When I recall our college days, particularly the hostel rooms, it takes me on a nostalgic trip. The days were full of fun and frolic, books scattered around, beer and rum bottles lying randomly, with cigarette butts strewn rather carelessly. The rooms were full of stench.
Most of the guys (even the studious ones) would ogle (there was no Google back then) at the girls. Posters of Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin populated the grubby and unwashed walls of the rooms. The politically inclined would paste large printed pictures of Che Guevara, Marx and Lenin among others, professing their ideological baggage unequivocally.
Some rooms were relatively cleaner and tidily kept. In our hail-fellow-well-met attitude we ended up ostracising such students. But they were our gurus during examination times, much to their chagrin. A close friend had put up a poster which read:“Cleanliness is the sign of a sick mind.” His room was particularly unclean and stained.
Cleanliness is both the abstract state of being clean and free from dirt, and the process of achieving and maintaining that state.
“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely,” writes P J O’Rourke.
However, to my mind cleanliness and spirituality are intertwined like Siamese twins. The human mind normally slips into a state of meditation and involuntarily has a spiritual experience at places which are relatively clean. Whenever I visited RajGhat I experienced enormous peace and tranquillity. Cleanliness is positively next to godliness.
India has today embarked upon a major cleanliness drive where villages, bijou towns, cities, rivers, ghats at Prayag and Varanasi among others, places of historical importance and important religious places are being refurbished. This is indeed a positive statement made by the government and NGOs involved in the project. Gurudwaras are sacred places, which are kept extremely clean by the devout.
A gurdwara (gurdwārā; meaning ‘door to the Guru’) is the place of worship for Sikhs. People from all faiths and those who do not profess any faith too, are welcomed in Sikh gurdwaras. To me gurudwaras are among the cleanest spots in the country and it is a lesson in humility to observe how the devout keep it absolutely spick and span.
The mind gravitates to the pristine spirit and listens to the soulful and mellifluous Gurubani being sung at a gurudwara. The human mind, which is normally cannonaded by innumerable thoughts, gradually settles down and is at rest and peace.
It would be interesting to mention that Sri Harmandir Sahib and Sri Darbar Sahib are informally referred to as the Golden Temple. Guru Ram Das constructed the Golden Temple in 1577. He was the fourth guru in the pantheon of Sikh gurus.
A Sikh friend mentioned that a gurudwara is a community asset and serviced by unpaid and committed volunteers, those who perform Seva from the kitchen to the shoe rack. Yet another friend (Jamuna Rangachari) had an enthralling spiritual experience during her visit to the Golden Temple. Further, she seamlessly connected with compassion and cleanliness at the holy shrine.
Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace and non-violence, championed the cause of truth only as he could. His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth like his life, documents every aspect where he does not dissemble anything. Such was the moral courage of the man.
During my days of quotidian drinking, I consumed almost two bottles of liquor and several packets of cigarettes a day. In that state of arrogance and hubris, I walked into the holy precincts of the Golden Temple carrying a packet of Wills Navy Cut. This could be akin to committing adultery. The act was certainly sacrilegious. For perpetrating this sinful act, I could have been trolled and hounded on social media. Today, I regret the mistake committed and apologise sincerely from the depths of my heart.
I am sober today because of my Guru H H Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and have given up drinking, smoking and eating non-vegetarian fare. The twisted personality in me is making amends and I hope those afflicted with these vices seek the grace of a guru to extricate themselves from this cesspool of negativity and embark upon the voyage to discover the quintessential quality of cleanliness and spirituality.
-Taken from my book,’Make the Mind Mt.Kailasa’ published by The Write Place (2017)
ravivalluri 