New Year’s found me at an Ayurvedic center in India where I’d booked a three-week detox program. This was my seven-week-retreat tune-up to get the body’s energies flowing better. It was a beautiful, serene setting, with people I trusted. The vaidya, the Ayurvedic doctor, predicted that my concentration would improve, but I didn’t really believe it. The primary intention was a reset for the energies of the body, and I didn’t doubt that.
A profound dream-reality experience
The days were leisurely, and practice was steady. Even when the detox was intense, practice remained a priority as well as a welcome anchor, and I could feel it deepening. Then came one of those dreams — the kind where dream and reality seem to merge, and feeling and insights stay vivid and nourishing for years. The details are not to be shared, but I can say that I had never before felt love and trust like that. And even in the dream itself, that love and trust became fuel for a meditation that was expansive, free, and deep. It was profound, moving, humbling, and inspiring.
Devotion arising spontaneously through music
During the stay, there was a quiet but clear sense that if a guitar were put in my hands, a devotional song would emerge. The thought rose and fell away several times. And then one day, out of the blue, someone asked if I’d like to borrow her guitar. Of course! Within an hour, a devotional song effortlessly took form. Over the next days I played it again and again and again, refining it, feeling the resonance in the heart and body. The music reliably and effortless took me into deep stillness. It still does.
I’ve hesitated to share the devotional here, as we were discouraged from creating or sharing our own versions of it. But after careful consideration, it’s a clear decision to offer it. This version feels like a personal translation. It’s not presented in a traditional way, and it’s infused with a heart-energy that no lineage or form can lay exclusive claim to.
It reminds me of when first singing Taizé chants some twenty years ago. My mind caught uncomfortably on words like Deus, God, Domine. I contemplated if it was in integrity to sing these words when I didn’t believe in a god. Then, one day, it became crystal clear: what I was connecting to wasn’t the language, but beauty itself. That same sense of beauty, of purity of the heart, infuses Oh Hreem. Words fall away. What remains is love and devotion.
It’s very much a ‘field recording’. The sound quality is poor, the guitar very basic. Yet it captures the openness of heart of that moment in time, with the crickets of the Indian night singing along.
As the month ends, I prepare to leave India for a seven-week silent retreat at the Forest Refuge in Barre, Massachusetts. The vaidya was right — my concentration is definitely stronger, and the detox has been an unexpectedly strong preparation for the seven-week retreat.
These last eight weeks have been incredibly heart-opening. I’ve never been homesick in my life, but I just might be homesick for India.
Om Hreem (devotional) — Listen with earbuds for best experience
24 January 2025 — Chowdapalle, India
Stops since the last entry: Madanapalle, India → Chowdapalle, India