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GURU DAKSHINA ~ a love offering by Sw. Vandana Jyothi ©2011 Foundation for Cosmic Religion
(Part 13, Chapters 7 and 8 in their entirety)
Chapter 7 ~ Guruji Sets the Pace
On the way over, Guruji played this game of having his ‘blue bag’ (the all-important ‘Guruji’s bag’) passed from one ‘trusted’ devotee to another with instructions to be given, very casually (even off-handedly considering it was his bag we were dealing with!) of what to do with it next. None of the others knew of the hand-offs except their own. It was so funny. Probably six people were in this chain, all separated by ego and space scattered throughout the plane, all getting to ‘guard’ the bag for a while, a very important job, before they passed it on. I don’t know how we didn’t see it. Distractions, I suppose, and not paying attention. I was guilty, too. Maybe the worst offender because he gave it to me first with instructions of what to do with it next but after I let it go, I didn’t track it. As if my trusteeship was over. But, no, not really. He only said pass the bag on, not the duty of ultimately guarding it and knowing where ‘his treasure’ was. So you have the advantage of knowing the lesson before I did. Alrighty-dighty then. You see it coming, right? Guruji announces he wants the bag. “Vandana, where’s my bag? Please fetch it.” I look at him a little incredulously because he knows darn well I relinquished custody of it as per his instruction almost two hours ago. “Uh, huh, bring me my bag, please. I’m going to the restroom, I’ll be right back.” Zing! My heart immediately starts pounding at double time. My eyes are wide and round as saucers. Where in the world, no... where in this plane is that bag?! Sweet Guru stayed in that restroom just long enough for us to go from pointing fingers at each other in heated discussion to giving up our individual arrogance and working together to trace its journey, each one realizing that every ‘I’ involved had guarded his bag SO well, sure, but when push came to shove, five of us couldn’t put our hands on it any longer. We had to unite and share his game, the pieces of his puzzle, to figure out which six people had possessed it and where to find it. Which we did do… ha, ha… in the ‘nick of time.’ It was in an overhead bin over his own seat! Of course, he knew where it was all along. Jai Gurudev! That was the first time a test was concocted for me around that blue bag. It wasn’t the last, oh dear, by any means. In fact, as I count ‘em up, the ones I remember so far, there were three. I flunked the first two of ‘em with flying colors. Here’s number two and I’m beyond embarrassed to report that it occurred less than two weeks later on that same pilgrimage! Oy!
The thought of traveling by bus to Jaipur from Udaipur when it is supposed to be by plane torches what remains of the fragile emotional state of some pilgrims who thought they had signed on for a vacation. Especially a couple, parents of twin boys and friends from Vandana’s home town. The lady of the couple is so outraged by... well, just about everything she sees in India—from the poverty to the smaller seats in the busses (she has a big derriere)—that she finally loses it totally and launches into a tirade about getting sick and tired of removing her shoes to go in and out of temples to get a glimpse of yet another one of India’s dressed-up kewpie dolls. Murtis. The tour manager finds a way to put her, Martha and three other pilgrims on a small plane and the rest of us endure a long, long bus ride from Udaipur to meet up with them.
The husband of my friend who flew to Jaipur remained on the bus. He was a gentle, warm, normally easygoing guy but the sum of the travails of this trip finally boiled over and simply left him fuming. I knew he took blood pressure medicine and his face was beet red. I sent a mental plea up front to Guruji to please come comfort him. And of course he did. He gave sage counsel about how we really travel in life alone, no matter what it looks like, and that we ordinarily meet up with our spouses for a period of pre-ordained time, or a lifetime, to learn to love and then, like ships passing in the night, move on. Guruji spoke in low, loving tones and when he went back up to the front of the bus, my friend’s face was a much better color. Only a few years later, his wife realized she apparently was a lesbian and left him and the boys to move in with her girlfriend.
The bus finally does arrive in Jaipur very, very late in the evening. The hotel does an amazing job of feeding everybody even though it’s ten at night. Vandana eats, too, such good food, and pushes back from the table. She happens this evening to be seated at the same table as Guruji and Rama Mataji. After standing up, she announces how utterly glad she is to be able finally to take a shower and says good night. She hardly has the words out of her mouth before both of them bolt upright out of their chairs, practically knocking them over to exclaim in unison, “No! You shouldn’t bathe right after eating!” Guruji explains that the energy, the fire, going inward to digest food is counteracted and sent outward when the opening of the skin’s pores occurs. If one bathes so soon after eating, there is conflicted energy flow. Similar to the admonition from her childhood about waiting an hour after eating to swim, but she never knew why. Proper digestion will not take place. OK. She’ll sleep, obediently, with a crust on. Next morning is a fun trip or so it says in the brochure. After showering and then eating, the group is headed off to the Amber Palace for a tour followed by an elephant ride. Vandana is again enlisted to “guard” the blue bag. She stays close to Guruji and all is well. But then everybody gets hoisted up on the elephants and off they lumber, one after another. Vandana waits nearby but then, all of a sudden, there is a flurry of energy and activity and the elephant mahout is urging her, impatiently, to get aboard NOW. She does, with the blue bag slung over her shoulder and off she goes down the hill. Guruji is still on the ground and has not even begun to mount his steed. The blue bag is not only walking away from him on an elephant, it’s going clear out of his sight. That is not OK and at the bottom of the hill, Guruji lets Vandana know about it in no uncertain terms. At first she makes an effort to defend herself explaining about the impatient mahout, but not long into it, she realizes she just blew it plain and simple. She is crushed and very apologetic. The mahout is not her Master. Guruji accepts her contrition and permits her to continue to carry his bag that morning. They go into a shopping area in Jaipur. Now the Universe arranges Itself to give her another lesson. She is walking with Mother, chatting, and everybody is generally headed in the same direction. Guruji ambles in and out of shops along the way, and like a pied piper, devotees follow him. Engaged in conversation with Mother, Vandana loses track of the guru. And she still has his bag. Oh, God! Where is he? Fresh from her stinging rebuke for running off with his bag, has she repeated her stupid mistake? Mother senses the building turmoil and gives her a questioning look. “Ma! Ma! I don’t see Guruji and I have his bag! Am I in trouble again?” Then she reflects. “But wait a minute, if I’m with you, I’m with him, right?” Mother nods her head ‘yes’ and gives her a totally reassuring smile. Whew! OK, understood. A moment later, that Prankster Guru steps out from a shop nearby and grins at Vandana. He starts to chuckle but can’t help himself and simply gives way to laughing out loud at her, amused. His tummy even bounces. She wags her finger at him and grins back, albeit a bit ruefully.
The third test around that blue bag happened later back in the States. I drove Guruji and Rama Mataji to a San Francisco venue in a really posh area near the ocean. It was an Indian devotee’s home and we were there for an outdoor puja and satsang. The sun was shining and the weather was spot on, neither too cold nor too hot. No test for equanimity on that score. There were no other Westerners at the puja, so my fair skin and blond hair made me stand out like a sore thumb. Oh, well. Guruji’s street urchin disciple didn’t belong and wasn’t of the same class as these people. Somehow that didn’t bother me this time, although I’ve experienced other times where I wanted Guruji’s Indian devotees to accept me. Ego stuff. Double ego stuff because I only cared if it was the opinion of a someone whom I felt deserved my respect. Again, it’s only after looking back I can see the setup for the test. I was not aware of it at the time. Probably because of my childhood and being in constant flux moving from home to home—one time, I was only allowed to take what I could carry in my arms—there is a tendency in me to pay very particular attention to “my valuables.” When I get up and walk around or away, I do not leave my purse behind. I just don’t. But that afternoon, somehow Guruji managed to get me parted from that purse by a goodly distance. The puja and satsang are complete. Guruji is being invited inside the home to partake prasad. He stands sixty feet away, ready to enter the house through the patio’s sliding glass door. Vandana is not engaged with anyone, and merely observes the slow exodus and milling of the thinning crowd who have gone inside to prepare plates for themselves. Guruji issues a thought command to her.
When your guru does that or actually when anybody who has that siddhi does it, you are aware on some level but you are also dimly aware at that moment (because you can hear it, too), that the questioner is poised to listen for your first answer, the one from the heart, the one given before intellect, mind or ego has a chance to parse it. Those are the truthful answers.
So while Guruji’s watching Vandana, he fogs up the rest of the world and a whole bunch of “her,” then mentally commands: “You see your purse over there? And my blue bag over there?” In the transmission, he attaches his identity to “his” bag and Vandana’s to “hers.” But he also somehow makes it clear that they’re in this together, that the “threat” is to them. From where she’s standing, triangulated from Guruji, she can see both without even turning her head. Mentally, she indicates ‘yes.’ With some urgency he transmits, “Something’s going to happen to the bags. You can only bring me one of them. Do it NOW!” Galvanized by alarm, without hesitation, Vandana strides quickly over to Guruji’s bag and takes possession of it. Even while doing so, the only thing she’s thinking about in her purse—not the money, not the credit cards, not the identification—is the car keys. How will she get him back to the ashram with no keys? She protectively takes Guruji’s bag to him, he accepts it, nods towards hers and turns to go inside. She retrieves her purse, too, and all is well. After eating and farewells, Vandana opens the front passenger door of the car for Guruji, the rear one for Mataji and they all get settled in. As they’re pulling away from the curb, Guruji turns to her, nods his head, extremely pleased, and remarks, “Vandana passed a very big test today!” She glances at him. Hunh? The bag thing? Oh, that. It didn’t feel like a test at all. Very simple choice. Instinctive.
 Chapter 8 ~ The World Peace Conference
After stopovers in Alaska, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka and Madras, the pilgrims finally touch down in Bangalore. The effusive and respectful greetings many, many Indian devotees who wait at the airport offer to Guruji is eye-opening to the Western devotees who are used to seeing very small receptions. The warmth of the cultured people is showered on the pilgrims, too, who are garlanded with flower leis similar to the Hawaiian welcoming greeting. Soon the women are bustled off to a sari shop in town to purchase new finery for the Sixth Annual World Peace Conference to be held in Bangalore’s Town Hall. When the roll-up door of the shop opens, it is pristine in its arrangement. When the group leaves, it looks like it will take at least two days to restore order. Vandana and another lady devotee bought matching saris except for color because they have been requested by Guruji to go on stage together and lead the audience in a simple bhajan at the conference. Both are terribly stage shy. Remarkably, for once Vandana is less so than her partner who cannot sleep the entire night before trying to memorize the twelve-line bhajan. Now they sit in a line of chairs just in front of a backstage curtain, waiting to go on. All of a sudden, Vandana feels a really sharp thump on the back of her head. Somebody behind the curtain just whacked her a good one! Startled, but not angry, she relaxes. Two seconds later, You Know Who sticks his head out through the curtain, eyes twinkling. The song goes well. Although there are interminable speeches in a language the Westerners don’t speak, they all do hear Guruji’s English portion. He nails it when he opens the Town Hall Conference. He said, “How can we talk about World Peace when we do not even have individual peace?” Not a week into the thirty-day pilgrimage, members of the group are snapping at each other, picking fights, wanting to change roommates. We haven’t even left Bangalore yet. And the couple from Vandana’s town want to go back home already.
*****
Flying a “puddle jumper” (as Americans call little planes making short hops) to Mangalore, Vandana nearly has a heart attack getting off the plane. Not used to exiting a plane to the rear, she thinks she accidently stepped into the blast of a jet engine when the heat and humidity of the coastal city hits her. No jive! Bhadragiri, Udipi, Dharmasthala, Bombay, Poona. In and out of temples, in and out of the bus. A kaleidoscope of cities in nearly as many days. If Vandana does not keep a copy of the map and travel brochure with her and keep track what day it is, she literally does not know where she is. A lot like doing the spiritual path. So the way she resolves the sense of land-based mal de mer is she hangs really, really close to Guruji the whole time.
(to be continued)
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