Oracle of the Chinese Temple

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Me and Daisy by Mattia Salvini

I went once to the Chinese Temple of Sarnath, and stood by an old open door to observe its suggestion of simple living: a Monk called me in. There was a place to sleep and a shrine, and the Oracle seemed to own no other wealth than his rosary and some cheer.

At the time, I did not know he was an Oracle. Some say that when the Dalai Lama, Gyalwang Rinpoche, visits Sarnath, he visits him too. Although the actions of great Lamas are not to be measured, I like to think that what is there to visit is no more — or less – than simplicity embodied.

Daisy, Rajan’s small daughter, is especially fond of seeing the ‘Chinese Lama’. This is only a short expression for ‘The Lama of the Chinese Temple’, since I frankly do not know his nationality, as no one seems sure. He does speak Chinese, Tibetan and Hindi.

Many visit him for a prediction, but that is neither Daisy’s nor my concern.

Vanessa Turner: Dream in Sarnath

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In February 2005 Vanessa Turner wrote an article about Buddha’s Smile School for Yoga & Health — Europe’s best selling Yoga magazine. Jane Sill, the Editor of Yoga & Health kindly agreed to send us the article so we could make it available for download here.

Here is a excerpt:

Dream in Sarnath: Buddha’s Smile School

by Vanessa Turner

I have seen miracles in action here and hope our dreams will come true.

First, let me begin by saying that until I saw it with my own eyes, I had no conception of the intensity of the poverty, destitution, and sheer starvation that beset many of the local poor in the area of Ashapur, Sarnath, and the larger city of Varanasi. The suffering here is so prevalent it is almost nightmarish. I have seen far too many beggars’ children, age five and below, walking barefoot and nude under the scorching Indian sun, their bodies so emaciated and ruined by hunger and malnutrition that you can see the cracks in their bones and the outline of the skeleton frame against their dry and pallid skin. Many have swollen stomachs, a sign of severe malnutrition, and these sights have become so mundane and banal to the local affluent (upper caste) people of this area as to become inconsequential to those who are not affected by such poverty. The lack of attention and sheer humanity to this epidemic of childhood poverty and mortality among the shudra, or untouchable caste of Uttar Pradesh (the larger state within which Sarnath and Varanasi are couched) is truly astounding to me, for I cannot understand how any human being could bear to walk past a starving young child and not even feel a minor pang of sympathy and an almost innate impulse to pick them up and carry them to a restaurant and feed them for the mere forty rupees (one US dollar) it takes.

Now the situation of the shudra castes in this district is much more severe than many other areas in India. The caste system, though ostensibly outlawed by the Indian government years ago, is acceded to religiously by the locals of Uttar Pradeshian society, and their glaring lack of concern for the increasing number of starving, dying children in the poorer areas of Varanasi is simply tragic. I became involved in Buddha’s Smile School for Underprivileged Children after meeting Rajan only a month into my stay in Sarnath. I am here on a Fulbright scholarship, as encouraged by my teachers, including Alan Wallace and his inspirational wife and my Sanskrit teacher, Vesna. Meeting Raj and her family was like finding a diamond cluster of jewels amidst a narrow-minded society of self-involved people. I was immediately taken by her warmth and open- mindedness, her gentleness and her kindness to me. I was homesick and confused, and she and her family immediately accepted me as a part of their family and insisted I take my every meal with them and their family of husband, wife, and two very young adorable daughters, ages 7 and 2. Our karmic bond and the uncanny feeling of familiarity that we shared led me to believe that it was no accident that I had become so instantly close with this exceptional Indian family, the kind of people who always invited the Rickshaw walas and other beggars and poor locals to their home for chai and food, who would not kill even the smallest insect if it crawled on their floor.

Getting to know Raj even better, I soon became aware of her great mission and current project, a recently-started free school for underprivileged beggar children in the surrounding area that would provide a comprehensive education covering Nursery school to Grade Five, giving them hope and encouragement for a brighter future, opening their young minds and stimulating their innate creativity, teaching them to think critically and to always question everything, to learn the ways of the previous great thinkers of India’s past, such as Gandhi and Mother Theresa.

You can download and read the rest of the article here.

Jake Fisher

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I was fortunate enough to visit the incredible Buddha’s Smile School and the living Saint Rajan on my travels last year around the major Buddhist sites of northern India.

A fellow Buddhist student recommended I visit Rajan’s school to see real compassion and devotion to others in action.

Meeting those children and seeing the happiness and joy Rajan and her family and other teachers have managed to cultivate in these children is incredible. The students there are generally the poorest of the poor with little other options in life than begging, prostitution or extremely hard labour for pay that will barely feed them.

This school has given these children, a new hope and belief in life and in themselves.

My feeling I got from my visit was how these children had found the love and security their little bodies were crying out for, in Rajan and her family. It really is a beacon of love and hope set right in the middle of one of the poorest areas in India.

I therefore believe Rajan is a modern day Mother Teresa of Uttar Pradesh and an example to us all.

Jake Fisher
England

Mattia Silvani

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Self portrait by Mattia Salvini
My name is Mattia and I have recently spent time teaching Sanskrit at Buddha’s Smile School. Despite my broken Hindi, the small students actually listened to the lessons with interest. The children memorized Sanskrit verses and made an effort to learn the first steps in the language.

Rajan is providing a rare opportunity for these children, to acquire an education that their background would normally not afford them.

At the time when I was teaching, the facilities were limited. I used to teach Sanskrit to about fourteen children, but in the classes there were at least another ten, since they had no other place to stay during pauses. To my surprise, even some of the children who were sitting there in ‘stand-by’ mode, had been attentive enough to memorize a few verses. They were also quite eager to repeat them aloud.

Sanskrit and Hindi are quite close, and the students had no great difficulty in picking up a very precise pronunciation. Of all the activities, they seemed to enjoy memorization and chanting, and Rajan included some of the salutations to Ganesa (the god that removes obstacles) to their morning prayer.

Knowing some Sanskrit opens up an immense storehouse of traditional knowledge, which is often far from the reach of even many Indians. More immediately, chanting the verses puts the children, and whomsoever can hear their enthusiastic renditions, in touch with a sense of very enjoyable, cheerful sacredness. I often wondered who else will have a chance to hear these Sanskrit verses: probably their parents and relatives will be amused to hear their small kids bring home what usually only trained professional priests can.

I am not sure as to whether any of the children will go much further with the Sanskrit, but who knows? Anyhow, they seem to enjoy it. This rich language has been one of the favoured idioms of culture in India for millennia: they should access and carry some Sanskrit to their lives, if they so wish.

Mattia Salvini
Ph.D.candidate and Part Time Lecturer
Dept. Of Study of Religions
SOAS University of London

Vanessa Turner

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Rajan, 35, originally came from Calcutta. As a young child, she had always been very sensitive to the suffering around her, so much so that she used to wake up before her mother did and prepare food and clothes to give to the beggars in her area. Rajan’s gentleness and love is what won the heart of her husband, Sukhdev Singh, but this created a huge rift in her family, as her parents had been planning an arranged marriage for her with a wealthy Indian man living in Australia.

Sukhdev was a pure and honest man, but his family’s religious background differed slightly from Rajan’s, so both sets of parents ardently forbade the relationship. Nonetheless, Rajan chose her true love for Sukhdev over the economic and social pressures inflicted upon her by her family.

After completing her B.A. in Education and English from Calcutta University in 1993, she and Sukhdev married and moved to Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Rajan immediately got a job teaching at a prestigious public school in Varanasi. But after her teaching day ended she would return to their small flat in Ashapur, the poorest and most troubled part of Varanasi. There Rajan would open up her front yard to the nearby beggars’ children, who were not attending school, and teach them reading, writing, and mathematics.

Thanks to donors like Amistad International, Rajan has been able to increase the size of her free school for underprivileged children. Two hundred children are now receiving their education in a warm, loving, and nurturing environment. Rajan is also able to provide snacks and occasional meals for the hungry children. Thanks to Amistad some of the students even have uniforms so that they do not have to attend school in rags and bare feet, giving them pride in themselves and their education.

The students’ parents are rickshaw drivers, sweepers, cow dung collectors, or weavers who are paid well below the minimum daily requirement to live and survive. Many children still beg at the brutal command of their desperate parents, who threaten to beat and even kill them if they do not return with money for dinner.

Many students have come to school with horror stories of dead relatives, brothers, sisters, mothers, who either fell sick from hunger and disease or simply died from cold in the winter or from heat in the sweltering summers. The poorest children have learned to catch rats and snakes and cook them in a fire without even spices or other flavouring, just so that they do not die of starvation.

Vanessa Turner