Jai Bhim!

I am mindful as I sit down to write my first update from India, in the calm domesticity of a warm afternoon that it would be all too easy to succumb to the temptation of trying to record and share every detail. Since our arrival, 29 hours ago, I feel I have been through a whole world shift. The tectonic plates of respective cultures, so fundamental to the foundations of our assumptions and responses to experience, have indeed been grinding together but the resulting quake was not unexpected, nor has it been at all unpleasant. I have not yet encountered any difficulties. I have been very well looked after. I am well in body, well in mind and very well fed and watered!

Greeting bouquet on living room shrine.

Following a delicious lunch, at which I gratefully discovered that Indian food does not have to be heavy or bloating as I have sometimes found UK Indian meals to be, I have the luxury of a few hours rest to myself. Later, I shall travel with Shakyajata, and Sheetal (one of the directors at Aryaloka and my very generous and talented hostess) to the Deekshabhoomi, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the mass conversion to Buddhism of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar with his about 600,000 followers on 14 October 1956. I know this is likely to be an evening full of experiences I shall very much want to share and so I’m going to take the opportunity for my first update before there’s too much more to say. I am unable to resist a desire to start at the very beginning, but in the interests of making this post manageable to read, I shall, really truly try to keep things succinct!

We were greeted at the airport yesterday morning by Aryaketu, Triratna order member and Director at Aryaloka, who is also husband to Sheetal and whose home I shall be living for the coming months. It was wonderful to see his familiar smiling face again (we met at London Buddhist Centre a couple of months ago) and after giving us each a beautiful posy, we were driven straight to the family home. We were welcomed by what felt like a huge crowd of family members as well as the girls on the residential course, each of whom greeted us personally in an informal procession, presenting us each individually with a flower. We shared some tea and chatted a little before I was shown to my room. I was very grateful to unpack my heavy bag and wash before taking lunch! The afternoon was spent resting and recharging the batteries with 40 winks. In the evening, I met and chatted (as much as language barriers allowed; I have my work cut out!) with the 8 girls who are living here. We established a few basic facts, though I have no hope of remembering how many brothers and sisters each have! At 18:30, Aryaketu’s mum led the girls in puja (Buddhist devotional ritual) and meditation, which I attended. Though much of the Triratna chants are in Pali or Sanskrit wherever you are in the world, still there are differences, and much of the actual lesson or direction is delivered in the native language, so I was not able to participate as fully as I liked. I did enjoy watching though and felt like an honoured guest when I was presented with yet more flowers by each girl after she had made her offering to the shrine. I was then able to make my own. Meditation was Metta Bhavana, which I managed to understand, but I felt uncomfortable in my body, hot, sticky, tired and not very able to focus. Having participated however, I felt refreshed and was glad to walk into a living room of English speaking visiting order members who had been attending a local Triratna conference titled Social Engagement and Liberation. We had dinner together (I am finding the dining customs easier than I feared but still it is a skill yet to master to eat rice and very runny dhal with the fingers of only my right hand!) and then some of us walked to the nearby Nagaloka Centre, for an open air concert of Indian classical music in front of the famous 36 foot high walking Buddha. That was really quite enough for one day, in which I’d done little more than snooze since leaving the UK at 05:30 the following morning and so it was to bed! Negotiating the new challenges of sleeping with a mosquito net wasn’t too awkward until I forgot it was there during the inevitable midnight toilet trip and ended up looking something like a spider’s breakfast. Still, I appear to have only one bite this morning so it must have done the trick!

Despite my instinctive urge to get out and start seeing this new world around me, I have tried to be very inactive today. I didn’t get up early for morning puja and meditation with the girls as I had half planned, opting to get another hour in bed instead! Shakyajata did the same, so we meditated together after breakfast and I was actually quite relieved to chant the refuges and precepts in our accustomed style as part of a Threefold Puja in English. I shall attempt to learn the appropriate customs here but one step at a time! My meditation was much more enjoyable than last night and I had a sense that I was floating in a river of my experience, with a myriad of thoughts present but simply bumping off me gently before floating off their own way, like only so much flotsam and jetsam. Shakyajata and I then did a little ‘checking in’ with each other, discussing our feelings about the trip so far as well as our expectations. After lunch, I managed to find out how to access clothes washing facilities and gave my travel clothes a good scrub! That they can only be air dried should not be an issue in this heat, but I think I shall need to learn that less is more when tucking into the washing powder; it is harder to rinse by hand and I think I shall find they are rather streaky when I take them off the line! We leave for the Deekshabhoomi by auto rickshaw in a little under 90 minutes, leaving me just enough time to post this (washing facilities may seem primitive by Western standards but we’re not wanting for Wi Fi!) before changing into appropriate attire for what will be a joyful but serious celebration. Goodness only knows what I shall encounter; I can only guess with excited anticipation!

Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

I was struck this morning, as I sipped coffee from a hanging chair on the terrace and looked down onto puja and meditation being performed on a platform in the community square, how palpable is my sense of liberation from the difficulties that were so painful to me only a year back. I was immediately trouble then by a wave of guilt that this has only come about for me because of the organised efforts of others to relieve a far greater degree of suffering and oppression than I have ever experienced. I was soon able to resolve this for myself however; perhaps this is simply a little karmic reward for the lesser efforts I have exerted myself in the organisation of fundraising and travel before I could even be here. A gentle easing of my own troubles that will better enable me to work for the easing of others’ and a little taste to fuel my faith that if I am resolute in my actions here that far greater things than I once thought possible will unfold not just for me, but also for those with whom I work, study, practice and live.

So, on the 60th anniversary of a very important event, I am eager now to really get stuck in with our work here. May we all be well, may it make many beings happy and may all be free from suffering as we grow and develop. Jai Bhim!