leaving the earth from a chrysanthemum

Jake and I may not technically be travelling together right now, but we're still certainly on a similar plane... While he lives and works in Auroville, a place that was envisioned and founded by the Mother, I have been attending a conference that was convened because of a call from The Mother. Let me explain... I took a ride to Jaipur with Seth, an American I met at the Taj Mahal, and that decision has opened up a string of concidences that have made this past week pretty amazing and insane. Seth is great- graduated college in Colorado, sailed around the Caribbean and Africa for 3 years, and now he's self-employed, running a company that advertises products from Asian factories to the wholesale buyer. He lives in China and Colorado, and travels to trade shows around SE Asia. I managed to catch him when he was on a 5 day extended vacation through India, and it was really wonderful travelling with him for a couple of days. Seth was on the business man budget, and I had been couchsurfing for a long while, so when he suggested a place called Hotel Diggi Palace, a more mid-range spot in Jaipur, I figured why not, it's only for a night (which has now become 4 nights for me). Diggi Palace is GORGEOUS, with lots of British colonial charm (only said partly tongue in cheek). It's quiet, there are tons of birds (and sometimes elephants!!), and it's still in the middle of the city. Anyways, this stay at Diggi Palace is more important for the people it has brought me to, less so for the decor.

I overheard a woman talking in the lobby/courtyard, and since my American (particularly east coast) accent radar is still on high, I couldn't help but approach her and ask where she is from. Turns out she's from Brooklyn, works in fashion, and was in India attending the Global Peace Initiative of Women conference that was taking place over the next 3 days in Jaipur. She and her friend Maxine, a photographer from New York, asked if I wanted to tag along later that day to see if I could get in, and of course I couldn't pass up the opportunity. For those who don't know me or what I studied in school, this conference is pretty much a dream come true for me. You've got a Vassar girl, anthropology/sociology major, with a focus on gender studies, embodiment, and violence (sexual violence/prison reform). I also did a lot of work in creative arts therapies and wholistic health education and integration into the student life... The conference was entitled "Bringing out the feminine for the benefit of the world community". Basically, the conference mission is not to talk about how women can change the world (we already know that all too well), but rather it was talking about out the feminine qualities that exist in BOTH men and women- oneness, compassion, softness, generally a more wholistic approach and perspective on the world. The Global Peace Initiative of Women was brought together from a UN summit of religious leaders. At the summit (in 2000 I believe), it was observed that there were only 5 female religious leaders of hundreds. Kofi Annan requested that the 5 women gather other female religious leaders from around the world so that they could meet and work together. This conference had some really major religious and spiritual leaders, both men and women, and I am still amazed and feeling incredibly blessed that I stumbled upon it. Amma, a really famous female guru who is known as the Hugging Mother (she has gatherings all over the world in which she literally spends all night giving thousands of people hugs), opened up the conference , and I must say, I almost started crying when she entered the room, her energy was so strong. The speakers ranged from the first female rabbi in Israel (whom I approached and started babbling about kind of being Jewish and how my friends have a female Rabbi back home, and I think that's really amazing, and she just smiled a lot), to Tibetan lamas and monks, to Sisters and Reverends, to doctors and lawyers from South Africa, women who spend their lives working with refugees and other people in Burundi and Kenya, a Cambodian woman who watched her mother killed by the Khmer Rouge, and then became a lawyer to fight against them, singers, grammy award winning musicians, other young people from Iraq to Mexico to Tunisia to Thailand, swamys and gurus, foundation heads, business people, it just keeps going. Needless to say I was able to make a ton of connections with really fantastic people, and was consistently overwhelmed listening to everyone speak. Yesterday was conflict day, and I watched two Israeli scholars and leaders and two Palestinian scholars and leaders sit on stage and have a conversation, laughing together and of course trying to work through the tension that was so evident. Listening to people's stories and meeting these people from all around the world, particularly meeting all these spiritual leaders, gave me a grounding (and a lift) that was really needed.

At one point, there was a sufi devotional music performance and it was really percussive and gorgeous. There was this Israeli singer named Miriam, who liked to give me hugs, and she was just dancing in the middle of the gathering tent, completely blissful in her own world, even though everybody was staring. I just couldn't help myself, I walked to the center, and joined her, and the two of us laughed and danced to the music, shutting our eyes because it felt right but also because there were tons of people taking pictures, and I didn't want to feel uncomfortable (haha). In just a few minutes though, more people started joining in, and pretty soon there was a huge global dance party in the middle of the tent, men and women, moving our hips, wrists, necks, feet, hands, sharing dances from all around the world. Amidst all the talking, debating, this was much-needed... In the middle of the song, I wandered to the outskirts of the circle just to watch, and I noticed a butterfly resting on a giant white chysanthemum flower. There have been butterflies fluttering about through the conference, which is a great blessing, so I felt particularly happy to see this butterfly at this moment. However, on closer inspection I noticed that the butterfly wasn't moving, and that it was in fact dead. I felt a pang of sadness, but then I thought, "what a beautiful time and place for that butterfly to leave the earth!"

There were smaller circle discussions throughout the conference, and at one point I felt moved to talk a little bit about my own experiences and work. When I referred to Thich Naht Han, and a poem he wrote called "Please Call Me by My True Names" I caught two Burmese monks nodding in agreement out of the corner of my eye. I can't articulate the accepatance I felt with that nod, but it had made me see the path I want to take in life a little more clearly.

All of that said... This conference has been amazing, but at the same time a bit overwhelming, and it brought up a lot of issues that I haven't really been facing in India. First of all, the conference was by no means perfect. There was absolutely no Latino/Latina representation in any of the panels, and the majority of people from the states were white. Class and sexual identity were virtually from the discussions. Beyond that, I was surrounded by more Americans, and actually more New Yorkers that I've been in the past 4 months, and it was a lot more difficult than I thought. Perhaps I've romanticized New York too much in my head? I realize I'll have a little bit of culture shock when I go home, which is normal, but I didn't think I'd experience.

This post is getting quite long, so I'm going to cut it off here, and save everything else that's been whirling around in my head for the next post. I'm going to a wedding in a village outside of Jaipur today, and I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories and adventures from that! Peace&blessings