Earth house Hold by Gary Snyder

Author:Gary Snyder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A New Directions Book
Published: 1957-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

A JOURNEY TO

RISHIKESH &

HARDWAR

Level green sugarcane fields north of Delhi a day’s bus ride to Hardwar. Bus change and one more hour to Rishikesh. A two-rupee tonga-ride to the mouth of the gorge and Shivananda’s ashram.

Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, my wife Joanne and me—simple to travel in this group—Allen can go buy tickets and check times while Peter and I lift rucksacks up on the bus-top, and Joanne gets seats inside. Rishikesh is a small town on the flat just where the lower Himalayas, the Siwaliks, begin and the Ganges debouches from the hills onto the plain. Hardwar-Rishikesh and on up the Ganges gorge is all exceedingly holy territory. The area crops up in the Jataka tales as the home of mountain-dwelling rishis, magic monkeys and elephants and wide groves of mango trees.

We arrived at the Ashram 9:30 in the evening and were led into a basement under a semi-finished brick building full of people slouching cross-legged on the floor, perhaps one-third Westerners. A giant man in a camel’s-hair coat on a sort of heart-saver couch intoning “OM … OM…” shaved face and head. We had come in at the end of the evening darshan, “presence.” The helpers, guests, and disciples were now being served sweet hot milk and fried chick-peas. Shivananda asked us, “Do they have these (chick-peas) in the United States?” Allen Ginsberg answered, “Yes.”

Shivananda was then half-lifted to his feet by two junior swamis who helped him step by step walk out and to his room. He is over six feet and in his eighties—looks like an ex-wrestler, must have been a powerful vigorous man, to judge by the energy he exudes even when half-crippled. He was born in South India, educated as an M.D., practiced ten years in Malaya, then became a sannyasin at Rishikesh. After some years of yoga practice and study, started his Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy Ashram around 1936.

Taken up the hill in back to “Mt. Kailash” on a gravelly trail by flashlight. Given a half-bucket of water. Sleeping bags on dusty cots and concrete floor.

Morning, water from the creek up the hill. Monkeys fight with dogs. A boy comes with a pot of hot tea “chai” and pours us out cups, 8 a.m. View southeast down the Ganges—soil on the steep hillside loose and scrabbly between wide-spaced broad-leafed evergreen trees. Across the river a forested three-thousand-foot hill with marks of a farm near the top.

Looking around the ashram, found the Shivananda Ayurvedic Homeopathic Medecine shop and bought some Swami Shivananda Toothpowder. It dyes the mouth red, tastes like gunpowder, and scratches. Lunch in the dining hall sitting on the floor, eating off flat trays, use the right hand only; usual vegetarian sort, only less. Then told we would have to leave the ashram the following day because a crowd of guests was expected for Shivaratri, Shiva’s Night—but that we could find lodgings across the Ganges at the Swarg Ashram, really a hostel—no teacher and no program.

That night at darshan, Shivananda gives us (sitting mingled in the crowd) each an envelope containing Rupees five.

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