Middle
East, Mediterranean and Balkans
Read about the upcoming Ananda Marga International Meditation and Yoga Retreat
(
September 9-13, 2010 Maaser Al Chouf, Lebanon)
Malta
The annual Middle East Ananda Marga conference was held in Malta, with participants also from Lebanon, UK, Italy and Germany.
Dada Shantimaya is teaching meditation classes in Malta as well as offering regular homeopathic consultations to the public.
Some recent news from Lebanon, from Dada Krsnasevananda:
After months of preparation we opened our new school/jagrti (spiritual center) in Lebanon on schedule on March 20. The program went very well attracting more than a hundred and fifty people including important people of the town and representatives of the Druze council. Thanks to your help the center was beautifully painted and decorated and everyone was impressed at how attractive it looked. The kids put on impressive demonstrations of their mental arithmetic skills, martial arts, yoga and meditation and we had parents and others enquiring about signing up for our programs.
A week before the public opening we had our Ananda Marga house entrance ceremony and our first retreat at the center with more than thirty people attending. Margiis came from Syria and Lebanon and the center proved itself a perfect venue for a small retreat. We were wondering where we should serve the food and then had the inspiration to put tables and chairs on the roof with its spectacular views of the mountains and valleys of Shouf. Luckily there was a warm south wind and the weather was perfect. Our rooftop restaurant proved to be a great success.
Last Monday we had our first day of school at the new center. I was very happy to see how much the children enjoyed the new place. My office faces a balcony and I watched one young student walking up and down with a book learning her lessons while others gathered in a circle in the comfortable library to study English. It didn't take the kids long to find out that, as I was right there on the premises, they could come and ask me questions if they had a problem. Every day there were a few knocks on my door and I found myself enjoying the new duty. The kids helped me as well - when I was making a flier for a children's yoga class they picked out their favorite graphics for me.
Now we are in the process of settling in and getting our programs up and running. None of the margiis have been practicing Ananda Marga meditation for more than a few months yet some of them are showing themselves willing to volunteer including two who have taken training for teaching yoga to children and will start next week. A few ladies are also starting an organic lunch project - preparing healthy food for the kids and any other people who are interested in organic vegetarian lunches.
Until fairly recently most of the new students were women but some nice young brothers are coming now as well. I taught meditation to one young man, Adham, who is a helicopter pilot and a captain in the air force. He is enjoying his meditation and the other day he told me that he saw a rainbow while he was flying and started chasing it in his helicopter! I suggested he better not mention that to anyone else. Last week he brought along some of his friends - one of whom is the percussionist for the top band in Lebanon. He accompanied us for kiirtan which was fantastic and he enjoyed himself so much he asked if he could keep his bongos at the jagrti. Another of Adham's friends is the leader of the youth movement for the progressive socialist party and I am sure he will be a great help in future for organizing activities with young people.
We invited the president of the Association for Permanent Peace - a well-established peace group that was started during the civil war by students from different religious backgrounds - to cut the ribbon for the opening. He liked our project proposal so much that he offered to help us with the process of registering our association as quickly as possible. We are thinking to call it Minds Without Borders. Its goal will be to set up schools based on Neohumanist Education principles, give teacher training, promote service and environmental activities, teach yoga and meditation, etc.
Some background of Ananda Marga in Lebanon
Ananda Marga has had a full-time presence in Lebanon since 2005 when Dada Ganadevananda went there to establish a homeopathic clinic serving war victims and the poor. The clinic closed after Dada left in 2008 and there was a short period where we had no resident acarya although Dadas and Didis, including myself, were visiting regularly. In November 2009 I moved to Lebanon permanently handing over my work in Syria to Dada Shantashubhananda who was returning there after a five year absence.
Before deciding to move here I had been visiting Lebanon periodically and we had a good network of new margiis and interested persons. There was a lot of interest in Ananda Marga and in September 2009 we organized our annual Sectorial Conference in Maaser Shouf, a picturesque mountain village about an hour and a half from Beirut. Over 80 people attended the conference from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan with the largest number of new people coming from Shouf, the region where I have now chosen to start a project. Encouraged by the good response I decided to move here permanently last November.
Over the last three months we have started small weekly meditation groups in five places: Beirut central, north Beirut, Bakaata (commercial center of Shouf), Baakleen (old capital of Shouf) and Kabreshmoun, a mountain village closer to Beirut. I now divide my time between Beirut and the mountains. In Beirut we have an apartment provided by one of my students free of charge (now looking a little better and no longer feeling haunted) and in the mountains I am staying with a newly initiated brother in the main street of Bakaata.
I have chosen Bakaata as the location for a project combining a yoga and meditation center with after-school tutoring for kids from the age of 5-17. Soon after coming to Lebanon I was fortunate to meet sister Radha Hassaniye (recently initiated), who was running a small tutoring school and looking for ways to take it in a more spiritual and holistic direction. When she heard about my interest to make a center in Shouf she offered to cooperate and make a joint project suggesting that we relocate to larger premises which would include enough space for both activities. She had already begun trying to teach meditation to the kids but told me she had been praying to God to show her the way to integrate spirituality more into the program of her school as well as into her own life. Radha is an incredibly selfless person whose main motivation is to provide a genuinely holistic education for the kids and to introduce progressive ideas into the community. She is extremely happy with the philosophy, practice and activities of Ananda Marga and she considers her meeting with Ananda Marga as God's answer to her prayers.
The program for the kids which we are now implementing includes meditation, breathing, yoga exercises, chanting, affirmations, songs, stories and games together with guided study (helping the kids with their homework) and some special techniques known as accelerated learning and ac mas (Japanese abacus system). As soon as we are able we will introduce other Ananda Marga programs such as involving the children in service and environmental projects, introducing Neohumanist values, etc. There are also programs for the parents and teachers including communication skills and parenting skills along with meditation and yoga classes. We are receiving requests from parents to start a kindergarten and will begin plans for this once the new center is established and running smoothly.
The kids are great. Although I don’t have a lot of experience working with children I am enjoying the learning process and the kids are responding well. Some of them started practicing meditation at home and became vegetarian after our first class! Some of the kids are already saying that the meditation is helping them with their personal lives as well as their school work. They are feeling happier. One of them came to me the other day and told me she was writing a book and wanted to have a whole chapter about meditation.
The new local margiis are also enthusiastic. One of them has agreed to prepare courses for the parents on communication skills and parenting as this is an area of great need in the community. Others are eager to work as teachers and I am planning to take a group of five to the Ananda Marga teacher training program in Holland next month. Another has offered to do the accounting work and so on.
Over the last couple of months, as well as conducting regular programs with children, teachers and adults (including parents), I have been participating in planning and development meetings for the school and also involving new margiis in the project. Didi Ananda Rainjana and Didi Ananda Rama (two diodes with a lot of experience in education) have also visited and are supporting the project by giving training to the teachers, Radha and myself. A few weeks ago we began the process of registering a company. The company will be called Center for Neohumanistic Studies, making it part of a network of such centers for Neohumanist Education around the world. A surprisingly large number of our new margiis are teachers and some weeks ago we decided that education would be the most suitable approach for developing Ananda Marga in Lebanon. Unlike Syria, the education system in Lebanon is primarily private and there are virtually no legal complications in setting up a school. Our new company will be able to act as an umbrella for starting similar projects with margi teachers living in other parts of Lebanon.
It is due to the connection with Radha that we are in a position to start such an ambitious project in such a short time. I have just been going with the flow – following up the opportunities which presented themselves seemingly on cue one after the other. Radha and her husband are both respected members of the local community. This and the fact that her school already existed are making it easier for the community to accept my sudden appearance in their midst. Radha is also a personal acquaintance of Waliid Joumblatt, the political leader of the Lebanese Druze. His house is ten minutes drive from Bakaata and the margiis already took me to meet him with the purpose of bringing the project to his notice. We had another unexpected positive development: the father of one of the margiis is the general in charge of national security. We were invited to dinner a few weeks ago and the meeting was very friendly. On the way there I discovered that I had my own machine gun in the front passenger seat – a sobering reminder of the situation in Lebanon.
Bakaata is the commercial center of the “Shouf” region of Lebanon (primarily Druze population). It is above 1000 metres in elevation and it snows in the winter. The region is very picturesque and an attractive location for people to come to practice meditation and yoga. The local people have sympathy for the path of yoga due to a large component of Indian philosophy in their traditional Druze ideas. Also one of their leaders, Kamal Joumblatt (father of Waliid) was a practicing yogi who went regularly to India and founded a local party known as the Progressive Socialist Party which promoted a kind of spiritual socialism very similar to Prout. Kamal Joumblatt has many devotees in this area which gives us a sympathetic environment for the work of Ananda Marga in the country. Radha herself is a strong admirer of Kamal Joumblatt and for that reason very attracted to Ananda Marga because of its similarities.
The project is already running in smaller premises with 60 students and 11 teachers and is popular, though not very profitable due to the limited financial means of the parents. Due to the increasing number of students and the lack of a large space for yoga and meditation we decided to move to the new building. We have set an opening date of March 21 for the new center.
We have found a large 400 sq. meter building with plenty of space for our activities in a nice quiet location with great views of the surrounding mountains. The building also has a second floor (a further 400 sq. metres) which is not finished but could be developed later if we need to expand further. The building is near to several other schools making it easy for students to come to the center once their day classes are over. Interestingly, the building belongs to a widow who has not rented it out or lived in it since her husband died twelve years ago. However, when she met Radha and heard of the proposal to make a meditation center there, she liked the idea and agreed to rent it out. Since writing this I have visited the owner and taught her Baba Nam Kevalam meditation, which she enjoyed very much.
In Malta, the latest news from the Sunrise
Center is online here.
Between the end of the summer club and
the start of the new scholastic year, the Sunrise Center was still buzzing with activity although for the most
part the children were not the protagonists except for a couple
of activities at the beginning of the month.
On the air waves!
On the initiative of the Sajf Attiv co-ordinators, children from
summer clubs of Cottonera were invited for an interview on Radju
Kottoner. Centru Tbexbix was allocated a quarter of an hour wherein
Analise, Bernice, Samuel and Demaris enjoyed a new experience. All
of them confidently spoke about the activities and outings in our
two months of summer club and also elaborated on this year’s
chosen theme, Close to Nature. In the photo Dorian from the radio
station is explaining to the children some basic facts about radio
transmissions.
And again on stage!
For the first time this year, all Cottonera summer clubs got together
to present a talent show for parents and guests at the Santa Margerita
College. Our slot included a presentation by five of our little
ones as well as the video
which Christine put together for the summer club closure. The video
with the children’s happy faces told it all and many people
approached us afterwards to express appreciation.
Reflections
After the end of every programme Didi, Katherine and volunteer staff
sit together for a number of sessions to reflect and evaluate the
programme and repeatedly check whether the activities are measuring
up to the benchmarks required from a project to deserve to be called
a Neohumanistic Education project. In the case of this year’s
summer club, once again there was a lot of positive feedback from
all volunteers: "In our lessons we don't privilege just one
skill or intelligence but we work on all intelligences, physical,
creative, artistic, cognitive, interpersonal, emotional, social…",
wrote Chiara Guida. "The children are becoming really good
in problem-solving, sharing, working in teams. They learn that what
they do affects others, and start to think of others’ needs",
wrote Christine. "From watching my colleagues I learned a lot
- the perseverance in using recycled stuff in the artistic and beautiful
way of Chiara, the funny side of Katrine, the silent hard work of
Christine, the multitasking capacity of Lawrence…" were
Chiara Zecchin's comments. "I learned a lot from this experience.
Using new techniques and moments of silence helped me to manage
the children better", commented Katrine.
Of course there are things we need to improve, and we need to continue
going deeper into understanding better and better the individual
as well as the collective needs of the community that we are trying
to serve.
Volunteer training
Regular training is vital for staff development and revitalisation
of the project. During September ten days were spent in retraining
in preparation for the winter session starting in October. Again
the focus was on planning, implementation and evaluation of each
activity according to Neo humanistic Education guidelines. Special
skills like teaching English in the phonetic way, classroom management,
silent time and improving creativity were all topics addressed during
the training.
Vegetarian dinner
Those of you who have visited Centru Tbexbix know that our premises
can be quite versatile! One day we’re a school, the next day
our place is transformed to host a fundraising dinner for 75 seated
guests, as happened on the 5th of September. The Spanish Vegetarian
Night was another successful fundraiser. Thanks to all who came
and enjoyed the good food, and our appreciation to the culinary
experts.
And more transformation...
The break from classes was a good opportunity to focus on some
other needs of the project. Thankfully our friend from Argentina,
Guido, offered his free time to work on the construction of three
large cabinets for resources. Classrooms were transformed into workshops
and at the end of the month, voila’, George and Guido assembled
the prepared wood and all of us are happy with the new storage space.
New Programme
For a long time it has been felt that Centru Tbexbix can offer more
free services to the community and especially to women. With this
in mind Didi decided to start a series of short health-related and
self-help courses.
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