14.9.2008

When you can't express your gratitude

When I read Sharon's words of "my heart is bursting with gratitude" I instantly understood what she meant and who she was referring to. She has been hosting John in Vancouver.

It was some months ago in India that I wrote a tribute to John, what he means to me. I wrote it with care as I didn't want to create an idol in my head or have expectations of him. After all as he's currently trying to "divorce" his own identity it wouldn't be fair for me to create an image in my head and label him with words.

His workshop has been inspirational. He is a man of immense energy, enthusiasm and courage. To actually be leading a class of 85 students in Japanese, build a rapport and get his message across patiently requires a certain skill. We haven't been doing much physical work as such but mentally we are stripping layers of conditioning, egoistic ideas and realising how wrong we see the world.

Here are some quotes from the workshop:

• "When you face the sun all your dark shadows will fall behind you" a Maori proverb
• "Form=emptiness and emptiness= form" Heart Sutra
• "We move into form, through form, out of form. Everything has a birth, life and death. In a closed circuit universe where energy cannot be created and destroyed all we're doing is moving through form. When we get attached to form we fear death"
• "Kokoro means emotional heart in Japanese"
• "strength receiving- when you surrender to earth, earth will push back with equal and opposite energy to support you"
• "Back bend=forward bend it's just a different way of looking at it. Some see words when they look at a page of written words and some see the space between the words"
• "When we arrive in this world the mind is like an instrument, it is totally balanced. But we arrived in a conditioned existence, our family, religion, beliefs and these are viruses. With so much stimulation the ordinary thinking mind becomes out of balanced, it has preferences, grasping desires, imprints. The ordinary mind grows bigger and doesn't allow room for the intelligent mind that is intuitive and can discriminate. The ordinary mind becomes full but lonely, full but unhappy, full but not comfortable."
• "Your mind doesn't control you; if it does it is not your friend. A calm, still mind that has silence and space is your intelligent mind that looks after you"
• "How we relate to ourselves and others are very important. It is all about relationships, someone else can't cause us pain, and it is our relationship with them. Similarly how we relate to ourselves, our thoughts can create pain and problems."
• "seeds you plant, seeds to harvest"