– personal travel notes
|
| SANSKRIT PRAYER
This is how Ramanadas translates the prayer he sang at the top of Arunachala:
“The Lord is in the form of kindness.
The Lord is in the form of love.
The self is one
A knife cannot be cutting the self
Water cannot make it wet
The breeze cannot move it
Fire cannot burn it
Self was never born, and never goes out
It is there in the past, and in the present
It is there in the future, it is all the time
When the body goes, the self remains
The self is the truth.”
The song is in the old sanskrit language, Ramanadas explains, and after translating then adds, as he has already stated numerous times today: “That is the beauty of Arunachala!”
|
| |
SONG TO THE MOUNTAIN
You root out the ego
Of those who in their heart
Dwell on You
O Arunachala!
May I and You be one
Not to be unjoined like
Azhahu and Sundaram,
Arunachala!
Lo! Entering my home
You did drag me out and
In your heart-cave fettered me,
Arunachala!
Excerpt from a 108-verse long poem / song by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
|
Climbing Mount Arunachala
Ramanadas has convinced us that we can't leave this place without having experienced the grace of Arunachala as it is sensed when climbing the hill to its top, “giving peace and quiet mind,” as he states.
“Hill” and “hill”... Seen from road-level, Arunachala might look like a “hill”. But once you start climbing, you realise it sure is a mountain, and the path towards the top is steep. |
We get up at 5:20 in order to begin the hike before sunrise, and while the sun is still not too hot. |
The path to the cave where Sri Ramana lived in the beginning of the 20th century. |
Approaching the top after more than two hours of walking and sweating. |
Just like in the old Beatles-song ‘Fool On The Hill’, on the peak of Arunachala we see one sage living there – Narayana Guru. We greet him in his cage under the blue plastic, a truly fascinating experience. He has lived there for seven or eight years. Initially, he went up on the mountain because he had been told he had a terminal dicease, and he wanted to die on the holy mountain. But... then he didn't die.
Jens Valmiki met him and talked with him several times over the years. Nowadays, he doesn't eat or talk much, but he has a group of devotees who hold ceremonies – and... well, make some cash out of the foreign visitors. There were four of us this morning. And an English girl dressed like a buddhist monk with shaved head. We receive some white ashes and some sand which has been under the guru's feet to take with us back in little plastic bags – supposed to have healing powers.
This is the first mountain top I have climbed which turns out to be sticky, slippery and making you black all over. It is covered in a thick layer of black oil and butter. Ramandas explains: “It is because a few weeks back they performed Kartika Deepam Festival. That was on 27th of November. According to the scripture of Arunachala Purana in the ancient days the hill used to be like a flame that was like the divine light. And in the successive decades the flame used to come up very naturally on the peak of the hill. In rememberance of that they perform this festival on that particular starposition every year. |
Mik in the center of the universe. (According to Ramanadas, Arunachala's top is the center of the universe.)
We try to absorb the energy of the place while hanging around there for a couple of hours. |
The natives of the top are friendly. |
At the very top you find a footprint that is believed by the Indians to be the footprints of Lord Shiva. |
Going down, we lose our way. And run out of food and water, of course. And its noon and the sun is roasting us, right in zenith.
Above is a snapshot of the particular moment when we find the right path again, after lots of extra climbing back and forth. We make it back to town at 2:30 pm.
Eight and a half hours in the center of the universe.
|
posted by Mik Aidt on Dec 20, 2004, at 18:07
|
|
