BODHGAYA PROJECTS

By Tony Simmons and Debbie Rayfield

Bodhgaya in Bihar, India, the place of Shakyamuni’s Buddha’s enlightenment, inspires the imagination and faith of Buddhists from around the world. India has produced some of the greatest saints, religions and philosophical systems ever to be seen on this earth, but today few Indians have the luxury to be nourished by their country’s ancient culture and religion and traditionally wholesome and joyous way of life.

This is especially so in the central Indian state of Bihar, which is the poorest and most backward state in the country. Here, poverty, disease and illiteracy dominate and oppress the lives of a wide section of the society. Many non-government organizations (NGOs) have sprung up to help improve the opportunities and living conditions of the local people. Root Institute for Wisdom Culture is one such NGO.

Life and indeed death slap you in the face in India, more than you can ever experience in the West. Sickness and poverty prevail while health care and assistance are minimal. Babies and young people, as well as old people, die as a daily event here, and it’s accepted as part of life. When a baby dies there is a puja, a shaving of heads and a funeral pyre, then life goes back to normal. No therapy for the mother, no court cases, no public outcry.

Here, in one of the most downtrodden and oppressed places on mother earth, the conditions and situations of people’s lives are almost unimaginable to most of the first world. It is easy to visit India and be so shocked by the visible human suffering that you build a protective wall, like a shield of ice around your heart. You blind yourself to the situation because it would be more than you could bear if you were to acknowledge or actually feel it.

It is easy for a causal visitor to project that these simple, uneducated people, devoid of the stress of modern life, are relatively happy. It is easy to see a man tilling a field with his oxen and feel he must be at one with the earth, his quaint mud and thatch house speaking of serenity and harmony with nature. It is easy to see a woman walking serenely through the wheat fields, her colorful sari moving in the wind, and be fooled into believing that there’s no emotional turmoil.

But to live in that quaint little dwelling through 48C-degree summer days and the perpetual damp mosquito plague of monsoon, to see your crops fail through drought and storm, to suffer illness and malnourishment without the means to buy food or medicine is something else again.

That very simplicity and lack of education only intensify social problems. Alcoholism and family discord are common here. These people have their own share of violence, fear, pride, anger and tears, and it is magnified by the incredible harshness of their lives. It seems there are few choices and little chances of respite.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, when asked how best to help India, responded, “It would help if education were improved. Basically, one needs to give emphasis to the preservation of ancient Indian culture. While India is copying from the West in terms of science and technology, which is necessary as it is a big country with poverty and so on, it is important to preserve this ancient deep knowledge.”

Thus the motivation behind Root Institute in Bodhgaya is to provide a realistic contribution to the preservation of this ancient culture while actively engaging in work that helps to alleviate the immediate suffering of the local people.

We offer free medical assistance through the Shakyamuni Community Health Care Center and education to local children of poor families with Alice Project Schools, which enable children to discover their inner world through the roots of their own religion and culture.

 

The Alice Project

The unique educational method used in Alice Project schools originated in Italy in 1984 under the leadership of teacher and psychologist Valentino Giacomin. It was researched and tested for 10 years in two schools in the Treviso province, making a great impact on educational circles of that country.

The project took its name from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The project attempts to help children understand and enjoy the mysteries of their inner world, just as Alice did. We aim to show students how to understand their internal as well as external realities and to thereby develop their minds and help them discover the magic reality that lies far beyond what is seen through the external senses. With this philosophy, in February 1994, Valentino began educational projects in Sarnath, Varanasi. The place was chosen because it is a holy place where many of the world’s religions are represented.

In mid-1996, at the suggestion of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, we contacted Valentino to ask for his assistance in training teachers for a group of 5 informal village schools that Root Institute was running in an extremely poor area around 8 kilometers west of Bodhgaya.

Government statistics from 1992 show that Bihar is 100,000 teachers and 25,000 schools short of making full literacy possible; 7.7 million children between the ages of 6 and 14 have no school to go to. The majority of children from rural areas are also suffering from sickness and malnutrition caused by lack of education in hygiene and health care.

Alice Project’s educational process involves teaching children about external reality through traditional subjects such as mathematics, science, language, etc. And they learn about their internal reality of dreams, emotions, thoughts and feelings through the use of meditation, yoga and the universal truths found in all religious teachings and cultures.

It is this internal reality that is the key to universal language and understanding. In this inner world one can not find property, borders, time or space. Understanding this leads to more peace and less reasons for anger and misunderstanding. Internal realities such as feelings, the nature of dreams, the desire for happiness and the fear of death are universal.

Root Institute is currently constructing a large formal school on one acre of land just outside the institute’s front gates. The school will eventually be large enough for over 300 children. We provide books, uniforms and equipment for sports and material for arts and crafts free of cost. We also employ a doctor two days per week to check on the children’s health, and we provide free medical care and vitamins.

Alice Project creates a holistic vision of the world where there is no separation or boundaries between external and internal phenomena. The boundaries are shown only to exist as a concept or projection of the mind. To cross the border dividing me and you, outside and inside, good and bad, mine and yours is to discover unity. From this, conflicts cannot arise, and there will be harmony.

It was the aspiration of Root Institute’s founding father Lama Yeshe that we should “return the historic kindness of the Indian people.” That kindness must be returned in a number of ways, material and spiritual, cultural and educational, and with a holistic approach that will bear the fruit of harmony and joy.

Shakyamuni Community Health Care Center

On January 27, 1991, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, one of his gurus and a group of students found an old man lying in the road covered with flies and close to death. Munshi was a former goldsmith from Gaya who, because of conflict, had been abandoned by his family. He was taken to Root Institute for Wisdom Culture where he was cleaned, fed and given medical attention. With love and care, he recovered over several weeks to a point where he could walk and feed himself.

Munshi died in July, 1991, living the last five months of his life in dignity and comfort. After his death, Lama Zopa was inspired to begin a home for the many sick, unwanted and dying people who are found in the Bodhgaya area, and thus the Shakyamuni Community Health Care Center was born.

Within the center a general clinic is run six days per week employing three local doctors, a nurse and two medical assistants. Most of the patients we see, due to lack of education and material wealth, do not even have access to bring down a fever.

The clinic is seeing over 500 patients per week. They may be suffering from minor complaints or serious diseases such as tuberculosis or from injuries such as burns and broken bones. The main means of treatment is homeopathic and nutritional therapy, but ayurvedic and allopathic medicines are also used when required.

Polio is still a common disease in village India, and we provide an active clinic specializing in the rehabilitation of victims of this disease. There are hundreds of registered patients, mostly children, receiving treatment through homeopathy, massage and acupressure.

One young girl was brought to us recently suffering from tubercular meningitis. Shabra’s body had been rigid with spasm for some weeks and she had not been able to take food or water for many days. We treated her for nearly a month before she could swallow a little water. Her mother sat at her bed constantly until she was exhausted. Everybody working here came to love little Shabra, taking turns to sit with her, check her drip, or just whisper a few kind words. Although she had some signs of improvement, it was obvious that she would never fully recover, so her family decided to take her home. One week later her father came to thank us for what we had done and to tell us that little Shabra had died. The family was happy, he told us; it was God’s will to take her.

Shanta was found helpless and dying outside the Gaya railway station. An old lady with matted hair, she was naked and had been lying immobile in her own excrement on top of a pile of garbage for five days. No one had bothered to bring her water and her badly injured foot had become gangrenous. When we found her, railway employees were eating lunch not five meters away, waiting for her to die so they could have the body removed.

We took her back to our Health Care Center to wash her and dress her wounds. We fed her and gave her warm clothes and blankets. Her mind and health were unstable, and she remained with us for three weeks before she suddenly died of a stroke. Her last days were spent in a clean and comfortable environment.

Shivanandan is an elderly gentleman who was evicted from his home by his own daughters, as he was proving too much of a financial strain on the family. Too old to work, his money was finished after a long and unsuccessful battle to save his wife from tuberculosis. In Gaya, while searching for food and shelter, he was struck by a car and was left on the side of the road with a painful, broken kneecap.

If you suffer an accident here there is no ambulance to take you to a hospital. You are simply left where you lie unless you are lucky enough to have money or a friend to help you. We found Shivanandan 6 days after his accident lying where he had collapsed. Since then we have operated on his knee, and he will remain with us for the rest of his days.

Ramji limped into the Health Care Center with a broken hip. He, too, had been involved in a car accident. We put him in traction, then set his hip, and he was to spend the long summer months in full body plaster. Ramji, however, had other ideas. Day by day, inch by inch, he managed to bite and cut through his case until he could sit up and get some air. He recovered nicely anyway and has been reunited with his wife. He is now back at home in his mud and straw hut.

 

Looking at our work from a Buddhist perspective, it seems as if these tired and misused people are our very chance and our very hope. They are a catalyst to fuel our quest for betterment. Here, you can learn to love because there is little other choice. You are forced to empathize with these people, to feel their suffering, to understand that they are no different from ourselves or our loved ones. These are downtrodden people whom suffering has made blind to the very spiritual paths that their country has made so easily available to the fortunate, the paths that will eventually uplift them from an existence bound by the shackles of ignorance.

It is critically important that the social welfare projects in Bodhgaya be maintained with a clear goal and the clear understanding that the main aim is to benefit others directly and thereby to practice the teachings within our own minds and hearts. This practical form of Dharma is often overlooked by many practitioners; little emphasis is placed on offering immediate comfort and hope to living beings.

We can be inspired by Lama Zopa’s words: “Even if we cannot do everything now, just to stop one problem of another person is worthwhile.” Learning to cherish others from the heart is not easy, but it must be learned. Working directly with those in less fortunate circumstances, if only we try to understand their value, their beauty and their essential nature, is perhaps the greatest Dharma teaching of all.

Thanks and acknowledgment to Valentino Giacomin and Kabir Saxena.