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| AHYMSIN NEWSLETTER, ISSUE - July 2014 | ||||||||
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SRSG Diary of the Walk Up to Guru Purnima 2014by Joanne Sullivan (Divya)Part 1 Please think of this more as a letter home than as an article. It’s a few snatches of things I have been thinking about lately. Being close to Guru Purnima one cannot but help think of the many sides of one we called Swami Rama. But did any among us know his true name? Do any of us even know ourselves? I can think of one person who I believe knows him. Why do I think this? Because one of the first times I heard Swami Rama, I went back to my room and had a friendly argument with him. Forgive me if you have heard this one before. This was a silent argument because I was back in my room, alone now. I started by saying “I’m not so sure I want a guru. I don’t know if I like the idea of someone else pasting their ideas onto me.” The silent reply was “Have you ever been in love?” And then there were 2 circles before my mind’s eye. They slowly moved toward each other until they were overlapping. I took this to mean that a teacher does not paste knowledge or ideas on you. Rather it is a place of shared understanding. The circles kept moving. I took this to mean that the greater the mutual understanding, the greater the love, as shown by a larger common area shared by the 2 circles. The circles were still moving toward one another until they were completely overlapping. No separation. One circle. I understood this to represent the height and purity of the guru-disciple relationship. Perfect communion. A guru does not paste information on you. It is rather a great act of sharing what he or she is. And then the disciple understands and in a way becomes one with his or her guru. When Swami Veda gave the Yoga Sutra, Pada 3, course upstairs in his initiation room, he asked how can you tell a true master? Then he said something like: he is the one who gives you the eyes with which to see him. He also said “It takes one to know one.” I lived at the Himalayan Institute in its heyday. Swami Rama walked those halls, played tennis with us (though I was but a ball girl), chanted the names of God with us, praised (Hello, Great Lady!), then scolded us, i.e., What is a Thunderstorm in human form? He led us along the pathways. We were all so different from one another. Linguistically, culturally, and in every other imaginable way, we were a striking cross section of humanity. Among us, there were people from Finland, India, the Caribbean, France, South America, and the U.S. We were quite a collection. I cannot believe I am saying any of this. I cannot claim to know Swami Rama. We are still learning of his many and varied missions around the world, Swami Veda said just a few years ago. Sometimes Swami Rama was Twinkling Mischief. He was a master at it. I can think of one other person who also took delight in moving his students up the sacred mountain in everyday ways. Take Dr. Arya, now Swami Veda Bharati. He always seemed to make it so easy. But you were not at a silence retreat in early Minnesota days and happened to overhear Dr. Arya say to the retreat cook “Oh, please leave out the salt….” And a few minutes later “and do you think you could also burn it please?” Sensate Pleasures If any of you have ever been on a silence retreat, you may recall how, for beginners, the absence of chatter can push the food platter into 1st place. I am not saying that it is the business of a spiritual guide to make life difficult. I do think, however, that for those of us who see ourselves on God’s own mission, it is helpful at times to be permitted to see: * one’s habits of mind, word and action *weaknesses--- in order to rise *assumptions---often unknown to our very selves-- and even, maybe, *our own favorite brands of personal armor and attack. So if you on occasion sense that you are losing a fuselage or other critical flight equipment, this is normal. Steady on. Yet I am clear about one thing. Difficulties are not given by the guru. Somewhere, perhaps some long forgotten somewhere, each of us created this world wherein we dwell. When I learned that someone I deeply loved would undergo surgery to avoid a precipitous death, I wrote Dr. Arya. He wrote back “The only thing to fear is your karma. Your only protection is your karma.” The guru can challenge you to see that you have 10 times the strength that you didn’t know you had. And strength is love. I heard Swami Rama give a lecture about this in Minneapolis in the autumn of 1980. He said to the crowd of several hundred that whenever he taught he looked to see if there was one person who was truly strong, one person of deep compassion. This is not an exact quote. But the entire lecture was built on those ramparts, that strength is love and compassion. Having been in the guru’s force field, many of us strive to live this ideal. Roots and Rocks What I really wanted to tell you about was Roots and Rocks. On these wondrous days, Swami Rama displayed himself as a force of nature and a master at play. Every so often, Swami Rama would stroll into the main building of the Himalayan Institute and say something like “OK, Kids, Roots and Rocks!” This meant everyone out of the building. We are working outdoors. The incredible joy, the looking at you, (all of you---and forget about that rock you were going to hide under!), the heavy lifting of boulders and hefty tugging at roots. The gritty, hard, physical work—together—out in nature and under the eyes of sheer joy, of joy brimming over. It was so much fun. Swami Rama’s vast expanse was not in full view at Roots and Rocks, but sometimes it sure felt like it. Once he started a huge bonfire of all the brush that we had piled in one place. He had a mysterious look about him and I half wondered (I know, you think I am imagining things again!) whose karma he was burning as this conflagration grew and grew, heading downwind toward the main building. Just when one thought all was lost a terrific thunderstorm set upon us and saved the day (and the collateral). One minute he looked greatly amused, and the next that this was serious business. The stormy brow. One friend, Jean Chu, tells how she first met Swami Rama at one of the Roots and Rocks days. She, a tiny but very strong woman, lifted a huge boulder that several men had just tried to lift and could not budge. Swami Rama was at her side in a heartbeat smiling and exclaiming “Hey! I know you!” Shortly thereafter, he announced “OK, kids, everyone line up.” He was handing out doses of Arnica to avert injuries. Part 2 Something interesting is happening at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama. It is so palpable that you can almost cut the air with it. The akhanda japa ---uninterrupted recitation, night and day-- of the Shri Guru Gita began only yesterday. Sometimes I go into the meditation hall and just sit quietly absorbing it all. I may step outside to the yajña shala before and after to participate in the fire practice with the akhanda mandala karam. And if I am very lucky, I may awake early enough to go sit in the Tara Devi Temple for the puja at the crystal Shri Chakra at the feet of the Divine Mother. Have you ever been in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem? If you go at 5 a.m., as I did once, you can hear a few monks chanting Gregorian chants. There is more than music, but I will focus only on the sounds now. After awhile, from another part of the church, there is chanting in a different language and of a totally different feeling. Then more singing comes from yet another part of the church, again, in a different language and of a totally different character. Together, in the echoing chamber, it creates a fugue effect as if each song builds on, intensifies the others. Once in a youth hostel in Banff, Canada, my son and I were face to face with people of different languages. We could only grasp a small amount of what each of us was saying. I said “why don’t we all stand close and start speaking in our own native languages all together all at once and see what happens.” We did and the experience again was fugue-like, and you could hear and feel our commonality, our combined natural music, as we spoke Japanese, Serbo-Croatian, French, German and English all at the same time. It was a joyful experience. I remember also feeling awe. Well, here, if you are in the meditation hall at 8 a.m., you may hear the quiet utterings of a priest chanting the Shri Guru Gita. At the same time, you will hear another priest chanting the Shri Guru Puja at the altar. And still more, you may hear the overlapping sounds of akhanda mandala karam coming from the yajña shala just outside the hall. Behind all this is the sound of the cows nearby. All these sounds together make a magnificent sound. I cannot describe the feeling it gives me, but at a certain point, the mind lets go of trying to make sense of all the parts and experiences an immersion in a field of Shakti. The common undercurrent is sometimes one of stillness. That fullness reaches its zenith on Guru Purnima with the fullness of the full moon spilling over and taking us all along in that river without end. Hot days, occasional bursts of rain, and a steady line moving up to Guru Purnima which is on July 12th this year. What is that line? The family-like gatherings of old and new aspirants from all over India and around the world? Is it the stillness of morning and evening meditations? Is it the akhanda japa of the Shri Guru Gita or the fire leaping up with each recitation of akhanda-mandala-karam at the sacred fire every morning before and after the Shri Guru puja? Or the mysteries of the puja simultaneous to the Shri Guru Gita? Or maybe this: Tonight after dinner, I was headed to the Meditation Hall to sit and absorb the vibrations of the Shri Guru Gita. Then I noticed people going into the Knowledge Center and ambled a bit closer to read the signboard. It said 8 p.m.: SWAMI VEDA AUDIO LECTURE ON GURU-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP. What a night. We sat and listened--- closer than physically close. As we inched ever closer to his every word, it was as if a great, oceanic shawl had wrapped us all tight together in his lap. It was a Dr. Arya classic from 1972 or 73! (Audio file number 2292 of the series on Guru-Disciple Relationship; to purchase, contact AHYMSIN Publishers at http://ahymsin.org/main/book-and-dvd-orders.html ) He wasn’t even in the room, but now it was as if he never left the room where the lecture was first given. I had been there at the Minneapolis Meditation Center in its beginnings and now we were all still there together in the same room of sorts—though years and oceans away. The faces had changed, but the binding spirit and the WE felt the same. It is amazing to reflect on those days of night after night of closeness to this man-god-child and how he has continued to give ceaselessly, sitting with us in silent meditation nearly every night. You can see that same abundant energy and vigor of the 40-year-old man in what is now the gentlest of octogenarians. His steady vigor has become an unbroken flow, an all encompassing peace, yet more eloquent now in silence. It is a golden thread. One occasionally wonders who or what one is witnessing. Is this what prana is like when it is guided with no loss of attention to breath or sacred sound and the magnificent possibility of all that life holds? Swami Veda is not here at the moment. But the air is thick with him and the presence of the master. In the audio tape, he talks about paying your karmic debt, about hard work and commitment in whatever we are made of and for---about taking on more and more, not shrinking back and still maintaining an equanimity. Among other things, he talks about the commitment to mantra. Is mantra the wings of light that bind us to the formless form some call Guru and some call God? In the room, there are people from several parts of this rich land of India and also some from France, England, Belgium, Nepal, Trinidad and the U.S., to name a few. There is a Jain master and his disciple. There is a child of 10 drawing on a pad of paper and occasional silent giggles as she shares with her father now and again, the mother seated close by too. There is the sense that this is a safe harbor, a place of trust and a good place to share and grow. Today there were some yellow wasps making a home by my front door and a dainty, pretty striped snake, when I came back from morning meditation. Adhikari Bhoi said that it was not poisonous and that they used to play with them as children in his family home in Orissa during the high rains. I was not afraid of the snake, but I felt afraid of leaving all this to go back to the U.S. Now I feel all right, that a boat will be waiting to take me wherever I need to go. And that a vast invisible shawl will be wrapped tight around me and will keep me close. For lifetimes to come. Before she left for the U.S., Swami Radha handed me a book called Love Is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald Jampolsky. I feel tied to the land here. The blue gray distant mountains, the overflowing flowers of scents and forms I never knew existed, of noble trees, birds and geckos. I wish you who are reading this could be here with us. To all our friends, Om dyau shantir antariksham shantih…. (the shantih pada that Dr. Arya always used to end every class with throughout the 1970’s) May there be peace in the heavens, peace on earth, peace in the middle regions. May there be peace in the herbs and shrubs, peace in the rivers and the forests, peace in the life that moves through all things—in whatever form, by whatever name. May all know peace excluding none. And may that peace come to me. Peace, peace, peace. Om…
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