On bright mornings, we thank the universe for its beauty. On dreadful mornings we curse the land on which we walk. Such is life and life is such. The newspapers and news channels sing dreadful tunes of terrorism, murder, rape, destruction and corruption. We all know this; experience it every day in and out. We have accepted our fates, the existentialist in us fights to prove that we are masters of our own fate. The choices we make determine the paths we shall walk on but most days we just walk on pre-determined paths. Would that make us soulless, hopeless or even joyless? We would rather not think about it. However there are fleeting moments in our lives when we marvel at beauty, marvel at how things can be so simple yet so pure. The earthworm saviours made me marvel, marvel at how beautiful simple things can be and they even helped me save a little bit of my soul as well.
Clement town, a busy little town in Dehradun, Uttarakhand is home to a small Tibetan settlement called Dhondupling. Home to Tibetan refugees, this settlement was established in 1964 and the land is said to have been donated to the Tibetan community by Acharya Vinoba Bhave, famously known for the Bhoodan movement or the Land Gift movement of 1951. This settlement is home to three monasteries belonging to the three sects of Tibetan Buddhism, viz. the Nyingma, Gelug and Kargyu sects. The Great Stupa of the Mindrolling monastery, belonging to the Nyingma sect, is where my tale actually begins. It is known as the Great Stupa of Buddha descent from Devaloka which liberates upon seeing and is also called the World Peace Stupa. Getting out of the history of it; I tend to get distracted and go on another tangent, my story is simple, an observation I made one bright morning when the universe decided to let me in on one of its wonders.
On one very rare scarlet morning, when my bed did not look particularly cozy; I made my way to the Stupa for my morning walk. Well it bordered more on a crawl than a walk. The Stupa is perfect for a walk; its compound is sprawling with bright green lawns, tiny trees and pretty little flowers. The beauty about this place is that it is quiet and not the eerie quiet that makes you want to run away but the kind of quiet that makes your insides feel calm. Evenings here are lovely too, a little crowded but lovely. Getting back to my story, on one particularly active morning I made my way to the Stupa, foggy eyed and not very happy. Never really been a peppy morning person. I remember that morning being particularly bright autumn morning. The birds were fluttering about, getting their chores done and the sky was a murky blue, infused with bouts of orange. The sun could just about be seen, lethargically making its presence felt. The place was serene; time seemed to have reached a standstill. I looked around and there were a few people walking around, most of them were elderly Tibetan folk.
Interestingly, Tibetans believe that walking around the Stupa helps in accumulating good merit. I once met an elderly yoga teacher in this exact place, he had moved to Dehradun from Himachal Pradesh. A jovial fellow with the kindest smile I had ever seen, every time he smiled his eyes crinkled up and it seemed like he had never known sadness, only joy. He said that in our daily lives we are bound to do something wrong, walk into erroneous paths and that walking around the Stupa helps one cleanse oneself of this evil, if you can call it that, helps one accumulate merit for themselves and their loved ones, for this lifetime and beyond.
Like always, I plugged my ears with my headphones, changed the song on my phone to the upbeatest one possible and started my so-called workout. I started walking around the compound and I noticed these three Tibetan ladies, wobbling along. Their eyes focused on their faith and they somehow seemed so full of life, even though they walked at their own slow pace with their beads in their hands and their chants embedded into their lips. From the corner of my eye I noticed that they had bent down and were doing something but I did not pay much attention and carried on. After three, four rounds I noticed that every time they walked they would suddenly bend down, do something and carry on with their walk. Now, they had gotten me all curious so I walked a little slower, turned down my music volume and walked behind them.
After a little while, of following them aloofly, one of them bent down again and she muttered something in Tibetan to the other ladies. A little ahead all three of them bent down, that was when I saw the leaves and blades of grass in their hands and on further diligent inspection I saw that they were pushing the earthworms from the cemented-tiled footpath towards the lawns. That was what they were up to; they were saving the very confused earthworms. Then I started putting two and two together, the lawns had clumps of earth in them, the earthworms were digging up the mud and somehow coming onto the footpath. These ladies were putting them back in the lawn, saving them from getting crushed by unobservant morning walkers like me.
Buddhists believe that each living being, be it a human, plant or animal have their own causes and purposes that brought them into being. They believe in nonviolence and morality above all else. Nonviolence, after all, is a recognition that all beings deserve to live their lives and that enmity, hatred and violence never improve our state of mind. Just as a person would not cause harm to their own body, similarly they should not cause harm to any other living being. In this way one would also not be harming themself by harming another.
It was just an ordinary morning and an ordinary moment for them, they probably do this every day and not because they have to but because they want to. I doubt this action of theirs even strikes them as something out of the ordinary or something exceptional. To them, it is so simple. The earthworm is lost, out of its environment, potentially at risk of being crushed. So, they direct it towards the grass, a safe place. They save the earthworm, or any other bug that finds it has strayed into foreign land. It is simple and pure. I watched on as they kept doing it throughout their walk. It got me thinking about how lost we are all the time. How we soak ourselves in negativity and it becomes a part of us. That day I heard about a person who killed herself, she had been undergoing depression on and off. I wondered if someone had directed her mind to a safe place, would she still have been alive. If there were more earthworm saviours in the world, would our world be a nicer place to live in?
People are so angry all the time, angry at the traffic, angry at their loved ones, angry at themselves, angry at their messy pets, angry all the time for so many things-some of them trivial and some them more serious than others. Who can blame them, there is so much to be angry at but then there is so much to be glad for too. That day I was glad, glad that the earthworms in that compound, inside the Tibetan settlement at Clement had saviours. I was glad for those little recyclers of nature, without whom organic matter would not be broken down and converted into valuable nutrients required for fertile soil. I am not going to get into karma or how this whole universe is linked and this action in fact leads to the preservation of a higher order, blah blah blah. I just saw some ladies saving some earthworms and for that moment I was glad, I was happy and my faith in mankind might have been renewed a little bit. Rather my faith in myself was renewed a little bit. That is the beauty of seeing good, it makes you believe in it and it makes you believe that there could be good in you because for that briefest moment you were glad to be have been a part of that beautiful moment, even if you were silently following those women. I have no morals or words of wisdom to offer at the end of this story, just a good thought. I have not seen those ladies for quite a while now; morning walks have been overtaken by other things. I am sure though if I find my way one morning to the Stupa, they will be there saving earthworms, with those kind smiles and diligent eyes. So, if you get bogged down by all the negativity around you just remember that somewhere out there, there are some beautiful people saving earthworms.
Clement town, a busy little town in Dehradun, Uttarakhand is home to a small Tibetan settlement called Dhondupling. Home to Tibetan refugees, this settlement was established in 1964 and the land is said to have been donated to the Tibetan community by Acharya Vinoba Bhave, famously known for the Bhoodan movement or the Land Gift movement of 1951. This settlement is home to three monasteries belonging to the three sects of Tibetan Buddhism, viz. the Nyingma, Gelug and Kargyu sects. The Great Stupa of the Mindrolling monastery, belonging to the Nyingma sect, is where my tale actually begins. It is known as the Great Stupa of Buddha descent from Devaloka which liberates upon seeing and is also called the World Peace Stupa. Getting out of the history of it; I tend to get distracted and go on another tangent, my story is simple, an observation I made one bright morning when the universe decided to let me in on one of its wonders.
On one very rare scarlet morning, when my bed did not look particularly cozy; I made my way to the Stupa for my morning walk. Well it bordered more on a crawl than a walk. The Stupa is perfect for a walk; its compound is sprawling with bright green lawns, tiny trees and pretty little flowers. The beauty about this place is that it is quiet and not the eerie quiet that makes you want to run away but the kind of quiet that makes your insides feel calm. Evenings here are lovely too, a little crowded but lovely. Getting back to my story, on one particularly active morning I made my way to the Stupa, foggy eyed and not very happy. Never really been a peppy morning person. I remember that morning being particularly bright autumn morning. The birds were fluttering about, getting their chores done and the sky was a murky blue, infused with bouts of orange. The sun could just about be seen, lethargically making its presence felt. The place was serene; time seemed to have reached a standstill. I looked around and there were a few people walking around, most of them were elderly Tibetan folk.
Interestingly, Tibetans believe that walking around the Stupa helps in accumulating good merit. I once met an elderly yoga teacher in this exact place, he had moved to Dehradun from Himachal Pradesh. A jovial fellow with the kindest smile I had ever seen, every time he smiled his eyes crinkled up and it seemed like he had never known sadness, only joy. He said that in our daily lives we are bound to do something wrong, walk into erroneous paths and that walking around the Stupa helps one cleanse oneself of this evil, if you can call it that, helps one accumulate merit for themselves and their loved ones, for this lifetime and beyond.
Like always, I plugged my ears with my headphones, changed the song on my phone to the upbeatest one possible and started my so-called workout. I started walking around the compound and I noticed these three Tibetan ladies, wobbling along. Their eyes focused on their faith and they somehow seemed so full of life, even though they walked at their own slow pace with their beads in their hands and their chants embedded into their lips. From the corner of my eye I noticed that they had bent down and were doing something but I did not pay much attention and carried on. After three, four rounds I noticed that every time they walked they would suddenly bend down, do something and carry on with their walk. Now, they had gotten me all curious so I walked a little slower, turned down my music volume and walked behind them.
After a little while, of following them aloofly, one of them bent down again and she muttered something in Tibetan to the other ladies. A little ahead all three of them bent down, that was when I saw the leaves and blades of grass in their hands and on further diligent inspection I saw that they were pushing the earthworms from the cemented-tiled footpath towards the lawns. That was what they were up to; they were saving the very confused earthworms. Then I started putting two and two together, the lawns had clumps of earth in them, the earthworms were digging up the mud and somehow coming onto the footpath. These ladies were putting them back in the lawn, saving them from getting crushed by unobservant morning walkers like me.
Buddhists believe that each living being, be it a human, plant or animal have their own causes and purposes that brought them into being. They believe in nonviolence and morality above all else. Nonviolence, after all, is a recognition that all beings deserve to live their lives and that enmity, hatred and violence never improve our state of mind. Just as a person would not cause harm to their own body, similarly they should not cause harm to any other living being. In this way one would also not be harming themself by harming another.
It was just an ordinary morning and an ordinary moment for them, they probably do this every day and not because they have to but because they want to. I doubt this action of theirs even strikes them as something out of the ordinary or something exceptional. To them, it is so simple. The earthworm is lost, out of its environment, potentially at risk of being crushed. So, they direct it towards the grass, a safe place. They save the earthworm, or any other bug that finds it has strayed into foreign land. It is simple and pure. I watched on as they kept doing it throughout their walk. It got me thinking about how lost we are all the time. How we soak ourselves in negativity and it becomes a part of us. That day I heard about a person who killed herself, she had been undergoing depression on and off. I wondered if someone had directed her mind to a safe place, would she still have been alive. If there were more earthworm saviours in the world, would our world be a nicer place to live in?
People are so angry all the time, angry at the traffic, angry at their loved ones, angry at themselves, angry at their messy pets, angry all the time for so many things-some of them trivial and some them more serious than others. Who can blame them, there is so much to be angry at but then there is so much to be glad for too. That day I was glad, glad that the earthworms in that compound, inside the Tibetan settlement at Clement had saviours. I was glad for those little recyclers of nature, without whom organic matter would not be broken down and converted into valuable nutrients required for fertile soil. I am not going to get into karma or how this whole universe is linked and this action in fact leads to the preservation of a higher order, blah blah blah. I just saw some ladies saving some earthworms and for that moment I was glad, I was happy and my faith in mankind might have been renewed a little bit. Rather my faith in myself was renewed a little bit. That is the beauty of seeing good, it makes you believe in it and it makes you believe that there could be good in you because for that briefest moment you were glad to be have been a part of that beautiful moment, even if you were silently following those women. I have no morals or words of wisdom to offer at the end of this story, just a good thought. I have not seen those ladies for quite a while now; morning walks have been overtaken by other things. I am sure though if I find my way one morning to the Stupa, they will be there saving earthworms, with those kind smiles and diligent eyes. So, if you get bogged down by all the negativity around you just remember that somewhere out there, there are some beautiful people saving earthworms.
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