Sunday 19th

I don't know whether the alarm clock went off; if it did we ceertainly didn't notice, and I arise at the stately hour of seven o'clock. It is a quarter to eight by the time I finish meditating. Today is the day we go home, but we haven't left ourselves much time to have breakfast, pack and clean up the place after us before we go back to Aspiration-Ground. We help a little with some more planting, and then go to change out of our dirty clothes for the meditation function.

Sri Chinmoy has arrived by the time we return; he is reciting more prayer-poems he has just composed. He composes one for each day of the forthcoming year, and just in the last week he has composed enough to last us until March! He talks about the plays last night - he opines that the play myself and Colm were in was perhaps not of the same standard as some of the previous plays performed by the group, and suggests that they broaden their repertoire to include the huge wealth of Indian spiritual stories that have accumulated over thousands of years. Smilingly, he says that Databir and Abakash - both long-time students of Sri Chinmoy - are the only group he could give this kind of advice to: other people might lose sleep over it, but those two would still sleep very soundly in their beds at night!

Then suddenly, Sri Chinmoy folds his hands and enters into high meditation. Out of the silence, he sings My Lord Beloved Supreme; out of the thousands of songs he has composed, this is probably among the two or three most soulful, and the song which he says embodies his philosophy more than any other. We join in, Master and students singing together as one. And then, he gets up; with a blessing-wave to all of us, he is gone.

And gone too, are we: the airport taxi arrives before we know it, taking us back to our homeland. For Ireland is where my soul has incarnated on earth, and it is there where I am best placed to play my part of the great drama of life. But I return with a newly gained cargo of inner joy and peace, and regained strength to face the challenges of daily life.

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