cont....Demands on time

Continue…. In recent years, the African nation of Rwanda has gone through a bitter and cruel civil war. In one family, the children lost both parents, only they and their grandmother survived. One of the older boys had to drop out of school to take care of the rest. He was so sad about not attending school anymore that he often cried through the night. His other siblings still in school would share their lessons with him when he came home from work.
   But if that were the whole story, we’d have to conclude that everything depends completely on our environment. That’s not the case. Life and the human condition aren’t so simple. Buddhism teaches that true freedom is connected to one’s inner condition of life. Someone with an expansive life-condition is free even if confined to the most restricted prison on earth.
   Natalia Sats, former president of the Moscow State Musical Theater for children, who fought against oppression and was jailed, also turned her prison cell into a place of learning. She encouraged her fellow prisoners to share their special knowledge with one another. One lectured on chemistry, another taught medicine. Mrs. Sats, who herself was a singer and entertainer, sang songs and recited verses by Aleksandr Pushkin, infusing everyone with courage and hope.
   I’m sure you know the story of Helen Keller. At the age of eighteen months, she lost her sight and hearing. Her loss of hearing also made it difficult for her to speak. But by working together with her teacher Anne Sullivan, she eventually learned to read, write and speak, and she graduated from Radcliffe College in Boston.
   Surely no one could have been as restricted as she was—unable to speak, hear or see. Her world was one of darkness and silence. But she drove the darkness out of her heart. At the age of nine, she finally spoke her first sentence:” It is warm.” She never forgot for the rest of her life the astonishment and joy she experienced at that moment. She had succeeded in breaking out of the prison of silence that confined her.
   Being human, however, at times she would feel forlorn and disheartened by the long hours she had to spend studying, having all of her textbooks painstakingly spelled into her hand, while other students were singing and dancing and enjoying themselves. In the story of My Life, she writes:
                                    I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still,
                             I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I loss
                             My temper and find it again and keep it better. I
                           Trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get
                           More eager and climb higher and begin to see the
                          Widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.