On April 7, PBS broadcast a two-hour documentary “Buddha” a journey through the life and times of the historical Buddha who lived in north eastern Indian two thousand five hundred years ago. The documentary is also an introduction to his teachings. One of the commentators extols the four sites of great importance for Buddhists and anyone interested in his teachings. The Buddha was born in Lumbini on the Nepal-India border, he found enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, gave his first teaching at Sarnath (near Varanasi) and died at Kushinigar.

Varanasi, River Ganges, India (© Janet Levine, 2007)

On a month-long journey to India and Nepal in 2007, I visited all four places and many others and can attest to the power of the Buddha’s presence, nowhere more powerfully (for me) than in Bodh Gaya in remote, desolate Bihar province.

At the same time as this PBS airing was receiving notice, I was teaching the timeless novel by Hermann Hesse “Siddartha” to two sections of high school juniors. In his novel Hesse follows the journey of a fictional Indian prince, Siddartha, and cleverly illumines for western readers some of Buddhism’s key teachings. I teach this book following on a unit on “Hamlet”, a precocious Western prince struggling with all the depression, anxiety and angst that causes so much suffering in the mind structures of the human condition as we understand it in the west. This Eastern prince searches for happiness, inner peace and enlightenment. He learns to trust his own inner teacher, the same voice inside himself that is heard throughout nature and governs the universal laws that keeps the earth on its axis and the great spiral of our cosmos swirling in limitless space. He teaches the “middle way” neither too tight nor too loose. These are eastern mind structures.

Throughout the “Siddartha” reading students kept an “ideas” journal;  informal, personal responses to some of the ideas they are encountering for the first time. Reading these journals is rewarding. None more so than the student who wrote of understanding one’s destiny as being a path to greatness, of being arrogant enough to unleash that greatness into the world, of knowing that every human being is capable of finding that greatness inside oneself. Buddhism teaches that this greatness is called achieving buddhahood, reflecting into the world the radiant enlightenment the Buddha achieved under the bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya. Nelson Mandela famously quoted Marilyn Williamson

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

But the Buddha also taught that the greatness is not greatness at all but ordinariness, the ordinariness of a hot cup of tea on a frosty morning, washing the dishes, taking out the trash and seeing the moon rise. The ordinariness of the courage of getting out of bed every morning and doing what you do every day. The ordinariness of responding to a stranger’s smile. And most importantly the ordinariness of living in the present moment, of being aware to everyone and everything in every moment.

Tags: Children, creativity, human rights, meditation, mind structure, Mind-training

On March 21 1960 the South African police shot and killed 69 people–men, women and children–at the police station in the dusty East Rand township of Sharpeville, South Africa. Almost two hundred more were injured. Almost all were shot in the back as they tried to escape the police bullets. On that Monday, the Pan-African Congress (PAC), an anti-apartheid movement lead by university lecturer Robert Sobukwe, initiated a series of protests against black people having to carry the hated “dompas” (identity documents) signifying that they were aliens in their own country. As the tragedy at Sharpeville unfolded outrage in the country and around the world resulted in unprecedented media fury aimed at the racist apartheid policies of the white Afrikaner Nationalist government.

The  10 days following the Sharpeville massacre changed the course of South African history. Protests and strikes were widespread and a run on the stock market particularly by foreign investors almost crippled the economy. Scores of thousands of protesters were detained, and as the jails filled, Sobukwe’s goal of rendering the country ungovernable seemed closer. Prime Minister Dr. Verwoerd’s government declared a state of emergency and on April 9 he miraculously survived an assassination attempt. Repressive legislation aimed at squashing any resistance was rushed through parliament and ushered in the dark years of “granite” apartheid as South Africa (overnight it seemed) became a police state.

Subsequently, regrettably, the world has seen similar outrages against humanity, and it seems they increase exponentially as we watch innocent people dying as a result of  terrorist activity or internecine warfare all over the world. But Sharpeville remains a high-water mark of shame in the struggle for human rights.

A native South African, I was a young teenager at the time and already a staunch proponent of human rights and an anti-apartheid activist. Today I remain committed to the struggle for human rights everywhere. In 1960 I can remember hearing the military helicopters overhead as the government cordoned off the black townships from the rest of the country. At night, in the Johannesburg suburb were I lived, to the east and west, we could hear salvos of gunfire as the police quelled all resistance. I was convinced that the anti-apartheid movement would prevail and freedom was upon us. But it took 44 more years for the first democratic elections to be held in South Africa, and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress government of national unity to be formed.

Currently March 21 is a public holiday in South Africa, Human Rights Day. To celebrate the great heroes of that historic moment, particularly Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and his PAC, and the extraordinary events of the year that shook South Africa, my motherland, a place I love fiercely, I have written a historical novel, CONFLAGRATION. It is a tender love story set against the perverted political furor.

I am hopeful I will connect with the right literary agent for this book. If any interested literary agent thinks they may want to represent this work, please contact me, so with this novel, we can help  to carry the torch of human rights forward, as well as the dream of a shared humanity that never dies. I’d love to hear from blog readers too.

Tags: apartheid, Children, Conflagration, creativity, historical fiction, human rights, Sharpeville massacre