Cleaning report

[Guest guest]

Dear fellow-cleaners,

 

this morning I thoroughly cleaned a statue representing Durga on her

lion, which I recently obtained and never really cleaned before.

Before being able to begin, it turned out I first had to clear my desk

to obtain sufficient space for cleaning and iron away a pile of

clothes which seemed inappropriate to keep lying around next to my

working-space. Having accomplished this, I took a clean cloth and

began. I chose the statue because I thought it would be easier to keep

my mind in check when supervised by Her directly. I read that when we

are able to keep our mind focused on a specific object uninterruptedly

for twelve seconds, we have achieved one unit of concentration. I

honestly don't know if I even achieved that. My mind did not stray

from the statue, but I had an inner dialogue with the Goddess and her

lion going on, their commenting on my cleaning and me praising their

beauty (I never observed so many details of the statue before), and

this was regularly interrupted by a commentary voice describing what I

was doing as if to a stranger. So this was not the inner silence I had

in mind. At one point, a particle of the cloth I used got stuck in a

crevice and I could not get it out. I was tempted to leave it, but

then remembered Nanda's story, and had to go look for a brush with

which to remove it. Which ofcourse meant more diversion. Anyway, I did

get it out after about a quarter of an hour. A true test of patience..

Then, getting to her feet, I got distracted by some peculiar marks on

her soles (sun and moon?) and got into all kinds of speculations.

Meanwhile, her feet became really shiny and beautiful thanks to my

rubbing, but my attention had moved away from the cleaning itself.

Having applied the Durga mantra repeatedly, I succeeded in silencing

the inner voices somewhat, and when cleaning the lion, there was a

definite feeling of peace and happiness. And the most curious thing:

the eyes of the statue, being made of bronze, are colourless and

looked 'blind' to me before. But now, as I gave her forehead and

cheeks a last loving rub, I swear I saw her wink at me!

This is definitely an experiment I am going to repeat. Who knows,

perhaps the incense-holder, the bell and all the other items on the

altar and even all the other stuff in my house are waiting to be cared

for like this, and eager to wink at me as well...

 

with love,

Henny