Devanāgarī (देवनागरी लिपि)

Salutations to the Supreme state of Being.

Sanskrit scriptures always start with this message, so I figured that's how I'd open this entry. 

This week, a handful of other KPJAYI students and I started taking Sanskrit lessons and studying the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, one of the most ancient and well-known yogic texts around. 

Our teacher's name is Lakshmish and oddly enough, the class takes place in the ladies' changing room at the main shala. Lakshmish writes stuff on a small whiteboard next to the lockers and we gather around him on the floor. He's a Brahmin, so he learned Sanskrit when he was just a kid and had to memorize lots of yogic texts. It's amazing to hear him recite them and I love how the light and dust particles float in through the window and descend on us like microscopic snowflakes. 

I've been trying to learn Sanskrit for a while now, and back home, I looked all over for a teacher. My research led me to the University of Costa Rica, where I managed to track down one of the country's two or three teachers. I sat outside her class for an hour, waiting for her students to finish an exam, and when she was getting ready to go, I burst in and asked if she wanted to teach me. She had a big, round, friendly face and she burst out laughing. 

"Why do you want to learn Sanskrit?" she asked.

"I don't know."

She told me that I'd have to enroll as a student at the university and that she recommended to come to India instead. The courses at the university were just a tiny brushstroke of what is a massive, lifelong field of study, and even if I dedicated the rest of my days to learning Sanskrit, I'd probably never be able to read and understand any of the scriptures. What a bummer!

Anyway, I was impatient at the time, so I looked around for more options but finally, knowing that I'd end up coming back to India eventually, I decided to wait.

And now...years later, here we are, learning Sanskrit inside the ladies' room. 

One of the first things that Lakshmish taught us is the meaning of the word Devanāgarī. 

Devanāgarī is the script used to write Sanskrit and a few other languages, such as Hindi. It means script of the city of the Gods (Deva = God and nāgarī = city) and it's such a beautiful word. 

I found out that Sanskrit was also written using a script called Siddham, which is even older than the script of the city of the Gods. Ever heard of siddhis?

I feel like all of the answers that I've been seeking my whole life are written in Sanskrit. And that it stores a lot of secrets. 

Yesterday we talked about how yogic knowledge used to be passed down only to a select few. It had nothing to do with caste, or education or any of those things. It was a matter of devotion. Yoga gave people lots of powers that could be misused. (I'm guessing they involve levitation and predicting the future and that kind of thing), so gurus had to be very selective when they chose to transfer their knowledge. I guess that's not the case anymore, now that yoga's so commercialized and has been reduced to an asana practice that people equate with aerobics or some other butt-sculpting method. 

Anyway, I'm convinced that all these sages and ancient yogis had it all figured out. And I don't mean that they could stop their own hearts or choose when to leave their bodies, although, apparently, they could. I mean that they understood why we're here and who we really are and what this is all for. Maybe they didn't even care for these questions.  

And it's such a paradox...India is such a paradox. It blows my mind that all this knowledge is stored here, you'd really never guess it when you get off the plane and step into the chaos...This beautiful chaos that I love above all else. 

This is Kushinagar up north, from my last trip here. It's where the Buddha died.