[Velayuthampalayam]
Village in the state of Tamil Nadu, India.
Many years ago, I was teaching programs in small towns and villages of Tamil Nadu. These were wonderful times, as I dealt with people who had a certain level of innocence and fire within them. We came to a place called Velayuthampalayam. People said, “You must come to the temple on the hill.” I told them, “There is no bald hill in Tamil Nadu – every hill has a little temple. Let’s leave it.” Then one day, they told me there is a cave where some Jina or Jain saints stayed, about two thousand five hundred years ago. Now I got interested. Considering the time period, they could have been direct disciples of Mahavir.
This is the nature of yoga, the nature of creation, and the nature of what we refer to as Shiva – still but tremendously vibrant.
We climbed up the hill and came to a place where a narrow walkway led to a cave. The local king provided them with beds that were carved out of the rock, in the form of a flat space and a small pillow made of rock. I sat on one of these beds, and even after centuries, it was as alive as if they had been there the day before. The place was not well-kept – the local youth used it to hang out and drink. It was littered with broken bottles and garbage, and the rocks were covered with the initials of who was in love with whom. We cleaned up the place and decided to spend the night there. It was a phenomenal night out there – that was the kind of footprint they had left. They had no intention of leaving a footprint, but wherever they sat and stood, it naturally happened, because they had become like that within themselves
▵ The Power of Stillness (Isha)