دار بيبليون
ZOOM interview with publisher/author Marc de SMEDT
By Lwiis SALIBA – 27-04-22
Excerpts from Lwiis Saliba’s questions to Marc de Smedt
Zoom videoconference of Wednesday 27 April 2022
1) You have been meditating for 53 years: What has meditation taught you and what has been the change in you?
2) Your meditation master was Taisen Deshimaru. Why and how did you choose him and why especially in the Zen tradition?
3) “The guru of all meditation is the breath”. How and why especially the breath?
4) In meditation, “one is both solitary and united”. This is a nice play on words, but with whom and how are we in solidarity?
5) You say: “In meditation, it is stillness that creates wisdom and wisdom that creates stillness”. The basic mind is very restless, so how can we encourage calmness in it?
6) You say, “Meditation is stopping the race! This brings to mind Thich Nhat Hanh who described his meditation centres as clinics of slowness. Don’t you think that meditation should be taught widely, including in its secular form, as an antidote to a typical evil of the modern world: “speeding up”?
7) “Meditation begins when I leave the meditation room”. To explain this paradox, how can we transform our daily life into a continuous meditative practice?
8) You often repeat something your teacher said: “Concentrate! You must be able to meditate under the bombs! Have you ever done this?
9) In your book Being Jesus or from Christ to Buddha you explain: “For seven weeks, the one who had just become the Buddha remained in meditation. At the end of his 49 days, he decided to transmit to humanity what he had discovered. Why did the Buddha hesitate? At our level, what should be the training and the purification of the motivation before starting to teach meditation?
Impressions on a nice interview by Zoom with
Marc de SMEDT
Interviewed by Lwiis SALIBA
27-04-22
Yes, it was a very beautiful moment, of sweetness, simplicity and wisdom…
A reminder of consciousness through the approach of meditation, by a man at the height of his deep interiority, of his long experience as a publisher, author, journalist, of his benevolence towards Jacques VIGNE (one of his prestigious authors), and of his availability towards Lwiis SALIBA in the service of the divulgation of mindfulness meditation.
One of those moments that float in the air and envelop us in an impalpable yet profound way.
We followed him, with our eyes closed:
-The clear water of consciousness in meditation appears and the mud settles deep within our beings. This is how the lotus seed can germinate and blossom!
-Finding harmony within…
-Light exists in darkness, just as darkness exists in light.
-We secrete pollution: our fantasies, our desires…
-The Zen teaching of Master Deshimaru !
-The work on the breath is transmitted to the consciousness.
-The concerns fall with the meditation and they find more correct proportions.
-Things become clearer in the calm and in the silence.
-Our mind: a ‘crazy horse’!
-The way is under our feet, the true path is under our feet.
An hour and a half of happiness.
And his friendly admiration for Jacques VIGNE is imbued with teasing kindness: Jacques who disembarks from the train or the bus with his big suitcases full of books, Jacques at the same time: a great scientist, a hermit, a man of his time, a doctor who has built up what it takes to help the great causes in India, with his extraordinary simplicity, his bottomless knowledge, his marvellous presence!
Thank you Mr Marc de Smedt, author of, among other things, : One day, one life’.
See you in a future interview, take us by the hand, and take us through your experiences as you navigate your favourite authors, those you support with your gentle and strong fervour, and which makes them better.
Take us to see the LOTUS bloom!
Thank you and…see you next time.
Geneviève (Mahâjyoti)