Swami says ‘Awareness is life’. The entire purpose of education is to generate this awareness in the pupils. Without it men and women become centred in themselves, and live for themselves only. Bhagwan teaches us that true realization is ‘seeing of all in all you see’. ‘If you can not see God in your fellowman, how can you see Him in a stone idol?’ He asks. Education is ‘expansion of love’ not its contraction. Swami has Given us a new recipe of education, and has showed us how to cook it.Compassion has never been part of a system of education except in Bhagwan’s university.
This started from a very ordinary, and sadly so, incident. Ha, it is but ordinary ! they say; can we afford to bother ourselves with such trifles ! A newspaper reported that a mother killed her children and herself driven by extreme poverty. Did it create a ripple in the minds (for the heart has taken a holiday!) of our progressive millionaire society ? But it drew a pearl of love from our Bhagwan’s eyes,
and He scripted a new syllabus for our university and school students. A symbolic intense drive into surrounding villages, predominantly poor, to explore a new dimension (and the truest) of education: two weeks of practising compassion. Compassion is the common denominator between God and man. Man becomes godly only when he identifies himself with the divine in all things in the creation. The God on earth now decided to teach at least His students the first alphabets of real education. Now for more than a decade Gramseva has been an inalienable part of Sathya Sai syllabus for true education. Hridaya has to be the seat of daya.
Ben Jonson wrote, “In small measures life may perfect be”. So a big thing, a big idea need not start in a big way. In spite of scientists insisting that the universe started in a big bang, Bhagwan says He put the universe together quietly, like a painter who puts pigments of colour silently to create a big picture, “I created the world with one word….” Compassion can start in small measures, with people we meet everyday, with animals, with environment, with the elements. I have seen expression of this rare quality in an old couple quite close to me. The gentleman takes a rikshaw (later an auto) from home in his shopping expeditions. When he comes back he usually passes on to the man 5 or ten rupees more than agreed upon hiring charges, and if it is summer, he offers him a lunch too. Not only that. He would ask the man to rest a while on his verandah before going out in the sun again. He was by no means a well to do person. He was a small school teacher who found it very difficult to support a large family with his meagre salary. But his compassion stopped at nothing. Now the lady of the house. She buys vegetable from vendors who call from door to door. In villages people usually do not buy vegetable from vendors, for they mostly grow their needs in their backyards. So people who depend on the sales for supporting a family find it very trying to make both ends meet. When such a person calls at the door, and tells her that she hasn’t sold anything till then, she buys out the whole headload, even if she does not need all that, and give her a little more than the cost. In addition, she would sometimes steal a sari from her own box and pass it on to her quietly. Offering the vendor a little water-rice (cooked rice soaked in water, a typical poor man’s fare) was never infrequent. When the gentleman died, people from four to five villages around gathered at his house at midnight hour just to be with the family, and attend his funeral next morning. When his youngest son got a good job, and wanted to offer his first month’s salary to father in gratefulness, the father went and quietly built a large shed in the cremation ground to be used by people who bring the dead for a ‘warm’ send off. And when the lady passed away at Puttaparthy about two years ago, Swami looked after her funeral entirely. Compassion for fellowmen always attracts compassion from God. That is where man-in-God, and God-in-man meet.
There was this woman I personally know. She loved to feed monkeys. Whenever she goes to buy vegetables for her kitchen, she always has a special budget for her friends, the monkeys. They would come to her kitchen window, and she would feed them in her own hands. If they don’t come on the day after she has bought bananas for them, she is upset, and would pray to Hanuman to send his flock. One day she went out to pick her sari from the clothes line outside, and there stood a huge
monkey in front of her gripping her waist ready to maul her. It was a very notorious gang leader who
had bitten flesh out of many people. There was a small crowd of neighbours standing at a safe distance from her, voicing various expressions of sympathy, but no one dared a step nearer. This women stood there calmly, and told the rowdy monkey, “Why do you threaten me ? I haven’t done any harm to you”. The monkey gradually slid down, walked a few steps away and stood guard lest any other money hurt her. She took all the time in the world to collect her sari, smiled at the rogue monkey, and entered her house.
Compassion has no barriers. It does not distinguish between a friend and a foe, a sadhu or a thief. During 70s I was working in a college in Odisha, and we were staying in an old thatched house with a walled courtyard, and an inside verandah opening to the courtyard. We used to keep our clothes of daily use on a wooden frame placed on the verandah. One morning we discovered that almost all clothes hanging there had been stolen during the night by someone who climbed over the wall to enter the courtyard. My wife was terribly scared and wanted to change the house. The next night Swami came in her dream and told her, “Why are you worrying so much ? After all nothing much is lost. That man is very poor, and needed these clothes”! Look at Bhagwan’s compassion. The whole world may hate the thief, but He had nothing but love and understanding for him. He even chided her for contemplating to report it to the police.
The new syllabus for higher education of Bhagwan’s students has caught the attention of the thinking world, which is growing increasingly aware that the most educated class is a threat to the world itself. Gramseva makes you aware that out there, there is a large humanity, basically an extension of yourself. Current education has done nothing to unite the academicians with the rest of the humanity. No syllabus, no teacher today, teaches us that education is essentially a process of self-extension. It has therefore turned out to be a process of self-alienation ! No other university has yet shown the courage to re-examine their syllabus in this light because the untempered mind is still the high priest there, and compassion the lamb at the bloody stump ! God is too non-secular, non-academic to enter the university gates !
(Published in h2h March 1st, 2011, Link : http://media.radiosai.org/Journals/Vol_09/01MAR11/09-get_inspired.htm)
Friday, December 2, 2011
EDUCATING YOUR HEART – 1
“It is the heart that reaches out to the goal, not mind”, Bhagwan says. According to Him heart is not the seat of irrational emotions, as commonly believed. It is the spiritual centre of an individual, which promotes intuition, and discrimination(vichara).The sense urges are purified here, and the ego, the feeling of separateness, is moulded to merge in the universality of God. The primary function of education, therefore,is educating this heart centre with compassion, or Daya, or empathy. Bhagwan says education is not confined to the four walls of a classroom, the whole universe is the classroom for a willing learner.
Some decades ago once around eight in the morning I left home to go somewhere within the town and hired a cycle rikshaw, a bicycle turned into a three-wheel passenger car to be manually driven by one man, the cheapest transport system for short distances within a town or city. It was a Sunday, and the town was just waking up to the business of living. I took to the road, littered with yesterday’s leftovers of the clients of many mobile chat vendors for which this particular street was well known. The clients stand around the four-wheel kitchen-cum-sales centres, fill their leaf plates on their out stretched palms, and eat the dainty dish of a mixture of at least half a dozen hot-sour-sweet items that rejuvenate their afternoon taste buds. Then they drop the plates on the road wherever they stood to be taken care of by the gods of democracy, the roaming cattle, or the scavenging street children ! People pass over the unfortunate heaps in their cars, scooters, cycles, bullock carts, on covered or uncovered feet. The droppings of bullocks and the stray cattle mix all that into a nameless paste to be finally become one with the tarred road which gradually loses its identity. Once in a while the khaki clad representatives of the omnipresent democracy raid the mobile restaurants, threaten them, take a few free plates of the famous chat and add their powerful leaf plates to the heap before performing the ritual of hitting a nearby tea vendor’s stall in order to attract a ‘pecial elaich tea’ to top a satisfying afternoon.
That street has a number of open sky meat stalls where meat is offered fresh and bloody. My rikshaw plodded through the familiar dirt and tried to speed up. Suddenly I noticed half a dozen cars and more than two dozen scooters, bikes, bicycles of all description parked by the roadside and people in their bedroom dresses, lungi and banyans, relaxing, gossiping, smoking as if there isn’t a hurry in the world. My rikshaw slowed down not to offend the civilized humans exercising their human rights. While the driver was maneuvering his rider through a relaxed Sunday, I peeped out trying to gather what had attracted the educated elite, juice of the emerging society of a resurgent India, to the street this morning. As soon as I peeped through the crowd, I pulled back in shudder, and asked my driver to hurry away.
By side of the road there was the bloody stump of a mighty tree, and stood there two half clad hefty men, one with a fearsome butcher’s knife, the other holding the neck of a poor hapless lamb between his fingers on the stump. The knife was running on the goat’s neck, and blood was dripping into a bowl placed below it. A dozen specimen of a highly accomplished educated elite were eagerly looking at it, probably thinking of a luscious Sunday lunch with family. I recognized one of them was a Doctor, some sort of a specialist, and the other a professor of Literature at the local university. Another was a deputy secretary of some govt department, famous for his huge mustache. They were eager to carry
home parts of the lamb’s body, its sinews, veins, pieces of bone, its heart…. I felt so sick, I returned
home by another road, and tried to sleep the whole afternoon in order to nurse my frayed nerves. But the fact that the incident is still visible to me, four decades later, proves how indelible was the impact of that moment on my mind.
Why did the sight affect me so deeply ? Is it because I have been a non meat-eater ? Is it because an innocent lamb was killed ? Not necessarily. Buying meat from the butcher to cook a lunch may look innocuous, but I am not sure standing by without reacting while a butcher’s knife runs into the neck of a helpless animal, its blood dripping into a bowl, and think of a delicious lunch it is going to provide, is any admirable sign of a civil society. Enlarge this canvas, and you needn’t be surprised if you see Kasab & Co mauling down people at the Taj.
Newspapers, TV channels, websites spill out every minute great real life instances of men and women outsmarting animals in every field ! They also tell us that new international standard schools are coming up everywhere in a great hurry; new universities, medical institutions, management establishments, art centres, involving billions are raising their proud heads all over the country to announce the incredible pace of education. The governments are in a hurry to aid them, academicians are in a hurry to catch up with knowledge explosion, investors are in a hurry to push their dividends graph up, developers are in a hurry to capture farmlands and green areas to build skyscrapers, everybody is racing towards happiness – my happiness sans my neighbour’s !
What has happened to our sensibilities ?
Do they have a place in our ‘incredible’ civilization ?
In a very striking judgement the apex court of India recently expressed its agony at the way even educated people refrain from reacting to public humiliation of women, allow political parties put up people of questionable characters as our representatives without bating an eyelid, and then without any qualms anoint them with power !
Bhagwan says, the heart should be the seat of compassion, Daya, in order to justify it is educated.
Therefore education isn’t primarily a provider of a living, it qualifies the kind of life we choose to live. Living may promote life, but life has to define living. But in our progressive syllabi the heart is no more than a blood-pumping device. The new priest of education is an untempered mind, and all our freedom is held hostage by it. Characteristically, however, the most elite of our progressive society worship this camouflaged tiger. All programmes in our schools and colleges are aimed at making the
intellect keener, sharper, cleverer, not deeper with empathy. One teacher of the recently opened Smt Eswaramma English medium School at Puttaparthy was recently telling me about a certain student of hers in the first standard. This girl would always watch her friends eating their lunch during the school lunch time. If anyone does not have enough dal or vegetable to go with rice, she would save that from her own lunch, and offer it to her friend. The moving thing about it is that she always feels happy doing so. Does our education promote this spontaneous empathy ?
There is another kid, a boy, she told me, who always comes a little early to school. He would put his bag in the classroom, and wait near the gate. When class one children arrive in autos, or busses, or in their parent’s scooter or bike, and he finds that it is difficult for a certain child to carry the luggage to his or her class room, he would do it himself. One day it was raining, and when the other kids arrived at the gate without an umbrella, he was found taking them one by one into the school building under his own umbrella. Another day it was drizzling when the school closed for the day, and he was found taking out his own towel from his bag and drying up a teacher’s wet scooter parked under a tree. When asked why he was doing that, he replied, “How can ma’m go home on a wet scooter ? Her sari will become wet.” The remarkable thing about this seven year old is that nobody ever asked him to do such things, and he does this quite naturally, without any self-consciousness.
Do we have any programmes in our schools and colleges to build up this precious aspect of true education, empathy ? We award medals to percentage of marks, to a keen intellect; what about a heart filled with compassion ? I personally would feel honoured to honour such a child. Bhagwan has been defining the end of education as character, and end of knowledge as love, for decades now. Character can blossom only on the ground of compassion and love, but they are misnomers now in our education set up. I remember here a stunning experience about poverty of our intellectuals. A friend of mine was a programme executive in a certain branch of All India Radio. He was a good Sai devotee, and wanted to record a symposium on Bhagwan’s famous saying ‘End of education is character’ to be broadcast on some occasion. He invited a well known professor of English, a journalist, an administrator to the studio, briefed them about the project, and asked the professor to initiate discussion. The professor interpreted the statement with quite an intellectual tinge saying, ‘Every object in the world has a certain character, so education too has a character…’ etc. Consequently, the symposium was never aired.
Mind is endowed with such power that if it chooses to lead the instruments of pleasure it may take the host down the dusk, but if it is led by instruments of perception, it may power the steepest climb to the
hill top dawn to achieve freedom from all darkness below. That, Bhagwan says, is the real education, to be free from darkness, untruth, and violence(mortality). The higher we climb, the greater is the sweep of our vision, the deeper our sensibilities to the breathtaking view of all created things linked up by an incredible thread of enlightened existence. That is compassion, and that is Daya, too.
Published in H2H, Link - http://media.radiosai.org/Journals/Vol_09/01JAN11/09-get_inspired.htm
Some decades ago once around eight in the morning I left home to go somewhere within the town and hired a cycle rikshaw, a bicycle turned into a three-wheel passenger car to be manually driven by one man, the cheapest transport system for short distances within a town or city. It was a Sunday, and the town was just waking up to the business of living. I took to the road, littered with yesterday’s leftovers of the clients of many mobile chat vendors for which this particular street was well known. The clients stand around the four-wheel kitchen-cum-sales centres, fill their leaf plates on their out stretched palms, and eat the dainty dish of a mixture of at least half a dozen hot-sour-sweet items that rejuvenate their afternoon taste buds. Then they drop the plates on the road wherever they stood to be taken care of by the gods of democracy, the roaming cattle, or the scavenging street children ! People pass over the unfortunate heaps in their cars, scooters, cycles, bullock carts, on covered or uncovered feet. The droppings of bullocks and the stray cattle mix all that into a nameless paste to be finally become one with the tarred road which gradually loses its identity. Once in a while the khaki clad representatives of the omnipresent democracy raid the mobile restaurants, threaten them, take a few free plates of the famous chat and add their powerful leaf plates to the heap before performing the ritual of hitting a nearby tea vendor’s stall in order to attract a ‘pecial elaich tea’ to top a satisfying afternoon.
That street has a number of open sky meat stalls where meat is offered fresh and bloody. My rikshaw plodded through the familiar dirt and tried to speed up. Suddenly I noticed half a dozen cars and more than two dozen scooters, bikes, bicycles of all description parked by the roadside and people in their bedroom dresses, lungi and banyans, relaxing, gossiping, smoking as if there isn’t a hurry in the world. My rikshaw slowed down not to offend the civilized humans exercising their human rights. While the driver was maneuvering his rider through a relaxed Sunday, I peeped out trying to gather what had attracted the educated elite, juice of the emerging society of a resurgent India, to the street this morning. As soon as I peeped through the crowd, I pulled back in shudder, and asked my driver to hurry away.
By side of the road there was the bloody stump of a mighty tree, and stood there two half clad hefty men, one with a fearsome butcher’s knife, the other holding the neck of a poor hapless lamb between his fingers on the stump. The knife was running on the goat’s neck, and blood was dripping into a bowl placed below it. A dozen specimen of a highly accomplished educated elite were eagerly looking at it, probably thinking of a luscious Sunday lunch with family. I recognized one of them was a Doctor, some sort of a specialist, and the other a professor of Literature at the local university. Another was a deputy secretary of some govt department, famous for his huge mustache. They were eager to carry
home parts of the lamb’s body, its sinews, veins, pieces of bone, its heart…. I felt so sick, I returned
home by another road, and tried to sleep the whole afternoon in order to nurse my frayed nerves. But the fact that the incident is still visible to me, four decades later, proves how indelible was the impact of that moment on my mind.
Why did the sight affect me so deeply ? Is it because I have been a non meat-eater ? Is it because an innocent lamb was killed ? Not necessarily. Buying meat from the butcher to cook a lunch may look innocuous, but I am not sure standing by without reacting while a butcher’s knife runs into the neck of a helpless animal, its blood dripping into a bowl, and think of a delicious lunch it is going to provide, is any admirable sign of a civil society. Enlarge this canvas, and you needn’t be surprised if you see Kasab & Co mauling down people at the Taj.
Newspapers, TV channels, websites spill out every minute great real life instances of men and women outsmarting animals in every field ! They also tell us that new international standard schools are coming up everywhere in a great hurry; new universities, medical institutions, management establishments, art centres, involving billions are raising their proud heads all over the country to announce the incredible pace of education. The governments are in a hurry to aid them, academicians are in a hurry to catch up with knowledge explosion, investors are in a hurry to push their dividends graph up, developers are in a hurry to capture farmlands and green areas to build skyscrapers, everybody is racing towards happiness – my happiness sans my neighbour’s !
What has happened to our sensibilities ?
Do they have a place in our ‘incredible’ civilization ?
In a very striking judgement the apex court of India recently expressed its agony at the way even educated people refrain from reacting to public humiliation of women, allow political parties put up people of questionable characters as our representatives without bating an eyelid, and then without any qualms anoint them with power !
Bhagwan says, the heart should be the seat of compassion, Daya, in order to justify it is educated.
Therefore education isn’t primarily a provider of a living, it qualifies the kind of life we choose to live. Living may promote life, but life has to define living. But in our progressive syllabi the heart is no more than a blood-pumping device. The new priest of education is an untempered mind, and all our freedom is held hostage by it. Characteristically, however, the most elite of our progressive society worship this camouflaged tiger. All programmes in our schools and colleges are aimed at making the
intellect keener, sharper, cleverer, not deeper with empathy. One teacher of the recently opened Smt Eswaramma English medium School at Puttaparthy was recently telling me about a certain student of hers in the first standard. This girl would always watch her friends eating their lunch during the school lunch time. If anyone does not have enough dal or vegetable to go with rice, she would save that from her own lunch, and offer it to her friend. The moving thing about it is that she always feels happy doing so. Does our education promote this spontaneous empathy ?
There is another kid, a boy, she told me, who always comes a little early to school. He would put his bag in the classroom, and wait near the gate. When class one children arrive in autos, or busses, or in their parent’s scooter or bike, and he finds that it is difficult for a certain child to carry the luggage to his or her class room, he would do it himself. One day it was raining, and when the other kids arrived at the gate without an umbrella, he was found taking them one by one into the school building under his own umbrella. Another day it was drizzling when the school closed for the day, and he was found taking out his own towel from his bag and drying up a teacher’s wet scooter parked under a tree. When asked why he was doing that, he replied, “How can ma’m go home on a wet scooter ? Her sari will become wet.” The remarkable thing about this seven year old is that nobody ever asked him to do such things, and he does this quite naturally, without any self-consciousness.
Do we have any programmes in our schools and colleges to build up this precious aspect of true education, empathy ? We award medals to percentage of marks, to a keen intellect; what about a heart filled with compassion ? I personally would feel honoured to honour such a child. Bhagwan has been defining the end of education as character, and end of knowledge as love, for decades now. Character can blossom only on the ground of compassion and love, but they are misnomers now in our education set up. I remember here a stunning experience about poverty of our intellectuals. A friend of mine was a programme executive in a certain branch of All India Radio. He was a good Sai devotee, and wanted to record a symposium on Bhagwan’s famous saying ‘End of education is character’ to be broadcast on some occasion. He invited a well known professor of English, a journalist, an administrator to the studio, briefed them about the project, and asked the professor to initiate discussion. The professor interpreted the statement with quite an intellectual tinge saying, ‘Every object in the world has a certain character, so education too has a character…’ etc. Consequently, the symposium was never aired.
Mind is endowed with such power that if it chooses to lead the instruments of pleasure it may take the host down the dusk, but if it is led by instruments of perception, it may power the steepest climb to the
hill top dawn to achieve freedom from all darkness below. That, Bhagwan says, is the real education, to be free from darkness, untruth, and violence(mortality). The higher we climb, the greater is the sweep of our vision, the deeper our sensibilities to the breathtaking view of all created things linked up by an incredible thread of enlightened existence. That is compassion, and that is Daya, too.
Published in H2H, Link - http://media.radiosai.org/Journals/Vol_09/01JAN11/09-get_inspired.htm
Thursday, October 27, 2011
THE STUNTED RACE
The little chips of time
we spent together,
pop up on the margin of memory
and tell stories history will never record.
They are so much part of history
though, that made and unmade
the world around me, but I was no more
than a component of history.
I wore them like shirts to a party,
felt honoured, claimed privileges,
and flaunted my class.
I hardly recognised they were
price of a million years loneliness,
designed to cut another million short,
and take me out of the race.
When I looked in the mirror
I saw two faces, and admired them,
while you wanted me to see a single face.
Today I see a single face,
scarred, haggard, and scared.
I know you couldn’t have forced on me
what I couldn’t have retained;
You couldn’t have called to your banquet
a dirty traveller, who revelled
in wayside inns to leisurely sip
a second round champagne.
But when I was beginning to see the day,
you called it a day.
----------------------------------
we spent together,
pop up on the margin of memory
and tell stories history will never record.
They are so much part of history
though, that made and unmade
the world around me, but I was no more
than a component of history.
I wore them like shirts to a party,
felt honoured, claimed privileges,
and flaunted my class.
I hardly recognised they were
price of a million years loneliness,
designed to cut another million short,
and take me out of the race.
When I looked in the mirror
I saw two faces, and admired them,
while you wanted me to see a single face.
Today I see a single face,
scarred, haggard, and scared.
I know you couldn’t have forced on me
what I couldn’t have retained;
You couldn’t have called to your banquet
a dirty traveller, who revelled
in wayside inns to leisurely sip
a second round champagne.
But when I was beginning to see the day,
you called it a day.
----------------------------------
POEMS ON HIS SMILE
You told me, “See me within yourself,
“If you would save me”.
But I loved to see you
Walk unto me, ask for my letter
And smile before you pass on.
Today when the marbles tell me
You will no more walk unto me, and smile,
I know You have walked into me,
Marbles and all, and smile
At my letter before I write.
-------------------------------
I see two dawns everyday;
One that comes behind the hills,
Rolls down the tree-tops
Fills the dark-and-blue sky
With gold-pink-and-blue.
The other,
When I stand before you –
A new light fills me,
The darkness of doubt and disappoint
Thaws into liquid hope,
And I am remade for the day.
--------------------------------
How do you smile like that !
Eyes smaller, and sharper,
Lips wide, topped by puddles,
And the whole face a ripple of joy.
You drown me in it,
You uphold me to float on it;
You possess me in a hug,
And absorb me does a cotton-ball.
--------------------------------
“If you would save me”.
But I loved to see you
Walk unto me, ask for my letter
And smile before you pass on.
Today when the marbles tell me
You will no more walk unto me, and smile,
I know You have walked into me,
Marbles and all, and smile
At my letter before I write.
-------------------------------
I see two dawns everyday;
One that comes behind the hills,
Rolls down the tree-tops
Fills the dark-and-blue sky
With gold-pink-and-blue.
The other,
When I stand before you –
A new light fills me,
The darkness of doubt and disappoint
Thaws into liquid hope,
And I am remade for the day.
--------------------------------
How do you smile like that !
Eyes smaller, and sharper,
Lips wide, topped by puddles,
And the whole face a ripple of joy.
You drown me in it,
You uphold me to float on it;
You possess me in a hug,
And absorb me does a cotton-ball.
--------------------------------
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
SANDWICH
Have you seen a sandwich
Two pieces of bread held together
By a layer of seasoned meat
Or some veg fry ?
When I first saw one,
I cried.
You know why ?
God spoke to me –
If only you placed me between
You and your wife,
You and your neighbour,
You and your son,
I could hold the whole humanity
Together.
Two pieces of bread held together
By a layer of seasoned meat
Or some veg fry ?
When I first saw one,
I cried.
You know why ?
God spoke to me –
If only you placed me between
You and your wife,
You and your neighbour,
You and your son,
I could hold the whole humanity
Together.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
INSTITUTION OF MEMORY
Why do we go gaga over opening of Bhagawan’s Samadhi, or Mahasamadhi, as reverentially termed, its holiness notwithstanding?
Isn’t it celebrating what we have lost?
Isn’t it canonising after crucifixion?
Why should we call it Good Friday, the day Jesus allowed himself to be nailed on a cross, so that we understand the meaning of love?
Is it celebrating love, or celebrating our failure to recognise it when it was available?
Why aren’t we ashamed of glorifying someone who gave himself up to our insensitiveness?
But what else could we do in order to remember our shame?
Yes, what else could we do?
Do we, however, remember our shame by ending our insensitiveness?
We remember it by forgetting it.
Isn’t it a cruelty that we worship memory, but do not adopt it?
Cruelty to ourselves.
Once Bhagwan asked, “Why are people so ready to die for religion, but not live it?”
Why should we justify life in its death?
He told us several times, “Live, so that you shall not die again”.
But death seems to be a greater reality than life!
So while they live, we forget what they live for; and when they quit, we want to remember once they lived!
When they try to show us the way, we think, anyway, the Way is here; and when the guiding finger is no more here, we remember that the Way was here.
The difference is, the calendar has turned over a page.
Or, has it?
And nothing more?
From Janaki-Ram to Janaki Ramachandran, have we travelled long?
Ah, the Mahasamadhi is beautiful.
Made of imported marble, exquisitely crafted.
There is a touch of gold too.
You can go near the platform, lay your flowers at its foot.
People in their thousand jostle just to pass by it.
You feel Swami is actually present there.
We always like to freeze the water, and admire the ice .
We are filled with awe at the wealth found in a temple, and debate endlessly how to spend it, and hardly notice the Temple standing there endlessly waiting for someone to say You are beautiful.
We raise a storm over who paid how much, and when, for the marbles, and yawn at the sweaty marble maker.
He is, becomes He was, ending up in He has been.
New deluxe editions of what he said, and what he was, take the pride of our collection.
New visuals created testimony the ultimate technology we fathered.
New Arts fuse him into our tired lives, and we point to each other the new way of the golden dawn, though none of us has seen it.
Journeys become easier, dinners tastier, transport more comfortable, residences cosier, relationships faster, and the memory shorter.
A new Institution is born.
But where is He?
Isn’t it celebrating what we have lost?
Isn’t it canonising after crucifixion?
Why should we call it Good Friday, the day Jesus allowed himself to be nailed on a cross, so that we understand the meaning of love?
Is it celebrating love, or celebrating our failure to recognise it when it was available?
Why aren’t we ashamed of glorifying someone who gave himself up to our insensitiveness?
But what else could we do in order to remember our shame?
Yes, what else could we do?
Do we, however, remember our shame by ending our insensitiveness?
We remember it by forgetting it.
Isn’t it a cruelty that we worship memory, but do not adopt it?
Cruelty to ourselves.
Once Bhagwan asked, “Why are people so ready to die for religion, but not live it?”
Why should we justify life in its death?
He told us several times, “Live, so that you shall not die again”.
But death seems to be a greater reality than life!
So while they live, we forget what they live for; and when they quit, we want to remember once they lived!
When they try to show us the way, we think, anyway, the Way is here; and when the guiding finger is no more here, we remember that the Way was here.
The difference is, the calendar has turned over a page.
Or, has it?
And nothing more?
From Janaki-Ram to Janaki Ramachandran, have we travelled long?
Ah, the Mahasamadhi is beautiful.
Made of imported marble, exquisitely crafted.
There is a touch of gold too.
You can go near the platform, lay your flowers at its foot.
People in their thousand jostle just to pass by it.
You feel Swami is actually present there.
We always like to freeze the water, and admire the ice .
We are filled with awe at the wealth found in a temple, and debate endlessly how to spend it, and hardly notice the Temple standing there endlessly waiting for someone to say You are beautiful.
We raise a storm over who paid how much, and when, for the marbles, and yawn at the sweaty marble maker.
He is, becomes He was, ending up in He has been.
New deluxe editions of what he said, and what he was, take the pride of our collection.
New visuals created testimony the ultimate technology we fathered.
New Arts fuse him into our tired lives, and we point to each other the new way of the golden dawn, though none of us has seen it.
Journeys become easier, dinners tastier, transport more comfortable, residences cosier, relationships faster, and the memory shorter.
A new Institution is born.
But where is He?
Sunday, July 10, 2011
THE PROCESS AND THE PURPOSE
Is living a process or a purpose?
Is dying beginning of the road, or end?
To live for a purpose is to raise the purpose above living, to monitor living by the purpose.
To live for the sake of living is to cut the goose for golden eggs.
One who pays any price for living, can not tell the difference between
dinner and the dinner plate, the clay-pot and the pot-clay.
One who does not pay any price for living, asks his cook to make him
a cup of coffee with no coffee.
Can you live truthfully without a truth, and lie without denying it ?
Can you make a dish without dressing that which it is made of,
or dress that without a pan on fire ?
Can you have an eagle without a sky, and a sky without a distance from earth ?
Can you have a child without childhood, and a mother without motherhood ?
And yet we talk of ends and means, when neither can manifest without the other.
And yet we talk of becoming apart from being, while we hardly know one from the other.
Words are weeds, thoughts a bounded pool;
Roads to arriving mirror the arrival.
The beginning a blur in end, end a blur at start
Like eternity and time, each of the other a part.
The intervening space an entertaining tale,
That connects the ends, and ends the tale.
Is dying beginning of the road, or end?
To live for a purpose is to raise the purpose above living, to monitor living by the purpose.
To live for the sake of living is to cut the goose for golden eggs.
One who pays any price for living, can not tell the difference between
dinner and the dinner plate, the clay-pot and the pot-clay.
One who does not pay any price for living, asks his cook to make him
a cup of coffee with no coffee.
Can you live truthfully without a truth, and lie without denying it ?
Can you make a dish without dressing that which it is made of,
or dress that without a pan on fire ?
Can you have an eagle without a sky, and a sky without a distance from earth ?
Can you have a child without childhood, and a mother without motherhood ?
And yet we talk of ends and means, when neither can manifest without the other.
And yet we talk of becoming apart from being, while we hardly know one from the other.
Words are weeds, thoughts a bounded pool;
Roads to arriving mirror the arrival.
The beginning a blur in end, end a blur at start
Like eternity and time, each of the other a part.
The intervening space an entertaining tale,
That connects the ends, and ends the tale.
Friday, February 18, 2011
ON LEARNING LESSONS
“ You have been a long time devotee of Bhagwan, aren’t you ?” someone asked me.
“ I have tried for a long time to develop devotion”.
“ You have lived with God for many years now. You must have learnt a lot of valuable lessons at His Lotus Feet”, he insisted. The usual enthusiasts, the usual questions. I was going to break into a run; but someone whispered, `Hold’.
The question of my good friend struck me with such bluntness that it took me a few seconds to steady myself. Well, I have tried to practise devotion for God for years now, and I must have learnt a number of lessons directly from Him, and I am expected to share them with others ! Expectations are legitimate.
Can I say I haven’t learnt any lessons ? Can I say they are too personal to share ? Can lessons be too personal ? The World Teacher is here and now, to lead the mankind to its goal, and here I am calling myself His devotee, admitting I have learnt no lessons ! Too negative an attitude. This won’t do.
When I tried to look within to find an answer the small voice spoke. He asked me gently, “Lessons ? What will you do with all that ? Teach others ? Collect some admirers ? Prove to them you are a few bits above them, ahead of them ? And you deserved all this by your good work ? Go ahead.”
I was flushed. Really, what will I do with all those lessons I am supposed to collect from Him ? I wouldn’t dare do all that is suggested. But… probably improve myself. Shouldn’t I ? Listening to the great lessons God teaches, one can come closer to God, and help others too in their journey. That should be a kind of service to mankind, wouldn’t it be so ? And service to man is service to God.
Very tempting indeed. God would allow me draw some money from His bank, help me spend it in some charity work under my signature, and let me earn some credit for doing His work. Then, to expand this good work I will ask for more funds, more conveniences, more conveyances, and probably, expect in secret some promotion in my status with Him ! And when they start taking my pictures to preserve in their albums, well, what more does a humble devotee want ?
“O God!”, I cried out. “help me unlearn all my lessons, and keep my mind and heart an empty chalice.” I don’t want the lessons to jostle in my mind, and make a lot of noise I-have-learnt-this. They would absorb so much of my attention that I would fail to notice when you pass by, and fail to hear when you whisper `roll up your mat and follow me’.
If ever I have learnt any lessons, I want to unlearn them. Each piece of `lesson’ is a marble pool with some unageing gold fish swimming in it. I wouldn’t change the water for fear of infection, but forget that
the stagnant pool could be infection itself. Then I would begin to compare other pools with my pool; or worse, begin expecting you to behave in conformity with these lessons ! Then Lord, the learner, and the learning both would begin to stink. Than this I would rather have a river, ever flowing, ever singing, ever running towards the sea, filling the countryside with cool moisture to fight the heat of living, but never forming a pool. I would rather witness the ever changing landscapes, the fluttering birds, the playful clouds, the sage sunrises and sunsets, and your uncertain moods in all certainties. When you hum a tune, I break into a song; when you fancy to paint I carry your paints and brush; and when you drop your eyelids with the drooping leaves, I go into trance. Why should I stick to a lesson, and try to define you in it ?
Dear Lord, what shall I do with learning ? It would separate me from you when I start counting them, and checking them with their lessons. This learning would invest me with an identity of my own, a face different from their faces. Then I would adorn my face with marks of that which you have given me, and denied the others ! I may chuckle with satisfaction, or feel the heat of envy. That means I would face away from you, and the devil shall be too pleased, for I will see his face, not yours. When you get into a playful mood, and fancy to humour me, and my learning, I would raise my eyebrows, and doubt the sanity of what you say or do. My learning shall be my undoing, my curse. The ghost, my new lesson, shall drive away the old ghost, and while I am furiously engaged in updating my lessons, you enjoy the fun behind the screen, and pity my foolishness. Who will not, if in order to grade the fruits I throw away the juice and preserve the skins !
Dear Lord, if in one of your creative moods you begin upsetting standard ideas, concepts, theories in order to help us with an insight into their relevance to understand you, I would raise my eyebrows, search my notebook to quote you to yourself, remind you of contradictions you commit, and get stuck in the mud of my lessons ! My lessons, which I have borrowed from you, become frames in which I would confine you and hang you on my walls ! Then I would accuse you of confusing me, using unstable syllables to teach important lessons. Dear Lord, how funny, you fall a prey to your own lessons ! They draw a boundary around the boundless, separate the drop from the ocean, and judge the ocean by the standards of the drop ! I shall have none of them.
Dear Lord, learning is not being. Though the end of all learning is being, they do not suggest each other. Learning lessons, and the ability to expound them hasn’t often led to being. Then why should I spend my little life in concentrating on something which has little end value ? Why should I want to learn lessons instead of being ? Learning lessons is taking a part from the whole, to trace the whole from the part, in order that the part may find its wholeness; while being is like taking the part to the whole, and then no more see the part in the whole. Then why should I try to learn instead of being ? Does the word find its fulfillment in the meaning, or meaning in the word ? Does sound merge in silence, or silence in sound ? Dear Lord, like an omnipresent fragrance, you are everywhere; like a whisper you are everywhere; like a mother’s compassion you are everywhere. Then why should I need a process to reach the one who is never processed ? Learning is a product; how can a product define the one who never produces two similar things ? Learning is what I am; can I become what I am not by preserving what I am ? Dear Lord, free me from all the urges of collecting lessons from you, so that I may break through the imaginary boundaries, and be the boundless.
Dear Lord, let me not question your deeds, but see you in your deeds. Let me not try to find a lesson in what you do, but find you in what you do. Let me not seek to understand you in your words, but seek to find all words in you. Let me not see the flower in the bud, or bud in the flower, but see the flower and the bud in their fragrance. Probably, that is why you said being is lost in the becoming. When I look at the tree, don’t I see the seed and the flower too ? If you are present in all time and all place, where is a way to you ? Where is a lesson to learn ? Instead of defining boundaries, and listing lessons how to cross them, can’t I just melt into you ? Does an ice-cube need to have knowledge of water before melting into it ?
Someone chuckled, and, “You should be practical in your mind, my friend. All these men of God, who have left legacies behind for us, teach us great lessons to reach God. Can you, which is the mankind, do without them ? Can you say they have no relevance for you ?”
Dear Lord, I still don’t think they teach us anything. The puddles realized that they are in fact part of the sea, and the part is in the whole. They have left behind what they saw, not that one learn to see, but be to see. In other words, one can only be. All their words have only one centre, being. The moment I am aware that I am in your eternal embrace, I ceases to be, only you are. I can not be where you are, and you are not where I am. Being is lost in becoming, so becoming must return to Being. There is no seeing apart from being; and since one does not learn to be, one does not learn to see. When you are around me, why should I ask to learn to see you ? And what do I learn ? Can any lesson define you ?
Dear Lord, then what am I asking of you ? Nothing, and everything too. Don’t try to teach me a method to see you. Do not try to show me a path to reach you; I may be too unsure to recognize the method, and too blind to see the path. Here I am, standing before you, poor as a rat. You are at the start of the road, at the end of it, and all along it. Then why should I pretend to use a road to reach you ?
The small voice within me heaved a sigh, I hope a sigh of relief, and said, “If you can recognise the end at the beginning, God bless you.” And Lord, should I ask for your blessings ? Let me be a part of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“ I have tried for a long time to develop devotion”.
“ You have lived with God for many years now. You must have learnt a lot of valuable lessons at His Lotus Feet”, he insisted. The usual enthusiasts, the usual questions. I was going to break into a run; but someone whispered, `Hold’.
The question of my good friend struck me with such bluntness that it took me a few seconds to steady myself. Well, I have tried to practise devotion for God for years now, and I must have learnt a number of lessons directly from Him, and I am expected to share them with others ! Expectations are legitimate.
Can I say I haven’t learnt any lessons ? Can I say they are too personal to share ? Can lessons be too personal ? The World Teacher is here and now, to lead the mankind to its goal, and here I am calling myself His devotee, admitting I have learnt no lessons ! Too negative an attitude. This won’t do.
When I tried to look within to find an answer the small voice spoke. He asked me gently, “Lessons ? What will you do with all that ? Teach others ? Collect some admirers ? Prove to them you are a few bits above them, ahead of them ? And you deserved all this by your good work ? Go ahead.”
I was flushed. Really, what will I do with all those lessons I am supposed to collect from Him ? I wouldn’t dare do all that is suggested. But… probably improve myself. Shouldn’t I ? Listening to the great lessons God teaches, one can come closer to God, and help others too in their journey. That should be a kind of service to mankind, wouldn’t it be so ? And service to man is service to God.
Very tempting indeed. God would allow me draw some money from His bank, help me spend it in some charity work under my signature, and let me earn some credit for doing His work. Then, to expand this good work I will ask for more funds, more conveniences, more conveyances, and probably, expect in secret some promotion in my status with Him ! And when they start taking my pictures to preserve in their albums, well, what more does a humble devotee want ?
“O God!”, I cried out. “help me unlearn all my lessons, and keep my mind and heart an empty chalice.” I don’t want the lessons to jostle in my mind, and make a lot of noise I-have-learnt-this. They would absorb so much of my attention that I would fail to notice when you pass by, and fail to hear when you whisper `roll up your mat and follow me’.
If ever I have learnt any lessons, I want to unlearn them. Each piece of `lesson’ is a marble pool with some unageing gold fish swimming in it. I wouldn’t change the water for fear of infection, but forget that
the stagnant pool could be infection itself. Then I would begin to compare other pools with my pool; or worse, begin expecting you to behave in conformity with these lessons ! Then Lord, the learner, and the learning both would begin to stink. Than this I would rather have a river, ever flowing, ever singing, ever running towards the sea, filling the countryside with cool moisture to fight the heat of living, but never forming a pool. I would rather witness the ever changing landscapes, the fluttering birds, the playful clouds, the sage sunrises and sunsets, and your uncertain moods in all certainties. When you hum a tune, I break into a song; when you fancy to paint I carry your paints and brush; and when you drop your eyelids with the drooping leaves, I go into trance. Why should I stick to a lesson, and try to define you in it ?
Dear Lord, what shall I do with learning ? It would separate me from you when I start counting them, and checking them with their lessons. This learning would invest me with an identity of my own, a face different from their faces. Then I would adorn my face with marks of that which you have given me, and denied the others ! I may chuckle with satisfaction, or feel the heat of envy. That means I would face away from you, and the devil shall be too pleased, for I will see his face, not yours. When you get into a playful mood, and fancy to humour me, and my learning, I would raise my eyebrows, and doubt the sanity of what you say or do. My learning shall be my undoing, my curse. The ghost, my new lesson, shall drive away the old ghost, and while I am furiously engaged in updating my lessons, you enjoy the fun behind the screen, and pity my foolishness. Who will not, if in order to grade the fruits I throw away the juice and preserve the skins !
Dear Lord, if in one of your creative moods you begin upsetting standard ideas, concepts, theories in order to help us with an insight into their relevance to understand you, I would raise my eyebrows, search my notebook to quote you to yourself, remind you of contradictions you commit, and get stuck in the mud of my lessons ! My lessons, which I have borrowed from you, become frames in which I would confine you and hang you on my walls ! Then I would accuse you of confusing me, using unstable syllables to teach important lessons. Dear Lord, how funny, you fall a prey to your own lessons ! They draw a boundary around the boundless, separate the drop from the ocean, and judge the ocean by the standards of the drop ! I shall have none of them.
Dear Lord, learning is not being. Though the end of all learning is being, they do not suggest each other. Learning lessons, and the ability to expound them hasn’t often led to being. Then why should I spend my little life in concentrating on something which has little end value ? Why should I want to learn lessons instead of being ? Learning lessons is taking a part from the whole, to trace the whole from the part, in order that the part may find its wholeness; while being is like taking the part to the whole, and then no more see the part in the whole. Then why should I try to learn instead of being ? Does the word find its fulfillment in the meaning, or meaning in the word ? Does sound merge in silence, or silence in sound ? Dear Lord, like an omnipresent fragrance, you are everywhere; like a whisper you are everywhere; like a mother’s compassion you are everywhere. Then why should I need a process to reach the one who is never processed ? Learning is a product; how can a product define the one who never produces two similar things ? Learning is what I am; can I become what I am not by preserving what I am ? Dear Lord, free me from all the urges of collecting lessons from you, so that I may break through the imaginary boundaries, and be the boundless.
Dear Lord, let me not question your deeds, but see you in your deeds. Let me not try to find a lesson in what you do, but find you in what you do. Let me not seek to understand you in your words, but seek to find all words in you. Let me not see the flower in the bud, or bud in the flower, but see the flower and the bud in their fragrance. Probably, that is why you said being is lost in the becoming. When I look at the tree, don’t I see the seed and the flower too ? If you are present in all time and all place, where is a way to you ? Where is a lesson to learn ? Instead of defining boundaries, and listing lessons how to cross them, can’t I just melt into you ? Does an ice-cube need to have knowledge of water before melting into it ?
Someone chuckled, and, “You should be practical in your mind, my friend. All these men of God, who have left legacies behind for us, teach us great lessons to reach God. Can you, which is the mankind, do without them ? Can you say they have no relevance for you ?”
Dear Lord, I still don’t think they teach us anything. The puddles realized that they are in fact part of the sea, and the part is in the whole. They have left behind what they saw, not that one learn to see, but be to see. In other words, one can only be. All their words have only one centre, being. The moment I am aware that I am in your eternal embrace, I ceases to be, only you are. I can not be where you are, and you are not where I am. Being is lost in becoming, so becoming must return to Being. There is no seeing apart from being; and since one does not learn to be, one does not learn to see. When you are around me, why should I ask to learn to see you ? And what do I learn ? Can any lesson define you ?
Dear Lord, then what am I asking of you ? Nothing, and everything too. Don’t try to teach me a method to see you. Do not try to show me a path to reach you; I may be too unsure to recognize the method, and too blind to see the path. Here I am, standing before you, poor as a rat. You are at the start of the road, at the end of it, and all along it. Then why should I pretend to use a road to reach you ?
The small voice within me heaved a sigh, I hope a sigh of relief, and said, “If you can recognise the end at the beginning, God bless you.” And Lord, should I ask for your blessings ? Let me be a part of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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