The Experience
What’s it like doing a Karuna Appeal?
A Karuna Appeal has a daily programme similar to being on retreat, but living in the city makes it ‘retreat-like’. The structure of the Appeal supports a ‘going deeper’ experience, as this is what creates successful fundraising. Most of the weekends are kept free and fundraisers do sometimes leave to visit friends etc. It is best not to leave more than twice throughout the Appeal so as to maintain the ‘retreat-like’ element and have time to rest up on the weekends.
The day starts and ends in the shrine room, with meditation in the mornings and a closing ritual last thing. The mornings are spent with the team doing training and then there is some free time in the afternoons. The fundraising takes place on weekday evenings.
The image of kids sleeping rough at Gaya station has stuck with you. You want to help.With a bag full of Karuna booklets you pace up and down the street, psyching yourself up to knock a door. You just don’t know who will answer that door or what will happen next. Whoever does answer is unlikely to know you either. It is a going forth from one’s familiar circle and role. It is a meeting of unknowns, and in this way it is a step towards a deeper experience. All that counts is who you are in that moment, your mental state. The door opens…How you respond to that opening is what a Karuna Appeal is all about.
The door opens(!) and suddenly you are presented with another person and their home, their world. A woman in her 40s with greying hair, a pen in her hand and a quizzical look in her eyes… Down the hallway with its faded floral wallpaper a busy family scene in the kitchen around the dinner table, wafting out pizza aroma…
Do you get anxious and panic? Does your brain go on holiday and your voice disappear? Or do you get all squeaky and come down with verbal diarrhoea? The householder may seem interested, but are you sure? Do you find yourself grinning rather inanely, wanting to avoid the pain of rejection? The door closes. Maybe they did take an interest, maybe not. Either way it’s just one door, there are plenty others. You reflect on what happened, you are maybe spotting a pattern in your communication, you are learning. You remember India and the kids at the station.
Although you never know who you will meet, you can attempt to be open and comfortable in not knowing. This is the practice of fundraising and the Appeal community and all the various training supports this. To the extent one can be comfortable with not knowing, one will respond appropriately and skilfully to each encounter on the doors. Fundraising in this way reflects the existential position that we are in all of the time: that we never know what will happen next. We might think we do, but we don’t. Thinking we know what is going to happen next we pre-empt the future, we take of down habitual roads and in this way we miss the person, we don’t connect with them but rather with some idea of who we think they are. Doing a Karuna Appeal means opening up to this uncertainty. It is about learning to stand in the gap between the impact the world has on us and our response to it. This is not easy, but it is possible and can be incredibly satisfying, even if only for a few moments at a time.