I had been mean­ing to men­tion that the Art of Liv­ing is cel­e­brat­ing the 25th anniver­sary of its found­ing on Feb­ru­ary 17-​​19. The Sil­ver Jubilee is being held in India and it is going to be a big deal — 2.5 mil­lion attend­ing, accord­ing to AOL. Peo­ple will be com­ing from all over the world to Ban­ga­lore to pay homage to Sri Shri Ravi Shankar. Obvi­ously, I am not going — just couldn’t fit a trip around the world into my sched­ule. I am also not that hot on the guru thing.

I have not been prac­tic­ing my kriya as reg­u­larly as I used to. As my fre­quency of yoga classes has gone up, the avail­able time for pranayama has gone down. I still try to fit it in on the week­ends as part of a restora­tion routine.

New Age Rage: The Art Of Breath­ing: “The premise of the pro­gram is to per­form ‘sudar­shan kriya’ every morn­ing for 25 min­utes. If that sounds like the approach of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion, it’s because Shankar was a dis­ci­ple and asso­ciate of the Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi… Sudar­shan kriya, which Shankar says came to him dur­ing 10 days of silent med­i­ta­tion in 1982, involves rhyth­mic breath­ing to infuse the body with oxy­gen and help rid it of tox­ins and stress. India’s ancient yogis con­sid­ered fresh oxy­gen and calm­ness key to phys­i­cal sta­mina, so breath­ing in tune with the rhythms of nature has always been an inte­gral part of yoga.” This Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle orig­i­nal came out in July 2004, repub­lished on CBS News and I chanced across it today. I thought it was a well-​​done piece and reflects that the AoL work in India is roughly the same as in the United States.

I was think­ing back to the Art of Liv­ing meet­ing that I went to two weeks ago, as well as some pic­tures that I’ve been see­ing on the Inter­net. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is almost always flash­ing a mis­chie­vous smile — a beam­ing, joy­ful grin as if he already knew the punch line of the Uni­ver­sal Joke. His play­ful­ness in front of the crowd, pho­tog­ra­phers or TV cam­eras also has another sense — he’s aware that he may appear weird or awk­ward (I found a pic­ture of him with a red Santa’s elf hat) and he doesn’t care — life is just one long lark — a kind of cos­mic vaca­tion so why not enjoy every minute, no mat­ter what’s happening.

I went to see Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the spir­i­tual leader of the Art of Liv­ing Foun­da­tion, Thurs­day night. He came to the Wash­ing­ton DC area as part of a world tour– I guess what he does every year. The con­fer­ence room was filled to capac­ity, mainly by Hin­dus, but there were all kinds of peo­ple, a cross­sec­tion of DC’s melt­ing pot. I saw my instruc­tors and oth­ers from my kriya group. They were man­ning the booths, sell­ing lit­er­a­ture and record­ings, dis­trib­ut­ing leaflets, help­ing peo­ple sign up for courses and explain­ing the organization’s activ­i­ties. I bought a book of Sri Sri’s col­lected chats  – Cel­e­brat­ing Silence.

The meet­ing was kicked off by a local musi­cal group, the Gener­ics, from the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land. They sang a cap­pella. Sev­eral of them had taken the intro courses and wanted to sign for Sri Sri. They were sur­pris­ingly good — kind of mob music (there were about 10 of them), but with at least four qual­ity lead singers.

Sri Sri got up and chat­ted for about 30 min­utes. I can’t remem­ber the details of what he said, but a cou­ple of things stick. Early in the chat, he fielded a ques­tion, what is the pur­pose of life? He said that if any­one told you that he/​she had the answer to that ques­tion, you should imme­di­ately ignore him and turn away because no one can really tell you what the pur­pose of life is. You has to find that answer for him­self inside yourself.

While peo­ple were wait­ing for the meet­ing to start, they put ques­tions onto index cards and handed them to ush­ers mov­ing through the con­fer­ence room. When Sri Sri came on stage, he was handed hun­dreds of ques­tions. He said that he would pick three to answer. Peo­ple kept send­ing up more ques­tions, even passed the point when they could have been included in the Q and A ses­sion. There was obvi­ously more sig­nif­i­cance to the writ­ten ques­tions than just the chance to get an answer.

After speak­ing for about half an hour, he led us in a med­i­ta­tion — it was 25 min­utes, but it seemed like an instant. That’s quite an accom­plish­ment given that it was not the most ideal con­di­tions. Even though it was sur­pris­ingly still; there were more than a thou­sand peo­ple — coughs, grunts, cell phone (despite repeated warn­ings to turn offall elec­tronic devices). But the time still flew by.

Sri Sri def­i­nitely looked very Indian, fit­ting the mold of a spir­i­tual leader. He had long, flow­ing hair and beard, dressed in white robes. He has a dark com­plex­ion, and a pen­e­trat­ing gaze soft­ened by a per­ma­nent smile. He spoke with a relaxed, high-​​pitched voice. If Hol­ly­wood — or Bol­ly­wood — were going to cast some­one in the role of a guru or swami — Sri Sri would win hands down. But there is obvi­ously a keen intel­lect behind the win­dow dress­ing. He really knows how to work the crowd, get them involved and draw in their par­tic­i­pa­tion. He is always elic­it­ing feed­back form the audience.

The meet­ing ended with Sri Sri being mobbed by the audi­ence. The orga­niz­ers wanted the audi­ence to forma line so that Sri Sri could greet them one by one, butut seemed that chaos would pre­vail. It was 9:30 at night. I had to head home so that I could still find my wife awake so that she could pick me up at the metro station.

Why did Sri Sri come to Wash­ing­ton? He had met with con­gres­sional lead­ers and also with Pres­i­dent Bush– Thurs­day was National Prayer Day.