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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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Autumn – Death And Reincarnation

Yesterday, for the first time this year, I saw leaves falling in large numbers and realized that autumn is here again.

I love autumn in Denver. The colors are just spell-binding. Autumn is amazingly beautiful in Lahore too, where I am originally from!

It also made me think about a few things. Like, for one, how quickly the years are passing now. I am 49 now. Just a few years back, I could never see the whole year passing by like I see it now. Or relate things happening in the current year to those happening in previous years so clearly. I don’t know if its age-related or if its just a new kind of perspective I have picked up.

I am also thinking of how weather can be such a huge teacher of how to look at life. Autumn is the end of one life cycle, one journey. And it also tells us that another life cycle, another journey, is going to begin soon. In a few months, spring will be upon us. New buds will start appearing.

A fresh start! And then all over again!

That’s how probably life is for us, humans, too. I think we pass through these journeys or life cycles again and again. I don’t have first hand knowledge of it. But lets look at a few things that come to me whenever I think about life and death.

For one, if we are all energy and if (as per the law of conservation of energy) energy can neither be created nor destroyed (it only changes from one form to another), then, do we really ‘die’? Or is death just the change of form?

Are we just packets of energy that (upon the so-called death) just return to the source? Like waves returning to the ocean? Like leaves, which create food for the plant and help it breathe, stay healthy and survive, do we play the same part for the human race, i.e., help it survive? And then, like leaves, we wither away and come back again? Like waves going back to the ocean and coming back?

Is it all the same energy coming and going and coming back again? Is this coming back what ancient Hindu wisdom teachers called reincarnation? If yes, then, I understand reincarnation. If reincarnation is the generic coming back of energy, then I believe in it. But if it is said to be the coming back of specific individuals, then I don’t know. I don’t know if one specific leaf, which falls in autumn, will come back as a leaf again. I don’t know if the specific water molecules that formed one wave will come back as another wave in the ocean or not. But I can see that trees do get their leaves back and that the ocean continues to create waves. Similarly, human being are being borne every day.

So, there is energy in the universe which takes up human form in the birth of a child. And then this child grows up and procreates and more energy takes up human form and so on and so forth. That is all I am here to do. Perpetuate this play of life, leela, as ancient Hindus called it. But in this time that I am here in this life, I develop this personality, this ego, which creates its own personal, emotional, professional, spiritual and other aspects of life and its self-importance, all of which drive me crazy. But all this while, the only thing that life wanted from me was to procreate and keep the young ones safe. And once I am done with that, then, I am done. I then just have to wait for autumn to come and take me back, like the falling leaf, like the receding wave in the ocean.

I can feel getting old now. Some dreams and goals fulfilled, creating ‘satisfaction’ or ‘happiness’, some unfulfilled creating ‘sorrow’ or ‘distress’; whereas all this time the only purpose life had for me was to advance life.

Soon, I will be gone. My part in the play is already over. Autumn is here already. I need to see that and not hold on to things. I need to start letting go. The leaf has to go one day, no matter how hard it holds on to the stem. The wave has to return, no matter how much it loves the shore. The more the leaf or the wave hold on to the stem or the shore, the harder it will be. Return is inevitable.

The only purpose of spirituality, if there is any purpose, would be to make us see the inevitability of the return. We have to go back home.

The ideal return is like the return of the leaf and the wave. They return lovingly. The leaf falls effortlessly. The wave returns so gracefully. There is love in the return. If I can just sit and observe for a while how leaves fall, I will see it. Its like the leaf and the tree just kissed each other good-bye. I love seeing it. I can see the love and the grace in the let-go on the part of both the leaf and the tree. Such a loving departure. Maybe that’s why some of us love autumn so much (and some of us find it sad). It is like the tree knows and the leaf knows that going home is part of life and that they will meet again. That’s how ‘death’ has to be for me. If, while I am alive, I can learn to return like leaves do, if I can learn to be ready for autumn, then, that is a life well spent. It is the most natural and highest form of life!

I understand now that that’s what all the Lao Tzus and Lord Krishnas and Buddhas and Jesuses and Mohammads and Rumis and Kabirs were trying to tell us.

(Image by Pexels from Pixabay)

#life #death #autumn #reincarnation #wisdom teachers #spiritual

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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A Code For Authentic Living

THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENT: There is only The One. You and others are all images of The One. And you contain The One. The One lives inside everyone of you. Just as The One is called ‘divine’, so is each one of you divine. And you are not separate from one another. You are all one, like the fingers on your hand or like the waves in an ocean or like the leaves on a tree. Try to experience utter silence and stillness. In utter silence and stillness, when the words and images of this world recede, you might experience something new, something you have never faced before. The eternal oneness which has no images, no boundaries, no noise, no attachments. Once you catch a whiff of the fragrance of this eternal oneness, you are on your way to reclaiming your own eternity. You have found yourself. You have reached home. (This is the most critical part of the Code and I deliberately start with the spiritual element. For me, this is the first and the most important element for a life worth living. You can throw away everything else included here and just keep this part and you’ll end up in the same place. Every other element of the Code is derived from this one.)

LIVING WITH OTHERS: The ‘others’ are you. It is a myth that you are separate from others. Whoever you meet, you meet yourself. And all of your relationships are with yourself. Help these others without getting attached. Advise them if they need advice and if you are experienced enough to advise. Do not judge them. Do not fear them. Do not compare your life with theirs. In your interactions with others, try to rise above the everyday rules of behaviour that you have been using all your life and just remember the eternal oneness. With practice, patience and perseverance, this remembrance will bring a new kind of relationship and a new kind of love. Judgment and comparison will give way to understanding and compassion. This will happen on its own, without any struggle. A new love will arise, which you will not understand in the beginning. This love will be without any attachments, it will be towards everyone you come across and it will be without any give and take. Once you can see yourself loving everyone without exception and without any attachment at all and loving everyone without needing anything at all, then, for the first time in your life, you have experienced real love as opposed to the commercial love that we all practice which is based on a very well-defined give and take.

KEEPING THE BIGGER PICTURE IN MIND: This life is like a short trip and you are already on your way back from the trip, like a wave rising in an ocean and then going back to the ocean. You will rise again as a wave in another life. Observe and understand this process and live accordingly. From the moment we are born, we are all on our way out. But we forget and we indulge in the ego-based life, which leads to temporary and meaningless pursuits.

MONEY AND MATERIAL GOALS: Practice minimal living – all needs, goals and attachments are like chains. Observe these chains in your own life and know that you have the option to free yourself. The body lives in a world based on money. Money is needed when you are born and, unless you have broken free of the world of money, it will be needed when you die and at all times in between. And human desire is a bottom-less pit. It will never be fulfilled. If you are moneyless or jobless, you desire a nice well-paying job. If you earn in thousands, you want to become a millionaire. If you’re a millionaire, you dream of becoming a billionaire. And so on and so forth. Keep that in mind and watch your desires. Just observing yourself and your changing desires will bring about a change. Slowly, step-by-step, you will become less desiring and more content. Master the art of budgeting and living frugally. And you will notice your stress and anxiety levels going down. The less stress and anxiety you have, the more meditative you are. If you plan to leave the world of money, then plan the departure accordingly. Do not leave unfulfilled any prior obligations. The great Buddha, when he realized the absurdity of everyday life, ran away from the royal palace to seek more understanding and an alternate way of life, leaving his parents (the King and the Queen) and his wife and kid behind. As per some traditions, after he became enlightened, he came back to apologize and tell his family what happened to him. His family eventually understood and forgave him and became his devotees, but the point here is that may be he could have done things differently instead of running away from his responsibilities. Yes, there is always the possibility ofanalysis paralysis i.e., not taking any action to fulfil your great purpose in life, but that can be avoided too. In any case, the world of money, possessions and attachments cannot be combined with the world of God, meditation and silence. Anyone who chooses the path of God will have to start letting go of all material possessions, tangible or intangible.

LIVING TRUTHFULLY: This means, firstly, speaking the factual truth and not telling lies or making things up. Lies and deception come from a twisted, contorted mind. They make life twisted and contorted too. And they hurt you more than they hurt others. Secondly, it means living a life based on the lessons you have already learnt in life. Ignoring the lessons you have learnt in life will make your life conflicted and unintelligent. So, have the courage to grab this moment and live your life as truthfully as possible. If you keep postponing a truthful life to the future then this postponement will become a habit. If you start living a truthful life, then such truthful living will become a habit. In the end so much of what we are and become depends on our habits. Start cutting all the BS that you practice in your relationships and your professional and social lives. And live today the life that you want to live. Don’t postpone it to future.

FOCUS: Live your life like a well-sharpened pencil and don’t spread yourself thin. Focus on doing what you really need to do or what you feel you are most passionate about. Find and focus on doing what you would do even if you are not paid to do it. That would be the thing that is really worth doing. It is like being with a woman or a man that you fall madly in love with, as compared to being with someone that you maybe like a little bit, or not even that. That is the kind of profession you need. Something that you fall in love with. Not something that you do 9 to 5, five days a week, and dream of getting off work and enjoying the weekend. No, once you find the right profession, then your whole week is a weekend. There is no difference between the week days and the weekend. You enjoy through the whole week. Work becomes play. Once you have found it, focus on it. Realize and cut out all the crap that you fill your day with just because you don’t have anything better to do. Find that something that will consume you like a raging fire. That is the one thing you should be doing. It is better to do that one thing very well than to do many things not so well.

HEALTHY BODY: Take care of your body. Exercise a little every day and eat light and purposefully. Avoid things to subdue or excite the brain. Just let the body, including the brain, be. Let them work at their own pace and with their own intelligence. And, while you take care of the body, don’t get too attached to it. One day it is going to wither away and you will depart on the next leg of your journey. Like everything else in this life, treat the body as something leased to you for a while. One day, the lease is going to expire and you will have to return it. Till then, enjoy it, take care of it and use it to achieve whatever purpose you find in life.

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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The Voice In The Wilderness

John, Jesus and Ramana: Who Am I

Lets take a look at three great teachers, two from Palestine of 2000 yrs ago and one from 20th century Tamil Nadu, India, teaching the same thing, in different words. They searched, and found, who the self / the ‘I’ is that is controlling everyone’s life. And they tried, each in his own way, to share it with us.

The ‘John’ we are talking about here is John the baptist from the Bible and non-Biblical scriptures. John lived in the desert, wore camel skin, ate locusts and honey, baptised people and became a great light in his time. He is said to have been a member of the Essene sect, to which Jesus might also have belonged. They, both, may have been trained by that sect for their separate ministries. Jesus was apparently later than John and was his student. John baptised Jesus and helped him start his ministry. John was killed by King Herod Antipas for criticising the King’s personal affairs. He is mentioned in the Quran too and is also a prophet for Muslims.

There’s not too much attributed to him anywhere; I would have loved to hear more of what he said, if, indeed, he did exist. He seems to have been a fascinating man. In this post, we’ll look at one sentence attributed to him in the Bible (New Testament) that I would like to mention here which has so much depth, clarity and method in it that its mind-boggling. There are very few people who have said so much in one sentence. The Book of Mark (Chapter 1: 1-3) in the Bible says this about him, “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'”

Seems like a simple sentence, but lets try to go deeper into it. The sentence has two parts, both referring to the same thing. The first part is: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord”. What does that mean for me / the disciple / the seeker, whom John is advising?

First, there is an implication, an assumption on John’s part, that I, the seeker, am interested in seeking the Lord.

Second, he thinks that there is a distance, a separation between the seeker and the Lord. That is why he says, “Prepare the way for the Lord”, which means that the Lord is somewhere else or the seeker is somewhere else.

Third, there is also the implication that the Lord is coming, whether we like it or not. That was the nature of the Palestinian apocalyptic messianic Christianity (as Prof. Robert Eisenman calls it), as opposed to the present day Christianity. For John, the apocalypse was at hand. We needed to take urgent action. We can see the traces of that apocalyptic message in Jesus’ words too. However, today, the Church is much more relaxed, laid back.

The message today (coming from the Pauline doctrines) is that we are sinners. Jesus appointed Peter as the head of the Church and the Pope is Peter’s religious descendent. The Pope and the Church will save us if we tithe regularly. So, just sit back and relax, give us your money and we (the Church / the Pastor) will do the rest. That is the basic cause of lack of spirituality today. There is a middle man between God and us, who is promising to take care of things that he cannot. But we believe them.

Jesus and John were not undertaking such commercial transactions, i.e., taking money and promising to act on our behalf. They were encouraging us to take action. In fact, they were encouraging us to take revolutionary action. They didn’t want our money. They wanted inner / spiritual action.

If we want to improve our spiritual lives, if we want to get back on our feet, if we really want to connect with the divine, the eternal, the universal, then the middle man, the Pope, the Bishop, the Padre, the Pastor, the Maulwi, the Pundit and the Pujari, will need to be fired. The Church will have to be abolished (it has very limited utility in any case). We will need to throw away this crutch and use only our own two legs. That is the only way to reach the divine. Alone and naked, without any and all crutches, excuses or possessions. Alone and naked is how we came into this world from the divine and alone and naked is how we will return physically and alone and naked is also how we need to return spiritually.

Fourth, John thinks that the distance, the separation between God and us can be removed and we can meet God. There can be a meeting of the seeker and the divine. (Jesus used to pray for “complete unity” of the Father, the Son and the people, see the Book of John, Chapter 17, in the Bible)

Fifth, John is telling the seeker that (i) although the Lord is coming, yet, as things are right now, the Lord cannot reach the seeker, but that (ii) the seeker can do something about it, the seeker can prepare the way.

The second part of the sentence says, “make straight paths for him”. John seems to be saying that the path is not straight right now and we will have to make it straight for the Lord to come to us. What could that mean?

In my view, John is referring to the ego. The “I” is the ego. It is made up of images and attachments. I am how I see myself, the images I have about myself from childhood to the present. All the experiences and memories, all the thoughts, desires, all the things I wish to achieve, things that I want to avoid, all the plans, strategies, aims, goals. All that is ‘me’. My attachment to my name, to my family, my house, my city, country, religion, race. These are things I am bound to. Even if I want to, I cannot break away from these. These attachments are like chains that bind me and keep me away from uniting with my eternal / universal self. These are the things that are standing in the way of the Lord. These are what would keep him from reaching us.

In today’s language, John is telling us that our ego keeps us bound to the smaller / physical / temporal self and keeps us from attaining our universal / eternal self.

John is saying, give up the ego, give up everything that constitutes the ‘I’. Throw away these things, clear the way and give the Lord a straight path to yourself. Once you have given up everything, once all the chains are gone, once the path is clear and nothing stands between you and God, then the meeting between you and God becomes possible.

To be more precise, once the the ego is gone, the meeting happens. The “complete unity”, that Jesus was calling for, has come about. The seeker / the “I” is gone and God is gone. The two do not exist any more. The seeker exists as long as God exists and God exists as long as the seeker exists. Krishnamurti used to say, the seeker is the sought. Both, the seeker and God, were images created by the mind, by human thought, which is the ego. The ego creates separate / divided images. When the ego / thought ceases to exist, the images cease to exist. The seeker and God merge into oneness, into complete unity.

In the words of Rumi, the lover meets the beloved and the two become one.

That is the message of John, as I understand it.

Now, lets take a look at Jesus and his teachings about the self, the “I”.

Most of the key sayings of Jesus in the Bible come from the first four books of the New Testament, i.e., Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (these four books in the New Testament are called the Gospels). Some historians consider these four books to be literature and mythology rather than history. Others, along with millions of modern day Christians, believe the Bible to be history. I consider these as treasure troves, full of the amazing wisdom of this s-called Jesus.

The mythologist, Joseph Campbell, used to say that myth is the collective dream of a people.

I am not a historian and, hence, not qualified to opine on the historicity of the Bible. This post will not go into the controversies of whether the Bible is historical or whether it is partly historical and partly literature woven around ancient Jewish mysticism or whether it is an exercise in Greco-Roman mind control / propagandist literature aimed at pacifying a particular nation into subordination. No, lets steer clear of these debates and lets just look at this fascinating, mysterious and mystical character of Jesus and the many words of wisdom attributed to him in the particular context of this post.

Firstly, as we have already seen above in this post, Jesus believed in “complete unity” and oneness of the universe. He said, “I am He who exists from the Undivided” (Thomas 61, which is not part of the Bible).

He believed that no one could experience the divine unless they were “born again”. This concept of ‘born again’ has been quite misunderstood and misused by the present day Church. Jesus was talking about a revolutionary change, an inner change, whereby you, as you know yourself, cease to exist. The ‘I’ ceases to exist. The ego ceases to exist. And a new life begins, a life which does not end in death. You become one with the eternal / immortal / universal self. Better to say, you realize your eternal / immortal / universal self. You were already that, but you have forgotten. And when you realize it, that’s the second birth Jesus was talking about.

Today, the Church preaches that if you come to the Church and just get baptised, you are “born again”. This is a misunderstood “born again” being sold by the Church. People fall for it because it is exciting to take a dip with the pastor in the Church pool in front of everyone else. It does put money into the Church’s coffers and gives people a fake satisfaction, so that they can stay in their comfort zones and continue with their fake, laid-back spiritual lives as before. Another typical Church ritual designed to undermine the revolutionary zeal of the real teachings of Jesus and promoting status quo.

Now, going back to the radical re-birth that Jesus was talking about, he said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.” (Thomas 70)

Also in Thomas 22, he talked about the importance of unifying the inside, “When you make the two one and you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below and when you make the male and the female one and the same so that the male not be male nor the female female— then you will enter the Kingdom”

In a future post, I would like to go in detail into the present day studies on the concept of multiple personalities inside everyone of us. For now, lets just consider what Jesus is saying. He is talking about the ego, which is a collage of images we have in our brains. We have been collecting these images since childhood. Images about our sex, our relationships, our ambitions and desires, our goals, our family, our society, our city, our country, our friends and every other attachment that we have. All these images create models that define “I” and “You” and “They” and the society around us. Jesus is saying that all those models and images need to go. The ego needs to go. When the ego is gone and all the models and the images are gone, we become one inside.

In Matthew 16, Jesus says something which again goes to the heart of his teachings, i.e., “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, pick up their cross and follow me.”

Here Jesus gives a 3-step formula for discipleship:

(i) Deny Yourself: which means deny who you are; deny the “I”, the ego, basically meaning everything you are, all images about yourself, all thoughts, all attachments, whatever your mind tells you about yourself. Deny your name, deny your physical self, deny your family, deny your property, deny your relationships, give up all tangible and intangible possessions. Peel away your ‘self’, like peeling an onion, layer by layer. In the end, when you have peeled away the last layer, what is left? Nothing. And actually we cannot even call it “Nothing”. It is not describable. It has no name, no quality, no form, no face, no appearance. Words become useless when we come face to face with it. There is no way to say anything about it.

Osho, the great modern day Indian mystic and one of my most beloved teachers and the one I have probably learnt the most from, used to say, spirituality is not about finding God, it is about losing yourself. He was saying the same thing. The ego / the “I” is a cloak we put on our divine / eternal / universal self, our God-self, our Godliness.

Spirituality, enlightenment or nirvana is about realizing the existence of that cloak and removing it. It is about letting go of the ego, denying that cloak, the temporary self. Once we let go of that temporary self, once we remove it, then God, the undivided wholeness, the Atman, The All, which is our true nature, our real face, is revealed.

(ii) Pick Up Your Cross: Jesus is telling us that if we have taken the first step, i.e., we have started denying / letting go of ourself, then we should be ready to die. Because that is what is going to happen. We have started moving towards death. Life, as we know it, is about to end. We are headed towards annihilation. The “I” will cease to be. It is not a physical death. It is the death of the ego, the personality, the mind as you have known it. Jesus’ own life, as I have written in another post, is a parable for the seeker’s spiritual life. The cross is symbolic of death, of ending. However, it leads to the next step, which is resurrection. This death is not an ordinary death. It is a death which opens the door to an everlasting life. To a deathless existence. To immortality. That is the ‘Holy Grail’, if there was any. We are talking about the ultimate alchemy. Your lower / smaller / temporary self is turned into the higher / universal / eternal self. So, be prepared.

(iii) Follow me: Jesus is inviting us on a journey. The journey of the seeker / the disciple. Jesus’ life in the Bible is symbolic. He gave up everything he’s telling us to give up. His name, his family, his house, his parents’ faith, the usual comforts of life, everything. And, in the end, he gave up his life. That is the seeker’s way. A total let-go.

In Thomas 37, his disciples ask him, “When will you be revealed to us and when will we see you?” And Jesus replies, “When you disrobe without being ashamed and when you take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then you will see the Son of the Living One and you will not be afraid.”

The ego is the robe / the cloak that we wear all the time. Jesus is telling us to take off that robe and be utterly naked and, if, like children, we are not ashamed to be naked, i.e., without the ego, then we will have attained the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, nirvana, enlightenment, moksha, call it whatever.

There are many, many other verses (all of them very interesting and eye-opening) which contain Jesus’ words on the same topic, but just to keep this post manageable, we will look at them in another post.

Now, lets go to India in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Popularly known as Bhagwan Ramana Maharishi, Venkataraman Iyer was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, India in 1879 and died in 1950.

At the age of 16, after some strange experiences and thoughts of death, he started asking himself, “Who am I?” and also started inquiring into the nature of death. He realized that a current / force seemed to be running through the body. He also came to the realization that this current / body remained once the body died. He became a life-long monk.

His views on the “I” are most clearly contained in a famous series of questions and answers titled, “Who Am I?”. The questions were asked by a visitor and Ramana answered them

The gist of his views is as follows:

Firstly: In answer to the first question, “Who am I?” Ramana says, “I” am not the body, “I” am not the five senses, “I” am not the sense organs and “I” am not the mind and neither the thoughts, meaning “I” am not the ego either, because ego is all thought. All this I am not.

He is talking about the real “I”, the divine / eternal / universal self. And he is doing exactly what Jesus sought to do. Peel away the layers of the visible / temporal / temporary “I”, keep peeling away and soon you will arrive at the real “I”. Jesus said, “Deny yourself”. This is exactly what Ramana is doing.

Secondly: what am I then, if I am not any of the above? Ramana says, I am pure awareness. When asked what is awareness, he says, awareness is existence-consciousness-bliss. I think Ramana is saying that the “I” is consciousness, which is the only thing that exists and when one realizes this, the ego disappears and there is only a blissful existence of the consciousness.

Thirdly: Ramana says that while awareness is the only reality, the world that we see is an illusion. As long as we are in the illusion, the reality is not. When the illusion is not, the reality is. Ramana is saying exactly what Jesus was saying, i.e., that the world of images and attachments keeps us from our eternal / universal self. Jesus said, it is only the solitary who will enter the bridal chamber. When everything merges into one whole, with no divisions, no images, no attachments, no “I” and “You” and “They”, then there is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Fourthly: Ramana said the only way to come upon awareness is to hold steadfast to the question, “Who am I?”. Whenever a thought arises in the mind, ask yourself, “To whom has the thought arisen?” Ramana’s tools are incessant questioning and untiring examination. Keep peeling away. Keep digging deeper and deeper. And one day you will arrive at the real self. You will see your real face.

I would suggest those who are interested in this incredible man to go to the website sriramanamaharishi.org and check out all the material that is freely available including the booklet ‘Who Am I’, which can be downloaded and printed, if needed.

The wikipedia entry on Ramana is amazing too. And Amazon has other books available.

This post is a combination of three earlier posts that I did. There is loads and loads of material to read about John, Jesus and Ramana, three of my favourite teachers. In this post, I only intended to present enough to spark an interest in readers who can then, if interested, launch their own inquiry into the subject and read the available words of these wonderful men, who sought to bring us something from the beyond. Indeed, they were from the beyond. That is the one characteristic of men and women like these, they are in this world only to bring to us something from the other world.

In the end, words are just words, just the tip of the iceberg. The only path for you will be your own path, not the path of John, Jesus or Ramana. They walked their own paths. You have to walk yours! And remember, the path leads to a certain death. If you start walking and you stay on the path, the illusory “you” is going to die… and the real “you” is going to live forever, as if you drank from the fountain of everlasting life!

Learn to hear that voice coming from the wilderness inside you. Yes, there is this wilderness inside and it calls to each one of us. But there is so much noise outside that we don’t hear that voice. Or even when we do hear it, we choose to ignore it because of all the attractions, all the problems, all the issues outside.

We have too much on our plate. If we want, we can train the ‘I’, the ego, to step aside and let eternal / the universal take over. But we will not do that. All our life we have been trained to let the ego run the show.

David Hume, the British philosopher, said about life, “this damned existence from which we dare not tear ourselves apart”.

We love this life of the ego much to let go of it.

But one day, may be we will start listening to that voice in the wilderness and start learning how to remove all obstacles and make a straight path for the eternal, the universal to reach us…

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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The Voice In The Wilderness

John, Jesus and Ramana: Who Am I

The ‘John’ we are talking about here is John…

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#attachments #ego #god #Jesus #John the Baptist #mystics #oneness #ramana #spiritual

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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Love Hate Relationships And The Art Of Conversing Spiritually

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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The Art Of Conversing Spiritually

Most of us love meeting people, talking to them, exchanging ideas, etc. And, psychologically, all of us desperately need to connect. Otherwise, we become sad and depressed. There is this deep hunger to connect. And I believe it is a spiritual need. Just like searching for God or nirvana or moksha or the Creator, call it whatever, or like searching for our own source, identity or purpose, the…

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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True Love And Marriage

Marriage, as it is practiced today, is another institution that has become quite redundant and decadent and we, as a race, need to take a very close look at its efficacy and what to do with it. Spiritually, I see it as having become another one of those poisonous gifts of the ego-based lives and societies that we have created. (See my earlier post titled, ‘Family: A Poisonous Gift From The Ego’ in the same vein.)

In this post, lets try to take a quick look at the history of marriage, how it has evolved over time, why it is spiritually more damaging than beneficial to us and whether we can move on to better ways of mating, raising children, finding peace, security and fulfilment in life and, most importantly, ensuring the continuity of the human race.

There was a time when man used to live in caves and was a hunter gatherer. This before we started agriculture and started living in settled communities. Anthropologists have found evidence from 40,000 – 30,000 years ago that we had discovered the disadvantages of in-breeding and had started developing relations with other tribes to get mates for child-bearing.

Between 30,000 years and 5,000 years back, we started growing our own food, i.e., discovery of agriculture. Just as in hunter-gatherer societies, in agricultural societies also, there developed a division of labour between the two sexes. Men would plough big fields and women would stay closer to the house and gather fruits and nuts and other edible plants and look after children and do other domestic chores.

With agriculture came surplus food. For the first time in human society, we had more food than we needed and we began storing food and exchanging it and trading it. And also for the first time we began to have extra time on our hands. We could now turn our attention to culture, education and civilization and other businesses.

Another development was ownership of the land and ownership of this surplus food. Also, agriculture needed more people. It was not as it used to be in the hunting days that two or three people could team up to hunt down an animal for food. Now you needed bigger groups with lots of males to work hard to plough the fields. And then for planting and harvesting, both males and females would be needed.

All this eventually led to a need to ensure reproduction of labour (marriage – own the women) and to ensure that one’s kids were one’s own (to keep the ownership of property in the family).

The beginning of agriculture and surplus food was a trigger not only for culture, education and so-called civilization, it was also the point in human history when human personality and ego started developing. We started becoming greedy, acquisitive and possessive. Now, it was not just a matter of staying alive. Now we had to become bigger and better and stronger and richer and more powerful and we needed to control everything around us. The ‘I’ / the ego had started its perilous journey. The well had been poisoned, so to speak. Man would never be the same again. The journey away from a more simpler human nature had begun.

Taking a parallel from the Bible, Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of knowledge. They had become wiser and discovered their nakedness. Was it bound to happen to Adam and Eve? Maybe, yes.

Was it bound to happen to us? Maybe, yes!

Anyways, back to marriage… it became a tool for ownership of women (as means of reproduction and slaves for doing domestic labour) and children (as free future agricultural labour). It became a tool to satisfy our greed and advance our control on bigger and bigger tracts of land.

Now, fast forward to today. Around 70 – 80% of people of the age of marriage are married in Asia and the Middle East. The numbers are lower in Russia, North America and Europe (mid-50s to mid-60s). Conversely, the divorce rates are much higher in the latter parts of the world and lower in the former.

In the US, as per 2017 records, marriage rate was 6.9 per 1,000 people and divorce rate was 2.9 per 1,000 (45 states and DC reporting, as per CDC / National Center For Health Statistics). So, almost half of all marriages are ending in divorce.

Keeping aside the stats and the scholarship on marriage, lets zoom into the more important aspects, i.e., the spiritual aspect!

Lets start with the question, what is marriage?

From a more common perspective, marriage is considered the culmination of a process whereby two people fall in so-called ‘love’ and if and when they fall so much in love with one another that they want to live together, then one of them proposes and the other accepts and they end up signing a piece of paper (in the presence of attending witnesses) declaring them to be spouses.

Whats wrong with this? Nothing, if thats what makes people happy, then so be it. Here are my views about this:

Firstly, there is no one but you. The ‘other’ is a myth and a false perception created by the ego. It is a trap set up by the ego and you fall into it. The ego knows only one thing: how to grow and acquire power and possessions. The ego is blind to the innate oneness of everything and everyone. It sees things and people as separate individuals and things. And it tries to acquire and own everything and everyone. That is the ultimate ruthless game played by the ego. So the concept of loving someone is misconceived from the beginning.

Secondly, any love that is directed towards one or more specific persons is fake love and not real at all. It is nothing but a business tool designed to undertake a commercial transaction. It is probably well-suited to achieve a give-n-take relationship. Mother nature wants us to mate and reproduce. It is a genetic requirement and we are designed to fulfil it. The fake love helps us to fulfil that. But beyond that, it will not result in any kind of truly fulfilling relationship.

The only real love is when you love without distinction and without needing anything from anyone. As long as there are needs and expectations, you are only doing a business. Hence, if a marriage is based on such a love, then its foundations are weak, to begin with.

Thirdly, marriage itself is a legal relationship. Law is an artificial setup. It is not a natural phenomenon. When we try to use law to deal with love or to control love, it is like a bull in a china shop. The bull will smash and break everything. And thats what happens to love in a marriage. It is another example of the continued utter stupidity of mankind over the millennia. It is like trying to control the fragrance of a flower through a contract. Can you control it? No, the fragrance will flow as per nature. You cannot stop it, you cannot control it. Similarly for love, you cannot stop it, you cannot control it, you cannot make it subservient to laws and contracts. It will flow as per its own nature. You cannot put it in a cage and you cannot shackle it. You cannot restrict its movement and you cannot own it. The moment you try to do that, it will die. It is like people who love flowers and try to conserve them in books. After sometime, all thats left is a dead reminder of something that was once living and fragrant and so beautiful. Most marriages are like those dead flowers conserved in books. I feel sad looking at such dead flowers.

Finally, the only positive thing marriage and love can do is to act as doorways to something eternally more beautiful… true love. What is true love? It is the rarest of flowers which blooms in the soil of total oneness and total let go. As long as you hold on to things and people and try to control and possess, you cannot love. You can possess and own only. You are a collector and user. You are not a lover. As long as there is attachment and fear of losing something or someone, there is no love!

Love begins where fear and attachment and separation end. Marriage is the highest form of fear and of attachment to people. As long as marriage is, love cannot be. There can be business and exchange of services, but there cannot be love. Marriage and love are mutually exclusive. And thats the problem with marriage. If you can understand this and keep your expectations from marriage reasonable, then it can probably work. But when you start thinking that you love someone and thats why you two should get married, you have set yourself up for failure somewhere down the line.

Having said that, love (even fake love, if taken to another level) and marriage have this amazing potential to turn into something from the beyond. And the indication of that is when you stop loving any one or more specific individuals and start loving everything and everyone around you. Yes, marriage does have that amazing potential. But in most cases, that potential remains unfulfilled. It is like going to church, which has the potential of setting you up for a great spiritual journey. But most people think that going to church is an end in itself. They end up going to church all their lives and never understanding an iota of their own faith or, for that matter, any other faith. They fail to understand that the church was a tool, a bridge to be crossed, on a long and beautiful journey. No, they stop on the bridge and then they stay there all their life. The same thing happens with marriage. It is a step on the journey of love. It can be a bridge, but not the destination. It has to be used as an opportunity to understand love and to move towards a much greater and all-encompassing and universal love.

Going back to true love, it is a magic that happens when fear and attachment and separation give way to a blissful togetherness which does not try to bind or possess or control and which sees no boundaries between ‘I’ and ‘you’ and ‘others’. There is no give and take involved and there is no reason to love someone. There is no reason to do something for someone. There is no ‘family’ and everyone is family.

In true love, there is no ring on the finger and no contract signed in the presence of witnesses. There is no cage, there is no prison and there are no chains.

In true love, we are not like dead flowers conserved in books, we are like living, fragrant flowers. We are like strangers who meet on the path, hold hands for a while, embrace and then depart lovingly, letting each other go wherever our paths are taking us, all the time realizing that we are actually one, there is no ‘we’, there is only me. Only me!

(Image by Nicola Giordano from Pixabay)

#love #true love #spiritual #oneness #meditation #god #mysticism

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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End The War Within: Balance The Pole

Yes, there is a civil war raging inside all of us, including those who look very happy or materially and financially very well-off or very spiritual. In fact, especially those falling in these three categories, they have a terrible war going on inside. All of us fall prey to this war. No one, except the very few who can be counted on one’s fingers (whom I call the great wisdom teachers), has been…

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#balance #oneness #opposites #polarities #spiritual #yin and yang

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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Kill The Buddha

I was in the metro (underground train) once in Milan, Italy. And I was in the first car, standing with my face towards the last car. As the metro was going through the streets towards downtown Milan, suddenly, for a second, all the cars lined up straight and I saw the people sitting and standing in the last car, which was probably the 7th or 8th car from me. I am sure it has happened to many people at many times, but it was the first and probably the last time for me. That's why it was so interesting. I said to myself, "Wow... tunnel vision".

At another level, I think that that is what happens to people branded as geniuses. Through hard work, perseverance and a bit of luck (in different proportions for different people), all the dots in their particular discipline suddenly line up for them and they see something maybe no one has seen before. They make sense of things which could have been non-sensical before.

I think Gautam Buddh, if he existed, was one such genius. He was able to connect the most critical dots about the human psychological and spiritual condition thousands of years before others did. He especially came to understand the effects of attachment like very very few others have before and after him. His words astonish and enlighten us to this day.

His basic saying on attachment is: "Attachment is the source of all suffering."

Another one is, "You only lose what you cling to."

There are many others.

Twenty five hundred years or so after his death, we still don't get it. We still continue to be attached to innumerable things, people, ideas, concepts, thoughts, desires, goals, images, etc.

Gautum inspired thousands of others to start exploring themselves. When Buddhism reached China, one of these inspired ones was Zen Master Linji, who gave one of the most shocking yet illuminating pieces of advice to the disciples, also about attachment, i.e., spiritual attachment in this case. It goes like this:

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him immediately.

What? Kill the Buddha? Isn't he like the originator of the Buddhist tradition? How can a seeker / a disciple kill the Buddha?

Lets break up the sentence and go deeper into it.

The sentences has two parts:

- "If you meet the Buddha on the road"

Lets remember that Linji is advising the disciple. Not all disciples are going to have the same path or the same experiences on the path. Hence he used the word, "if".

What is the experience Linji is talking about? "Meet the Buddha". It can have many meanings. One meaning is that when you are on the path, you have to leave all images behind. 'Buddha' is also an image. (And I am not talking about the statues of Buddha, which Gautum Buddh would be shocked and disappointed to find, since he was so much against statues and worship.) When we read about Buddhism or we listen to Buddhist sermons or we see Buddhist quotes or we see the statues, we develop an image in our minds as something good or bad or useless or something to be pursued or something to be converted to. We develop goals, i.e., to be a 'buddhist', to attain enlightenment, etc.

Another meaning could be that, when you are on the path you might come to a point when you start feeling that you are progressing towards enlightenment and that you are becoming a buddha yourself. Again, that is an image you hold in your mind. And Linji is warning that if you start thinking in terms of what you are 'achieving' or 'gaining' on the path, then you have actually left the path. You have lost your way. Thus, he says, if you see the buddha on the road, kill him immediately.

The moment we have developed goals and images and the moment we start thinking of ourselves as 'special' or as a 'buddhist' or as coming close to enlightenment, we are finished. We are no longer going in the right direction. Then the real teachings of Buddha will remain out of our reach and we will be stuck to those goals and images and thoughts.

The moment we we start getting attached to or holding on to a 'scripture' or a 'book of God' or when we start worshipping a prophet or 'son of God' or 'the mother of the son of God' or the Buddha or a 'guru' or 'tirthankara', the spirituality in us dies.

The difference between a living spirituality and a dead spirituality is the difference between a beautiful living flower on a stem and a dead flower someone has saved in a book. If you like to save dead flowers in books, of course there's nothing 'wrong' with it. Its just that it will not have the fragrance and the colors of a living flower. But if you don't want the fragrance or the colors, then it's not a big deal.

Buddha and Linji were talking to people who like living flowers on stem rather than dead flowers. They wanted us to stay alive, not become spiritually dead.

So, as we saw above, the words, "meet the Buddha" can have different meanings. It could mean having images or thoughts of the Buddha in your mind. Or, it could also mean having images about your own buddhahood. Yes, you are a buddha. Its just that you have forgotten that you're a buddha. And you have started thinking of yourself as a much smaller 'I', i.e., the ego

And what is a buddha? Someone who is unattached, silent, observant and unshakeably present in the herenow.

What is the road?

There is only one road, one path. On this path, one direction goes towards the inside, towards God. It is the direction of silence, stillness, quiet observation, simple and content living, a blissfulness without any goals. A world without time. Time is a utility which can be put aside and one can be timeless, without the attachment to the past or the future. Just being in the present. The forever flowing stillness of now. The pendulum stops. The polarities disappear. If someone throws a stone in the lake, it disappears in the lake without creating any ripples. No ripples at all. Someone hits me, I don't respond. Someone abuses me, I don't respond. Someone praises me or says they love me, I don't respond. Someone takes away all of my possessions, I don't respond. There is no response to the 'good' and no response to the 'bad'. There is just silence, stillness and observation. Images are flashing on the inner screen and passing away, then more images and more. And none of the images elicits a response.

The other direction is towards the outside, towards money, towards material possessions, images, goals, desires, discontentment, mental stress, anxiety and fear. 'Time is of the essence'. Goals need to be met. Net worth needs to keep growing. Images need to be maintained. The 'circle of control' needs to be expanded all the time and power needs to be exercised over as many people as possible. The past defines the present and the present must lead to a certain well thought out future. Everything must conform to our own plans. Otherwise, there is discontentment. Stillness is death. Silence is weakness. This direction also includes religious or spiritual goals, dreams and aspirations. Trying to be a good person to win the ticket to heaven, where there are all kinds of pleasures and comforts.

There is a beautiful Native Indian Cherokee story, in which a father teaches his son about good and evil through a parable involving two wolves. He tells his son that there is a terrible fight going on inside him between two wolves. One is good and the other is evil. The evil wolf has anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The good wolf has joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, kindness and compassion. This fight, he told the young boy, is going on inside every one, including the little boy.

The boy is listening attentively. He asks, "Which wolf is going to win?"

The father says, "The one you are going to feed."

(see firstpeople.us/CherokeeLegends/TwoWolves)

It is is a beautiful parable. The two wolves are the two directions on the path we are talking about. You can choose which wolf to feed, which direction to start walking in.

Attachment, including attachment to spiritual or religious goals and aspirations, lies on the path of the ego.

Again, there is absolutely nothing 'wrong' with the path of attachment and ego. If that is what you need right now, then that is what you will get.

Whether you know it or not, consciously or sub-consciously, there is one thing you are seeking in life (see my other Post titled, 'The Big Fish'). That is the thing you will give anything to get. That is what you are after. It could be money or power or prestige or spiritual status or any other thing. That one thing, the 'Big Fish' in your life, determines which wolf you are going to feed, which side of the path you are going to choose.

Next, what does it mean to kill the Buddha?

It means, be silent, watchful and still. When the seeker is on the path, he / she has to stay silent,watchful and still.

Linji is warning that on the path, the seeker has to be absolutely naked. There must not be any attachments or images when you start the journey and also during the journey. There will, of course, be moments when the seeker is weak or discouraged or harbouring doubts and tries to get encouragement from the image of the Buddha or the goal of attaining nirvana. And there will be moments when, for example, the seeker has mastered the art of meditation or has attained an insight into some sutra or saying of the Buddha or has achieved something else which he considers as a substantial step on the journey and is ecstatic over it. Linji is saying that all these will pull the seeker back on the path.

If we see the teachings of the great wisdom teachers in parallel, we will find many consistencies / similarities. Why? Because their paths were identical and their destination was the same. Jesus, in one of his parables, has also warned that the seeker can be set back on the path if he is not watchful. This is the parable of the woman with the jar full of wheat grains (Thomas 97). It goes like this: There was a woman who was carrying a jar of wheat grains. As she was walking along, the handle of the jar broke and the grains started dropping out. The woman, not being very mindful and perhaps busy with her thoughts, did not realize what had happened. By the time she reached home and looked inside the jar, it was empty. All the grain was gone.

This is probably what Linji is warning about. We have to be watchful on the path. Otherwise, we will lose whatever understanding we have gained, whatever progress we have made. If there are any images arising in our minds, these need to be discarded. The mind has to be like a mirror. Any dust on the mirror has to be removed, otherwise we will not be able to see ourselves in the mirror. Whatever thoughts, ideas, images, experiences arise, we observe them and let them go. There is no holding on to anything, any thought, any image. If there is a reaction to these thoughts, ideas, images, we observe that reaction too. The more we observe, the more these thoughts, ideas and images will become like clouds passing by in the unchanging sky. There will emerge a silence and a stillness. That silence and that stillness is the path and it is also the destination. In that silence and stillness is the divine / the eternal / the universal, i.e., our true self.

So, "kill the Buddha" means letting go. Osho used to say it brilliantly: spirituality is not about finding God, its about letting go of yourself. The 'I' is the only thing separating God and us. If we let go of the 'I', there is no separation. All is one.

The 'I' / the ego is like a robe we are wearing and this robe is made of images. If we are not watchful, the Buddha or the idea of nirvana or moksha or enlightenment also becomes one of the images that the ego is made up of.

Linji is telling us to remain utterly naked. To maintain the oneness by not letting anything come between ourselves and God, not even the Buddha.

The events in Jesus' life, especially towards the end of his life, are also relevant here. Just before his arrest and trial for blasphemy and sedition, he is at a place called Gethsemane. Judas Iscariot (his disciple who turned traitor) has already told his enemies where Jesus is, so that they could come and arrest him. Jesus knows that he is about to be arrested. He is saying his final prayers, asking to be saved: "---Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet, not as I will, but as You will"

Jesus knows that he will be tried and crucified. However, as the time is approaching, Jesus is feeling afraid of losing his life. He is fearful of death and is requesting God / Father to help him avoid death, if possible. At the same time, he is also submitting himself to God's will by saying, "not as I will, but as You will"

This is a moment of weakness which Jesus had just before the crucifixion. He has fallen prey to the fear of death. He is an enlightened being, he has felt oneness with God, he has transcended the boundaries ordinary individuals have and has experienced the eternal / universal self, he calls God his 'Father' and himself God's son, he has already become a great teacher, his vision is clear. And, yet, here he is, telling God that he does not want to die. He has lost his Buddha-nature. Or, to be more precise, he has lost his Christ-nature. Here he is just the man Jesus.

In the version given in the Book of Matthew, he says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

He is complaining. It is as if he had some image of God and some expectation of what God was going to do if he (Jesus) was about to be hanged and that expectation is not being fulfilled.

But, Jesus is no ordinary being. He does fall, but he bounces back very quickly. When he is being crucified, he says from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

For someone beaten mercilessly, hanging on the cross, with nails in his hands and feet, about to die, these are not the words of an ordinary man. No, he is back as the enlightened master and is setting yet another example of love by praying for people who are killing him.

This event from Jesus' life shows vividly what Master Linji was trying to teach. If you fall on the path, you've got to pick yourself up. You've got to kill the Buddha. Jesus killed his buddha, to speak metaphorically. He conquered his weaknesses and doubts. He regained his mindfulness. He let go of the final attachment, i.e., to his own life.

So, in a nutshell, meeting the Buddha on the road means falling down, falling prey to your own attachments... killing the Buddha means getting back up and letting go.

(Image by Charles Rondeau from Pixabay )

#buddha #spiritual #mystic #oneness

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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Family: A Poisonous Gift From The Ego

This post is not going to make me very popular, especially with those who hold very sweet, romantic concepts of one’s own ‘family’, but what to do. I’ve got to write what I’ve got to write. So, here goes…

What is family?

1 generation back, I had 2 ancestors.

2 generations back, I had 6 ancestors.

Going back 10 generations (roughly 250 yrs), I probably had 1,024 ancestors. I am not good with numbers, but you can do the math yourself. Maybe some of them were common ancestors, so the number could be less than 1,024.

Going back 30 generations (roughly 750 yrs), I probably had 1 billion ancestors.

Going back 40 generations (roughly 1,000 yrs), I could have had a trillion ancestors.

How many of these millions (at least) of actual family members do we choose to consider as our family? And how many other relatives did they have?

All the rest are discarded / disowned as ‘others’. Why? Forget about 40 generations back, we don’t even go back 5 generations. Why? Economic conditions? Family and individual incomes have gone down and people cannot afford to look after large groups of people? From large tribes to large joint families to smaller families to single family parents?

Or psychological reasons… we would feel overwhelmed to think about all these people? Is that why we have ignored all those wisdom teachers who taught us that family is not about all this. Its not about this shortlist of people that you carry around. Its not about your ‘blood’ and if it is about blood then the same blood flows through all of us. How can we not see that? How can we be stupid enough not to see that? It is unbelievable that we can land a man on the moon, explore farther and farther reaches of the universe and make so many incredible technological innovations, but we cannot see our innate oneness. To this extent, we are probably the dumbest of all species, not the smartest.

The great wisdom teachers told us to go beyond these concepts of family, religion, sexes, color, creed, caste and so on and so forth. But we were too blind to what they were saying. We are a spiritually blind specie. Just like some kinds of fish, shrimps, worms, beetles and other species are totally blind, we (99.999999% of us) are spiritually blind. We are just unable to see what we share with that person standing at the corner of the street or that co-worker or that person sitting in that car who is trying to overtake us and we say, ‘over my dead body’.

The wisdom teachers were telling us that we are all one family, we come from the same source. We all have the same father, the same source, the same creator.

I have written extensively on ‘ego’ before, so i’ll just extrapolate from that and keep it short. If interested, you can go back to my earlier posts and easily find what I have written earlier on this.

‘Ego’, the ‘I’, the personality that we develop, basically comes from two sources, i.e., firstly, our heredity, what we are born with, the genetic make-up that we bring with us as we come into this world and, secondly, the information that we acquire after birth, from our upbringing, our education, our interaction with people and what some call, our social programming.

The heredity or the genetic make-up is responsible for the functioning of our whole body up to maturation (puberty) and then also for mating and child bearing and keeping the new borns safe until their maturation. Once we have given birth and brought the young ones up safely, we are done. We have played our part in the cycle of life and we are now ready for the pasture. This is all that mother nature wanted us to do, i.e., to pass on the baton to the next generation (for their mating and parenting life) and then to retire. But, by the time that happens, we are so glued to this whole thing called life and to the social conditioning (which makes us greedy, clingy and unwilling to die) that we continue leading the same lives and thinking that life still needs us to keep doing the same thing, i.e., run after money and sex and everything else these two demand. We refuse to give up. And, from one point of view, rightly so. That is what life taught us to do. And now life wants us to get out of the line and take a side seat? No way! We are not going to give up what we have spent years in accumulating and learning.

So, anyway, that is the whole messy life that the ego, the ‘I’, wants us to live.

Back to the idea of ‘family’, the ego, the ‘I’, our social conditioning and programming makes us believe that our family is our parents, our spouses, our children and may be our siblings and their brothers and sisters. Very few people would include some others in that list. Most would like to keep the list of ‘family’ shorter, as short as possible.

That is how the ego works; the less the number of people we are responsible for, the better.

The concept of ‘family’ is one of the symptoms of the poison of ego that we have drunk. It is one of those social institutions, which, like money, like politics, like marriage, like private property, like religion, like nationality, like race, like ethnicity, divide us and create strife. All these are the poisonous effects of ego-based individual lives and societies.

Maybe one day, we will collectively wake up to these poisons!

I hope to write more on this further posts. In the meanwhile, start doing the maths on your forefathers, the previous generations and try to count how many family members you may have today even if you just count the last thousand or so years – keeping in mind that human history is thousands (if not millions) of years old.

Go on, spend some time on it… and it might give you a different perspective on the people you see on the road or in office tomorrow!

(Image by Pexels from Pixabay)

#family #oneness #spiritual

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rogeramir · 6 years ago

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Karma, Dreams And The Balance Needed In Daily Life

What is 'Karma'? It is a Sanskrit word meaning, 'action'. Ancient Hindu wisdom teachers studied human actions and how each action has consequences and how it leads to further actions or reactions. They came up with the 'law of Karma', which states that actions have consequences and that good actions will have good consequences and bad actions will have bad consequences.

I agree to the extent that whatever you do has effects for you and for others and, in fact, for the whole universe, which implies that we may want to be more cautious in our thinking and the actions which that thinking gives rise to. I do not, however, agree with the rest of the so-called law of karma. I am not sure about 'good' actions having 'good' consequences and vice versa for 'bad' actions. That involves many different philosophical questions and I don't waste too much time on those. Philosophical questions are for philosophers and for those who have the time and the interest to take those questions up. I am here to propose constant observation of our own selves as a way of discovering who we are.

For me, Karma is this: if I have a cup of coffee at home, then, to have another cup of coffee, I will have to wash the same cup or buy a new one or drink in the unwashed one. These are the possible consequences.

Or, if I have been rude to someone, I will have to apologise or live with the guilt of it or I will become or remain a generally rude person.

So, I do agree that every thing we do brings consequences.

Physicists say, 'to every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction', also known as Newton's Third Law of Motion.

The Chinese have their own philosophy of yin and yang, which states that seemingly opposite forces are complementary, interconnected and interrelated. The opposites / polarities create one another. Night means that soon it will be day. When a baby is born, it means that at some point in time in the future, there will be a death (no one lives indefinitely). If grass is growing and flowers are blooming, then in a few months, autumn will be there. These are examples of yin and yang, opposites creating each other.

Now, lets look at what is happening in our daily life:

If I have eaten too much, I will have to stop eating for a while.

If I have remained awake for a while, I will have to get some sleep.

If I have talked for a while, I will have to remain quiet for some time.

If I have been with other people for a few hours, then I need some alone time.

If I have been angry or agitated or happy and excited, then I will need to silence the mind for a while.

If I have been earning money today, then, today, I will naturally feel good if I can share my money or other possessions with others.

Similarly also in other things that make up our day. All these are examples of Karma too. And they also suggest that our everyday life demands a balance. A very fine balance. Not just balance for the sake of balance, but a balance that will actually bring sanity and a freshness to life. It is the balance which brings us back home. During the whole day, we take hundreds of actions, see thousands of images, speak many words, listen to many words, use our imagination about things, interact with people, eat, drink, converse with people, watch TV, listen to the radio or music or podcasts, read newspapers, journals, blogs, and take so many other actions. All that is information being downloaded into the brain, into the mind. All this information changes us. It becomes a part of us and, to whatever extent, we become this information. Every day, every minute, every second of our lives, we change the world and the world changes us.

The more information we absorb, the more we change. The more we change, the more we go away from our original self. It is as if our original self keeps getting covered over by layers and layers of information. And these layers hide our true nature. They come from the outside, from the world of images, from the world of perceptions. These perceptions are not the reality, they are a version of the reality which the limited human mind comes up with. This perception depends upon our biology, our heredity, our training and development from childhood, the so-called social programming that we undergo.

The problem is (and this is the whole crux of man's spiritual problem and his spiritual struggle) that the more we change, the more we seek our original self. The more we go out into the world, the more we want to come back home. The more we forget ourself, the more we try to remember ourself. The search for God, the search for the right religion, all philosophical thought, all cosmological studies, all studies of man and all studies of the universe, all these are geared towards that one search, the search for our origins.

We come from a great silent, as yet unknowable, blissful nothingness and we become these small noisy, all too predictable, sad, confused individuals. And then we search for that nothingness.

What I am proposing here is that while we continue with our normal lives of going into the world and getting more and more information and becoming more and more different every day, we can also start a parallel process of taking a few steps back home each day. And that journey is not necessarily a long one. It can happen in an instant. If you can learn to use the right vehicle, it will take you less than a second to go back home. That vehicle is utter silence. If you can learn to harness that vehicle, it will transport you in a micro-instant to that land of blissful nothingness from where we all originated.

Going back home each day creates that balance in our life without which we become a bunch of confused, agitated, egoistic, insane individuals. Without it, we live in the world of the ego, images and attachment. Going back home each day will reduce and keep in check our insanity.

If we just keep an eye on ourselves every day, we will come to understand where exactly this balance is needed and what happens when we do not keep this balance.

If we work too much without getting adequate rest, the body and the mind suffer. Our future performance and also our health will inevitably suffer.

If I stay awake all day and do not get adequate sleep, it will be disastrous for the mind and the body.

If we eat too much and keep eating, we will suffer all kinds of diseases and sickness.

If I focus on money alone and do not address other key factors in life, such as family, spirituality, inner peace, then all the money in the world will not be enough to bring peace and contentment to life.

If I keep talking and do not listen to others, all of my relationships, whether personal or professional or social, will start suffering.

That is the daily balance I am talking about.

(Neitzsche, image from Wikipedia)

Neitzsche, the mad philologist, philosopher and genius, hints at the need for this balance when talking about the virtues of good sleep in his book, 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'. He said we need to deal with sleep with respect and modesty and that we should stay away from those who do not sleep well and who stay awake at night. According to him, when we do not create this balance, the mind tries to do so in dreams. It plays out scenes, as in a movie, which bring back this balance. But, of course, that balance is only imaginary, fake, unreal, only meant to show us what is missing in life. Most of us do not understand what the mind is doing, the hints it is giving us about what we are not doing. But we are too dumb to take those hints.

Ten times must thou reconcile with yourself again; for overcoming is bitterness and badly sleep the unreconciled.

Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.

Ten times must thou laugh during the day and be cheerful; otherwise, thou stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee during the night.

(Neitzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra)

Neitzsche also famously declared in one of his books that 'God is dead'. With utmost love and respect, I beg to differ from Neitzsche on this. But that is a topic for a separate post, which I am dying to do very soon.

So, for now, lets take a few moments every day (throughout the day and especially before going to bed) and see what we are doing, what the so-called Karmic-consequences will be and what we will need to bring back that balance in life.

Lets learn to master the use of that vehicle of utter silence to go back home every day. It is the same vehicle that was used by Jesus, by Mohammad, by Gautum Buddh, by Mahavira, by Lord Krishna, by Rumi, by Kabir, by Nanak and by many other luminaries of the spiritual world. We can learn to use it too. These great ones were like Prometheus (in Greek mythology) who stole fire from gods and brought it to humanity. Similarly, the great wisdom teachers, the prophets, the shamans found this art of attaining great silence and doing deep meditation to come to our original self, to see our original face, to go back home. Jesus called that home the Kingdom of Heaven. Buddha called it nirvana. Mahavira called it moksha. Mohammad called it tawhid. Lao Tzu called it the great tao. They have taught us over the centuries and most of us have not paid too much attention. And that is OK. As a specie, we have not yet reached that place where we collectively, in large numbers, start seeking sanity. We are still in the phase of going through, and coming to terms with, our insanity. Our greed, our attachments, our sounds, our images are too over-powering for us to really pay any attention to the other world, the world of silence. I think one day we will wake up in large numbers and that day will mark the real turning point for the human world. That waking up will be Karmic too.

Karl Marx thought that socialism will come on its own (and not by a CIA-sponsored rebellion) as an evolution of, and withering away of, capitalism. I feel that the great spiritual awakening of man will also come on its own. People like Jesus and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Krishna and others saw it and tried to tell people and we didn't listen. But their words changed us and contributed to the great spiritual evolution of man. I feel that going back home (in the spiritual sense of the word) is our destiny. It is the great Karma that so many spiritual traditions have talked about. Some call it the 'second coming of Christ', some call it, the 'final judgement'. There are different names for it. But if you look closely, the concept is similar. We can choose to ignore it for now, but not for too long. And, to be clear, I am not advocating any specific religious belief here. On the contrary, I am trying to go beyond all religions, to the place where there are no religions, there are no images, no words, no beliefs, no attachments, no sounds, just a great big nothingness and silence. And maybe not even that.

Lets just remember that whenever we want we can start paying a little more attention to our daily life and choose to take our lives into a wholly different dimension, a wholly different direction. If we want to!

If you eat every day, then fast a little every day. If you talk every day, then stay silent for a little while every day. If you work every day, then stay still a little while every day. If you earn money every day, then make it a practice to give some money away every day. Do these and other small balancing acts every day and you might discover a great confidence, a sense of control and an inner peace and bliss emerging somewhere inside.

And I can promise you one thing: you are not going to find a greater treasure anywhere in this world than that peace and bliss that you find inside!

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