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"A sign of intelligence is to see the One in many and find the many in One"
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| http://projects.washingtonpost.com/ |
| Jul 6, 2007 |
| Take a Deep BreathSri Sri Ravi Shankar's approach to Inner Peace Is Like
Fresh Air to Millions of Followers
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| Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 5, 2007; Page C01
The guru comes to Washington and sleeps on the floor, as is his wont.
He tells a joke about the folly of material things and giggles and is
asked
why he smiles so much.
is headquartered. The Indian guru will speak today at a conference with
Bill
Clinton on the program,
too.Shankar
is visiting Washington, where his Art of Living Foundation is
headquartered.
The Indian guru will speak today at a conference with Bill Clinton on
the
program, too.
He answers with a question: Why don't others smile more?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, in town from his ashram in Bangalore,
India for a U.S. tour, combs his wispy hair and smoothes it over one
shoulder. He
reports that he had oatmeal for breakfast. "With
Tabasco"
he adds impishly.
Shankar believes that rhythmic breathing exercises, combined with yoga
and
meditation, can bring people inner peace, and he has been teaching this
formula to millions since he discovered it 26 years ago during 10 days
of
silent meditation.
How did this discovery come to him?
"You write a poem, you don't know how it comes to you," Shankar says.
He is seated with nine followers around him, though he might not call
them
that. ("Followers?" he once said to a reporter, turning around.
"There's
nobody behind me.") They are from all over the United States -- some
are
volunteers, some are staffers for his nonprofit, the Art of Living
Foundation, which only recently acquired this beautiful old embassy by
Meridian Hill Park as its national headquarters.
Most are dressed in white. They laugh when he says something clever or
elliptical or cleverly elliptical, which is much of the time. As in,
Sri Sri
Ravi Shankar, what do you read?
"Mind," he says. "And spirit."
His voice is soft and high, the tenor of young boys and old men. Though
he
sleeps sometimes two or three hours a night, he says, he doesn't get
weary.
(Well, actually, what he says while grinning is: "Do I look tired?") He
favors expressions like "if mind is kite, breath is thread," and
"knowledge
should be used as soap, for cleansing."
Also, "truth is always contradictory."
Why is that?
"Truth is not linear, it is spherical," Shankar says. "So it has to be
contradictory. Anything that is spherical is always contradictory."
At the Art of Living's new national headquarters, which was purchased
last
July and is still in the process of being cleaned and renovated,
volunteers
who during the day work for places like the World
Bank and
NASA
have
pulled weeds and Swiffered the floor in anticipation of Shankar's
visit. He comes about twice a year, fresh from tours of other
countries, his
schedule packed with courses to teach and speeches to give. (Today he
is
scheduled to speak in Washington at a conference for Indians sponsored
by
the Telugu Association of North America; he's been billed just under
another
speaker, Bill
Clinton.)
Shankar's followers include a former sound engineer named Philip
Fraser, who
sold his worldly possessions to join his guru in India in the early
'90s.
Fraser has been teaching Shankar's breathing technique for 16 years. He
lives in the new headquarters along with his fellow instructor and
relatively new wife, Kasia, an extraordinarily tall and beautiful woman
who
gave up modeling after she saw a flier in a vegetarian restaurant in
Warsaw advertising
the Art of Living.
They practice their breathing every day. Philip Fraser describes the
feeling
this practice gives him as "something on the other side of happiness."
The breathing technique Shankar teaches is based on the notion that
just as
emotions impact how people breathe, how they breathe can also impact
their
emotions. By controlling their breath, the idea goes, people can
counter
their stress and recover from natural disasters and violent
surroundings.
Shankar, 51, was raised a Hindu, though he and his students consider
his
teachings nondenominational. When the Art of Living Foundation
celebrated
its 25th anniversary last year, it rented an abandoned airfield on the
outskirts of
Bangalore and
reported a crowd of
2.5 million people. (In videos of the event, the crowd stretches from
horizon to horizon.)
In March, the foundation was honored at the Kennedy
Center,
where Sen. Joe Biden
(D-Del spoke
of the "more than 20 million people" worldwide who'd taken Shankar's
programs. The Art of Living says at least 100,000 people have taken
Shankar's breathing courses in the United States. (Though in this
country he
is still often confused with the famous sitarist who knew the
Beatles(
They're not related.)
Shankar also co-founded, with the Dalai
Lama,
among others, another nonprofit, the International Association for
Human
Values, which relies mainly on volunteers. A spokeswoman says the
sister
organizations have founded an orphanage for 200 children in
Kashmir,
built houses in South
Asia,
and offer vocational training in places like South
Africa and
Iraq
.
The breathing technique is taught for free in prisons in
Taiwan,
India and the United States, as well as to people in the wake of
disasters
like Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indian
Ocean tsunami.
This, Shankar says, helps explain why here in the States, his
six-session
course costs $375.
"Charity cannot happen from an empty bowl," he says.
Shankar describes himself as "nobody" and as "a child" and says that
pride
is pointless. He says he feels the pain of others acutely. ("He's
porous,"
one of his followers says.) The veneration his students show him
"doesn't
touch me," Shankar says. "I don't pay attention to it at all." (Though
sometimes the rose petals people throw get in his eyes, he has said.)
Best not to ask him what the meaning of life is. He has said that's
"like
asking me to chew your candy for you." Instead, ask him if he thinks
the
world is getting better.
Yes, he says. Though there is decay just as surely as there is
progress.
"You know, nothing stays the same," Shankar says. "There is night
somewhere
and day somewhere else."
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