This yogini highly recommends spending time with 3-year-olds raised by yogini social workers such as Omkari (Anita Stoll). Sadie - this mighty mighty 3-year-old - has started the phase that lasts our entire lifetime - the phase of establishing autonomy, figuring out her own power and what is needed from others, the world, and eventually from the Source of the Universe itself. And she loves to do things "by herself." Such as pour her own Chinese medical herbal cough syrup into a spoon - and spill it on the counter. Or take all the beads out of the box and watch them scatter in every direction. The spilling and the scattering are not her intentions. And after each spill, scatter, "mess-up," Sadie says, "That's okay."
"That's okay." And proceeds to try to gather it up.
Fine motor skills are still being honed. But I can hear Sadie say it now - every time I trip or fall or am not certain of what's next. I hear her say, in her three-year-old voice, "That's okay."
And mama Anita and I talked about it because my heart just sighs around this sweetness. "I messed up. And that's okay." Is what she is saying again and again. And eventually, we know, the cough syrup will stay on the spoon and the beads won't scatter everywhere when she empties the box out on the floor.
Simultaneously - I get the following story from OSHO. Osho. Osho. Osho. (Shawn Harrison liked to tell me about spending time at his Ashram in India and they chant Osho. Osho. Osho. Osho. weird, but appropriate somehow).
"Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples. A man came and spit on his face. He wiped it off, and he asked the man, 'What next? What do you want to say next?' The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on someone's face, he will ask, 'What next?' He had had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither; he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But just matter-of-factly he said, 'What next?' There was no reaction on his part.
Buddha's disciples became angry, they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda, said, "This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it. You keep your teaching with you, and we will just show this man that he cannot do what he has done. He has to be punished for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this."
Buddha said, 'You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me. He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that 'this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their trace, a revolutionary, a corrupter.' And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion, he has spit on his idea of me --- because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?'
'If you think on it deeply,' Buddha said, 'he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something --- spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent --- in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. They you have to do something. When you are in deep love and you kiss the person or embrace the person, what are you doing? You are saying something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that's why I'm asking 'What next?'
The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, 'I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.'
Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. When you see a buddha, it is difficult, impossible, to sleep again the way you used to sleep before. Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and perspiring. He had never come across such a man; he shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.
The next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha's feet. Buddha asked him again, 'What next? This too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are a little narrow; it cannot be contained in them.'
Buddha said, 'Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.'
The man looked at Buddha and said, 'Forgive me for what I did yesterday.'
Buddha said, 'Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing; it is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here -- I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.
'And you also are new. I can see that you are not the same man who came to me yesterday because that man was angry - he was anger! He spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet --- how can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it. Those two people --- the man who spit, and the man on whom he spit --- both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.'
