Last January I published a post inspired by a favourite verse from the Bhagavad Gita:
If anyone with love and devotion offers me a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water, I will accept it. Bhagavad Gita 9:26
If you like you can read the post here, but I will be including the poem that made up that post in this one which shares the same topic,
Today’s post was in fact written during my more recent hospital stay as a record of a very nice encounter with my Bhagavad Gita and a nurse. I’ll only make changes to tidy it up a bit and to make it clearer for you, the reader.
A ministering angel, in the guise of a nurse happened to notice my beloved little Bhagavad Gita sitting on my bed-side cupboard as she went about her healing duties. Picking it up, pausing to gaze at the image of the Lord on the cover, she then exclaimed excitedly:
‘You love Krishna!’ She was already opening and closing my book at random, with a rapt expression on her face.
‘I do love Krishna,’ I replied, happy to connect with a fellow devotee.
‘O my God,’ she cried even more excitedly, ‘you even have leaf. She held up one of the small leaves I’d slipped between the pages. It was as if she was making of it an offering, just as I had when first putting it there, in remembrance of that verse I love.
I think there are at least half a dozen such leaves offered at various times over the years.
Gently, reverently, she put the leaf back in its pages, closed the book carefully, and replaced it in the exact same position on the bed-side table.
‘I am very glad you love Krishna,’ she smiled as she tuned to leave and headed to serve the next one in need of healing.
One of the topics I like to explore on YouTube (my ‘break’ is over and I don’t think I’m scrolling quite do much as I was before I took that break) is the lives of hermits; the monastic life as lived by nuns, monks and priests of any and all religious traditions or none.
That’s more than one topic isn’t it? Well, you get the drift. In any case, last night I rediscovered a nice documentary on a monastery in the United States I had already seen but decided to watch it again. Here’s the link.
Courtesy Wikipedia
A monk on the doco talks about The Rule of Benedict. Just as the name suggests this is the rule (of life) written by Saint Benedict of Nursia in the 6th Century to help guide monks and nuns living in monastic communities in all aspects of a shared life dedcated to God.
Benedict had a good insight into such a life (and human nature) and the ‘Rule” is in fact a text containg many instructions and a great deal of advice on monastic life centred around what he termed Ora et Labora – the very essence of the contemplative life in his view.
It’s Latin of course and translates to Pray and Work and is followed by many monasteries in the Christian traditon. Of course, monastic communities in most traditions have similar sts of guidelines or ‘Rules’.
The primary focus and function of monastics is to pray. That’s what they are there for. But Benidict figured that some kind of balance was needed; not only so the monasteries could support themselves but so monks and nuns actually got some physical activity. Hence the equal emphasis on work.
So, the two ideals work together in a way supports a balanced, ordered, harmonious and peaceful community (in theory). Pray and work are intertwined. Even the Latin for pray, Ora is embedded in Labora, the word for work.
We don’t do rules here at the hermitage, not into them at all actually, but I do like this Pray and Work idea very much. It is, after all, what we do too, and why we are here. In fact, I try to approach everything I do as a prayer. It doesn’t always work in the sense that, while prayer and work may be one and the same, I tend to sometimes forget that fact. So having this pray and work principle as a central tenet of my life reminds me to remember that I am actually doing both.
I pray – quite a lot actually. Chanting mantra, reciting set prayers I’ve gathered into my practice over the years or that I’ve written myself. Then there is the prayer that comes from within silence, the contemplation of the texts I study, the things I see, hear, or talk about.
There is the cultivation of ‘good thoughts’ and feelings of compassion. Just sitting, being still and quiet with an open mind. Simply stopping to look at a flower, a tree or another person and sense the beauty. All these and more are prayer.
Which leads us to the ‘Work’ side of the equation. What exactly is my work? First thing to say is, I am a hermit and a monk and my primary job is to pray. If It sounds like a closed system, that’s because it is.
My work includes my studies and practices which are aimed at cultivating those good thoughts and open mind we talked about, and that attempt to ‘create good vibes in the world’. (Which, as I’ve written many times, is best achieved when I am secluded at least a little from the busyness of the world.
Lest you imagine that I am missing out on the physical activity seen by Benedict as essential to balance, let me assure you I do get quite a lot of exercise – more all the time as I recover. It’s my yoga practice, an integral aspect of my prayer and work life.
This blog is a part of my work. Though, to be honest, publishing this blog and engaging with our little community, gives me so much pleasure, joy, and ‘good vibes’, that I really can’t call it ‘work’. Writing and posting does me good!
When it comes to work, it’s not so much about what you do (we gotta do what we gotta do), but more about how you approach that work.
What transforms work into prayer is doing it for the right reasons. But who’s to say what are ‘right reasons’? Well that’s easy: you. Or me. Or any other individual deciding for themselves and for themselves alone.
As I said my work – and prayer – is to try to create good vibes in the world. I don’t always succeed but I think it really is the effort and intention that is most important. And not being attached to the outcomes. As in: ‘Aren’t I so holy and virtuous praying for the world all the time’. Hardly.
No. Create the vibe, let it go, and let it do its thing.
I’ve been biting my nails lately. A lot. At least that’s the thought that occured to me just now as I sat hunched over chewing on my right thumbnail.
Truth be told, there isn’t a time I remember when I didn’t chew my fingernails and pick at my toe nails. When I was a child my mother would coat my fingernails with an allegedly foul tasting liquid meant to curb my appetite for fingernail.
Alas, I came to like the taste so much that it had the opposite effect. Rather than put me off biting and chewing, this strategy simply served to make me want more.
Thinking back on it now, that liquid was likely some kind of poison. Not much health and safety oversight in those days. But I’m still here – and still biting my nails.
Why? It is actually a very good question. I know it’s very often looked upon as being a ‘bad habit’. Especially if youv’e left childhood behind and are still chewing. To me nail biting has been a response to anxiety, worry, fear and uncertainty.
Maybe as children we find comfort in biting nails at those times of trouble, and it doesn’t take long for the habit to become ingrained and we have turned into nail biting adults – perhaps still finding the same comfort.
Actually, it does seem to me to be a habit I would like to leave behind: nails made deformed, ragged, and unsightly from a lifetime of chewing.
‘Stop biting into yourself’, my mother would constantly remind me. ‘Stop chewing on yourself.’
Maybe it’s a self esteem thing, a means of self harm in a sense: ‘I don’t feel good about myself, so if I start eating bits of this ugly thing, I might eventually erase myself completely.’
Mmm. Perhaps. It’s a clue. Headed in the right direction, But what if it’s not an attempt to erase ‘this ugly thing’, the physical body, the thing we mistake for ‘me’ and with which we engage with the world?
What if, instead, it is some kind of misguided or unconscious way we try to dig deeper inside of ourselves? Could it be an attempt to get past the physical and right to the core of the ‘real’ me? To our ‘inner’ Self?
After all, I’ve often discovered myself happily chewing nails while thinking hard, deep in reverie, reading intently, or trying to get ‘to the root’ of something. Sound familiar?
Mind you, I’m not saying now that chewing nails is a ‘good habit.’ As a strategy to strip away the physical body in order to get to the real me deep down somewhere there inside, it hasn’t proven particularly effective.
Perhaps there will come a day when I no longer chew my nails. Maybe there will be time when my other more legitimate self enquiry practice will allow me to access that inner Self, when I will finally realise my true nature and discover who I truly am.
First step on this path is to remember that there is no ‘good or bad’, no ‘one day’, no ‘future time’. There’s only what is and there is only the eternal now.
The other advice to give myself as I end this post is – when trying to change a behaviour – is don’t fight against or resist the behaviour itself. Instead I need to propose viable alternatives.
No posts for a while. There isn’t one today either actually. I simply felt the need to reach out, connect, write.
Blogging requires a continually refilling reservoir of ideas. And it is then necessary to reflect on those ideas (or at least one of them at a time) and then to commit them to paper – or screen.
And despite my, at times desperate longing to actually write a blog post and to share it here, the fact is that no ideas, and not a lot of energy and mental space to reflect and write have made available to me.
There’s the problem right there isn’t it: ‘at times desperate longing? Talk about attachment to outcomes, to a clinging desire for results. So much for my claim to not being ‘goal oriented’. Hardly.
And it’s not as if I’ve not had a lot of other stuff going on in my life. While I mostly manage to carry on with my spiritual practices and routines, it seems that along with physiotherapy exercises daily, medical appointments, and the rest, I haven’t been left with much physical, mental, or creative energies left over for much else.
But, really, it’s the attachment and clinging that’s the real bugbear. The ‘reasons’ for not writing and posting may well be good and true, but still I get frustrated, not being able to jot down and send my notes out into the world.
So, just be. Don’t worry about it. That would seem to be the sensible advice.
And I am trying to take that advice – thank you. Be patient. Be present. Be quiet – keep silence. Be still and listen.
That’s all there is to it really. Ideas and energies are there. Or do I mean here?
In the High Holy Lands Where Magic Sometimes Happens
For the last while (long while really. Actually many years), I have dreamed a few times a month, sometimes more, that I am in, about to arrive in, or just about to leave Rishikesh in India.
Rishikesh is a small town straddling the Ganges River, and nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas. For millennia it has been considered a sacred place. Its history replete with stories of divine beings, ancient sages and saints, not to mention its status as a major pilgrimage destination for at least a thousand years and the town becoming ever more popular in recent years for pilgrims and ordinary pleasure seeking tourists from around the world.
This isn’t me but it could be
I last visited Rishikesh in 2016-17 (having previously spent time there in 2006) when my partner hermit and I stayed for several months. I associate that stay with the strengthening and deepening of my spiritual practice as well as the gaining of a kind of clarity in terms of my outlook on the world particularly on the spiritual path that had been calling to me – as it does still.
Putting aside health issues that hinder our mobility, I think it’s fair to say that my attachment to Rishikesh and my longing to return have more or less faded away almost completely over recent years.
Rishikesh has always been a busy, crowded place with the associated traffic, noise, pollution, and inflated prices. Rampant commercialism has long threatened the town’s ‘spiritual ‘ or ‘sacred’ vibe. These days it is the fourth most visited place in India for overseas travellers so it’s likely to be more busy, choked with traffic, noisy, more commercial and material focused than ever, with the associated degradation of its appeal for some.
But, even if I were also able to put all this aside, I think the core of the letting go of my longing for Rishikesh has more to do with the turning inward that has accompanied our eventual recognition of our calling to the hermit life with its quiet, secluded, contemplative lifestyle (or the aspiration for that life).
So, why the dreams? Why so often? Well, as I’ve mentioned, Rishikesh has played a significant role in my life. And despite the dropping away of those longings and attachment, I’m not saying going there again is totally out of the realm of possibility, but it no longer has that ‘I’m home’ kind of feeling. No longer has that magnetic attraction for me.
Now, here’s the missing information about these dreams I’ve neglected to mention thus far: Not one of the dreams has been set in the ‘real’ Rishikesh; never have they been ‘geographically correct’ for wont of better description.
Sometimes the dream town is nothing more than a small clump of houses sitting on a hill or in a field with a dirt track passing by.
Other times it is a sizeable town with temples, streets, cafes and shops masquerading as an Indian town. Sometimes it’s simply a story taking place inside a shop or restaurant that, in the dream, I know is in Rishikesh though not in the terrestrial town. There have been dreams in which the town is more like a city with highrise buildings, multi-lane roadways, and all the rest.
The most recent dream had me in a bus headed for another bus connection to Rishikesh. Worried about missing the connection, I was told that the Rishikesh bus wasn’t due ‘for weeks’.
Many and varied settings all standing in for the ‘real’ Rishikesh. But I don’t think I need Carl Jung to tell me the meaning of these dreams. All of them are my internal sacred or significant ‘Rishikesh’. It’s as if the actual geographic location in India called Rishikesh is the illusion and these dreams are the reality for me. All emanating from the cave in my heart
My inner or true Self, you might say, telling me that my being concerned with my specific geographical location is missing the point. A message for me that I am always in Rishikesh, that I am always in sacred space and with saints and sages, and that the Divine is everything and everywhere.
Physiotherapy, formal exercises as well as the myriad of day-to-day activities required to maintain a physical body, is prescribed as the way forward for people like me who have experienced a stroke.
Quite right too. Exercises and activities to build and strengthen muscle to help recover mobility; to repair broken – and develop new – brain pathways to help recover dexterity and increase both micro and macro motor functioning.
But what of psychotherapy? Not the talking, talking and more talking kind that aims to uncover past traumas, root out the cause of current psychological and emotional issues in an attempt to ‘fix’ you. While talking can be hugely helpful, (I mean it. Talking to a trusted friend, relative or professional, provides not only emotional support, but can give you new perspectives and fresh insights into even the most intractable issues).
What I’m getting at here is more about therapy for the complete psyche: the emotions and the mind and including the spirit or soul.
It is about the rebuilding of confidence – the ‘I am able’ attitude – and it is about filling the void to evolve a meaningful life.
The refuge that each day I commit to take in the divine will of the universe is where this care of the psyche -the inner me, if you like – begins.
Pause for reflection #1: If I take refuge in the will of that which is on the face of it ‘a higher power’ than my own, then why the big efforts at ‘filling the void’. Sounds like I’m resisting that divine will, or somehow refusing to acknowledge the reality of my life as it is.
Of course the ‘making of effort’ and doing our bit is absolutely vital and necessary. So I pray, I meditate, I read, I sit quietly, I create what and when I can. And I make blog notes like this and they also count.
But it doesn’t feel enough. It’s like I’m trying too hard to get to some point I’ve actually acknowledged I’m already at: in the shelter of the will of the universe.
I don’t like to say it, but I’m bored, and I think it is the constant ‘trying’ that is the big obstacle to having a more rounded and holistic approach and attitude to living here and now with life as it actually is for me at this moment.
‘Trying’ suggests the going outside of the present. Making huge straining efforts to make things other than they are. Hardly living in the moment is it?
There are long periods when I find myself sitting with ‘nothing to do’ (I cant read, write, create and pray all the time as in 24/7 can I?)
Pause for reflection #2: Why not? You may very well be asking, as indeed I am asking myself right now. Perhaps these spaces and times are the will of the Divine specificallydesigned for me to learn to sit in silence and to simply be. Maybe they offer spaces and times for me to be quiet; opportunities to simply be open to receive, lessons in presence.
Not only that, perhaps they are healing times when all the fragments of my psyche can settle back into their rightful place.
So, the problem is the solution, is what I seem to be saying here. The times I am describing here and which I often face and experience with dread, are precisely gifts of grace granted to me to help me heal, and teach me to sit in silence learning to listen.
Yes, keeping silent except when and how it is the divine will of the universe might be quite nice.
‘I must be back in the blog writing mode, I’m really hanging out for a new topic.’ I blurted out to my partner hermit just now.
Actually, it was desperate. What I actually said was ‘I’m really desperate‘ for a new topic. I quickly modified it to anxious then again to keen, in an attempt to keep the sound of attachment out of my voice. Finally, in these notes, it’s morphed into ‘hanging out’ which is obviously no better at all.
Her reply needs no disclaimer, no modification: ‘The answer comes from the silence,’ she said quietly.
I’ve actually had a relatively quiet – even silent – day: resting in recovery, laying on my bed, sometimes sleeping, sometimes simply following my breath.
Mind wandering, of course, that’s what minds do after all. But overall at least a semblance of silence seemed to be the order of the day.
Even then, after all that silence, quiet, rest and mostly a not overly busy mind, the best I can come up with is ‘I’m desperate’?
As in, I’m really hanging out; really anxious; really keen. As in, I”m not really listening – not at all silent. In fact, so full of desire, clinging and attachment for a new blog topic was I, that actually noticing one come out of the ‘silence’ would likely take a miracle.
All day – hours – I lie still. As I said, only sometimes sleeping, the rest of those several hours watching my breath, attempting just to be in silence and in the stillness.
So is it me? Am I missing something? An answer has come (here I am making notes for a new blog post), but what’s this ‘silence’ business from where answers apparently come all about?
Clearly, silence does not always seem to require an absolute, complete, and total absence of noise, voice, words, thoughts, if it is indeed the source of ‘answers’.
Maybe silence itself produced an apparent state of attachment to a new blog idea as a kind of ruse or trick to have my Self fool myself into seeing the foolishness of attachment as well as showing me how silence really works – in the real world.
Silence is not some sort of rarified mystical state that we have to enter through rigorous spiritual practices. It is actually a condition that emerges from everyday moments, ‘random’ thoughts, or comments made seemingly without thought or any apparent significance or meaning. Actually silence lives everywhere, is in everything and is all the time.
Right at the end of our last post, I mentioned – in an almost off-handed manner – that the hermitage has moved. Better to say the hermits were lead by the ever not so subtle universe to leave our refuge of a year for the safety and seclusion of another abode a few hundred metres away.
Why? Why did the hermits have to move? Well here’s the thing, the owner of that space that had graced us with its protection for that year decided to revive his on and off again campaign to sell the property. And with great success too: very soon there was a buyer very keen to move in ASAP
So, the search was on for a new abode to house the hermits. Cutting a long story short, and leaving out a multiplicity of praises, gratitude, and details, here we are.
Now you know why we moved into a new hermitage. Or do you? You have a few of the facts about how the process of us moving actually manifested in the material world, but as to proper answers to the why questions? You’ll agree that it’s all a bit vague, mundane, and that I haven’t given any answers to why at all.
That’s because I don’t know either; no idea at all.
It’s true, there were some unusual obstacles and pressures – but aren’t there always for everyone as they negotiate and try to manage their lives in the world?
And I could add that the timing could have been better – see above rhetorical question for my response to this one.
No. Like so much (actually everything really) that happens in the on-going, non-stop re creation of the physical world (constant flux, change,seeming chaos, conflicts, setbacks, advances, ups and downs) as it flows along in its own way at its own pace, I have to admit, its a mystery to be unravelled. Or not: there are some who would dare to label this constant re creation, God’s will.
So, we can ask why here? Why now? What’s the lesson to be learned from the move to the new hermitage.
Or we could just tell ourselves that that’s just the way the Cosmos does things. By any standards it’s been a no hitches, no hassles, change of address. But let’s not get distracted by dualities: It is what it is, as I like to say.
And there’s no good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
If my life was ruled by ‘clock’ time (which generally speaking it is in spite of my many protests and despite my continuing meditation and other practices designed to assist in developing a sense of being fully present thereby enabling one to truly live in the here and now), I would be telling you now that there’s been a long gap between posts and that this has occurred because two and A half months ago I had a stroke and I didn’t leave the hospital untill less than a fortnight ago.
But there’s been no ‘gap’, the posts will carry on flowing along (or not) of their own accord; and while it is true that my brain and heart colluded in an action that has for now resulted in some damage to other bits of my body, the simple reality is that life has gone on doing what life does, and I AM still here, with perhaps a little more of a clue to the ‘how to live in the here and now’ as well as the whole ‘I AM THAT I AM and not the body’ mysteries.
Obviously, I’m not into swapping ‘You think your hospital stay was bad? Well let me tell you … .’ stories. Now I think about it, there are quite a few of the good, uplifting, kindness and compassion, decency and respect variety a couple of which I might write about if they decide they want to be shared.
But for now (when else is there?) I am here (where else is there?) trying to flow in the life I share with my partner hermit in our new (for us) hermitage just over the other side of the village Main Road.
What I want to talk about today, what I’d like to share, isn’t new. By that I mean the ideas are well known in the world – and they’ve even occured to me from time to time.
But, today, the thought seems new. Clearer and more obvious somehow. Perhaps when a little bit of knowledge finally ‘sinks in’, and is fully realised for what it is, then maybe that’s the beginnings of wisdom. Or an enlightenment. Perhaps we can say simply that a profound insight was had.
The thoughts I’m talking about concern prayer. More specifically the thoughts were prompted by my experience this morning chanting mantra – in this case, the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, my mainstay you might call it; My main focus of devotion and meditation.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
As so often happens, as I chanted today, I found myself thinking other thoughts, following mental stories invented as they went. I carried on chanting, but I was thinking other stuff at the same time.
I stopped the mental recitation of the mantra so I could focus on the emerging thoughts.
Yes, it’s true I was, chanting but it was merely at ‘lip level’ as I’ve heard it described. My intention may well have been to focus my full attention on the words of the mantra, on my means of devotion, and the repeating of God’s names. But clearly my mind had other plans as it wandered and skipped around on other paths.
I guess it’s a problem for anyone who prays in whatever form the prayer takes; it’s very easy to be distracted my experience tells me. I’ve read that people may have chanted a mantra for decades – twenty or more years – and feel that they still can’t ‘get it’, that while the intention is there and strong, they just can’t seem to fully immerse themselves in the mantra. Nothing of it reaches the heart. It’s a lonely feeling, I know.
They, like me quite often, will feel frustrated, empty, and as if their devotion is not devotion at all but simply a mouthing of supposedly holy words. Just an exercise, another spiritual practice to simply get through. Some, give up.
That’s why I stopped chanting this morning: I felt the insight coming on. That new revelation that’s hardly new at all.
Here it is then, the insight. If I become aware that my mind is straying and the mantra is being recited rote fashion, then so long as I gently bring my attention back to the words of the mantra, then in fact, all is well.
My teacher, Swami Tadatmananda has said when speaking about meditation, that the very act of bringing the mind, our attention back to the object of meditation when we notice it’s wanderings, is in itself an integral component of the meditation itself.
So, if I’m chanting and my mind begins to jump about, and I notice those mental antics and bring my focus back to the words of the mantra, then in truth, in the reality of the thing, I’ve actually not ceased my chanting at all. There hasn’t been any interruption.
As I said, it’s not a new idea; it’s not my own idea. But it feels new, it feels as if it’s an idea meant for me.
Intention, effort, resolve, persistence (or is it perseverance?) – and love. The only other necessity is that I continue chanting, both in that moment of supposed interruption and generally in my life.
In other words, if it feels like I’m only mouthing words that aren’t reaching my heart, don’t worry.
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 