We Just Have to Do It

By Robin Leo Hoffmann 

I was 19 when I first came to Varanasi, the last stop of my first trip to India. Back then I often stood in front of temples and knew that something was happening in there that I could not understand yet. Ten years later I am back, and I want to meet an Aghori, ideally interview one. So I simply ask everyone on the street. Varun, whom I meet on the stone steps by the river, recommends the Aghor Foundation. An ashram on the edge of the city. 

The ashram feels very quiet, peaceful, I am welcomed warmly, and then I am already sitting in the interview with Sadhu Ji, called by his guru to lead this ashram. His guru changed the path of the Aghoris. If Aghoris are only avoided, if they cause fear, shame, disgust, they don't serve their actual purpose. So he kept the philosophy and changed some of the daily practices. An Aghori is there to help the homeless, the sick, street children, the outcast, to serve all of humanity.

What I experience there is selfless devotion. Sadhu Ji works the field himself, on the other side of the river. The ashram takes children off the street and gives them food, a bed, a school, a family. They grow everything they eat themselves. The children are in awe of him, and at the same time they are cheeky and dare to talk back. He laughs a lot with them, he plays a lot with them.

One evening we philosophize about idealistic ideas of the world, and I fall into a melancholic exhaustion. I wish for a world in which we all live values like the ones here in the ashram. I notice a slight heaviness spreading in my chest. Sadhu Ji looks at me lovingly and says: "That's no problem. We just have to do it. We can create exactly this world." Then he smiles, turns to one of the children, throws him a funny line and plays with them for a while.

It's as if we humans really have only two tasks. First: recognize your boundless, unfiltered, pure essence. Second: find a form in which you want to serve humanity with all your being, with all your heart, with all your devotion. Sadhana and Seva. It can be art, it can be accounting, it can be cleaning. It can be a devoted bus driver who makes sure he takes every passenger along. Spirituality is no mystery. Be simple and live what you already know.

On the last morning the children come to say goodbye. Sadhu Ji is the last. He looks at me and asks: "Is there anything I can do for you?" Serving, even when saying goodbye. "This is your home. Remember this. You can always come back." The taxi drives off, and tears run down my cheeks. Tears of relief, of gratitude, of being touched.