Notes from the Hermit's Cave

Musings on one Hermit's life & world

Suffer the Little Children

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Notes from the Hermit's Cave

A sculpture of a young child, on a busy street corner in the heart of downtown Sydney. I like many thousands of others, have passed it by many times only giving passing thought to the origins, meaning, or significance of the statue itself.

Until a couple of days ago that is.

As a subject for contemplation and for a photograph, it is a powerful image: striking in its presence. Once one actually stops to look and reflect that is.

After several minutes of standing with the statue and asking myself who is it? What does it mean? (there is no plaque or sign to steer the way), I made this photo and I moved on.

Only later, at home, did I notice the little plant growing through the pavement in the corner. And zooming in on the plant I saw the little moth sitting on a leaf.

I decided to research online, see if I could learn more about this site. The sculpture is called Youngster and was created by artist Caroline Rothwell. It seeks to highlight the plight of refugees, in particular children.

There isn’t much online, but you can read a media article which gives some more insight into the sculpture here.

That article focuses mainly on the sudden appearance of a plaque at the site. Presumebly placed by a citizen with strong feelings on the subject, the plaque wasn’t ‘official’, so was later removed.

Actually, the text on this plaque pretty much sums up my own strongly held and often expressed feelings. Though, these days as a contemplative monk and hermit, I try hard to not have opinions, or make judgements on the way in which things in the material world play out.

But, obviously I am still human, and this is only one of so many issues that cause me distress, sadness, even rage. Actually, rage is a big one. But then, how could anyone of goodwill not be outraged? It is the very reason I am struggling hard to get this post down, to somehow make it all clear.

You see, at the same time as being so affected on the human heart level, I am very aware at the same time that it is the conditioning of material nature that leads to the very obvious fact that life is suffering.

Eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. Every single activity of every living being is motivated by one or more of these activities or a desire for their fullfillment. They are the basic drives that rule all life.

So what to do? As I’ve said (probably many times) I am not a warrior – I used to be but not now. However I am just like every other life form motivated by conditioning, either from my experiences in this life, or by that conditioning inherent in all material nature.

To a great extent I have retreated from the world. Not in order to escape or so I can ignore the suffering. I haven’t abandoned the world.

In fact the exact opposite is true: I have withdrawn, become a hermit monk, precisely so that I might be able to dedicate every ounce of my energy, my heart, my love, to prayer; to creating and maintaining a quiet and contemplative silence.

My prayer is not of the asking or begging kind, beseeching some invisible ‘god’ to give me something. Instead, I attempt to be still (never ever easy); to free and open my mind so that I may be more receptive to the Divine, to the will of the Universe; and to become more mindful in every activity and moment.

In this way I am aspiring to realize fully my oneness with all life. All life. I want to become fully awake to the fact that everything is Self. That there is nothing else.

And of course Self includes this child and all she symbolizes; it includes that little green plant growing through the pavement in the corner; and it includes the little moth perched on one of its leaves.

As well, my prayer, my aspiration for full self realization and union includes all those who are warriors, those whose activism and engagement with the material or physical world is every day alleviating and attempting to alleviate suffering and its causes in whatever form it takes on this planet we all share.

I am extremely flawed: I’d like to tell you I am always full of love and light, but there is much of darkness in me still to be rid of. So, all I’ve shared with you till now are still only aspirations and I have far to go. Nobody can say if I will ever reach that full realisation. In the meantime I intend to keep doing what I can to participate in the work of change.

Peace and love

Living the Life

Posted on June 3, 2022 by Notes from the Hermit's Cave

Welcome to another musing from the hermits’ cave. It’s been a while hasn’t it?

Mind you, I’ve been busy: settling into the new hermitage here in the desert. Actually, it’s been cloudy since we arrived, and raining sometimes. It’s as if the Subtropics have followed us here, except that it’s been freezing.

And I’ve been busy colouring in as well. Not as in filling in a picture book designed for colouring, but in making my own patterns and shapes with the one aspiration of making colour happen.

Japanese calligraphy masters will tell you that God is in the ink, or in my case in the pigment of the colour pencils I use. I draw designs, sometimes complex, sometimes simple, then fill the spaces with colour. Sometimes just one or two, sometimes multiple colours.

Why? Well, the simple answer is because I like doing it. I like to see colour covering the page, seeing it slowly fill that empty space. I’m not good at ‘drawing’ and painting in the traditional sense, but one thing I can do is make colour. So I do.

And it’s a sacred act: God is in the ink remember? It’s the making of beauty. And that is a holy act. There’s that aphorism isn’t there? It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness?

Or, I could say that it’s better to make colour and patterns than it is to be swamped by the darkness.

There’s a Bhagavad Gita verse I like that I came across again the other day:

If one’s thoughts are fully absorbed in the Absolute all his [sic] spiritual offerings also become a part of that same Absolute
Bhagavad Gita 4:24

In other words, all our actions – and we never cease from activity while we dwell in a material body – are not only prayers or offerings to that Absolute (or you can say to God, to beauty, to art, to love, to the universe, to life. Or you don’t have to name it at all. None of the names and forms are relevant) but in fact become that Absolute.

I am a hermit pilgrim, living a contemplative life devoted to the Absolute we just talked about. I have little to offer, but I offer all that I am. And with my photographs, and with my ‘colouring in’, I try to create a little bit of the sacred, a lit bit of colour and beauty to keep us all away from the darkness.

Peace and love

You Say You Want a Revolution, Well You Know …

Posted on May 1, 2022 by Notes from the Hermit's Cave

Welcome friends to another post

I’m actually scheduling this one to publish sometime in the future. The reason is that, as I reread it now, I see I’ve used ideas, and even some sentences here that appear in a couple of recent posts. The thing is, I think this is a post worth reading, so I’m kind of sneaking it in via a touch of time travel. In any case, please enjoy, and by the way, thank you for sticking with me for this long (however long this is).

It was a revolutionary idea for its time, the early 19th Century. Come to think of it, it still is. A reform minded Christian minister, William Ellery Channing proposed that the proper goal for each of us human beings is perfection.

Or rather, the goal should be a realisation of the perfection that is already our true natural state, our true selves, which we’ve forgotten as we have got on with the rarely easy business of living in a material world. You see? I did say it was a revolutionary idea.

After all, he wasn’t talking about the obsessive perfectionism that often curses so many of us anxious types. Or the myths propogated by mass media of what it means to be ‘perfect’. No, he was proposing a complete and thorough shift in the prevailing thinking about the nature of humans, and in reality, of all life.

Anyway, he posed the question:

Do you ask in what this perfection consists?

He then proceeded to answer his own rhetorical question:

I answer: in knowledge, in love, and in activity

When I came across this little vignette in an unrelated book I’ve recently finished reading, I was a little bit mind-blown. Channing’s formula is more or less identical to that presented over millennia in a number of the world’s religious or spiritual traditions.

For example in the tradition I am studying these last years, Sanātana Dharma, this little formula constitutes pretty much the foundation for any kind of spiritual growth. It could be said that in a real sense it is the very basis of all Yoga:

Jnana Yoga (knowledge, study, includes meditation, contemplative practices and so on), Bhakti Yoga (Divine Love. In the sense that love is always divine) and Karma Yoga (often called the Yoga of action. It basically includes everything we do in the physical world. The Karma bit is about our actions becoming selfless).

In other words, just sitting there on their own these three Yogas offer a pretty succinct answer to the question many of us ask ourselves constantly: How can I live a good life?

We pursue knowledge for many reasons: it may be a reluctant pursuit as we sit through the interminable years of high school; or later as we head to university or college to train for a career that we hope will support us. The thirst for knowledge might arise when we come upon a topic or an area of interest and fascination that we just have to learn more about.

Just as with the infinity of knowledge, love comes in equally infinite guises. Unlike knowledge, however, I don’t think there are ‘reasons’ we can give for love. Love is love; it is its own reward (and it’s own torture), it just is what it is. Divine is as good a word as any. Any love, all love, is love for all and for everything.

And then there is the kind of knowledge we pursue as we try to answer what I like to call the Who am I? questions. Things such as: What’s the meaning of life? Where am I from? Where am I going? Is this all there is? Oh, and of course the real biggie: Who am I?

Now, at the risk of having to take the prize for the most obvious statement ever made, let me make the point that all living things have to take action all the time if they are to remain alive. So obvious that I’m even having to take several different actions in order to tell you this. So, you might well ask, what’s the big deal? What’s Channing and all the others through the ages getting at? What activity?

Well, I think Channing was getting at the notion that every action we take needs to be informed by knowledge and love. But, what knowledge? Well, clearly we are caught in a tsunami of information much of which goes to making ‘fake’ knowledge, propaganda, deceptive advertising, biased education, and the rest.

In other words how often do we see knowledge not used correctly? And, how often is humanity’s use of knowledge – our actions – informed by love? Now we can begin to realise how revolutionary this idea is, and always has been.

I think that’s why the Sanātana Dharma teachings and world view embody the concept Bhakti, or divine love. As I noted, all love is divine. These teachings tell us that all action is to be undertaken with love, without attachment to rewards or outcomes, and dedicated to the welfare of all life.

Channing had the same idea: for him all life is pure and perfect already. And of course it follows I think that all actions we take have the potential to be informed by a wisdom gained from proper use of knowledge, and to be informed by love, whether it’s for self, for other people, other animals, Earth herself.

So, pretty revolutionary stuff eh? I guess a lot of us have heard that famous quote from Gandhi:

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Well, here’s the freaky bit. Just now as I looked up the quote to make sure I got it right, I discovered that he never actually said those words. Not in that form anyway. Here’s what he actually did say. It’s a long quote but I think it’s an interesting note to finish on. I think for me it clarifies many of the questions this little discussion has raised in my own mind, as it will for you I hope.

Gandhiji at his spinning wheel (thank you Wikimedia Commons)

Knowledge; Love; Activity

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man [sic] changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.
Mohandas Gandhi

Peace from me to you

When a Day Off Isn’t a Day Off

Posted on April 20, 2022 by Notes from the Hermit's Cave

Namaste and welcome

You know by now that I study the Bhagavad Gita. I’ve been at it a few years now, and it gives me a great deal of joy and comfort, not to mention the help it is to me as I struggle to understand Self and life, the Universe and everything (to borrow a well-worn phrase).

Yes, I love this book which is the story of a warrior king and his charioteer getting ready for battle. Arjuna, the warrior, is us. Or rather he is our ego, our lower self, the us that lives as a material entity in the material world.

The charioteer is actually Krishna, and he represents our Higher Self, the Self that is what some people call God, or the Divine, spirit, universal consciousness. In other words, my Higher self is having a conversation with my lower self as I battle or struggle with living in the material world.

Anyway, it’s enough to say that I am very fond of this book, the lessons it holds, the guidance I sometimes glean from it. And I try to spend time with it as often as I can. Daily mostly, but not always. I have to admit that sometimes I just want to give it a break, leave the words alone, just be with Self for a bit.

Actually, there is a verse that I wrote down long ago that does in fact sanction the student (that’s me) to take a break.

Forgoing all religious injunctions, take exclusive refuge in me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear
Bhagavad Gita Ch 18:66

This is Krishna speaking, giving instructions to Arjuna. Essentially it’s the higher Self telling our little selves to ignore outside rules, regulations and all that, and rely instead on what comes from within the Self; in other words, what our hearts tell us.

Now, he’s not saying ignore laws of the world, that’s not what this story is about. He’s telling Arjuna, look, don’t take notice so much of what the religious leaders tell you, or what instructions you read in holy books.

Then, after more or less consistent study over years, I came across yet another verse quite recently that confirms this one, but that hadn’t ever spoken to me before:

When your mind is fixed and unmoved and not confused by scriptural injunctions you shall attain yogic samadhi
Bhagavad Gita Ch 2:53

This verse actually says: don’t confuse yourself with stuff you read in the scriptures; instead keep your mind fixed and unmoved by the outside world. And if you do that, you will achieve that level of peace, self-realisation, and happiness, that you’re after.

So, do we have here a book of scripture that is in fact telling me not to take any notice of what it says in that book? That doesn’t sound very likely does it? No, I think what both these verses are getting at is this: The first and primary thing to do if you want to achieve happiness, peace, self-realisation, is focus inwards, on the Self.

Or God, or spirit, the Universe. We all call it by different names. But the point being made is that we aren’t going to find all the answers only in a book, or in the instructions from ‘religious’ leaders; overdoing the books or the slavish following of teachers only causes us (sorry I mean me) confusion.

Higher Self here (in the guise of Krishna, who is in the guise of a charioteer) is advising us to look to our Selves, not to the words of others to reach union with that Self. At least, that’s how I’ve chosen to interpret it.

What’s interesting here is that these are two of the very few verses for which I haven’t looked at commentaries or interpretations by other people. What I’ve done in other words, is take the advice given in these verses and looked inwards.

I don’t mean to suggest that I use these verses as ‘have a day off’ cards; most likely the contrary is true. On days when I don’t look at the Bhagavad Gita, I like to think I spend more time ‘just sitting’, perhaps chanting mantra, and contemplating.

Of course it doesn’t always work out like that naturally. But, at least on those occasions there is the heart and mind space available for a more direct communication or connection with Self. With that part of me that is one with all.

Peace and love