Once, when I had lived in the monastery for a year or so, I was walking from the main house to my yurt and all of a sudden I heard this familiar sound “bebeep, bebeep”. Automatically my hand went to my pocket to reach for a cell phone. I stopped to laugh at myself. I don’t have pockets anymore, what to speak of a cell phone. The sound came from a mole chaser in the garden.
Living as a brahmacari (a monk student) makes you think about wealth in a different way.
We don’t own anything. Everything we use, like the computer I’m writing this with, is not really mine, the car I drive is not mine. I can’t go out and buy a soda or whatever I feel like having at that moment. We are trained into giving up the notion of ownership and we are taught to adopt a mood of service and dedication instead of a mood of staking out things in our name that really don’t belong to us. I guess a monk’s life seems so off-putting and unwanted because we renounce the things that make people happy. But we want to be rich too. Everybody wants to be rich. Wealth just means different things to different people.
I’m planning on writing more about wealth later.
Dear Gurunistha,
I know many people outside who live their lives as their last. Who posses nothing. We also live in a monastery of our hearts, although on the outside we participate in the world. We also live and know that this game of life seems absurd too, and that in fact we possess nothing. Not even ourselves.
I talk to my friends and we laugh together, analyse the matters and circumstances in the world. Isn’t that funny, that when you look at our planet from above: it’s such a tiny dot in the endless space horizon. There are such profound ontological and existential questions hanging above us and surrounding us .. and yet our human society lives in a self-imposed set of rules, imaginary economics, trapped between imaginary borders of interests and power. For some outsiders, we look like idiots.
This planet is such a tiny piece of dust in a vast space, and when look closely upon us, everyone has the right to explore, to live. We as the society, as individuals, we can live all together and help each other understanding the space, endless horizons, ourselves, our humanity and spirituality. Our place in the vast space. There’s no need for poverty, or famine, or politics …
In my early twenties, I asked myself what should I do in my life. A part of me wanted to go monastery and I almost did that. But there was a tiny voice inside of me, I don’t know was it me real or illusionary, that said:
“No .. that’s too easy. If you really want to live renounced you have to be thrown in the midsts of the battle, like good-hearted Arjuna was, and from inside that battlefield you need to think about Me. You need to be among people, share their dreams and help them be stronger. Be at their side, and always try to recognise me — because I’m always there. Inside all people around you, inside you. Sometimes I’m hidden, but I’m still there. Sometimes I’ll pull your faith from within you with almost invisible fishing hooks, but don’t lose the faith in yourself — you will recognise me. I like to play hide and seek and I promise you .. I’ll never abandon you.”
I felt so much stronger and determined. Yes, I can do that not because I’m able to to do it, but because I feel such a strong presence in my life that helps me, inspires me, finds a pleasure in interacting with people and making them aware of something greater, something vast and beautiful.
Every morning I wake up and leave the monastery of my heart, of my inner life and my internal worship, and go outside. There’s battle outside, I see Yuyudhana, Drona and Bhisma and numerous others, their horses and chariots. It’s time to join them on this KuruksÌ£etra, the ksetra of life and spend my day thinking of You, my dearest friend.
Dear Gurunistha (although I know you with your previous name),
You have a new reader. I only had the possibility to read this first “message” (need to go to sleep beside my childer), but there a things we share or think alike. I doing yoga and meditation once a week, as my main practice is with my family
I would like to say so much, but it’s hard to me to find the words in English - is it ok to write in Finnish?
Namaskar (I don’t know if you do yoga/know this, but it is the best greeting one can give),
Sanna (one of Emmi’s frieds)