Om Benza Sato Hung …
They didn’t teach CPR in high school. I missed a chance to save my grandfather from a heart attack. Sponging up all I could at survival skills boot camp, I was the youngest in the team to do a solo parachute jump at 16. “The mind is like a parachute, it only works when it’s open.” The philharmonic concert hall, my second home. The Soviet Union collapses, my mother loses her job. We worked as janitors to make ends meet. Did reading 53 volumes of Soviet encyclopedia, Tolstoy, The Arabian Nights, Schopenhauer, Conan Doyle, Bradbery keep me away from drugs and help me not to drown in alcohol at 15?
Vivekananda and Krishnamurti set the stage,
The Kremlin, piano lessons, Russian folklore, Bollywood movies, drama club, dancing and drumming, Realist art of Shishkin, Ayvazovsky, Vasnetzov, The Volga and Oka rivers region’s traditions, My soul’s blood supply for many years. “Every gesture is a prayer”, Mother Theresa said. Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin Sounded o in the background While I did bed-side care for my sweet Grandma, What is it like To not be able to move on your own
Akhmatova, Balmont, Block, Yesenin, Agni Yoga, Vajrayana, Classical music, opera, mantras gave me my wings. I found my star In the dark night of the soul. Taking refuge. Eightfold path. A Bodhisattva Vow. One-pointed concentration. The lion’s roar of my teachers reverberated through Lama Ole Nydahl, Nizhny Novgorod, ‘96. Karmapa, New Delhi, ‘09. Skya Trizn, New York, ‘13. Prostrate, purify, pray. Cry, conquer your energies, count your beads. Sit with your breath. Watch your mind continents and times:
In pain, No cure,
No hospice… for years???
May all beings everywhere be free from su ering and causes of su ering.
with the mind. You made it to Bodhgaya -
HVWP COMMONPLACE 70
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online