saint guru chod (1900-1988)

"Never mind, he retorted, "You can't change the world. If I make them stop talking, they won't come and learn. Relax. This isn't India, you know."

I continued to attend.

Then one morning in a cool tone of voice, the Master gave notice. "A yogī doesn't practice too many āsanas," he said. "Prānāyāma is more important."From the very first days I arrived in Thailand, I had regularly dwelled with local monks. There were Westerners staying at the temple too, who had entered the conventional Thai Buddhist monkhood. Living together with my fellow ascetics, I began taking interest in their regional styles of yoga. Of course, I learned quickly that Indian term "yoga" was a virtual taboo among the Thai Buddhist clergy, who curiously preferred the Latin word "meditation." Yet, terms aside, I found myself taking up certain native practices such as the anāpānasati, vipassanā and samānthā forms of yoga. Under the sway of my Theravādin brethren, I questioned the necessity of learning prānāyāma.

'Why should I learn prānāyāma,' I thought. 'I'm already practicing meditation!'
Now the Master was aware of the situation. At first, he just smiled and asked about my progress. "Are you still learning meditation?" he inquired. "Are you able to stop your mind…" But soon after that he cut the crap.

Stop meditating!" He ordered one day, then bluntly commanded, "Learn prānāyāma."

He had effectively told me not to waste my time, or his – Learn prānāyāma or get lost.

A Thousand Deaths

My regular appearances at Guru Chod's Institute certainly caused a general stir. Morning attendance noticeably grew and soon exceeded capacity. When the room for "women only" filled to the brim, the adjoining room for "men" took the overflow. In this way, together with the surging clientele came the augmentation of disquieting noise until the actual source of the nerve-raking din was lying on the floor right beside me.

Now many of the yoginīs that visited the house were flawless testaments to why Thai women are renowned worldwide for their elegance, charm, and dazzling beauty. What is more, many of the ladies had their eyes set on me. This was plain to see even for a naïve ascetic figure as myself. I tried my best to maintain a distant manner but the glint-eyed ladies only found me more endearing.

As the months rolled by, it became the Guru's habit to treat me in a cool and rather off-handed manner. In fact the Master took every opportunity to embarrass and shame me right in front of all those beautiful but noisy women. It was also apparent that the Master gained considerable enjoyment from his sustained campaign of psychological attrition. Through the driving force of his repeated assaults, I was made to suffer a thousand deaths.

Soon thereafter, the Prankster Guru saw the need to infuse some warmth into his hyper-detached student, especially when seeing how the sensitive rookie had become so unnerved toward the Institute ladies. And it was true; I had managed to clam myself up so tight that the world's sweetest smiles were not even able to penetrate my hard exterior shell. In the face of their advances, I exerted extra zeal; but this again only made me seem more alluring.

Due to the deadlocked situation, the Guru tried to get me to drop my guard. It was early and not yet crowded one day as I was lying on the floor taking rest between exercises. The Master came in from the back of the house. He donned a friendly smile and sat in the chair. Then he calmly sought to win my trust by starting up some breezy, buddy-buddy conversation.

"Yeah..." he began with a plaintive sigh, "when you're young you're free. You can go out to nightclubs where the girl comes and sits right there." He slapped himself firmly on top of his thigh. "But when you're old," he added, "you can't do it anymore."

A few days later, the Guru perceived that I had fallen to a mood of morbid dread with dark grey arcs beneath my eyes. He then tried to brighten things up a bit by mooting the topic of death itself.

"Don't forget!" he said with a devious grin (he aimed his magical finger right at me): "Everybody's got to die."

My mind was vague. By way of dull response, I asked him if any of his old students ever came to visit him.

"No," he said, "They've all kicked the bucket – Ha! Ha! Ha!" He laughed out loud. "You know 'kick the bucket' means?" he posed the question.

I slowly blinked my eyes.

"In Thai" he explained, "if you can 'still kick the bucket,' it means that you've still got some power left." Then he doubled up his fists and roared with hilarity.

"It's like this," he went on. "When old friends meet after many long years, they like to say to each other – 'Hey, can you still kick the bucket!' Get what I mean?"

I glanced about the room with uncertainty. The women were silent.

Mischief Making

Next, the Guru started setting me up with dates. "You should be more friendly," he advised one day. "Have compassion!" he said. But I was skittish as hell of these treacherous ploys.

'Why?'

Because as soon as the least little thing occurred, they all started tattling and spreading false rumours and cracking jokes at my expense.

"That's all right!" the old man consoled – "It's just their sense of humour. Never mind."

Going to the house became an excruciating ordeal. Pitched psychic battles were being played out daily. As the aggravations and tensions mounted, I found that my patience totally exhausted. The Master, however, remained up beat. He kept close tabs on the daily round of intrigues like an avid sports fan. He seemed to take pride in counting all of the times he could get me to step in the traps he laid.

All the same, through sheer determination I began to make progress in prānāyāma. I marvelled how the formerly tedious task had now become a source of genuine joy. Each day after performing all my āsanas, I sat on the floor and practiced prānāyāma for nearly an hour. But I started over doing it and strained my knees by constantly sitting in the full-lotus pose. I thought that sitting on a blanket might help, but the Master flatly denied my request. "You should sit in a more comfortable pose," he said. But I refused to listen and continued to strain my knees. Through facial expressions, he conveyed his annoyance, but I imprudently chose to ignore these cues.

A few days later I haughtily repeated my request to be able to sit on a blanket. Then the Guru produced an old synthetic bathroom mat; the kind made to fit around a western style toilet. He handed it over with a menacing smile and said, "Here use this." It looked like someone had pulled it out of a garbage bin. It was lumpy, soiled and oddly shaped, and when I actually used it, my knees hurt worse.

Now in spite of this being such a trifling affair, I took it all very deeply to heart. As I sat cross-legged on the lumpy mat, my eyes filled with tears and I started to tremble. At this point, the Guru's young daughter intervened. She took pity on me and gave me a blanket. Then she turned a side-glance of scorn to her father as if to say, 'Why do you treat him so cruelly!' But the Guru just grinned a self-satisfying grin and stepped to the patio to have a little smoke.

It was difficult to practice prānāyāma after that. I sat there alone consumed in agitation. I cringed with dread to imagine that the Guru might never put and end to his mischief making.

Back to India

I arrived in Calcutta alone by flight. It was late November and the temperatures were dropping. I decided to go south and booked a berth on the fifty-two-hour Kerala Express to Varkala, a tranquil seaside municipality in the Trivandrum district of Kerala state...

Returning to India was like a soothing balm. The two-day rail journey helped abate my frazzled senses. I sat in peace for hours on end and gazed transfixed out of the thin barred windows of the second-class compartment, Spartan and sufficient. As we clamoured our way across the grey-green countryside, a magical spool of rich poetic filament unfurled before my panning eyes.

There was more of the same the following morning. Wistful smiles of sackcloth children squatting in the dust beside the dawn-lit road. Mist-cloaked reapers thrashing grain beneath plodding hooves of their bony oxen.

It was October 31, 1984. We were somewhere en route near the Andra Pradesh-Tamil Nadu border when BBC World Service Radio reported that the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had been brutally murdered by her personal bodyguards while casually walking to her morning office. As her tiny bullet-riddled corpse lay in state, the capital's streets were the stage of a bloodbath performed on a "certain" ethnic community. Riots were spreading like wildfire across the country.

There was a 24-hour delay in Madras in order to safeguard the lives of "certain" passengers. All were cautioned not to leave the station. "Be careful young man," a gentleman warned me, "If rumours of CIA involvement get started, your life will be in danger."

The streets of Madras were quiet but tense. A nation-wide curfew was now in effect. Staff-wielding policemen stood about everywhere pressing their thumbs into the palms of their hands. All shops were closed except a few defiant tea vendors passing out cups of their steamy brew through padlocked storefront grilling.

Varkala

As I turned down the quiet road heading to the sea I passed by the bathing pool with ancient stone steps. There were echoing slaps and hand-washed laundry spread out everywhere to dry in the sun. Then I cut through the palm-groves and thatch-roof housing with terraced rice-fields not far beyond. I then became charmed by the gentle murmur of the brook as it moved through the reeds, and slowly poured into the estuary. That was just before the beach where two temple elephants lay on their sides in the warm shallow pools, mahouts giving scrub with coconut husks.

The asctual tīrtha or pilgrimage point is the shore at Pāpanāsam, literally "the place for cleansing sins." The narrow beige beach runs long north to south with curling breakers that gently massage the sandstone boulders that are strewn along the base of purple-hued cliffs.

I scaled the path of the northern cliff to muted sounds of gulls and sea waves; the picturesque view of the Arabian Sea. At the summit I came to the Nature Cure Hospital, placid like an ashram for the terminally artistic. This cluster of a half-dozen sun-yellow cottages immediately affected me as brilliant for yoga; and its director, Babu Joseph, shared my view. "It's the best place to stay in all of Varkala," he said. "I invite you for a ten-day regime." I accepted.

I crafted many notes in that airy cottage with its super-abundance of sunlight sublime. I left the windows open to the soft cool breeze and the waves as seen through the pines and the betel palm: fisher-folk totting nets and lines along the sea beach; the far off screeches of gulls oft' intoned...

I was adopting the methods of the French Cloudist painter René Laubiès who happened to be staying in the ashram at the time. René liked painting in the early morning light, which was also the time that I practiced yoga. But as soon as I finished, I would dash to his cottage in hope to steal a glimpse of his inspired technique. But he would always just be winding up, kneeling on the floor midst the crumpled-up papers & colour-stained rags, that broad piece of plywood that he used for an easel; twisted up oil tubes scattered all around him; brushes soaking quiet in a dented old can: the whole place stinking of expensive French turpentine.

Rishikesh

One incredibly hot afternoon I was napping in my room when a bizarre communication came direct from Guru Chod. Deep in sleep, I heard a ringing telephone. The receiver was lifted. The voice on the line said, "Come, there's more to learn." click. I arose with a crystal clear mind.

That's Mysticism

I could now well appreciate the Guru's kindness, having first dispatched and then summoned me back from Rishikesh. I could also accept the trials and tribulations as sacred steps in the rites of passage. The tremors that he caused to jar my soul were after all immense outpourings of love – ingenious strategies specifically devised to rid the young dreamer of a fatuous ego. Of course his young daughter was there as well, bashfully peeking around the corner as we talked in the cool of patio. Then the Master revealed himself a river of knowledge flowing straight from the source of the heart.

"I've read a hundred books on yoga," he confided. "So have you. But you can't learn yoga from a book," he affirmed.

Nor from the teacher's collected sayings: It must be learned mystically, in between the lines, as it were. In the tension of the love between the guru and the student there is something uncannily mysterious and beautiful. It is a teaching borne on mind-waves, propelled by love.

But then, what is the thing that is actually transferred in this mystical exchange of love?

Said the Guru,

When a child hurts its finger and starts to cry, the mother kisses the finger and the child stops crying. Not anyone's kiss will relieve the pain. Only the mother's kiss does the trick... It can't be explained... I like to leave it open. That's mysticism.