Adyar, Sunday, 10 November 2013

 Borobudur

Adyar, Sunday, 10 November 2013

This was a day of rest and conversations with the newly arrived participants of the School of the Wisdom, which will start tomorrow morning. The garden department has been cleaning the wild undergrowth around our house, during the last few days. This was to be done for the occasion of the Convention, explained one of the workers.

There were a TOS and a Madras Theosophical Federation meeting in the afternoon with a presentation on shamanism after these meetings.

During the morning walk some 14 days ago, there was again the man followed by a man with a rifle gun and this time it was an automatic weapon similar to a Kalashnikov. The rest of the week, we did think we saw the same man walking without a body guard. Hopefully someone has brought a sense of proportion to the mind of the walker.

The last weeks, we see fireflies under the trees in the darkest part of the way back from the dining hall not far from our house.

It is a busy time moving to a new house and doing a new job.

The drinking water bottle of 20 lit. was commanded by our new colleague, as the man answering our phone call just let the line go silent. The bottle should have been delivered at 8 pm, but was delivered at the house of the neighbor at 7 pm, who did not have to pay as he was told, that the bill would come later.

One morning the young dog, who sat under our chair in the Great Hall was lying under a desk at the Treasury. We joked, that it had been born near the Bookshop last winter and had probably had enough of the books and went straight for the money, this time.

Ants are still everywhere on the porches and in the kitchen. They are speeding along their highways and sometimes carrying an egg in their mouth.

The IPF Conference:

During the cremation of our beloved president we were with an Indian delegation of about two dozen delegates at the Indo-Pacific Federation's Conference in Bali, Indonesia. On 1 November it began with an opening ceremony at 5 pm. There were about 90 participants. Originally we were checking in with 16 delegates at Chennai airport, but four of us (Secretary, Vice-president, his wife and The Editor) had to go back after the check-in, because the sad news came, that Radha had died while we were on our way to the airport. At the opening of the Convention on Friday afternoon some of the speakers have given short testimonies of their encounters with Radha. These were very to the point and greatly appreciated by the delegates.

Delegates at Indian Pacific Theosophical Conference 2013 - Bali

Meditation in the group of more than 50 people was very special experience.

There were talks by Ravi Ravindra about Actorless Action, by Linda Oliveira about Discovering the Diamond, by Chong Sanne about the History of the Theosophical Society in China and by Vic Hao Chin about Mainstreaming Theosophy.

On Sunday we went to Borobudur on Java. Most interesting but fatiguing experience. We missed the last visit to the Parabrahman Temple, because the rain had started to pore down. The Buddhist initiation mountain Borobudur had lost its power and there were only stones reshuffled by the restaurationnears financed by the UN. It was as touristic as the Sacré Coeur in Paris with lots of too pro-active souvenir sellers. Compared with Avalon it was nothing but dead matter. The UN had even put slabs of lead in horizontal layers under the stones to prevent influx of water. At the lower levels many stones had been heaped against the vertical sides of the terraces to prevent them from sliding down the hill.

We did not go on the temple tour excursion, which was in the program for the next day of the conference, but had a morning of rest and an afternoon of work. After some exercise of swimming, and reading a book, we were back to normal again. We had dinner with two other delegates, one who had stayed to organize a trip to another quieter island after the conference and the other, who came back from the temple tour without having had dinner. At about ten or eleven in the evening there was several times a tokèh bird just above our head making its call with very loud voice. We wondered what significance the presence of that bird might have.

On the last day of the conference there were many warm contacts with people we had met before and some new contacts with people we met for the first time. The laptop was put to use for another delegate to communicate with family.

There were interesting talks by Pedro Oliveira on TS & the Social Media, by Ravi Ravindra about Mindfulness in Action and Mindlessness in Love, and by Isis Resende about Theosophy in Brazil.

In the evening of the last day of the conference, we had dinner on the beach and witnessed there a real Balinese dance performance of the Ramayana. We saw a very thin slice of the moon just before it would be new with the round sphere if its night side against the dark sky.

The next morning we had a swim in the sea and the pool before going to the airport. From midday till midnight the travelling kept us busy and being part of a group helped a lot to make the experience an agreeable one.

It was very good to be back in the HQ at Adyar, where there is no atmosphere of tourism and money making.

Happy, healthy and in peace, yes.  At occasions, people say even, that we are very lucky here. The handbag, which we had forgotten in the taxi, when we arrived in Adyar just after midnight, came back to us the same morning.

Today we got our first consolidated bill, which is like a tip. The servant said that we should call her by the first name and not address her as madam. All three meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner are at the very modest price of not even one euro per day.

People are beginning to arrive from abroad. Dinner time has been set at 6 pm again because the monsoon period is over. On Friday we heard for the first time again the sounding of the gong by the cook Moni. We had at our table three from India, one from Norway, one from Iceland, two from Bolivia and one from Australia.

The election fever begins to rise and we receive information, from which one might conclude that there seems to be a lot of pushing and pulling before the start of the race in order to get a good position.

On Saturday 9 November 2013, a memorial was organized in the Great Hall for the deceased President of the TS, Radha Burnier. Messages from abroad and from India were read out by respectively the International Secretary and the General Manager. Condolence speeches were delivered and several speakers could express themselves each one during two minutes. After that there was a beautiful chant by the General Manager followed by the putting forward of flowers before the portrait of Radha by those present, who felt like paying respect to her in this way. For us this was a special event, because we had never before lived through this ritual except the one done before the portrait of A. Besant on the 1^st October 2013. 

The positioning of the flowers before the portrait from our two folded hands at the heart chakra really gave rise to an strong feeling of affection towards the deceased, which was much more intense than we had expected.

Bye for now,

Brooder