Seattle Ashram Part II
7th birthday in the girls ashram. I was sick as a little dog.
It’s Saturday, September 30th, 1978. It’s my birthday. I am 7 years old. I have a fever and sore throat. My ashram teacher let me sleep today in the infirmary. When I get sick, I get to sleep in late and drink sprite. When no one else is here, it’s a little creepy and dark. I notice the smell of mildew, but at least I don’t have to wake up at 3:30 am or take a cold shower.
For my birthday, Mata and Pita sent me a package. I opened it tonight during dinner. I got gulab jamuns and a cake. I love my mom’s cakes. This one has green frosting just like I asked. The girls in my ashram sing me happy birthday and I get to eat a little cake before going to bed. But not too much because I’m sick. My ashram teacher tells me to read the letter out loud that my parents wrote me and share the gulab jamuns with all the girls. I want to take my package to my sleeping bag and tuck it away, but in the ashram we share everything. They tell us we’re in maya if we don’t share. That we’re being miserly. I don’t want to be a miser. Last time they sent me a package of socks and underwear, I had to put it in the community drawer where all the other girls put their clothes. I snuck a pair of socks in my sleeping bag so no one else could wear them.
Every day, I wake up at 3:30 am and go to bed between 6 — and 6:30pm. When I get older, I can go to bed like the big girls, at 7pm, but not yet. I take cold showers to wake me up and off we all go to the first morning worship called mangala arati which begins at 4:00am. The guru says it’s an auspicious time of the day. Sleepy eyed and slow, we shuffle into the temple room and find our way to the back of the room. The sound of the brass bells rings as the head pujari, a hindu priest, awakens the deities from their sleep by blowing the conch shell. The altar curtains are pulled back and we offer obeisances. (This looks like child’s pose in yoga.) On any given morning, curled into a little ball, but in the air but not too high, and head on the floor, I turn my head slowly to the left or right to rest on my cheek and get a few extra seconds of sleep, but the cold marble floor shocks me into proper position and the center of my forehead sits gently until it’s time to get up.
I sit up and back into lotus position. Knees crossed and one foot over the other. I love the smell of incense and the sound of the bells. It’s exciting to see the deities first thing in the morning -they look so beautiful in their pajamas. They look a little sleepy too and I relax knowing it’s early for everyone. The early prayers begin and the sound of kirtan stirs.
My very favorite part of the morning worship is when the ghee lamp is passed around for us to touch the flame and then touch our head to indicate we have received blessings from Krishna. The smell of burning cotton balls dipped in ghee makes me hungry and happy. My least favorite part is when the pujari sprinkles holy water across the room and a water droplet hits me right in the face or in the eye. But I wipe it away with my sari and keep dancing.
Me and Pita worshiping Tulsi
After mangala arati, we have two more worships before breakfast, one is where we circumambulate the Tulsi plant, which means to walk around her in a circle. Tulsi is a little green holy plant that is very special to Krishna, so we worship her by offering incense as we walk around and sing the Tulsi Prayers.
While this is happening, the pujari is dressing the deities for the day.
In the Miami temple, my mom makes all the outfits and dressed the deities. They look the prettiest when she does it. She does this thing with fishing wire that pulls up the ends of their clothes and makes it look like their dancing. It’s really pretty.
Here in Seattle other pujaris are in charge. They look pretty, but not as pretty as my mom’s deities.
It’s exciting when the conch shell blows again and the curtains reopen. We’re all awake now and get to dance to a super fun kirtan lead by the men. We dance, sign and throw our arms in the air in joy. Most mornings we get kind of sweaty.
After the last kirtan for the morning, we sit down for a lecture. I hate sitting still. My legs can’t stop bouncing and I fidget with my braids or the ends of my sari. When I was really little I used to suck on the ends of my braids. I’m 7 now and I don’t do that anymore. Lectures are super boring. Maharaj talks a lot about being a good devotee, that the material world is maya and not to fall into the traps of material security and sex. He says it’s not good to be attached to anything in this world, that everything is temporary and distracts us from doing our service to Krishna. If we want to go back to Godhead, where Krishna is, we must remain celibate, focused on our spiritual service and learn to control our senses. Our senses are like wild horses that need controlling. The biggest form of maya is the relationship between a man and a woman and should only be engaged in if they are going to have kids. That’s kind of gross. And that women should serve their husbands. My stomach flips and I feel a little nauseous. Maybe I’m hungry.
I get more fidgety as he goes on, my knees bounce higher and more often. I wonder if Krishna likes me. If I’ll get back to godhead where all the good people go. I wonder if my Mata and Pita love me, or if I’m a distraction from their service. Maybe that’s why they sent me here. Maybe it’s my karma.
I wonder about all the animals being killed for meat and how they might feel and how awful it would be to be reborn and suffer that way. What did they do in their past life to have to come back and be killed by meat eaters?
Maharaj tells us that for every inch of hair on a cows body, that’s how many times we will be reborn and suffer in our next lives if we kill and eat cows. I’ll never eat cows.
Maharaj tells us that if we sleep a lot in our lives, we’ll be reborn as a pig and live a life in puddles of stool.
Maharaj tells us that one day we will all grow old and die. My heart races and I wonder if my Mata and Pita are still alive. It’s been 5 days since we talked. I wonder when they will die. I wonder if my mom will give me her red conch shell bracelets when she dies. She loves them so much and I love her so much and at least if she dies, I’ll have her bracelets. The next time I see her, I ask her is she will give them to me when she dies. She scoffs.
Maharaj tells us not to get attached to anything or anyone. It’s all maya. It’s all an illusion. I wonder if I’m too attached to mata and Pita and Rama, my little brother. Maybe I am bad for missing them. He says that love is mundane and keeps us trapped in the cycles of karma. Maybe love is bad.
The next time we are making ghee wicks, I steal a couple of cotton balls and stash them in my sari and stuff my ears so I don’t have to listen to the lectures. I don’t want to hear what he’s saying anymore. It makes me feel weird.
After the lecture, I jump up and move my feet around because they fell asleep. One of them is limp and I trip. We all laugh. Breakfast is ready and my ashram sits in a circle together and eat prasadam — food that has been offered to the deities. Before we eat, we sing a sanskrit mantra Sarira Avidya Jala, to honor the food we are given. I don’t really know the words, so I make them up and make the other girls giggle. After our prayers, we sit in lotus position with our left hand under our bum and use only our right hand to eat with. Our left hand is used to wipe our bums, so that’s why we have to sit on it. It’s dirty, even though we use water from the lota to wash with, but we’re still not allowed to eat with both hands. It’s awkward and my left hand is losing blood flow. I learn how to sit on my hand softer.
I quickly learn how to tear a chapati with one hand and use it to scoop up my food. Some mornings we have curds and whey with molasses which is easier to eat, sometimes we have kitchari. I like them both.
Our food is sacred and when one of my friends spills her curds and whey, she is forced to lick it off the floor. Wasting food is offensive. I feel embarrassed for her.
At dinner, we are served a vegetable dish with okra, potatoes and raisins. The okra is slimy and looks like cooked slugs. I hate okra. I vomit. My ashram teacher forces me to lean down and eat my vomit because throwing it up is offensive to Krishna. I tell her no. I lose the fight and eat it.
“It’s offensive to me to have to eat my vomit off this nasty floor where everyone walks around barefoot.” This is the sound of my inner voice waking up.
I am humiliated and angry. Defiantly, I sit back down, refuse to eat any more dinner and am sent out of the room. “Good,” I think to myself, “I don’t want to be here anyways.”
A few nights later, we are back in the ashram for dinner and as we sit down one of my friends is locked out of the ashram for doing something bad. I hear her crying and screaming. She’s scared — we’re all scared. We want to go help her, but we’re not allowed to. I see her little face in terror watching us start to eat. It’s hard to eat with her out there. So sit in silence, eating slowly wondering if we’ll ever see her again.
I go to school everyday and learn how to read and write and do math, but geography is my favorite. I know where all the states are and their names. I also love art class. The best part is colouring Jagannath with his big eyes, and Krishna. Krishna is dark blue like a monsoon cloud and he has big beautiful eyes. He wears a dhoti with lots of gold and yellow and red. I think he would look prettier if I colour him silver instead. Moksharupa takes my art and yells at me because “Krishna is blue, not silver. It is offensive to colour him any differently. Who do you think you are? Go to the front of the class.” I start to cry and go to the front of the class and sit down on the chair, where she places a dunce cap on my head. I sit there for half and hour which seems like eternity. I also lose a leaf on my devotional creeper tree. My face is red and hot. She is so mean, I want to spit on her.
I don’t remember the day I left Seattle, but I will never forget my time there. I started to think that if teachers were this mean, they would surely suffer the same kind of Karma a meat eater might. That their punishment wasn’t anything I would ever do, but their own rotten Karma would get them. I left feeling hopeful I would never see any of their faces again.
When I arrived home, it was with a huge relief to see my parents and little brother. He was so much bigger than the last time I saw him. Now we could play together. I was comforted that one day he would be coming to gurukula with me.
When I was home, I never talked about what happened in school. You could find me playing in the cow pastures with my little brother and friends. We rode bikes and played in the lake with the tadpoles. We climbed trees, chased lizards and played in the rain. Coming home was fun because I could sleep in, take hot showers and no one told me what to do, besides Mata and Pita, and I could play with the boys.
My Mata was busy with the deities and temple duties. She was always busy and cried a lot. I hated to see her so sad and angry. When I got back home, she hit me a lot. She had big hands that left welts on my cheeks and legs. Maybe I really was bad. Maybe this is why she sent me away. And would again and again for the next 5 years.
Some of my dearest friends came out of this experience. After this school closed down due to “financial” issues in 1979, we would all meet up again when I came back to the west coast in 1988 to live with my mother in the Los Angeles Temple on Watseka Ave. During this time, I found out I was pregnant with a little boy. I was 16 1/2 years old and no matter how much time had passed, the friends I made in Seattle welcomed me back with open arms. We bonded in extraordinary experiences that tested our spirits and shaped us all at a core level.
With these girlfriends we have found humour in the absurdities, hypocrisy, misogyny and religion we were raised with. We grew up to be mothers, wives, professionals, artists and so much more. More than any one of our teachers or gurus ever dreamed for us. Once I had a sense of myself, once I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, I held out that hope and vision for myself. My childhood gave me a strength that carried me defiantly through the remainder of my time in the Hare Krishna Movement and into my teens and twenties as a single mom.
I realized life is life. It will work its chaotic, magical, wild, unpredictable self all over us with no escape…for anyone. I am competitive and the only way I have found to win, that is to say not feel like a loser, is not to bypass the hard stuff, or even strive for the good stuff. It was to learn the art of extraction: mining the good from the hard, the gold from the shit. This is how I learned to win. To take myself out of the victim mentality. To stop the cycle of blame, self-pity and escapism. This is how I win. This is my victory. #blooped #mylifestory#thingsilearned #schoolofhardknocks #opensesame #cult #survivor#livingfullout
