If you could take one thing … ?

So, this was humbling …

All packed and ready for the airport, my cab driver was running ten minutes late, and then spent another five minutes waiting for me outside of someone else’s house halfway down the street. I had calculated my journey based on the assumption that this taxi company is usually early, not late; and now found myself mildly irritated as I ran up to his car to let him know he was at the wrong address. Then, instead of getting in next to him in the front seat, as I often do, I sat in the back, out of view of his mirror, planning to ignore him for the rest of the journey.

About three minutes in, I realized how churlish this was (and for that matter hypocritical, given that I was counting mantras!) – so I started chatting to him, and he to me.

When I asked where he was born, he said “Eritrea”. He is here alone and has been for nine years, all his family are still in Eritrea, on the border of Ethiopia.

I manage to get over to London to see my parents two or even three times a year and even that doesn’t seem enough. When I asked him when he was going back to see his family – his mum, his dad, and everybody else – he said, “Probably never”. Thinking that this might be about not having sufficient funds, I discovered instead that it’s because he left illegally and, if he returns, might never get the chance to leave again. Or worse.

Thence ensued an extraordinary story – the journey of a refugee who has made it to safety through an almost impossible mixture of courage and blind luck. His name is Henos.

I just texted Gen Samten, who is wondering when to book his flight to Denver, and mentioned Henos. He replied: “I would love to hear more about that conversation. We are so privileged and complain when our plane is a few hours late. Accounts like this give context.”

So here it is.

His journey started with an illegal crossing into the bordering Ethiopia – not a long trip, but not a safe one either; and the one in which he said goodbye to his family and country perhaps forever.

He was in a camp there, not a great one if any of them are; and the choice was to stay there or to find a way to keep moving. So he got himself out of the camp and to Sudan, which took two days, walking and finding some rides. And then further north to Libya, a month’s trek over the Sahara desert, with a group of people who paid someone to smuggle them through: “It was very dangerous. We had a very little to eat and less to drink. (He demonstrated a daily ration the size of a thumb). This was really, really hard. And very dangerous, we had to travel at night and hide in the day.” “You’re so brave!”, I said, with inadequate words and having barely had to miss a meal in my life even when not in a desert. He dismissed the notion: “I had to do this, I had no choice. I couldn’t stay in Eritrea because of the government. I had to look forward, keep looking forward, to a place where I could be safe. I had to accept the fear.”

At this point, sitting comfortably in a taxi zooming its way through London in Springtime, not even on the tube!!!, with oodles of time to catch my plane despite the delay, I was realizing how spoiled I am. And what I would have missed if I had sulked for even a moment longer rather than talking to him.

So, he got to Libya – the camp was horrible, naturally, and he and the other refugees were kept firmly separated from the town and its people, second-class citizens amongst some of the poorest people in the world. No shops. No places to go. Nothing to do. Surrounded by strangers.

A detail or two has gone missing from my memory here, but somehow after some months he managed to get out from that Libyan camp and onto one of those very overcrowded boats to Italy, for 500 US dollars per person. Very uncomfortable, to say the least, and then, when they were about two hours from land, a terrifying storm arose.

The boat was being rocked around, the storm getting stronger and stronger. And it transpired that only the previous day, in the same rough seas, 150 illegal immigrants had drowned in similar circumstances. Today, however, the maritime military were on the look out for repeat boats, and spotted them. A helicopter hovered over their heads. Three fast boats came out of nowhere, one on the left, one on the right, one in front, and escorted them through the storm to the shore. Whoah.

Meanwhile, just now, at Heathrow, I showed my passport, no questions asked, as per usual. I printed out my bag tag for my suitcase, which is full of stuff I really don’t need to lug all the way over to the other side of the world, if I even need it at all. I was waved through security, everyone smiley and polite, and not once did I have to hide from authorities or bandits, or avoid death by drowning.

Back into a refugee center in Italy, at which point Henos had to decide on whether he would now try to get into Sweden or the UK. Sweden, he decided, had the harder language, so he chose the UK.

I can’t even remember how he got from Italy to France, but he managed it, and it wasn’t Eurostar. I think it involved hitchhiking and more walking. (At this point, he didn’t speak any European language). And now he is at Calais, along with three other men, in the back of a huge lorry, in a terrifying wait to cross the Channel. But the border patrol come sniffing around, their dogs barking and braying  … the lorry doors are thrown open … and all four men scarper as fast as they can.

“Of course I knew I had no chance at all of not being caught. But this is when something very very very lucky happened …”

Ok, better look up from this flat white to check the departure board. Hmmm, my flight is still right on time, and they are kindly telling me which gate to go to and how long it will take me to walk there. Which is all of 5 minutes. For a 9-hour flight, on which all the latest entertainment is no doubt provided and food delivered cheerily to my seat. All the way to Denver, where a friendly person will pick me up and take me back to my apartment, perhaps solicitous, “Welcome home! How was your journey? I hope it was not too tiring. How were your parents?”, to which I will reply, “Oh, it wasn’t too bad, thank you.” “Wasn’t too bad?!?!” – when in actual fact, compared with a grueling journey of 3+ months, not counting all the refugee camps and hideaways, having only the faintest clue about where I’m going, how I might get there, and what or who I will discover when I arrive, and having said goodbye forever to everyone and everything I have ever known, my journey is clearly a walk in the park, sheer luxury from beginning to end.

Ah, yes, so back to my friend running for his life … so (and he got very excited at this point so I couldn’t catch every detail), but the jist of it was this – he managed to crawl up below another lorry, and they knew he was there, BUT …

… someone else was already under that lorry! And they mistook him for Henos and took him instead. They had no clue there were two of them.

Then the lorry boarded the ferry, the gangplank was pulled up, and they were on their way. Hardly believing his strange luck, wondering about the other guy, lying on a shelf a meter long that was riskily close to the wheels, holding on tightly for 5 deeply uncomfortable trepidatious hours, not even daring to peek out, Henos made it to England with nobody seeing him.

This was as far as we got in the story for we had now arrived at Terminal 5.

What is your most precious possession?

There are a lot of morals to this tale for me. One being, never get cross with someone without hearing their life story first. Another being that Henos was prepared to put up with seemingly any amount of hardship, loss, uncertainty, pain, hunger, and fear to get to “somewhere safe”. How prepared am I to put up with even mild hardships (such as a two-day fasting retreat to celebrate Buddha’s Enlightenment Day?!) to make the necessary journey out of samsara, a journey that leads to permanent safety from all danger and suffering?!

And it also makes me wonder, what is my most precious possession? When all the chips are down, what is the one thing I still want to have with me?

This morning, as I packed, I had big decisions to make – should I take my chewing gum packet from the last trip or buy a new one at the airport? What about my toothpaste?! Vitamins?! And do I really need to keep on lugging all my clothes back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean like this?!

But how do you decide what to take on a journey that you don’t even want to take, but must? Something that fits in your pockets, as you sure as heck are not getting a suitcase or even a handbag all the way over there (wherever “there” ends up being). Henos had some money, enough to pay various people-smugglers, no more. He had the clothes on his back.

We don’t even have clothes, let alone pockets, on our journey to the next life, a journey we will be on within a matter of years or months. We don’t even take our body. What are we going to take with us? As Venerable Atisha says:

Since future lives last for a very long time, gather up riches to provide for the future.

I would take Venerable Geshe-la’s books, if only I could, so that I could start reading them the moment someone kindly taught me to read again, and thereby have another precious human life. How am I going to guarantee meeting these teachings again, in a language I understand? And what if I am not even born as a human being? This makes me realize that I need to be reading these precious books now, whenever I can, so that they can go with me in my heart, and so that I am creating enough causes to find them again.

A practical suggestion

With 23 books to read, more than once ideally, one practical suggestion I’d like to share is always to have one of Venerable Geshe Kelsang’s books on the go. If you’re on a study program, you’ll have one on the go already, which is great; but in that case I’m suggesting another one as well, that you read just for fun. They are all fun, but this is one you can read as quickly or slowly as you like, and think about in any way that takes your fancy. You could stop watching Netflix 30 minutes earlier than bedtime and then read this book till you fall asleep. Just an idea. If you live in England, you could take advantage of the large amount of rainy grey weather to cozy up to a book – I was reminded on this particular trip of how Venerable Geshe-la once said that English weather is the best because it gives rise to no distractions, lol. (Unlike Colorado, where reading one of these magical books must compete with eg, snow-boarding or hiking, requiring a high level of non-attachment and wisdom even to pick it up.)

In The Mirror of Dharma with Additions, Venerable Geshe-la suggests we go one better and memorize Dharma books and prayers that we intend to use:

When we memorize Dharma books and sadhanas we are storing huge precious jewels of Dharma in the store of our mind. Later, for us, Dharma will come naturally from our mind day and night, even during sleep. This is because the treasury of our mind will be full of the jewels of Dharma, which will never decrease; the more we use them the more then will increase.

And this way we can definitely slip the books with us into our next life.

Are you a migrator?

Henos is now the proud owner of a British passport. Like I said, we’d arrived at Terminal 5 before I managed to find out how he managed that (it took him five years), and in fact I still had 100 questions. So did he, as it happens – he wanted to know about life in Colorado, and did I know any Eritreans in Denver, because they are “everywhere”. He is even thinking of trying his luck in America because, so he’s heard, you can get rich there? Plus, he is still on his own over here, and, although he has made friends, “everyone is always too busy to meet up, busy working ”, so why not try his luck over there? I explained about work visas and immigrant quotas and the high cost of living and health insurance and lack of safety net, etc, but this was all sounding rather tame after what I had just heard, and he certainly seemed unfazed. So, we shall see, lol. Any country would be lucky to have him.

We are all migrators. Our journeys through samsara are never-ending. Not to mention frequently (if not always) random and unexpected. (On cue, our flight attendant just told my neighbor that in his off-time he is a mermaid. As is, coincidentally, one of his co-workers, who is one better, “a professional mermaid.”)

Kindness

Henos must have met moments of kindness throughout his journey or he would not be here. But did he watch a friendly video like this at any point in his journey over land, desert, and sea?! Did he ever get given the kind advice “Stay safe and look after each other?!

We take others’ kindness and concern for us for granted – at least I do – until it is no longer there. Whereupon even the smallest act of mercy makes our heart swell. We realize something we usually overlook, which is that kindness is all that separates us from desperation.

How many people were involved and what were the odds of Henos getting to London and becoming a UK citizen? What are the odds of you or me getting to a precious human life and, if we play our cards right, becoming a citizen of a Pure Land? Who has the better odds?

Everything is fleeting and Henos’s scary dangerous journey yesterday is our scary dangerous journey tomorrow. What will we have to rely upon then, as we transition to our new alien life, other than our good hearts, resilience, and good karma? What else will help us?

The karmic lottery

Henos had outrageous good luck compared with the other guy under the lorry. He had created the karma not to be caught. And what happened to the other guy? He probably had big dreams too, a lot of bravery, perhaps a similar story up to that point. But where is he today? Likely not a British citizen driving a London taxi. Karma Law #3: If an action is not performed, its result cannot be experienced. Worth bearing in mind. Karma counts. Have we created enough good karma to avert all manner of disasters?

In an amazing precious human life story, I met another refugee at KMC London on this trip –a mother who has fled from somewhere in the Middle East. She and her son live in one room and get 7 pounds a day, but she patiently awaits the opportunity to be allowed to stay and work, and meantime her little boy is wearing a smart new uniform provided by his school, and making friends. Most astoundingly of all, to my mind, is how far they’ve had to come to meet Dharma, and how much easier it would have been for them to miss it. But, taken over lifetimes, have we not all come this far and had this many “coincidences”? Meaning, surely, that it is now or never?