When I arrived at The Lotus-Heart, there was a queue of people lined up to attend the meditation workshop.  We had spent all week in preparation to his arrival putting flyers out all around the city,  titled Discovering Meditation with guest speaker Shishir Pauk from the Canadian  Sri Chinmoy Centre.  At last I got a seat and there he was, Shishir, finally in Christchurch. He was clad in a big home knit baby blue jersey, white pants that were just short enough to reveal two multi coloured knitted indoor shoes. He had tufty white hair and he turned to smile warmly at us through his round spectacles. He was already making the class feel at ease with his openess and often unintended humour.

He told a lot of good stories throughout the class. One story I liked was when he was young he was watching CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company-check it out) and they went to this monastery to interview this man who was a hundred and something who had been meditating there since he was 18 years old, and in typical CBC fashion they asked this beautiful old man if he could tell the veiwers in 2 minutes what he had learnt from meditating all these years. The old man said "I don't need 2 minutes I can tell you in 2 words; 'Know Thyself' " Shishir went onto say how the old man was talking in code and as his teacher Sri Chinmoy says in his university lecture titled Know Thyself "Atmanam viddhi-Know thyself". Each individual has to know himself. He has to know himself as the infinite, eternal and immortal Consciousness."

We did two guided meditations and altogether the class was illumining and inspiring. Although Shishir had really just come off the plane he was a great example himself of how much enthusiasm, openess, joy and even youthfulness one can derive from meditating.