Meditation and Social Change
The Kolkata [Calcutta] traffic was at a standstill and the driver, anticipating a long wait, had turned off his engine. A beggar girl from the sidewalk thrust her arm into the rear of the taxi, her dirty face and unkempt hair framed by the window opening.
Her voice had a harsh quality and her dull eyes reflected cruelty and abuse. She was doubtless the slave of a neighborhood mafia boss who organizes street urchins into a lucrative business, maintaining the children until they are no longer useful.
My wife, sandwiched in the middle of the back seat, was the target of this girl, who had to reach across an orange clad yogic nun seated by the window. The nun fixed soft eyes on the girl and spoke, her Bengali words, though unintelligible to me, sounding sincere and friendly.
The beggar girl, accustomed to rejection, anger, and physical blows suddenly looked confused and uncertain. She withdrew her hand, then put it hesitantly forward again. Glancing nervously at the nun, she abandoned the rear window and approached me in the front seat. As she reached her hand towards me she glanced back at the nun. Their eyes met and the beggar girl turned and ran.
I had never seen anything like it. Usually these children are so hardened by living on the streets that nothing can make them leave; yet the nun’s words, while sounding benign, had sent the girl scurrying.
“Didi [sister],” I asked. “What did you say to her?”
“I invited her to come and live with me, as my daughter, in my ashram [meditation center]. I told her that I would care for her, see that she was fed and clothed, and that she would receive an education. I said that she would never have to live on the street again.”
The nun looked thoughtful. “I’m willing to,” she said. “But if I were to take her home I would be accused of kidnapping. The laws are very complicated and it is difficult as well as expensive to adopt these street children.”
She would know. There were already a few such children and homeless elderly women living in her ashram. I saw for myself while staying in Kolkata that, although this nun lived a simple life (exemplified by sleeping on a wooden bench with nothing but a blanket), she raised funds to provide life-saving heart surgery for the young daughter of an impoverished family.
We are living in a transitional era of history in which the narrow sentiments that have so long dominated the world are failing. The social and environmental realms are deteriorating and our socio-economic institutions, political systems, and religions are not only inadequate to address the crisis, they are actually part of the cause.
To change the world is no small task. It requires not only love and compassion, but also self-sacrifice, courage, and noble actions. More than that, it requires cosmic vision, the ability to see all problems as your own problem, to feel all pain as your own pain, to see all of humanity as members of your own family.
Meditation is not just for your personal benefit. It is the starting point of true revolution, the liberation of mind and the actions free from prejudice or narrowness that naturally follow.