Divine Humor: Sri M

As it appears in the “Appren­ticed to the Himalayan Mas­ter” by Sri. M

On the last day of our stay at Arund­hati cave, I was prac­tis­ing kriya in the morn­ing, and try­ing to fix my atten­tion on the white two petaled lotus cen­tre between the eye­brows, called the Ajna chakra. How­ev­er, no mat­ter how hard I tried, all I could see was the image of my favourite break­fast dish, the South Indi­an Masala dosa. For the first time, I real­ized how fond I was of masala dosa. It was almost an obses­sion and I fought hard against it, try­ing to get rid of the image.

Baba­ji walked upto me, tapped me on the shoul­der and asked,”So what are you med­i­tat­ing on?” “The Ajna chakra.” “Yes? And it is shaped like a masala dosa?” He said, and start­ed laugh­ing.

“Please Baba­ji,” I said,” I know that you know all that is hap­pen­ing in my mind, but don’t laugh. Please help me out.”

“Sor­ry,” said Baba­ji. “I won’t laugh. Tomor­row, we will go to Rishikesh and I will help you get rid of the obses­sion. The first step is to eat masala dosa to your heart’s con­tent. The Madras cafe at Rishikesh has excel­lent masala dosas. I will get you as much as you want and then you shall be free of this obses­sion. The tantric dic­tum, “Yogo bhoga yathae” is based on the fact that some­times, you can­not get rid of an obses­sion with­out indulging it. So relax and try again.”

I was sur­prised that even the thought that I was going to have my fill of masala dosa the next day, erased the image that had inter­rupt­ed my kriya and I could eas­i­ly com­plete my exer­cise.

On the sec­ond day after our arrival at the cave(Mauni Baba’s cave), Baba­ji gave me twen­ty rupees and asked me to go to Madras cafe and eat masala dosa. “Eat as much as you can,” He said “And sat­is­fy your­self ful­ly”.

I crossed the riv­er by boat and made my way to the Madras cafe, which I had dis­cov­ered dur­ing my last vis­it, and ordered a masala dosa. I rel­ished every bite, ordered anoth­er, and fin­ished that as well, fol­lowed by a cup of cof­fee. I burped loud­ly and got out of the restau­rant. Nev­er again did I have any spe­cial attrac­tion for masala dosa. The obses­sion was com­plete­ly erased. I do eat masala dosa occa­sion­al­ly even now, but am no longer obsessed with it.

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