Buddha in a Habit

Sister Cyril preparing to send her students out to do the work of the Buddha

Many things overwhelm me when I walk into the home where Mother Theresa took her last breathe.  I sit silently at the tomb that houses her body, the headstone bearing Christ’s greatest message. One that human beings find it sadly difficult to follow: “Love one another as I have loved you.”  I am just as silent when I walk through the exhibition celebrating her life of compassion and sacrifice.  It is in this exhibit where I learn that she not only nursed and fed the families living in Calcutta’s most uninhabitable slums, but she lived there with them.  This diminutive woman begged for food alongside the destitute, allowing them first dibs on the spoils and only eating what was left once the women and children had had their fill.

I am merely humbled by these powerful images of Mother Theresa.  What leaves me speechless, unable to comprehend this one woman’s commitment to mission is presented as a cursory biographical fact.  When Mother Theresa was 18 years old, she left her home country to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (The “Loreto Sisters”).  This teenager got on a plane headed to Ireland (and shortly thereafter, India) having no reference point for the culture in either country.  She did not speak English or Hindi or Bengali.  She had never been outside of her family’s neighborhood, much less on foreign soil. Mother Theresa was fully aware that once she began her missionary work, she would never see her own mother again.  Would never return home.  And she STILL got on the plane.

When I read this, I am unable to move on to the next panel of artifacts.  I don’t know why, but this detail is even more powerful to me than the images of her opening up the orphanage and bandaging up the diseased and dying.  She was just a girl.  Not even out of adolescence.  She would not be the first young person to devote her life to the arduous task of ending human suffering.  But, how many of those who came before her and who came after her gave up their FAMILIES? Their mothers?  Their homelands?  Their native tongues?

Days after having toured Mother’s House, I am still thinking about little 18 year old Gonxha Agnes saying goodbye to all that she knew and 60 years later never once mentioning how sad she was to leave her family behind in order to devote herself to such important work. It is against this backdrop that I find myself sobbing in the presence of Sister Cyril, a lesser known missionary than Mother Theresa, but a woman who is as equally dedicated to ending human suffering.

Like Mother Theresa, Sister Cyril left her native land of Ireland when she was little more than a girl.  Although she does visit her family back in Ireland, since joining the Loreto Sisters in Calcutta five decades ago, Sister Cyril has never gone back permanently.  For the last 30 years, Sister Cyril has been the principal of Loreto Sealdah School.  She has spent most of those years turning it into not only a school of high academic caliber, but a shelter for Calcutta’s parentless street children, an opportunity to learn for the children of the prostitutes who work in the infamous “Red Light District” and a training ground for her successors.  Sister Cyril has spearheaded numerous training programs for people who want to teach the poor.  She has inspired the “school in a trunk” movement that brings even the most basic education to children who live in remote villages and children of migrant workers whose parents put them to work making bricks in order to help support the family.

During our visit to Loreto Sealdah School, we are shown a documentary on Sister Cyril’s work.  She speaks frankly about the great need that exists in India and does not mince words about how more people should fulfill their duty to address that need.  When Sister Cyril began admitting street children into her school, her middle class parents balked.  Sister Cyril enlisted the hearts of their daughters to teach them compassion. “One of the girls told me her mother turned up her nose and called the kids dirty.  She was proud to correct her mother. ‘Sister, I told her she was the one who was dirty because she had a dirty heart.’  I was proud of her,too, for standing up to her mother for the right reason.”

And she trains her girls to stand up for justice even if it means manipulating the unjust.  When Sister Cyril discovered another “invisible” group of children in Calcutta, she called upon Loreto Sealdah students to bring them out of the shadows.  In far too many middle class homes, Sister discovered, school aged children are “hired” to work as domestic help.  They are paid little to no wages, given one paltry meal a day and are not allowed to leave the premises.  They are modern day slaves.  Sister found out about these children because her students leaked their wealthy neighbors’ secrets.  “That girl who is in that flat, she is not a little cousin visiting from the village.  She is the family’s fulltime maid.”  Sister has trained these students in their own form of rescue.  She tells them to use their middle class manners and their familiarity with the families to sweetly coax the women of the houses to allow their young maids out for a few hours a day.  “Just to play and come down to my school,” the girls tell the housewives.  And it is during these one or two hours a day, that these same girls teach their enslaved peers how to read and write.

I am already near tears before Sister Cyril begins to explain why she has worked tirelessly over the years to institute these programs into the fabric of Loreto Sealdah School.  “It is not my job to just teach my students so they can pass their Board exams,” Sister Cyril speaks plainly.  “It is not the goal of their education to go off to Europe or America and become doctors.  Their goal is to continue to change their country.  To allow others to live with the same dignity we have allowed them.”

And it is here when I feel something get stuck in my throat.  Water gathers in my pupils and my eyes begin to blur when I hear this woman continue to explain that morality can not be seperated from education.  That she and her staff have worked to develop a curriculum on Human Rights, which is compulsory for all students who attend her school.  “They must go out and propagate what they learn here,” Sister finishes. “If they don’t, then we have failed.”

By the time the film has ended and Sister Cyril strolls into the room as if she has been cued by her staff, my mind is in overdrive and so are my emotions.  I think back to 18 year old Gonxha Agnes on the road to becoming Mother Theresa.  I look at this sturdy Irish nun standing before me.  An outspoken firecracker to whom police officers bring raped and half starved children because they know Sister will take them.  Feed them. House them.  And teach them.  The woman who puts 100 of her students on a hot bus every Saturday and sends them out to villages with lesson plans so they can teach their rural counterparts.

“I hope you enjoyed the video,” Sister smiles as she sits down.  “So, do you have any questions for me?”

Questions?

Will you take statements, I want to say.

I want to say a lot.  I want to express my inability to fully understand how a Buddha has ended up walking this earth as a Catholic nun.  How I have been practicing Buddhism for just two short years and I am therefore unprepared to meet her.  This living, breathing embodiment of the most basic of Buddhist concepts: We ordinary human beings possess the Buddha nature; it is up to us to continually access and act on it.  

Yes, Sister Cyril, I have some questions for you.  I am forming these words in my head, but each time I try to say them, my throat gets tight and more tears trickle down my cheeks. 

How long did it take you to grow these fearless Buddha legs?   When will mine become as strong as yours?  Tell me what prayer to recite when I grow frustrated with my baby Buddha legs.  My wobbly walk of compassion that sometimes ends with my butt crashing to the floor, having to get up and try all over again.

The others in the group are able to ask Sister thoughtful, intelligent questions while I struggle to find the right thing to say.  And the 5 or 10 tear-free seconds needed to say it. 

It takes me two hours.  We have visited classrooms at Loreto Sealdah School.  Had lunch.  Taken countless pictures with the curious students who love to practice their conversational English with foreign visitors.

Before we leave, we are back in Sister’s office and she asks us again. “Is there anything else you would like to know about our work here?”

I can feel my throat tightening and my eyes welling up.  I take my 10 seconds while I still have them.

“Thank you for the work you do here.”  I can hear my voice cracking.  “It takes so much courage to devote your life to this work.”  The tears come back and I feel the other eyes in the room on me.  Wondering why I can not stop weeping.  I rush so quickly through the rest of my statement, I don’t even know if Sister understands me.

“I wish more of us had the courage to do it.”