Osho was once asked : If one were to make only one New Year's resolution, what would you suggest? Osho, as was his wont, countered with What is resolution? And then went on to explicate : Resolution is struggle. Resolution is ego. Resolution is saying, I cannot live spontaneously. And if you cannot live spontaneously, you don't live at all. You only pretend. What Osho is at pains to underpin, is that a free channeling of life force is what living is all about. Living, in the real sense, is not possible if the free flow of life force is obstructed by pre-meditated formulations. It amounts to denying the tomorrow its divine right to unfold itself in its true being. Deciding today about tomorrow is like killing tomorrow before it is born. It is like killing the foetus in the womb.
Lest it should be construed that I am forfeiting preparedness for the morrow to uncertainty, let me make it clear that there is a big chasm between apathy and patience. We need neither to force ourselves on the moment, as it would warp the time trajectory, nor do we have to appear like helpless victims. We need only to lend a helping hand to the moment, in unfolding. That will undercut inertia, intrigue, disenchantment, stage-managing, all engineers that stifle the vital energy . Instead, there will be insight, ingenuity, integrity, discrimination which allow the life energy to bound uninterruptedly. All these abstract denominations would pass for nothing, were they not to translate into concrete fixtures of human physiognomy. Just a glance would reveal whether somebody is really living or happens to be just a mirror image of living.
There are various seminars arranged in almost every part of the globe to manage the growing noise pollution in the cities, as it is linked with many illnesses of the body and the mind. Certain parts of a city are marked as silence zones, high decibel klaxons are prohibited, raucous parties are banned. Admirable! More admirable will be the precocity to understand the mechanism of the inner noise. Outer noise is simply an expression of the inner noise that never takes a holiday. Don't you see people glued to a teeny weeny device called the cell phone, while they are at the wheel, on their legs, in air or in bed ? What is happening ? It is a gift from Martin Cooper, the inventor of cell phones, to the world at large, to provide a non-irritant passage to the inner traffic.
Nothing takes place in the theater of the world, that doesn't first happen in the interstices of the inner matrix. All concrete formulations have their subtle origins. Be it a frontline feud, or a domestic duel, an armed fracas or a verbal sling fest, bride burning or heart burning--it is all a blow off from the inner noise. A life lived on and from this noise is only a pale copy of living. Real living happens when there is complete silence inside. With silence comes serenity and in serenity is born sensitivity. Sensitivity attracts to itself, sensibility. And it is sensibility that imparts beauty to a character. Gertrude Emerson, Editor of Asia magazine and a likely incarnation of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous American Transcendentalist, had a memorable experience while she was staying with Mahatma Gandhi at his Sabarmati Ashram in October 1926.
Let her speak : "A gong sounded at 4 a.m. and fifteen minutes later, Miraben and the other Ashramites were hurrying along a path to the sandy stretch near the river... Gandhiji was already sitting on a low platform at the front. It happened to be a Monday, his day of silence...Gandhi now sat motionless, wrapped in a soft white woollen shawl, eyes closed, head sunk to one side. Suddenly I had the feeling of waves and waves pouring forth from his lonely little figure tangibly lapping round us all, waves inundating us and the whole world, waves of infinite love. At that time Gandhi, so often called ugly, looked supremely beautiful!"***
My wife often relates to me the story of a journalist who was assigned to interview a very ugly woman. After an hour with her, he emerged out of the room to divulge : I am out of my depth. I have just interviewed the most beautiful woman I have ever met. I now introduce you to a being who lived life as it unfolded itself to him. Long ago, much before history began, King Yadu was passing through a forest with his retinue, when he came upon a young anchorite , by the wayside. The King was struck by a glimmer of otherworldliness about the ascetic. He was a digamber awadhoot, a sky-clad renunciant. Nakedness, be it of mind or body, is ugly. But whosoever called Mahavir or Shukdev or Diogenes or Lal Ded, the only woman saint who lived sans clothes, ugly ? If somebody looks charming even without clothes, he/she must be divine. The King drew his chariot near his object of adoration, alighted from the chariot and stood before the awadhoot. How strange ? The awadhoot was there and still not there. Only his presence was there, if you understand.
There was a soft glow radiating from the poised face of the awadhoot and a mysterious smile played around the corners of his lips. He was a rare specimen of humanity. No, he was not of this world. He was just divine. Curiosity got the better of the King and he asked the anchorite: What makes you so blissful? "It is my own Self", a resonant voice replied. The master of this voice was Dattatreya. Yes that was the name of the ecstatic being. Etymologically speaking, Dattatreya is compounded from datt(given) and atreya(to Atri). So he was given to Atri. And Atri means Pran that protects. Pran is cosmic breath. So finally Dattatreya is one who is given to Pran that protects. It was this unobstructed flow of Pran in Dattatreya which made him look different from the normal run of people. For him even clothes were an obstruction and so the idea of clothing himself didn't cross his mind.
King Yadu's curiosity was unabated. He continued, "Surely someone must have taught you this art of staying in your Self. Who is your Guru?". "To date I have had twenty four gurus, who shall I name?", Dattatreya wondered. "Tell me about all", insisted the King. "Well, here they are : earth, water, air, fire, sky, moon, fletcher, sun, pigeon, python, sea, moth, wasp, bee elephant, deer, fish, whore, crane, boy, girl, snake, spider, hornet", enumerated the awadhoot. There was nothing ominous or mystical, about the number twenty four. It simply meant that he was alive to his surroundings. He was ready to receive Nature in its totality. Nature did not come to an end at the number twenty four. We don't know how many gurus Dattatreya made after this chance meeting with King Yadu. Dattatreya's world was an open ended world where Pran flowed interminably.
According to the legend, Dattatreya was the eldest son of a rajarshi, sage king, Atri by name. Being the eldest son, he was his heir apparent. But like the latter-day Buddhas-- Siddharth, Vardhaman, Bodhidharm--he renounced the throne and took to forest all by himself, in search of the Absolute. Taking to forest was the done thing in ancient India, in the absence of a Guru. Nature was supposed to be the best teacher, as man in those days, took nature to be sentient and himself an integral part of it. Such a man is amply rewarded by Nature because whoever embraces Nature with open arms, Nature opens her heart to him. "Nature never did betray/The heart that loved her", so sang Wordsworth. Of course it is a silent communion.
It is obvious that one is most likely to learn tolerance and forgiveness from earth, cleanliness and sweetness from water, ascension and purgation from fire, pervasiveness and taintlessness from sky, nectarean mellifluence from moon, one-pointedness from fletcher and so on and so forth. But that is not the end of the story, because all this is peripheral knowledge. Peripheral knowledge is only one-dimensional. Though an emanation of the center, periphery is a pale copy of it. Of course peripheral knowledge is essential for upgrading the quality of our lives, but it is meant for display, for the men at large, being easily comprehensible. It doesn't make us free. The quintessense remains at the center, undiluted and hidden, for those who will be satisfied by nothing less than the whole truth.
To be free one has to seek one's fulcrum. The fulcrum is a mere point, a negligible point, yet it mothers all work. It is a point of effortless effort. Once you are a fulcrum, things move without you moving. Happenings just happen. Every nano centimeter of space becomes a marvel. Every nanosecond becomes a moment for celebration. One doesn't have to earmark a moment at the midnight of 31 December, out of the billions of moments in a year, to celebrate. In fact celebration happens only when you are alone, alone with your Self. When you need 'the other', whether a thing or a person, you don't celebrate, you only enjoy. You always enjoy something with somebody. All enjoyments need a crowd of things and/or persons. Enjoyment is wild, celebration is silent.
In this silence, one can easily enter into communion with the early morning dew drop, the far advanced night's moon beam, the solitary blade of grass swaying in the wind. In South Africa, Gandhi asked a Trappist monk why they observed silence. His reply was : "The still small voice is always speaking to us. We cannot hear it unless we become silent ourselves". One has to become silent oneself to catch the silent signals of Nature. "Look deep into Nature", advised Einstein, "and then you will understand everything better". This silence endows a Dattatreya with a charisma, with a magnetism. In such moments he plays the divine game, becoming divinity himself, and hides himself behind a mysterious smile. This is an act of celebration.
Celebration comes from the Latin celebrare, which means 'to honor'. In celebration one honors one's Self. Enjoyment comes from enjoyen, which means to make merry. The world enjoys enjoyment, or is it the other way round ? Enjoyment enjoys the world because after an orgy of enjoyment, it is a bout of tiredness, if not misery. To remove the hangover, more enjoyment becomes obligatory and then more tiredness follows till the difference between enjoyment and tiredness gets blurred. Celebration, on the other hand, becomes an act of worship. A Dattatreya worships every object of Nature as his own Self and becomes still in rapture. He is open from all sides to receive the grace of Pran, the Cosmic Breath. He then radiates something that carries conviction. This is called living, truly.
I will close this piece with the anguish of a Winner and the song of a Dreamer. The Winner is George Harrison, one of the Beatles and the Dreamer is John Lennon, another Beatle :
GEORGE HARRISON SPEAKS TO PAUL SAULTZMAN, A CANADIAN FILM MAKER
Like we're The Beatles after all, aren't we ? We have all the money you could ever dream of. We have all the fame you could ever wish for. But it isn't love. It isn't health. It isn't peace inside, is it ?
JOHN LENNON : IMAGINE
Imagine there is no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there is no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.
*** Quoted from NEARER HEAVEN THAN EARTH by Girish N. Mehra, Page 311.
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi
Lest it should be construed that I am forfeiting preparedness for the morrow to uncertainty, let me make it clear that there is a big chasm between apathy and patience. We need neither to force ourselves on the moment, as it would warp the time trajectory, nor do we have to appear like helpless victims. We need only to lend a helping hand to the moment, in unfolding. That will undercut inertia, intrigue, disenchantment, stage-managing, all engineers that stifle the vital energy . Instead, there will be insight, ingenuity, integrity, discrimination which allow the life energy to bound uninterruptedly. All these abstract denominations would pass for nothing, were they not to translate into concrete fixtures of human physiognomy. Just a glance would reveal whether somebody is really living or happens to be just a mirror image of living.
There are various seminars arranged in almost every part of the globe to manage the growing noise pollution in the cities, as it is linked with many illnesses of the body and the mind. Certain parts of a city are marked as silence zones, high decibel klaxons are prohibited, raucous parties are banned. Admirable! More admirable will be the precocity to understand the mechanism of the inner noise. Outer noise is simply an expression of the inner noise that never takes a holiday. Don't you see people glued to a teeny weeny device called the cell phone, while they are at the wheel, on their legs, in air or in bed ? What is happening ? It is a gift from Martin Cooper, the inventor of cell phones, to the world at large, to provide a non-irritant passage to the inner traffic.
Nothing takes place in the theater of the world, that doesn't first happen in the interstices of the inner matrix. All concrete formulations have their subtle origins. Be it a frontline feud, or a domestic duel, an armed fracas or a verbal sling fest, bride burning or heart burning--it is all a blow off from the inner noise. A life lived on and from this noise is only a pale copy of living. Real living happens when there is complete silence inside. With silence comes serenity and in serenity is born sensitivity. Sensitivity attracts to itself, sensibility. And it is sensibility that imparts beauty to a character. Gertrude Emerson, Editor of Asia magazine and a likely incarnation of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous American Transcendentalist, had a memorable experience while she was staying with Mahatma Gandhi at his Sabarmati Ashram in October 1926.
Let her speak : "A gong sounded at 4 a.m. and fifteen minutes later, Miraben and the other Ashramites were hurrying along a path to the sandy stretch near the river... Gandhiji was already sitting on a low platform at the front. It happened to be a Monday, his day of silence...Gandhi now sat motionless, wrapped in a soft white woollen shawl, eyes closed, head sunk to one side. Suddenly I had the feeling of waves and waves pouring forth from his lonely little figure tangibly lapping round us all, waves inundating us and the whole world, waves of infinite love. At that time Gandhi, so often called ugly, looked supremely beautiful!"***
My wife often relates to me the story of a journalist who was assigned to interview a very ugly woman. After an hour with her, he emerged out of the room to divulge : I am out of my depth. I have just interviewed the most beautiful woman I have ever met. I now introduce you to a being who lived life as it unfolded itself to him. Long ago, much before history began, King Yadu was passing through a forest with his retinue, when he came upon a young anchorite , by the wayside. The King was struck by a glimmer of otherworldliness about the ascetic. He was a digamber awadhoot, a sky-clad renunciant. Nakedness, be it of mind or body, is ugly. But whosoever called Mahavir or Shukdev or Diogenes or Lal Ded, the only woman saint who lived sans clothes, ugly ? If somebody looks charming even without clothes, he/she must be divine. The King drew his chariot near his object of adoration, alighted from the chariot and stood before the awadhoot. How strange ? The awadhoot was there and still not there. Only his presence was there, if you understand.
There was a soft glow radiating from the poised face of the awadhoot and a mysterious smile played around the corners of his lips. He was a rare specimen of humanity. No, he was not of this world. He was just divine. Curiosity got the better of the King and he asked the anchorite: What makes you so blissful? "It is my own Self", a resonant voice replied. The master of this voice was Dattatreya. Yes that was the name of the ecstatic being. Etymologically speaking, Dattatreya is compounded from datt(given) and atreya(to Atri). So he was given to Atri. And Atri means Pran that protects. Pran is cosmic breath. So finally Dattatreya is one who is given to Pran that protects. It was this unobstructed flow of Pran in Dattatreya which made him look different from the normal run of people. For him even clothes were an obstruction and so the idea of clothing himself didn't cross his mind.
King Yadu's curiosity was unabated. He continued, "Surely someone must have taught you this art of staying in your Self. Who is your Guru?". "To date I have had twenty four gurus, who shall I name?", Dattatreya wondered. "Tell me about all", insisted the King. "Well, here they are : earth, water, air, fire, sky, moon, fletcher, sun, pigeon, python, sea, moth, wasp, bee elephant, deer, fish, whore, crane, boy, girl, snake, spider, hornet", enumerated the awadhoot. There was nothing ominous or mystical, about the number twenty four. It simply meant that he was alive to his surroundings. He was ready to receive Nature in its totality. Nature did not come to an end at the number twenty four. We don't know how many gurus Dattatreya made after this chance meeting with King Yadu. Dattatreya's world was an open ended world where Pran flowed interminably.
According to the legend, Dattatreya was the eldest son of a rajarshi, sage king, Atri by name. Being the eldest son, he was his heir apparent. But like the latter-day Buddhas-- Siddharth, Vardhaman, Bodhidharm--he renounced the throne and took to forest all by himself, in search of the Absolute. Taking to forest was the done thing in ancient India, in the absence of a Guru. Nature was supposed to be the best teacher, as man in those days, took nature to be sentient and himself an integral part of it. Such a man is amply rewarded by Nature because whoever embraces Nature with open arms, Nature opens her heart to him. "Nature never did betray/The heart that loved her", so sang Wordsworth. Of course it is a silent communion.
It is obvious that one is most likely to learn tolerance and forgiveness from earth, cleanliness and sweetness from water, ascension and purgation from fire, pervasiveness and taintlessness from sky, nectarean mellifluence from moon, one-pointedness from fletcher and so on and so forth. But that is not the end of the story, because all this is peripheral knowledge. Peripheral knowledge is only one-dimensional. Though an emanation of the center, periphery is a pale copy of it. Of course peripheral knowledge is essential for upgrading the quality of our lives, but it is meant for display, for the men at large, being easily comprehensible. It doesn't make us free. The quintessense remains at the center, undiluted and hidden, for those who will be satisfied by nothing less than the whole truth.
To be free one has to seek one's fulcrum. The fulcrum is a mere point, a negligible point, yet it mothers all work. It is a point of effortless effort. Once you are a fulcrum, things move without you moving. Happenings just happen. Every nano centimeter of space becomes a marvel. Every nanosecond becomes a moment for celebration. One doesn't have to earmark a moment at the midnight of 31 December, out of the billions of moments in a year, to celebrate. In fact celebration happens only when you are alone, alone with your Self. When you need 'the other', whether a thing or a person, you don't celebrate, you only enjoy. You always enjoy something with somebody. All enjoyments need a crowd of things and/or persons. Enjoyment is wild, celebration is silent.
In this silence, one can easily enter into communion with the early morning dew drop, the far advanced night's moon beam, the solitary blade of grass swaying in the wind. In South Africa, Gandhi asked a Trappist monk why they observed silence. His reply was : "The still small voice is always speaking to us. We cannot hear it unless we become silent ourselves". One has to become silent oneself to catch the silent signals of Nature. "Look deep into Nature", advised Einstein, "and then you will understand everything better". This silence endows a Dattatreya with a charisma, with a magnetism. In such moments he plays the divine game, becoming divinity himself, and hides himself behind a mysterious smile. This is an act of celebration.
Celebration comes from the Latin celebrare, which means 'to honor'. In celebration one honors one's Self. Enjoyment comes from enjoyen, which means to make merry. The world enjoys enjoyment, or is it the other way round ? Enjoyment enjoys the world because after an orgy of enjoyment, it is a bout of tiredness, if not misery. To remove the hangover, more enjoyment becomes obligatory and then more tiredness follows till the difference between enjoyment and tiredness gets blurred. Celebration, on the other hand, becomes an act of worship. A Dattatreya worships every object of Nature as his own Self and becomes still in rapture. He is open from all sides to receive the grace of Pran, the Cosmic Breath. He then radiates something that carries conviction. This is called living, truly.
I will close this piece with the anguish of a Winner and the song of a Dreamer. The Winner is George Harrison, one of the Beatles and the Dreamer is John Lennon, another Beatle :
GEORGE HARRISON SPEAKS TO PAUL SAULTZMAN, A CANADIAN FILM MAKER
Like we're The Beatles after all, aren't we ? We have all the money you could ever dream of. We have all the fame you could ever wish for. But it isn't love. It isn't health. It isn't peace inside, is it ?
JOHN LENNON : IMAGINE
Imagine there is no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there is no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.
*** Quoted from NEARER HEAVEN THAN EARTH by Girish N. Mehra, Page 311.
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi
