by Chett Vosloo
***
Within a few months of practicing meditation, I started to notice certain changes in my life. The first was my energy levels. By now, my diet was relatively simple and balanced. I ate little meat and hardly touched any alcohol at all. In the past, I’d usually gone to bed between 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm, but I was now going to bed between 11:00 pm and midnight and still waking up fresh in the mornings for my morning meditation. I needed less sleep than before, yet I functioned perfectly well. In fact, my energy levels were probably better than they had ever been. I could also see how my morning meditation got my day off to a good start. Even if I woke up feeling a little tired, the meditation invariably picked me up and gave me an energy boost. If I was running late and missed my morning meditation, I could very often notice the difference, as I didn’t feel as alert. So, although it was never a fun thing to get out of bed in the mornings, I made sure to keep my discipline as the pay off was obvious.
My increase in energy levels wasn’t the only change in my life. In the afternoons, I had got into the habit of taking a walk or a jog through the forest across the road from where I lived. Sometimes if I wasn’t in the mood for exercise I would head to the forest with a book instead. During these visits to the forest, I was surprised at how I started to notice and observe changes in the flowers blossoming around me, as well as in the changing colours in the forest. I had never paid any attention to this sort of thing in the past and would have walked by completely unaware. What a great feeling it was for me as it was almost as though I was ‘waking up’ and seeing things for the first time.
I also noticed certain changes in my attitude at school as well. For one thing, I felt as if I had far more concentration during my classes than I had before. There were changes in the way I dealt with my co-teacher as well. My Korean co-teacher, the person who was responsible for me, and who I had to teach many of my classes with, was a super fiery character with an incredibly short temper. He walked around the classroom with a bamboo stick and was always looking for an excuse to use it. I had nicknamed him Hitler, as the students were terrified of the guy. With our different teaching styles, teaching with Hitler was never an easy thing for me. In the beginning, we’d had our fair share of run ins, but what surprised me now was that when we did have our disagreements from time to time - for the better part, anyway – I was able to keep calm and to not let his bad moods get to me. In the past I would have been so pissed off with the whole thing that I would have cursed him the whole way home. However, I now felt far more in control than I had been before.
Even though I had started to move away from the crowds the year before in Cape Town, I now enjoyed spending even more time in my own company. From time to time the foreigners in my town met up for a drink in one of the local bars, but more often than not I found the conversation so boring and meaningless that I’d leave early. Small talk, I discovered, made me feel tired, and so I started to see less of the few friends that I had made. I was becoming a bit of a loner, but this didn’t worry me at all as I hardly ever felt lonely. A night in a pub left me with a hangover and I felt shitty the next day, whereas a jog through the forest or a morning meditation gave me energy and left me feeling great. It was a simple decision in the end.
Even the way I spent my free time on the weekends was starting to change. I’d always been the kind of person to want to do as much as possible. The old me would have known that I only had a year in Korea and would therefore have wanted to see and do as much as I could, but now I didn’t really care what I did and did not get to see. Rather than spending my weekends chasing around the country to see different tourist sites, I now preferred to spend my weekends in my town. I had my books, my music, and of course there were the surrounding forests on my doorstep, and so what was the point of going anywhere else? I had all that I needed right there. By the time Monday came along, my batteries would be fully charged and I’d feel ready for the week ahead. I’d always loved nature in the past, but it seemed as though I was now appreciating nature so much more than ever before. These changes, as great as they seemed to be at the time, were only the start of things to come. In truth, my inner awakening had only just begun.
***
On the whole, things were going very well for me in South Korea, but there was still one issue that forever hung over me, and that was my skin condition. Being in Korea didn’t help either. In South Africa the weather is fairly moderate, however I was now living in a place with two extremes. The summers were hot and humid, and the winters long and cold. These weather conditions made it that much easier for my skin to flare up. As much as I wished that I could accept my skin condition for what it was, I just couldn’t. I hated the brown spots on my body more than anything else in my life. Just the mere sight of them would often bring about an instant wave of anxiety in me. How bad my skin condition was going to get in the future scared the living hell out of me. So rather than having to face looking at the brown spots on my body, which would only leave me feeling anxious and depressed, I tried to avoid looking at them as much as I could. However, the more I avoided looking at them, the more fear and anxiety built up inside me. It got so bad over the last few months that I had even got into the habit of showering with the light off. Denial. Denial. Denial. It was strange. On the one hand I was having moments and glimpses of a deeper peace than I had ever experienced in my life, but on the other hand I was still tortured by the sight of my own body. My situation was a bit like when you’ve got a big exam looming ahead of you. You feel perfectly okay and happy when forgetting about the exam that awaits you, but the moment you think about it, you immediately tense up and feel anxious. This is exactly how it was for me. When I didn’t have to see the pigmentation on my skin, I was perfectly happy, but such was the fear that had built up inside me over the years that just one look at the spots on my body and I’d go into a flat spin. Sadly, this is how it would remain for me for some time to come. I still wasn’t ready to face my problem head on, and until I was, I’d have no real chance of breaking free from the chains that were keeping me locked in the prison of my own mind. The choice was mine in the end. If I wanted to run, then nobody was going to stop me. I could keep running for the rest of my life, but if I wanted to put an end to this suffering once and for all, then it would have to come from me and no one else. Only I would be able to free myself!
CHAPTER 16
With our long winter vacation coming up at school, I made all the necessary arrangements with the ashram to be a volunteer on Amma’s three-week tour through the south of India.
“Just be prepared, Jed. The tours with Amma can be tough going. The heat, the long bus hauls from one place to the next, sleeping in cramped rooms, the mosquitoes – all these things can make it damn difficult at times.”
This was the advice that I was given at the start of the tour. Not sure what to expect, I was naturally feeling a little overwhelmed and nervous in the beginning. The seva that I was assigned was supposedly the one that nobody wanted to do - cleaning toilets! When I wasn’t cleaning the bathrooms, I tried to help out here and there with other jobs that were needed, like picking up trash, chopping vegetables, that sort of thing. When I wasn’t doing seva, I liked to go and sit on the stage behind Amma and watch her in action. I never got tired of this, as to see Amma giving hugs for hours on end was something special. The crowds at the first programme of the tour were massive. Riding on a high from all the excitement of being a part of it all, I kept awake until three the next morning. By then I figured that I had better get some sleep as it was going to be a long tour and I had better take it easy.
The rooms that the volunteers slept in were directly behind the stage where Amma sat giving darshan. Outside each room was a list of names of who was to sleep where. With roughly 600 volunteers on tour, space was always going to be tight. Army style, we set up our bedding in rows from wall to wall. Some of the volunteers slept on nothing but a thin straw mat, but the majority of Westerners slept on camping mattresses. Sleeping in cr
owded rooms was no big deal for me, but it was the humidity and the mosquitoes that got to me. If it was going to be like this every night, then the next three weeks would be a struggle.
When I woke up in the morning I was surprised to hear that there was still music playing from the stage below. I looked at my watch and saw that it was just after 6:30 am. By now the sun had risen and I was sure that the programme must be over. Surely Amma still wasn’t giving darshan? Curious to see what was happening, I put on my clothes and tip-toed over the bodies lying around me to get to the door, and would you believe it, there was Amma giving darshan, sitting exactly as she had been since the evening before. There was still a line of people on both sides of the stage waiting for their hug, so who knew how much longer it would take until she had finished giving darshan. I was absolutely mystified, and to think that in a few hours time, Amma would be back to do the whole thing again.
After two days at the first venue, everything was packed up and off we went to the next city. With so many people on the tour, getting everything packed up and moved from one place to the next was no small operation. Having had only a few hours sleep the first two nights, I thought that the long twelve hour bus ride to the next programme would be a good chance for me to catch up on some much needed sleep, but with the heat and the Indian roads as bad as they were, sleeping in the buses was not all that easy.
***
Up until now, all my encounters with Amma had been positive and happy memories for me. However, I was about to get my first real taste that a spiritual master was not only there to smile at you and make you feel good, but more than anything they were there to remove your ego. On my way back to my room in the early hours of the morning, I saw a man in a wheelchair at the entrance. He sat alone, looking through the gates towards the stage where Amma was sitting. I immediately felt sorry for him as I could see that he was suffering from some disease and that he had no use of his legs. An idea then came to me that maybe this was an opportunity for me to do a good deed. I went straight up to him and asked him whether or not he had had darshan from Amma. He shook his head and told me that he hadn’t and that he was still waiting for his number to come up. Judging by the size of the crowds, and the number on the token that he held in his hand, I knew that it would be at least a few more hours until he got his hug from Amma.
“Do you want to go for your darshan now?” I asked shrewdly, looking down at the frail-looking Indian man.
When he smiled up at me and said that he would, I at once started to push him in his wheelchair through the crowds towards the stage. When I got to the front of the line the man guarding the entrance asked me for his token. If I had shown him the one that he had been given, I knew he would have told me that the man in the wheel chair had to wait until his number came up. So I told a lie and said that I had already handed in his token to someone else a few minutes before. Collecting tokens and controlling the line of people waiting to see Amma was no easy job. There was often a lot of pushing and yelling, therefore he didn’t have time to waste dealing with me. With a little shake of the head to say ‘okay’, we got waved through. Even though I had just blatantly lied, I still felt happy as I was sure that I was doing a good deed.
When taking someone in a wheelchair for darshan, the protocol was to wait at the front of the stage until you got the go ahead from the men standing on either side of Amma. At this point you could either push the wheelchair right up to where Amma sat, or if the person wasn’t too heavy and you had the strength, you could carry them in your arms to Amma. I stood for a few minutes waiting to get the nod that I could take the man for darshan, the entire time thinking about what a noble act it was and what a good person I was to think of this man. But then, just before I got the okay to take him, Amma turned sharply and looked me straight in the eyes with a very stern look on her face. With her eyes wide open and her eyebrows raised, she held this look for a few seconds before turning to hug the next person in line. I was a little shell-shocked and couldn’t understand why Amma had given me such a harsh look. Wasn’t this something good that I was doing after all? If I had the choice, at that moment, I probably would have given up the idea of taking the man for darshan and would have walked off, but before I had a chance to back out, the Indian guy standing next to me tapped me on the shoulder and said that I must pick up the man in the wheelchair and carry him to Amma. I didn’t know what I was meant to do when I got to Amma and so I sort of off loaded him into her lap. This definitely wasn’t the best thing to do, as Amma let out a painful sigh when he landed on her legs. I then stood back and watched at how, with the man cradled in her arms, Amma spent a few minutes showering him with so much love and affection.
On my way back to my room I couldn’t stop thinking back to the look that Amma had given me, trying to make sense of it. It was only the next day that it dawned on me that what I had thought to be a noble act wasn’t such a noble act after all. I wasn’t only thinking of the man, but rather I also saw him as an opportunity to boost my ego and for me to get close to Amma. It was completely selfish of me, no doubt about it. When Amma gave me that look it was as if she could see straight through me and knew what my real intention was. Although it wasn’t the kind of experience I’d like to go through again, it did serve as a great lesson in the end.
***
At the end of the evening programme Amma very often sang a song with the crowd before leaving. Most nights I missed out on this as I had usually gone to bed long before the end of it, but on one particular night I was feeling wide awake and was determined to push through right to the end. There was a lot of pushing and shoving as everyone wanted to get as close to Amma as they could before she stood to leave. After some pushing myself, I found a spot right at the edge of the stage, about twelve feet away from where Amma was sitting. It was, however, an awkward place to be as there was a five-foot drop from the stage to the main floor below. All it would have taken was a good push and I would have fallen off the edge onto the people standing below me. As tricky as it was for me to keep my footing, I knew that Amma would be walking past any minute and so I didn’t want to budge from where I was.
When Amma did eventually stand up to leave, just as I had expected, there was a whole lot of excitement and immediately people started pushing. I tried my best to keep my balance, but I slowly started falling back. I knew that it was now only a matter of seconds until I’d collapse onto the people below. Then, the most amazing thing happened. As I was falling I felt someone grab hold of my hand and gently pull me back. You can imagine my surprise when I turned around and saw that, of all people, it was Amma who was standing there holding my hand. Amma smiled at me with her mouth wide open, as if to mirror the look of total shock on my face, and then, in a split second, without me even having a chance to utter the words, ‘Thank you’, she turned and walked away.
I’m sure that there were several reasons adding to it, but I found that throughout the tour I went through a series of ups and downs. One moment I absolutely loved being on tour and felt incredibly privileged to be part of it all, but then the next thing my mood would change and I’d be wondering why on earth I was volunteering to scrub toilets. However, this roller-coaster ride that I was on was supposedly all part of it. Even people who had been on many tours with Amma went through their times of doubt. I remember Amber, an American lady who I had met in the ashram a while back, telling me of her own experience with doubt. She said that right from the time that she was a young girl her mother had taken her to see Amma on Amma’s annual tour through the north of America. By the time Amber had reached her late teens she had stopped going to see Amma altogether. A few years passed until one day she started having the desire to see Amma again and so she booked a ticket to India, intending to spend six weeks in the ashram. Sitting in the hall one evening watching Amma give darshan, Amber told me that she was suddenly filled with so much doubt.
Why am I here? What’s the point in all of this? she asked herself. Amma doesn’t even remember me,
so why did I waste my time coming to India? Sitting amongst several hundred people in the hall at the time, Amber then made a silent prayer. If you remember me, Amma, I want you to look at me.
A few seconds later, Amma raised her head and scanned through the audience in the direction that Amber was sitting. That’s not good enough, Amma, thought Amber. I want you to look me properly... and I want you to smile. Not long after, Amma looked up from where she was sitting and this time looked directly at Amber. With a loving smile on her face, Amma then raised her eyebrows, as if to say, ‘Are you satisfied now? Of course Amma remembers you.’
It was all very well that Amber had been lucky to have had that experience, but it hadn’t happened to me, and so of course it was that much easier for my own doubts to creep in. Thankfully though, these moments of doubt never lasted long, and usually each dip that I went through was followed by a realisation, an a-ha moment, and a lesson that I needed to learn.