Lightandsoundmeditation

Meditation for Peace in the World

Usually, the last week of December is for festive holidays. Many people around the world celebrated the Christmas and New Year with family and friends. However, there were many groups of people who prayed for the peace in the world and to prevent the disaster according to the prophets’ predicts of the ‘end of the world’.

This year in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Master Ruma Foundation sponsored a group of approximately 500 people including monks, nuns, and laypeople from four South East Asian countries to come and join together at an international meditation retreat and pray for world peace.

This End-of-the-Year Meditation Retreat was held at the Master Ruma Meditation Center, an 80 rai facility in Baan Pong, a village in the mountainous Chiang Mai, from Dec. 24- Jan. 1st. The event was presided over by Master Ruma himself for practitioners of the Light and Sound Meditation from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. This was the second retreat in Thailand and the forth retreat in South East Asia for 2012 that was organized by Master Ruma.

Unlike the other meditation retreats, this retreat not only focused on initiating new practitioners to the Light and Sound method and on the practice of meditation (consisting of 3-4 sessions per day for up to12 hours a day), but it also had many other special activities. These included tours of the organic vegetable farm, fun games, vegetarian cooking competitions, and a gala New Years Eve Party with fireworks, a candle procession, singing performances, and the floating of hundreds of traditional kom loi lanterns. Apart from conducting many insightful dharma teachings, Master Ruma also had friendly chats with his disciples, and personally cooked and served delicious vegetarian dishes for everyone. New disciples were thrilled to be so close to the Master who is very high in noble spirit yet very humble and loving to all his followers.

At the retreat, although everything seemed normal, all activities were meaningful and blessed by the Master. Everyone could feel in their spirit the great love from the Master through his amicability and generosity, and were grateful to receive such noble grace.

Behind the success of the event, many people did not know how much effort Master Ruma and his disciples put into making the place beautiful and can accommodate such many fellow practitioners for them to be as comfortable as they can. Master Ruma personally designed and made tables himself and taught his monk disciples to make them. These tables were made due to Master Ruma’s thoughtfulness for the purpose that people could rest and enjoy their meals at the tables after long hours or meditation. These tables were put on the grass field in the garden.

Master Ruma and his disciples also made three public water stations along the walkways of the Meditation Center for the fellow practitioners to enjoy hot or cold water from these water stations. This initiative is from Master Ruma’s memories from the past when he went on his journey to seek the ultimate truth in countries such as India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, etc., Master Ruma saw the local people putting small fresh water jars along the roads for the benefit of the monks and lay people when they walked by. Master Ruma used to drink fresh water from such charity jars, which helped quench his thirst and encouraged him to continue his journey to find the Truth for the benefit of all mankind. Therefore, he wished to give benefit to those sincere practitioners at the retreat as much as possible.

Unlike any Masters, Master Ruma managed and did everything himself with his monks, such as planting trees, making the stage, decorating Christmas trees, etc. Seeing the Living Master has worked very hard physically and spiritually for the benefit of mankind, we fellow practitioners were touched by his love and much grateful for his grace.

At the conclusion of the retreat, Master Ruma told the participants that the end of 2012 through much of 2013 presented a difficult period of time and much negative karma for our planet. However, he gave words of encouragement and hope and told everyone that they could help through their actions and dedication. He said that through their continued and sincere practice of the Light and Sound Meditation, by committing to the five precepts and vegetarianism, and by sincerely praying to the Buddha, or God, or to whatever you believe, the negative karmas can be overcome and we can save our beautiful planet for the next generations.

“The Light and Sound Meditation Method is a spiritual meditation method, contemplating on our internal vibrations, i.e. listening to the vibrations of our inner sounds. Light and sound are both from God. Light represents enlightenment. Seeing the light in meditation means we are enlightened. You can experience this when you are initiated."

“You can more easily follow the dharma if you can harmonize the real life work and your inner spirit. It is difficult to achieve this if you do not follow the five precepts.”

“You are busy the whole day with your work. You have various thoughts wandering around, and you are very busy earning your living and trying to support your family - how then could have enough time for meditation? However, if you do not meditate everyday, it is very difficult to make a true progress.”

“The main purpose for compliance with the Five Precepts is to cultivate the purity of your Movement-Word-Idea continuum in the way you communicate, your ideology, and your actions in your daily life. You need to be very prudent and aware in all aspects and you should not do things like lying, stealing or harming others.”

“ We must approach all people with our noble compassion, our bright wisdom, our immense affection, and pure action and ideology. This is the way of all disciples of the true Dharma.”

“If you want to properly follow the Five Precepts you need to achieve absolute serenity. Everyday, we have the self-check the three essential aspects of “ideology, word and action” and evaluate if we have achieved genuine virtue. We need to be sincere with ourselves, our parents, siblings, spouse, children, friends, neighbors, fellow disciples, and everyone we meet.”

“When you make a mistake you should sincerely admit and confess to yourself. Confession does not mean you torture or fine yourself, but rather that you make a conscious effort to understand what you did wrong, what you need to do to correct it, and how you can try to avoid such a mistake in the future. This is the way of the enlightened mindset.”