The Covid-19 crisis also left its mark on my life and highlighted the extent of the disruption of our times. Commitments and cancellations flew around like dominoes in slow motion. Starting with the postponement of a global meeting of Potential Project in Delhi with Tibetan Master Mingyur Rinpoche, to the cancellation of the audience with SH the Dalai-Lama, in Dharamshala. The weeks leading up to the final shutdown brought out a high-water mark of emotions in me, despite all the serenity - joy at the overwhelming interest in mindfulness in Mumbai, disappointment after the lightning end of my India sojourn. An experiential exercise in the Buddhist construct of impermanence.
Unforeseen events have rushed into our lives at full speed, making us aware that impermanence is a constant companion. Faced with facts that cannot be changed, we face completely new challenges with unclear endings. Like sailing into a dense wall of fog on the high seas without a compass. To make the best of an unchangeable fact, we must practice radical acceptance without being thrown into permanent turmoil by our emotions and the resulting carousel of thoughts in our mind.
This pandemic, which is also ephemeral, leaves deep scars on the planet and in each one of us. The word "virus" comes from the Latin "virus" which means poison. Upon entering the body, the virus transforms a living cell into a mini factory to reproduce itself. This results in "poisoning" of the host organism. Depending on the immune defense, the host organism reacts.
In the outside world, this tiny strand of RNA, has caused devastating health and economic consequences that have been and continue to be marked by illness, death, isolation, job loss, school closures, home offices, loneliness, anxiety and depression. In parts of our planet, the effects of the lockdown were accompanied by hunger, housing loss, mass migration, and despair
precisely where day laborers and precarious work are a reality.
On the other hand, the shutdown gave us the chance to think about our priorities and life design and to perceive relationships in our personal environment more deeply. The chance to reflect on the destruction of our earth, climate disasters, social injustice, extinction of living beings, etc. and to understand our role in it. Outside the disruption, inside the unique opportunity to turn within ourselves, in the pause, the infinite silence in
ourselves, to recognize.
For some of us, the pandemic, global gridlock and shutdown acted as a wake-up call, despite suffering and the restrictions on personal freedom and mobility.
A wake-up call to take a fresh look at our relationship with ourselves and our immediate surroundings.
A wake-up call to live more slowly and consciously, with wisdom and compassion.
A wake-up call to recognize, feel and positively change our connectedness to all people and living beings.
A wake-up call to accept our earth in all its vulnerability and to treat it sustainably and respectfully in the future.
A wake-up call to recognize this brutal standstill as a warning sign of nature and to take advantage of the unimagined opportunities, in the reorientation and phase of reshaping the social and economic fabric of our planet, instead of a return to "business as usual". To even more consumption and destruction.
A wake-up call to connect with the innermost of our selves and unleash potentials for growth without greed, envy, covetousness, lies, egoisms and self-importance.
To reshape our future, we need to be present here and now and let go of the baggage of the past. All that we have learned from our good experiences and mistakes serves as the basis for re-thinking a better, more just, more inclusive world. A world without the massive divides, between rich and poor, white or other-colored (for the most part), female or
male, young or old, sick or healthy. Without the resentment, anger, guilt and pain of history. If we open ourselves, in our minds, in our hearts and with our wills, to what wants to emerge, it is possible to create a common sustainable, more just world, an oasis of aliveness that we owe to our planet and to our children and our children's children.
For in the words of Kahlil Gibran, the esteemed Lebanese-American poet from "the River and the Fear":
"It is said that before entering the sea, a river trembles with fear.
He looks back on the path he has traveled, from the tops of the mountains, the long winding path through forests and villages. And in front of him he sees an ocean so wide that entering it means disappearing forever.
There is no other way.
The river cannot turn back.
No one can turn back.
To return is not possible in existence.
The river must take the risk of entering the ocean, because only then will the fear disappear, because there the river will realize - it's not about disappearing into the ocean, but becoming the ocean itself."
