Yoga, Sannyasa e vida de Ashram: entrelaçando ritmo, temporalidade e aprendizagem no contexto de práticas do Ashram Casa do Guru

Abstract

Our starting point is the interlacing of three conceptual keys (Yoga, Sannyasa and Ashram) that comes out from a personal path of belonging. We do so in order to bring to the surface a context of relationships in which a particular lifestyle is lived, emphasizing on its collective aspect and on its immanent time, temporality and rhythm. Yoga evokes a sense of perception and practical interaction with life, where attentive, conscious and holistic relationships are valued; Sannyasa is an ancient tradition that, having its cradle in Indian ancestry, is anchored in the institution of renunciation and, as ancestral, the Guru-disciple tradition; Ashram is a territory where Yoga and the expression of Sannyasa are embodied, constituting a space where a rhythm of interaction with nature and its cycles is imperative, where the technical and ritualistic aspects of Yoga are expressed and where, finally, a lifestlyle is celebrated, highlighting values such as work, discipline, moderation, regularity, movement and contemplation. This work is an ethnography based in an Ashram called Casa do Guru. This space is in the rural area of the city of Moeda, sixty kilometers away from the capital of Minas Gerais. This Ashram, as the materialized intersection between these traditions itself, is an expression of the School – in this term, understood as a body of knowledge perpetuated between generations as opposed to a physical institution - inaugurated by Swami Satyananda Saraswati in the 1960s in India. Our fieldwork, based on a perspective of a shared guidance and collective construction, mixes scenes that are typical of my involvement and my learning at Casa do Guru - as an Ashram resident - with others that are evoked from networks of relationships that are also expressed within tha Ashram’s history. What we propose from our text is to shed light on a constant process of identity negotiation and what exactly this process bequeathes us to think about the ways in which we have built our relationships with time. In doing so, we finally reflect on how we have built our own temporalities and subjectivities in a modernity that appears diffuse, fleeting and dispersed. Finally, the notion of rhythm that permeates the text is also a final and constant provocation and an invitation to keep an eye on the synchronicities and dispersions of our own rhythms in the face of the times that guide us.