The horror is global and it travels within the psychic field of life. Deep in the intuitive reaches of my soul, I am immersed in the sensation that the system of life itself has gone on alert - somehow humanity is coming close to losing its fundamental reverence for human life. That reverence is our essential touch stone with our humanity.
A collective madness is manifesting in choices that are repeat performances of previous slaughters are rationalized to be sound judgments - once again. If ever a person wanted to understand the handiwork of darkness, one need only look at how acts of hatred are rationalized. There is no reason for someone who identifies him or herself as a "conscious" much less "civilized" human being to ever participate in an act of hatred - ever.
That first time you declare yourself to be "conscious", you are saying that you have successfully rid yourself of those demons that give you permission to violate your own spiritual beliefs. You are saying that you have shed the option of violence because you see the folly in it, the uselessness of it - that indeed such acts only lead to more. You are saying that you have discovered more "conscious" resources within you with which you will now engage with life You are saying that you are strong enough, conscious enough to recognize when a demon - pressing upon the Victim or Martyr archetype in you - is talking you into betraying your higher instincts. You are telling yourself that your soul has the stamina to withstand the tsunamis of life without turning dark and hostile.
Human actions are increasingly becoming the antithesis of instinctual choices that lean in favor of humanity. We are growing increasingly frightened instead of increasingly open, loving, and global. We are moving in the opposite direction of where an "advanced" society should be headed. We are imploding. We can feel the tension building in the collective atmosphere - even if we cannot name that tension. An ordinary woman, interviewed for a comment on the Malaysian crash said, "What's happening in our world?"
All life breathes together. All events impact all life one way or another. Some people are physically wounded and others will absorb the wounds on the psychic level. Even those who ignore the events will experience the consequences as they continue to unfold. If ever we needed to pray for the world and for humanity, it is now. We must be about the business of utilizing what it means to be "spiritually conscious". You become conscious in order to put your soul to work. If it feels right to you, consider this prayer of your own version of it, "I open myself as a channel of grace for healing and restoring the balance of life. I ask that all life be blessed." And stay ever mindful of how easily anger and hatred bite at your heels...."Hover over me God..."
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Global, Universal Suffering with Carolyn Myss
Sunday, July 13, 2014
After Death Musings - I
BY ANNIE KAGAN:
The List
surrender-goddess
1. The First Thing that Happens is Bliss. As soon as you die, you’re sucked out of your body into a Healing Chamber. The lights in that Chamber erase all the harm you suffered during your entire lifetime, physical, mental and emotional. So, in less than a nanosecond, all your pain is gone.
2. You Still Feel Like Yourself. Even though you don’t have your body anymore, you still feel like an individual. Actually, you feel more like yourself than you did when you were alive. There’s so much influence from others while you’re on earth that in a way you don’t get to be you.
3. Light Has a Personality. In the afterlife the light rays have qualities like wisdom, kindness, compassion and intelligence. This light makes visible what is invisible on earth, the Divine nature of all things.
4. Sin and Punishment is a Human Concept. There’s a lot of mumbo jumbo on earth about what might be waiting for you after you die. Making mistakes while you’re alive is part of the earth deal. If we had to be perfect to get to so-called Heaven, no- one would make it there.
5. Your Life On Earth Isn’t a Punishment Either. Sure, there’s pain in life, but not because you’ve done anything to deserve it. Pain is part of the human experience, as natural as breath or eyesight or blood moving through your veins.
6. After You Die, Instead of Judgment Day There’s No-Judgment Day. When you review your life, you see the paths you took and the ones you didn’t. You see where your genius was and where you might have done better, but you don’t feel judgmental about it. And even though it might not make sense to you now, after you die you understand that you had a great life, even the hard parts.
7. You’re Happy You Look Like Yourself. You’re not concerned with the way you look. There are no pretensions or efforts to appear any which way. You just radiate, which is effortless.
8. Love Is Not the Same As Earth Love. You’re not loved because of what you do, how you look, how famous you are, or how much money you make. It’s not like yesterday I loved you, but today I don’t anymore. Love is truly unconditional. Most controversial of all is that in the afterlife there’s perfect compassion and no matter how you lived you are loved.
Kundalini The Joy Of Celibacy And Yoking The Life Force To Enlightenment
By Yogi Tom/Silver Dawn Media © 1997
I found that once I had sat out the immediate crisis of desire that inevitably arises with the practice of celibacy if one has previously enjoyed an active sex life, that I had to master the very esoteric art of “inner sex”.
Even among knowledgeable Western Tantric and kundalini yogis celibacy can sometimes be under-rated or undersold, when traditionally it has always been a useful, even essential, means of spiritual development that can have quite dramatic effects – usually positive, but potentially negative and dangerous, if one doesn’t understand the esoteric nature of sexo-yogic techniques and the Pandora’s Box of the mind they can open up.
Furthermore, given its association with repression and “unnaturalness” in Western popular culture, celibacy in general has a bad image.
When kundalini awakens one often enjoys very intense, fulfilling and powerful sexual union in the conventional manner, and, even if one knew how to practice celibacy in a positive and spiritually creative manner, it might seem too ambitious a goal given the – often urgent – need to find an outlet for this extraordinary energy that often has a very powerful will of its own.
Thus it is, that, if one is thinking about possibly practicing celibacy as a positive spiritual move to harness the energy of an awakened kundalini, it is best to do so holistically, slowly and from a firm foundation of deep spiritual commitment and study of the relevant scriptures.
The sexual energy and fluids are the purest energy source on the planet and transform the mind, body and spirit in very subtle and profound ways.
They are the lifeblood of real Tantric meditation and transmutation of mundane consciousness into pure consciousness. Have no illusions about what Tantra really involves – on a truly cosmic level – once the consciousness begins to be nourished, invigorated and purified by one’s very life force.
Once one has started to go upwards as well as outwards in one’s focus of energy then there can be no going back as a transformed and purified nervous system, for instance, cannot be de-sensitized, and spiritual revelations flowing from the opening of the head and throat chakras cannot be forgotten or ignored.
Given these factors one needs a certain healthy caution as well as, in some ways, recognizing what an opportunity for enlightenment kundalini awakening offers and just how rapidly and effectively celibacy can transform a kundalini experience into a truly extraordinary expansion and deepening of understanding and spiritual consciousness…there is, as ever, a dramatic tension within, between the urge for conventional outer union and the more intuitive sense that perhaps a deeper, more permanent and more profound inner divine union is possible through the esoteric art of sublimating the sexuality.
To sublimate one’s sexuality one needs to know all the esoteric theory of the chakras and nadis, prana and chi/ki, the meridians and the significance of the spinal column as a channel for the sublimated sexual energy and fluids.
One needs to have mastered the fundamentals of hatha yoga, in particular the three major body locks – mulabandha, uddiyana and jalandhara – that are like natural fuses on an electric circuit board carrying high voltage current.
To gain this knowledge one must create a deep and safe foundation by drawing on the basic ideas of the Hindu, Taoist and Tibetan traditions at the very least.
To get an idea of what’s involved one could start with three classics: Swami Radha’s Kundalini Yoga for the West, Richard Wilhelm’s translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower and Lama Govinda‘s Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism.
The spine feeds sublimated sexual and spiritual energy upwards into the brain and so one must be prepared to experience “spiritual and psychic brain surgery” in the long run if one is going to become celibate after the kundalini has awakened.
If one is interested in further researching into the psychic and spiritual effects of celibacy, one could read Gopi Krishna’s personal account which describes how, in the male, the sublimated semen feeds the nervous system and brain and subtle body round the clock once this esoteric evolutionary mechanism has been activated.
Krishna also notes how his semen was refined in nature and produced in greater quantities than usual to meet the needs of the evolving nervous system and subtle body.
Given this intense and extraordinary effect of celibacy one has to prepare carefully – no high pressure job – and preferably a highly flexible one in case things move faster than expected, a pure diet, a happy partner who won’t try to tempt you away from your monastic vows, friendships based on an understanding of the subtle and profound nature of what you are doing, a peaceful environment in which to nurture the subtle experience unfolding within as the chakras are purified and flower so revealing your true spiritual nature, no dire financial pressure and, ideally, some kind of guru or spiritual tradition that understands the principles involved in this hidden path that is, in effect, the fast track to enlightenment.
I actually used both the Hindu Tantra and the Tibetan Tantra and found different scriptures and different gurus met different needs as things progressed.
I was not shopping around for influences, I simply used what was appropriate at the time and let it go when that influence seemed to have run its course.
One has to travel light with kundalini and there is no way one can ever know what approaches will be appropriate once one has passed the point of no return with the full flowering of the throat chakra. Theories and fixed concepts become redundant as one travels from world to world of the mind and universe.
However, it can be a very lonely universe without a guru one trusts totally….and there may come a time when even he or she cannot help you.
So have no illusions about what the Tantra involves – it’s like a crucible of fire at times, a cruel cosmic vice sometimes, a still golden pool at other times…..you learn to co-operate with the forces involved as there is literally no alternative. Once started it can seem as if there is a conspiracy to make you become enlightened or burn in hell for the rest of time !
As one goes beyond the heart chakra into the world of the throat chakra, this opens up the world of pure sound in the form of mantra which, in some ways, is an introduction to pure symbolic forms such as yantras, yidams and mandalas.
While one cannot predict which forms will be useful for yourself, it is worth reading up on the significance of these in some depth in advance as you won’t have much time once they begin to get a grip on the development of your consciousness as it is purified by sexo-yogic techniques and the spontaneous natural processes that come with creative celibacy.
I found that once I had sat out the immediate crisis of desire that inevitably arises with the practice of celibacy if one has previously enjoyed an active sex life, that I had to master the very esoteric art of “inner sex”.
Anyone who’s seen Tibetan or Hindu Tantric art will probably already understand that erotic coupling mirrors our potential for integrating, synthesizing and sublimating our natural dualistic nature through esoteric meditation.
In many ways this is actually an extraordinarily natural and straightforward process if only our conditioning would not get in the way and so repress, distort or cling onto our sexual nature.
Dreams can be very useful guides to where the mind has got to as highly erotic, beautiful or dualistic themes can point ot the nature of the energies emerging from the subconscious as the mind becomes purer and feeds on the new fuel or nectar you have offered it in the form one’s own sexual fluids and energy.
One has to listen very carefully to these messages and, quite literally, start to live the dream so as to integrate the waking consciousness with these emerging primal forces.
As these very pure energies emerge into the conscious realms, one will discover why it was so important to have prepared oneself through spiritual practice, study and integrating one’s lifestyle and relationships in true yogic fashion – for, as the cleansing of one’s consciousness begins in earnest, the past and the old self will begin to look very different to how one imagined them to be at the time.
Without a firm foundation and faith in the Tantra in general and the particular method or guru one is following then things can get out of control very quickly as these are forces that rarely manifest in everyday life.
Minutes and seconds can bring insights and revelations and bliss that go beyond anything anyone could dream of, even in the course of a lifetime, on a more mundane, but less hazardous, spiritual path.
In the Buddhist tradition the sutras of the Theravada and Mahayana were specifically designed – amongst other things – to prepare one for the rigors and lightning fast path of the Tantra.
Some teachers say 10 years of sutra practice is needed before seeking Tantric initiation, but if one already has a spontaneous kundalini awakening and one is interested in exploring celibacy, then one will have to backtrack somewhat and lay the foundation before taking the direct route to the crown chakra and beyond.
Given one is laying the foundation with the added power of kundalini, the linear time spent doing this is not important, what counts is the depth of one’s commitment and understanding of what it is to lay spiritual roots to one’s every thought, word and deed until one’s whole being simply becomes a spiritual tool that is obeying the intelligence of kundalini rather than pursuing the plans of the ego.
Thus, perhaps the most powerful technique for transforming a celibate mind is the savasana or corpse pose of hatha yoga for, done correctly, this allows the mind to become integrated in a way no conscious technique could ever hope to attain.
Perform savasana before sleeping each night and the effect can be indescribable in giving one an extraordinary sense of wholeness and healing on every level of being.
And one may well find that psychic and sexual phenomena such as the dakini – forms of mystical goddesses embodying different aspects of one’s true mind – emerge from the depths of one’s mind quite readily and lead one into the extraordinary world of inner orgasm that can, at best, permeate the whole body and mind for hours on end, creating a new holistic and indestructible consciousness capable of breaking free from and dissolving all the old attachments.
If one doesn’t like wild orgasmic psychedelic trips with crazy women – such as the dakini of the Tantric scriptures – then don’t even think about sublimating your sexuality if one is undergoing a kundalini experience. It is truly a primal experience encountering the female aspects of the psyche.
If one is serious about going all the way with kundalini, celibacy and meditation, then by this stage one obviously needs to be able to focus within all the time and so some logistical planning is needed that is flexible enough to adapt to the whims of the shakti and the dakini.
Even living in a spiritual or monastic community may not be the best bet if this involves following strict rules as these kind of primal forces are no respecters of etiquette or mundane notions of spiritual discipline and may require both long periods of intense introspection as well as periods of rest, exertion and integration of subtle forces with the physical body….explaining this kind of erratic behavior to a community working to a routine could be very difficult if they don’t know the mysteries of the Tantra.
In some ways, celibacy is the foundation stone of real Tantra, so think about it, read about it, spiritually refine your existing sexual relationship if you have one, but if you have an awakened kundalini remember the Zen saying before actually trying celibacy in earnest: “Better not to start. Once started better to finish.”
Think of it as like Himalayan mountaineering – the preparation has to be perfect, but even then one can find oneself on the receiving end of Nature in its cruelest forms in ways that no mortal could have predicted. Ignorance – even of things one would not normally be expected to know – is no defense on the upper reaches of the Tantric path. Kundalini can forgive, but even she has her limits if you push things too far.
So have a guru to bail you out should things get out of control (and to ensure this need does not arise in the first place) and create as many safety nets as possible through sincere and natural spiritual practice long before embarking on celibate Tantric meditation.
For sublimating one’s sexuality after a kundalini awakening is like putting the purest fuel in a rocket – it’ll give it the means to get airborne so long as mission control and the flight planners understand the principles of gravity and aerodynamics….and the beauty and terror of the Tantra is that the spiritual equivalent of this kind of knowledge and understanding comes from the heart, the intuition, dreams, scriptures, Mother Earth, Nature, the stars and the guru. It is a vast, limitless and ancient primordial wisdom that has no time for the arrogance of the Western ego.
The one thing you can probably leave out of the Tantric equation is one’s own conditioned intellect and the mundane self that goes with it. Lose that in deference to the rest of the universe and one may begin to learn something and become something of spiritual value. – SILVER DAWN MEDIA
COPYRIGHT TOM ASTON/YOGI TOM/SILVER DAWN MEDIA 1997 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FOR THE USE OF THE WEBSITE KUNDALINI RESOURCE CENTER AND OTHERS INTERESTED IN KUNDALINI. MAY BE REPRODUCED FOR NON-PROFIT SPIRITUAL ACTIVITIES ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: The ideas and opinions expressed here are those of the author and/or authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the site host, or the community at large. Also, any exercises presented here, either physical or mental, are to be practiced at your own risk. Consult your physician, therapist, guide, or guru before you begin, or should you experience any discomfort or trauma from any of the processes involved in the awakening of kundalini energy. Many people consider this energy force too powerful to work with on your own without the active assistance of a guide. Use your own best judgment. By all means, be extremely careful, and progress slowly and cautiously on your path to Kundalini Awakening. It is in your best interest to do so.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Vivekananda on Maya and Illusion
Swami Vivekananda
MAYA AND ILLUSION (Delivered in London )
Almost all of you have heard of the word Maya. Generally it is used, though incorrectly, to denote illusion, or delusion, or some such thing. But the theory of Maya forms one of the pillars upon which the Vedanta rests; it is, therefore, necessary that it should be properly understood. I ask a little patience of you, for there is a great danger of its being misunderstood. The oldest idea of Maya that we find in the Vedic literature is the sense of delusion; but then the real theory had not been reached. We find such passages as, "Indra through his Maya assumed various forms." Here it is true the word Maya means something like magic, and we find various other passages, always taking the same meaning. The word Maya then dropped out of sight altogether. But in the meantime the idea was developing. Later, the question was raised: "Why can't we know this secret of the universe?" And the answer given was very significant: "Because we talk in vain, and because we are satisfied with the things of the senses, and because we are running after desires; therefore, we, as it were, cover the Reality with a mist." Here the word Maya is not used at all, but we get the idea that the cause of our ignorance is a kind of mist that has come between us and the Truth. Much later on, in one of the latest Upanishads, we find the word Maya reappearing, but this time, a transformation has taken place in it, and a mass of new meaning has attached itself to the word. Theories had been propounded and repeated, others had been taken up, until at last the idea of Maya became fixed. We read in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, "Know nature to be Maya and the Ruler of this Maya is the Lord Himself." Coming to our philosophers, we find that this word Maya has been manipulated in various fashions, until we come to the great Shankaracharya. The theory of Maya was manipulated a little by the Buddhists too, but in the hands of the Buddhists it became very much like what is called Idealism, and that is the meaning that is now generally given to the word Maya. When the Hindu says the world is Maya, at once people get the idea that the world is an illusion. This interpretation has some basis, as coming through the Buddhistic philosophers, because there was one section of philosophers who did not believe in the external world at all. But the Maya of the Vedanta, in its last developed form, is neither Idealism nor Realism, nor is it a theory. It is a simple statement of facts--what we are and what we see around us.
As I have told you before, the minds of the people from whom the Vedas came were intent upon following principles, discovering principles. They had no time to work upon details or to wait for them; they wanted to go deep into the heart of things. Something beyond was calling them, as it were, and they could not wait. Scattered through the Upanishads, we find that the details of subjects which we now call modern sciences are often very erroneous, but, at the same time, their principles are correct. For instance, the idea of ether, which is one of the latest theories of modern science, is to be found in our ancient literature in forms much more developed than is the modern scientific theory of ether today, but it was in principle. When they tried to demonstrate the workings of that principle, they made many mistakes. The theory of the all-pervading life principle, of which all life in this universe is but a differing manifestation was understood in Vedic times; it is found in the Brahmanas. There is a long hymn in the Samhitas in praise of Prana of which all life is but a manifestation.
By the by, it may interest some of you to know that there are theories in the Vedic philosophy about the origin of life on this earth very similar to those which have been advanced by some modern European scientists. You, of course, all know that there is a theory that life came from other planets. It is a settled doctrine with some Vedic philosophers that life comes in this way from the moon.
Coming to the principles, we find these Vedic thinkers very courageous and wonderfully bold in propounding large and generalised theories. Their solution of the mystery of the universe, from the external world, was as satisfactory as it could be. The detailed workings of modern science do not bring the question one step nearer to solution, because the principles have failed. If the theory of ether failed in ancient times to give a solution of the mystery of the universe, working out the details of that ether theory would not bring us much nearer to the truth. If the theory of all-pervading life failed as a theory of this universe, it would not mean anything more if worked out in detail, for the details do not change the principle of the universe. What I mean is that in their inquiry into the principle, the Hindu thinkers were as bold, and in some cases, much bolder than the moderns. They made some of the grandest generalisations that have yet been reached, and some still remain as theories, which modern science has yet to get even as theories. For instance, they not only arrived at the ether theory, but went beyond and classified mind also as a still more rarefied ether. Beyond that again, they found a still more rarefied ether. Yet that was no solution, it did not solve the problem. No amount of knowledge of the external world could solve the problem. "But", says the scientists, "we are just beginning to know a little: wait a few thousand years and we shall get the solution." "No," says the Vedantist, for he has proved beyond all doubt that the mind is limited, that it cannot go beyond certain limits--beyond time, space, and causation. As no man can jump out of his own self, so no man can go beyond the limits that have been put upon him by the laws of time and space. Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time, and space would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three. What does the statement of the existence of the world mean, then? "This world has no existence." What is meant by that? It means that it has no absolute existence. It exists only in relation to my mind, to your mind, and to the mind of everyone else. We see this world with the five senses but if we had another sense, we would see in it something more. If we had yet another sense, it would appear as something still different. It has, therefore, no real existence; it has no unchangeable, immovable, infinite existence. Nor can it be called non-existence, seeing that it exists, and we have to work in and through it. It is a mixture of existence and non-existence.
Coming from abstractions to the common, everyday details of our lives, we find that our life is a contradiction, a mixture of existence and non-existence. There is this contradiction in knowledge. It seems that man can know everything, if he only wants to know; but before he has gone a few steps, he finds an adamantine wall which he cannot pass. All his work is in a circle, and he cannot go beyond that circle. The problems which are nearest and dearest to him are impelling him on and calling, day and night, for a solution, but he cannot solve them, because he cannot go beyond his intellect. And yet that desire is implanted strongly in him. Still we know that the only good is to be obtained by controlling and checking it. With every breath, every impulse of our heart asks us to be selfish. At the same time, there is some power beyond us which says that it is unselfishness alone which is good. Every child is a born optimist; he dreams golden dreams. In youth he becomes still more optimistic. It is hard for a young man to believe that there is such a thing as death, such a thing as defeat or degradation. Old age comes, and life is a mass of ruins. Dreams have vanished into the air, and the man becomes a pessimist. Thus we go from one extreme to another, buffeted by nature, without knowing where we are going. It reminds me of a celebrated song in the Lalita Vistara, the biography of Buddha. Buddha was born, says the book, as the saviour of mankind, but he forgot himself in the luxuries of his palace. Some angels came and sang a song to rouse him. And the burden of the whole song is that we are floating down the river of life which is continually changing with no stop and no rest. So are our lives, going on and on without knowing any rest. What are we to do? The man who has enough to eat and drink is an optimist, and he avoids all mention of misery, for it frightens him. Tell not to him of the sorrows and the sufferings of the world; go to him and tell that it is all good. "Yes, I am safe," says he. "Look at me! I have a nice house to live in. I do not fear cold and hunger; therefore do not bring these horrible pictures before me." But, on the other hand, there are others dying of cold and hunger. If you go and teach them that it is all good, they will not hear you. How can they wish others to be happy when they are miserable? Thus we are oscillating between optimism and pessimism.
Then, there is the tremendous fact of death. The whole world is going towards death; everything dies. All our progress, our vanities, our reforms, our luxuries, our wealth, our knowledge, have that one end--death. That is all that is certain. Cities come and go, empires rise and fall, planets break into pieces and crumble into dust, to be blown about by the atmospheres of other planets. Thus it has been going on from time without beginning. Death is the end of everything. Death is the end of life, of beauty, of wealth, of power, of virtue too. Saints die and sinners die, kings die and beggars die. They are all going to death, and yet this tremendous clinging on to life exists. Somehow, we do not know why, we cling to life; we cannot give it up. And this is Maya.
The mother is nursing a child with great care; all her soul, her life, is in that child. The child grows, becomes a man, and perchance becomes a blackguard and a brute, kicks her and beats her every day; and yet the mother clings to the child; and when her reason awakes, she covers it up with the idea of love. She little thinks that it is not love, that it is something which has got hold of her nerves, which she cannot shake off; however she may try, she cannot shake off the bondage she is in. And this is Maya.
We are all after the Golden Fleece. Every one of us thinks that this will be his. Every reasonable man sees that his chance is, perhaps, one in twenty millions, yet everyone struggles for it. And this is Maya.
Death is stalking day and night over this earth of ours, but at the same time we think we shall live eternally. A question was once asked of King Yudhisthira, "What is the most wonderful thing on this earth?" And the king replied, "Every day people are dying around us, and yet men think they will never die." And this is Maya.
These tremendous contradictions in our intellect, in our knowledge, yea, in all the facts of our life face us on all sides. A reformer arises and wants to remedy the evils that are existing in a certain nation; and before they have been remedied, a thousand other evils arise in another place. It is like an old house that is falling; you patch it up in one place and the ruin extends to another. In India, our reformers cry and preach against the evils of enforced widowhood. In the West, non-marriage is the great evil. Help the unmarried on one side; they are suffering. Help the widows on the other; they are suffering. It is like chronic rheumatism: you drive it from the head, and it goes to the body; you drive it from there, and it goes to the feet. Reformers arise and preach that learning, wealth, and culture should not be in the hands of a select few; and they do their best to make them accessible to all. These may bring more happiness to some, but, perhaps as culture comes, physical happiness lessens. The knowledge of happiness brings the knowledge of unhappiness. Which way then shall we go? The least amount of material prosperity that we enjoy is causing the same amount of misery elsewhere. This is the law. The young, perhaps, do not see it clearly, but those who have lived long enough and those who have struggled enough will understand it. And this is Maya. These things are going on, day and night, and to find a solution of this problem is impossible. Why should it be so? It is impossible to answer this, because the question cannot be logically formulated. There is neither how nor why in fact; we only know that it is and that we cannot help it. Even to grasp it, to draw an exact image of it in our own mind, is beyond our power. How can we solve it then?
Maya is a statement of the fact of this universe, of how it is going on. People generally get frightened when these things are told to them. But bold we must be. Hiding facts is not the way to find a remedy. As you all know, a hare hunted by dogs puts its head down and thinks itself safe; so, when we run into optimism, we do just like the hare, but that is no remedy. There are objections against this, but you may remark that they are generally from people who possess many of the good things of life. In this country (England) it is very difficult to be a pessimist. Everyone tells me how wonderfully the world is going on, how progressive; but what he himself is, in his own world. Old questions arise: Christianity must be the only true religion of the world, because Christian nations are prosperous! But that assertion contradicts itself, because the prosperity of the Christian nation depends on the misfortune of non-Christian nations. There must be some to prey on. Suppose the whole world were to become Christian, then the Christian nations would become poor, because there would be no non-Christian nations for them to prey upon. Thus the argument kills itself. Animals are living upon plants, men upon animals and, worst of all, upon one another, the strong upon the weak. This is going on everywhere. And this is Maya. What solution do you find for this? We hear every day many explanations, and are told that in the long run all will be good. Taking it for granted that this is possible, why should there be this diabolical way of doing good? Why cannot good be done through good, instead of through these diabolical methods? The descendants of the human beings of today will be happy; but why must there be all this suffering now? There is no solution. This is Maya.
Again, we often hear that it is one of the features of evolution that it eliminates evil, and this evil being continually eliminated from the world, at last only good will remain. That is very nice to hear, and it panders to the vanity of those who have enough of this world's goods, who have not a hard struggle to face every day and are not being crushed under the wheel of this so-called evolution. It is very good and comforting indeed to such fortunate ones. The common herd may suffer, but they do not care; let them die, they are of no consequence. Very good, yet this argument is fallacious from beginning to end. It takes for granted, in the first place, that manifested good and evil in this world are two absolute realities. In the second place, it makes a still worse assumption that the amount of good is an in-creasing quantity and the amount of evil is a decreasing quantity. So, if evil is being eliminated in this way by what they call evolution, there will come a time when all this evil will be eliminated and what remains will be all good. Very easy to say, but can it be proved that evil is a lessening quality? Take, for instance, the man who lives in a forest, who does not know how to cultivate the mind, cannot read a book, has not heard of such a thing as writing. If he is severely wounded, he is soon all right again; while we die if we get a scratch. Machines are making things cheap, making for progress and evolution, but millions are crushed, that one may become rich; while one becomes rich, thousands at the same time become poorer and poorer, and whole masses of human beings are made slaves. That way it is going on. The animal man lives in the senses. If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable; or if something happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses both his misery and his happiness begin and end. As soon as this man progresses, as soon as his horizon of happiness increases, his horizon of unhappiness increases proportionately. The man in the forest does not know what it is to be jealous, to be in the law courts, to pay taxes, to be blamed by society, to be ruled over day and night by the most tremendous tyranny that human diabolism ever invented, which pries into the secrets of every human heart. He does not know how man becomes a thousand times more diabolical than any other animal, with all his vain knowledge and with all his pride. Thus it is that, as we emerge out of the senses, we develop higher powers of enjoyment, and at the same time we have to develop higher powers of suffering too. The nerves become finer and capable of more suffering. In every society, we often find that the ignorant, common man, when abused does not feel much, but he feels a good thrashing. But the gentleman cannot bear a single word of abuse; he has become so finely nerved. Misery has increased with his susceptibility to happiness. This does not go much to prove the evolutionist's case. As we increase our power to be happy, we also increase our power to suffer, and sometimes I am inclined to think that if we increase our power to become happy in arithmetical progression, we shall increase, on the other hand, our power to become miserable in geometrical progression. We who are progressing know that the more we progress, the more avenues are opened to pain as well as to pleasure. And this is Maya.
Thus we find that Maya is not a theory for the explanation of the world; it is simply a statement of facts as they exist, that the very basis of our being is contradiction, that wherever there is good, there must also be evil, and wherever there is evil, there must be some good, wherever there is life, death must follow as its shadow, and everyone who smiles will have to weep, and vice versa. Nor can this state of things be remedied. We may verily imagine that there will be a place where there will be only good and no evil, where we shall only smile and never weep. This is impossible in the nature of things; for the conditions will remain the same. Wherever there is the power of producing a smile in us, there lurks the power of producing tears. Wherever there is the power of producing happiness, there lurks somewhere the power of making us miserable.
Thus the Vedanta philosophy is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It voices both these views and takes things as they are. It admits that this world is a mixture of good and evil, happiness and misery, and that to increase the one, one must of necessity increase the other. There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms. The great secret revealed by this analysis is that good and bad are not two cut-and-dried, separate existences. There is not one thing in this world of ours which you can label as good and good alone, and there is not one thing in the universe which you can label as bad and bad alone. The very same phenomenon which is appearing to be good now, may appear to be bad tomorrow. The same thing which is producing misery in one, may produce happiness in another. The fire that burns the child, may cook a good meal for a starving man. The same nerves that carry the sensations of misery carry also the sensations of happiness. The only way to stop evil, therefore, is to stop good also; there is no other way. To stop death, we shall have to stop life also. Life without death and happiness without misery are contradictions, and neither can be found alone, because each of them is but a different manifestation of the same thing. What I thought to be good yesterday, I do not think to be good now. When I look back upon my life and see what were my ideals at different times, I find this to be so. At one time my ideal was to drive a strong pair of horses; at another time I thought, if I could make a certain kind of sweetmeat, I should be perfectly happy; later I imagined that I should be entirely satisfied if I had a wife and children and plenty of money. Today I laugh at all these ideals as mere childish nonsense.
The Vedanta says, there must come a time when we shall look back and laugh at the ideals which make us afraid of giving up our individuality. Each one of us wants to keep this body for an indefinite time, thinking we shall be very happy, but there will come a time when we shall laugh at this idea. Now, if such be the truth, we are in a state of hopeless contradiction--neither existence nor non-existence, neither misery nor happiness, but a mixture of them. What, then, is the use of Vedanta and all other philosophies and religions? And, above all, what is the use of doing good work? This is a question that comes to the mind. If it is true that you cannot do good without doing evil, and whenever you try to create happiness there will always be misery, people will ask you, "What is the use of doing good?" The answer is in the first place, that we must work for lessening misery, for that is the only way to make ourselves happy. Every one of us finds it out sooner or later in our lives. The bright ones find it out a little earlier, and the dull ones a little later. The dull ones pay very dearly for the discovery and the bright ones less dearly. In the second place, we must do our part, because that is the only way of getting out of this life of contradiction. Both the forces of good and evil will keep this universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies. That lesson we shall have to learn, and it will take a long, long time to learn it.
Attempts have been made in Germany to build a system of philosophy on the basis that the Infinite has become the finite. Such attempts are also made in England. And the analysis of the position of these philosophers is this, that the Infinite is trying to express itself in this universe, and that there will come a time when the Infinite will succeed in doing so. It is all very well, and we have used the words Infinite and manifestation and expression, and so on, but philosophers naturally ask for a logical fundamental basis for the statement that the finite can fully express the Infinite. The Absolute and the Infinite can become this universe only by limitation. Everything must be limited that comes through the senses, or through the mind, or through the intellect; and for the limited to be the unlimited is simply absurd, and can never be. The Vedanta, on the other hand, says that it is true that the Absolute or the Infinite is trying to express itself in the finite, but there will come a time when it will find that it is impossible, and it will then have to beat a retreat, and this beating a retreat means renunciation which is the real beginning of religion. Nowadays it is very hard even to talk of renunciation. It was said of me in America that I was a man who came out of a land that had been dead and buried for five thousand years, and talked of renunciation. So says, perhaps, the English philosopher. Yet it is true that that is the only path to religion. Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream--the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. It finds the truth of the statement, "Desire is never satisfied by the enjoyment of desires, it only increases the more, as fire, when butter is poured upon it."
This is true of all sense-enjoyments, of all intellectual enjoyments, and of all the enjoyments of which the human mind is capable. They are nothing, they are within Maya, within this network beyond which we cannot go. We may run therein through infinite time and find no end, and whenever we struggle to get a little enjoyment, a mass of misery falls upon us. How awful is this! And when I think of it, I cannot but consider that this theory of Maya, this statement that it is all Maya, is the best and only explanation. What an amount of misery there is in this world; and if you travel among various nations you will find that one nation attempts to cure its evils by one means, and another by another. The very same evil has been taken up by various races, and attempts have been made in various ways to check it, yet no nation has succeeded. If it has been minimised at one point, a mass of evil has been crowded at another point. Thus it goes. The Hindus, to keep up a high standard of chastity in the race, have sanctioned child-marriage, which in the long run has degraded the race. At the same time, I cannot deny that this child-marriage makes the race more chaste. What would you have? If you want the nation to be more chaste, you weaken men and women physically by child-marriage. On the other hand, are you in England any better off? No, because chastity is the life of a nation. Do you not find in history that the first death-sign of a nation has been unchastity? When that has entered, the end of the race is in sight. Where shall we get a solution of these miseries then? If parents select husbands and wives for their children, then this evil is minimised. The daughters of India are more practical than sentimental. But very little of poetry remains in their lives. Again, if people select their own husbands and wives, that does not seem to bring much happiness. The Indian woman is generally very happy; there are not many cases of quarrelling between husband and wife. On the other hand in the United States, where the greatest liberty obtains, the number of unhappy homes and marriages is large. Unhappiness is here, there, and everywhere. What does it show? That, after all, not much happiness has been gained by all these ideals. We all struggle for happiness and as soon as we get a little happiness on one side, on the other side there comes unhappiness.
Shall we not work to do good then? Yes, with more zest than ever, but what this knowledge will do for us is to break down fanaticism. The Englishman will no more be a fanatic and curse the Hindu. He will learn to respect the customs of different nations. There will be less of fanaticism and more of real work. Fanatics cannot work, they waste three-fourths of their energy. It is the level-headed, calm, practical man who works. So, the power to work will increase from this idea. Knowing that this is the state of things, there will be more patience. The sight of misery or of evil will not be able to throw us off our balance and make us run after shadows. Therefore, patience will come to us, knowing that the world will have to go on in its own way. If, for instance, all men have become good, the animals will have in the meantime evolved into men, and will have to pass through the same state, and so with the plants. But only one thing is certain; the mighty river is rushing towards the ocean, and all the drops that constitute the stream will in time be drawn into that boundless ocean. So, in this life, with all its miseries and sorrows, its joys and smiles and tears, one thing is certain, that all things are rushing towards their goal, and it is only a question of time when you and I, and plants and animals, and every particle of life that exists must reach the Infinite Ocean of Perfection, must attain to Freedom, to God.
Let me repeat, once more, that the Vedantic position is neither pessimism nor optimism. It does not say that this world is all evil or all good. It says that our evil is of no less value than our good, and our good of no more value than our evil. They are bound together. This is the world, and knowing this, you work with patience. What for? Why should we work? If this is the state of things, what shall we do? Why not become agnostics? The modern agnostics also know there is no solution of this problem, no getting out of this evil of Maya, as we say in our language; therefore they tell us to be satisfied and enjoy life. Here, again, is a mistake, a tremendous mistake, a most illogical mistake. And it is this. What do you mean by life? Do you mean only the life of the senses? In this, every one of us differs only slightly from the brutes. I am sure that no one is present here whose life is only in the senses. Then, this present life means something more than that. Our feelings, thoughts, and aspirations are all part and parcel of our life; and is not the struggle towards the great ideal, towards perfection, one of the most important components of what we call life? According to the agnostics, we must enjoy life as it is. But this life means, above all, this search after the ideal; the essence of life is going towards perfection. We must have that, and, therefore, we cannot be agnostics or take the world as it appears. The agnostic position takes this life, minus the ideal component, to be all that exists. And this, the agnostic claims, cannot be reached, therefore he must give up the search. This is what is called Maya--this nature, this universe.
All religions are more or less attempts to get beyond nature--the crudest or the most developed, expressed through mythology or symbology, stories of gods, angels or demons, or through stories of saints or seers, great men or prophets, or through the abstractions of philosophy--all have that one subject, all are trying to get beyond these limitations. In one word, they are all struggling towards freedom. Man feels, consciously or unconsciously, that he is bound; he is not what he wants to be. It was taught to him at the very moment he began to look around. That very instant he learnt that he was bound, and he also found that there was something in him which wanted to fly beyond, where the body could not follow, but which was as yet chained down by this limitation. Even in the lowest of religious ideas, where departed ancestors and other spirits--mostly violent and cruel, lurking about the houses of their friends, fond of bloodshed and strong drink--are worshipped, even there we find that one common factor, that of freedom. The man who wants to worship the gods sees in them, above all things, greater freedom than in himself. If a door is closed, he thinks the gods can get through it, and that walls have no limitations for them. This idea of freedom increases until it comes to the ideal of a Personal God, of which the central concept is that He is a Being beyond the limitation of nature, of Maya. I see before me, as it were, that in some of those forest retreats this question is being discussed by those ancient sages of India; and in one of them, where even the oldest and the holiest fail to reach the solution, a young man stands up in the midst of them, and declares, "Hear, ye children of immortality, hear, ye who live in the highest places, I have found the way. By knowing Him who is beyond darkness we can go beyond death."
This Maya is everywhere. It is terrible. Yet we have to work through it. The man who says that he will work when the world has become all good and then he will enjoy bliss is as likely to succeed as the man who sits beside the Ganga and says, "I will ford the river when all the water has run into the ocean." The way is not with Maya, but against it. This is another fact to learn. We are not born as helpers of nature, but competitors with nature. We are its bond-masters, but we bind ourselves down. Why is this house here? Nature did not build it. Nature says, go and live in the forest. Man says, I will build a house and fight with nature, and he does so. The whole history of humanity is a continuous fight against the so-called laws of nature, and man gains in the end. Coming to the internal world, there too the same fight is going on, this fight between the animal man and the spiritual man, between light and darkness; and here too man becomes victorious. He, as it were, cuts his way out of nature to freedom.
We see, then, that beyond this Maya the Vedantic philosophers find something which is not bound by Maya; and if we can get there, we shall not be bound by Maya. This idea is in some form or other the common property of all religions. But, with the Vedanta, it is only the beginning of religion and not the end. The idea of a Personal God, the Ruler and Creator of this universe, as He has been styled, the Ruler of Maya, or nature, is not the end of these Vedantic ideas; it is only the beginning. The idea grows and grows until the Vedantist finds that He who, he thought, was standing outside, is he himself and is in reality within. He is the one who is free, but who through limitation thought he was bound.
Pema Chodron:
"Recently, in a friend’s kitchen I saw on the wall a quotation from one of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s talks, which said: “Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.”
I was struck by it because when I read it I realized that I myself have some kind of preference for stillness. The notion of holding the sadness and pain of samsara in my heart rang true, but I realized I didn’t do that; at least, I had a definite preference for the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. My reference point was always to be awake and to live fully, to remember the Great Eastern Sun—the quality of being continually awake. But what about holding the sadness and pain of samsara in my heart at the same time?
The quotation really made an impression on me. It was completely true: if you can live with the sadness of human life (what Rinpoche often called the tender heart or genuine heart of sadness), if you can be willing to feel fully and acknowledge continually your own sadness and the sadness of life, but at the same time not be drowned in it, because you also remember the vision and power of the Great Eastern Sun, you experience balance and completeness, joining heaven and earth, joining vision and practicality."
- Pema Chodron
