A New Time Share

By a Wanderer  (A story with fictional characters in real setting)
We were all set to go for our yearly vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We have a beautiful time share right on the beach. I, my wife, three kids and two dogs; we were all excited. Everything was going according to plan until last week. Right before our departure, an unexpected series of events forced us to cancel the whole trip.  Everything fell apart.

While searching for an alternative, I came across a sign board for a retreat “Meditate-A-Thon” – a two-day residential meditation retreat at Vedanta Society of Providence. I registered for both of us. This was the first summer when we were doing something without kids. My wife was reluctant to attend, but in the end she agreed to participate.

Retreat began with Swamiji’s short talk. Thought of long meditation sessions gave me shivers down my spine (unfortunately it was not awakening of Kundalini). I was uneasy but couldn’t talk because of silent retreat. At last, I decided to deal with – ‘I’ and ‘my mind’. Two days of complete silence. Slowly, serenity of the environment took over. I determined to stay instead of running away.

There were 15 participants. I was amazed to notice that each one was a serious seeker. Everyone was adhering to the schedule that starts early morning at 5:30AM and goes until night 9:30PM.  Participants were very careful while moving around to avoid noise. Every single action was part of meditation. Even the noisy clock was removed to avoid “tick” “tick” sound.

I can comfortably watch a movie for a couple of hours, but sitting for meditation is a different story. I was struggling to bring back my wandering mind. I was about to give up, and help came from a short reading. One statement struck me hard. “When the mind is awfully restless and out-going, you should doggedly persist in your Japa, even do it mechanically, without giving way to restlessness. In that way part of your mind is always engaged in Japa. Thus, the whole mind cannot become or remain restless.” – by Swami Yatiswarananda. This simple piece of advice helped me a lot.

Two days went by. Last day, Swamiji concluded with some important notes –
1. Practice – Even if mind is not focused, continue Japam or meditation. Repeated practice brings joy. Thus, quantity leads to quality.
2. Dynamic mediation – Last two days we meditated in silence, now make this mediation dynamic.  This meditation should permeate through every action. As electricity illumines the room so also meditation should illumine our actions.

At 1PM, the retreat ended. Some of the devotees were still feeling the momentum of Japa. For me, I was happy that I could sit through the whole retreat. As soon as my wife got her phone back, she called our daughter, “Sweetheart, we found a new Time Share, and it is quite close to our home.” She was right. Last week, I thought everything was falling apart as we couldn’t make it to Myrtle Beach, but in reality everything fell into right place, and we found our new Time Share, a retreat home.

www.vedantaprov.org

Spiritual Retreat for Youth: Lessons Learned

By Ankur Chiplunkar (participant in Youth Retreat held at Vedanta Society of Providence, July 25-27, 2014)

This retreat has been a great success for me. The topic of Buddha’s Noble Eight Fold path was very appealing, leading to enriching discussions and wisdom. The best part I liked about this approach is that it is very practical! Difficult, but not impossible. The beauty of the approach is that you can apply it to your day to day activities, making you very efficient and productive at your daily tasks. At the same time, this approach can be applied to the bigger picture of attaining liberation and help you organize and execute your spiritual progress plan.

I loved the symbolism of a wheel with 8 spokes used to describe the Eight Fold path principles. Each spoke in the wheel represents one principle from the noble path. You need all the spokes in the wheel for it to rotate and move in one direction. The best part about the analogy is that after 1 full rotation, you come back to the first spoke again. This essentially means that as you progress in your spiritual path you need to keep on refining your new actions, efforts, view, etc. This is very similar to the water treatment plant example, which Swamiji explained, where the filter keeps on getting finer and finer as the purity of water increases.
Apart from the Eight Fold path I learned another key message during the retreat, which is that the older scripts need to be understood in the context and time when they were written. All the statements made then might be applicable in today’s situation, which is quite different in the micro-sense. In the macro-sense, misery, death, delusion and suffering still exist and will continue to exist. This lesson is very important, since most of today’s miseries in terms of religious practices comes from misinterpretation of the holy scripts!

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Insights from the Young Adult Retreat

By Rohan (participant in Youth Retreat held at Vedanta Society of Providence, July 25-27, 2014)
Insights:
1.    “Noble” comes from Arya Satyam, meaning “deliberate, elevated, wisdom, and finesse.” The definition of Noble is fitting for the title “Noble Eightfold Path.” It clarifies that life should be lived on the Path deliberately, consciously, and with thought into each action. Successfully staying on the path is only achieved by being present in the moment of thoughts and actions.  It is by way of overcoming the instinctive or animalistic life: one that is stimulated only by external forces, and is reactive.

It is difficult, not impossible.

2.    The Four Truths are:

a.    There is suffering.
b.    There is a cause.
c.    There is a state of infinite peace, and it can be achieved by removed by removing the cause of suffering.
d.    This can be achieved through life on the Eightfold Path.

The Four Noble Truths are important because they acknowledge that there is a problem, that there is a cause to the problem, there is a way to remove the cause, and that the problem is actually alleviated after removing the cause.
3.    Dharmachakra – a wheel with 8 spokes is used to represent the Eightfold path. This is a fitting image for the path as each of the 8 spokes of the wheel is dependent on the others, that if one break, the whole wheel is out of alignment. They support a wheel, an object representing inertia and movement along the path. Together, with all of the spokes working correctly, the wheel can move along the path.

4.    Right intention is intangible, and is often relative. Over time, with trials and failures, our experience develops into wisdom, which adjusts the view. Changes and refinement of the view adjusts the intention. This process is similar to the scientific method, outlined below, that emphasizes the importance of experience and failure in order to develop wisdom.
5.    Meditation in every moment is Right Mindfulness.In order to live a deliberate, noble life, it is important to strive for mindfulness in every moment, and being present in the moment. It reminds me of the book we read once for summer camp in Marshfield called Present Moment, Wonderful Moment, by Thich Nhat Hanh.

6.    Tathagata – “Thus he comes, thus he goes” – a great description of Buddha as he would come and go through realities and Samadhi at his own volition.

7.     While Right View, Intention, and Speech are for mental purity, Right Action, Livelihood, and Effort are of physical purity, and ethical conduct. The three broad categories of actions that should not be undertaken are taking or harming life, stealing, and illicit sex.

When actions are right, they are performed with intention and control. When they are not right, the ego splits. A moral doubt occurs, a second ego develops. The second “I” causes major conflicts and inner tensions. The separate I splits according to one’s own conscious.

8.    The scientific method is an important tool on the spiritual journey. It is a method that calls for experimentation. It invites the possibility of failure when trying new experiments. New methods based on your own experiences and observations are developed and honed to get a better understanding of the truth. Tools have been provided through the various teachings of past gurus. These tools can be tested in one’s own practice or modified to get the best results for you.
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Meditate-a-thon 2014

The residential long meditation retreat was held at Vedanta Society from 6:00 PM Aug. 01 (Fri.) to 1:00 PM Aug. 03 (Sun.). 17 people including Swami Yogatmanandaji participated in this retreat. The retreat constituted meditation from 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM on Friday, 5:30 AM to 9:30 PM on Saturday and 5:30 AM to 12:300 noon on Sunday with short breaks in between. The participants will present their thoughts, opinions and feedback on this retreat as comments to this post.

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Quantifying Dukkha

By Atreya (participant in Youth Retreat held at Vedanta Society of Providence, July 25-27, 2014)
 
Having read books by Swami Vivekananda, it is very difficult to resist the temptation of – giving up the worldly life and taking up the life of a monk. This spiritual retreat, under the guidance of Swami Yogatmananda, provided a balanced learning experience. It helped me gain better control of my emotions, behavior and actions while humbly reminding that we have lot more to know about this universe.

Walking the noble eightfold path, encompassing Samyak- drishti (view), Sankalpa (intention), Vac (speech), Karmanta (action), Ajiva (livelihood), Vyayama (effort), Smriti (midfulness) and Samadhi (concentration), we can completely eradicate Dukkha from our life. As any other powerful tool, these are difficult to master. These are to be practised simultaneously like spokes of a wheel.

One of the things that make it difficult is our inability to express these things precisely. Many times I have doubts, but I find it difficult to express them in words. Also, many times answers are vague. These challenges make it necessary to quantify and mathematize this beautiful science of spirituality. We can quantify external world. And since internal world is connected to external world, there is some hope in doing that.

An important comment by Swamiji was that we need to reformulate our natural number system, units and have a set of semi-integral cardinality. As I understand, this is necessary to handle the complex working of our mind, a part of which can watch itself while doing some other work.

There are some physical quantities which are conserved like energy, momentum etc. On the other hand while meditating we stress the concept of “Existence”. Only because I exist, I am aware and I can think of mathematical consistency. If I did not exist then the concept of awareness and mathematical consistencies are meaningless. Conservation laws are nothing but consistency check. This makes me believe that probably “Energy”, “Momentum” are physical realization of abstract concept of “Existence”.

These things give me tremendous hope that we will soon reach a point when, as Swami Vivekananda wished, each of us will be able to see the self within us effortlessly.

www.vedantaprov.org