What follows is a piece I wrote last year after visiting my Hindu teacher’s monastery in California. It was meant to be published as a little booklet, but I never got around finishing it. Warning! It’s unedited;

This is Audarya, not the World

It’s 4.20 am and my alarm goes off. It’s time to wake up. I arrived yesterday after staying in San Francisco for some days. The change is enormous. From homeless people pushing around shopping carts to grass eating cows. From sky scraping towers to tall trees. There is no comparison. It was a two and half hour drive from San Francisco. Vamsidhari, my host in SF, drove me to Santa Rosa where Gurunistha picked me up in a Toyota Prius. From there, only a little bit of highway left. We exited and drove over roads with lots of turns and climbs and drops. The last part was just unpaved road. At the end of the road, we stopped and here we are, Audarya, a monastery up in the redwoods.
I will stay here for about two weeks. Immersing myself in the life of a monastic. Not just any monastic, but a Gaudiya Vaisnava one. This school of feeling and philosophy was transplanted from India in the 1960s and of all the spiritual traditions in the world, I haven’t found any I’ve felt more at home with. In that way, coming to a monastery is an experience of coming home again. Audarya is even more special, because it is the monastery where my Vaisnava teacher lives. His name is Swami B.V. Tripurari and he’s been a monk since the early 1970s. I will be helping out wherever I can and will follow the temple schedule. This means I will wake up early to go to Mangala Arati. Aratis are ceremonies where a priest does offerings to an altar while we sing devotional kirtans, songs, supported by a clay drum, mrdanga, and hand cymbals called karatels. Usually after the aratis there is reading or a lecture from a holy book.

After Guru Maharaj’s reading from Caitanya Caritamrta this morning where Caitanya was reminded of Vrindavana by seeing animals and humans living along harmoniously, I was made to think that this is Vrindavana too. Cats, cows and monastics coexist peacefully. They are all in service of the Center, the deities.
I surely did not find this Center when visiting all the famous locations in SF. Although they are nice sight-seeing destinations, they leave one empty. Just like all the stores that give one the false impression that consumption satisfies. They are places where we can exert our individuality by buying ourselves into whatever we choose from the shelves of the shopping malls.

Today has been a hard day of work. Leveling the last part of a long trail and digging a long trench for the new cabin. At present, the monastics stay in yurts but in the winter these can be very cold.

This morning it’s just Gurunistha, Guru Maharaj and me for arati. This is an amazing experience and raises the question why isn’t it more crowded over here? Why aren’t people lining up to live here? My karatel playing obviously needs a lot of practice. Just doing the same beat all the time isn’t very thrilling. During work today, Gurunistha and me talk about how bhakti is not cheap. And our hard working here, or actually his hard working and my pathetic attempt to, show how expensive it is. While we are digging trenches, I see many attachments spring up. I wonder why there aren’t any contractors coming with bulldozers and doing everything for us while we can go read and chant. But at the same time I realize there is some benefit and a satisfying feeling in being able to build all this ourselves. The physical tiredness in the evening only adds to this.

I never expected any mosquitoes here, but they have found me. It seems mosquitoes are the natural inhabitants of any holy place. I go to Finland, they find me. I go to India, they find me. I go to Audarya and they find me. If this is some karma eating away by means of my allergy, I won’t complain. As long as I’m not producing more karma by scratching.

In the mornings when I wake up, I’m amazed by the darkness. Our eyes are completely blinded when we don’t carry a flashlight here. I walk from my yurt to the bathhouse and at one point, I stop and look up. There are so many stars. It is amazing to know that the ancient sages could determine so much by just looking at the stars, but all I see are spots of light in the darkness. All these stars are present everywhere, but modern street lighting has polluted our skies and makes us unaware of where we are. Looking up to the skies always makes me feel tiny, perhaps we have blinded our vision to the stars, so we’ll forget how small we actually are. No bright lights, no big city. Just faraway in the redwood forest.

This place also causes weird dreams. I have heard other people say the same. But what’s the meaning of being in an office or library and walking up the stairs to hear a lady scream and watch everybody panic. I dream of hitting the fire alarm and running out of the building with lots of other people as fast as I can. After waking up, I just feel weird.

Chris, Sridhama and me had an intimate talk with Guru Maharaj today. It was very special being able to talk to Guru Maharaj this way. To sit and listen and have one’s questions answered in an unbelievable way. Sitting there for two hours straight, listening. First in the cold then in the basking sun. We talked about white bags, the meaning of the songs we sing in the morning and having a healthy monastic model. It should be something people want to be a part of and not run away from. Being a monastic with dignity. Giving it all its respects, and not overly romanticizing it.

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