I was (am ;) a “difficult” disciple of my guru…
I was: Ambitious and eager to learn, diligent, devoted to the path …but on the other side unconscious, driven, restless… I had a strong and stubborn mental, full of ideals but also caught in pictures, concepts and ideas, beliefs – not able to perceive the world as it is, people as they are, my master who he really is…
So, I have been the prototype of a modern EGO – running through life: in work, in love, in spirituality. And very often I was (I am) overrunning. Always tensed, ready for action, as guru Makaja said: “jumping always on the first”.
So, in his efforts, to help me out of the walls of my EGO, to help to come into reality, Makaja said to me many years ago: “Konstanza, you have to train Buddhistic mindfulness. You need that. You have to learn to act mindful, to be fully aware of every situation, every person – and through this compassion will be born in your heart.”
(Well, he also could have said “you have to train second part of Komaja meditation, because it is basically a mindfulness meditation, but obviously he wanted to emphasize that it should be in everyday life, in every action.
So, I began to read.
Since then, I read quiet a lot of Buddhist masters.
The basic thing I learnt and why the Buddhist attitude conquered is that it is teaches very contrary attitude towards the world, than I had or have it:
Karl Jaspers described it in his essay about Buddha:
“The warrior (samurai), the artist, the active person, they live as Buddhists in heroic serenity. (…) They act as if they are not acting. They are there and not there. Life and death do not touch them. They take one and the others unaffected, unattached.”
So, I learnt to make a step back, or better: to step fully into life. To be aware of reality as it is (and not as I would like it to be, or as I think it should be) and to embrace it as it is, and out of this perception and acceptance to act as good as I can.
- Buddhist mindfulness is a counterbalance to my (we can say WESTERN) strictness
- Buddhist serenity (Gelassenheit) a counterbalance to my ambition, eagerness, tension to realize this or that…
- Buddhist awareness and mindfulness are liberating me from the imprisonment of my egos ideas and concepts.
The second very important why Buddhist thought conquered me is that while reading its masters, I understood my master, my guru better, in a new way, freshly – as if I fell in love newly with the Komaja teaching. Buddhist thought and practice gave me deeper insight in my spiritual way that I was going with Makaja already for 20 years (today, 2021 about 35 years 😊). Especially the value of his meditation techniques (how he combined love meditation with consciousness meditation, the sublimity and transcendence of his tantric techniques etc…)
Actually, I did the same as Hindu thought and philosophy did: I incorporated Buddhism in my being a disciple of Makaja, into my Komaja practice. This is the greatness and adaptability of Buddhism but also of Komaja: they both liberate, and do not put a “Head over a Head” …
And out of this experience I conclude, that also the Christian Westerners (searching for real spirituality) understood Jesus teaching in a new way through Buddhist thought: the importance of developing virtues, how to succeed in loving the enemies, how to succeed to realize the sermon on the mountain etc. etc.