Kaylee and Kevin

Yesterday, I received a call late in the morning.  I knew immediately before she said anything, by the sound of my mother’s voice that she was trying to control her sobs. Finally, garnering a shred of composure she choked out the message that two of my niece’s young children had been killed in an automobile accident a few hours before.  Apparently the car they were riding in was broadsided by a semi.

In the moment my mother conveyed the news, there was a jolt that ran through my body, and my solar plexus contracted as from a blow.  The images that arose were of the two little children lying dead in the wreckage; my niece, and her husband paralyzed with grief; my elderly mother alone, in shock; and the surviving little boy lying hurt in hospital. 

I watched as a hollow feeling radiated out from the center of my body, as I continued to listen to what my mother knew about the accident and the family gathering at the hospital in far away North Dakota.

After the call, I stayed with the observation of thought and feeling as it continued to arise and move through mind and body.  Surprisingly, I noticed that it was becoming an increasingly difficult effort to attach feeling to thought, and thought to feeling. 

I observed that arising simultaneously with the difficulty attaching was a nudging, as if from some distant part of myself, for me to suffer. It seemed to be chiding me for the sense of quiet stillness that was residing beneath conscious thought & physical sensation.  "After all", it seemed to say as it became conscious, “isn’t suffering a sign of love, compassion, and empathy for the suffering of my relatives.  And this ‘quiet stillness’ is just shock or denial, isn’t it?”

Reflexively the inquiry into the judgment of the stillness began…”Is it true that suffering would be proof of love, compassion, and empathy?  Is it true that suffering would be a validation of the children's lives?  This feeling of peace is false…a denial of the reality of a tragedy…is it true?”

The inquiry followed along these lines for some time until the question…”They are dead, is it true?” arose.  Suddenly, in a flash, the chiding voice disintegrated leaving in its wake an expansive awareness.

As the process continues this morning, I find that nowhere is there a place to ‘hang’ a hat of meaning.  I watch as fleeting thought and feeling move about without finding a place to rest.  What is the necessity of the moment?  Simply this.

.

Who was born?

Today is the anniversary of the day I heard I was born.  Why do I phrase it that way? Well, when I investigate what I had always thought to be true, that I am so and so, and was born on such and such a date, I cannot truly say that it happened.  I don’t remember it, and even if I did, would that make it so?  The only proof I’ve had is word of mouth.  My mother says she was there and it happened.  But even when she utters those words, are they not based on a memory…albeit a pretty old one? Wouldn’t at this moment every thought be from memory?  In this moment, can I know mentally anything that isn’t past or future related? 

What’s it to me that “I was born”? What happens when I go from right here to there (into the past) with that thought? Where am ‘I,’ then?  Perhaps I go into a thought of the future, and imagine that if I was born I will surely die.  What happens to this present moment, when THAT thought intrudes upon it?

The beauty of inquiry is that one can travel into the depths leaving behind the many carcasses of  identity, shedding them like pieces of clothing, as who I think myself to be moves inward toward the naked truth.  Without these clothes, these carcasses of identity, who am I?  Do ‘I’ exist at all?  Understandably this can be quite a terrifying experiment, because all we think we are or have, is our existence as this person.

Without an ‘I’ (as a person) to identify with, do I exist?  There isn’t an answer to this question.  It is a question that collapses in on itself with inquiry.  And in the pure thoughtless moment that arises, there is only clear unadulterated reality.  But without investigation this is just another story told, to be believed…or not.  Each of us, if we are inclined to travel this road of inquiry, do so alone…perhaps inspired by the words and experience of our teachers, but alone just the same.

I am not aware of living in that awareness, except in a moment.  But it has shown me that it is, regardless of whether I am ‘aware’ of it or not.  It is not dependent on my recognition of its existence.  It is a constant.  It is my true nature.  It is always present, waiting to be ‘known.’

Loka Samasta...

Loka Samasta….

 I heard one day, albeit second hand,

that you requested a prayer for the end of suffering

for all sentient beings, in all the worlds

to be said, when it occurs to us to do so,

and so my dear friend, I take upon myself the task to

quietly chant in time to each footfall

through the mist shrouded forest

on this cool autumn morn,

the prayer of your request.

As the words slip from my tongue,

images of suffering…

from perfume laboratories

to African ivory poachers

leaving baby elephants abandoned

to shiver and starve

with the terror of their memories,

cattle sill alive after the nail gun to the brain

has failed to do its job

being hung from a hind leg to suffer in agony

for the convenience of those who stop at the drive through

for their lunch time burger…

little girl babies being raped for

so called “protection” from AIDS

and mothers watching helplessly

as their sons and daughters starve to death

for lack of concern by those who have the resources to help…

the religious zealots who send their children

to blow themselves to pieces

along with other women’s children

who happen to be in the way…

the old woman dying alone, in pain,

unattended in a shabby understaffed nursing home...

governments more concerned with acquiring wealth, and power

for the few to the disadvantage of the many…

the children who kill other children

because they have no hope…

and for those who have it “all”

but are empty and hollow inside;

...visions of suffering…

Tears welling at the images

spill onto the forest floor to the strains...

“May all of the beings in all of the worlds be well….

May all of the beings in all of the worlds be happy…

May all of the beings in all of the worlds be free from suffering…”

I am stopped in my tracks with the enormity…

the impossibility of it all.

Just as all is lost in the midst of broken hope,

the gentlest of breeze brushes softly against wet cheek,

drying in their places the tears of a moment ago.

The looking outward falls back on itself

and is pulled to the inward eye

which catches a glimpse of another reality.

In this world, where suffering is absent,

life continues to unfold not unlike the world

of outward texture where pain and death

and certain limitations exist.

In the outer world of suffering,

these experiences are shunned as undesirable,

and each man’s journey seen as a solitary venture

filled with fear of what may come,

and regret of what has passed.

Driven by fear, and ignorance,

the man of the outer world

strives for power

so as not to be found powerless.

He strives for more,

so as not to be seen as less.

He does not consider the effects of his actions

on the world around him, much less upon his own life.

And from this fear based striving to survive,

ignorance and denial of human commonality

color his actions, and leave him alone and separate.

There is no thought or concern for the suffering of

others like himself, caught in the hamster wheel

of attachment to the world of their agreement.

Nor is there concern for the innocent beings

he uses to achieve his ends.

In this world, even those who strive to change it

looking only outward cannot do much more than

rearrange the deck chairs of a sinking ship.

A change might occur, but without a shift

from attachment only to outer vision,

to the real roots of suffering

the changes will be temporary at best.

In the world that unfolds in the inner eye,

where pain and death continue,

happiness and well being are the standard,

and fear and lack are nowhere to be found.

What each has is enough, for the moment,

and the future is of no concern.

Work erupts spontaneously

from the necessity of the moment

rather than from the need to accumulate,

or from some long ago adopted rule about human value.

Others of differing opinions are not seen as threats

or, people to be converted to our “right” way of thinking.

Harmony is the natural state,

and no one strives to put himself above another.

Animals are treated with respect and honor for

the contributions they make in the world.

And beauty is not defined by garments worn

or the passing styles of commercial fashion.

Each man is content, living in the present,

with no concern for the future or past…

as the present lived well, takes care of the future

and  past lessons have been learned from attention paid at the time.

The mind is quiet, at peace, in spite of what calamities arise.

Life is seen naked, revealed as it is,

devoid of the trappings of the mental constructs

of obsolete belief systems that divide man against woman.

What arises with the inner view

on this mist shrouded morning in the autumn colored forest,

is not a command to deliver a message for others to hear,

or even a prayer from one,

for the sake of others,

but a silent song from,

and to one heart.

It is not something to attain…

it is the natural state which is untouched by

the vagaries of the mind and its manifestation

of the outer world.

It is that state within the depths

where all beings are one without division

which you, my friend,

have requested we summon

by means of a simple prayer.

J

Contemplate

When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere.  In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits.  At the moment of realization the person ceases.  Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself.
                                                                                                                    Nisargadatta Maharaj

Love & Inquiry

My friend (who is all love whether she knows it or not at any given moment), in comparing the path of love with the potential dryness of inquiry wondered, ‘what is love?”  I am certainly no expert, and as the word love has been used to describe so many states of experience who isn’t confounded by the definitions? I responded with what came up for me when I read her musings, from that illusive momentary place of ‘glimpsing’ the entirety of it all…"I don’t see a difference between love and inquiry."

"What is love?” Isn't it simply our natural state? In my experience this natural state occurs when the "I" I imagine myself to be (this woman, with these attributes) isn’t obscuring it with the insistence that this person and the world are alone real, to be managed and formed into some fixed personal ideal.

It is not an emotion though it manifests as emotion, just as it manifests in and as everything.  One way to move toward it (though it is the core of who we are) is to question what we think of as reality when we're looking through the eye of personality.  Through earnestness, and inquiry into the nature of the self we can also realize the love that we are.  I don’t find inquiry lacking in love.  In fact, in order to be vigilantly involved in the continuous inward looking there has to be a sincere earnestness.  To me earnestness in this endeavor is driven by love itself.  It could not happen without love.  AND, I feel my Sai's hand in it all.

 “Sit quiet for a moment and inquire what is it that stays and what is it that does not.  You are now eager to learn about the news of the world, changing fortunes of peoples and nations, of “isms” and movements.  But you have no thirst to know the conditions and conflicts within you happening against the permanent back drop of the pure unaffected Atma, which is your innermost Reality.  Know ‘THAT’, and everything becomes known.  Possess ‘THAT’ and all things are possessed by you.”

                                                            Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Who Am I?

One day in the darkness of a pre-dawn morning after having walked barefoot (the day before) along the rocky path around the base of Mount Arunachala with sight turned inward, and heart beating RAM with each step, I sat up on my pallet in a state of sleepy detachment in the room at Ramana Ashram where I had been staying,

As I sat on the edge of the bed my mind began to turn back on itself with one incessant question that arose in conjunction with each and every lazy awakening thought.

     “Who is it that is sitting?”  Who is it that is asking?  Who is it that is thinking?

     Who is it that moves to stand? Who is asking?  Who is walking?  Who is asking?

     Who stops before the sink?  Who asks?  Who is brushing teeth?  Who asks?”

This inquiry was not a process that I was doing.  Rather it was being done, as ‘I’ watched.  There were no answers, because before an answer could formulate, the question “Who asks?” would arise.  And because an asker could not be traced, there was, of course no answer.

This process went on for many days after I arrived back at the place I had been renting at Brindavan.   The questioning lasted so long and was so constant that it had virtually eliminated every trace of thought, until even the question “Who is it?” ceased.  There was no surviving the interrogation, even for the interrogator.  This state of suspended thought gave rise to an ever- expanding experience of spaciousness.  Time collapsed into an eternal NOW and I began to feel myself (or what I had thought myself to be) being drawn, as if upward, toward an immense ecstatic joy.

Why do I write about this?  I can’t really say.  Perhaps it’s to remind myself that this was a 'happening'.  This was not a discipline of inquiry that I had decided to practice.  In fact later, after it ended I could not for the life of me make it happen by consciously trying to catch every thought that arose to ask who was thinking it.  In fact all of the effort would only result in a pounding headache, disappointment, and finally giving up.  Beneath the disappointment of not being able to ‘make’ it happen, however, lay an incredible and most obvious truth.  I am NOT the doer.  In the moments in which that truth descends the relief is profound.   But if I am not the do-er, then…

who AM I?

Darshan

When I lived in India, and after (for lack of better words) a Nirvacalpa Samadhi experience that exploded spontaneously within me as I was reading a chapter in a book called (interestingly enough) “Vision of The Divine”, I became intensely drawn to the process of inquiry into the nature of the Self.  Simultaneously arriving alongside this interest, two books were given to me. “Talks with Ramana Maharshi”, and “I AM THAT” (conversations with Nisargadatta Maharaj). 

Although some ashram inmates might have felt that reading anything but Swami’s direct teachings was a ‘no, no’, I did not see any difference, especially since his verbal directive to me, along with the “internal” happenings of ‘my’ mind revolved around the inquiry “Who am I?”  That the books came my way without my searching them out was another of his gifts, I believe.  (As an aside:  When I use the terms ‘He, Him, His, or even Sai’ very often I am speaking of that HE…that SAI who is in fact my very own Self manifesting as the Beloved teacher dressed in orange, as well as all that is manifest and that which is not.)

As He also directed my husband Lee when once we sat together at his feet to “Inquire…who am I?”, we have made it a part of our mutual daily practice at home “in the world”.  Along with my morning ‘sits’ (I hesitate to call them meditations, since they differ so radically from the long ago experiences of Oneness and bliss), Lee and I read daily the words of those Gnanis who have tread that path and realized that Self through inquiry.  To me it is darshan (a glimpse of the Real).  And as such, it is much more than just reading and listening.  The words are alive with essence when the mind is quiet enough to feel it. 

Imagine, (those of us who might call an experience of “Reality” however fleeting it might be, darshan), how exquisite it would be to experience the ‘world’ in its entirety as THAT; just for one moment; the world as it is, in all of its aspects…darshan of the ONE. 

The Rabbit Hole

Sue, an old friend now living in the states after 30+ years in India suggested that I create a blog describing what it’s like to live “in the world” after having “given it up” to live in the presence of the Avatar Sri Sathya Sai Baba.  This suggestion came on the heels of some other friends encouraging me to finish and publish my “memoirs” of that time, as they found the stories to be “inspiring”.

I started writing the India journal in 1999 and wrote enthusiastically until the enthusiasm shifted to boredom.  This process continued until late this summer, when I reached the point in time in the journal when I left India after spending the better part of the years 1978 – 1981 there. I have returned many times to India over the years, but have not lingered long there.  And though the years since that earlier time have been filled with lessons, I have said little about them in the manuscript.  The ‘book’ has been edited through a collaborative effort and is in a “holding pattern” as I write.

So, is it true that I have something to say?  Perhaps the truth is that I have something to hear.  There are so many stations along the way, and nowhere do I find a destination.  So many exquisite experiences of what has been called “Reality” have not culminated in an arrival at a place.  In fact, those experiences of sublime Oneness were just that…experiences that came and went…come and go.

In my worst moments here “in the world” and by THAT I mean my mind, I find myself falling down the rabbit hole and getting lost in the habit of believing myself to be this woman with all of her raging emotions, judgmental thoughts, desires, fears, and attachments.  What use was/are these experiences of “Reality” then, if they are not constant?  And what good has come of my once “giving up the world”?  Good questions.

Perhaps the rabbit holes of the present are not so deep, nor do those experiences last very long before being interrupted by flashes of awareness.  Would this be the case had I never gone to and sat at the feet of Sai?  I don’t know.  But I believe those moments of falling would have taken me over as they had before, and left me hopeless and helpless for weeks instead of minutes or hours.  And even now in moments of falling into them, there is simultaneously an awareness of their falseness.

Before my experience of India (and by India I mean Sai) I cannot say that I knew, believed in, nor trusted the concept of love.  In His presence the ‘I’ or who I think myself to be would dissolve in an explosion of light, or be battered by the question “who is it that…?” until there was nothing left but spaciousness.  That light, and that spaciousness is love.   I believe that was His gift to me.  As I would watch Him day in and day out from the confines of whatever state of mind would possess me at the time, I could see that light and spaciousness in action. 

Translating

     
One day Sai Baba ordered me from across a room (when he was surrounded by a group of Russians and Italians all speaking to him at once), to “Translate!”  In answer I said, “Swami, I don’t speak Russian.” Again looking deeply into my eyes he commanded, “Translate!”  I knew absolutely that he was fully aware that I didn’t speak either of those languages, and was a bit confused by his insistence.  Later a few people who witnessed the event approached me to tell me that Swami meant for me to put into practice his teachings, and/or to write about my experiences.  “Yes” I would say, knowing that the advice did not quite capture the entirety of what I felt was meant by the command.

One day after returning to the states and after much contemplation on the “translate” directive, I opened up the huge yellow volume of the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary that belonged to my scholarly husband.  I was a bit surprised to find that the first definition was “to move a thing from one place to another”; but was quite astounded when my eyes fell on the second definition:  “to translate - by faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God translated him, because it was said that he was pleasing to God”. 

In the Vedas the idea is put forth that the spiritual aspirant must “die” before ‘she’ dies.  This is called the experience of the Jivanmukta, of the Gnani who realizes the true nature of the Self and abides there while continuing to inhabit the physical form.  This above all was my heart’s desire.  It felt to me that this was the best possible service a being could render to humanity.  Without the death of the ego, how could there be such a thing as selfless service? 

However, earlier on the day Sai insisted I translate,  he’d asked me what I wanted.  I closed my eyes and whispered, “I want what you came to give”.  This I believe is the truth of that experience; his promise of translation is what he came to give.  But before that death, the translation that will be is of the experience of day-to-day life filled with the mental activity that simultaneously creates and destroys the illusion of the world.