I lived in Anand Ashram Ubud for 3 days. It’s a place for people who are interested in Yoga, meditation and mantra chanting. Our daily schedule contains tree mantra chantings before the three meals, morning yoga, morning meditation, afternoon meditation and two fire purification ceremonies separately at dawn and dusk. The meals are vegetarian-friendly.

Ashram means a place of religious retreat, and ananda means extreme happiness. Anand Ashram doesn’t refer to a specific region. Instead, they propose the vision of One Earth, One Sky, One Humankind. Small flags of different countries are hung up on the ceiling, and symbols of different religions such as Chinese Taoism are drawn on the wall.

I read the English book aside my bed. It was written by Anand Krishna the founder of the ashram. Mr. Krishna is Indonesian, so his English writing is not very native-like but comprehensible enough to convey his thoughts. Our two meditation tutors’ English are also fluent with Indonesian accents.

Indonesians usually take off their shoes before entering their rooms and sacred places. I am not accustomed to it. My bare feet feel cold when they touch the floor. And I also dislike that my dirty feet touch the bedsheet. So I have set aside a pair of clean sneakers.

“Om shantih shantih shantih!” This is the most frequent sentence in the daily chantings, meditations and yogas. The mantra is in Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. It means “Peace! Peace! Peace!” Many mantras used in Chinese Buddhism are also translated from Sanskrit.

During the three days, it’s strange that all inhabitants are female except me. A meditation tutor said that women are talented in spiritual enlightenment.

I am not an expert in yoga or meditation. Our tutor said western yoga had put too much focus on physical gestures, which is only the first layer of true yoga philosophy. The other layers include energy, mind, feeling and spirit. And he said that meditation is to go beyond the mind.

One meditation class impressed me a lot. In that class, we inhaled through the nose and exhaled through the mouth. Our breath was required to be short and quick and strong to shake off our depressed passive energy. We repeated the breathing practice for seven minutes. After the practice, I couldn't help crying and I felt that a strong energy echoed inside my abdomen. It’s amazing.