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Spiritual Return to School

18 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by AjmaniK in life and living, nature

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

education, retreat, school, summer, vacation

I still remember how I felt when I first found out that school is “out” for summer break for TEN full weeks in the USA. I was incredulous. Ten weeks? What I wouldn’t have given for ten weeks out of school for summer in my native India? For starters, it would have meant an additional four weeks with my parents and siblings. A lot more traveling the far reaches of the northern and north-eastern states of India. A lot more curvy windy roads in the mountains, crossing ten-thousand feet passes, visiting far-flung monasteries, and playing in rivers like the Indus, Jhelum and Brahmaputra. I could go on for a while here…

As much I enjoyed taking a break from school during the scorching heat of Delhi, I truly did enjoy going “back to school”. Other than the last week or so before school began, when there was a mad dash to try and complete the myriad homework assignments and science projects that were due in our first week back, “back to school” brought great anticipation. The “catching up” with friends on the first day of return-to-school was perhaps the most looked-forward-to event. In an age before cell-phones, summer apart from friends was spent in a virtual vaccuum of information about their wherabouts and wheredoings. The first few days back were filled with an exchange of stories over the what seemed to be oh-so-short thirty minute lunch breaks.

Once the euphoria would wear out, reality would strike. The teachers were not afraid to bring our focus quickly back to their view of the “purpose” of school – education through examination. The quarterly exams would loom a mere two or three weeks away from when school started. You see, we were supposed to be ‘studying’ over the summer. What “blasphemy”, “torture” and borderline “cruelty”… abuse of the student’s mental faculty, don’t you think so?! I say that (almost) tongue-in-cheek, for I know now, that as a parent, I (almost) wish that they would hand-out some summer home-work to occupy their oh-so-long, languid, “I don’t want to go to another summer camp”, ten weeks of summer.

So, what is your favorite part about “return to school”, I asked her the other day. “My friends and teachers,” she said. I guess some things are inter-generational. As much as I looked forward to a return to my friends, “returning” to (some of) my teachers was a close second. It was almost as if they also came back renewed, revitalized and re-energized with an energy to create an environment for learning. A few of my high-school teachers innately understood that the frequency of “tests” and “exams” actually interfered with the process of learning. They were the ones from whom I perhaps learnt most about life and living.

For in the ‘real world’, there is really no ‘return to school’. We may take vacations or retreats, but unless they are of the “lost-to-this-world” variety, we remain ‘in school’. Or so it seems. It is when we choose to explore beyond the walls of our physical world, that we perhaps (re)create the “summer breaks” of our childhood. It is in that ‘eternal summer’ that we can teach our hearts to explore the inner mountains and brooks. It is in that ‘heart school’ that we can feel the warm depth of the river beds, and watch the ripples as the thought pebbles skip on the surface.

The heart is this ‘daily school’ of the learning experience of joy, warmth, silence, stillness, awareness. We may not want to take a ‘summer break’ from it even for a day, let alone for ten weeks. No return may be necessary, for we never did leave.

Kumud

P.S. I invite you to ‘return to school’ with us in the #spiritchat community on twitter – Sunday, Aug 19 at 9amET / 630pm India. And yes, you can leave your homework at home… just bring your ‘summer’ adventures to share. Namaste.

Return to School
After a Summer of Exploration, a “Return to School”

SpiritChat – April Discussions

30 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by AjmaniK in Uncategorized

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Tags

compassion, education, meditation

April has been an exciting month in our weekly spiritchat discussions. We began with a discussion titled The Spirit of Compassion – a virtue that is thought to be essential to developing moral excellence and spiritual growth.

The second Sunday of April was Easter Sunday – when we paused for the holiday to let folks enjoy the spirit of renewal with friends, family and community.

…the heart and spirit of Easter is about faith, family, love, light, renewal, hope and remembrance – all those things are worth pausing for…

We did something different for the third Sunday – I invited a special guest, @acmullick – to share with us about the practice of meditation. At the outset, we realized that there are too many different aspects to meditation to cover in the space of one hour. So, this topic will be back in the future – to discuss more specifics of meditation. I would like, in particular, to explore the link between meditation and prayer.

The fourth Sunday of April (which happened to be Earth Day) started out as a discussion about education and learning and evolved into a chat about what nature and the earth can teach us. As always, a lot of questions were raised during this chat – some of which we will try and answer in future chats.

So, as another month is behind us and we prepare to step into May, we pause (as has become a little bit of a spirit chat tradition) – to look back on the month in the final week. Which topic impacted you most in April? What topics would you like to see discussed in the month of May? Is there a common thread between compassion, renewal, meditation and learning?

I invite you to join us in our weekly SpiritChat discussion on Sunday, April 29th at 9am ET / 1pm GMT.

Go ahead – invite a few friends too!

Kumud Ajmani

Update: Here is the transcript http://bit.ly/sc-tr-0429 and questions – thank you to all who shared in the discussion!

Q1. In your opinion, what is the best way to practice #compassion? #SpiritChat 

Q2. What prevents us from being #compassionate? How can we overcome it? #SpiritChat 

Q3. How can #meditation (or similar practices) lead us to more #compassion? #SpiritChat 

Q4. Can we learn #meditation by ourselves? Or do we need a technique and/or teacher? #SpiritChat 

Q5. What kind of #education do we need for spiritual progress? Or #SpiritChat 

Q6. What spiritual lesson(s) did you learn in April that will help you moving forward? #SpiritChat 

Q7. April was a month of renewal with #compassion and #meditation. What can we expect in May? #SpiritChat 

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