Beka’s Indian diary part III

March 6th, 2007

Beka Card continues her diary from retreat in India…
Read Part I
Read Part II

Gifts to humanity
From Tiruvanamalai, I travelled with two others to the central Indian state of Maharashtra. An overnight train journey in India can be fun and integrating as often the Indian people want to talk to you and share their food. It’s a perfect insight into Indian culture.

Maharashtra is one of the most underdeveloped states in India and within it can be found a community called Anandwan. The community was started some 60 years ago by a man named Baba Amte. Baba was a follower and friend of Ghandi. He one day came across a man with leprosy who was in such a terrible state that Baba found it hard to stop thinking about it. He went back to the man and was compelled to help him. He took the man in, so to speak, and began giving him medical treatment and dressing his wounds.

Soon, Baba found some land to go and start living on as a community (just as Ghandi himself did). He took his wife and the man there and, with almost no money, began building homes and growing food. They soon became self-sufficient as others joined the community. When Baba asked them what the community should be called they said, ‘Anandwan’ meaning ‘forest of bliss’.

I had the great honor of meeting with Baba Amte whilst I was at Anandwan. He is bed-ridden now but there is a rare strength in him that is hard not to feel. He expressed heart-felt appreciation not only for the help our group (which I will speak about later) but the fact that we were meditating. He felt it was a truly worthwhile thing to do – to give attention to the inner-world. His actual words were, ‘Meditation is a gift to humanity. It is not a movement towards greatness, it is a movement towards goodness.’

I felt humbled by this man who, despite never having done any meditation, could not only see the benefit of it but also seemed to not need to do it – as if he had somehow benefited from it already.

It occurs to me that Baba had given up an awful lot in his life in order to carry out the immense task that lay ahead. I began to see that I myself and indeed the group I was with had also given up, quite naturally, many of the wordly ‘pleasures’ we were so accustomed to in order to be at Anandwan. It was during this period that I happened to read somethng on self-restraint/brahmacharya in Ghandi’s autobiography:

‘I pondered over brahmacharya and its implications, and my convictions took deep root. I discussed it with my co-workers. I had not realised then how indispensable it was for self-realisation, but I clearly saw that one aspiring to serve humanity with his whole soul
could not do without it. It was borne in upon me that I should have more and more occasions for service of the kind I was rendering and that I should find myself unequal to my task if I were engaged in the pleasures of (family) life…’

I realised whilst reading these words that I had not craved for anything during my time at Anandwan – on the contrary, I couldn’t even imagine being in any other mode where I would be wanting or thinking about anything other than what was necessary. I found that a simplicity of life is actually rewarding and I saw this simplicity manifested as beauty in the eyes of Baba Amte that day I met him in his bedroom in the heart of the community he himself had created.

Now, years on, the community is thriving. There are around 2,000 people at that particular site and it is predominently a place for people with leprosy – where they can receive treatment/be cured and also learn skills, become educated and then be given employment within the community. This, then, is an empowerment for these otherwise socially discarded (by wives, husbands, children and friends) people.

Leprosy is a disease that destroys the nervous system. It usually starts on the back (so it won’t be noticed in it’s early stages) where the pigmentation of skin is damaged. Then the extremeties (hands and feet) begin to be effected. If someone with the disease picks up something hot they carry on holding it as they don’t feel the pain. Thus, injury occurs. This injury will often become infected and then won’t heal due to lack of immunity in the system. Bones degenerate and often fingers and toes fall off. This is why many people in the advanced stages have limbs missing.

Leprosy can be cured after the first treatment but the patient needs to continue the treatment for a year under close observation. This is why Anandwan is such a wonderful resource – it encourages people to stay, so they can be fully cured. If people don’t stay for the treatment there is a high chance that they will continue to get worse due to open wounds not being dressed. Every morning there, between six and 10 people go to the hospital to get their wounds dressed and afterwards go out to the fields, workshops and factories to work. This alone is humbling to observe.

Aside from people with Leprosy, there are also people at Anandwan with other illnesses and disabilities. There is a school for deaf and blind children. I had the honor of spending some time with these children who really were a joy to be with.

Anandwan has a few sister and brother communities. One of these is called Somnath. It is the rural part of the community where they grow their food – rice, grains, vegetables and fruit. This is where we went to do a meditation retreat before starting the work retreat at Anandwan. It is a beautiful example of Indian rural life with its rice paddies, grass huts and wildlife to enjoy.

I was asked to teach yoga each day at 6.15 a.m. I have taught yoga before on retreats and found it a very beneficial and deepening experience. For the most part, this is due to the fact that, other than when you are actually teaching, you are in complete silence. This makes the whole proccess more spacious. It allows for anything that is arising, perhaps from the teachings, to be reflected upon and then to manifest in the form of asana. Thus, it becomes a very immediate and authentic forum for sharing one’s experience.

The feedback also confirmed this; people spoke to me of how the yoga class really helped them with their meditation and actually enhanced the retreat experience. This kind of feedback is so inspiring to hear and gives me the juice to continue on this path that I am forever surrendering to. Being open and allowing what is there to come through seems to be one of the key aspects not only to teaching, but the whole yogic/life experience. On retreat, this can feel magical – a complete, beginningless and endless flow of energy moving between dharma teacher, yoga teacher and retreatants so that one sees that we are really all the same energy, all teachers, all students, all one.

Listening to the background music
Every afternoon we were read some text by the sage Kabhir who would sing his teachings in Varanasi some 400 years ago. He spoke many times of not having faith in any religion but feeling that what really matters is the heart. Certainly one of the most beautiful things that was read to us during the week was the line, ‘Love is the path’. Amongst many other Sufi-like descriptions he spoke of the ‘music without the instrument’ and listening carefully to hear the ‘background sound’ that is always there. This struck a chord (!) in me and in particular in my asana practice – we really do need to listen carefully (use our awareness) to tune into the frequency that is more stable, more reliable and that is always there – it’s just that it gets forgotten and lost due to busyness in one’s life and mind.

Somehow, in my own practice I find that a sense of Trust is being built up. After a number of experiences of feeling or realising that there is something greater than me and my mind that is always present and steady. More and more when things are challenging or even simply when I get on the mat, I know now that what I need to do is step out of the way of myself in order to listen, be open and allow the background sound to be heard so that it is no longer just background sound.

A poem I would like to share…

Stumbling through the woods
Lost and confused,
I fall to my knees,
Exhausted.

In the very moment
Of giving up completely,
I hear you;
Your music is the wind
Blowing gently through the trees
And reminds me
Of a tune
I once played.

Who’s helping who?
After the retreat at Somnath, we travelled back to Anandwan where a three-week work retreat took place. The retreat is also organised by Sangha Seva and I feel it is the richest example of Dharma as service that I have experienced thus far.

As the reader may have gathered, there are many fairly shocking sights involved with leprosy. Just seeing people who have limbs missing can be difficult. Why? Perhaps it is fear – of the unknown, of death. It makes us feel uncomfortable. We are always happy and comfortable all the time we are in situations we are familiar with or where we feel we have control. We like to be around ‘beautiful’ things. One of the doctors and Anandwan said that physiotherapists didn’t want to come to Anandwan because it’s not ‘beautiful’. I replied (with my own enquiry beginning), ‘It depends what you mean by beautiful.’

Our time at Anandwan was taken up by various working activities. Some people went to work in the fields, some in the plant nursery, some in the school for deaf and blind children, others worked with the old people, giving them massage and a few people got up at 5.30 to dress wounds from 6 – 10am non-stop each morning.

The first week I chose to work in the plant nursery and with the children, both of which were a joy. The second week I prepared myself for physiotherapy which I was really inspired to do. However, during the course of my stay at Anandwan, I came across a puppy who was at the edge of his life. This meant that my time was taken up by this unexpected situation. Indeed, this was what became my ‘work’, my practice. The puppy was my patient.

He was completely infested with lice and lice eggs, was so weak and, above all, was completely alone – abandoned by everyone and totally unsupported. Suffering alone in this world, not knowing what it is to be loved is something I have always found heart-breaking and in a country like India it is common to come across animals and people in this situation. I came round a corner one day and found a man throwing stones at the puppy. My anger did not take hold - I gently but firmly told the man to stop, that there was no need for this. He had never thought of any other way of being, it was as simple as that.

It baffled me for a while that in a place such as Anandwan, there could be this type of discrimmination - that in a place where people who have been socially discarded are given support in every way possible they could still be so stuck in the cultural conditioning of hierarchy. I saw that all around me people had support and that this poor animal did not. There was no decision to be made – it was my duty to help.

I had never been able – practically or emotionally – to do anything like this before but now I knew it was possible. I picked him up and took him to the nearest vet. I later discovered that what the vet had given me for him was of no use whatsoever. This is also often the case in this under-developed country. I began treating him anyway and feeding him twice a day. Soon, a local man from the village saw what I was doing and allowed the puppy to stay on his veranda.

One morning I went to see him and found him with blood all over his head – he had been attacked by another dog. He was so weak at this point I wondered whether it was worth continuing. It was too much to see such suffering. The local man who he was staying with was the one who really gave me the positivity to carry on. He seemed to never doubt that the puppy would be ok.

After realising the treatments were having no effect I decided to treat the animal in the same way that we treat ourselves for this condition. A friend and I shampooed him and the lice immediately and finally began to die. However, during the shampooing we found a more serious problem – the puppy had a hole the size of a penny in the side of his neck and inside were maggots eating his flesh. It was not only horror that we felt but also despair – as if the animal hadn’t been through enough already, now this.

We took him to the doctor at the leprosy hospital – a kind and committed person. He told us to bring him in the next day. His words were, ‘We are all God’s children.’

I was told to bring the puppy into the men’s ward where there were many sick patients. So, in true Inidan style, the puppy was treated there and then on the floor next to a leprosy patient. Another hole was found with maggots inside. Over the next few days myself and a couple of friends continued treating him – pulling out the maggots one by one. The puppy’s eyes were also infected and he still seemed weak. Anti-biotics were adminstered.

By the time I left Anandwan I felt that the puppy had had everything done for him that he could have possibly had done. There was a sense of resolution – if he was going to die he would die knowing what love is and this was, above everything, the best I could have done. No matter who or what any living being is we all deserve to know what love is before we die.

Life transforming
This whole experience was of course strong but also transformational for me. I felt the suffering of that being more than I had felt the suffering of any other being. Why it happened in that particular place and at that time I cannot say, but I really see that puppy as a true gift. His vulnerability reflected my own, indeed, all the vulnerabilty of all beings.

The interaction I had with him took me to such a deep place that a tsunami of tears came, which I have never really experienced in such an intense way. The deep and fragile place I went to allowed something to shatter inside me, for walls to crumble. It took me closer to myself and, in so doing, closer to life. I felt an intimacy with people I had never experienced before. I no longer saw any discrimination between beings. We are all one family, brothers and sisters in the same richness called life. All here to support one another in any way we can. As soon as the walls of separation come down we can begin to see this.

As an example of this, I observed a change in the attitude of the local people towards the puppy. As previously mentioned, he had been considered a lost cause – not worth saving, only worth throwing stones at. For them, seeing a foreigner walking along with a sick puppy was laughable, confusing or sometimes even to be sneered at. But when they saw the continuation of care (that it wasn’t just a one-off thing) then they began to change there way. In a similar way, the staff at the hospital began giving some of the patients more attention and care when they saw some of the group doing this.

Love is the duty
The beauty of doing this type of retreat is that you benefit from having the support of the group and this support, I’ve realised, is vital in this extraordinary life. Inevitably, this kind of situation brings with it a wealth of experiences. It is a rich source for learning about ourselves, how we react to things, how real our fear is, what our limits are, what is it to give? What is it to receive? Can it be one and the same thing? Also, there may be questions like, what is the heart that is open? What does love mean?

Possibly the most prominent aspect of my experience at Anandwan and with the puppy was concerned with love and duty. It was definately a compulsion to take the puppy and try to help it. There wasn’t even a question whether or not to do it. It was my duty. Where the duty came from, when I really looked, was from a heart that was torn open by the suffering I saw and the love I felt because of it. It seems, therefore, that love is the true meaning of duty.

Truth/satya
There is again the element of Truth/Satya which played a big part in this experience – both Baba’s, the group’s and my own; the day he found the man with leprosy, something in him knew he had to help. He saw that what really mattered was to make this man well. In that moment, within that experience, was truth.

I guess in the same way, then, my experience with the puppy was also, on some level, an expression of truth.

Ghandi wrote:

‘Truth is like a vast tree, which yields more and more fruit, the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mine of Truth, the richer the discovery of the gems buried there, in the shape of openings for an even greater variety of service.’

Unfortunately, the puppy died on New Year’s Eve. May his soul be forever peaceful and free from suffering, may he eternally know Love.

May all beings allow the walls of separation to fall
May all beings know what love is
May all beings be free from suffering

Om shanti

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