Smell of Rose

What are the most memorable moments of your life? When you felt peace, when you felt that in that very moment the world was exactly as it should be, when you felt that you are at the right place at the right moment, when you almost felt that you understand existence, when everything was just all right. If you seriously count them there are not so many, are there..? You have lived twenty, forty, sixty years, and there have been only a handful really

 penetrating moments, have been not..? Perhaps, when you watched 

a colorful sunset, and the beautiful play of lights on deep orange clouds left you speechless; Or perhaps, on a mild

 spring 

afternoon, when you smelled a rose, sitting on a soft garden grass. The gentle wind touched your skin, and the sweetness of the rose was unspeakable; Or perhaps, when you watched your lover sleeping in your arms. You sensed her/his unmistakable smell, that meant you the pure love that moment. The warmness of her/his body, the soft rising and falling of her/his chest, and the small movements of her/his eyelids told you: the world is perfect, after all; Or perhaps, when you sat that afternoon at the dining table, and around the table you saw your children, maybe the grandchildren as well. You looked that special spark in their eyes that only children have. Listened the warm tinkling of their joyful laugh. Then you knew that life worth it. You knew it for sure.

Was this experience really bound to that special subject -t

he sunset, the rose, the lover, the child- you contemplated? Or your amazement of sunset, your pure love to your lover and to your child opened up some deep blockage, and let you experience the life in its eternity and entirety; and beyond even that, maybe for a split second the pure existence itself. Think about it 

for some time. In that very moment were you aware that you are watching the sunset; In that culminating point when you held your lover and felt the perfect happiness and tranquility, were 

you really conscious about the pleasure of owning and being owned? I am not asking one second before, or after - I am asking exactly that fleeting moment, when you were content. All your worries and hopes, your image of self, were all these present in that very moment, or there was no subject and no object, s/he and me, before and after, only the experience that melt all separation into the sensation of very existence here and now. When the sunset were you and you were the sunset; when that very spark in the eyes of your beloved one was you and you were the spark. Then you were utterly tranquil and content as your self opened up and united with that incontrollable flow of Universe, without a second thought.

That very moment is the beginning of meditation. Here in the dhamma-hall we all are practicing that very moment. We force our mind to detach from its created realm, by focusing our awareness to the subject of meditation. This links us back to what is 

real and true. In everyday life it happens when something really spectacular happens, because we are so deeply buried into our age-old habitual patterns, that we need so

mething extraordinary to grab our consciousness out from the cage of that world it has been 

creating to itself. Here

 in dhamma-hall the breathing makes it. In and out - no thought - in and out - no worries - in and out - just peace - in and out - and clarity.

There is this spark in every one of us. But we bury it, and, after a decade or two, it becomes barely perceivable. We bury it under unbearable weights of heavy

 thoughts, fears, unimportant dreams. We become so attached to them, that

 we forget the spark that actually lights everything, yet, lays out of anything. We start to live on the very surface of our minds, where all the trash is accumulated. We jump from one fear to the next, then to the next hope. Endlessly. All in our lives after a certain age we are in keep running. From one to another, another, then another again. Then we become frightened; we do not see the spark anymore, we do not find meaning anymore. But we do not stop, instead we double the force with which we gather more this and more that. Then we die.

Here we do not want that endless circle. Therefore we unite with the Universe trough our breathing. Just as you united trough the sunset, through the rose, through your lover, through your child, through what and whoever that opened a window for that moment to the truth. When the mind calms down, when there is no distraction anymore, when there is no hope and fear, when the subject and the object melt into one, then even the breathing, the final aid fades away. What is left behind, where there is no thought, no emotion, where no object and no 'I' and no sensation is present? That is for you to find out - That is who you really are...

Lift Your Arm

...Presence. Full awareness of here and now, and nothing else; that is in those eyes. Depth and simplicity. Life is deep and simple. The truth is simple. The truth is what exists in this very moment. Those things are simple; a touch on your skin, a fleeting warmness in the body, the sound of a bird, a vanishing memory of a long dead friend. From this point we have a choice to make: to penetrate further in depth into this reality, or creating a new world using these sensations as building blocks. Until we know what we are doing, both ways are beautiful; Until we are not bound to our creation, this ability of mind to abstraction is magical.

My teacher, U Nandasiddhi said: The most important thing that you should take with you from here is t

hat your mind always should know what it does. If you eat, you should know that you eat. If you walk you should know that you walk. If you breathe fast you should know: I am breathing fast. If You breathe shallow, you should know: I am breathing now shallow. If you move your hand you should know it.

You might say it is not mystical enough, it is too simple, it is easy. Really so? All right. Through an experiment I can show what he really meant. For that I will need your cooperation, though; let us play a half interactive game. You must sit now in front of the monitor, your hand laying on the mouse. Lift your arm, please! Just lift it up in air, then put it down.

...

Done?
Then, tell me, how did you do it?! Perhaps you have absolutely no idea; maybe do not even get first what I mean. Perhaps my lines set you more aware, and then you say that this muscle in the shoulder contracted, that other fixed, another again relaxed, etc. But I did not asked that either! How your mental decision of raising your arm become translated into a physical action?! You have no idea; it happened just like that... Even more, where, and how your self made the exact decision in which exact moment you start to lift your arm? You can keep thinking "I lift my arm, lift my arm" and nothing happens; Until a real decision is made, when without even t

hinking it trough "I lift my arm" it lifts. Try it! ... When and where exactly that particular decision was made. How? No idea, have you..? Any?! It just popped up, and happened just like that??? But if you have no idea how you decide, who really raises the arm, who hugs your lover, who lives your life?!?

Should I distract you even more? :) Before you are reading this line, were you aware of the push of the chair on your butt-whether there was more push on the left or right side, whether it was soft, in a small or large area? Were you aware how the shirt touched your skin, causing very gentle sensations? Were you aware of the dryness of your lips, the tension of eyelids, the warmness inside the abdomen, the ...

Then is it really you, who participate in this world? Even the grossest and most simple actions, and the grossest manners slip away from your awareness. So, are you really there on the other side of the screen, in this very moment? Or, rather, that is a semi-robot, and you are sitting in the cage of your mind, among your fears, powerful desires, and in wired habits that you have been carrying for God knows how long - sometimes, even you yourself laugh at yourself... Don't you? :)

Do you grasp the importance of this? We live so deeply in that world we created on our own that we barely perceive reality. It was a very simple question: How? not about the God, about the meanin

g of life, not about deep philosophy; nothing like that. Isn't that -ironic, hm? That we desire transcendental truths without being able to penetrate the truth of lifting arm; That we live our lives being a total alien even to our own body, but having so firm ideas about what the world is, how it should be, how it should not be, and how other people should or should not behave, what is good and what is bad. Does it sound sane? What truth such dulled minds can possibly gather?

And, soon or later, the truth, the true nature of the real world hits us; inevitably. When I say 'true', when I say 'real', I mean something absolutely down to earth, nothing misty. All phenomenon that exist out of mental interpretation, that exist here and now. Every now and then -when a person is not as we think s/he should be, when we do not get what we think we deserve, and ultimately when we are -or a beloved one is about to be ripped away from this existence by death- the corners of the illusory world, we have been keep creating, collide with reality. Like two spinning rectangular metal frames one within the other. Unless they exactly fit in one and other and have the same spin, that is when we live fully in reality, a collision is bound to come. Then we are forced to face reality. Then our fragile world is smashed by the powerful presence of the only entity that exists for real. Then our concepts we starve to hang on are shaken; or broken. Then we face that love goes, that good not at all always wins, that I am crying by my dieing sweetheart being totally powerless, that reality is a powerful flow which sometimes lifts up supporting our illusio

ns, and sometimes squeezes people into bloody mess. That reality couldn't care less.

Is that the real nature of this world? All of us felt it sometimes, I am sure. But if one does not understand how s/he lifts the arm, why on earth we have the arrogance to think that we know what love is or should be, what good is and how this or that person should follow that, what death and pain is? These are way more subtle phenomenon than a lifting arm. Yet, about these we have a rigid opinion, and if the world dears to be different we feel sorrow, annihilation, loneliness, we feel betrayed. Is that sane? Isn't that ironic?

The most suffering, the most pain is actually caused not by a cruel reality, but the tension that evolves when our play-world is matched against the incontrollable flow that we call Universe. So, then who causes and can end these sufferings: the Universe that rips our world apart, or we, who build it? After all what real control we've ever had? What control we had over coming to this existence? And instead of identifying our selves with that ultimate impulse, to enjoy and understand what we were given, we all got trapped in some dreamworld where we do not know a thing for real, not even the secret of a lifting arm, but cling for a control over fleeting illusions created by our minds. Insane. Control over concepts that melt away in the moment one truly starts to investigate them... Have you ever dared to face reality with clarity, instead of through the blurring shields of your rigid interpretations? Have you ever dared to see what love really is, what pain really is, what death really is? For that matter, what does life, and to be alive really mean? Have you ever dared to let it go, and just observe? Have you ever stopped and dared to see what it really means to lift your arm..?

Stolen Umbrella

It's been three days I am here. The nights are cool, but the days are hot. The sun is even 

more unforgiving. It shines with amazing power, especially considering that it is winter now. Its rays almost push me back when I step outside. There is a basket of umbrellas in front of the dhamma-hall (meditation hall). The monks every day when we go to have our lunch take one from there against the sun. Today I too pick up one. It is from Japan, and has a very good quality. It has double layers, and blocks the heat very effectively. Under it the hot summer day turns into a warm spring one.

So, after lunch I arrive back to the afternoon session almost refreshed. I'm just continuing my walking meditation, when one of the y

oung Vietnamese monks comes and touches me, and calls with gesture. I am surprised. The meditation rules in Theravada tradition are very strict. We are not supposed to touch, to talk to each other; not even to hold an eye contact. Until this very moment all of them were strictly following these regulations, so I am wondering more and more what could have happened with him. We go to the basket of umbrellas. Then he unmistakably points to the umbrella I took for lunch, then to himself, then he repeats once more without a word. My God! Now I get it! Those umbrellas were not for share, they were owned. To understand this more, you must know that a Theravada monk cannot own only a very few things as his robes, a razor, a water filter, an alm bowl, and... and an umbrella. That is all. Imagine that you have nothing else in this whole world but these, and I take one of them... :) I do not know should I laugh, or stay serious. Anyway, I join my palms in front of my chest and bow, meaning: sorry man, I had no idea! He understands me and smiles.

Nevertheless, something has changed after this incident. There are about eight Vietnamese monks, who are 

studying this meditation technique with me. After my stealing the strict rule is somehow broken, and I realize that often some of them gives a smile, a friendly look. For several days this dumb pantomime goes on. Until the day of my personal interview with the chief abbot (Venerable U Pandita) arrives. From now on, every day he interviews two of us about our experiences, and I am the first one. They are already having the afternoon break when I return from the interview. I sit among them in front of the dhamma-hall, but my mind is still analyzing the chief abbot's words; He gave quite a many, for that matter. The planned time of our meeting was fifteen minutes, but he released me not until forty minutes had passed.

Suddenly I am aware that someone is sitting by me. I have become rather sensitive in the past nearly two weeks, and can sense an urge from the side. An urge for contact. I give a glance, and it is one of the young Vietnamese monks, the one with whom we played the most the pantomime in the past days. What should I do? He clearly waits me to start; and I really would like to, because I am very much interested in him. But there are all the senior monks around us; he could have more trouble than me, and...

Then I feel a gentle, shy touch on my arm, and he says: - Did you visit Sayagyi (the chief abbot)?- Yes. -I am still deep within me. I am interested in him, but nothing more comes out.

- And how was it?

I smile; no difference on this whole globe - this question reminds me to my MSc time, when we eagerly asked one and another about the professor's mood before an exam.
...And then we start to talk. After the break we go together to our accommodations, and talk all the way. About my past, about his, about my aims, about his, about my experiences, about his. He is Shin Santa Maggo, and has been a monk for eight years now. He was born in the Vietnamese countryside and one day, at the age of 13, he visited a Buddhist pagoda with his mother. He felt home immediately, and right there he said to his mom that he wanted to live this life and would be a monk.
- And how did your mother take it? Did she not fear to loose you?
- No, because I had an uncle, already serving in a distant monastery for decades. So, this life style was well known and respected in my family.
A few years passed, when in that particular monastery they were seeking new novices of his age, and then his uncle took him.
- ...And how often do you see your family?
- I do not miss them. I've never missed my home; only now I am missing Viatnam, since this is my first time to be so far away...
Maybe he misunderstood my question, anyway, I shall not force it... Until now, he was mainly focusing on theoretical studies. Now his teacher finds the time ripe to shift the balance to more practical studies. So, he has sent him here, to study the vipassana meditation. He is a very good meditator having very stable concentration. After at most two hours I have to have a walk. During these breaks I quite often see him doing his meditation perfectly unperturbed for three hours in a raw. Wow! After seven more years he will be a Dhammacharia, 'the one who knows the Dhamma (Dhamma-Buddha's teaching in this respect)'.
- Parhaps one day I will visit your monastery. :)
- Yes! You should come to my country! -he says with a smile.
We arrived to our apartments. He is found of languages:
- How do you say good bye in your language? ... Then,
- Viszlàt, he says in Hungarian.
- Xin chào bà, I say in Vietnamese, laughing - at least we've already learnt something! Although he always laughs even more: his Hungarian pronunciation is generally better than my Vietnamese...

Almost every day after this, we walk together, and both of us are excited to explore a way new world in the other. And at Last I feel I've got a friend, who understands my quest, with whom I can share such experiences that are ungraspable for the vast majority of people. At last someone, who is self-consistent; a rear gift that I could find only in a handful persons during my life. Someone, who needs no support, who needs no a way to show, but the same alignment of our individual paths bears the fruit of friendship. Who is mild, yet strong -another rear gift that I've never found... And at last I find such eyes. For that matter many monks here own such look. Look Bhikkhu Ashin Sangharakkhita on the left, or Sayadaw U Nandasiddhi on the right. Both of them are my teachers. At last when I look deep into these eyes I do not see misery, I do not see that they want anything from me, I do not see unfulfilled dreams, I do not see fears. At last there are no gripping hands, which want to fulfill with my existence out here some unbearable emptiness inside there. At last I can look into those eyes without feeling the sorrow I usually do; there is no total chaos and self torture as in most of the eyes I have ever encountered. But there I can see clarity, will, understanding, tranquility, and proud humbleness. I can see presence. That is what I have been looking for for so many years. And here it is; here they are... Thank You, God! Here I am...

Were We Pure...

This terrorist attack on Mumbai made me wondering certain tings. I wrote in my previous blog that the eyes of one of those terrorists made me wonder the most. And the fact how precious, yet fragile the life is. My wondering can end instantaneously literally in each and every moment. And I should be thankful for every new day I get -and every old one I've got, for that matter. :)

Watching into the eyes of that young murderer, I think I realised something that might sounds provoking. Please do not take me wrong, that is not my intention! We are humans. The greatest among us, like Krishna, Zarathustra, Lao Ce, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, did not (want to? could not?) change the world, but kept the spark alive. We are an inevitable mixture of 'good' and 'bad'. Look the thousands of years of human history -it seems like the very same movie is being played in different costumes; look at the billions of years of history of animal kingdom; and last but not least look at the realm of the physical universe. There are and will always be forces against other forces in every level; there are always some who kill, and some being killed, in both symbolic and actual means. The dance of these forces writes the story of our world. Think of the ancient Chinese symbol of Yin and Yang. Without the dance of 'good' and 'bad', of the opposing forces, the story stops being told. In the physical world, as well as in the human realm - after all, the reality is one, even though it takes various forms. Every day, when you just spend a homey family dinner with the ones whom you love, you kill - to sustain your body. Our immune system kills millions of other living creatures just to keep us alive; to participate in the existence of this universe, we ought to kill, we ought to suppress other forces to give way to those we label as ours.

Of course, most of us do not shoot harmless people when walking on the streets, and one certainly feels some distinction here. We have a certain barrier, beyond which we stop hurting others. But - Until what..? Frankly, how many times in your personal life have you hurt someone gravely? Maybe someone whom you claimed to love... How many times you felt so deep anger that you would have liked to hit the opponent, or even did hit him for that matter; or felt to clear him out of your way at once. Surely, you did not do it in the end. There was that barrier.

But where that barrier comes from? From education, from fear of consequences. For how many of us it comes from inside, out of true love; true acceptance of the other being, of the other opinion in that certain moment..? No, if it arisen out of love not conditioning, the anger would not even be born. Because then you, we would realize how unimportant all such arguments are. That we have come to this world together naked, and one day, soon or later, we all leave alike. Until that we are bound. We create the external reality of one and other. And, after all, nothing has any importance what so ever, except what world we create to others, who and what (!) share this existence, at this time with us.

Be honest: what reality do you offer to your fellow beings? To your beloved ones, to the ones whom you dislike, and to that poor animal whose skin was used to make your shoes or belt, or your medicine was experimented on. Is your attitude, the way you look others, is it really utterly pure, compassionate, selfless, uplifting, filled with unconditional love -as you think the world should be? At least mine is not. Neither of those young terrorists.

Clearly, they did not have that barrier we others do, or put it to an other perspective: their barriers lied much further out than that of the mass of people. The barrier, until they are ready to hurt. They might have had different conditioning (surely); They might have had more rough experiences that taught them something different; They might have been taught, trained to overcome their fear, compassion and let those negative forces to burst out of them into the physical world, and eradicate other human beings from existence.

Apart this, I do not see much qualitative difference between them and me. And you? Were you be much different from them if you were trained by your parents, by your adult idols, by all whom you admired to kill for higher good since your childhood? Were you, really..? Do not you really have a dark side that could have been conditioned by people and circumstances to be more apparent -far more apparent? Are you really strong enough, and good enough that whatever circumstances you were put as a baby, the outcome certainly would be someone we call a good man? So, that is what I mean...

There might be purely evil man on this globe, but I have never seen or heard or red about any single one, whom I could say about: s/he is the evil in human form. On the contrary, what I saw, red and heard is that circumstances could turn quite ordinary people into evil (I could refer here from handful psychological experiments to the Holocaust, but I'd rather not to). This tells me, that all the troubles lay within us, ordinary, everyday people. Deep down, hidden. Hidden, suppressed in me, in you, and apparent in some others.
...

The other day some of us were discussing things with a Buddhist monk. One lady expressed her sorrow by the terror one can find in this world; the wars, diseases, sufferings, tears, the pains that one causes to another. The monk said:

-We belong to here. Were we pure, we would live in heaven. Something that is made of the qualities of a different realm, is bound to be present there, not here. But we are part of this realm. We have been growing into this universe, from these very conditions. The soil, the water, the sun ray that made our very beings to grow into existence, are made of anger, envy, hatred, compassion, love, joy, hopes and fears. This is the human challenge. 'Good' and 'bad' are both the building materials of each and every one of us and we have to accept that we are organic part of this universe, with every single cells of ours.

There is no a separated good and innocent self, and the bad world out there; The universe is manifested in our beings, therefore we inherently carry all of its gifts and burdens within our fabrics - our very existence in this world is the prove that we belong to all of its sufferings, whether we cause or bear them.


* Photo from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com:

'It's the Journey'

These thoughts are inspired by discussions in this blog. I suggest you to go there and read those chilling thoughts by yourself, but, in brief the main conclusion is that it is the journey what counts, not the final destination.

Is it really so..? You know, recently I have been thinking a lot about these questions (just read the citation by my photo icon on the left:). For long, I, too, thought that 'it's the journey'. Though not anymore; not quite. If it was JUST the journey -irrespective of its result and direction- why do you start it at all? After all, life as such is a journey itself. Within and without you. Just sit down and do not move for a hundred years, that is a journey, too. Life goes by you, just like the fields pass by while sitting in a train. Life goes through you in the throbbing of each and every cells.

But how many of us was really born to meditate still on the top of a mountain peak for the entirety of his life? No, most of us need to move. No, simply experiencing the flow of life, that is the journey itself, is not suitable for each and every one of us. No, I think, it is something more than a random journey itself...

Why do you feel the urge to move ahead? Why to create something, whether it is a material good, a family, an art performance, or a photo? Because we are pregnant of dreams. The quality, the 'direction' of the journey has to match the root, the forces hidden deep down in our unconscious, in the realm of dreams. In all of us there is a creative force, which wants to achieve something; on a certain, unique way. Something, which usually hidden from us. A force, which urges us, which does not let us rest, which wants to create a specific journey for us. The determination to create, the effort to move ahead are all rooted there. If your way is aligned to this momentum, then you live as you should be. Only then it is the journey. 'Coz, you let this motive to blossom. What blossom, it does not matter; whether it is worth for others, whether it is a great or tiny accomplishment for mankind, it does not matter. But the journey only is THE journey, if it fulfills the deepest dream of the Soul.

Cup of Coffee

It has been raining heavily for days. I was told that a country cannot be more different from Finland than India. Well, they were wrong. During monsoon it just has the same feeling, it generates just the same mood as the ever gray Finland, albeit in a bit warmer edition. I sit in a lodge under palm trees, slowly sipping my cup of coffee.

Oh, that smell... It brings the smoothness of the milk, and richness of the air of a summer afternoon enclosed in the coffee. And the warm cup warms me up, too, carries the essence of life, and brings back memories, via the desert of time and space, when I took similar sniffs among friends.

And that taste..! I drink it almost black, but with just a little bit of sugar and milk. That taste is also the life itself. It is bitter. But the little sugar gives a sweet aftertaste. It is an inseparable mixture of sweetness and bitterness, which play with one and other, and force me to take another small sip. And I come into play, too, to finally decide, whether it is sweet or bitter. Just as life... And that small milk gives such a pleasant creamy smoothness that the sips one by one follow each other. I am very much aware of the whole process, as well as my tiniest reactions to it.

Coffee is an excuse. Excuse to stop the fast stream of everyday habits, to sit down, just for sitting. If there is a cup of coffee by you on the table, people don't start to ask silly questions, like why are you sitting there? Is anything wrong with you? Why do you do nothing? No, with coffee, they are convinced that I am doing something. After all, that is healthy if we always do something. Otherwise hidden disturbing contents of the unconscious might arise.

Oh, friend, how wrong you are... I am not drinking coffee. I am meditating. The rituals of coffee-making are just like the deepest religious rituals. To find the perfect balance of the three ingredients is difficult. It requires attention. Awareness of the present moment. It links me back to the basics. Liquid and powder; measuring them, keeping in mind as definable variables the needed amount of coffee, water, with various thickness of milk and amount of sugar, for a proper mix. And I have created something. What? That it is worthless? Oh, friend... Not the end product what counts, but the process of creation!

Meanwhile I have prepared myself. Prepared to detach from the everlasting ripples of my thoughts, from fears in past, from hopes in future. I am finally right here, right now, with my cup of coffee. My heart beats a little bit faster. Oh, its effect started. Just like psychedelic drugs, it alters the consciousness. But it does it so smoothly that most people don't sense it. For them it is already a habit. But it does bring clarity. It is very polite, though. This clarity is not overwhelming, just above the threshold of sensation. But it is there. And you can let it expand. If you allow it, it comes. As I said, it is a polite alteration. :)

People are passing by, and they think I fit perfectly in their habitual pattern. But I am out of that. I am with the now, here, with my cup of coffee. Memories sometimes pop up. No worries. I observe them freely, and let them go, if and when they want. No need of anything. I do not want to get rid of anything, to achieve anything, just to taste the next sip, sense my heartbeat, and be this clarity. Hehe :) During my meditation retreat the best meditations consistently were following the afternoon tea-break. Maybe I am the yogi of coffee-yoga! :D


Still, on other days, coffee is a social excuse. Again a pause. When there is an excuse to stop every day's hassling, come together and just enjoy each other's company. Enjoy the breath of the summer afternoon, the voice of our friend. What he says? It may or may not matters. After all, we all are small human beings. We may or may not be right. The truth is not in what we say. But in the fact that we say it...

(Image is illustration from web: http://www.coffeelab.com/coffee/coffee_roaster.jpg)

Yoga - Here and There

There is something unique here. It is hard to grasp what I exactly feel, but I shall try now. Frankly, at home I did not really like yoga classes. For those, who are just a little bit sensitive, a class was a gathering of miseries, disturbed energies, unfounded hopes, desires, baseless expectations and prides. And only sometimes a little bit of real tapas (one of the ten yogic principles; meaning more-or-less: burning zeal in practice). More often than not it was just boring how the good teachers struggled to channel the distracted energies of the pupils – not to mention the bad ones... Classes were compromised; Compromised for the sake of ego.

First time in my life I have been feeling something different here… Have I changed, or the place is magical..? I felt this difference during my Buddhist meditation retreat, at the Iyengar Institute, and in my personal discussions with sadhus, who have devoted their entire lives to have access into the divine. In every bit of their teachings I feel some wisdom beyond expression, rooted in experiences of thousands of years of thousands of extraordinary minds; Rooted in age-old traditions of this land that are not partial imports but are at home here. And one can sense these living roots to the past. To the past where the irrational part of our consciousness was much more encouraged, when it was simply acknowledged as a valuable equal part of our existence. We had it, too, in the west. But we lost our connection to it to gain something else. 

Meanwhile, however, we remained the same human beings as we used to be, still having this ancient part of ours, deep within. And we leave it to be starved. We try not to accept its existence, but suppress it. Instead of real integration, when we ‘let our-selves’ to see the world from a vastly different point of view, and simultaneously express this hidden part through its own language; the language of conscious rituals, of powerful symbols/archetypes, such as, for instance, the fire, water, sacred animals, flowers, wonderful and terrifying visions, etc. Rituals, which clearly express our link to this organic world. Rituals, which after all for nothing else, but expressing that we all are part of the whole.

This ritualistic path of understanding is missing, even from the good yoga classes in the west (at least from those I used to visit). But it is all present here. The rituals, which are still organic parts of the present Indian society, shine in their bests when they are joined with deep intellectual understanding, uncorruptedly aiming the ultimate; that is, in the best yoga practices here. I feel some vast, pure force in all these classes, which is so powerful that it does not struggle with the individual distractions but aligns them with wonderful ease; or destroys…

Both the Theravada traditions and Iyengar’s yoga techniques are enormously powerful, pure, and divine. I feel my smallness very clearly when facing them. My most personal reactions, aversions, excuses, are all taken into account in the know-how of these techniques. For thousands of years they knew them… How unique I am? How unique a man is? Countless men and women went into the depth of their existence, in vastly different times and spaces, and yet, we all have been finding the same… Same weaknesses and strengths. What I think to be my most personal fears, progresses and fails are all explained in those holy texts in great detail, with no mistakes. This firmness of knowledge, this vast wisdom is just overwhelming. These ancient techniques know far more of me than I do of myself. This is embarrassing for my ego. It thought to be unique. Precious. But thousands of such tiny egos thought the very same, and thousands will, too, until they realize the truth: it is not like that.

Can the I (with capital letter, heh? :) bear it? It must. It must if it wants to carry on these paths. And they know it. Teaching is fundamentally different here. Masters know that those who remain in the class, they are serious students. They know that we all have taken a bath in the vision of our own hells and we all decided to go forward; That we are kind of over of a certain threshold. The very reason we all gathered here is to practice. Just to practice. For as long as it takes; For hours, for years, tens of years, tens of lives... So, they handle us accordingly as an adult; A matured adult.

These teachers are inhuman; Impersonal. Something immeasurably vast compare to any animated wisdom; A channel; Channel to the purity of existence itself. Both Theravada meditation and Iyengar yoga are hubs of this Light. And through them one can link to this eternal Light, the very same that was present thousands of years ago and shined for the ancient saints.

As It Is

I am sitting in my room and just over there is the garden bathing in the silver light of almost full-moon. A month after the monsoon started this country starts to look like a 'real land'. I mean the burned fields and pure hot rocks give place to life: the green color of life everywhere. Harsh sprawling green colors in various tones, calm the soul and says: We live again!

For days there is an impression growing in me; one serious difference between 'our' attitude and 'theirs' here. A fundamentally different approach to life. Certainly, this is generalization, and as such, it is oversimplification. Still...

Here they are opened up. Extremely social. We are more, much-much more individualist. We try to separate ourselves. In every level of our existence. Look at the cars, for example. Fancy design, luxurious interior which place of our body in full comfort. Perfect noise insulation. Soft music from the high quality sound system, and the car senses and judge by itself more and more situations (from the rain sensor to BLIPS) just to give us the illusion of separated perfect existence, the heaven. Everything goes as we would like to, and at last we believe for a moment that there is something eternal in this world. That this world is after all not a dark and cold vacuum, but a soft, warm home covered by beige leather on the seats and expensive wood on the dashboard. Or have a look to the shopping malls. Everything is carefully kept dust-free. They look pretty, harsh, and ever-new. Natural decay excluded... Brilliant lights, soft music, tons of goods to buy and finally you believe that you are happy. What do you really buy? Some stuff you need or satisfaction? To fill up something. Something that cannot be filled by this way...

Here the life and its tools are more rough. There is not enough resources to build up the illusion of everlasting goods. You feel the elements everywhere around: in cars, in homes. You are bound to encounter with masses of people everywhere again: at homes, while travelling, while working. The smells attacking you everywhere, too; smells of people, the heavy steam of trash water, and your own sweat. There is no illusion created. This is rough as life itself.

A sharp mirror. This roughness pushes you to face with reality. You are not separated, not alienated from the world, but deeply engaged with it. It is around and within you. In Europe you are bound to soften the environment otherwise you die. It led us to the creation of the illusion of security. What we are so stucked to. Here you can stay alive without altering the environment too much. For the price that within the natural tolerance of human body one has to deal with and accept much wider extremes. The roughness of life. No fancy car, no goretex cloth, no well insulated walls. You feel the cold of the winds, the wet of the rain, the burn of the sun, the ups-and-downs of existence. Hundreds of millions live like that.

But we humans do need some secureness, don't we? Where do they find it? Maybe inside? Inside... Beyond the complaining layer of personality in the layer of dreams and believes. And some special souls even deeper, beyond needs, beyond believes can face with what is there. The tranquil space of existence. Where everything is just as it is...

a Whole New World

Simply shocking... I will work for the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism in the following few years. They sent a fancy jeep for me to the airport. Now we are on way back to the Institute, through the city. City... For a long time I was keep thinking that we are passing through some kind of ghetto or slum - but now, this is the city... Dust, trash everywhere; people are by the road sitting around fires on dust; chaos everywhere: in the traffic, among the buildings; shops in such huts which look dirty and like to be abandoned for ages. I have the very strong impression that the whole city was left behind by people hundreds of years ago and they just came back yesterday and started to occupy it again and rebuild from the ruins to match to human condition. This poverty is simply unthinkable for us in the west - at least it was for me.

We stops by a bodega to take a chai (Indian tea with milk). A few people are sitting/standing around. They are smiling from heart and the whites of their teeth brilliantly radiates out from their dark skin (except those who chew bethel; they teeth are strongly reddish). I smile back from my heart, too, and spontaneously realize that even in this dusty, chaotic environment all depth and richness of human emotions, ups-and-downs, understanding and experiences exists. Then a sudden flash strikes through me: I and actually we (generally us middle class people in Europe) have everything what we could or should have to live a happy and balanced life. And in this very moment some deep strain releases; I had to travel thousands of miles to understand that it does not matter where I am. Wherever I am I do have everything I'd need - within me...