News Paper Article

[Guest guest]

Jai Guru Datta. This an article published in "Pittsburgh City Paper." The

reporter visited Drs. Ramana & Indubala Murthy's residence during Manasa

Swami's visit to Stubenville in February. I thought you might want to read his

sketch of the activities.

Thanks

JGD

V. V. Prakasa Rao

 

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Prophet Sharing

Pittsburgh City Paper, 3/4/2004

 

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/archive.cfm?type=Cover

Story&pagenum=2&action=getComplete&ref=1700

 

Noble silences and ignoble gases: A dispatch from two spiritual retreats

 

Writer: JOSHUA SCHRIFTMAN

Photographer: HEATHER MULL

 

As the months passed, though, and as I continually "couldn't find the time"

to meditate, even that perspective faded, and I wanted to find a way to

refresh it. When I came across an ad for The Datta Retreat Center, which is sort

of

a satellite campus of Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Swamiji's ashram in Mysore,

India, and a local branch of the Datta Yoga Center, USA, I knew I needed to

investigate. I had heard of this Swamiji before.

 

Years ago, when I'd been traveling through Mysore myself, I had met one of

Swamiji's devotees at the hostel where I was staying. He told me about his

guru's presence, about his aura of warmth and magic. I usually would have

dismissed

this testimony as credulousness, vanity, or the opening bars to a con. In

India, though, anything seemed possible. I would have gone to meet his guru

right

then, but in India, where everything may indeed have been possible, I spent

most of my time needing to go to the bathroom. So it was on that day, too: bad

stomach, no swami.

 

So, after a series of phone messages and e-mails, it was established that I

could visit the retreat on Saturday, and then come out to the home of one of

his devotees on Sunday for a special ceremony. This ceremony, called Kum Kum

Archana (really), was going to be held in the venerated presence of Sri Manasa

Swamiji, who I later found out was considered to be a very holy man, and very

close to the big swami himself.

 

As I pulled my car up alongside the retreat center, it became clear to me

that if I was hoping for something like my experience at Bhavana, I had perhaps

been hoping for too much. The ice and snow that covered the grounds were

unbroken by footprints, and snow devils circled in the parking lot. I had known

there wouldn't be a crowd here, but this was unexpected.

 

A small calico cat ("Jaya," I learned the next day, who belonged to Padma,

the retreat's manager) accompanied me with her cold little mews as I walked from

building to rustic building in the empty center. A blissful Ganesha looked

over its recent offerings outside a house next to a creek running through and

under the snow, and I could tell that in the summer the land must be

resplendent. Two nearby temples also hinted at a splendor that they were

withholding for

warmer times.

 

The larger of the two temples, a prayer or meeting hall, was equipped for

musical performances and had a life-size picture of Swamiji over an altar at one

end of the hall. Streamers and glittering decorations hung from the ceiling

over the wooden floors, and display cases held CDs of Swamiji's recordings and a

selection of his books. I noticed a small stereo system set inside one of the

cases, so I left some money under the counter and chose two of the CDs: one

labeled "Music for Meditation and Healing," and the other "Live from

Hyderabad." Who doesn't like a good bootleg, right?

 

 

I turned on the stereo, curiously removed Bonnie Raitt's Fundamentals from

the player, and sat down in the cold prayer hall to listen and read. According

to one pamphlet, Swamiji's music is supposed to have deep "vibrational" healing

powers, and it has had positive effects on everything from anxiety and

depression to cancer and the common cold. At first I dismissed the music as

being a

bit too Hindu for my tastes, whatever that means, but it started to grow on me

as I went on reading. In fact, on my stereo, right now, as I write, Swamiji

is cranking out the ragas as sitars, violins, and tablas accompany his

synthesizer to climax after ecstatic climax.

 

In an anthology of devotees' stories of their first encounters with Swamiji,

I found a tale I later realized was from Padma, the manager in absentia. She

wrote about the devotion she felt upon first meeting Sri Swamiji, and

subsequently about how his teachings and specifically his music had healed her

sicknesses over the past 20 years. A second narrative came from a Pittsburgh

woman

whose husband had been struck by a car; in her husband's case also, the music

and

the nurturing love of the Swami had pulled him through. In story after story,

a composite picture of the Swamiji becomes apparent: a deeply mystical,

deeply caring, and almost spookily omnipresent force who is able and willing to

care for every one of his devotees.

 

Another book I'd picked up discussed the healing energy of the stones in the

second temple on the grounds. Apparently, because of what the British call

"lay lines," or energy fields that lace the earth and meet at certain points, a

field of "protective energy" had formed around the temple. Jaya and I went to

check it out.

 

The temple was hexagonal and filled with windows through which natural light

poured in. Hindu deities perched next to and upon the "healing stones"

projecting up from the earth in the center of the hexagon, but as I walked the

brightly colored path that ringed those deities, I realized that this was a much

more ecumenical temple than I'd first realized. Jesus and Mary stood next to

Krishna, while over their heads, like halos in a dada pieta, Native American

crafts hung down from the ceiling.

 

I noted a wooden African totem, a brass Star of David next to a menorah on

the wall, a plaque written in Arabic, pictures of the Swamiji, and an

aged-looking Buddha, who seemed, perhaps, just a little amused by his present

company. A

stack of bhajans, or hymns, sat on the floor next to a crate of cymbals,

drums, and castanets. I tried to imagine the small room full of dancing,

chanting

devotees; sometimes, I thought, solitude isn't so bad.

 

The next morning, as I pulled into the driveway of the Doctors Murti, who had

been kind enough to host the Kum Kum Archana, something seemed odd. The house

was nothing short of a mansion. When I was invited inside, I felt like some

kind of tourist, a glamour-seeking interloper. I stared slack-jawed at the

brightly polished granite floors, gawked at the crystal chandeliers that hung

from

cathedral ceilings, and visibly lusted after an entertainment system that

dwarfed the baby grand in the corner. Immediately after my shock set in,

however,

it was warded off by the attentive hospitality that surrounded me. The hosts

gave me breakfast, showed me downstairs to where the ceremony would take

place, and soon introductions were being offered all around.

 

I soon met Dr. Rao, the president of the Datta Yoga Center in the United

States. He had a skull-like countenance that seemed to strongly discourage any

frivolity, but as we spoke about Swamiji and his place in their lives, any

wariness I had felt quickly faded. He said that everyone who meets Swamiji has a

different experience of him: Some people are unmoved, while others fall in love.

It all depends on where you are in life -- or lives, as the case may be.

 

I was surprised to learn that they believe that Swamiji himself is not just a

guru, but that he is an avatar -- a living incarnation of the deity

Dattatria. Other gurus have reached their enlightened state by living many lives

and

accumulating good karma. Swamiji, Dr. Rao explained to me, had more of a direct

line to divinity. He was actually something more akin to a living god -- which

brings me to an interesting point of comparison between the Bhavana

experience and my time with the folks from the Datta Center.

 

Concerning gurus, I found the following in a book of Sri Ganapati

Sachchidananda Swamiji's wisdom: "Knowledge gained without a guru is akin to

self-medication and therefore more harmful than useful." The point is clear: You

can go it

on your own, as the Buddha did, but you won't get as far and you might hurt

yourself in the process. At Bhavana, on the other hand, they were strict about

what you did, but not about who you did it for. Then again, according to the

followers of Swamiji, once you met the guru, you offered him what devotion you

did out of love and no other sense of obligation.

 

I also had a chance to speak with John Laird, who was responsible for first

bringing Swamiji to U.S. over 20 years ago. I asked him about what the Datta

Center was, exactly: Was it simply a kind of Hinduism? Dr. Laird said no, it

wasn't simply Hinduism; its mission was the "spiritualizing of humanity." He

told

me that the ceremonies and the ritual were all meaningful and fairly complex,

but what brought people to Datta was the sense of universal love that you

feel in the presence of Swamiji. Dr. Laird also said that when he first met

Swamiji, he had gained his first glimpse of his own soul, and that it was this

quality of Swamiji, rather than any specifically Hindu traits of Swamiji's

culture, that define the Datta Center.

 

The crowd slowly coalesced around the altar, and as Sri Manasa Swamiji, the

visiting swami, began the day's ceremony, he looked out at the growing crowd

and offered an explanation of what was to happen, saying somewhat mysteriously

to me, "Life -- this incarnation -- is ritual."

 

Sri Manasa and two other priests began chanting in unison as they pitched

herbs, clarified butter, and other offerings into a flaming brazier that perched

in the center of the room. Smoke, representing our desires, rose to the

heavens (or in this case, the ceiling vent). In the final stages of the

ceremony,

there must have been 65 people in attendance. We all stood, took handfuls of

almonds, circumambulated the flames, and leaned in to pitch our nuts into the

growing blaze.

 

Afterwards, we moved to a different altar, and as bhajans were sung in

Swamiji's praise, everyone started to turn around in circles, so I did too. I

had no

idea what the hell was going on at this point.

 

After that final ceremony had finished, the devotees invited me back

upstairs, where a wonderful lunch had been prepared by our hosts. I stuffed

myself on

curries, biryani, and rich homemade gulab jamon. The conversation was honest,

the people were excited and kind, and the atmosphere was warm and inclusive.

After a short time, though, I had to be on my way. I needed to go and process.

 

Now, after some time has passed, I've started to question part of my approach

to this. Perhaps maya isn't quite the opposite of enlightenment at all.

Perhaps growing up, getting a job and getting engaged isn't really the

thickening

of maya at all, but rather the sweetening of the pot. What if loving Swamiji,

as his devotees do, is a way to love the world, and Buddhist detachment from

the world is simply a path to understanding the world that much better?

"Retreat," in that sense, is a strangely misleading word.