MOUNAM - the Silent Mind

A Muni and Mounam.

Thoughts produced by incessant thinking are like the bees buzzing around the hive and taking off for acquiring honey for the Queen bee = our ego. When we ralise that this compulsive, icessant activity is a non-ending slavery to the ego without giving lasting happiness and that it is an obstacle to our progress in the spiritual path, we realise that the ego is the culprit like the ghost which does not exist. As Ramana Maharishi said in Upadesa Saaram, we find: ayi patathyaham nija vibhanakam. The ego falls, and the true self shines forth.

A successful muni = mounee is silent not only in speech, but also in the mind and thus deprives the ego of nourishment. J Krishnamurti advised that we first first learn to observe the interval that exists between two thoughts, become more and more aware of it and extend it to practise mounam.

Getting rid of this disease of ceaseless thoughts, that exists in all human beings, first needs acknowledgment that it is a disease, not an intellectual virtue. Unfortunately, the emphasis is on refining and bettering (worsening?) it as a skill and an asset to a intellectual person. This wrong attribute will persist until a revelation takes place as in the case of Yogis and one does not mind travelling on the rough, difficult spiritual path strewn with difficulties, with guidance from a competent Guru.

What can one do when being a slave to the ego is considered a blessing and one is content and happy with being a slave for ever and ever?

The way to gain anything is to lose it

The way to gain anything is to lose it.

True charity emanates from sound judgment of the intellect rather than a weak emotion of the mind. In its purest form, charity has the distinction of benefiting the receiver as well as the donor.

Victor Hugo in his novel Les Miserables highlights the benefaction that charity brings to the receiver. A convict had escaped from prison and sought shelter for the night. The priest obliged, gave him supper and a bed to sleep. In the middle of the night he decamped with the silver plates of the house. The next morning the police who had caught him brought him in. The priest feigned surprise and asked the policeman: "Why did you harass him? I gifted the plates to him last night." The policeman apologised and left.

The convict was astounded. To crown it all, the priest picked up two solid silver candlestick stands from his desk and gave them to the convict with these words: Remember, life is to give, not to take. The convict took them and departed. Thence, he was transformed. Living a life of service and sacrifice. Such would be the outcome of true charity.

Likewise, the donor is blessed with the effect of charity. Charity is a synonym for prosperity. So is sacrifice for success. Swami Rama Tirtha proclaims: The way to gain anything is to lose it. The more you run after wealth, the more it recedes. You crave for it, and it eludes you. Leave it alone, and it follows you. Work earnestly, dispassionately; the reward of work shall court you.

The phenomenon of colours illustrates this law of life. Light is constituted of seven colours. When an object is bathed in light the seven colours impinge upon it. An object appears blue when it actually gives away blue and takes in the other six. It appears in the colour it parts with. An object gains the colour it gives away! You gain what you give away, what you sacrifice. Not what you take. Develop the spirit of dispassion, renunciation in life. You turn pure, divine. And when you amass wealth you turn impure, demonic. Oliver Goldsmith wrote: Where wealth accumulates, men decay. [.....] -- Swami Parthasarathy
The complete article is at 'Speaking Tree', Times of India
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In this context, it is perhaps relevant to recall Lao Tsu's

Law of the Reversed Effort

The Law which sees to it that
When you try to stay afloat, you sink;
When you try to sink, you float;
When you hold your breath, you lose it.
Those who justify themselves, do not convince.

It is in the letting go, that we are enabled to receive;
In the stillness, that we can participate;
In the silence, hear; and,
out of the dark night, see.
To know the Truth, one must get rid of knowledge.

Time Shifting vs Time Management

[...] for those of us who live in nanosecond time, a moment becomes very, very short, and in each moment we ask how much we have gotten done. How much did I cram into it? Was I successful in multitasking?

This approach to time management simply turns up the speed on the treadmill of our lives. I propose we evolve beyond time management to "timeshifting" - which is different from merely "downshifting." The practice of timeshifting recognizes that every single moment has a particular rhythm to it, and that we have the capacity to expand or contract an individual moment as appropriate. One way to shift what's going on in our world is not to try to rush to do more, but to allow ourselves to go deeper into that moment of being present. Our ability to shift gears, to shift our rhythm to meet that moment and be present in it, is what allows us to experience the fullness of life, to create our life in the way we want it to be.-- Stephan Rechtschaffen. ****** Source: Nipun Mehta: Thought/Week

See also: Concept of Time - click HERE

Leaving no Foot-prints behind

Living in the past, present and future at once

The time zones of our life by Mukul Sharma (article in Economic Times)

Aphorisms telling us to live “one day at a time” turn out to be less cutesy if we think of a day as an extended metaphor for the present. Then it begins to make a little more sense. Recovering drug abusers and alcoholics, for instance, are exhorted by their various anonymous organisations to do the same: just try to stay off the stuff for the coming 24 hours and not think of how they might be able to hold out during the next day, the week after or even luck out for a lifetime later without breaking into a cold turkey of anticipation immediately. The reason is, for most of us the future comes so heavily pre-loaded with the past and memories of experience that it skews the path ahead unfairly at times. As a result we hardly remain in the kind of control we would ideally like to be. In the 1964 classic Games People Play, the psychiatrist Eric Berne described the dysfunctional nature of such set patterns by calling them predetermined “scripts”. He catalogued a series of mind games in which people play through an outlined and predictable sequence of “transactions” that are superficially plausible but which actually conceal motivations, include private significance to the parties involved and lead to a well-defined outcome that are usually counterproductive. Of course we can’t avoid history, much less disregard it, and those who don’t learn from its mistakes are indeed doomed to repeat them with unnecessarily distressing consequences. One day at a time also doesn’t mean repeating the same day forever because that would make it like instant history happening all the time in the present. Neither does it mean an unconcern about opportunity and potential since that would lock us eternally in the here and now. What living one day at a time actually means is being able to learn from the future before it takes place. Learning from the future is the art of trial and error without, in fact, trying or (hopefully) turning out to be erroneous. In a sense it’s a process of virtual extrapolation which makes the day more dynamic, meaningful and, ultimately, rewarding — during the course of the day itself. People who manage to do this also manage to shorten its duration from an arbitrary 24 hours down to the extremely thin slice of “now” moving across the continuum of all time available to them. They live, as some of our wisest folk have done, in the past, present and future at once. – Mukul Sharma

See also Swami Chidananda's discourse "Leaving no foot-prints behind" (click here)

THE LOTUS FLOWER - Significance

The Lotus Flower - Significance as symbol
In Hindu/Buddhist philosophical literature, the lotus flower is a symbol with great significance. For example, in Sloka 10, Chapter 5 of the Bhagavad Gita it is said: "One who leads his life dedicating all his actions to Brahman, abandoning attachments, is freed from bondage just as a lotus leaf remains unaffected by the water.

Alan Watts, in his Essay "Seven Symbols of Life" explains the symbolic meaning of the Lotus flower thus:

It figures in the art of every great civilization of Asia, and in the course of thousands of years has gathered to itself associations which, to the Western mind, are bound up with all that seems exotic in the life of the East. For the lotus is a mystery—a perfected glory appearing out of the unknown, a flower in whose circular spread of petals has been seen a symbol of the Wheel of Life and the rays of the sun. Yet while there is mystery in the perfection of its form, the greatest mystery is that such a form should appear out of the slime—the formless primeval morass, where, in the earliest ages, stirred the first living creatures—the home of blind worms and slithering reptiles, feeding upon one another and begetting their kind in innumerable masses.

This underworld of the morass has been sufficiently described in Kesserling’s masterpiece the South American Meditations, and there is no need to describe it further. But what must never be forgotten is that this underworld still exists in the soul of man; that while his spirit, like the Lotus struggles towards the light, so beneath him and surrounding and nourishing his roots is the primaeval slime. And further, below this slime is the world of minerals, the rock and ores descending deeper and deeper into the earth right down to that flaming darkness which men have imagined as Hell - From all this the flower gathers its nourishment while from above the sun and the rain bring to it the gifts of Heaven. Both are essential to the life of the flower.

It might seem to the eyes of man that the lotus is no more than a flower, that this resplendent creation exists of itself floating detached and spotless above the water. But this is illusion. For just as the sage may appear spotless and detached from the world he is like the lotus in that he has roots in the primaeval slime—and knows it. Foolishly it is thought that the highest achievement of the human spirit is a heavenly purity detached from earth—a rootless flower suspended in the air and nourished wholly from above. Yet in the symbol of the lotus we see that there is no conflict between heaven and earth; above, the flower develops into the fullness of its glory, expanding joyfully, opening its petals in welcome to sun and rain, while below, its root. stretch out into the morass, welcoming darkness and slime as the petals welcome light and air. For the life of the lotus is not in the flower alone; if it were, the roots would shrivel and die and the flower too would sink back into the mud. Nor is its life in the roots alone, for if this were so the flower would never raise its head above the water.

The realization of the truth contained in this symbol is the central problem of human life—the equal acceptance of both earth and heaven. Yet remember it is the roots which accept the slime—not the flower, and the flower which opens itself to the sun—not the roots. The reverse of this would indeed be abomination and evil- But nothing can be evil so long as it is in its right place, for the conflict between good and evil is not a conflict between heaven and earth, but between a right and a wrong orientation of man between the two. For evil is when the flower turns and plunges into the slime, twisting up its roots to gesticulate meaninglessly in the light of day. Or again, evil is to withdraw from either the root or the flower, to try to deny either of the two by refusing it its right to reach out into its appropriate world. Thus the particular problem of modern man of the West is to recognize his roots.

For hundreds of years his peculiar interpretation of the teaching of the Christ, his cult of consciousness, his moralism, his belief in progress towards the hygienic, the individuated and the independent has made him forget his roots in the primaeval slime. But he must remember that the roots are not to be recognized once more by searching them out with the flower; to attempt this would be to lose all that he has gained by his development, one-sided though it be. It is this folly which we see at work in the West to-day, in the growing obsession with the irrational force of sex, of the herd, of blood and violence. Yet these forces are, in themselves, as pure as any of the virtues, and as full of life-giving nourishment as Reason and the cool thought of great philosophy. For this obsession is not recognition. It is feeding the mouth with the contents of the bowels, or, conversely, filling the bowels with undigested food.

What must be done, therefore, if man is to attain a right orientation between heaven and earth, and a full development of both root and flower? How can he fulfill the Eastern precept, “Grow as the flower grows, at peace”? How can he give full recognition to the slime, and at the same time rise upwards to the sun?

In the darkness below the surface of the water lies what modern psychology has termed the Unconscious. A little way down it remains individuated, but the further it descends, the more individuals are lost in the mass. Thus in the slime is the world of reptiles, an ever coiling and uncoiling world of flux, where the individual is subordinated to the one aim of reproducing the species—a world of extreme fertility and ruthless destruction—symbolized by the circle snake which swallows its own tail. In the depths of the slime below the reptiles are even more primitive and un-individuated forms of life—plasmic formations wherein even the distinction between the sexes has not developed, formations which reproduce their kind simply by dividing into two. And further down, beneath the bed of decaying vegetable and animal matter (the death from which life arises again and again), is the formless substratum of the mineral world.

These depths have their counterpart in the soul of man, for his Unconscious sinks beyond the personal and the chain of his past lives and the lives of his forefathers, to the race, to the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds. Here lies hidden the memory of the whole Universe, and in these unconscious depths every man has his roots. From them he derives his life just as much as from the conscious world above the water. And by accepting them he transmutes the life of the slime into the glory of the flower. Therefore man must learn to recognize his foundation, to accept the primaeval slime as part of his nature—nay more, to affirm and welcome it with his roots, stretching them down deeper and deeper into the earth.

For as men we cannot deny that we came into the world with blood and pain, that the powerful reproductive urge symbolized by the reptile stirs within us, that we have bowels as well as brains, that our life depends alike on growth and decay, and that what we have been accustomed to regard as dirt, violence and pain is an essential part of our nature. This is the meaning of the Resurrection, that life comes forth out of death and decay, just as the fruit must rot for the seed to grow into the tree.

Therefore nothing is to be gained by trying to escape from the primaeval slime; without it we should die, while in truth it is no evil, Indeed, the humility of the sage is his capacity to accept the lowliest of things, to find goodness in slime. Yet it is strange that this should have been perverted into the false humility of the ascetic who rejoices in the dirt on the outside of his body, for this again is obsession, it is making the flower descend to the root.

Some will ask if this is not a ghastly life where the most gorgeous of flowers depends on slime, where growth can only be had at the expense of decay, where great achievements of the human spirit have their roots in the darkness and “depraved” irrationality of the Unconscious. Indeed, there are those who are so revolted by this life that they deny both flower and root, growth and decay, light and darkness, conscious and unconscious—hating both.

But their attitude is false, for they do not really hate both; they hate the dark side and would like to have the light, could it be had without darkness. When they speak of the vanity of life we must remind ourselves of the story of the sour grapes; they would not call it vain if it could be had without death. Yet nothing is to be achieved by revulsion and denial, not only because the attitude is fundamentally false, but because the denial of a thing does not make one free of it. Paradoxically, hatred binds one to the thing one hates, for if anything has enough power over a man to make him hate it, to that extent he is bound and conditioned by it. But while hatred is extracted, love is given. Therefore freedom comes not through hatred and denial, but through love and affirmation. “Love” is not meant in the sense of “like” as opposed to dislike, for one may love without liking; the two are on different planes. To love both the root and the flower, earth and heaven, slime and air, death and life is not merely to like decay because it makes possible growth; it is to bring the two together into an inseparable unity and to become one with it by a complete acceptance; until, beholding it, man can make to himself that tremendous affirmation: Tat tvam asi —That art thou!

by ALAN WATTS

A Personal God

It's truly a miraculous experience, watching a child grow from infant to baby to child - struggling to crawl, move on all fours, sit, stand, walk and speak to the mother. The instructions wired into the brain have to be decoded and practiced repetitively by the infant before it learns all the tricks to balance itself, stand, walk and speak. The nurturing mother watches, encouraging her child, but every step of the learning process in the mind has to be taken by the child itself.

A similar process is in operation when we learn to walk on the spiritual path. An urge to seek the mysterious spirit arises in the mind that then has to unlearn the old urges and directives of the ego, and learn new ways to see, hear and experience. The Universal Mother, with great love and affection, watches patiently - confident that her child would overcome the initial hurdles as it did the physical ones as an infant and triumphantly come to her ultimately. For, she has already provided the needed equipment and knowledge for this new experience.

We have to have faith in this belief. Reincarnating over many births, benefiting from past experiences, like the child tripping, falling and finally learning to stand and walk and take great strides upon this earth, we too will be ultimately successful in attaining to the goal of Sat-Chit-Ananda that is pure Bliss.

Einstein who said he experienced the mystifying forces in Nature, stated also that he did not believe in a personal God. But the God that he refuted thus was the anthropomorphic God created by man, in the image of man, for the worldly benefit of man - a God that ruled like a disciplinarian, granting favors to those who conformed and punishing the rebels; that was the fictional God of the religions preached by the Priests, in collusion with the earth's Rulers.

The Upanishads however speak only of a Brahman, (in the neuter as tat - IT), that is omnipresent - filling every atom of the Universe and living in every moment of time, past-present-& future. Conceptualizing this huge, timeless & dimensionless presence in a Rama or a Krishna helps the mind of the seeker in the same manner as a stroller helps the child to walk without faltering and falling. Identifying totally with a personal God of one's choice in this manner, one advances spiritually by leaps and bounds. The personal God then becomes the Universal Presence, which is experienced in the silence of the mind and the Bliss in the heart. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa experienced this Blissful presence of the Universal Mother in the idol of Kali that he worshipped.

Hinduism is a strange amalgam of a core theory and accompanying practices, rituals and superstitions. Understanding its core truth is akin to reaching the kernel of a coconut - remove and throw away the tight, adhering coverings of fiber, break the hard shell, pour away the water and reach the pure white delicious kernel. Is it any wonder that those who do not practice it with faith, sincerity, steadfastness, devotion and detachment see the outer coverings and are turned away?

Einstein did not believe in a personal God as he also considered that organized religion and its rituals were not effective in ensuring the practice of what they preached about morality and ethics. He summed up this ineffectiveness, and his disappointment, in forceful terms thus:

"When considering the actual living conditions of present day civilized humanity from the standpoint of even the most elementary religious commands, one is bound to experience a feeling of deep and painful disappointment at what one sees. For, while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection."

The Vedantic portion of Hinduism lays emphasis on a personal, moral, ethical code of conduct. It however goes further to analyze the root cause of humanity’s suffering and concludes that the powerful, over-riding ego nurtured in societal materialistic values is to blame. This analysis, which is contained in the Upanishads, leads to many recommendations for getting complete control of the mind and developing contact with Universal Consciousness. Perhaps, had Einstein been familiar with the Upanishads, he might have conceded the validity of Upanishadic statements - which do not refer to a Personal God but name Brahman (in the neuter) as the source that exists every where, in all things and beings -- like the concept of energy.

This Upanishadic concept of the Universe is not religion but pure philosophy. Hence, realizing the practical needs of the 99% of humanity, Hinduism’s ancestors created Gods, mythologies, rules, regulations and rituals -- all of which served a temporary, intermediate purpose like a ladder. An advanced practitioner like an ascetic (sanyasi) has to step out of it and climb further on his own in order to realize the Truth.

Hinduism thus provides a 2-tier system: an elementary stage in which you believe in a personal Deity of your choice and follow rules for personal ethics and morality, and an advanced stage when one is ready to leave behind ego-dictated pursuits for material goals and is ready for the higher goal of realizing Sat-Chit-Ananda, with the assistance of a Guru. The Guru of Hinduism is merely a guide and an adviser, not a priest like the priest in a church with authority to control and guide his flock in accordance with a set of rules prescribed in a book. He is a realized saintly person who has understood and practiced the Upanishadic statements relating to the nature of Reality and therefore is able to give his disciple (sishya) guidance in the travel along the spiritual path which has been described in the Upanishad as being like the razor’s edge, difficult to tread and beset with obstacles:

Kathopanishad:
UtthishThatha, jAgrata, prApya varAn nibodhata
Kshurasya dhArA nishitA duratyatA
durgam pathastat kavayo vadanti.

Arise, awake, receive guidance from the best preceptors
For the path is like a razor’s edge
- dark, beset with obstacles, difficult to tread,
so the experienced (who have travelled the path), say.

GOD and EVIL

One is dismayed by the evil at large in the world and in oneself, depressed and humiliated by the inadequacy of one's efforts to cope with it, humiliated then by the inadequacy of one's own self. It is from precisely such a feeling of humiliation that, religious writers have often urged, the search for and need of God, take their rise. What is more, the seeker who is inspired by such a mood may not be wholly without hope of succeeding in his quest. For alienated by intellectual pride, they have assured us, God draws nearer to those who approach Him in humbleness of spirit." - From the Book "God and Evil" by C.E.M. Joad:

OPRAH WINFREY's interview with ELIE WIESEL
( From Oprah Winfrey's web-site: http://www2.oprah.com/omagazine/200011/omag_200011_elie_b.jhtml )

He's one of the people I most respect: Elie Wiesel. After I first read his memoir *Night* seven years ago, I was not the same—you can't be the same after hearing how Elie, at age 15, survived the horror of the Holocaust death camps. Through his eyes, we witness the depths of both human cruelty and human grace—and we're left grappling with what remains of Elie, a teenage boy caught between the two. I gain courage from his courage. The story—and especially that number, six million—numbs us:

A Jew hater named Adolf Hitler rises to power in Germany, the world goes to war in 1939, and when the showdown is over six years later, the tyrant has slaughtered six million Jews. Six million. Inconceivable. We see footage of the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the gallows.Yet words like Holocaust and Auschwitz are still abstractions—seemingly impossible until we see photos of someone who was there. A face. Eyes. Hair. Prison numbers tattooed into an arm. A real person like Elie Wiesel who made it through the atrocity.

"How could you live through the Holocaust and not be bitter?" I ask Elie. At 72, he emanates quiet strength; with his strong handgrip, it's as if he's saying, "I assure you—I am alive."

We sit across from each other at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, where hundreds come to see evidence of what happened to the Jewish people. Thousands already know Elie Wiesel's name—he is a prolific writer, a professor at Boston University and an activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986—but I want him to take me back to the time when living to tell the story was the last thing that mattered to him. I wanted to know: "What does it take to be normal again, after having your humanity stripped away by the Nazis?"

"What is abnormal is that I am normal," he says. "That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life—that is what is abnormal." "Why didn't you go insane?" "To this day," he says, "that is a mystery to me." and a miracle.

After he was liberated from Buchenwald in 1945, he and other orphans were sent to France. There, he lived in an orphanage, then later supported himself as a tutor and choir director—and he decided that he wanted to live again. He studied literature, philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne, and in 1952 he became a reporter for a newspaper in Tel Aviv. For ten years after his release, he vowed not to speak of his experience. "I wanted to be sure that the words I was going to use about this event were the proper words," he has said.

In our time together, Elie and I talk about how it is possible that he can still believe in the sovereignty of a force bigger than himself, why he has no explanation for his survival in the death camps, and what, five decades after Auschwitz, brings him what he calls real joy. Oprah: There may be no better person than you to speak about living with gratitude. Despite all the tragedy you've witnessed, do you still have a place inside you for gratefulness?

Elie Wiesel: Absolutely. Right after the war, I went around telling people, "Thank you just for living, for being human." And to this day, the words that come most frequently from my lips are ‘thank you’. When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.

O: Does having seen the worst of humanity make you more grateful for ordinary occurrences?
EW: For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.
O: Did you ever hate your oppressors?
EW: I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying [the Bible and the Cabala] to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself.
O: On your first night in the camp, you saw babies being thrown into the flames. Can you ever forgive those who killed the children?
EW: Who am I to forgive? Only the children themselves could forgive. If I forgive, I should do it in their name. Otherwise, it is arrogant.
O: By becoming a voice for those who are suffering, are you doing what the world did not do for Jews during the Holocaust? EW: I've gone everywhere, trying to stop so many atrocities: Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia. The least I can do is show the victims that they are not alone. When I went to Cambodia, journalists asked me, "What are you doing here? This is not a Jewish tragedy." I answered, "When I needed people to come, they didn't. That's why I am here."
O: Is it our indifference and arrogance that makes us Americans feel that we are the center of the universe—that a mother's pain after losing her child in Bosnia or Nigeria isn't as important as our own pain?
EW: I wouldn't generalize. There are people in America who are so sensitive. Whenever I meet young Americans abroad, they are there to help. A doctor in New York read a quote of mine that sparked her involvement. Somebody had asked me, "What is the most important commandment in the Bible?" and I said, "Thou shalt not stand idly by." So she packed up her office and went to Macedonia—I met her there... We cannot free all the prisoners in the world or save all the victims of AIDS, but we can at least show them that we are with them.
O: You and the others in the camp were forced to march by three people who were hanged. And somebody behind you whispered, "Where is God?"
EW: A voice in me said, "God is there."
O: Where are you and God with each other these days?
EW: We still have a few problems! But even in the camps, I never divorced God. After the war, I went on praying to God. I was angry. I protested. I'm still protesting—and occasionally, I'm still angry. But it's not because of the past, but the present. When I see victims of a tragedy—and especially children—I say to God, "Don't tell me that you have nothing to do with this. You are everywhere—you are God."
O: Did you come out of the horror of the Holocaust with your ability to love intact?
EW: After my liberation, I fell in love with every girl—consecutively. But I would never dare tell a girl that I loved her, because I was timid—and afraid of rejection. I missed so many opportunities because I was afraid to say what I felt. I needed to love more than I needed to be loved. I needed to know that I could love—that after all I had seen, there was love in my heart.
O: Do you remember the day you were released from the camp? EW: April 11, 1945. The Americans were close by, and a few days before that, on April 5, the Germans had decided to evacuate all the Jews. Every day, they would evacuate thousands—and most were killed upon leaving. I was in a children's block with other adolescents, and we were left until the end. [But every day we marched to the gate anyway.] I was near the gate more than five times before I was released, and each time, the gate closed just before I came to it.
O: How do you explain that you survived the camps?
EW: I have no explanation.
O: You—someone who has studied the Talmud, the Cabala—have no explanation?
EW: Believe me, I have tried to know, but I do not. If it is God, I have problems with that. If he bothered to save me, why couldn't he have saved all the others? There were people worthier than I.
O: Don't you think your survival has something to do with who you've become and what you've said to the world about the Holocaust?
EW: No, no, no. The price is too high. Because I survived, I must do everything possible to help others.