FIRST LOVE

(Excerpted from Chapter Five of Wild like a wolf: my holy life)

The first memory I have of my father is of him sitting up in a bed in a hospital ward with many other sick men. I am a toddler.  He asks me to do a dance for the patients.  Someone starts clapping and I am jumping around happily thinking that I am dancing.  Suddenly a patient starts to call out for help.  He is obviously in pain.  Then he screams.  Nurses run in and pull the curtains around his bed.  All the clapping is finished.  My dance is cut short.

My mother takes my hand and we leave to ride the train back home.  There are no good-byes. We pass along the Connecticut River and I look out at the bleak winter sky.  Sitting in my mother’s lap, I don’t feel the same way I did before seeing my father. At home my dancing was never cut short.  But something hidden, something to fear was there in that hospital ward, in the moans and screams of the patient, in the urgency of the nurses, something that curtains had to be pulled around so that no one could see it, something that had the power to cut short the dance.

In the second memory of him I am on tip toes straining to see over the top of the parlor window sill.  I must have heard that he was coming home from the convalescent patients’ part of the hospital because I was waiting at the window that looked out on the road in front of our house. I waited there for a long time before the tan, four-door Chevrolet sedan stopped and parked out front.  I could not see the driver, but I heard someone honk the horn.   Once.  Twice.  Twice again.

Suddenly I saw my mother running towards the car.  Her long, golden brown hair was swinging on her green V-neck sweater.  She opened the back door of the Chevrolet and stretched the top of her body forward.  After a bit of rummaging inside the car, she was standing upright again and nearly carrying what looked like a big boy.  She was supporting him as if she was a big crutch and he was leaning into her. The boy was wrapped in a white bed sheet.  His hair was very black and shiny with waves in it. I recognized the handsome face I had seen in the hospital. The man who had said, “Let me see you do a nice little dance for us.” 

As my mother helped him towards the house I could see that for the first time since I’d known her she was wearing red lipstick.   And she was crying.

Daddy was just 24 years old when I met him.  He didn’t ever read to me from books, but he told me many stories.  I loved listening to his words.  He told me that we, he and I, were Portuguese; that my mother and grandmother were Polish and that’s why we spoke Polish in the house.  He said that when he had met my mother on the steps of the Crayco Hotel in Bellows Falls, Vermont and they fell in love he was Jackie Reis, a welter-weight boxing champion who had never lost a fight.

For a few years they lived happily-ever-after. But as soon as I was born things began to change.  When I was two something horrible happened to him and he and the Angel of Death did 15 rounds together.  Nobody won. But Daddy woke up in the Bellows Falls hospital and heard the doctor whispering to the nurse, both of them standing at the foot of Daddy’s bed, “He’ll be gone before morning.” 

So, when the coast was clear, Daddy, bleeding from the rectum, as much blood as a slaughtered pig, he said, walked home, more than a mile, through the winter snow and below-freezing gusts of wind and collapsed onto the front porch.  Babcha and Blanche were at home and they both heard the thud.  It was Grace of God, Daddy said, who took him up to Hanover, New Hampshire, to Mary Hitchcock Hospital and delivered him to Emergency.  The sun was just coming up over the horizon; the icicles on the roofs hanging like crystal scalpels. 

When the anaesthesiologist put the mask over Daddy’s handsome face, he didn’t go right off to sleep.  Daddy remembered his body when it was a gleaming temple.  He said his whole life played out like a Technicolor movie in front of him. He saw my mother, her large breasts and her tiny waist. He saw his baptismal name in lights, Joaquim Charles Reis, and bits and pieces of his rubbish childhood, the fourth baby born of Theresa Almeida and Frank Reis, immigrants from San Miguel—a Portuguese island in the Azores. 

Daddy’s first job was not easy.  He had to take the punches of grown men and not fall down.  He was 11 when he learned this job from his enterprising older brothers who didn’t exactly invent it, but had been punching bags themselves for a couple of seasons. To keep from tipping over when the mill men punched him, one by one on pay-day Fridays, Daddy learned to stand with his legs wide apart, locking his ankles and his knees, then tensing his calves and thighs, and, most of all, freezing his spine. 

These rubbish kinds of childhoods were common in Fall River, Massachusetts he said where immigrants had come to work in the woollen mills, and where Frank, who looked like an exotic native Hawaiian surfer in his wedding photo, was actually a porter on a ferry boat until he died of TB or as they used to call it, “Consumption.”  After that, Theresa, became a washer woman, with seven living children, no insurance and monthly rent to pay.

So, Daddy dropped out of sixth grade and took the punches.  He became a sort of legend.  The family always had enough to eat.  This is what poor kids did.  It’s what they still do.

Daddy’s two older brothers, Scottie 13 and Joey 12, became his trainers and later his fight-career managers. They collected big money from those heavy-drinking, child-punching mill workers on pay-day Friday nights.   The Reis Boys said if anyone could punch their little brother Jackie in the stomach and make him fall over with a single whack, they would win the jackpot.  They stood outside the mills, week after week, selling their wares. One punch cost five dollars.  If no one made Daddy crumple, then the Reis Boys got to take the money home.

Daddy never crumpled then.  And he never crumpled afterwards.  He stayed hard as tombstone granite, graduating from mill-yard punches to below-the-belt punches in the New England boxing rings.  He was a welter-weight wonder, all charged up by the sound of the ringing bell and the victory taste of his mouthpiece until he met my mother and fell in love with her—until I was born.

And then, all of a sudden, his intestines exploded like bicycle tires that God-ordained night at Mary Hitchcock Hospital.  His colon and part of his ileum had to be removed.  They were like dazzling garden snakes that just went rotten and full of holes because of salt tears and sugar karma and huge, blood-curdling screams that never got let out.

Boxing boys don’t whine.  They just keep on dancing.  Or, they die.

After his intestines got thrown into the hospital trash, Daddy had to wear a bowel bag for the rest of his life on Planet Earth.  At the hospital, and later at the convalescent home where he was sent to live for centuries, Daddy learned how to change his bowel bags and how to make new ones out of clear plastic sheets, cut into handkerchief-like squares.  Each plastic sheet was clutched together with a black rubber ring about the circumference of a silver-dollar piece.

Daddy placed this apparatus over the constant wound of the artificial opening on his left side, out of which his excrement now dripped, and he strapped it securely into place with a leather belt.  He stuffed cello-cotton between the leather belt and the bowel bag, to soak up any excrement or blood that might accidentally leak outside the black rubber ring.

He didn’t go to therapy because in the nightmare time before cable TV, there was no such thing as therapists for hospital patients, at least not up in our neck of the woods, or so he said.

Nowadays the bowel bags are ready-made and very efficient. And there are psychological counselors to help the gouged-out patients to accept the madness that accompanies their losses.   But the horror, just like Daddy’s horror, is still the same.

Mostly everybody who heard Daddy’s story said how lucky he was to be alive, that he almost haemorrhaged to death and that the resident doctor at Mary Hitchcock who performed the emergency surgery that blood-soaked-white-moon night was a hero. 

Doctor Milne was just about my father’s age when the two of them entered the last-fight arena together.  It was the two of them against the marauding hordes from the Death Lands.  After 33 years of caring for my father, carving up his body, moving the artificial opening from one side to the next to preserve the tissue around it,  performing various other related surgeries, it was hard for Doctor Milne to know where his patient’s  body left off and  his own began.  You could say he shared a psychic connection between his soul and my father’s.  When they were together, they could read each other’s minds. 

When my father died at 56 and hundreds of people came to the Fenton and Hennessy Funeral Home, I remember how hard Doctor Milne cried—so unashamed, right in front of everybody. He was on the kneeler beside my father’s open casket and he was clutching Daddy’s waxy-looking hands. I could tell by the way Doctor Milne was shaking that his grief went all the way into his bones. It was obvious to me that he had lost the Jackie Reis, welter-weight champion part of himself. 

All the cockiness, all the sure-footedness, all the razzmatazz drained right out of him.  After awhile, his sobbing stopped and he got up off the kneeler and reeled out of the funeral home.  It almost looked as if he were drunk.  Whether he ever realized it or not, my father’s ghost, in silver satin boxing trunks, and maroon leather boxing gloves strutted out beside him that poison-ivy night.  Left.  Right.  Left.  The punches whopped the shadows. And the shadows jabbed back.  

After the burial, when I asked my mother why she never cried at the hospital on that last day of Daddy’s life, and why she never cried at the funeral, she said, “For me, your father died a long time ago.”

But from the very beginning moment that my daddy danced into my life and long after he danced out, I was One with him.  When he cried, I cried.  When he laughed, I laughed.   And when he beat me up with his boxer’s fists and sometimes knocked me unconscious, I didn’t hate him. In a mystery way I might have deserved it—or maybe I was redeeming our whole family, you know, like Jesus. 

To be continued….

MAKE UP - MIRROR REFLECTIONS

SUNDAY IS FUN DAY (Special)

As the train chugs onward I look into my folding makeup mirror.  Several new wrinkles have etched themselves around the corners of the eyes.  The jowl lines have deepened.  The neck skin is definitely sagging.  There’s no escaping the reflection.  It’s mine.

As I stare out the windows at the vast stretches of parched lands and the sullen faces of the people clumped near the railway tracks engaged in various forms of survival—making dung patties for their fires, gathering scraps of wood, collecting bits of rubbish, I wonder: How can anyone help but cry in an India of such desperation, an India that Gandhiji himself might never have dreamed possible?  My tears plop down onto my journal, obliterating the words.

Nothing is permanent, the Buddhists say.   If you believe in reincarnation you could imagine that these impoverished people might be rich in the next life.  If you don’t accept the: As you sow, so shall you reap directive, I guess you’ll be despondent too.

Perhaps I can pretend that nothing is real, just Maya, passing clouds.  But, in spite of the words of the sages and saints, I can only see life as it exists.  If I have a third eye, it is blind.

  As the sky darkens and the stars pop out, I remember festive New Years Eves, red satin dresses, platters full of tasty foods, bubbling champagne, kisses under the mistletoe, oh, those kisses, and an abundance of friends—ah, yes, the good life!

  Now I’m in another world. My heart is here.  My Guru is here. But have I become a better human being having settled down here for the past more than 20 years?  I don’t know.  I left everything behind in the United States, my status, my good-paying job, my well-furnished home, my gorgeous clothes, my reliable old car…my beloved and very large family…

I did this so that I could move forward on a path that I pronounced (to myself only) would lead me closer to God.  But what appears to have happened is that I got closer to my self and further away from my pre-conceived idea of God as a supernatural force separate from me.  Meanwhile, now that I am consciously merged with God, I am still far from being an ideal human being.  Does this mean that God is imperfect?  Could be.  And is this why the Tibetan Buddhists don’t use the word God when referring to Nirvana within the Ultimate Emptiness?  Could be.

In the glow of the dull train light, my spying pen moves stoically on.  Why is it that I have attained so little lasting satisfaction in my long life?  Why is it that I always have to look so deeply at things?  Why can’t I just ignore?

Nothing is permanent. The wheels of the train bogey, rolling over the tracks, are repeating the mantra. But the last images I saw as I left Pune Railway Station are imbedded in my consciousness.  After departing from Dharmavaram, Andhra Pradesh, on the Pune Express, an overnight journey, I had stopped in Pune for two nights on my way to Bodh Gaya. 

Hundreds of Osho devotees who live inside and outside of the ashram constructed by their late Guru, Bhagawan Rajneesh, a Vedanta scholar, roam through the relatively clean and westernized Pune streets.  They sit in cafes, coffee houses, and restaurants that look as if they have been lifted out of the poshest Los Angeles, Paris, or Amsterdam neighborhoods and teleported to Pune. These devotees are natives of India as well as foreigners.  They come in all shapes, sizes, age groups and colors.

 I found it a little funny that most of them dress in maroon, monk-style robes, not unlike those worn by Tibetan Buddhist lamas.  Funny, because dressed in these robes, many of the Osho ashramites smoke cigarettes, drink Kingfisher beer, and openly wrap themselves around each other in touchy-feely love holds. Some lovers stroll hand-in-hand through the ashram gardens kissing each other in full view of the passing crowds. Others slip into the many huge stands of bamboo.  One dramatic young Indian couple found a large rock on which to stage their Hindi-film-style courting capers.

Funny, because the real-life Osho disciples remind me more of the bawdy, medieval pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer than of other New-Age groupies I have met along the path of my own odd spiritual quest.  I say odd because in the beginning it was never a conscious quest I undertook.  I just kept trying to escape my own angst, rather than follow my own bliss, as the late mythologist Joseph Campbell had suggested people do.

Then, in a less-idyllic setting, about 12 kilometers from the ashram locale, there is the very old woman with a huge, maybe 50-kilo bag of rice on her head—trying to cross traffic—on congested Mahatma Gandhi Road!  Dressed in a green rag of a sari, she grabs at many people passing by her.  She is begging them to help her. They move on as if she is invisible.

I am in a rickshaw on the other side of the road divider that is about two-feet high.  I hear the old woman shout, “Baba!”  She stares at me imploringly.  I scream at the driver to stop.  He is either ignoring me, or he can’t hear me.  Horns are honking. Gears are grinding.  Engines are throbbing.  A pony pulling a cart loaded with three grown men whinnies in terror.  The old woman goes missing in a cloud of city-bus exhaust.  

I reach the railway station at 3:57 p.m.  The DBG is scheduled to leave at four.  It does.  Luckily I’m on it, but the dust of Pune has seeped into my pores.  No amount of Lakme Cleansing Milk is going to get it out.

Dalai Lama on Forgiveness

His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama has said, “Forgiveness is an essential part of a compassionate attitude, but it is a virtue that is easily misunderstood.  For a start, to forgive is not the same as to forget.”

For many years I carried around a huge burden—the hatred I felt toward the man who had sexually traumatized me when I was young.  I also carried around rage at my family for not protecting me.  Add to this, my own guilt, for being too afraid of the perpetrator to expose him.  After all, he was a highly respected individual in the community and I was a mere child.

But Dalai Lama teaches it is vital to keep in mind the distinction between the doer and the deed.  He agrees, “Sometimes this can be hard.  When we ourselves or those very close to us have been victims of terrible crimes, it can be difficult not to feel hatred toward the perpetrators of those crimes.  And yet, if we pause to think about it, we realize that distinguishing between a terrible deed and its perpetrator is actually something we do every day with regard to our own actions and our own transgressions.  In moments of anger or irritation, we may be rude to loved ones or aggressive toward others.  Later we may feel some remorse or regret, but when looking back on our outburst, we do not fail to distinguish between what we did and who we are.”

With intense therapy and a determination to rid myself of all negativity in this matter, I got the courage to file a case against my perpetrator years after his actions.  I received a settlement, most of my family was supportive, and other victims of the same man came forward.  With justice served, I forgave my abuser, my family, and myself.  

His Holiness, the Embodiment of Compassion, taught, “Given that we find it so easy to forgive ourselves, surely we can extend the same courtesy to others!  Of course not everyone is able to forgive him-or herself, and this can be an obstacle.  For such people, it may be important to practice compassion and forgiveness toward themselves, as the foundation for practicing compassion and forgiveness towards others.”

Indeed, I worked on generating compassion towards myself first. Consequently, I was freed of the related physical, mental, and emotional pain. 

As Dalai Lama had indicated. “Another truth to keep in mind is that forgiving others has an enormously liberating effect on oneself,” he said. “When you dwell on the harm someone has done to you, there is an inevitable tendency to become angry and resentful at the thought.  Yet clinging to painful memories and harboring ill will will do nothing to rectify the wrong committed and will have no positive effect on you.”

I have let go of the past. Although, I never want to forget it. Recovering from the trauma has given me a new life and an understanding of those victims and their perpetrators who have suffered and are still suffering.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

SUNDAY IS FUN DAY (Special)

He was a tall, thin 18-year-old.  He wore shabby clothes and even shabbier sandals when he arrived to paint my desk: a small desk that needed sprucing up.  I felt pleased to be able to help him out by giving him honest work.

He was recommended by a colleague.  “He is such a polite boy,” was what was said.

And, indeed he was.  One of the most polite persons I have ever met.  I explained the job—sanding , priming, using wood putty to smooth out the gaps, then applying two coats of very costly—and beautiful “petal” pink glossy paint and the trim, “cherry.”

First he went off to the shop for the supplies.  He returned and handed me the change.  I didn’t check the receipt or the bag of supplies—my first mistake.

It was 9:45 when he began.  By noon the putty was drying.  At 3 pm he returned and applied the first coat.  He said he would come back and “finish the job.”  But when he did return, the first coat was still tacky.  It was then I noticed the lumps and gorges.  The putty had not been smoothed out.  “No problem, Madam,” he assured.  “I will fix it in the morning.

Then I noticed that the half litre “cherry” gloss was not in the supply bag.  He said he must have left it at the shop.  He went off to the shop to retrieve it.  In minutes he returned.  The shop was closed, he said.  He was now riding a brand new bicycle with a well-dressed, approximately 14-year-old at the back.

“My helper,” he explained. This is a one-member job, I announced.

“No problem, Madam.  “You pay for one worker; you get two.”

At any rate, my office was in a shambles, paint all over the floor, (in spite of the newspapers) and a bucket full of hardening putty—which he said was also not a problem because it was “only Rs 10 chalk powder…”

What?  Chalk powder!  Let me see the receipt!  I was only an octave below my thunderous scream level which sends the neighbours to their windows.  I was trying to control myself.  I always try.

It seems the polite painter had suddenly misplaced the receipt.  He said it happened between the closed shop and the brand-new bicycle ad the well-dressed friend.

Okay, I said, silently reciting my mantra ad letting the well-dressed kid inside.   I accepted that with two workers my office would get cleaned up faster ad I could finally get back to work.  Well, this was my second mistake.

Next morning at 8 am the painter, the brand-new bicycle and the well-dressed friend did not return to smooth out the lumps and gorges. Meanwhile, the “cherry” gloss has never arrived, the sticky surfaces of the desk are still sticky and right after the duo left, I noticed that some of my cosmetics in the dressing room next to my office had gone missing.

I called my colleague who recommended the polite painter.  He admitted that he did not know where the fellow lived, but had hired him off the street!  As for missing cosmetics, he couldn’t imagine why boys would steal make-up.

It’s four days later and I still don’t have a desk to work from, or any clues of what to do.  None of the local paint shop owners claim to have sold anyone a Rs 110 half litre of “cherry” gloss.  In fact, they didn’t sell anyone any “petal” gloss either.

I am stymied. My plan is to wait.  Maybe Mr Polite will show up again.  Maybe he will explain why he did what he did (or did not do).  Maybe waiting is my third mistake.

Meantime, I really, really wonder what a tall, thin 18-year-old young man is going to do with my cosmetics.  Or, what his friend is going to do with them.  Perhaps at this very moment the two of them are riding the Karnataka Express dressed in saris, jasmine bouncing in their hair, my apricot blush on their fuzz-less cheeks.  Oh yes, I can see them now, clapping at the passengers to pay up for the songs being sung to them.

Who knows what is going on?  This is Sacred Bharat, after all.  Nothing is as it appears to be.  Maya, thick and glossy, covers the ‘Absolute Reality’ where there are no desks, no petty thieves, no fuming victims, and certainly, “no problems.” Ha!

SATHYA SAI BABA LEAVES HIS BODY

The Eternal dissolves into Eternity

It was April 24, 2011, about 10:30 a.m. on an overcast but hot day when I heard the news that my beloved guru, Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba had left his body. For me, it marked the beginning of the Golden Age. He had always said that his mission was to transform people so that they would love and serve each other and violence would become obsolete.  I felt he had instilled his teachings in the hearts of his devotees and as a result his mission would continue through them.  

He had been in the hospital for many days and devotees waited around the clock for reports on his condition. I was standing in his Andhra Pradesh ashram, Prasanthi Nilayam, when it was announced that Swami had left his body and entered Maha Samadhi (the conscious departure from the physical body of a realized soul, and the shrine where the physical body is buried). Like millions of his devotees, I accepted the will of the God I believe him to be.  I watched as some people dropped quiet tears and many expressed disbelief. My heart swelled with gratitude that I had been graced to live in his physical presence for 21 years. He had not only saved my life; he had given me a life.  He is locked deep in my heart, alive and well.

The fact that it was Easter Sunday made me smile.  Swami always had a sense of the comic, no matter how serious the occasion.  And now, as the world was celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Swami’s form was exiting.

Sai Baba’s teachings are simple and esoteric all at once.  He taught that we are all one, in fact, that we are all God.  He insisted that there was only one caste, the caste of humanity, and that there was only one religion, the religion of love.  He began most discourses with the words, “Embodiments of Love.” 

Born Sathyanarayana Raju on November 23, 1926 in the village of Puttaparthi, at 14, he announced that he was an avatar, God in human form, and the reincarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba.  In that year he began his mission: To restore righteousness in a world gone astray.  He taught, “This Sai has come in order to achieve the supreme task of uniting the entire mankind as one family through the bond of brotherhood, of affirming and illuminating the Atmic Reality (The Divine Self) of each being, to reveal the Divine which is the basis on which the entire cosmos rests, and of instructing all to recognize the common Divine Heritage that binds man to man, so that man can rid himself of the animal and rise up to the Divine, which is the goal.”

According to reports, he performed many miracles—from the unimaginable to the seemingly trivial — such as healing the sick and manifesting trinkets to make his devotees happy, he said. He predicted that “No one will fully understand my powers.” However, not only his devotees but skeptics and scientists have tried.

Many people have attempted to convince others that he is, in fact, evil. All this talk about him, negative and positive, did not seem to interest him. He simply carried on his mission.

Even his detractors often recognize his humanitarian contributions. Meantime, Radio Sai Global Harmony reports: “His numerous service projects, be it free hospitals, free schools and colleges, free drinking water supply projects, or free housing projects, all stand testimony to His selfless love and compassion for the needy and less privileged. True to His declaration, “My Life is My Message,” He has inspired and continues in his subtle form to inspire millions of His devotees worldwide by His personal example to live the ideal that “Service to man is service to God.” 

So what will happen now that our Beloved Baba is no longer with us in human form?  I believe his mission will continue; his devotees will carry on as he instructed.  For instance, the worldwide Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organization will undertake service activities that will benefit their communities.  Individual devotees will carry on their own service projects.  I, for one, will continue the work Baba wanted me to do: Communicating his love to those who are unloved, bringing hope to those who are hopeless, and leading the afflicted out of their pain.

Thousands of books have been written about his many miracles by people from every religion and walk of life.  Of his miracles he said, “I give you what you want, so that you will want what I have to give—mainly liberation itself.”

According to some of his devotees, the best way to experience Sai Baba is to privately ask him, from your heart, to reveal to you who he is.  Then you can come to your own conclusions.

But it is declared by his followers that Sai Baba walked among us to teach us that we too can become a Jesus, a Buddha, or a Mohammed.  We are, he consistently pointed out, God too—only we have not yet become aware of this fact.

My editor at Deccan Herald, Bangalore, India office, requested this article from me on April 24, 2011 the day Sai Baba discarded his body.  With a few modifications, it appeared early the next morning just as you have read it here. 

Behind The Masks

SUNDAY IS FUN DAY (Special)

I’m in Bodh Gaya, India to attend His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s Kalachakra (Wheel of Time) teachings and to take the Bodhisattwa vows.  It’s January and it’s so cold my face is stinging. I wonder why I’m here.  In the guise pilgrim, I am actually a seeker of Truth. I have little interest in obligatory rituals and less in organized religions. But I do believe in simple faith—most of all faith in oneself. 

What’s more, I love people and oppressed peoples always catch me by the heartstrings.  It makes me so very sad that the Tibetans have lost their exotic Snow-land Nation to the mundane Chinese administration.  Like countless others, I too long for a Free Tibet.

In the pre-dawn morning I walk from my tent  over to the Stupa, a dome shaped sacred monument originally designed to hold relics and remains of  the sixth century Shakyamuni Buddha, the historic Prince Siddhartha of India whose teachings have traveled the world.

The Stupa is not far from the Bodhi Tree, a fig tree, where he sat meditating and eventually attained Enlightenment.  This is holy, I think, walking in the footsteps of a Buddha who left the wealth of his kingdom, turned his back on fame and glory and found his way to this relatively barren place to discover who he really was—not a prince at all, but a servant of mankind.  I feel at one with this paradox of Emptiness.  Alone, I belong to everything.

I meet Tzu Tzen, tall and rugged and 21 years old. I can’t make out his features, though, because he is wearing a mask.  His dark eyes flash when I ask if he speaks English.  “I do now,” he begins. “I was born in Tibet, but I speak three languages.  Mostly I talk in Hindi to everyone.”

He tells me he has come to Bodh Gaya from a place in India he prefers not to name.  “I might get my parents in trouble,” he admits.  “There are Chinese spies at most of His Holiness’s events.  If they find out where my family is, something bad could happen.  My father is an activist in the Free Tibet movement.

Tzu Tzen says he has come here for blessings from His Holiness. But his unique mask makes me wonder if his primary purpose might be more political than spiritual.

Many people here wear a mask for protection from pollution and the freezing air.  But his is different.  The majority of thermal white cotton masks which loop over the ears and cover the mouth and the nose are sold for 20 rupees in the streets.  On the other hand, Tzu Tzen’s mask is self-designed.  Made of thin green cotton—like those worn by hospital staff—his mask ties behind the head and neck.  In bright, blood-red letters it announces, “China, go to hell.”  

I stifle my laughter, because to me it’s such a wild idea he has, that he can alert all of China with just four words.  What is this message about?  I ask seriously.

Tzu Tzen says he is angry at what happened to his country.  “The Chinese just stole it right out from under us. Mao Zedong had more than a million of our people slaughtered. They are still killing us, shoving us in prisons, not letting us practice our religion.  They are even dressing up their military as monks—spies in robes—who pretend they are part of the monastery life that tourists get to see.  The Chinese only let the tourists see what they want them to see.  It’s not Tibet anymore.  It’s a fake, for show, tourist trap.”

He is shouting at me as if I’m Mao Zedong himself. “I just want to go home.  That’s all.  Can you understand?  I want to go home to my country.

 “I’m fed up with India too because the people here take advantage of Tibetans. They can’t even pronounce the word Tibetan.  They call us Tibetians, as if we are half alike.  I am not an Indian!

“The tent city I’m staying in is like a refugee camp.  My sector has no proper floor.  It’s just dirt with some straw thrown about.  It’s not even made of real tent material. It could go up in flames with the drop of an incense stick.  And it costs 2,500 rupees per month for a space in the tent.”

My tent area is exactly as he describes his, two broken toilets for several hundred people, limited water, and no heat.  Nevertheless, I ask: Are you sure Indians are running these places?

“Of course I’m sure. They are taking the money. His Holiness gives the teachings free, but we have to pay too much for our lousy accommodations.  They charge us outrageous rates because they know how much we love His Holiness. They pretend they know about Buddha.  But right here in Bodh Gaya, they don’t ever remember him. Money, money, money, that’s what Indians want nowadays.  Tibetans want freedom.

But wouldn’t life in Tibet—even if the Chinese welcomed you—be worse?  What would you do to survive?  Do you know how to be a nomad? How would you earn a living?  You might not even find a tent waiting for you there.

“I have saved money doing kitchen work, doing modeling.  I could find something—anything.  I will figure it out when I get there.”

As the sun begins to brighten the sky, Tzu Tzen makes the rounds of the Stupa with the thousands of other pilgrims who have now arrived.  I walk with the crowd. He holds his mala in his right hand chanting, “Om Mani Padme Hum.”  He walks the approximately one eighth of a kilometer distance about 25 times.  He trudges determinedly, the white puffs of his breath escaping from his mask.

Isn’t it weird to be a follower of His Holiness who stresses compassion, forgiveness, and non-violence and be wearing a mask you painted with bright red letters that are definitely anti-Chinese?

“To you it might be weird. Have you ever had your culture killed?  Have you ever lost your freedom? To me it’s necessary.  Somebody has to do something.  I’m doing something! Fifty years of peaceful negotiations haven’t produced anything,” he rages.

So the mask is your way of speaking out against tyranny?

“Yeah.”

What would your parents say if they knew you were wearing it?

Unexpectedly, Tzu Tzen bursts out laughing.  He removes the mask revealing his handsome, young face. He holds onto his stomach as his laughter increases.  Then he stops. “They’d say, Tzu Tzen, go to hell!”

Attending the teachings of the Dalai Lama, walking around the Stupa, squeezing the beads of the mala, empathizing with the classic angry young man…it doesn’t have to be that serious, I realize.  It can be a lot of fun.

On the way back to my tent I stop at Mohammed’s Restaurant.  It is also a tent.  I splurge and have a slice of apple pie with my chai.  What a funny world, I muse.  On the menu there are Tibetan momos right beside Chinese noodles.  I wonder what the spies eat.

“Mostly they like vegetarian, California fruit plate,” Mohammed says.

THE SNOW QUEEN

Even as a prisoner in a house of strangers, there were always grandmother’s quiet, soul-enlivening rooms, with no television or radio to disturb my reveries.   But the secretary, my personal holy place, was where I most enjoyed being. On any given day of the week, at any time of that day, I might be found scribbling away on pieces of paper— composing stories that fluttered in my mind like the wings of birds.  I wanted to let the birds out, so that they could fly, and most of all so that they could sing.

  As an adult, when I lived in the Mojave Desert in California for a time and kept an aviary, I learned that canaries sing so beautifully in cages because they are males and they are trying to attract a mate.  I got so disturbed by this and the ferocity of the male love birds who attacked and killed other birds in the aviary then cannibalized them, I couldn’t stand it.  I brought most of the birds back to the farm where I had purchased them.  I only kept the doves.  But before long a seven-year old boy with a BB gun shot and killed them.

Fortunately, in the beginning of my days I could not have known why birds sing, or why love birds tear apart their potential rivals, or that there would ever be a small boy so full of hate that he would have to kill a helpless bird in a cage, just to get some relief from the pain of his life.  I would have to wait a long, long time to find out the dual nature of reality.  But I was getting off to a good start. My stories were helping me examine myself very closely.  I was not like a young Leonardo Da Vinci collecting specimens and taking them apart to see how they worked.   I was the specimen, and I wanted to understand who it was that was picking me apart.  

Attached to the desk’s writing surface were overhead, glass-door-front book shelves. My mother used these shelves to store her fancy drinking goblets, those that were taken out for very special occasions. And the three drawers under the pull-down writing surface contained table linens—again, used only for holidays or events so rare that they marked life changes. 

Bronislawa Leowkadia Szyzko, my American-born mother, daughter of Victoria Konezko and Sigismund Szysko, never minded when I sat at the desk writing my stories, nor did she even ask what I was doing.  She was far too busy.  She worked two jobs—as a hotel maid and a sewing machine operator at a garment factory— to pay off my convalescing father’s hospital bills.  Mothers are supposed to be our first gurus.  That’s what the saints and sages say.  But at 7 Church Place, in the shadow of Fall Mountain, this was not the case.

 At home my mother appeared to carry out her many chores with great attention, but I could see her mind was in another place.  On some level, she must have noticed that I was at the desk regularly, using up plenty of scraps of paper.  In fact, she must have been the supplier of the pages of my first manuscripts.  But she never spoke to me about my magical writing.  And I never told her.  That’s the way things were between Blanche—her USA name—and me.  They never changed.

I was three years old when I first climbed up onto the desk stool and knelt there to do my writing.  The stories that I transcribed were illegible because, though I could already read children’s books and knew the alphabet, I had not yet learned how to form the Big Words pouring out of my head, through the pencil, and onto the paper.  I simply heard the stories coming from within myself and I scribbled them down as fast as I could to keep up with the flow.  But had anyone asked me to, I could have recited them. I was eager to share them.  No one, except my cat Midnight, was interested.

I also remember the ecstasy of sitting in Blanche’s lap as she read to me from the many children’s books that she took out of the Rockingham Free Public Library at 65 Westminster Street.  I memorized the words as she read them and followed her beautiful finger as she pointed out the syllables.  Sitting in her lap to be read to was the only time Blanche allowed me to be close to her.  I didn’t move a bit, for fear that she might remember I was near her and then suddenly put me down to go back to doing her chores or to get ready for one of her jobs.  I sometimes got the feeling that she was reading all those children’s books to herself— as if I wasn’t really there. 

 When I was almost four she bought me a little upholstered chair of my very own, and that was the end of our physical intimacy.  Of course, there had been breast feeding.  But I don’t remember that. Blanche did read to me sometimes after she gave me my own chair, but it was not the same.  She was in her chair.  I was in mine.  And when she discovered that I could read the words on my own, she gave up reading to me entirely. But one of the last childhood things we did together—before I was put in school—was go to the library where she got me my own card and she introduced me to the children’s librarian. From that time onwards I loved books and writing almost as much as I loved Blanche.

Maybe all the stories I was writing from three onwards were for her.  Perhaps they still are. Nearly all the stories I wrote between the ages of three and five were about a Snow Queen who lived in a snow-covered forest, far, far away from civilization and on top of a huge mountain.  The Snow Queen in my stories was gorgeous—with gold-flecked, light-brown hair and sad brown eyes.  She was a woman always waiting to be saved, taken out of the ice world and delivered to the warmth of love, no doubt.  I, the witness to the Snow Queen’s life, was the only one who knew her whereabouts.  And story after story I, the Invisible One, was trying to get to where she was so that I could rescue her. But I could never do it.  Just when I got close to her, she disappeared.   Not surprisingly, perhaps, my Snow Queen looked just like my mother.

To be continued…..

Dalai Lama on Close Feelings

We develop close feelings easily—at home, at the job, and at our places of worship.  We feel strong kinship often with strangers.  Yes, by all means, we feel love.  But do we feel compassion?  Not necessarily.

Dalai Lama explains, “With usual love, as long as the other person appears to you as beautiful or good, love remains, but as soon as she appears to you as less beautiful or good, your love completely changes.  Even though someone appears to you as a dear friend and you love her very much, the next morning the situation may completely change.  Even though she is the same person, she feels more like an enemy.  Instead of feeling compassion and love, you now feel hostility.  With genuine love and compassion, another person’s appearance or behavior has no effect on your attitude.”

When I declared my undying love I truly meant it. For awhile the object of my affection felt the same way about me, until he suddenly loved somebody else more and married her.  In shock, I struggled to accept my partner’s change of heart. I tried to act in a compassionate and understanding way.  I could not.

According to His Holiness, “Real compassion comes from seeing the other’s suffering.  You feel a sense of responsibility and you want to do something for him.   There are three types of compassion.  The first is a spontaneous wish for other sentient beings to be free of suffering.  You find their suffering unbearable and you wish to relive them of it.  The second is not just a wish for their well-being, but a real sense of responsibility, a commitment to relieve their suffering and remove them from their undesirable circumstances.  This type of compassion is reinforced by the realization that all sentient beings are impermanent, but because they grasp at the permanence of their identity, they experience confusion and suffering.”

Slowly, by focusing on my spiritual practice, I did begin to see my own selfishness in the matter, holding on to someone who wanted to be free.  I also saw how I was being inconsiderate.  I began to take responsibility for my own life. Soon I realized I was not alone. There are so many others suffering similar rejection. 

“A genuine sense of responsibility generates a spontaneous sense of responsibility to work for the benefit of others, encouraging us to take this responsibility upon ourselves,” the Living Buddha teaches.

 I helped myself by helping others who were in more pain than me. Before long I felt freer than I ever had. In forgiving the man I had so desperately loved, and praying for his happiness, I had healed myself. I had moved into another level of compassion.

“This kind of compassion,” His Holiness says, “is reinforced by the wisdom that although all sentient beings have an interdependent nature and no inherent individual existence, they still grasp at the existence of individual nature.  Compassion accompanied by such an insight is the highest level of compassion.”

Who Is Sai Baba? Concluding Part 3

Due to all the villagers that couldn’t wait to come and see the baby, Sri Pedda Venkappa Raju requested that non-vegetarian foods be prepared for a celebratory lunch.  He wanted the mixed community to be happy and fully enjoy the foods they liked.  Mother Eswaramma prepared a variety of non-vegetarian foods but when she went to serve the guests all the meat dishes were turned into vegetarian dishes! The guests were in awe of an event they could not understand.  They, of course, did not realize who this baby was. As it later came to be revealed, Sathya would never tolerate the raising of animals for butchering and eating.  To him, an animal was a precious being to be loved and allowed to live out its own destiny. 

The ladies of the village could not get enough of the charming baby.  They visited the Raju household every chance they got.  Even the men collected at the home to play with him.  He delighted everyone including other children.

One pious woman, Subbamma, the wife of the village head, Lakshminarayana Rao, adored baby Sathya.  She was childless and Sathya would run to her the minute he heard her voice.  This gave Subbamma great comfort and joy. Before long it became obvious that the child had adopted her as his foster mother. She was childless no more as little Sathya’s many playmates would gather at her house and partake of the sweets and savories she served them.  But she herself would feed Sathya with her own hand.  On a particular day when she was serving him her pakoras (fried savories) she also offered him some water.  She said, “Open your mouth, Sathya, I will pour water.  When he opened his mouth, Subbamma could see the entire universe inside in all its cosmic splendor.  At the site of this, she fell into ecstasy and she bowed at his feet, clinging to them and washing them with tears of joy.  Subbamma knew now that her Sathya was no ordinary child. She realized that he was the Lord God Incarnate and she fell into ecstasy.  Her bliss lasted for many days.

Indeed, the villagers observed that their new resident was a rare child.  He only wanted to make others happy; he never asked for anything; and he was content with whatever he was given.  However, he would never eat non-vegetarian food; so in order not to disrupt his immediate family, Sathya decided to take his meals at his paternal grandfather’s house because Kondama Raju believed in the Divinity of his grandson and non-vegetarian food was never served to him.

Grandfather Raju understood that the child would never hurt animals and disliked any kind of violence.  In fact, Sathya would run and save chickens from being butchered whenever he could. He petted dogs and consoled them whenever they were abused.  His days were filled with loving service to the members of his family and the village society he lived in.  When it came time for him to enter school, he walked to Bukkha Patnam—about eight kilometers away— returned home to prepare food for his grandfather who he enjoyed cooking for, and then went back to school again. Later, Sathya was sent to the village of Uravakonda to live with his brother who was a teacher.  The parents thought Sathya was old enough for further studies.

But on March 8, 1940, when he was 14, Sathya was stung by a scorpion.  Suddenly, he lost consciousness for several hours.  When he regained consciousness, he exhibited strange behavior which continued for the next few days.  He alternated between laughing and weeping, speaking eloquently then falling silent. He began to sing verses in Sanskrit, a language of which he had no prior knowledge. Doctors believed his actions were caused by hysteria.   His parents didn’t know what to think. They brought Sathya back to Puttaparthi. But his family and others noticed that the scorpion sting had changed him. He seemed removed from them, as if in deep meditation.  More and more he withdrew into himself and ignored those around him.  Where had the vivacious, charming Sathya gone? There were whispers that he had become possessed by a Muslim ghost.

In fact, in his most recent past life Sathya had been Sai Baba of Shirdi, a Muslim God man, who had devotees who were Hindus as well as Muslims. Shirdi Sai Baba had left his body eight years before Sathya’s birth.  Perhaps none in Puttaparthi knew this. But many of those who had prophesized the birth of Sathya Sai Baba, including Nostradamus and the Prophet Mohammed, did predict the descent of the Lord God on earth at this point in time. And, respectively, they described his physical attributes and the work he would do.

After the scorpion sting, Sathya’s parents thought that he might have gone mad, or was possessed by a demon.  Various “remedies” were employed, one such being the burning of his skull with a branding-iron like tool by an exorcist in Kadiri. But Sathya was unmoved. He withstood the pain with patience and no complaint. 

On May 23, 1940 he came out of his inward state and gathered the people around him.  Back to his charming, outgoing self, he began materializing objects out to the delight of all who sat in front of him. Seeing his son behaving like a magician, Sathya’s father became infuriated and demanded, “Who do you think you are?  If you don’t answer, I shall hit you! Come out with it—are you possessed, a lunatic, an incarnation, a deity or a devil? Who are you?” 

Sathya replied calmly, “Do you not know who I am? I am Sai Baba. I descended because the Venkavadhoota (the family saint of the Raju family) prayed for my descent.” The Lord’s reply was firm and deliberate. The ring of truth in it was unmistakable. He kept on muttering to himself throughout that day, talking about his code of conduct and his lineage—“Apastamba Sutra, Bharadwaja Gotra,”

Meantime, Sri Pedda Venkappa Raju did not accept his son’s story.  He felt that the boy was still possessed by the spirit of the Muslim saint who, it had been deduced, was none other than Sai Baba of Shirdi. So the distraught father took action.  He believed that a Muslim priest’s intercession could cure Sathya so he found such a priest in Penukonda, a village several kilometers away from Puttaparthi.  Sri Pedda Venkappa Raju took Sathya there and requested the Muslim priest to exorcise his son.  The priest, who happened to be a Government official, declared Sathya a “lunatic”.

 “Lunacy it is, but whose?” Sathya demanded waving is hands in the air and producing sacred ash (vibhuti) which he scattered all over the room.  Back in Puttaparthi Sathya still maintained that he was Sai Baba. On the following Thursday, the 30th of May 1940, Sathya’s exasperated father asked his son to give some proof of his claim and Sathya consented. It being a Thursday, Guruvaram, the day for worshipping the guru, Sathya asked that jasmine flowers be gathered and piled up for ritual prayers (puja). When this was done, he asked for the flowers to be placed in his opened, empty hands. He then scattered the fragrant small white flowers casually, and they began to form the shape of the Telugu letters representing “SAI BABA”. The power of this written name moved everybody, including his father, and they were convinced that he was who he said he was, Sai Baba—Mother-Father God. In fact Sri Sathya Sai Baba is a Triple Avatar—Shirdi Sai Baba, Sathya Sai Baba, and Prema Sai Baba, the latter still to be born.

Once he announced that he was Sai Baba, he persisted in saying that he was on the earth to transform the wicked and to usher in a Golden Age.  He explained that he had come in answer to the prayers of saints and sages. Finally, the young Sathya went off to live alone and apart from his family to whom he declared he no longer belonged.  Now, he said, he belonged to everyone and he began his work of uplifting the world.  His paternal grandfather and one of his early school teachers were among his first devotees. 

The population then was allegedly less than 100 residents. Now, it is in the thousands.  People from all over the world have made it their permanent home because they want to be in the atmosphere of Divinity. 

THE KNIFE

SUNDAY IS FUN DAY (Special)

A friend needed some help in Sri Lanka.  So I went.  While there I bought myself a snappy little black-handled knife.  It was terrific for peeling fruits and veggies.  I brought it home to Puttaparthi India without having it snatched up by Customs.  It’s a gem of a kitchen tool I bragged to myself and what a shopper I am…. I paid only 45 Indian rupees for it.

I was home just a month and still pleased with my island purchase.  Suddenly the thundering drums outside my veranda spoke to me.  Oh!  It was the last day of Ganapati Festival in our neighborhood and it was time to celebrate. I raced out of the house barefoot and followed the rhythmic, mesmerizing drums to the huge Ganesha idol, an elephant-headed boy—son of Shiva—who in this case had several arms and was in the pose of a dancer.

According to Puttaparthi Sathya Sai Baba, the Ganapati idol represents our own divine intelligence which removes the obstacles in our path, those blockages that prevent us from reaching our God Selves.

But today as I jogged across the road and sped to the spot where the idol stood, my thoughts were firmly on the ground.  Native drums are primal.  The loud and fast booming appealed to the wild she wolf within.  As I danced, hiding behind the crowd, lest I be judged a weirdo, my entire being felt acrobatic. In my mind, I cart wheeled on the green grass of hills; and I floated like a thoroughbred horse over hurdles on the track to the winners’ circle.  An amazing joy flooded my being. I pictured a peaceful world; I imagined that the accelerating beats of the drum, the fast stepping and leaping of  the dancing boys, the tossing of colors like powdered rainbows was a boon from the heavens.

Indeed it was! After years in the spiritual trenches of our remote ashram town I was definitely in an ecstatic state, the longed-for Sat Chit Ananda!

The Guru teaches us to let go of desires, to treat everyone and everything as passing clouds, to divest ourselves of tinsel and trash, to seek the permanent reality, to move purposefully toward Liberation itself.

As I leap in the air and spin and stomp I am like a whirling dervish, one with the Creator.  Yes! Yes!  Yes!  I am free of myself, my ego, all the mortal ties that bind; not even Death can stab me.

Ah, such is the magic of Ganapati Festival! I had stripped off all my attachments like ragged clothes.

On the way home, I notice my sparkling yellow sari is now splashed with magenta dust; but I can’t stop smiling.  I am certain my feet are no longer touching the ground.  How can I be so lucky, I muse, so blessed?  The cat curled up on the porch chair doesn’t respond.

At least an hour goes by in this elevated condition.  Then human hunger strikes.  It’s 8:03 p.m. I look at the clock like a time traveler just returned from a journey to the moon.  I decide to have an apple.  I use the sweet little back knife.  I peel the skin off carefully so as not to waste.  I slice each piece attentively then place it on my tongue like a Holy Communion wafer.  What a day, I sigh.  Soon sleep comes,  kisses me on the cheek, and I succumb.

In the morning I am thrilled to be alive, so content to be in my lingering state of euphoria.  Health, wealth, reputation, these are not in my thoughts.  I am far above the mundane.  I am contemplating the Sat Guru’s words, his teaching that before Enlightenment we must pass through the fire of “The Three Zeros”.

 Seekers will undergo the loss of health, the loss of wealth, and the loss of reputation.  However, after the examination we are transformed. We are even stronger in our faith. I certainly had lost those three things and I suffered greatly; yet I remained full of hope and gratitude. For me, the hardest thing to lose was my reputation.  I clung to it like a crutch. But then I let go and let God take care of my enemies. 

I roll out of bed eager for my coffee.  Slowly, I begin to realize I’m limping.  My back is aching and feels like it was kicked by an elephant. Was it you, Ganesha? My muscles are stiff and my feet are shuffling over the tiles.  In the kitchen I remember the high-jump athlete I was just yesterday, offering Arathi to the many-limbed idol.

I put on the water and wait for it to boil.  I hobble to the counter to get the little black handled knife, my 45 rupee bargain, just right for sliding into the jam jar, just right for cutting the butter, perfect for slicing toast in half.  It’s not where it’s supposed to be—in the knife holder.  It’s not in the utensil drawer.  I search the sink, the cupboards, and the refrigerator.  I definitely search the trash.  I repeat the whole process again. Hum, I come up with nothing. There are spiritual messages in every action the disciple takes.

How could the knife disappear?  Sweet, little black-handled knives do not walk out of the house on their own.  My heart races.    It had to be me who lost it, after all, I live alone.  Or do I?

Aha! I look at my Guru’s picture above the vessels and shout for him to help me find the precious knife.  Yes.  Now it has become a prized possession, a coveted tool, a nasty, rapidly growing ATTACHMENT.  This is not nice, but it’s true, over a lost knife I am now berating my very own image of God. Guruji’s eyes just glare back at me.

Drummers of Ganesh Festival. Photo by Terry Reis Kennedy

Then I turn my anger onto myself.  I scold my body for feeling so lame.  I scold my mind for following my Ego.  Yesterday I was “liberated,” but less than 24 hours later I am The Fool, stuck like glue to a cheap, shiny knife.

Days have passed.  I’m quieter.  I’m not quite eating humble pie, but the pride’s been squeezed out of me. I’m powerless, propped up in my bed with a hot water bottle between my stiff, aching back and the soft, accommodating pillows.  The drummers have gone back to their cities and villages; all of Puttaparthi’s Ganeshas have been submerged in the waters.  And the knife, hiding somewhere in the house like a lizard, is most probably howling with laughter. 

Meanwhile, Ganapati, son of The Destroyer of Desires, has taught me an important lesson.  There is a fourth zero.  In order to merge with Supreme Consciousness, it is necessary to chop away attachments that still cling.

The dazzling knife had to go. But who took it away?  Only God knows.

THE SECRETARY

One of the earliest memories I have begins when I am three.  I am sitting at the shiny mahogany desk in our living room at 7 Church Place, in Bellows Falls, Vermont.  My mother used to call the desk, “the secretary.”  At that time, being so young, I did not know the meaning of that word. Nevertheless, I intuited that it was a place where I could sit in peace, scribbling the stories I loved to create.  How I knew that it was a writing place at a time when I had not even learned to print, is for me a kind of proof that we carry past-life tendencies with us.  No one in my family ever wrote anything at the secretary at all.  It was just a piece of furniture where things, rarely used, were stored.   But it was my sacred place.  I was there that like a little yogini, I could dissociate from my body, and become one with the words I chose for my stories.  For me, In the beginning was the Word—really!

My mother and my father and a black, bob-tailed cat named Midnight and I lived upstairs over my born-in-Poland grandmother.  She was my mother’s mother and I called her Babcha.  Her ground-floor apartment in the dark brown duplex which she owned, and according to her vast oral repertoire of stories, she had purchased at 50 cents per week, was actually my second favorite place to be; for it was spiritual in a different sense.  It renewed me and gently eased me back into the world of samsara.  You see, one part of my life was Heaven, another part was Hell.  One part of my life took place beyond my mind; another part was glued to it.

  

 Our house, even though Babcha owned it, belonged to all of us.  She constantly reminded us of this. And I personally felt that I belonged to and was a part of every room and closet and of every under-the-eaves crawl space in the attic.  From as early as I can remember, I have felt connected to the energy around me.  In retrospect, I learned much more by osmosis than I did from books, perhaps.

Church Place had no churches on it, but it was a relatively serene neighborhood considering it was full of poor, working-class, second-generation families, like ours, with heaps of kids and dogs. I, on the other hand, was an only child. The lot our house was situated on was replete with trees and bushes which my recently widowed Babcha tended by herself—not that she ever got much help in that department from her husband, a sensitive and violin-playing man who wound up working at a paper mill just to be able to live in a free country and earn a decent wage.  He might have been a half-starved musician playing in a Warsaw orchestra. Instead he put away the violin, worked as many shifts as he could to support his family of two sons and a daughter.  Then he just lay down and died of alcoholism that no one has ever really admitted.  After the burial few words were spoken about Papa. I remember his after-shave colognes and his hearty laughter.  Once he took me to the chicken sheds up on Hyde Hill and told me he would chop my head off and put me in an oven and roast me, just like the chickens that I saw being butchered there.  I wet my pants in terror and all his friends laughed like crazy. The violin he had brought from Poland haunted our Church Place attic for decades—until one day it just disappeared like dust in the rain.

  From Babcha’s gardens came the fruits and vegetables we ate fresh in season and out of thick bluish preserve jars in winter.  We lived across the street from a vacant lot surrounded by mostly triplexes and a once-stately Victorian mansion that had been partitioned off into apartments.

At home, I loved roaming the basement where the huge monster furnace was, where the root cellar full of potatoes, carrots and beets hulked.  It looked like a gigantic sand box filled with smoke-scented earth.  There the root vegetables were buried, as if to trick them into believing they were still in the garden.  In fall and winter, it was my delightful job to dig them up on Babcha’s command, which was usually once a day just before supper. Wooden slatted pickle jars as tall as toddlers were full of dills and sauerkraut.  The sweet and sours lined the canned-goods shelves in recycled baby-food jars.

 My personal kingdom began in the basement and climbed all the way up into the attic. What’s more, I could come and go as I pleased throughout the house.  In Babcha’s rooms, I ate candy from her crystal bowl set on the round dining room table; I rummaged into her pantry to look for the donut-like Polish confections known as krushtyki which she kept hidden there.  I always found the hiding place, though, as Babcha probably intended, and I gorged on the powdered sugar treats. Her ice-box was full of tempting snacks as well.

In her house I could lie down on the sofa and look at her large array of healthy houseplants anytime I wanted.  Velvet, raspberry-colored gloxinia, African violets in shades of pink and white, double and single petalled as well.  There were coral geraniums, red poinsettias, and magenta cyclamen that bloomed then withered then bloomed again.  I was fascinated by them and by the tulips that Babcha forced into flower to brighten our home during the darkest blizzard days of February and March.  I literally watched the ivy grow, the fern fronds reach for the light, and the sansiveria spike tall and lethal looking, like emerald swords.  And the immense jade plant fascinated me, especially since it was said to bloom only once every nine years.  I had not yet lived long enough to see this happen.  But I believed it would.  How could I know then that when I reached nine, many of the buds within me, my potential flowers, my most delicious fruits would be ripped out of me, hurled onto the ground and eaten by wild pigs?  I couldn’t know. And I’m glad.

Babcha was my first Guru, really.  And while she was out working as a laundress, a housekeeper and a maid, and my mother was out working  as well and I was looking after my sick father, I had these wonderful contemplative times all alone in Babcha’s living room— which also functioned as a dining room when special guests visited.  Naturally, I learned to love plants and the cycles of the seasons just by staying with a grandmother who kept something in bloom all around the outside of the house, and on the inside too. The plants on the stands she had placed under the three windows that formed a bay and looked out at the back yard mesmerized me.  My horticultural studies began right then and there and ended up at Horticultural Hall in Boston just before my entire world went numb.

So, yes, there was the cool-damp promise of the basement and its peculiar scent that triggered a bit of terror in me.  The smudgy smell of the root cellar combined with the fumes the coal-burning furnace produced a deju-vu experience in me.  But it was the experience of a blind person, for I could never “see” anything.  The aroma, though, was clearly from way back in time.  Was it the torching of the teepees with our children still inside? I later wondered, or the burning bodies at Varanasi, maybe.  Even the Avatar Guru I came to see in India, and whose ashram I have lived near for many years, has never answered my queries.  “Trust my uncertainty,” He said in one of His discourses.  It’s hard for me to trust much nowadays.  It was impossible then.

And always there were chores up the stairs from Babcha’s.   Upstairs is where I spent most of my time.  It was upstairs that I first noticed that sometimes my parents and Midnight, who was one year older than me, were also enveloped in the same cellar scent that I came to associate with episodes of dread.  Decades later I would understand why.

To be continued……