Meditation and Its Practice – Sadhana Mandir Ashram – October 19-22, 2018

I arrived here in Rishikesh on October 17, 2018 and made my way to Swami Rama’s Sadhana Mandir Ashram. Why Sadhana Mandir you may ask. I took some classes with Dr. Rudy Ballentine who was Swami Rama’s doctor at his ashram in New York and I wanted to see what his teachings were all about and in order for me to be able to stay here they want people to sign up for classes here. So, what worked timing wise was this course Meditation and Its practice.

Swami Rama – How to Tread the Path of Super-conscious Meditation

I arrived here and was welcomed by taking me into the dining hall for breakfast before checking in. What a nice way to be welcomed. They don’t want to take my money first, they want me to make sure I am comfortable here first and foremost. The grounds have beautiful gardens and are well manicured.

 

I spent my first couple days here exploring Rishikesh and Ram Jhula before the program started. This is a beautiful place nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas. I explored the Trivini Ghat, Rishikesh Market, Ram Jhula, Parmath Niketan, got my feet wet in the cold waters of the Ganges and found a coffee shop and my first cup of real coffee in weeks. The children run around with flowers for offerings to the Ganges for the evening rituals. I small girl cornered me and I gave her one dollar and told her that was our secret and that she couldn’t tell her friends… well, that didn’t happen and then I was surrounded by a half dozen children asking for a dollar. So, I stayed through the evening to see another aarti. Those rituals are really beautiful to see. It’s still a bit dusty here but not as much as in Varanasi.

The meditation program I am in is basic introduction to meditation and mostly includes the preparation for meditation… proper body posture, environment, food intake, and calm/restful mind. There hasn’t been much practice other than relaxation, breathing and mantra techniques. After the vipassana course I was just in all of this seems rudimentary. I can find the Buddhist influence in the teachings here and still find the vipassana technique my preferred method due to its heavy embodiment aspect.

We are watching videos of Swami Rama’s lectures that I am finding interesting. He speaks about meditation as a foundation of life’s practices to find the peace and joy in life. He also talks about some other things that I want to jot down before I forget…

1. You are responsible for your own “enlightenment”. You can read all the books and listen to all the Swami’s you want but you are ultimately responsible for it yourself.
2. Never condemning yourself and always keeping a pleasant childlike curiosity towards everything that comes up in your thoughts during meditation. Do not get attached to any of the pleasant or unpleasant thoughts of the past or the sensations in the body
3. People are typically unsatisfied with their lives and spend a lot of time searching the outside world for their happiness. When happiness comes from going inside ourselves and clearing away the past traumas/difficulties which seem to dictate our lives.
4. What have you done with your life? Marriage… children… a job… money… a house… but what have you done as selfless service to humanity? Which is what truly matters.
5. Loneliness is a killer
6. The goal of meditation – letting go of attachment to craving and aversion by finding equanimity… living in the moment
7. What is enlightenment? – To never let your peace of mind/joy for life be affected by the outside world. Acceptance of what is.
8. Selflessness is the only way to liberation
9. The whole body is in the mind, the whole of the mind is not in the body
10. Physical strength isn’t much use. Strength of the mind is essential
11. World bliss = Momentary bliss
12. We are born from the unknown… we die into the unknown… we must embrace and find guidance from the unknown
13. If your actions and speech are under your control the mind will follow
14. Spirituality = being aware of absolute reality all the time
15. We complicate things more than they need to be.

After this program is over I’m meeting a new friend from Lucknow here in Rishikesh at the Omkarananda Gita Sadan for several days to speak about the depths of leading a spiritual life, meditation and traveling around the area to the hot springs and into the Himalayan hills. I’m hoping for more pictures to come.

From here I will be traveling south to Kochi, Kerala on the southern coast to experience the beaches on the Arabian Sea and southern Indian food for a couple weeks. It’s almost hard to believe that I will have been here in India for almost 60 days and will need to make my way out before my visa expires to Nepal before the 15^th of November.

 

Click on the pics to enlarge….