From my three homes of Bhur, Bhuvah, Svah,
I awaken to That – Sat, Chit, Ananda.
The rising Sun and the setting Moon stirring Agni within.
A festival of Effulgence, Wisdom, and Beauty,
Music of the Morning Dawn as prayer-offering,
Dance in circumambulation as pilgrimage to my meditation seat,
Dew-drop pearl of light illuminating above, below, and all sides in radiant contemplation.
Mantra-consecrated mind, my offering on the Festive Night of Peace to Thee.
May these three lights of consciousness, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness grace you on this festival night.
Each and every day, light the three lamps of prayer, meditation, and contemplation as a reminder of the perennial Light of Love that you are, your true Being.
Name as Word, Word as thought, Thought as perception adding memory Memory as feeling, Feeling as experience Experience as awareness Awareness as Meditation Meditation without Name, Word, Thought, Experience, Pure Awareness of Being–NoName, Namah Name as a spark of Consciousness illumined, glowing and growing with intention, Let intention be my prayer and light be my meditation. Letting go of “my” is peace.
What is Peace
Peace is never empty or vacant for it is She, our Beloved Mother. Whose face is our desire, seeking to see, to touch, to hear, She has breathed us into this world, where She is our fate and destiny. What vision may She reveal, that gives strength and courage to dance on this stage of life. What voice does She speak, that animates this wave of life called infant, child, youth, adult. From one to many, such identities return to one who is She. Peace is One, Peace is She.
The AHYMSIN Full Moon Illuminations Newsletter this month recognizes the pains and sufferings of recent events as we reflect upon current and on-going global issues with a spiritual salve of healing through the teachings of the Tradition.
Gurudev Swami Rama explains how we must all understand the source of our instincts, urges, emotions, and desires to lead a free, happy, and joyous life. A simple practice I follow each day is to read the ‘Quote of the day’ from the Perpetual Calendar of Swami Rama’s teachings.
Recently, one of the quotes was:
“Be confident and self-reliant and say to yourself, I will do it, I can do it, I have to do it”
yet, the next day seemed to make this more practical for me:
“Increase your capacity slowly and gradually and learn to be patient with yourself.”
The ambrosia of decades of teachings by Gurudev and Swami Veda were a blessing for us. To live life harmoniously is to be free from the internal and external conflicts that fear creates are truly the illumination we need on our path of sadhana. When there is peace in the heart there is peace in the home. Through skillful and selfless living, let your inner-most virtue come forward from that infinite source to purify our personality. Let prayer, meditation, and contemplation be the healing salve for the mind. Let the mind reflect its most natural state of quietude, contentment, and joy.
You are invited to participate and respond. Begin with listening to the guided peace meditation by Swami Veda to gain freedom from the wrinkles of mind and conflicts of heart. With this sattvic mind, read the newsletter articles and contemplate a deeper meaning in your life and relationships. Over the coming days, make time to listen to the full lectures [Swami Veda’s lectures from the seminar on “Peaceful Planet, Heart, and Mind” – Sacred Activism and Meditation as Renunciation] making notes in your journal. Resolve to listen to the meditation twice each week over the next month to experience the depth of peace you may reach.
You may respond by addressing your comments to Divya or Adhikari at ahymsin@ahymsin.org.
Your audio references for the themes of Spiritual Activism and Meditation as Renunciation and the Peace Meditation are as follows:
Guided Peace Meditation by Swami Veda Bharati:
Lecture on ‘Spiritual Activism’ by Swami Veda Bharati:
Lecture on ‘Meditation as Renunciation’ by Swami Veda Bharati:
Yours in service of Gurudev,
Swami Ritavan Bharati
Gather all your senses. Let your mind, body, breath be in harmony and peace. The seat of your mind at peace. Bring that peace to all your limbs., organs, and faculties. Feel the peacefulness in your forehead. Peacefulness in your vocal organs and your jaw. Peace descending into your neck and shoulders. Peace in your arms. Peace in your hands and fingers. Let them rest in peace as you breathe. Breathing gently, slowly, smoothly.
Peace in your fingers, hands, arms, and shoulders. Peace in your shoulders, peace in your throat center of consciousness and all its internal organs. Peace in your bosom, the heart center and all its internal organs.
Peace descends into your navel center of consciousness and all its internal organs. Peace in your thigh joints, legs, feet, and toes. Peace in your entire body from head to toe. Breathing with a smooth, gentle breath from toes to top and top to toes three times.
Guide the mind and breath upwards. Follow the ascending breath of peace to each center, pausing with three breaths in each. Peace in your navel center of consciousness. Peace in your heart center of consciousness. Peace in your throat center of consciousness. Your speech organs resting in peace. Peace in your forehead and deep within the seat of peace in your mind.
Peace in the seat of your mind. Peace descending like a gentle dove in your whole mind, body, breath and through all your organs. Your whole-body breathing peace. Your breath descending and ascending from the crown to toes and from toes to crown. Feel this breath of peace, this gentle dove-like peace flowing through your whole body in each breath.
As you breathe in and as you breathe out, let the feel of the thought ‘OM SHAM’ flow through your whole body. Inhaling and exhaling with OM SHAM five times.
Inhale as though you are inhaling from your toes through your whole body. Your consciousness ascending with OM SHAM. As though you are exhaling from your crown and the peace prayer is spreading into the whole world with that exhalation with OM SHAM.
REPEAT: Inhale as though you are inhaling from your toes through your whole body, your consciousness ascending with OM SHAM through the crown. Exhaling from your crown and the peace prayer is spreading into the whole world with OM SHAM.
Continue five times.
NOW, inhale and exhale as though you’re inhaling and exhaling from the opening of a cave in the heart center. Remembering OM SHAM as you breathe. Enter the cave of light in your heart center. Light and peace and the mantra OM SHAM reverberating in that luminous cave of peace. Dwell in the luminous cave of peace absorbed in the reverberations of OM SHAM.
And now even the reverberation of the mantra subsides. Be assimilated into the divine silence of this emptiness, of this sacred-space. Again, the conscious thought of OM SHAM and the luminous cave of peace in the heart. Your heart cavity expanding, expanding to include all who are brought into your intention. Their hearts, your hearts, your peace, their peace; OM SHAM.
Let this cave of peace expand, expand to include all living beings. All as One, life-force-beings together in your vast expansive cave-space of the peaceful heart. The entire earth, all living beings, all sentient-beings in harmony, love and peace as a unified stream of being.
Dwell in this vast expansive space cave of unity, of the all-pervading, all-permeating life force. All consciousness at peace. Resting in this universal presence.
Slowly return coming back from that expansive space into the luminous cave of your heart reverberating with OM SHAM.
Now follow the course of your mind into your breath. Feel the flow; navel to nostrils and nostrils to navel. Feel the touch and flow of your breath in your nostrils. Exhaling with the thought OM SHAM and without a break inhaling with the thought OM SHAM. Your mind, mantra and breath flowing as a single stream.
Remaining attuned to the stream of consciousness in mind, peace mantra, and breath, gently open your eyes. Let the peace, the vibration of OM SHAM continue flowing even with your eyes open. Just sit and be at peace. Maintaining that presence when you leave from here. And wherever you are, whatever you do, let the peace-filled heart and mind, bring blessings of peace, harmony, and love to all. OM SHAM
When your meditation becomes that empty space in the sky of the heart, it becomes like the moonlight in the space of consciousness. What a subtle and refined pleasure, beyond the mystic ecstasies of tears or laughter.
Akasha-ja, one born of space or space-born. Imagine a being whose being is space alone. Space is not considered an emptiness in ancient Indian physics, but a condition of matter. The subtlest condition of matter. Many of you have practiced the purification of tattva, these subtle conditionings of matter through practices such as bhuta-shuddhi, and others.
So continue to aspire for that as much as you can. When in meditation you have purified and refined your inner-eye, you will find that this physical body is a cave in which you dwell. And there is a deeper cave inside that cave, and yet deeper, so you keep going.
In that inner space, in moments of absolute silence, slowly you learn to dwell in that cave and all sense of dimension ceases. You return to your breath and to your mantra. Then you will go deeper, touch a moment of silence, come back to your breath or your mantra. Go deeper, letting the breath refine, let the mantra refine, letting stillness expand where mind becomes centered on a single point, the whole mind becomes a single point.
This is no longer meditation of concentration which is separation; but a union where even mystic emotions rest in quietude and stillness. Such a subtle state reveals the light within, for you now are that appropriate receptacle, you are the pure space (akasha-ja), consciousness, and a configuration of space. The very nature of such a space means, the “holder-of-light”, Chidgangana-Chandrika, as Kalidasa has written in his poem of the same name. When such a brilliant light shines illuminating sushumna – the prana-path guiding in this sky of consciousness – para-akasha, illumination is revealed in its source.
May silence and stillness unfold as light and fullness in your daily meditation. Om
From this moment to the next, a step from past to future, a firmness of tapas, a gentleness of devotion. A collection of pearls connecting Sankalpa over time, month to month, year to year, decades of sadhana, and service now compressed in a micro-moment of heartfelt tribute. To have everything is to leave with nothing, and do so pleasantly and joyfully. It is to be free, to create, to surrender the fruits, and to move on. At this time, in the rarified atmosphere of crisis and health challenges, it gives me great pleasure to share our collective appreciation and gratitude to these disciples of the tradition. It is about them, and it is about each of us. To give memorials is a reminder of our fleeting mortal life. But to share the life-long experiences of dedicated sadhakas is to acknowledge our immortal self.
These individuals are remarkable sadhakas, one with the predominance of jnana, and the other, the rare traits of a bhakta. Together they are truly Karma-yogis and models sadhakas for generations to come. Each wave of divinity ebbs and flows, expresses and stills, speaks and goes silent. Each devotee a wave of beauty, a ray of refinement. We have all benefited from their skills, capacities, and knowledge reflected in their duties performed selflessly and lovingly.
Their work was a regular and consistent monthly reminder. Their editing, layout, and communication skills elevated the purpose of our newsletters. The newsletters became our own personal journals to reflect, contemplate, and be inspired through the articles they delivered to us. And I have observed in them as I see in many of you, situations where others have tried to upset you and disturb you, and you have remained not upset, have not let yourself be disturbed, and have responded to such negatives with a positive affirmation. It’s great, tremendous progress, you know. And that is where progress in spirituality is seen. With some of you, I have seen within the last years a reduction in the angering content in your personal life.
As our concerns for the Mission continue, the work goes on, the same internal eye will open in others to see what is to be done, and wherefrom nothing, something again appears. Who will rise now to continue the tasks, finish them and let go of the fruits awaiting the next creative wave to appear. Without attachment to success, they have served and now pass these fruits of service to others as gifted opportunities. A life of a volunteer is the life of a true disciple who practices the art of listening, finding contentment through meditation in action, and returning to a spiritual core of vitality that again arises as a wave on this pilgrimage of life.
Service to humanity is serving the Guru-lineage. Knowing what others need, and what will help others in their time of need. Their relationship to the lineage is the privilege of being indebted to the lineage and thereby growing in a sacred relationship, through selfless service, and love. May I simply call out their names for recognition and call on each of you to express your appreciation and gratitude. Blessings of the Lineage to you both, Carolyn Hume and Stephan Hodges, for your years of hard work, dedication and seva. Humongous amount of work goes behind sending the monthly newsletters, maintenance of the website, etc.; without you both, it would have been impossible.
My gratitude, love, and blessings to you, Dowlat, for picking up the mantle as the Editor and team leader for the AHYMSIN newsletter and website going forward. You and the editing team that will come together will lead these new efforts towards the AHYMSIN Website, and the new periodic newsletter by the name: Full Moon Illuminations. My appreciation to Divya and Rabindra who have put in countless hours of work over these past two-plus years towards recreating a new creative website for AHYMSIN. The new website and newsletter will be launched soon and will continue to offer various avenues to learn about our tradition and the teachings that are offered. And may I ask the guidance and blessings of our Beloved Swami Veda to continue to watch over us, simple aspiring sadhakas on the path of moksha, that we continue to contribute to the well-being, health, and inspiration of humanity across the globe.
Yours in service of Gurudev and the Mission of Himalayan Sages,
srb
Blessings of Grace and Transformation at this special time of atonement and redemption. May God’s grace be with you and your family throughout the year with well-being, peace, and contentment.
Many of us relate to the beauty and awe of these ceremonies and celebrations. Of all the Christian Liturgies, the Eastertide liturgies are the most sacred and mysterious in their symbolism and meaning. We are so fortunate that Swami Rama and Swami Veda gave such extensive commentaries on the Christian Scriptures to understand these layers of meanings and levels of experience for all of us.
Through prayer, meditation, and contemplation we come to understand Christ-Consciousness, and realize Truth. Through atonement, abandonment (death), resurrection (transformation), and redemption, we discover the path and purpose of life and sadhana. May we continue in our evolution with victory over death, and liberation over ignorance to awaken (muksheeya), the Oneness of our true nature, and the Eternal Presence of Being.
with gratitude and blessings of the Lineage,
Swami Ritavan
During this Shivaratri time, resolve to return to the light of life and love in your meditations.
Remember your Shiva-sankalpam, “Tan me mana shiva sankalpa astu”.
(That which is the absolute knowledge, that which is the reservoir of the mind-stuff;
That which is memory and steadfastness and sustenance;
That which is the light hidden within all beings;
That without which no action can be performed.
May that, my mind, be filled with beautiful, benevolent, beneficent, peaceful, Siva-like, divine thoughts, feelings, sentiments, emotions, resolves.)
They are all contained in the word ‘Shiva-sankalpam’.
Wherever there are Shiva temples, that Shiva there has a name. The ashram temple for Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama is named: Sadhakesvara, the Lord of the sadhakas – those who are aspiring to become as Shiva, those who are aspiring to know the truth of “Shivoham”. Within the walls resides “Sphatika-Jyotir-Linga” – ‘the linga of light’. The Temple and Crystal Lingam were given these names at the first consecration. As a meditation temple, here, a sadhaka performs their interior mental worship – manasa-puja. In this meditation, one dissolves all identification with name and form. Through pralaya, one withdraws their conscious identity with body, with senses, with sense objects, with memories of the experiences of sense objects, so as to become that very jyotir-linga as Shivo ’ham – I’m Shiva, jyotir aham – I am a being of light.
Everyone who perform a worship to Shiva says – Shivo ’ham – I Am Shiva. Then, if you are Shiva, who is the worshipper? Who is the worshiped? This mystery is unveiled only when one truly enters “within”. In this internal worship – manasa-puja, each external devolute is dissolved into its corresponding cause. As our consciousness dissolves the external forms and as awareness moves into subtler and subtler energies, all that remains is the causal body – linga-matra, and then alinga – just an amorphous form of light, an amorphous form of the presence of energies. That subtlest form of divine being is called the linga – just an indication of a mere presence – like a crystal lingam. That is why in our Shiva temple you will find the crystal-lingam. It has no head, face, senses, arms, legs – they have all been dissolved and absorbed into the linga-matra the ‘mere presence’ of light reflected in the crystal. Shivo ’ham – I’m Shiva, jyotir aham – I am a being of light. (redacted from Swami Veda).
Blessings of the Lineage to you all. As we are drawn together in this celebration of illumination let us bring the light of the hearts, our compassion, to all those who have experienced hardships, trauma, and misery.
Let the fruits of our meditations be offered: may their suffering be alleviated.
And as to yourselves say, Thy will be done and not mine.
Having thus unburdened yourself of all the claims of ego, remain a dweller of the heart-center, maintaining this awareness through breath and mantram.
I have thought about this extensively and tonight I’d like to share the two words that have come to mind: “resilience and silence”. And I call this resilience and silence returning to the single “I”. For when you drop the “I” of ego, from the “silence” of resilience, you find that you are in silence. In that single presence.
For all of us around the globe, this year has been truly a stress test of resilience and returning again and again to silence.
As we have removed the “I” of ego in resilience, we have become aware of our ability to change and flow with that change.
And as meditators, we have valued the quiet moments and have returned to silence, reminded of the fullness of re-silencing again and again throughout the day. This resilience and re-silence are two sides of the coin of personality and transformation.
Let our meditations be a pause in the constant push and go with the flow of your breath. Let your meditations be a practice resilience and return to the single “I” of silence in stillness, in the fullness of your being.
