Soul Garden

Gardens are the lungs of the city. A place where people can breathe fresh air in the middle of hectic and chaotic city. And not just the body need park, the soul also longing for garden. As a small mirror reflecting how unstable human soul at this time, a number of economists in the West find, even when economic conditions were to decline, the budget of many countries to buy weapons continues to rise. The question then, where is the soul garden?

Darkness Inside

One important element of human body is the brain. And it has been widely published in neuroscience studies, twenty to thirty million years ago the human brain was very hard. This explains why the behavior of human being in ancient times was far from civilized. Just revolving around eating, fighting and sex.

Consequently, such behavior is embedded deeply in human memory until now. Psychologist Sigmund Freud called it the unconscious. Everyone do not want to get angry, but many people are grumpy.

Legal and social institutions such as family and court trying to dispel this dark room of unconsciousness by punishment, and it is not entirely successful. The increasing rates of suicide, mental illness, victims of drugs, divorce, terrorist bombs everywhere telling that human civilization need a different candle.

The Candle of Caring

In different forms, everyone suffer. While the ordinaries put suffering as punishment, the enlightened beings use suffering as the path. Suffering is like a lantern which indicates the direction of the road.

And suffering can be transformed into the path, if one does not run away from suffering. Instead, like meeting the Guru, then let suffering softens all inner qualities. As long as an inner inquiry is diligent, sincere, consistent,  then suffering can be an opportunity to dispel the inner darkness.

This is the story why all the holy Guru experienced deep suffering. Rumi was deeply sad of losing his Teacher, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, Mahatma Gandhi's body was penetrated by bullets, HH the Dalai Lama lost his country when he is still a teenager. There are similarity among these holy Guru, they are all diligent, sincere, consistent to take good care of suffering, then found a candle. This is in line with meditation. Like eagle, the left wing of meditation is awareness, the right wing is carefulness.

Everything is Beautiful

The main characteristic of human heart that has passed the mountains of sufferings, he/she  could see the deep face of life that goes beyond logic. Which can not be explained in words. And then having direct experience, that feeling is the language of the soul. At the level of feeling, life is a series of song.

Let's explore the lyrics of the following children song: "Let’s see my garden is full of flowers. Some are white and some are red. Everyday it is watered. Rose and jasmine are all beautiful".

Life is like gardening, it takes persistence, patience to make it beautiful. Similar to parks, life inside and outside are rich of color. Sometimes happy sometimes sad. One time praised, in another time tested. Whatever the color, everything is watered with prayer, love, kindness, compassion, meditation. Similar to the last verse of the song above, in soul garden (by which read: enlightenment) every aspect of life (the past, the present, the future)  is beautiful.