"Vyaktigat shunyata samuhik purnata", we often hear these words of Vinoba, and now through our retreats I am am able to relate with them. In our moved by love retreats, we hold space for lot of first time friends and as a volunteer it requires to be fully present to co-create and hold sacred space for others. In this space I feel the above words become relevant, how do we dissolve our individual needs and identity so that we can serve others who are present. Coming to an MBL retreat is not so much about what I am going to get but it is a reminder for me to ask myself how do I share what I have received till now in my life. Who I am and have become is not an isolated process, and if I have any virtues it is because of with the help of noble friends, friends who are too in the path of service to others.

And yet there are moment when I feel the need to be nourished, I need to drink from the same well which we offer to others, and often when these two needs gets mixed up, unbalance occurs. Thus with this need what naturally emerged was our recent retreat 'shuchita sangam'. Shuchita means purity and Sangam means to come together, an effort to come together in the process of connecting with our own inner purity. This purity for me is not the moral values established by society, but the values which dissolves the separation within us and outside with others. In two days we are mostly in silence observing seven practices.

Prarthna - Prayer- To connect with divinity
Addhyan - Reading / Self Study- to connect with our lineage
Dhyan - Silence - To connect with ourselves
Safai - Manual Labor- to connect with soil and nature
Sangath - sharing - to connect with each other
Lekhan - Writing - To express our thoughts
Satsang - Music / Film etc - To connect with the world


In this silence we connect with the emergence and arrangement of life. And in this silence we realize that when we truly empty ourselves the universe fills us with it.

In deep gratitude for spending the second Shuchita retreat with fellow pilgrims in Safai Vidylaya.

Notes:
More Pictures
Shuchita Sangam Retreat - 1

 

Posted by Madhusudan Agarwal on Feb 6, 2015 | permalink