HereNow4U - Living Jainism Tour 2006 - 05.06 Ladnun: Meditation And Evening Activities

23rd November 2006, 17:30 – 20:30

Munishree Kishan Lalji guided us through a wonderful 30-minutes meditation. After relaxation, we were instructed to concentrate on breath, imagining it in the form of a golden column. While inhaling, we were advised to descend the column, while exhaling to ascend. Then we were advised to combine the descending and ascending movement of breath with Ar-Ham, an outline of the first line of Namokar Mantra,’ Namo Arihantanam’ - I bow down to Arihanta, the enlightened ones’.

Grace to Munishrees guidance, we succeeded in coordinating the movements of breath, golden column down - inhale, golden column up - exhale, with mental recitation of Ar-Ham, and after some time we found our own rhythm and really enjoyed it. We came back, and Munishree said, “30 minutes over now.” We could not help but wonder, as it seemed to us only few minutes. Anyway, we felt refreshed and very light.

On our way back to university guesthouse, we met 21-years-old Rajesh Jain, student of JVBI. We did not meet personally yet, but had exchanged some emails. He is from Kishangarh, Rajasthan. Daily visits to Munishree Kishan Lalji have become his afternoon routine, before he starts preparation of next day’s lessons. He promised to bring by Muni Neeraj Kumar, when we regretted lack of time to hear his voice. He immediately went off and came back with the same!

Some time was left to dinner, and we used the opportunity to visit Tulsi Adhyatma Needam, where we had stayed for several weeks in January 2005.

After tasty dinner, Dr. Bhattacharyya came with a professor hitherto unknown to us, also accomodated in the university guesthouse. We were happy to get some time for talking, and learned that the professor was the doctoral thesis supervisor of Dr. Bhattacharyya. Professor Dr. Satya Ranjan Banerjee from Kolkata University gave a two months course in Prakrit at JVBI. He has authored about 400 publications, in form of books, articles and papers presented to national and international conferences. In a brochure of Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar Kolkata, listing his publications, he is noted as one of the leading linguists of India. His specialties are Prakrit and Pali, apart from this, he knows very well Greek (where obtained another PhD) and Latin. His ‘Introducing Jainism’ (Jain Bhawan, Kolkata 2002) is highly recommendable.

We were tired after this long and eventful day, but happy that even the end of the day was crowned with a meaningful encounter.