Meditation

After a day of wrestling with sculpties Five happened to come across a hidden landmark in the inventory. It was there for a long time. Often Five wanders around, marking interesting ideas and places for later use. Somehow these half forgotten landmarks can always develop into an interesting tour, providing new clues and adventures.
This time it was a link to a place of meditation. This search for meditation was started by an accidental encounter with a small quiet place in the neighbourhood of a Japanese disco. Interesting, this mingling of noise and being silent. Typically Japanese if you ask Five.

So the first place to visit was:

Buddhist Shrine of Varosha on the Crazy Devil Sim
Strange name of a sim, with this Buddhist shrine, don’t you think?
Eastern paradoxes I suppose!
What was very nice here and also in most of the other meditation places was the carefully arranges sounds. The sounds are all around and provide a very relaxed atmosphere. This is reinforced by the gardens, the trees and the water. In at least two of these places you could wash your hands. Washing your hands in SL? Very nice? And it really makes you feel “clean”, or relaxed. Very interesting.
Five bought a meditation rug, which comes with a candle and a mantra sound for only 1 L$. Only the “meditation” on the rug, indicated in the llSetText-terrible way, says : mediation, which is actually not too bad……
There are a lot of garden in SL. What makes the difference in this case? Five is not the religious type, neither is Five a New Age addict. In these gardens something is found similar to the feelings created by Arab gardens, an essence of persistent self search, meditation of life, an idea of retreat from the world. Hm Five gets soft!

Aegif's Buddhist stupas in Manitoba 2560 Tibetan style stupas
Is more Tibetan as the name says, it is also situated in the middle of buildings , homes and offices, is this a pity? Not at all, if you know how the temples in the East are nearly always in the middle of busy city area’s. Just to best place to be able to meditate!
Still smaller was

Meditation place
But with a very nice view on a bay! This place even has sponsors who finance it! Great!
Well, if you type in “meditation” or “Buddha”, in the search engine of Second Life, you get quite a list of places to visit. Of course not all are of the highest quality, and the meditation sit is quite often exactly the same animation. Which is a bit boring after visiting a few places. But ok, are you supposed to make a monastery tour? (Please, is there a monk around wanting to make a few variations of this one animation?)
Five wondered about these places. It is quiet, it is a heaven a peace, certainly after wrestling with sculpties, Linden Script, making complicated things, shopping, writing about clothes….
Why are these places never mentioned, when journalists write about Second Life. Why always the most negative things? But maybe it has to be like this. Let these places be hidden. The hidden is eternal, just as eternity is hidden.