But not all religions are faith based.
Felice hummed the mantra she had recently been given as she scrubbed the tile floor with a hand brush. It was her secret, her one true self secret and it was part of the path to happiness. Her special song led the way on the road before her and the work was a joy even when the assignment was cleaning lavatories or putting in long hours at kitchen patrol.
She made good use of roadside distractions. Although initially unfamiliar with open fire cooking, Felice had become an expert chapatis maker, rolling out dough balls into thin crêpes, dropping them into the sizzling hot ghee and, after a precise time bubbling on each side, she held them with wood tongs over the flame to get them to puff out like a balloon. Her sensibility produced a delicate crispness that was extolled by everyone in the ashram including, secretly and in private, the head yogi who grudgingly admitted that nowhere in his enlightened view of the world had he encountered such delicious chapatis.
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Over two hundred meals a day were served in the ashram, but that was Abhyasa, the reason she was there. To quote the Swami Sivananda, “the purpose for which we have come to this place.”Felice marveled at the simple concept, turned it around in her head as she knelt and scrubbed the rough tile scuffed by years, centuries, of similar acolyte
