Precious Human Life

One of the topics that we've been studying in class is the Precious Human Life. Whatever it is that you consider gives meaning to life, whether it be art, science, exploring the mind, philosophy or whatever, it's pretty clear that you can only do it as a human being. And when you look around at how many different kinds of things there are living, the proportion of them that are human is infinitesimally small.
But simply being born with mostly-monkey DNA is not enough for your life to be Precious. You also need freedom and leisure to indulge your chosen method of exploration. If you spend your life, as most people do, working very in order to feed yourself and your family, you just don't have the chance to get interested in much else. If you die of malnutrition before you're five years old, or live in a war zone, or have your rights repressed, you can't even think about anything else. If you're rich and free enough, you still need knowledge -- that is, access to education, teachers, methods, and peers.
Even if all these conditions come together, it is also certain that their concurrence is temporary and will at some point cease. You will become busy, or poor, and sooner or (if you're lucky) later, die.
In the centuries-old texts that we study, this is presented in exhaustive detail as a kick up the arse to meditate and study as well as possible right now, today, while we have the chance. And living 'in India' brings an edge to this contemplation. I say 'in India', because I'm not really living in India. I'm living in a small Western-Tibetan enclave. I sleep in a clean bed and have a hot shower every morning. I wear a different, clean T-shirt every day. I drink bottled water and take malaria tablets. I never eat on the street, where even the ice cream gave my friends food poisoning. I spend energy and money to put as many sanitising and nullifying interfaces as possible between every aspect of my activity and my surroundings. But I can observe; I'm closer to this Third World life than I was in England, and about as close as I want to get. I can observe calmly and dispassionately, because I know in a few weeks I'll be going home.
So what's to observe? Well, I've only seen the very best face of Delhi. We live in one of the poshest areas, but even here outside our gates the taxi drivers sleep in a shelter by the side of the road, as traffic and street dogs pass by. Our trips into town are all by taxi through New Delhi. The poverty and dereliction that you can see here are, apparently, nothing compared to the slums of Old Delhi. So I know that the people I see are, comparatively, doing all right for themselves.
Here's a guy doing well. He's got a job as a labourer. But how many labourers in England would spend the day carrying stone slabs on their head for a pittance?
Here's an animal doing well. Cows have right of way on the streets, and they all look confident and well fed. Still, I'm glad I'm a human being.
This is a market street where a lot of Westerners shop, and stay in little hotels.
What the picture can't convey is the terrific noise from the diesel generators outside every shop, the fumes, the beggars, and the cheap shallow atmosphere. And this is one of the major places. To escape from the crowds, we took a parallel street, and that was like stepping into another world. Here nothing was recognisable -- I wasn't sure what people were doing, or what function the buildings served. Is that a house or a cafe? Is that place being knocked down or lived in? Is that someone's bedroom just facing onto the street with no wall? Just what expression is that on these people's faces?
Like most of the scenes that really affected me, I have no photos. To objectify these peoples' lives in that way seems really rude, especially since the price of my camera would feed a family for a year.
Close by the market is the bus station - never a particularly nice place in any major city. Here's a from-the-hip shot of a guy not doing so well -- lying in the road in the middle of the afternoon with a half eaten meal next to him. Or vomit, it was difficult to tell.
As you often ask yourself here, is he dead or asleep? I think he's asleep.
I'm not complaining, or trying to impress anyone with exotic tales of deprivation. This is just how it is. Billions of people are deprived. And so I really appreciate how precious my life is. That I'm one of the very, very, very few fortunate enough to have all of the myriad conditions to be able to pursue my interest, which is to try to understand how the universe and the mind works.
And so, to meditate, and to bed. Goodnight.