I’m forty five minutes early for the yoga class. Naturally there is no one around. Not even the yoga teacher. It is cold and quiet here. The kind old man who opened the ashram door for me, left into the night bidding me good night. He chatted with me while tying his shoe laces. The typical questions, ‘where am I from?’ then, ‘whether I’m Sinhalese?’ It turned out that he had visited Sri Lanka, back when it was still referred to as ‘Ceylon’. Beautiful place it was he said. I smiled and nodded. We parted.
I had forgotten to bring any reading material. But there are plenty of books here. There is a shelf full of books on spirituality, which I browse at random. My eyes land on ‘Siddhartha’ by Herman Hesse. Here is a book I’ve been meaning to find for a while. It is a tiny book with very little pages, I notice. For some reason, I’m not in the mood to read more than a page. The words flow and sound poetic, but they flow past me. I am restless. I put it aside and decide to sift through my thoughts instead.
This restless-ness is like the noisy street outside, with its incessant noises from by passing vehicles. But just like the pauses in between vehicles, I feel the stillness inside of me. I listen for footsteps. Like the thoughts that swirl in my head, they are fleeting; making me strain to hear, to understand.
There is something about this Silence. It is different to the stillness in other places. You know, like how tap water tastes different in different countries? The Stillness here is rich and beautiful. It is calm and is seeping into my insides. This stillness makes me feel like I’m part of it.
