Rishikesh is a place where spiritual energy runs high, and thousands of pilgrims make their way to the banks of the holy river Ganges to find it. While the big hippie days are certainly over, there are still yoga schools for foreign visitors aplenty, and seemingly every other guy with a long beard looks like a guru.
We came here for a 12-day retreat in an ashram, where you can learn about aspects of Hinduism and spirituality, practice meditation and yoga. The quiet and clean place and the strict daily routine, starting with the morning bell at 4:30 a.m., made the experience complete. An hour of meditation at five in the morning was followed by the first one-hour yoga class. After study time in the library and lunch there was a lecture and discussion with a practising yogi, followed again by yoga and meditation sessions.
While we aren’t early birds, we enjoyed the atmosphere and the yoga and meditation a lot. The fact of being away from busy street life as well as from the constant flow of information and communication had a very relaxing effect. The physical exercise combined with quiet and focused meditation – quite difficult for beginners – made us feel great. It is the concentration of the mind on one thing, idea or thought, on one yoga posture, or just on the breathing, that is a universally valuable capability.
We did not grasp all aspects of reincarnat
ion, karma, or the long and difficult path towards superconsciousness, but got some interesting glimpses. The way of the yogi has to be seen as an entire concept of utmost self-discipline building on the foundation of yama: No harming, no stealing, no lying, no sex, no intoxicants. It further requires ascetic practice, meditation, serenity, silence and solitude.
Social interaction, even with family, or striving for development of society as a whole is not part of the philosophy, which is focused on personal enlightenment as the ultimate goal. The body is merely seen as a mortal hull and food is only required to sustain it, so there is no particular attention to a healthy diet. Yoga postures are meant to exercise full commanding of the physical body, fitness is not a goal in itself. Ultimate control of the breathing process, especially the gap between exhalation and inhalation, opens up a meditative path to total detachment from the ‘normal’ world and thus, eventually, towards spiritual achievement.
Ommmm shanti shanti shanti
