Follow the moon!

It is never easy to say what history will remember. Sometimes, people of no significance are remembered simply because of the circumstances that they lived in. And sometimes, some truly remarkable people are completely forgotten. Though they are forgotten by men, they leave their mark on life in subtle ways. Their stories are remembered by the earth and the sky. These stories are for those who know how to listen. One such story is the story of the poet Vishwakarma.

Vishwakarma lived thousands of years ago in a small kingdom at the foothills of the Himalayas. Though history has chosen not to remember him, during his lifetime, he was considered to be one of the greatest poets of all time. His skill with words was such that some believed his poems to be imbued with mystical power. His imagination was such that some believed he could see into other worlds. His songs lit up the lives of common men and women. They thrilled scholars. They even threw the mystics into raptures.

He lived in a small hut on a hill, on the outskirts of the capital city. Every now and then, he would enter the city and wander through the streets, singing his songs. The people loved him and would gladly give him the few things he needed to stay alive. But Vishwakarma was no beggar. He simply sang for the joy of singing. He would wander through the city all day and then finally depart in the evening for his little hut. Then, after about a month, he would return again with new songs.

One day the King announced a poetry competition. The one who would write the finest poem would be appointed as the court poet. As Vishwakarma drifted along the streets, lost in his own world, singing his songs, someone told him about the competition.

"The finest poem?" Vishwakarma wondered. It had never occured to him that there was such a thing. It was still just noon and he still had many songs left to sing. But without another word, he turned and left for his little hut outside the city.

A month passed, but Vishwakarma did not return to the city. A few of his admirers decided to visit him. They found him on the hill, sitting on a huge rock outside his hut. They asked him why he had not come to the city to sing his songs.

"The finest poem," he said. "I have been busy. But it is not ready yet."

"Sing us a few of your songs," they said. "We have missed you."

He smiled softly and nodded. A few songs had come his way as he waited for the finest poem to descend upon him. He began to sing. These men were already his admirers. They had grown used to, and had fallen in love with, the music of his soul. But they could not help feeling that these songs were something different. The sound went deeper into their hearts than ever before.

"Sing these songs in the King's court, Vishwakarma!" they said. "You will surely win!"

Vishwakarma smiled and shook his head. The finest poem was yet to come. His friends thanked him and went back to the city. The next day they walked the streets, singing Vishwakarma's new songs. The songs spread through the city and were soon heard in the palace as well. The King too was deeply moved. He had heard Vishwakarma's songs before, but he had never heard anything like these. He was delighted to hear that Vishwakarma was composing something special, something even better for the competition. He decided to postpone the competition until the great poet was ready.

Another month passed by, and Vishwakarma did not return to the city. This time, the King himself arrived at his little hut.

"My court needs you," said the King. "You are indeed the finest poet in my kingdom. Let us forget about the competition. I will make you my court poet right now if you agree."

Vishwakarma shook his head. His finest creation was still not done. But since the king had come all this way to see him, he closed his eyes and began to sing softly. Something strange happened. It seemed to the listeners as if he was no longer contained within his body. His presence had spilled out and had permeated the rocks, the trees, the hills and the sky. The birds fell silent. Even the wind seemed to fall under his spell. It danced with the gestures of his hands and rose and fell with his voice. It was as if the whole of creation was singing. When his song was complete, a deep silence fell around him.

Full of awe, the king bowed before him and left.

Since then, Vishwakarma never came to the city. Every day he would sit upon the huge rock outside his hut and he would wait. His friends brought the few things he needed from the city. Once a month, the King would arrive, accompanied by men and women from all walks of life. Vishwakarma would yield to their love and sing to them. They would drink from his soul and leave fulfilled. But the songs that he sang for them did not satisfy him. He remained unfulfilled. He continued to wait.

The longer he waited, the more his songs seemed to grow in power and beauty. His fame continued to spread and people began to come from distant kingdoms to listen to this strange mystic-poet. Other poets and artists wondered at the potency of his creations. Filled with both awe and jealousy, they began to believe that the source of his art was not human, that it was inspired by supernatural beings. Some said that Vishwakarma would visit realm of the gods and that the songs he sang were composed by the gods themselves. Others said that evil spirits visited him in the night and infused his poetry with their seductive power. Some of them decided to discover Vishwakarma's secret and sent a spy to watch him.

The spy arrived at Vishwakarma's hut in the middle of the night. He found Vishwakarma sitting on the rock as usual. There were no gods and no evil spirits. He hid behind the trees and began to keep watch from a distance. But there was nothing to see. There was just the frail form of Vishwakarma, sitting motionless in the moonlight. Finally, his curiosity overwhelmed him. He stepped out into the open and approached the rock. As he drew closer, what he saw filled him with amazement.

Vishwakarma's eyes were open and fixed upon the moon. He was looking at it intently, almost as if he were in a trance. Only his lips were moving, whispering strange and beautiful songs. Hours passed and Vishwakarma remained on the rock, locked in his trance. It soon became apparent to the spy that he was not entirely still, he was moving slowly, shifting his position on the spot so as to keep his eyes on the moon. Finally, when the moon set, he closed his eyes and became motionless. Filled with fear and awe, the spy ran back to the city.

Within a few days, everyone in the city knew - Vishwakarma got his inspiration from the moon! So they had been right - his songs came from a supernatural source. Soon, hundreds of poets began to spend their nights on terraces, staring at the moon. But no songs came forth for them. Some of them consulted the scholars and priests about this strange practice, but no one had any explanations. Finally, a few young poets decided to ask Vishwakarma himself.

"We have tried to do what you do," they said. "We too have stared at the moon for hours, but the moon does not speak to us."

Vishwakarma laughed heartily.

"Don't stare at the moon," he said. "Follow the moon!"

Puzzled by his reply, they questioned him further about it. But they soon realized that while he was not trying to hide anything from them, he simply had nothing more to say.

Many years passed.

It was a full moon night. A man arrived at the palace gates carrying a message for the King. It was a message from Vishwakarma. He had finished composing his poem - the finest poem. The messenger wanted to deliver the message to the King himself. But the King's attendants did not wish to disturb the King at such a late hour. After all, this message could wait until the next morning.

The next day, early in the morning, the King arrived at Vishwakarma's hut, accompanied by a crowd. Vishwakarma was seated on the rock as usual. His eyes were open and his face turned upwards. As they approached him, they realized that it was too late. He was dead. The King laughed and shook his head. Somehow, he was not surprised.

Thousands of years have passed since then. Somehow, none of Vishwakarma's songs have survived. Even his name has been forgotten by the masses. The hut where he lived has turned to dust. But the hill still exists somewhere, as does the rock upon which he sat. And there are some strange legends about Vishwakarma's hill that are whispered among a few mad poets of this land.

It is said that if one having the soul of a poet visits Vishwakarma's hill even by accident, strange and beautiful songs begin to pour out of him. No one seems to know where the hill is, and yet, it is said that poets with enough madness in their souls are sometimes drawn to it by an invisible force. And when they find it, they know. On full moon nights, one can hear Vishwakarma's final poem - the finest poem. Those who hear it never write again because they realize that there is nothing left to write.

Among the few who know have heard of such things, some choose not to believe. Some believe with all their hearts. Some even claim to know the location of that hill, but they absolutely refuse to reveal it. They have only one thing to say as a clue - "Follow the moon!"

On the boundary

On the sacred boundary
    Of life and death,
The absolute intimacy
    Of my breath,
I find you waiting
    And I fall
Into your embrace
    And dissolve.

Shambho!

Raindrop

Like a drop of rain falling
    Through the wide open sky
I fall through you in silence
    And watch emptiness go by.

I fell in love with you one day
    And even today I fall
Who knows where I shall land or if
    I shall land at all.

Where I might land some day
    It does not seem to matter
A drop is a drop while it falls
    When it lands... it's water!

*****

No, I have not fallen in love with a woman or anything like that! 

A conversation I had a couple of days back led me to the issue of being in trust. It is a remarkably tricky state to achieve. I am certainly not talking about trusting God or trusting fate or anything hocus-pocus like that. Imaginary props like that may bring some solace, but there is nothing wonderful about fooling yourself. I am talking about moving into trust for no reason at all. It is a very peculiar state of being and to touch it even for a moment is truly intoxicating. This is not about mental or emotional gymnastics - it is a completely different state of consciousness.

In a discourse during the consecration of the Linga Bhairavi Temple, Sadhguru talked about moving consciously into a state of trust.

"... I am not talking about belief. I am talking about moving into trust. So, how can I trust? The fact that you are sitting here comfortably (or not!) - that's trust. Because, you know there have been incidents where the Earth has opened up and swallowed people. There have been incidents where pieces of sky have fallen and people have been crushed to death. There have been situations - the very air that you breath has turned against you.... So you are anyway trustful... unconsciously. You are trustful unconsciously, unlovingly. I am talking about being trustful consciously, lovingly. That's devotion... Devotion is not fantasy. Devotion is not a belief system. Devotion is the sweetest way to be in existence."

It is could be very easy for someone to misunderstand what he is saying and think that he is talking about devotion to God. But he is not talking about trusting something you don't know. He is just talking about trusting existence. That does not mean that he is talking about believing that "everything is going to be fine in the future" - that would just self-deception. He is talking about just plain trust - based on nothing, demanding nothing. He is talking about trust that is rooted in the present, it is not concerned about the future. He is talking about falling in love with existence. He is talking about becoming a raindrop.

Falling in love with existence is very different from falling in love with a person. Falling in love with a person involves a lot of emotional nonsense. Falling in love with existence is meditation.

Kshatriya

Shivaji - one of the most remarkable Kshatriyas to walk the Earth.

It is a glorious story that everyone in Maharashtra knows very well. Over 350 years ago, on the slopes of Pratapgadh, the destiny of the Marathas stood on the edge of doom. It was the meeting of Shivaji, the fledgeling king of the Maratha rebels, and the gigantic Afzal Khan, the powerful and ruthless general of Bijapur. It was supposed to be a peaceful meeting, and Afzal Khan invited Shivaji into a friendly embrace. But even as he embraced him, he tightened his grip around the Maratha's neck, choking him, and tried to stab him in the back with a dagger. To his surprise, he encountered the chainmail that Shivaji had worn under his clothes. But he had no time to attack again. Shivaji had already torn open his belly with his own concealed weapon. Afzal Khan's bodyguard, Sayyad Banda rushed to defend his master. But before his sword could reach Shivaji, his arm had been chopped off by a swift blow from Shivaji's own bodyguard, Jiva Mahal. Within just a minute, the siege of Pratapgadh had essentially ended. The young Maratha king, who was to change the destiny of a nation, had survived.

There are thousands of minutes in a day and hundreds of days in a year. And hundreds of years have rolled by since that battle on the slopes of Pratapgadh. And yet, that one minute lives on in memory. Every blow that was struck, dodged or blocked within that one minute has been chronicled. That one minute has been enacted in plays and films and sung about in songs. And we still say "होता जिवा म्हणून वाचला शिवा" ("Shiva survived because Jiva was there"). How did the people who lived that minute experience it? What was Shivaji thinking then? What went through Jiva Mahal's mind as he stopped the blow that could have ended a dream? That has not been chronicled, but we can easily guess the answers to those questions. The answer is - absolutely nothing. If either of them had taken a moment to think at that time, the story would have been entirely different. That one minute was made glorious not because of great thoughts but because of the precise flash of a blade.

Mankind has been unfortunate enough to have gone through far too many wars. And every war has had its heroes - men and women who have done extraordinary things in the face of absolute peril. And yet, as far as I know, most of them have simply said that they were just doing what was necessary at that moment. We think of a hero as being very courageous, as someone who conquers his fear and does something difficult. But the fact is that being courageous in such situations does not involve conquering one's fear. It simply requires being genuinely sensitive to the moment and doing precisely what is required. If one were to take time off to find one's courage, it would just be too late to act.

Absolute peril has that wonderful quality - it can either paralyze a man and destroy him, or it can take him into that rare state when he is aware of nothing but the present moment. For that brief while, it can bestow godliness upon him. It almost makes it worthwhile to seek danger. It is possible that some people are just built that way - to face peril is the only way they can be at their absolute peak. In his book "Krishna - the Man and his Philosophy", Osho describes Arjuna as such a being - a true Kshatriya.

He is a swordsman; in his makeup he has the sharpness and thrust of the sword. He can shine only if he has a sword in his hand. He can find his soul and its fulfillment only in the depths of courage and valor, of battle and war. He cannot be fulfilled in any other manner. That is why Krishna tells him, ”It is better to die upholding one’s true nature than to live a borrowed life, which is nothing less than a horror. You die as a warrior, rather than live as a renegade. Then you will live a dead life. And a living death is better than a dead life.”

For the past few months my circumstances have been such that I have been under a constant peril of some sort. No, it has not been mortal peril, but circumstances have arisen in such ways that certain parts of my life were constantly under a genuine threat. I tried to manage this situation in different ways with limited success. One thing is, I told myself that I needed to accept the situation completely to deal with it in the best possible way. That did work at times, but not too well. Intellectual acceptance of this kind has only a limited effect. But then came those wonderful moments when the situation became genuinely unbearable. Yes, those were the wonderful moments since those were the moments when thought simply had to stop and action flowed. Something wonderful happened - a strange new life, a strange new bliss in the middle of hell. Of course, what I have been going through certainly cannot be compared to mortal peril, but for a brief moment, a little understanding dawned upon me. For a brief moment, I understood what true Kshatriyas might have been like. For a brief moment, I understood why Krishna wanted Arjuna to fight, why Arjuna needed to fight, whether he wanted to or not.

Genuine awareness can dawn upon a person in so many ways. The path of peril is a truly remarkable path for those who are able to walk upon it. People have so many theories about why Krishna allowed the Mahabharata war to happen. I think that one reason might have been that he saw the peril of war as a wonderful opportunity for so many people. It is said that Krishna himself did not strike a blow during the war. But I think that is a lie. Krishna, the man, may not have struck a single blow. But Krishna, as a spiritual possibility, was alive in the edge of every sword and on the tip of every arrow. 

Guru Poornima

Like the moon that shines
   In the heavens above
Flawless is your beauty
   Untainted by my love.

*****

It is Guru Poornima today, and most people would think that it is the day to say something sentimental about one's Guru. But the madman I am so helplessly bound to is not very sentimental, most of the time anyway. So taking a cue from him, I will try to tone things down a little and take a clinical look at this peculiar relationship that people have with the Guru.

I have nothing to say about other spiritual masters whom I have never seen. And to be honest, I don't even wish to say anything about the one that I have seen. The idea of saying something meaningful about him is almost terrifying. And yet, I am going to force myself to say something. I am not sure whether what I say will be coherent. But that does not matter. I think most people who have been genuinely touched by Sadhguru's presence even for a moment are completely confused when it comes to verbalizing the experience. Yes, people break into tears and say a lot of sentimental things. I certainly do not wish to look down upon their expressions of emotion. But I think the confusion that precedes these sentiments is much truer expression of what is going on with them. I think the confusion occurs because we experience something that is intense and is yet somehow independent of our emotions.

The connection that people feel with him is not about being strongly attracted to his personality and it is not even about gratitude. My own life has been through many ups and downs (perhaps far more than normal) since I have come into his sphere of influence and I can honestly say that my sentiments have not always been  flowery. And yet, when I have encountered moments when I was absolutely at the end of my tether, he was there. Though this may sound sentimental, it was certainly not so in reality. When you are absolutely at the end of your tether, you are usually too tired to feel emotion. Hollow emotions cannot hold you up at those times. One needs rocks to stand on, one cannot stand on air. And so when I say that he was there, I mean that when I felt that I had lost everything, I found that I had still not lost him. Or perhaps it may sound more sensible if I were to say that I had not lost what he has given me. At those moments I was too tired too feel gratitude or love or to even draw any sort of solace from his presence, and yet, he was just there. Just like the sky and the earth, whether I acknowledged him or not, he was just there. It is not important whether I was able to use his presence to improve my lot. What is relevant here is that when everything seemed to have broken down, when my emotions were exhausted, I was still not free of him. He was there as a way of being. And by being that way, I survived.

I know that this does not explain anything. It is not supposed to. I just wish to say that what pours out of him, what we receive from him cannot really be measured or understood in terms of the outpourings of emotion that occur around him. He describes himself as a mechanic, as someone who just does what is needed. That may sound like a rather clinical, emotionless way to express what he is. And yet, it is fitting that he should be described in this manner. What happens through him is so rich that it does not need to be embellished with emotion. What it actually is, is still a mystery to me. In the immortal words of another great Guru, Master Oogway, "I don't know."

Master Oogway: "I don't know."

Drunkenness and Creativity

Drunk on half a drop...

People have said a great deal about the connection between meditation and creativity. I have only half a drop of meditation in my life. So perhaps I am not really qualified to speak about this, but I am going to say a few things anyway since that half drop has been enough to get me drunk. And when people get drunk, they start talking recklessly, don't they? Can't be helped. They can't be blamed for it. Blame the one who gets them drunk.

People think that meditation relaxes the mind by silencing it which makes it creative simply because the it starts seeing things that were hidden by the clouds of chaos. While this is essentially correct, it is a little too simplistic, too easy to misinterpret. And the reason for that is that typically, we do not have any idea about the incredible depths of relaxation that are possible. I certainly do not claim to have experienced those depths in their entirety. And what little I have experienced has certainly not been because of my own efforts. I have simply been fortunate enough to have caught that half a drop from the fountain of Silence.

To be able to step out of the well-beaten paths of everyday thought, one has to first stop walking on those paths. Creativity is the ability to create something genuinely new. For something to be genuinely new, it cannot be born out of just a superficial reorganization of what one already has - it must be born out of absolutely nothing. It must emerge from the void, from Silence. Then surely it stands to reason that for the phenomenon of true creation to happen through us, we must first step into Silence.

From my own meagre experience, I would like to say (not that I have any right to say such things, but I am drunk!) that what happens in Silence is far more than the simplistic explanation that I have mentioned above.

Silence has a life of its own, an intelligence of its own.

So then can one employ meditation to become more creative in the arts, sciences and all the other nonsense that we indulge in? I would say - no, that is not how it will work. One cannot enter Silence with a motive. Motives are loud things. One must leave them behind before one can enter Silence. And then one can only wait in the womb of Silence for new things to be born. Sometimes they may be the things that we are looking for, sometimes they may be something entirely different. All we can do is allow them to manifest through us. The Silence lives on its own terms. We can only allow it to live through us. As it is, what it has much more to offer that we can ever ask for. So it is no loss to leave our little demands behind. They will be satisfied in ways we can never think of (we are just not creative enough on our own).

All we can do is be drunk, even if it is on just half a drop! All we can do is offer ourselves to the magnificence of Silence, to its glorious creativity.