hermit's chronicles

Sogyal Rinpoche recounts this episode in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying : Apa Pant told me this story. One day our master Jamyang Khyentse was watching a ‘Lama Dance’ in front of the Palace Temple in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, and he was chuckling at the antics of the atsara, the clown who provides light relief between dances. Apa Pant kept pestering him, asking him again and again how to meditate, so this time when my master replied, it was in such a way as to let him know that he was telling him once and for all: “Look, it’s like this: When the past thought has ceased, and the future thought has not yet risen, isn't there a gap?” “Yes,” said Apa Pant. “Well, prolong it: That is meditation.”

This was a question haunting a small boy. His parents were at wit's end, as they could not explain it in a simple language the boy could comprehend. Once the family went for a darshan to Shri Ramana Maharshi. The boy put forward his question to Ramana Maharshi. Shri Ramana laughed to himself. Then with smiling face, he asked his devotee to serve the boy a dosa from the kitchen. So, on a plain leaf, a dosa was served. Shri Ramana looked at the boy and said, "Now I will say 'Hmm.' Then only you should start eating. Then again I will say 'Hmm.' After that no piece of dosa should be left on your plate." The boy agreed. He was so excited. Others were watching expectantly. Now the boy was eagerly waiting for the signal by looking at Shri Ramana's face. When he gave the signal "Hmm" the boy started eating. Now his attention was on Shri Ramana. He wanted to finish the dosa before the second signal. The boy was eating the dosa in a hurry, tearing big ...

 Somehow, right from day one, I had very few questions for my Guruji, Ramesh Balsekar. This is not to imply that I was wise or knew everything; it simply means that I was in love and for some reason questions did not arise. However I did have some interactions with him that left a deep imprint on my memory. The first one happened the day I met him. I had been blown over by his book 'Consciousness Speaks'. And then by an interesting chain of circumstances I was led to meet him at his Gamadia Road home in Mumbai. (I have narrated the entire sequence of events in How I Met Ramesh published by Zen Publications. This is a compilation of accounts by a large number of spiritual seekers who mysteriously landed up at Rameshji's doors). Those days the satsangs were yet to begin and you met him one-on-one. So we three – my spiritual mentor Guru Dayalji, his dear friend solicitor Mahendra Patel, and yours truly – trooped into the small room and sat at his feet. Once we had settled...

  Wherever she looks She finds reason to smile In farce, beauty, peace, celebration Sheer joy bursts forth from trivia She’s inexplicably happy. The black cat meditates Unblinking, with remarkable poise The Gulmohar blooms Setting the drab street on fire She’s inexplicably happy. The frowning child in the pram The chatty mother Prattling on in English Early introduction to education She’s inexplicably happy. Giant tetrapods lie Spread-eagled on the shrinking shore Crabs crawling in crevices Empty beer bottles the new flotsam She’s inexplicably happy. A crowded lift Three giggling teens Keds, kneelength tees, mobiles Torn jeans, breathless gossip She’s inexplicably happy. The doubting mind asks Is this temp? Will this last? Her eyes sparkling She smiles and shrugs, Who cares?! This moment, here and now I’m inexplicably happy.

At a Hindustani musical concert, the tanpura comes in first and exits last. The musician/vocalist begins after the tanpura and performs using the steady drone of the tanpura as the reference point. After a duration s/he exits but the tanpura carries on. The tanpura denotes the ananta , the one without a beginning and end. The drone of the tanpura is called a shruti , a steady repetitive note. The musician stays constantly aware of the shruti running in the background to structure his or her performance. In our lives too there is a constant shruti running in the background: “I want, I want…” I want to acquire something that will make me complete or I want to get rid of something and become complete. The desire to acquire something is called pravritti ; the desire to shed off something is called nivritti . You say to yourself, “I have a lovely family, a wonderful home, a steady career. If only I can get a large SUV my life will be complete.” Well, that is pravritti operating. Now you ...

Santosham was a word used often by Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi. In fact just before he dropped his body Bhagavan looked to his assistant and uttered just one word, “Santosham” . Santosham translates to Happiness. The meaning could be extended to include Contentment or to Feeling Complete. Many years ago, as a child, I heard Swami Chinmayananda say something that stuck in my head. It was at his very first public talk in Mumbai, at the Indian Gymkhana in Matunga. He said, “Unhappiness is Desires divided by Desires Fulfilled.” Basically he meant that, unless you understood the game, the gap would never be filled. By implication it meant that the gap would ensure there was no santosham . It automatically follows that with true santosham there are no expectations about the future, no clinging desires in the present and no complaints about the past. In other words, total acceptance of What Is. And that according to most Masters is the surest sign of total understanding. A sign of ‘purnata’ (...

Mom decided we ought to pay a visit to the temple town Nathdwara during our Christmas holidays. Dad made a fuss about the expense but Mom was firm: we hadn’t gone to pay our respects to the family deity, Shreenathji, for quite a while and we couldn’t put this off forever. Finally dad gave in and sent somebody from the factory to queue up at the railway station to buy the tickets for the family – which meant my parents and we three boys, the youngest of them being me and I was nine at that time.

 Cut to Nathdwara.

 The Nathdwara temple has eight darshans – which means, the temple gates are opened eight times a day to allow devotees to have a glimpse of the deity. The deity is adorned differently for each darshan hence each darshan is unique. 

 Now, if you are devout, and in love with the deity, even with its form, you would like to have as many darshans as you can. So I announced to my mother, “Tomorrow I will have all eight darshans of Shreenathji.”

 “Hush!” said my mother...

When you listen to a Bollywood song, you generally relate to its melody or beat and rarely to the deep meaning lurking in their lyrics. An occasional Hindi film song can make a deep impact. I am sure each of you has his own favourite philosophical song or a verse that has touched your heart. Here are some of my favourite lyrics from Hindi film songs, with my translations. For instance, here is lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi’s take on the Sufi/Taoist attitude to life in ‘Main Zindagi Ka Saath Nibhata Chala Gaya’ (from the film Hum Dono ). Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya Har fikr ko dhuen mein udata chala gaya Barbadiyon ka shok manana fizul tha Barbadiyon ka jashn manata chala gaya Har fikar ko dhuen mein uda…  Jo mil gaya usi ko muqaddar samajh liya Jo kho gaya maein usko bhulata chala gaya Har fikar ko dhuen mein uda…  Gham aur khushi mein farq na mehsoos ho jahan Main dil ko us muqaam pe laata chala gaya Har fikar ko dhuen mein uda… I kept going with the flow Puffing away...

In W. Somerset Maugham's iconic bestseller The Razor's Edge , the enigmatic protagonist, Larry Darrell, makes this observation: "I'd known bad men in Paris, and when I got back to Chicago I knew more, but for the most part their badness was due to heredity, which they couldn't help, or to their environment, which they didn't choose. I'm not sure that society wasn't more responsible for their crimes than they were. If I'd been God I couldn't have brought myself to condemn one of them, not even the worst, to eternal damnation... After all He created men: if He so created them that it was possible for them to sin, it was because He willed it. If I trained a dog to fly at the throat of any stranger who came into my backyard, it wouldn't be fair to beat him when he did so." In Srimad Bhagavatam , we come across the story of Lord Krishna and Kaliya Naag: Shri Krishna overpowers Kaliya, the dreaded multi-hooded venomous snake in the Yamuna Riv...

Maya is Divine Hypnosis. Facebook is virtual hypnosis. Maya manifests lila , a play, an illusion of the phenomenal world. The play includes love and hate, mountains and streams, modernism and tradition, conflicts and attachment, success and failure, smiles and tears, pleasure and pain. Check out life on Facebook: the happy people and those that have hit a patch, the pouting selfies, the pets and the grandkids, the arrivals and the passings, the virtual friendships, the passionate activism, the gorgeous foods, the breathtaking locations, the envy-evoking trips to fancy lands, the political slugfests, all the trolling and the trolling of the trollers, the hate and the caring, the Likes and Loves, the heartening news and the scams, the genuine sharing and the vain, and of course the ‘stories’ and the ‘reels’… You see? A whole new manifestation, entirely virtual. Facebook’s game is ‘engagement’: the duration of time it can entice you to stay engaged in its virtual allurements. Same as Maya...

Even at the elementary level, Science was teaching us more about Spirituality then we realized at the time we were being taught… but I guess we weren’t interested in either at that point.   Take Geometry, for instance. Remember the theorem we were taught at school? ‘The smallest arc of a circle is a straight line’. That, if you ask me, is the finest pointer to Zen. In the circle of Life this moment is a straight line. If you can live this moment (the What Is) with acceptance, then the next moment and the next…you would find that you have lived the cycle of life effortlessly. Take Chemistry. We were taught about static equilibrium and dynamic equilibrium. Let’s make this simple. Let’s take a chemical reaction where Molecule A is combining with Molecule B to form Molecule C. At some point all Molecule A’s would have combined with Molecule B’s to form Molecule C’s and the reaction would reach a dead end. That is, the reaction would have reached a stable equilibrium.   Now let’s t...

 The Setting: TRA Narayana of Chennai, Branch Manager of a large British firm, visits Sri Ramanasramam in Tiruvannamalai on a hot April day, along with his colleague Parathasarathy. It is about five in the evening and Bhagavan is not on his couch so the two men decide to explore the ashram. As they are returning to the thatched verandah from the other side they stumble upon this scene. They stand affixed, watching the scene unfold without making a sound. The Scene: They hear a childish voice say, “ Chee, asatthe (Fie, you creature).” They see no children around. Therefore they look around to find the source of the voice. They observe some movement among the leaves of the vegetable plant in the kitchen garden near the thatched verandah. At a closer look, they see a small goat, a little monkey and a squirrel and Bhagavan!  Bhagavan is sitting with his legs semi-folded. The goat is nestled between his knees, the monkey has its head on his right knee and the squirrel is perched o...

"I realized that those who totally live on the grace of the Almighty receive the necessary food to eat and shelter to live. Worrying for food and shelter is not complete faith. I will believe till the last breath of my life that God alone is my property and depending on any other thing except God's will bring disaster in my life. I find my Lord always walking before me, providing all the things that I need." – Swami Rama in Living With The Himalayan Masters

When Vibhishana had ethical issues his all-powerful brother Ravana and crossed over to Ram's camp, he was scared stiff about the consequences. But Lord Ram welcomed him saying, "Abhayam!" Fear Not! When Ashwathama let loose a mantra weapon to kill all the Pandava progenies, Abhimanyu’s pregnant wife Uttara came rushing for help to Lord Krishna, praying that he somehow save her unborn child. Moved by her plea, Krishna raised his right palm and blessed her saying, “Abhayam!” Fear Not! When Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi was in the last lap of the time in his mortal frame, a devotee humbly approached him with a request. He asked Bhagavan to liberate him from fear. Bhagavan smiled weakly and said, "Granted." Again, Abhayam! Fear Not! Swami Samarth's most quoted proclamation is, " Bhiu nako mi tujhya pathishi ahe! " Fear not! I have your back! Once again, "Abhayam!" Look at the image of any avatar, sage or prophet, be it Guru Nanak, Buddha, Shirdi S...

 Fr. Anthony (Tony) De Mello, a spiritually evolved priest from Bandra in Mumbai, was one of the remarkable spiritual teachers I wish I had met in person. Tony happily adapted concepts and devices from all spiritual traditions, including Vipassana, to create potent spiritual workshops which helped thousands of people. His books, mostly comprising brief teaching parables, were translated into a dozen foreign languages, becoming bestsellers around the world. They had enticing titles like Song Of the Bird, One Minute Nonsense, One Minute Wisdom and Prayer Of the Frog. The Church apparently was unhappy with the spiritual ‘pollution’ of foreign traditions and the Vatican sent an advisory to the Bishops to discourage Fr. De Mello’s books and techniques. However the Bishops, who had witnessed the amount of good both were doing to their flock, broadly ignored the advisory, which I understand was finally withdrawn. Fr. Tony De Mello died at a relatively young age in the US, some say under ...