Bhikshuni

The New York City Subway – a convocation

If you can create harmony
In your own life,
This harmony will enter
Into the vast world.

Sri Chinmoy

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From time to time, I experience my New York City subway ride as a convocation, an almost ecclesiastical like gathering of devotees, dedicated to preserving their peace for the duration of the ride.  Consciously or unconsciously, we are unified by the unspoken agreement, “I shall do you no harm” and in a limited space and time agree to tolerate one another for the length of our confinement.  This group of uniquely diverse New Yorkers can manage a stillness and equanimity that feels like silent prayer.  I admit not as joyous on Monday, when it is a contest of endurance, but more so as the week progresses.  Even the very occasional disruption is often tempered by a tacit agreement not to escalate under any cost, lest we are unable to read, sleep, text, do last minute homework, listen to IPODS etc.

So here we are, training in inner poise, a microcosm of world harmony, in my case for 45 minutes or so, a pilot project of peace that could be utilized globally if we were inclined to consciously extend the application of this phenomena beyond the limits of the subway—from the personal to the universal.