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Welcome to the Jungle

12/12/2016

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Though I have been clear that the purpose of my time in India is to be a volunteer teacher and that therefore the professional standards I would apply to such responsibilities in the UK are paramount, I did also feel it would be a shame to come all the way to India and have no other experiences. This trip to be involved in a Buddhist social project is also an important part of my spiritual development and so I was delighted when it was suggested for me to take a week of ‘semi solitary’ retreat. My first two months were entirely limited to the busy, noisy, polluted Nagpur city centre and the opportunity to get away for a few days and see some Indian countryside was a real attraction. I was also aware that despite living in a community that made Dharmic practice and study really very accessible to me, I had become somewhat mechanised in my spiritual and daily routine lately. A chance to have a rest, recharge my batteries and reengage with the Dharma was an important opportunity and could not have been timelier.
The plan was for Mark and me to take a week off teaching while Shakyajata ‘held the fort’ on a week of reduced classroom contact. It would be a good chance for the students to demonstrate their learning so far with some independent assignments and assessment activities. Aryaketu would drive us to the retreat centre that had been booked for us and would join us there, taking some time for himself too, not often an easy thing for a busy order member and centre director to facilitate. We would not plan a set retreat schedule and would in fact take as much of it in silence as possible. We’d not be totally solitary as we’d all be in the same retreat centre but we wouldn’t practice together or communicate unless we really needed to for any reason. We’d take some fruit and oats and coffee for breakfasts but our lunch and supper would be delivered to our doors each day by the family who lived in the local village and ran the retreat centre. There would be no one else using the centre, set in a remote valley just outside a tiny village called Bihali, near the jungle hill station Chikhaldara.

There would be lots of time for reflection, walking (maybe even running!), meditating, reading… and not much else. Time to explore the jungles of both the physical and mental landscapes. I was keen to avoid over-prescribing my time here. I have a tendency to be a real planner, I’ll schedule things down to the last five minutes if given half a chance (I guess that’s teaching for you!) but I find I frequently become resentful of this self-imposed structure, struggle with motivation to complete the tasks yet find it difficult if I am unable for any reason to complete the things I have planned, regardless of whether or not it would be more appropriate for the plan to change. This is a point of tension in me that I really want to work on and it seemed like a great opportunity to do just that. Plan nothing. Do as little as possible, nothing at all if I felt like it. Forget trying to feel productive. A chance to really still my mind and listen to what was needed. No more, no less. Of course, I knew this would be a valuable experience to record, for my own benefit as well as to share more widely and so I began to keep a daily diary, which I found formed an important part of my practice as I used it as a tool to focus my reflections. I have decided, that rather than try to summarise, or ‘write up’ this diary, the most simple thing to do, which would happily also involve the least amount of additional (unnecessary!) work, is to simply publish it as it is. An honest and open record of my experiences and reflections, as it felt right to record at the time. This can then be accessed in a similarly fluid way, as and when anyone may wish to explore it. I’ve scanned the pages (it seemed less tiresome than typing it all out!) so I hope my writing is legible enough to be accessible!

The retreat was, in the most part, a rich and rewarding experience. I benefitted from it greatly and achieved some genuine insights in to myself and my spiritual practice as a Buddhist. I am returning from it with some valuable discoveries and glittering mental treasures. I feel obliged to warn anyone who may be interested in perusing it further; however, that there was one day when I encountered an unpleasant experience during a possibly ill-advised walk away from the retreat centre.
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It’s easy in hindsight to say I should not have walked so far alone but my friends will know I may well have gone anyway, even if I had been aware of a risk. I have recorded quite graphic details of a sexual assault that occurred on day 4, December 7th (Though I actually wrote about it on day 5, December 8th, from half way down page 27). If you think it may upset you to read it, please don’t. I’ve made it clear in the text which bit to skip. I’ve included it in the interests of maintaining the integrity of my intentions with regards to the entire Maggamouse blogging project, I’ve included it because I want to share the rest of the diary, which at the time, it helped me to write in it about, and I’ve included it because, like many other difficult personal things I have been historically open about, I think the more we talk publically about such things, the better. But there we are. You have been warned.  All you really need to know is I am well. I am happy. I am growing and developing. I continued with the retreat and derived further benefit from it so there is more to read beyond that incident. I’d like to thank my friends and fellow retreatants, Mark and Aryaketu for supporting me through the days that followed and with metta, I’d like to thank you for reading.

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Sheetal's Story

11/12/2016

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In my last update, I recounted a trip to an eye hospital with one of our students. This was an eye-opening experience (yes, pun intended) in itself, but there was an important part to the morning that I didn’t mention. A while back, I was fortunate to spend some time speaking with Aryaketu’s father, Triratna Order Member Saccadhamma, and I humbly attempted to write his story, from a childhood of poverty to spiritual discovery, through ordination and the eventual building of his house, which I am currently staying in and that also accommodates the community of young women at Aryaloka, as well as their teaching facilities. There are so many people I have met over the last couple of months whose daily lives I find inspiring, whose background stories I feel sure would greatly benefit those from the West to read. Of course, it is not always practical to find the time required to really listen to their histories from start to finish and so I have resolved to simply share as many as I can but in no particular order. It’s not inappropriate though, having started with the bricks and mortar, both physically and spiritually, to move now to someone that from my perspective really embodies the heart of all it is to be domestic in India.
That’s not to trivialise her other roles though and I was fortunate to realise the opportunity afforded us by the optician’s waiting room to begin hearing and taking eager notes on Sheetal’s Story. Sheetal is Aryaketu’s wife and mother to 15 year old Ojas. She admirably fulfils all the functions expected of her in this role, preparing three meals a day for both the men in her life as well as us, the visiting teaching team, often cleaning up after us as well as undertaking the housework required to keep her home functioning. She supports Aryaketu unquestioningly in his work for the order, even when this brings him home late or takes him right out of the country for many weeks a year. She gently, yet persistently encourages Ojas to make the most of his studies, patiently bringing him back on track when really, like many other 15 year old boys the world over, he’d rather be playing Assassin’s Creed. Her life is by no means limited to the domesticity ascribed to her by Indian society; however. She is also fully committed to Dhamma herself and attends weekly chapter meetings on Tuesdays with study classes on Saturdays in her own progression towards ordination into the movement. This process often takes far longer for women than for men in India as it is much harder for them to secure time away from domestic duties to study, attend retreats and deepen their practice sufficiently. Still undeterred, she carries on. If this doesn’t already sound like a full schedule, Sheetal is also Centre Manager for the Bhilgaon Campus, responsible for not just teaching important parts of the critical MSCIT (Maharashtra State Certificate in Information Technology; a government recognised qualification that is a basic requirement for any individual wishing to obtain good employment in a wide range of sectors beyond physical labouring) but also for the pastoral care of the young women, their spiritual development and harmony in their community, as well as a myriad of administration tasks that come with the job such as managing course fees from the non-residential students and making sure the registrations with the exams office are regularly maintained.
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Sheetal at home in a colourful sari1
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Sheetal and Ojas
Sheetal manages to successfully fill all these roles whilst she works with the long term debilitating disease that is osteoporosis. She was diagnosed with this when she was 35, just over a decade ago, and it frequently causes her a great deal of pain. Having had a similar condition myself in my teens, (juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, thankfully not an active disease any longer) I can almost feel that sharp yet grinding ache in the heart of the joint when I watch her move, often awkwardly, around the house; bringing in lunch, or sweeping the floor after sorting vegetables from the weekly trip to the market. ‘I never drank milk!’ she tells me, ‘not even when I was pregnant. I do not like it. But for the calcium…’ she now drinks a glass every evening, with flavoured protein powder to make it more palatable, and an egg, for breakfast. This may help slow down any further deterioration but it cannot reverse the damage already caused. The homeopathic and Ayurvedic remedies she is prescribed may or may not, do much to help. ‘I used to worry’, she confides one evening as a student demonstrates village healthcare skills by massaging Sheetal’s sore legs and swollen feet with oils warmed over hot coals before deftly wrapping them with castor leaves tied in place with cotton thread until morning. ‘How will I manage when I am old? But this is not helpful. I stay mindful of the present moment. When I cannot sleep with pain I get up and meditate. This is very helpful to me.’
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The model hostess on a recent visitor, Sara's last night in Nagpur.
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A domestic chore; sorting stones from the rice!
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A rare night off cooking; Spring Dosa with Neha at Jaiswal!
Sheetal was born in Nagpur on the 2nd of September 1975, the first daughter of three, into a very full house. There were four uncles, three aunties and three of her grandparents as well as her mum and dad, all living together when she arrived into the family. The house was noisy but not just because there were so many people in it; situated on the Kamptee Road, one of the main routes to and from the city centre, there was constant traffic rumbling past and even more, she tells me, during her childhood than there is now. The Kamptee Road is the ‘main drag’ from Aryaloka Bhilgaon to Aryaloka Indora, where the other half of our teaching takes place and a trip up it is a challenging experience full of dust, fumes, noise, trucks, mopeds, blaring horns, auto rickshaws, coaches, cows, people, bicycles, vans, you get the idea. One needs to allow a certain amount of energy just for the journey before teaching has even begun and so it is hard to imagine living right next to it when it was even busier. Thankfully, it was only the backdrop for the first three years of her life and when her father was successful in applying for a transfer in his government job as auditor for the railway, she moved with her parents and her 18 month old sister to a rented house in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. These were happy times and she describes this part of her childhood with a buoyant vigour as though somewhere a curtain has opened to let a ray of morning sun play across her face. She shines as she speaks of it, despite the gloom of the eye hospital waiting room. After her second sister was born, her mother’s mum came to help the family and she enjoyed the walks to school, sometimes with her grandmother, sometimes with her dad. When she was five, her father was successful in applying for a government house and this looked out onto a big playground, which was the scene of many a joyful evening, playing with friends after school. They were happy and healthy here, very well looked after by a mother who took the wellbeing of her family very seriously. She left nothing to chance in meeting their needs, researching nutrition to ensure they were well fed, attending school for regular updates, helping with homework. Yet there is no sense that this was in anyway strictly enforced and it seems she was able to balance this with equanimity, taking care also to provide the love, freedom and emotional strength her family needed to flourish. Sheetal describes her mother with so much love and admiration that she really does sound like a model parent and it is perhaps no surprise to learn that when Sheetal’s aunt and uncle ran in to marital strife and began quarrelling, two of her cousins moved in! Preferring the warm, loving environment to their own home, this irritated her mother’s sister intensely.
All good things must come to an end; however and when Sheetal was 13, the family moved, with no shortage of regret, back to Nagpur. Her paternal grandfather owned several properties, which he rented out and they bought one of these from him. Living in their own home did not bring the joy that might have been expected; however, and the family struggled with inconsiderate neighbours in the busy city centre, a far cry from their experience in the suburban community of Jabalpur. Despite this change of circumstances, her mother continued to form the backbone of positivity the family needed to get by. In the Indian education system, it is common for students to attend classes for extra tuition and begin preparing for exams when they reach 10th Standard. Sheetal dutifully attended her first class but found it crowded and unpalatable so told her mother she did not want to go again; she would study hard at home instead. In the interests of seeing their progeny succeed, many parents would have taken none of this wayward behaviour but Sheetal’s mum simply agreed by saying ‘whatever makes you happy!’ This support is remarkable not just to demonstrate the significant amount of trust and faith in daughter by mother but also in the face of surprised criticism from family and friends. Such critics resigned Sheetal to failure; her school in Madhya Pradesh had been a Hindi Medium school, but here classes were in Marathi.
Such a significant disadvantage combined with a lack of tuition would surely result in disaster, they were adamant. But they underestimated Sheetal. She studied hard, just as she said she would, and this seed of determination fertilised by the love and support of a remarkable mum, blossomed in to Passes with Distinction for Marathi, Science and Social Science. This may have surprised and impressed her detractors, but success following hours of home study was hardly a new experience for Sheetal; her mum had spent the summer holiday of 1984 coaching her to a good standard of English before she even began studying it formally at the age of eight. Academic success, just like the formulation of an adequate diet, was never taken for granted or left to the chance of received wisdom, she had been raised to beat her own path to her goals.

After her exam success, she took admission to the famous local Sindhu Mahavidyalaya College for 11th and 12th Standard (sixth form or college equivalent). This fame was mixed; the college had a reputation for excellent teaching but also for troublesome and disorderly pupils, especially among the male cohort. This couldn’t have been further from Sheetal’s own temperament but she resolved to put her education ahead of her own sense of personal security; a significant risk following her provincial girl’s school background. Of course, mum was as supportive as ever, coming along to see her off at the gate on her first day. Concerned to avoid unwanted and inappropriate attention from the opposite sex, Sheetal went out of her way to be as unattractive as possible and deliberately dressed in unflattering clothes. ‘I oiled my hair!’ she tells me, demonstrating by dragging her hands down the sides of her head, flattening her now henna-enhanced tresses.
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Enjoying coconut water on a trip out!
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Sharing noodles with Shakyajata at Planet Food!
‘I only wanted to study!’ She knew marriage was one day unavoidable but was determined to make the most of her education while she could. Mindful of her status as eldest child, she was also keen to avoid any conflict or bad impressions. ‘I thought; my father is the only man in the house, what if a boy comes to fight him!? I was afraid of one sided love.’ Such a sense of personal responsibility at this young age illustrates not only a commitment to her family but also a sharp eye on a longer term plan. She knew a good education would secure her access to a higher social standard of suitors further down the line, as well as delaying the inevitable wedding. ‘I wanted to become a graduate.’ Of course, she passed 12th Class and took a BSC at the same college, finishing with a 2:1 equivalent in Microbiology, Chemistry and Botany, taking then a computer course for five months after graduation. I can’t help wondering, when I try and add up how many chapattis those hands roll out each week, if they’d not have been put to better use in a laboratory than a kitchen, but this is a Western woman’s perspective and it is patently clear that Sheetal is very genuinely happy with her circumstances as they have unfolded.
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Rolling out the daily chapatti batch!
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Sheetal with Shakyajata before a trip to the Deekshabhoomi!
Despite her academic success, these years were not easy for Sheetal’s family. Having moved closer again to the conflicted home of her aunt when returning to Nagpur, the impact of the rift that had driven her cousins to live with them in the first place became ever more apparent. Sheetal’s aunt came to their home to argue with her sister several times and this affected the whole family with unpleasant rumours spreading around a very difficult situation. Her mum’s health began to suffer and she became very ill, experiencing chest pains and other symptoms of anxiety in the wake of constant harassment. Sheetal’s sister, equally academic, was studying a pharmaceutical course and contacted a doctor she knew for advice. With this treatment and a lot reciprocal love and support from the immediate family, her mum rallied physically but still she was suffering with mental illness. One family member who saw through much of the gossip and regularly visited to support the family was Sheetal’s maternal grandfather. He lived in an area of Nagpur called Mahendra Nagur and suggested his daughter try attending meditation classes with him on Thursdays at a centre just a one minute walk from his home. It would help, he assured her and asked her several times to come with him, but Sheetal’s mum refused, saying that she had done nothing wrong and it was her spiteful brothers and sisters who should go and learn to live a better life! One night, which was coincidentally a Thursday, Sheetal’s parents were invited to her father’s house for dinner. They were asked to arrive at half past five; too early for a meal but with plenty of time to chat and to go for an evening stroll around the neighbourhood before eating. Lo and behold, their local stroll ‘just happened’ to take them into a local Triratna centre. Despite her misgivings, when she saw the shrine in the open space, the flowers and the Buddha rupa, she felt immediately impressed and enjoyed the meditation and puja that occurred that night. From that day on, says Sheetal, her mother never stopped her Dhamma work. This was in the March of 1998, Sheetal’s final BSc year, and in April she finished her exams. With her time now freed from study, she went along to a Dhamma class with her mum. She was unimpressed when she walked in and saw a young man in a kesa on the stage. ‘I thought, this is the wrong man! How can he teach? He’s too young! I thought, young people go to the cinema and enjoy themselves, they know nothing about spirituality!’ This man; however, gave a talk that impressed her so much with relevant examples that seemed to come from her own life and experiences that she felt he knew her already even before her mum introduced them, post talk.
If you’ve already guessed the Buddha-meets-Bollywood plot twist in this delightful tale, I am pleased to confirm that his name was, indeed, Aryaketu. Still, Indian culture and Buddhist reserve do not lend themselves to heady romance off screen and they did not converse again until Sheetal went to volunteer at the Triratna office on the local Dr Ambedkar Road, helping to produce a quarterly magazine published there. Still they were respectfully distant in their communication, though Sheetal remarks that she never normally talked to boys for fear they’d fall in love with her and is not entirely sure why she talked to this one! Inspired by her own experiences and by the example of her mum (now an ordained member herself), She continued her involvement in the movement, volunteering as a maths teacher at one of the local charitable projects, the Bahujan Girls’ Hostel. She attended Dhamma classes regularly and became well known amongst the Triratna Sangha in Nagpur.
One day, after teaching at the hostel, she came home to an animated reception from her sister who told her that a very exciting thing had happened and that she should try and guess who had visited! Jija, Aryaketu’s mother and also a Dhamma Mitra, had come for chai, along with another mutual friend from the order. It is with some amusement that Sheetal continues the clearly oft-recounted tale; apparently Jija had actually left the room to use the bathroom when the family friend formally suggested that Sheetal and Aryaketu made a good match for marriage! Sheetal was already well known to Aryaketu’s family; she’d attended Dhamma classes run by his father, dancing classes and retreats with his sister. She was pretty, educated to a good level and dedicated to Triratna. There weren’t many more boxes left to tick. Aryaketu was certainly happy for them to suggest the union, though was apparently unconvinced that such a standard of young woman would be interested in a man who did not have a government job or family house. Sheetal’s wider family were certainly not impressed, but when she heard the news, Sheetal was every bit as delighted as her mum and dad. She had always dreaded the day when she believed she would inevitably have no choice but to marry a man with money and status; not something she wanted, fearing that such a husband would be free with his money, his affections and possibly, his fists. Having been brought up by a family who encouraged her to have her own opinions, stand on her own feet and make her own way in life, the thought of winding up in a housewife’s role with little else to occupy her but a demanding husband, filled her with fear. She felt she could trust Aryaketu however; he would not be a philanderer or a wife beater with a commitment to the Dhamma as strong as demonstrated in his talks. As someone so well known in the order, he was unlikely to have any hidden motives or distressing personal secrets.
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Sheetal at home with Aryaketu
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The couple in Coffee Day
After all that worry, Sheetal felt a solution to the problem of marriage that would allow her to pursue the simple life free from money or pressures of status had indeed presented itself and they were married on October 31st, 1999. As newlyweds, Aryaketu was working at Nagaloka, but he was soon ready to move on to new challenges of his own and wanted to provide opportunities for young people. He started the Aryaloka institute in 2000, so it has really always been a part of married life for Sheetal. She worked as a private tutor to bring in some money for the first three years before Ojas was born in April 2002, but then began taking responsibility for the Aryaloka accounts. It was a role that needed filling and it made sense for her to take work that made it straightforward for her to carry out the household management too.
In 2012, the Bhilgaon branch opened and she then became centre coordinator and teacher. Sheetal seems surprised as her narrative catches up with her present life, that she has so much to share. ‘I thought I had no story!’ she tells me again, having dismissed my request to write it in the first instance by saying there was nothing to say. She never imagined, she tells me, that she would live as she does now, in such a big house, with a car, a television, all the symptoms of wealth. Of all three sisters, she was always the one least interested in professional or material gains, in possessions or status, and yet, she tells me, she believes herself to be the happiest of all of them. Her sisters are not unhappy, she explains further, and have good jobs, good husbands, houses, in many respects the lives they always wanted; but they are not as happy as her. She is pleased, she mentions too, to know her parents do not have to worry about her. ‘Oh, Annabeth, I am really very happy!’ she announces, with an air of grateful surprise. She seems mildly taken aback too when I reply ‘Good! You deserve to be!’ But I do not believe for a moment that it is because of the house and the car, the status of being married to an order member or being the coordinator of a school that she is happy, nor do I think does she. Sheetal is an eminently kind woman, a thoughtful and sensitive person who takes the happiness of those around her seriously. She works hard, unceasingly in fact, to maintain this happiness and wellbeing, just as she describes of her own mother. In the short time I’ve known her, I have come to professionally and spiritually respect and personally very much like her. She is now, and I hope will always be even when the miles separate us, a trusted friend. Her faith in her practice of Buddhism goes far beyond the flowery rhetoric of devotional text, or acts of kindness for the sake of fulfilling a precept.
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With the Bhilgaon young women's community students in October
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Showing us how to really wear a sari at a recent wedding!
Compassion and loving kindness shine through from the core of her being and her fierce dedication to professional and domestic responsibilities is balanced by a calm temperament, a consistent, reliable, freindly stoicism which is itself underpinned by occasional flashes of bubbling joy and moments of unconcealed delight. If I gain no more from my time in India than the opportunity to count Sheetal among most treasured friends, however far flung she may one day be, then it will have been no waste in my time and resources. I may continue to relish her company during the remainder of my stay but her influence, I feel sure, will outlast our weeks together and her steady reliability, her lightness, her determination and her selfless nature shall continue to inspire me for many years to come.
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The Way I See it…

1/12/2016

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It’s not uncommon, indeed this will sound familiar to many teachers, to become involved in issues that students are encountering beyond the classroom. This is a key role of the personal tutor, providing personal support and pastoral care suitable to the needs of the individual, helping them make the most of their studies by being aware of their whole being and not just their academic progress. Even a subject teacher who does not have these tutorial responsibilities will need to be aware of the potential for study to be disrupted by matters beyond the usual classroom barriers, especially when it is clear that there is some problem impeding learning. Sometimes, you get an inkling that a student is struggling for a particular reason and the course team had noticed that one of our female students seemed to struggle with seeing the whiteboard in classes. There are often some simple things you can do to subtly remedy these sorts of problems without making a fuss. In this case, make sure she sits near the front, use a good quality whiteboard pen, ensure you write clearly and that your worksheets are easy to read, to name but a few. Eventually though, if this doesn’t seem to help, you have to make gentle enquiries about her well-being. I’m not sure who took charge of that, probably Sheetal for obvious reasons to do with language, but we learned that she was indeed struggling with her eyes.
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The Tariff of Charges; Coming Soon to an NHS Near You?
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Eye Hospital Reception
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A Familiar Sight
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Brave Pushpa Tackles the Sight Test
Pushpa told us that shortly before coming to study here, she had started feeling a burning pain in her eyes and that they were watering a lot. She first noticed it at home, when she was sewing, and her family had arranged for her to see an optician, who had prescribed glasses. Unfortunately, her family had not been able to afford these and so there was nothing further that they could do.

The nature of the work with the residential students at Aryaloka as funded by Young Indian Futures has a history of stretching beyond the classroom into health needs and it was not the first time Shakyajata had arranged a medical appointment for a student, hoping to then fund the required treatment from the charitable donations to the charity. Sheetal was optimistic that an eye appointment and glasses for Pushpa would not cost more than two thousand rupees (that’s about twenty five pounds at the current exchange rate) and so, on Monday morning, I set off on the bus with them both to support as much as I could. I’d spoken with my mum at the weekend and she’d mentioned that she would transfer some cash to my account for Christmas, so while I’m having to be very careful with my pennies during my time not earning here, I felt I could stretch to this cost myself without dipping into the charity pot. It seems, from a western perspective, like a small thing, just a basic need, but something that can make such a big difference to daily quality of life.

I’ll be honest; my reasons for going weren’t purely altruistic. Yes, I did want to support Pushpa and yes, I wanted to help free up time for Shakyajata (she’s had a very busy week conducting interviews and filming a documentary), but I was also very interested to get a nosey into an Indian eye hospital! I’m not so curious about the Indian healthcare system I fancy trying it out for myself, but if the opportunity arises... well, why not? It wasn’t far, just a little further up Dr Ambedkar Road from one of our favourite restaurants and it seemed clean, welcoming and professional, if a little old fashioned. I hadn’t been too sure what to expect but I was pleasantly relieved. Sheetal told me that this would be a far better standard of care centre than the one Pushpa would have attended before coming to Nagpur. We registered and waited in the foyer, Pushpa looking nervous, Sheetal fielding questions about us (and I think mostly about me) from the other patients. I guess they were curious due to my attendance but at least it gave Sheetal (from what I could gather) an opportunity to promote the work of the institute and generally spread awareness of Aryaloka. I had tried to make Pushpa feel better by saying ‘at least you get the morning out of the classroom!’ but I’m not sure that did much to ease her nerves, especially when she was called up to read letters from a familiar looking chart, publically, in the waiting room! She was then handed a slip of paper with some details about her performance and we settled down to wait again. It didn’t seem that we had to wait long. I’d like to think we waited the standard length of time but I’ve been aware of a couple of times when the presence of a white face has facilitated a queue jump, so maybe we got lucky!
The optician was a kind man, with good English who told me he’d visited London twice, as a tourist. I guess an eye doctor must be a pretty well paid job! Perhaps not as well paid as some would like however; he examined Pushpa’s eyes and told us there was nothing wrong with her vision at all, it was actually very good. He said it was common for people to be given very weak and unnecessary prescriptions in order for the practitioner to receive some commission but that in this case, he did not feel poor eyesight was the cause of the pain. His diagnosis was sensitivity to airborne pollutants and instead prescribed eye drops! No need for any expense! The consultation only cost two hundred rupees (I tried to pay but they could not take my card or change my 2000 note, so Sheetal stepped up!) and the drops themselves, which we collected from a chemist on the way home, were less still than that!
A very good outcome indeed! No expensive glasses (and I imagine Pushpa is relieved not to be wearing them!) and no further messing about with fitting frames and lenses or going back to collect them the next day. We were even home in time for lunch! So far so good for Pushpa too; I asked her on Tuesday evening if the drops were helping. “Yes!” she said, her eyes were much better. Hopefully this will help her study, but if nothing else it’s enough that she’s simply more comfortable. So why have I felt the need to share this publically? Partly, it’s interesting, as I said, to see inside the machinations of healthcare systems in other countries but mostly for another far more important reason. I actually feel really grateful. I’m verging towards the proud but I’ll try and curb that one, mostly I’m feeling grateful to have this opportunity to work alongside such compassionate people. People who notice another’s suffering and take time to find and then provide what they need.
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An Initial Result
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A More Thorough Examination
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Sheetal Collects the Eyedrops
As much as we might like to try and do that in England, from within a UK educational system it’s just not possible. There are too many students, money is not free from budgetary restraints for such things and anyway, issues such as physical healthcare are grey areas where one becomes involved in only a distant way for fear of being considered inappropriate or having ones motives scrutinised. How satisfying I find it then, that we can simply cut through all that here. There’s a need. Here’s a solution. Problem solved. A very refreshing perspective indeed; no lenses required to see that!
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Living and Learning

19/11/2016

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It seems a strange characteristic of each blog post I’ve written since attempting to become an English teacher in India, that while they’ve featured plenty of English, there’s been very little use of it to discuss teaching. There’s been so much going on in the periphery that has seemed remarkable or exceptional in some way that the very reason for my being here has faded into the background. I suppose the truth is that while there’s plenty about my time teaching here that is novel to my experience, really, it’s been the one thing that hasn’t seemed so exceptional, the one thing I can rely on to be really pretty predictable; an oasis of relative normality in an ocean of experiential shift and cultural upheaval. In all honesty, it hasn’t even factored as a huge percentage of my time here so far. There are only two English classes a day, apart from weekends, when students have a half day of other classes on Saturday, we have our weekly teachers meeting, and a two hour  Dharma class instead (Think Buddhist Sunday School). One of these daily classes during the week is with the young women in the morning, one with the young men in the afternoon and more often than not, it is simply a case of repeating (with a few tweaks and twiddles) the first class with the second group.
For the first few weeks, it was uncommon to be in the classroom alone and we were doing a lot of team teaching. This phase is starting to recede a bit now as we each make time for lesson preparation or other tasks and errands, but it was a wonderful rediscovery and hopefully won’t stop all together. In my first year in the classroom (academic year 2002/03), classes were actively timetabled to feature team-taught periods and it was a real joy to support each other, share delivery, improvise off unexpected moments of inspiration (or disaster!), almost like actors might and have the ‘so, how did that go!?’ conversation afterwards. A robust course, whatever the subject, should have input from various brains, I think. Not just for a greater breath of subject knowledge, but the different life experiences and personalities of different practitioners is bound to make a difference too. One of the factors that eroded my love of teaching in the UK was this gradual drift from genuine teams delivering substantial content to more than one year where it ended up being just me. Course leader, course tutor, only subject teacher. Just the one brain-full to go round the class.
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Mark teaching
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Some refuge in visual resources!
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Trying to demonstrate that writing on the board is not really so bad!
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Any one know? What am I doing here!?
I’ve always thought that course content is essentially greater than the sum of its parts and felt sorry for any group who only ever had me (or any other individual teacher for that matter) teaching them. It never seemed adequate.

With a good team, if nothing else, you can play to each other’s strengths whilst planning and we’ve certainly been doing plenty of that! Shakyajata is by far the most experienced among us, not just in terms of having taught in India for many years but also in her experiences as a Teacher of English before coming here. She’s been fronting a lot of the planning decisions as well as much of the more technical grammar points in active teaching. Mark is, a little like me, making a shift from his main subject, Science, to English teaching but before leaving the UK he attended an intensive TEFL course which sounded like a very useful, if slightly stressful, experience.
It’s not as if the cessation of my UK teaching career was exactly pleasant either (you can read the details here if you don’t already know them!) and before I arrived, I’d been out of the classroom for over a year, so I’ve not been feeling very confident with planning or delivery. Thankfully, one thing I’ve never lost any confidence in is drawing and I’ve been making the most of the generous preparation time that is comes with living on site to do lots of that! He’s been getting really stuck into his new direction, with lots of impressive ideas and confidence, happily taking on extra classes for non-residential students at the Indora campus in the evenings and even spending a lot of his ‘down’ time helping the young men’s community practise. And then there’s been me! I’ve not shared in Mark’s confidence with the language teaching. My TEFL was conducted entirely online and whilst there were bits I breezed through pertaining to general classroom management, delivery theory and assessment processes, there was also a lot that I sort of managed to limp through off the back of a lot of note taking and hope for the best in the multiple choice tests. There were more in depth written assignments but no actual teaching practice. I tried to arrange some experience by volunteering as an assistant at my local FE college but it never transpired.
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Someone give her a ruler, quick!
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And again, safety in pictures!
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It's not a craft class, honest!
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It's a class introducing concepts of under and over!
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As well as new vocabulary; 'cut!' 'stick!' 'fold!'
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The pretty book covers are just a coincidence!
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And now we can all say 'Please pass me the scissors!'
As a visual learner myself, whilst I recognise the need to present information in a variety of ways, I definitely feel more fired up about lessons with a strong visual content. The students do seem to enjoy it too. There’s something very reassuring about going into a classroom with a couple of hours preparation under your belt. I never was one who liked to ‘wing’ it and I think I was one of the few teachers in my last team who did actually have filed lesson plans for each lesson, much to the apparent disgust of some more ‘natural’ colleagues! Through being able to produce lots of visual content, I’ve felt like I’ve managed to chisel out a tiny nook of comfort zone in an otherwise entirely new suite of (occasionally hostile) experiences. Being aware of my learning style bias has been important, but given the breath of backgrounds in our team, I don’t feel too worried and have thought how much I’d enjoy having three different teaching approaches myself; a visual artist, a singer/English professional and a scientist!

One benefit of team teaching is that even when you are taking a less active role, you are still in a really strong position to observe your colleagues and I’ve been learning a lot, not just about how to teach English but about the subject itself. Did you know that the difference between when you use ‘a’ or ‘an’ is in whether or not the next word starts with a vowel?! It seems so obvious when someone says it (a mouse, an elephant) and I’d have known if someone had got it wrong; but I’d not have been able to pin down why. Ahhh, bring back the relative certainties of red plus blue equals purple any day! Nevertheless, I’m badgering on, nibbling away at new titbits of knowledge as they present themselves and, slowly, I suppose, I must be making some progress! I’ve had some positive feedback from those who have seen my classes anyway, and the students are always smiling.

Aside from mild feelings of inadequacy alongside my more experienced or more confident colleagues, there have been many discoveries I have been enjoying about my unusual teaching renaissance and though there may be things about my Indian experience that leave me wanting (Oh, for the joys of a simple baked potato!), I feel my time in the classroom has been feeding a deep thirst that has been building for some months (or even years). The feeling that I am able to provide some assistance to others, meaningfully and in a way that empowers them to improve their own experiences of life is unparalleled in the sense of satisfaction it brings me. Feeling not just that I am part of a team delivering a much needed service but that the recipients are genuinely appreciative and understand the difference education can make to them is a rare luxury. I have found of my teaching in the UK that an almost resentful belligerence to receiving it is a sad symptom of the way we approach free, equal access to education. Many young people see school and college as a necessary evil to endure, a bit like a reluctant gym member; something one must be seen to be doing but with no real sense of purpose or faith in the outcome.
Perhaps this sense of obligation is at the root of an apparent trend to overemphasise the responsibility of the teacher in the learning process. To my mind (and this works equally when I am the student), a teacher should be a facilitator of appropriate conditions for learning to take place, but it is the student who must necessarily take a leading role to ensure it actually happens. I’m aware that may sound like a teacher trying to back off responsibility but I do not underestimate how much work or skill is involved in cultivating those conditions; simply aware that the seeds from the ripest fruit in the world cannot grow unless they are embedded in fertile compost that is consistently watered and kept in appropriate light and heat.
As well as the aforementioned team teaching, one refreshing difference here is that because we are not following a set qualification, it is entirely up to us to decide how to pace the content. Yes, we must make sure our learners receive the basis in the English language they need, but the freedom from deadlines and minimum unit content has been like taking a giant weight from my shoulders. Shakyajata is wise enough to recognise that, at least in this instance, less is most definitely more and as such we are planning for small amounts of  easily digestible content that stretch enough, but never too much.
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A comic strip to introduce narrative and past simple tense!
A little and often approach to delivering high quality, meaningful information is a very new one compared to my conditioning to churn out lots of content in about half the time really required, which too often results in low quality, sporadic and unreliable learning. Another feature of this temporal spaciousness is that we have plenty of time to revisit, reinforce and repeat. Gone are the days of ‘tick the box and move on to the next thing’ teaching. We move on, when they are ready to. Funnily enough, they do seem to be absorbing the knowledge pretty quickly anyway and we’ve stuck, so far, to our ‘module’ plan.

Perhaps it is partly due to this appropriate pacing, partly due to a genuine sense of progress in themselves and partly due to a generally very grateful attitude to learning in the first place that it has become common for classes to be concluded with a round of applause and happy shouts of ‘Thank you m’am!’ The first time this happened, I had to check they weren’t being sarcastic, but I don’t think that’s really a feature of Indian humour. Is this due to a cultural difference? The fact that these students are so incredibly grateful for any learning opportunities when coming to us form a background where only the high-caste privileged born are able to afford or socially access education? Compared to the UK, where I feel free education to a certain standard has become regarded as such a basic right it’s barely valued. You can lead a horse to water but that’s as far as it goes. Sadly, in the UK, if students aren’t motivated to put in their share of effort on the learning journey it is still more often the teacher who is blamed for not trying hard enough, not differentiating successfully, not being creative, exciting, engaging. I think it must be more complicated than this alone and I know from Shakyajata that it is not always the case that students blindly accept whatever they are given at Aryaloka simply because it’s free and it’s better than the nothing they would otherwise have.
Maybe then, it’s simply that given the freedom to operate as professionals, the time and space and trust to assess what our learners need and then respond to that thoughtfully and meaningfully, we are able to deliver a quality educational experience which facilitates genuine learning and meaningful progression, not just the ability to meet hollow criteria that doesn’t actually demonstrate anything beyond a bureaucratic dependency that never really benefits anyone. Maybe our learners are actually learning. And maybe they know that. Maybe that’s what they are grateful for. Maybe that’s (at least partly) why they invite us to dinner and want to play football with us at the weekend!
I have been here for six weeks now and it’s always about this time in a course where you really begin to see personalities emerge as you get to know a group. The naturally compromised nature of verbal communication to form a rapport might have had something of an impact on this but it’s funny the things you notice. Still, despite language barriers, personalities shine through. Hidden depths are revealed, life stories are told and I find myself become increasingly fond of every little idiosyncrasy I encounter. It’s always hard to say good bye to a tutor group you’ve really enjoyed teaching and though I don’t think for a moment that we’ll be able to discuss our deepest feelings in any detail by the time the date of my departure arrives, I somehow already know that these groups are not going to be among the easiest to have to say good bye to.

The experience of waking up at the weekend and realising I’m actually a little sorry to not be in the classroom is something I’ve not felt for a long, long time and it’s good that this is happening despite being in very new territory with my teaching. It seems like the good old days of teaching visual language may not be too far away anyway.
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The girls watch us eat their lovingly prepared dinner!
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A Sunday kick-about!
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Preparing the stumps!
I have been asked to teach Photoshop (what music to my ears!) and hope to start doing so next month. We’ve still got a bit of negotiating to do but I’ve started planning and am looking forward to begin back on familiar ground. It’s going to be a challenge, no interactive whiteboards here to demonstrate on, no Virtual Learning Environment to upload materials and content to, not much in the way of student access to the internet during classes either; but I’ll get there. My first ever taught lesson ended up being painting with only red paint and no brushes or paper. We got through and learned a lot about achieving texture, on cardboard, with various alternative tools. Where there’s a will, there’s a way and that resourcefulness is something that India is very good at teaching. It may end up being a bit unconventional but I don’t think I’ve ever been described as ‘conventional’ anyway. That’s probably just as well!
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Sangha Day – in Sickness and in Health

18/11/2016

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As many Buddhists around the world know, last Monday (November full moon) was Sangha Day. Those of you reading this who are not familiar with Buddhist terminology may like to know the word ‘Sangha’ refers to the spiritual community and is considered one of the Three Jewels of Buddhism; along with the ideal of human enlightenment (represented by the figure of the Buddha) and the teachings that enable us to achieve this state (known as the Dharma or Dhamma depending upon whether you’re using Pali or Sanskrit). Sangha Day is celebrated in November (on a ‘supermoon’ this year!), as it traditionally marks the end of the rainy season (though I’ve seen not a drop since I arrived 5 weeks ago). This then, was the day that all the monks and nuns left the shelter of their temporary communities to once again ‘go forth’ and teach the Dhamma as far and widely as possible. There were two traditional practices on this day; for the monks and nuns, confession was critical. Having been cooped up for so long during the rains, many unskillful and unkind words or actions may have slipped past even the most well-meaning practitioner and to leave these weighing on a guilty conscience was not the best way to bid your compatriots farewell, not the most honest way to begin teaching higher ideals.
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Mahendra Nagar Triratna Buddhist Centre
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Buddhist flag flying at Mahendra Nagar
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Stupa to the donor of the land at Mahendra Nagar
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The Sangha Day shrine is prepared...
For the ‘lay’ folk, dana, or giving, was important and they would make new robes for the ordained to go off in. This was partly gratitude for the teachings they had received during the season and partly to make their own contribution to helping spread the benefits of Dhamma teaching. For modern practitioners in Triratna, these activities are not so relevant but there is often the opportunity to ‘reaffirm’ the vows one made when becoming a mitra or member of the order. I had received an invitation to one such ceremony in London, but of course would be unable to go, so when I heard that Sheetal was going to a reaffirmation day at her local Triratna Centre, I was immediately keen to attend; not just as it would be my first opportunity to visit the Mahendra Nagar Centre but also to participate in the puja. It would have been an enjoyable activity in the UK but here it seemed like a really quite important thing to do. Not only would I be able to reaffirm my commitment to my own mind, I could do it publicly and let my adopted Sangha see that I was genuine in my ‘Going for Refuge to The Three Jewels’, alongside them and in the same manner that they do. As I’ve mentioned before, though there is much that is at least similar enough to feel familiar in Triratna in India there is also a lot that is really very different as well.
After we arrived at the centre, I was able to relax and enjoy watching the shrine dressing activites. Of course, we’d turned up absolutely on time to an event organized in India so we had at least 45 minutes to wait before much happened. As it turned out, things finally kicked off merely an hour and ten minutes late. I knew I was going to have difficulty following a lot of the day as it would be conducted in Marathi but thankfully, the day started with chants in Pali (which I know, whew!) and a period of Metta Bhavana meditation, which I am familiar enough with to follow the stages of sans guidance. I focused on a few people from Triratna in the UK. I feel part of both Manchester and London sanghas since my move north to south, so I had plenty of people to pick from! Such is the nature of genuine friendships I think; it doesn’t matter how distant you are, those bonds remain true, so happily you don’t really lose such friends, you just accumulate them. After this, there was a full-on talk that I actually couldn’t follow so I made time to make lesson planning notes and jot down some thoughts for myself about the nature of Sangha and the re-commitment I was about to make. Thinking about Sangha seemed especially apt in such a situation, finding myself as I was, suspended in limbo almost (if you’ll pardon the analogy from an alternative religion!) between Indian and English sanghas. Occasionally, I could grasp bits of what the speaker was discussing, especially when he began referencing the Five Precepts using the Pali terms we chant every day. Unfortunately, my studious air and feverish scribbling apparently meant everyone assumed I understood Marathi (I constantly underestimate just how scrutinized ones actions are here; if you do something, you can guarantee everyone’s not only noticed you doing it but drawn about a hundred corresponding conclusions before you’ve even finished.) This explained their confusion and disappointment when I was unable to respond to their attempts in conversation!

Lunch was a predictably delicious affair of rice, dhal, chappatis and subji and we had a full hour to eat it, which I was grateful for as previous experiences led me to assume it would be a bit of a rush! When the ceremony began, I was excited to learn it would be a Sevenfold Puja thinking I knew it well enough to follow under my breath in English; so much for that. It was completely different and I just couldn’t work out which stage we were doing beyond about the third. There was no Heart Sutra and no final mantras. Hey ho.

The actual reaffirmation involved so many people that even just this section alone took over an hour! The Mitra Ceremony involves making offerings to the shrine of a flower, some incense and a candle (representing physical impermanence, the all-pervading nature of the Dharma and the illumination of the enlightenment mind) so you can imagine that for nearly every person in attendance (Sheetal and I estimated about 150) to do this takes some time. Buddhists aren’t best known for rushing things either; it’s a bit at odds with the 'calm and mindful' job description!
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The hall is laid for meditation and puja...
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And finally, the speakers arrive on stage!
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Flowers...
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...incense...
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...and candles for the Reaffirmation Ceremony.
Sheetal was keen to know how the numbers of mitras compared with the UK but I found it so difficult to say. It certainly seemed like a greater percentage of those attending were mitras than I might expect in the UK but then it was a day for mitras and India is generally a society in which spirituality is infinitely more normalized. There are four Triratna centres just in Nagpur. Even London only has three. Comparing any aspect of India and England (and I know this is a strange analogy coming from a vegan) is a bit like comparing finest matured Stilton to processed ‘cheese food slices’. They’re sort of the same in a great many ways and yet at the same time, couldn’t be more different. Notionally, one might be qualified to have superior qualities to the other and yet there are times and places where only the ‘inferior’ will do. If that makes no sense to you then that’s fine. I’m still equally confused about really pinning down the differences between my home and adopted cultures so that makes us just about even.

That evening, I had agreed to take our community of young women round the corner to Nagaloka where the esteemed Dhammachari Lokamitra was giving a talk for Sangha Day. He has a great deal of experience in India and is one of the founding members of Triratna (or FWBO as it was) in the country so he is very much respected not just as a senior international Order Member but as one who really understands the local community here too. He spoke at length (though I know it was just a summary) on Dr Ambedkar’s approach to Dhamma, detailing his assertion that it was a way to achieve empowerment, a method for overcoming barriers between people and a key factor in effective governance. Lokamitra discussed each of these from the perspective of how we operate as a Sangha. He concluded by stating that if we are honestly practicing the Dhamma on an individual level and as a community supporting each other in our ideals, we should be an example of the most effectively functioning community possible. This in turn renders us empowered to break down barriers in society and utilise our human commonalities to facilitate the effectively radical, and not just tired old prescriptive governance that is required to really build a better world. To build the world we speak of when we greet each other ‘Jai Bhim’, and call to victory for Ambedkar’s vision of a truly equal society.
So I’d like to say that after a day of all that intense focus on Sangha, the community I live and work with, those individuals who together form one of my three key refuges in a practice that ultimately pivots on cultivating universal, selfless compassion, I’d like to say I came away overflowing with metta (loving kindness) and bursting at the seams with warm, friendly positivity. I’d like to say that because it would be appropriate, it would be ‘nice’ and it would mean I could stop writing this increasingly lengthy update; but it wouldn’t be very truthful.
Actually, I came away wondering. One of the first questions in the year one mitra study course (and one Sheetal, Shakyajata and I had recently considered in a very fruitful study session) asks which of the three jewels we feel most strongly attracted to. For myself, it’s always been Dhamma (or Dharma if I’m in UK brain).
Not just in terms of the teachings but also in another more subtle use of the word that refers to what I interpret as a universal flow of energy of which we are all a part, once we transcend our own egos. This energy, I do not believe to be unique to Buddhism. I think some religions call it God. Some people who might be broadly spiritual but not ‘religious’ per se call it ‘Mother Nature’, or even more abstractly ‘Love’. I have an inkling that physicists call it ‘Dark Matter’ and rather enjoy baffling themselves by trying to pin aspects of it down in particle accelerators. I suspect we may eventually find out it’s simultaneously all and yet none of these things. You can probably tell from this paragraph that I’m rather fond of thinking about it. So, my ‘one’ of the three (not that it’s really possible to separate them, of course) is not Sangha. Don’t get me wrong, I feel communities are critically important regardless of your culture and I spent much of my time while I qualified on an MA trying to develop ways through an Art and Design practice to strengthen community, find commonality, empower people and breakdown barriers. In terms of my spiritual life though, it’s not the most important one. And having heard and thought so much about Sangha, having been embraced so warmly into this new one, I felt really awkward about about that.
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Lokamitra prepares to speak at Nagaloka
For the next couple of days, I felt decidedly ‘not right’. Low energy. Unable to settle down to things I felt I ought to. Unable to find motivation to do the things I felt I ought to want to do. Write a blog update about Sangha Day, for one! I decided to let myself have some time ‘doing nothing’. I’m starting to find that when I get ‘stuck’ and decide to do this, what I actually do is far from nothing. What I actually do is allow some space for the things bubbling and brewing away in my subconscious to ‘do their thing’, to coalesce, to ripen and bear fruit. I then started reading some of Bhante’s writing, ‘Conversion in Buddhism’ and ‘The Ideal of Human Enlightenment’, both pretty core texts and both with their share of comments to make about the role of Sangha. One thing that struck me in his discussion was the importance of having a community to bear witness to you at your best and, sometimes, at your worst. Funnily enough, this is one of the things I have been finding most challenging about my current situation. I’m very used to living alone. Even when I don’t live alone, I’m used to being able to take as much time as I want to myself, to work through when I’m not feeling at my best in private. To then re-emerge, feeling better, all shiny and new like a butterfly who’s just been able to do all that ugly business of mutating from a caterpillar in the safety of its cocoon and never had to make any of that public. Yet, in a home full to bursting with over 20 people, I cannot do that. Even if I go to my room, everyone in the house knows where I am. If I leave the house, people know. If I return, I am seen. If I am looking a little dishevelled, a little less tired than I might like to admit I feel or anything other than at my total best, I know it has been seen, noticed, witnessed. So much for just lying low until I feel back on top of things again.
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The Sangha Day Shrine, not all incense and flowers...
So much for quietly hiding in my shell until I’m ready to once again present the version of me that I’d like people to think I am all of the time. And this means that I cannot hide it from me either. I am living right up against the surface of myself and can’t indulge my belief that I’m just a little bit superhuman any longer, not even fleetingly. I’ve never been so aware on such a minute by minute basis of all my mundane shortcomings. Occasionally, I’ve been excruciatingly aware of some huge glaring flaws in my personality but I’ve done rather a lot of work on those thanks to several years of counselling and I find them really quite manageable these days. Until now though, I’ve never been so aware of all the tiny, trivial, apparently unimportant ways that I’m not quite as I’d like to be. I feel as if I am staring into a mirror, 24/7. Not just a mirror of my physical form either, but worse, a mirror of my inner psyche. Sound harrowing? It is. And I find that maybe this is why I am not as enamoured with Sangha as I might have thought I would, or should be. Maybe it’s all just a bit too raw, but maybe it’s exactly what I need to be doing. Six months of life at the cutting edge of my (very new) spiritual practice was never going to be all about lighting candles and arranging flowers on a shrine to the heady scent of incense and the pleasant chanting of melodic mantras.
My experience of dissatisfaction with my own mundane reality reached its peak, when in the early hours of Thursday morning, I finally had cause to really concede my belief that I’m super human. I finally had to give up my resolution that ‘this is great, I’m practically a native! I’ve got guts of STEEL I’ll never get sick in India!’ whilst deciding which end of myself to first position over a bucket. Thank goodness I had a bucket. I’ll spare you any further details but there, along with the bodily fluids I never realized were so abundant, went any last shreds of dignity and privacy in this household. The thing about having so many people living in one house is that they’re never physically distant and it’s amazing just how much a bucket can amplify the most private of noises in the complete stillness of a far from festive, truly silent night. And of course, from there on in, came the outpourings of concern, the complete eradication of a sense of privacy and the very well-meaning offers of various Indian remedies. I have learned that there is nothing like the love of an Indian grandmother, gently yet persistently plying you with Ayurvedic remedies that appear to be the equivalent of pouring melted Vics Vapour Rub into your ailing digestive tract 'because your fire's gone out', to make you quite determined to get better just as soon as possible. Unfortunately, where we encounter one kind of suffering in our immediate experience, we often compound this for ourselves by generating a load more in our felt responses to it. Buddhism describes this as the ‘second arrow’; it’s all the ways we hang onto, prolong or add to our own unhappiness. In my case this came tumbling in on me as a barrage of feelings of guilt for getting sick (maybe I ate too much, didn’t wash my hands well enough, failed to follow some sage advice about not exposing myself to various pathogens), worry about being a burden (if I can’t teach, why am I here? Am I going to make others ill? If I can’t help round the house I’m just dead weight, people will think I’m being lazy!) and embarrassment for being seen as I really am (a wet, squidgy lump of meat full of various unpleasant substances and not always best able to retain said substances where polite society traditionally considers appropriate).
Cue a day in bed, consuming nothing but rehydration salts (I avoided further Ayurvedic doses) and reading more Bhante. I managed to get up that evening and was generously cooked a special dinner; lentils and rice cooked into a warm, salty, bland mash. Probably exactly what I needed. After a day in bed, I thought I’d get no sleep at all but I did sleep right through. I managed to drag myself kicking and screaming to the 7am puja and did a very sorry job of attempting to focus on my meditation, but still that was better than what I’d managed the day before.  Feeling better but still not great, when Shakyajata suggested ‘checking in’ after breakfast (A Triratna practice of sharing with Sangha members how you’re feeling) I really didn’t want to. I knew I had nothing nice to say. I also knew that was precisely why it was so important that I did so. Funnily enough, I had felt rather guilty during our last ‘check in’ on Saturday when others felt down or uncomfortable and I had felt really good, as if I was rubbing my happiness in their faces. Now I felt the same but for opposite reasons, guilty for ‘dragging down’ other’s good moods. Well there’s an interesting thing; you really just can’t win against yourself sometimes, eh?
And there I find a recognition; that’s what Sangha is. When you just can’t win against yourself alone, Sangha is the community of others who remind you that life is not a battle you fight against yourself, or alone in the first place. Shakyajata referred to our close working relationship as ‘a cremation ground’ when we first arived. I understood this on one level, I understood that yes, other people can help you work through and eradicate unhelpful things but now I think, I really get it.  Sangha is a community who don’t just help you flush out these impurities, but without whom you couldn’t truly tackle them at all. It’s the coming together of all the other perfectly imperfect people, some of whom are necessarily on top form, some of whom are inevitably not, at any one time. We support each other, we see the best and worst in each other, we get on with it. Sometimes, we even get on with each other, but if we don’t, we’ll use our incompatibilities as fertiliser to grow into stronger, better humans who are one step closer to our common goal together. We’re the mirror in which we see each other’s and our own flaws and foibles, because without that illumination, we can’t grasp the blemishes we need to cleanse. Sangha is the bucket that lovingly contains our midnight explosions without question yet simultaneously amplifies the embarrassing noises, so there’s no hiding from it, so we have to confront the unpleasant truths found within us, we have to empty them out and disinfect them. But whichever end we find ourselves on, whether performing the stoic job of martyrdom that is the bucket or taking the embarrassing role of sickening patient, it’s all just part of the balance of life. To refuse a sharing of these with one another denies others their own fluctuations. Being me ‘at my best’ gives others permission to be at their best too, but why should I deny others the freedom to feel not so great without judgement as well? So that Dhamma I’m so fond of, that flux of combined universal energies, flows in such a way that when I am up, another is counterbalancing this by being proportionately down and one way of seeing it is that it’s my responsibility to share my inevitable ‘meh’ days too so that this can be normalised, that others know I understand these; I have them too. That’s real understanding and community I think. It’s great to share each other’s company when we’re feeling wonderful but perhaps more important to endure ourselves in the company of others during those times when we are not.
So, for my own part, my Sangha Day practices have finally amounted to confession, in the sense of acknowledging that I am not always quite the person I’d like others to have to be around and then dana, in the sense of my genuine commitment to give all of that person to both my spiritual community and to those I work with on a mundane, worldly level. It’s also a commitment to give all of myself to my efforts to realise my will to enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Giving myself completely to that cause means withholding none of it. It means giving myself entirely with both my features and my flaws, my strengths and my weaknesses. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. It won’t always be pretty, it won’t always be dry or hygienic, but it will always be honest and it will always be safe in the knowledge that even when I am feeling at my least acceptable, there will always be a Sangha there ready to not just accept but to actively expect that honesty. And there I find a place to build my faith in the third jewel. Yes, I believe I can, with enough effort, eventually attain what the Buddha attained. With that faith secured, I believe wholeheartedly in the Dharma as a process for getting there. But can I trust those around me to really be there and support the whole of me on the back of three and a half decades of worldly conditioning that have taught me humans aren’t really always that trustworthy?
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An enlighteming Super-Sangha-Day-Moon!
Hmmm. Well, no, not yet. Not always. But I think this Sangha Day, I learnt why I must try. And as long as I remain mindful of that, I do, at least have faith it will enough to get me there. No, that’s not quite right. Not enough to get me there. Us. It’ll be enough to get me there with my sangha. Wherever they are in the world.
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A Nice Day for a Multicoloured Wedding!

9/11/2016

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We had a few social engagements last week and although these were exciting in their own right, there was definitely a sense of build up to the wedding on Saturday; this is probably true of any event that requires its own shopping trip! Of course, with this in mind, I was quite eager to try the sari on, though I’d been very patient and waited for the day itself to arrive. The fact that I had no idea how to put it on myself was something of a deciding factor in this apparent restraint but I was also a little apprehensive; I’ve heard saris are hard to walk in and not very comfortable for those not used to wearing them. I’m normally up for a challenge but these days form definitely follows function in my sartorial decision making and it’s been many a year since I talked myself into enduring discomfort for an evening just because I thought I looked good. I find formal social engagements exhausting enough even in my own cultural territory so I was aware that I might be setting myself up for a bit of a job and if I was going to be uncomfortable I thought it best not to know ahead of time. Still you can’t come to India and not try wearing a sari at least once and there’s not much point putting one on unless you’re actually going somewhere in it!

The wedding invitation made clear that it started at 11am and we’d been told we’d leave at about 10:30. Given that I would need help to get dressed, but not wanting to be pushy or rush anyone else who also needed to get dressed I simply said ‘I’ve no idea how long it’ll take to put on, please let me know when it’s time to get ready!?’ and settled down to a quiet hour before all the excitement kicked off! I certainly didn’t want to get into my beautiful new strait jacket too early and start the discomfort any sooner than needed but at about 10 O’clock, I started to wonder where everyone was. It really was very restful but I was worried we may end up with a last minute rush. Didn’t anyone else have a watch!? I looked upstairs. I looked downstairs. I fetched the sari, packed my bag and got as ready as I possibly could. Aryaketu, sat happily in the downstairs living room, asked ‘Why are you not in your sari yet?’ Shakyajata emerged, dressed in her new kurta. Neither of these things did anything to dispel my concern. I’m not used to being unable to get dressed independently. I think I can just about recall learning to button up my own dressing gown and I definitely remember the perseverance of learning to tie my own shoe laces but I managed to get my head around these skills nigh on three decades ago. Having to wait for someone to dress me was somewhat disconcerting. But of course, I was forgetting; we’re in India and time is only ever theoretical. Just as I had found Sheetal (who was dressed) and tried to remind her politely that I might need a hand, Aryaketu wandered calmly into the kitchen and started to make himself some breakfast. It was now after 10:30. Sheetal told me that Vaishali (her sister in law, who also teaches at Aryaloka and lives with the family downstairs) would be better able to help me… and then proceeded to get changed into a different outfit. Aryaketu went to have a shower. I calmed down.

I had thought I might only need help putting a sari on once and that if I watched carefully I would be able to do it myself next time. This wasn’t born out in reality; however, when Vaishali arrived to help dress me! I felt like a cross between a maypole and the unfortunate victim of a very aesthetically aware spider as she ducked and dived around me tucking yards of fabric into the petticoat tied incredibly tightly around my waist. A pleat here, a tuck there, a loop left trailing for some unknown purpose, a fold, another tuck… and then the pinning started! How on earth anyone ever manages to get into one of these themselves I couldn’t begin to imagine but I think you’d have to learn to do it young. So much for a sense of pride over the buttoned dressing gown. Finally I was folded, tucked and pinned satisfactorily. I was already sweating (great!) but it was time to find out if I could walk. I took an experimental step forward. No problem. A second step. I did not trip over. I internally congratulated myself for my ability to remain perpendicular. I’m not a stranger to hitting the deck when I have no restriction round my legs whatsoever and this seemed like something of an achievement. Actually, I didn’t find walking any trouble at all, but I did feel strangely exposed and only half dressed. Strange as it may sound from someone who has spent the last four weeks silently grumbling about having to keep her legs and shoulders covered at all times for reasons of modesty, I found myself feeling rather naked to have half my midriff hanging out.
I tried to tell myself that I wouldn’t think so much of it and would in fact have far more on display if I was at a swimming pool. So there I was, suddenly transformed with one swish of fabric into a semi-naked maypole-spider-dinner at a swimming pool and boy was I ready to party! Aryaketu was still having a shave though, so Shakyajata and I decided to pop up and see the young women in their computer class. We knew we’d be slightly disrupting them but also that they’d be delighted to see us in our finery! And they were too! Such enthusiasm! I realised how strange I found their excitement to see me in a sari, as opposed to how I imagine I’d have reacted to seeing an Indian teacher (if I’d had one) in Western clothes, which is, probably not at all. I’d have been fascinated to see her in her own, traditional Indian clothes, not stuff that I wear every day. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the novelty? Shakyajata reflected wisely that it demonstrates your acceptance of them and I suppose from a native of what is widely perceived to be a more developed or civilised culture that’s really very important, and certainly well worth being a bit constricted round the middle for.
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Shakyajata and I prepare to leave...
Finally, around forty five minutes ‘behind schedule’ and fifteen after the publicised start of the wedding, we were all ready to go and I found myself feeling very grateful for the fact that we’d be getting a lift to the venue so I’d not have to navigate the bus in my new outfit. I climbed in the back next to Shakyajata, leaving the front seat free for Sheetal. Aryaketu had already explained he’d be picking Mark up separately after dropping us off as there’d be no room in the car. I thought we’d have been able to squeeze him in between us in the back but was secretly glad not to be too scrunched up given the circumstances. This was until Sheetal got in the back next to me. Then Saket (Vaishali’s son) climbed on her lap. Jija (Aryaketu’s mum) climbed in the front seat. Her sister hopped in too, half on top, half next to her. And so we drove off, seven in one car, none of us with seatbelts including a child and two elderly ladies (both in the front seat). Aryaketu made a call on his mobile (maybe to let Mark know we were running late? Probably not) and at this point I stopped trying to make a mental catalogue of all the traffic regulations we’d have been breaking in the UK. We’d not have made it past the end of the road! But, in the UK we were not; just another difference to swallow up and get on with!

It soon transpired that what had appeared to be lateness had in fact been a carefully orchestrated disinclination to spend too much time hanging about unnecessarily. Well aware that the ceremony was highly unlikely to start on time, there had never been any need to rush and we actually drove past the wedding procession that had not yet even arrived at the celebration hall. We were dropped off outside as Mark was collected and made our way to some seats halfway towards the back. Shakyajata was firm in turning down an offer of seats on the stage; we’d never even met the bride and groom after all and neither of us fancied playing the role of trophy white lady. That might sound harsh or unfriendly and it did indeed feel a bit that way but there’s a degree of status that comes with visible association with Westerners (I’d encountered this in China too) and it makes me feel uncomfortable at best.  We were attracting enough attention just by being there; far better to take some modest seats in an unobtrusive spot than to draw anymore stares. I tried to ignore the gentleman in front taking a ‘selfie’ with us carefully framed in the background by turning my face to look behind me, only to find myself staring into another camera. Such is life. A strange feeling though, to be valued for one’s skin colour instead of some achievement, especially when you’ve spent your whole adult life fighting as much as possible to eradicate this mistaken assumption that a chance quantity of pigmentation in the dermis has any bearing on your value as a human being. At least this discomfort distracted me from any thoughts about how I felt about what I was wearing and I found myself relaxing as I enjoyed watching the live band who were merrily turning out all manner of entertaining, up-beat songs to keep the crowd entertained as they waited. Quite a crowd it was too. I think there were about 500 people milling around and I wondered how on earth it was possible to have so many friends to invite to your wedding until I reasoned that it was probably not that difficult at all if you were content to invite entire families of ten plus their random foreign visitors who you’d never even met. Of course, this being a Buddhist wedding, there were also a lot of Order Members and other Sangha members about too, which would have pushed the number (and I thought also the costs!) right up through the roof!
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The Wedding Shrine
Finally, the bride and groom arrived and the ceremony began. A figure wearing a kesa (the Triratna ‘dog collar’) appeared on stage (a reassuringly familiar sight!) and began to chant the refuges and precepts, a very usual way to start any ritual proceedings. Sorry, did I say, the ceremony began?  Excuse me? The ceremony has started! Nobody seemed in the least bit interested in this fact and continued to chat, mill about as the fancy took them and call upon the services of various members of waiting staff who were distributing refreshments from trays of tea and snacks. Nobody except us anyway, I realised I wasn’t the only one finding this odd as I noticed Shakyajata and Mark also joining in with the chant. Apart from one other lady I spotted across the aisle, I genuinely think we may have been the only ones! To be fair, I suppose there wasn’t really all that much to see but it seemed a bit disrespectful to almost totally ignore the entire reason for our presence; the lifetime commitment these young people were making to one another. In India, it really is a lifetime commitment too, divorce and separation are still very rare and I felt the least I could do was try and participate.
True to the pattern of most weddings I’ve attended though, it seemed most people saw it as an opportunity to eat free food and show off their fancy clothes. There were plenty of these too and I soon ran out of energy to mentally tag sari designs as my ‘favourite so far’. ‘Nope, that one!’, ‘Actually I prefer the colour of that one.’ ‘But maybe with the pattern of that!’

After the chanting, I managed to peer through the backs of heads, milling crowds and enthusiastic photography team (yes, there really was an entire team) to see what was happening next. Part of the ceremony involved a cord being tied around the couple’s hands before water was poured over them. They swapped garlands (indicating my opportunity to dispense with the handful of marigold petals I’d been sweatily clutching since they’d been handed to me half an hour ago) and saluted the shrine for a final time before leaving the stage. “Was that it!?” I inquired of Sheetal. Not quite. They had gone to get changed and we were invited upstairs to a buffet lunch while they did so (I guess there might have been some formal signing of registers and such too, but that’s based on an English model and I don’t actually know that!). The lunch hall was huge, I suppose it would have to be for so many guests, and while I was semi-curious to explore it, I was actually quite grateful that Sheetal offered to go and get me a plate of ‘safe’ foods; she knows well enough now what I like to eat and would be better placed than I to identify any random milk products! A Buddhist wedding will be vegetarian by default (though I’m learning to assume nothing) but milk doesn’t come into this category so paneer, ghee and curds are still likely to be involved in some dishes. I waited for her patiently, wondering how long it would be before I spilled an oily, turmeric yellow dollop down my so far shockingly pristine turquoise sari. I contemplated perching on a sofa but decided that with a petticoat tied so restrictively tightly about my tummy, trying to put any food down me whilst bent at the gut would be a temptation too far for the gods of indigestion so I stayed standing, true to buffet style. Plenty of more practised sari wearers were happily plonked on the floor to enjoy what appeared to be plate after plate of (characteristically excellent) Indian specialities. Much as my taste buds were tempted to request seconds, my stomach over-ruled them for once. No more space! No time either, as we were herded into photo after photo by various people who I think were friends of friends, or who were at least pretending to be.
Long after my face started aching from all the pseudo smiling (I dread to think how many random people now have pictures of my well-meaning yet rapidly fatiguing grin-cum-grimace on their respective mobile devices!), we were told the couple were ready to receive us and so we all trundled back down stairs to the stage, where we joined the queueing well-wishers. Goodness knows, they must have been exhausted enough but stoically smiling amid the crowds, the bride and groom shook hands and took the congratulations of each guest amid showers of marigold petals. Finally, I had an opportunity to say hello, to thank them for their hospitality and to wish them the best for their future together. Just that though and no more as I was swept past and off the stage by the swelling crowd until the bride’s father (to whom we’d been briefly introduced at lunch) came and invited us back for a photo with his daughter and new son in law. Though I suspect there may have been some degree of ‘novelty foreigner opportunism’ to his request, it was a final photo that I didn’t mind as it was at least central to the purpose of the day!
There were a few final conversations (including one with a local Order Member who may be able to help us organise to go on retreat!) but we were then mercifully ferried home. It was a perfect ending really as though we could have stayed, we managed to leave while I was still enjoying it and hadn’t started getting too uncomfortable or irritated! Apparently the family also thought I’d ‘done well’ in wearing the sari, which was reassuring as I assume that means I also managed to avoid committing any public faux pas around activities such as eating, trying to subtly avoid photographs, or generally being an appropriately grateful guest! There’d been no filter water available at the event and I was thirsty after the salty, spicy lunch so I didn’t try and conceal my enthusiasm when Aryaketu suggested we go for coconuts on the way home! The seven of us slightly extended our journey to obtain the succulent thirst-quenching fruits and I relished every hard-earned slurp!
I did enjoy the event, it was certainly an education and I also found I could relax into wearing the sari, in which I ended up feeling almost elegant (certainly not an adjective I’d normally use for myself!) but having said that, it was awfully good to be home and I didn’t need half as much help to carefully extricate myself from the folds and pins as I’d needed to get into them!
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Go on then! One last photo before I get comfy!
My next opportunity to wear it will be to Neha’s wedding, in January, which I’ve been looking forward to since she visited England in June! I’m also very interested to see the difference and though I was initially sorry that I’d not be going to hers first, actually, I’m quite glad I got the chance to have a practice! I’ll not be feeling daft about needing help to get dressed though and will be very happy to accept the assistance. I shall certainly need it!
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Social Butterflies!

3/11/2016

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Before arriving in India, I was advised that we were likely to receive multiple invitations to lunch and dinner at various eager homes, possibly clashing and all critical to not just attend but to schedule in absolutely the right order to avoid causing offence. This did not transpire. I can’t pretend to have been disappointed; I’ve found the days full and challenging enough without wondering how to tread on social eggshells. It has been really good to simply settle into the Indian domestic environment, observe family habits and have a practice at, for example, eating rice and extremely runny dhal with my fingers without worrying about whether I was unwittingly performing some great faux pas. Having said that, I was beginning to wonder why we hadn’t received any such invites but this week has proven that such events are akin to the proverbial buses; you wait weeks for one and three turn up at once. At least in this instance we’ve had a little warning and I haven’t had to fling myself through any front doors whilst avoiding a river of mopeds.

In June, I had the great honour of meeting a particularly remarkable woman, Neha, during a visit to Europe. Neha studied on the residential course at Aryaloka with Young Indian Futures nine years ago and is a textbook model of the success of the project who now regularly rubs shoulders with very senior order members whilst holding down a plethora of creative roles at Lord Buddha TV, a channel dedicated to broadcasting Buddhist and Ambedkarite teachings. She has recently enjoyed great success with the publication of a documentary Ambedkar in Hungary (28,521 views as I write this) that she shot during her summer trip looking at the lives of a community of Roma people who have discovered the ideas of Dr Ambedkar in their own search for social emancipation.
Neha has become not just a friend to me but also a great inspiration so I was excited when we received an invitation to her home to have dinner and celebrate her birthday on Wednesday!

Her kind ‘Papa’ collected us from Indora soon after we finished teaching that evening and took us in his now familiar auto rickshaw to their house; a small but beautifully kept dwelling on a street with a similar ambience. It is small and perhaps a little run down to some eyes, yet it is clear that those who live there look after it with care and whatever means are at their disposal. Shakyajata has, of course, known Neha for nearly a decade and has visited her family several times on each of her trips so Mark and I stood back a little to let old friends reunite. We were equally warmly welcomed though and were presented with the customary fresh flowers in a very touching fashion. We all sat in their tiny but delightful living room; at the centre of which is the beautifully decorated family shrine. I tried to keep track of the introductions and conversations, conversing in English where possible or with some interpretation where needed.

Soon, Neha’s birthday cake was brought into the room! I have seen display cabinets full of such cakes on Dr Ambedkar Road and I must be honest in saying that they don’t much appeal to my tastes as they appear extremely artificial; gaudy bright colours and something that tries to resemble fresh cream but ends up looking more like enthusiastically applied bath sealant. Nevertheless, cake snobbery aside, It was clearly enjoyed by everybody! Everything progressed very normally; Neha lit an exciting firework candle which we all applauded. She then proceeded to cut the cake, at which point the first custom that is slightly outside of the British experience revealed itself when she turned round and hand fed a piece to Shakyajata, who received it with an air of dignified resignation. This activity continued as Neha fed cake to, and was then fed by, each guest in turn. I was more than slightly relieved when it came to my turn and I was able to apologise profusely but explain I would not be able to eat the confection which no doubt contained both eggs and dairy products. She conceded with some disappointment but saying that she understood. At this point someone pointed out that the wafer curls on top of the cake would be ‘mostly sugar anyway’ (Thanks, Mark) and so I ended up being cajoled into a bite of one. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant but I’m not sure it contained much in the way of traditionally edible substances! I was lucky; however, to escape from the main birthday cake ritual, which was still to come. After quite gracefully receiving his share of the cake from Neha’s careful hand, her brother returned the gesture; by smearing it vigorously all over her face! This was clearly of no surprise to her and she continued the mutual feeding with a similar resigned pride with which Shakyajata had set the scene with her first bite! I have since been told this is a very normal birthday tradition. And there was me thinking the ‘birthday bumps’ was a strange quirk of English custom.
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Such a normal, civilised family scene!
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Until the cake is cut!
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When it is perfectly normal to smear it on the Birthday Girl's face!
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Soon, we were presented with a fine meal; dhal, chapattis, rice, salad (a separate one made especially for me with no mayonnaise), a delicious mushroom Balti, gulab jamun, and little sweet crispy snacks as a side. Our plates were never left empty for a second by our very attentive hosts and I was gently berated for ‘eating very slowly’. It’s true that I am often one of the last to finish in the UK, so I’m a gastronomic tortoise by Indian standards. Despite the lavish care given to the preparation of a meal, most Indians seem content to gulp the dish down and get on with something else as quickly as possible, something my digestion has a habit of rebelling against. I was content to apologise and take my time because it was too nice to rush anyway but I couldn’t help noticing that none of our hosts were eating, which I found more than a little strange.  At various stages, different extended family members appeared to meet us and take photos. I also found this odd, mid meal, but did my best to be photogenic with a mouthful! Eventually, we begged our hosts to feed us no more as we were really very full! Neha explained that eight PM was far too early for them to eat and they would be having their dinner later, at about half past nine. I did feel rather guilty that such a lot of effort had been put into not just our meal but responding so kindly to our daily rhythm, but no one seemed in the least put out. After more chatting and laughter, we were graciously conveyed to our respective dwellings; Mark on the back of Neha’s brothers’ scooter, Shakyajata and myself in her Papa’s rickshaw once again. I’m not sure if I’m slightly jealous of Mark’s ride or really rather relieved we got the ‘safe’ option!

Of course this wasn’t before a grand farewell send-off from the entire family, in which Neha’s brother in law took great pains to express enthusiastically to me that if I ever encountered any difficulties in India, I should contact the family straight away, who would all provide assistance in whatever way I needed. He made this point very earnestly, several times and it occurred to me rather sadly that I would seriously have questioned the motives of any gentleman making such offers at home. In this instance though, I could not question his genuine demeanour and felt very much as though I had been welcomed wholeheartedly into yet another loving family.
As if that wasn’t enough of an exciting social experience, the very next day we were to attend lunch with Asha, another ex-student of Aryaloka who now works at the Institute. Knowing that our usual daily pattern is to teach from Five O’clock at the Indora campus, she had kindly suggested a meal beforehand so instead of the normal routine of enjoying Sheetal’s cooking pretty much as soon as we step out of the classroom at One, we instead caught a lift to her home with Aryaketu, who would also eat with us.
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Another fine meal; with Bihari specialities this time!
We were shown into a home of comparable humility to Neha’s and just as well kept but we were soon presented with a range of unfamiliar foods! No chapattis!? What on earth!? Instead, we were given a Bihari treat; a kind of small fried bread dumpling, which really did make a delicious change. Of course there was also plenty of subji, pakoras, pilau and I very much enjoyed a generous fresh salad of raw beetroot, cucumber, radish and salad. Though it is easy to eat a vegetarian diet here, I have really missed raw vegetables as they are nearly always cooked very thoroughly, so this was a real joy and I could almost feel my body absorbing the nutrients. Asha had been considerate in removing a dish of khir (milky rice pudding) from my plate, knowing that I follow a vegan diet. Unfortunately, two and two hadn’t quite been put together and it wasn’t until I declared ‘this dhal tastes different!’ that Aryaketu pointed out it wasn’t dhal at all and was made with curds; so I encountered Vegan Food Fail #2. Still, I’d only tasted a small spoonful so I didn’t feel too put off and did a very good job of demolishing the verified ‘safe’ edibles before me! Yet again, I noticed our hosts were not eating, simply ferrying dishes back and forth from the kitchen to slavishly refill our plates if anything appeared to be diminishing. I asked Asha if she’d already eaten. Perhaps our arrival time of 2pm was too late for them? On the contrary, she’d not eaten since breakfast but assured me that I should not worry and she was not hungry. After our meal, we were served very sweet black tea with lemon juice and reclined to enjoy a rest and a good chat, especially with Arti. She speaks excellent English and is married to Paul, whom I had first met at the Manchester Buddhist Centre and who volunteered as an English teacher at Aryaloka last year. Soon it was time for us to leave and prepare our lesson at which time a minor mystery was solved. I’d been so engrossed in chatting to Arti, who is excited to be leaving tomorrow to meet Paul where he is now teaching in China, that I’d not noticed everyone else seemed to have vanished. As we got up to leave, I peered around the door to the kitchen; there they all were, relishing a hearty lunch! Apparently it is entirely normal for hosts to serve their guests first and not to dine themselves until that meal has been finished! No wonder I was ticked off for eating slowly, they must have been starving! Well. You live and learn.
As if that wasn’t enough of an exciting social experience, the very next day we were to attend lunch with Asha, another ex-student of Aryaloka who now works at the Institute. Knowing that our usual daily pattern is to teach from five O’clock at the Indora campus, she had kindly suggested a meal beforehand so instead of the normal routine of enjoying Sheetal’s cooking pretty much as soon as we step out of the classroom at one, we instead caught a lift to her house with Aryaketu, who would also eat with us.

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There they are! The family finally eats lunch!
We now have yet another invitation to our first meal (aside from the Deekshabhoomi Picnic!) with the young women’s group on Sunday, so this time I shall not be so confused when they don’t eat with us. I can’t pretend I wouldn’t prefer it though, it seems rather divisive to my mind and a pity to miss on the opportunity for shared experience that a communal meal offers. Before that of course, we have a big day tomorrow! The wedding and my first attempt to wear a sari! I feel as though I’ve passed the first stage of Indian socialising but I am definitely about to level up. We hope. I suspect dinner with the girls will feel positively relaxing after whatever Indian Buddhist weddings have to offer!
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A Bank Holiday Picnic

1/11/2016

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It sounds like such a British affair to celebrate a rare Monday off work and school, relaxing in the open air with friends and a picnic; but that’s where the similarity ends! The girls had asked to visit the Deekshabhoomi some time back but owing to the practicalities of arranging travel amongst other things, we’d waited until we had a full day at our disposal to make a real day of it. Though many of the girls had visited the site of Dr Ambedkar’s conversion with their families, none of them had really understood the historical significance of the event and it is only recently that they have been studying in any detail about the impact of his activism on the lives of modern Indians and the wider, international community that is Triratna. So, this was in part an opportunity to spend some time together outside of the classroom but also an ongoing exercise in learning about Ambedkar’s life and the role Buddhism and spiritual practice plays in the daily routine of his followers. I was also keen to return; though it was not long since my last visit, on the 14th October anniversary of Ambedkar’s conversion, such was the significance of this date that it had been too busy to really appreciate the place and rather overwhelming just 24 hours after landing in India! I was looking forward to seeing it in a more peaceful state.

At the end of my last update, I reflected that my experience of study trips in the UK was that if you had private transport booked, this would be a significant stress reducer as an alternative to the trials and tribulations of public transport. I also reflected; however, that I was learning enough about India to suspect that things would not be quite so simple in this case. I wasn’t wrong. To begin with, I was delighted to hear that the coach we’d arranged to carry us from Bhilgaon to meet the young men at the Deekshabhoomi had, wait for it, arrived a few minutes early! India – 1, UK – 0. I’m used to coaches turning up worryingly ‘promptly’-cum-late. Would that I could end the story of the transport there, however, things fell down a little when our driver brightly announced that he could carry a total of four passengers. There are ten women students. There were four teachers expecting to travel with them. Cue a quick ‘phone call to a gentleman who has become one of our favourite go-to rickshaw drivers, mostly because he’s very flexible in allowing us to stop on our way home to buy fruit from the Kamptee Road-side stalls. Thankfully, he was only ‘10’ minutes away (note; 10 minutes in India = 20 /30 minutes in actual time). Still, this did not seem to present a complete solution to my mind; rickshaws can carry maybe four to five people. At least we had already had a call from Mark to let us know that things were equally delayed at his end as the young men had not yet finished eating breakfast or packing their lunch. I decided to disengage from any sense of stress and trust that things would work themselves out, so I sat in the sun and watched a couple of the girls hook (rather unripe) guava fruit from the tree in the front garden and waited to see what would happen. No one else seemed too worried, after all. The solution was five in the van (including myself), four in the rickshaw and the rest in Aryaketu’s car. We finally set off, only about 30 minutes behind schedule, which, I have learned, is practically on time. When we arrived, we found the guys already waiting for us calmly in the shade of the Bodhi Tree’s descendent. All’s well that ends well.
Now, if you’re anything like me on school trips, there’s nothing like knowing your lunch is packed to make you feel ready to eat it before you’ve even stepped off the coach, but it was not quite time to eat. Leaving our bags and shoes outside, we all stepped reverentially into the Deekshabhoomi itself. In a calmer and very different atmosphere to my previous visit, I finally felt able to pay proper respect to the ashes of Dr Ambedkar. These are at rest inside a silver model of the building, which is housed in a glass dome and incorporated into yet another scale model of the Deekshabhoomi building, itself modelled on the stupa at Sanchi. Rather like the layers of an onion, or a Russian doll, or possibly some other more universal analogy that I’ve not considered. Some of us sat and absorbed the atmosphere of peace and quiet, some of us contemplated a display of photographs from the life of Dr Ambedkar that are displayed in one corner of the internal space. Taking you through his time in education, government and activism before ending with scenes from the conversion event and finally his resting in state, they brought a degree of informed poignancy to the day and the girls especially were engrossed in the exhibition.

Such an occasion could not be simply left hanging and so Aryaketu gathered us together before delivering what I later learned to be an impromptu talk in both English and Hindi! He gave us some further background to the importance of Ambedkar’s life and work, including his vision for the future of Buddhism. Ambedkar had recognised the need for a simple and easy to follow text on Buddhism (which he wrote in the form of the Buddha and his Dhamma), individuals willing to perform as ‘servants’ of the Dhamma (Buddhist teachings) and, perhaps most importantly for our immediate context, an international Buddhist movement. This, reasoned Aryaketu, was where Triratna came in to its own and played such a pivotal part at home and abroad. This particular observation suddenly spun everything into perspective for me. I had until this point felt both moved and strangely disconnected from the story and achievements of Ambedkar. How, I had been asking myself, could I, having been so randomly and unfairly born into such privileged circumstances of abundance, personal respect and safety, presume to affect any genuine emotion for this man in the presence of my friends and colleagues, whose lives had been so genuinely transformed by him. How could I, even more, presume to teach them anything in that context? Seeing myself suddenly as part of Ambedkar’s wider, long term vision of international Sangha suddenly justified a feeling of commonality. I may not be sharing in my friends’ history, but I can share in their future and understanding that Bhante Sangharakshita had met Ambedkar and recognised the role Triratna can play in that regard really settled my feelings of discomfort and gave me a sense of cohesion that had been lacking. It was with this pleasant feeling of unity that we then conducted a short puja before circumambulation of the stupa whilst chanting the Shakyamuni mantra (though actually a slightly different version to remove potential confusion with Hindu chants).

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The Deekshabhoomi
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Ambedkar's 22 Vows
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The Deekshabhoomi Buddha Rupa
With the spiritual food so expertly served and happily consumed, we finally left the cool of the marble building (where one is requested to observe respect by refraining from photography) and stepped back out into the hot, midday sun to begin our physical feasting! The women had packed us a delicious lunch of chapattis, pilau and subji which they carefully ladled into disposable plates for us from a range of stainless steel ‘tiffin’ boxes that had been meticulously packed that morning. Delightful as this was, I was rather impressed with the simplicity of the men’s approach. They’d cooked a huge quantity of poha, which they’d simply plopped into a big bag! We tried some of that too, which was every bit as tasty! Indians tend to have a rather direct approach to food. Though great care is taken in the preparation, it doesn’t tend to be consumed with much ceremony and most of the picnickers had finished and cleared their plates before I’d got even half way through. I sped up to avoid appearing anymore unusual than, erm, usual, enjoying some guava presented to me by Hema before we all quickly piled back out of the shady spot we’d found to start taking pictures in front of the dome. I have become accustomed to eating lunch at a reasonably leisurely pace before taking things quite slowly, possibly even lying down for twenty minutes or so prior to afternoon activities and unfortunately, at this point, the heat and exertion rather got the better of me and I’m afraid to say I ended our trip feeling rather ropey.
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How many students can you fit in a rickshaw!?
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A rejuvenating slurp of coconut water!
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The stage at Kasturchand Park
Thankfully, Aryaketu and Sheetal had suggested I accompany them for the afternoon to visit a show of local and handmade textiles so I didn’t have to climb back into the rather hot and uncomfortable van when it was time for the groups to head off. Instead, I was fortunate to enjoy an air conditioned car ride and some fresh coconut water, which really did the trick in making me feel very much better. We enjoyed the craft market very much (I even made a couple of purchases thanks to Aryaketu’s expert haggling) and it wasn’t until we were due to leave that I asked about the location. Aryaketu explained that we were in Kasturchand Park, an important location where political and spiritual speeches were often delivered from the central structure. He also told me that Bhante himself had spoken to a huge crowd there some years back, which really cemented my feelings of inclusion that he had generated in his talk earlier in the day.
After an enjoyable afternoon, we only made it home with minutes to spare before the evening puja and meditation, but make it home we did! A shorter ritual owing to the earlier events was followed by a ‘checking in’ session with the young women, in which we each talked about our experiences of the day. It was clear how valuable each of them had found it in locating their studies in a context of Ambedkarism and they were each equally positive about how they feel they are progressing in their academic studies. I decided to be really honest and explained (thanks to Sheetal’s interpretation) that I had found myself feeling a little alienated until I had heard the talk about an international vision for the future of Buddhism. I also made my own point about my perceptions of equality, stating explicitly that as far as I was concerned, the only difference between them and me was that I had simply lived on the planet for a few years longer. In a culture that takes the status of teachers seriously in an hierarchical structure, and prizes fair skin highly in terms of physical ideals, I really hope this will be taken at face value and my words might be at least one brick in the strengthening foundations of confidence for each of these wonderful young women who strike me as being so brimming with talent and potential that I feel myself barely equipped to instruct them at times. Though it is true that we do not share much in our histories, we have, as the result of different conditions still found ourselves in the same place in time, space and intention and I do so genuinely hope that my presence might play a role in helping to brighten their futures because I am aware how much my own will continue to be inspired so hugely by theirs.

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A Festive Weekend

29/10/2016

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Though neither my hosts nor I were celebrating the Hindu festival of Diwali, it has been impossible not to notice it in recent days and this has set something of a tone for our weekend. A bit like Christmas in the UK, many things shut for a few days and taught classes did not run on Saturday. Work did not entirely stop for us though and we had a very productive teaching review meeting on Saturday morning. This was especially useful as it was the first time that Mark, Shakyajata and I had been able to make time to come together for a chat about how things were going without then having to dash into a classroom or jump on a bus back to our respective campus. Having had a week of experience teaching together and getting to know one another and both student groups a little more, this became a really useful opportunity with lots of positive decisions made. Next week is now planned just enough, not too much to eliminate flexibility, with an even distribution of teaching tasks that we each feel well able to independently plan, prepare and deliver. I’m genuinely looking forward to it, both in teaching my ‘own’ content and seeing how my two experienced colleagues manage ‘their’ particular topics. Actually, such was my enthusiasm for my tasks that I came straight away from the meeting and began preparing for my first session; a ‘test run’ of an a practical activity and the creation of a gapped worksheet that I will use alongside it to introduce new vocabulary in the context of instruction verbs. Not only was it good to ‘strike while the iron was hot’ so to speak, it also meant I could really ‘switch off’ my work head and enjoy our planned afternoon together that we had agreed after a really enjoyable Saturday evening last week.
After lunch, Mark and I strolled out for a further explore of Bhilgaon village before wandering back round to the Nagaloka Buddhist training complex. I’ve pretty much got to the point where my confidence is such that I might have done this alone but it is rather nice to have a companion when you attract curious stares and the ‘Please ma’am, just one selfie!?’ demands. Having said this, I do think that two western faces tend to attract more of this kind of attention in the first place so it’s a bit of a double edged sword! Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable hour while the others rested and our main afternoon activity of a big shopping trip could begin in earnest!
The family have received a wedding invitation for next weekend, to which we are invited by extension and so we needed (OK, I’ll be honest, wanted, but it’s a great excuse) to buy some appropriate clothes. For Mark, this entailed a smart shirt, for Shakyajata, a nice, dressy kurta (tunic over trousers) and for me… well, I’ve decided to be brave and have a go at a sari! I’ve been told they aren’t easy to walk in and I will certainly need some help getting dressed but I’m up for it. I think. One new cultural clash I shall face is that whilst I find I am sometimes resentful of being ‘made’ to swelter in long trousers and with my shoulders covered every day, it is not considered at all risqué to bare ones midriff… and of course the tiny ‘blouse’ (that I would call a crop top) I will be wearing under the sari is going to leave me more publically exposed in that area than I am accustomed to. Still, I shall get over it. If I can cope with mixed sex communal showering at German computer parties, I’m sure I can cope with showing a little bit of tummy at an Indian wedding. This is a challenge I’ve yet to face though and procuring said garments in the first place was something of a trial in its own right!
We had decided that after catching the bus into town, we would be able to find all our purchases on Dr Ambedkar Road, one of the main shopping areas and also the site of the Saturday market. This would have been busy enough on any regular Saturday but on the Diwali weekend it was even more so. Imagine Oxford Street on Christmas Eve. Now imagine that the pavements have been removed so the pedestrians and vehicles are trying to share the same thoroughfare. Now add a row of market stalls in between the shop fronts and the constantly jostling pedestrian/traffic mash. Remove observation of traffic laws and pedestrian crossings. Add smog and a liberal sprinkling of agitated hooting. Add more of both of those. OK. Now you might be starting to get an idea of the sensory overload that is a shopping trip on Dr Ambedkar Road on a normal Saturday. Square that for Diwali.
We managed to find Mark’s shirt and my sari (as well as a rather lovely scarf for Shakyajata) in an ‘emporium’, which is sort of like a rather basic (and slightly confusing) department store. To choose the sari, we were invited to sit on chairs at a kind of low stage, upon which a salesman would liberally spill great lengths of rich fabric from their plastic wrappers, plucking them from a shelf behind him when asked. I began to despair; I don’t like shopping at the best of times and there were so many possibilities. Of course, my eye kept roving to the ones that were way outside of my price limit and I was aware that my indecision was not just draining my time but also that of my fellow shopping buddies and the patient salesman. “How about this one?” No. “How about that one?” No. “This one perhaps?” Hmmmm… No. “Ah. How about that one, there, the turquoise one with gold embroidery and a flash of red trim? And how much?” Finally, I’d found the one! Fortified by my mercifully brief rummage, I even managed to spot a dress I rather liked the look of and added that to my purchases, which were confusingly whisked away by the separate retailers as soon as I’d agreed to buy them. Sheetal didn’t seem concerned by this though so I went along with it, watching in interest as the items were scanned and then dropped into a big chute! I was presented with two slips of paper, one for each garment, that I was required to take to a desk downstairs for checkout. On presenting the slips to the cashier, you pay (My debit card worked! Result!), before having your slip stamped; but you are not yet furnished with your purchases until you have visited a second desk, where your items are retrieved by another worker on presentation of your payment receipt. I’m sure there’s some logic to it somewhere but it seemed like an unnecessarily drawn out process to my mind. If that appeared to have exhausted me, I needed to forget it because we weren’t even near finished. I still needed to buy a ready-made blouse (the sari fabric comes with a bit extra attached for you to make your own but unfortunately (or maybe for the best) Sheetal’s sewing machine is not working. I also needed a petticoat to wear under the sari. And to think some women wear these every day! These were thankfully a little simpler to get and I even managed to haggle 50 Rupees off the blouse while Mark located some strawberry flavour Kellogg’s cornflakes and Shakyajata found a kurta and trousers that she liked. Fighting our way up and down Dr Ambedkar Road was a trial however and by the time we stopped by a sweet stall for Mark to go inside and buy some paneer (cheese), we were all exhausted and really ready for some supper!
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Vegan Food Fail #1 - Quite tasty with cheese bombs eliminated!
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Shakyajata Enjoys her Pizza...
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...whilst Mark anticipates breakfast!
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A Packed Dhamma Class!
On Sunday, we have a two hour Dhamma class; Buddhist teaching led by Shakyajata. This is mostly for the students but Mark and I can join in as Sheetal translates into Hindi. This week, the young men came out on the bus to join us and it was really nice to see both groups together, though it did mean the shrine room was bursting at the seams and became almost unbearably stuffy. I confess, I slunk out early; sometimes it is useful to recap basic things you are familiar with but I felt my time would be better spent not draining anymore oxygen from the cramped space so I slightly ashamedly took myself off for a spot of yoga in my room instead. After lunch, we sought some shady outside space at Nagaloka again. We are very lucky to have a local green area, something I’ve become really aware of since Mark’s arrival and residence in the city centre. He’s certainly keen to spend time a little further out of the city when he can. We whiled away a pleasant two to three hours just chatting about not very much at all before heading back for the evening puja and meditation, but the highlight of the afternoon was a very close up view of a Grey Langur monkey, who seemed completely unperturbed by our presence despite our attempts to attract his attention!

The Diwali holiday continues into the beginning of the new week and so we have no classes tomorrow but we have instead planned a picnic trip to the Deekshabhoomi for both the young men and young women's groups. It’ll be the first time I’ve visited the place in daylight and without a crush of people thronging to celebrate the conversion anniversary (See Friday Night at the Deekshabhoomi) so I’m looking forward to the trip for that reason, as well as to spend some social time with the students. Fingers crossed the hired van turns up on time and gets us there. Normally when arranging a student trip, knowing we’d be going by coach would be a significant relief but I somehow have an inkling that in India, it’ll not be perhaps quite so straight forward. It’s certain to be an adventure though, whatever happens and I’m sure there’ll be more stories to tell very soon!
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Acclimatising

27/10/2016

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After two weeks in a foreign country, it’s perhaps not unusual to be beginning your homeward journey but on this trip I’m still really only just getting adjusted and possibly beginning to imagine what my routine, as far as it will be possible to have one, may look like in the months to come. Since my last update a week ago, time has been filled more consistently with teaching activities, not just in the classroom but also outside of it in the planning and preparation stages and it’s been a real pleasure to have been given the space and freedom to turn some of my visual skills to this end in ways I’d never have had time to do when teaching in the UK. One thing I have been particularly glad to work on is a series of illustrations for the purposes of prompting correct use of pronouns with the verb ‘to be’ (She’s dancing. He’s singing. They’re running. Etc.), copies of which were then laminated and cut to handy flash-card size. These can take quite a while to produce, illustrating first in pencil before adding ink and then scanning for editing in Photoshop, but I never felt rushed or pressured to finish in an unrealistic time frame.
I’ve been taking a bit more responsibility in the classroom too, delivering more content myself and particularly picking up and taking the lead on some common pronunciation mistakes. These are not quickly remedied and will need frequent revisiting but it was gratifying to find something meaningful that I could initiate with the groups in the interest of genuine learning but also developing rapport.
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Mark and Shakyajata with the young men (and a supportive wife and daughter!)
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Freshly laminated resources!
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An eager class...
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Mark enjoys his first home-cooked lunch courtesy of Sheetal's famous kitchen!
We’re now a full team too; Mark, our other English teacher arrived on Monday and it’s been enjoyable getting to know him both personally (we’d only met once before in the UK) and professionally in a team –teaching environment. Having someone near my own age with whom I can converse fluently has also been an unexpected benefit of his joining us and I’ve really enjoyed the mild yet very grounding cultural escapism that has been possible as a result.
The fact that I have begun to travel into the city independently and feel fairly comfortable using the local buses now has also been a welcome development of my experience here. The journey is really very straightforward, as soon as identifying a bus from a coach, lorry, private vehicle or slightly suspicious public-cum-private transport option has been achieved and you’ve bravely stood in the middle of the traffic for long enough to flag it down and board. If you can then establish that you’ve actually got on a service for the correct route and negotiated a ticket (as well as your change) from the conductor then you’re well away. Bus stops aren’t too obvious in many places and it’s often not clear which vehicles are actually buses.

Still, the journey is cheap (only 9 Rupees to the first useful stop or 11 to the next) and very quick (only ten minutes on average) with a service coming every ten to fifteen minutes. In the evening, it’s sometimes a bit of a treat to hire a rickshaw as an alternative to the bus. At up to 150 Rupees, it is a bit of a luxury but it takes you door to door if needs be and occasionally a kindly driver can be persuaded to stop for shopping at one of the fresh fruit stalls on the busy main road that leads from Nagpur city centre out to Bhilgaon.
A night-ride home in a rickshaw! Not for the weak!
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A decorated bus...
The additional freedom and independence that has come with increased travel confidence has also made it possible for me to start pursuing leisure interests after teaching. I soon realised upon arrival that running outdoors would be a significant challenge and probably not all that safe, taking the dusty polluted air, busy, dangerous, poorly lit roads, and ambient temperature into account. This also before considering the cultural environment in which a single western woman donning sports kit and legging it off out in public would attract even more attention than her attempts to board a bus into town.
However, I don’t give up that easily and having felt the negative physical effects of no exercise after just a couple of weeks without a run, I decided to seek an alternative option in the form of a ‘ladies only’ gym less than a ten minute walk from the Indora campus. Use of this facility has required further adjustment on both physical and cultural levels. Physically, the heat has been an interesting new experience; though there is an electric desk fan aimed at the treadmill, this only provides a little relief from the 28 – 30 degree temperature in the gym and so a big part of the exercise I have been doing has been about getting my body used to that.
That there is no shower facility is an interesting additional twist given that such an environment does encourage unusual amounts of sweating. On my third run there, I finally managed to run for a full 5km. There’s a 15 minute time limit on the machines as part of a queuing system that I try not feel irritated by when the next user is apparently content at an average walking pace, but Indian and Western attitudes to exercise are clearly as different as any other lifestyle factor and there have been times where a recovery break on the stationary bike was probably quite a good idea before getting back on the treadmill in such heat.
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Frustrations aside, it has been good to get active again, even if this has been in very different conditions to those of my norm and I am already feeling better for the activity. Combined with a 30 minute yoga routine in my room most mornings, I should be well equipped to maintain a reasonable degree of fitness, even if marathon training distances are out of the window when broken into 15 minute chunks! In addition, I’ve realised the gym is a valuable opportunity for a little bit of the ‘me’ time to which westerners are so attached, before returning to the busy family home where a desire to be alone is not only difficult to indulge but actively bewildering for the rest of the household.

I’m continuing to get used to the alternative versions of ritual practice too, such as different tunes for mantras and entirely different verses during puja. If you’re used to chanting in Pali anyway, one might not think there’d be much difference but it can be surprisingly jarring when you’ve become so used to certain sounds or making offerings in certain ways. Even the shrine salute is a little different here; a slightly longer process and it’s taken me until now to remember I haven’t finished half way through. Meditation too has been a new experience as it’s not been so easy to follow the stages when led in Hindi. This hasn’t had a huge impact on my practice but it is yet another flicker of alteration that builds up to quite a significant degree of difference when added to the backdrop of other changes.
Some Common Scenes
Generally, despite these observations, which I am sometimes more able to take in my stride than others depending on energy levels or general mood, things have been settling into a rather pleasant sense of normality over the last seven days and I find myself unsure if it still feels like I’ve hardly been here a day or if I’ve been here for months already. Feelings of acclimatisation are bound to consolidate still further over the coming days as we fix more permanent planning decisions around teaching timetables and syllabus delivery, as well as settling into other routines around weekend practice and other leisure time. Having said that, we are about to enter a three day holiday period for Diwali; not a Buddhist but a Hindu event that will bring festivities, change and disruption to the whole country, much as Christmas might in the UK. We’ve made some plans for special things to do with the young men and women over that time so whilst any fragile, new-born sense of normality is going to get a good and proper rattle over the weekend, it should be in quite a fun way and there’s sure to be plenty to fill up a new update pretty soon!
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    ‘Magga’ is the Pali word for ‘path’.  In Buddhism, this word is often linked to the Ariya Magga, or Noble Eightfold Path, the fourth of the Four Noble Truths, which is the path to the cessation of suffering.
    ‘Mission Maggamouse’ is the latest catalogue of the adventures of Glittermouse; a visual artist and educator. It has been initiated specifically to record and share her experiences at Aryaloka Computer Education Centre, a Buddhist social project in Nagpur, offering subsidised education to some of India’s poorest and most excluded young people. As a recent Dhammamitra (mitra who has asked for of ordination) of the Triratna Buddhist Order, this activity is an important step in integrating her teaching experience with her spiritual aspirations. You can read more about Glittermouse on the ‘home’ page of this site.

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