Celebrations and Bitter Herbs

 Celebrations and Bitter Herbs

Friday, October 15^th

Today it is the sadhu's birthday and Prema and I set off at 8:00am to surprise him with gifts that we had purchased. Two metal mugs, a pair of tongs (used to lift hot pots from the camping stove), a box of coconut and caramel sweets, cashews, almonds, apricots, raisins and bread. En-route we stopped at the German Bakery and purchased a coffee roll, sandwiches and powered milk for chai.

We arrived at his home on the river bank to find that he was not there. A woman who spoke no English received us and using sign language, indicated that he would soon return. She had placed all of his belong in the entryway and was busy cleaning the tiny hut.

Prema and I climbed down to the outcrop of rocks at the bottom of the stairs where we waited for hthe sadhu to come. He arrived within a very short time and we sat there on the rocks and ate our picnic of sandwiches. The Sadhu was extremely pleased to see us and had anticipated our visit. He was he said, making preparations to travel to a neighboring state that was the home of the woman visiting him.

She had traveled overnight by train to arrive in Rishikesh at 4:30am this morning. On arriving she went to Trivini Ghat on the banks of the river to bathe and then walked two hours to arrive at his home.

The Sadhu informed us that he had instructed this woman to arrange for a people in her community to pool their resources and sponsor a lunch, providing food for the poor and the disabled. He said that he watched with despair as people vainly worshiped idols and left offerings for the gods, whilst many starved. “Rather then feed the idols, feed the hungry and in them, witness god eating. We are all aspects of the divine and we must honor this in ourselves and others.” With these words, He had managed to galvanize the people of this town into action.

He spoke of his home town of Calcutta, and compared it to the densely populated cities of Tokyo and Shanghai which he had visited in his former life. I do not yet know his story, but he has promised to will share it with me one day. I am left wondering who is this man, who is so willing to suffer the austerities of renunciation, in his quest to know god. It is a concept that is largely alien to us in the West.

We moved our celebration to the hut where the sadhu prepared coffee for us in the shinny new mugs. We lit a candle and cut the cinnamon roll into four equal pieces to share amongst us. This was followed by the rich homemade sweets and I was left feeling slightly nauseous. I had eaten too many sweets. As we ate the sadhu told us the story of a very special type of deer in India that is born with a pouch in its navel. When it reaches maturity, the pouch releases a particular odor. Smelling this, the deer begins to search every where, trying to find the origin of this smell, not knowing that he is the source of it. The sadhu then liked this to our search for god. “We seek god everywhere outside of ourselves, failing to realize that the key to god lies within us.”

He is a man possessed of a great deal of wisdom that is delivered in the form of stories.  He also shared the following story. “ During the time of the second world war, Germany invaded Austria, then called Prussia. In an attempt to escape imprisonment, a magician had sought refuge at a convent, where he lived amongst the nuns. Each day he observed them laboring in service to God. Some composed music, others were translated the bible, and still others were wrote beautiful poems in reverence to God. He observed this and thought. These sisters are all doing work for God, but what can I do, I a lowly magician.

And so this being all that he could do, he decided to go to the vestry and perform magic for the Virgin Mary. Two days later the nuns noticed that he was missing and decided to look for him. They found him standing before the Virgin Mary performing magic and gasped when they saw that she was wiping the sweat from his brow. So immersed had he become in his devotion to the mother, that he had he had dissolved into nothingness, becoming one with her.”

This is the true quest of the sadhu, to become one with God. “Joy he said, knows nothing other than itself. “People waste their lives seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Yet, each is a mirror image of the other. When the pleasure has ceased, then we know the pain of wanting. And pain must eventually be rewarded with pleasure.” His advice to us was to ”seek only joy, as it has neither beginning nor cessation.

We departed with the promise to visit again when he returned from his trip. I am simply astounded by the simplicity and austerity of his life. It is a path that demands absolute faith. He is completely reliant on the good will of others, and it comes in the form of food and clothing provided by those who regard him as a man of great wisdom. They petition him to pray for them in return for the small gifts that that offer.

There is inherent in this tradition, an understanding of reciprocity, that allows for men like the Sadhu to peruse the completely spiritual life. The community support them as it is understand that their probity, and commitment to prayer and meditation serves them all. It is the sort of symbiotic relationship that is so uniquely a part of India, and rarely modeled in the West.

Lunch today was a bitter brew. The vegetable that was served up resembled zucchini, but had the bitter taste of aloe Vera. I only discovered after I had eaten the first fork full. At first I thought to throw it away, but I decided to eat all. I did not want to be wasteful, and I saw in my desire to avoid the bitterness , a pattern that repeats itself in my life. In variably, I reject those experiences that I consider unpalatable, or too hard to digest and accept only those that I consider pleasurable. With the sadhu's words still ringing in my mind, I ate every bitter morsel of it.

My day had been filled with both the bitter the sweet. One I welcomed whilst the other I sought to avoid. Life is always delivering both the bitter and the sweet and I am learning to digest it all. Not to do so is to invite illness and discontentment. In many ways India is the perfect depiction of these contrasts.

Life can be harsh here, and extreme poverty is evidenced everywhere. Many of the impoverished are little more than indentured servants, trapped in a perpetual cycle of poverty and deprivation. I can no more seek to change this, than I can change the lives of those who continue to languish in homelessness, poverty, and despair, in New Orleans. Nearly five years after Katrina, people of the 9^th Ward remain displaced and disenfranchised.

The knot of time must inevitably un-ravel itself. Change comes of its own volition. I see this demonstrated in the Gulabi Gangs of India. Armies of women from the lowest caste (the Untouchables) who are demanding equal rights under the law and an education for their children. They march into local government offices, dressed in pink sari's brandishing bosh sticks, demanding protection against spousal abuse and improvements to the local amenities.

They are tearing down the pillars of tradition and oppression that have stood for millennium. Their story leaves me with a sense of hope.  But, for now I must embrace India wholly. Woven into her rich and ancient tapestry, is both the beautiful and the profane;to remove one thread, would be to tear a hole in her fabric. She is the mistress of spice. Purveyor of the sweet, the pungent, the salty, the spicy, the bitter and the sour.