a journey full of encounters
The journey takes us back to ourselves.
Albert Camus
This week I'm back. My stay was about 2 months in India, he left traces, processes taken stirred up old issues. Yes, it's just as one of long standing India travelers have always heard that you come back as a different person. Since I already hold my own personal "journey" are, this stay, this intensive period, the last building block for a new structure, a new section was is to come now.
This time was for me above all a period of encounter, with a different culture, different people and with me! It was a very valuable time in my life where I could learn a lot and still do.
And although the "outward" did not see much happening. Besides the 10 days in Chennai for meditation and a day trip to Chidambaram, I'm still only in Pondicherry. After my 10 day retreat I realized I do not want to travel further through the country. It was not only because of the related physical exertion and heat and the day-long train rides or that I alone would have to leave, it was above all the realization that this moment is not the time for it, for making new impressions on the exterior, monuments, temples, beaches, no it was and is a time of women, the encounter with oneself, with old patterns and personal injury, and even have been with old beliefs and convictions, with the old energies dissolved and transformed.
Well I have already mentioned the first 3 weeks I was like a culture shock, not just the heat, the climate to which one must get used to, especially what one sees on the streets. Unfiltered and without warning, one is confronted with it, filth, stench, garbage, but most of all suffering, misery, human and animal. How do you deal with it if you as a "white" than Westerners who always money, is angebettelet of women with her baby in her arms, with a typical gesture for the child's mouth just uses it when a ragged bicycle rickshaw driver 1o minutes in a begging to go for 10 rupees with him how to go about it when you see a family living with 3 young children in the dirt, with nothing except a couple of bags?
My answer was that I got used to it over time, which inevitably and was necessary, but there are answers as to how specific people, as there is no blanket. There are those Westerners who come for several years in the country, or live there for several years, which have been very adapted to deal with it as the Indians themselves "Nobody cares", no one is interested, it is a normal sight, one road picture, a cityscape, as on us at joggers and cyclists in the park walkways. One could also say in these Westerners have a certain emotional blunting or adaptation stattgfunden. And so they (un) consciously adapted to the country that you travel or live there for a long time, emotions play a big role in everyday life, it is accepted as is, whether it eats a child dirt, or a bottom of the caste is run over in the street, he lived his life and he will come back, next time maybe as Maharaja, the doctrine of reincarnation allows also the caste system, everyone is born into the caste that he has "earned" by his actions (karma) in the previous life! Religion and caste system in close symbiosis, which is necessary well to maintain the second largest country in the world, "opium of the people ', a tranquilizer to the order to avoid social unrest (which gives it anyway), 800 million Indians live below the poverty line, a huge explosive potential.
The fisherman and his family, will always live in his bamboo hut, he asks, or does not think, what if, as it would if I had a house, a car and running water! He accepts it and makes the best of it, moaning and lamenting, a character trait, an attitude which we in the West may well have more, beyond all social differences. From my room, I allowed the family to watch the children in particular, long time, children are laughing on the street, dance, jump and play. I have seldom seen such happy children, and in an environment which we would describe as a "slum". Because If we ask again the question of how much "wealth" you need to make happy be?
I was personally on the issue of giving money very torn, no matter how much. It actually needs to know that one of the beggar and gets back something, either a snotty answer because you gave too little, or in my case, very often the case, a guilty conscience if we did nothing, and after 2 full shopping bags home drove. Children, I've basically given no money (one should not), but always something they could plug directly into the mouth, such as sweet, a little boy or a banana, which I peeled him directly and for a beam on his face was given.
But there are also other examples of Westerners who are not so emotionally numb, not just see the misery, but also act to do something. Examples of compassion, attention and assistance.
I have the pleasure and opportunity to know two such people had to spend much time with them to make trips to laugh and discuss.
was the one that Sonja, a vital center Fünzigjährige from southern Germany. She always came over to our Guest House for breakfast, our dining room was especially in the morning is always a lively place to meet, exchange and inspiration. She was a total of 3 months in India, 2 of them in Pondicherry. One evening comes Sonja from a cafe in the City, and literally stumbled over two naked children on the steps of the cafe. They were completely naked on the stairs and slept. Probably before your already 10 Westerners away risen over the children, but Sonja responded, those are decisions that are made in seconds and come from the gut. She was looking for the parents, who live all in the dirt, and bought the two daughters of the evening to attract first something.
But that's not all, went from now on, Sonja regularly, sometimes daily, to the family in the city, providing them with clothing, fruit, money for food, and finally, shortly before leaving with a bicycle rickshaw with a load area, so that the Father thereby enabling him to earn a few rupees to help themselves.
You searched in the city on several governmental and private organizations to arrange the departure after someone takes care of the family, unfortunately, this attempt was unsuccessful.
Secondly, there was Catherine, who I met only in the last week of my stay. Catherine is a young German woman in her twenties from London who has lived for about 4 months in Pondicherry, and even works as long and as a volunteer (volunteers) in an orphanage! In this house there are about 100 children, most disabled in one way or another, mentally or physically. They are outcasts children because of your disability or as a result of an affair, exposed by the parents were, themselves and thus usually leaving them for dead. You will be collected on the road or placed by the police. Catherine took me a day in the orphanage, so I could make myself a picture. It is a picture of human misery, but also the hope that every child has a destiny for himself, I took a bag of cookies, distributed them among the children. They are supplied with the essentials, get food and a place to sleep, and thanks to the self-sacrificing and selfless work of volunteers and a little affection, attention, warmth.
These two are only representative of all the other numerous Meetings are called, these two, because me, respectively, each in their own way, more enriched, have impressed and fascinated, with your actions, your words or just your being. Just grateful I am for all the other meetings, short or long, in and outside the Guest House's, with so many different people from different nations, for the talks, for listening, for the guide, for being there, it was a beautiful, erkenntisreiche times, on all levels!
How are you now on? This question I see before me, in emails, "hey back, beautiful, and now?" Now that's what it is, now when I'm sitting on the laptop, now when I get up and go to the bathroom. And so it goes, from now to now, from moment to moment, because otherwise there is nothing that is the reality! "Yes, but you have to plan yet, have a goal, the chimney must smoke again?" Sure, there are ideas and plans, all in good time!
If I were to be asked, what have you taken from your time in India, would I answer: "A feeling of love and gratitude for this life and the realization that EVERYTHING is constantly changing!"
It never ever comes out of what we can expect from life, but only on what life expects from us.
Viktor Frankl
