Yoga Bootcamp

YOGA BOOTCAMP

Come on in to Big Pumpkin's ashram

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A novel by Jnana Hodson

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Copyright 2019, 2013, and 2005 by the author

Dover, New Hampshire, USA

Cover illustration by Pikoso.kz via Shutterstock

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Contents

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Welcome

Arjuna's anguish

Garuda labors for his divinity

Satya, with brunch

Veda in the reflection

Song of Gandharva

Rudra goes to the mat

Uma leads hatha

Travels with Jaya

About the author and more

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Welcome

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Mamritat was a seat-of-the-pants laboratory in a turbulent time. Yes, laboratory, with the emphasis on labor. Each of its residents had chosen to work with Swami Subramunya in their pursuit of purification, inner peace, and personal enlightenment. Each for a different reason. They were also his full-time yoga students as well as his teaching assistants. They were the staff that ran what was as much a hostel as a rustic hotel or retreat in the woods in addition to being a house of worship and a communal monastery. They were vegetarians trying to raise as much of their food as possible, and avatars of organic back-to-the-earth living. They were, for the most part (and not necessarily forever), celibates in the midst of a sexual revolution. They were aspirants and messengers and disciples, too. Some people wrote them off as crazed zombies, while others sensed in their message a sane alternative to a military-industrial-complex consumer society.

Could this take hold in America?

Their experiment was to make it happen. Each was at a different stage in self-awareness and self-realization. This wasn't India, after all, and changes would be required. So they'd try a little of this and a little of that to see what works best. What they practiced was above all else quite down-to-earth. Forget the exotic, other than as spice.

Quite simply, they were discovering that yoga is about much more than standing on your head. Sometimes it was a matter of washing dishes or chopping firewood or weeding the garden or mixing cement. They did that and much more. It was about humanity itself and basic human nature more than any array of outlandish gods and goddesses. Angels and demons might be another matter altogether.

Across history and cultures, individuals have withdrawn from their secular surroundings to dwell in isolation where they could be guided by adepts in their chosen esoteric tradition. Renowned examples could be found in deserts or islands or even hanging from mountain cliffsides, yet others were in the heart of restless cities. Sometimes the adherents lived in total seclusion, as was the case with hermitages or monks confined to caves or anchoresses sealed in the church tower, where they could pray without interruption. Sometimes it was an abbey, cloister, or convent, a temple and its grounds. Or, in India, a shared household called an ashram.

The adept might be called the master or the mother superior, abbot, teacher, spiritual director, shaman, roshi, rinpoche, sage, counselor, guide, guru, or in India, swami, reflecting a conscious renunciation of secular possessions and other attachments.

Each of these enclaves would take on the character of its leader and his or her religious order.

Mamritat was no exception.

Its founder was born in Memphis — as in Tennessee, on the banks of the Mississippi River — and was recognized as a statewide wrestling champ before joining the Navy straight out of high school. He never got around to college.

I didn't need to. People say I can sell anything. Don't believe it. I can only sell what I believe in. Period.

He believed in first-hand experience. As in hands-on. Something more than mere speculation, based on hearsay or reading.

When they hear my Southern drawl, some people assume I'm slow — you know, like dumb — and they think they can pull a fast one over on me. Man, did I quickly learn to play that to my advantage.

Indeed, whenever necessary, he would pour the dialect on thick, sometimes as a sensuous balm, sometimes as a smokescreen. Besides, doing so gave him more time to evaluate a situation and devise an appropriate response.

At one time I was selling electronics. Stereo gear, especially. Young couples would come in, and the hombre would want to buy some top-of-the-line piece. I'd ask about their living space, what they'd be playing, their budget. Then I'd suggest something cheaper that would do the job just as well, maybe better. The word spread. I was the guy to trust, the guy who saved them money rather than soaking them. Remember, I was being paid on commission.

He came to New York through one of his Navy buddies, wound up as a trader in the financial district. One very high-pressured job. He married a woman who was just starting a line of cosmetics. They suffered two miscarriages, and he came to yoga through her. She left him, though, for a French apparel executive and moved to Paris. Today her name's found in every high-end department store.

After the divorce, he made some astute investments, including his now ex-wife's cosmetics enterprise. Emotionally, the yoga kept him afloat. He couldn't get enough of it.

There weren't many teachers in America in those days, and their emphasis was on physical exercise. He sensed something was missing, that he needed to immerse himself in yoga's spiritual dimensions, too. The only way to do that would be to travel to India to see if he could find a master, one who could understand English. That Southern drawl, especially.

He was already living frugally but was also inquiring about possible centers where he could live and study. He received a very kind letter from one of S.S. Tryambaka's devotees inviting him to visit. It was enough for him to quit Wall Street and make arrangements for what he assumed would be two weeks or two months, max. He stayed six years.

He came back initiated as a swami with the name Subramunya but not yet ready to resume the life he'd been leading. He taught small classes and lectured but really wanted to get out of the city and continue his contemplative time in the quietude of the countryside. One of his students pointed him in the direction of the bungalow, and he was smitten.

By coincidence, he'd chosen the perfect time to cash out of his stocks. The Dow had risen nearly sixty percent in the seven years he'd been investing. That left him a nice cushion to draw on.

The bungalow began attracting guests for weekends of yoga, kind of like a bed-and-breakfast, and before long, Swami Subramunya was feeling crowded.

His growing circle of followers usually referred to him simply as Swami, but he insisted his own teacher, Sri Swami Tryambaka, always be called Gurudev, the extra syllable expressing the utmost respect.

The next step initially seemed an extravagance.

Hoping for Gurudev to visit America or, better yet, stay here, Swami bought the marginal farm and began shaping it into Mamritat Ashram. Alas, the master passed into mahasamadhi, the great meditative union, two months before his first scheduled trip to the New World. Subramunya was on his own.

Adding to the apparent folly was Swami's decision to keep the bungalow, which would eventually prove its value as an essential retreat from the retreat. Still, he was saddled with two mortgages and an uncertain future. He would have been better off retreating to a cave. Seriously.

Mamritat, by the way, was a Sanskrit word for a rejuvenating nectar, perhaps one drawn after severing a cucumber from the vine. The ashram's gardens would contain many cucumber vines.

Sanskrit? It was the sacred tongue of the scriptures, chants, and theological writings supporting yoga. While it was the oldest known root of modern languages extending from India across Europe, it had, like Latin, one of its descendants, become extinct apart from its role as a repository of ancient learning.

While most people would see the focus of Mamritat as mysticism or, with ridicule, hocus-pocus, Swami's groupies would soon explain otherwise — that, at heart, truly sacred learning came alive in practical tasks. Chopping firewood, cooking, cleaning toilets, tilling soil, weeding — as well as blowing the morning conch — all conjoined as spiritual revelation. Look to the heavens or light all the incense you want. Grounding in daily life and service remains indispensable.

What had been a small hardscrabble farm was now a household where yoga was to be lived and not just taught.

Yoga? Meaning union, of oneself with God, and then with the universe and with other souls and even within oneself. Yoga came in thousands of varied labels and emphases, but the five principal ones, according to what Swami had been taught, were hatha yoga, the physical exercises; raja yoga, meditation; bhakta yoga, devotion; jnana yoga, knowledge; and karma yoga, labor offered in service. Karma yoga, especially.

Most who showed up were hoping to find the wisdom or bliss on leisurely walks in the woods, by sleeping late, by sunbathing in the summer or cross-country skiing in the winter. They expected to read profound words and paint landscapes and write poetry. Ha! That route would take years! Swami's faithful band would say the fastest way to find the Lord was by washing dishes, peeling apples, mixing cement, cleaning toilets, chopping firewood, at least in the right environment. When guests came the first time, none expected to be doing karma yoga — the daily labor that sustains their communal life and mission. But those who didn’t run away in the first few days came through, and how!

As they were told, If you submit and give the practice all you have, the man in the orange plaid flannel shirt will take you as far as you’re willing to go. All you need is determination, faith, and patience — things you can learn. Great results don’t happen overnight — so don’t insist on instant enlightenment. Without slacking up, take this path as it comes. Savor each step, each trial, each upset. Be faithful. Without discipline, nothing’s possible. Maybe it’s a paradox, but acquiring spiritual self-discipline brings unimaginable freedom. Jay ho! Another day.

As they told their guests, Namaste. Welcome. Enjoy your stay.

Now, please take off your shoes in our dwelling.

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Arjuna's anguish

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From some unseen depth within the timeless farmhouse, a conch bellowed. Each deep-throated wail from its shell summoned the sleeping devotees to awaken, rise silently, and assemble. Forget the rooster down the lane. This was the call of a sacred bull or a ram. It could have even been the voice of God himself commanding order to form out of chaos or for light itself to appear.

Waking the residents and guests alike was a holy task. Without an alarm clock, Rudra somehow stirred himself before sunrise each day, dressed, and assumed his post to perform this ancient reveille. The sound stretched from the very origins of humanity. It arrived as a gift from the Tritons.

Try not to curse to yourself. It was going to be a long day. There were geometric mysteries to fathom from the mollusk shell itself. What Rudra cupped in his hands could have been viewed as a triangle with a wing or, from another perspective, as a square dropping into a spiral. Or a six-sided star so pointed nobody could say which nibs fell precisely within any given orb. The particular univalve shell at his lips had twenty-five points. There had been more before the tip was sawed off to form the mouthpiece for this trumpet.

It was primitive and powerful and ultimately natural.

The shell was about the size of Rudra's open hand. Its exterior was the color of pie crust and lighter than tanned skin. The outer surface was as dry and flaky as shale. The inside was shiny, almost liquid, like ceramic glaze. Its fleshy pink resembled a human vulva, more than an emblem of fecundity. May the coming day be fertile was its dawning prayer.

The circular recess, too infinite to explore, symbolized the feminine; the angular nubs, the masculine. The conch was an insignia of opposites meeting, like the night that was turning back from the approaching sun.

Farthest from his lips, a single point flapped out into a wing that rolled around toward him. The sound, too, took flight and echoed back to his ears. Rudra inhaled slowly, concentrated, and dispatched the next chord. At his end of the triangle, his lips pursed on what could be seen as a breast and vibrated; indeed, his mouth was at the nipple that had been sawed away to make the seashell into a horn. Mother Nature, by whatever name, we praise you!

This ritual was an act of utmost devotion.

Likewise, the inward spiraling shrank toward a reverse infinity akin to the effort of each aspirant working to sink ever downward toward an essential core. Bit by bit, possessions and extraneous distractions would be stripped away as the passageway narrows.

Sleep wouldn't be they only thing they'd be required to surrender in the coming hours. Each one was in pursuit of what is timeless and eternal — something that could be known only in the very moment of now.

Illogical? Were they crazy? The staff had given up everything to be here. How long would be another question.

In the attic, Arjuna squirmed in his sleeping bag and wondered how Rudra ever awakened so brightly while he himself needed eight hours’ sleep and then some. With another blast of the conch, Arjuna stretched. Back when Rudra slept in the attic with the rest of the disciples, he never had to rely on an alarm clock. Before you go to sleep, Swami had said, concentrate on the hour you want to awaken. You won’t need the alarm clock. That’s never worked for Arjuna. Maybe someday?

Reluctantly, he squiggled from the bag and considered that even though Rudra now slept entwined with Uma in a room of their own, he still came to life before dawn.

Maybe it’s a basic difference in chemistry, Arjuna proposed while anticipating Swami’s retort, You can do anything you put your mind to.

The deep resonance of the conch voiced one more AUM, the eternal vibration of the universe. Arjuna imagined its source as the sacred shofar of the High Holy Days. That, or a giant bullfrog or even a dying whale.

The Bhagavad Gita, the central scriptural text in their ashram, described how Bhisma roared like a lion and blew his conch, which was followed by the tremendous sound of all the kettledrums, conches, drums, and cow horns of his assembled troops — how the holy conches resounded as the battle commenced. We’re engaged in a battle here, just as Arjuna was there — a battle of the spirit, the half-awake yogi Arjuna told himself while slipping into his brahmacharya underwear and then cut-off blue jeans and a white cotton blouse imported from India. He placed a string of sandalwood beads around his neck and, still half asleep, wove his path to the attic doorway before turning into the hallway that separated the original part of the house from the guest rooms on the third-floor addition.

Swami required all new residents, male and female, to dorm in the attic as brother and sister. The fact that everybody could overhear everything pretty much eliminated the likelihood of two individuals getting together in the middle of the nigh. Besides, sex vibes would reveal the offenders.

In warm weather, some of the staff moved outdoors to the barn or tents, making way for more guests.

Arjuna glanced at the stairway. Its wooden steps needed paint or varnish, their heights were irregular, the third-floor landing sloped southward, safety railings still hadn't been installed, and the four-by-four beams supporting the two halves of the staircase were already cracking. Passing the office, he saw that both second-floor bathrooms were in use, so he continued downstairs, hoping the toilet beside the kitchen was available.

In the predawn light, he drifted toward his cushion in what they half-jokingly called the Bridge, a low-ceilinged chamber of timbered walls and native stonework. Bridge, like the command center on a ship, especially. This morning there was no need to ignite kindling in the fireplace. He paused before stepping onto the platform and its straw carpeting and bowed toward the altar, with its vivid portraits of Hindu gods and the masters of their lineage all surrounded by bouquets picked the previous day. He draped his meditation blanket over his shoulders wrapped himself in sunflower colors. Like a tepee, the garment kept both warmth and sublime vibrations close to him as he crossed his legs and assumed his assigned place in the half circle facing the altar. Rudra and Veda had already settled. Garuda was entering from the stairway. The others would no doubt arrive shortly. He shut his eyes and did a round of pranayama — breathing exercises — while waiting for Uma, Satyabhama, and Gandharva. And then Veda, already deep in concentration, began intoning A-A-A-U-U-U-M-M-M. Promptly, everyone joined in. Two, three, four times. Five, six, seven, eight — each inflection growing more rounded and harmonic. Whatever the conch had said earlier was now magnified. Their own voices became one. The sun was rising within each of them.

Maybe it was one reason the character of morning meditation usually differed from evening’s. Straight from sleep, their minds were not yet filled with a full day’s experiences to digest. They were closer to dream state consciousness. There was, however, a risk of nodding off half-way through the half-hour — especially on a morning like this, following a chaotic night. Nevertheless, what Arjuna felt as a bottomless pool of icy water first thing each morning often empowered the new day.

Keeping his eyes closed, he envisioned the candle where it stood on its sinuous golden candlestick in the middle of their circle. Imagined the flame in his third eye, at the top of his nose, but this morning the yellow cone wouldn't stay still but kept moving to one side or another. Diagnosing his situation as a consequence of being half-asleep, rather than half-awake, he then rode the space between meditation and drowsing, where his body occasionally jolted as if on a bumpy airplane flight. Be that as it may, the discipline remained strict. Don’t move a muscle. Don’t budge. Feeling an itch, don’t scratch. It’s militant. Curl your tongue to the roof of your mouth and maintain that. Ultimately, it’s light overcoming darkness.

So the man in orange insisted. Their rockabilly guru. Their tour guide on this journey of the soul.

Concentrating on the candle, Arjuna noticed that even the flame had distinctly different morning and evening states. This was one of those mornings when many unconnected impressions scampered through his head and heart — grotesque sluggish dreams rather than sharply delineated truths arising from super-consciousness. So be it. Bit by bit, each successive one would become more crystalline and shorter than the one preceding it.

How could he not be inspired by the first time Jaya transcended? She