MUMBAI, India (UPI) -- I have just had a most amazing mini-workshop -- on a local Mumbai train. And my 'participants' were women who were all strangers to each other, going off to work, in a crowded compartment, as we traveled about an hour downtown from Malad Station to the final Churchgate Terminus.
It all started with a young woman asking about my T-shirt, designed for the Women Allies program by the amazing women of IWP (International Women`s Partnership for Peace and Justice) in Mae Rim, Thailand, a group that has as the basis of their teaching and work, a sustaining Buddhist philosophy and an active Feminist orientation.
My co-traveler asked me what the words on my T-shirt, 'In the spirit of Peace and Justice' really meant. As I started to talk of my time in Mae Rim, two others across from us began to listen in intently, and soon began to ask their own questions.
Hey! This is India. We seldom wait for permission or an invitation to join in conversations, and very soon we get close -- or nosy. How you see it depends on your perspective or mood at the moment.
Then another woman, who introduced herself as a bank officer, from way across four seats on the other side (obviously with mega-sharp hearing in noisy Mumbai), leaned forward, asking if I was a teacher of meditation, because she`d noticed I`d shut my eyes as I got in and seemed to be meditating. I told her that train travel drives me crazy, except when I start with about fifteen minutes of breathing in/breathing out... then impulsively offered to show them.
So.
With 13 women squeezed into a space that was really just enough for six people, four sitting on each narrow bench across from each other, and five more hanging over the backs and sides of the seats, I first had them close their eyes, palms on their laps for those seated, and led them through simple awareness-breathing for the next few minutes.
It was surreal. No soft stillness-inducing tones here; I had to first practically shout out the instructions, just to be heard by them all -- which in turn got a few more onlookers crowding in. There were station stops, trains rattling by, whistles, stops and starts, people getting on and getting off -- including the very engaged woman who started it all, and who nearly missed her stop. The last three stations, I taught the few women who were still on the train the simple accompanying hand gestures that Ouyporn had taught to help us keep focused.
I see this picture in my mind now and smile -- a group of women who set off to work that morning in a local Mumbai train, who had never met each other until an hour ago, sitting with eyes closed, hands weaving soft, graceful patterns in the air as they held the awareness of a breathing pattern that may have been taught for centuries in forests and monasteries to people who almost certainly did not have to rush off in five minutes to jostle and push to get on to the next bus or walk through thick crowds to the office.
At the last stop - the Churchgate train terminus, there were smiles and thanks, and cries of 'Ohletsdothisagain!' It would be a better day for us all.
Thank you, all my beautiful Mae Rim Allies. You didn`t know it, but you were all with me in that train too. What`s 15 more of you in a compartment already full to bursting?!
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
