I attended my first ever Buddhist meeting yesterday. It was over Webex. I was introduced to Buddhism by my sister. She has been practising Buddhism for many years and is an ardent believer of its tenets. As far as I can recall, she mentioned the practice a few months back as well but for reasons unknown, I never managed to give it a start. But this time when she again mentioned it I had to give it a shot. So, it all started earlier this month, and that’s when I started chanting. I still have a very short attention span, but I am working on it. So far I have made good progress. I also spoke to one of the leaders of the organization and she helped me with a lot of my queries.

Few weeks into the chanting and I got the opportunity to attend a meeting.

Not going much into details I just want to mention a few highlights of the meeting. I took notes, blame it to my compulsive need of taking notes.

• Bringing a change is an inward process. You cannot change the universe unless you change yourself. Charity begins at home.
• Don’t lose hope. It is very easy to feel hopeless in the current scenario but train your mind not to.
• If you don’t have hope, create one for yourself. You can create hope when you pray for a larger audience and a greater purpose and not just for your own self.
• Our personal goals are always linked to a larger goal which is World Peace and World happiness. Even if you have everything to pursue your personal goal, you won’t be able to unless there is world peace. Take the current situation, even if you have all the money in the world you cannot go out and buy a car for yourself. It might have been your goal for the longest time but you can’t fulfil it. The universal needs to restore the balance.
• It is very easy to feel powerless right now. To watch everything happening and not being able to influence/control any aspect of it is not a good feeling. The only thing that you can hold on to is hope.

It might feel that I am reiterating the same thing, but it isn’t. It is interlinked for sure, but they all have individual attributes to them.

There were many members who shared their experience as well. How chanting has helped them in creating a better world for themselves and for their near and dear ones.

The meeting was the only highlight of the day. I have never done/attended anything like this in my life. Post afternoon I painted little hearts on one of the mugs that I had. We used 3D outliners and they are permanent in nature. Once it dried, I sprayed varnish over it and it is now ready to use for everyday purposes.

Talking about painting, my flatmate paints incredible Mandalas. She also painted some plates and they are all gorgeous to bits. Painting a mandala isn’t as easy as it looks. It needs your undivided attention and don’t even talk about the time commitment it demands.

This blog is part of free writing practice, which essentially means that you write everything that comes in your mind until you hit 500-word count.

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