Swami Joseph Samarakone o.m.i.

Fr. Joseph is a member of the Oblates of Mary Immacculate and is the Acharya of Aanmodaya Ashram near Kanchipuram. He is a native of Sri Lanka but has lived in India since 1976.

Fr. Joseph

Fr. Joseph must be somewhere around 80, perhaps more. He is a portly man with flowing white hair and a luxurious beard to match I.  arrived at the ashram January 19. When I first arrived, rather later than I’d expected, he was lying back on his bed as he’d had a long appointment with a doctor earlier in the day for treatment to a nasty infection in a wound on his leg. He was immediately warmly hospitable. He laughed to hear me say that I’d expected the train journey from Pundicherry to last only three hours. He summoned a novice who led me to a large, clean simply furnished room where I began to unpack.

Fr. Joseph has long been involved in inter-religious dialogue and in the inculturation of the Church in India. For Fr. Joseph, “the ‘kingdom’ of Jesus’ vision embraces all peoples, all religions, all cultures, even people who have no religion and, therefore all ideologies and all life-realities of the people. Thus the kingdom is larger than the Church” (“My Adventure with Inter-religious Dialogue” in Traversing the Heart. Journeys of the Inter-religious Imagination eds. Richard Kearney and Eileen Rizo-Patron).

Temple at Aanmodaya

Arati at Morning Prayer

Rather like the chapel at Shantivanam ashram, the Aanmodaya chapel resembles a Tamil temple. Inside, the supporting pillars are decorated with the symbols of the world’s great religions and spiritual traditions, including secular ones. I was rather surprised to see a hammer and sickle adorning one of the pillars. Elements of traditional Indian piety, especially arati – honouring the fire, are incorporated into the liturgy here.

Interior

Symbols of various religions are found on the temple pillars

Temple Seating

The second reading at the Eucharist on Saturday morning was several verses from chapter six of the Bhagavad Gita. Fr. Joseph spoke simply and movingly on the verses, relating them to the gospels as well as to other religious traditions.

Fr. Joseph tells of his first encounter with Fr. Bede Griffiths in 1977 whom he recognized at once as an authentic Christian sannyasi of India. Fr. Bede asked Joseph to chant the Thiruvacagam of a great Tamil saint, Manickavacagar. Though he’d never chanted it before, Joseph did so that day as if he had been singing it for years. It still holds an important place in the worship at Aandamaya. It is dedicated to Shiva as a loving Divine Mother:

The mother’s thoughtful care her infant feeds: Thou deign’st

With greater love to visit sinful me, --

Melting my flesh, flooding my soul with inward light,

Unfailing rapture’s honeyed sweetness Thou

Bestowest, -- through my every part infusing joy!

My Wealth of bliss! O Civa—Peruman!

Close following Thee I’ve seized, and hold Thee fast!

Henceforth, ah, whither grace imparting would’st Thou rise?

The Matrimandir

At the centre, in every sense, of Auroville, is the Matrimandir. This astonishing structure looks, for all the world, like a giant golden golf ball, sitting in the midst of extensive gardens. The Mother directed that the city of Auroville be built around this centre for meditation. Work on the structure began around 1974 and took over thirty years to complete – rather like the cathedrals of mediaeval Europe.

All the materials for the Matrimandir were donated by devotees from many countries, including the 15 kilos of gold which make up the surface. Each disc or face of the golf ball is made up of thousands of smaller cells of gold, protected against the salt air by glass. At the top of the ball is a mirror which follows the sun throughout the day. The sun’s light is directed down through the centre of the ball and provides the sole source of interior illumination.

The Matrimandir

You enter the Matrimandir by climbing ever-rising ramps. Footwear is removed and you don a pair of white socks in order to keep the white interior entirely clean. The interior is made of marble from Italy and Rajasthan. While the outside appears like a golf ball or some Buck Rogers vision of the future, the interior is beautiful in its simplicity and harmony. The central area is a large room for seated meditation. There the sun’s light falls upon a crystal globe, 70 cm in diameter – the largest in the world. The light continues further down to a lower level and a smaller crystal in the middle of a lotus-shaped pool. I was with a group of some fifty people who were led together into the Matrimandir.  We sat around the circumference of the great room, sharing in a profound silence as we meditated together. Different nationalities, different languages, different religions or none, yet finding a communion in silence. 

Auroville

What do you get when you attempt to found a community on spiritual principles of love, compassion, and harmony between nations and peoples? Answer: Auroville. Further, if you’re interested in a place that caters to every variety of New Age thinking and practice, a place that is consciously green and sustainable, then come to Auroville.

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

Auroville is a community, or rather a community of communities comprising some 1,800 people, situated a little north of Pudicherry (Pondicherry) on the Bay of Bengal. It was founded in 1968 on land donated by some 140 countries under the inspiration of a French woman known as the Mother. The Mother was a devotee and spiritual partner of the sage Sri Aurobindo – hence the name. 

Today, the majority of Auroville residents are foreigners, coming from over 40 countries. Unlike Chennai, where I saw scarcely a single foreigner, Auroville is a mecca for people coming from abroad, seeking every type of spiritual practice, healing modality, body work, yoga and more. This at least is the official form and direction of Auroville. Like every other human community, however, reality does not always meet the aspiration.

Cyclone Damage at the Centre Guest House

Auroville sits in the great, flat Tamil Nadu plains. Just a few weeks before I arrived, a cyclone hit the Pudicherry region. Auroville is still very much in the process of recovery. Uprooted trees and a general shamble of branches and debris still abound. This is especially poignant as all of the trees in the region were planted by Aurovillians since its foundation. The area had been utterly denuded of trees due to policies of the British and French colonial authorities. Many residents told of virtual miracles of escape from the fury of the cyclone, though there were over fifty deaths in Pudicherry. Water and power has largely been recovered, but the clean-up work continues. 

Fernanda and Sandy the dog

I’ve been staying at one of the many guest houses, each of which has a distinctive character and orientation, be it horticultural research, art, meditation, or whatever. Many places offer opportunities for visitors, especially long-term visitors, to participate as volunteers in their work and mission. For anyone wishing to try out their polyglot skills, this is the place to come. One of the guests I’ve come to know, who arrived the same day as I did, is Fernanda from Sao Paulo, Brazil. We communicate through a mixture of English, my imperfect Spanish, and a generous mixture of smiles and gestures. I’ve chatted with a sociologist from Paris, and tried to keep up my share of the conversation with a couple of dozen Germans. Fernanda and I went to a beginners Iyengar yoga class that was to be offered in Italian. In the event, the class was largely in English, with Italian instruction to one student, and simultaneous translation from English to Portuguese provided by another young woman from Brazil.

Although my first ever yoga teacher was an Iyengar teacher, it’s been years since I’ve taken a class in this style. A beginner class it may have been, but for me the learning was enormous, not to mention some real physical challenges. It was a pleasure to explore once again such clear, detailed instructions regarding alignment.

Workshop Participants at Lunch

Can We Speak Frankly?

Let’s face it, unless your visit to India is five stars all the way, sooner or later you will have to come to terms with the Indian toilet. Having encountered this in the past, I’ve been determined to make squatting a regular part of my yoga asana practice since squatting is what it’s all about. No thrones, no T.P. The Indian toilet is basic, functional, and by all accounts, far more healthy and satisfactory for keeping things moving.

So what’s it all about? See picture and imagine yourself squatting deeply (foot pads conveniently provided), doing your business and then, ahem, resorting to a rather basic way of cleaning up afterward. The bucket of water and pitcher are there to help you do just that. Pour with the right hand, clean with the left. How the left-handed of the world manage this I do not know, but it lies behind (no pun intended) the privileging of right over left when it comes to greetings, touch, eating and all the rest.

So relax as much as you can, get down, and get it done.

Modern air travel is a rite of passage.

While international travel is still restricted to those of some means, it is nevertheless the great leveller among those who can afford it. Its processes and exigencies are borne by all sorts and conditions of people, transforming them into a new identity: the passenger.

The process begins well before arrival at the airport. Whether one “travels light” or brings luggage to rival an imperial progress through an outer province,  one has to try to imagine every contingency, determine what one cannot do without, second guess the unforeseen, and finally submit these decisions to the inexorable logic of the suitcase’s available space. Any anxiety about whether it will ever again be possible to organize and fit these articles into the suitcase can be relieved by recalling that airport security may well bring about such a trial in the presence of hundreds of other passengers standing in a growing queue behind you.

At the airport the rite of passage begins in earnest. The place itself could be anywhere and nowhere. Natural signs such as day and night are erased. The human person is defined as homo consumer. Glittering objects in stores and duty free shops beckon. Luxury items you would never have looked twice at become beguiling, alluring articles. But all that is put behind you as officialdom requires that you declare your identity repeatedly. Your slightly anxious smile is compared with the grim looking photos in your travel documents. You declare your intentions – where to, why, for how long – over and over. Will those packing decisions come back to haunt you? Perhaps the toothpaste in the carry on will be mistaken for gelignite. We shuffle forward to be scrutinized, x-rayed, perhaps searched bodily (God forbid there be a cavity search!).

Having passed that hurdle, we find ourselves in the liminal zone known as the departure lounge.  Generally graceless, featureless, and uncomfortable, the space is designed to test once again the sincerity and depth of your intentions.

At last, the next great moment comes: embarkation. Seat numbers and other documents are scanned once again. There can be a few moments of surprise here. Basic counting skills appear to have been missed by some folk. How is it that “one” piece of carry-on luggage becomes for some a steamer trunk/garment bag/guitar case/backpack assemblage? For those in economy class, there is a new revelation of what some airplane designer decided is a seat suitable for every shape and size of humanity.

Finally, hurtling through the air at unimaginable speeds, we share one another’s recycled air, dine on identically tasteless foods, and try to time our visits to the washrooms around turbulence, service trolleys, and the simultaneous effect of alcohol on many bladders.

At last, we arrive. Proud bearers of new air mile points, we disembark to face a final few challenges. Will we be reunited with our luggage? Will the encounter with customs and immigration be serene, humiliating, or fraught? And then, on to the new adventure.