priceless
Simply no other way to describe the smile I saw on his face. It was the last day, the silence was broken, some students had animated conversations, while others still stayed more or less silent. And this particular gentleman was among the more silent ones, quietly having his lunch. I was sitting opposite to him, and he happened to glance at me – smiled… one of the the most self-content smiles I have ever seen in my life – no exchange of words necessary – he continued with his lunch.
In general, people smile when something nice happens – some happiness because of some wealth they accumulate, or some health situation gets better, or get food when they’re hungry, or hear some music they like, or when in a serene place admist nature, or even use some psychological techniques of meditation that gives them a lot of energy… countless number of reasons. But how long do these smiles last? All these external fluctuating circumstances – time takes away the wealth, or causes hunger again, or health deteriorates again, or a powercut causes a break in the music, or they return from serene nature back to the chaotic traffic-jammed polluted city, or the effect of the meditation wears off – and the smile disappears.
But still this particular smile was quite unlike the other external smiles. It was from a relatively longer lasting inner smile that one gets when he sees things as they are, not as he would like it to be. These were the kind of smiles I was seeing all around me.
I feel extremely priviledged that I was also a part of this process by serving as a sevak in dhamma khetta in Hyderabad. I have been working almost non-stop for 19 hours a day for the past 2 weeks – doing all kinds of jobs, a lot of them that I have never done before, from computer servicing to cleaning floors, to patrolling the grounds, to planning, solving sudden unexpected problems and managing and organising different things.
I have never worked so hard [there was a severe shortage of sevaks this time], and yet so effortlessly, and with such tremendously self-motivated “colleagues” and such learned compassionate and pure-minded superiors. I finally got a better idea of what Nipun means when he says “Imagine being fully alive, awake and engaged.“! It has been an extremely educational experience, and will take quite a while for me to digest it all and put it in words. 🙂
Getting spiritual eh? I heard Vipassana is one of the hardest to master.. Good to know you enjoyed it..Great!
Thanks Shyam, well I personally would avoid the most hopelessly misused word “spiritual” 🙂 Vipassana is actually very simple – its nothing but bare choiceless observation of things that are already going on (without inducing anything new using any external aids like chanting or objects or imagination etc). And yet as you say its not easy to master… I myself am only a novice but am in no particular hurry. Its kind of like a life skill – like for example good communication or building relationships etc, to be learnt incrementally through experience and application in practical life, rather than mere theory.
As I write this, an analogy strikes me. Its only an analogy, maybe as much as a blind man describing the elephant to be like a rope after feeling its tail:
I feel its a bit like learning to break-fall in Martial arts. As you might know, in Martial arts, break-falling (when thrown by the opponent, falling rolling over, consuming the impact without hurting onself) – is one of the most fundamental concepts that a beginner must learn in the first place. A Sensei told me that its very important for even one who becomes a black belt to keep in constant touch with break-falling. Else one might become a black belt after mastering some complicated fundu punches and kicks but still end up fracturing his elbow if he’s thrown onto the mat by just some simple move by a white belt! 😀 One may argue about the advantages of Jujitsu over Karate or the relationship between Tai-Chi and Aikido – but irrespective of comparisons, break-falling is a fundamental skill.
— Douglas Adams
This was a review I’d written, which was considered as a “Spotlight Review” in Amazon for a while… 😉
A book of possibilities, May 25, 2004
The author says you should learn meditation only at a Vipassana Center so why buy this book? My understanding was that if we take swimming as an analogy, learning swimming by reading a book might not be a great idea for one who is not familiar with it; and this I felt was what the author meant by emphasizing that its not a Learn To Do It Yourself book.
However the book does give an idea that swimming is a very real possiblity. That it is possible for a man to learn to stay afloat, even in a churning sea with waves throwing him up or pushing him down all the time.
The course itself helped me begin to understand and accept who I really am, not who I appear to be. The book is also useful as a reference guide after taking the course, one that can be reread occasionally to always find some or the other new point every time.
Placing the book under Buddhism is slightly misleading I think; the book and the technique is about Dharma, the foundation of any religion. If we compare it to computer software, Dharma is like the 1s and 0s; while any religion is like a device driver or application software built over the fundamental concepts. I happen to be a Hindu, and can attest that I’m still a Hindu, though I feel I’m a better Hindu then what I used to be. At the same time, Im able to more honestly make an attempt to see the point of view of other religions. In other words, my religion no longer divides me from the rest of humanity.
Cheers,
Sanjay Mysoremutt