Sunday reflections 8 - The bright side of winter!

Yes there is a bright side! We are watching the Canada Sweden gold medal Olympic match up today and I am itching to get my feet into a pair of ice skates and zip across the ice. Oddly enough, I learnt to skate in Dubai in 1984, smack in the middle of a blistering summer at the Al Nasr Club ice skating rink. I did not even have an inkling then that I was Canada bound. I rented skates and persisted day after day over the 8 weeks I spent there. I took to the ice like a fish to water even surprising my niece's trainer.

After we came to Canada, my husband and I bought ourselves skates but were too embarrassed to stumble on the ice. So after a couple of tentative tries, we carted them from house to house, as we moved around, finally donating them to goodwill. Likewise with cross country skis which we used a little more, over a couple of winters on the beautiful wooded trails close to our Blind River home. Our move to Toronto saw us gravitating towards all things Indian in an attempt to create a comfortable cocoon for ourselves and introduce our child to her heritage. Luckily for Utta she took to winter, having moved here when she was just 18 months. As a toddler, she loved playing in the snow and would refuse to come inside while I froze watching over her. She learned to skate, play ice hockey and ski downhill. It's no wonder she does not complain about winter!

My favourite pastime in the winter is complaining about it. And yet we live in a nation whose tag line for the Olympics was "we are winter" and where the winter scenes just take my breath away! I love the hush of a snowy day, walking on a crisp cold day and recall with fondness a well deserved hot chocolate after a couple of hours of exhausting but exhilarating cross country skiing. Like everything else it's always that first step. Rather than recoil and cower inside with confused thoughts about winter - all irrational and learnt - I am determined to tackle the great outdoors. Skating maybe? I am sure there is a rink around the corner from me and a pair of rental skates available for a song. I just need my brave face. What greater motivation than making my daughter proud and perhaps one day skating with her. I hope to blog about my skating experiences which hopefully do not include tales of broken bones! (Ok ok - no more negative thoughts)

And how about those Canadian athletes!!

Sunday reflections 7 - 3 Epiphanies

It is 4:30 am and I hurry towards the meditation hall. The two hour meditation leading up to breakfast has it's highs and lows depending on the previous night's sleep. It is a striving to embrace that elusive experience of Shuniya, the point of stillness, which ironically cannot be achieved through effort but comes from totally letting go of the conditioning that everything comes with effort. There are no great aha moments, just the excruciating drag of time from minute to minute. I try to be fully present through the aches, pains and tingling as well as the vastness of time as I observe each breath, gently forcing the mind back every time it runs into the future with craving for the hot oatmeal, toast with tahini and the piping hot cup of tea that awaits the close of the meditation or to past Chennai experiences of decoction coffee. Anything to occupy it. With eyes tightly shut, and determined to make an honest effort, I focus, mildly distracted by the footfalls and the rustle of clothes of others who have dragged themselves from bed to settle on their spots. By the second day I realize I can tell who has come in. I am particularly tuned in to a young man who sits along my row, with a fully shaven head, white and gleaming. He wears a hoodie in a dark colour to go with his light coloured pants and appears the keenest of the lot. I cannot see his face and would dare not make eye contact, breaking the precept of noble silence. I play a little game of making up his story in my head to test how close I have come, when the silence is broken on the last day. He is clearly married but did he still flirt with the idea of monk hood, I speculate because of his ostensible intensity?

Anyway, I anchor my practice to his, since competition is what I know best. I will out meditate him. Stay motionless, while he shifts positions, remain glued to my spot eschewing the need for washroom breaks and outlast him past the breakfast gong. It works. I barely know how the first hour has passed heralding the soothing chants that mark the second hour. The next day when the gong strikes the wait does not seem long at all. Odd. Now I cannot wait to get back in the hall to meditate. I have an incentive. I want to outdo and outlast this young man. Although the meditation itself is great, and even unbeknownst to myself I am quietening the mind, it is only on day 4 or 5 that I wise up to the egocentricity of this incentive whereby I am treating meditation as a competitive sport! I then begin noticing this habit pattern that underpins decisions I make in life. This is not to say that competition is bad. However, there are times when competition does not engender the best outcome. In those instances, alternatives may include finding a middle ground or withdrawing so as not to cut one's own nose to spite a competitor. It may be a while before I am actually able to alter my reactions, but at least now I am noticing?! How interesting! This is one of three big epiphanies I have.

The second one relates to my need for purpose in everything I do. Here, there is the realization that there is "no pizza in nirvana" (Sharon Salzburg) and no outcome to look for on a cause -effect linear scale. Transposed to everyday living it is the idea behind karma yoga where you don't look to the end but the reward is in the experiencing!

And the third epiphany? Well it relates to my romantic ideas on everything including spirituality. Oh how wonderful that this young man may be on his way to becoming a monk. For starters, fresh out of 10 days of practice, I do not indulge my curiosity to find out. It really does not matter if my speculation is right or wrong. After all this is about his life and his journey and not fodder for my entertainment.

Silence and Sensation

Equanimity just looks on and observes, while calmly settled in composed neutrality. It is manifested as the quieting of both resentment and approval. Gautham Buddha

I am back from my Vipassana retreat in Alliston, Ontario where nestled in the wilderness of Canadian conifers is Dhamma Torana, the Centre where I strengthened my meditation practice while observing ten days of noble silence. This could have been the lower Himalayas in the winter, so pristine the snow and serene the beauty of the land. The only sounds I heard till we broke the silence on day 10 was that of the gong to herald wake up, meditation and meal times. With 60 other enthusiastic meditators I trekked from the women's dorm to the meditation hall and the dinner hall in a cozy triangle, between the hours of 4:00 am and 9:00 pm never otherwise venturing much outside. The days consisted of long hours of observing my breath and sensations in complete silence, in the large Dhamma Hall or in my individual cell. The first two days were challenging with aches from sitting cross legged on a meditation cushion for 11 hours. However, except for a few rocky moments from emotional upheavals brought on by the intensity of the practice, on days 4 and 6, it was an extremely comfortable and natural state for me to be in. The quiet of the winter just deepened the inner silence I was able to scale.

Besides the sheer experience of delinking from all sensory stimuli, there were some marvellous benefits that I enjoyed from this retreat.

I main lined with the Buddha and my heart brimmed over with gratitude for his contribution to bring real peace and harmony with a non sectarian practice that just involves observing breath and sensations to eliminate past conditioning and habit patterns. Pure Vedanta with "how to" instructions. I am committed to continue on this path to bring greater detachment, unravel old habit patterns and to live without the reactivity that comes when the the mind and body are out of sync!

I met amazing young women who on day 10 just stunned me with their wisdom and purity. There is such a thing as an old soul. One 20 year old's experiences on the spiritual path since age 17, simply floored me. Another young woman said she did not have any place to go to after the retreat, but that it had brought her the clarity to understand what she wanted to do. Her husband was there, of course segregated from us, and she told me, with unbelievable serenity, that he might decide to become a monk! I wondered how these women have such courage to be so detached and uncompromising in their life choices,

Another "benefit" came from deepening my practice by volunteering to clean up washrooms and public areas. These are the "privileges" that an old student can sign up for and I did.

A further benefit was re-learning how to live life by strict rules. In a world of silence, systems and adherence to rules is of paramount importance so you don't get in people's way while taking care of your own needs. There are those of us who are rule bound and others who keep shifting the lines. I have assessed myself as belonging to the second category. So such reinforcement was really useful for me! I am replicating some of it at home with instruction lists and weekly menus! Let's see for how long this lasts!

Living the life of a nun has its advantages in that you get by with the basics, live off the charity of others and simplify life to limit it to few activities. I ate the wholesome breakfast of oatmeal, fruits and toast and lunches of rice, pasta or couscous with cooked veggies and salads with great relish and made do with just herbal tea at dinner time. I was present in everything I did, from showering to washing to walking on the snow, without the distractions of sensory clutter and choice.

I hope to do a ten day retreat every year and longer ones in the future.

We all know the benefits of meditation. Here is one of myriad scientific articles coming out on this topic. (http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/mindfulness-meditation-causes-specific-molecular-changes-in-the-body-uw-madison-study/meditation/ ). If you want to get established in a daily practice within an environment that is non-religious/sectarian/cultist, I highly recommend Vipassana. Also, if you are intimidated by the austerity, don’t be. There is so much love and compassion in the environment there that you are allowed the privilege of sitting on a chair if you cannot cross-legged on the floor, or if you wish to meditate in your room, rather than in the hall. You are also provided a meal in the evening if you cannot bear the thought of going to bed on a hungry stomach. Most amazing off all are the changes that you will see come over you and their positive impact on your relationships, productivity, focus and overall well being. If you are able to set aside 10 days, give it a try. It's free and works based on the pay it forward principle! You will come away enriched and become part of a wonderful community of volunteers who run the Centres worldwide! Check out www.dhamma.org.

Utta and Shazia

Uttara and Shazia attended middle school and high school together. Then Utta went to Montreal and Shazia remained in Toronto. They stayed in close touch and met every time Utta was in Toronto. Growing up Shazia was the most beautiful of Utta's friends with her large eyes, chiselled features and a svelte figure, long limbed and proportionate. She was funny, intelligent and a veritable tomboy. She and Utta walked home together from school since she lived two doors from us and they hung out together a lot at our home. Her parents were progressive and unlike Utta's other Pakistani friends did not try to get her married soon after graduation. She had a loving home and everything appeared to be going well for her as she studied to become a Pharmacist and secured a plum job within a large Toronto hospital.

These last two years Shazia had grown quite thin and Utta and her friends started to worry about her. She said she was feeling fine and was just very busy. She lived by herself in her Toronto apartment and worked hard at her job. She came to her parents home in Markham over the weekends. Last summer when Utta met her over dinner in a favourite Markham haunt she said that Shazia had grown even thinner and barely ate half of her salad. She also told me that she felt like a giant next to her and for the first time noticed people staring at them when they walked together. Two days before she left for London Utta met Shazia again, this time for coffee and a chat. She said Shazia insisted they park their cars a few kilometres away and walk to a coffee shop in Unionville. Utta found this strange but went along because it was a beautiful summer day. When Utta gently broached the topic of her weight and health, Shazia shrugged it off saying she was extremely busy and missed meals because she had no time to eat. Utta gave her my number to call if she needed help with anything. I did not hear from Shazia.

Early this morning Utta called me from London wailing that Shazia had been found dead in her apartment and the funeral was today.

I made my way to the mosque on this bitterly cold day, the mercury showing -25 degrees. The place was milling with people. A young death. On the third floor, the Namaz e Janaza prayers had concluded by then and they were bringing the body down to the ground floor where I was, to take her to the burial ground. Her parents were inconsolable in their grief, holding on for dear life to the plain wooden casket, covered in green velvet cloth with gold Arabic inscriptions. They wanted to see her face one last time. I was there when they opened the casket and uncovered the milk white cotton cloth that they had wrapped her in to just reveal her face. The smell of incense assaulted my senses and forever etched in my memory is that same beautiful baby face that had once brimmed over with laughter, now lifeless and pale. I kept thinking they are going to lay Shazia in a hole in the ground on this bitterly cold day. I left there wondering how her parents would have the courage to do that.

Sunday reflections - 6 - Shashi Tharoor and habit patterns!

I had a hard time waking up this morning. I deviated from my regular diet at the party last night and the sugar was still circling around in my blood to reduce me into this big blob of laziness. I eat on these occasions not because of hunger or even craving but by force of habit! While I do notice the disconnect between the act of eating, the food itself and the sensations in my body, habits overpower me. Yesterday the radio doctor said “Exercising self control does not work, but self monitoring does”. Well I was aware of the act of eating but all this noticing was just making me eat more and guilt free! This is because I kept rationalizing that it was ok for me eat since I was noticing! Meanwhile, have I ridden myself of the habit pattern that compels me to eat food which is put before me, especially if it looks eminently edible? Nooo. In other words, just noticing does not break deeply ingrained habits. But, joking aside, it is definitely a start!

Given our conditioning then, the act of falling into temptation is much easier than we care to notice. Our so called transgressions of our personal or public code of conduct big and small, occur on the turn of a dime. Take the case of Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar. The media assault on the strength of their marriage has resulted in tragedy. As news comes out of the couple's public rows on twitter, airplanes and other locales, it appears on all accounts that Shashi had succumbed to old patterns of behaviour that craved the attention of beautiful women. His wife's jealous rages and ultimate death may have resulted directly or indirectly from his alleged clandestine communications with the beautiful Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar.

The question then is this. If we are all so habit prone and eminently capable of deviating from societal or personal norms why do we subscribe to absolute “dos” and “donts”, “right” and “wrong”. Why do we all blindly don the strait jacket of these black and white ideals? They clearly are impractical but we rationalize, cheat and lie our way both to overselves and others because we desperately want to hold on to our carefully constructed image of ourselves. We have a great sense of shame even self censure! Given that we live in self denial we make little spiritual progress.

The first step to our spiritual and moral advancement is unravelling our immutable false image of ourselves and acknowledging we are utterly fallible. That we are no different from Shashi Tharoor or anyone else who repeats patterns of behaviour either unaware or unable to transcend them. The next step is keeping an open mind and listening without judgement to our own mental chatter and to what others have to say about us. As we do this we will peel away our conditioning and see our natural mind free of prior causes or constraints.

In the words of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche in "The Joy of Living"

"For most of us, our natural mind or Buddha nature is obscured by the limited self image created by habitual neuronal patterns - which, in themselves, are simply a reflection of the unlimited capacity of the mind to create any condition it chooses. Natural mind is capable of producing anything even ignorance of its own nature" and he follows this with a quote from the Song of Karmapa " In natural mind, there is no rejection or acceptance no loss or gain". In other words, there is no need for habits.

In summary, if we notice without judgement and chip away at our baggage bit by bit then we will uncover our natural mind and let go of habit patterns.

Here are some non Buddhist suggestions to observe and change habits!


http://zenhabits.net/20-tricks-to-nuke-a-bad-habit/

Sunday reflections 5 - Our backyard Bhima

On Sunday Suku and I hosted a lunch for family and friends. We could have ordered from one of the Indian restaurants which offer fare that passes off as "Indian" in the West, but nowhere near resembles what we ate growing up. I did not have to resort to that travesty and have a spread of greasy paneer, naan and oily half cooked rice. This is because we have our own Bhima in the city. Bhima in Hindu mythology, was the second of the Pandava princes, whose story is retold in the Mahabharata epic. He was known for his culinary expertise. One of the 5 famous Pandava princes, he is said to have masqueraded as the king’s cook, for the one year when they went undercover in the kingdom of Virata, mesmerising His Royal Highness with his mouth watering dishes. The famous South Indian “Avial” (mixed vegetable and coconut dish) has been traced back to him as its originator.

Chandramouli Mama, our own Bhima, is a Brahmin priest in Toronto, who manages a temple and cooks and feeds people. Portly and energetic he can make a meal appear in a jiffy with effortless ease. So much so he is the port of call for us Tam Brahms. Right from first birthdays to eightieth and everything in between he handles all with panache and zeal for his loyal followers. We unabashedly ream off items we want on the menu and he gets caught up in our enthusiasm to suggest even more dishes. The end result is a divine spread and a great draw.

So on the appointed day, Suku and I provided an authentic South Indian vegetarian meal which featured saambar saadam (lentil stew rice), thayir saadam (curd rice), Rasam (spicy lentil soup), potato spicy fry, Paruppu vadai (spicy donuts), payaasam (milky rice pudding), thayir pachadi (raita) and appalam. He threw in pulao, mattar paneer and daalpuri for good measure, but with that distinct South Indian home-made quality to them. But that was not all - homemade pickle with mangos cut into tiny pieces as they do with mangos picked from backyard trees in Chennai and thinly sliced plantain chips were included as accompaniments to this great spread. Baadam cake, laddus and thenkozhal in loot bags topped it all off. Mama is a magician because he can produce prodigious quantities of freshly cooked food in a morning. He probably works through the night. The food always arrives piping hot in stainless steel containers at the appointed time, delivered by his brother and one of the temple patrons. Also Mama never skimps on quantity. I always have to remind him to not go overboard. But he never listens and I always have take-away containers for people to take home their next meal. We had 70 people that day and food was overflowing with several people carrying precious leftovers home.

I remind myself never to take mama for granted. It's like having Bhima in our backyard - warming up this cold city of ours. On Tuesday, the day of Tamilnadu’s biggest festival, Pongal (celebrating the winter harvest), I dropped in at the temple and was offered a steaming hot cup of cardamom tea and chakkara pongal (rice cooked with jaggery, ghee and milk). I did not have to make pongal at home. The day before when I went over to pay him for the food he had provided on Sunday he packed me venn pongal (spicy rice) and uppuma (semolina). No one leaves his temple hungry. It is truly a dharamsala (refuge) animated by one man's energy and generosity of spirit. Although there are several others who cater to South Indian tastes, Toronto would not be the same for me without him!

Sunday reflections - 4 - The Ordinariness of My Life

Yesterday’s reflection was on the ordinariness of my life. Every day is mercifully the same. I wake up each day to the sound of the alarm or the husband at 4:30 a.m., and reluctantly make my way to the washroom, aware of each step I take, of the sensations of sleep in every limb, the cold air on my skin. I am aware of the conflict in my being, the part that wants to get back into the womb like warmth of the mattress. The moment passes and I make my way to the kitchen. I boil a kettle of water, peeking out to check out the bevy of options offered by our unpredictable weather conditions. If there is not much snow on the ground and the temperature is mild, contrary to predictions, I walk with a spring in my step to put on the kettle. I wash down a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and honey with a cup of soothing warm water and brew a fresh pot of coffee. I steam idlis in the rice cooker for breakfast and pack our lunch. My first stop being at the yoga centre, I do not eat or drink but chat with my husband as he does.

We leave together at 5:30, him to work and me to the Vedic Cultural Centre for yoga with three or four other loyal folks who are as fanatically committed to the practice as I am. By this time, I have “WhatsApped” my daughter to check in with her in London, reviewed my personal and office emails and facebook updates, and have been reassured that everything is business as usual. After our 75 minute practice of hatha/kundalini yoga and pranayama we chit chat usually complaining about the weather, since it can never ever be perfect, and then make our way to our respective lives. I take on the highway heavy with traffic and alternate listening to Carnatic music or talk radio or chatting with my mom or my two sisters, if they are available. I catch up on all the happenings across the globe and visualize myself in sunny Chennai or Dubai with great longing. On a rare occasion I catch up for a chat with my little girl and these instances being few and far between, kick the day’s rating up several notches on the ordinariness scale.

At the office I change into work clothes and begin my day with coffee and breakfast, as I am usually in before the others. I review my calendar, read my emails and know that this is going to be yet another uneventful day with no life altering moments, no heroic acts, just every- day transactions similar to the ones from the day before. Ever so often when I hear leading lawyers wax prolific about injustices that they are taking on, I notice my mind flicker with a tinge of restlessness craving the adrenalin rush and sensationalism brought on by high profile cases, casting doubts over my choice to run a social enterprise and act as legal counsel doing mostly solicitor work. In those moments I question what it is that brought me to this place at this time, when I could be elsewhere. But as I observe this urge without judgment, I usually calm right down and fully embrace the tedium of yet another day of repetitive activity.

The amazing thing is the more I pay close attention to the everyday routine of my existence, without purposiveness or strategy, I focus better on everything I do and find that each moment brings forth a bouquet of small surprises. It may be new discoveries at the morning yoga session, of the possibilities of mind and body, or breakthroughs when interacting with someone who is hard to communicate with. As I keep myself open to all possibilities without fear or censure, I experience amazing coincidences without any effort or willfulness on my part. And all I really do is observe and revel in the sounds of chatter and laughter around me and give thanks for the moments that roll one into the other bringing forth the state of gratitude I am in. While I love my many interactions with friends over lunches and dinners I equally enjoy my solitude and it is truly the ordinariness of my existence that brings forth for me the joy of living each day!