Sensei of Shambala by Anastasia Novykh - HTML preview

26

few days later, when I was shopping with my mother as usual, I was making plans for the evening, thinking over questions

After yesterday’s rain and night frost, there was a heavy fall of fluffy snow on the streets. Winter here was quite warm in comparison to those regions of the Soviet Union where we had lived before. Miners’ snow looked like snow only the first day because on the second day it became grey from coal dust, and on the third day, it completely melted, turning into wet, slushy mud. Every New Year we celebrated with the same weather forecast: “Rain turning to wet snow.” So I was glad to see at least this fluffy snow and feel the long-awaited freeze. It was giving me hope that next New Year, which was only three weeks ahead, we may celebrate properly, with real winter and a lot of fun.

As I was dreaming of a good future, we were walking to the next store. Suddenly my mother unexpectedly slipped and fell back so hard that even her legs flew up. It happened in a few split seconds. I didn’t even have time to understand, not even to catch her. Men passing by rushed to lift her up. I also tried to help somehow, being really scared. Having thanked the men, my mother stood up, leaning on me.
“Mum, how are you, can you walk?”
“Hold on, my back hurts so much, as if something

cracked.”
“Maybe we should go to the hospital?”
“Just wait; it will pass.”
We stood a bit and then slowly walked home. My

mother limped slightly. At home, she felt even worse. We didn’t want to bother father at work and hoped that it would pass. The pain kept getting stronger, and no pills helped. We tried all we could: we rubbed it with different ointments, made compress, and simply warmed it up. But she felt even worse after the last procedure. Of course, I didn’t go to the meditation training. And when my dad came home late in the evening, we tried everything possible in order to relieve the pain. There was only one way out: to go to the hospital. My father made a few calls and arranged for mother to be observed by a doctor at the regional department of neurosurgery.

In the morning, her state quickly worsened. An aching, sharp pain passed into her leg. Even the slightest movement caused the strongest attack of pain. She was even taken into the hospital reclining. In the neurology department, after a series of X-rays and computerized tomography, the doctor diagnosed that she had had osteochondrosis of the spinal column for a long time, and the fall had caused the fibrous ring to burst and a 7 mm herniation of the intervebral disk. As a result, the sciatic nerve was squeezed, and the strong pain extended to her leg. After careful examination, the doctor sent her to consult with the neurosurgeon. My father again found a good neurosurgeon, who, having studied the results of the examination, concluded that an operation is inevitable.

It was a catastrophe for our family. We saw more than enough bedridden patients on the way to the consulting room of neurosurgeon. My mother also heard plenty of horror stories from her future neighbor in the neurology ward, who needed to undergo a second operation. My mother was so scared by the forthcoming operation that, after consultation we abducted her from the neurosurgery department, if our strenuous hobbling could be called an escape. Thus, unexpectedly for all of us, the future looked dark. We decided to try drug treatment, injections, and, as they say, to fight to the end.

From that day when my mother went into the hospital’s neurology department, my life changed sharply. In the morning, I went to school and later went by bus to the regional neurology department. All the time I was near my mother and tried to support her spiritually. As it seemed to me, it was very important for her. The doctors were indignant that outsiders visited her, but my father quickly settled that question. The hospital became the main place where I spent my free time.

My mother was all the more sad that misfortunes, one after another, chased our family. Moreover, a message came from Moscow that the date was fixed and I was awaiting an operation after the New Year’s holidays. My mum greatly worried that I had given up my favorite hobby classes and trainings and even tried to insist that I should return to my usual life. But I didn’t listen to her. It seemed to me that nobody would take care of her like me and that without me she would simply fade away from her bad thoughts and the oppressing atmosphere of the ward where all her neighbors just spoke about their diseases.

At first, I, as well as my family, was a little bit shocked. “How could such a thing happen?” I thought. “So unexpectedly, and to my mother. Our life is so unpredictable! It only seems to us that we can forsee and plan everything in it, and that everything will be exactly like we imagine. In reality, every day is a trial, as if somebody wants to test us, how reliable we are, how steady we are internally in various situations, whether it’s joy or grief. Maybe these stresses that make us their unwillingly witnesses and participants appear to us as reminders from above that life is too fragile and that we might not even have time to do the most important thing in it. We are so accustomed to put aside the important things in our soul for an indefinite ‘later’ that we don’t realize how quickly life passes and that we do not have time to do anything serious in it.

Why do we start to really value something only when it is irretrievably lost: youth, in old age; health, on the hospital’s bed; life, on our deathbed? Why?! Maybe these sudden situations make us think over our perishable existence, make us wake up from our unrealizable fantasies borne by our laziness and bring us back to reality. Reality shows that nobody clearly knows what can happen to him at any minute. So, maybe it’s not worth tempting fate and we should start to value each moment right now, value it as if we were people doomed to death. Maybe then we’ll be able to understand more deeply the sense of life itself and do a thousand more useful things for our soul and for surrounding people. “It’s foolish to think that tomorrow is waiting for us, it may simply never come.” Only now did I understand the real meaning of Sensei’s phrase, which once I believed to be a joke: “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans.”

In the first few days with mum on the ward, we listened to the life stories of her neighbors, and I found proof that nobody is insured against Mr. Accident. The woman whose bed was next to the window was called Valentina Fedorovna. Just one instant had turned her entire life upside down, and it happened unexpectedly as well. She and her husband were living from hand to mouth, with hardly any money. They decided to join a wave of the cooperative movement, so her husband quit the factory and registered his own furniture cooperative. Her husband was enterprising and hard-working, and the business was successful. In just one year, they made so much money that they bought new cooperative apartments, a car, and even a country lot. Everything couldn’t be better and they had no troubles.

But two months ago, when Valentina Fedorovna was coming back with her husband from a relative’s birthday party, they got into a big car accident. It happened in a split second. Three cars crashed into each other at full speed because of a drunken driver in the oncoming lane. Her husband died immediately. Thanks to being fastened by a seatbelt, she miraculously stayed alive. However, she was told that the doctors later diagnosed a subluxation in the cervical area of her spinal cord with a hematoma. After that, her hand hardly moved, while she couldn’t feel her legs at all. The subluxation was cured in the neurosurgery department. However, the hematoma remained as a consequence of the spinal cord injury. Valentina Fedorovna was transferred from the neurosurgical to neurological department about one month ago.

It seemed to me that she suffered more in her moral state than in her physical state. At that moment, her life was destroyed. She had to mortgage a part of her property because all the money she had was quickly spent on treatment and on paying off her husband’s odd debts. But most of all, she was shocked by the strange attitude of her friends.

She told us that she had many friends and relatives, but as soon as they found out that her husband had died and that she remained disabled alone, everybody for some reason immediately forgot about her existence. She had been in the hospital for two months and had been visited only by her old grandmother and her sister, who, despite the fact that she lived in poverty, always tried to bring her something delicious. Valentina Fedorovna now understood who is who, but it was already too late. That evening, I wrote down in my diary her old grandmother’s interesting expression regarding careless friends, “When the pot is boiling, the house is full of friends. And when the pot is gone, nobody comes.”

Valentina Fedorovna was in despair and didn’t find any other way out for her grief except slandering her former friends and relatives. I felt uncomfortable when hearing such speeches. These bad words spoilt her own mood and made her very nervous, and she inflamed hatred in herself and people around her suffered. We didn’t even want to mention the word ‘friend’ because this woman would explode and resume her non-stop complaints.

Another woman, Anna Ivanovna, was kind. She didn’t curse her destiny, though her health wasn’t any better. She had almost the same kind of disease as my mum. One day, her back simply began to ache. The doctors found a herniated disk. They performed an operation and eliminated the vertebral herniation. After that, she felt a lot better. But some time later, she again fell ill and felt even worse. The doctors recommended her for a second operation, but she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to walk after it. Anna Ivanovna was quite reserved in telling her story, but the details, especially the consequences of her operation, scared not just my mother but also me because I, most likely, would be operated on by neurosurgeons as well.

Anna Ivanovna hardly moved. Her husband, a happy plump man, often visited her. Their children had grown up a long time ago and lived with their families in different cities. But Anna Ivanovna had her own distress, as she was most of all afraid to be bedridden; after all, she was only fifty. She was afraid to become a burden to her husband and even more to oppress her children with her illness. That’s why this woman tried very hard to recover, swallowing all the assigned pills and performing all the prescribed procedures. But sometimes, when the pain became unbearable, optimism left her and she would weep bitter tears, repeating the same question, “Why?!”

The third neighbor, a young woman about five years older than me, had afterbirth trauma. Lena had already felt pain in her back during the pregnancy. Her right leg completely stopped moving; she couldn’t even move her toes. As it turned out, she had a protrusion of two disks. At home, she left the baby in the care of her retired mother-in-law. She also was visited by her husband. He was a good guy: calm, and probably a meek person. Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, was rushing like a hurricane, always grumbling and dissatisfied with trifles.

This complication after the delivery, which nobody could foresee, put the young family on the verge of collapse. Apart from the fact that Lena had serious health problems and couldn’t physically take care of the child, her mother-in-law regularly provoked conflicts, telling her son that he didn’t need a cripple wife, that it would be a burden for all his life, and that he should ask his wife for a divorce. Lena couldn’t rely on anyone else to be with her child but her mother, but the mother lived far away in a different city and seldom visited her because she worked all the time in the factory, barely making ends meet. In general, Lena’s life had turned to a continuous tragedy.

Having heard plenty of all these stories, I realized that not one of these patients had expected such an outcome; everyone lived and planned something, but the events came like thunder amidst a clear sky. Everybody complained about why it happened specifically to them. In the evening, after having heard all of that, I randomly opened my diary and came across Sensei’s words, “There is no such thing as chance. Chance is only a natural consequence of our uncontrolled thoughts.” “That’s it!” I thought. “Strange that I simply didn’t pay attention to these words before.” In order to improve my vigilance, I marked them out in the diary with bold italics.

I really wanted to visit Sensei’s trainings, but I just couldn’t get out from this whirlpool of events without feeling guilty. I regularly called my friends, who effusively bragged about their successes. At home, I continued doing meditations, and I tried to do the Lotus Flower every free minute. It worked well to evoke feelings when I thought about a desirable present. At that thought, a wave of tiny ants would arise in my solar plexus and spread through my whole body in different directions. This feeling was quite pleasant. Even though I wasn’t near Sensei, his words in my diary constantly circled in my mind.

In the hospital, I decided that, at any cost, I would change the unhealthy atmosphere in the ward because listening to talk about diseases and oppressive existence could quickly weaken even a healthy man. Visiting my mother, I tried to tell all the funniest stories I knew, starting from school life and finishing with different amusing incidents from literature. But this method was ineffective, since the women remained deep in thought about their own problems. One time, talking to Lena, I told her what I heard from Sensei about good and bad thoughts, about the essence of our soul and our life. Amazingly, the women started listening to these words with such attention, as if they weren’t Sensei’s words I was telling but rather a confession that concerned each of them. My mother said that after my departure they continued to discuss these words and reflected on their meaning in relation to their life experiences. Strikingly, in just a week after my conversation, there were some unexpected results.

Valentina Fedorovna, who more than everybody groaned and grieved, transformed herself into a completely different person, an intelligent organizer of her destiny. My mother said that after these conversations she intensively pondered something. The result of her decision surpassed all expectations. She offered Lena’s husband the official position of director of the furniture cooperative with a correspondingly good salary. This was a complete shock not just for the young family, but especially for the mother-in-law. They simply didn’t know how to thank Valentina Fedorovna for this present of destiny.

Although Lena’s husband was a meek person, when he was entrusted such an important business, he showed the talents of a good manager. As the motherin-law told us, he worked with great enthusiasm and efficiency twenty-four hours a day, and due to his efforts, the production of furniture was restarted in less than two weeks, and they even got their first big profit. The mother-in-law blossomed from happiness, and her attitude towards Lena immediately changed for the better.

Moreover, Valentina Fedorovna hired her sister in this cooperative, turning her from a simple bookkeeper with a tiny salary in a state enterprise into the chief bookkeeper of a privately owned enterprise, with a good salary. And since the woman was honest, punctual, and accurate, order was guaranteed. In general, such smart and simple decisions made by Valentina Fedorovna pleased everybody, and especially herself. Her health and her life in general began to improve. Even her old friends began to visit her, offering various services. But Valentina Fedorovna, completely without anger, let them know that she no longer needed their services or help.

The atmosphere in the ward after that got significantly better. Now, the women smiled more often, joked, supported each other. The atmosphere in this ward became pleasant for everyone. Even the hospital staff lingered for longer than usual just to chat with our jolly women. What’s most striking, not only did the women’s mood improve, but also their health; they quickly started recovering. I understood that this terrible pain was begotten, first of all, by their imagination, by bad thoughts and fear of the unknown. It was like a worm eating them up from inside, intensifying over and over again their physical pain. As soon as these women drew their attention away from these thoughts, they became pleasant not only to those around them, but also to themselves. They received an opportunity not only to reason soberly, but also to try to adapt to the new conditions of their lives and their relationships with people.

I was simply shocked by this discovery, since I didn’t suspect that Sensei’s words would cause such a revolution in the thoughts and feelings of these women doomed to suffering. The positive thoughts of one of them begot an entire chain of events in the destinies of several people, bringing happiness and wealth into their lives. This proved to be evidence that Sensei was absolutely right in telling us about the power of our thoughts and how much they affect us and our destiny.

Also, I noticed that it became significantly easier to practice the Lotus Flower in the ward. I did my best to support this spirit of optimism, which grew every day. I brought library books of the great classics, with good endings of course, as well as humorous stories. The women read them with pleasure, retelling each other the exciting moments. It turned out that many of Sensei’s words also found their proof in works of the classics of different epochs. Finally, I realized that Sensei actually spoke about the eternal truth that was always known to humankind. He just explained all this simply and clearly.

I also noticed one more curious moment. Anna Ivanovna, who had been working for twenty years in a university as a teacher of literature, knew many of these books almost by heart. But now she said that she reread these books with pleasure, as now she perceived them completely differently. In particular for her, for her soul, as she later confessed, she made interesting discoveries, noticing in the books those things that she hadn’t paid attention to before.

Sometimes our readings would turn into real literary soirees. Amazingly, when I spoke to the women about Sensei’s theory of control over thoughts, they listened to these words with unusual attention. At first, it embarassed me because I simply couldn’t answer many of their questions about life. But at home, looking through my diary anew, I found the words of Sensei, which, in my opinion, more or less matched the answers. Strangely enough, the women perceived these words in their own way, depending on their life experiences, and these answers quite satisfied them. So, although Sensei wasn’t with us, his presence was felt clearly in his deep thoughts which we constantly came back to.

New Year drew near. The women decided to organize a holiday party right in the ward. My father settled all the formalities with the chief doctor. We even installed a small, real Christmas tree, decorating it with various toys and, just for fun, with syringes and droppers. Our family celebrated New Year in mother’s ward with the other women and their close friends and relatives. It was so merry, and everyone was so kind to each other that I had the impression we were all a big, friendly family. I remembered one interesting toast, proposed by Lena’s mother-in-law.

“They say that how you celebrate New Year, so will be the entire year. And despite the fact that we are celebrating it in the hospital, the most important thing is that we are celebrating it in the company of such wonderful people. I am thankful to God that all the misfortunes of my son are finally over. Thank you so much, dear Valentina Fedorovna, for your kind and keen heart. If it weren’t for you, we would never have gotten out of that nightmare. So let’s drink to you, to unpredictable destiny, which gathered all of us in such an unusual place. To your health!”

A lot of kind and beautiful words were said that night. Close to two o’clock in the morning, we were even joined by the chief doctor and his wife, who were coming back after visiting their friends. But as I later understood, he was more interested in talking to my dad rather than staying with us. Having drunk a few glasses of wine, the women began pouring out their souls to each other. I was really shocked when Valentina Fedorovna was telling us how she had taken her vitally important decision.

“You know, girls, I long thought about what had happened to me and how to get out from that trouble. And one time, after one more heavy pondering, I had a strange dream. A beautiful young man with blond hair to his shoulders came up to my bed and started speaking with a melodic voice, ‘Why are you suffering? Look at the people surrounding you. When you see their best features, your problems will disappear.’ After that, I woke up in a completely different mood. I began thinking. And really, as it turned out later, I couldn’t have found better candidates for my business. Although, honestly speaking, in the beginning I had doubts, there was still a great risk. But recalling this dream, something pushed me to a final decision. Honestly, girls,” she made the sign of the cross, “it’s the genuine truth!”

“Would you believe that this blond man was also in my dream?” confessed Anna Ivanovna. “I was just too shy to tell you. He was telling me something with such a pleasant voice. But in the morning, I could remember nothing of his words. I just remember that afterwards I had such a nice feeling. I still keep feeling appeased. What could it mean?”

“They were angels from heaven who came to help you,” exclaimed the pious mother-in-law. “They show you, my dear, the right way…”

She then started the whole homily of church teaching. But this case clearly intrigued me. Coming back home, I hurried to write it down in my diary.