Padmaloka Outreach Work

St Petersburg January 2005 - by Saddhaloka

I visited St Petersburg again towards the end of January this year. I was at Guhyaloka for 4 months last year, and so it was almost a whole year since my last visit to Russia. Fortunately Nagadakini was able to spend two months in St Petersburg last summer which much more than compensated for my long absence. Nagadakini was in St Petersburg again this January for two and a half weeks, and I joined her towards the end of her stay for some five days.

I travelled to St Petersburg by daytime coach from Tallinn, where I had spent a few days with Vaddhaka. He is now running the Tallinn Buddhist Centre for at least the next two years, and he seems to be doing very well with it. The overnight trains between Tallinn and St Petersburg no longer run. I have always enjoyed that trip on the old Russia style trains, with the glasses of tea provided by the attendant from the ponderous samovar in the corridor, the elaborate pouch in which they retained the tickets for the duration of the journey, the slightly surreal middle-of-the-night visitations by border guards, customs and passport control, and much more. They stopped the trains for a few months whilst they repaired the tracks and the Eurolines coaches took over. When the trains started again they were only a third of their former length, and obviously they did not prove viable.

From the coach station in St Petersburg I travelled up to the very north of the city, to the flat where I had stayed over my last two visits. It had been mostly a rather mild winter in these northern parts, and people had been complaining about the raw greyness and lack of snow. Now though, temperatures were dropping fast and an icy wind cut into me as I made my way from the metro to the flat. I was greeted there by Jane Heimonen, who works there with her friend Marina in their garden landscaping and design business. Usually her husband’s secretary is there too.. he runs a building business, but for the duration of my stay Jane had arranged for the flat to be much quieter. When I first visited there was a burned-out car outside the front door, and the hallway was covered with graffiti. Last time the car had been taken away, and this time a new magnetic lock had been fitted on the outer steel door and the hallway freshly painted. Still , there two more doors and four locks, two of them very substantial, to get into the flat.

I arrived late afternoon, and Jane explained that today was the anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad in the Great Patriotic War (know to us as Second World War). It was a protracted and grim siege, and saw much destruction, cruelty, heroism. Starvation took its toll, and there are well know stories of cannibalism. During the siege there was the highly emotive first performance of Shostakovich’s ’Leningrad Symphony’. Tonight his son was going to be conducting the ’Leningrad Symphony’, played by the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in the Symphony Hall where it was first played. Would I like to go? The only problem was no tickets were available. None had been sold. They had been issued to various Veteran’s Associations and so on. But we could go into the city centre and try our luck. So off we went.

Outside the Symphony Hall there were people milling around on the pavement, hoping to get in, but only those with tickets were getting passed the doorman. Jane spoke to a few people, and eventually handed me over to another Russian woman who seemed to think she could get hold of tickets. At one point we squeezed our way in and stood near a door where a formidable matriarch stood guard. She was unmoved in the face of pensioner’s cards being waved before her. Only proper tickets would do.. Around a table a crowd of people were talking into mobile phones and trying to sort something out, without little apparent movement. At one point my lady got a ticket from a young woman and gave it to me, but the guardian would not let me through. More was needed. A proper slip from an official organisation. Eventually we gave up at this entrance and went round to the main entrance. From the grand foyer a wide marble staircase rose steeply up, carpeted in red. Along the side of the stairs soldiers in smart uniform, with jack boots and with tall peaked caps stood to attention. Half way up the stairs was another line of guardians. My guide showed her ticket to one of the women, who agreed to let her through to the standing room only space. She hustled me through with her, overriding the mild protest that only one was allowed by, declaring I was from England.

Soon we stood at the back of the balcony that looked down on the main hall from three sides. Before long there was a strange thumping, and the whole audience rose to their feet. Three standard bearers, flanked by two guards each, goose-stepped up the central aisle, stamped to attention, and turned to face the audience. When everyone had sat down again a grey haired general rose to his feet from a raised box on one side and delivered a rousing patriotic speech. I did not understand the words, but the spirit he communicated was clear. Then the conductor and a film-maker and a couple of others came on the stage and talked for a while. At one point they were joined by an old man with a stick and medals across his chest who hobbled proudly up to join them. The music was to be accompanied by documentary film of the war and that period, and because no live performance is every exactly the same as any other, the editor of the film would be manually adjusting the film speed to keep it synchronised with the music. Much was made of the fact that this was a world first… the putting together of this music with film. Of course the music was the main thing… In fact the music, although extremely well played in all its dramatic intensity, perhaps inevitably often seemed like background music to the film. There was footage of Hitler as the drums and music told of the gathering clouds of war, juxtaposed with footage of a smiling Stalin overlooking the great socialist experiment, and footage of the war and siege itself. At the end there were lots of people getting up to offer bouquets of flowers and take photographs. Outside I thanked my guide and said goodbye and made my own way back to the flat. The temperature was still falling. It reached -14C that night, and over the next few days it snowed and snowed, whilst becoming a little bit warmer again. I found out the next day that Jane had also managed to get in and had a seat downstairs.

Over the next 3 days we had our programme of activities, held in a northern suburb, not far from a metro station, in a flat used as an alternative school by followers of Rudolf Steiner, the early twentieth century founder of Anthroposophy. The venue had been arranged by Sveta, a doctor, with whom Nagadakini stayed, and whose daughter had formerly attended the school. It was a bit of an experiment, having an outside venue rather than using someone’s flat, the idea being that meetings could be held by Nagadakini both before and after the main weekend . In fact very few people came to these extra meetings, and in future we will probably just focus on the weekend.

On the Friday night I spoke on the Bodhisattva Ideal. On the Saturday morning and afternoon we explored the 6 Perfections. On Sunday we had a meditation day, with workshops exploring the mindfulness of breathing and the metta bhavana. The programme worked well, and people seemed well engaged. About eight or nine people attended over the weekend, with a fair proportion attending most or all of the events.

Most of those coming to our activities come through personal connections, and we still have to find ways to try and make a wider circle of connections. We are working on getting a Russian language web-site established, and at the same time Bodhipaksa is getting some pages of his Wildmind site translated into Russian. We hope this will lead to some new contacts. One woman on the weekend works for a newspaper and offered to help with advertising, so that could also make a difference in the future.

We needed to get some food before the talk on the Friday evening, and Nagadakini took me to a new restaurant near the flat where the events were held, and introduced me to the delights of Bleeny Donalt. Bleeny are Russian pancakes. Obviously the brainchild of some bright young Russian entepreneur, Bleeny Donalt is Russia’s answer to MacDonalds. The whole place had the look of MacDonalds, down to the red and yellow chairs, the red uniforms, and children’s play area, but the staple was pancakes rather than hamburgers and there were kitsch tableaux of a peasant with axe sitting on a roof and a peasant woman holding a child standing on a balcony.

We had a very good meeting on the Monday with Tanya Naumenko and Kirill Shilov from Uddiyana, the Russian Buddhist publishers we are working with. We have brought out Kamalashila’s book on ‘Meditation’ and Bhante’s ‘Who is the Buddha?’. ‘Vision and Transformation’ is being worked on, and we have some money from the Legacy Fund to get translation of ‘What is the Dharma?’ underway. We talked with them about publishing in Russia. They explained that there is not the sort of popular market for Buddhist books in Russia that we have in the West. Many people who consider themselves Christians would just not read books on Buddhism. Many Russian Orthodox churches have pinned up in them lists of proscribed books that good Christians should not read. This would include all books on things like yoga. The Orthodox Church tends to be conservative, and linked to a resurgent nationalism. Within the church is a large, even more conservative group opposed to the ’liberal’ attitudes of the Patriarch, who is Estonian, and therefore not even a proper Russian! Even Russian Buddhists would tend to mostly read just the books connected to their own school and teachers. That is the Russian mind-set. It continues to be a pleasure to work with Tanya and Kirill. They are friendly and straightforward, and reliable.

There were requests for another retreat in Finland from some of our Russian friends so I am talking to people in Finland to see what can be arranged. We will have to see what the response is when we come up with concrete dates. As I have said before, it feels as if we are still trying to work out how to be in Russia and get across to Russians our approach to the Dharma. Just at this very basic level we have plenty of work to do. On every visit there are times when I find I am asking myself, ‘’Is this all worth it?’’ And every visit there are times of warm communication and times when one sees someone really responding to the Dharma that make it all seem worthwhile. For me personally it also makes a big difference to be working on this project with Nagadakini, and sharing the ups and downs of trying to make sense of Russia.

Metta

Saddhaloka

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