YOU HAVE IMPRISONED BUDDHA! AND ONLY YOU CAN SET HIM FREE!!

There was an air of festivity, fun and frolic at a large convention hall. It was a college reunion gathering.

After the dinner, the whole gathering settled down into smaller groups generally along with batch mates.

In one of such group of late seventies and eighties batch, the conversation was going around the difficulties of aging!

Suswasa, one of the old students was sitting silently but keenly listening to the conversations, suddenly stood up.

Everyone in that group was eagerly waiting for him to speak. Suswasa is known for sharing his deep insights and immense knowledge in a simple way, right from his college days.

“YOU HAVE IMPRISONED BUDDHA! AND ONLY YOU CAN SET HIM FREE” uttered Suswasa, and continued; “Imprisonment is confinement, usually within a small space and it is complete curbing of freedom.

Buddha referred here is not a person. It is the space where we all want, desire and struggle to be in! The space that is serene, calm and peaceful!

So, when Buddha is imprisoned, we lose calmness and peace. We become restless and over stressed.

Do you know who imprisons Buddha?

It’s the stream of thoughts that we harbour in our mind!

Hence, to set free Buddha and reclaim our rightful space that is serene, calm and peaceful; we need to step back from the thinking mind!

We are all worried about ageing and its ravaging effects. But we need to embrace ageing! However, we are all conditioned to fear ageing. We all have seen people around us including our near and dear ones struggling with ravaging effect of ageing on physical body and psychological condition. It seems the loneliness, the sufferings, and helplessness – all the three descend simultaneously on an ageing person!

If we keep our body and mind fit through wellness regime, we can enjoy and live purposefully for sixty more years!

And it all begins by setting Buddha free! It’s very easy.

The moment we are aware of body through sensations, we take care of our body, by taking appropriate food, doing exercise, and growing in health becomes effortless. When we are aware of senses, we are in high alert state and perceive the world around us rightly. When we are aware of thoughts, we know that most of them are to be discarded and few remaining ones are to be acted upon. When we are aware of our emotions, we use them judiciously instead of being used up by them”.

The entire hall was reverberating with the clapping of his batch mates.