Braja Sorensen is an Australian writer and poet. About 20 years ago, she moved to lived in the village of Mayapur in the eastern state of Bengal in India. Mayapur is the village which has been one of the most influential centres for the Vaishnavite tradition in Hinduism for more than 500 years. It is also the headquarters of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, more commonly known by the acronym ISKON. In this episode she talks about why she chose the spiritual life and what that decision has meant for her. She is the author of many books including Living with the Bhagvad Gita. You can listen to the podcast with Braja here. (Editor’s note: There is a slight echo in a small portion of this conversation due to the shaky internet and voice connection from the village of Mayapur.)
- What made you leave Australia and move to a tiny village in eastern India? What does choosing a spiritual life really mean?
It was the ’80s when I took my first step on the journey that would become the rest of my life. In those days I might have spontaneously admitted, if asked, that India was for washed-up hippies, yoga was boring, and meditation was eye-rolling. (Now that I think of it, I still might say the same…)
I set out across Australia from my home town of Adelaide in search of what could only be explained as life. Any other reason came after the fact: I didn’t know enough of what was available or what ailed me to be able to say what it was I needed or sought, only that it had to be something of substance. I find myself now, mid-fifties, to be more interested in the journeys of the internal landscape more than geographical locations. So it was, then, that in my youth I sought not an adventure but a purpose…
I didn’t sell the Ferrari, or travel to three different countries searching blindly for food, love, or dubious mystical processes that claimed spiritual sanctuary. I was in my thirties, and after having worked in television, tourism, and publishing in Australia, London, and the U.S., I thought life had something more to offer than it had served up so far. The first moment I arrived in India at the end of 1992, it kicked my senses awake, laughed its way into my heart, and delighted me with its intoxicating array of colour, tradition, celebrations, festivity … life. I was in the land where transcendence had been living for thousands of years as everyone’s next door neighbour. Everything about my surroundings drove me towards introspection, depth, and the beginnings of peace. Even the weather seemed to conspire against the possibility that I might abandon this decision and take flight back to the familiarity of my former life. Through the drenching rains of the monsoon, with its steady drumming like background music to my ears, I simply became part of the landscape. The thing is, I belong to India. The first time I smelled it all those years ago in Delhi airport at 1 a.m. on a cold December morning, a torrid cocktail of scents that seeped in through my pores; the first time I slid into the back seat of an Ambassador taxi, booked into a true-blue Indian dharamshala, sipped chai from a roadside stall, got gut-wrenching dysentery, cried in temples and laughed with locals, put my back out on a rickshaw ride from hell, slid into the purifying waters of a holy pond at Govardhan Hill, and bent down and touched the soft, powder-like dust on the ground of the spiritual centre of the universe, Radha-kunda — all these things claimed me and made me their own. Those holy towns left images in my memory; as I paid my obeisance in temples, the ancient floors left impressions in my body that leaked into my heart and remain there still. Basically, I let India have its way with me; I had found what would write my life’s story.
I came back to India not as a visitor, but to live here, in 1997 — something that would have given the twenty-something girl I had been a good laugh. I have practiced Iyengar Yoga since my thirties — something that girl might have flipped off with ‘well, you are getting older…’. And I have been a practitioner of mantra meditation for three decades — something the girl back then was looking for and had already but just didn’t realise it…
In 2000 I met my husband, a Dane who at the time lived in Sweden; I was back in Australia for a year; neither of us wanted to stay where we were. Both of us had been to India several times, so we decided we’d try living there. We tried, and it became home; almost 20 years later, we’re not going anywhere.
2. Tell us about your life in Mayapur. What is your daily routine? How has it changed you as a person?
Life changes everyone, but living in a different country, a radically different culture, is of course going to change one. Or not. But if it doesn’t change you, if there is no adapting to the environment, then that environment will spit you out in due course. I see many foreigners coming to India who are organised, efficient, and are ‘get things done’ kinda people. They fail :) Seriously, until you realise India functions on a different paradigm than the west, you’ll just struggle here. I realised this six months after I’d lived here, and I resolved to simply ‘let it go’, those ideas of how things ‘should’ be done according to my conditioning. You either go with the flow, or you’ll flow right out.
As for Mayapur? Life here is just life; it’s a village that is growing into a city, and I feel more comfortable here than anywhere in the world. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere; I bought my first and only home here, and still live in it. There’s just nothing and nowhere else for me. Routine? We are up before 4 am; that might sound extreme, but it’s kind of natural here…it’s a quiet place, and the days wind down early; 6 pm here feels like 9 pm in the west, so rising early is just natural, it makes sense. I’ve always loved mornings, and in Mayapur, mornings are filled with the sounds of prayer, temple bells singing, chanting…it’s a town whose whole foundation is spiritual life, it’s a holy place, and so its routines are different from city routines. I write books; I make mango pickle at the beginning of summer; I wander along smooth, worn paths in the winter when the gur (jaggery) pots hang from date palms and all the birds are happily drinking at the sugary sap that leaks from the trunks; I go to Calcutta on the train to shop; as the heat rises in April-May, we’ll go to the Ganges for a swim in the late afternoon, and the cooling effect of her waters stays with you long into the night; I photograph nature and intriguing things, which means a lot.
I don’t know if it has ‘changed me as a person’. I think I was always meant to be here, it was always going to be this, so I am the person I am, who I’m meant to be. I didn’t undergo some radical personality change. I feel grounded, like I belong, like these are my roots…that’s possibly the only thing that changed…but again, that was more about finding where I, as a person, belonged…I don’t think I changed, I think I just found my place.
Then, 10 years ago my husband and I had a head-on collision on our way to Calcutta with a 30-tonne Tata truck; we were roadkill, basically…both of us nearly died, I had to be resuscitated in the emergency room, and my husband would have been dead had the ambulance not reached us on time, which in India is a miracle in itself. That incident changed me as a person, but that’s a whole other story.
3. How has living with the Bhagvad Gita transformed your life? What does the Gita mean to you?
I have to admit I’m not really a religious person. The Gita is basically the owners manual for the human body: it explains how the mind, the senses, the whole body works in accordance with the material energy, and how we’re effected by that energy; more importantly, explains the nature of the soul, the purpose of life, and how we fit here. It’s just something I doubt could be absent from my life, this book: it’s the most fundamental yet elaborate spiritual and philosophical text that exists. It’s like manual for the human body, it explains how the mind, the senses, the whole body works in accordance with the material energy, and how we’re effected by that energy; it also, more importantly, explains the nature of the soul, the purpose of life, and how we fit here. It’s just something I doubt could be absent from my life, this book: it’s the most fundamental yet elaborate spiritual and philosophical text that exists.
4. Why do you think, even though humanity has never been richer, more people seem to be unhappy than ever before? Have you found some answers in your journey?
I’m not entirely sure humanity has never been richer. Perhaps there is more awareness of the world as a whole, there is a reach people have in humanitarian terms that wasn’t possible before — Humans of New York, on Facebook, is just one small example. You read those posts on Facebook and hundreds of thousands of people are moved by the simple stories people tell, and they’re simple stories, they have a common appeal, and honestly they’re heartbreaking. I think this feeds the natural humanitarian desires in everyone, but still I don’t see anyone changing, anything really happening: no one knows how to ‘fix’ things. People are unhappier because life is moving at a pace that it never did before; informational technology is filling our minds with details we never knew before; all the gadgets we have are turning the youth into anti-social or over-social creatures we don’t recognise and can’t relate to; drugs, alcohol, and recreational intoxicants are more freely available than before But depression and suicides are increasing, yet no one seems to be able to connect the freedom of availability of all these things that assail us — information, entertainment, gossip sites, intoxicants — with the increasing unhappiness in the world. No one knows who they are what their purpose is, what the world is all about, why they’re here, nothing. Do I have answers? Yes, I have answers. But I don’t speak of them much because frankly I’m tired of people and their wayward opinions, their insistence on having a ‘view’ on everything and a ‘right’ to share it. The answers are there in the Gita, like I said: but how many will listen? How many have their inbuilt prejudices kick in on hearing something about what is considered a ‘religious book’? This is explained in the Gita, actually :) How the mind controls a person, and not the opposite. Learning how the mind and senses function is crucial to getting through life and learning of higher subjects that will satisfy and fulfill you in spiritual terms. But not until you get through the basics. Learning who and what you are when this body is finished. What I’ve learned is, you just got to do it. Don’t be sidetracked by other peoples’ prejudices or opinions, which are nonstop and never, ever helpful. Seriously. When have you ever heard someone’s ‘opinion’ being helpful? :) You see, ‘opinion’ is a judgement or a view that is not necessarily based on fact. So when we understand the difference between opinion and reality, we can begin to separate the wheat from the chaff, kinda thing: opinions mean nothing, and spiritual reality is everything.
~
