Dear Folks, It’s Sunday morning, gray and cool after a hot, sunny week. The house is quiet. Sylvia and Heather have just left for a week with Sylvia’s mother in New York. (The absence of Heather quiets the house by an order of magnitude, but also takes away much of the charm). Karel is off with Stephanie. Don is in the back house, I guess, watching some sporting event on television — he likes just about any kind of sporting event. Having come from a week of profound quiet at the Ayurvedic Health Center, I am appreciating the silence.
This is the time of year when life accelerates suddenly, from the great, deep, lazy pool of winter into the fast water, the rapids of spring. Just in the week I’ve been gone the place has been transformed — the mud has dried up, yellow daffodils and blue scylla have burst into bloom, the grass has greened, the buds have swelled on the fruit trees.
There are twelve more sheep than there were a month ago. It was a laid-back lambing this year; everything is laid-back, since until recently I haven’t been up to my normal intensity. So we didn’t mount an every-four-hours-day-and-night lambing watch, as we usually do. I think we lost one lamb as a result of our lowered vigilance. Fortunately, most of the births were smooth and didn’t require our help at all.
In case you wonder how a lambing goes, here’s how it goes:
March 27 — Sylvia came out to do the morning chores and found Forsythia with little black ewe twins, up, dry, and nursing. Forsythia, daughter of Dot, was the first to lamb last year too and produced twins as a yearling, an unheard-of feat. She is in line to become Gold Star Ewe of the flock, a title her mother currently holds. Sylvia put Forsythia and babies in a lambing pen — we always do that, to be sure they get to know each other and to administer special treats like warm water with molasses in it.
March 31 — Single black ewe to Cocoa. Again, up and dry at morning chore time. A huge lamb, who has continued to grow at a great pace (singles usually do). She’s twice as big as any other lamb out there. A disappointment, however, since we expected Cocoa to twin. Cocoa has singled four times in five lambings; we’ll sell her now.
Later that day Sylvia came out to find Faith with two still-wet ram lambs, one black, one a funny salt-and-pepper. (Faith herself is white with a black nose and black legs.) There was also a third lamb, dead, still wrapped in his amniotic sac. Apparently this one had died in the womb, maybe a week before, because he was not as fully developed as his brothers. Faith produced triplets last year too, all of whom lived. She’s a super-producer, but she’s also the loudest, most unruly of the sheep. Since we have to cull this year, Faith will probably be one to go.
Cocoa, Faith, and babies into the lambing pens. The maternity ward is filling up.
The next day, checking the pens, I noticed that Faith’s little black fellow was low on energy, uncoordinated, hardly able to stand. So I scooped him up, brought him in to warm by my woodstove, and gradually got about eight ounces of Nina’s high-fat Jersey milk into him. Then I put him back out with his mom, thinking “sink or swim,” expecting him to sink — it’s hard to turn around weak lambs. But this one revived! Started sucking and never looked back. He’s out there now kicking up his heels with the rest of them.
April 4 — Black ewe lamb to Tulip, up and running, Tulip’s first lamb (she’s a two-year-old who didn’t breed as a yearling). Mother and baby knew exactly what to do, though it was a first for both of them. The next day Sylvia let them out of the pen, and a few hours later found a cold, dead, very large lamb in the pen, again still in the amniotic sac. We didn’t believe Tulip had dropped that lamb — it was much bigger than her little ewe. It’s still a mystery, but in retrospect we think it must have been Tulip. That’s the lamb we probably could have saved, if we had been watching properly.
April 9 — Black ewe and ram to Dot, the old pro. This is her 11th lambing, 8 of which have been twins. She is my favorite sheep, but she’s getting on. Every year I think it’s time to cull her, and then I think, no, not yet.
April 15 — I was out pruning fruit trees when I noticed that all the sheep were out grazing but one. I checked the barn, and sure enough, Godiva was in the back trying to push out a very large, malpresented lamb (only one foot forward instead of two; not a bad malpresentation, but usually requires help, especially with a lamb so big). Godiva and I worked a long time before we got that lamb out. Its mouth was cold, and I was sure it was dead, but I cleared its passages and pummeled it and swung it upside down and tickled its nose with straw and did all the tricks I ever heard of, and to my amazement the cold, limp thing snuffled a bit. So I redoubled my efforts, and it sneezed. And then I watched life flow into it, moment by moment — what an awe-inspiring thing to see! Godiva started licking her baby happily, and soon it was on its feet, surgingly healthy. I put mother and baby in the pen, and an hour later the second lamb came, without help. Two fine black ewes. (What a year for ewes!)
That lambing was a good test of my returning strength. I needed everything I had to pull out that lamb, and my arms and shoulders were sore afterwards — I’m out of shape, but back in business!
April 19 — Only yearlings left now. They don’t always breed, which is fine with me, since they’re not yet fully grown themselves. But it was clear that two of our three yearlings were due any moment, and sure enough, on this day Faithlet (Faith’s daughter — we don’t name them until they become mothers themselves) came due. Again a black ewe, also coming out one leg back. I wasn’t around for this one, but Sylvia, Karel, and Stephanie managed to get her out. Sylvia, with her years caring for horses, has a fine sense of how to treat all animals, in sickness or health. Faithlet and baby are doing well.
April 22 — The shearer showed up. He does that, he just appears. He knows all the sheep-owners of the Valley and cruises around, shearing as he goes (in our fall he goes and does the same in the New Zealand spring). I was at the Ayurvedic Center, but Sylvia and Don knew what to do, and zip! the winter sweaters came off. When I called home and Sylvia told me the shearing was done, I was a bit nervous, because we had one yearling still pregnant, and in my experience shearing very pregnant ewes can cause troubles. But all was well; just three days later:
April 25 — Godivlet produced a tiny white ewe all by herself. Cute little thing. Possessive first-time mother, stamps her feet whenever any of us, or Basil, or the gander, comes near her baby. The baby looks fragile next to her month-older half-siblings, but she’s spunky and healthy.
Now when we turn out the flock to graze on the greening lawns, there’s quite a show. Eight big mamas and virginal Dotlet, the yearling that didn’t breed, and huge Ferdinand the proud father, and twelve hopping, jumping youngsters. There isn’t a prettier sight in the world than that flock, scattered over a dandelion-flecked orchard in the soft evening light of spring.
For me this has been a month of returning to my old life, which at first was a great joy. I actually took pleasure in doing dumb stuff like registering and inspecting my car — to be able to take care of things again felt like such a privilege. For about two weeks I worked nonstop without feeling the least bit stressed. I was so thankful to be able to work.
Well, of course THAT couldn’t last! Before long the mountains of unattended business and neglected farmwork and woefully shattered book deadlines, all of which have accumulated over months, began to get to me. My patterns of stress came back, worse than ever. I tossed and turned at night, to-do lists pounding in my brain. I started eating badly. I didn’t take time to meditate, or take naps, or have fun. I re-read all the inspiring promises I made to myself, but the old patterns of anxiety-inspired overwork run deep, very deep. Maybe I even purposely let them go rampant, knowing I was scheduled for a week at the Health Center.
So I arrived there last weekend not in very good shape. I had, as they would say, accumulated a lot of ama that had to be knocked out of my system.
The Maharishi Ayurvedic Health Center in Lancaster, Massachusetts, occupies a gracious mansion on 200 acres of meadow and forest. As it name implies, it is run by the followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the people who do Transcendental Meditation or TM. I had been taught TM by friends 10 years ago, but I had never much practiced it, and I had always been distinctly uncomfortable by some of the cultier manifestations of the Maharishi’s movement. I never would have considered exposing myself again to TM groupies, if it weren’t for Dr. Deepak Chopra, the medical director of the Lancaster Center. All I knew about him were the books he has written, but those books are so intelligent, so inspiring, and so open to both Eastern and Western modes of healing (Chopra used to be medical director of a traditional hospital near Boston) that I felt drawn to him and whatever kind of healing he dishes out. As it turns out he wasn’t there — he had been called by the Maharishi to Moscow, where he is setting up a clinic. So I got to experience Ayurvedic medicine on its own, without the charisma of its leader, which is perhaps a good thing.
Ayurvedic medicine is a resurrection of the wisdom of ancient India, 6000 years old — with, given Chopra’s Western training, much wisdom from modern medicine mixed in. Within an hour of arriving I was conferring with an Ayurvedic doctor, who also has an M.D. We talked for an hour before he examined me. (I don’t think I’ve ever had a full hour of any other doctor’s attention, except when I was unconscious.) He asked less about my medical history than about my life. What a novelty!
After the interview and exam, the doctor prescribed my treatment for the week, the herbs, the kinds of massage, the diet and music and aromas for my body type and particular problems. If this sounds wierd, read on, you ain’t heard nothing yet.
Every day I rose whenever I liked (it got earlier as the week wore on) and did easy yoga exercises they taught me and a session of TM meditation. I went for breakfast (hot cereal, fruit, herb tea) whenever I wanted. All day I could attend lectures, view educational tapes, or walk the beautiful grounds as I liked. At 11:15 every morning I had my panchakarma treatment, a two-hour massage, with two technicians working over me, employing massive amounts of warm, herbed sesame oil. Usually they just dipped their hands in it, but sometimes they poured it over me out of small hoses — that was messy but felt heavenly. Twice they dribbled it back and forth over my forehead for long periods; it was an incredibly pleasant, relaxing experience. Sometimes I had steam baths or inhaled eucalyptus oil. Some of the massages were very deep and rough — I had a lot of ama to get rid of! After the treatments I felt relaxed almost to the point of spinelessness, but not sleepy. I didn’t take naps, didn’t feel the need for them.
Meals were simple, abstemious, elegantly prepared — vegetables, rice, and dal or Indian lentils (only lightly spiced), with fruit for dessert. I loved the food, though some of the other guests complained about the absence of meat, sweets, caffeine. I lost five pounds and was never even faintly hungry.
Every afternoon before supper I meditated again. In the evenings were lectures or videotapes — the lectures and tapes were important, because they communicated the mindset, the way of thinking that sets up the mental paths to healing. I was in bed by 10.
I didn’t always feel good. In fact the first few days all the guests felt distinctly bad, with headaches, sleeplessness, diarrhea, stomachaches. You’re shedding your excess kapha, the doctor said (kapha is one of three body principles, the one which was most unbalanced for me according to my diagnosis — these guys insist on talking in Sanskrit). Your headache just shows the purification is working. In a few days you’ll feel great.
Well, he was right, I did.
What kind of people subject themselves to these strange regimens? One of the best parts of the week was getting to know my fellow-patients.
– A fourth-grade teacher from Nova Scotia in her 40s, who has fought colon cancer for over a year; recently her doctors told her the cancer had spread to her ovaries and there was nothing more they could do for her,
– A woman from the Netherlands with a similar prognosis, also colon cancer, now spread to the liver, again the doctors had given up. Her husband took the treatment with her; until his recent retirement he was the CEO of a major Dutch grocery chain,
– A man from Exeter NH with an inoperable brain tumor, paralyzed and wheelchair-bound, with speech slurred, undergoing chemotherapy at Mass. General. His condition was so severe that at midweek he had to be hospitalized and discontinue the Ayurveda treatments,
– Three executives from a Japanese corporation with no medical complaints other than high blood pressure, coming to determine whether to send the whole staff regularly for Ayurveda treatments, whether to teach TM to all their 300 employees, and whether to construct a special room so they could all meditate together,
– Two women (one of them me) with uterine cancer, recent hysterectomies, and good prognoses. The other one, the owner of a beauty salon in Los Vegas, had refused the same radiation implant that I had balked at and came to Lancaster instead,
– Another woman, mother of two teenagers, from Delaware, with no medical problems, just resolved to clean up her life.
They are courageous, good-humored, and determined people. We formed a loving, supportive group, almost a family; there was, as you might expect, a lot to share. The staff of the Center were also, without exception, warm and supportive. Every one from doctor to dishwasher is a devotee of the Maharishi; they all meditate together; they all themselves follow Ayurvedic health precepts.
Well, it was a wonderful week and I returned more unwound and at peace than I can remember ever being. And yet deeply disturbed. When I tossed and turned in the night at Lancaster, it wasn’t because of a to-do list; it was because of an old dilemma in my life that the place resurrected.
I loved being there, as I have always loved being in any of the New Age communities that the modern world generates. (I’ve been involved with several of them, from the Hunger Project to San Francisco’s Zen Center to the Missionaries of Divine Light.) I deeply believe the basic Truth upon which all these communities are founded; it is the same Truth at the root of all major religions. I not only believe it; I actively yearn for it, yearn to live it, yearn to live and work with other people who are as committed to it as I am. I know that Truth is the ultimate answer to all the world problems I keep bashing my head against, from hunger to pollution to war to cancer. There were times, especially when watching tapes of Deepak Chopra speaking, when I was so inspired that I could have stayed at the Lancaster Center forever. Maybe they’d hire me on as a groundskeeper.
And there were other times, especially when I was watching promotional tapes for TM, or reading the catalog of the Maharishi International University in Iowa, or listening to some enthralled staff member talk about his or her utter devotion to the Maharishi, when I wanted to flee instantly from this foolish cult. I was especially disturbed, wildly angered actually, by the constantly repeated “scientific studies” of the beneficial effects of TM — on everything from blood pressure to the stock market! These “scientific studies” were all done by TM believers, most of them at the M.I.University, and were manifestly unscientific.
They angered me doubly, because they demeaned the fundamental idea of science, which I revere, and they also debased the profound Truth of their own movement, which I revere even more, and which does not need artificial props from so-called scientific experts. It’s like propping up Mount Everest with a toothpick. It’s simply ridiculous. I seethed with anger at the way this movement debased itself. I wanted to believe in the movement and, frankly, except for Deepak Chopra and the Maharishi himself (both of whom we saw on tape), I didn’t hear a single spokesperson all week I found credible.
I was also angry at the don’t-think-for-yourself-just-quote-the-Maharishi stance of the staff, even the doctors. I hate seeing intelligent people reduced to being minions. I can’t stand organizations that have constant bottlenecks because all decisions are made by the one guru at the top. I was furious at some of the sillier manifestations of the practice (such as “yogic flying”) and at some of its blatant commercialism (don’t take vitamins, take Maharishi Amrit Kalash; we’ll keep you supplied for only $95 a month).
All that anger is just excess pitta coming out, the doctors said. Excellent. Your doshas are coming into balance. The treatment is working perfectly.
I believed and didn’t believe, wanted to believe and couldn’t believe, and tossed and turned, wondering whether this is my problem or their problem. I’ve had it before. I have it with every organized religion. It’s probably my problem; a real Catch-22 problem when you absolutely believe that ultimate healing comes from belief, but you can’t get yourself to believe the belief!
So anyway, here I am back home, all my everyday problems still piled up, just increased by a week. Anxiety returning, but determination stronger than ever that somehow, some way I’m going to turn my life more and more in the direction of Ultimate Healing — of myself and my society, to the best of my ability. I’m going to go on meditating and doing the yoga and eating the Aruyvedic diet to the best of my ability. I’m going to track down Chopra (in June, I hope) and find out how a man with his clear intellect can associate himself with Maharishi groupies. If I can afford it, I’ll go back to the Lancaster Center sometime for more panchakarma treatments, avoiding all the promotional tapes but trying to imbibe more of the basic wisdom. I’m still on the healing path; I’m on the path more than ever, though I can’t see beyond the next turn.
Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve. Despite the dullness and bareness of the days that pass, if I search with due diligence, I can always find a deposit left by some former radiance. But I had forgotten. At the time it was full-orbed, glorious and resplendent. I was sure that I would never forget. In the moment of its fullness, I was sure that it would illume my path for all the rest of my journey. I had forgotten how easy it is to forget.
There was no intent to betray what seemed so sure at the time. My response was whole, clean, authentic. But little by little there crept into my life the dust and grit of the journey. Details, lower-level demands, all kinds of crosscurrents — nothing momentous, nothing overwhelming, nothing flagrant — just wear and tear. If there had been some direct challenge — a clear cut issue — I would have fought it to the end, and beyond.
In the quietness of this place, surround by the the all-pervading presence of God, my heart whispers: Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve, that in fair weather or in foul, in good times or in tempests, in the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar, I may not forget that to which my life is committed.
(Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart)
Love and healing, peace and grace to you all, Dana
