મેડાવો.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aza4X5kiOEA

I’m not exactly sure what Sheela is doing, but it is clear that the Babus are in charge.  This was from a recent cider pressing excursion to a friend of Sheela’s co-resident Noah.

Hi folks,

Greetings from Achham.  I wanted to share a blog post with you all from my work at Bayalpata Hospital:

http://blog.nyayahealth.org/2011/01/17/compassion-and-consumption/

Let me know what you think.

Love,

Duncan

Hi Folks,
I wrote this after biking home from the hospital to an empty house while everyone was away in Louisiana. It was an extremely rare occurrence for me (thankfully), so I thought I’d write about it. I also wanted to try out vocaroo, so giving you all some spoken-word.
In any case, glad that I’ll be picking them up at the airport soon .
Love,
Duncan

windows, darked

making my way home at night
the road, the same
the path, changed.

bound for the moon someday
nah, bound for the sun are they
yes, in their eyes i see
the depths of the brain, a tree
of a quadrillion connections
of infinite perfections.
i count the zeros in my head:
1,000,000,000,000,000
synapses
make that x 2
[or is it 10^(15x2)??],
and in their mouths, the universe
Yasoda’s vista is not a metaphor
its the lived experience of us parents.

and even as i bike,
away from them
(not home yet),
in the dark
i can see the universe,
their universe.

but i reach the driveway
i realize now the path
is different.
Windows, darked.
not a spark.
not a flicker.
not two short torsos
who,
running,
wrestling with the world,
learn how to grasp,
harness the quadrillionth synapse
(times two)
to create new planets
and stars and trees and,
yes,
their share of microbes.
yes my sons
i can see you
running playing fighting,
of cars and puzzles and books
and discovery.

but not here, not now;
you’re not home.
nobody is.
windows, darked.
so i put away my gear.
and remember yesterday
when you were home
when the windows were lighted
when i could look into your mouths
and the universe would unfold.

Leaves Fall

The air is crisp and the autumn’s leaves are golden and brown and green and red. When the wind gusts, a few new leaves fall.

I marvel at the stochastics: an ongoing poisson process, shaped intermittently by the wind, that ends only when the last leaf has fallen and the winter has declared itself as arrived. I try to pick out the exact departure of each of the most recent leaves just prior to their descents but I never seem to be able to grasp the precise moment when the strength of the wind and the weakness of the stem join forces to cause flight.

Together, the four of us are trying to catch the leaves. These colorful wisps seem to always slip my grasp. It should be so easy, catching them gently floating to the earth. But just as I reach for them, the force of my hand seems to push them away and they slightly change course and fall before I can catch hold. I sheepishly pick up one of my fumbles and hand it to Anand, who doesn’t seem to have noticed Daddy’s unsure hands and is happy to have fresh gems so recently in flight.

Then I look over to you. You gracefully catch the leaves on each attempt. I study your form, to try to determine what it is that makes you so competent at a process that I am failing. What is your secret? It does not seem to be your strength or agility or dexterity or speed. Not having any new strategies, I go back to the game, guessing that perhaps I only have to focus a little harder. I catch one, but I feel little relief since I miss the next several. I turn back to you, arms to the sky, as you quietly pluck another brilliant red leaf. I remain bewildered. Surely if baseballs or footballs or basketballs or tennis balls were falling from the sky, I would win this game. What is it about the leaves?

You catch a yellow-green maple leaf and hand it to Umed. You exchange smiles. It is in that moment that I see why it is that this game comes so naturally to you. Your lightness of spirit, the joy and hope that you bring to our family, makes time slow down. Within your slower frame of reference, the leaves descend lightly and your hands themselves produce less turbulence. And so the leaves dance softly into your open palms. I look back up to the sky, grasping for the way in which I too can slow down the descent of the leaves.

With love,
Duncan

Dear all,
I’ve been meaning to write some thoughts about the role of Jainism in modern politics and economics. On the way back from Hina Mami and Anil Mama’s Pratikraman session today I decided I would finally sit down and write something about the subject. The below is my first, admittedly very quick, unedited, and abbreviated attempt to reflect on this issue. Hopefully together we can flesh some of these thoughts out over time and I can continue to learn.

On Jainism and Social Justice
As Jains around the world meditate and reflect on the final day of Paryusan, the events of this day nine years ago give us further pause of Jainism’s meaning and message. Our prayers and thoughts are with the families of those souls whose lives were taken on that terrible morning. We all mourn those who perished and, in our mourning, must reflect upon how such awful deaths can be prevented.

One could argue that acts of terrible violence on the scale such as the attacks of September 11th, 2001 renders the non-violence philosophy of Jainism at best impotent and at worst irrelevant to modern international relations. What does Jainism’s principle of ahimsa (non-violence) really have to say vis-à-vis atrocity, aggression, and violence? Genocide in Sudan. Nuclear threats in North Korea. Extremism in Iran. Militant xenophobism on the rise in Europe. Continued civil conflict in many parts of India. Persistent unjust military action by the United States in several corners of the globe. For those of us who care about social justice, we cannot sit idly by. The politics and economics of power lead in one direction: violence, disease, and suffering, most often towards the poor and most vulnerable members of our society. We must fight against atrocity and aggression, and we must win. Neutrality is not an option; though we directly may cause no violence, by allowing—and in fact indirectly benefiting via the global economy—we are all culpable.

It well beyond my scope here to discuss whether Jains should support military action in Iraq or Afghanistan or Kashmir or Sudan. That is far too deep and difficult a question for the present moment. A broader caveat I should make now is that my understanding of Jainism is limited to the last ten years of my life. A slightly more approachable question is the role of ahimsa in the battle against militarism. And while it is true that Jainism is perhaps the world’s only major religion on behalf of which no wars have ever been fought, that fact does not bear too heavily on the power struggles of the present day. Here the most important figure in my mind is Shrimad Rajchandraji. The Jain philosopher and disciple of Mahavir, born two years prior to Gandhiji, was one of the single most important philosophical influences on the Mahatma’s life. They were close friends through the end of Shrimad Rajchandraji’s life, and exchanged a series of letters that would bear heavily on Gandhiji’s later political actions. The British Raj was a devastatingly powerful and violent empire and yet it fell ultimately to the hands of a largely non-violent struggle. Gandhiji’s brilliance was that he engaged and intertwined spiritual and political matters, arguing for Indian internal self-reliance, simplicity, and detachment while fighting politically for dignity, self-governance, and freedom.

There are three primary threats to global peace and security: militarism, materialism, and religious intolerance. I have spoken above about the Jain’s response to militarism: ahimsa (non-violence). To materialism, Jainism says: aparigraha (non-possessiveness). To religious intolerance, we say anekantvad (non-absolutism). In my reading (again with the caveat that I have only begun my own learning process), these three Jain responses—ahimsa, aparigraha, and anekantvad—to the earth’s most pressing problems—are not merely natural arguments that flow from Jain’s philosophy but rather they form the very core of Jainism itself. Jainism seems to me to be at once a spiritual and political philosophy, and that is the fundamental reason why Jainism remains relevant to modern societies.

Now, materialism. So engrained is materialism in our society that it has become cliché to even lament the materialism. The reality TV shows. The soul-less, aesthetic-less odes-to-concrete strip malls. The disregard for environmental justice. The 220 million tons of garbage each year that the EPA estimates our country generates. On a personal level, vegetarianism and attempts to limit personal environmental impact and waste, driven by Jainist philosophy, are important. But doing our own parts does little to prevent the strip malls. To fight materialism at a broader level, we need to succeed in inculcating our institutions and businesses with Jain principles. This is intensely practical as well as spiritual, as Gandhiji states about Rajchandraji in Experiments in Truth,
“People normally believe that truth-telling and successful business never go together. Shri Rajchandbhai on the other hand firmly believed and advised that truth and honesty were not only useful but essential to all good business. Morality is not packed within a prayer book, it is to be practiced and lived in all stations of life. Religion and morality sustain both good life and good business.”

This notion will appeal to young Jains who are driven by their parents and society to succeed. The question is, can we succeed at business and work in a way that furthers our spiritual development and that drives social justice? The answer to me is yes, but it does require work. Big business these days after all make huge profits on environmental degradation, violence towards impoverished workers, cigarette smoking, guns, alcohol, and fast food. The way to win this fight is not through withdrawing from the marketplace, but rather by entering the marketplace giving consumers better products.

Religious intolerance is a mainstream, dangerous force throughout the globe. The use of the proposed Islamic cultural center a few blocks from Ground Zero by right-wing politicians to inflame Americans’ suffering from the twin tower attacks was but the most recent example in American political life. In India, violent groups under the guise of the Hindu religion continue to threaten the very fabric of Indian secular democracy. From Al-Qaeda to the present Iranian government, militants defile the name of Islam for their own gains. There are countless other examples throughout the globe. Jainism’s view of anekantvad stands strongly against such absolutist thinking, and argues that the heart of all religions is the stewardship of the soul.

Taking this spiritual view, the trends towards militarism, materialism, and religious intolerance are symptomatic of an underlying disease process: our global society’s losing touch with our souls. This is where the depth of Jainism can help us all. Indeed, if ahimsa, aparigraha, and anekantvad are the central motifs of Jainism’s spiritual and political philosophies, then the supremacy of the soul is the religion’s essence. In Gandhiji’s words, with concepts heavily influenced by Shrimad Rajchandji:
“Religion is the spiritual quality of the soul. It is embedded in human nature in visible or invisible form. By religion we are able to know the duty of man, by it we are able to know our relations (or kinship) with other living beings. But all this requires the capacity to know one’s self. If we do not know ourselves we cannot know others rightly. By religion one can know himself.”

Today, we can communicate across the globe literally at the speed of photons, but the neurons in our brains are so inundated with extraneous (mis)information that we easily are led astray. Increases in the incidence of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, violent video game addictions among children, and motor vehicle accidents caused by texting are three public health symptoms of this phenomenon. The deeper meaning of these symptoms is that, despite the remarkable, wonderful democratization of knowledge, we and our children are at greater risk than ever of not knowing our own souls. There are no simple solutions here, other than study, meditation, reflection, persistence, and faith. Faith in ourselves and in others, that belief in the veracity of our souls, is something that I have seen to be engrained among my new family members who had the fortune of growing up Jain. This faith provides resilience against the distractions of the modern world. Interestingly, the single most important principle that my father a passed on to me was this very point, summarized in one of his more memorable teachings: “I am that I am that I am that I am, and so it is”. Today I was reminded of this when we repeated “So hum” during Pratikraman.

I feel that Jainism should permeate our work and personal lives and not only be present when we decline meat or take samayik or go to temple. If we are to make Jainism relevant to the world, if we as Jains are going to fight for social justice and against disease and ignorance and violence and environmental degradation, we need to incorporate Jainism into the institutions that we are a part of. This in my mind is also how we will make Jainism relevant to our children. There are only ten million Jains around the world, but the story of Shrimad Rajchandji and the birth of a free India is testament enough to the insight and impact that Jainism can have on the broader world.

And so, on this last day of Paryushan 2010, coinciding with nine-year anniversary of the deadliest attack on American soil, we mourn those who were lost, and in their memory, we reflect upon how we can work towards a more peaceful world. I firmly believe that Jainism has much to offer to achieve this vision.

Michhami Dukkadam,
Duncan

Dear all,
One of my seniors in residency passed this article along to us from the NY times. The author describes her struggles with her parents and a medical system ill-equipped to help people live their last days in a fashion in keeping with their beliefs and aspirations. It reminded me of so many of my patients during internship for whom the medical system just refuses to let die a humane and dignified death. In our noble search for cures, we so often do harm to vulnerable people at the ends of their lives. I am also reminded of my dad. He died in his sleep of the sequelae of a condition– congestive heart failure– that doctors could have treated and kept him alive for some time, but living a lifestyle that was not compatible with his spiritual and philosophical beliefs. He refused such a fate. The last year of his life, he continued to run, spend time with us, see patients, and attend conferences on spirituality. We went on an amazing spirituality retreat together just before I started college, two months before he died. That week was a truly blessed, and I will carry it with me for the rest of my life. While it took me, then at 18 years of age, years to forgive him for his rejection of the medical system, at the end of internship and having seen the violence we doctors do to people, I have come to accept and respect his position.

The piece is definitely worth reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all