Chanting Tradition
This page is referenced from my old pictures in 1995, my visit to Dallas, TX, my visit to Houston, TX and life in Portland, OR.
In Syda Yoga the main single practice is meditation. If you expand that to the three main practices, it would be meditation, chanting, and seva (helping out or volunteer work). Their chants are normally highly repetitive with a lead chant group chanting one phrase and then the rest repeating it. They are done to very pretty melodies (often with harmonium and drums). I really love to chant because they are so beautiful and it is easy to just lose yourself in the chant (being so repetitive), making it a kind of group meditation.For my first couple of years at Syda Yoga I did seva (helped out) at the children's houses. One summer Gurumayi (the head of the group) was visiting in India and then returned to New York for the Christmas/New Year's holidays. They had a small staff in New York at the time and they weren't able to prepare for the number of people who wanted to visit for the holidays. As a result strict limits were put on the number of people who could visit. I didn't make my reservations really early and so wouldn't be able to visit.
I would never make my reservations to stay at the ashram far in advance as I lived close by and could visit most any time; I hated to think that by making my reservations early I was preventing someone else from being able to visit.
Anyway, my seva supervisor for the prior couple of years, Annie, was leaving the ashram and heading back home to Houston after the holidays. Usually staff aren't permitted to take courses and such when they are really crowded and in order for her to be able to take the program they were offering (which I thought would be nice as she was leaving soon), she would need to find someone to do her seva (or job). I volunteered to take over her seva with me driving up and back each day (about an hour and fifteen minute commute each way) and bringing my food with me (so as to not make more work for the staff). I asked 'management' for approval to do this (thereby allowing me to visit the ashram and do seva without making the crowding and such worse) and it was approved. It also made Annie's departure a little nicer for her.
When I got the approval, I had a passing thought that wouldn't it be great if there was snow and ice on December 31 during the day (after I had made the drive up to the ashram) so that I would have to stay over night and could chant to midnight as I had in the past, starting the New Year with chanting and then seva of driving people back to their rooms (one of my sevas was driving buses). However, about a week before New Year's I heard that snow and ice were predicted for December 31 during the day and through the evening. It brought back to me my passing wish for such weather.
As I considered it, the evening of December 31 was the worst possible time for bad weather (for most everyone but me) as people would still go out partying and there could be loads of accidents. So, as I considered the implications, I consciously prayed (to myself) that the weather would be clear on the evening of the new year so that people could travel safely.
As the day approached, they changed the weather prediction that there would still be bad weather on the 31st, but that it should clear up by the evening. On the day itself, sure enough there was ice and snow, but in the afternoon it was warming up and the precipitation was dropping off. I went ahead and asked some of the other ashram bus drivers how the roads were and asked ashram security about the predicted weather (looked good), but I already knew in my heart (intuition) that the roads would be fine.
When I finished my seva about 6PM, I considered asking if I could stay over, but I wasn't comfortable with that as I would have to say that I feared the roads would be bad, which wasn't the case at all, I 'knew' they would be fine. So, instead I just drove home as promised. I went to bed early (so I could drive up again the next morning for the New Year's day program) and instead of chanting, dreamt of happy chanters and safe drivers.
After that, most years I was able to go up to the ashram to chant until midnight and then do seva driving people back to their rooms, but if there were ever any problems getting reservations I always knew that I could go to bed early and dream of happy chanters.
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This page was last updated on April 20, 2007.