Awakin at annapurna - 2
A little background of Awakin at Annapurna
Annapurna is a space in Pune close to urban ashram where we have started awakin’s just a week ago, the sunday that went by happened to be the second awakin. On sunday we are very much used to host Meals on wheels (MOW). MOW was started with a simple idea of cooking home made food and moving out on streets. We introduced an hour of silence 2 months ago and now we thought it would be good idea to start an Awakin along with already existing meals on wheels. We cook with an idea of ‘x’ people sitting in the circle + ‘x’ or 12 (whichever is greater) people we would meet on streets.
Awakin process at Annapurna
- 8:00 am - 10:00 am : Cooking in silence
- 10:00 am - 11:00 am : An hour of silence
- 11:00 am - 12:00 pm : Passage reading and sharing
- 12:00 pm onwards moving out with food on streets
Well, when I was sitting in silence this sunday in the awakin, a question came to my mind why am I really sitting in silence? What is it that needs to be addressed in this hour of silence. Why have we thought of clubbing up meals on wheels and Awakin? All this led to a simple answer.
We sit in silence so that we really feel equal with whomsoever we share our food. We sit in silence so that we understand that there is no ‘they’ and ‘us’ when we share food, its just ‘we’. Its just ‘we’ sharing food with ‘people’ . We sit in silence so that we never judge anyone on the basis of anything. We sit in silence to understand that its not important how many people eat the food. We sit in silence to understand that the number of people eating food do not matter as long as we have made a heart to heart connection and we are really okay if its just one person whom we end up sharing the food with. We sit in silence so that we acknowledge the fact that we would feel immensely bad if we couldn’t find even a single person to share the food with. We sit in silence so that we really are at peace even if we our food is rejected by anyone. And lastly we sit in silence to really really understand that we don’t distribute food, we share it from the deepest of our heart. When we share, Its really like saying ‘ Hey, we have cooked some food with love come lets share ’.
Till today we have always tried to keep the above things in mind and moving ahead I wish to continue this with fullest of my heart. What if there was no hour of silence? Well, I could have easily been lost. This has happened once, one of our friends once tried to judge someone hungry and ended up not offering food. The friend said ‘ He seems an okay age and he can earn his own bread! ’. Later, all of us including him felt really bad for doing that. We sat in a circle and talked about it. I remember someone had then said, ‘What if one of us is in an unknown city, gets mugged and looses all his money and the phone. There comes a person with food ready to share and you are hungry. Looking at your face he too feels that but thinking you could be earning enough he never asks you! What if this happens? ’ What if that person is me? I really had goose bums that day and thought this needs to change and I could not see a way out other than an self enquiry of why are we doing what are we doing? And I could not see the answer. One fine Sunday our dear friend Atul happened to casually put up a topic of including an hour of silence and there it was, the best solution ever! We started sitting with an hour of silence and hence the Awakin’s. :)
I feel really good that the awakin’s have started in one more home! :)
This week we read the passage Surrender your data. A few friends shared some deep thoughts about how surrendering data really meant putting out their judgements. How surrendering in itself was a huge thing and in order to surrender one really has to commit themselves to something until then one cannot really surrender. That was really a nice thought :)
Thank you for taking out your time to read, will update with more awakin stories soon! :) You are reading that is why I am writing and I am writing because you will read! Thank you for holding the other end so that this continues! Thank you very much, gratitude! :)