Past the Surface-Depths of Truth

Past the Surface-Depths of Truth

The last few weeks, I have had a changing life experience with the mobile hospital. Because the mobile hospital has been in Chapare, a jungle area about 4 hours outside of Cochabamba, I have been part of a small group of workers who have been walking house to house in the rural areas that we serve. We are getting family information and medical history in order to help us serve the communities better. This has been one of those experiences that will forever impact my life and has altered, in its own way, the way I see the world. I guess I wasn’t quite ready, or rather caught off guard, to meet the people face to face, that before, had only been statistics in books for me. The weighted true reality hit me, as house after house, I heard stories that were heartbreaking. And not only the fact that these stories were real from people I was spending time with, but the appearance of acceptance or normality to these sub-human conditions made me seek...

 Some of the children from the rural communities sitting on the mobile hospital

This experience left me pondering many things and I left feeling...helpless and deeply saddened. I had been to these same communities a number of times, but now I had an understanding of these places that was beneath the surface. 

 A group of women and many of their young children attending a workshop on health

How often I still only see the surface in my own life and those I come in contact with. One recent example for me was when I was volunteering this last fall at Christ’s House, a homeless medical shelter for men in Washington, DC. I came into the situation with my own bias, ignorance, and opinions about homelessness and what I found after getting past the surface was absolutely incredible. Once I was able to spend time with the men, develop relationships and trust, and hear their life stories, it was able to change my perspective on not only homelessness, but more importantly, superficially labeling anyone without getting to know the heart of that person. It may be easier or keep life simpler to not go beyond the surface, but I believe it leads to a life of illusion and ignorance as well hindering us from reaching our full thriving potential. 

Man on the street staying dry during some rain in NYC

I am currently listening to a course on the lives of Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad, from the Great Course Teaching Company, which I highly recommend, and I am reminded of what was said about the Buddha, “After his first awakening it didn’t bring him peace but restiveness, it was enough to cause him to walk away from his life of ease and comfort. He could have easily stayed within the walls of illusion. He could have done what most of us do when we glimpse our frailties and mortality, just forget about it. With the aid of alcohol and other drugs, cosmetics and surgeries, amusements and sports, mindless consumption and acquisitions, we try to stop thinking about what we know to be true. We do it so well that usually we aren’t even aware that we are doing it. Perhaps this has been the approach of choice for most humans throughout history. Our species has devoted an incredible amount of creative energy to creating new methods to hide the truth from ourselves.” 

I wanted to share this experience with you even though it has been difficult to accept and it’s something I continue to grapple with. As crazy as it may sound, I am grateful for the opportunity to be in these type of situations that profoundly impact my life. It’s just the truth of our reality, and I am thankful to have had my eyes opened to it personally. I hope in some small way I can give back and have a positive impact on the people I come in contact with, because they have impacted mine.
I’ll finish this entry with some words of encouragement for any of you who are reading as well as myself. “I realized that you do not find clarity in the mind but in the heart. And the heart will not speak to you unless you quiet yourself and liberate yourself from such masters as greed, envy, and illusion. But if you can do this you will find, in the stillness that follows insights of wisdom that are obtainable in no other way. You will begin to see things as they really are.”