On 22-25 November 2018, our Centre organized a Retreat at the Rajghat Study Centre in Varanasi. We had participants from various parts of India including Pune, Karnataka, Delhi, Bhopal, Santiniketan, Bandel and Kolkata. And also some from Varanasi itself. The group profile too was interesting and included friends in education, in media, in corporate life, ex-bankers and of course a few who have retired.
A Retreat puts absolutely no pressure on participants. Because it is not about how much one knows. Indeed, it is about listening, being open, being ’empty’ of bias, prejudice, opinions, ‘knowledge’. It is an interaction among friends. Not among competitors! A Retreat is equally about solitude and absorbing the beauty of the environment. And the Varanasi Study Centre on the banks of the Ganges provided that beauty. But beyond that, a lot depends on the intensity one has to ‘receive with open arms’. A Retreat is indeed a break but not in the way one normally looks at a break. It is a break from the routine, the patterns so that one is revealed to oneself.
The theme of the Retreat was ‘Can we live without identifying?’ Participants found it fascinating to explore this question. The strand of inquiry took them through so many questions including the movement of thought and above all the question of questions….is the self anything other than identity created through the movement of thought? Is it anything more than the past? Our Retreat on the banks of the Ganges from 22 to 25 November led to a deep and intense exploration of this vital question.
Does it all boil down to our compulsive hanging on to an identity, an illusion, the self (ego). Do we ourselves block access to the Truth, the Sacred? Because we have opted for the ‘security’ of a thought-created identity, illusion? A self that is essentially made up of the past? This question stayed with participants even as they left Rajghat at the end of the Retreat.”