September 1, 2011
Mooji, Leslie, Dr. Raja & friends at the Fundraiser.
September 1, 2011 Unedited - Straight from the Heart
Dear Ones ...
At home. Upstairs. Osho, Ladyji, and Keshav lying around. Shirdi and Alex are out and about. Wandering as former street dogs do. Enjoying.
Morning. Chants playing on the computer as I type. How I love these creatures. A number of times a day I bend over and stroke them, or give them a little kiss. They just continue lying there, like saying, "Mom ... Come on ... Leave me alone", But it makes them feel safe, secure, and loved. They've become so so sweet.
They still like to wander, or just sit outside by the side of the road a chunk of the night. Osho doesn't always go out when the others do. We're sleeping on the second floor. So I can be on the ground floor with the door open. But he often doesn't come. He waits until I get upstairs. Then wants me to go downstairs again. Open the door for him, and see him off. Which is okay for one round. That is, letting him out. Then being awakened sometime during the night to go downstairs and let him in. But then, after I've fallen asleep he sometimes wakes me and wants me to let him out again. My response is clear and focused. "Stuff it, Osho". And I go back to sleep.
Osho is the Guru of Dogs. They all simply love him. Follow him. He's got a certain energy that he emits. He's one of the very few dogs in town that can go across any other dog's territory and not be challenged. People love him. Animals love him.
Sometimes when I'm sitting with Osho. I look over at him, and say, "We've become old guys together, babe". "I love you."
It's such a blessing for my Heart to be so open to animals. As I walk along the streets I continually get these surges in my Heart which feel so good. Of course, I pick up the flip side, too. I really experience their suffering.
I feel a Heart connection with all the creatures - bullocks, birds, cats, snakes, insects. It wasn't always this way. I loved animals generally from the earliest parts of my childhood. But the full opening to include insects, and other forms that I can't think of right now happened during a fourteen month retreat, in silence, in a remote cabin, on several hundred acres of sacred land in the middle of nowhere.
At the time I was doing a Tibetan Buddhist spiritual practice. The simple cabin had been built by a Tibetan monk who did a three year retreat. To get to it you had to follow a narrow trail through heavily forested terrain. It went over a small stream and then over two long hills. The cabin was nestled in a small clearing at the top of the second hill.
We have on the white wall surrounding our Shelter, a famous statement by Mahatma Gandhi. "The Greatness of a Nation and its Moral Progress can be judged by the way its Animals are Treated."
This is really a comment on the nature of the Heart.
The real importance of this is that the Heart opens in all directions. If it opens more for one thing, it opens a little more for all things. If the community has more compassion and caring for the dogs, they'll be nicer and gentler with each other.
It's so difficult, costly, and time-consuming to try to get people to be nicer with each other by working directly with them. We're so, so complicated. How much easier it is to open a Community's Hearts through demonstrative love to homeless dogs.
It uplifts both the Human and the Animal communities. Dogs have much better lives. Humans have better lives. Humans are more caring with the dogs and with each other. As a result, it is safer and healthier on the streets.
It is a low cost, fast way to uplift Society in many ways. And this is the gift that India's homeless dog problem actually presents to us.
The solution is demonstrative love - the very core of our work. We are told by all the great Indian masters, that love is the most powerful force in the universe. No question, we are seeing it work.
