6. The Life of a Traveling Sadhu
Chapter 6
The Life of a
Traveling Sadhu
Sundar found a sheltered, rocky crevice in which to spend the night. But he did not get much sleep. He lay awake most of the night, wrapped in his blanket, listening for the sound of jackals and tigers while swarming insects buzzed around him. And as the temperature dropped, he shivered with cold. He was grateful that no animals bothered him in the darkness, and he was very glad when the first vestiges of dawn crept across the land. He was soon up gathering twigs to build a fire. Sundar was sitting by the fire warming himself and praying about where to go next, when he noticed a group of men approaching. The men were carrying sticks and laughing among themselves. Sundar recognized one of the men—a Muslim man from the village who had hurled stones at him the day before.
Sundar stood and waited, his muscles tightening. He expected the men to mete out a beating to him with their sticks. He was surprised when this did not happen. Instead, when the group of men reached Sundar, their leader fell to his knees. “Please forgive us,” he said. “You are a holy man, and we have sinned against you. This morning we agreed to meet at dawn and go beyond the village wall to make sure that wild animals had killed you during the night. But not only are you alive, you are well and waiting for us with peace in your eyes. It is obvious that God especially favors you. Come back to the village with us, and we will give you food and shelter. When you have rested, we will listen to all you have to say.”
It took Sundar a moment or two to accept what the man was saying. The man had come to make sure that Sundar was dead, and now he wanted to honor him.
“Only God could turn your hearts,” Sundar finally replied. “I will accompany you back to your village and tell you the good news of eternal life.”
The men all walked back to the village, and true to their word, they fed and housed Sundar while he preached in the village. Sundar stayed in the village for a week, and when he left, the men asked him to return soon and tell them more of the strange stories of Jesus.
Sundar promised he would return and then set off to the west to find another village in which he could preach the gospel. He had gone only a few miles when he met another sadhu. This sadhu, however, was a Hindu and had discarded his yellow robe and was lying on a bed of nails at the side of the road. Sundar walked over to him and asked, “To what end do you wound and torture yourself so?”
“I see you are a sadhu too. Yet you do not know why I do this? It is my penance. In lying on this bed of nails, I am destroying the flesh and its desires. I serve God in this way, but I am still very aware of my sins and evil heart. Indeed, the weight of my evil heart is more painful than these nails. My goal is to kill all desire and so to find release from myself and oneness with God,” the sadhu answered.
“And how long have you been on this quest?” Sundar asked.
The other sadhu winced. “That is my problem,” he began. “I have been exercising this discipline for eighteen months, but I have not yet reached my goal. Indeed, it is not possible to find release in such a short time; it will take many years, even many lives, before I can hope for release from my sinful nature.”
Sundar stood quietly watching the man, thinking about the empty promises of Hinduism. How cruel it is to think that we must torture ourselves through many lives in order to find true peace. If we do not reach our goal in this life, why should there be another chance in another life? Is it even possible in thousands and thousands of lives?
“Brother,” Sundar finally said, “consider the notion that neither you nor I will ever find peace through our own efforts. I have found that peace is a gift from God, not the wages of self-denial and sacrifice such as you are making. Seek the life of God, and not the death of the flesh.”
A little farther along the road, Sundar encountered another sadhu doing penance. His feet were tied with a rope, and he was hanging upside down from the branch of a tree. Sundar sat down under the tree and waited for him to finish his exercise. When he came down, Sundar asked, “Why do you do this? What is the purpose of such torture?”
“People are very surprised to see me hanging head down from a tree, but this is my method to serve God and do penance. When I am hanging upside down, I remind myself and others that all of us are bound by sin and lead lives that are, in God’s eyes, upside down. I seek to turn myself upside down again and again until in the end I stand upright in the sight of God,” the sadhu explained.
Once again Sundar struggled with the Hindu idea of penance. “It is true,” he said, “that the world is upside down and its ways are sinful. But I ask you this: Can we ever hope to right ourselves through our own strength? Must we not turn instead to God, who alone can set right what is wrong and free us from evil thoughts and desires?”
The Hindu sadhu sat silently for a long time. “You have spoken wisely,” he finally said. “I will have to ponder your words.”
As Sundar continued his journey west, he prayed for the two sadhus he had encountered. It saddened him to think how earnestly they searched for peace of heart and failed to recognize that finding it was a matter of faith and not painful exercises.
Sundar continued to head west, and finally he climbed over the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. He traveled on in Afghanistan until he came to the city of Jalalabad, where he stayed for several weeks and preached in the streets. But Sundar was now in an area where the people spoke the Pashtu language, and since he could neither speak nor understand the language, he decided to travel no farther. Instead he turned around and headed east, back toward India.
It was August 1906, and Sundar was in the town of Jammu in Kashmir, one hundred miles north of Lahore, when he noticed another sadhu in an orange robe. This man, though, was a European, and Sundar soon learned that his name was Samuel Stokes. Samuel explained that he had come from America to preach the gospel to the Indian people in the countryside and remote villages of the north.
Sundar was immediately intrigued to find a foreigner with the same calling as his own, and the two men soon decided to travel together throughout the fall and winter months. Their first night together turned out to be quite a test. No one in Jammu had offered them food or a room in which to stay. But as night fell, a farmer relented and allowed the two sadhus to stay in his cowshed. Sundar gagged as he entered the foul-smelling place. Still, it was all they had, and the two men thanked God for a roof over their heads. Later the farmer brought them a loaf of stale bread, and again they gave thanks to God. Because bugs and rats were crawling around, making it impossible to sleep, Sundar and Samuel spent much of the night talking and praying.
Sundar pointed out that the two of them were taking shelter in a stable, the same type of place where Jesus had been born. The thought cheered them, and Samuel began telling Sundar about another man, Saint Francis of Assisi, born in the twelfth century, who had wandered around Italy preaching and doing good to those he met.
“Saint Francis was born into a wealthy family. His father was a merchant,” Samuel said. “As a young man his sole aim in life was to enjoy himself. He gained a reputation for throwing parties and telling the wittiest stories. Then, when he was about twenty years old, he became ill. During his illness he thought long and hard about what would happen to him if he died. And he came to the conclusion that he would not be worthy to go to heaven.”
“So what did he do?” Sundar asked, brushing a spider off his arm.
“He renounced his father’s wealth and took a vow of poverty. Then he went from town to town preaching and helping the people. He often worked with lepers, and over time other wealthy men and women joined him, which led to the starting of what would become known as the order of Saint Francis.”
“How wonderful,” Sundar replied. “To think that I am following in well-trodden footsteps. In my heart I thought that God might well have called other men at other times to do as I am doing, but I did not know for sure. And you, Samuel, have confirmed that to me. You will have to tell me more of this Saint Francis. I am especially interested to know how he balanced service to the lepers and solitude with our Lord.”
Samuel nodded. “As we travel together, I will tell you all that I know of Saint Francis. Although I am a Quaker and he was a Catholic, he is my inspiration in coming to India. I, too, have turned my back on my inheritance and seek only to do the will of God.”
During the night Sundar thought a lot about what Samuel had told him. Thoughts of Saint Francis inspired him to continue his journey, even though winter was coming and there had been little response to the gospel from many of the people in the villages he had visited.
The next morning the two men left Jammu and headed toward Kangra Valley. The weather grew colder, but they continued on, often traveling through the night, resting at dawn, and then preaching in the afternoons and evenings. Samuel had a “magic lantern” with him, which allowed him to project slides onto a screen or the side of a building. When he took it out, crowds would gather to view images of ancient Christian sites in Palestine and marvel at what they saw.
It was a long, hard, cold winter, and by spring both Sundar and Samuel were exhausted. Indeed, one day in a remote area, as the two young men walked along, Sundar collapsed at the side of the road. His body was wracked with pain, and he was overcome by fever. Because they were miles from the nearest village, Samuel left Sundar propped up at the side of the road and went to seek help for his traveling companion. About two miles away he found the house of an English planter, who offered to take Sundar in and help him. Samuel carried Sundar to the planter’s house and placed him in bed.
Sundar’s body was weak, and his recovery was slow. The planter insisted that the two men stay with him until Sundar was completely well. During the afternoons Sundar and Samuel would sit outside in the sun and talk to their host. At first the planter was not particularly interested in religious matters. But as their afternoons together rolled by, his interest was piqued. Soon the planter was asking probing questions about Christianity, and before Sundar was well enough to leave, the man had become a believer.
When Sundar’s health finally returned, he and Samuel thanked the planter and went happily on their way. As far as Sundar was concerned, his bout of illness had been worthwhile, since it produced a Christian convert.
The two men headed for Sabathu, where they planned to spend a month helping in the leprosy hospital. Sundar was still a little weak, but nonetheless, when they arrived at the hospital, both men volunteered to do whatever they could. They were put to work changing bandages, bathing lepers, and cleaning the ward. It was dirty work, and they ran the risk of contracting the disease, but both of them worked wholeheartedly.
At the end of their month helping in the hospital, Samuel decided to return to the United States to recruit more Christian men to come to India and become sadhus. With Samuel’s departure, Sundar decided to make a short preaching tour of the villages in the mountains around Sabathu.
One day as Sundar was leaving the village of Narkanda, nine thousand feet up in the mountains, he noticed that in a field below the village some farmers were gathering in their barley crop. He walked down the steep track that led to the field and greeted the farmers. But none of them seemed eager to greet him, especially when they learned he was a Christian sadhu and not a Hindu one.
“We don’t have time for you,” one of the men said. “Can’t you see we are busy? Let us alone. We don’t need your God. We need to get our crops in.”
Sundar stood wondering how to reply to the man, when a rock hit Sundar on the forehead. The rock had been hurled at him by one of the other men working in the field. At first Sundar did not feel any pain, but he was aware that blood was pouring down his cheek. The rest of the farmers stopped what they were doing and watched, wide-eyed in horror. It was very bad luck to harm a holy man, Christian or not.
Sundar knew that the farmers were waiting for him to curse them, but instead he pressed the palm of his hand to his forehead to stem the bleeding. As he did so, he silently prayed, “Father, forgive them.”
Sundar made his way over to a nearby stream and washed his face. Several sets of anxious eyes watched his every move. When they were satisfied that there would be no repercussions for the rock throwing, the men went back to the work of harvesting their barley. Sundar sat in the distance and watched them, waiting for the blood oozing from his wound to stop flowing.
About an hour later one of the farmers staggered over and flopped down beside the stream near Sundar. “My head,” he gasped. “I have never had such a bad headache.”
“What is your name?” Sundar asked.
“Nandi,” the man replied.
Sundar knew that the other men would think he had put a secret curse on Nandi as a result of the stone-throwing incident, so he walked over to the field and picked up Nandi’s scythe. Much to the amazement of the other men, he began swinging the scythe back and forth, harvesting the barley, and soon he was in a rhythm with the rest of them. He worked silently beside them until the sun set.
That night Sundar was invited to Nandi’s house, where all of the farmers from the field gathered to hear him tell stories about Jesus Christ. Nandi insisted Sundar stay the night in his home, and the following morning he begged him to come back whenever he was in the area.
In the distance beyond Narkanda rose the Himalayan Mountains. In many of the villages he passed through in this area, Sundar had encountered Tibetan traders who had made their way over the mountains with trade goods strapped to their long-haired yaks. Their distinct flat Asian features and prayer wheels intrigued Sundar, who soon found himself once more thinking about Tibet. This strange land beyond the Himalayas seemed to be beckoning to him.