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who is that?Oksana Matviichuk4 September 1981Kiev, Ukraine photo gallery |
contactsoxanna@sansara.net.ua
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thanksFirst of all I would like to say thanks to my parents for the precious human body родителям and also for showing me the emptiness of everything that is referred to as family and family relations. This was extremerly important lesson, thank you.Thanks to N. for while just being herself - totally sincere - showed me the emptiness of all that is reffered to as friendship and understanding. Special thanks to A. from showing me the emptiness of all that is referred to by people and me especially as love. Being inspired by nothing was amazing and I even feel pity that it is so totally over. Thanks to all who are interested in and benefit from my traces in this world. If ever I happen to show you emptiness of something in Sansara, please, do not judge severely, it's just life. And the biggest thanks is to Lama Karmapa for his attention, patience, compassion and inmeasurably wise teachings. In the end the Lama is the only one who stays with you always. Evernthough only in the enlightened nature of your mind. One day I will say thanks to you for showing me the real emptiness. | |||||||
lifeAll alone in the playground.Somehow it happened that I spent most of my childhood being on my own. My great grandmother was too old already and could look after me while I was out only from the balcony. There were no children of my age in the same living compound and therefore I was either swinging totally alone or having got bored from such a monotonous thing to do would come back home to read books. Extensive library of our family mostly consisted of collected works of different authors therefore I got used to reading not by novels and romances but by authors from the very beginning to the very end including the last boring volume with letters only. As I entered the primary school the situation did not change much. Right after the lessons I was met and escorted home. When I've grown enough to be coming home without anybody meeting me the need to communicate itself already almost exhausted as everything was replaced by imaginary worlds of books and dreams. It was during my sleep dream that I could do everything which was impossible during the day. I took the turn behind our living compund numerous times to get into whole fairy-tale world, wandered mysterious streets and learned to fly. I remember first time making myself jump out of the window, full of fear and with my eyes shut tightly. "This is just a dream!" And how amazed I was when landed safe and sound. The only thing that resqued me from becoming totally autistic was the opportunity to go for whole summer to a little provincial town where my other grandmother lived. There were much fewer books in her library and much more children of my age in her living compound. It was summer, sun, flowers and puddles. I was leaving home at sunrise and coming back only after sunset. There still are these kinds of opposites in my life. I either spend my days totally isolated whether it is work, studies or meditation, or immerse myself into people and social life without a single change to stay on my own for even a minute. Light or darkness? At approximately age of 12 my strangest life period started. I was already living with my parents again at that time and my father started my spiritual education. Lots of books once again, but this time they esotherical. My question what this world is and how it functions was H.Roerich's book "Space tales of the East", I was reading it with my eyes opened widely and gladly agreed with the new ideas about reincarnation, about subtle and dense worlds and of course, the idea of ahimsa, non-violence. At that age I though that it's enough only to know how silly and useless all the human sins are to never ever commit them. The time of light and clarity was however quickly replaced by total darkness as I've found at my father's library "Practical Magic" by Papus and totally immersed into other world. Childish esoteric christianity once turned into same childish militant satanism eventhough naive. Together with same kind of friends I was cutting ribbons from crosses on cemeteries to summon spirits and hypnotyzed the only sensitive friend to ask which gild is fancied by that beautiful boy from the next living compound as we were too shy to ask him directly. This could not have lasted long. And the movie by David Lynch "Fire walk with me" was some kind of a turning-point. Somehow I concluded that if things continue going like they used to go then I would repeat the destiny of the main heroine of the movie: sniff cocaine and have sex with ghosts. The root of evil had to be cut off immediately and at my 14 I considered my own sexuality to be this root of all evil. This is when I declared my first celibacy though in reality I haven't tried alcohol or cigarettes, or even kisses yet. Next crisis came on Daniil Dandreev's "Rose of the world" where the author was describing his travels through the astral worlds around Earth. Alas, no matter how clearly I understood that one has to follow the light I still realised my own sensual attraction to lower worlds. Their descriptions woke up sweet lingering in me instead of righteous indignation. The unsolvable dilemma of choice between light and darkness, between ought to and want to was dispelled by Carlos Castaneda who stated that there were no good, no evil, everything is relative to our perception. If there are no opposites then there is no dilemma of choice between them. This is how I breathed in fresh ait of nondual perception for the first time. Long time after I was following Castaneda's and all his disciples' ideas. The art of dreaming was especially useful. And so I live from night to night spending days studing and telling cyber-dreamer friends about my night journeys, fights and meetings. Web design started coming to my life when I decided to make a webpage dedicated to Michael Jackson. My world of that time was filled with agressive dark forces which were always waiting for the first chance to attack me just as night came and among them he was the image of something englessly kind and bright, as my father used to say later, the image of God. However my parents were still making fun of a plastic surgery addicted superstar making me go even farther from them in my heart. The complicated art of living. "Be happy on your way, my lonely wanderer" - this was the last line of one of the texts I wrote when I was 19. The text itself was filled with painful understanding of my own lack of freedom and thirst for salvation, thrifst for escape. People and relations between them seems only a stupid limitation to me, only social conditionality which once has to be abandoned but still I had no strenth to abandon it. I considered myself weak, ignorant, unworthy and nobody needed me. I wanted to break all the relations with the world but was constantly facing my own self. I was looking for better, even perfect world using all the ways and methods I could only think of. At first just as Carlos Castaneda recommended I had to try hallucinogenic drugs. To make this possible I had to break all the connections with my family and go to another city which also was in accordance with his advices. While in Moscow I learned to work and earn money eventhoug I was balancing on thin line between adequate functioning in the socierty and my escapes to psychedelic worlds. The intensity of both work and use of psuchedelics was only growing. The time of New Year greeted me with a breakdown. Firstly I spent a week in a hospital with extreme food poisoning and then there was the New Year's eve in Saint Petersburgh. I had lots of drugs with me but no cash and all the mobile phones of my friends were not answering. It was -20C outside, December 31 and totally unknown city. The trip I had during the New Year's night was one of my strangest trips. The amount of acid was so high that my body was plainly swithing off as I was losing my consciousness. But while losing my body I was still in a way conscious and could observe how all the sounds, pictures and sensations gradually end and I fall into darkness where there is nothing, not even time. I stayed there as naked awareness without single thought or form and then having put all my strenth into one inimaginable effort would come back. And then off there again. Acid to me was a way to find the special, perfect world. I even say that I was using it to find God. But whatever I found there seemed to me too strange and too different from what I wanted to find. After that New Year I was feeling like the cornerstone of my system of world perception was taken out and so the whole my world was falling apart like a house made of playing cards. Later on this tendency would come up in my life few times more. I would be finding a new hope for the perfect world, joyfully put all my efforts into achieving it and finally facing only my own self with the full understanding that nothing had actually changed. At that time I already wanted to go to India but I could not make it as my mind was too much destroyed by psychedelic drugs. Insted of that I went to Englant to study photography only to become totally disappointed in the all Soviet people's dream to find better life in civilized Europe. Also I tried to become a nun, I've given away all my belongings and once again broke all my connections with the people around me but in the end I understood that in order to achieve something on the spiritual path I need deep heart connection with the Teacher. I revealed kind of this heart connection with the religion of Chiristianity but life in the nunnery showed its worst face to me. The problem was not only my difficulcy standing constant lack of sleep, the problem was in endless monastic quarrels and gossips, in too much of attachment to the material world in the people who should have had totally renounced it. Once again all my ideals were lost. I even stopped reading any kinds of spiritual literature. So I decided to plainly live my life the way it is just hoping to meet the one who would show me the way one day. I decided to live, but how? What for? Most of my life I lived for love and of course I could not have avoided going through one more fairy tale destroyed. What I considered the profound heart connection and mystical marriage proved to be a story made up of lies only. But I still was unaware of that when another New Year's night brought me the news of becoming pregnant. At that time I still believed into out "special connection" and seriously considered the option of terminating for the sake of these highly spiritual relations. Now I see that the moment of life itself was a kind of test for all my system of life values. At that moment the list of "never commit" which I took from my very first spiritual book was almost gone through with "yes, why not?" The only two things mentioned there but not yet commited were abortion and suicide. Most of my life starting from teens I was in deep depression and the last year before I got pregrant it was almost like an obsession. Every morning I was waking up to be urging myself for at least hour not to jump out of the window. I was getting ready, going to work and in the evening imagining again how I put on white dress and jump from 13th storey of the building I was living in. So I tried to imagine myself doing an abortion for approximately a week. I was looking for most gentle ways of terminating but in the end plainly could not make it. Being vegetarian for a few years, talking too much of non-violence and absolute love what am I going to do? To kill a living being inside myself? Then what would all my word and values account for? If I still chose to do it and later on would have know that the special connection between me and child's father had been only imaginary then nothing would had kept me in the world. This way I would surely top the last "done" in the list of human errors thus summing up my failed life. Thoughts of suicide were still pursueing me even during the time of pregnancy but at that time my body did not belong to me only anymore. Somebody else was in need of my body and thus I myself was needed in the world, I could not deny that. So I stayed and I was living in total emptiness with no hopes and aspirations. I was just a machine which main objective was to never let the child cry. And there were no energy for any self thoughts, reflection or even frustration. First months being mother were a true training of will and spirit. I was doing all the things I did not manage in monasteries that is sleeping only 5 hours per day totally giving myself to selfless service. And all the free time whenever any was filled with numerous design projects and hatha-yoga practice. This year still remains in my memory as an example of how sensible and fully life can be lived, how effectively the time can be used with almost not a single second wasted. My daughter was growing, life was becoming easier, winter turned into spring and the spring bloomed into summer. The idea of speniding summer in Moscow did not sim the best option for a 9 month old child and so we went travelling. First there were Altai mountains in Russia and then Kiev and Crimea in Ukraine. This was the very travel where I met my Buddhist teachers. Lama Ole Nydahl was giving a course in Altai and Karmapa Thaye Dorje visited Kiev. All my searches and diligence were granted, I could start the new life from then on. And I decided that this new life would be inspired by Buddhism so that I would one day become same as them and be bringing people just as much happiness as they do. В моем тогдашнем мире, наполненном агрессивными темными силами, которые только и ждут, чтобы напасть на тебя темной ночью, он был чем-то бесконечно добрым и светлым и, как впоследствии говорил мой отец, образом Бога. Что, впрочем, не мешало родителям посмеиваться над изуродованной многочисленными пластическими операциями поп-звездой, а мне - отдаляться от них в мир снов и мечтаний. buddhismComing back to the pure land.Observing Karmapa in Kiev I was realising that I always wanted to live exactly like him. That is to be teacher for the people, to be their guiding star. And this is the best, the main, the most important goal in life. It's the most worty way to live it. But I knew it always it was just that I considered myself unworthy such a noble goal. I was thinkming that maybe some other life there will be better conditions for achieving it but this life I had to do something else. And so I was constantly deceiving myself trying to walk the path which never was meant for me. And of course it's no wonder that I could not achieve anything there. By the moment I've met Karmapa I've had chance to try everything I wanted to try. There were no choice anymore and I immediately understood that every goal is reached only because of the steps one takes towards it. And if the goal is something very far and high it just means that there are bit more steps to make towards it than to another closer goal. And so I started making my first steps. Sometimes I was doing meditation practice, sometime I did all what I learned to do before instead of doing it for myself I was doing that for buddhist center. Designing and programming websites, earning and giving away the money. And after year since my first meeting with Karmapa my time to visit India came. At first I wanted to go with my daughter but my family was so much against this idea and urged me to leave her with them for the whole month. This was one more "never ever" which I even did not consider doing but still had to do because it was better for everybody. I was already feeling at that time that after visiting India my life is never going to be the same. And I was right. There in Kalimpong I was as happy as never before in my life. I've found the place where I had to be and the people near to whom I had to stay. First days I was simply crying my eyes out of happiness. I was sitting down to meditate and weeping endless. Finally I've found him! How many years, centuries and eternities I was wandering not knowing him, not remembering him. Of course, I meant Karmapa, my Teacher. And so I was making numerous wishes to never ever lose him again. My heart stayed with him and it's no wonder that having come back to Kiev I could not continue my previous life anymore. Here my parent were kind enough to continue taking care of my child thus giving me full freedom to walk the path I've finally found. At that time buddhist practice meant meditation to me at the very first place and I tried to meditate just as much as I could. It was when the other story of my life, the inner story started. This was the story of how the illusions withing my mind were gradually seizing giving me more and more freedom and happiness. This story is mostly made up of beautiful sleep dreams, each of them being a certain kind of a puzzle to solve and also a roughness in my own mind which had to be smoothed over. Just as I managed to do that I got next puzzle immediately seeing the next dream. This way step by step, drom by drop all my habitual tendencies were becoming untangled. In exactly one year after my first meeting with Karmapa in Kiev and in four months after coming back from India for the first time I was in Kalimpong once again, this time for good. My decision was to become a full resident of Pure Land. Here I've got a surprise. It was a disappoinment in a certain way, similar to those I was going through many times before. Having stayed in Kalimpong for a bit longer than last time I've faced my own old habitual tendencies. I was spending nights online at my computer, drinking green tea from a nice teapot and getting nice curtains and pillown for my flat. I even fell in love! And approximately after one month living like that I realised that this provincial Asian town with its provincial Asian gossips is completely unbearable. To my happiness Karmapa was going to travel in Asia and I followed him. Amazingly I was happy to leave the place for which I was longing so recently as for the best place on the planet. Where can one find the pure land? Only in one's mind. And again meditation, meditation and even more meditation. Following the recomendation of Karmapa I also started studies becides meditation. Thanks to that the wild mixture of all the possible religions and esoteric ideas in my head was gradually clearing through. I was becoming more bright and calm and almost did not feel any different between the state of my mind while being near to Karmapa and while being away from him. So I could expand the limits of places I could visit and the boundaries of the things I could do. Just right after 10 day closed retreat I came back to Russia to recall how common people live and to see how Buddhism is practiced in Europe. Also I wanted to try to share my knowledge with people and see what can come out of that. But still after half year more I was back to Nepal, again in a monastery, again in retreat. It was there that I've had a certain sensation or realisation that made me review all my previous life and all my previous views. I've seen that what I was looking for that is the true nature of my mind is present always and everywhere being loving kindness and compassion by itself. It is not something that has to be developed in oneself and even any kind of setting up a goal in order to reach it only takes you further as it's initially present. The only thing that you can do is staying conscious. There were no more need for the painful escapes. No more need in artificial filterion of the mindstream. No more need to look for the pure land. And the something I always called some proved to be unseparable from the non-conceptual wisdom. This is how heaven and earth became one and I understood that I was read to come back and take my life the way it is. Since then I do not look for anything to be foound but only learn the ways to share myself with the people. Final chord. A Boddhisattwa should not be afraid to stay in Sansara until all the beings of all the world no matter how unaccountable they are reach the liberation. My first attempt to descent from Hymalayas into hell realm of Kiev in order to help the people with whom I was connected with seemingly the strongest and closest connection failed totally. During only few months I've lived though total destruction of whatever reamined from my life outside of Asia. The impossibility to see my daughter, being forced to resign myself to the lies she is going to grow surrounded by, the wish of my own mother to find another woman who can be my mother instead of her, total crash of all the illusions in the field of love and finally, like the aforesaid was not enough my friend whom I considered the closesnt and most understanding betrayed me. The faith can move mountains if there is only a tiny bit of bit but I do not have even that anymore. I will not try to move the mountains of Kiev, I will instead wait until they come to me by themselves. Bodhisattwa's readiness alone to stay in hell for immeasurable eons to save at least one single being, alas, is not enough. This living being has to ask you itself for the help. This is what can be called the union of methods and wisdom and this is the choice I make. Maybe the emptiness I've seen is not the Emptiness but only one of the sides of my illusions. Anyway, it's not so important. Like goes on and the path lies through its every single minute. |
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copyrightOxanna is the author of all the content of the website if it's not specified otherwise.You can use the information from the website provided giving the link to the source. Most of the photographs are avaliable in bigger size and the graphic has its source files also. Please note that I am not native English speaker. But if you are and if you see some remarcable mistakes in whatever I've written please feel free to drop me a line so that I could fix them. Concerning these questions or any other ones you might have please use my mail. |
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