"We cannot change the beginning but surely can change the ending." We see this mentioned in a short film by Suyeol Jang. How true it is. So have many ventured to come out of the coccon and take a big step to travel long distances to change their fate. We often read and hear about these successful personalities who made it big. Their drive and energy make us and keep us on our feet, too. We then learn that it all boils down to whom we associate with. We have to pick our friends, colleagues, and associates with care. The spiritual masters, too, have to watch out for who comes along. Hence, we understand what Tavayogi said to me once that the guru shall test his disciple for some 12 years before imparting anything to him. The patient one shall be accepted into the fold. But in this world of instant noodles, we each want things happening immediately or leave for greener pastures. Then, instead of stepping on the green meadow, we step into a swamp of muddy water or, even worse, the quicksand. It is a long walk indeed on this path. It might have been a few births before we arrived in this spot, too. There might be more births awaiting before we are accepted into the fold. But let us take baby steps for now as a victim of a forest fire in California who saw her home razed down as did many others, tells Simon Reeve in a BBC documentary about rebuilding her life after the fire.
Coming to the spiritual path is about rebuilding one's life, too, but not as in accumulating but in learning to let go. Hence, rather than rebuilding it to its former majesty, it is about reconstructing one's life with only the essentials needed to sustain life. Hence, we see the idea of simple cottages, hermitages, and Ashrams come about. Both the Ashram and its tenants are equally humble. One is at peace with life. The search stops. The visitations stop. One aligns with nature. Occasionally, a seeker would drop by and might make it his stop and home too. But sadly, with time and the coming of many, the necessity to accommodate and feed them requires an extension and expansion of the premises. The very core and nature of a simple Ashram shifts away into oblivion and is forgotten. What then takes shape is an institution. The very idea of an Ashram is to have us drop our dependency on all the luxuries that we have been used to like hot showers, running water, electricity, entertainment, etc. The moment I stood at Tavayogi's Kallar Ashram, he told me not to expect all these. We had to bathe in the river that flowed nearby. We had to hit the sack after dark as there was no electricity. We could not venture far, for our own safety, as his Ashram was on the fringes of a jungle. Simple food was prepared by those who knew how to cook and we had to wash our own dishes and clothes. He told the devotees gathered during his last visit to Malaysia that I had a culture shock back then on my first visit to his Ashram in 2005.
So when Mrs Molly Menon emailed me from the USA asking if the Ashram had these facilities or that of a lodge, I spilled the truth, telling her not to expect these. But even then she turned up at Kallar Ashram, and there was no turning back for her. She quickly adapted herself to a life of a hermit, too.