Renovation

This Tank on the southside of Arunachala has been drained of water and is currently being cleaned and deepened under the Urban Renewal Plan of Tiruvannamalai City.

This Tank on the southside of Arunachala has been drained of water and is currently being cleaned and deepened under the Urban Renewal Plan of Tiruvannamalai City:

Scope of the project: The repair and renovation of Water Bodies.

'The number of water bodies considered to be holy, apart from having been useful to maintain the water table in the town till some years back, are now being completely polluted with mixing of sullage and sewage, besides being misused. In many of the tanks, major portion is encroached and water containment has become very much limited, which has resulted in constant depletion of ground water, apart from polluting the air, land and ground water. The soil erosion in the hills has resulted in silting and damage of the drainage network system, and in many of the roads, the drains are filled with silt and are completely choked.

The situation warrants a major intervention in order to improve the physical and natural environment of the town. A correction in development in the form of Urban Renewal is a basic requisite to enhance the living conditions of the people and to provide a conducive atmosphere for worship and pilgrimage.'

Reforestation

Great photo taken from Chengam Road southside of the Hill. One can see the growth of lots of trees on Arunachala planted as part of the reforestation programme. A very heartening sight for the Hill to be looking so green even before the rainy season starts!

Traffic Signals

Photograph of a new, alien visitor to Tiruvannamalai, traffic lights. We got our first set last year and unfortunately the Municipality have decided to get up-to-date and instal a few more. So here it is our new resident!

Arunachala in the background and traffic lights in the foreground. Fortunately we don't have to tolerate this new addition to Tiruvannamalai living all day long, as the total of 3 sets of traffic signals in Town are only turned on between 6-9 p.m. And we don't have traffic meters (yet) either!

Cement Pour

Many ladies do construction work and contractors like hiring them because they can pay them less and control them more easily. The average lady construction labourer gets around Rs.60/- for a full day's work. Which is dreadful considering a litre of milk costs Rs.14/-, low quality rice Rs.20/- per kilo and a cheap pair of cheap rubber flip-flop sandals Rs.30/-. Unfortunately this kind of work also leads to serious health problems with back and internal organs.

This is a cement pour on the roof of a house under construction off the Perumbakkam Road, south of Arunachala. A small cement mixer, rotating at the back of the picture, is being fed by lines of ladies carrying stone, sand and cement in metal basins balanced on their heads.

The lady in the photograph seems to be swanning along effortlessly in her sari and tight blouse; don't buy into the facade, this is back breaking, soul crunching work. As always the young guys are the supervisers (in this instance watching the cement mixer) while the ladies are left to do the grunt work!

Charged Energy

The charged energy field in the general area of a power place has an invigorating effect upon the energy field of a human being and promotes a balanced, vital, and unobstructed flow of the body's own subtle energies.

... Power places assist the body in healing itself by stimulating the release of energy blocks and strengthening the internal energy flow.

[Martin Gray]

Research Centre

This is Dr. Manickam, Tiruvannamalai's Ayurvedic and Herbal Practitioner. I met with him a couple of days ago to gather information on some of the various local herbs he is working with for our next issue of Arunachala Grace News (subscription on left hand panel of this Blog). For news of his life and the Oliscevadi leaves (Palm Leaf Writings) he is holding in the above photograph please check out the June 23 posting on this Blog.

About four years ago Dr Manickam started up the 6 acre Ramana Herbal Plantation near Soarandhai Village located 12 kilometres from Arunachala. As well as growing most of the herbs he uses in his traditional herbal Ayurvedic treatments he has also established the Arunachala Research Centre for the purpose of developing herbal medicines for specific ailments.

Currently Dr Manickam is working on herbal ayurvedic treatments for: malaria, hepatitis, epilepsy, endro-colitis, jaundice, longtime fevers and ailments connected with immune system deficiency.

As mentioned above, this month's Newsletter will be carrying a report on Dr. Manickam's work. We will also be using our website www.arunachalasamudra.org to give in-depth reports about his work and its progress. The website is currently being redesigned but we expect to have a specific section of the site dedicated to Dr. Manickam's herbal work on-site within a couple of months.

Taos

In the early 1980's I was fortunate to spend a considerable amount of time at Taos, New Mexico. This was before the area started to become fashionable with airport, casino and creeping urbanisation. My house was about 20 miles north of the town and situated upon a Mesa on top of Arroyo Hondo. At the back was the Rio Grande River and at the front thousands of acres of open land and the Taos Mountains!

On the outskirts of Taos is the Taos Pueblo and one Christmas Day I went there to attend a Festival enacted by tribe members dressed in elaborate animal masks and costumes. The sky was violet, the air crisp and waiting for snow and the earth and adobe houses built upon it all shone with a translucent ochre light.

That Festival is open to non-tribals but there are other esoteric ceremonies performed that are concealed and secret. Behind the Pueblo nestled in the Taos Mountains is the sacred Blue Lake and oral tradition holds that the Taos tribe was created out of its sacred waters.

The Lake which is of historic importance and essential to Taos culture is the location for ceremonies which few non-tribals have ever witnessed. One writer compares the rituals of one particular 3-day ceremony to those witnessed in India conducted by Hindus and wondered if there was some anthropological link between the Pueblo Indians and the Hindus of India.

Whether or not that sort of link exists can only be conjecture, but for me Taos, with its mountains and mesas and profound sacredness is the only other spot other than Arunachala that I could truly say, 'satisfied my heart'. Even the dirt in both places looks the same!

zero

...You must be simple. You must be utterly naked in your consciousness. When you have reduced yourself to nothing; when your self has disappeared, when you have become nothing, then you are yourself God. The man who is nothing knows God, for God is nothing. Nothing is everything. Because I am nothing, I own everything.

[Yogaswami]

Taiwanese Shoe Company

Growth Link, a subsidiary of Feng-Tay, a Taiwanese shoe manufacturing Company who produce Nike shoes, propose setting up a Special Economic Zone and shoe manufacturing unit at Cheyyar, Tiruvannamalai district at an investment of 300 crores Rupees (66 million USD). The Company explained its reasons for choosing Cheyyar, Tamil Nadu as: geographical location, nearby port facilities and a proactive State Government.

An area of 275 acres have been allocated for the Special Economic Zone and once developed the Company will provide employment initially to 5,000 increasing to 15,000 people in due course.

Growth Link's production is anticipated to start by the beginning of 2008. Nearly 200,000 pieces of footwear are expected to be produced per month increasing to a million pieces (per month) within the next five years.

You can get a headache trying to keep track of all the outsourcing. An American Company outsources to a Taiwanese Company who then outsources to an Indian Company; now is there anywhere we can go from here? Its kind of scary to think Indian labour is so cheap that Taiwanese Companies are outsourcing here!

Independence

When I first arrived at Arunachala most of the Westerners coming on Pilgrimage seemed to be here as a result of their association with advaita and/or the sage Ramana Maharshi. But now everything is changing and it seems many Westerners are coming for Arunachala.

On arriving I stayed at Sri Seshadri Ashram and whilst there spent my time either at the samadhi of Sri Seshadri Swami or at Ramana Ashram. It wasn't until I left the Ramana Nagar area to live in the surrounding countryside that my access to Arunachala became more of a direct one and not one via someone else. And very happy I am too for the change.

'Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket'.
[Swami Chinmayananda]

Arunachala Venba

'It stands as an insentient Hill. Its action is mysterious past human understanding. From the age of innocence it had been within my mind that Arunachala was something of surpassing grandeur. .. . It drew me to it, stilling my mind . . . Thou dwellest in different religions under different names and forms . . . Thy unity permeates the diversity of beings and religions . . . nothing can keep the soul from returning to its Source . . . O Arunachala, Self, Ocean of Bliss.'

[Guru Namashivaya]

Wood Apple

Many of the fruits, foliage and herbs found around Arunachala, have medicinal and ayurvedic properties. In spite of what large drug Companies would like us to believe, most major life saving medicines are in fact derived from common and organic substances. Arunachala is replete with a profusion of such natural life enhancing fruit and foliage.

A tasty favourite with monkeys is the Wood apple, or Elephant apple (because the fruit resembles the skin of an elephant) commonly found on Arunachala Hill. The unripe fruit is considered to be a useful astringent in diarrhoea and dysentery, and the ripe fruit (which is edible) is prescribed for afflictions of the gums or throat. The fruit is called Dadhiphala in Sanskrit, as its taste is compared with that of Dadhi or coagulated milk. The leaves are aromatic and carminative.

The fruit is cold, dry, refreshing, astringent, cardiacal and tonic, and is a useful remedy in salivation and sore throat, strengthening gums and acting as an astringent. Sherbet made from the fruit increases appetite and has antidote properties.

The pulp applied externally is a remedy for bites of venomous insects; if the pulp is not available then the powdered rind of the fruit may be used. It is also prescribed to relieve bowel afflictions. The fruit when cultivated, reaches a diameter of approximately four inches. Rural folk pound the leaves with curds and apply the mixture to the whole body as a remedy for heat of blood supposed to be caused by bile.

Thus the Wood Apple is multi functional and effective, and this is but one small item of the many indigenous ones that are prevalent around the Hill. What a pity so much is being forgotten so quickly! More info on fruits and herbs to come.

Going Solo

Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality.
[Michael Ellner]

One of the most important aspects of Arunachala, it's easy to go solo! Arunachala is the Guru and you don't need anything or anyone else while here. This sacred site has lured saints, sages and pilgrims since ancient times. The great ones among them (e.g. Ramana Maharshi and Seshadri Swami) always thought of themselves as Arunachala Devotees not Gurus. Ramana would say that one didn't even need to do meditation or prayers whilst staying at the Hill. That it was enough just to be here as even when asleep the power of Arunachala transforms and inspires.

Nowadays it's getting fashionable for Gurus and Satsang teachers from the West (and India) to come and set up their stall at Arunachala. Some like Sri Nannagaru are genuine but others are a total waste of time. So, don't be nervous to come without a group or teacher. This is a happy place to fly solo as it is the one place on earth where one can truly talk to God heart-to-heart without the necessity of a Guru (in form) to mediate with the Divine!

NABARD

Nearly 20 women self-help groups, identified by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), put up stalls at Kumaran Anugraha Marriage Hall, Chennai on Thursday September 14 at an exhibition which will run until September 23.

The ladies from Tiruvannamalai and other Districts, came with items from their native places. The goods range from a wide variety of jute products from Tiruvannamalai, soft toys, agarbathi (incense) and decorative items from Kancheepuram; saris from Madurai; fancy terracotta items and dolls from Villupuram and Dindigul; wood carvings from Sivaganga and quantities of pickles and spices from Namakkal and Yelagiri.

NABARD, spent Rs.109,000/- (US$2,400) to organise the display festival at Chennai. The Chief Manager of the Exhibition stated at the fair's inauguration that NABARD gives funding and a marketing platform at such Trade Festivals to women groups.

An organisation set up by a German group called Shantimalai Trust has been vigorous in establishing successful women self-help groups in the Tiruvannamalai District for over 20 years. Many of the self-help group items are exported to the U.S. and Europe and include: cotton bedding, quilts, clothes, embroidered saris, handmade paper, ethnic dolls, wood engravings etc. The products are of the highest quality and are sold in superior overseas outlets.

Anything to help empower women in this country is to be welcomed. Sadly this is still a chavinistic country where women are firmly pushed to the side or at least into the kitchen! If you travel about in the evenings through any village you will find the gents with their beedies and chai (homemade cigarette and tea) at the tea-stalls chatting outside while the ladies (including very young girls of 7 or 8) carry home huge pots of water from the village water pumps.

Even on constructions sites; it is the women who do the dirty, hard labour like breaking and carrying stones and sand, while men train and work in the more comfortable, highly paid spots i.e. plumber, carpenter. Sadly it is virtually impossible for a lady to break into training for such work.

Definitely life and opportunities have improved for woman in the Cities but not so in the villages; and after all India is still a country of a million villages!

Personal Sadhana

Such beauty, such inner magnetism, cannot be adequately explained or described. Arunachala may simply be, for some, the true inner pole of the Earth, as Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi so often asserted. Such devotional outpourings are reminiscent of the hymns of Prophet Isaiah in another context:

'Rejoice for Jerusalem and be glad for her
All you who loved her . . .
That you may suck and be satisfied
With her consoling breasts,
That you may drink deeply with delight
From the abundance of her glory.
For thus says the Lord:
Behold, I will extend prosperity to her like a river
And you shall suck, and you shall be carried upon her hip
And dandled upon her knees . . .'

One does indeed long to fill oneself, greedily and in great gulps, with the milk of loving-kindness, wisdom and enlightenment, from those stark stumpy paps of Arunachala, to be dandled upon those accommodating slopes and ravines, to allow the burdensome ego to dissolve into the bliss of its Oneness!

[Alasdair Black]

Cotton Mill

A newly-built AKCT Cidambaram cotton mill was recently opened at Mangalam village, Tiruvannamalai District. Which is very good news both for the industry and local employment, however one hopes stricter standards are observed to prevent nasty water pollution which is often the result of the cloth dyeing process.

Cotton prices and financial disincentives caused such a serious slump in the local industry that several mills were forced to shut down. However, a recent relaxation in taxes on power looms, handlooms and spinning mills and also the scrapping of excise duty in the industry have now successfully reversed the slump.

We love our cotton. People quickly learn that no matter how sheer or light-weight a man made fabric may be, nothing beats the comfort and coolness of cotton during the hot season. I remember one summer I insisted on wearing cotton-mixes (synthetic plus cotton) and ended up with dreadful heat boils on my face and body. When I went to the skin specialist the first thing she told me was, 'Wear cotton!'.

Thereafter I was a radar for noticing other peoples heat boils and I observed that in every single instance the person was wearing cotton-synthetic mix outfits. Wearing synthetics in India during the hot season is like going out in a plastic bag. So, if you are planning on coming please bring lots of cotton clothing, you will be glad you did!

I AM

My Name is I AM
(anonymous)

I was regretting the past and fearing the future.
Suddenly my Lord was speaking,
'My name is I AM'
He paused. I waited. He continued.
'When you live in the past with its mistakes
And regrets, it is hard. I am not there.
My name is not I WAS.
When you live in the future with its problems
And fears, it is hard. I am not there.
My name is not I WILL BE.
When you live in this moment, it is not hard.
I am here.
My name is
I AM.'

Monsoon preparations

Tiruvannamalai Municipality recently convened a District Disaster Management Committee to discuss precautionary measures to be taken to mitigate possible flood situations during the October-December Northeast monsoon season.

In this respect PWD officials were requested to prepare materials such as gunny bags, wooden logs and sand to repair possible breaches in water bodies. Public Health Officials have been requested to ensure the availability of sufficient quantities of medicines in the case of monsoon-related illnesses and fire and rescue service personnel have been asked to ensure such resources as rubber boats and ambulances are available throughout the monsoon period.

The Municipality also ordered that Control Rooms should operate round-the-clock in Tiruvannamalai Divisional Offices throughout the October-December Northeast monsoon season.

I can't remember the Monsoon season previously necessitating such extreme precautions as rubber boats; but maybe our local officials have decided to prepare for all contingencies! It certainly seems like the rainy season nowadays is much more rainy. Our big natural reservoir, Samudra Lake, overflowed last season with rainfall being the highest in the last 20 years.

Also parts of Tamil Nadu had so much rain and dampness, that the usual tropical fruits like banana and papaya rotted on their leaves and trees. Maybe soon the UK will be cultivating mangoes and we will be harvesting strawberries, yummy!

Update

Been having some blimps with my computer this week and have decided to get everything sorted out in one go hence am sending this from a local email facility while my own computer is at computer hospital getting a new Windows installation.

As to news on our Arunachala website:

www.arunachalasamudra.org we should should have the colours and formatting taken care of within the month. We are not taking the site down while we redesign, so please be patient with our interesting page colours, while the work proceeds.

After the Website facelift is complete, we will continue to develop the website to include an Inspiration and Information section, and hopefully make Arunachala more accessible to people that don't have a strong Hindu connection. Advaita and Hindu mythology are beautiful, enriching and fascinating principles BUT When all is said and done, sometimes it is easier to make a connection with the Divine using ones own tradition and history as the access point. In this respect this Blog welcomes any and all questions about Arunachala.

The Arunachala Grace Newsletter will be coming out at the end of this month so if any readers wish to sign on for their free subscription, please check out the left hand margin of this Blog for the Newsletter subscription sign-up.

Am currently preparing a new montage entitled Arunachala Friends, so if all goes well with the computer update, the new montage should be posted on this Blog within the next few days.

Operators!

I suppose there is a certain expectation that spiritual people, who supposedly dedicate their lives to spirituality, should perhaps be more expert in living with greater integration between thought-word-action. Unfortunately as well as Gurus sometimes turning out to be big disappointments, there are plenty of professional sadhakas who are a disgrace to their lineage. Here at Arunachala the professional sadhaka from the West is becoming a more frequent visitor - and with this upsurge of dedicated seeker, little stinkers are also beginning to turn up.

From my own experience I got cheated big-time by an American lady over a land arrangement here at Tiruvannamalai. She is a long term Sri Sathya Sai Baba devotee who has been living at Swami's Puttaparthi Ashram in Andhra Pradesh for over twenty years. So, I don't have much patience with listening to foreigners complaining about 'rogue' Indian dealers - from my own experience there are some rather dreadful foreign operators out there too!

I suppose it's like the saying, 'when a thief sees an Angel - all he notices is his pockets'. So even here at Arunachala the occasional stinker makes it through the radar - and instead of the Glory of Arunachala, all they can see is a different kind of opportunity!