I was out and about photographing for a few hours this morning. On such walkabouts I like to walk at a slow but steady pace, and in a contemplative frame of mind.
Usually I’ll also chant mantras as a way of focusing my mind, of keeping random thoughts from distracting my attention. And so it was today.
Deep into today’s walk, I was feeling ‘in the zone’, as I like to call it. Making photos and chanting mantra. All of a sudden I heard myself singing a bhajan (sacred song or hymn) in place of the mantra I’d been reciting.
This particular bhajan was By Your Grace, by Krishna Das, It’s a beautiful devotional song that you can listen to here. I’ve been listening to it and singing it for years, and I love it. I find it puts me in a nice prayerful state of mind, Anyway, here are the lyrics:
Closer than breath, you are the air Sweeter than life itself, you are here I am a wanderer, you are my peace I am a prisoner, you are release
Jai Gurudev…
I am a pilgrim, your road so long I am the singer, you are the song Held in the open sky, so far above I am the lover, you are the love
Jai Gurudev…
I follow your footsteps through the flame All that I ever need is in your name Carry your heart in mine, vast as space All that I am today is by your grace. By your Grace… I live by your grace.
One more way to chant sacred songs
Now, the song was written by Krishna Das as a way of thanking and praising his Guru. But, the words and the power of the song can be dedicated to any of our own individual concepts of the Truth. Whether we call it the Absolute Reality, the Supreme Being, the Life Force, the inner Divinity, Nature, Consciousness, God, Guru, the Universe. After all, these are all simply names and forms.
I guess what I’m saying here is that the song is a fine prayerful and meditative way to express our gratitude to, our love for, and devotion to whatever it is in our heart of hearts we know as our support, our teacher, our creator, our Guru. Our very own Truth
That was the first thing my partner said when I showed her this photo. Her eyes – and perhaps even her heart – had found that which is illuminated by the sun, even though it’s surrounded by wreckage and ruin.
The wreckage by the way, of an abandoned and trashed store front. One of several in a small arcade, that’s long sat empty.
Ah, I thought: one more illustration of a metaphor I’ve been hearing a lot lately in my studies about consciousness.
Allow me, please, to adopt our teacher’s metaphor which, for me, really clarifies this concept of consciousness, or Atma as it’s called in Sanskrit.
Is the brilliant light streaming into this room and onto this chair affected in any way whatsoever because the chair is sitting amidst all that wreckage?
Is the sun shining any less brightly on the chair than it would if the chair was sitting in a luxuriously decorated space instead?
Of course the answer to both questions is no. The sun, and its brilliance remains undimmed, and completely unaffected, untouched, regardless of what it shines on.
The ‘I’ that photographed this scene, and my partner’s ‘I’ whose eyes were drawn to the chair in the scene, are both consciousness. Not ‘my’ consciousness; not ‘her’ consciousness. Consciousness is all; all there is. Boundaryless, infinite, all pervading. We can’t even say there is one consciousness, because there is only consciousness.
Ah, I hear you say: there is one sun shining on our world; and the sun isn’t ‘all there is’. Well, as our teacher likes to remind us, all metaphors are flawed: you can only take them so far.
Metaphors, are only meant to illustrate, to show us the way, point us in the right direction as it were. In our little example here, the metaphor is meant to help us gain some knowledge.
The knowledge that we are not what we see, hear, taste, touch, think or feel. We are that light – consciousness – that allows us to know what we experience with our senses.
One more thing: The light of the sun, flooding the chair with its brilliance, enabled my partner to see that it was comfy, even though it was sitting in that wrecked, abandoned and lonely place.
Just as in our lives, when everything seems to be crashing down around us and we feel we are the ones stranded in that wreckage, we can remember that the light of our own consciousness, is the way in which we may shine our attention on the truth of our unchanging eternal, and true nature, that is who we really are: perfect, eternal, absolutely unaffected by anything at all.
On the going down and the coming up silvered and golded stairs to and from the Underworld. It’s all just a giant mirror In which we see who we are not.
Watercolour by Pauline (with digital enhancement by the Hermit)
Vibing on the mystic trees, their upside is downside, their downside is upside selves telling me: You’ve got to cut through the attachments. Then, not a new, but old made new again, insight confirms, clarifies, brings details to, shines a light on the specifics: Stop desiring what you already have.
By the River’s Light I’ll Live My Life out of sight of Babylon
A Note From Me: I can’t tell you who wrote these words. Maybe I did; maybe it’s a song lyric; or maybe it’s a quote from someone famous. Whatever the case, a half hour internet search failed to come up with anything even close. So, The best I can do is thank whoever did bring these beautiful words into the world. I hope you are pleased with how I’ve made use of them.
My eyes follow the line her pen inscribes across the page, its whiteness coming alive. In such moments, I know that it is true : I know that God is truly in the ink.
Sarah Bernhardt as Prince Hamlet (Public Domain image)
No, it’s not a quote from Shakespeare. Mind you, now I think about it, there’s a line in Hamlet, where the man himself is monologuing about the human condition and declaims a strong-felt sentiment:
What a piece of work is man! [sic]
The reality is that first quote is from someone far more mundane than the bard: me. The occasion on which I uttered this equally impassioned statement was as I sat holding my smartphone and listening to the music flowing from it through bluetooth fairy land and into the headphones I was wearing.
The truth is I was at that moment just awestruck and a bit overwhelmed with what I was hearing, and just as significantly, with how I was hearing a particular song.
Not being a materialist by any measure, my phone and headphones are nowhere the latest or top of the line models, but still, to me, what I was hearing was magnificent. It’s the only word that fits really.
Anyway, that isn’t exactly what I want to write about today. Reflecting on the experience described above, got me thinking about the actual song I was listening to. And that’s what I want to write about now.
The song in question is written and sung by Australian singer-songwriter Cyndi Boste (died 2018) and is called Cry Down on Me. Here are the lines that have struck me particularly:
I’m not afraid of your tears. Cry down on me I’ll make sure nobody hears Cry down on me.
Before we go on, a short note. Until I started research for this post I had my own idea of what ‘Cry down on me’ means. Seems I got it wrong. However, for this post I am choosing to believe that the songwriter agrees with me. If you look up the meaning and then listen carefully to the lyrics, you’ll see that perhaps I didn’t get it wrong after all.
Essentially here we have the singer/protagonist reassuring another person (friend? lover? sibling? We don’t really find out, but if I had to guess, I’d say they are lovers) that they are safe to share their tears, their sadness, anger, fears and so on. Most of us at some time or another (or always?) have been afraid to express or share our emotions, to show our tears.
So, why is our protagonist going to make sure nobody hears the other’s tears? Well, she is obviously aware that the other is at the very least embarrassed, perhaps afraid of being ridiculed, rejected, or perhaps they’re worried about appearing ‘weak’ or making themselves seem vulnerable.
And how did she come to that awareness? I think she has seen this other with the eyes of her heart, seen their need. And now she’s telling them: ‘Look don’t worry, I am listening to you with my heart and I can hear you.’
We are exposed to so much ‘noise’ from everywhere all the time. Even the tears of a loved one can be lost in the overall din that sometimes threatens to smother us all.
And of course we’re not just talking about literal tears here, and the sound the shedding of them makes: anything said, written or otherwise made known that is of substance, or real importance and meaning, is threatened with annihilation by all the trivia, gossip, advertising, round the clock news, and what I often call the general blah blah, that passes for life in the modern materialistic world.
Of course to protect ourselves from all that noise, it’s no surprise that we so often only listen with our physical ears, see with our physical eyes. Actually having said that, I know from my own experience that even that level of engagement and attention can be a struggle sometimes. And doesn’t that struggle sometimes lead us to closing down altogether?
I guess the answer lies in what Buddha call The Middle Way or Path: The bottom line is that we can choose what we listen to (or look at) and what we don’t. No need to switch off and isolate ourselves completely from the ‘outside’. Nor is it necessary to leave ourselves wide open to all that noise.
Like our protagonist in the song, we can listen with the ears of our hearts; we can see with the eyes of our hearts. It is in our hearts that love lies, where Truth lives. We can say to that other that we are listening and seeing with our hearts, while at the same time reassuring them that nobody, including us, is going to simply be hearing or seeing you only with physical ears and eyes.
The last time I listened to the song (yesterday: it’s become a big favourite) I had the thought that maybe our protagonist is reminding her Self that she’s listening. Sometimes our ‘real’ self can feel like a stranger, as if that Self is someone unknown, and living as a separate entity outside of us can’t it?
It’s at that heart level where we can truly listen, truly see, the other. And whether that other is one’s Self or another person, the truth is there really is no difference: your heart is truth, the other’s heart is truth, and it’s the same Truth.
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 