Jacques Bucheron (born 1970) lives on a walnut farm in the Dauphiné Mountains in Southern France. After high school, he studied Indian religions and languages at the University of Montpellier, and spent several years at his Guru’s ashram in the Himalayas, where he followed the daily Satsang program. He later moved home to run the family farm. He now spends his time running the farm and translating Hindu and Buddhist texts, and arranging Satsang retreats. His daughters, who are important characters in this book, live in Grenoble, where they are pursuing studies in music and history.
– I realised that I had experienced some things which seemed so important that I wanted to share them so that others might also benefit from them. The Guru seemed to me to be such an extraordinary being, that I wanted to tell the story of how he used every available tool, or technique, to make me give up the false ideas about who I am, and replace it with a correct understanding of who, or what, I really am.
This was initially a very painful process because I felt that I had to give up everything I believed in, everything I liked, everything that belonged to the so-called comfort zone of my personal life. But after a while I understood that giving up the mediocre state of being human, a mixed state of happiness and unhappiness, was an agreeable price to pay, because I realised that the Guru had given me something far better: A deep sense of peace and satisfaction, which they call paramananda, or supreme bliss in Sanskrit. This bliss has nothing to do with your world, nothing to do with your personal life. It is just what you eternally are in the middle of all the changes taking place in the world. And it is accessible to everyone through the correct understanding created by meditation.