3/12/13
Verse 12
See
the skin, bone, dirt and inner urges which end tragically
to
which the I-identity is conjoined;
this
which perishes is the other; oh, grant the cherished boon
that
the great I-identity increases to perfection.
Did
I mention that this is one of my favorite commentaries in all of That Alone? I
suppose I did. I can trace many of my most substantial ideas to it, and it
never fails to remind me to take care and rein in my ego. So it holds a special
place in my heart.
As
we begin in earnest our conversion from a horizontal to a vertical orientation,
Narayana Guru offers us two verses to clearly distinguish them. Mistaking the
one for the other is a tragic mistake we routinely make, and is the legitimate
impetus for a course of study to rectify the injustice. Sketching out the
parameters is not too hard, but putting it into practice is another matter. As
Don said, it is simple but not easy.
At
the outset, Deb brought in Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan rishi in close accord
with the Gurukula on many fronts. His book, Cutting
Through Spiritual Materialism, details the clever ways the indwelling
spirit is treated as a possession of our ego. Instead of releasing our I-sense
into the spirit, we use static ideas about the spirit to glorify our egos’
appearance to ourself and others. Defining and appropriating the indefinable
and ungraspable is what the rinpoche calls spiritual materialism. His
insightful antidotes are applicable in any field.
Spiritual materialism is such an easy
trap to fall into that Narayana Guru recommends a prayerful attitude to help us
steer clear of it. We need the assistance of some outside agency, and our
friends should be considered flawed because they suffer from the same malaise
we do. Lacking a wise therapist, at least we can remind ourself that the ego is
just a tiny shred of cloth covering the body of our being, and turn our
attention to that greater reality. A prayerful attitude not only redirects our
attention to the spirit, it simultaneously humbles our superficial self-importance.
We pray to a greater Self, which is our true nature and does not need to be
clothed in the garb of a familiar deity. In fact, the less defined it is, the
better, because our definitions are created out of the same ignorance that our
egos are. We are opening up to the Unknown.
Moni
pointed out that this study is a pursuit of true knowledge. We have to ask
ourself how much does the ego play into it? The ego tends to bend ‘true’ into
‘mine’ or ‘my truth’. It’s a much bigger gap than we realize.
Nitya’s
story of the simpleton and the goat poignantly illustrates how we are at the
mercy of other peoples’ opinions. The ‘I’ we employ to navigate the world is a
construct of shrewd guesses based on the feedback we receive. We have to be
brave enough to reject this fictitious being in order to reestablish connection
with our true Self. Our casual acquaintances only know the fiction, and
continue to draw us back into playing along with it. And indeed, so do we. We
have bought into our own story line. Everything in our environment militates
against us reorienting to the source, the Karu. Yet that is who we really are.
Coming back to ourselves is what the dissatisfaction we feel is trying to
foster. Too bad that so many ersatz emoluments are available to continue the
distraction forever, if we don’t stand up to them.
Peggy’s
poem about her relationship to her mother, shared in the last mailing,
eloquently describes the kind of relinquishing that has to take place, and the
painfully deep roots that oppose it. Yet her breakthrough was so simple and
sweet! She simply gave up clinging to her past identity, and she was
immediately able to be fully present. It has become the core of her life, what
she called her “sacred foundational axis.”
The
first major step in the transformation is to become our own best friend. We
have been looking for ratification from outside for so long we have forgotten
who we are. In a sense we have considered ourself beneath our dignity—an object
of scorn and derision, attitudes which are epidemic in our social sphere.
Treating our self fairly and with kindness, yet without exaggeration, is
critical. Chogyam Trungpa wrote extensively of this, and the Gita, in Chapter
VI, verses 5 and 6, puts it this way:
By the Self the Self must be upheld; the Self should not be
let down; the Self indeed is its own dear relative; the Self indeed is the
enemy of the Self.
The Self is dear to one (possessed) of Self, by whom even
the Self by the Self has been won; for one not (possessed) of Self, the Self
would be in conflict with the very Self, as if an enemy.
We
are enjoined to take over the reins of our life that we once surrendered to the
perishable world we register with our senses. What could possibly be holding us
back?
In
place of our Self we have substituted our story, as Mick put it. We tell a
plausible narrative about ourself, with lots of sad parts and a few happy
parts, if we are lucky. Everything that happens to us we fit into the story,
usually mangling it in the process. To wholly stop self-referencing is very
difficult, and indeed there is some value in maintaining it, but we have way
overdone it. Nitya often said how the I was merely a reference point, and as
such it was valuable. But we tend to exaggerate its importance, as well as
keeping the reference point moving so it is where everybody wants it to be.
Then it becomes a ridiculous game.
Susan
recalled in her early teens how battered she was by other kids’ negative
opinions about her, how she longed for their approval. At the same time she looked
down on them. Funny how those two go together, isn’t it? Later in life she met
some of them again, and they thought she was okay. She felt really happy, even
though she still didn’t like them! So there is a crucial part of us—the
ego—that desperately wants to fit in with society and feels good when it does,
no matter how much our intelligence tells us it is not important and even
unhealthy.
Mick
related how, as a child growing up in Catholicism, he was taught that he was
Bad. Being bad quickly became an integral part of his self-identity. Almost all
of us have that to a degree, but the Judeo-Christian religions take it to the
level of a mania. You might want to stop thinking that it wasn’t quite right,
but that would be Bad! Thinking contrary thoughts is Bad! Evil, even. So you
stop trying. It’s a very effective technique for imprisonment. Plus, every bit
of conflict or criticism you encounter reinforces the feeling that you are
worthless, not important, an insult to God’s purity. No wonder so many of the
devout look constipated.
Persecuted
minorities live in a more hostile environment that they don’t dare ignore, and
so their lives easily become warped for protection. Nitya blasts that
cold-hearted injustice here and elsewhere. What is it that impels people to
abuse their fellows? Life is tough enough without adding more travails to it.
It
called to mind a short story from John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, a book that surveyed the United States of
circa 1960, when the proper term for black people was Negro. There are several
passionate and moving chapters on race issues, which were still steeped in
barbarism at the time:
I
lived then in a small brick house in Manhattan, and, being for the moment
solvent, employed a Negro. Across the street and on the corner there was a bar
and restaurant. One winter dusk when the sidewalks were iced I stood in my
window looking out and saw a tipsy woman come out of the bar, slip on the ice,
and fall flat. She tried to struggle up but slipped and fell again and lay
there screaming maudlinly. At that moment the Negro who worked for me came
around the corner, saw the woman, and instantly crossed the street, keeping as
far from her as possible.
When
he came in I said, “I saw you duck. Why didn't you give that woman a hand?”
“Well,
sir, she's drunk and I'm Negro. If I touched her she could easy scream rape,
and then it's a crowd, and who believes me?”
“It
took quick thinking to duck that fast.”
“Oh,
no sir!” he said. “I've been practicing to be a Negro a long time.” (236)
What
a shame that our normal humanity has to be suppressed because of the lethal
threats of injustice that have persisted throughout our history!
There
are other people who were worshipped as children, told they were perfect and
wonderful, and given every opportunity. In a way, it’s almost more insidious
than being reviled, because a positive self-image is harder to relinquish than
a negative one. Or so you would think. Even though it is equally a false
construct, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to give it up. It feels fine. We
will hold on tight to it until a trickle of doubt creeps in, a sense that this
isn’t really me. What could be missing? Here is where doubt is its most
valuable. We should enlarge it rather than try to eradicate it as soon as we
can, because it will lead us back toward our authenticity. Most of us doubt our
true nature and believe fervently in our false persona. That orientation needs
to be reversed.
Very
often the “spiritual” attitude is that all input is bad, that we must turn away
from it to find our true reality. Narayana Guru’s Advaita teaches us to locate
our true reality right in the midst of our daily life. This is the challenge
that will take us awhile to live up to. We aren’t either to get embroiled in
actuality or withdraw into fantasy. We are to stay firmly grounded in ourself,
and let that grow and expand. Both Nitya and Nataraja Guru say some harsh
things about the ego in their commentaries, I think to counteract the excessive
fondness for it we permit ourselves. The ideal is to remain neutral. The next
verse will clarify any confusion. I want to bring in part of it now, a section
worth rereading many times:
So, at the very height of the
excitement and joy of gaining something, you are asked instead to relate it to
the very core, to spiritualize that experience. You are not asked to kill the
joy, but only to look for its essence. You have to realize that it is not
produced by objects, but is an essential part of your own divine nature. If the
joy we see in a person, in a desirable thing, opens a window for us to see the
Lord, the Absolute, the Divine, which is our own truest Self, then everything
becomes a door for us to enter into our innermost sanctum. This critical
process is described in the first two lines of the verse: “Gather your
mind-modalities as flowers and make an offering of them to the Supreme, who
transcends all the necessities of the world.”
You are not asked here to withdraw
from everything, but to transcend everything. This is accomplished by spiritualizing,
by seeing everything as divine. Vananni: a
sense of reverence should come and fill your whole being. You are standing
before a child, your own child, and thinking of it only as a child which has
come from you. But when you look with this new vision, it is no more a child.
You see the divine manifestation in it. You can see your union with the divine
in that which makes your heart go to the child’s heart, and the feeling of
trust the child has in you. When you see that union it is no longer a
discomfort, it is a devotion. You are not bound. Otherwise you feel obligated
and bound to everything to which your senses take you. Now it is glorious that
you are given an opportunity to be with your own real being. With that
reverence which comes and fills you, your work becomes a devotion. It is a
service, an offering, a dedication.
Sakala
mazhinnu means you are no more a person bound within the shell of this
human mortal coil. You become expanded. Your expanded being fills everything,
embraces everything. The spirit encompasses everything, and you are one with
it. Now you are liberated; you have become free because the spirit is free.
Simple,
isn’t it? But not easy.
I
suggest we invert the idea here, too, and think of how we reinforce other
people’s self-identities instead of giving them the freedom to be themselves.
We should guarantee that we don’t force people into roles out of our own
expectations or demands. We should be very careful not to touch the chafed
areas of irritation that persecuted people must always carry. These are the
least of our contributions, and anyone not willing to make them should not dare
imagine they are spiritual or even fair in any sense.
We
should ask ourselves how we unintentionally put pressure on others to conform
to ordinary frames of reference that leave out the oceanic bliss of existence,
and stop doing it. I meet so many people who are apologetic about their
feelings: you can see they want to say something, but instead they say what
they think you want to hear. When I sense that, I like to give them the option
of speaking honestly, by providing a safe venue for it. When it works it is
usually appreciated quite a bit, though many people won't even take the chance
when it’s offered.
My
favorite awful example is asking children “What do you want to be when you grow
up?” While usually well-intentioned, it forces them to think of themselves as
being inadequate the way they are, uninteresting to the social world. Instead I
ask something like “What is your favorite thing to do?” Then they can enthuse
about the joys of their life, if they aren’t already too inhibited by previous
demands.
This
is much more radical that it may appear. We live in an ocean of social
attitudes based on divisiveness and rejection, and our identities are built as
much on what we hate as what we love. Sneering and disdain are the safest poses
to strike, and invite like-minded folk to be do the same. Refusing to join that
game makes you an instant outsider. This is where being our own best friend is
most essential. We have to access the warmth and support of our own inner being
to replace the adulation of a corrupt social milieu, because said adulation is
commonly based on inferior motivations.
Part II
Nataraja
Guru’s comments are especially germane here:
VERSE 12
With skin, bone, refuse, and many an inner factor of evil
end,
Wielding these, lo! one ego looms: this which passes,
Is the other: that Self which grows to perfection,
0 grant the boon that it may not the ego swell!
THE repeated ‘I’, ‘I’ of the previous
verse has a way of
asserting itself in two distinct manners. This verse
suggests that one of these ways of assertion is favourable to self-realization
while the other is detrimental to happiness when understood as the end or goal
of life.
The structure of the Self which has been analysed in the two
previous verses is filled with a content, not in terms of a vague abstraction,
but in a very realistic, operational, human, and even a pragmatic manner, by
which the aspirant to self-instruction can find his way and choose the right
one of the two alternatives open to him in the path that marks out his progress
in self-realization.
By cultivating the ego which has bodily attributes, the end
is not happiness. By cultivating the Self that is non-bodily but has other
attributes of a series of values in an ascending subjective scale leading to
happiness (whose nature will become clarified only in the later verses), we
stand in danger of having a bloated egoism in the name of some fetish-concept
of personal spirituality which might lead us into the blind alley of a
megalomania. Spiritual life often contains this soul-killing possibility of a
wrong kind of self-hood which can be full of horizontal taints such as passion,
pride or ignorance. The Bhagavad Gita (XVI. 21) refers to this sort of danger
in strong terms as constituting the gates of inferno:
‘Three-fold is the gate to inferno which can counter
Self-hood - desire, anger and avidity; renounce
therefore these three.’
A horizontally-oriented self-hood spells evil while a
vertically-oriented self-hood reaches out to the good ideal. A prayer for a
boon to save self-hood from being developed in a wrong or compromised sense and
a warning against such a danger which is so easy to fall into in the name of
self-knowledge, from which we can think many ‘holy’ men suffer, is what the
Guru takes the opportunity, sufficiently in advance in the course, to warn
against in this verse, whose main purpose is to state that difference between
the two forms of the same self. The modalities of movements in consciousness,
to which these two egos are subject, has a paradox, conflict or contradiction
at its core, which it will be the task of succeeding verses to effectively
abolish.
To distinguish the two selves implied in the contemplative
life envisaged here, constitutes the important initial step to be taken. We
shall have occasion to examine the nature of the contradiction or the
complementary character of the two selves involved. For the present we shall do
no more than to refer again to the Bhagavad Gita (VI. 6) which also posits two
selves for resolution into unitive terms, as follows:
‘To one who has overcome the self by the Self, the
Self is his kin: for one self-less, however, the very
Self can remain inimical like a (veritable) opponent.’
The verse immediately preceding (VI. 5) also refers to the
subtle inner structure of the Self in man:
‘One has to support the self with the Self, one should
not let it down. The Self is the kindred of the self,
the very self is the Self’s (own) enemy.’
This ‘I’ within has its convergent (vertical) and
divergent
(horizontal) aspects which have to be carefully
distinguished,
‘LO! ONE EGO LOOMS, ETC.’: The ‘lo!’
here which stands for
‘look,’ implies a warning, as we have said above. In Vedantic literature
generally this error of self-identification with a certain bodily or
un-spiritual aspect or attribute of the personality is called the dehoham buddhi,
the attitude of mind
that says to itself, ‘I am the body.’ It is important to notice here that in
the verse above, as in Vedanta generally, the line dividing the body from the
mind, or the physical from the spiritual aspect of the personality is
underlined.
When we use the word ‘mind’ in English it is meant
to
include all that is spiritual in a vague manner. Manas (mind) however, as
understood in the strict Vedantic sense, belongs to the bodily side of our life
rather than to the spiritual, because it is one of the inner organs together
with buddhi, chitta and ahamkara (intelligence, relational sense and
individuation), which depend for functioning on the stimuli entering the body
from the objective rather than from the subjective side.
Psycho-physical parallelism, if at all admissible, has to be
understood as taking place between elements in consciousness that really belong
to two rival poles. The line which is to separate what belongs properly to the
side of the psyche and what belongs to the physical aspect of life calls for
minuter examination in the light of the polarity or ambivalence which is to be
postulated as the base of this question of parallelism.
In the present verse one notices that the Guru takes care to
indicate that the ego that wields the skin and bones includes on its side many
other factors of evil portent, which conduce to unhappy ends. Even religious or
other sentiments as sometimes popularly felt, as when one hears of ‘an
enjoyable funeral requiem or dirge’ or of someone who cries throughout a
melodramatic film show, have mixed sentiments involved, which are hard to put
strictly into one compartment or other in the polarized scheme that we have to
think of, in respect of the two selves involved.
In fact, finally the two selves have to be abolished through
unitive understanding. It is this which it is the task of the present work of
the Guru to accomplish.
In other works of the Guru this parallelism and polarity is
discussed by him in greater detail, as for example in the composition called
Chit-jadangal (Thought and Inertia). The same theme is indirectly touched upon
in Indriya-Vairagyam (Sense-detachment) and in Pinda-Nandi (Prenatal
Gratitude), as well as in some other compositions of the Guru.
The problem here is the same as in chapter XIII of the
Bhagavad Gita devoted to the ‘kshetra (field) and kshetrajna (knower of the
field) distinction.’ Sankara’s famous work called Drig-drisya-viveka
(discrimination between the seer and the seen) is based on this same
fundamental distinction—so important to be made before the Self can be properly
realized.
When one has succeeded in eliminating the horizontal
tendencies adhering to the self and it is thus purified, the
very self asserts itself and grows into power or perfection by double assertion
and double negation. In the process, if one again rests peripheralized in
interests, as for example being too much taken up by social or political
problems, one might become some sort of distorted absolutist in the deprecatory
connotation of the term. In the name of institutional forms of holiness we have
examples of distorted personalities with egos exaggerated or awry in one sense
or another. These pitfalls have to be avoided by the aspirant to contemplative
life. The ego should not be allowed to suffer bloating, warping or distortion.
If we should think of social duties it can be of items which
are free from the relativistic taint. The good work of the Good Samaritan in
the Bible is disinterested and correctly altruistic, while many
well-intentioned works in the name of religions suffer from relativistic taints
or partialities which, like milk in a dog-leather bag, as Sankara would put it,
have no real spiritual value.
‘THAT SELF WHICH GROWS TO PERFECTION, ETC.’: Once
the
distinction between the two aspects of the same unitive or Absolute Self is
made, it will be easy to see how a normal process of spiritual progress can be
established. Perfection or plenitude is the goal to be attained by the
progressive self put on its proper path. The attribute which grows to
perfection refers to the pure or verticalized self which still stands in danger
of being compromised by horizontal factors.
If Bishop Berkeley denied objectivity to the body; while
John Locke in his philosophy gave primacy to the objective aspect of reality in
the context of European philosophy; we have David Hume, the sceptic - whose
position has been humorously summed up in the textbooks as consisting of the
pithy saying, ‘no matter, never mind; no mind, what matter!’
In a revised methodology pertaining to a more complete
Science of the Absolute, as envisaged in Advaita Vedanta, to treat of body and
mind from the standpoint of what Bertrand Russell would call his position
of ‘neutral monism’ is justified. He restates this in his History of
Western Philosophy (Allen and Unwin, London, 1946) as follows:
‘I think that mind and matter are merely convenient
ways of grouping events’ (p. 861)
Earlier on the same page he says:
‘Thus from both ends, physics and psychology have
been approaching each other, and making possible the
doctrine of ‘neutral monism’ suggested by William
James’ criticism of consciousness’.
Thus we see that the position taken by the Guru is not
repugnant to the attitude of the latest pragmatic or empiricist philosophers,
even though they might call themselves ‘sceptics’. They represent a form of
agnosticism which is a natural corollary to absolutist wisdom of the correct
kind, which still remains to be formulated scientifically.
Part III
John
H. wrote:
Atmo 12 is very thought provoking indeed. When I ask myself to point to the
"I" in me, I usually point between my eyes - probably signifying the
brain. But if I'm horny, I
might point to another part of me, or hungry, yet another, or my foot hurts -
another. so yes, I am a dog
skin.
But being a dog skin bag isn't all that bad - I happen to
like dogs, the thing wrong with them is that they don't live long enough.
But is it possible that all the parts of the dog skin and
the milk inside - the inner bodily stuff - is it possible that each part has
its own consciousness? Is
that why there is a committee in my head? When my serotonin levels are way down, like when I
take bad acid, the committee is like the Senate and I think my consciousness
gets Sequestered. But if my
serotonin levels are higher, after good sleep, some part of me seems to take
control of the committee -but it's usually the hurt foot, the hungry belly, or
whatever. If the inner self
is part of the distracted parts, why can't it just say, hey, I"m in charge
here? I feel like there's
more than one of me in here sometimes
My
response:
John, you have expressed the human condition quite clearly,
just as Narayana Guru posed it in Verse 11. We are a series of I's stretching
through time. The study is intended to strengthen the part of us that stays the
same in the midst of all those changes. It's not something we just decide on
and it's a done deal—it's a gradual rewiring of our orientation. We are giving
the eternal part of us a chance to grow, in a sense adding a little sunlight,
rain and fertilizer to a burgeoning plant. Those who pay close enough attention
through the course will most certainly have a more solid sense of their inner
coherence as we go along. This is powerful medicine.
Fear not, the
growth isn't based on any particular belief or practice. The requirements are
simply listening, paying attention, questioning and pondering. A neglected part
of us will grow and move into the limelight, very much like a garden full of
seeds in Just-
Spring. The I that's different in every circumstance doesn't
go away, it merely assumes its proper role. It actually grows stronger and
healthier, which is the very reason it doesn't have to elbow into the middle of
every dispute, or be undone by them.
*
* *
Jake has highlighted some important ideas that got short
shrift in the Notes. Here is his Verse 12 summation in its entirety:
In
this verse, Nitya’s Narayana Guru outlines directly the procedure for “knowing
thyself.” Citing Sankara, Nitya
writes, “Our real form . . . . is an apprehension of True Beingness.” It
is in the realization itself that we
find our eternal form, our Atman that is always observing and never changing. It is consistently that which forms our
divine core at the base of the changing forms of phenomenal manifestation.
Nitya’s
commentary on this procedure simplifies matters and points to the very large
error that commonly occurs along the way, that of attaching ego to the
apprehension rather than our eternal Self. This error, in fact, informs so many Atman Projects that
they are, more often than not, translated as legitimate and as the path to a
self-aware life.
This
first error can be avoided, says Nitya, by a concentrating or meditating on
that which is imperishable and in not identifying one’s true self with the ego
and its sources of existence—the body and the mind. In spite of humanity’s best efforts and best intentions,
both of these elements which make up our basis for existing in
transactional/dream realities will dissolve and disappear, as waves on the
water. In my estimation, the ego
is merely doing its job (in its version of the project) of self-preserving the
living organism, but the foundation for the job is unstable. By attaching to
the mind/senses of the
immanent and then on that foundation building an effort to know the
transcendent we miss the mark and substitute the immanent wholly.
At
this point, because the authority for knowing one’s core exists in
phenomenality, the ratification for that authority is in the hands of others
sharing the same experiential experiences. In other words, legitimacy becomes an exercise in
egalitarian democracy. One is
voted in as guru, adept, prophet—whatever—and then convinces oneself that it
all must be true. Idolatry, to use
a homely reference, can thereby easily become the coin of the realm and in fact
often is. Cultural popularity, as
Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and political machines exploit it becomes an egoic
affair of locating in the population as a whole those ego-inflating concepts
all rooted in materiality, such as physical desirability, financial riches,
personal power, and so on, and then mirroring them in a personality that those
“watching” can assume they possess.
This
house of mirrors can continue as long as individuals stay away from any notion
of the possibility of an apprehension of true Beingness. As a matter of fact,
such an
apprehension can now be denigrated as self-serving and divisive for a
philosophy thoroughly grounded in a world confined to sense and mind. In a world
of material and literal
consensus and conformity, paying heed to, or worse yet, appealing to a higher
Self not touched by ego and therefore beyond the reach of a majority
ratification of the materially grounded amounts to apostasy and deserves
nothing less that derision and mockery.
In
this verse is the Guru’s call to remain steadfast in attending to the true Self
as the foundation for one’s Atman Project. Along the way, as Nitya councils, be aware of the ego’s
efforts both internally and externally to de-rail the search into a materialist
circular one. And essential for
that effort is an attending to humility and the insidious nature of a
pride-stroking ego. In order to
maintain such a position, one must appeal to an absolute transcendent power
beyond the popular vote. Nitya
uses the term god for this power and
later will explain that the word is a place-holder type of term for the
transcendent, one that takes many linguistic forms but is not any one of
them. In humility is the open
admission that all is not the ego, a position for which, as Emerson opined,
“the world whips you with its displeasure.”
In his The Atman
Project, Ken Wilber devotes a
fairly extensive discussion of this lifelong endeavor.
*
* *
Local teacher Melanya (not in the class or even aware it
exists) just sent me something applicable to our present study. It’s rather
light by Gurukula standards, but we’re way on the tough end of the spectrum, so
some of you might enjoy this type of interpretation. It’s nicely put, and a
worthy addition to the discussion:
Trusting
yourself doesn't mean following your impulses and doing whatever you want. It
doesn't mean ignoring the feedback you get from the world. Trusting yourself is
a practice of learning to listen to your body and your wise mind so that you
begin to notice when you are opening to the world and when you are shutting
down.
Most
of us have all kinds of ideas about how we should be. We should be more
disciplined, more confident, we should generally be better than we are. And we
have this agenda to improve ourselves. So we push ourselves with a kind of
subtle self aggression.
Or
we may have given up on ourselves and feel it's not worth trying anymore. We
might as well indulge in all our vices because we're hopeless. So we collapse.
Often
we flip back and forth between these states - we push and then we collapse.
Then we pick ourselves up again and push... and then we collapse. It's
exhausting...
The
good news is that it is possible to live another way. It takes practice and a
lot of care.
Here
is a simple practice I learned from Tara Brach. It only takes a few minutes.
You can do it anytime you have a moment where you can bring your attention
inward for a little while. I've found it to be a simple and very effective way
to learn to listen to my inner wisdom and to begin to notice what helps me open
and live more fully - and what triggers me to shut down, defend my position, or
collapse.
You
could try it right now.
Take
a moment to check in with your body, to allow yourself to inhabit your body
more fully and simply feel. Check in particularly with the core of your body;
your belly, heart and throat. Hold the question "What is asking for
attention?" and see what calls to you. Allow yourself to be surprised by
what emerges. And when something asks for attention, simply bring care to that
area of your body or that emotion that arises.
The
most important aspect of this practice is to bring a warm caring attention to
anything that arises. Often we want to fix that pain or solve that emotionally
dilemma. What is really needed is warmth and care.
Some
things are harder to bring care to than others. If you have trouble bringing
care to your experience, imagine someone else bringing care to you, someone who
has cared for you at some point in your life.
Part IV
One
more important idea that I didn’t have time for yesterday follows from Nitya’s
story of being called a guru. From Verse 12:
When
the first man comes and says, "Oh, great Guru!" you say "No,
man! Don't make fun of me." Then two people come and say "great
Guru!" "Eh? Am I? No, I am not." Then ten people come and bow
and call you a great Guru. You look at yourself and ask, "Am I a great
Guru, or not?" Then a hundred people come, then ten thousand in seven
jumbo jets. Now you cannot deny that you are really a great Guru, it’s all
confirmed. So you have to say, "God, come and save me. This is where you
are needed. I won't be able to get over this temptation by myself."
It brought to mind the beautiful letter Nitya wrote to one
of his dearest disciples after he assumed the role of Guru following Nataraja
Guru’s death, in November, 1973. He guarded against egotism by drawing a thick
line between himself and the abstraction called Guru, that to him was
Natarajan:
You
(who know the pulsation of my heart and the rising and falling temperature of
my soul) have gone beyond all barriers of social convention and personal
differences to sit with me in the silence of eternity. This witnessing without
regrets and without comment makes you ever more dear and sacred to my heart.
It
is evening. I am in Guru’s room. I sleep on his bed, sit on his chair, eat from
his plate, and receive people’s homage and love. I am the guru. And yet I am
the simple man whom you befriended, listened to, loved and hated, chided and
chastised, adored and suspected. Those phases are gone. Now I understand the
thoughts and feelings of Jesus for God and of Mohammed for Allah. I have
learned to be humble and submissive. Any moment the Guru may need my heart to
pulsate his love, my mind to think his thoughts, my hands to wipe someone’s
tears. I was not an ideal disciple either in my dedication or in my surrender.
Both dedication and surrender now come with a grace that was not hitherto known
to me.
Ever
since I declared myself as “Guru,” people are arranging big and small
ceremonial receptions. In the last month I have revived my old friendship or
familiarity with several thousands of people. News came in all Indian papers
that I am planning an East West University. Some good architects are making
designs. The project is in the air.
Being treated as a guru was something Nitya personally dealt
with quite often, in a country with unshakably fixed ideas about it, but we can
extrapolate his attitude to all the ways people describe us, and how difficult
it is to resist. Also to how we describe them. It’s the way we all become
shaped to fit into our society, and it often pinches grievously. The neti neti
(not this not this!) approach is to always remind ourselves that we aren’t what
we are being told we are, even as we listen for the kernel of truth that might
be lurking in the words. We should also restrain ourselves from pigeonholing
others with our preconceived notions. A little investigation invariably shows
that the reality is different from any presumptions we make about it—and that’s
a good thing.
My
parents had no background in Indian philosophy, so I was always directed to
listen closely to criticism and pay heed to it. They might have warned me that
not everyone is a wise rishi, but they left that fact out. My child’s ego was
quick to deny it’s faults, so it was important to be constrained to take other
views into account, and I appreciate them for that much. But over time this
morphed into abandoning my inner strength in favor of popular opinion, which is
so pervasive I was quickly overwhelmed.
Then
too, Nitya’s valid point is that positive input is much harder to resist than
criticism. I remember at age 10 we moved to a new state, and I entered a school
that was a year ahead of my old one, right in the middle of the course. The
kids were very different, too, and I was feeling awkward and out of place.
Later the first day a boy handed me a note: “I used to like Terry Dukes best,
but now I like you best, because you are the tallest.” Wow, what a relief! I
had a friend, and the ice was broken. It made me happy to be tall, which was
apparently the only criterion, since I hadn’t actually met the boy before. For
a long time I felt confident, thanks to my height. I was tall, and that was
special. Two years later a girl shot up and towered over me, but that was okay,
because girls didn’t count. I was secretly worried, though. Then in a few years
a lot of kids caught up to my height, and my claim to fame was ended. Sic
transit gloria! Which is why we have to keep flitting from one self-image to
the next. Multiply this times a million, and you have the basis of personality,
of the ego. No wonder philosophers consider it a fiction!
