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.