Journey to Enlightenment Part 02

Author(s): Chitrabhanu, Nirmala Hanke
Publisher: Create Space

Page 49

The Freedom of Choice
Spring 2008
From Jinamanjari Journal
Meditation is to free oneself from bitterness and sadness of past conditions and judgments. Our programmed beliefs, even religion, which means to unite is used to separate one from another. Many people have narrowed their life and placed themselves in a fold by thinking, "I am Muslim.” “I am Hindu." "I am Jain.” “I am a Jew.” “I am a Christian.” “They are not like me; they are all outsiders.” By belief, one has blocked and alienated oneself from mankind and living beings who are helping our existence in many ways, visibly and invisibly. Meditation helps to break the self imposed limitations on oneself and to live liberated in a "uniting" universe...
The Jaina philosophy does not build our life on the past but on the living present. To me, a good life is a healthy loving life. A good life is a creative life. It is that life where we want to have the awareness that we can choose what we want to choose and make the choice to accept and let go of the dead past and live in the living present.
If we don't let go of the past, we cannot move forward. I am reminded of two friends in India who decided to cross the Ganges River by boat in Benares. They were drinking bhang, a stimulant, and were feeling energetic because of intoxication and the beautiful full moon. They decided to cross the river to another town to get good food. The whole night they rowed and rowed. But when it was dawn, they saw people on the shore who looked like the people from the night before. One of them said, “This place looks exactly like Benares." So, they stepped ashore and asked, "Where are we?” They were told that they were in Benares. “Benares? But how can that be? We have been rowing and rowing the whole night.” Only then did they find out that in their intoxication they had forgotten to untie the rope from the jetty. The rope was over 200 feet long, so that had moved from here to there, but what about us? We want to move forward, but we don't untie ourselves from the anchoring past habits and beliefs. Whenever we talk, we talk about the past and go on playing the old worn-out record. Even in therapy for years, our mind roams in the empty rooms of past phantoms. Clinging to the past dogmas, we turn from a plum into a prune.
48 - Journey to Enlightenment - Volume Two