I think you’ll need to be more specific as to exactly what you require, including how much time it might take, before I can give you a realistic answer.

Thanks for your interest.

In my small town, Bhagwan was quite a hit around 1979-1985: out of my high school class 6 already quite close friends took Sannyas, on the (party) plane to Bombay half of the passengers were sannyasins. In Nepal I met a high school teacher of mine who had taken Sannyas: he inspired me to go for a meditation at the Kathmandu Sannyas centre and to book a group in Poona; when hiking around Annapurna I met a Sannyasin from Munich…

But then I decided for the meditation course in Bodhgaya.

After returning to Germany in 1982 for about 3 years everything was “Sannyas”: I lived in a mixed commune of sannyasins and non-sannyasins. I have been to the Centres in Schloss Wolfsbrunnen, Amsterdam, Medina and finally to Rajneeshpuram as a paying guest.

However, I always felt a little bit like an outsider:
So much hype. I am not a good sannyasin. After the silent meditation period.

My Sannyas letter says:
“A Sannyasin is committed to be a stranger,
he is committed to be an outsider.
He has chosen consciously:
I am going to live in joy.
And the only condition that is needed
to fulfil it is silence.
If you become a little more silent
more and more joy will arise out of you.
The moment you are totally silent
an infinite explosion of joy happens.”

That indeed fitted me well:
Anand Prasanto meaning ‘Bliss in deep silence’.

So after “the Ranch”, Bhagwan wasn’t the be-all and end-all of everything – I kept following my impulses doing a lot of meditation at home and in nature, some Tibetan meditation retreats, Mantra chanting, Sufi zikhr, Satsang with various persons. Finishing studies. Working.

40 years down the road I feel trust in what is happening.
My favourite is walking in nature: I carry nordic walking sticks to shift me around – otherwise I would just remain standing or sitting, looking at the sky and the colours.

My plan is to have a second home somewhere in Asia, like Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand or Malaysia – and then to “follow the better weather”….

Would you like, when you have time, to receive and send a few emails among SN’s friends to exchange mobile numbers?

Meditation, working on ourselves, self-reflection, being as honest with ourselves as we can, refines the story, integrates the stories, until eventually there is only one ”story”.

The illusion of a story, a self, is a tool that has to be transcended.

“There is no self” is the granddaddy of fake Buddhist quotes. It has survived so long because of its superficial resemblance to the teaching on anatta, or not-self, which was one of the Buddha’s tools for putting an end to clinging.

Even though he neither affirmed nor denied the existence of a self, he did talk of the process by which the mind creates many senses of self — what he called “I-making” and “my-making” — as it pursues its desires.

Wearing a mala and red clothes is also destructive to the identity that the standard clothes people wore gave them; another part of the heightening of self-awareness process, the early part of which is self-consciousness. There is no self-awareness without going through self-consciousness.

MOD:
The comments are handled automatically by Word Press, Shantam.

Thank you very much for your contribution of your “very personal view”, as you say (and your open-mindedness – I presume – re other “personal views”).

One step at a time….

Madhu

In fact, I feel freer without the temptation to be looking at the thing, which, seeing so many constantly gazing at their little gadgets while walking down the street and on public transport, seems to me to have become one of the defining means of ‘hypnosis’ of the age, a huge ‘distraction’ for millions of people to bury themselves in.

But sure, if it ‘floats your boat’, why not take the initiative and create this network ?