Shekhar Natarajan

I appreciate the master.

And so I started practicing Zen meditation in Italy for maybe seven years.

When did you start Zen meditation?

I was 33.

And after maybe 7 years, 6-7 years, the master of my master, the Italian master of my master was Dharma brother of Zen master in Sogenji, the temple.

And so I want to spend some time in the temple.

I write a letter to the Abbe and because they know me, they accept me just for five weeks, not so long.

But I spent five weeks in the temple in Okayama, in Sugenji.

And then three years later, I come back to make a walk on the pond of the temple for the Master's birthday.

Very beautiful.

so my experience with vipassana was very different yeah i was so um the obviously like you know as you know you have to focus on your breath yeah and uh the the night prior uh the uh the night prior basically they tell you what you're gonna feel next day sort of

So, the first two days, and like for people who don't know about Vipassana, they have to experience it.

So you're like, you're completely shut off from the world, as you know.

You cannot talk to anyone.

You're given a bland food.

And all you're doing is basically sitting and meditating, pretty much, and focusing on your breath.

So for me, like, you know, I am an unsteady mind.

I'm always in ADHD, thinking, thinking, thinking, creating, creating, creating in my mind.

Situations that I'm, like, not even, like, aware of or things that may go wrong and other things.

So, for me, like, the first three days, I would say I was okay, like, you know, with the way things were processing.