Seeking inner serenity

Along with her Enlightenment Seekers Study Circle, Erika Dias looks to reach across boundaries to discover a harmonious balance to life

The soft tinkle of wind chimes greets you as you step into her home. On one side, the windows open out onto a little shrub jungle, kept that way to welcome birds.

The breeze from the garden brings with it a fragrance of exotic herbs. Beautiful and curious furnishings and ornaments speak of a full life, of travels and rich experiences.

There is an atmosphere of peace, of quiet serenity. “Sometimes, people tell me this house is like a temple,” says Erika Dias, author of ‘Blossoms of Wisdom: On Peace and Environment’, one of her many books on spiritual themes.

Like her surroundings, she radiates calm, peace and stillness – a living example of the doctrines she expresses in her writing.

Her group, the ‘Enlightenment Seekers’ Study Circle’ meet at her home regularly to discuss and share spiritual experiences in daily life, their mission being ‘to liberate the mind to infinite cosmic energy which is universal eternal peace.’

Although Erika was born a Buddhist and has a strong foundation in Buddhism, her group does not confine themselves to any religion in their search for enlightenment. Believing that religion and ‘isms’ are what cause discrimination and violence in the world, they seek to reach across these boundaries to find universal love for all beings.

“You have to burst open the fences to reach cosmic energy,” she says. Trying to bring together the essence of all religions, the group also discusses various religious philosophies and their applications during meetings along with how to bring these energies into their day to day lives.

“The group doesn’t have a leader, its philosophy is based on shared spiritual experiences,” she says. She has written a paper, ‘Meditation for All’ which embodies the basic principles of their beliefs. In it, she explains how, by removing anger, hatred, envy, greed and grasping, the space which is outside us in stillness and silence, can be entertained within us. “When all this is removed there is only love, caring and concern – then you are with only space words and space thoughts. The bitterness and venom is gone.”

She has formulated two mantras, which she says are powerful enough to bring instant relief and joy if constantly repeated. The mantras are those which came spontaneously to her as a result of the wisdom brought by years of meditation. It was a way in which she could help the group by giving them an effective and easy system by which to meditate. “Rational and logical is the hard ingrained, harsh left part of our brain. It is dualistic,” she says. It is this, the intellectual part of the brain that manipulates words and thoughts. Our mission, according to her, should be to reach that spiritual “oneness” of the ‘heart-vibrations’. “That is, to ceaselessly live with our ‘heart-chakra’, the power station of our seven chakras. This oneness energy is not dualistic – it is the merging energy for harmony and balance of the mind and body. It will give then, perfect, eternal peace 24 hours.”

She admits that tremendous effort is needed to achieve this state of mind. However, by manipulating every word, thought, and deed in a fully awakened state, you can dissolve the habitual spontaneous duality of samsara (earth planet) and merge the word, thought and deed energies into ‘oneness’ energies.

For example, she says, one such technique would be to sit in the lotus posture on the bed at the end of the day and reflect on your experiences of the day. How did you help your ‘self’ and at the same instant ‘the other’? The universal skill in us to care for self and the other is nurtured in the same instant.

At some stage of practice with these mantras, at an advanced stage, one reaches ‘Samadhi’ which is conquering the ‘stillness and silence’ within you which is abundantly found all around us in space.

When in Samadhi, Erika points out that you can be calm, tranquil and serene in any situation. For example, harsh and abusive words do not generate similar thoughts within you. In their group they teach several tried and tested techniques to be able to keep this emotional distance.

By following these methods to purify one’s energy, one will be able to have a light and buoyant mind resulting in bliss throughout the day – and when our energy is purified in this manner, at death we will be able to connect instantly with pure energy to join the divine energy, she believes.

Erika’s personal quest for peace within herself began during her stay in Bangkok, where she spent 18 years with her family. Working as a consultant at UN ESCAP, Bangkok, the quietness of life there, away from the influence of family and friends, led her to ponder on the spiritual meaning of life, and poetry ‘began to flow to her’. When she met Dr. Thin Thin, a WHO doctor with similar goals, they established an international group similar to ‘The Enlightenment Seekers’.

At first, she was reluctant to return to Sri Lanka, when her husband told her it was time to return and serve their motherland – reluctant to leave behind the peace of that country and the spiritual relationships she had formed. However, having decided to come back in 1996 she was then impatient to establish a group here as well, to share her spiritual experiences with those who were on a similar pursuit. Today the group has over 50 members.

Erika has written eighteen books, six of which are poetry, that sell in many countries. She has received awards for her poetry in Thailand, Australia and the United States. In 1991 she received an honorary doctorate for two books of her poetry from the World Academy of Arts and Culture in California. In March, 2004, she was awarded the ‘Outstanding Woman in Buddhism’ award from UN ESCAP in Bangkok on International Women’s Day.

These impressive achievements have done nothing to detract from the simple, unassuming nature of a woman who seeks only to exist in the peaceful contentment she has discovered and to share its secret with others.

‘when the mind is emptied of anger,
hatred, envy, greed
there is nothing but space within
and ‘silence and stillness’ outside………’
“Every line in my poetry is from experience,” says Erika, “There are no concepts in what I write, only experience.”

As a mother and grandmother, she has also been able to use her experience of mother-love in her quest. “Supreme mother-love can bring you direct enlightenment,” she says, since it the first ‘true love’ of a woman’s life, that unselfish giving which expects nothing in return. If you can expand that to universal mother-love, she says, you can embrace each child just as your own.