Holi is around the corner. A harbinger of spring, it marks the end of icy winds, cold desolate nights, and diffident rays of the sun. People celebrate Holi making bonfires, yodelling popular songs and dancing with wild abandon. Sprinkling colored powder or water is also an accepted way of merrymaking. Holi always comes on the day of the full moon in the month of Phalgun.
The custom is an outcrop of an ancient legend. According to the legend, a king by the name of Hiranyakashyap made it obligatory for his subjects to worship him as the ruler of the universe, in place of Vishnu, the traditional Hindu God. His own son, Prahlad, who was a devotee of Vishnu, defied his command. So the king entered into a conspiracy with his sister Holika, to eliminate Prahlad. Holika had a boon which made her immune to burning by fire. So she sat on a burning pyre with Prahlad on her lap. Miraculously, it was she who was burnt to ashes, while Prahlad came out of the inferno, alive.
As with other legends, this legend also operates on more than one plane. For the uninitiated, it becomes an object of faith, because of the play of supernatural forces. The festival helps them in bonding together to create a common social milieu and a happy cultural ambience. For the initiates, on the other hand, myths are a unique way of keeping alive a phenomenon of utmost importance in the form of an encoded message. The message can be deciphered down the ages, without losing its initial charm.
There are three players in this story: Hiranyakashyap, Holika, and Prahlad, and in the backdrop is Holi. Etymologically speaking Hiranyakashyap means 'encrusted with gold'. So he stands for worldly wealth and its accompanying paraphernalia such as power, arrogance, manipulation, and virtual blindness. By virtual blindness I mean that one can't see the writing on the wall even with eyes open. In spiritual parlance we call it sleep. So Hiranyakashyap is asleep spiritually.
The meaning of Prahlad is 'the blissful one'. You see the beauty of bliss is that it doesn't have any opposite. If you are happy, you can be unhappy too; if you are glad, you can be sad, but if you are blissful, you can't be anything other than blissful. Blissfulness is a state in which there is neither happiness nor unhappiness. You transcend both. A blissful person will neither jump out of his skin in moments of glory, nor will he eat his heart out in lean times. He remains level-headed whether in or out of Lady Luck's favor. He stands outside of both; in the middle, so to say.
All the three names, Holika, Holi, and Prahlad, come from the same sanskrit radical >hl< which means 'to create bliss'. Holika is the ablative case and therefore it means 'the instrument of bliss', and Holi is the substantive meaning 'bliss'. So it is a play about blissfulness or to be precise : about how to transcend sleep and become blissful. I think it is clear by now that to be blissful one has to be wakeful.
And what exactly is wakefulness ? Let me give you a practical example. While eating our meals, it is a common practice to sit together on a dining table, relate our day's experiences, discuss problems,and laugh away or rant at something. It is the done thing because this gives forth an air of bonhomie within the family. You eat to your heart's content, or more correctly, till your stomach can take no more weight.It is the dead weight in the stomach that decides for us. And this is appreciated. I am trying to say that an alert person would have been satisfied with much less, and felt much better. I will tell you how.
Some day try a different method. First thing you have to do is to remain silent while eating, not only outwardly, but inwardly too. In fact inwardly is the most important criterion. Sit for eating only when your hunger is very keen. Sit alone. Feel the aroma of the dishes, their colors, and textures. Take a morsel, feel its touch on the palate. Let it tickle your taste buds for as long as it is possible. However, because of your centuries-old conditioning, you are going to gulp it down in a moment. It will take quite some effort on your part to make it into a habit. Your mind will not stay on your food even for a second. Bring it back again and again. It is a practice which takes not months but years to fructify. Once you attain it you will find you are eating much less, and feeling energetic much more. Only because you have become alert.
During your daily eating sessions, you eat till the stomach refuses to take any more. As a result, your stomach feels heavy and your mind becomes jaded. Your body doesn't need food, it needs energy. But when you are eating with your mind running at express speed, you are depleting your energy reserve faster than you are replenishing it. How ? Because the brain uses up 78% of all the energy available to the body. Therefore when you are silent inwardly, you conserve all the energy that you are deriving from the food. The brain is inundated with surplus energy and it refuses to take any more food. This happens simply because you are wakeful. So wakefulness means you are not allowing yourself the luxury of the inner monologue. This in turn helps you become alive to the present moment.
Hiranyakshyap is asleep and Prahlad, his son, is awake. In other words,a somnolent father has become awake in his son. How did the transformation come through ? Well, fire has been used in this story to bring about this metamorphosis. Fire, in sanskrit, is called Agni which means 'the first born'. Agni is the first Vedic god. When the Vedic rishis meditated on Agni, all the sacred symbols, Om, Swastik, Trident, Lingam, were revealed to them. And then there were other gods, the Maruts, and Vasus, and Pastyas and others.
Agni, besides having the qualities of leaping skyward,and producing heat and light, has the unique property of burning everything including itself. Holika as an instrument of bliss, becomes an emblem of fire by burning herself in the process. The whole festival of Holi can thus be encapsulated in one sentence : Become awake using fire as a medium. Awake, alert, conscious, attentive, enlightened, realized, are all synonyms for being alive to the present moment. Absent, asleep, ignorant are words used for persons having a free run of thoughts.
Buddha advised some of his disciples to stay on a cremation ground for three months in order to meditate on the burning pyres. This helped them free themselves from unnecessary thoughts. Baba Muktanand spent 20 days on Rudrabhumi cremation ground in Kashi. Sitting between 20 to 30 burning pyres, in the dead of night, he had the realization that he was separate from his body. The final awakening had happened to him. For householders it is enough to meditate on a candle flame, in the comforts of one's home, to attain to a state of wakefulness.
In my previous article I had written that Buddha had used 'breath' as a means of gaining enlightenment. Both these techniques, are part of the 112 techniques that Lord Shiva teaches, in the form of a dialogue with his consort Devi, in Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, a text of Kashmir Shaivism. But 112 is not the end of techniques. Mahavir Swami used 'frugal eating' as a means of remaining awake. During a span of 12 years, his total eating days totted up to one year only. G.I. Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic borrowed the sufi dance from dervishes, but modified it by adding to it his own technique of 'stop' to break human conditioning, or human sleep as he called it.
Eckhart Tolle, today's popular spiritual teacher, bemoans "Compulsive thinking", which "has become a collective disease". It is our "collective insanity", he continues, which "killed 100 million members of our own species in the 20th century alone... See the heinous cruelty and suffering, on an unimaginable scale that humans have inflicted and continue to inflict on each other as well as other life forms, on the planet".
Some people use the sun to meditate upon. After all, the sun is the biggest ball of fire known to us. Meditation on the sun derives away all the dark thoughts, making one peaceful. Peacefulness is the criterion of an awakened person. If you are at peace, you are awake. Buddha simply means 'the awakened one'. Mahavir Swami is said to have become a 'jina' which means a conqueror- a conquerer of thoughts. Thoughts are great tyrants. As long as you are 'asleep', your mind remains a thoroughfare for them. They gatecrash all the time and make you restless even in your sleep. But if you are awake, no thought can enter your mind without your permission. That is the beauty of being 'awake'. You become a master of your thoughts.
William james, at the turn of the last century had written: "One of the greatest discoveries of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind". In spiritual terms it means you can make your life blissful by becoming awake. Once awake, you will discover that you are a spiritual being having a human experience instead of feeling that you are a human being in search of a spiritual experience.
Thank you for being here with me. May God bestow his choicest blessings on you. Please celebrate Holi thinking you are only an instrument of God. In truth it is God himself in different roles. Happy Holi.
.
Please visit the site on 18th March for an exposition of a subject that happens to be the only certainty in this otherwise fluid world.
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi
The custom is an outcrop of an ancient legend. According to the legend, a king by the name of Hiranyakashyap made it obligatory for his subjects to worship him as the ruler of the universe, in place of Vishnu, the traditional Hindu God. His own son, Prahlad, who was a devotee of Vishnu, defied his command. So the king entered into a conspiracy with his sister Holika, to eliminate Prahlad. Holika had a boon which made her immune to burning by fire. So she sat on a burning pyre with Prahlad on her lap. Miraculously, it was she who was burnt to ashes, while Prahlad came out of the inferno, alive.
As with other legends, this legend also operates on more than one plane. For the uninitiated, it becomes an object of faith, because of the play of supernatural forces. The festival helps them in bonding together to create a common social milieu and a happy cultural ambience. For the initiates, on the other hand, myths are a unique way of keeping alive a phenomenon of utmost importance in the form of an encoded message. The message can be deciphered down the ages, without losing its initial charm.
There are three players in this story: Hiranyakashyap, Holika, and Prahlad, and in the backdrop is Holi. Etymologically speaking Hiranyakashyap means 'encrusted with gold'. So he stands for worldly wealth and its accompanying paraphernalia such as power, arrogance, manipulation, and virtual blindness. By virtual blindness I mean that one can't see the writing on the wall even with eyes open. In spiritual parlance we call it sleep. So Hiranyakashyap is asleep spiritually.
The meaning of Prahlad is 'the blissful one'. You see the beauty of bliss is that it doesn't have any opposite. If you are happy, you can be unhappy too; if you are glad, you can be sad, but if you are blissful, you can't be anything other than blissful. Blissfulness is a state in which there is neither happiness nor unhappiness. You transcend both. A blissful person will neither jump out of his skin in moments of glory, nor will he eat his heart out in lean times. He remains level-headed whether in or out of Lady Luck's favor. He stands outside of both; in the middle, so to say.
All the three names, Holika, Holi, and Prahlad, come from the same sanskrit radical >hl< which means 'to create bliss'. Holika is the ablative case and therefore it means 'the instrument of bliss', and Holi is the substantive meaning 'bliss'. So it is a play about blissfulness or to be precise : about how to transcend sleep and become blissful. I think it is clear by now that to be blissful one has to be wakeful.
And what exactly is wakefulness ? Let me give you a practical example. While eating our meals, it is a common practice to sit together on a dining table, relate our day's experiences, discuss problems,and laugh away or rant at something. It is the done thing because this gives forth an air of bonhomie within the family. You eat to your heart's content, or more correctly, till your stomach can take no more weight.It is the dead weight in the stomach that decides for us. And this is appreciated. I am trying to say that an alert person would have been satisfied with much less, and felt much better. I will tell you how.
Some day try a different method. First thing you have to do is to remain silent while eating, not only outwardly, but inwardly too. In fact inwardly is the most important criterion. Sit for eating only when your hunger is very keen. Sit alone. Feel the aroma of the dishes, their colors, and textures. Take a morsel, feel its touch on the palate. Let it tickle your taste buds for as long as it is possible. However, because of your centuries-old conditioning, you are going to gulp it down in a moment. It will take quite some effort on your part to make it into a habit. Your mind will not stay on your food even for a second. Bring it back again and again. It is a practice which takes not months but years to fructify. Once you attain it you will find you are eating much less, and feeling energetic much more. Only because you have become alert.
During your daily eating sessions, you eat till the stomach refuses to take any more. As a result, your stomach feels heavy and your mind becomes jaded. Your body doesn't need food, it needs energy. But when you are eating with your mind running at express speed, you are depleting your energy reserve faster than you are replenishing it. How ? Because the brain uses up 78% of all the energy available to the body. Therefore when you are silent inwardly, you conserve all the energy that you are deriving from the food. The brain is inundated with surplus energy and it refuses to take any more food. This happens simply because you are wakeful. So wakefulness means you are not allowing yourself the luxury of the inner monologue. This in turn helps you become alive to the present moment.
Hiranyakshyap is asleep and Prahlad, his son, is awake. In other words,a somnolent father has become awake in his son. How did the transformation come through ? Well, fire has been used in this story to bring about this metamorphosis. Fire, in sanskrit, is called Agni which means 'the first born'. Agni is the first Vedic god. When the Vedic rishis meditated on Agni, all the sacred symbols, Om, Swastik, Trident, Lingam, were revealed to them. And then there were other gods, the Maruts, and Vasus, and Pastyas and others.
Agni, besides having the qualities of leaping skyward,and producing heat and light, has the unique property of burning everything including itself. Holika as an instrument of bliss, becomes an emblem of fire by burning herself in the process. The whole festival of Holi can thus be encapsulated in one sentence : Become awake using fire as a medium. Awake, alert, conscious, attentive, enlightened, realized, are all synonyms for being alive to the present moment. Absent, asleep, ignorant are words used for persons having a free run of thoughts.
Buddha advised some of his disciples to stay on a cremation ground for three months in order to meditate on the burning pyres. This helped them free themselves from unnecessary thoughts. Baba Muktanand spent 20 days on Rudrabhumi cremation ground in Kashi. Sitting between 20 to 30 burning pyres, in the dead of night, he had the realization that he was separate from his body. The final awakening had happened to him. For householders it is enough to meditate on a candle flame, in the comforts of one's home, to attain to a state of wakefulness.
In my previous article I had written that Buddha had used 'breath' as a means of gaining enlightenment. Both these techniques, are part of the 112 techniques that Lord Shiva teaches, in the form of a dialogue with his consort Devi, in Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, a text of Kashmir Shaivism. But 112 is not the end of techniques. Mahavir Swami used 'frugal eating' as a means of remaining awake. During a span of 12 years, his total eating days totted up to one year only. G.I. Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic borrowed the sufi dance from dervishes, but modified it by adding to it his own technique of 'stop' to break human conditioning, or human sleep as he called it.
Eckhart Tolle, today's popular spiritual teacher, bemoans "Compulsive thinking", which "has become a collective disease". It is our "collective insanity", he continues, which "killed 100 million members of our own species in the 20th century alone... See the heinous cruelty and suffering, on an unimaginable scale that humans have inflicted and continue to inflict on each other as well as other life forms, on the planet".
Some people use the sun to meditate upon. After all, the sun is the biggest ball of fire known to us. Meditation on the sun derives away all the dark thoughts, making one peaceful. Peacefulness is the criterion of an awakened person. If you are at peace, you are awake. Buddha simply means 'the awakened one'. Mahavir Swami is said to have become a 'jina' which means a conqueror- a conquerer of thoughts. Thoughts are great tyrants. As long as you are 'asleep', your mind remains a thoroughfare for them. They gatecrash all the time and make you restless even in your sleep. But if you are awake, no thought can enter your mind without your permission. That is the beauty of being 'awake'. You become a master of your thoughts.
William james, at the turn of the last century had written: "One of the greatest discoveries of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind". In spiritual terms it means you can make your life blissful by becoming awake. Once awake, you will discover that you are a spiritual being having a human experience instead of feeling that you are a human being in search of a spiritual experience.
Thank you for being here with me. May God bestow his choicest blessings on you. Please celebrate Holi thinking you are only an instrument of God. In truth it is God himself in different roles. Happy Holi.
.
Please visit the site on 18th March for an exposition of a subject that happens to be the only certainty in this otherwise fluid world.
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi
