Falling

The fool who stares at the Sun
    Knowing that he may lose his eyes
May one day see the blessed land
    That beyond the darkness lies.

The fool who gladly leaps off cliffs
    Knowing well that he may die
May one day sprout golden wings
    And inherit the open sky.

***** 

For years, I have had a rather peculiar experience at times and it is only recently that I have begun to understand what it is. At times, it so happened that I began to listen to a song and was so overwhelmed by its beauty that I had to stop listening to it. And there were times when I was reading a book and was so overwhelmed by what it was saying that I had to close it. Peculiar though this may be, I am sure it is not entirely unique. Everyone must have experienced something like this now and then. There is, of course, no way to engineer such an experience. The same song, the same book may not reproduce such an experience again.

It is only now that I am beginning to understand what a wonderful opportunity such an experience is. The only reason why we are compelled to "break the moment" in such a situation is because we are about to hit a glorious peak of energy where the mind is bound to fail, where it would have no option but to become silent. The mind tries to salvage its nonsense in such situations by running away. But if we were to not fall prey to such foolishness, something wonderful can open up.

There is a beautiful madman called Swami Rajneesh who, it seems, teaches his followers to take their energies to a peak through dance and to find those golden moments of absolute stillness at those heights. Well, it seems that sometimes even when we are not physically dancing, those peaks can come to us as gifts from existence. Those unbearably beautiful songs should be listened to. Those terribly beautiful books must not be closed. And at those moments when we are so deliriously happy that we cannot bear to be still... those are the moments when we should sit still and allow the madness to overwhelm us. These Great Waves are not meant to be avoided. We should ride them, for there is every chance that they might toss us so high into the sky that we may never return. They might toss us so high, that we might forget which way is down... and then we might just fall upwards. 

Swami Rajneesh - Osho's beautiful madman

Moments

Just like a squirrel

Opening up nuts

I open each moment

Looking for you.

Oasis

Taljai temple, Pune

One of the nice things about living in Sahakarnagar (in Pune) is that it is close to the Taljai hill. I go up there almost every day these days and I particularly like the Taljai temple. I have grown up in Sahakarnagar, so Taljai has been a big part of my life. It is just a tiny little hill and it is certainly not very high, but when I was small, it looked quite big. Even today, when I see a mountain, somewhere at the back of my mind, I compare it with the Taljai hill. Some day I hope to visit Kailash and I am sure that one of the first things that will come to my mind when I get there is that it seems much bigger than the Taljai hill.

I remember going up there when I was small. The wonderful forest that covers half of this hill was quite young then. It had just been planted a few years ago and the trees were still growing. The supposedly "haunted house" halfway up the hill used to excite me quite a lot, particularly when I was about five years old. I remember that even then I did not actually believe that it was haunted, but that I wanted to believe. There were two ways to go up - there were steps along one side of the hill, leading up up to the temple, and there was just a dirt road from another side.

Then years passed and the forest grew thicker. It soon became a very popular place to go for walks. When I was fifteen or so, it was one of the usual places to go to with friends. The haunted house was no longer haunted - it was just a place for young kids like us to hang out in. I can remember quite a few amusing and/or "meaningful" conversations that took place on its terrace. The forest had now turned into quite a convenient place to commit crimes. It was not considered a very safe place to be except in the early morning or in the evening when there would be a lot of people going there for walks.

Things have kept on changing. The dirt road has been replaced by a tar one, which is surprisingly well-maintained. The haunted house has almost fallen to pieces. There is a proper fence around the forest. The temple is no longer as tiny as it used to be. They have built concrete platforms around it for people to hang about. There is even some sort of a sports center that has come up right next to the temple. It has all become a little too convenient. Every morning and evening hundreds of people drive up to the temple in cars and on motorcycles and go for walks in the forest. There are places for people to sit and for children to play. Near the temple, there are all kinds of shops selling snacks and tea so that people can stuff their faces immediately after they have lost about half a pound by jogging or walking. The police are around quite regularly, so the place has become much safer (or so it seems anyway).

So, what is my point? Am I going to moan about how the place has lost its innocence and how much nicer it was in the past? Well, yes and no. There are times when I think that the place was nicer when it was a little more deserted. At the same time, it is really not all that bad. I can complain about how ugly the tar road is, but the fact is that it does make it easier to go up there, particularly during the monsoon months. And I cannot really say that the place is no longer beautiful. Yes, it has a little more structure to it now, it is not as "natural" as it used to be perhaps. But it is still beautiful in a way. The trees are still there and so is the sky. And while I do not particularly enjoy seeing all those motorcycles and cars, I have to admit that it is nice to see how happy and relaxed people seem up there. Yes, most of them are missing the true beauty of the place as they go around chatting about politics or listening to stupid Bollywood songs. But they are getting something out of it anyway. It can be seen on their faces.

The place is really an oasis in the middle of the city. Let's be honest - a city is a ghastly thing to behold, let alone live in. No, I do not have any right to criticize city life because I am very much a city person. I am sure I would not enjoy living in a village for too long, let alone living in the wild. But one must admit that even though we have grown used to, perhaps even dependent on the convenience of living together in large groups, we do look incredibly ugly while we do so. This lovely little place takes us away from the city for a while. No wonder people look relaxed up there. It is not just that they come close to nature by walking about in the forest. Even if there had been no trees, even if it had just been a desert, it would have still helped people relax. It is my theory that we all hate cities even though we depend on them. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we are aware of how ugly they are and it makes us happy to get away.  

Anyway, to conclude, here is a picture of the platform next to the temple. These days, I spend a lot of time sitting here.

I sit here and pretend to meditate.

Guru Pooja

Isha Foundation has been conducting a Guru Pooja Training program in Pune this weekend. It is being conducted on the premises of the University of Pune. I have been attending the program as a volunteer and it has been an extremely rewarding experience.

I went through Guru Pooja Training in November 2011 at the Isha Yoga Center near Coimbatore. That had been an overwhelming experience at that time. Of course, this time I already knew beforehand about the kind of madness I was going to descend into. But that has not made the experience any less overwhelming.

In my last post, I talked about how Linga Bhairavi is "my greatest embarrassment" - I would never be able to explain Her to the "logical" crowd that I associate with. Well, Guru Pooja is another one of those embarrassing things. Not everyone reading this might know what Guru Pooja is, so I should probably say something about that. However, I simply do not have the courage to explain it in my own words. So here is a link.

Even without going into the details of what Guru Pooja is, I can certainly talk about what I experienced today. As a volunteer, apart from doing the few odd things that required to be done, I spent all day with the participants, doing what they did. I have been drowned in the Guru Pooja chant all day. That probably sounds like the kind of activity that might numb the brain. It is possible that it might numb the brain if you are not really aware of what you are doing. But when done with awareness, it certainly can do some truly marvelous things to you.

Today, as I went on with the chant, I realized something in a very deep way. What I realized is not some kind of an elusive truth - it is really just a bit of common sense that would not surprise anyone at all. And yet, just because you know something does not mean that it has penetrated the depths of your being. Sometimes, the simplest of truths come back to you in very deep ways. That is what happened to me, and what I realized was this - when you chant something like that, you have to chant with your entire being. That may not sound like much, but that is because we don't know what it is to do something with our entire being. When you chant something like that with your entire being, when your entire system comes alive with a strange new intelligence and bends its will on a single utterance... and when what you are uttering is something like this chant, some truly amazing things can happen.

Now I could spend a lot of time talking about those "amazing things that can happen", but what truly overwhelmed me was those few moments when I was chanting with all (or almost all?) my being. What a rare and exhilarating feeling to be in one place, doing one thing. There is truly nothing like it when all the pieces of your being are facing in one direction. Perhaps it takes something like this chant to make it happen. What a blessing it would be to go through life like this!

What miserable people we are! For a moment, let us forget about all the spiritual/philosophical nonsense that we have burdened ourselves with over the centuries. How about just the simple idea that whatever we do, we will do with all our being? We will not drop any of our desires. If we want something, we will desire it with all our being - body, mind and soul (whatever that might be). If you want something, your mind should desire it with all its force. Your body should reach out for it with all its strength. But as it happens, when we desire something, even our mind is not entirely with us. It is already thinking about how we may not get what we want. So we long for it. What a pathetic way to be! To long for something is truly a sin. Either you go ahead and reach for it with the whole of your being or you don't. If your entire being were involved in the act of reaching for something, you would simply not have the time or energy to spend on longing.
 
How many of us can be like this? Whatever way of being one chooses for oneself, that choice must be absolute. It is the only way to be. Perhaps there are people like this. I have certainly seen some people who come close to being like this. I would like to be like this. It is good to get a taste of that possibility once in a while.

I am sure that does not sound like a very profound truth, but as I said, what matters is how deeply one realizes it.

Babbling baby

The middle of the night,
Mommy sleeps.
The moon peers in
Through a shaft of light
And lights up the crib
Where Baby sits
Alone in his world
And babbles on...

*****

I remember listening to Sadhguru chastising people about how scattered they are, about how hard he has to work to bring them into the Here and Now. I remember feeling ashamed of myself as I heard him, and yet I knew that my energies were shamelessly dancing across half the globe. It is really unfortunate that we have so much energy. If we did not have so much of it, we would not waste so much of it. Of course, if we did not have energy, we would end up falling asleep since becoming meditative requires energy. I would like to think that being meditative does not require any effort at all, but I do know for a fact that going in that direction requires some effort. It requires effort to realign these million pieces of myself until they all face the same way.

And yet, scattered though we are, there come those rare moments of blessedness when we are struck with just the right amount of ennui - not enough to cause depression and make us stop living, but enough to cause us to stop looking. Looking! That original sin through which we turned outward to begin with! A stunted little consciousness looking out through two little windows into a sea of nonsense! Just the right amount of ennui so that the eyes close and we enter our own inner world.

No one else. Just a very private world, like a crib illuminated by a shaft of moonlight. No effort to meditate, just a profound silence caused by being where you really, really want to be. Here! Oh, what a wonderful place Here is!

To just be Here... to not make an effort to meditate... to not make an effort to become silent... to just babble incoherently without the obligation to make sense! What an ocean of silence lives in the nonsensical words of a baby!

Tonight I sat in the dark, in front of Bhairavi, the room just lit by the lamp of the gudi. Her immense presence filled the dark room... (She does not sleep!) That is when I saw that baby, babbling in the dark.

Jai Bhairavi!

Fragile beauty

A woman asked her lover, "What do you like the most about me?"  

Somewhat startled by the question, he paused for a moment. Then, with great pain in his eyes, he answered, "What I liked the most about you was that I thought you were the kind of woman who would never ask me such a question."

*****

True beauty is such a fragile thing. The slightest movement in unawareness, and it is gone. And yet, it is so resilient. No matter how many times we destroy it, no matter how many times we trample it, it resurfaces again and again, seeping in repeatedly from some blessed dimension.

It is very rarely that we manage to see some of this ever-present beauty in life. Life is really like a beautiful lawn - inviting you to step on it, to enjoy it. And yet, even the slightest step in unawareness can destroy its perfection. One should really walk through life with the same care and awareness that one might have when one steps on a perfect lawn. But usually we are like a herd of irate hippopotami...

I was re-reading the first chapter of "Glimpses of a Golden Childhood" by Osho. He speaks about this beautiful poem,

The wild geese
Do not intend to make their reflections.
The water has no mind
To receive their images.

He speaks about this poem as a way to describe what he calls "communion" as opposed to "communication" - communion happens by itself, but communication carries within it the tension of intention and thus never really happens. What Osho is celebrating (I think) is the beauty inherent in an absence of intention. Somehow, in my mind, the poem depicted a state of absolute awareness. Perhaps the two are interconnected. Perhaps true awareness is only possible when intention is absent.


Well, Osho can talk about his wild geese. I was talking about this woman and her lover. Returning to that tale...

*****

Even as he said those words, he regretted saying them. Not only had something precious between them been lost because of her question, his answer was bound to cause her immeasurable pain. 


But to his surprise, she listened quietly to his answer... and smiled, from the very depths of her being. So enchanting was her smile that he found, to his surprise, that he too was smiling.

Radha's song

It sang once, now fallen mute,
To my bosom I clasp his flute.
I bring it to my lips to play
But only one thing does it say,
All the notes speak as one...
That I am his, I am his!
The music says that I am his!


They see the madness in my eyes
And hear my lost, plaintive cries.
I look for him here and there.
They follow me in mute despair.
They weep and weep and they say...
That I am his, I am his!
The gopis say that I am his!


The birds that once saw him and me
Sing flying from tree to tree.
"You taught us how to love," they say,
"And yet, where is your love today?"
But in those songs I only hear...
That I am his, I am his!
The birds do say that I am his!


The patient earth bears my feet
In cold and rain and burning heat,
And catches tears when they fall
As for him I call and call.
Only echoes call back to me...
That I am his, I am his!
The echoes say that I am his!


The Yamuna once beheld our dance,
The sacred grace of our romance.
Grieving today with me is she.
Her soothing waters speak to me,
As lovingly they caress my feet...
That I am his, I am his!
The waters say that I am his!


The winds still bring me his scent
As I wonder where my Krishna went.
I follow the gusts of this breeze.
It takes me winding through the trees.
As it dries my tears it says...
That I am his, I am his!
The wind does say that I am his!


Now he dwells on another shore.
I know I will see him no more.
And yet my eyes behold his face,
My limbs quiver in his embrace.
For before he left he said to me...
That I am his, I am his!
My Krishna said that I am his!


Behold, O gods! And be pleased!
For Radha today has truly ceased.
She broke the shackles of her fate
And the Lord walks in her gait!
Now she can say no more...
For she is his, she is his!
The silence says that she is his!

Radha's pots

Seeing Krishna at her window, the gopi's heart leapt with joy. With shining eyes and open arms, she called out to him.

"Come, O thief. My pots are filled today, to the brim. The butter is fresh, and you have no need steal any more. Just for a few moments at your feet, I offer you everything I have."

However, today, Krishna was not tempted. Though he smiled at her, full of love, he passed her by and went to Radha's house.

When Radha saw her beloved at the window, she did not welcome him.

"Go away, you thief! I have nothing left. The pots are empty. You and your friends have robbed me clean!"

But he did not go away. He entered the house, through the window, as was his wont. Meeting Radha's defiant gaze with his smile, he peered into her pots. He found them empty, as she had said.

Then the Lord sat next to those empty pots. He put his flute to his lips and began to play. The whole of Creation stood still, in anticipation of that heavenly sound. And yet, somehow, no one heard anything.

The sound never left Radha's house. Sitting next to those empty pots, Krishna played his flute. The world heard nothing, but the pots were filled with the sound.

And so was she.

Post-Samyama

Post-Samyama... anyone who is associated with Isha would need no explanation for this term. But for those who do not know, Samyama is an intense eight day yoga program conducted by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev at the Isha Yoga Center near Coimbatore. It has been over 3 months since I attended this program and I would like to write about how life has changed since then. The term post-Samyama is quite apt since, as anyone who has been through the program would know, life does change quite dramatically within those eight days.

Of course, it is not possible to speak about what is actually done during the program - partly because it is forbidden to speak about it, but mostly because what happens there is far beyond my understanding anyway. But I think it would be quite appropriate to speak about some general impressions.

As I said, most of the things that happened there are far beyond my understanding. I certainly ran into some difficulties during the program. Physically, I had prepared myself as well as I could have. But then I caught a cold which lead to a fever. And yet, despite my illness and a million other limitations, fortunately what happened there was so huge that I could not escape it. Perhaps if I had prepared myself better, perhaps if I had been psychologically more stable, I could have gotten much more out of it. But there is no point in thinking about that. What matters is that, even with all my limitations, he managed to drag me, kicking and screaming, through a transformation of some sort.

Impressions of Samyama -
Over a thousand people meditating in silence. A man with a white beard and fiery eyes walks among them. Even in that silence, his presence bears down on everyone with the ferocity of the wildest of storms. Sometimes, nothing seems to happen. And sometimes the air crackles and another dimension of life pours in out of nowhere. It is as if he is everywhere at once, there is no escaping him. He is ruthless and almost impatient about our limitations, and yet his compassion shines through his willingness to carry on. A thousand souls, whether they know it or not, whether they believe it or not, are carried to the doorstep of a completely new possibility of life. And after this superhuman effort, he just goes on...

I cannot say much more about the program apart from these vague impressions, but much can be said about how my life changed afterwards. During the program, participants are initiated into the meditational practice called Samyama. I don't know how much I missed during the program, but this practice is the greatest gift I have ever received from anyone. And he gave it to me even though I was so obviously unworthy. It makes no sense to thank him for this. Thanking someone, expressing gratitude is, in a way, a form of repayment. That would make no sense here. It is far better to walk through life being in his debt.

Those who are close to me would know that I went through some very trying experiences immediately after the program. Everything in my life was changing and still is changing with such rapidity that under normal circumstances I would have fallen apart. Through all this, the practice of samyama meditation has served as a lifeline. I will not say that I have not suffered at all. But through all the suffering there has been an undercurrent of silence, and at times even laughter! When I say that there has been an undercurrent of silence, words cannot really convey what that means. It has not been the silence of an empty room. It has been the deeply nourishing silence of life at ease - the kind of silence that carries fire in its belly.

I have begun to experience life with heightened sensitivity. For instance, I recently read the book "Krishna - the Man and his Philosophy" by Osho. It is certainly an extraordinary book. But an extraordinary book can be read in very ordinary ways and then it amounts to nothing. I do know that the very way I read this book was a consequence of Samyama. And as a result, it came vibrantly alive for me. The words poured into me like liquid laughter and Krishna seemed to come alive in a very deep sense. Krishna has always been a character that I have been fond of. Yes, Hindus worship him as a God, but there is no denying the fact that no matter how we pretend to "believe in him", he is just a character in a story for us. And he is a character that we think we know very well. And yet, after I read this book, it was as if I was drowning in something completely new. Of course, that is the greatness of Osho, but I would have never been this receptive to it if it had not been for Samyama. Perhaps this is how people felt when they participated in "Leela" - the program on Krishna that Sadhguru had conducted some years ago in the Isha Yoga Center. 

So intense was that experience that I automatically took to writing. Now, like many other people, I have been guilty of writing atrocious poetry(?) as a child. And I mean, really bad poetry - the sort that later makes you wonder what your parents were doing when you were up to something like this. But that was long ago and I have been sufficiently embarrassed with myself to not want to try anything that rash. But what happened here was truly amazing - the poetry, if I may call it that, poured out of me in one swift motion. Experiences come to us in many ways, but I never really experienced anything in the form of a picture or a song. And yet, that happened to me. One night I was drowned in a powerful image (and no, I don't mean that I saw visions or anything stupid like that) which I turned into a short story called "Radha's pots". Some days later, a song poured out of me, one that I titled as "Radha's song". I am not sure how this would rate as poetry, but for once, I was not embarrassed! Perhaps that is because I don't really see myself as having written any of it.

And who knows what else...