LOST and FOUND in INDIA

CALCUTTA BITES

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:12:00 +0000

The chubby, perfumed woman entered the restaurant and slid into the heavy wooden chair, sweeping her long, untied hair aside so she wouldn't sit on it...

...the thick linen tablecloth, the shining glasses that sang crystal notes when tapped, the perfectly aligned cutlery: everything appeared to satisfy her. Her plump cheeks grew rounder as her red painted mouth squeezed itself into a smugly contented smile. The seams of her clothes squeezed and strained and bulged as she wiggled herself to comfort. Her kajal-lined eyes peered above black-framed specs and raked the room. Like a Bollywood movie set. She was the star in her own lunch hour. She could feel it...

Her friend arrived, towering above the table, big hands lifting the heavy chair too easily, the soft silk sari too delicate for the build, pale pink lipstick too pretty for the firm jaw, the haircut an over-zealous endeavor at femininity, the deep voice quietly alarming.

Long streams of Bengali flowed from them, interspersed with fragmented, random English, phrases not existing in their mother tongue. "Tara swami ye patha na bala ucita, this is only my opinion, na?" They waved oversized menus around as they spoke, their huge and obnoxious size lost on Pouty and She-man, who were huge and obnoxious in their own charming ways.

Plates of food arrived. Pouty picked at bones, pursed lips blowing at steaming rice, puffed air making hot clouds. Small round lips parted, small sharp teeth dragging at a long green chili. They both spat words and bones, parking the latter plate-side, unleashing the former between bites, most landing on the hapless waiter whose excessive and obsequious "yes, ma'ams" somehow deserved the slap.

Elegant drinks clashed with lusty mouths. Heavy gold bangles clashed with china. Cutlery clashed with teeth. War was declared.

Pouty and She-man ruled.

FEAST

I sat and watched the core
of suffering humanity
feast upon life, ravishing each moment
like it were the last
the whore illusion smiled back
the red slash of her mouth irresistible
she gorged, but on the weakness of the willing
"are you happy now?" she asked
indifferent to their bleating responses
they sat back sated
wanting more
"no one is happy here," she thought
the relentless stuffing of the body
does not feed the soul

5 THINGS YOU DON'T NEED TO HEAR THIS WEEK

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:42:00 +0000

Because nothing p*sses us off more than being told all the time...

Read it @ Elephant Journal »»» *☆.｡.•*✿

♥

HIDE YOUR CHILDREN

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:23:00 +0000

Two dead children were found at the back of the local school, their kidneys and eyes removed. An otherwise quiet village, where the most unusual, interesting, or exciting thing that happens is at a local temple on a festival day, or when a cow or bullock or goat runs loose down the main street, or when the boats crossing the river go on strike.

Lock up your children, nowhere is safe. And if you think it's different where you are?

I wouldn't want you as a parent...

DID SOMEONE SAY DHARMA?

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:44:00 +0000

Dharma is what lies behind the door marked "Spiritual Equality." Open it and step inside and leave all other labels at the threshold...

Read it @ Elephant Journal »»» *☆.｡.•*✿

♥

FLUTE SONG

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:48:00 +0000

The cold season lingers; the nights are deliciously cold, but the days are starting to warm. A flute song is playing from a temple speaker somewhere in the distance; I love the sound of the silence of the night, broken only by that simple, sweet melody that drifts across the fields and in my window...such a far-off sound. I think the person playing must be kind...

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

- St. Francis of Assisi

♥

OPRAH GETS HER KRISHNA GROOVE ON

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:11:00 +0000

Oprah looks gorgeous in a sari...she was seen ducking into the local Krishna temple in Vrindavan, my favorite little village in north India. Also my favorite temple she's in. (I just wish I knew her tailor...)

Hardly surprising she's there: after taking on the cattle industry and her recent exposes on the grotesque methods of cow slaughter, the world's most famous cowherd boy, Krishna, no doubt pulled a "have-your-people-call-my-people-and-let's-do-lunch" routine on her. Bless her...

Big or small, conscious compassion kinda rocks....

ॐ♥

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER!

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:36:00 +0000

~~My blogging friend...~~ I mean The Now Exceptionally Famous Ann Imig, National Director over at Listen To Your Mother, was one of the first bloggers I knew, and I love her to bits. She is now blogging at the million-readers-a-month Superstardom site, Elephant Journal. Well? Why you still here?

Go read her @ Elephant Journal! »»» *☆.｡.•*✿

INDIA CENSORS INTERNET, SERVES SUMMONS ON FACEBOOK, GOOGLE

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:33:00 +0000

Someone should have told India that if they insist on promoting themselves as a future "Superpower" and want to stop being seen as a third world country, then censoring Google, Facebook, YouTube, and 18 other similar sites is really not the way to go about it....

Read it on Elephant Journal »»» *☆.｡.•*✿

YOGA TEACHERS: NOTHING BUT A VEHICLE

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:02:00 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/manumint/

If yoga is more than just "exercise," shouldn't its teachers be spiritually and philosophically qualified?

Read it @ Elephant Journal »»» *☆.｡.•*✿

YOGA GIRL

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:47:00 +0000

If you haven't seen this yet you're either dead, or not that into yoga. Or maybe it's just not that into you. Yowza. Seriously, go and watch this and, like, connect with the universe...it's brilliant.

DID I MENTION THE HIMALAYAS?

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:30:00 +0000

I didn't? Well they're here. Close by. Close enough to feel. At this time of year, they appear here in Mayapur in the form of the northerly breeze, its frosty wings breathing through my front balcony. We'd much prefer they visit during, I dunno, HOT SEASON. But no...they do it now, in winter, and suddenly all the lovely cool marble floors and benches and walls in my home are like ice. I wrote this poem in monsoon season about seven years ago, when the depth and breadth of green never seems to end, when the grass seems to reach the sky and its shades of color are countless and gorgeous and rich and deep, and when we wish for those cold Himalayan breezes. But right now, we're shivering and praying for the heat...

MONSOON LANDSCAPE

Will I wake up one day and the green will be there

Reaching up to the sky like a heavenly stair?

Will the shades that it comes in never find end

As they wind their way up in a huge cosmic bend?

Will the palm trees all tilt and throw down coconuts

on the ground covered thick with upturned village huts?

Will the waves from the Ganges crash loud on the shore

With a majestic and foreign ocean-like roar?

I wonder these things because as days go by

The green becomes greener and nearer the sky

The waving grass covers the whole earthen floor

Until I can’t recall what it looked like before

But winter will come and with it the wind

And the retreat of the grass in the cold will begin

Soon the earth will appear, dark and rich at our feet

And once more we will shiver and pray for the heat.

YOGI BARELY

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:25:00 +0000

Look at me and hear me,
because I am here

just for that

~ Rumi

THE TEN THINGS

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:37:00 +0000

If it's the only thing you do all day, watch this:

click to watch:

"'The Ten Things" is part of the letter written home

to my 4 year old son from

a small summit on the China/Mongolia border..."

~ Jeremy Collins

5 THOUGHTS YOU'LL HAVE AT THE TIME OF DEATH

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:54:00 +0000

No point in avoiding the inevitable: let's get on with it then, shall we?

Read it @ Elephant Journal »»» *☆.｡.•*✿☆✿*•.｡.☆*

RUMI ON THE INDIVIDUAL SPIRITUAL PATH

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 07:33:00 +0000

To enter into the ultimate truth,
you need to leave your horse behind
and walk alone into the uncharted territory of the soul.

There you may find that you need to behave in ways that would have been unthinkable when you were closely following the formulas and rules of behavior prescribed by the religion into which you were born. How strange that your personal path to God often seems to be blocked or criticized by the priests of religion. Do you dare break free of the confining rules? Do you dare to follow your own truth, even when it starts leading you astray from the path of your religion? What if this breaking free is the only way that you can really understand the truth of your religion? Can you follow the inner impulse?

~ Rumi

SAMSKARA: CREATING A MINDFUL LIFE

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:12:00 +0000

"Mindful" is the name of the gardener who tends the tiny seeds of sound and word, who waters and nurtures the thoughts that sprout, who inhales the heady scent of the flowers that bloom in the heart, the result of such tender care...

Read it @ Elephant Journal »»» *☆.｡.•*✿☆✿*•.｡.☆*

KARMA, ANYONE?

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:11:00 +0000

The word "karma" seems to be going in the same direction as "spiritual" did a decade ago: the marketplace version of it is skin-deep, a kind of urban understanding, a trendy phrase, a hip concept. In reality, it's a complicated science that the eastern philosophies, specifically the Bhagavad-gita, explain as "almost impossible to understand."
Someone who is inclined towards the deeply philosophical, the scientific, or the spiritual side of life may scratch the surface of that understanding, but the complicated laws of the universe will always remain, in some part, something of a mystery even to their most loyal students.

So it doesn't surprise me when the layman's understanding of karma meets seemingly innocent death and suffering head-on, or when the topic of euthanasia is raised, or when bad things happen to good people. It's hard to understand, harder yet to swallow.

I'm not here to give all the answers to what is perhaps one of the hottest of life's questions: "why did it happen?" It takes too much, it's a complicated topic, and the hearer has to want to know.

But bad things do happen to good people. And it's not God's fault, or "the universe's" fault. Neither of them "told" anyone to do it. Neither of them are obliged to stop someone doing it. Nor is it their fault that a child dies, or a cancer patient suffers a long time before they breathe their last. Our lives and the things that happen in them, individually and collectively, are of our own doing.

The universe turns on its own laws, and if you wanna dance, you gotta pay the band.

Only I'd choose my dance tunes careful, like....

COW BUMS & LOVING INDIA

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:41:00 +0000

A reminder of why I live in India and love it so damned much...

YOGA, A NEW YEAR, and the WRITING ON THE WALL

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:02:00 +0000

I had my yoga ropes installed when I returned from my Dehradun yoga retreat (that's the Rajpur studio, left) and for weeks my practice has been on the ropes in a variety of inversion asanas and backbends. While I was hanging around I was thinking how nice it would be if the mind and heart healed as quickly as the body can, or that there was some simple yoga exercise to do that would cure them in a few minutes, hours, days...(cont'd)

There is, though body-healing is easy: minds and hearts are harder. I follow more than one yoga process: the hatha yoga is for the body and I'm sold out to it, although I have sporadic moments when I ignore my practice and consequently regret it. It's not so hard to get back into, though, and I love the feeling of the body welcoming back the presence of ease, comfort, flexibility, balance, and health.

But the mind and heart....it takes so much more for the healing in those areas. My yoga for both is bhakti yoga: a peaceful shelter, a daily practice which pains me more to ignore and neglect than the hatha yoga; the results are serious aches and pains that aren't visible at first: fissures in the soft and pliable surface of both. They need to be tended to daily to ward off the blows that some inflict unknowingly, that settle in over time, that hit like thunderbolts, or that sneak in when we're not looking and sow their seeds of heartbreak and mental torment in the form of loneliness, broken relationships, and pasts we'd like to forget...and we all have those.

I didn't make any New Years resolutions: I never do. But I feel occasionally like making some New Braja resolutions. One of them is to read the writing on the wall and act upon it. And when that resolution is as literal as this graffitti from a holy village in Uttar Pradesh called Vrindavan, it makes life a little sweeter.

I hope whatever prayer, mantra, hymn, or anything else that you choose to chant heals your mind and heart and takes you gently into life and the year ahead...

I JUST WON $10m / HOT NAKED YOGA GIRLS / VATICAN BANS MEDITATION

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:18:00 +0000

Seriously, the things I have to do to make people read an article about death & dying...

WELCOME TO MAYAPUR...

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 07:41:00 +0000

Listen to the beautiful sounds of a Mayapur morning while gazing at the peaceful, soul-soothing Ganga, or download it here, if you'd like to keep it...

see more images at my photographic site, Braja's India

BEAUTIFUL WINTERS IN MAYAPUR...AND HAPPY NEW YEAR...

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:18:00 +0000

The temple bells are ringing, a thick mist covers the crop fields outside my window, an old man sings a prayer in a temple close by, and in the distance a train horn sounds; the birds are still and silent---possibly because they'd have head-on collisions in the mist.

Thank you for all your visits, support, friendship, and exchanges during 2011----see you next year :)

THE END...

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:20:00 +0000

Svasty astu visvasya khalah prasidatam

"May there be good fortune throughout the universe,
and may all envious persons be pacified."

That's Sanskrit. That's timeless wisdom.

That's real beauty...

...and that's all for 2011.

See you on the flipside...

BUT WAIT!!

click here first, please!

Puritanical Yoga Bull$#@!*

www.elephantjournal.com

Yoga puritans rose from their bolt-hole to deem an EJ article a scourge on principles, a poop-dump on the perfectly manicured lawns of Planet Yoga. Bah humbug!

DON'T GO GETTIN' ALL CHRISTMASSY ON ME...

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 02:16:00 +0000

Don’t Go Gettin’ All Santa-Clausy On Me….

www.elephantjournal.com

ARMED WITH YOGA [MAT] STAND AND FIGHT

noreply@blogger.com (♥ Braja) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:54:00 +0000

I've transcended Blogger, had a yogic connection with Ann the mystic mother of yoga, and got tired of people taking things so seriously I decided to torch the yoga....come on over for a laugh.....

Armed With Yoga [Mat], Stand and Fight

www.elephantjournal.com

While most yoga styles stem from a bona fide source, some of them should have been shot at the starting gate, never allowed their day in the sun, mercy killed.