Silence in Rishikesh

Contents of an Indian street cow’s stomach
(Gomata Gau Seva Trust, 2016)

What is this light above the water in the shape of an umbrella? It is not submerged even when the whole earth is submerged in water. Is it the eternal Brahman, enumerated in hundreds of statements of the Upanishads, that has taken the form of an umbrella to give shelter to those suffering from the threefold miseries? We have become perfect merely by seeing it, O Teacher of the Universe. O Janardana, and you are also glancing at it repeatedly. Although you are the personification of wonder, you look at it as though you also find it wonderful.

FB Memories July 11 (2015)

  

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2012

It has taken a long time, but on occasion I am finally hearing -- or imagining that I am hearing -- the voices of the writers of the Sanskrit texts.

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2011

For Love to be realized, it must be experienced internally as emotion (bhava) and externally as reciprocation (prema).

Thereafter Lord Vishnu replied:

 
The light in the shape of an umbrella that you see in the sky is the supreme light, which on earth is called Kāśī. Just as a gem is set in gold so it is with Kāśī on the earth. It is not part of the earth, but is My supreme destination, and was not therefore submerged in the water. When all material objects are submerged in water, this conscious and blissful Kāśī is not submerged.....

 
Just as the conscious being and material body are not one, though situated together in one body, similarly Kāśī, which is Brahman in nature, has come together with the inert earth. The inert is created, but not the Supreme Self. I will uplift the earth taking the form of Varāha. At that time again Kāśī, which is dear to me, will be established on earth.

I was just thinking about this passage in Krishna Sandarbha. These verses about Kashi are quoted and then applied analogically to Krishna's Dhamas. "Just as Krishna is present in the body, but is not touched by it or its suffering, so it is with Kashi, and so it is with Vrindavan."

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2013

Tun. Retreat. Small things will be profitable and correct. For one of positive virtue, retreating at this time brings safety, forward movement is untimely. Line 4: "Retreating in order to preserve one's purity is right for a developed being, but difficult for the undeveloped."

To achieve spiritual integrity in Tao
the emphasis belongs not on worldly affairs,
but on keeping the mind still -- this you know.
As worldly interest lessens
Tao interest increases.
As your mind becomes empty,
the Tao fills your being.
With heart and mind pure,
negativity and evil fail to lure.
Only by observing and correcting yourself
can you eliminate the pain and torture
you allow to occur.
...
Silence is the ideal.
Merely talking about self-cultivation
lacks any real benefit.

I am still in silence, though I am having a bit of a lax day. But I thought I would share the following from a book I have been reading, Sam Keen's "To a Dancing God." This book belongs to my heritage time intellectual period, the 1970's, so all the books and thinkers he quotes are the same guys I end up quoting half the time. But I found the following kind of good and appropriate. Keen is proposing some non-mainstream courses that will never be taught. He is not a hippie, but his writing breathes the Zeitgeist of the 70's. I do think he was at Esalen, Big Sur, for a time. This is from the proposed course on "On becoming a lover."

 
"Carson McCullers once wrote a short story which suggests the proper place for a course in loving to begin. She tells about a young paperboy who encounters a drunk in an all-night diner. The drunk insists upon showing the boy a picture of his wife who fifteen years previously ran away with another man. He goes on to explain that in those days he did not know how to love but he has subsequently developed a science of love that will allow him to win his wife's love. The mistake he originally made was to begin with the hardest object of love--a woman. His new science establishes a hierarchy: first love a rock, then a cloud, then a tree, and gradually your powers will grow until it will be possible to love a woman.

 
"There is wisdom in this story that the Greek philosophers would have understood. Plato also insisted that love had a ladder of ascent whose lowest rung was a simple object. Eros is first directed to modest objects, and only afterward may it reach the good, the beautiful and the true. Practice in loving best begins with objects, things--rocks and trees and beautiful machines." (p. 58)

The point being, of course, that the deity in the temple is only there as a starter ("transitional") love object. Jesus said, "How can you love the God you can't see if you cannot love the neighbor you can see?"

And now, I return to my Yoga Tarangini work. More Pranayama!!

Actually, the REAL point I was making is, if human beings are tough to love, then try Giridhari for a while. And call it a strategic retreat.

Manu says, "Truth is better than silence." But most of us only fabulate that we have the truth, I being one of the worst. So I will go with silence for a while. Call it another strategic retreat.

Silence: Necessity or Self Indulgence? ...

 
There were three earnest men who were friends and became monks. One chose to live out the saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers" and worked to reconcile enemies. The second chose to visit the sick. But the third stayed in solitude. Now the first worked among many contentious people and found that he could not appease them all, so eventually he was overcome with exhaustion. He sought out his friend who was caring for the sick, only to find that he too was worn out, depressed and unable to carry on. The two of them decided to visit their friend in the desert and told him their troubles. When they asked him how he was, the monk was silent for a while and then poured out some water into a bowl. "Look at this water," he said. And they saw that it was murky. After a while he said, "Look again and see how clear it has become." As they looked the two monks saw their own faces as in a mirror. And the monk said to his friends, "Because of the turbulence of life, the one who lives in the midst of activity does not see his sins. But when he is quiet, especially in solitude, then he sees the real state of things." From "Finding Solitude" by Abbot Christopher Jamison.

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2009

Interesting that the Vishnupurana starts with the stories of Prahlada and Dhruva, both of whom are rebellious sons. Sounds like a thesis.

Vishnupurana 1.11.29: Dhruva says, "I don't want anything given me by someone else, but to attain a position by my own deeds. I want a position that was not obtained [for me] by my father."