hermit's chronicles

Maurice Frydman, the yogi who wrote the "spiritual bestseller" I Am That , based on conversations with the renowned sage Nisargadatta Maharaj, was an excellent engineer. So when he met Gandhiji he set about making innovations in the Mahatma's charkhas (spinning wheels). In fact he designed the most effective of Gandhiji's charkhas, danush-takli . It was so efficient that Gandhiji was heard to joke: “I’m trying to make more jobs for people, Maurice, not less!”

Sogyal Rinpoche recounts this episode in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying : Apa Pant told me this story. One day our master Jamyang Khyentse was watching a ‘Lama Dance’ in front of the Palace Temple in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, and he was chuckling at the antics of the atsara , the clown who provides light relief between dances. Apa Pant kept pestering him, asking him again and again how to meditate, so this time when my master replied, it was in such a way as to let him know that he was telling him once and for all: “Look, it’s like this: When the past thought has ceased, and the future thought has not yet risen, isn't there a gap?” “Yes,” said Apa Pant. “Well, prolong it: That is meditation.”