Karela is a bitter vegetable widely used in cuisines across Asia. The taste is bitter. Very bitter. It is eaten raw, stuffed with green mango or few other things, fried with spices, pickled, boiled. 

An unexpected perk to the brave who bites into it is the sweet, crunchy, very refreshing aftertaste. It leaves one wishing for more. It keeps me going to the Indian store on the delivery days to buy the freshest one possible. I developed my own way of choosing the ones I want from the box of many, different in size, ripeness and the color. After choosing a few, I then begin to look for my favourite one, the karela that is ripe and soft. The one with yellowish undertones in its greenness. I open this one at home right away or save for a student to see. 

Life is karela. Bitter, very bitter. It is lived raw, stuffed with green mango or few other things, fried with spices, pickled, boiled.  It takes just a few bites into the bitter flesh to learn about the refreshing, clean, sweet aftertaste. To recognize the sweetness in the bitter even before biting into it. To make the biting all the more wanted, experienced to the fullest, sweet and happy.

The opened one, with crimson red seeds inside is like a boat. A boat that sails amidst the gentle or fierce waves of life. Look at it, feel it, draw it, write a poem about it. Live it one moment at a time.

"The meaning of life is to love others as we love ourselves and to serve others"

Amma  (Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, Hindu spiritual leader)

If you never experience both happiness and sorrow,

You will never know the difference between the two.

                                                              Tibetan Proverb

Wei Wu Wei

Why are you unhappy?

Because 99.9 per cent

Of everything you think,

And of everything you do,

Is for yourself —

And there isn't one.

— Ask The Awakened

the Door

I am standing in front of the imaginary door. This door consoles me when I think that I can not go on anymore...with whatever "terrible" things that happen to me...

On my side of the door there is me and passions that eat me up alive sometimes, there is work and everyday routine, that drives me crazy sometimes - making me just plain happy other times.

Behind the door is the cessation, the end of what I think bothers me. There is calm of no thinking and no deciding. There is turbulence of my inner world, there is torment of having opened that door and entering, of knowing that I opened it too soon.

On the door there is a magical screen. I see happenings in the world around me, the happy and the sad events. I see other people, animals, plants going about their daily, hourly lives. Since it is the magical screen, I don't have to hear, feel or smell what I see. I can taste, though, taste life as it is - as bitter and as spicy, sour taste of grief, sweet of skies and cold of rushing rivers.

Watching life as it happens this moment or thinking about what I just saw that already changed for the next thing... Watching and tasting all that arouses a powerful urge in me - to stay on this side and turn around and look for those that I might help if only a little bit.

I know there are many doors like that in the world. As many as there are people.

from Henry Miller

"everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself"

to be happy

I can accept and tolerate anybody. I can't accept myself.

My student told me this today during a quiet moment before class. She brought me her favourite book to read, showed me a self-made book of her poems and ....she talked to me.

I can't accept myself.

Accepting myself would mean tolerating my beliefs, looks, actions... Who creates all those?
My looks are given to me at birth, there is little I can do to change them besides staying "in shape"...
My beliefs develop as I grow in my lifetime..
My actions result from my choices and bring consequences, immediate or long term...

My student is in pain because she can not accept herself.

I thought that a person who needs reassurance in such matters would likely believe someone he or she trusts as one trusts a Teacher. Connecting to my student as a teacher would give me a tremendously rare chance to truly relieve her suffering.

It is important for some of us to know that we are OK.
Some of us developed an idea that it is not important whether or not one is OK, because being good means being yourself in the only way that it is possible to be oneself: to be born and grow absorbing beliefs and choosing actions.

Acceptance without exception.

"To accept others and not to accept oneself" is not so different from "to accept oneself and not to accept others".

A person knowing, believing that one is same as others and others are same as one,
will truly accept others as oneself and oneself as others.

As a teacher I need to point out to my student that we are all basically the same.

I will start from this.

I will start tomorrow.
.