Sensei of Shambala - Anastasia Novykh (english novels for students .txt) 📗

my mum. One day, her back simply began to ache. The doctors found a herniated disk. They performed an operation and eliminated the vertebral herniation. After that, she felt a lot better. But some time later, she again fell ill and felt even worse. The doctors recommended her for a second operation, but she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to walk after it. Anna Ivanovna was quite reserved in telling her story, but the details, especially the consequences of her operation, scared not just my mother but also me because I, most likely, would be operated on by neurosurgeons as well.
Anna Ivanovna hardly moved. Her husband, a happy plump man, often visited her. Their children had grown up a long time ago and lived with their families in different cities. But Anna Ivanovna had her own distress, as she was most of all afraid to be bedridden; after all, she was only fifty. She was afraid to become a burden to her husband and even more to oppress her children with her illness. That’s why this woman tried very hard to recover, swallowing all the assigned pills and performing all the prescribed procedures. But sometimes, when the pain became unbearable, optimism left her and she would weep bitter tears, repeating the same question, “Why?!”
The third neighbor, a young woman about five years older than me, had afterbirth trauma. Lena had already felt pain in her back during the pregnancy. Her right leg completely stopped moving; she couldn’t even move her toes. As it turned out, she had a protrusion of two disks. At home, she left the baby in the care of her retired mother-in-law. She also was visited by her husband. He was a good guy: calm, and probably a meek person. Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, was rushing like a hurricane, always grumbling and dissatisfied with trifles.
This complication after the delivery, which nobody could foresee, put the young family on the verge of collapse. Apart from the fact that Lena had serious health problems and couldn’t physically take care of the child, her mother-in-law regularly provoked conflicts, telling her son that he didn’t need a cripple wife, that it would be a burden for all his life, and that he should ask his wife for a divorce. Lena couldn’t rely on anyone else to be with her child but her mother, but the mother lived far away in a different city and seldom visited her because she worked all the time in the factory, barely making ends meet. In general, Lena’s life had turned to a continuous tragedy.
Having heard plenty of all these stories, I realized that not one of these patients had expected such an outcome; everyone lived and planned something, but the events came like thunder amidst a clear sky. Everybody complained about why it happened specifically to them. In the evening, after having heard all of that, I randomly opened my diary and came across Sensei’s words, “There is no such thing as chance. Chance is only a natural consequence of our uncontrolled thoughts.” “That’s it!” I thought. “Strange that I simply didn’t pay attention to these words before.” In order to improve my vigilance, I marked them out in the diary with bold italics.
I really wanted to visit Sensei’s trainings, but I just couldn’t get out from this whirlpool of events without feeling guilty. I regularly called my friends, who effusively bragged about their successes. At home, I continued doing meditations, and I tried to do the Lotus Flower every free minute. It worked well to evoke feelings when I thought about a desirable present. At that thought, a wave of tiny ants would arise in my solar plexus and spread through my whole body in different directions. This feeling was quite pleasant. Even though I wasn’t near Sensei, his words in my diary constantly circled in my mind.
In the hospital, I decided that, at any cost, I would change the unhealthy atmosphere in the ward because listening to talk about diseases and oppressive existence could quickly weaken even a healthy man. Visiting my mother, I tried to tell all the funniest stories I knew, starting from school life and finishing with different amusing incidents from literature. But this method was ineffective, since the women remained deep in thought about their own problems. One time, talking to Lena, I told her what I heard from Sensei about good and bad thoughts, about the essence of our soul and our life. Amazingly, the women started listening to these words with such attention, as if they weren’t Sensei’s words I was telling but rather a confession that concerned each of them. My mother said that after my departure they continued to discuss these words and reflected on their meaning in relation to their life experiences. Strikingly, in just a week after my conversation, there were some unexpected results.
Valentina Fedorovna, who more than everybody groaned and grieved, transformed herself into a completely different person, an intelligent organizer of her destiny. My mother said that after these conversations she intensively pondered something. The result of her decision surpassed all expectations. She offered Lena’s husband the official position of director of the furniture cooperative with a correspondingly good salary. This was a complete shock not just for the young family, but especially for the mother-in-law. They simply didn’t know how to thank Valentina Fedorovna for this present of destiny.
Although Lena’s husband was a meek person, when he was entrusted such an important business, he showed the talents of a good manager. As the mother-in-law told us, he worked with great enthusiasm and efficiency twenty-four hours a day, and due to his efforts, the production of furniture was restarted in less than two weeks, and they even got their first big profit. The mother-in-law blossomed from happiness, and her attitude towards Lena immediately changed for the better.
Moreover, Valentina Fedorovna hired her sister in this cooperative, turning her from a simple bookkeeper with a tiny salary in a state enterprise into the chief bookkeeper of a privately owned enterprise, with a good salary. And since the woman was honest, punctual, and accurate, order was guaranteed. In general, such smart and simple decisions made by Valentina Fedorovna pleased everybody, and especially herself. Her health and her life in general began to improve. Even her old friends began to visit her, offering various services. But Valentina Fedorovna, completely without anger, let them know that she no longer needed their services or help.
The atmosphere in the ward after that got significantly better. Now, the women smiled more often, joked, supported each other. The atmosphere in this ward became pleasant for everyone. Even the hospital staff lingered for longer than usual just to chat with our jolly women. What’s most striking, not only did the women’s mood improve, but also their health; they quickly started recovering. I understood that this terrible pain was begotten, first of all, by their imagination, by bad thoughts and fear of the unknown. It was like a worm eating them up from inside, intensifying over and over again their physical pain. As soon as these women drew their attention away from these thoughts, they became pleasant not only to those around them, but also to themselves. They received an opportunity not only to reason soberly, but also to try to adapt to the new conditions of their lives and their relationships with people.
I was simply shocked by this discovery, since I didn’t suspect that Sensei’s words would cause such a revolution in the thoughts and feelings of these women doomed to suffering. The positive thoughts of one of them begot an entire chain of events in the destinies of several people, bringing happiness and wealth into their lives. This proved to be evidence that Sensei was absolutely right in telling us about the power of our thoughts and how much they affect us and our destiny.
Also, I noticed that it became significantly easier to practice the Lotus Flower in the ward. I did my best to support this spirit of optimism, which grew every day. I brought library books of the great classics, with good endings of course, as well as humorous stories. The women read them with pleasure, retelling each other the exciting moments. It turned out that many of Sensei’s words also found their proof in works of the classics of different epochs. Finally, I realized that Sensei actually spoke about the eternal truth that was always known to humankind. He just explained all this simply and clearly.
I also noticed one more curious moment. Anna Ivanovna, who had been working for twenty years in a university as a teacher of literature, knew many of these books almost by heart. But now she said that she reread these books with pleasure, as now she perceived them completely differently. In particular for her, for her soul, as she later confessed, she made interesting discoveries, noticing in the books those things that she hadn’t paid attention to before.
Sometimes our readings would turn into real literary soirees. Amazingly, when I spoke to the women about Sensei’s theory of control over thoughts, they listened to these words with unusual attention. At first, it embarassed me because I simply couldn’t answer many of their questions about life. But at home, looking through my diary anew, I found the words of Sensei, which, in my opinion, more or less matched the answers. Strangely enough, the women perceived these words in their own way, depending on their life experiences, and these answers quite satisfied them. So, although Sensei wasn’t with us, his presence was felt clearly in his deep thoughts which we constantly came back to.
New Year drew near. The women decided to organize a holiday party right in the ward. My father settled all the formalities with the chief doctor. We even installed a small, real Christmas tree, decorating it with various toys and, just for fun, with syringes and droppers. Our family celebrated New Year in mother’s ward with the other women and their close friends and relatives. It was so merry, and everyone was so kind to each other that I had the impression we were all a big, friendly family. I remembered one interesting toast, proposed by Lena’s mother-in-law.
“They say that how you celebrate New Year, so will be the entire year. And despite the fact that we are celebrating it in the hospital, the most important thing is that we are celebrating it in the company of such wonderful people. I am thankful to God that all the misfortunes of my son are finally over. Thank you so much, dear Valentina Fedorovna, for your kind and keen heart. If it weren’t for you, we would never have gotten out of that nightmare. So let’s drink to you, to unpredictable destiny, which gathered all of us in such an unusual place. To your health!”
A lot of kind and beautiful words were said that night. Close to two o’clock in the morning, we were even joined by the chief doctor and his wife, who were coming back after visiting their friends. But as I later understood, he was more interested in talking to my dad rather than staying with us. Having drunk a few glasses of wine, the women began pouring out their souls to each other. I was really shocked when Valentina Fedorovna was telling us how she had taken her vitally important decision.
“You know, girls, I long thought about what had happened to me and how to get out from that trouble. And one time, after one more heavy pondering, I had a strange dream. A beautiful young man with blond hair to his shoulders came up to my bed and started speaking with a melodic voice, ’Why are you suffering? Look at the people surrounding you. When you see their best features,