One of India's Lessons in Pure Unfettered Devotion
Trip Start
Oct 09, 2007
1
27
45
Trip End
Mar 10, 2008
Kolkata (Calcutta),
West Bengal,
India
Thursday, January 8, 2009
I go to Lokenath Temple every day by car at 3 o'clock with Baba. It is about 2 ½ miles from the condominium complex where I stay.
The building is simple, attractively painted 4-story concrete with an open, flat roof from which you can enjoy the view. I would guess each floor to be about 1000-1100 square feet. To the north, northeast, and northwest, there are 3 good-sized bodies of water, and immediately to the NE is an empty, treed lot. (Baba says it belongs to the city and will never be built upon.) With the water and the fact that the grounds are about 1 ½ km off the main road to Ruby Hospital - everyone marvels about what a quiet spot it is, how it could even exist, in teeming Kolkata (population, 15+ million). Young boys at the threshold of manhood are always playing ball in the wide and dusty, bumpy road as you approach, but it is peaceful here, wonderfully removed from the constant honking of Kolkata traffic.
Though the temple has its fair share of mosquitoes with the water so nearby, thus far I have escaped with only one bite without even using mosquito repellent! (God is good, so very kind to me!) Nonetheless, I take great delight in killing any possible mosquito... my murderous heart always taking triumphant satisfaction in terminating, for all time, at least one lineage of disease-bearing generations of future mosquitoes.
The guard opens the black metal gate for us as we drive in (all Kolkata buildings have guards - it would be foolish not to have one) and park beneath the building. We slip off our shoes, then go up to the 2nd floor to give our pranams to Baba Lokenath, whose white statue is always clothed in brilliant robes and lush garlands (most often of brilliant yellow puffs of marigold). One garland extends all the way to the floor. The temple priest is there, performing pujas and preparing for the evening prayers. After offering his respects to Baba Lokenath, Baba's first order of business is to go up to the roof to feed the birds. They are mostly crows, which, to me indicates just how impartial he is to all forms of life. Then he goes to work at his desk.
The Mission's offices are on the 1st Floor. Baba and Babai (his computer genius/website manager) share an office. They have me set up at a desk in the large central room that has a view of the water to the NW. Amalendu and Photik, who run the Mission projects have an office SW the room where I sit. and the Mission's medical compounder, Madhavi, sits in a small office between Baba's and Amalendu's and Photik's offices. Madhavi is an absolutely silent woman who comes in, works for hours compounding and putting away her medicines, and quietly leaves. She is the image of quiet, contained dignity.
I hang out with Baba Lokenath in the temple whenever I can, reading, writing, meditating. I am beginning to work on a comprehensive brochure on all of the Mission's projects, from feeding the street residents at Kalighat, to the medical vans and street schools, to the Self-Help Groups for women and farmers in villages, and the 2 computer schools in rural villages.
Devotees come and go, and I often hear them singing and chanting as I am working. My heart washes in warmth at those sweet, high pitched, utterly devotional voices singing of their love for God. The purity communicates beyond the words I cannot understand.
I go up to join the evening satsang each night (satsang literally translates to mean "Holy Company". It is time spent with others in devotion to God), and am finding ever deeper joy in these ancient, ancient chants. Millennia of devotion saturate each mysteriously haunting, evocative note.
The devotees are so gracious to me. I have met many of them before and can remember few, if any, of their names for the life of me. It is embarrassing, since they all know who I am.
One devotee is particularly enchanting. She is very old, timelessly so. She cannot be more than 3' 4" tall, and is bent with arthritis, obviously poor from the simple sari she wears, with a generous smile and bright, lively, dancing eyes. She comes twice a day to the temple, once in the morning, always bringing flowers for Baba Lokenath's altar, and again in the evening for satsang. Baba loves her so much. She pranams to him, and he asks for her blessing in return, each night. She rubs around his heart and beams. The first time he asked her for her blessing she said, "My blessing is that you live for as many years as I have hairs on my head! (Poor Baba! Who would want to live that long?)
She talks to me eagerly in relentless streams of Bengali. That she knows I cannot understand a word is irrelevant. I desperately want a photo of her blessing Baba. She conveys so much ... but when I attempted one, she could not be deterred from looking at me rather than Baba. Baba and I will have to get sneaky with the camera to catch a photo of her, unaware. I will post the photos I took last night of her later today, and add the one I manage to sneak later still (I forgot my UP port and have to borrow one at the office).
The thing is, India is full of souls like this dear woman... utterly innocent, poor beyond imagining, with hearts the size of galaxies, unspeakably generous, absolutely abandoned in their devotion to God, unaffected by pretense. They are heart stoppers. Everything in and about them speaks of love, and the simplicity I ache for. They have a richness I have never known, unfettered as they are by mind, given over entirely to pure, unstriving devotion.
This is what I love about India. I want to become that old woman. I want to become ShantiMa ... completely innocent ... unabashedly surrendered to all that is good and beautiful. They are the true masters of what it means to be human. Forget enlightenment; I would settle for that any day!
