Where ever we go I tell everyone that there are two great lessons that India has to teach. When I tell the Indians this, then the Two Things, they're always delighted, saying how right I am. Whenever I tell westerners who have never been to India these same Two Things, they usually say something like, "That doesn't sound very good to me."
The first great lesson of India is: You can own absolutely nothing and still be happy. It's not that Indians wouldn't like a little more in the way of material goods, it's just that they're not essential to their happiness because they always have something better than things. They have their families and they have their God. Whenever you first meet any Indian, he will always want to sell you something because it's more than business in India, it's survival at it's most basic level, make a few rupees today or your family doesn't eat. The average pay in India today (1995) is still only 50 to 90 cents a day. And that's a 12 to 18 hour day with only two days off a month so of course, if they can sell you something they will. But once you either buy something or you don't then there's only three subjects that interest them; family, God and Indian politics, in that order.
Since we foreigners don't understand their politics, we're spared that particular form of torture so they concentrate on their other two interests. “Who's in your family and what's your belief in God?” They then ask you if you'd like to meet their family? Then say, "I believe..."
However, with Indians it's more than belief, it's a way of life. They don't just practice their religion, they live it on a daily basis. It pervades everything that they think, say and do. They are their religion and are in complete harmony with it, therefore they'd like a new pair of shoes but they don't need them to be happy. They already have something much more meaningful that they can not lose and that cannot be taken away from them. We know lots of Indians where the whole family of 8 or 10 live in a two or three room mud hut with a dirt floor and a stick roof. They have no running water, it has to be hauled in buckets from the nearest well sometimes as far as a quarter mile away. They cook over a cow dung fire and eat mostly rice, dal (lentils) and chapaties (whole wheat tortillas) for every meal, drinking only water or chai (milk tea). The mother and father might have a change of clothes, one of which will be old, patched and badly worn but still clean. The children will have only the clothes on their backs, which will be very badly worn. The father will have an old pair of shoes and both mom and dad will have a cheap pair of sandals. The kids will be barefoot. Usually the grandparents will live with them and look after the smaller children while mom and dad and the older children work either in the fields or at jobs. Most of the children don't make it past the third grade before having to quit and go to work to help support the family.
They are unbelievably poor, owning almost nothing but still they are happy. They sing, dance, go to temple and are always interacting with one another and the other people around them. They simply don't care that they are poor, they have each other and they have their God, and that is enough to sustain them.
Kelly and I are considered homeless bums in America. We work as little as possible, live in an old VW van and own almost nothing. The cops are always moving us along, but in India we are respected because Indians don't look at what you have, they look at what you are and in what you believe. In India we are considered to be Yogi's, Sadhu's or Baba's. We show them pictures of our van usually parked somewhere out in the country and tell them that this is what we live in.
They are delighted saying, "You must be very great people indeed to live such a life." because in India the Baba life is something to aspire to. To give up everything and to live on faith alone, wandering around owning nothing is one of the highest goals that anyone can attain. It's the dream of most Indian males to work their whole lives securing the future for his wife and children then giving up everything to simply become a wandering Sadhu. Or to never marrying at all. I they instead become a Yogi's disciple as a young man and after studying with their Guru for ten or more years becoming a Yogi themselves, owning nothing but their begging bowl and a piece of cloth to cover their genitals.
In one village we stay in the most respected member of the community is called "The Old Baba". He's and his wife are almost 90 years old. They live in a very small mud hut that they haven't left in over 20 years. Before that he was one of the village yogi's but he still never went far from his hut. Since he's a Shivite, he and his wife spend their days smoking a chillum with a mixture of tobacco and ganja with the other villagers, giving them spiritual advice and chanting mantras with them. Even though ganja is illegal now in India, thanks to that rat-bastard Reagan, everyone, include the cops, still smoke with the Old Baba and his wife. All their needs are met. The people bring them food, water and chillum mix. They massage them, smoke and chant with them, and remove their wastes. Everyone in the village will tell you, "Yes, we have many holy men and women here. But he is the real Yogi."
We use to know a cave yogi who recently died in his 80's. He'd been living in his cave for over 50 years. You had to walk through a jungle then cross a large river to get to him. He lived in a small cave at the bottom of a waterfall that, he told us, had been continuously inhabited by yogis for over 5000 years. He owned nothing but his bowl and his loincloth, yet he was the most respected individual in the entire region. Everyone, who could, would visit him bringing him a bit of food and to listen to him speak. He said that sometimes during the monsoon that he would almost starve to death because the river was too high for people to cross, but it was no big deal, he'd live until he died, that's all.
Whenever women become yogis they're considered even more powerful and sacred than men. Not only because so few of them do, but because Hindus say that all power emanates from the female, that males only direct this power. That's why almost all Indian Gods have female counterparts, the males are only using the power that they get from the females. We know of a female yogi who climbed a small mountain in a remote part of India over 35 years ago to meditate and has never come back down. Again, all her needs, mainly food and water, are carried up to her by the people who live in the villages that surround the mountain. These people are very proud that they have a genuine Yogini in their area who own nothing and spends he days doing nothing but meditating.
Also, most Indians have a sense of self worth and pride in who and what they are. Even the poorest castes are happy and well adjusted because they have a place in their community and are necessary to the well being of their family and of their fellow villagers. Some families have up to 40 people living under one roof. It'll include the grandparents, the brothers and their wives and all of the children, with maybe even a few cousins thrown in. They will all work the farm together sharing the fortunes of their combined labor.
Plus, an Indian sense of normal is very wide, it's about the same as mine, respect your fellow human beings, try to get along with them and commit no violent acts against them. They're also thankful for the things that they do have. They do things like; bless the water tap or the electrical switch every time they turn one on, or every time that they're given a gift they touch it to their foreheads as a blessing. They have very little government in their lives and almost no "law", yet even though they're crowded and poor they get along really well with each other. Unlike the west, where normal has an extremely narrow definition and even though we are surrounded by cops, violence is everywhere. Calcutta, a city of 10 million+ people, most of whom are extremely poor, has almost no cops, yet anyone can sleep on the streets all night long unmolested. Try that in LA, if you weren’t mugged, you'd be arrested.
There have been plenty of times that we've slept in train station through out all of India surrounded by hundreds of people and have never been bothered. In fact, the Indians have always made a space for us and told us that they'd watch our stuff if we had to go to the toilet. And some of these people were so poor that they and their entire families live on the floor of the station, yet they were happy to help us and to chat with us asking nothing in return.
So this is the first great lesson of India: That material things are just that; things. They can help you out in life and make it easier for you but they can not make you really happy. That has to come from within, from your own heart, your own mind and you own soul, and from without, from the ones you love and who love and accept you for who and what you are.
The second great lesson is: How to wash your ass.
Indians like most Asians look at toilet paper not only as an unnecessary expense but as a filthy habit too. They can hardly believe that someone would be so dirty and uncivilized as to walk around with an unwashed anus. Have you no shame! We know Indians who will not deal with westerners for only that one reason and others who will refuse to shake the dirty hand of a tourist. They're always polite about but they are not touching one of the great unwashed. Once they find out that you wash after toilet, their whole attitude changes toward you. They'll be much friendlier. They will invite you home to meet the family and have dinner with them.
Before I learned to use soap and water instead of paper I suffered from hemorrhoids. I even had to go to see a doctor once because they were bleeding. He rubber banded them, gave me some ointment and told me that it was a very common complaint, and that unless I ate a lot more whole grains that I’d probably have them the rest of my life. I was only 32 years old! Thankfully we went to India the next year. When I went into an Indian pharmacy and told the clerk that I needed some hemorrhoid cream, he asked me if I used toilet paper. I said yes. He told me that was the one of the causes of my hemorrhoids, and if I stopped using paper and switched to soap and water, that they'd go away on their own. He told me that hemorrhoids are caused not only from a bad diet (meaning meat) but also from tiny bits of fecal matter that the paper leave behind and even by the paper itself, that the paper left wood fibers behind and they also irritated the anus.
He also told me that the best cure for hemorrhoids was to tuck them back up into the anus where they belonged and where they could heal themselves. This was almost impossible to do with paper but easily accomplished with your fingers. I figured that I had nothing to lose by trying this so I asked him how to do it.
He told me to us a large cup with a spout on it. Fill it with clean water and using your right hand. Sluice it slowly down your anal cleft from behind while with your left hand that you've put some soap on your fingers. Then reach between your legs and using one or two fingers, clean you anus real good tucking up any hemorrhoids back up into the anus that needed it. That's it, easy. Now wash your hand really good with soap and water. I tried it and at first due to my western training about an aversion to shit, I found it very hard to do, to actually touch it, Yuck! But I persisted and finally got used to it. That was over 15 years ago and since then I've never gone back to toilet paper except in case of emergency, and I've never suffered from hemorrhoids since. They went away within a month and have never come back even though my diet has remained pretty much the same. Funny thing too, I now have a small aversion to westerners and their unwashed asses. How can they not wash themselves after toilet and walk around with dirty asses?
When I tell westerners about this they say, "How can touch your self down there? I never could."
I tell them to try this as an experiment: Next time you come home from a hard days work or play and are all dirty and sweaty, instead of taking a shower or bath and using soap and water, just rub your body all over with toilet paper and see how clean you feel.
When I tell this to my Indian friends they laugh and say, "That's right, westerners just don't realize how dirty they really are."
Well, it's our culture’s fault. We were never told so we never learned to correct way and we even think the opposite is true. Toilet paper is clean and washing our anuses with soap and water is dirty. It doesn't quite make sense when you look at it this way. But I have learned the two great lessons of India and my life is much better because of it, and that is: Things are nice to have but they are not what makes me happy. And my ass is clean.