Wired for Wonder: Dandapani – The Art of Balancing Life
5 Oct 2013 by warrencammack, No Comments »
Dandapani introduced himself as an Australian who knew from an early age that he wanted to be a monk. He graduated University and left for Hawaii to study with Gurudeva (Sivaya Subramuniyaswami) who in the 1970’s had established a Hindu monastery in Kauai.He then talked about the value of meditation and that the ability to focus the mind is becoming more important than ever as our lives become filled with more opportunities for distraction each day. Stating that at school we are told to concentrate but we are never taught how to do this – most of the time we are teaching ourselves how to be distracted…
Meditation is something that needs to be done regularly to succeed and practice does not discriminate between good and bad habit. Dandapani suggested that we think of our awareness as a ball of light highlighting different parts of the mind. Focus it on happiness and you will be happy, focus it on being calm and you will be calm etc. Wherever your awareness goes, energy flows towards it.
In order to develop your will power it’s important to ensure that you finish what you begin, finish it well and do a little more than you think you are able to do. Over time this will build up to become habitual and it’s something you won’t need to focus on to accomplish in the future.
He reflected on the simplicity of his life as a monk in the monastery talking about how he slept on a futon and making his bed each morning was simply a case of rolling it away. These days he sleeps in a queen sized bed with his wife and the bed takes about 15 minutes to make and has ten times more pillows than people – he asks his wife who else will be sleeping in the bed that evening!
A balanced life Dandapani surmised is one that is balanced and that we can direct awareness in a proportionate way to the thing that really matter to us. Death is the great impetus and everyone will at some point realise that time is finite and we can only do so much with that which we have. Understanding your desires is important and everyone should be clear on what we want to do – he himself has ten things that he wrote down to guide his life. The two he shared were:
- I am the most important person in my life (if I’m the best I can be then I can be the best for others)
- Make time for the important people in my life
Evaluate who matters to you. Do they uplift you? If not then be kind to them but don’t be engaged.
Dandapani closed by saying “I used to help people all the time, I’m in the monk business!”
@dandapanillc
