Bedtime On The Bus

(From The Bus Ride Adventure Story by Murat Yagan – excerpt edited)

"If in our individual life or in the life functioning of a group of people, we do deliberately behave and live by practicing the virtues I have offered, in other words, under deliberate attention we make it our business in our daily life to practice the fourteen suggested human attributes, whether we naturally are like them or not, our life vibration will bring a certain expansiveness into our ecology and this positive vibration will generate back more of the same, naturally, but not by deliberate intention. And this in its turn will bring in even more of this special vibration.

It is a law of human dynamics that operates on the principle of cumulative effect. This doing of the best of the human virtues shall transform any crowd of humans into a community, if they are willing to stay with it for a time.”  

'The rest is very clear, actually, we shall further grasp it as we move along in doing it."

“Very well now we have one more thing.  Every evening as we go to sleep in the bus, on our reclining seats with blankets on, before we retire for the night, we shall have a collective quiet moment. Then, perhaps, a volunteer will pose a question which will be:

‘Has anybody experienced today any deviation from our developing, special positive vibration through practicing the fourteen humanity developing attributes? Either in his own doing or in what was done to him, today?

If so, please be generous enough to humble yourself in all sincerity and reconcile this break simply by sharing.” 

Sometime will, then, be spent in allowing the fullness of reconciliation to occur into the quiet, by others merely listening, or through discussion, whichever seems as if it may aid the restoration of the expansiveness or peaceful state. Finally a volunteer shall pronounce that there be a quiet, concluding moment or a grace according to his own way and wording. This is all that need be done unless someone would request more.

“Then, as we proceed on our trip, during the day anyone may propose opening a session of dialogues, question and answer periods or report or comment on our personal experiences, or may want to simply share impressions, or talk about anything we want by asking the floor for that.

“If the intention of each is to do his/her best to sustain themselves in these human virtues and adjust accordingly each and every day, day and night – and -- seek to mindfully greet one another with the power and sincerity of brotherly love, the group will become a community.”

In Murat’s Bus Ride Story Adventure, the conclusion of the story is that at the end of seven days a totally different group of people land in Halifax (we say Anchorage); joyful, hilarious, hugging each other in tears of joy, each carrying a list of addresses and telephone numbers of the group members. Two couples have changed their feelings from brotherly love into conjugal love and joyfully chat about their plans for marriage.

While this is the end of that story, it is really only a beginning of the next one.

Can you improve upon this practice? What are your suggestions?