KNOMO CHOICIUS

Forget the Kool-Aid

Keep your eye on that little pot between the two plates…. From Left, junior priest, or “pandit,” my friend’s son, female relative, wife of my friend’s older brother, my friend’s older brother, who shaved his head and beard after not shaving for six months, in anticipation of this Bhagwat ceremony. The nose of my friend, Dharmendra (white scarf on his head) is poking out from behind the fancy red and tinsel shawl of his wife.

One of my current colleagues sometimes makes fun of himself by admitting he drank the Kool-Aid. Of course that was a sad time that most of us of a certain age remember, when the members of a religious cult drank cyanide laced Kool-Aid and died. Well, I am still alive to write this, so it wasn’t cyanide.

But it was a bit of shock to find out what the little pot contained, after my friend, Dharmendra, who has yet to approve a single sugar cane juice vendor, after 4 trips with him over 20 years, had waved his arm at me and the other two western women attending the Bhagwat (see Bhagwat- Day 1) – to indicate that yes, we should be offered spoons of the blessed holy liquid. It was quite bitter. I figured it was asofeotida (a special spice used in Indian cooking, whose name is not only casually linked with the work “fetid”). Well, ok. As I have previously noted, India is the land of surprises.

When the priest lifted the jug of golden liquid to fill the pot, the first French woman joked that it was whiskey. But no.

“C’etait l’urine de vache,” the second French woman informed me.

Really? I just drank cow pee?

Yes, it was a shock. For at least a minute. Then I remembered that my Zoroastrian friends had been discussing how the new excessively Americanized generation did not want to try this extremely healthful ritual. Mary Boyce, a reknowned, scholarly writer about the Zoroastrians, said that cow urine was the only disinfectant that the early nomadic herders had available.

Ok. Great. That really made me feel a wonderful relief.

I wonder if drinking the holy water was the cause of the very strange and vivid dreams I had last night. Not scary. Not seemingly prophetic. Just very strange and vivid. And one after another.

Well, if I am still alive to visit my Zoroastrian friends again in the future, I guess I can tell them I survived the ritual of their ancient cousins.

Bhagwat: Day 1

Central dais in the tent erected for the week-long memorial ceremony for my friend’s mother. She passed away a year ago. Several other relatives are being honored alongside, and I was told my mother, who passed away two years ago, would be included if I came. That’s my mom’s picture second from the left, bottom row. Dharmendra is in the white hat, to the left of the priest.

“The entire week’s events will cost $13000.00,” my friend informed me. It always amazes me how Indians find money for weddings and other rituals, even when things are “very difficult.” Even if he has three sisters living, and two brothers, presumably to share some of the cost. The family lost both their mother and the oldest sister in a few short months.

Well, apparently the bricks used to build the above dais aren’t a big part of the cost, even though such high quality bricks are expensive. Because? you might ask. Because my friend plans to sell the bricks that he bought, as well as return the bricks he borrowed from the new hotel construction site next door, at a good profit, because after a week of blessings by seven priests, these bricks are going to be VERY HOLY and will bring good luck to any building into which they are incorporated.

So what else does the $13k cover? Well, of course the seven “pandits,” or priests. Some are specialized in chanting, some playing musical instruments, some interpreting scripture, some performing ritual. I suppose it must cover the tent, and crew of people who set up the tent, and brought the 85 mattresses to line the floor, and run the electrical and sound systems. Not to mention dig the small moat that the unexpected rain storm necessitated on Day 2. The food (and cooks) for all the relatives and friends, up to 800 expected on the last of the 8 day event. The full time sound technician. The special shawls for Krishna’s birthday that were given out on Day 1. The three copies of the giant plastic banner announcing the event. The steel structures supporting the tent itself, as well as several internal platforms. Etc.

My friend’s nephew, Mohit, sits in front of the special holy heifer (virgin cow) dung plastered brick ceremonial stand, prepared for his aunt’s memorial, before it got all the decorations shown above. Mohit is a yoga instructor, and has restored the abilty to walk to a young handicapped boy that the doctors gave up on.

The day started with my understanding that the some of the women standing around waiting to begin the procession to the Ganges to get the holy water were commenting on the fact that I was wearing pink. HAH! I rejoiced that my Hindi was now good enough for me to realize that’s what they were saying. I managed to respond that “Nobody TOLD me I was supposed to wear yellow.” Which was fine. Because I don’t have any yellow Indian outfits anyway.

Mourners dressed in yellow, on the way to the Ganges from the mourners’ home. Supposedly 600 meters, but at a very steep angle down. I cheated and took a scooter ride back.

The morning ceremony lasted about 3 hours, including the walk to and back from the Ganges. I was told we were to fast all day, only eating a small meal in the evening. But then, while the non-mourning guests were being fed a big meal, the fasting mourners were led into a small room and given little bowls of nuts and dried fruit. These Hindus have a different concept of fasting. Or maybe he left out the “e” and really meant feast. Who knows. Because today, Day 2, the “small meal” really was a huge feast. But I didn’t have much, as I was coming for a fasting event. We’ll see how long I hold out.

Half eaten “small” snack to keep us from starving during the “fast.” My pink top is shown in the lower right corner, along with my purple pants!

The afternoon, 3 pm to 6:30 or so, was comprised of the main priest (shown in orange in the top photo) chanting from the Bhagavad Gita, the holy scripture of Hinduism, giving interpretive comments, and musical interludes, of course blasted at full volume on the four banks of three 4 foot speakers each. That made it easier to cover the construction noise from next door.

Women sit on left, men on right. Musician priests at right, main priest at upper left. Balloons and garlands of flowers, posters of Krishna, and other Hindu dieties, decorate the tent. Note the professional videographer’s rig. Gender separation is only during the public part of the ceremony, the reading of the scripture. The morning pujas are just for family, and all sit together.

So that’s my report so far, totally inadequate, of Day 1 of the Bhagwat.

Hotel Shiv Vilas Impression

Having clumsily dropped the unwrapped plastic straw, he turned around, and stepped back to the welcome desk, to retrieve a replacement. All fairly unremarkable, until grimacing, he heartily kicked the first straw under the desk from which it had been removed.

Of modest height, the typically skinny north Indian 20 something, hair brushed to his left from a strongly offset part, cowlicked in the same manner my host’s son’s relationships were teasing him about last night, must consider himself too high in the social hierarchy to pick up what he dropped.

Another thought breaks into my consciousness. Maybe he was keeping his hands clean. But no, he returns a few minutes later, this time taking a paper napkin from the same piece of movable furniture, before turning in the same careless manner, but this time keeping a grasp on his target.

Sipping my ginger, lemon honey brew, I observe as he follows his supervisor back into the dining room, while they trade familiar chat.

Hotel Shiv Vilas in Rishakesh, entrance to restaurant, where I am now working, as the room I’m in has no desk!

Back in Rishikesh

Now, abhi, now I am in India. Feet having touched the ground yesterday at 2 am, I slept well, once installing earplugs to kill the tic tic tic tic of the fan in the room next door. I only figured out that this was the likely source of the noise after turning my own fan on this morning. India always surprises me with the new strange sounds. The fan ticks are preferable to 2017’s herd of mules’ hooves clacking on the cobblestones at 4:30 every morning. Construction crews had to be pre-stocked daily with mortar mix, in anticipation of the workers’ arrival.

So, refreshed after as good sleep as possible in a country where the science of acoustics is unheard of, I have my breakfast of four slices of whole wheat toast, butter, jelly, and tea, and head out to the Pundir General Store.

Dharmendra tells me that it is expanded and renovated since last year. There is a plentiful supply of my primary prey – Neem-Clove Toothpaste. Lots of nice auyervedic soaps, incense, etc. My purchase adds up to 3085 INR, but when I tell the shopkeeper that this is the best toothpaste in the world, he takes the 3000 rupees, and returns the 100 rupee note, telling me “Yes, we know. That’s why it’s the only kind we sell. One tube free!”

Heading back to my hotel, I am aware of the order in the chaos of the street. People, in a steady stream, weave in and out between parked vehicles, passing trucks, docile cows, chunks, large and small, of broken concrete, and fruit and vegetable carts. I merge into the crowd, not just physically, but my consciousness merges with theirs. A couple passes, he wearing a Latin lettered Sochi tee-shirt, she a Cyrillic version.

Rishikesh, the holy city of yogis, has regained its status as a bustling adventure tourist destination, four years after devastating floods and mudslides.

I am aware of the order in the chaos, and accept my place in it, no longer fearful of crossing the street, or walking in it, a fact of life in the land of scarce sidewalks.

Lion’s Love or Alternative Valentine

The Buddhist nun Thubton Chodron says “Love is the wish for sentient beings to have happiness.”

I am very happy to have come across this definition of love. By this definition, I am very loving. I want all sentient beings to have happiness. The fact that I have given up on trying to help others have happiness no longer bothers me. I want it. Thubton Chodron seems to imply that’s what love is.

Of course Westerners think that wanting alone is not as effective as doing something to achieve the desire. We have that old saying: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. But Easterners have more wisdom that assures us that thoughts are things. In a way, we could consider that the entire core message of Jesus was just that. Jesus’ followers eventually got rid of much of the law, the requirements for doings. They emphasized the inner thoughts. Why, if not out of an understanding, not belief, understanding, that thoughts lay the groundwork for the quality of the deeds.

Another culturally Western Buddhist teacher instructs “Don’t just do something. Sit there!”

But, as long as I have been attracted to and studied the ideas of the East, a big part of me still feels like I need to do something to make my wishes into horses. Through the tension of East and West, I’m beginning to realize that every effort I have made to truly help someone out of what I perceived as a dire situation has gone wrong. People get into dire situations for large, complex and complicated constellations of reasons, most of which are incorrect subconscious beliefs about the nature of reality. Therefore, one person can’t ever have a high chance of truly helping someone for the longterm by adjusting their outside situation. The persons incorrect, unacknowledged beliefs will continue to sabotage them.

Therefore, while my spoken statement is that I have given up on doing anything to express my love, and am happy to wish for others’ happiness, my inner desire is to have the strength to continue to work in the ways that I am allowed to help others see a way to happiness.

Now, the intent, or content, of this string of sentences is all well and good. However, it pretty much applies only to humans. Thubton Chodron says that love is the wish for sentient beings to have happiness. The Buddhists have a prayer that is often translated into English as follows: May all sentient beings have happiness, and the causes of happiness.

Ok great. But, as Lynn Sparrow Christie, a motivational speaker notes, “There’s the problem of the food chain.” The Jains have truly tried to create a system of rules / laws / habits / deeds / way of life that addresses this. Not only are they vegetarian, they don’t eat seeds, because that cuts off a life. Eating the fleshy part of the peach is ok. Garlic cloves, definitely not. Wheat not. I’m not sure about potatoes. They can produce a new plant, but the plant will make seeds if allowed. So maybe they do eat potatoes. Of course, Jains might or might not have known about potatoes when their religion was started. The coffeeshop where I am writing is getting a new internet router, so I can’t check. This is good. Lets you the reader see my stream of consciousness, and you can go look to figure it out on your own! 🙂

Anyway, to get back to the Jains, not only do they have a restricted vegetarian diet, but they wear masks, so that they do not inadvertently inhale and kill by immersion in digestive juices, any gnats or other sentient beings. Not only do they wear masks to avoid unintentional inhalation of gnats, but they sweep their paths ahead of themselves as they walk, to avoid crushing ants and worms. Every moment of the Jains’ lives are taken up in avoiding harm. I now see this as an uninterrupted meditation on laying the foundations for other sentient beings having the causes of happiness, or at least avoiding the causes of pain and suffering at a basic physical level.

Kindof like Judaism, there are so many rules and regulations, you don’t have time to get into trouble. Of course I am sure that just as there are Orthodox Jews who manage to lead truly creative lives, there are Jains who do the same. I am convinced that God has led different peoples to adopt different religious systems, not only because it was natural and expedient based on differences of environment, both natural and as responses to cultural pressures, but because having a spectrum of beliefs and ideas and cultures makes watching the human drama a more interesting prospect.

That said, getting back to all sentient beings having the causes of happiness is going to require a lot of changes to the status quo. In order for all sentient beings to have the causes of happiness, many of Nature’s beings are going to have to undergo fundamental changes. The lion must be able to lie down with the lamb in perpetuity, not only for a few minutes, after it has gorged itself on three giraffes.

The Great Composer

The notes bounced off of the flat surfaces of the large boulders strewn around the landscape. The pile of dirt and small stones grew longer, and taller. The decibel level of the so called music diminished. The racket from the stones sliding down the slopes of the growing ridge of rock and dirt drowned out more and more of the sound emanating from the window of the blue pick-up truck.

The digger stepped down hard on the upper edge of the spade’s blade, wiggling the top of the handle forward and back, in an effort to pry the annoying rock away from its neighbors.

A loud sigh announced the last bang of the last rock tumbling down the side of the rock pile. Joe grabbed the five gallon bucket from the edge of the rectangular pit, turned it upside down, and tested its stability. Then, stepping on it, he hauled himself up to ground level, and turned toward the truck, pulling the kerchief off of his head and wiping his face.

“Least I can do,” he mumbled, pulling the corpse out of the back of the truck. It did not complain as he dragged it toward the pit, and laid it out atop the ridge of rocks. “Least I can do.”

“Damn self-proclaimed musician should be allowed to experience the same torture he subjected us to.”

Joe walked back to the truck, and cranked up the music. He returned to the pit, pulled out the bucket, and sat down.

“Half an hour. That’s all he gets. Time to be moving on.”

Suddenly, Joe sat upright, hearing something new. The so-called music flowed around him in ever changing combinations as it bounced off of the faces of the boulders. The complexity and subtlety ebbed, then flowed again, each time with a new hue. The barren landscape took on new life.

Joe slumped over. He realized he had erred.

Then, sadly, he rolled the corpse into the pit, filling it in with all of the rocks he had just so recently worked so hard to dig out of the ground. He left the music playing, and walked away, knowing his skeleton, or that of his truck, would open the lock of the mystery of the disappearance of the great composer.

Awesome Writing Prompts #731: Person Place Thing

world’s worst songwriter, freshly dug grave, skeleton key

A Faded Rose

Faded beyond faded, the color of the roses resembled that of the collapsed mold colony in the center of the ring of tea bag tags.

The dried skin of the corpse smoothed the knobs of the protruding bone ends.

Remains of a slip of newspaper rested in her lap.

Mouse turds decorated the pile of crumbled egg shells in the sink. The corner of a crust of bread remained on a plate, perched on the edge of the countertop.

Jill surveyed the rest of the interior of the cabin. Her eyes returned to the vase, which covered the corner of the folded newspaper, the obituaries staring upward.

Jill turned, and walked out of the door, pulling it shut behind her.

“So,” Jack asked, as he re-holstered his revolver, “is it true?”

“She wasn’t wearing the rose. And there was a whole vase full. But they were pretty faded.”

This prompt, from the site “Prompts that don’t suck” immediately brought Delta to my mind.

A pile of used teabags, an old newspaper with something cut out of it, an egg salad sandwich were three of the six items listed for prompt 733.

Dancing to an Unheard Melody

This is a past life regression I did in 1988. The title above is from my friend Mel, who heard me read the piece in the writing group…

To my surprise, I actually find myself embodied. My arms around my partner, I look into his eyes. He is black. He wears an army uniform. He is taller than I am. He leads me around the dancing floor. Bright spots of light move as the glitter ball rotates above us. The vision is a vision, and I don’t hear the music. I look down at my shoulder, and find I am white. I don’t think this is a surprise. The inner self I was channeling must have known this as soon as I noted the dark tones of my partner’s skin. The question of my gender was never articulated.

As the unheard tune ends, I step back to smile at my partner, and looking down, I see the upper line of my yellow sleeveless dress against my skin. I am pretty. I know this, even as I can’t see my face. They say that beauty is perceived in the face designed from the average of all common features in a population. I fill in my face with this subconscious information. I am slim. The pretty and the slim are different from my current incarnation.

The skirt of my dress is yellow, like the top, but covered with black polka dots, the size of quarters. I sense this is happening in the 1930’s. Maybe one of those dance contests they had with cash prizes to supposedly alleviate the misery of the depression. Like in the movie They Shoot Horses.

Now, thirty years after this past life regression experience, I wonder why an enlisted soldier, presumably with a paycheck, would subject himself to this. Hmmm. Maybe he was attracted to me? Still, this is hard for me to imagine, having been stuck in my current body for all of this lifetime.

The essence that I took from the extremely foggy vision of a past life, that felt extremely forced at the time, was that my unwillingness to conform to society’s expectations goes back to a time before my birth into this current heavy, plain looking carcass. But she must have died young, if she was in her twenties in the 1930’s or 40’s, and died in time to provide a soul to one born in the late 1950’s. I wonder what happened to my dancing partner. Was he a partner for an evening only? A weekend of a dance contest? Years?

Yesterday, I joined the Theosophical Society. They’d already been around for 100 years when I graduated from high school. Their purpose is to promote Universal Brotherhood. The founders believed in the benefits of reincarnation. If you know you have many lives, you don’t have to feel pressured to “get this life perfect.” All the major religions teach that we are more than our bodies. Most teach that we are more than our minds. Or that we are neither our bodies, nor our minds. Nor our feelings for that matter. I can intellectually grasp that there is evidence that we are more than our bodies and thoughts and feelings. The idea of reincarnation helps to explain a lot of things. It’s not the only possible explanation for the experiences of deja vu, or strong connections to other people. It’s not the only possible explanation for my wondering from the age of four why I was born.

To my mother’s credit, she never gave me a fake answer. For some reason, it never occurred to me to ask my dad. Perhaps this persistent question, which implies that I did have a choice in being born, or at least that I thought I did, is even better evidence for reincarnation. Or at least for the existence of the individual’s soul or spirit as an entity separate from the body.

When I took the past life regression workshop, I had little hope that I was actually going to be able to get any information about my past lives. I’m an intellectual, and that generally interferes with the ability to perform self-hypnosis. As noted at the top of the post, I was surprised to even get a glimpse of a past life.

My friends at the Spiritualist church assure me that I have had many past lives. Who knows? My “karmic astrology report” from Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment says that my planets give a tendency to get carried away by my imagination. Yet some type of undiagnosed brain damage has left me with extremely poor visualization skills. I get lost really easily, even as I have developed skills to get to where I need to go in my daily life. Maybe this brain damage is what has kept me centered in the physical world. When I do have a clear inner vision, it always feels like a gift. I can never conjure it at will.