sumarah

banana tree Laura Romano

…after a while, he said, “You know, we should learn more from nature; nature is full of teachings. Every plant, for example, has a message for us, and one of the most important for human life is that of the banana tree. Do you know what the teaching of the banana tree is?”
 I talked about the strength of the big, flexible leaves that allow themselves to be blown about in the wind, of the solidity of its trunk, full of water, and of the sweet generosity of the fruit.
 ”Yes, that too” he said. “But above all the banana is a plant you can cut at the roots a hundred times and it will always grow back – in sunlight or in shade, in whatever soil, until it has produced its fruit at least once. Only after that, if you cut it again, then it will not grow back and will die.”
Laura Romano Sumarah – Spiritual Wisdom from Javall>

banana_tree2

Sumarah Meditation Laura Romano

In recent years “meditation” has joined the list of those unfortunate words whose meaning have been damaged.

When a word is constantly used and is emotively charged by the importance of what is being communicated, it often becomes overcharged, and, paradoxically, its communicative value diminishes. It is weakened, and its meaning loses flavour and intensity. Many words have suffered this fate, above all those which define important existential concepts. Words such as “love”, “happiness”, “consciousness”, “understanding”, “feeling”, “spirit”, and “soul” have such a wide spectrum of interpretations that it is hard to use them without feeling the constant need to redefine them. It is almost as if the emotional charge and the need to express it lead to over-use and to the progressive distortion of the original meaning and values of the most important words.
 In recent years “meditation” has joined the list of those unfortunate words whose meaning have been damaged, both because mistaken idealisations, and because of ideological preconceptions that have obscured there meaning and weighed them down 1)↓
 When the word begins to be disorienting and to cause confusion instead of clarifying, it can be useful to look at its etymology. The term “meditation” derives from the Latin meditari which means “reflect to cure”, coming from the same root med from which “mode”, “measure”, and “medicine” derive. It is significant here that in antiquity, the magus, the priest or priestess, and the healer were often the same person. This etymological meaning of meditation reflects well the practice of Sumarah, wherein meditation is considered as way of being, an instrument of life and for life, and not as an end in itself. It is like a means of transport, and, like any means of transport, meditation is there to take us to where we want to go; once we get there, we get off…
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1. see about the word “God” – the second Pak Wondo session