Purpose

Saturday Sept 28^th:  This is my last day at Dhyanidham for this visit, and truth be told it has not always been an easy visit.  Instead of my usual blissful dream on my first night here, this time I had a nightmare.  In those first days and again these last days, during the days of rain and even when the sun was bright, I’ve had what my understanding of ayurveda calls a vata imbalance.  For me this means my body has felt jumpy and anxious, my mind impossible to tether.  

This morning in temple I asked myself why I had come.  I did have a practice in mind and established myself in it for 10 days.  It was not a long practice and left many hours available.  During the hours when the electricity was on, I worked on the illustrated ashram guide I am preparing, as well as on this record.  But the feelings of uneasiness never quite left me.

I had come with plans to receive or at least order furniture that would make the apartment more comfortable and homey.  I had plans to pay for that furniture even though I did not know how to carry nor exchange that amount of funds.  I had plans to do shopping that would ready the apartment for December of 2014, when Ma plans a big event and I expect to have other disciples staying with me. 

India, of course, had its own plans.

The difficulties of exchanging money took precedence over shopping.  The rains took precedence over both.  The furniture maker, an Indian disciple who is a master carpenter, took my order, but here on my last day he had still not returned to take the pile of cash that had been so hard to acquire.

I questioned the strength of my practice, my dedication, my ability to achieve the goal.  I showed up to all the morning and evening temple events, even when the rain was fierce and the early mornings dark without electricity.  But was it enough just to show up?  So many things I had planned to accomplish here had proved impossible to achieve.  I had come a very long way and didn't even have an ironing board or pictures hung to show for it.

The week before I left home, I had contacted some friends who had shared with me that their nephew was diagnosed with a recurrence of a serious illness.  Almost as an afterthought I asked them, would they like to order a puja to be done for him at the temple while I am there?  I could bring back the prasad.  They looked into the offerings and decided to order 125,000 repetitions of the Mrytunjaya mantra with bij.  At the time, we didn’t know this is a 25-day practice and would not conclude until after I returned to the States.  Nevertheless, when I arrived at the ashram arrangements were made for a brahmin to perform the japa and I was able to participate in the sankalpa.  Yesterday, I was told that the brahmin would be at the ashram today and that at lunchtime I would receive a sacred thread and flowers to take back to the family, though the japa repetition will continue for more days.

I came to lunch and saw an unfamiliar brahmin eating at another table.  We nodded to one another.  I was served my lunch, said the meal prayers, and began to eat.

When I was about half done with my meal, the temple priest arrived.  He came to my table and placed next to me two plastic bags, each containing a thread, a flower, and prasad.  Animatedly, he seemed to say that he had been waiting for me at the temple.  I apologized.  He explained which packet was for the child and which for the family, then went to get his own lunch.

I sat with my hands in my lap, looking down at my plate of food.  I was somewhat distressed at yet another instance where my inability to communicate had caused someone inconvenience.  But other feelings came up through that distress.  The two packets of prasad sat to my left, but I could not look at them.  Waves and waves of energy poured over me from them as I kept my eyes on my food.  I felt the same way I had felt when I first saw Mount Kailash—it was too powerful, too huge, too overwhelming for more than a passing glance out of the corner of my eye. 

I looked at my plate and began to weep.  The dining area was crowded with dozens of local children and adults, and in the midst of their stares I could not stop crying.  I looked at my food and cried and tried to fathom the energy pouring at me from the prasad.  And finally, it swept over me as an absolute certainty—those two plastic bags were the purpose of my trip.

Many years ago, before I met Ma, I took a simple stick from Virginia to California and placed it at the center of a medicine circle.  The moment I did so, I felt the universe rush through me.  Everything I had ever done, everyone I had ever been, every step I had taken in my existence had led inexorably, inevitably, to that one moment.

Now at Dhyanidham, staring at my lunch plate, I experienced that same sense of absolute purpose.  Everything about this trip--the months of planning, the days of travel, the hours of anxiety and self doubt--had been about that last-minute, almost offhand japa request, leading with absolute certainty to the two pulsing packets of prasad sitting to my left.

Two of the village children came next to me, put their palms together and said Sita Ram.  I cried for happiness at their well being.  I cried for sadness over my friends’ nephew and other children who suffer.  The priest came back to my table.  Smiling broadly, he delivered a homily of a few English words, saying All is God; this person, this creature, this plant, everything is a creation of God, and so I should be happy.  The elderly disciple to my right held my hands in hers and wiped pretend tears from her face, telling me not to cry.  There was no way I could explain to them that I was crying because, finally and clearly, my purpose for this trip had been fulfilled.

Car-ma

I am ordering furniture to be made for my apartment, and so I must go to Bharuch to the banks.  Day 3 of rain, the trip is cancelled because the road through Nikora is too flooded to pass; perhaps tomorrow will be better.  But tomorrow becomes day 4 of rain, and the roads can only be worse.  I would give up the trip to Bharuch, but word comes that a bigger car and other routes should be considered.  And so on day 4 we set out on roads more back than the back road through Nikora.  Everywhere, the landscape is flooded; fields and groves look like lakes.  In the Gujarati conversation between the driver and Hirenbhai, every 5^th word is panne, water.  In some places the water rushes across the road from one field to the next; in other places, water fills potholes as large as ditches.  We dodge cattle, goats, children, men on scooters, women carrying sugarcane on their heads, all taking advantage of the narrow pavement.  Finally the backer road intersects with the main highway, six lanes divided.  The direction we need to take is at a standstill, packed three lanes wide with transport trucks headed toward Surat and Mumbai.  Without hesitation, our driver cuts across those three lanes, the divide, and the three opposing lanes, and heads down the shoulder into the oncoming traffic.  He is not alone.  At one point, I see a road sign that says, “Please do not drive on the wrong side,” though the “please” may be something added by my mind.

On the way back, we leave the highway and immediately encounter a rush of water flooding the edge of the roadside town.  The driver stops.  Women are washing clothes in the rapids, and he engages them in a conversation that I imagine includes the questions, Has anyone tried to drive through here?  Has anyone made it?  But the women seem not to know.  The driver rolls up his pants legs and gets out of the car to check the depth and strength of the current.  Apparently reassured, he gets back in the car and drives us through.  When we get back to the ashram, I pay him twice his asking price for the trip.

Considering what everyone went through to get me to Bharuch, there must be a lot of karma tied up around this furniture, the money, or just me.  But I feel like a passenger through the outworking of this karma; so many others do so much, and I seem to reap the benefits.  I pray that God and Guruji will reward all these people.