29 November 2005

the king of fruits, not in season

so i dont know how to deal with this with so little internet time and so much flute to practice but a lot has been happpening.

there are some photos and there will be more

some more jamnagar
in the spaceship ashram


today i woke up early with clay and chanoorbhai picked us up and drove us into the wild dry jungle of gujarat to release four snakes he caught (in city apartments, for free) to the wild. there are movies but i dont have time or patience to upload them.

we had thanksgiving with clay and sheila. it was beautiful and lots of singing and meditating and general living it up and then sheila left. clay is still however here and maybe forever.

today a professor referred to mango (mangifera indica) as The King of Fruits. also apparently raw mango is craven by pregnant women. i am learning all this and more, so many medicinal plants, i have pictures i need to correlate names and properties (one of them enhances breast size when applied topically) and then ill post.

also to purify sulfar (gandhavashodana) you buy it from some western chemy lab and then melt it in ghee (1 kg sulfur / 250 g ghee) and then pour it into hot but no longer boiling milk (4 L, over a gheed up cloth screen) and then decant the milk. any physical impurities get caught in the cloth (usually very little) and the weird arsenic and antimony compounds get asborbed in the ghee and milk. rinse with water four times and let dry 1 day and youre good.

to get the sulfur clean enough for ayurveda's demands you must do this 7 times. 1 week. to get it clean enough for internal use (not topical skin cream style) you must do this 100 times. ayurveda does not mess around.

also my flute-playing friends say the bansuri i bought (which my blind respected guruji has never mentioned anything about) is a piece of shit and should be thrown in the lake (in the middle of jamngar). he gave me a pvc flute he made instead. everybody in jamnagar is extremely impressed with denali's flute. i highly suggest you all get one if you want to impress a billion people without buying a large set of gold jewelry.

21 November 2005

SADHYASHUKRAKARA

which translates to "instant semen".

[ new photos of jamnagar and sheila ]


the key takeaway from today's fifty minute sermon on the virtue of cow's milk (details hopefully manifesting below). the basic idea is that semen is the 7th and last dhatu (roughly: tissue structure) to be produced by the body, taking about thirty days on average. but with cow's milk you can get it in two or three days. so you should drink it all the time and then you will be as populous and prosperous as holy india.

also, in the ancient ayurvedic texts (caraka samhita, sushruta samhita, asthanga...) details of positive and negative effects of eight milk are given: cow, buffalo, goat, camel, ass (donkey), sheep, elephant, and, of course, human. these people were and are really, really into milk.

the two vegans in the class and half of me had a pretty hard time of it.

indian philosophy

q: how can i make my mind steady?

a: ... all you can do is to shift the focus of your consciousness beyond the mind.

what i'm learning in plantdrug class

from the whiteboard of professor p.p. sharma (dravyaguna):

definition and scope of
veerya
that, by which the drugs act,
is called veerya,

...

quote from the same:

without drug you cannot maintain your health, you cannot get the hundred year.

16 November 2005

no phone number.

okay. so a little news.

1) i understand the basis philosophy an physiology of ayurveda. it's pretty brilliant and i'll try to have to have it explicated soon.

2) the hostel for international students, while wonderful and social, was too wonderful and social, so i left for a place where i could study better, play the flute more, and cook. so im living in a nice apartment of a new japanese friend and she's leaving to study martial arts so it'll be good and solo and lots of counter space.

3) sheila mcshane arrives tomorrow with entourage and tabla in tow.

what this means is I HAVE NO PHONE NUMBER. i have figured out international calls and theyre 3 points / minute (4 us points / hour) so that's not too bad except i have 2000 us points for the next year and that's supposed to included my boat / flight / astral projection 'home' wherever that may be.

letters can be sent to the same address i imagine. i still go there every day.

love. ankur

14 November 2005

november full moon update


so i negotiated with the camera and the following should work -- some photos of this little city (jamnagar) and some ayurvedic techniques which i will eventually explain.

tentacle.net/~ank/photos/jamnagar

tentacle.net/~ank/photos/panchakarma

tentacle.net/~ank/photos/rasashastra

i'm safe and not quite healthy but it's all part of the process. see attached letter for details.

love, ankur

08 November 2005

contact inflow

contact inflow, valid until first week of february 2006:

i've arrived in india and started classes. everything is insane: india is the amazon gone human. it's very strange.

to send me letters:
ankur shah
#1
international students hostel
gujurat ayurved university
jamnagar
361008
gujurat
india

to call me:
011 91 288 2558260

the time difference being 13.5 hours ahead of california and 10.5 hours ahead of new york.
its a phone in the common room on the second floor of my hexagonal international students hostel, and im on the ground floor. the security guard may or may not answer. so say "1" or "ankurbhai" if you dont want to get into some hindi.

i'll be around between yoga and class (8:30 - 9:30 am) and at lunch time (12:30 - 3:30 pm) and at night (between 8:30-9:30 pm). give or take a few minutes for walking. i try to be in bed by ten but people are so lovely so that never happens. please call me. my mom called me and it was great. try it.

to visit:
jamnagar is in gujarat is in india. the airport here i've learned only accepts air india flights. that could be false knowledge. there is a four hour (hearsay) train from ahmedabad (capital of gujurat, direct flights from singapore) and a 6 hour overnight bus from ahmedabad (180 points = 4 us points). india is more expensive than i remember (kilo of chermioya = 25 points) and the exchange rate is 45:1 (india to us) so still really cheap.
once you're in jamnagar, call me or take an autorickshaw to the Gujarat Ayurved University. pronounce everything with an indian accent and you'll get there fine. i'm in the international students hostel. room #1. you can stay with me if you're male (cholmes) and if you're female (sheila) we'll figure something out.

31 July 2005

contact information summer 2005

i'm living in the river house down in dungeness. near sequim, wa

360 681 0596 at the house, 201 892 4946 gets the cell, if we win.

real mail can go to my mother's house on lost mountain --

83 lost meadow
sequim, wa 98382