According to Vedanta philosophy, Divinity is described in three intertwined words- Sat, Chit and Ananda- Truth, Pure Consciousness and Joy or Bliss. This is our True Nature, our Essence, our True Identity. In this state of consciousness, time-space created boundaries get dissolved, the ego-created self disappears and the Self emerges.
People who have reached this state are called self-realized beings.They are intimate with the universe that includes all living beings. To them the whole universe is one family. I have been blessed to be in the presence of such self-realized beings. Their loving and compassionate kindness evoked a deep sense of intimacy within me and with others sitting around me. I would call it an enlightening experience, a blissful experience. I felt infinite compassion, affection, and warmth radiating from them. I deeply felt their loving presence. While I am writing this reflection, I feel their loving presence in my heart. Such experiences have awakened my heart and have made my heart spacious and gracious flowing with loving kindness. May we all be blessed by enlightened beings for opening and expanding our heart!
0 Comments
When I was 5 years old, every morning my dad used to chant the song of awakening. It has become a light house for me. The song is in Hindi. " Utha jaag musafir bhore bahi aba rayn kahnatak sovat hai. Jo sovat hai vo khovat hai, jo jagat hai vo pavat hai." Let me translate this song in English.
" Hey traveler, wake up. Morning has dawned. How long will you keep on sleeping? One who wakes up receives blessings and the one who keeps on sleeping misses the Divine gifts." To me life is a journey, a pilgrimage. We all are pilgrims of light. I am one of the pilgrims walking on my path. There have been times in my life when I took a wrong step. I hurt myself and hurt others close to me and around me. I woke up from my sleep and resumed my walking keeping my inner eyes open. I leaned form my fall. Got up and continued my pilgrimage. I have learned that light is within me. I do not need to look for it outside of me. The face of light is covered by the veil of my egoic mind. When I become still and open, I discover the light within me and I follow it. Following this light brings joyful bliss in me. It keeps me on the path of love, compassion, and gratitude.I feel free from the grip of the past and the worry about the future. The inner world of worry and missing something takes me away from the Present, which is beyond time and space. Our suffering is created by the mental constructs creating divisiveness in me and others. And I am still journeying living in the here and now. Life is a blessing. May we walk on the path of life keeping our mind and heart open to be touched by the inner light of awakening! From evolutionary point of view, the brain is wired to fight, flee or freeze for protecting ourselves. In this context, fear is an instinctive response for our survival and security. The fear mentioned in this writing is psychological created by human conditioning. The conditioned mind reacts to a perceived stimulus and makes us resist, oppose, run away, hide or deny. Such dysfunctional patterns of perceiving, thinking and behaving block our potential to see things as they are externally and internally. Sadly, these patterns become habitual and block our growth and development personally and inter personally.
" To want to see clearly is a true act of fearlessness." This statement says it all. When my eyes open to see my own suffering as it is, the gate to working on my suffering opens. I need to see my blindness with an open mind and heart, courageously and compassionately. Such mindfulness seeing is not an analytical intellectual process. Mindfulness is observing without judgment what I am experiencing in the here and now consciousness, in the present moment. The mind gets free from holding onto the past and being hijacked by the future, from regrets, anger, shame, humiliation and guilt or from fear, worry, apprehension and anxiety. The present moment has no clouds or shadows blocking the light of knowing which removes the darkness. Mindfulness has been my way of working on myself. Mindfulness meditation has helped me to discover and meet my true self. It has opened the door of my life for receiving blessings coming from everywhere. I am very grateful for receiving such blessings. May we cultivate fearlessness and mindfulness to live a blissful and joyful life! A very wise statement by J.Krishnamurti. As I understand, anger is anger, righteous or unrighteous. Anger burns us and burns others. As far as I am concerned I do not intend and want to burn myself and do not intend and want to throw my fire on others whether they are my kinsmen or others. It is my conviction based on my experience that anger causes more anger and violence causes more violence.
Anger arises in me when I judge or condemn myself. The same way anger arises in the other person when I judge or condemn the other person. The same thing happens the other way around. How do we end the cycle of anger? Not by denying it or by justifying it. Both ways perpetuate the cycle of anger. It does not end by preaching you should not be angry. Practicing mindfulness in all contexts of life has been immensely helpful to me. Mindfulness is intentionally paying my non-judgmental attention to what is happening in me and around me. It is very helpful to pause between the anger generating stimulus and our habitual and automatic response. Taking deep breaths helps me to remain calm and centered and from that place within me the right, the wise, response arises. Such a mindfulness practice frees me from the grip of conceptual and sociological analysis of anger. When the mind is calm, open and centered, the right kind of inquiry arises in the mind which helps me to understand the intra and interpersonal dynamics of anger. The inner light helps me to process the inner and outer clouds of destructive emotions. May we be mindful of the arising of hurting thoughts and emotions in our mind and make wise choices! Choice making is in our hands. We all know that as human we have mead self-and-other hurting choices. In all relationships there is no the other without me. We all are intertwined. When I make a wrong choice, focusing only on my interest, I am going to hurt the other and the other may counteract to hurt me or teach me a lesson. Tooth for tooth and eye for eye becomes a vicious cycle hurting each other on all levels.
So it goes back to choice making. Wrong or crazy choices are made when the mind is buzzing with wrong or crazy thoughts, when we are not awake. All wisdom traditions have emphasized the value of taming the monkey mind, the wandering mind. Meditation is one of the most effective ways of taming our wandering mind, quieting our noisy mind. We need to be aware of the light or heavy clouds passing through the sky of our mind. We let these clouds come and go without reacting to them or letting ourselves be hijacked by them. I practice mindfulness meditation. "Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We gain immediate access to our own powerful resources for insight, transformation, and healing." Jon Kabat-Zinn. Cultivating such mindfulness skills requires ongoing consistent practice called sadhana. It is an introspective inner work, relating to the world from inside out. May we cultivate mindfulness to make wise wholesome choices for doing greater good for us and for others. When my sense of my self is engulfed by my arrogance and my sense of superiority, I get disconnected with my being, with other beings and life at large. The essence of my being is the same as the essence of all beings. The drop is the ocean. I am an integral part of the whole. Such realization makes me aware of my illusion of separateness, dispels the darkness of my ignorance, heals my self- inflicted wounds.Such an awakening makes me whole. This is real humility. It expands my awareness. It emboldens me and makes me virtuous.
Humility is not humiliating oneself or putting oneself down. It is not self degradation or self condemnation. It is an acknowledgment of our cosmic insignificance, ridding ourselves of our false sense of self-glorification and arrogance. This is the first movement. In the second movement we embrace our cosmic insignificance. We become frightfully honest and authentic with ourselves. It is like a rebirth of oneself. This leads us to the third movement, a movement of self expansion, self enrichment and self fulfillment. Such expanding self awareness brings blessing to oneself and to others. I am going through this journey. It is a joyous and fulfilling journey and I am grateful to my spiritual teachers for awakening me and guiding me. Knowledge and wisdom are different. Knowledge is acquired, knowledge is taught. With knowledge, we become knowledgeable. Such acquired knowledge of what is, what is real, is dualistic.It is one-sided. It is not holistic. Realization emerging from one's experience is holistic. Reality is one. It is not two It is not divided into two-one against the other.
Wisdom dawns upon us when the mind is still and quiet. As Thomas Merton says, " Silence is the mother of Truth....My silence is my salvation." " Be still and know that I am God." -Psalm. " Stillness is also inner peace, and that stillness and peace are the essence of your Being."- Eckhart Tolle. Such stillness makes me aware of my conditioned consciousness and mental commentary which has a dualistic sense of reality. Stillness makes me grounded in presence and frees me from the clouds generated by the conditioned consciousness. Such a shift in consciousness helps me in making wise choices. The mind that is free from conditioning is a creative mind and a wise mind.We need to be liberated form the conditioned mind which creates and perpetuates me against you mindset, a narrow perspective of reality and existence. Living mindfully everyday in all walks of my life has has opened the door of wisdom in my life. It has expanded my mind and enriched my heart.The journey of life has become a pilgrimage and I deeply feel grateful for receiving such a grace. We go where our mind goes. Our mind takes a ride in the past or a flight in the future, hardly staying in the present. Wandering mind becomes our default mode of functioning. Such a wandering mind is compared to monkey mind taking control of ourselves. Such a wandering mind deprives us from being free and deeply connected with us, others in our life and the beauty of nature. Our mind can be our enemy and it also can be our friend.We need to learn how to make our mind our friend.
Mindfulness is one of the ways for making our mind friendly. I have been regularly practicing mindfulness. It has been very helpful to me for making me peaceful, joyful, compassionate and creative. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental and compassionate existential awareness. of what is happening in me and around me. It has helped me to remain present to what is rather than what was or what will be. It keeps me stay in the being zone rather than the default mode of going away from the present moment. I value the power of pausing when my mind takes a hike and goes to the past or the future, taking away from the here and now consciousness..Noticing where my mind goes without reactive judgmental thoughts, I pause, breathe and connect my mind with the ever present breath. In the mindfulness landscape, sitting doing nothing, spring comes and grass grows by itself. Life bestows blessings and I receive them gratefully. May we learn how to befriend our mind, be here and now, and receive blessings coming from everywhere! We live in two universes: the universe within and the universe without. Since the dawn of life, we as human beings have been wondering about these two universes. We ask the core question; Who I am I? We look within and understand different layers of I- physical, mental, emotional and relational. When we do not identify ourselves with the changing scenario of the I, the knowing of the I manifests. And this I is beyond time and space. It is universal and eternal. Until we realize that I, our wondering will continue,
The cosmos, the Universe is like the inner soul-the Cosmic I, the Universal I.. We have been expanding our knowledge and understanding of the Cosmos, the Universe. We as the inhabitants of this Universe are wondering about it and making space explorations. When we become aware of the vastness of this expanding Universe and compare it with the planet earth, we as human beings feel very humble. And when we look at ourselves with this cosmic lens, we realize how little is our egoic self.. Such inner inquiries awaken me and I feel released and liberated from the little cage I live in. It seems to me that the essence of the inner world and the outer world is the same, beyond the conceptual lenses we may use to understand these two worlds. It feels like a mystery, a wonderment. I sense it when my mind ceases to wander. It gets still and remain open and clear like the blue sky. May we be free from the bondage we create by ourselves and relate to the expanding inner and outer world! We all are journeying. Life is a journey. The upward path of our life journey is not always easy. We encounter hazards that may thwart our upward journey. We may fall down and fail. We may get overwhelmed. We may go through fear, worry and anxiety. We may feel like we are losing the ground. The temptations may allure us. And we may succumb to them. But we build up our inner strength, get up and keep moving on the upward path.
I have been a traveler on this path for a long time. And I have encountered small and big difficulties. I have been practicing Mindfulness Meditation which has kept me grounded, steadfast and awakened. I have fallen down and I have gotten up. Mindfulness practices have created inner strength in me to continue my upward journey. I see my original face when I remove the veil of my self-focused thoughts and cravings. I hear my original voice when I become still and hear the sound of silence. I feel full and complete. Nothing is missing. I feel like a child nurtured by the Mother Earth.Life is a mystery and a miracle. My heart gets filled with joy, humbleness, and gratitude. May we remain awakened to see the Divine Light that shines everywhere and all the time! |
Site powered by Weebly. Managed by iPage