The present article has been written on the eve of the New Year to assuage, on both sides of the fence, ruffled feelings which had been stoked by an unfortunate lawsuit (now quashed) in a Tomsk court, between the Russian Orthodox Church and Iskcon.
Ajit Sambodhi.
_____________________
Tomsk is likened to the Athens of yore, for its philosophy, its culture, and above all for its love of learning. If Athens was known as the cradle of Western civilization, Tomsk is lauded as home to the Siberian civilization. As Athens is venerable, being one of the world's oldest cities, so is Tomsk, being one of the oldest cities of Siberia. Like Plato's Academy and Socrates' Lyceum in Athens, Tomsk is proud of its State University and Polytechnic University. Situated on the Tom river, this idyllic town is nowadays in the news, but for wrong reasons. Whoever thought that Bhagavad Gita which has been giving succor to whoever needed it, over the past 3000 years would find itself a subject of ire and contention, to be debated in a court of law, of all places, in the peace loving town of Tomsk? It is beyond comprehension, simply baffling.
Mr. Alexander Kadakin, the Russian Ambassador to India, is also at a loss to make head or tail of it. Says he: It is strange that such events are unfolding in the beautiful university city in Siberia, as Tomsk which is famous for its secularism and religious tolerance...Well, it seems that even the lovely city of Tomsk has its own neighbourhood madmen. It is sad indeed. Happily, it was not a trans-Russian event. It was just like a storm in a teacup--a spillover of the uneasy ties between Iskcon and the Russian Orthodox Church. That is the problem with Orthodox Religion. Allow me to use OR for it, henceforth. OR rests on a set of beliefs and practices agreed upon by its adherents. It has a certain code of conduct to be observed by one and all. Religion, on the other hand, is a private affair between an individual and his God.
Religion comes from the Latin re-ligare which means to bind again. In religion an individual binds again with the One he has unwittingly become separated from. One discovers to one's astonishment that the One is but his own self. When one gets united with one's own self, one becomes religious. One becomes a witness to an unfettered play of one's own divinity. One day Kierkegaard, who was once a regular churchgoer, suddenly stopped going to church. When asked about his abrupt decision, he said he had come to realize that he did not need a midwife for such an intimate relationship. ORs work, at their best, as religious fronts; at their worst, as arbiters of culture and power politics. The most that they give is an outline of their homegrown cosmology, and certain dogmas and rituals, to uphold it.
In OR, religiosity is often sacrificed at the altar of an esoteric regimen. ORs are mostly born after the Master who embodies the freshness of religiosity in him passes away. No OR was born while the Master was alive. When the chasm between Religion and OR grows wildly wide, a Bertrand Russell rises up to explain Why I Am Not A Christian, a David Dvorkin testifies Why I Am Not A Jew, an Ibn Warraq underlines Why I Am Not A Muslim, and a Kancha Ilaiah laments Why I Am Not A Hindu. It is a very sad state indeed. Count Leo Tolstoy, Russia's tallest novelist, had perhaps the toughest time braving this gap. He took up the gauntlet against the obduracy of the Church and proclaimed what Jesus Christ had taught eighteen hundred years ago that The Kingdom Of God Is Within, (not in a church).
After doing his two major works, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1876), Tolstoy experienced a spiritual awakening. He did not write any fiction for seven years after that. Instead, he focused his sights on his inner life. He began to admire and live the simple rustic life of Russian peasants. He discovered that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner self perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one's neighbour and God rather than looking outward to the Church or State for guidance and meaning. Instead of paying lipservice to God in a church on sundays, he thought it fit to look into his heart and weave love for fellow beings in his daily dealings. True to his conviction, he founded thirteen schools for the children of his serfs.
He became disenchanted with worldly pursuits and started living the life of a recluse. He renounced his inherited assets as well as his earned wealth, disclaiming the copywrights of his works. This strained his relations with his wife. In the end he even left Yasnaya Polyana, his estate, and breathed his last on a railway station. In India his asceticism would not have raised a single eyebrow. He was doing what Buddha, Mahavira, Bhartrihari, Atisha, Mira, Bodhidharma--the number may get out of hand--had done before him. It is a done thing in India but in Russia it was labelled anarchism and radicalism. One writes as much for others as for oneself, to put to test one's own convictions. Tolstoy wrote: Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ touched anything like what Churchmen understand by the Church.
He repudiated the Church and its dogmatism, at every step. For his supposedly heretical stance, the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him. But the world as a whole embraced him! In 2001, after 100 years of excommunication, when his great-great-grandson, Vladimir Tolstoy, made an application to the Church to lift the excommunication, the Orthodox Church did not relent and his request was turned down with the plea that Leo Tolstoy's was a tragic personality. Again at the time of his hundreth death anniversary on November 20, 2010 Sergei Stepashin, a former Prime Minister of Russia wrote an open letter to the Church to explain its position on Leo Tolstoy. He was informed by a letter that the excommunication could not be overturned because of Tolstoy's tragic spiritual aberrations.
The intelligentsia is helpless. What can be more tragic? His friend Nicholas Roerich, a mystic, painter, writer, philosopher was a free pilgrim of the soul and so was his contemporary rebel against orthodoxy, whether in science or religion, HPB*, the founder of Theosophy. I am sure had they not moved out of Russia in time, they would have met the same fate. What I am saying about the Russian Orthodox Church does not in any way exonerate Iskcon. Far from it Iskcon has more than its share of skeletons in its cupboard. Kirtananda Swami scandal, Turley child abuse cases, Akshya Patra controversy, Sarnagati Village temple scam, Succession intrigues are some of the evergreen cases that still pop up in newspapers. When the next skeleton tumbles out of its cupboard, is anybody's guess. So Iskcon's track record as an Organized Sect appears no less questionable than that of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The present controversy is not as much about Gita as about who scores over whom in a turf war that has been going on for a long time between two deft players over the Russian checkerboard. Gita is being used only as a scoreboard. Gita is very well respected in Russia. Russians know that Gita had been given a place of honor in the households of Leo Tolstoy and Nicholas Roerich. Gita was held in great respect by HPB also and she had been presented an ancient copy of the Gita in a mother-of-pearl and gold binding by an Indian prince. I think it is time I explain what exactly is the meaning of Bhagavad Gita and what it stands for. Well, the word Bhagavad in it means like light, that is, of the nature of light. And Gita means a song. So Bhagavad Gita means a song in the likeness of light. Just as light shows us the way, so does Gita.
Gita has been accused of being an extremist text while the truth is that it rests on the bedrock of the middle path. Couplet 17 of Chapter 6 beseeches: Be temperate in eating, recreation, work, sleep and waking, to lead a painless life. Can there be a more sobering text than this? Where is extremism in it? Gita seeks moderation in all walks of life, all the time. A Russian newspaper Gazeta.ru questioned how a work of antiquity has suddenly morphed into an extremist text. Another newspaper Vechernyi Tomsk titled its report: Trial Of Indian Book Brings Shame To Tomsk. A human rights ombudsman, Nelly Krechetova, aired her resentment on radio Echo Of Moscow thus: This book is considered sacred by more than a billion people the world over, and in Russia itself the book has been in circulation for 20 years. The trial is absurd, she added.
Again it has been blamed for sowing discord amidst people. On the contrary, Gita admonishes people to be very careful about their thoughts, lest they should harm themselves by wayward thinking. See what couplet 25 of Chapter 9 forewarns: Know gods to become godlike, manes for to be manes, ghosts to become ghostly, and divinity for to be divine. Three thousand years ago, Gita propounded what Quantum physics has come to realize now. Says Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, a Quantum physicist: It (Quantum physics) says that you can't have a Universe without mind entering into it, and that the mind is actually shaping the very thing that is being perceived. Gita gives the high sign that one can not think bad about others without first imperiling oneself.
So the allegations just won't wash. In this respect I would like to make a mention of the wonderful work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese entrepreneur. His researches have demonstrated the power of thought on water! With the help of photographs, he has shown how water forms beautiful crystals if you say good words to it and makes ugly crystals if you say something disrespectful to it! Now human body is 80% water. It is the single most important constituent, under our skin. It knows all our secret thoughts and motives. We can be disregardful of our thoughts only at the peril of degrading the quality of our life. Health foods are quite popular and so are exercises, but they fall short in warding off diseases. Why? Because we don't take into account the quality of our thoughts. Diseases are largely psychosomatic.
I will wrap up this piece with the summary of a beautiful story of Leo Tolstoy. The story has been woven round a legend that was prevalent in the Volga district. He wrote this story to underscore the point that one doesn't need OR (Orthodox or/and Organized Religion) to connect to one's God. All one needs is simplicity of heart to generate a truthful thought. In his story Three Hermits, a bishop is seen overseeing a fisherman talking to a knot of people on the deck and pointing his finger towards a scarcely visible island while they are sailing in a ship from Archangel to the Solovetsk Monastery. As the bishop's curiosity gets the better of him, he walks over to the group of people to enquire what they were talking about. The fisherman reruns, for his sake, the story of Three Hermits, who live on the yonder island, for the salvation of their souls.
He tells the bishop that once he was out fishing on the sea. Night fell and he was stranded on that island. In the morning, as he wandered about aimlessly on the island, he came upon an adobe hut. A man stood out front. Presently two more came out. Without speaking, they fed me, dried my things, and helped me mend my boat. On being asked how they looked like, the fisherman replied: They were all old but one looked ancient. His face shone like an angel's. He was the smallest of the lot and had a slightly bent back. His beard had a greenish tinge and he wore a priest's cassock. The second one was taller and strong. Before I had time to assist him, he had turned over my boat as if it were a toy. He is kind and wears a broad beard, tinged yellow. The tallest of the lot had a beard running to his knees and had an old mat wrapped around his waist.
The bishop became keen to see the hermits and though the captain dissuaded him from seeing those foolish old fellows, who understand nothing, and never speak a word anymore than the fish in the sea, he wanted to go there. The course of the ship was changed. After sailing over a distance the ship was anchored as it couldn't go any further and a boat was lowered to take the bishop to the island. Reaching the shore he met with the three old bearded hermits. As told by the fisherman, one had only an old mat wrapped around his waist, the second was in a tattered peasant coat while the third wore a priest's cassock. On seeing the bishop, the old men bowed to him and the bishop gave them his benediction. He then asked them what they did to save their souls and those of their fellow men, on that island.
The hermits looked at each other, smiling, and were silent. Then he asked them what they did to serve God there. When two of the hermits glanced at the very ancient one, he replied: We don't know how to serve God. We only serve and support ourselves, servant of God. All right, said the bishop, just tell me how you pray to God. To this the hermit replied: We pray in this way: Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us. The bishop smiled. He told them that that was not the proper way to pray to God. He said that he was pleased with them and he would teach them the way in which God in the Holy Scriptures has commanded all men to pray to Him. He asked them to listen to him carefully and repeat after him the Lord's prayer: Our Father Which Art In Heaven.
The hermits listened to him and followed him assiduously, word by word. They faltered and blundered a hundred times but the bishop didn't lose heart and labored ceaselessly with them till they were able to say the whole of the Lord's prayer by themselves. It was now getting dark and the moon had risen over the water. The bishop pulled himself up from his makeshift pulpit and after kissing the hermits goodbye, prepared to return. He got into the boat and returned to the ship which lifted the anchor and set sail again. The pilgrims lay down to sleep and all was quiet on the deck, but the bishop had no wish to sleep. So he sat in the stern all by himself and looked towards the island, meanwhile thanking God for making him an instrument to teach such godly men.
While the bishop sat there pondering over the events of the day, and gazing into the distance, moonlight flickering and touching the waves on the crests, he suddenly saw a blob of light rising from the direction of the island. It grew bigger as it sped on the water towards the ship. He leaned over to one side to share his wonderment with the helmsman. But by then the capsule of light holding the three hermits had overtaken the ship. The helmsman became terrified and the commotion drew all the pilgrims to the stern. Even before the ship could stop, the hermits chorused in one voice: Servant of God, we have forgotten the prayer that you taught us. Please teach us again. The bishop leaned over the starboard and said: Your own prayer is good enough. Please pray for me also. And bowed to them. The hermits made an about turn and were gone.
EPILOGUE:
The hermits were unlettered and untouched by worldly ways. They didn't know that there was a way to serve their fellowmen. They served each other--and sometimes a stranded person like the fisherman of the story-- the way they took their breath, uninterruptedly and without speaking. Well, this is called being in the present. Attending to whatever crops up before you, without involving the past or the future. Do you think they had a past? Or do you think they could invent a future, pawning their soul? They didn't know that one had to go to a Church to learn to pray. Or that there was a special way to connect to God. They even didn't know if they were themselves connected to God! This is called being religious. And this is Religion in its pristine form. When you are joined to the One without even knowing that you are joined. Because there is no second. Only you are!
HPB*: For a lowdown on her, please go to The Tipping Point, April 1, 2011.
S Novim Godam! Happy New Year!
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi
Ajit Sambodhi.
_____________________
Tomsk is likened to the Athens of yore, for its philosophy, its culture, and above all for its love of learning. If Athens was known as the cradle of Western civilization, Tomsk is lauded as home to the Siberian civilization. As Athens is venerable, being one of the world's oldest cities, so is Tomsk, being one of the oldest cities of Siberia. Like Plato's Academy and Socrates' Lyceum in Athens, Tomsk is proud of its State University and Polytechnic University. Situated on the Tom river, this idyllic town is nowadays in the news, but for wrong reasons. Whoever thought that Bhagavad Gita which has been giving succor to whoever needed it, over the past 3000 years would find itself a subject of ire and contention, to be debated in a court of law, of all places, in the peace loving town of Tomsk? It is beyond comprehension, simply baffling.
Mr. Alexander Kadakin, the Russian Ambassador to India, is also at a loss to make head or tail of it. Says he: It is strange that such events are unfolding in the beautiful university city in Siberia, as Tomsk which is famous for its secularism and religious tolerance...Well, it seems that even the lovely city of Tomsk has its own neighbourhood madmen. It is sad indeed. Happily, it was not a trans-Russian event. It was just like a storm in a teacup--a spillover of the uneasy ties between Iskcon and the Russian Orthodox Church. That is the problem with Orthodox Religion. Allow me to use OR for it, henceforth. OR rests on a set of beliefs and practices agreed upon by its adherents. It has a certain code of conduct to be observed by one and all. Religion, on the other hand, is a private affair between an individual and his God.
Religion comes from the Latin re-ligare which means to bind again. In religion an individual binds again with the One he has unwittingly become separated from. One discovers to one's astonishment that the One is but his own self. When one gets united with one's own self, one becomes religious. One becomes a witness to an unfettered play of one's own divinity. One day Kierkegaard, who was once a regular churchgoer, suddenly stopped going to church. When asked about his abrupt decision, he said he had come to realize that he did not need a midwife for such an intimate relationship. ORs work, at their best, as religious fronts; at their worst, as arbiters of culture and power politics. The most that they give is an outline of their homegrown cosmology, and certain dogmas and rituals, to uphold it.
In OR, religiosity is often sacrificed at the altar of an esoteric regimen. ORs are mostly born after the Master who embodies the freshness of religiosity in him passes away. No OR was born while the Master was alive. When the chasm between Religion and OR grows wildly wide, a Bertrand Russell rises up to explain Why I Am Not A Christian, a David Dvorkin testifies Why I Am Not A Jew, an Ibn Warraq underlines Why I Am Not A Muslim, and a Kancha Ilaiah laments Why I Am Not A Hindu. It is a very sad state indeed. Count Leo Tolstoy, Russia's tallest novelist, had perhaps the toughest time braving this gap. He took up the gauntlet against the obduracy of the Church and proclaimed what Jesus Christ had taught eighteen hundred years ago that The Kingdom Of God Is Within, (not in a church).
After doing his two major works, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1876), Tolstoy experienced a spiritual awakening. He did not write any fiction for seven years after that. Instead, he focused his sights on his inner life. He began to admire and live the simple rustic life of Russian peasants. He discovered that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner self perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one's neighbour and God rather than looking outward to the Church or State for guidance and meaning. Instead of paying lipservice to God in a church on sundays, he thought it fit to look into his heart and weave love for fellow beings in his daily dealings. True to his conviction, he founded thirteen schools for the children of his serfs.
He became disenchanted with worldly pursuits and started living the life of a recluse. He renounced his inherited assets as well as his earned wealth, disclaiming the copywrights of his works. This strained his relations with his wife. In the end he even left Yasnaya Polyana, his estate, and breathed his last on a railway station. In India his asceticism would not have raised a single eyebrow. He was doing what Buddha, Mahavira, Bhartrihari, Atisha, Mira, Bodhidharma--the number may get out of hand--had done before him. It is a done thing in India but in Russia it was labelled anarchism and radicalism. One writes as much for others as for oneself, to put to test one's own convictions. Tolstoy wrote: Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ touched anything like what Churchmen understand by the Church.
He repudiated the Church and its dogmatism, at every step. For his supposedly heretical stance, the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him. But the world as a whole embraced him! In 2001, after 100 years of excommunication, when his great-great-grandson, Vladimir Tolstoy, made an application to the Church to lift the excommunication, the Orthodox Church did not relent and his request was turned down with the plea that Leo Tolstoy's was a tragic personality. Again at the time of his hundreth death anniversary on November 20, 2010 Sergei Stepashin, a former Prime Minister of Russia wrote an open letter to the Church to explain its position on Leo Tolstoy. He was informed by a letter that the excommunication could not be overturned because of Tolstoy's tragic spiritual aberrations.
The intelligentsia is helpless. What can be more tragic? His friend Nicholas Roerich, a mystic, painter, writer, philosopher was a free pilgrim of the soul and so was his contemporary rebel against orthodoxy, whether in science or religion, HPB*, the founder of Theosophy. I am sure had they not moved out of Russia in time, they would have met the same fate. What I am saying about the Russian Orthodox Church does not in any way exonerate Iskcon. Far from it Iskcon has more than its share of skeletons in its cupboard. Kirtananda Swami scandal, Turley child abuse cases, Akshya Patra controversy, Sarnagati Village temple scam, Succession intrigues are some of the evergreen cases that still pop up in newspapers. When the next skeleton tumbles out of its cupboard, is anybody's guess. So Iskcon's track record as an Organized Sect appears no less questionable than that of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The present controversy is not as much about Gita as about who scores over whom in a turf war that has been going on for a long time between two deft players over the Russian checkerboard. Gita is being used only as a scoreboard. Gita is very well respected in Russia. Russians know that Gita had been given a place of honor in the households of Leo Tolstoy and Nicholas Roerich. Gita was held in great respect by HPB also and she had been presented an ancient copy of the Gita in a mother-of-pearl and gold binding by an Indian prince. I think it is time I explain what exactly is the meaning of Bhagavad Gita and what it stands for. Well, the word Bhagavad in it means like light, that is, of the nature of light. And Gita means a song. So Bhagavad Gita means a song in the likeness of light. Just as light shows us the way, so does Gita.
Gita has been accused of being an extremist text while the truth is that it rests on the bedrock of the middle path. Couplet 17 of Chapter 6 beseeches: Be temperate in eating, recreation, work, sleep and waking, to lead a painless life. Can there be a more sobering text than this? Where is extremism in it? Gita seeks moderation in all walks of life, all the time. A Russian newspaper Gazeta.ru questioned how a work of antiquity has suddenly morphed into an extremist text. Another newspaper Vechernyi Tomsk titled its report: Trial Of Indian Book Brings Shame To Tomsk. A human rights ombudsman, Nelly Krechetova, aired her resentment on radio Echo Of Moscow thus: This book is considered sacred by more than a billion people the world over, and in Russia itself the book has been in circulation for 20 years. The trial is absurd, she added.
Again it has been blamed for sowing discord amidst people. On the contrary, Gita admonishes people to be very careful about their thoughts, lest they should harm themselves by wayward thinking. See what couplet 25 of Chapter 9 forewarns: Know gods to become godlike, manes for to be manes, ghosts to become ghostly, and divinity for to be divine. Three thousand years ago, Gita propounded what Quantum physics has come to realize now. Says Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, a Quantum physicist: It (Quantum physics) says that you can't have a Universe without mind entering into it, and that the mind is actually shaping the very thing that is being perceived. Gita gives the high sign that one can not think bad about others without first imperiling oneself.
So the allegations just won't wash. In this respect I would like to make a mention of the wonderful work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese entrepreneur. His researches have demonstrated the power of thought on water! With the help of photographs, he has shown how water forms beautiful crystals if you say good words to it and makes ugly crystals if you say something disrespectful to it! Now human body is 80% water. It is the single most important constituent, under our skin. It knows all our secret thoughts and motives. We can be disregardful of our thoughts only at the peril of degrading the quality of our life. Health foods are quite popular and so are exercises, but they fall short in warding off diseases. Why? Because we don't take into account the quality of our thoughts. Diseases are largely psychosomatic.
I will wrap up this piece with the summary of a beautiful story of Leo Tolstoy. The story has been woven round a legend that was prevalent in the Volga district. He wrote this story to underscore the point that one doesn't need OR (Orthodox or/and Organized Religion) to connect to one's God. All one needs is simplicity of heart to generate a truthful thought. In his story Three Hermits, a bishop is seen overseeing a fisherman talking to a knot of people on the deck and pointing his finger towards a scarcely visible island while they are sailing in a ship from Archangel to the Solovetsk Monastery. As the bishop's curiosity gets the better of him, he walks over to the group of people to enquire what they were talking about. The fisherman reruns, for his sake, the story of Three Hermits, who live on the yonder island, for the salvation of their souls.
He tells the bishop that once he was out fishing on the sea. Night fell and he was stranded on that island. In the morning, as he wandered about aimlessly on the island, he came upon an adobe hut. A man stood out front. Presently two more came out. Without speaking, they fed me, dried my things, and helped me mend my boat. On being asked how they looked like, the fisherman replied: They were all old but one looked ancient. His face shone like an angel's. He was the smallest of the lot and had a slightly bent back. His beard had a greenish tinge and he wore a priest's cassock. The second one was taller and strong. Before I had time to assist him, he had turned over my boat as if it were a toy. He is kind and wears a broad beard, tinged yellow. The tallest of the lot had a beard running to his knees and had an old mat wrapped around his waist.
The bishop became keen to see the hermits and though the captain dissuaded him from seeing those foolish old fellows, who understand nothing, and never speak a word anymore than the fish in the sea, he wanted to go there. The course of the ship was changed. After sailing over a distance the ship was anchored as it couldn't go any further and a boat was lowered to take the bishop to the island. Reaching the shore he met with the three old bearded hermits. As told by the fisherman, one had only an old mat wrapped around his waist, the second was in a tattered peasant coat while the third wore a priest's cassock. On seeing the bishop, the old men bowed to him and the bishop gave them his benediction. He then asked them what they did to save their souls and those of their fellow men, on that island.
The hermits looked at each other, smiling, and were silent. Then he asked them what they did to serve God there. When two of the hermits glanced at the very ancient one, he replied: We don't know how to serve God. We only serve and support ourselves, servant of God. All right, said the bishop, just tell me how you pray to God. To this the hermit replied: We pray in this way: Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us. The bishop smiled. He told them that that was not the proper way to pray to God. He said that he was pleased with them and he would teach them the way in which God in the Holy Scriptures has commanded all men to pray to Him. He asked them to listen to him carefully and repeat after him the Lord's prayer: Our Father Which Art In Heaven.
The hermits listened to him and followed him assiduously, word by word. They faltered and blundered a hundred times but the bishop didn't lose heart and labored ceaselessly with them till they were able to say the whole of the Lord's prayer by themselves. It was now getting dark and the moon had risen over the water. The bishop pulled himself up from his makeshift pulpit and after kissing the hermits goodbye, prepared to return. He got into the boat and returned to the ship which lifted the anchor and set sail again. The pilgrims lay down to sleep and all was quiet on the deck, but the bishop had no wish to sleep. So he sat in the stern all by himself and looked towards the island, meanwhile thanking God for making him an instrument to teach such godly men.
While the bishop sat there pondering over the events of the day, and gazing into the distance, moonlight flickering and touching the waves on the crests, he suddenly saw a blob of light rising from the direction of the island. It grew bigger as it sped on the water towards the ship. He leaned over to one side to share his wonderment with the helmsman. But by then the capsule of light holding the three hermits had overtaken the ship. The helmsman became terrified and the commotion drew all the pilgrims to the stern. Even before the ship could stop, the hermits chorused in one voice: Servant of God, we have forgotten the prayer that you taught us. Please teach us again. The bishop leaned over the starboard and said: Your own prayer is good enough. Please pray for me also. And bowed to them. The hermits made an about turn and were gone.
EPILOGUE:
The hermits were unlettered and untouched by worldly ways. They didn't know that there was a way to serve their fellowmen. They served each other--and sometimes a stranded person like the fisherman of the story-- the way they took their breath, uninterruptedly and without speaking. Well, this is called being in the present. Attending to whatever crops up before you, without involving the past or the future. Do you think they had a past? Or do you think they could invent a future, pawning their soul? They didn't know that one had to go to a Church to learn to pray. Or that there was a special way to connect to God. They even didn't know if they were themselves connected to God! This is called being religious. And this is Religion in its pristine form. When you are joined to the One without even knowing that you are joined. Because there is no second. Only you are!
HPB*: For a lowdown on her, please go to The Tipping Point, April 1, 2011.
S Novim Godam! Happy New Year!
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi
