I had a couple more weeks before I went home. What was it I really wanted to do before I left? I decided I wanted to meditate. Having no other force pulling me, I headed to Bodgeya to the place of Buddha's enlightenment. It was a small nutty tourist town. The kids had learned to speak excellent English upon which to solicit money. The Mahabodhi Temple is worth seeing for sure as well as the many temples of the different types in the surrounding area.
One day I visited one of these temples and a tourist had left behind a half eaten apple. Some Indian kids came by and I noticed one of the girls eying it but saw me looking and she walked away. Later that apple was gone. That is the stuff that makes you realize what hunger and poverty really is. You can not see someone's empty stomach. I can recognize the tattered clothing and unwashed hair but if kid looks clean then I have no way of identifying need. I know in the US we are wealthy because whole pieces of fruit will lie on the sidewalk and no one will pick it up. I think no one but the street people are that desperate. Also, here food is a small percentage of our expenses unlike in other countries.
Occasionally they distribute food at the Mahabodhi Temple. It was the most confusing situation I have ever seen. There where many monks praying that day. A few hours before dusk, they started to distribute food which I image where donations. A huge table filled with juice boxes, fruit, bread. They bagged it up and first the monks of their sect got food. Then other monks. Then practicioners. Then westerners. Then some of the begging locals. But not all. And certainly not the children whom were very friendly and fun. We bonded on our polished toenails. But they were totally unruly. At certain points the monks would chase them sort of playfully with sticks. One foreign woman, as we all did, felt sorry for these poor urchins and gave them some candy. She was totally mobbed and a fight broke out including a guard with a billy club. A bit later a monk, a very big husky monk, went to give these kids some bread, many loaves. And he too was mobbed and they almost knocked him down. Some of the bread lay shredded all over the dirt. Such a difficult situation. There was no right and easy solution much like all the problems of the world. Sitting in my home in the West it is easy to think, we just need to give them food, or jobs, or education but the problem is not that simple. And these things are not necessarily solutions unto themselves. The poverty situation is surprisingly similar everywhere around the world. Years ago, I taught "youth at risk" for a program in upstate New York. The program was very well rounded: GED class, paid internships, computer class, life skills class, even one on one counseling. Even with all of that, most kids did not succeed. Mostly they just had to show up and do the bare minimum but that was too much. At the age of 16, their values were set. And there was just no solution. Ingrained patterns are not just for the West, they are also in East. The patterns may be different, I don't know, but the outcome is the same such that the solution is not as simply as giving people jobs, or money, or food, or education.
