Letting Life Flow Through Me
During the ten days Vipassana Retreat, Goenka Ji tells the story of a little kid and his favourite dish. His mom makes his favourite dish – rice pudding and to add flavour she adds cardamom to it. The little kid sees the cardamom seeds, thinks they are small stones and refused to eat the dish. …
I did my first 10-day Vipassana course in Delhi, Gurgaon. Vipassana meditators run all the Vipassana courses on a volunteer basis – nobody is paid. They do it because they want to and genuinely too. I had to do two more courses before the desire to serve arose in me. I remember standing at the …
Let’s take a scenario: You have a early morning meeting at work. And for some reason you slept late the previous night and woke up late. You forgot to make your lunch and it’s your turn to take the puppy out for a morning walk. I am sure all of us have experienced the following …
The story goes – Abraham Lincoln’s brother wrote him a letter stating that he wanted to move from his current location because he didn’t like the people, didn’t like the place. His brother moved places and after a few months the same story and the same letter to Lincoln. Lincoln wrote back and said, “How …
In one of my previous blogs I had talked about the 10 Paramis or Virtues. Today I want to talk about one of them which is 6. Khanti: Patience May I ever be patient. May I be able to bear and forbear the wrongs of others. May I ever be tolerant and see the good …
Let’s say you have a poisonous tree in your backyard – it is infected by some insect which is causing it to be poisonous. The infection is in the roots of the tree. You keep cutting the tree down and telling yourself that the problem is solved. At a superficial level it does look like …
This blog follows the last one where I talk about the different ways in which we can accept or not accept other’s judgements/opinions. In this blog I am going to talk about how to increase the “effort” factor in implementing the different ways. Before we get started let me explain what I mean by “effort …
In the 10-day Vipassana courses Goenkaji tells us some stories during the discourses. The one below is similar to the one Goenkaji narrates during the course. There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land and many students …
This blog is dedicated to all the priceless entities. Vipassana meditation retreats that I keep mentioning in my blogs are free – they are run on a pay it forward or donation basis. You pay with what you can and pay only if you want – a lot of people come back and volunteer for …
This is in some sense a continuation of the last blog – this time I want to talk about the five precepts. Before we get into that let’s talk about Sila, Samadhi and Panna. The picture above depicts the three groups of the Noble Eightfold Path – Don’t worry this is not going to be …