dinacharya: daily routines

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every couple of weeks here, i am saying hi to some one new, someone who has washed up on the shore, like a new character in the ayurvedic island world of 'lost'. they are all interesting: robin the chicago-ite with skin as bright as her large blue eyes, only outshined by her speed to be stimulated; noorin, whose kerala tanned ebony skin shines diamonds when she giggles; miguel, the pretty ayurvedic practitioner from portugal who walked in one eve with a surfboard n philosophy; govinda, the professor of music from italy whose dialect was as unique as his govinda-expressions; bianca the spirit trapped in a body and floating through india like music notes...

some of them, i got to know deeper, fell into a hole with. some of them i broke bread with one night, then every night, talked vata, pitta, kapha with. as we grew, we took walks to the beach and swam through our past fears, n our future hopes, taking slight pauses to catch stars hovering like spaceships over the sea. then it's over. they leave. done with their treatments, their 1 week or 3 week or 1 month ayurvedic programs.

some of them, like my crew – j.c, ray, tama, n maud – i've gotten to know for months. we ran past infatuation, shared walks longer than days, train rides through time, laughter enough to wake temple gods. then, goodbye.

each time i say goodbye, a part of me breaks. when bianca, manisha, vallerio left, i sat around till their morning ride came.  each of them sang variations of “i'm leaving on a jetplane, i don't know when i'll be back again.”. when the dust cleared, i was still there and would've fallen, as i almost did when my boy jc left, when ray told me she was leaving, when they actually left, both before their time, before we could both be on our way, mutually abandoning each other in a chapter in our story of life.

i'm used to departures. ny is a transient city, an overnight bedfellow for many. hello's and goodbyes are like swivel doors, so much so, new yorkers grow callouses on their speech, stones in their eyes.

i understand other new yorkers - immigrants from the global south n migrants from down south in america - louisiana, georgia, the carolinas - trapped in our economic drown, without knowing how to get out.

in babylon, relationships r ephemeral, unaccountable, quick steamy affairs and poof.

i could be sunk, but i have rituals/things to do, to keep it pushing. 

after watching each friend here leave, i look at the sky, and depending on the position of the sun, step into the arena of daily regiment. i have to go to the beach, do pushups in the sand, sun salutations in the water, jog before the sun could see me, meditate to the sound of waves and give thanks and prayers for mama earth, for fam n strangers. i have to shower, oleate, and dress before school, and then it's time for me to leave.

constancy, as the prophet muhammad has shared with the world, will keep you from floating away, from losing your mind, from falling apart.

every day, there are rituals that keep you anchored. five prayers a day, sleeping with your head to the east, fasting 30 days a year, eating light, washing your body and openings, dabbing scented oils... are some of the prescriptions for groundedness that the prophet of islam conveyed.

the yogis have lived this wisdom for millenia, by way of the shat-kriyas, detailed ways to engage with cleaning, with being, from nasya and vamana to asanas. the yogi code, described in patanjali and hatha yoga texts, and lived by the real, is known as ashtanga-yoga. ashtanga guides the yogi practice – from ahimsa - active non-violence to all beings - to karma yoga - service to the community.

among the mohawk, iriquois and many of the northeastern as well as continental tribes in north america, the practice of rituals was known as a warrior code. warriors awoke while the moon was still out, meditated by sunrise.

the zulu in south africa, the masai of east africa, the tuareg of north africa, each have their kriyas, their warrior codes, as did the lost and found nation of islam in chicago, the five percenters of harlem, the zulu nation in brooklyn.

in ayurveda, the prescriptions of quran and vedas resound. the warrior code manifests in rituals throughout the day, known as dinacharya.

dinacharya is the code of rituals that ayurveda prescribes. things to do everyday, to keep you grounded, keep you from sinking into overthinking, into immobility or unsteady erratic movement. dinacharya is warrior code. 

chyvanprasha - witches brew

wisdom blows like a breeze here, over the arabian sea n into the city center of a scorching kannur. on the fourth floor of a building, above the dusty roads of south bazzar my peers n i make medicine. like witches in salem, we share our love for ayurveda, stir the large spoon over the concoction of herbs and amla, our witches brew.

chyvanprasha is a decocotion of over 40 herbs, gathered, dried and made into a decoction, until the herbs disintegrate, ending their life as an herb and beginning  a new beginning as liquid. they look like wet mud, a blend of all the people of the earth into medicine.

robert smith, of the cure, in the song disintegration, sings, shouts, laments, how the end always ends. there is no end in sight, bush said about the war on terror. he may have hit on a truth, that there is no end in sight, life is a continuum, without beginning or end, that dark and light coexist and that as far as the eye can see, is not far enough.

a day after the decoction is made, we mix it with the amla that boiled in a cotton cloth, above the herbs. reduced to mush, the fruits are blended into a paste, which we stir with ghee and fry to a brown as rich as the earth in pheni, bangladesh.

blends make our features. my mothers cheekbones point to malaysia, cambodia, china, somewhere east. her hair paints the sky in frizz, like blended girls in brooklyn from berkley, with cotton candy fros and mexican noses and irish eyes and arabic written on their eyebrows and india on their nose.

ayurvedic medicinal preparations are about blends, about the alchemy of plants and understanding their property, their dravyaguna, by listening. thousands of recipes have been listed in caraka samhita, susruta, asthanga - books older than the americas, than the mughals and christianity and judaism.

we stir, elena, a light hearted brunette from a past life in india, and i. she laughs, boisterous, full as christmas carols in claymations. i laugh too, until their is no sound, only the vibration of ghee and amla going into herbal decoction and dissolved sugar cubes. the brown becomes richer, the consistency thicker, but hours later it is not thick enough to be paka (sticky) in the way we need it to be. we keep stirring, taking turns to take shots of the honey we will add for our medicine.

cyhvanprasha is like centrum, the a-z immunity booster of ayurveda.

yesterday, when we first began the preparation, we walked into a room of fifty herbs in sandwich bags, sitting around like a forest of elder trees. i fell in love.

netravasti - eyes on U

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netravasti is an ayurvedic treatment for the eyes, cleans your pupils like socrates did his students minds with questions. medicaided ghee, drips from the cotton of the healer onto the closed eye of the patient, of my peer, sebastian, who lays there in shiavasana, a corpse pose.

the eyes are the window to the soul, someone in a past life said. past-lives in new york can be as far back as andy warhol or the bronx's graffiti-merlins - seen and lee and lady pink - on canvas subways painted with inner-city.

a past life with my boy k who disappeared in 1999 was y2k, with my sheroe, nana, it was 9.11 with ash n the 2006 crew in la, it was 12.12.12. the past in the city of 8 million stories, could be a few years back and as near as a week or yesterday. we go through friends, diets, styles and language like karmically-challenged beings who return to the cycle of running after something, addicted to the seen, to something happening, again and again.

the eyes can be felt. they are like the zap of the green lantern, the magic ring of the hobbit, that the dwarves, the sorcerer, the lords and demons fought for. when dusted off, the ring, shone brilliant, was blinding.

you are blinded by the thick of the medicine burning your eyes in netravasti. when dr. shamna did the treatment on me, my sight was myopic, my peripheral vision walled by the vasti. i saw in blur. my eyes burned. but i felt the gaze of my peers. heard their voices,

when someone is looking at you in the train, at 2am or during, rush hour, you feel it. you feel the energy gushing out of the cavities above their nose. you'll feel gazes wherever u r, even if/when u have ur eyes closed - on a park bench in prospect park, in a plane to pondicherri, in the slums of dhaka.

eyes can have light that nourishes, like cream, like mothers, like my mother. eyes can be curious, observant, looking for meaning, like my papa and my nephew.

in north philly, eyes may make you stand a little taller.  in midnight block parties they may make you beat your chest like gorillas in the wild protecting their babies, like u might in seeing a stranger in your building lobby. eyes may make you bark like dogs sensing an alien body entering private property.

eyes can make you pop your collar, adjust your blouse and skirt and dupata, brush off your kicks and strut the dance of friday night at the oscars, knowing you may connect or miss a connection and later that night, in the seal of your room, land on craigslist's missed-connections, wondering if someone's eyes fell on you, noticed you, read the silent conversation you had in the language of eyes with that cute-thing on the bus, on your way back to astoria, crown heights, parkchester.

the eyes grow hard with time. they get used to things, people, places. they lose their awe and wonder. they lose sight, grow dry and break like skin under the winter of unemployment. netravasti reintroduces the moisture, lubricates the rust of the optic nerves, gives you the clarity you need.

when the ghee was soaked out, when the vasti taken off and rose water applied to clear his skin of oil, sebastian sat up, blinking, looked at the clock, read the time. yes! he said, a little better.

navarrakizhi: never let me down

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7 positions. the kizhi massages, as we have been taught in the ayu school, is 7 positions. the abhyanga massage in the asthanga ayu program i studied in 4 years ago, is 7 positions. the strokes, long or sometimes short, are circular and are done in odd denominations: 3, 5, 7, all the way up to 21 - an auspicious number, dr. prabath, the teacher of movement here says. 

7 is the number of strokes necessary for someone who is in need of treatments based on the tridosha theory. when you are in panchakarma treatment, you are in islam to the person working on you for 7, 14, 21, 28 days. you surrender to their skill, acumen, care, love. you give yourself over to them as a muslim might prostrate to ALLAH, as a yogi might sit before a banyan for days, months, years, like the knotty-haired stranger hrin told me about. "he wandered on to a village by the beach here, some years back, speaking hindi, but mostly silence and gestures." he is still there, years later, rooted into the earth, like the mango tree he is next to.

at 7, you are in mercy. you are also in namaste, acknowledging by practicing, affirming the divinity in yourself to prostrate, to be so in tune with the love of another, that you hand yourself over, become as vulnerable as street dogs, who lay beside you, ignoring rumours of human stonings, gun shots, sticks. namaste. 

suheir hammad said that when the towers went down, she stood outside her chinatown building staring at disbelief through fire and smoke, at bodies flinging themselves into sky. when the tears blackened her arab eyes, a large white woman took note of her, held her. suheir said she was palestinian and her brother was in the u.s. military. double trouble. the woman held her harder. beyond borders, ethnic constructions/profiling, there is is heartbeat. namaste

in the first position of the kizhi massage you are sitting on the hard of the dhroni table, waiting with your hands and feet out like a beggar, receiving the jewlery of a village elder rich in wisdom and so much compassion, he absolves his conscience by giving himself over to you. 

the practitioner touches your vital points – 7 of them – head, ears, hands, feet. at the completion of the 7, you are in preparation for surrender, ready for the prayers the practitioner says over your head - your dome - the holy minaret of a mosque - the bayuwali channel described by khemetic science. you prostrate in silence. the bond is made, the covenant of massage begun. thus begins the sacred process of body work in ayurveda.

i sat and watched as my peer and friend received the hands of the healer, which began with a respect, acknowledgement of the head and face, by way of fluid motions, using a minimal of oil, as this is a peripheral region to the treatment. the procedure then occurs with oleation over the back, arms, chest and stomach, legs, top and bottom, feet. 

7 body parts are completed. they are now prepared n ready for the kizhi, ready to be pressed with poultices of herbs from mother earth, herbs that have been collected with the utmost care, with islam and namaste to the essence manifest in sun-water-soil-air-soaked plantlife.

in the case of navarra, the plantlife used is a grain, a navvarra. navvarra is known for its nourishing qualities. the rice is boiled, cooled and placed in boluses to make medicinal pouches. i watched my friend lay on his back, his side, his stomach, as the healers pounded, pressed, molished, taking extra care near the joints, placing extra pressure near the bulges of mamsa and meda. 

the islam of namaste  - the Light in me to the Light in You - completes the kizhi massage. my friend sits where he began, his legs dangling above the floor. the healer towels him down, cleans and rubs his feet. namaste.

amma the homeless guru ii

the man whose car we were in, who drove feverishly through narrow paths in the back roads of thalessery, was a disciple of the ancient woman i sat next to, whose bare thighs brushed against mine. he had been with amma, committed to her specialness for the past 20 years, he explained to hrin, who sat on the passenger side and turned every so often to translate for his wife n i.

when we got there, to the man's newly constructed house, his entire family came out, one by one. first his smiley daughter and then his shy son, both old enough to be skeptical, young enough to be wide-eyed, curious and obedient. although the man left the door open, and although we all came out of the car, amma didn't. she just sat in there and looked about, first at the spaces between the once-village of coconut huts, now a pillar of development, where stone and marble replaced hay and mud.

the children came with chai and gilabi's, the wife of the man  and his sister came with prayers and sunken heads, the mother of the man sat next to amma in the car, seeking prayers and blessings wih hands interlaced in humility.

20 minutes later, after we watched amma through sip and munch, on the porcelain porch, amma remained seated, making a gesture here, emitting an indecipherable there.

we returned to the car and drove off.

hrin told us amma wanted to return home, but when we got to the intersection and turned towards the long journey back, she made some sounds and a gesture that the man understood to mean to drive in the opposite direction and we did, for miles, until we reached his guru, a 102 year old yogi, who sat still on the porch.

the yogi was as bright as the white flowing panjabi and beard he wore. his glasses were thick as lakes. he held his palms together steadily in namaste upon seeing his student, and we each took turns paying our respect to the living legend. his family trickled outside, watching us, offering chai and food and the restroom. amma looked at him but remained in the car. the yogi walked in a tremble over to where she sat, bowing down and touching the feet of amma.

who was this woman that a 102 year old living legend, a seer of the ancient mathematics of yoga, bowed down to? what was the medicine she offered, that made the people around her lower like mayans to the sun?

amma the homeless guru

homeless w/gas mask

yesterday morning, after pranayms n sun salutations in the ocean, i ran into my boy hrin. he was close behind me, on the beach, after completing his own meditation, facing the rising sun.  i hadn't seen him in a week, since i'd been getting to the beach earlier, before sunrise. but i had a late start n he was there with his wife. we chilled for a little bit, meditated on the ocean waves n the calm when his wife noted the time. they had to breeze to see amma, a special woman, they told me, an hour away. they invited me n i flew with them, through kannur, 3 on a bike, n onto a train to thalessery, 1 or 2 stops away.

we get there without rush, strolled over to a rickshaw n before we get to amma's place, while we r still on the road, we pause, n so does time, for a second. before hrin said a word, i knew it was here.

amma was a tree walking. lines of ancient were drawn over her radiant skin, high thick cheek bones. she looked over at us, withdrawn, wide-eyed and curious, like only a baby can. her grey-blue sari loosely sat over her thick cinnamon skin. amma looked like a crazed homeless woman, her hair in clumps and hanging like a deranged boquet of dried roses.

she reminded me of some of the homeless in new york, who walk without a clothes/image-consciousness, who talk to themselves out loud. except amma didn't speak. not much and not sensible when she did, atleast not to the people of kerala. amma was from some otherwhere in india. no one is sure just where. she didn't speak malyalam, but she arguable didn't speak a language known to most of us in the material world.

i watched her in awe, the lunatic with the crazed expression n hair n clothes. n then there was the sane n normal coming up to her on the street, stopping to bow down to her, touch her feet with their head.

who was this woman who new york would lock up, spit into a shelter, push into the subway tunnels, who might escape into a 2pm train, walking from car to car without a beggars bowl n just stare at you or through you or something or someone? who was this woman i would assume belonged to the tribe of bums i'd known as zombies on crack, who laughed to themselves and walked from car to car in the subway?

amma was without drugs, without any destination i could decipher, without a beggars bowl. she just walked and got into the car of the man who walked beside her. hrin asked the stranger if we could join him. he agreed, let us in. i sat next to the tree who bore through me with eyes like the dark shadows on the trunk of a banyan.

meditating past maya iii

mars from the blackcommentator.com

dr. shimji, my yoga therapist teacher here, said the difference between the two stages of meditation - dharana and dhyana - the two final stages before reaching samadhi – liberation – in the asthanga yoga path - is that dharana is the concentration on something, in the practice of meditation. dhyana is to harmonize with that something, so you become it.

in the yogi, sattvic, real-recognize-real realm, this may mean becoming one with family – past and present – with community, with the earth, the sun, the ocean, with life.

dhyana, from what i've seen, happens daily in the babylon realm, by way of becoming one with the material realm – sneakers, jeans, hats, coffee, cigarettes, club life, alcohol. dhyana in babylon can be a deep meditation on how great you are, how much better you are than others - the ego realm of getting acclaim, getting gassed by your title, your sense of racial/ethnic/national supremacy your exercise of power over others.

poison.

prayers for you.

prayers for me.

deep prayers.

this kind of material/ego/babylon-dhyana - becoming a dkny purse and converse sneakers - could only stem from fear and insecurity.

meditation is happening in babylon, but maybe the kind that maybe killing us softly. is it even possible to exist in such an image based reality and meditate through it?

even many gurus and yogis of india seem to be looking to the white west for recognition, for legitimation. they never seem to come to the hood when they travel. why?

the answer to getting deeper, to finding genuine Guidance may lie in the greatest guru we all have access to – mama earth.

as bruce lee advised, “become water. flow like the water.” afterall, “water don't have no enemies”, fela reminds us.

this past month i've had a chance to bow before the arabian sea, dim the lights and cameras that flash on my ny state of mind, wear shorts and a tanktop and just soak in waves, sunrises n sunsets. the strut i've developed over decades of block to block catwalking, dissipates into a swagger so deep, that only mars could see it.

meditating past maya ii

nyc subway shot -jamal shabazz - a brooklyn, ny phenomenon in photography

image dominates movement in new york, as soon as you step outside your building, you have an audience, people are posted on the block like pages of gq and details and vogue. depending on the block, it might mean the rudeboy approach, where one may be “gucci down to the sox,” as biggie smalls noted as a means of negating/compensating for the racial stigma of “black and ugly as ever.” in new york, race/class consciousness is in a tug of war with fashion-consciousness.

what was hot, dope, ill last week is tough, crack, popping this week and the styles and attention to them are as quick to change as the turn of subway turnstyles during rush hour. the cool trickles into social engagements where you may feel the need to be “arriving late, cause our clothes and our time gotta coordinate,” as ludacris put it.

my boy matt, from rhode island, once told me he never felt so much pressure to stay up on fashion as he had after moving to the rotten apple. his resent led to an animosity, which i've seen in other friends as well, who hated hipsters and willy burgh, where an entrance pass may mean being perpetually retro-fitted with a manicured unkempt beard, shaggy hair, and walking with a coffee, rolled up cigarette and an ipad.

nothing wrong with “looking feeling like a million bucks.” but if you are participating in something you don't want to participate in, that's not real to You, then it's a slippery slope of negative vibrations. 

you may hate shopping, or having to shop or feeling you have to shop or wearing the clothes you bought and not feeling fulfilled even though you spent hours picking them out to look just like kanye, justin timberake, jessica biel, megan fox. within a month you don't even like the clothes, the shoes, the books, the plates, the phones, the classes,the tickets you bought. even if you do, the markets already changed styles, and what you're wearing is so out that wearing it would be almost as bad as walking through the trains with shit smeared all over your dingy clothes, hair and face. 

in babylon, we meditate through self-image, where everything is a pricetag and most relationships contingent on the image of who you market yourself as – teacher, doctor, musician, actor, writer, market analyst, lawyer, life-coach, yoga-instructor, etc, etc - material/ego becomes our god, our point of meditation.

meditating past maya i

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james dean - an icon that revolutionized cool/hip in america

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"even james dean couldn't escape the allure, dying young leaving a good looking corpse" – jay z

a decade ago, on a monday night post club-crawl, my friend randa explained meditation to me. breathing in the east village skyline on the rooftop we sat on, she said “meditation is turning off the noise in your brain for a little bit and just focusing.” another friend added that, "meditation is a practice in concentration." my first yoga-guide, bullet, from cochin, india, said that meditation was the act of focusing on a single thing. meditation is being present, wrestling the wild beast of the mind that leaps like a monkey from tree to tree as goenka-ji of vipassana tells us.

for a while there, and when i say a while, i mean years, i didn't think i could meditate. i would sit and breathe and think about the 10 minutes i had remaining before work and whether i was going to talk to the boss and how flippant she was and peace to her and god help her and how i'm too old not be stacking paper and making big-things happen, so i don't have to work for that fat-bitch or anyone else, etc, etc. and thus, i thought, i had another failed attempt at meditating. 

recently, while here, while writing this post, i realized that i've not only been meditating, i've been doing it for a long time and so have many other people in my life, through their suffering from all kinds of babylon illnesses. 

my friends and i have been meditating on the allure of being an image, of fitting into the clothes and linguistics of a cool that doesn't seem aligned with the sun. but superficially, it sure does feel more gratifying to bling on the catwalk of subways and blocks, dates and friday nights. our meditation stems from the high of instant gratification, that like anitbiotics and raid and tylenol, kill that pain right away. and the sun and the rivers feels like ayurvedic medicine that is taking too long, and moving too slow. 

jay compares this allure, this meditation on material-living, to a blinding high: "and you could treat your nose and still won't come close/ the game is a lightbulb with eleventy-million volts, and i'm just a moth addicted to the floss, the doors lift from the floor and the tops come off..." 

narccissm has been a daily practice in meditation for many of my friends and i and it sure does feel good, for a second, like a cigarette and a drink. then there's your heart, lungs and the next day.

swasthasya swasthya... the motto of ayurveda

--> “swasthasya swasthya rakshanam aturasya vikara prashamanam dha” -
protect the health of the healthy and relieve the 'disease' of the ailing.

boricua breaking a move - don't know the artist - thank u - a great piece

this sloka is said to be the motto of ayurveda - that health is balance, that health is more than just going to the doctor when you have a cough and fever and an outbreak of rashes, that health is to be preventive, to maintain the gift (your temple/mosque/church – your body) you were given.


back in the day, my boy joe, from spanish harlem, when asked how he was, used to say, maintaining. he was always maintaining. joe used to take good care of his curly hair twisted in shirley temples, chant down babylon in his humming tunes of robert ester marley, walk up and down the city like it was his religion, and engage in sattvic discussions on the meaning of living.

the ancient egyptian nubians i studied with in east new york, under the guidance of the khemetic culture in burkina-faso, said that the brain was the most important organ in our body and our skull is the proof of it. the brain is the only organ fully covered by bone, like a helmet on a motorcyclist.

the skull is a sheath against knocks, bruises and falls, but somehow, not enough in babylon living to protect us from stress, anxiety, depression, the resulting psycho-somatic diseases – hypertension, hyperacidity, heart-conditions, high blood pressure. how do we maintain our mental health in the maya of stocks, bonds, hedgefunds, subprime loans, credit, debt, desperation, drugs, alcohol?

for some like this california-girl (“with diamonds in her eyes and flowers in her hair”) i used to know, said she was balanced by the prozac and zoloft and other anti-depressants she took. in babylon, balance is pscycho-tropics pushed by the the pusherman, big pharma and his lobby groups and their campaign financing to the men in the white house. and then they want us to vote...

maintaining, in ayurveda is ensuring that your doshas are balanced in the way they need to be, as determined by your prakruti (constitution). doing this means having a relationship with food and your body, knowing how to discern babylon-sweet from real sweet, babylon-salty from real salty, etc. and ingesting the right tastes and right combination of foods for your body-type.

ayurveda says that health is the balance of mind, body and soul. soul – atman, is tarnished by the profit-driven, rat race mentality, that has us eating pizza's on the run and plotting next moves before the current is completed.

the yogis say that a sattvic diet of sattvic food, literature, people, etc., will help you maintain n go deeper. d'angelo, in the love song “higher” asks: “can you take me higher, higher than i've been before?” what books, which people, what environment, what food, what routines/rituals... can take you higher? get high!!!

medicine – degree or no degree????

don't know that artist - thank u - the piece speaks millions - peace to the taken n the taker

the commodification of everything has had me running like the last man alive in an apocalypse over a dissolving bridge between two towering mountains. i don't know. i've been struggling with deciding as to how to go about advancing my studies on the path of a medicine man in this commodicological frequency we r living in.

in the absence of any direct connection to villages and any living family (r.i.p to my dada and foofaa, both of whom were traditional village medicine men) connected to the traditions of ayurveda/unanani/yoga, i have been defaulting on going through the route most westerners do in getting their traditional on. part of me feels like i'm cheating, like this is privy knowledge and there must be paths to cross before i can arrive at being granted the teachings and training. part of me feels that there has to be more than a money exchange that should give me access to learning and growing on this path. i would rather have gone through the traditional channels, like dude from autobiography of a yogi or bruce lee or other disciples who sought out teachers and teachers who either accepted or didn't their students, and when they accepted determined what that education was going to look like for the individual they were dealing with. teachings that were layered with meaning, that for one student might involve cleaning floors and windows to learn the value of discipline, and tucked in there, hidden techniques that the teacher decided you needed to learn.

part of me, the soul part of me, the ancient part of me is moved by the stories of workers-artists i've met along the way. jewelery makers like the women i met on my way out of the grand canyon and into the navajo reservation. i asked each of them how they learned to bead, make jewelery. every one of them told me the same thing - their mother or aunty or some family member. and when i asked who their teachers learned from, they said some other family member, and they went on in this way till we were centuries back. i was moved by the stories of some indain artisans i met a few years back - the rajastani sculptor, the bengali miniatures illustrator, the gujerati shawl-maker. when i asked each of them how they learned their craft, they told me the same thing – from my father/mother/uncle/aunty and they learned from their father/mother/uncle/aunty. for the shawl-maker the lineage went back atleast 2000 years, “that's as far as i could trace back,” he said. this is the gurukul style of education, a rich ayurvedic business man in kerala told me four years ago, when i first arrived on these shores to seek the sacred teachings. sacred has a hefty pricetag these days. the businessman, who was extremely knowledgeable on ayurveda, explained that even if it's not family or a family lineage, the gurukul style of education is one between a disiciple (student) and guru (teacher) and that both must accept each other and the guru is fully entrusted with the guidance s/he thinks the disciple needs.

so now in my 3^rd month of an ayurveda panchakarma program, i am certain that i'd like to go deeper, much deeper in my training. i appreciate learning/education,  but would rather not reinforce the system where nothing is sacred, where everything is for sale, and where the learners aren't necessarily those who thirst the most for this knowledge and path, but those who could afford it. in this contemporary paradigm the sellers sing the hymns of ancient texts to pander to the spiritual impressions of the buyers, just as levis and diesel jeans play the songs of cold play and common. the marketing is enticing, but something feels off about the shopping. a keralan yogi brother, who i met earlier on the beach today, said that they (the sellers) cheapen ayurveda and yoga by making it so expensive, by making it a business.

so in moving forward, degree or not degree feels like the question of real or not real – which for me comes from the ashes of the concrete-jungle generation of eighties ny that i was hemmed by. “keep it real,” was a common expression in early nineties new york. keeping it real was defined by what wasn't keeping it real. turning to the cops for resolve or the authorities of any sort - from the criminal justice system to the medical system, to the education system. before the deeply philosophical street culture of new york became a packaged hip hop item for sale ('sometimes the rap game reminds me of the crack game” - nas), there was a healthy distrust of the system. there was a sense that placing faith in any portion of this apparatus (that coalesced into a cohesively anti-life masonic system) - with the principle underpinnings malcolm x (r.i.p) referred to as tricknology - was inherently injurious to the soul. selling out was giving into the profit-system, going commercial with what was priceless and in turn not keeping it real.

so how do you keep it real in the babylon system of traiditonal medicine? do you get a degree from this same system, which makes it illegal to practice traditional medicine in the traditional way? do you pay a bunch of money in exchange for an education and reinforce the pillars of the for-profit ideology? is their training even enough? are there other ways to get a traditional medicine education that doesn't require phd programs or wads of money? what do u think young?