By Jyothsna Bonthu
“I have no nets to catch fish”, cried a devotee.
The docile Monk retorted, " I could transform you into a Hawk, if the agony of human birth is so much. But what thrill is it, if one has not decoded the bliss of Being by himself."
The devotee flew. Inwards.
The Himalayan Monk has been observing penance and silence for decades, rarely speaking when devotees come and go.
“So what did you discover about yourself” enquired another devotee.
“Sublime Bliss” the Monk remarked.
“Aren’t we all in the pursuit of same happiness, albeit from different means.?”
“No. That which you can feel it- that which is fleeting: I did not pursue it. Rather I could create something more – that which I can experience it.”
“Interesting, could you elaborate?” questioned the devotee.
“It’s ineffable!” Monk replied.
He continued, "When the mind is thinking and not still, fear supersedes. When the mind is absolutely still an exuberance pervades. What heat is to fire, sublime bliss is to consciousness. The primal secret of human existence is to not have fear."
Then the devotee realized the reason behind his silence.
How could one explain in simple language the ineffable existence of Truth? Else but in silence.
The Monk clarified that, "Anyone in single minded pursuit of Enlightenment ever finds it. A good monk would be a docile yet determined fellow. A bit of a sensualist in tune with the primal elements of Nature, one who is capable of compassion for the world and is utmost kind towards oneself. One would know that its not necessary to climb every mountain yet find Realization in the mundane and ordinariness of Life - irrespective of the religion one belongs to. Remember that you are made of Nature elements that speak a different language, each of its own. Imbibe them. "
Nature has a language of its own, if we observe closely, it actually speaks quite eloquently.
Earth teaches us to Ground. Give. Build and Heal. It can be touched , seen, heard, tasted and smelled.
Water teaches us to Cry. Cleanse. Flow and Let go. It can be touched, seen, heard and tasted.
Fire teaches us to Burn. Tame. Adapt and Ignite. It can touched, seen and smelled.
Air teaches us to Observe. Decide. Breath and Focus. It can be touched and heard.
Ether teaches us to Connect. Listen. Know and Be Still. It can only be heard.
"You are a force of nature" the Monk added , " 'SHOONYA' in sanskrit essentially means zeroness. “I”ness as a force of nature, the indestructible consciousness, stripped off of the baggage of emotional sentimentality and psychological personality of the mind. It refers to the reincarnating part of the spirit and the necessity to keep it pure, rid of dense karmic memory."
" In sufism it is referred to as "Akhfa". In buddhism as "Turiya". All the three: mind, body and spirit carry immense memory imprints life after life. To be rid off them is our ultimate quest for Truth. In a gist it means the “inner sense”. The Holy Soul. A promise of sublime Bliss. You might be a Kybalion law abider, a Reiki practitioner, a Christ adventist, a Psilocybin shamanist, a Pschydelic transcendentalist, a Buddhist monk, a Sikh samadhi disciple, a Lataif-e-sitta seeking sufist, or a Ramzan fasting mohammaden, but certainly you are searching for God in your prayers, for every human’s quest is to know what is the true nature of our Reality. " He said.
Enrichment of life happens if we master the art of living wide rather than living long. As Seneca the stoic philosopher states, “Live immediately: Putting things off is the biggest waste of life. It snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. The whole future lies in uncertainty.”
Now here lies the dilemma: we want a promise of an assured future to live worry-free in the moment. However the antidote to overcome this fear of an uncertain future lies only in absolute involvement in the present moment. Design a macro plan for your future, it could be multiple plans if the fear of failure bothers you, and then be micro focused & committed to dive into the moment with absolute abandon. Daily repeat the process of honing the skills needed to execute the plan. Your macro plan with a micro focus is the only key to living a life of freedom!
Choose which vision statement suits you, that’s your Dharma.
Ex1: You might be a janitor, a field marshall or a school teacher if you fall int the category of a Pioneers your vision statement broadly falls into one of the twelve. I’ll explain more. Suppose a field marshal at Navy Seals has a team to command and an enemy to fight off, and if his/her vision is “To Pioneer By Marketing” then he or she goes on to campaign a new missile and proposes his or her higher officials to make a new defence technology not available in any other countries. Thus one fulfils ones Dharma and the consequences of that choice is his/her Karma for that Life.
Ex2: Suppose you are a school teacher your vision might be “To Analyze By Innovating” then you could come across a situation where you are faced with multiple linguistically or autistically challenged kids and then you had to come up with an innovative way of teaching them by analysing each of their skills. The Montessori methods are a good example.
To live immediately on the precipice of Presence, there are four ingredients to serve that very purpose, viz.:
Mental clarity
Emotional fulfillment
Robust health
Spiritual freedom
The first three are ofcourse self explanatory but what about the fourth, what does it mean to have spiritual freedom and how does one attain it? Fear is an archnemesis of all spiritual progress. To be a Captain of your life you must foremost accept the fundamental fear of failure.
Ed Catmull who cofounded Pixar along with Steve Jobs has an excellent thesis on Leadership. He goes on to say “In a fear-based, failure-averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. They will seek instead to repeat something safe that’s been good enough in the past. Their work will be derivative, not innovative. But if you can foster a positive understanding of failure, the opposite will happen. If there is fear, there is a reason — our job is to find the reason and to remedy it. Leader’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the ability to recover. The antidote to fear is trust, and we all have a desire to find something to trust in an uncertain world. Fear and trust are powerful forces, and while they are not opposites, exactly, trust is the best tool for driving out fear. There will always be plenty to be afraid of, especially when you are doing something new. Trusting others doesn’t mean that they won’t make mistakes. It means that if you do, you trust they will act to help solve it. Fear can be created quickly; trust can’t. Leaders must demonstrate their trustworthiness, over time, through their actions — and the best way to do that is by responding well to failure.”
So Live Immediately!
Now!
And Trust more often!
As we a grow into a full-fledged person it is by default that we tend to building the gross body. Its method includes food and sleep. The physical nature of a body and its growth is hence easily quantifiable. Without growth we would wither in certain aspects, here please don’t misconstrue what I am saying, there are people with stunted growth syndrome and are leading a successful life. My point is at a more cellular level there happens life and death of cells on a regular basis and essentials like rest & digest is an ingrained mechanism.
Similarly with the mind which is more intangible in nature, it is by default that it tends to building the subtler body of ours. Its method serves the purpose of emotional regulation and intellectual reason. These aspects are still quantifiable but not so clearly like the gross body. Now here many miss out on the process and are actually emotional and mentally stunted in ways. It is clear to identify people with mental retardation but not with the emotional aspect. An emotionally stunted person can appear to function normally in a given society but look closer again, enquire about the interaction he or she has with her immediate circle- people who are emotionally immature or have stunted regulation are the ones who develop chronic personality disorders later in life, the effect of which is visibly seen in interpersonal relationships. Clinical psychologists highly agree with this. As early as two to six years of age, a person begins to grow in this dimensional and needs ample amount of decent attention, appreciation and affection from the primary caregiver. If in any circumstance any one of those needs were not adequately fulfilled, then the subtler dimension like the mental framework of the person begins to retard and personality disorders viz., avoidant personality disorder or borderline affective disorder tend to manifest in later stages. Such simple ingredients to foster a full-fledged human personality, if missed out can create a permanent void in the person and growth becomes insurmountable if not impossible.
Now coming to the most subtlest and intangible dimensional of the body i.e the spiritual body, on fulfillment can lead to effervescence and exuberance, nevertheless if depleted of the resources it needs to bloom i.e., forgiveness and compassion can lead to a stunted spiritual growth. The effect of which is a drab and melancholic life. Before a person learns to give out these qualities, first he or she needs to have an early experience where these tools for growth are fostered upon him/her. Meaning we cannot expect a person to grow as a compassionate and altruistic person if ones atmosphere while growing was full of strife, despair and torture. What rest and digest are for wellbeing of the body, same are forgiveness and compassion to the spirit.
An unwealthy uneducated person can still bloom into a cheerful and kind personality given someone elderly or an acquaintance in ones vicinity has given them the gift of forgiveness, inturn helping the person learn of such godly traits of tolerance and humility. Contrary to that, a mercenary could be depleted of such spiritual riches given ones backround only demanded them to function in society in a cut throat way, accumulating only greed and ruthlessness. Unable to understand the suffering of others one would only strive for peaks of material excesses, serving only the purpose of – fulfilling ones passions and selfish desires, overlooking to alleviate the strife of others. What joy is it if one has not solved the misery of others and hence not created any value to the world in true essence.
However subtle the spiritual process of growth is, it is still quantifiable and expressed in a language understandable. Look into the eyes of a pauper whose head is now covered by a roof that you laid on top. Look into the smile of an elderly widow whose children now could study because of the school that you have built with tuitions covered. Look carefully at your childhood enemy’s disposition who hit you hard on your face back then and the scar you still carry till date on your nose - and you still greet back whenever she / he passes you by today. Forgiveness and compassion in true essence are the love languages of every human being. If forgiveness and compassion have not healed the world would you think the planet would still be spinning so perfectly?
To communicate better on a soul level, language with words often falls short. Then how does one communicate? Become Love personified. As much as it sounds foolish to the rational mind, it is truly the only way to spiritual freedom. Now this is not to be misunderstood as choosing a person of likeability and then putting all your passion into this object of your desire. The kind of Love I speak of, is the opposite of likeability. It is easy to love a person whose personality or tastes or values you like. That’s the crux of natural selection i.e, survival by choosing and mating. But Love takes you to a different dimension.
Imagine loving a person whose lifestyle you cannot accustom to, whose ideologies may be regressive to you, whose mistakes are hard for you to forgive, and it goes on. This kind of Higher Love gives you wings because your life remains unchained and untampered by wanting a likeable person to fulfill the void. Simone Weil has a similar take on Love goes on to say, “There are those people who try to elevate their souls like someone who continually jumps from a standing position in the hope that forcing oneself to jump all day— and higher every day— they would no longer fall back down, but rise to heaven. Thus occupied, they no longer look to heaven. We cannot even take one step toward heaven. The vertical direction is forbidden to us. But if we look to heaven long-term, God descends and lifts us up. God lifts us up easily. ‘That which is divine is without effort.’ There is an ease in salvation more difficult for us than all efforts.
Carnal love in all its forms, from the highest — true marriage or platonic love — to the most base, down to debauchery, has the beauty of the world for its object. Love that gives itself to the spectacle of the heavens, the plains, the sea, the mountains or the silence of nature senses this love in a thousand faint sounds, breaths of wind and the warmth of the sun. Every human being feels it vaguely for at least a moment. It is an incomplete love, sorrowful, because it gives itself to something incapable of response, which is matter. People desire to transfer this love onto a being that is like it, capable of responding to love, of saying ‘yes,’ of yielding to it. The desire to love the beauty of the world in a human being is essentially the desire for the Incarnation. If we think it is something else, we are mistaken. The Incarnation alone can satisfy it.
As Simon Weil says, “There is something in our soul that loathes true attention much more violently than flesh loathes fatigue. That something is much closer to evil than flesh is. That is why, every time we truly give our attention, we destroy some evil in ourselves. If one pays attention with this intention, fifteen minutes of attention is worth a lot of good works.”
The secret to meditation is not in doing it but being it, meaning bringing meditativeness into your daily existence. Essentially, one needs to practice on maintaining an unwavering mind and a fatigue free body. An unwavering mind does not means shutting off thoughts but allowing the thought train to flow freely and at the same time not give attention to them. Any average person who has a macro plan for ones life and can maintain utmost attention to detail each day and every day on execution of the plan, while not forgetting the intention of why one has taken upon the plan, is a superhuman already! To not be consumed and eaten away by ones thoughts is the key to success. Meditativeness in such case will follow through you rather than you struggling to sit a corner silently.
A fatigue free body only aids in amplifying the spiritualization of your existence because the true nature of a simple superhuman is - stillness at core and continuous movement at the crust. Methods like sixteen hour fasts, light meals, lean muscle diets and exercises, swimming, pilates, etc. foster an anti-fatigue regime.
The Monk explains “While actions performed out of fear and desire are transactional in nature, actions based on duty bring more transparency. But actions performed out of Love only can make us close to transcendence. There is however a sign to know if you have become meditative or not: If tears of ecstasy haven’t flown from your eyes, the tears that originated from the heart, then you have done it wrong. All else is just commercial propaganda and ponzi schemes!”
He further demonstrates, "Eyes closed. Chest pressured. Look inward. Deep breath. I am the beat now repeat I-am-the-heartbeat. Pressure builds. Fate floats. Rising light. Finite hope. Enter Calm. Slow the thought train. Silence glides. Notice the void. Hold on to the deep belly knot. Don’t breath. Don’t panic. Holding up. Now Release…."
'Shoonya' in Sanskrit is the art of becoming void within oneself. To become zeroness. To let go of deeply held beliefs. To consciously peel off ones own personal identity. I am this, I am that, I do this, I do that, I belong to them, I like this. I don’t like that, etc. To become free of toxic codependent bondages. To determinedly rehabilitate from compulsive addictive habits. To Vanquish every last bit of yourself and constantly annihilate your thoughts feelings and beliefs in order to give a chance for the indestructible Self to overpower you. Only in that kind of meditation can you progress.
Hence the three spiritual love languages are:
1. Radical Forgiveness
2. Dispassionate Compassion
3. Dauntless Courage
The perpetrator has not forgiven. Worse the perpetrator has not even acknowledged the wound inflicted was hurting to you. Why should you then forgive? Once you have understood that forgiveness is not about you giving a chance for the perpetrator to hurt once more but it is about you becoming free from the power other holds- its liberating! For the fear of not letting yourself be susceptible to such hurt is what causes unforgiveness. So you remember it so deeply. You hold it closely to you. You become defined by your wounds. “I am a trauma victim or I am an ill fated survivor.” Radical forgiveness means even the worst of the crimes inflicted upon you such as childhood molestation or claustrophobic confinement are forgiven because you in this case you remember and recover. Your recovery is your true empowerment. Once you’re a spiritual warrior you automatically develop a sense of compassion, it’s a given. To alleviate the suffering of others comes natural to you cause you swum those same dark waters.
By Jyothsna Bonthu
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