Arizona Yoga

Summer 2004

(Following is an article by Rama Jyoti Vernon, reprinted from the newsletter of the Arizona Yoga Association)

Seva in Afghanistan

Rama Vernon

“The world is like the kink of the dogs tail, as long as you hold it you think it is straight. The moment you let go, it just kinks up again." These were the words of Yogi Vivekananda, the first Yogi and Swami to visit the Untied States in l893 for the World's Parliament of Religion.  His teachings influenced my practices of Yoga for several decades.

I once believed the greatest service I could give to our world would be my own inner peace, and helping others find their deep sense of inner peace through Yoga. But in l984 during the height of the Cold War between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., I was called to serve the world in bringing warring factions together through dialogue forums and conflict resolution trainings. After creating hundreds of peace exchanges between the two superpowers, my colleagues and I were eventually asked to extend our work to Armenia, Azerbiajan, the Middle East, Central America, China, Kosovo, Cuba, Ethiopia, and South Africa.

"What is it that you are doing that works?"  A Moscow official once asked. For many months, as I pondered this question, I discovered that no matter what country I was in ... no matter what leader, or citizen I was meeting with, it was all Yoga. Through Yoga, without realizing it, I transcended the borders of separation between my country and another, the good and evil concepts that seem to dominate the thinking of so many in our world today. I also found over the years, I was able to transcend the separation, and my own divisions of what was the "inner" work and the "outer" work within the world.  After a time I could no longer draw lines of demarcation but found that one would support the other and both were mutually interdependent.

I've recently returned from Afghanistan where decades of wars and invasions have taken their toll on the country and its people. I was invited to assess the country's needs, work with its widows and orphans, and explore the possibility of creating a Women's Conference with representatives from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Russia and Turkey. Meetings were arranged with highly educated women of the Rotary club in Kabul. These women are journalists, educators, and members of governmental ministries, active in rebuilding their country.  They are very enthusiastic about coming together with their sisters from neighboring lands, in the hope that through these connections they might prevent future conflicts and war. I was shocked when Hawah, one of the leading women TV journalists of Afghanistan suddenly said,  "Men destroy...Women rebuild!"  Expecting a reaction from the Afghan men, I watched them, waiting for a response.  They did not flinch but instead with downcast eyes, nodded their heads in agreement.

In Afghanistan, my stereotypes were challenged.  U.S, media tend to portray women covered totally by the blue linen fold or silk burkas (more accurately known as Shoudhuri) as the "the poor women behind the veil." With only a mesh opening for seeing and breathing, they either felt safe and protected or felt their individuality and personal identity had disappeared under the cloak of tribal and national conformity. I assumed the women of Afghanistan, Taliban or not, were meek and mild and deferred to the men for their mere existence. However, women we met were powerful, courageous and enthusiastic about rebuilding their country.  Young women did not cover their entire bodies. Many wore headscarves and long pants with tunic tops. Others, no doubt a bit older, still found refuge under the Burka, not knowing if the Taliban would return. Now, women were expressing their individuality with tight knit or colorful sequined skirts.

In the Bazaar, I was surprised to find booths of shoes that were wild and daring - sparkling plastic sling back pumps, jeweled embroidered velvet slippers, brazen colors, sparkles and plastic flowers were a contrast to the colorless stereotype we in America held of the Afghan woman. Many of them asked us for lipstick, face creams, eye and face makeup. Some daringly threw the front cloth of their Burkas back over their head, striding defiantly through the muddy and dusty streets of Kabul. "Better safe than sorry," said one very powerful widow as she pulled the Burka apologetically over her head. She survived the Taliban regime and now supports a large family on her earnings from the cottage industry of sewing. She was teaching other widows how to support themselves, their children and even their extended family of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews by sewing, weaving and embroidering.

I have gained a unique window into the Afghan society by traveling with the American born Hartung sisters, who lived in Afghanistan during the 1960's, a time when Afghanistan was experiencing the most stable period in its national history and developing a democratic government. Marnie Hartung Gustavson, a co-founder of Advocates of Afghanistan, and Ruth, her sister, founder of 7 Centers Yoga in Sedona and President of the International Yoga College (formerly the American Yoga College), offered insights into the effects of war on the country that provided a valuable comparison to current conditions. Ruth's deep penetrative insights into the spiritual depth of this incredible country confirmed my feelings that the Vedic roots and origins of the philosophical wealth of the East came not just from Mother India, but from this region as well. 

The widows of the wars were thrilled with the contributions we gathered in America so they could buy sewing machines in Kabul. The hand turned sewing machines cost only $35 each, and operate without electricity. Electricity is a major luxury in some areas of Kabul and almost nonexistent in the provinces. The intent of our small group of six people was not to give charity, but to work with the newly emerging entrepreneurs and leaders to support and help them teach their own people in their own language.

We met with leaders of a small refugee camp where children, matted with dust, ran barefoot over frozen winter ground. The swatches of violet-red that streaked the children's usually all black hair made them look like punk rockers, but is sadly due to malnutrition. The people have no wood for fires to keep warm.  Their dirt floor tent shelters are tattered and worn from the harsh elements.  We were invited to sit on the ground by the opening of a tent where one of the leaders of the camp lived with his family.  A toothless elderly looking woman dusted the ground with a hand made hand broom and then later brought us hand made quilts and blankets, and insisted we sit on them.  Her wispy gray hair, hunchback, and gnarled hands gave the impression she was much older than her 52 earthly years.

As our group spoke to the leaders, trying to identify the needs, we found that most in this camp had once been farmers, agriculturalists, who had lost their land in wars and invasions.  Now they shine shoes and often must begged for money or food for their families.  Due to the gifts of money we raised in the US specifically for the refugees, we were able to temporarily help the situation.  By the end of the trip, members of our group arranged for regular medical care, food, hygiene lessons and general education for the children.  Most important of all, the "forgotten ones' of this camp now felt seen and heard knowing that there were those out there who truly cared about their fate and their future. 

We attended a Sufi meeting one afternoon, and sat in Satsang with our Afghan Brothers whose devotion to God could be felt through their poetry, songs and dances. Ruth and I were asked to teach Yoga to groups of Islamic Afghan women in Kabul.  In one group, the women quickly removed all their cloth coverings, revealing tights and or tapered trousers and sleeveless tops.  They swung their arms and stretched for the sky and dropped to the earth. "What does Yoga mean?" asked one women in the front of the class."  "It means union,” I

answered. "Union with what?" she asked, stretching her arms to the heavens.  What could I say, that would be acceptable in this culture?  There was only one answer that escaped from my lips at that moment. The women gasped and loudly sighed in approval when I replied;  "Union with God".  

Our periodic excursions out of Kabul through the mountainous passes were the most memorable for me personally. As we wound our way northwest into this valley of the Tajic Tribes, we traversed the difficult roads through many small villages along the Panjshir River with the towering white peaks of snow all around us.  It felt like a pilgrimage in India, as if journeying to the feet or Maha Samadhi tomb of the master.  In the Panjshir Valley, we visited the tomb of General Hamad Shah Massoud, the matryed leader of the Northern Alliance who was

assassinated 2 days before 9/11. “He was a great peacemaker", we were told by our guide, "He brought the heads of the tribes together and together they were planning to build a new democratic Afghanistan...But then before the Americans made war on us, he was assassinated .Two days before September 11, when the planes hit your New York buildings", our guide and interpreter shared, "two foreigners from Saudi Arabia came into this country and killed him.”

In Kabul General Hamad Massoud's picture adorned large billboards, taxicabs, buses, stores and little shops built from the dirt and dust of the earth.  His image eclipsed the one or two large pictures on the Airport and government buildings of Hamid Karzai, the U.S. appointed president of Afghanistan whom some called the Mayor of Kabul.  President Karsai's name was rarely if ever spoken, as if he were a non-person.  However, General Massoud's name was extolled wherever we went regardless of tribal affiliations. 

When we arrived in what appeared to be a primitive mountainous area, it was obvious that the white round tomb of General Massoud, with its metal roof dome was a pilgrimage site for those who wished to pay homage to this man who could have been a great leader bringing peace at last to a nation tired of wars, invasions, and occupation. The energy of the tomb was meditative. It did not feel like a place to come to seek retaliation, but a place of peace reminding the human heart of love and forgiveness rather than revenge.

Another day, our group of six people also ventured to the Northwest area toward Central Afghanistan through the exquisite valley countryside to the Bamiyan Valley to pay homage to the site where the millennia old Buddhas once stood before the Taliban bombed them. The journey was only 80 miles but it took over ten hours, as the roads were unpaved and far more suitable for the mountainous longhaired goats than for motor vehicles. The women were not fully covered as in the cities. Their outfits were more colorful like the clothing of Rajasthan in Northern India. "We love India," our Islamic guides said more than once. "We love their clothes, their music and their food." As we journeyed deeper into this valley rich with orange, apples, dates and grapes, the farmers enjoyed the lazy early spring sun as they tilled the thawing ground with primitively carved hand plows and only one ox. "So that is the yoking of Yoga," I thought, "the harnessing or bringing together the plow to the oxen.... to till the soil or ground of our own being for the new seeds to be sewn".

Our journey continued, and the faces and costumes of the people changed as we wound our way following the river and valley floor through several high mountain passes and down again through the rocky gorges. We went from the area of the Pashtun tribes into the Hazara tribal villages where we seemed to transcend the passage of time and entered into a primordial world that felt like the beginning of civilization upon earth. Faces, bone structure, eyes and dialect changed, it felt as if we were in the mountainous and remote regions of Tibet. The tribal peoples looked so much like the Tibetans that we asked if there had once been a Chinese influence here. "No No", one teacher emphatically shook his head, obviously not pleased with the comparison. "Gengghis Khan?” I asked timidly expecting to be again reprimanded for the comparisons. "Yes, Yes, Genghis Khan" the teacher answered, straightening up to this bigger than life ancient tribal war lord. "Gengas Khan", he repeated, sticking his thumb in his lapel and puffing out his chest.

The remaining coves of the male and female giant Buddhas towered to the top of 200-foot high cliffs. Even though the images were no longer the guardians of the cave, their aura, or energy field that had been worshipped for thousands of years, could be felt pervading and protecting the entire valley. "Who lived in these caves?" I asked one of the Hazara guides. "The people who worshipped the Buddhas," was his simple answer. Tiers of caves towered one over the other with connecting tunnels and ancient carved stone stairs leading through this labyrinth of beehive honeycombs from one cliff or mountain to another. The views from the cave openings were breathtaking, as we looked out into the eight or nine thousand-foot valley floor, with housing compounds that were built from the dirt of the earth, like colorless crusader's castles.

I inhaled the atmosphere. Women in their colorful ancient Biblical dress knelt elegantly by the river pools filling pots of water they would carry on their heads back to their homes. Old men, bent with time, carried tiny sticks on their backs while donkeys carried the heavier firewood. The towns looked, as one member of our group said, “like in a spaghetti western, with gnarled small tree trunks holding up the wood verandas over the raw wood board walks". Towering mountains surrounding this valley were like the peaks of Mt. Kailasa, the abode of the great lord Shiva. The air was charged with the molecules of prana as the breeze blew over the untouched snow of the mountaintops. My heart was so full of love for the area and the peoples that there were no words to express it. I yearned to enter into the village life, sleep on the earth by an open fire, carry water, chop wood, and tend the goats and fan-tailed sheep in the meadows and cliff side paths.

The pull of entering into the land that time has forgotten would be jarred by the current condition. Men shouldering the old Russian rifles with tanks and convoy trucks that dotted the valley floors, a reminder of the invasions and occupation of the U.S.S.R. The farmers and the children stood in their fields with crutches to support legs lost to one of the most prevalent perils in our world today.... land mines. For the people of this region and war torn regions throughout the world, I thought, the war is never over!

On the way back from Bamiyan, we asked our drivers if they would teach us how to pray with them. They stopped the van along a gurgling mountain stream and spread a small blanket upon which we could kneel. Our driver, Waheed, hobbled over to the grass and dipped his hands in the stream to wash his face, take the water over his hair, on his hands, wrist and forearms, and then he removed the prosthesis that took the place of his left leg, claimed by a land mine. Our two guides then began to pray in Arabic and we followed in the prostrations and prayers with them. Though we did not understand all the words, it became a holy moment between all of us, and once again proved the Oneness of devotion.

One cold rainy morning, we made our way through the muddy streets of Kabul to an orphanage. A group of impoverished children accosted us with begging, outstretched hands. The most assertive little girl was covered in mud. Her worn and tattered dress had seen many more days than her tender years. Her once white sandals were broken and held together by pieces of frayed string and covered with old plastic bags to keep her feet dry, but it wasn't working. The February icy rain had soaked through her thin cotton dress, and her plastic covered shoes were soaking wet. The child sloshed beside and in front of us as we worked our way through the courtyard and to the front door of the orphanage.  As our hosts greeted us to take us to the orphans, they shooed the little beggars away. The girl with the plastic covered sandals and thin cotton dress disappeared into the early morning mist. As we unpacked suitcases full of paper, crayon, pencil and pens to do grief therapy through art with the orphans, I could not forget the child outside the door. "It's heartbreaking," I thought, "Children on one side of the door receive nothing. This side of the door children are fed, have clean hair and clothes, are educated and in general seem to be alert and playful."  

"Is it a door," that separates us as nations, states and people?  Is it the door of the human mind, I wondered that day, that separates our perception of evil and good, darkness and light? Is it doors, or a veil of forgetfulness? What separates us from the idea of "One Humanity" is the remembrance that our brothers and sisters of all races, religions, ethnicities and beliefs are not only a reflection of ourselves...they are us!

A few years ago while attending an environmental conference in Elat, Israel, where the Dali Lama was the honored guest, we were invited to meditate at sunrise with him on the nearby mountain that overlooked the "four corners" of the

Middle East.  As his Holiness stood on the precipice of a cliff, with only the sky for a backdrop, he looked down over the countries that converged in the valleys beneath: Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.  "I don't see any environmental or natural boundaries of separation here, " he giggled softly.  "Which makes me think," he hesitated, "that the only borders are those within the human mind."

Rama Vernon has been at the forefront of the East-West yoga movement for over 35 years. She is a global peace diplomat, founder of the Center for International Dialogue (CID, (www.cfid.org), and the International Yoga College (formerly American Yoga College). Her work with CID recently took her to Afghanistan, to provide aid to women and children. Rama's Yoga Sutra-based work provides a unique approach to teaching national and international conflict resolution. If you wish to contribute to this worthwhile work, write or send donations to: Center for International Dialogue, Box 300, 2509 N. Campbell Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719