It’s important because it is basically the only activity (or non-activity) that teaches us how to tolerate being alone with ourselves. For the majority of us not to have anything to do, without some form of engagement or entertainment is torture.  We are “driven to distraction” by boredom.  Waiting in line, sitting on long flights, being unemployed, or even engaging in some form of activity that is disagreeable, puts us on edge or worse. Like murderous or suicidal. Meditation can gives us the necessary mental training to deal with such situations, and gives us a different understanding of being.
Once when I was on a trans-Atlantic flight I suddenly realised that I don’t need the in-flight entertainment system. This was an opportunity to enjoy just sitting.  Time was of no importance, long or short.  In the normal situation, we try to shrink time by filling it, either by agreeable activity or entertainment.  Having nothing to do makes it stretch, so that every minute seems like an eternity. This is true: every minute is an eternity.  We are very rich in time, if we don’t squander it. When we do, our lives are over in a moment. Before we know it, we are old, and then we die.  We don’t stop to enjoy the miracle of watching our children as they grow, or even to enjoy the beauty or the fragrance of a flower.

Yesterday, walking out in the woods and fields, I began to fret about all that I hadn’t managed to attain in my work.  In general, I feel low self-esteem when it comes to my efficiency, in terms of what I manage to get done.  The more I manage to do, the more seems to be left undone. The days that are the busiest make me the most discontented.  Whereas when I do nothing at all, I feel perfectly happy.  So, on my walk, all the thoughts about how inadequate and inefficient I am were coursing through my mind.  I even gave them voice, speaking out loud.  Then suddenly I thought – or said -, I don’t need to be doing this. This is all just about doing.  And it’s not even about now.  It’s about things that did or didn’t get done.  I said to myself, I can turn this around.  I can enjoy this present moment of walking, and leave all the other stuff behind. So I did.  I had a wonderful walk. Before the walk I had felt tired and lacking in energy.  Now I felt alive and fresh.

I have a problem (still) with doing.  I do not have a problem with being.  Being alone with myself, and not having anything to do is wonderful.  Something to enjoy.  I’m not alone, and not myself.  And time is just an artificial construct in which we try to confine and give shape to experience.  But to be. truly alive. to experience. is. to be. out of time and mind.

In the evening I read and listened to a couple of interviews by David Godman, a disciple of Ramana Maharshi.  He was born in 1953 and in 1976 arrived in Tiruvannamalai, intending to stay a few weeks. He said he had a little money in his pocket, which would eventually run out, after which he planned to return home to the UK. Life worked out otherwise, and he ended up staying for good. He said that at a certain point, the mountain indicated to him that he could stop thinking about his return or worrying about how to support himself. It was his destiny to be there, under the shadow of Arunachala, like so many before him, including Ramana himself.

In 1977 I traveled to India after completing a yoga course of the Sivananda organization. I’d actually been on my way to Tel Aviv, where I had promised to join the staff of the yoga vedanta center. But while on the way, in Greece, I had decided to delay my arrival a bit in order to go overland to Rishikesh, and visit the ashram where Swami Vishnu Devananda had learned and practiced. I spent about a month in India, and then bought my ticket to Tel Aviv. I thought I would be spending just a few months or a year in Israel/Palestine and indeed after 6 months I returned back to the US. However, something drew me back again to the yoga center in Tel Aviv. I realized that I had begun to feel at home there. I ended up staying in Israel/Palestine just like Godman ended up staying in Tiruvannamalai, almost over the same period.

A couple of days ago I watched a wonderful feature movie called The Violin Player. At 112 minutes, it is fairly short for a feature film, but its slow and measured pace gives depth to it. Only in the final minute, or perhaps when the titles begin to roll at the end, is the film properly understood. There, there is a quotation of something Pablo Picasso apparently said: “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life”.

In South India every morning the women go out and deftly draw in powder a simple or elaborate design known as kollam or rangoli. Being there at the gate, the design gets stepped on and smudged throughout the day, so by the end of the day there isn’t much left of it. The following morning, the woman of the house obliterates what’s left of it and quickly traces a new kollam.

In temples and ashrams, there is an even more elaborate ceremony. In powder or coloured grains of rice, complex yantras are drawn and worshiped. The last time I was at Ramanashram I saw this. At the end of the ceremony, these wonderful yantras are deliberately destroyed, to indicate impermanence.

I’m thinking that sometimes the pattern of life is not obvious or clear to us while we are living it. It is covered and obscured with dust. The plot and its significance may become clear, if at all, only in our final moments.

In the mind of the universe, the underlying pattern is always there, whether we understand it or not. Every flower, every snowflake conceals an elaborate geometry. In our ordinary lifetimes, a hidden pattern gradually emerges and reveals itself , only to be swept away in the sudden act of our death. This must surely happen, in order that a new pattern may be drawn.

True meditation is characterized by a state of openness and receptivity.  But in such a state, the mind is vulnerable to assault by any passing thought that wishes to colonize it. For this reason, meditators are usually advised to do is to take a single element: a mantra, the breath, or a quality, and to “concentrate” on it so that the mind will be occupied with this one thought instead of by all the others.

Nevertheless, the mind remains severely susceptible to attack by so many other thoughts that try to hijack one’s meditation. Eventually, it either gives in and goes with the flow, or enters into a kind of numbness.

So really there is no substitute for a chaste, clear consciousness that can remain completely receptive and vulnerable, but is still able to rebuff, without any resistance, every attempt to seduce it.

If the latter seems impossible, this explains why meditation is only one part of spiritual practice.

There is no longer any reason to accept anything: any ideology or creed, or hold on to any conception of truth.

By now, we’ve proved all of them wrong. By the early 21st century we can say with complete confidence that they have all equally fallen into ignominy.

New teachers and apologists for old teachings still come along.  They should be welcomed with an ironic smile.

Only one thing remains certain, and this is that we are racing towards the destruction of ourselves and the biosphere.

The end won’t come today or tomorrow.  Or even next week.  The end is not near. But it is embedded in the present. In our greed, in our blindness and ignorance.

These are what we must change.  The old guys had clues to obtaining a different consciousness that could bring about a radical transformation.

The words in which they couched their revelation are unintelligible or wrongly interpreted, no doubt, and the implementation may have been flawed.
Yet they were onto something.

We need to seek out the kernel, winnow away the chaff.

Only India has been able to produce spiritual masters like Kabir and Meher Baba, whose religious identity is unclear, but whose spiritual stature is enormous. And Meher Baba himself explored and brought attention, more than any other, to the world of God-intoxicated sadhus, whose spiritual stature was also great, but who were not capable of teaching anything to others. Their case is even more interesting, because if no one would pay attention to them in this way, they would be considered mere aberrations, whose experience is of no value to humankind. The changes being brought about by modern India endangers their very existence; and once they are gone, they will quickly be forgotten, with a shudder.

As a side note, it’s nice that those with an interest in Meher Baba have chosen to use Wikipedia itself to record his life and ideas, thus making them accessible to everyone.

Also in Wikipedia, I also found interesting information on the Soham mantra, with mention of all the classical sources, and on the concept of “ajapa japa” – japa that has the quality of persisting without effort. I occasionally experience this, particularly when walking – though briefly.

In his The Creative Vision of the Early Upanisads David Frawley says, “Those who regard the idea of the direct realization of the Absolute as an invention of the Upanisads or Buddhism do not understand the inner implications of Vedic symbolism.. however, the Veda does have, at the same time and with not much sense of contradiction, a more creative side to the Self and a greater affirmation of creation… As we now begin to approach another age of light, that creative truth and way to the Self may again become possible, not in the dualistic fashion of medieval dualistic Vedanta but in the creative vision of the Vedic seers.”

In modern India these two kinds of seers are most represented by the two foremost sages of the time-period, Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo; the former being the supreme of the seers of the uncreate Brahman and the latter the supreme of the seers of the creative Brahman. The former represents the ultimate modern simplification and practicalization of the direct approach to the Absolute, while the latter represents a resurgence after some three thousand years, in a new and modern language and approach of the seers of pure Creation and Divine Life. They were contemporaneous in age, even dying the same year, and resided only a few miles from each other at their Ashrams in South India. Though their teachings seem rather different, perhaps even contradictory in some aspects, they reflect the vast range of the twofold Vedic teaching, as it continues to transform itself according to the needs and potentials of man as it has done so since the beginning of this time-cycle.”

“The supreme Shastra of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being.  The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us.  It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite.  All life, all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence.  He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite.  He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia in the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga
All his writings are available for PDF download at:
http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/writings.php

(By using Calibre, you can re-format these for any device.)

The Buddhist monk who had immediately before been discussing the Dharma suddenly asked, “Do you know about 9/11?” It was obvious from the way he said this that his understanding of the event was different from the accepted version.

He had a lot to say on the subject, and I, who have never troubled to delve into alternative speculation about this tragedy, was at first shocked to hear this from a monk. And then I understood.

In order to take what would seem to most people as the radical step of abandoning the world, there must be a strong instigation, either personal or more general.

When I myself took the vows, all those years ago, it was on account of a strong attraction and hopefulness towards what I defined as spiritual life, and a simultaneous dislike for what I saw in the world. The latter was not well-defined; only a feeling for which I had not bothered to provide a theoretical background. I had no sources of information and only my intuition to go on.

But now there is the Internet, and much greater access to information than in the past – even for monks. It is a lot easier to access covert knowledge and stimulate alternative thinking. This monk had taken a path that allowed him to deeply question basic assumptions about the way our civilization works. 9/11 had been a convenient opening.

His wish to share his knowledge of 9/11 came from a notion that it could serve as a key to understanding. For me, it isn’t and could not be such a key, because it’s an area in which I feel out of my depth. As I said to him, “I could go to websites about 9/11 and begin to believe alternative theories, but this would still be only a belief. I simply don’t have the tools or the knowledge to assess them properly.

But although 9/11 isn’t a key for me, I’m in sympathy with the rest of his deep dissatisfaction with the world. I told him he was preaching to the converted.

The truth, however, is that it is quite difficult to detach from the world. Monkhood is an easier path for that. The rest of us have to deal with the world much more rigorously. The establishment, and the established patterns, worm their way through everything.