1990.

We had a Buddha’s picture and one of us would start off

Why is the Buddha smiling?

Some of the answers were

“It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure it out. It is simple. If it is that complex God wouldn’t have anything to do with it – that only the ‘Einstein’s’ would be able to figure it out.” ‘

It is all there in you. You don’t need me.”

“Stretch your lips. That is all it takes to improve the world.”

We took the game to our community stretch workouts which would go on for 8-10 hours for 3-5 days, to give us breaks in between. The game came to be called ‘The Buddha’s Smile’ and continues to evolve.

Here is how it goes after a bout of questions and answers on his smile.

Close your eyes. Stretch your lips just enough to feel the gentle vibrations around them when you smile. Be with it. Come back when you notice that the stretch is lost to regain the pleasant feeling. Observe your breathing as it goes in and out of your nostrils. Go with it, in an out. Observe the breathing becoming slower and slower

Imagine that you are lying down on the ground on a rectangular sheet of rubber with your hands and legs along the diagonals

Keep observing the stretch of your lips and the rate of breathing

Imagine the centre of the sheet, where the diagonals meet and the sheet being stretched evenly in all directions. The sheet is under stress and there is conflict all around. But the centre is not disturbed. At the centre, ground zero is the lighthouse with nine levels. Keep connected to the stretch of your lips, breathing, the centre and the growing silence. Four garden plots of rectangular and equal size spread out from the centre. The sheet turns into a foot ball and is filled up. The centre of the sheet is shifted to the centre of the football. It is being kicked around but the centre is not disturbed. Imagine the football to be a living organism, an amoeba or a cell in your body capable of going on continually

Re-NE…Wing its self.  Observe the stretch, rate of breathing, the centre and the silence

Silence                                                           IS

This is a rough cut of the game. The details vary with the facilitator, community and from events to events. Buddha continues to smile

Stretch your lips. The body chemistry improves….

Silence                                    IS
Most eloquent

the space between every letter, word and sentence. But for these, gaps nothing would be communicated.

Aruna is beautiful, deaf and dumb, in her teens. She comes home with her mother in the morning to help Lizzie with the household chores. Liz makes a lot of noise with her mother, to get things done her way and often fails. Aruna is different. Nothing needs to be said. She connects directly to Liz – no noise – in silence.  She connects intuitively to whatever Liz wants done and always exceeds her expectations.  There is perfect communication, best results and no noise. When they leave Liz makes a lot of noise. She is overwhelmed. All praise and wonder as to how she does it

We learn, communicate, connect and reflect in silence yet seldom do we recognize the power and value of silence and to be connected to the centre. Silence is the most powerful weapon, the communicator. We are afraid to face it and keep making noise to avoid facing it like an idiot box that cannot be switched off.

Connect to the centre in us, the silence, at the core of our being.

At the centre there is absolute silence

Return to the Centre (Bede Griffiths).

Silence                                  is