Podcast

Welcome to the Map of a Human Being Blog & Podcast #3. Covering the first six months of my encounter with Bawa Muhaiyaddeen.

The next morning we went to the Fellowship house.
There were two kitchens. The first floor kitchen, which was the public or communal kitchen sat just off a large meeting room, and there was the second floor kitchen. This was a little more private, although very little in this house appeared private. It was set aside primarily for the Sri Lankans that traveled with Bawa or visited, and other permanent house residents.
Judging from my friend’s relationship with those in the kitchen that morning, he was well known to them already. They all knew his life story and I had the feeling mine was about to go public also.
“Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
“One older sister and a twin sister.” Having a twin sister always seems to excite people, I’ll never know why.
“Are the sisters with me? Do they live in the States? And your parents?” Which means: are they alive? Yes, both were alive at that time. Yes, and they’re well.
“How do they feel about you being 29 years old and not yet married? You’re not married are you?” Phew!
Needless to say, most of the people in the second floor kitchen that morning were older Sri Lankan women all dressed in Saris. They had various characters: a rotund, kind of the-heart-and-soul-of-the-earth type. A delicate quiet person, who continued cooking without involving herself in the discussion; although I knew she had her antenna up and didn’t really need to get any further information. From her corner of the kitchen came the hiss and crackle of a sizzling frying pan as she dropped in finely chopped onions and seed spices, sending pungent jabs of cumin and pepper into our nostrils. Another lady busied herself, occasionally interjecting questions to retrieve a missed detail. My friend served as a buffer to all this, knowing I enjoyed it, being familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Asians, having grown up in England. They also had me cutting vegetables just the way they wanted them. Seems they were quite attached to their own recipes, which they prepared for the midday meal. Rice was shared, but there were many other dishes. An okra curry here, some dahl over there, and in this pot? “Just some vegetables,” curried of course. The ladies weren’t very good at explaining the curry cooking process. Or were they trying to keep trade secrets? Unknown to me at that time, I would hang around with them later and learn to cook some of their dishes and incorporate them into my diet. A five-year apprenticeship at a Rolls Royce company learning to use all the tools and machines, had taught me how to watch a skilled person work and see the subtleties of actions needed to complete a process.
They’d all been to London and some had relatives or children living there. Within half an hour, I was being introduced as London Tony. That name would stick for years to come even though they probably visited London more than me. Having hailed from the rural West Country of England I even had a little distaste for large cities at that time.
Occasionally one of the husbands came into the kitchen, they were both physicians. Both men translated for Bawa and were also his dedicated students. Everyone offered food and drink as soon as they had been introduced, seemed like a cultural habit. I accepted tea and drank it without milk or sugar. This was seen by the Sri Lankans as equivalent to betraying the Queen! They shared the standard English way with milk and sugar, doubling up on the sugar.
All of a sudden my friend announced that Bawa was about to speak and we should go to his room. I wasn’t sure if he had left the room and come back, but somehow he knew and used the excuse to leave the cutting of vegetables motioning me to follow him.
On the landing people filed into Bawa’s room. He sat lotus position on his bed with a blanket over his legs. A microphone was positioned in front of him, and one of the doctors settled down beside the bed in front of another mic. The room filled up quickly and like the good student that I was (I left school legally at 15 ½ years old) I settled in as far to the back as I could. There was some rivalry for the space near the bed.
I watched Bawa like a hawk, looking for any sign of a chink in the armor. Rumors abounded in those days about gurus not following their own wise words. Bawa looked at no one in particular, appearing to be in a contemplative mood as if listening to some far-off sound. The room filled with cross-legged people. When I thought no one else could possibly get in, people would step carefully between the seated and lower themselves, settling like birds in a nest. It was clear these people were very professional at this; I wouldn’t have had the nerve.
Bawa said something in his bird-like high pitched voice and the translator echoed that, “If anyone has something on their heart, they should get it off.” I took that to mean, if you have a question, please ask. For the next two hours, people asked questions from, “How do I cure my back pain” to “who is God?”

Tags: wisdom memoir, meaning of life, why was I born?