Om Namah Shee-va-yaw

Swami Vishnudevananda, the founder of the Sivananda ashram system outside of India, designed this TTC program in a very thoughtful, thorough and traditional fashion. This TTC program is sticking to traditional values to the “T”. First, we are working under a gurukul system of teaching which has been followed since ancient times in India. We sleep, learn and work in the same place as our teachers, as one community. They even gave us bags from India that are used in India to carry around our books. Supposedly the yellow color, representing knowledge, and white color, representing purity has an effect on your mindset and ameliorates learning.

Also included in the curriculum is chanting and kirtan. Everyday we sing for 2-3 hours a day. We sing kirtan for about 30 minutes in the early morning and evening satsang and actually have an entire 1 hour class every day dedicated to chanting that Swami Ambika (the elder, boyish Brit, that my friends and I have agreed reminds us of Rafiqi from The Lion King) leads.

That’s right, Christians, Quakers, Buddhists, Atheist are chanting Hare Rama Hare Krishna for 2 hours a day. (Part of my Hare Rama Hare Krishna syndrome is that the mispronunciation of Sanskrit really drives me a bit nuts, especially as now I myself am saying Shiva as “Sheeva”). But as the days have passed the mispronunciations are getting harder to hear.

We chant Sanskrit mantras to open and close every single session we attend (6 session every day) to invoke Ganesh, Sarasvati, Swami Sivananda and Mata. This means that all 80+ TTC’s are required to learn these mantras along with the hindu chants that we sing. We spend our class period (1 hour per day) learning not only the meanings of the daily chants, but the pronunciation as well, word by word. To be honest, I’m really impressed at how quickly my classmates are learning the shlokas. I clearly have a head start and am able to digest the chanting easily, but I have a lot of admiration for my classmates many of whom, are being exposed to Sanskrit and hindu gods and concepts for the first time. I also am realizing how lucky I am and grateful for my parents, grandmother and aunts for painstakingly taking the time to teach my sister and me so many Sanskrit mantras. There are only a handful of mantras that I do not know by heart and haven’t heard of.

Chanting (singing is known as kirtan) is very powerful. A classmate of mine, Ashley, asked me the other day in the bathroom, “Do you find yourself singing these chants randomly as if we aren’t hearing them enough?” And that’s what’s happening. These songs are so catchy and we are repeating them so much that they are being embedded in our subconscious. When I’m eating, showering, walking to and from the satsang hall, I am chanting. Another classmate of mine disclosed over brunch that she is gaining the most benefit from our kirtan during satsang. She said she’s crying the entire time. No it’s not from the pain, but from the release of emotion.

Even myself. There is something very touching and beautiful about the kirtan - the sounds, the simple, yet deep meaning and the vibrations that bring tears to my eyes as well. I know this sounds really cheesy and like I’m going off the deep end, but this isn’t the first time that I am feeling these sensations (though admittedly, it has been a while). There were a few moments when I was growing up and would feel the same feelings, the same devotion, while singing a bhajan or the Ramayan. It’s powerful, it’s purifying and it’s real.

In our chanting class we sang a particular bhajan in English which really annoyed me at first. Singing these chants in English just don’t resonate the same way and sound really stuffy and cramped to me. But once I stopped judging and actually listened to what I was chanting I realized how much meaning there was:

Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realize
Be good, do good, be kind
Be compassionate
Adapt, adjust, accommodate
Bear insult, bear injury, Highest Sadhana
Bear insult, bear injury, Highest Yoga
Enquire Who am I?
Know thy self and be free
Om Shanti, Om Peace, Om Shalom Om

It struck me how counter these philosophies are to what I’ve learned in the corporate world and in B-school. The question I will be pondering upon for the next few weeks is that if I truly believe in these values, how will I carry them into my world practically?

Today is Gurupurnima, so the ashram hosted a pooja. We crammed ourselves into the main Krishna Temple and began chanting bhajans for another 2 hours straight while every single attendee, of which there were over 100, participated in the traditional ceremony of pouring milk over the idols of the lineage of gurus tracing back to Lord Siva himself. A Bhramin pandit from Kerela was conducting the Pooja – he’s the first priest I’ve seen with actual dreadlocks in his hair. I’m sure it’s really bad to say this, but he looked really dirty and had the biggest belly. I really wanted to take a picture of him, but didn’t feel that was appropriate, so just trust my description. The ceremony was actually very beautiful. The temple was full with a very mystic energy as every single person seemed to be chanting from their hearts.

Though I was exhausted from the entire day and was battling my fatigued legs from sitting cross-legged on the floor for over 7 hours all day, by the end of the Pooja I was completely rejuvenated, as were my dorm mates. We usually come back to the dorm and immediately hit our beds, but tonight we were really jazzed up from all the singing – We stayed awake until 11 pm (which is an hour later than usual) chatting away and laughing.