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Yoga School by Ria Neme


At long last I’d arrived in McLeod Ganj, also known as Little Lhasa because it has been the home of Tibet’s government in exile since the Chinese invasion. I’d imagined it as a remote sanctuary like something out of the movie, Seven Years in Tibet. Instead, it was overrun with western hippies and yoga freaks, and every conversation quickly turned to the topic, “What is your life’s purpose?” After a couple of days, this got pretty annoying as I had no clue and it seemed to me like nobody who was asking did either. Besides, it was always the journey that mattered to me, not the destination. Weren’t the experiences along the way, the living itself, that were the purpose, if there even was a purpose.


I was staying at a little inn, fittingly called Siddhartha House. Each room had a slogan and was decorated accordingly. Mine was ‘Passion’ and the entire room was bright red, decorated with heart pillows and rose paintings. Unromantic as I am, it made me think of one of those rooms in Amsterdam’s red-light district, the front wall of which is a window, frequently occupied by a young woman from Eastern Europe, serving as a living advertisement for the services being offered there. The first thing I did was take the rose paintings off the walls. What replaced them were huge stains, which I covered with photos of family and friends. My room had a balcony, the door of which didn’t close. When I plugged in my phone to charge it, the entire socket fell out of the wall.


As the sun set, I turned the lights on, but nothing happened. Next, I went to take a pee…and when I flushed, all the urinated water came pouring out on my feet from under the toilet bowl. I was furious but here was no one to call. I had to figure out the solutions for myself. I discovered that with a quick Bruce Lee kick, I could manage to close the balcony door. I went out and bought a roll of thick sellotape, which I wrapped multiple times around the base of the toilet bowl. I also sellotaped the socket. I managed to fix everything but the lights. Luckily, I just needed to buy new bulbs.


There were about twenty of us on the yoga course. I didn’t feel like socializing. All I heard every morning was boring chit-chat about yoga and traveling. I preferred to wander around, watching goats being skinned, while cows wandered by dropping their dung all over the street, which motorbikes almost immediately flattened so that pedestrians could step in it and carry it into all the buildings. The streets were full of human and animal waste, fruit skins, and trash, yet everybody was happy and smiling. 


There were about two-hundred stairs leading to the top of the valley, where the yoga school was, from my motel. One day, as I was walking up the stairs, motivating myself by thinking “I am climbing a stairway to heaven,” I felt a huge sigh behind me. “Yeah, I know exactly how you feel,” I said loudly, hoping it was some good-looking backpacker dude behind me, but when I turned around it was a huge black bull with enormous horns! In a split second, I ran about fifty steps upward with the speed of an Olympic athlete. There was no space to step aside, I had no choice but to be faster than the bull. Cows on the streets were common as tourists in Times Square. Who they belonged to, where they’d come from and where they were headed only Shiva knew.


On May 25th, my yoga school welcomed its new crop of students with an opening ceremony which consisted of throwing herbs into the fire while honoring all the Gods, and trust me there were plenty of them. I was a little late, so the last space left was right by the fire, giving medirect access to all the smoke. There was a Brahmin or holy man present beside the Yoga teacher, and they sang in Sanskrit, listing all the Gods, of which I recognized only a few. According to Hinduism, the number of Gods and Goddesses is limitless. By the 104th God, the priest had lost his voice, only moving his lips with no voice coming out. All of us attendees looked like face-down sunflowers after sunset.


Each day we woke up at 5.30 am to attend the 6.00 am meditation, then we did four hours of asana practice, two hours of Vedic philosophy and an hour of evening meditation, finishing at 6.00 pm. The schedule was hardcore but weekends were off. As rusty as I was when I arrived, by the first week I was able to grab my toes without bending my knees. The course was intense, both physically and mentally. We were continually forced to break our boundaries and step outside our comfort zones. By the sixth week, almost all the students faced some sort of emotional or physical breakdown; there were only a few survivors, and I was one of them. Students would burst out crying or even have tantrums. When the final week arrived, we had to present a full Ashtanga Yoga class, including all forty-three poses. During the closing ceremony, those of us who remained hugged each other and cried. 


I decided to get a commemorative tattoo of the course on my spine with a huge OM symbol, not knowing ahead of time that the Tibetan tattoo guy used the traditional stick tattooing method. It hurt so bad I was ready to leave my body. After the first few needles in my spine, I asked him if he could make it smaller, but he just laughed. Having had enough of physical torture, I decided to sign up for a two-week Vipassana meditation retreat to focus more on torturing myself mentally. I still do not know what led me to do this; I just felt an urge to push myself beyond my limits. Little did I realize at the time that these experiences were laying the groundwork for a reservoir of strength that would sustain me in the years that followed. 


Before I entered the Vipassana retreat, I went for a last excursion to see the Golden Temple of Amritsar, one of the most charismatic places I’ve ever visited. It has stunning architecture, characterized by the unique Sikh blend of Hindu and Islamic styles. Its upper floors are covered in gold, which gives the temple its name. It’s surrounded by a large, sacred body of water known as the Amrit Sarovar (Pool of Nectar), from which the city of Amritsar gets its name. In the evening, gentle meditation music is played on loudspeakers, which makes you want to stay there gazing at the reflection of the temple on the water. Not only is it a place of worship, but also a symbol of resilience and hope because it has withstood numerous destructions and reconstruction, each time emerging as a stronger symbol of faith. I’ve sometimes thought since it was no coincidence that my path led me there.


A few days later, I arrived at the Vipassana retreat center located in Dhamma Sikhara. It's a serene setting surrounded by cedar woods, set off by a vast iron gate so it resembles a prison within a forest. Students register in a small room where they fill out several sheets of assessment forms with questions about their mental and physical well-being. After that, you have to sign a form that you may not leave the center during the two weeks of the retreat, other than under special circumstances like serious illness. You have to surrender all your personal belongings, including phones, diaries, pens and books. 


Participants are required to observe ‘Noble Silence’ throughout the course. This means silence of body, speech and mind. Any form of communication with fellow students, whether by gestures, sign language, written notes, even eye contact, is strictly prohibited. To minimize distractions and promote introspection, male and female participants are segregated. Interaction between genders is not allowed at any time. There’s a strict daily schedule that includes a morning wake-up at 4.00 am, meditation sessions throughout the day, two simple vegetarian meals and evening lectures until 6.00 pm. Bedtime is 7.00-8.00 pm. 


The cells are just big enough to fit two single beds. These are made of iron with only a thin layer of what it would be a stretch to call a mattress. Toilets and showers are outside, and showers have no doors. There are no mirrors in the whole facility. The rooms are dark with bars on their windows against the baboons that roam the woods. There are no bedsheets or covers, just a dirty blanket. Big black spiders and scorpions are almost as common as flies or mosquitoes.


Before I entered my room, while standing in line at the reception I spotted a junkie-looking girl with a shaved head who was yelling in Russian. She looked like she was suffering from some mental disorder and she stank like a bum. I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ…What kind of place is this? She’d better not be my roommate.” Silent meditation retreats are known to teach students to break your limitations, your narrow perceptions, and to embrace a new reality based on love and acceptance, but mostly acceptance.

 

So, maybe it was inevitable that this reeking freak would become my roommate. When she entered the room, her body odor intensely filled the space. She smelled like she hadn’t taken a shower for at least a month and her appearance reflected this too. I immediately opened the window as my greatest weakness was bearing unpleasant smells. I got the biggest lesson in resignation of my life up to that time having to bear this skunk for no less than twelve nights. I went for a walk in the woods to escape the stench and by the time I came back, she had closed the windows, and her smell was already wafting in the corridor.


Since we couldn’t talk, I had no choice but to try to make her realize that she had to take a shower, or it was going to lead to war. Yet because we could not directly communicate with each other, I had to use hints. I opened the window again, put my deodorant on her bed and left. When I came back, the window was closed again, and my deodorant was thrown back on my bed. It was unbearable. I put put a scarf around my nose and sprayed my deodorant on but she still didn’t take the hint. Or rather, she did, but couldn’t care less.


While I’ve always maintained a healthy weight, attending the yoga school had led to a ten kilogram loss that had left my pelvic bones protruding noticeably. This made it painful to lie on my sides or stomach on the thin mattress, so that sleeping became a problem. Waking at 4.00 am was extremely difficult, considering I usually fell asleep around 2.00 am. Dining was another lesson. I’m not  picky when it comes to food, but there are three things I refuse to eat: 1. Raisins, 2. Mush and 3. Cumin seeds. Breakfast was lentil curry mush with soft raisins. Lunch was vegetable curry mush with cumin seeds. I hadn’t realized when I signed up that the exact same food would be served every single day. (Harakiri!) Thankfully, I’d hidden a bag of peanuts in my bag as survival rations. Although it was forbidden to eat after lunch, ten to fifteen peanuts per day was my protein dose for survival.


The main challenge though, was sitting upright with your back straight in lotus pose for no fewer than six hours a day. Having taken weeks of yoga classes prior was some assistance, but I was still struggling immensely. The first hour was bearable, the second became seriously uncomfortable, while the third was intolerable. Had there not been a fifteen minute break between the first and second three hour sessions, I surely would have passed out from the pain. To add to my training in tolerance, farting was a common habit during meditations from all the pulse heavy food we were given. Every ten minutes or so, someone would let rip. When I was lucky, it was aloud, so that I had enough time to take a deep breath before the stink reached my nose. It was the silent ones that were the killers!


The meditation hall was shared by men and women. It was an enormous space with more than 150 people meditating. We had a teacher who sang in Sanskrit, and whose voice sounded like he was castrated. I'd only ever heard something like this on television before and my biggest challenge was holding back hysterical laughter when his high-pitched tone would change to a lower pitch and back again, which made him sound like a rooster with its neck caught in a fence. Apparently, others found it funny as well because when one guy finally dared to burst out laughing, a hundred and forty-nine other uncontrollable laughs followed. Unphased, the teacher warned us and sent the guy out of the hall.


There was no room in that place for anything other than discipline, which even extended to our walking in the woods among the baboons. We were warned never to look them in the eye or smile at them, as this could lead to an attack, and there had been serious injuries before. There was a single track in those woods, and everybody used it for exercise and releasing the tension and soreness of sitting in a lotus position all day. There’d usually be about twenty of us walking one right behind the other like a millipede.


Meanwhile, my struggle against the Skunk continued. I sprayed deodorant to begin with, but it only lasted me a few days. I was devastated when it ran out. One day, after I'd sprayed deodorant on her mattress and blanket, she came towards me fuming with anger. Had she had a weapon and been in the outside world, I suspect she would’ve killed me. In this case, all she could do was fifty rounds of sprinting round the track through the woods. Each time she passed me, she eyed me with a look that said, “Just wait you clean bitch, I’ll kill you once we’re done with this enlightenment shit!” That same day, she threw out my remaining peanuts. I had about thirty left, and I was furious. Then it was my turn to sprint around the track picturing ways of terminating her.

 

Each time the teacher lectured us about loving our enemies, I pictured the Skunk being forced to take a shower with a gun pointed at her head. That was the closest I could come to enhancing my empathetic skills about loving my enemies. On other days, fragments of my childhood, my relationships, and other vivid memories flashed into my mind. When you try hard to calm your mind, it can start to turn against you. The ego does not like to be crushed; it does everything to convince you that it’s very much needed, and the self-transcendence of enlightenment is unnecessary. What was enlightenment after all? Emptiness? Being solely in the present moment? Having no judgment towards anyone or anything? Realizing that we are all nothing but eternal ‘consciousness of knowing’, while living an illusion of self to experience a world that allows us to feel? But then, what is knowing without feeling? 


At that phase of my life, enlightenment was the realization that everything that happened was meant to happen exactly the way it did. No other experiences would have led me to become the person I became. This is not to say that I was a person who had anything like complete comprehension of myself. Far from it, but for the first time I was on my way to figuring out who I was. Every single day, my ego became less active during meditation. I never experienced out-of-body sensations like some yogis do, but I was able to empty my mind of useless thoughts.


By the last day, I had accepted bad body odor, eating raisins, mush, and cumin, waking up at 4.00 am, sitting for six hours without moving, and going twelve days without seeing my face in a mirror or talking to anyone. I was finally learning self-discipline and self-resignation, a trait that is the biggest gift in life. That Vipassana experience was an intensive training ground which instilled in me the courage to live fearlessly, embracing whatever life offered unconditionally, without judgment, or often even understanding. It taught me that every event can serve a higher purpose, whether good or bad, its meaning becoming clear only with time.


Ria Neme grew up in Hungary, but has since lived a life on the road around the world. She is the author of Offroad Destiny, a memoir inspired by her journey through life’s unpredictable twists and turns. Through honest and relatable storytelling, Ria writes in a raw, earthy style that forgoes formalities and conventions in order to connect with readers from all walks of life. She aims to inspire readers to embrace resilience and personal growth, no matter how bumpy the road may seem. When she's not writing, Ria enjoys hiking, kayaking, and spending time with her loved ones.


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