Awakening at 3 am this morning sent me in to an alternate spin on reality. I vigorously wrote with utter inspiration for 3 ½ hours. When this was complete I lay back down and pulled out The World of Tibetan Buddhism by his Holiness the Dalai Lama. I am currently studying Tibetan Buddhism and of course much of the Dalai Lama’s work due to my interest in Buddhism. Now since I have left on what we all might call a truth seeking quest, I have been confronted many times about my spiritual persuasion. Sometimes the questioning of this matter has the effect of thrusting me in to the oblivion of my mind. Typically I respond with some convoluted answer because in a sense that is the space in which spirituality takes up in my mind. However when I step back and reflect on the essence that it carries truly within me, there is no ambiguity to its potency and no need to define it, for the moment in which I define it, I draw the lines of senseless boundaries. Sometimes I think it would be so great to belong to a box. I mean come on, then you are awarded a name tag and chair to sit and rest, brothers and sisters, a neat outline of the way it is and the way it shall be. Who, in which is human, does not at times desire this manifest reality. To me it seems that the current collective however is moving more towards this indefinable state in which there is the automatic side effect of disillusionment and fear of the unknown, fear of being that negative space when the box has been cut away. Like three year olds again, we sit with our scissors and glue and cut and paste, cut and paste haphazardly creating our ever changing manifestos. This is why we are in a technological era. We cannot go back to the typewriter (despite its nostalgic clicking) or the pen and paper for anymore than fun. Upon serious reflection to our relationship to life, we are revisers of the highest order thus far. As soon as we think we have the correct configuration, our mind turns the corner and unfolds yet another way to view the negative space of our existence. So with my scissors in hand, I read yet another chapter of the Dalai Lama’s wisdom on altruism.
Upon finishing the chapter, I took away one valuable reminder. We are ever so dependent on one another. So right he is of course. There is no denying our most basic need for one another. I reflect back to a time in which I lived for four months on a farm off of the grid in New Mexico. I retreated as much as possible away from the rest of the outside world. I valued so highly my relationship to solitude. In fact in much of my poetry at the time, I even personified solitude to be this romanticized nurturer whose lap was my solace. Upon reflection, this seems so paradoxical to the point of comedic. Even in solitude, we must have others, for if not we will amalgamate some symbol or imaginary friend to take the place of the needed companion. Going back to something more recent in my past, I was daydreaming and reaching a point of lucid wakefulness in which I allowed the thoughts and images to move through me at free will and create their own story. What came to me was an overwhelming desire to hold and comfort children that had nobody to rely on, nobody to listen to them or feel them. Then coming closer to the present I reflected once again, this time on the moment that the little street performing girl came to the edge of the tuk-tuk to put on her show. At this moment, while sitting in meditation, meditating on the interdependency of all human beings, I knew I must start today and end never. I literally felt some sense of a pulsating life force connecting me at this time on a much deeper level to the rest of humanity.
Eager to start, I thought big and wanted no more than a pure experience of connecting to those in need. I wanted to abolish all other touristic desires that would get in the way. I wanted that compassionate experience to wash over me and purify, just as it had in meditation. I decided I was going to an orphanage today. I scrolled the internet to find any in Delhi. I found two and their numbers. Neither place answered but I decided that was of little importance. I would find my way there somehow. I worked my way back down the dirty alleyways, confounded with “buy this miss” and “do you smoke, miss” and any other form of distraction or persuasion. It was like an over-exaggerated blur of human desire being channeled in all of us through the desperation of faces and extended hands. The awareness made me smile. Nobody seemed to want to take me to where I was going or did not know where I was going. Eventually, after being put in the wrong place by a rickshaw driver and not finding my destination on the metro’s wall, I came back up to solid ground. I thought of giving up and just going back to the peaceful mosque of yesterday to contemplate. Then I realized that was bullshit and I remembered my resolve. I stood at the streets edge, watching the passing traffic. A tuk-tuk came to the side of the road. He had kind eyes and a sense of presence about him. He asked me where I was headed. I told him the area of Raj Garden and he asked me what it was I was looking for. I told him the Welfare Home of Children. He said that the home was no longer there but that he knew of two orphanages and that he would take me. I wanted to cry right then, his sense of knowing and helpfulness was all I needed. He asked me as we were driving away what it was that I was doing there. It was like the spiritual persuasion question. I didn’t know how to respond. I just felt the drive. I said simply, “to help”. He kept asking me what kind of children, big or small, showing the sizes with his hands. It turns out that there were two separate orphanages. I didn’t know, I suppose help whoever. I told him to choose. We proceeded over a major highway. We ended up at a light where a man came scooting on his bottom, with no more than a loin cloth on, between the vehicles to beg for money. He was so close to being run over. I squeezed my eyes as my tuk-tuk worked our way around him. We hit another light and a little boy came up selling out-of-date magazines in his hand. I asked him if he went to school and I tapped his hat with a smile. Kubleep, my driver explained to me that his parents were beggars and so that was his destiny as well. Another tiny sheepish girl came to the other side. Her hair was stiff and her face was almost black from all the layers of unwashed days. She lifted her bitty hand and pleaded. I held my eyes to her eyes in place and stroked the top of her head and brushed the side of her face. I took her outstretched hand and squeezed it. Not all of the money in the world could satisfy their embedded craving.
We finally came to the Missionaries of Charity which was started in honor of Mother Theresa. Kubleep said he would wait. I was frustrated. I wanted to spend all day yet I was far away from any place to catch a ride. I took what I could get and went inside. I heard the sound of children in a large room and I watched two women in waiting on a couch. There were Indian women as well as some white women all dressed in Mother Theresa like robes. I waited and waited for what seemed like hours until I saw a women bring out a baby with wide eyes to the two women on the couch. Their faces told me that this was their new baby girl. They oozed love from their pores at the sight of this new blessing. The same lady who had delivered this child to them came over to me and asked me what I needed. Again, I felt confused and small. “I just came to help,” I managed to mutter. All of this build up to find that they were going down for a nap. I needed to come at different hours. I felt a loss, like the anticipation had been for nothing. I only had enough money to pay Kubleep for only so long. I stood and shrugged and walked out.
Kubleep greeted me with a genuine full mouth of teeth. He was so happy to help me because he loved that I wanted to help the children. He told me to pay him whatever I could, but in all reality I knew he had a house wife, three kids and his mother to support. He worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week already. He wanted to continue to show me the city and begged to take me to the Mahatma Gandhi museum even though I told him I did not have lot of money. His spirit was so sweet. It struck me suddenly that he was perhaps the child spirit that I could touch. He told me the museum was free. We headed there and I asked him to accompany me inside. He agreed. We side by side silently shuffled through the rooms of photographs of the amazing secular freedom fighter. I read through the hundreds of quotes that had come from this man like some sort of intuitive magic of his tongue. I stared at the pictures of his mentors, the pages of his diary, his humble sandals and the spinning wheels that he had empowered thousands of villagers to utilize as their tool for freedom. I asked Kubleep if he could read in English too because his spoken English was so good. He smiled. This was something that he prided himself on. He began to read, slowly at first, a quote from Gandhi on the liberation of humanity. He made it all the way to the bottom, only needing my help for two or three words. We both stood there smiling at his own liberation. We walked down the hallways of newspapers honoring the great man and paintings and relics from his death and ritual cremation. Kubleep kept reading through the signs, picking up speed and picking up inspiration. Sometimes altruism is just giving someone a ride to the place they need to go or just listening to a person tell you of their home. On this very day, a humble tuk-tuk driver and family man that is no more than a number in this vast city of crowded spirits, became my mentor.
We walked in a spirit of liberation out of the double doors and hopped back in to the tuk-tuk. I just listened. He told me of his “very good friend”, Paul Sutherland from Massachusetts, who had helped his family. He had bought him shoes and helped his kids with money for school. He told me that he wanted his kids to have respectable jobs so that their life would be easier. I listened to his cough, like so many others in this city. I knew it was from all the pollution that he inhaled in that little open tuk-tuk. I listened to his advice. He asked me if I was married and I told him no. He asked me if I had somebody I was going to marry and I told him yes. He told me to make sure that they are the right one because it is for life, just like his wife is for him. I assured him that that this was the right one. That nobody had ever made so much sense before. I asked him if he was a Hindu and he said yes. I told him I was studying Buddhism and he pointed out their connection, which I was aware of. He made reference to a quote he had just seen which had stood out in my own mind. He said that Gandhi says that all of our gods are the same even though we think they are different. We both smiled and agreed as we passed mosques and churches and temples and pulled up to the famous Baha’i temple. He waited and insisted that I go and see. I walked through the droves of people and floated up the stairs, turned in my slippers for a token and floated on further up to the huge white opening lotus. Kubleep’s spirit was all over me with such softness. I waited with the hundreds to sit in the quiet space. There were people with eyes closed, hands in prayer, babies breaking silence with their own chants, people in lotus, and others just marveling at the space. I floated back out of the doors and turned to look at the blue pools below the symbol of blossoming wisdom, just as the sun fell perfectly in to the opening.
I put my shoes on and found my way back to the tuk-tuks. Many others were there vying for my patronage, but there was my humble teacher waiting. He tried to take me elsewhere but I knew I needed to head back. My eyes were fading from inspired exhaustion and he needed to feed his family. He dropped me back off with one last piece of advice, “don’t let others take advantage of you.” I smiled and he told me my smile looked like an opening flower. Like the lotus, I thought. I bowed to him and gave him all that I had in my wallet, except a bit for some bananas. I stumbled back through the opening of this enlightening day and crashed on top of my bag at 6:30 pm.
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