Ashram Life

Interview with a mahant
Udasim Sthan ashram, Varanasi

This ashram is about 300 years old. It was built by Baba Pritam Das Ji. He established this religious society. Our goal is to preach religion, to give teaching, and to provide housing facilities for pilgrims. We also help the nation in times of emergency, and so on. This is a Hindu ashram, and we preach sanatan dharm. We don’t preach any one sectarian idea, but rather human-ness. Our sect is called the Udasim sect, and we are the oldest. Our name Udasim refers to the idea of becoming limitless by union with the supreme god, Brahma.

Usually, about 25 or 30 people live here. They are not all sadhus. Some are students and some are sants — saints. We do not take any payment from students. It doesn’t matter which particular god these students worship. Our goal is simply to teach Sanskrit. [So an atheist is not admitted?] How can an atheist find a place here? You yourself know the traditions of our gurus which has been with us since ancient times. We have rules in our ashram, and anybody who stays here and studies should obey the rules. The rules for our students include being present during the artis and being involved in the service of the ashram in any way, as they have time. There are several kinds of works of service and a student is free to do any of them, but they are exempt from service during examination time. We don’t teach any other subject besides Sanskrit. We have a dormitory for our students, and some of them stay here also. Other students stay at Dindayal Nagar and at Kabir Nagar.

During our artis, one leader chants the mantras and the assembled people repeat after him together. So our prayers are not individual, but corporate. This is a sanatan dharm place, so of course we have many gods. Mostly we worship the five-fold deity. So we do the mantras of all of them, but our main ones are Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh. We take all three of these as the basis of how we function. In the prayers that we perform, all the names of the gods are featured.

As far as permanent residents of the ashram are concerned, we have four managers, but they are transferable. Their authority is equal. The sadhus and sants are people who are always wandering. Several sants from Benares have come. They know that this ashram exists here, so they feel a desire to come to this place. We have ashrams all over the country, and from those places also, people come with the idea of making a pilgrimage to Benares. There are facilities for them if they stay. We don’t give facilities to any and all pilgrims, but only to those who are from other places where we have our ashrams, and if they have an introduction letter from a resident of our ashram at their home-place, we give them facilities free of cost.

Many people of all types come to our ashram. A large number come from philosophy departments. For example, Kamlakar Mishra Ji, from the philosophy department, comes here. His students also come here. One is from Germany and one from Switzerland. So, several of his students come. He is my guru ji, and he teaches me. I go to him for instruction. Some of his Ph.D. students come here too. We don’t think about whether you are a foreigner and we are Indians, or whether you are a Hindu or not. Such things have no meaning for us. Anyone can come, but they must be in submission to the rules.

We are really more of a religious society than strictly an ashram. So we do not see this as a place for living out a life-stage of spiritual search. No one can stay here for his whole life. The work of a society is only to arrange things. But there are four stages in the life of each sadhu in our place. It’s not necessary to be in your fourth stage of life. You can take sanyas even from childhood. But one is not allowed to be married.

Women are allowed in our society, but there cannot be marriage between our men and our women, nor can they live together. In actuality, there is no one who is a true brahmacharya. No one is celibate in their imagination. It’s like a chink in one’s armor, which can happen in anyone’s body. In your body, there are ten senses, and each sense has a chink in its armor. Through every sense, you can receive encouragement [to become sensual]. So really, no one is a true brahmacharya.

The reason we don’t keep women with us is because if we did, from time to time we would lose our minds. The strength to keep firm isn’t there. What we need is to become hardened because usually when a woman comes near, so does softness and tenderness. So then we are not able to perform our religious duty. Because, you see, a woman’s heart is not hardened. It is soft and tender. It’s not just that she tempts you, but her softness conditions you also to become soft if you are attached to her. Women can stay here as pilgrims for one or two days, but not on any extended basis.

There are people here who have no interest in the knowledge of books. They are tapasvis. Such a man is Bankim Baba. There are three other types here: teachers, hans, and param hans. For these three groups, learning is important, whereas for a tapasvi, the only thing that matters is to be a roaming ascetic. I cannot move from being a kutichar to being a hans or a param hans. To be one of those, one has to start on a separate track from the very beginning and follow a different kind of practice. Being a hans or a param hans is a very difficult thing to achieve. That’s why you have to start early, and you should not go into management. Changing from one stream to another is not possible because one’s mentality gets conditioned from the very beginning. We administrators are here to organize things for the roamers and those who are hans and param hans. There are many ashrams in Benares, but they may not meet the needs of the roaming sadhus, so we administrators have to take care of them.

[Do the hans and param hans teach pilgrims?] That is usually up to them. We cannot do anything to make them teach others. The progress of hans and param hans is such that through long years of effort, they reach the stage of becoming a hans or a param hans. Not everyone can achieve this. If a man does achieve it, then he is not likely to want to remain in the company of other people. Rather, he usually prefers lonely, remote places. Someone who seeks to get close to a hans or param hans can receive teaching from him, but the student has to prove himself worthy to be taught by such a great person.

You know that the smoking of hashish does go on here. It is a part of our life, but not everyone does it. I myself, for instance, do not smoke hashish. Roaming sadhus have freedom from responsibility, so they can afford to smoke hashish. Such people smoke, although there is no compulsion about it. One doesn’t have to smoke. There is no religious rule that forbids it either. Kutichars don’t have the freedom to smoke. There are those who are heavily involved in study, and others practice yoga, while still others do some other type of religious practice. And for all of these, drugs are forbidden. [Concerning the effects of smoking] Well, it’s smoking. You know what smoking does. It’s not good for the health. As far as ordinary food is concerned, those sorts of things are not dangerous. After all, they are ordinary, every day things. If you consider them as drugs, they are not the sort of drugs from which you come down. But concerning food, you have to consume those things.

We are living in the Kal Yug, and in this age the most important thing is the system of food. It is very necessary for us to eat. Even if we miss food for one day, it will create problems and make us weak. We won’t be able to get up and walk, and we will hardly feel that we have any life in us. In earlier ages, there was vital life in people’s breath or in their bones. But in this age, there is no life in our bodies, unless we eat at least some food. For this reason, that drug [referring to food] is very necessary. There is no doubt that food is a type of drug, but it is a necessary drug. If you don’t eat, the fullness of your face will begin to disappear in only one day.

In terms of my own spirituality, I took sanyas at a very young age, when I was three or four years old. I received inspiration from my parents to do this. I was offered to Guru Maharaj Ji. My guru is Shriman Purushottam Das Ji. He is from our ashram in Delhi. When I left home as a child, I stayed in his ashram in Delhi for about ten years. I still follow the instructions he gave me then, and I have to do that for always. Right now I am under the authority of our society and I cannot give diksha to anybody, nor can I make any disciples. There is no way of predicting if and when I will become a guru. There is no set pattern. If I achieve worthiness sometime by some means, then one can talk about it. But now I have no proper response to give you. I can’t really say if I have any ambition to be a guru.

As far as being inspired to be a guru, one can receive inspiration from either bhagvan or Guru Maharaj Ji. Actually, in our place, we give great importance to the guru, and not that much importance to bhagvan. Bhagvan is in his own place, and the guru is in his own place. The one who comes one time to the guru, then according to our Hindu sanatan dharm, he has to completely dedicate himself to his guru. Whatever remains for us in life, the guru is all of that to us. If he says, “Jump in a ditch,” we jump. If he says, “Burn yourself,” we burn ourselves. If he says, “Remain hungry,” we remain hungry. So there is no importance given to bhagvan here, because our guru is our bhagvan. The word guru is “gu” plus “ru.” Gu means darkness and ru means light. So, one who is able to remove darkness and bring us into the light, he is a guru. So whether I am capable or worthy of being a guru or not, I cannot say of myself that I have found the light. Even after becoming a gyani, one’s greatest human-ness is expressed through admitting only ignorance. You can only know the extent of a guru’s power if you go and experience it yourself People have only come to you as a guru when they have seen that there is something special about your spiritual leadership.

This sort of thing is not described in books. They do not give us understanding about gauging the spiritual power of somebody. That is a spiritual thing, something that comes through experience. Books are written by people and they only write what they have experienced. Someone who is truly spiritual cannot describe that in a book. One has to find out through one’s own experience. A book can give you a testimony about the writer’s feelings, but it cannot give you the feeling itself. That you have to gain experientially. Is there any shortage of gurus and spiritual leaders in Benares? Go around and see for yourself. So many gurus and saints are roaming around, and such knowledgeable people are here. But none of them give you their experience second-hand. You have to experience those things yourself. These people don’t look very great or knowledgeable, but they are. Their ordinariness and humility are the badges by which they are recognized. This is the mark of our Indian culture.

In terms of the definition of a guru, you will not find in Allahabad the type of guru that you find in Benares, because here, all are gurus. [When asked to speak words of his own experience so that the interviewer, as a new learner, could understand, he replied thus ...] Just going around and asking questions of people in every lane is not going to gain you anything. You have to go to some mahapurush, who has studied much and knows a lot. Meet with such a man, gain merit in Kashi. Gain experience.

You should read Indian philosophy, and learn what it’s all about. There are only two kinds of philosophy: Indian and Western, and there is a great difference between them. In Western philosophy, they only pay attention to sakshatkar. But our philosophy pays attention to past, present and future. Western philosophy only pays attention to “is”, but they don’t care about “was”. But the point is, if “was” did not exist, then where did “is” come from? This is how our swami ji explained it to us in a seminar at BHU (Benares Hindu University). Because “was” was, we can have “is”. If you want to know Indian culture, you read Indian philosophy. Get the latest theses written by philosophers at BHU. This will help you to understand. But better still, after reading, you should enter into experience. It is one thing to read books, and another thing to put into practice what they say. Spirituality comes from practice, not from books.