Year 2010 in Retrospect By
Swami Anand Neelamber Chief Editor
is a monthly production of TAOSHOBUDDHA MEDITATIONS. We have explored various paths of inward journey through the issues of Meditation Times on a monthly basis. Naqshbandi Sheikh Ramchandra Lalaji said
betaSsubI sdakt kI jan hE.
To rise beyond narrowness is the only way for spirituality! Therefore we have explored, and spoken on almost all paths and various masters beyond narrowness. As the year 2010 enters into the womb of eternity for ever we take you through the review of each issue of Meditation Times.
Meditation Times January 2010
A new dawn ushers the hope of transformation and enlightenment. The spring brings many wonderful manifestations. The flowers of hope may seem to fade but they ne’er vanish. Masters are like flowers they come waft their fragrance to the winds and then wilt to form manure so that the disciples can grow with this divine fertilizer. Death for a master is but a celebration and mere transition to another realm. It is a portal to a world divine and sublime. A world beyond the cognition of our frail senses! Masters always see from a transcendental perspective and that is why we cannot understand their implicit utterances. And yet a child can see exactly what the masters say. To understand a master simple innocence is needed.
If your mind is cunning and calculating you will miss a master even if he lives in your house. To smell a flower all that is required is your presence. To recognize a master all that is needed on your part is your availability. You must be open and vulnerable. This January issue celebrates Death. Our last year’s January issue also was a celebration of death. It seems ironic that for a New Year we start by celebrating Death. But Death is really a rebirth. A discontinuity with a past and plunge into the unknown and unknowable. Unknown and unknowable because you cannot know it with your mind and for mind it will always remain unknowable. And a heart need not know it cause a heart lives is in it, a heart is it. Masters are like flowers that blossom with the light of spring and whiter with the darkness of winter. Few masters appear in winter. Not the physical winter but the winter of the soul. Rare indeed does a master appear in the winter of the souls’ sojourn.
Meditation Times Feb 2010
The mystery and magic of love cannot be known by science and mind. Only a heart that is capable of total madness can glimpse the wondrous majesty of love. Love is not within the domain of reason or intellectual discussions. Love defies definition and yet there are more definitions on love than on any other subject. The enigma of love has enraptured the soul of man ever since he first peered into the vast limitless beyond. Love is love and cannot be stated by any other way. Nothing can define love. Love defines everything. It is because of love the stars whirl in their cosmic dance of creation. It is because of love the tiny ants carry food to their nest. The entire cosmos exists in love and for love. It is the expressions of love that manifest as the Creation. Mystics and poets have sought to give expressions of their insights of love only to become vehicles of love themselves. Love transforms and transmutes whoever seeks its shadows into love itself. To know love is to become love. Yet love can only be known by being love. Thus love is its own knowledge
and knowledge is only knowledge when is becomes love otherwise it is mere intellectual gymnastics. This issue of Meditation Times highlights some of the many expressions of love by various mystics and poets. In this editorial I wish to quote verbatim from an extract by the chief editor from his upcoming book “LOTUS from the MOON� . Love is an energy that makes our hearts, yet our hearts cannot make that power. Love descends upon our souls by the will of God and not by the demand or plea of the individual. Love opens the dimensions beyond the realm of intellect and offers no reason for its appearance and departure. One can either live in the misery of its submission and pine for its return, or celebrate the bitter sweet memories. Love is not within the domain of your control. In fact you cannot love. It is love that possesses you and carries you in its wild dance through the portal of beauty, truth and bliss. Only one of infinite trust can fathom the depths of this mystery of two souls pulsating as one orgasmic being. Love is oneness. Duality is the illusion of the mind that seeks to protect its ego by creating a separation, and then wandering aimlessly hither and thither; roaming for many lives to seek the lost beloved; all the time with the kohinoor (treasure of love) in the undiscovered sanctum of your heart. Once you realize that love is not a search but a happening. Then the miracle is that you were all the time in love but the screen of fear prevented you from feeling its presence. My work is to help remove this fear and love will reveal itself.
MEDITATION TIMES MARCH 2010
This March issue highlights the concept of enlightenment. Enlightenment, though it is Sanskrit in origin, it is essentially Buddhist and specifically Zen in its flavor. Hindus have not been known to seek enlightenment as is the case with the Chinese and Japanese masters. Hindus have stopped at the mere attainment of samdhi – the trans-conscious state of turiya as it is aptly called. Enlightenment is viewed as something mysterious and magical. Yet it is the most simple of phenomenon. It is our very natural selves and not some other worldly experience. In fact we are already enlightened; it is just that we are too afraid to be aware of it.
Masters are really mirrors to reflect our original face. It is this face that we are too scared to see so we put on many masks to hide our true reality. The deception has even befooled us. We think we are this deception now and forget that we are Buddhas in mortal garb. So much so that when the masters say you are Buddhas we rebel and crucify him. We make enlightenment a super human and super divine attainment. Enlightenment is not even a simple attainment. Enlightenment is not an attainment at all. Enlightenment is dropping all desire for attainment. Be still and know. Not that being still you will then know. The very stillness is knowing. It is one and the same. Just being still is knowing. This is enlightenment. When you come in contact with that dimension which is the very source of your creation, you can melt and merge with it, you can become one with it, or you can sit and watch like a spectator. The choice is yours.
MEDITATION TIMES APRIL 2010
We continue the enlightenment saga. Life is an experience and an opportunity. Enlightenment is when we understand what to do with the opportunity that is given to us. Each of us has a unique song to sing and make the universe a harmony of musical melodies. The orchestra will be left unfulfilled were we not to find our song and sing it. The techniques to recover these ancient echoes are varied and multifarious. The sad reality is that we have forgotten the natural rhythms and now dance to robotic beats with mechanical precision. Mind is now master. The heart waits in silence...ever resounding the mystical vibrations that continue to fall on deaf ears. An inner tuning is needed to hear this silent melody – a still mind. The small voice of the existence is mute when the mind is engaged in the maddening rush to nowhere. The noise and clamour of material pursuits is deaf and immune to the realms of inner calling. The cries from the yonder hills are lost in the busy streets of the market place. Now and again a thunderous
lion’ s roar awakens one lonely seeker...and he is quickly silence by the crowd that is slumbering for eons. His message of life eternal is heard as gibberish and he is scoffed and told to go back to sleep. The slumber pains his soul and he moves to solitude to embrace his beloved. His constant companion is the echoes in the pines that carry the eternal songs. The birds sing the praises and the brooks murmur the enchanting rhapsodies. The flowers display his canvas of beauty while the star studded skies reveal his fathomless secrets in a matrix of intricate tapestry.
MEDITATION TIMES MAY 2010
In this out third anniversary issue we focus on Jiddu Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti is one on the Buddhas of this century, and like all Buddhas he is most misunderstood. And especially by his critics who are not enlightened. Only an enlightened can see into another enlightened master and say from what plane he is operating at. Krishnamurti was too advances for his disciples. Those who gathered around him could not fathom his depth and profound teachings. It takes great preparation to reach the dimension of Krishnamurti. Those of a future time will be able to grasp the precocious insights of Jiddu Krishnamurti. It was no accident that Krishnamurti was a contemporary of Osho. Both master were from another realm and could not be understood by the disciples around them. However in the case with Osh he sought to make every effort to make his vision available to the disciples. Osho came down to the level of the disciples. Jiddu tried in vain to elevate his disciples. The realm he came from was just too infinite to be brought down to normal consciousness. It was the tragedy that Jiddu could not reach his disciples. But he did prepare them to see beyond this realm and to seek the vistas into a new dimension of consciousness. Such a dimension was envisioned by Osho and Osho made every vista into the herenow available. And this could not have been possible were it not for the preparation by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Ramakrishna was also very insignificant as a precursor to Osho. It was Ramakrishna who first sought to seek God in all available paths at the time. The paths are many but the goal is one. Jiddu insisted that there is no path. And he is right at the ultimate level. At some point all paths must be dropped to go beyond. But one cannot just begin at no path. It is difficult and man cannot go into the dark night with no staff to help him grope. The master is the staff. The master has been through the dark night and he can guide the disciple up the point where the disciples has to muster all his courage to take the plunge into the dimension beyond the known. It is from this dimension where Jiddu speaks. And Jiddu was one of the rare and few masters who spoke of the herenow as the ultimate state of being. When one is in the herenow one is in the totality of existence. One is interconnected to all and one is all. One becomes all and all becomes one.
In our third anniversary issue we choose to highlight in much detail Jiddu Krishnamurti as he stands apart from all other masters. And as I mentioned earlier Jiddu shall only be understood in a future time when mankind has evolved to a level beyond knowledge.
MEDITATION TIMES JUNE 2010
Fear is the enemy of truth. To uncover truth or to even begin the sojourn, one must be fearless. Man fears that which he does not know. And the quest in the unknown grips man with a paralyzing fear. Man fears to sit in meditation and access the inner recess of his own mind. And yet that which is the cause of fear does not really exist – the ego. It is the ego that is the source of all man’ s fears. And this ego is non-existential.
Man fears love as well. In love ego tends to dissolve and so man shirks love. He cowers in the face of love. His immaculate and lofty portrayals of love are filed with the under pinning of fear. The quest into the unknown requires a fearless desire for truth. Hence I say fear is the enemy of truth. In the opening pauri of Nanak’ s Japiji he says Omkar is nirbhay – without fear. Fear arises out of duality. When there is only One, there is no fear. Ego is an illusion of separation and hence fear is screen that inhibits the seeing of herenow. Fear creates longing for the past – because it is known. And fear wants to project the known into the future. With fear we remain stuck in the rut of samsara – the cycle to continuous births and death. To break this cycle the heart must be fearless. To exist in the present moment is to be fearless. It is a discontinuity with the past. When we are present in the present we are fearless. Mind is full of fear. Mind is fear. After his treatise on the eighteen types of Yoga and spiritual disciples, Krishna goads Arjuna to be fearless in the battle. His last words were “ma sucha” – do not fear. To undertake the journey of spiritual life all fear has to be overcome. The encouragement of one who has crossed further shore is needed. Trust in the guidance of the Guru will dispel fear. The guru has seen the mystical realm. His hands outstretch to welcome you into the dimension of herenow. Guru removes fear and the truth is seen crystal clear. It is fear that is the screen. Tagore in his immortal Gitanjali says in one of his poems, “ Where the mind is without fear...” This issue is a focus on overcoming fear. Once fear is removed, the path to truth becomes easy to traverse. It is no wonder that drunkards have no fear. And those who are drunk with the wine of the mystic very easily reach truth. In fact truth finds them a worthy receptacle and descends into their hearts.
Mind is full of fear. Empty the mind of its fear and truth shall dawn like the rising sun. “ So whenever you feel fear, it is a tremendous opportunity to understand that life is momentary, it is ephemeral, it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of...� OSHO
MEDITATION TIMES JULY 2010
Guru is one who removes darkness of ignorance and the darkness of knowledge. Both are veils that prevent the atman from full realization. Guru need not be a person. Any situation where one can rise out of ignorance and knowledge can be considered a guru.
Sufis say when the disciple is ready the Master appears. I differ in this view. I say when the Master is ready the disciple appears. Masters are not so important. It is the receptivity of the disciple that transforms him. Hence any situation can be a Master or Guru. It is the disciple that makes the quantum leap due to his insights. Guru is really a mirror. The disciple sees his original face. The Guru is the future of the disciple. Even false gurus are masters in their own right. Cause it is really the receptivity of the disciple that is most important. And by false I mean in terms of established traditions. But any guru who is a conformist is not a guru for me. Gurus bring new insights and hence cannot be conformist. Yet there are many gurus who are conformist. The search to find a true guru is baseless and wrong in the first place. The disciple has to search the burning desire in his heart first. This burning desire is the desire to know the truth. When this reaches 100 degrees then the real quest begins. This issue is in commemoration of Guru. And we introduce a new format for Meditation Times. We shall be giving excerpts from our upcoming publications and continuing excerpts from them each month. One of the great Masters is Gurdjieff. He is our main feature this issue.
MEDITATION TIMES AUGUST 2010 This issue has been dedicated to Sri Ram – an avatar, a God of Hindu origins but universal application. Sri Ram, the very name is saturated with divinity. Ram is not just an ideal but he is a being who played the role of a human and played it so totally that he transformed his humanity into divinity. Swami Vivekananda says “to be truly human is to be divine” .
The story of this magnanimous character Ram was first recorded in Sanskrit by sage Valmiki. Valmiki went through a radical revolution in consciousness and that made him the worthy bard of the epic Ramayana. Many other versions and editions of the story have come into existence since then. Swami Vivekananda says that as long as mankind exists the story of Ram and Sita will continue to inspire humanity. Sri Aurobindo says the Ramayana “has been an agent of almost incalculable power in the moulding of the cultural mind of India: it has presented to it to be loved and imitated in figures like Rama and Sita, made so divinely and with such a revelation of reality as to become objects of enduring cult and worship, or like Hanuman, Lakshmana, Bharata, the living human image of its ethical ideals.�
Our attempt in this issue of Meditation Times is to present a spiritual and mystical dimension to the story and to unravel the deeper inner imports of the text – Ramayana. We are especially intrigued by the Ram- Kaikeyi Samvad. In this discussion Ram calls Kaikeyi as his ‘ janani’ . Janani is one who gives you birth. His actual mother is Kausilya but why does he call Kaikeyi as his mother and not just mother as the title can be used for various persons of that disposition, but he says janani – one who gives me birth. Kaikeyi actually was the one because of who Ram could have executed the reason for his mission. The real spiritual works of Ram started with his journey to the forest – that was initiated by Kaikeyi. One of the more popular editions of the Ramayana is by Goswami Tulsidasa. Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas is “a long chant of religious devotion.” Tulsidas’ famed Hindi Ramayana “combines with a singular mastery lyric intensity, romantic richness and the sublimity of the epic imagination.” – Sri Aurobindo. Tulsidasa made the story of Ram available to “common people”. We at Meditation Times are trying to make every possible dimension of spirituality available to all who would come from the various disciplines and schools to thought. In all of these editorials we over highlight this point. The response to our August 2010 issue was overwhelming and we have decided to continue in our present September issue to highlight aspects of the Hindu Epic Ramayana. It seems that the readers have found an undiscovered analysis of the text. Our way is both unique and universal. We present old wine in new bottles because the mystic wine is the same and causes the same effect when drunk. We are merely preparing a menu that suits the appetite of the seeker.
We intend to do a trilogy on Ramayana and a third issue would be forthcoming. This issue will focus on women in the Ramayana a will be our Deepavali issue. The October issue will focus on Sufism as a tribute to the Islamic month of Ramadan. This issue on Sufism will relate to the growth of Naqshbandi Path in India and another issue the Hindu Influence in Naqshbandi path. In our present issue that deals with the Ramayana, we highlight some of the main characters of the Epic. And give special emphasis on the Gayatri Mantra. In a subsequent issue we will deal exclusively with this most potent Mantra. The relation of Gayatri to Rama is that Rama is a descendent of the Sun Dynasty, and Gayatri (Savitri) is the daughter of the Sun God. Hence a
direct bond is established. Also the guru of Rama is Vishvamitra who got his siddhis from the Sun God through recitation of the Gayatri Mantra. The demon king Ravana is a much misunderstand and misrepresented character of the Ramayana. His role cannot easily be unraveled without the ‘intuitive eyes of knowledge’ – chakshyumati vidya. “If I cannot be Rama, then I would be Ravana, for he is the dark side of Vishnu.” – Sri Aurobindo. The text lends itself to allegory but the allegory is not of personal whim or fancy. It has a mystical synergy. With our mental caprice we can concoct a meaning and interpretation. This fabrication would be a travesty of truth. The truth is hidden from the unscrupulous and revealed only to the sincere seekers who have risen above the moral dualities and who have adopted the path of the sannyasin – divine outlaw, one who has gone beyond the laws of mortal men. Our singular approach is to give hints of the mystical and point towards the moon (in this case the Sun). Truth is such that is cannot be said directly, that is the very nature of truth. We can only give hints and indicate towards some dimension beyond the known. One encounters truth along the sojourn to life eternal. Then one comes to understand why the truth cannot be said. A truth that can be said is not truth. Truth is silence. When all the noise and chatter of the mind, when the waves of thought have receded into the vast eternity of love’s mute gestures, truth shines like a thousand sun – Gayatri illumines the intellect and the eyes of knowledge open to see the Reality as it with no mind, no thought , no feeling – this is the truth . Ramayana is the path to truth. Rama is the incarnate truth. Aham Rama Asmi – I am Rama.
MEDITATION TIMES OCTOBER 2010 The world of the Sufi is magical, mysterious, melodious, marvellous, methodological and most of all mystical. A Sufi cannot be found unless he reveals himself. Religion has three phases – the first is Shariat – the outer core of ritual and rules; the second is Haqiquat – the inner core of truth and realization; and
third is Tariquat – the methods, disciplines and techniques to attain realization.
Sufism is the inner core of the spiritual quest. The dregs and dross are removed and pure love remains. The Sufi approach is one of awe and wonder at the marvels of the Creator Who is dissolved in His Creation. One cannot come to appreciate Sufism without being transformed by the very desire to know what Sufism is. To know the Sufi way is to become a Sufi by the very process of knowing. But Sufi is about love – not knowing, at least not intellectual knowing. The Sufi path is riddled with mysterious parables and mystical insights into very ordinary things. When one begins to inquire who is a Sufi then the lamp
of knowing is lit. When this flame becomes a burning passion that cannot be quelled until the heart dances with ecstasy at the mere thought of the Beloved, only then the search is over. A Sufi is mad. Mad for the Beloved. Mad because he has left the arms of world to embrace the open sky without a thought for tomorrow. A Sufi is a moth that dies in the enamoring flames of dissolution. He must not only see the Beloved, he must die in the presence. Only such a death reveals what is truly worth living. A Sufi is one who has died for the world and is reborn into the paradise of heaven on earth. Where a Sufi lives that place is the mythical firdous. Only now is it not a myth. It is a living reality. To even meet a Sufi by passing chance is a gift from Allah. Only he who has reached the last stages of spiritual evolution will get such a grace. This issue of Meditation Times is about the Sufi Way, the Sufi Path. Sufis are interested in the transformation of consciousness. Their main focus is how to get the sincere aspirant to renounce his old ways and embrace a method that will draw his awareness to an inner calling. This is done very mysteriously and mystically, in such a way that the aspirant does not know when the old way has dropped and the new way is adopted. He feels a pull from within and an irresistible urge to follow this Sufi Master. He has fallen in love with the Sufi. This love is what will carry him to the firdous of his inner being. Such is the mysterious Sufi Path. A path of pure love, a way of transformation from lead to gold!
MEDITATION TIMES NOVEMBER 2010
The world of the Sikhs is ordinary and simple. It is not based on any miracles. This is one for the very few paths founded by a Master that is does not rely of any miraculous phenomenon for its origins and existence. Guru Nanak is one of the four persons that I have identified as changing the direction of the new world. It was no wonder that Christopher Columbus discovered a new continent and called it the New World. This new world was outer. But Guru Nanak discovered a new inner world. This is the world of the Sikhs. The both discoveries were made around the same time in opposite parts of the world – East and West. We have delved into the world of the Sikhs in previous issues of Meditation Times. We again take a plunge into this world and explore the many wonders it has to offer. Nanak is very dear to us. He called his place of worship as Gurudwara, which literally means the door to the beyond. It can
be considered a ‘stargate’ a portal that transports the meditator to realm beyond the dimensions of the mind. It should be noted that what Nanak discovered was not new; just like what Columbus discovered was not new. It always existed. They just made it known to the world that had forgotten about it. Japuji is the fragrance of the ultimate flowering of Gurudev Nanak. After Nanak attained the dissolution of his being and transcendental merger into the cosmos, the first words he uttered was “ek omkar satnam”. In this simple yet profound declaration is the foundation for the entire edifice of the Sikh religion. The words seem simple enough but the words are not the message. One needs to delve deeper to extract the hidden mysteries within the words. Krishna says in Gita that there is only one mantra. This mantra is Om Tat Sat. This Om Tat Sat was interpreted by Nanak as Ek Omkar Satnam. They mean the same thing. Ek – means one. Not one as opposed to two or many but simply one because there is only one. He alone exists. Nothing else exists. Omkar – means the resounding existential sound. All creation emanates from sound vibration. This sound vibration is OM. Through the utterance of Om He becomes the creation and is involved in the cosmic Lila. Sat – means that which exists eternally. It is the sacchidananda of Vedanta; the rit of Veda; the dhamma of Buddha; the dharma of Puranas. Nam – means the world of infinite plurality; the world of names and forms; the entire creation. Ek omkar satnam means there is only one existential sound resounding through all creation. All the verses of Nanak were sung. His way was through singing. This is Bhagavad Gita – the celestial song. Singing was the invisible silk thread that Nanak used to ultimately link with the invisible cosmic umbilical cord that emanates from Him.