In my last post, I spent some time contemplating a question:
If I’m actually praying a prayer, how could it even occur to me that I might in fact not be praying, but instead simply be reading the words of the prayer? (substitute here ‘reciting the words of the prayer in rote fashion’)
Well, for today’s post I have a poetic offering which I composed several days ago. It’s actually words of my own built around – embracing even – an already existing prayer: the Mahā-mantra, which is better known as the Hare Krishna mantra.
While making notes for that post, my mind at one point drifted to that poem. So, after finally publishing the post, I reread the poem a few times.
It struck me that, rather than creating a simple poem, I had instead composed another and distinct prayer of my own, which incorporates the Mantra. That was a revelation to me.
It’s a poem, no a prayer, of gratitude. And of praise also. It has a structure and a cadence that has me sensing that it is a prayer to be prayed, and not simply a poem to be read as words on a page – or screen.
It is with that gratitude and with love that I humbly offer these words – this prayer – to you.
TAKE THE LORD’S NAMES
‘Going to chant for a while’. Hare Krishna A refrain often heard Hare Krishna Here in this place Krishna Krishna In this hermitage Hare Hare In this place of abode of hermits Hare Rama In this paradise for hermits Hare Rama In this place of refuge Rama Rama In this safe haven Hare Hare Where we servants serve Hare Krishna
Thanks to inspiration from my partner hermit, I’ve once again begun reading Bhagavad Gita from the beginning. The quoted verse came up this morning as I continued through chapter 2.
Setting the scene, the Bhagavad Gita is a conversation between Krishna (God) and Arjuna, a famous warrior who’s leading the army of the ‘good guys’. The context is actually a metaphor for the battle that goes on constantly between what some call the Higher Self (represented by Krishna of course), and our lower selves, our ego, mind, and the rest of the worldly us (represented by the very worldly Arjuna).
Knowing that, sometimes a verse will jump out at me as being in some direct way related to me. This verse, this morning seemed spookily all knowing about my mood of just slightly earlier.
Before we move on, I should point out that Arjuna has just realised that if the battle goes ahead, he’s going to have to kill many relatives and friends, teachers, and others he respects. And he’s just decided he’s not going to do it and sits down depressed and dejected on his chariot.
Now while I personally applaud this decision (he even says it might be better if he went off into the forest and lived the life of a wandering monk rather than be in this battle), I have to remind myself that it’s not for real, it’s a metaphor for the battle between our two selves.
Krishna says to Arjuna that you’re going to look really bad if you don’t fight the fight to uphold the Truth as you know it. Lesson number one when studying the Gita: don’t sweat the context!
Anyway, to our current story.
I’d just finished my breakfast cup of tea, and I knew it was time to ‘get on with the day’ as the saying goes. Today, though, Tamas** was strong. Which left me feeling, I don’t really want to get on with the day.
Instead I felt I wanted to not get on with anything; I wanted to lie down and sleep, and not think about anything, or do anything else either!
This picture is called Lunchtime Sleeper but it’s how I felt after breakfast this morning!
Mind you, not in the ’empty your mind of random thoughts, relax the body, realise the Divine’ kind of mood. No, more like ‘lay down, block out everything, blank the mind, sleep.’ Blank as it blot out!
Then, the famous second thought kicks in: No, I said to myself. I will not allow Tamas to take control. So, I got up, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and got ready to begin my practice.
I guess you could say that Tamas finds it easy to take control when one’s mind is in enemy mode as I like to call it (somewhere else in the Gita, Krishna says the mind can be our friend or our enemy).
My mind in particular doesn’t usually need a lot of help to disparage me, put me down. Getting me to question my own capabilities is one of its favourite activities – sometimes.
And it’s exactly right, perhaps I should be questioning myself: If I allow Tamas (mind and ego etc) to have free rein, the pain and the shame is all I feel. Well, perhaps not all, and not always, but still, it’s not a good thing.
So, what’s going on now? I’ve been reading Bhagavad Gita, and now I’m making these notes. Tamas is on the run and my mind is being ever so friendly.
**Tamas is that aspect of our (human) nature that has us leaning towards lethargy, laziness, that ‘I can’t be bothered’ feeling, and excess sleep, and all the other slothful stuff. Blotting out, as I termed it earlier.
In November last year I published a post on this blog that sought to answer the question, Why do I pray? In that post I said that this question is one of the big ‘Who am I’, Self-Enquiry questions.
I also claimed in that post that it was (is) a core aspiration of mine that I make prayer a ‘whole of life activity’. To quote me from that post:
You see, I want to pray, and make my whole life a prayer. A prayer of praise and devotion; a prayer of gratitude and loving; and a prayer of service to all beings .
Anyway, moving along to today’s post.
That question, why do I pray, is one I ask myself quite often. It’s not a one time enquiry you can tick off and move on from. The contemplation of why pray is an ongoing and evolving thing.
A couple of days ago, as I once again reflected on this particular question, it occured to me that perhaps it wasn’t the only one I needed to be asking myself if I am to think about my prayer life in any depth. Actually, the same could be said for pretty much anything one is trying to find answers to.
Indeed, many writers – particularly story tellers and journalists – will be aware of the series of questions often used to get to the truth of something:
Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?
Commonly refered to as the ‘The Five W Questions’ (although there is that H in the mix leading to some calling them the WH Questions), these questions asked correctly and thoughtfully, will help to ensure a comprehensive and complete answer to any enquiry.
The next thought popping in suggested that it might be a great idea to apply the W Questions (including the H) to me and my prayer life.
At first I thought it seemed like a neat challenge, a kind of intellectual exercise that would be interesting. Then, though, after thinking about it some more, I realised that contrary to being just some mental challenge, asking myself these questions in relation to my prayer life, might actually be essential.
Especially if I am to some day reach fulfillment of my aspiration to make of my whole life a prayer. It’s the only way, I reasoned, that I would be able to get complete picture of the state of my prayer life.
Of course I have to wonder if it is indeed possible to ever get a ‘complete picture’ of a phenomenon such as an individual’s prayer life. Still, let’s just plunge in, see where it goes, what happens, how it works.
Who
There are actually two ‘who’ questions that I’d like to try to answer, both essential to our enquiry:
Who is it that’s praying? And Who do I pray to?
The answer to the first question is obvious: it’s me doing the praying. But, which me exactly? Not the me who is the true Self, the Absolute Reality. The reason why will become clear as we go along.
No, the me doing the praying is what we might call the body mind complex, the me that lives in the material world as a material being. The impulse to pray, what to pray, who to pray to and all the rest arises in the mind.
Mind you, I along with so many others I’m sure, like to say that I pray with and from my heart, my spiritual heart. But then I do also know that emotions originate as thoughts in the mind. Of course that does not lessen the significance of such emotions and the prayers, love, or devotion that follows.
Now, who do I pray to? I know it’s going to sound a bit odd, flippant and even silly, but as I think about it, I realise that I do in fact pray to everyone and to everything.
Which is to say, my prayers are directed to that invisible ‘something’ that pervades and permeates – and actually is – everything that exists. You could say that I pray to existence itself. There is nothing or nobody else.
Of course it’s not exactly an easy thing to get a handle on praying to ‘everything and everybody’. I mean, where does one direct their attention? Who or what does one address or speak to? The answer is a lot more straightforward than you might think at first.
Because my prayers are to that amorphous ‘everything and everybody’ it’s quite easy to select one or more resonating and meaningful somethings or somebodys as the objects of my prayer.
There are many spiritual or religious traditions in the world, all with their preferred names and forms of the Divine (or Existence as I named it earlier). Each of these manifestations of the Divine has its own characteristics, their own place in the Universe. They each play their own roles in the cosmic order.
As such there are more or less an infinite number of choices for me to have as foci for my prayer life. I will try to share with you a few of my personal pantheon.
Om: The Essence of Brahman, Absolute Reality
The Existence I’ve mentioned a couple of times is named by some Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, the everything and everybody that I was talking about.
So, I might sometimes pray to Brahman. Mainly it’s an aspirational prayer as I seek to realise fully my already existent oneness with the Ultimate Reality.
Then there is Ishvara, which is probably closer to what most would recognise as God – a personal supreme being, Or, in some traditions Ishvara simply refers to the one or more deities that an individual chooses as objects of her or his devotion.
Centre of Attention on the Hermitage temple alter
Also included in my personal pantheon, are the Divine Mother, Kirishna, Ganesha, Lord Jesus, The Buddha, Sarasvati, as well as other teachers and saints from many traditions who pop in and out of my prayers, seemingly at random.
My prayers are of praise and/or gratitude to the teacher, deity or saint who seems to me at that moment to be most linked to my current circumstances and thoughts.
All of this I call prayer. To God. Or Brahman or Ishvara. Or very often, simply My Lord,
Today, a poem for your reading and contemplative pleasure. The title of the poem comes references a verse from the Bhagavad Gita in which Lord Krishna talks about what are acceptable offerings: He tells Arjuna that God, or the Divine will accept even a leaf as an offering of devotion.
So, when I returned to the Hermitage one day recently to find two leaves on the ground at the front gate, I recalled that verse and decided to make of those leaves, just such an offering.
Welcome to another installment in our occasional series (see links to all previous installments at the end of this post) looking at some of the answers given by Krishna to his cousin Uddhava during a kind of Q&A session that takes place as both are about to leave their hometown which is on the brink of war. Krishna’s returning to Heaven, while Uddhava is heading for parts – and a future – unknown.
Hence all the questions around living a good true life, all driven by the knowledge that Krishna isn’t going to be around anymore to give Uddhava life advice.
And the question we’re discussing today is certainly a big one. In fact, though it is a single part of a three part question, I felt inclined to give it our full attention. To me it is that significant. In fact, thinking about it now, I could even add here that of all the questions and answers, this one could stand alone as the question, the answer.
To the question then, as asked by Uddhava to Krishna:
What is Charity?
Well, although I thought I knew what the word charity meant, and what charity is, I did end up looking it up, just to get a clearer and deeper picture.
Yes, a charity is an organization set up to give aid to those in need. And, as I also knew, charity is the voluntary giving of help – often in the form of money or other material goods – to those in need.
All just as I’d thought. But, then, I came across another entry that filled out the picture for me a little more. In addition to the above, this listing told me that the ‘true meaning‘ of charity is generosity and helpfulness.
Again, it specifies that this generosity, this helpfullness, is usually extended to the ‘suffering and needy’. Still it suggests that charity may be at least a little more universal an attitude toward functioning in the world, a world shared with so many other living beings.
(note from me: This latter definition comes from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. I’ve used this dictionary a great deal, and for very many years. It’s been my favourite go to, as they say.
PRESS THE PAUSE BUTTON PLEASE
Right, yes, I hear you loud and clear. Here I am going on as if this is a semantics blog. Sorry about that. Perhaps we should get back on track and allow Krishna to give the answer Uddhava and the rest of us have been waiting for:
Charity is the renunciation of aggression.
Perhaps you can see why I was at first a bit taken by surprise, and I puzzled over it for a while. Then after seeing that Merriam-Webster definition, I knew I’d found a clue: generosity and helpfullness.
Then it came to me: Ahimsa!! No, this is not some obscure exclamation reserved for Eureka! moments. Rather Ahimsa is a foundational principle underpinning many of the great religious traditions of India.
For me, Ahimsa is basically doing no harm, the practice of non-violence towards all living beings, through one’s thoughts, words (speech), attitudes, actions.
However because life is complicated (ie: there are no easy answers), various schools of thought over time have developed a kind of modification in which they say that Ahimsa is choosing to tackle the complexities of our lives in the world in such a way that we do as little harm as possible.
But how, one might ask, can we expand those dictionary definitions to include Ahimsa? Well, as far as I’ve been able to think about it so far, I’d say that Krishna’s answer itself is the root that we can graft those definitions onto
Which is to say, renouncing aggression is that root, that foundation on which to base the cultivation of charity and a charitable attitude and manner in our relationship with ourselves, with all other beings, and with the planet (and the rest of the Universe too of course).
(By the way, thank you to my Partner Hermit for that word: charitable. Not that I didn’t already know the word, obviously, it’s just that at the time I just could not find it anywhere in my slow-moving brain!)
That open, generous, helpful, compassionate, patient, kind, thoughtful (oh let me count the applicable words!), that charitable demeanour and behaviours with which we engage with the world (and with ourselves) are the result of removing aggression from our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Actually, thinking about cause and effect, and effect and cause, for a second: the way towards that state of charity is the same. In other words the means and the end don’t only justify each other, they are each other. One thing.
Don’t be ready for fight or flight each time you communicate with your boss, or your spouse, or your child, or your parent. Or with anyone else in any situation you find yourself in.
Listen to and observe with patience, care, compassion, and your full attention, the needs of others. Don’t assume you know best. And include yourself in this paying attention.
Look before you leap. Stop, listen, think, pause, before jumping into any situation that needs understanding, calm, quiet and time to alleviate any possible confusions, or misunderstandings.
If you make a mistake (or is it when?), don’t be so hard (aggression?) on yourself. Be just as open, friendly, forgiving, patient and the rest, with you as you would like to be with everyone else.
As to ‘generosity and helpfullness to the needy and suffering’? Well, all living beings suffer simply in the act of living itself. We are all well aware of this. The degree and forms of this suffering (and the needs that cause the suffering) will always vary, but even so, they are inevitable.
There’s a small mantra or prayer, I often use to end other prayers or reading, that I’ve always liked a lot:
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti
I have always thought that this was simply a prayer to the Divine that included the repetition of the word for peace three times.
Of course it is that, but recently I heard that it’s structured in this way with the three repetitions to make of it a deeper or more universal prayer:
Shanti: Peace within myself Shanti: Peace to all living beings Shanti: Peace to the world itself
I may have the words slightly off, but the essence is there. Anyway, for me this really does sound like Charity.
If you’ve missed earlier posts in this series please click on the links below
And welcome to Part 2 of The Q&A in the Scripture series in which we are looking at the answers given by Krishna to a list of questions asked by his cousin Uddhava in a scripture called the Uddhava Gita.
Remember the scene? Uddhava has asked Krishna a pile of questions about how to live a good life, how to live in the world with discernment.
These questions have become urgent because the cousins are about to leave their hometown which is on the brink of war. Both will be going their separate ways and both know they won’t be seeing each other for a while – perhaps never again.
Anyway, moving right along: In our last installment, we had Uddhava asking the first of his questions; this one happens to have two parts:
What is quietude and what is self-control?
We discovered that quietude is not the state in which one finds peace, silence, our true selves, or the Divine, but is itself that consciousness, that pervades and permeates all that is, silence, peace. In other words, quietude is the Divine itself.
In the present post, we move to the second of Uddhava’s two-part question: what is self-control? Krishna’s answer is excellently short and sweet:
Krishna in his response, makes it clear that restraining the (one’s own) senses includes mind as a kind of sixth sense in addition to the five physical senses. In the context you could almost say that it’s his mind that Uddhava is in most need of restraining. Maybe that’s the message for all of us?
Well, we are all well aware of the ways in which we have tried to control our senses; Uddhava knows too. But look at the situation these two cousins find themselves in:
It’s fine for Krishna: he’s returning home to Heaven, or wherever. But, Uddhava, who is also about to leave, is facing more uncertain prospects. He’s experiencing great turmoil, and fear over his and his familiy’s safety as the threat of war closes in. Most likely he’s also grieving over having to go into exile from his ancestral home.
Of course he’d be fearful for the future: where will he go? What will he do? How will he protect and provide for his family? Like I said, an onslaught of mental and emotional anguish.
Still, it does seem that Uddhava is maintaining quite a steady presence of mind. He’s thinking about the future; he is clear about the sort of stuff he needs to find out from his cousin (remember Krishna is God) in order to put and keep his life on the right track despite the challenges facing him now and in the future.
Then there’s the fact that this self-control thing is only one question on a list of 36. Clearly Uddhava is looking for a lot of advice.
Restrain the senses – all six of them – Krishna says. But how? What does it mean, ‘restrain the senses’? I think I alluded to the notion that we all have some ideas, some clues, about how we as individuals might restrain them, but let’s personalise this: What does it mean for me to restrain my senses?
Actually, now I’ve made that suggestion, I feel overwhelmed: Where would I start? Surely I need to do a whole series of posts, just on this one topic alone?
Oh wait, I can start right there. Exaggeration, hyperbole, over-dramatising, catastrophizing, all perfect examples of emotional reactions leaping from an unrestrained senses central: my mind.
Let’s put aside that mental stuff for a little while, and just say that all those emotional responses could do with a bit more restraining training. Just looking at the physical senses to begin with, I can easily say that they also, at least some of them sometimes, need various degrees of working on.
First, my sense of taste: it goes into overdrive sometimes, and then I eat too much. Not so much as in the past, but the restraint has a way to go still.
My sense of sight is pretty good, well restrained for the most part. But there are times when I lapse into old habits and spend too much time looking at a screen and scrolling in a mindless kind of way. Getting there though!
As for my sense of hearing: You might remember a post from a while ago when I talked about letting go of much of my music collection, some of which I’ve listened to my whole life. I’m doing this because so much of what used to be ‘my favourite’ songs or artists, no longer serve my spiritual growth, nor does much of it reflect the view of life and the world that I’m trying to cultivate.
Well, I’ve made a good start, but occasionally I slip and find myself humming old tunes, or listening to an album that I really ‘should have’ deleted already. Restrained? Sort of, and I’m still encouraged.
Enough! Let’s get straight to the biggie: my mind. If I’m honest, I have to say that my mind, while not exactly in full agreement with my efforts at restraint, is starting to get into sync with me and my aspirations for a more controlled mind.
But still, those previously mentioned emotional reactions like exaggeration, over-dramatising and the rest, are still there. Falling into line, it’s true, still … .
Then there is the (more than) occasional first port of call reactions to pieces of news of various kinds: I’m prone to ask, just as I imagine Uddhava might have: Why don’t ‘they’ control themselves? Why can’t he or she or such and such country or politician show a little restraint?
Yes, I know, we’re all guilty of this one to some degree or other.
My quickness to anger is not quite, but almost, might soon be, won’t be long before it is, a thing of the past.
Then, there’s my tendency to ruminate: rehash endlessly real and imagined events and other stuff from the past – as well as the always imagined possibilities (as well as the impossibilities) for the future.
Again, I know I’m not alone in this emotional roller coaster ride, and I do know that I am nowhere near as much of a ruminator as I was; I have made great strides, significant inroads, and I am encouraged that the end of rumination is getting closer!
And now, here is the one thing I tend to think of one of my biggest, most tiresome and tedious, most annoying conditioned emotional responses: I talk too much. Not as much as I used to, but still too much for my comfort, and for the peace of mind of those around me. More restraint is called for.
Restraint has played its part in reducing my talking. But in a sense the major ally has been the ongoing quest I’m engaged in to discover my true nature, as consciousness, which is really my oneness with all that is.
And here our second question and answer leads us right back to the first: quietude.
I wrote in that post:
Quietude, calmness, peace of mind, are not where you will find God, consciousness, or whatever we call it. Quietude and the rest are God. They are consciousness.
Or putting it the other way round: cultivate silence, calm, peace of mind, and your senses will no longer need to be restrained. Your whole Self, including body and mind, will then be resting in Quietude, in your true nature.
That’s why I think these two questions are asked and answered together: Each leads to the other: by restraining our senses we are more easily able to achieve a state of calm, quiet, some level of peace of mind – in other words, Quietude.
Welcome to the first in a short – and occasional – series centred on a text containing a kind of Q & A session between Krishna (God) and Uddhava (his cousin).
Thirty six questions in all, with which Uddhava asks Krishna how he can live a good and honest life, dedicated to doing right and living the truth.
If you haven’t already, it would be really helpful if you read the Introduction post here, before going much further; just so you have a better handle on the context, the background etc. It will just help to set the scene a little more.
Now that’s been said, let’s get on and into it. The very first question Uddhava puts to Krishna is actually two questions in one.
What is quietude and self-control
Good questions, the both of them, given the circumstances Uddhava finds himself in. His hometown (it’s Krishna’s too) is about to descend into a nasty civil war and is most likely a chaotic, noisy, overwhelming and frightening environment to be stuck in.
Uddhava, like the rest of us just wants a peaceful life, and as to the second question, well he’s bound to be asking himself the same question we’d ask: Why can’t these people just control themselves before it’s too late? Not to mention the onslaught of emotional and mental anguish he’d be suffering himself.
Anyway, Uddhava is about to leave town following his cousin’s advice, and would like to find out how he can go on to live a good, righteous and honest life, while he’s in exile from his home.
Krishna chooses (sensibly I’d say: they’re both big questions) to answer one question at a time and he begins by explaining what is quietude:
Quietude is fixing the mind on me.
Krishna is not saying here: ‘Look, once I’m gone [I think I’ve mentioned that he’s leaving too, going back to Heaven or wherever he lives on a permanent basis] try to remember your dear old cuz in the odd quiet moment now and again will you?’
What I think he is actually saying is: ‘If you fix your mind on me, then that’s quietude’. We could call it silence as well. He’s not saying ‘I am in the silence’, nor is he saying ‘Through silence (or quietude) you will come closer to me’. No, what he says is ‘Quietude is what I am’.
So, what about those of us not in a first names relationship with Krishna? Well, think of Krishna as being a name and form of Universal Consciousness. Yes, the same Universal Consciousness that is all created and non-created things; the sun, Earth herself, trees, the oceans, all living and non-living beings in the Universe, in all universes if there are more than one.
There are a whole list of synonyms for quietude: equanimity, calmness, peace of mind, rest, serenity, dispassion. Just to name a few.
These further definitions are really quite helpful. What I mean to say is that we rarely if ever associate that calmness, equanimity, peace, and the rest, with actually being the Universal Consciousness, that is also all of us and everything else that is. Again, think of Consciousness as the Divine, God, or by any other name and form, you attribute to the natural order and flow of the Universe.
Forgive the repetition : Quietude, calmness, peace of mind, are not where you will find God or consciousness, or whatever. They are all consciousness.
The beach is also dog friendly
Have I mentioned that the current hermitage is a cottage on the side of a large sand dune, on the other side of which is a stunning stretch of Pacific Coast beach. Sitting on the top of the dune and looking out over the beach and ocean it is easy to think of all that’s seen as divine.
It is most definitely a peace of mind, calm and quiet inducing experience to sit there. Certainly it is quietude itself with the only sounds being the song of the universe in the form of the waves and wind.
A question I asked myself, and I now pose to you: If what we’ve been calling Universal Consciousness is actually all that is, then why not a state of mind like quietude, calmness, balance, and the rest? Like everything else perhaps these states are simply elements of that consciousness or Absolute Reality, or oneness, or what some call God, the Divine, or … ?
In any case, I have a feeling that’s what Krishna was getting at with his answer, and what Uddhava somehow intuited with his question.
Thank you for joining me on this little pilgrimage. in the next post in this series (it could appear anytime, so stay tuned!) we will discuss Krishna’s answer to Uddhava’s second question: What is self-control?
Not long ago I began studying an Indian scripture called The Uddhava Gita. It’s quite a lovely book actually: it’s poetic, actually it is a poem, or song, and beautifully written. The title means The song of Uddhava and is an account of a conversation between Krishna wearing his God of the Universe hat, and his cousin Uddhava.
The story takes place in their home town of Dwarka in the state of Gujarat (Krishna was also a regular family man with a huge extended family) which is about to explode in a destructive civil war. Soon Krishna is leaving to return to his heavenly abode, and at the opening of our story, he advises Uddhava that he too should leave town ASAP.
I should point out at this juncture that I do not see this Gita as a historical document. It’s a story created as a backdrop against which to place a long conversation in which Krishna, or God, passes some spiritual teaching to Uddhava.
Although the location of the story is a real place and exists today, we don’t learn anything beyond that this is the setting for this little chat.
The purpose was to present these teachings in an entertaining and accessible format. Like so many scriptures around the world, this one is a song, making it easier to learn and pass from one person to another over time in a society that was not yet universally literate.
So, why am I writing about this text? Well, in one section Uddhava is asking his cuz all sorts of questions, that have obviously been on his mind for a while. He knows Krishna is leaving he planet soon and he thinks that this might be his last chance to get some answers.
He asks questions like: What are reality and truth? And, What is a person’s strength. Then there are queries like: Who is a friend? What is home? Many are related to spiritual matters and practice, and all are concerning qualities and attributes a person should possess to live a good life, a honest life. A Dharmic life.
Actually, if I were to condense all of Uddhava’s questions into one big question, it would probably go something like this:
How can I change my lifestyle so I might live a righteous life, a good and honest life in which I can learn the truth and live my whole life according to that truth?
Now, here’s the thing: Uddhava asks a total of 36 questions, some singularly, some are multiple questions containing two or three queries. Krishna then proceeds to answer the questions, all of them in fairly quick succession.
I would like to share a few of those answers with you. I don’t get the sense that the questions are asked or answered in any particular order or pattern, so perhaps those I share will be an idiosyncratic selection, or it may be entirely random. Not that there is such a thing of course, so I guess you will just have to wait and discover for yourself the chosen questions.
Don’t worry! I have no intention of burdening you with the complete set of 36. In addition to saving you that fate, some of the questions and or answers didn’t resonate; others didn’t feel overly relevant to this blog.
I’d like to devote an individual post to each of the questions, bearing in mind some of them are multiples. I learned about all 36 questions and their answers in an hour long class. Needless to say that experience was more than slightly mind-blowing. One or two (or maybe three) at a time will be just fine for all concerned I think.
So, next post, I look forward to sharing with you the first of Uddhava questions along with Krishna’s answer. It will in fact be literally the first one asked; I thought discussing it at the start would sort of set the scene and the tone for us. After that one there will be further posts. Again don’t worry, I’m planning a fairy short and occasional only series.
Remember that old Bee Gees‘ song Words? It’s about one person offering all they have to another. Well, the one doing the offering must have been a writer because, while the song’s a love story, it’s words that are the big thing on offer here:
It’s only words, and words are all I have To take your heart away
Well, as this is a blog, words are the way it hopes to reach your heart. Actually, the posts also include photos and sometimes other art, but the main vehicle used here is words.
So, with that in mind I have a couple of words to offer you today. Well, one word and its opposite. Have a look at this sentence from Thomas Merton:
If Irish monks affirmed his Celtic spirit in their mastery of cataphatic contemplation of the wonders of divinity in nature, Buddhist monks evoked his Zen mind and drew him into the apophatic path of formless ’emptiness’…
As sentences go (though this is obviously only part of a sentence) this has to rank pretty close to the top for length and denseness.
Kataphatic. What a word! Of course I had to look it up; I’d never heard the word before (this post is a rewrite from notes written a while ago that I never got around to posting.), and even though the sentence seems to suggest the meaning, I was still curious.
Looking at Wikipedia – where they spell it with a ‘C’ like Merton, as well as with a ‘K’- I learned that cataphatic is an adjective that describes an approach to theology that uses ‘positive terminology to describe or refer to the divine (God, Truth, Dharma, Spirit. You know what I mean: the divine).
Apophatic, as you probably figured out already, is when one uses ‘negative terminology to indicate what it is believed the divine is not’. A process of negation or we could say you get to what the divine is by a process of elimination.
Pretty simple concept really, but with a couple of big words to label it, and a lot of words to define it. No, don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the meaning and origin of the words and all the rest. Mainly because I don’t know and I’m not especially interested anyway in all that technical stuff.
I simply resonated with the word, and the concept. Cataphatic made me think of Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in Mary Poppins. But let’s not go there: this is a serious blog after all. Except to say there’s more to that word than you might imagine.
Putting aside the aesthetic appeal of the word for a minute, let’s contemplate a while on cataphatic, and it’s opposite, apothatic.
To begin thinking about these two words, it’s necessary to acknowledge the existence of the divine. We can call it God, if we like. Or Dharma, Truth, Spirit, Love, Beauty.
As the quote suggests, a cataphatic approach, ideology, theology, or whatever we call it, ascribes names and forms to the divine, as well as describing where and in what the divine may reside.
Whereas apothatic, again as the quote suggests, does not ascribe names and forms to the divine. Instead it seeks to discover what or who god is or isn’t by a process of negation as described already.
For a long time I labelled myself as a Humanist. I had decided that this physical body is all there is; the physical or material universe is all there is, and that there is no ‘god’ separate from us or who has special powers to affect our lives. No God at all in fact.
In the Grove of the Sentinals
But, all that while, I just knew that there was something else, something more than just the physical. And over time, I came to the knowledge that there is indeed more than the simply phsical universe (including we humans).
I’ve thought about it a lot over the years and I came to the conclusion not that many years ago, that I had simply been afraid to name or define that something more. It would have meant admitting to myself that something more really did exist.
That is to say, I was scared of taking the cataphatic approach – and I’d never even heard the word.
Well brothers and sisters, I saw the light. The truth was revealed to me. And what is that truth? Well, to put it simply, I wasn’t scared anymore. Not of names and forms, and not of what I couldn’t see.
Now I could take both the Catophatic and the Apothatic approach: that the something else I had actually always known just was, really is, and can have a name and form, or not. The divine is not an omniscient being or any kind of being at all; As I’m very fond of saying, the divine (or truth, God, Dharma) simply is. And it’s all there is.
Some of you might know that I am really quite fond of the Indian deity, Ganesha . Do I believe that a man with the head of an elephant actually exists or ever existed?. Of course not. Do I actually think that he resides in the lovely painted icon that sits by my bed? Well, obviously not.
But do I believe that there is a spark or aspect or attribute in all life, in you and me, in nature, in (scary word time) creation, that we can tap into to help us overcome obstacles? Or that we can access when we begin new ventures of whatever kind, or when we need strength to face challenges? Yes, I do. Very definitely.
And do I believe in a blue boy called Krishna who lived in India 5000 years ago and spent his time playing in the fields with the village cows and his friends, entertaining them with his flute? Again, of course not. Does he live in the other beautiful icon by my bed? The answer is obvious: no.
But do I chant the Hare Krishna mantra in an effort to come closer to the divine that is… well, that just is? Yes, again, very definitely.
Words. It’s all only words. Only words? Only??
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. (from the opening of the Gospel of John)
Well, here we are with the third and final part of our contemplations on Flee, Be silent, Pray Always, the answer discovered by our friend Arsenius who was looking for a way to be saved from the the things of the world.
In a very real sense, this third injunction might be seen as the most important of the three. Indeed, again in a very real sense, those first two seem to me to be prerequisites for the third. Certainly, many of us would like to flee to a place and state of silence in order to escape the world and its many and varied causes of our suffering. Such people are simply and completely over the noise, the chaos, war, greed, the complexity of relationships, and all the rest.
Then there are many many others who, rather than looking to escape the world, are wanting to ‘flee’ towards a place and state of silence in order to engage more fully with the world by contemplation, meditation, and most of all, prayer. Such people are working towards making their entire lives a prayer.
And then there are the third group which is made up of those who have some sense of running away from the world while at the same time they feel compelled to move towards a contemplative life that they sense will be the best way they can actually serve the world.
I think I can include myself in this last group. I’ve never coped well with masses of people, being in the workforce, or dealing with the horrors that the world seemed to be overwhelmed with.
At the same time, I’ve always wanted to (and have tried to) combat injustice, racism, violence and the rest. I guess you could sum it up by putting it this way: I was (still am) an oversensitive person who one day had had enough of trying to ‘fight the system’ when it was the system making and changing the rules of the game as it went along.
Better I thought, to turn inwards in order to reach or realise my oneness with all living things. I’ve always been predisposed to praying as well, so it was a natural evolution in many ways. My intention and commitment these last few years has been (and still is of course) to pray continuously and with all my being.
My prayer is for the release from suffering for all living beings and that’s my central focus for prayer. For me, it feels very much that I am a lot more use to others living what I think of as a prayerful contemplative life than being actively engaged with the world out there in the midst of it all so to speak.
Pray Always
Prayer for me is not so much about petitioning some all-powerful being who is seemingly on a whim able to grant or refuse my wishes. For me it is more an affirmation of the reality of my already existent oneness with the entirety of the universe. It’s a way of seeking to actually realise that this oneness is my very Self.
Prayer is about being present, not wishing blindly that things be different than they are. In praying I seek to affirm that the ‘universe is unfolding as it should’, as it says in a famous poem I’ve always loved. (Actually if you don’t know about Desiderata [Things Desired] then please do check it out; you’ll love it).
I think that in this sense, prayer is in fact an act of mindfulness, or rather an act which will help develop a mindfulness practice. It is a way to practise being fully focused and present to whatever is going on, whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.
And if we’re able to be present – even on a temporary or momentary basis – then we will be more calm, more at peace, and more able to achieve some clarity in our lives and with whatever is the intention with our prayer.
I know it might sound like a clumsy attempt at a clever play on words, but we’ve described mindfulness as the practice of being fully present. But we can put it another way. We can define that state of being fully present as being in presence. Like what we might say to a friend who is daydreaming while we are trying to talk to them. We might say something like ‘so and so, your presence would be appreciated’.
In presence of what? I would say everything. When we are absolutely in the present moment (again even momentarily), when we are able to realise our oneness with all things. Essentially the universe is there – or is it here? – with you in that present moment. It’s a moment when we may indeed feel we are in the presence of all that is.
Some may call that presence God, or the Divine, or Universal Consciousness. Others may see it as being in the presence of their own true and authentic Self.
That leads quite nicely to the next aspect of prayer that I want us to look at. Praying to God. I’ve spent so long on mindfulness because I wanted to stress that I don’t think it’s necessary to have a personal name or form for God, or even a notion of an unmanifested, invisible ‘force’ called God, in order to pray.
On the other hand for me, and I know for a lot of people, there are names and forms of the universal consciousness that pervades and permeates the universe, that I personally resonate with and I can reach out to them whenever the feeling or inclination arises. It sounds a bit odd to say, but for me to think that all that is, is all that is, sort of sums it up.
And as a result of that, any prayer I pray is addressed to my own Self which is simply part and parcel of all there is. In other words, it’s a personal choice for any one of us what form or name we choose to pray to. Or if we don’t pray to a name and form at all. All is one.
One thing I’ve mentioned I think a couple of times is the idea of making all our activities into a prayer, but other than the discussion on mindfulness and presence, I’ve not really addressed the how and why.
Why is pretty obvious. Because living and acting mindfully helps us in so many way such as being more peaceful, more relaxed, happier, and so on. The how, now I’m thinking about it is the purpose of this post. And it’s also true to say we’ve been talking about it since this series began.
That is to say, we flee from the aspects of our lives that don’t serve us and which can be changed. This might be a decision to spend 30 minutes every day sitting quietly and undisturbed. And as we’ve mentioned a few times already it could be going all out and moving to a desert cave somewhere.
In both those scenarios we give ourselves the opportunity to be silent and, hopefully also surrounded by silence. How to pray always? There’s an expression I love and try to live by: Follow your Dharma. Here Dharma means your own truth, being authentic to who you are, having the intention to do what’s right in all situations. And of course actually following through with that intention if at all possible. In this way you transform every action into prayer.
Living a life of prayer does seem on the face of it to not involve much use of spoken prayers, as in saying prayers with words. Well, I don’t intend to be humourous here, but a great deal of prayer does it fact involve talking to one’s Self. To the real self, that part of us that’s part of everything else. It can do us good to have these deep conversations.
Then of course there are the many many prayers that already exist to serve people from so many traditions, cultures, to suit all kinds of purposes and intentions.
Many of us will be familiar with a number of prayers learnt when we were children. If you’re anything like me, they still pop up by themselves from time to time.
Actually as I deepen my prayer practice, I’m discovering that I’m remembering all sorts of prayers from many and varied sources. I think as I dig deeper, more and more are coming up to the surface.
This prayer (by Thomas Merton I think) resonates deeply with me
If these ‘pre-prepared’ prayers say what you want to say and in a way that resonates with you, then you are free to choose those that feel right for you. I guess I mix and match the prayers I use; it’s always dependent on my feelings, thoughts, and intentions at the time.
Like Arsenius, I try to be open and responsive to whatever the ‘answers’ are, even though my ego does sometimes when it doesn’t like the answer, try and control outcomes.
One point about such prayers: I find it tempting oftentimes to simply recite them at what I’ve heard described as lip level. By rote and without emotion, in other words. At those times I try to slow down or pause to reflect on what I’m doing and why to get back in touch with Self.
A major part of my prayer life is chanting mantra. I try to spend more time chanting as time passes. There are a number that I use depending on inclination and need.
I chant anywhere and sometimes a mantra will start chanting itself, surprising me by its arrival
(This photo isn’t me by the way)
Now, probably one of the most important aspects of my own prayer life: I know I’ve mentioned my intentions in praying at all, but one aspect I haven’t mentioned is praying as devotion.
Devotion as in worship, praise, as in gratitude for the beauty in my life, as an expression of love. Knowing with the mind that all is one is fine, but these kinds of prayers help us to cement our awareness of that oneness of all living beings. As I said earlier, I, like you or anyone else, may use particular names and forms to represent this oneness, but, well, it’s all one, so we are non-different from all those names and forms.
Lord Sri Krishna is among my favourite forms of Universal Consciousness (also known as Brahman)
There are many representations of the Divine, but Krishna and this picture of Him are special to me.
Focusing your devotion on a particular form seems to help make it easier or more real. It’s tricky to pray to and with a thing that has no form and is invisible.
So, my friends I hope what I’ve said here is of some little interest to you and that you have found at least something you can use for your own life.
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 