
impossibility, I'm transitioning to practicing concentrating on
one thing. This practice causes an instant transformation in
one's character, whereby all thoughts suddenly become amazingly
interesting and important except for the one on which you're
trying to concentrate.
7:00 am - prasaad. This is food which has been
ceremoniously offered to god and is therefore purified and
holy -- I use it as an incentive to finish "meditating."
What's funny is that this self-imposed child-psychology
actually works, even if it means the last five minutes are
spent distracted by thoughts of a piece of fruit or a small
pastry. This snack also keeps my stomach from complaining
too much until breakfast.
7:10 am - Hatha Yoga asanas. Without a teacher to set the
pace, I get distracted a lot, particularly when I'm supposed to
be relaxing between postures; sometimes I discover that instead
of concentrating on breathing deeply, I'm playing with my hair and
thinking about what I'll have for breakfast. Life is so much
easier in the ashram, where your breakfast choices are made for you.
9:30 am - enter the world, make beeline for cheap restaurant.
My posture is improving in leaps and bounds; I can now maintain
a straight sitting position while eating for as long as three
seconds in a row. Having spent much of the morning suppressing
hunger and thoughts of food, and knowing that eating anything
substantial after about one o'clock will ruin afternoon asanas,
I tend to gorge in the morning and then continue snacking even
when I'm still stuffed. I think this is what is known as an
eating disorder.
4:00 pm - repeat asanas. Afternoons are usually easier than
mornings. I usually notice at least one small improvement
each day, which is good for motivation; that's what's keeping
me from dropping down to once per day. Instead of being
distracted by thoughts of breakfast, now I'm distracted by
thoughts of dinner.
6:30 pm - dinner. Again I eat too much. Are you beginning to
get the impression that I have a weakness in the area of food?
9:00 pm - practice meditation, again rewarded by prasaad.
10:30 pm - sleep.
Doesn't sound too exciting, admittedly,
but I get enough excitement just crossing the street or taking a ride
in an auto-rikshaw. India's night-life isn't much to write home
about, if it exists at all, so I'm not missing much. And on the bright
side, physically and emotionally I feel pretty good -- a couple of
times I've surprised myself by how cheerfully, or at least even-tempered,
I've responded to what would normally be stressful situations. Like
being stuck in sweltering New Delhi all day, then discovering at the last
moment that my train leaves from (Old) Delhi Station and not New Delhi
Station, then abandoning my auto-rikshaw midway because the driver
insisted on charging me a ridiculous amount instead of using the meter
as we'd agreed. I'm not sure how cheerful I would have been if I'd missed
my train to save a buck and a half, but it made sense at the time.
|
Spending three consecutive nights on the train wasn't nearly as miserable
as I'd expected, primarily due to meeting interesting people. I met Luke,
a tour guide from Madurai, on the platform and discovered that we were
seated next to each other. I gave a mango to an orange-robe-clad man whom
we suspected was a faux sadhu, but we chanted Om Namah Shivaya together
anyway. Discovered that the game rock-paper-scissors can be taught without
a common language. Played rummy with a troupe of Indian guys who wandered
by out of boredom. On the next train, I sat next to Patrick, an interesting
guy from Kansas (note the rare occurrence of "interesting" and "Kansas" in
the same sentence), and befriended a little boy who was afraid of me, by
showing him how to play with a yo-yo.
I'm working on a new approach to dealing with beggars. The basic
concept is rather than paying them to stop making me uncomfortable,
which is what they're expecting, treat them like human beings.
This can sometimes be pretty difficult, but every once in a while
it pays off -- they stop thir well-practiced routine of pitiful
expressions and hand-to-mouth gestures (if they have hands) and
smile at me when I ask their name. Another tactic along similar
lines is to never give money; instead, give food -- ideally something
reasonably healthy and not resellable. It's a strange surprise when
a beggar refuses food, but keeps asking for money. The ostensible
goal here is to help those who need it in a direct way, without
supporting those who exploit emotions for cash. The deeper goal
is to avoid feelings of guilt or being taken advantage of.