Pooja Pooja Everyday

We started out the day in a bang – it was the anniversary of the Ashram's Krishna Temple, so the temple of course held a pooja. It was beautiful and the murthi is very beautiful. At the end of the Pooja, the pundits dressed Krishna Bhagvan in beautiful clothes and add the detail of his flute as well.

In my asana teaching class today, I learned a few ways to correct postures, especially Halasana (the plough position). I can't wait to try it out on my sister because I am confident that I can get her to touch her toes to the ground. I practiced the correction on my partner, Ghanaya (she's 17 or 18, a good friend and really cheerful), who prior to today could not get her feet to touch the ground. We were both so excited for her accomplishment today. She was beaming :*)

It so happened that not only did we do a Pooja for the Krishna temple today, we also started our Gita classes. A lovely, bigger British women with a few missing front teeth set the stage by telling us the story of the Mahabharat up until the Gita. The hour flew by very quickly and most of my classmates really enjoyed the story. I really enjoyed the stories also and want to go back home and watch all 100+ episodes of the Mahabarat on video.

In our philosophy class today, I along with a few of my classmates almost lost composure. Swami Mahadevananda (French Canadian with big belly) is not a very good teacher. I believe he has good intentions, but teaching is an art and if not done with compassion it loses its lust. Swami was going all over the place and our lecture included 20 minutes of taking roll to figure out why so many people were coming in late, a 5 minute bathroom break (for him), discussion of the earth's elliptical orbit and commentary on US modern history. Much of it I wasn't able to piece together, but read the lesson on my own and extracted what I believe I was supposed to get out of the lecture.

I could feel my negative energy brewing, so I broke my own rule, closed my eyes in class, tuned out and meditated. It calmed me down, but not my classmates. The negative energy was in the air, but was more than filtered with our incredibly strenuous asana class. We held positions for a very long time and I realized why people were saying we would be more sore the second week than the first. I think we held Sarvangasan (shoulder stand) for almost 4-5 minutes. Saying it was intense would be an understatement, but we all willed ourselves and meditated through it.

Aside from surviving the asana class, the highlight of our day was being served spaghetti for dinner. We ended the day with yet another Pooja – this time it was for peace in Sri Lanka and to send good blessings to the Tamils. Many of the local Tamil community was present. Though it had been raining all day, it had stopped raining and the havan was conducted outdoors on top of a mountain, where the ashram has built many small temples for many South Indian gods I haven't heard of. This time, we poured ghee (butter) into the fire. As soon as we finished the Aarti, it started pouring again. Apparently people said that it is considered very auspicious when it rains after a havan.

And I believe it – Mary Kay saved my life today. The rain had made the trail back to the ashram very slippery. So as gay as this sounds, Mary Kay and I held hands the entire trail down. She saved me from a major major fall. A fall that left at least one of my classmates with a spranged ankle. Despite the scare that incident gave me, it was very beautiful to walk through the woods in the mist of the rain after the sun had set. There was a calming and mystic feel to it that was accentuated by Mary's (crazy, British girl who I call "Pakajam") Indian flute playing. She's "quite good" (in a British accent).