Settled for the present in Tiruvannamalai, beneath the silent eminence of Arunachala. It's been a week.

I have a lot of respect for the pilgrims making their way to what is for them a sacred place, and for the desire their pilgrimage expresses to get beyond the vicissitudes of existence in the material plane.

I myself am not entranced by the spiritual promise offered by the place and the sages, like Ramana Maharshi, that have made it their home.  But in such places my mind gravitates more naturally towards the spiritual dimension.  I feel more at peace here.  I find myself singing to myself the bhajans that I learned 45 years ago and which have never left me.

I am not seeking to become absorbed in some spiritual plane and forget the material one.  As I have said elsewhere, I have greater issue with the tendency of the mind to perceive the world with a fragmentary, divisive vision.  Or alternately, to disregard the material plane completely, though this is much more rare.  Either way, the problem is with perception, and the divisions we make between ourselves as subject and the world as object.  A key to breaking through this tendency and to understanding it in more than an intellectual way can be devotion; reverence for everyone and everything because all equally express the reality of unity in diversity / diversity in unity.

Walking around Tiruvannamalai, there is a generosity of spirit, and such a paucity of means.  Life hangs on a thread for many (others are well-fed).  And how this rich and poor nation conducts its business in such a haphazard way; burning piles of rubbish lining the streets, monkeys scrounging through food containers.  Beggars, pilgrims, tourists from the new age. Gurus, charlatans, get-rich-quick businessmen whizzing by banana vendors. Washed-out dirty would-be saddhus smoking beedies, women street sweepers spitting over shoulders in the muck. Strutting peacocks calling from walls.