The Self is not known through the study of the scriptures, nor through the subtlety of the intellect, nor through much learning; but by him who longs for him is he known.
— The Upanishads
The rains had stopped. The sky was still overcast promising more rains later in the evening. The sun had already dipped behind the clouds and beyond the horizon, unnoticed. My wife and I were huddled in a nondescript auto rickshaw in an apparently nondescript small town with our baggage wobbling at the backseat.
“Change only happens when a person works hard. However, when it gets tough a bit of faith helps one to get through. People feel happy and contented to live a life of devotion and faith,” concluded the man sitting beside the driver (they work as a team). When you hear such words of wisdom from an auto rickshaw driver in a small town of India, you sit up and take notice. However, we weren’t surprised. Both me and my wife had witnessed the process of change and had been living it for the last four days.
Yes, four days of participating in the activities of an ashram with people from all over the world that included walking barefoot, chopping vegetables in the kitchen, serving food to the monks and other visitors, cleaning bathrooms, washing bed sheets (not with a machine), chanting mantras, and singing devotional songs. There was no compulsion to do any of those for us. But something in me said that through training the mind, selfless work, and absolute faith I might just be able to begin the process of realization encoded in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.
At the end of the fourth day, as I was picking up the pearls of wisdom being strewn around by the auto rickshaw driver, who doubles up as an English-speaking guide for foreign tourists, I was beginning to realize that all the selfless work coined as “Karma Yoga” and all the devotion and longing for God coined “Bhakti Yoga” is carefully designed to break down a false sense of the ego. It is designed to detach you from fruits of your work and give you a certain ability to dedicate your life for the service of others. Though four days are not enough to complete the transformation (it may take several years or maybe even a lifetime), if done with honesty and sincerity, it does take you to the shore of a vast ocean of understanding and realization.
It all began when we found ourselves in Munger—a small town in Bihar, India. Munger is known to pilgrims, saints, and devotees because of Kastaharni Ghat (which literally means “the bathing place which expels all pains”) on the banks of river Ganga. Legend has it that Lord Rama on his return journey from Mithila to Ayodhya, after marrying Sita, took a dip in this water to relieve himself from fatigue.
However, I wasn’t in Munger to relieve my pains but to understand the true meaning of yoga and the role an institution named Bihar School of Yoga is playing in propagating it. Bihar School of Yoga not only touched our lives in many positive ways, but also the life of the auto rickshaw driver, the lives of thousands of people who live in Munger, and the lives of hundreds of children who study there.
You have to see the children to understand the change that is happening and how. They learn to paint, dance, and sing. They not only have learnt to speak fluent English but have also learnt to chant Vedic mantras with the efficacy of a priest. They learn to do all this over the weekend while attending regular school on the weekdays. And once they have learnt something well they get to teach others.
“Do you like it here or at school?” I asked a group of young girls who chatted with us for a while.
“Here!” All of them said with a big smile.
There are certain experiences that change you from the core. Spending time at Bihar School of Yoga, with an open mind and heart is one such experience. Whether any change happened in me is for you to judge, but change is very much a reality in the small town of Munger. I saw the change in the eyes of the people in Munger. They talk with respect, they go out of their way to help others without expecting anything in return, and above all they respect women the way they would respect their own sisters.
In the near future, Munger could very well become the epicenter of transformation, the epicenter of yoga, the epicenter of understanding the true meaning of the Self. Munger lives by the Sanskrit mantra “Hari Om Tat Sat” that literally means “God is in everyone and that is the truth.”