What is Sadhana?
“Sadhana” — the word had always seemed to belong elsewhere. To ochre robes drying in mountain sunlight. To caves, silences, withdrawn faces. To men who seemed to have stepped outside ordinary wanting. Certainly not to indecision. Not to trunks being packed, departures delayed by thought. The afternoon before leaving Almora Ashram for Chandigarh returns to me now less as memory than as atmosphere. I had arrived there months earlier in the middle of what, at that age, I could only have called wandering — moving from place to place without any clear idea of what I was looking for. In those months I had drifted through towns without staying long anywhere. A few days here, a week there. Cheap lodges near bus stands, long journeys without conversation, tea at railway stalls that all began to taste the same after a while. I was not searching for anything I could have named clearly then. I only knew I could not yet return to the life I had left behind. Somewhere during those ...