Cartwheels in a Sari by Jayanti Tamm Read Free Book Online Page B

bound by dogma? Doesn't the true spiritual search require self-guidance?”
    Three male disciples surrounded him and nudged him toward the aisle in an effort to remove him.
    As he passed by me and headed to the back, with a bellowing voice he said, “The Buddha said to question everything the Master says is truth and find your own tru …”
    And he was gone.
    My father, in his official capacity as Guru's attorney, followed him out. The entire church throbbed with outrage. Nothing like this had ever occurred before. If disciples had concerns, they kept them to themselves; Guru was never questioned, certainly not in public. My mother put her arm around me, pulling me into her and rubbing my neck with her thumb. Confrontation in general scared me, let alone ashouting spectacle at a meditation. The sacred space felt altered, and its shock hit me suddenly. The changes Girish had raged about had no meaning to me. What did I care or understand if Guru enacted radical policy reversals from arranging “divine marriages,” as he did for my mother and father, to a permanent ban on marriage? So what if seekers either married before joining or remained forever single? No one, and certainly not my parents, explained to me its permanent impact, that it meant my future destiny was to be a nun. I suppose, even if they had, at the time, I would have found it a wonderfully exciting adventure, a way to remain forever attached only to Guru.
    Looking back, however, Girish was right. By the mid-seventies, everything had changed, even the name of our group. Originally called the Aum Center, Guru renamed it the Sri Chinmoy Center, the first of many programs, objects, places, and awards he named in his own honor. The fact that we no longer met for official meditations in Guru's house, and now went to the church, was another enormous change that happened overnight.
    Only days earlier, in the long car ride home from Bayside, when my parents assumed Ketan and I were sleeping, I overheard my father break his own law of maintaining meditative silence in the car to discuss the events that had led to the sudden move to the church. The New York meditations used to be held inside Guru's home, and Guru's neighbors, from their front stoops, gawked at the smiling throng who filed into the blue house each night. My father spoke about one neighbor in particular, a petite married woman a few years older than Guru, who lived directly across the street. Curious about the Indian man, the woman began having neighborlychats with Guru. Charmed by Guru's attention, she decided to attend meditations and soon became a regular fixture at Guru's house. Her husband, a no-nonsense laborer unimpressed by the flocks of what he considered young hippies crowding into the house across the street, began questioning his wife as to what she was doing at a black man's house. When other neighbors confided to him that they had spotted his wife, alone, tiptoeing in and out of the Indian's house in the middle of the night, rumors of an affair seemed confirmed. The husband had had enough.
    My mother had turned around, to ensure that we were both sleeping, before my father continued. I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned against Ketan's snoring body. My parents had already lost me. We all went to Guru's house. What was the problem?
    A call was received by the Queens Building Department, my father continued, that the house was being utilized as a church in a neighborhood not zoned for religious buildings. Building inspectors arrived unexpectedly late one afternoon and, seeing the rows of chairs in the living room, issued a stern warning. Guru would not be able to hold meditations inside his house anymore. The disgruntled husband was ready to go public with allegations of the affair. Guru was furious. He gathered a few disciples, explaining that the Supreme, at times, commands that instead of using compassion, he should use justice.
    Sure enough, the Supreme had bestowed his benevolent justice