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Yaaaay! Shane´s site!
Last week, all the members of the Dublin Sri Chinmoy Centre (which I am a part of) were very busy playing host to all our friends and fellow students of Sri Chinmoy from England, France and further beyond, as we all met up for a weekend in the West of Ireland . As a little gift for everyone we designed the following card, with a translation of one of Sri Chinmoy's aphorisms in English, French and Irish:
Sri Chinmoy has always spoken of how much oneness between different countries means to him, and how happy he is that students from different countries such as England and France or England and Ireland that had a previous history of animosity can meet together and help in some small way to bury this history in oblivion.
In other cases, he encourages students from countries that were previously part of one large country to meet together, so that even if there is a political sense of separateness, there is no sense of separateness in the hearts of his students. For example, he would encourage students from the former Czechoslovakia, the former Yugoslavia, and he former Soviet Union to meet together frequently, and even perform together in singing and instrumental groups when they visit him in New York.
Sometimes Sri Chinmoy just asks students from certain countries to meet together because he feels there is a certain spiritual thread linking them together - that is why students from Australia and New Zealand meet together quite frequently for weekends of meditation and fun, and why students from the German-speaking countries come together with the Eastern European countries, Italy and the Netherlands for similar occasions.
I havent been posting entries here for a while - that's because I've been rather occupied with my new baby, shanemagee.com . Like any other child, it demands all your attention - regular feeding with blog entries, incessant demands for the latest add-ons and plug-ins, and constant complaining that it doesnt look as smart as all the other kids and that I haven't redesigned the theme in aaages. But you have to love it anyway.
However, I've always enjoyed entering into the beautiful peaceful atmosphere of this site in order to add to my blog, so the stream of entries to this blog certainly won't dry up completely....
The man himself...
Even in this age of cynicism and suspicion, there are still people whose integrity and stature are beyond question, people whose very association or encouragement of a cause give that cause a new respect in people's eyes. At the back of my mind, I must admit I was always wondering how Nelson Mandela got himself into this elite circle. At a first glance, his resume does not seem to be one that would elevate one outside of his own country. Raised to become counsellor to the young Thembu king, ends up being a young lawyer in Johannesburg, and comes to the conclusion that strict non-violence would not be sufficient to overthrow the wall of segregation and injustice, and thus leads a campaign of sabotage that leads to his imprisonment. Certainly the stuff of national fame, I thought, but no more. But this beatific aura had already surrounded him even before he was released from prison, as the entire anti-apartheid struggle was able to rally itself around the release of this one men. In fact, there were whispered suggestions that perhaps he should be assassinated as soon as he came out from prison and the assassination blamed on the government, lest he ruin everyone's hopes and expectations by being a mere mortal; at least dead the myth would remain, so the reasoning went.
But this aura did not come from nowhere, I am finally glad to discover. Locked away in prison, and extremely limited in his connection with the outside world, Mandela nevertheless had begun shaping the direction of the apartheid struggle solely through the strength of his own personal example. He was the recognised leader of the prisoners on Robben Island, and under his guidance all the different factions of prisoners - the ANC, the more stridently militant Pan African Congress, the Communist party, whites, Indians and others came together as one; as most of the leaders were in prison, this came to have a tremendous effect on the unity of the apartheid struggle as a whole. He would always take great pains to ensure people were not left humiliated or marginalised - this applied to all the other factions, but also in his approach to the prison warders. He learnt Afrikaans, which was seen as the language of oppression, in prison. Often he would stop his fellow prisoners from kneejerk reaction to some injustice in the anticipation that he could get the needed thing in time, and he could do it whilst at the same time procuring a friend out of those that stood in his way. His reaching out to the warders ultimately led to contacts further up the chain of command, all the way up to the minister of justice. Most of all his sense of intuition was second to none - he knew the importance of magnanimity but at the same time knew the core areas where any compromise would have meant suffocation and death. In 1985, he was offered release to Transkei, one of the 'Bantustans' that had been set up within South Africa as a sop to world opinion, and the area where he was born. He refused, telling the people of South Africa that 'your freedom is my freedom' in a famous speech read out by his daughter. However, his intuition also told him to begin negotiations with the government, even without the explicit backing of his fellow prisoners.
Along with the great black leaders of America in the 1960's, Mandela shattered the illusion that a black man was not up to the task of statemanship - even as he walked free from prison, his reputation for statecraft was second to none solely as a result of his activities within prison walls. In the years that followed, he had much need of it. There was a very real and present danger that the country would be rent asunder by violence and bloodshed, not only from white extremists, but also as a result of violence between the ANC and the Inkatha Party, aided and abetted by the apartheid government and essentially pitting the members of South Africa's two main tribes against each other other. When Chris Hani, a prominent black leader, was shot by a white assassin, everyone waited to hear what Mandela would say. The atmosphere was such that a speech blaming the government could have been the spark for a bloody revolution. However, with characteristic humility, Mandela begged for calm and noted that a white woman had risked her life to provide evidence that would identify the killer. Similarly, reaching out to the leaders of the Inkatha Party, he gave one concession after another in an attempt to convince them to join the political process. Again, his intuition told him what was important; harmony at this crucial and fragile stage.
I remember listening to a South African delegate giving a speech at an opening ceremony of the World Harmony Run in New York: he recalled as a child how rugby was seen as a white man's sport, and no black man would be seen dead wearing the Springbok jersey, the jersey of the national side. But in 2005, the rugby World Cup came to South Africa and who should be presenting the trophy but Mandela himself, wearing that same jersey! Looking back, this one small gesture led to a noticeable thaw in relations between blacks and whites in South Africa, and the speaker concluded by telling us he now has a Springbok jersey himself.
Earlier this week, I was unlocking my bike and preparing to go home at eleven o'clock at night; I had been spending the evening teaching maths all over Dublin. Behind me, the shop where I had just bought a banana was closing up for the night. The Chinese employee was standing out the door, shaking the mats and preparing to bring them inside.
Some local, sporting a beard that looks like it has just risen up in flaming insurrection, the kind of facial takeover you just don't see anymore in these days of goatees and designer stubble, rambled out of the adjacent pub and unlocked his car. "Ni hau!", he called out to the Chinese shaking his mats.
"Conas atá tú?", replied the shop assistant. This has evidently been going on for a while between them, each speaking the other's language.
Not too bad. Bloody freezing, isn't it?, said the local as he unlocked the car.
"It's pretty cold alright. Slán", said the assistant as he took his mats inside and the car drove off.
It was my birthday last weekend. In Eastern tradition, it is the celebrant who does the giving (after all, giving is much more fulfilling than recieving) and so I made prasad for all the members of the Dublin Centre this week. Prasad is a spiritual tradition that goes back thousands of years in India, in which food is blessed before eating so that the meditative energy may be more easily absorbed by the physical body. In addition to food (and plenty of it) I also decided to make a little photograph with one of Sri Chinmoy's aphorisms:
Meditating on this particular aphorism gives me a real sense of detachment amidst the frantic whirlwind of life. Sometimes in life it feels as if I am a stray bit of wood floating on the ocean, being tossed around by the waves; I get much more joy when I am able to stand back and see it all for what it is, as one giant chaotic exuberant evolving circus.
The photograph of Sri Chinmoy I used was taken by Kedar Misani .
I was out for a run earlier this week which took me up the northside of Dublin. Running along the canal, the huge spectre of Croke Park rose in front of me. Croke Park is the Mecca of Irish sport, the headquarters of our two main games, Gaelic football and hurling, and since its recent redevelopment now the third biggest stadium in Europe. Even though I was blocked from seeing the pitch as I ran past the side of the stadium, my imagination and memory drifted to all the great games that had been played on that pitch, and to one in particular which was a pretty childhood-defining moment - the famous-four-in-a-row between Meath (my home county) and Dublin in 1991.
Just as in soccer, Gaelic football has both a league and a knock-out competition; unlike soccer it is the knockout competition - the All-Ireland Championship - that is more prestigious by far. The early stages of this competition consist of four provincial competitions, the winners of which go on to battle it out for the ultimate honours. Now, a certain amount of staleness had set into this format in the last ten years, because a seeding system had ensured a duopoly of power in each of the two strongest provinces: Meath and Dublin were invariably sure to contest the final in Leinster, Cork and Kerry would grace final day in Munster, and the ultimate honours would invariably fall to one of these four (out of a total of 32 counties). In 1990, the entire nation was captivated by our exploits in the 1990 World Cup in Italy, and voices were heard muttering that before long, Gaelic football would be relegated to the sidelines of Irish sporting life as soccer mania took over.
So in 1991 seeding was abolished. And guess what? Dublin and Meath, the two strongest teams in the country, were drawn to face each other in the very first round.
(Perhaps a quick summary of the rules of Gaelic football might be in order here - the ball can be held in the hand and is usually passed around by being kicked from the hand or handpassed. The goals look rather like those in rugby - a goal counts for three points whereas kicking it over the bar counts for one.)
As the teams met on that sunny day in June, it was not only the open draw that provided the novelty value; there in tiny writing on the player's jerseys was a sponsor's name, the very first game where this was allowed (and the tiny writing - one inch maximum - was stipulated by rule!). My memories are quite dim of this game, except I remember that Meath didn't play well at all, and there was quite a moment of drama when, with seconds left in the game, Meath player P.J. Gillic kicked in a speculative ball towards the goal which eluded everyone, goalkeeper included, and bounced in such a way that no-one knew where it was going - goal? point? wide? - untill it bounced over the bar for the equalising point. And so everyone went home, glad of another day.
Unfortunately for us, we were due to go on holiday to Montpelier, in the South of France at the time the replay was due to take place. There was no satellite down in the South of France in them days, and so we crowded around a phone to be told the result in a few words.
Another draw. Extra time was played. Still a draw. The game would go to a second replay. Drawn games are a good deal rarer in Gaelic football than in soccer, and second replays were almost unthinkable - in fact only five had occured in the entire 104 year history of the championship, most of those dating back to a long long time ago.
Well, the third game was also scheduled to be played during our French soiree, but the Magee family were having none of that, all seven of us piling into the jeep and booting it the whole way up the motorways of France to arrive back in Ireland on the Sunday morning of the game.
Another draw. Extra time was played. Tiredness set in. The referee went down with cramp and had to have his leg stretched by one of the players. Still a draw. Unbelievable.
By now, interest in the series of games had spread far beyond these two counties and gripped the Irish imagination. On one side, the men of the Royal County of Meath, home of the ancient capital of Ireland, and on the other, Dublin, the modern capital. If you were a Meathman living anywhere in the south east, the chances were you were commuting into Dublin to earn your crust, and there was plenty of opportunities for banter and teasing. Green and gold flags would be found decorating telephone poles along every back country road in Meath; the blue of Dublin adorning council flats and lamposts all over the city. It wasn't uncommon for whole families to be split down the middle if the husband came from Dublin and the wife from Meath or vice versa. Wives anxious to have Sundays restored to normal family life argued for the whole affair to be settled by the toss of a coin.
And so on June 6, 34 days after they first met, Meath and Dublin came together for the fourth game.
It didn't start out well for us at all. And it didn't continue well either. As time ticked on in the second half, we were six points behind, and Meath didn't look like doing much to rectify it. I was sitting in the Cusack stand, surrounded by other Meath supporters, and I remember looking around and seeing how everyone had lost hope; the atmosphere was reminiscent of a funeral. And then they got a penalty, a chance to kill us off completely, and drove it wide. And then we got a goal, and quite implausibly, with seconds left we were three points behind. But still no-one thought we'd pull it back.
And then this happened.
The scorer was Kevin Foley, a defender who (legend has it) was making his first ever foray into the other side of the pitch out of desperation. 13 out of the 15 Meath players on the field were involved in moving the ball up the field; we might have lost hope, but they hadn't.
We had pulled level, but that was not all; with the Dublin players still recovering from shock, Meath scored a last-minute point. The final whistle blew. Meath had won by one point. To my dying day I will recall the total silence in Croke Park, as seventy thousand gobsmacked spectators tried to come to terms with what had just happened.
Gaelic football has retained its position as the premier sport in the country, and many people credit these series of matches for injecting new life into the sport and kickstarting a renaissance of sorts. As for the players, my dad tells me that the Meath and Dublin teams who played those matches meet up each year for a game of golf and a chance to reminisce about those magic days.
Related Links
- Top 20 GAA moments - Kevin Foley's goal was featured as one of the top moments in GAA history. This clip is introduced by Micheal O Muircheartaigh of whom I have spoken very highly of on this blog before....
My good friend Pavitrata had a section on his photo gallery called 'Found Sounds' in which he detailed any interesting overheard snippets of conversation he had heard that day. He was rather strict about what went in and what didn't - it had to be written down the evening that he heard it. I, on the other hand, have no such qualms.
Here's one I heard this evening walking home:
You're only as good as your last column inch
Perhaps Noivedya might agree...
I have a copy of the Bhagavad Gita lying around somewhere where I'm guaranteed to pick it up every so often and sift through its (not very many) pages. This morning, the following verses had a profound effect on me. (here, Bharata and son of Kunti are used to refer to Arjuna, to whom the dialogue is addressed)
The Great Brahma (ie prakriti or all of Creation) is in My womb, O Bharata. In it I place My embryo, and from it all living creatures take birth.
Whatever beings take form in all the wombs, O son of Kunti, their womb is the great Brahma and I am the father who implants the seed.
When I still my mind in meditation, I get an experience of a Reality that is not easily explained by the mind and its dichotomies: a sense that God is in the world and part and parcel of every little thing, that indeed everything is God showing himself in all His different guises, but at the same time a sense that God is also outside of it all. This is a very common experience; my own teacher, Sri Chinmoy , speaks of these two aspects as God the Creator and God the Creation.
In Indian tradition, they talk about Shiva and Shakti, the male and female aspects of God, but at the same time the static and dynamic aspects of God. The great spiritual Master, Sri Ramakrishna , described Shiva and Shakti as 'fire and its power to burn'. In many animal species (and unfortunately far too many human relationships) it is the mother who is left with all the hard work of gestating and rearing, of keeping creation alive on a minute-to-minute basis after the father's initial contribution; the above paragraph uses this powerful analogy to allow a glimpse into the deeper realities of Creation to one who reads with his heart. It also gives one a greater appreciation of the Mother aspect of God, and indeed for all the women across the world who through countless daily acts sacrifice and self-giving keep creation ticking along. Indeed Sri Ramakrishna regarded every woman as the Divine Mother Herself, showing Herself in millions of different forms.
Ted Corbitt in his prime
Ultrarunning, or running distances longer than the marathon, only gained popularity as a sport in the last thirty years. Much of this popularity is due to Ted Corbitt who worked tirelessly to promote and organise ultrarunning events. Over a 30 year running career Corbitt ran almost 200 marathons and ultramarathons, and discovered such important advances as the importance of hydration (the idea came from one long run when he caught snowflakes with his tongue!). "Sure, I sort of used myself as a human laboratory," he once said, "but it was no big deal, because I was only doing what I loved."
Ted worked as a physiotherapist and would run back and forward from work, often notching up 200 miles in a week. Sometimes he would get stopped by police who didnt understand why a black man would be running everywhere. Despite his enormous contributions, his name is not as well known as others; he preferred to just do what came natural to him andleave the limelight to others. He was also very involved in the organisational side of things like setting up standards to certify races. He is called by many 'the father of ultradistance running'.
Ted still going strong.....
Believe it or not, Ted is still participating in ultra races in his eighties: on the right is a picture of him participating in a 24-hour race at age 84.
The study of social networks is greatly influenced by the 'small world' hypothesis - that everyone on the planet is connected to each other via a finite number of friends. The term 'six degrees of separation' has since entered into popular discourse, suggesting that on average we are connected to any other person by a chain of six acquaintances.
Kevin Bacon
When I was growing up, I remember we used to play a game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in which we would try to link any actor or director to the actor Kevin Bacon in a chain of less than six names. Out of this game came the assignment of a Bacon number to every actor: Kev himself had a Bacon number of 0, if you worked on a film with him you got a Bacon number of 1, if you worked with someone who worked with Kevin you got two and so on. (It is actually mathematically proven that actors would on average get lower Connery numbers or Caine numbers, but 'Six degrees of Kevin Bacon' just has a nice ring to it)
Paul Erdős
Around the same time, there was a similar game in action surrounding the famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös. Erdös had a way of life which kind of reminds me of the roving Irish musicians of yesteryear; he would travel from campus to campus, show up on a colleague's doorstep, work on a few papers and then move on to the next place; his personal possessions could all fit in a suitcase. In this way he coauthored 1500 papers with 409 people, and became one of the most prolific mathematicians ever. An Erdös number of one is given to anyone who collaborated with him, and the chain continues just like the Kevin Bacon game - many a mathematics faculty coffee morning has been spend joining together the links!
Now for the ultimate test of polyability and social connectedness: have you starred in a film with Kevin Bacon AND coauthored a paper with Paul Erdös? Introducing - the Erdös-Bacon number, got by adding your Erdös and Bacon numbers together! Erdös and Bacon both actually have undefined Erdös-Bacon numbers, since they stayed in their own fields. The lowest known Erdös-Bacon number is 3 for MIT mathematician Daniel Kleitman who coauthored a paper with Erdös and appeared as an extra in Good Will Hunting which gave him a Bacon number of 2. Popular string theory author Brian Greene has an Erdös-Bacon number of 5. Richard Feynman has 6, and Stephen Hawking has 7.
Among professional actors and actresses, the lowest is 6 for Danica McKellar (who played Winnie Cooper in The Wonder Years) and has an Erdös number of 4 for a paper she coauthored whilst still an undergrad at UCLA. Possibly the only other full-time actor to have a defined Erdös-Bacon number is Natalie Portman, who has 9.
Apparently, I have an Erdős number of 5, so all I need is a starring role alongside Kevin Bacon to boost me into that elite league :)
I have just put the finishing touches to a series of daily blog entries describing my trip to see Sri Chinmoy in November 2006.
Sri Chinmoy meditating with his students...
Three times a year, hundreds of Sri Chinmoy's students gather to meditate with their teacher, and join in the whirlwind of activities and events that spring out of and run alongside our meditations: soulful singing, virtuoso intrumental performances, spiritual theatre, helping with initiatives for world harmony, humanitarian work, sporting events ranging from two mile races to marathons and ultra-marathons, a full-fledged circus (!), and an annual giant team effort to break a Guinness World Record!
A definite emphasis on joy :)
I'm not sure there's anything quite like these visits anywhere else in the world, and so I've tried a few times to encapsulate something of the atmosphere of these visits to share with people who were not there; I also wrote a daily diary of my visits in November 2005 and April 2006 . I usually visit New York to see my teacher in April, August and November of each year, but in April and August I throw myself into every activity going and there's not so much time for writing (which explains why I didn't write a daily account of my visit in August). However, November is generally the quietest of the three times in terms of things to get involved in; there is less of the whirlwind of events I described above, but at the same time that makes it much easier to write about.
Here's where all the meditations were held. In April and August we'd be all sitting where the photo was took and everything would take place in the open air; unfortunately the weather is not that kind to us in November! Whilst you're looking at the photo, do you see the colour on those trees? Thats another reason why I love coming here in November; it's like we get an extension on autumn with all its colours.
I hope, dear reader, that you won't take my daily doings and experiences as typical for every student who went to visit Sri Chinmoy in November. Sri Chinmoy has students of such vastly differing personalities and temperaments, and another daily diary picked at random from the people who were there might read very differently! For example, you'll see that whenever I'm not meditating, I look to busy my time with some other spiritual activity like running or helping people. But other people on the same visit might like to take a day or so to go seeing New York's famous sights, or prefer to catch up with all their friends from all around the world who have also arrived to meditate with Sri Chinmoy. There is no right or wrong way, the way I do things is just the way I am; I've always been happier when I'm busy doing something useful for others. (P.S I have to thank my dad for this, for sending me out working on the farm as a child on those cold winter nights when all of my cooler-than-thou schoolmates were comatose in front of the telly)
Lastly, I have to give a big thanks to my friends Dmitriy Volkov and Alexei Levchenkov from Smolensk, Russia for supplying most of the photos for the blog.
OK, so on with the show....you can either see the entries one page at a time or get all the entries lumped together on one page (for the latter, you'll have to start at the bottom and scroll up to get them in the correct chronological order).
I do hope you get some joy from reading them.
I have been inspired by Sahayak's recent blog entries describing the tranquility, peace and vastness he encountered in the Australian desert, and it got me thinking of places I have visited that took my breath away.
About six years ago I was in Kenya for four months; a week of that was spent hinking up and down the 5000m high Mt Kenya, the second tallest mountain in Africa. The plan was simple, if a little foolhardy: my self and Gideon, my Kenyan flatmate, would start off and hopefully pick up a guide along the way. At break of dawn, we left Nairobi on a matatu (minibus) racing along at well over eighty miles an hour.
The slopes of Mount Kenya contain an extraordinary array of landscapes and biomes. Tea and banana plantations on the lower slopes soon give way to a swathe of camphor rain forest, host to huge monoliths of trees and birds with the most dazzling colours. I looked down and saw tiny two-lane dual carriageways full of marching ants, complete with interchanges that would confound the best of our 'spaghetti junctions'.
At about 3000m the rainforest suddenly breaks onto grassy plain; as we left the forest, to my right I could see a startled water buffalo break out of the forest onto the plain. The entrance to the national park was here, and it was here we camped for our first night, after a guelling 32k uphill hike. Luck was with us; there was an English couple scaling the more technical climbs on Mt. Kenya and we could travel along with them and their guide. Mount Kenya has three main peaks, two of them require technical mountain skills, but the third highest, Point Lenana, was hikeable, so that was the one we were going up.
My brother Colm works as a gardener, and occasionally I give him a hand. One time we were on our way home and I was cycling through his iPod looking for music; I found an album of Irish music I wanted to listen to.
"I learnt quite a few tunes on the flute from this album, you'll probably recognise them", I said to Colm.
A mischievous grin spread across Colm's face. "Bet you I won't recognise them at all!" he says, and we both crack up laughing.
A few minutes later, when one of the tunes came on, I looked out of the corner of my eye at Colm to see was there any flicker of recognition. He was trying to hide a smile, because he didn't want me to know.
Another time we were laying a lawn and I was talking rather loudly, as is my wont sometimes.
"Shush, will you; ears have walls", Colm admonished me.
"Actually 'ears have walls' is probably more correct than 'walls have ears'; they only hear what they want to hear." I said.
"Bet you you're going to go home now and write all this up in your blog." Colm teased.
"Absolutely", I said, "Unless it ends up in my blog, it never happened."
Me and Asidhari, 2-mile race in NY
Every Saturday, in quite a few Sri Chinmoy Centres around the world, there will be a 2-mile fun run talking place, with students of varying abilities trying to walk or run around the course quicker then they did last week. When the race takes place in New York, Sri Chinmoy will sometimes come and spontaneously compose a prayer-poem or a song. At last Wednesday's meditation, I was leafing through a complilation of these prayers (titled My Race-Prayers), when this one popped up like an old friend....
I am a God-dreamer-life.I am a God-lover-heart.I am a God-listener-mind.I am a God-carrier-vital.I am a God-server-body.I am a God-treasurer-soul.I am a God-whisperer-soul.I am a God-drummer-soul.I am a God-messenger-soul.I am a God-harbinger-soul.
(composed February 29, 2004)
Some of Sri Chinmoy's poems will mention the components of our being - body, vital (our emotional being), mind, heart, and soul - in turn, but what I love about this one is that it identifies with the soul, the Real within us, not once like the rest, but five times, each adjective somehow reinforcing the last whilst at the same time expanding our window tinto the highest part of our Being.
I remember Sri Chinmoy said that learning this prayer would be of definite help to us in our aspiration and he would be very grateful to his students if they learnt it. I did, and then of course with time I forgot. But now I remember.
It is a pretty small piece of rock that we are living on. I mean, it has a radius of only six thousand miles. You could hop in your car and head down the motorway and clear your way through a thousand before the day was out. Except your country might not be big enough. They are pretty small too.
It's official: 89% of all statistics make me feel like the world is going to hell, if not tomorrow, then very soon.
But there are no statistics available on the number of small acts of kindness performed every day, every hour, every second. No statistics on the number of biting words withheld for the sake of harmony. No statistics on the number of stoic resilient smiles, no statistics on the sacrifices and self-giving borne out of that inconveniently unquantifiable thing called Love.
Related Links:
- Real-time population counter : I find it a bit suspicious how people seem to be born in batches of three...
- The Grand Canyon picture is by Niriha Datta and the other two are from Bodh Gaya (where the Buddha attained enlightenment) and Myanmar respectively, and were taken by Ranjit Swanson .
Here are some musings, disconnected and yet connected at the same time....
Bad habits have a cleverness of their own - I read once about a very overweight lady who lost weight after having her stomach stapled, only to regain it after finding out she could absorb as many crackers as she wanted by first melting them with her tongue....
I had another dream; a very simple one, completely free of the murkifications the subconscious is wont to throw up during slumber. I was merely going up to recieve prasad, or blessed food, from my teacher. And on my teacher's face, which has now weathered 75 years on this earth, there was all the energy and vibrancy and simplicity of a child running around the garden.
I remember a few years ago when boxing rather than running was my sport of choice; I would return to my corner to either some tough words if I wasn't performing to my full potential, or some soothing reassurances if I was, and sometimes both in the same bout. But how different the 'coaching' of a spiritual Master is. In the inner word, sometimes it is when you are doing well that it is time to push you to extend your capacities further , and sometimes it is when you are doing not so well that the proper medicine is gentleness and compassion and love.
I was told a nice quote today:
“Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.” - Unknown.
Pictures by Kedar Misani and Diganta Pobitzer .
These days, to keep myself inspired, I find myself reaching not for an inspiring book or some soul-stirring music, but for my laptop, which contains everything at once!
I regularly supplement my meditations by reading Sri Chinmoy 's many aphorisms. In his youth, Sri Chinmoy used to write long poems in a formal, metred style, but over the years he has come to adopt the simple aphorism as his poetic medium of choice. His output has been nothing short of phenomenal: in 1983 he completed a collection of 10,000 aphorisms in 100 volumes titled Ten Thousand Flower-Flames ; by 1998 he had completed 27,000 aphorisms in 270 volumes under the title Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants . Never one to rest on his laurels, he is now more than half-way through creating Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees , a collection of 77,000 aphorisms. He has written many other aphorisms over the years, but it is to these three collections I invariably turn to upon visiting SriChinmoyLibrary.com ; I pick an arbitrary volume, scroll down the list of poems to one at random, and begin reading each one, not with my eyes, but with my heart, for it is the heart that knows how to unwrap the simplicity-packaging of each poetic offering, and with whole being drink the glimpses into higher and deeper truths that lie within.
Another thing which usually never fails to transport me into loftier realms is looking at the many meditative photo-montages on the Sri Chinmoy Centre photo gallery, particularly those which contain pictures of my teacher. All great teachers work in the realms of silence, and silence radiates from every corner of their being, so that even photographs carry this silence, and speak to the aspiring heart as if the teacher were actually there. Sri Chinmoy once recommended that if a spiritual seeker was interested in finding a teacher, he should get photographs of different teachers and look at each one to see which gave his heart most joy:
"How can one know who his spiritual teacher is?...His heart looks at the spiritual Masters and makes the choice. When the heart sees a spiritual Master, if it is overwhelmed with joy, then there is every probability that that spiritual Master is the right one for the seeker."
(excerpt from My Rose Petals, Part 2 by Sri Chinmoy.)
Well, Sri Chinmoy is my teacher, and many are the times my heart and I have gotten tremendous, tremendous joy from looking at photographs of him in high meditative states. In these pictures, there is an amazing variety of expression on Sri Chinmoy's face, such that one might think there are different people in the photographs! But we carry the same expressions on our faces all the time because life has grinded us into a single, monotonic way of being; whereas each expression on Sri Chinmoy's face displays a different country in the land of Vastness. My favourite photo album on the gallery is by Kedar Misani from Switzerland; the gallery of Pavitrata Taylor from London runs a very close second.
Finally, some ancient inspiration as well as modern: the life and example of the Indian spiritual Master Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) has always been of great inspiration to me. During the last four years of his life, a close student of his by the name of Mahendranath Gupta (also known as Master Mahashay, or simply M.) kept a word-for-word diary of his meetings with Sri Ramakrishna, and this diary came to be known as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. The entire contents of this book are now available at ramakrishnavivekananda.info ; in opening a chapter at random I am transported into 19th century Calcutta, walking the temple grounds of Dakineshwar in the blazing heat, sitting down to hear the great Master speak with childlike spontaneity, seeing him rise into the highest meditative states of samadhi at even the first few lines of a soulful song or the barest mention of his Beloved...the philosophy of Sri Ramakrishna, like that of my own Master, Sri Chinmoy, is endowed with tremendous simplicity and unalloyed love for God, and I especially love reading from the Gospel in the evening of a day overburdened with Western complication. However, for those unfamiliar with Sri Ramakrishna or Indian philosophy in general, the Gospel can be quite a mouthful; I would recommend you first read the wonderful Ramakrishna and his disciples , by Christopher Isherwood.
Perhaps others might care to share some internet gems they've stumbled across...
In recent years, Christmas has become a time I inwardly brace myself against, a readymade groove of ritual worn out by market forces, dulling the senses and the spirit. I expected this year to be no different, and I sadly harked back to the Christmases of my childhood, to the darkened Christmas vigil as children acted out the nativity of the Light to come, to the air of wondering what was on the other side of that locked door...
I left my presents until the last minute, with good reason: even if you start a week in advance, you're still going to end up getting something at the last minute; this way you save yourself a week. I begin by meditating good and long and hard, hoping against hope that this year will be as painless as possible, before meeting up with my other two brothers to begin the hunt.
In the absence of any photos i took myself, this one kind of reminds me of department stores of Christmas. (taken by Pavitrata Taylor )
And guess what - it was painless. Almost enjoyable, actually. We just had a good chat, pooled some ideas, and set off with at least a rough idea of where we were going. We ended up around the Capel St area, where many of Dublin's camping and hardware stores have conglomerated. And lo and behold, presents just seem to pop up out of nowhere. A pair of waterproof gloves for my sister, for riding out horses in the cold winter mornings; we had found the perfect gloves in the wrong size in one shop, and then noticed them in the right size as we were just about to leave the next shop. My brother, a budding photographer, had blown up and framed many of his pictures as presents. Shoes for my dad, noted for being fussy; the perfect pair announce themselves just as we walk into the shop. Near the end it gets a bit tiring; I take a quick snooze in a department store cafe as my brother orders me a smoothie.
Next day was Christmas Eve; we had moved our usual Sunday night meditation to the morning so everyone could get home to their families in time. Ours is a very young meditation centre, and it was not so long ago that our meditations would be rather curtailed around this time due to lack of either numbers or space. On my first year as Sri Chinmoy's student, I found refuge over the winter in the more established meditation centre of Graz, in Austria (where my brother Colm is currently spending his Christmas) rather than face into the spiritual desert. The thought of those times makes me even more grateful for our new city-centre location, where meditations can continue unimpeded over the holiday season.
My family home is located only an hour from Dublin. The rest of the family have gone to visit my grandfather up in Cavan, I would also be going if I'd caught the bus home in time. They tell me the new broadband connection and router is fully installed at home, it sounds too good to be true after all the trouble we've had, but it is. My mother and brother are playing with Google Earth, trying to pick out where we live.
Today, I was doing advertising for Lotus Yoga , Dublin's newest yoga centre; I walked a short distance from the Centre to Dublin's busiest street, plonked my chair down right in the middle of it, sat holding my sign pointing in the direction of the aforementioned yoga centre, meditated and people-watched.
(On reflection, I'm not sure how not smoking has to do with opening up a packet, it's not as if she wanted me to take them out and smoke them for her :) )
Seeing as Christmas is fast approaching, I thought I'd mention this book: Kahil Gilbran's 'Jesus the Son of Man'. The book takes the form of a series of narratives related some years after Jesus' crucifixion - some related by his closest disciples such as Peter, John, Andrew, Mary Magdalene; others by people who encountered Jesus such as Simon the Cyrene, Pontius Pilate, the rich man who asked him what he had to do to get to heaven, a householder who proudly displays the two doors and a table that Jesus made for his house, to passersby who for the rest of their lives felt the impact of a fleeting smile from the Master; others by sworn adversaries such as Annas, Caiaphas or even a mother angry that her son has left his comfortable life to follow him, and still others by Romans and Persians who are discussing his present impact years after his leaving the earth...
What I like about the book is that it does not focus so much on the outer miracles performed during his last three years on earth, but on the greater miracles of love and forgiveness which Jesus embodied in his every speech, smile and gesture, qualities which reverberate in the earth consciousness until this day. This view is also shared by my teacher, Sri Chinmoy , in his many expressions of admiration for the Christ, and in his play, the Son , which he wrote about the Christ's life. Here is a beautiful passage from Gilbran's book, with John as the narrator: In the course of the book, Gilbran supplements the accepted accounts of Christ's life with incidents like these sprung from his heart's identification with that love.
On a day when He and I were alone walking in a field, we were both hungry, and we came to a wild apple tree.There were only two apples hanging on the bough.And He held the trunk of the tree with His arm and shook it, and the two apples fell down.He picked them both up and gave one to me. The other He held in His hand.In my hunger I ate the apple, and I ate it fast.Then I looked at Him and I saw that He still held the other apple in His hand.And He gave it to me saying, 'Eat this also.'And I took the apple, and in my shameless hunger, I ate it.And as we walked on I looked upon His face.But how shall I tell you of what I saw?A night where candles burn in space,A dream beyond our reaching;A noon where all the shepherds are at peace and happy that their flocks are grazing;An eventide, a stillness and a home-coming;Then a sleep and a dream.All these things I saw in His face.He had given me the two apples. And I knew He was hungry even as I was hungry.But I now know that in giving them to me He had been satisfied. He Himself ate of other fruit from another tree.I would tell you more of him, but how shall I?When love becomes vast, love becomes wordless.And when memory is overladen it seeks the silent deep.
I think a good spiritual film could be made out of this book. On my rare visits to the video store, I am struck how little there is by way of films that will leave the viewer spiritually uplifted at the end of it, or at least inspired, and I sometimes wonder at what would be a good thing to make a film about. You could make the film in documentary fashion, sending a camera out to all the first-century places where the different narrators lived to interview them (show the camera too, why not). All the differing accounts might bring home the atmosphere in which the Christ lived and taught, and at the same time, I think, preserve a sense of enigma which coaxes us to search deeper within. One might have to take some licences with the book (one always does); the language used throughout its pages is very poetic and makes for wonderful reading, but it would be nice to intersperse the poetry with "realistic" documentary interviews, all subtitled of course.... Advance preview screenings are available in my head from December 19th.... :)
The entire book is available to read online at kahlil.org ...
