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.
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