Tag Archives: Self Enquiry

‘Sometime Soon’: When is it?

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There used to be a thing – maybe it’s still a thing – that would happen sometimes. You’d be talking to someone and suddenly they’d burst out:

‘Hey that rhymes! You’re a poet and don’t know it!’

This exclamation, this sudden and surprising interruption, was always prompted by some sort of accidental rhyming happening in something you’d said.

Or, sometimes, it even happened when you had written something and had through no fault or thought on your part, created a rhyme, even a little impromptu and accidental poem.

Well, that’s what happened to be. It was a while ago now and I was writing in my journal. It must have been ages ago because I don’t keep a journal anymore.

In any case, with nobody reading over my shoulder, it was left to me to express surprise at a sudden outburst of poetics on the page. And along with the surprise, I was able to make a quick note of what I’d written:

Anyway, this post isn’t about this little demonstration of spontaneous poetic genius; it’s actually about the ‘sometime soon’ tagging along on the end.

I have no idea where or what the walk to take, the pilgrimage to make, was – or is. Which suggests a rather obvious conclusion: ‘sometime soon’ never came. The walk was not taken; the pilgrimage was not made.

Now, I’m thinking to myself, if the walk under discussion was so appealing – as well as so significant that it transformed into a pilgrimage – then how come ‘sometime soon’ wasn’t right now, or rather right then. If you follow me.

Of course there’s no telling the reasons for the sometime soon. Maybe plans would have been required; travel to arrange; equipment to gather; fitness to acquire. Who knows?

Clearly I was inspired to at least put down in writing that I thought this walk, this pilgrimage, was (or would be) a good thing to do.

Meaning, in that moment, in the present that is (or was) of that moment, that walk/pilgrimage was a thing I wanted to undertake.

Now, while I might have longed to take that walk, to make that pilgrimage, in the present of that moment of writing, and even though planning may have been required, thereby putting off the actuality of the taking and making till some future time, I at the very least could have taken some action – again in the present of that moment – to get the ball rolling so to speak.

So, what’s the lesson here?

Well it’s simple really, very simple. Maybe simpler to say than to actually put into practice, but I think my lesson here is just this. Tell myself the truth as often and as much as I possibly can. In other words:

Be honest with myself

Let’s look at the options

If I’d really wanted to take this walk, to make this pilgrimage, no matter how remote, how complicated the logistics or planning, why didn’t I take action in that present? Or at least in some present before I actually forgot completely what the walk/pilgrimage was.

And why add ‘sometime soon’ if I didn’t actually desire or intend for this thing to happen? Well, possibly to put of any decision about doing or not doing. Or perhaps it was a way of saying (in completely other words), ‘Well, it sounds very nice, but I doubt I will ever end up doing it.’

So, honesty, and clear thinking about what I want and what I don’t want. That way I won’t be so attached, so keen on clinging to outcomes that I can’t see clearly, can’t easily know what I am to do or not do. Presence. Being present is what this is really about isn’t it?

To be completely present, to be fully here and now, requires me (all of us I suppose) let go of the maybes, and the ifs and buts as well as the endless ruminations about do this or don’t do that.

If I want to take a walk, or make a pilgrimage, then I say to me: just get on with it! If I don’t, then just say so, and move on.

Last little comment: I would really love for the present to remind me of what this walk/pilgrimage was. I’m a bit curious I guess(yes I know, curiosity is a present moment deflater) Maybe it’ll come back to me now I’ve written this post.

Peace

A Journey to the Centre of the World (sort of)

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Namaste and greetings

Yesterday I came across a couple of stories – true ones – that I wrote years ago. They are what we might loosely call ‘travellers’ tales. I thought it might be nice to share them here. So here’s the first one. Enjoy

Not the Manu temple I write about, but another one close by

I’d walked up to Old Manali, and I’d kept walking through the town. Then higher still, past the temple to Manu, and the scattering of traditional houses and small fields clustered around the temple.

Three near-naked and stoned saddhus invited me into their cave – more a kind of overhanging rock shelf poking out from the foundations of the temple itself.

Naturally I declined. Politely. I wasn’t, never had been, and never shall be a stoner. Besides, here I was deep in the Himalayas walking through ancient villages and past temples to ancient gods. Seems to me that that’s enough to bring on a high all its own and like no other.

Then, a little higher up the trail. I rounded a corner to be greeted by a kind of open forest glade; a grassed and flowered field protected by a semi circle of forest sentinels, their crowns maybe thirty metres above my head.

And there, in the middle of this magic field, a large flat rocky area, like a series of ‘shelves’ layered one on the other. This maybe twenty square metre tiered platform was probably the remnants of an ancient hill (or mountain?) that got in the way of a more recent but clearly relentless glacier.

Whatever the history, here was an arena with views no theatre or movie could ever hope to reproduce. This natural amphitheatre faced several layers of peaks across the valley. But, before those peaks, and directly in front of me, just down the slope, stood the temple, then more trees, reaching down into the valley. Here the river flowed, surrounded by farmers’ fields and the brown dots of houses.

Then the forests begin again, thick at the bottom in the valley, but becoming more scattered on the higher ground. Then those many layers of higher and higher hills, mountains really, rolling off into the distance to, where on the horizon and behind it all, a row of the really high peaks covered in their permanent snows.

‘This is a special place, a sacred place,’ I heard myself sigh out loud. Sitting cross-legged now, I let my eyes wander over the scene taking in the blue sky, the white peaks, the multiple greens of the forests, the sliver ribbon of the river, and the rest.

At such times and in such places, one’s eyes tend to close of their own accord. And so it was for me then and there. I let myself drift. Thoughts came and went, to be replaced by more thoughts that came and went.

Then, my eyes opened. Again of their own accord. After a few seconds of that cliched ‘where am I?’ feeling one has when startled out of one state and into another, I made out the figure of a person standing facing me a few metres from where I sat.

‘I’m sorry,’ I heard her voice call to me. ‘You just looked so peaceful sitting there meditating, I just had to stop and watch you.’

She told me she’s been watching me for about fifteen minutes, which gave me a start: It’d felt l Ike I’d only just sat down and closed my eyes.

‘They say the light of the world is held about twelve kilometres up this trail. That means it’s the centre of the world.’

I had to stand to try to take in a revelation of this magnitude.

‘And apparently,’ she went on, ‘they’re going to move it soon and nobody knows where.’

Was she an angel? Was I dreaming? They, whoever they were, are about to shift the centre of the world? Even in India one doesn’t hear this kind of news everyday. Actually, I doubt you’d ever hear it on any day.

Then she was gone, headed up the trail. I didn’t follow. I remember thinking: twelve kilometres was too far for me especially as I already had a long walk downhill to my hotel back down in the new town.

Yes, mundane, practical musings, a typical response to news of such a wild and far-out nature. So, not exactly in shock, yet not quite myself, I turned back. Down. Through the village, past the temple with three crashed out saddhus out front, back into the town.

There are cafes there. They sell Chai there. I needed one.

Actually, given the momentous news I was going to have to digest, I might even have a couple extras.

This is a true story; it actually happened more or less the way it’s described here.

Of course, there is no ‘light of the world’ stored in some secret spot, somewhere on Earth.

Well, I suppose if there is a light of the world, then it’s likely to be the world itself, I mean Earth, all the beings who live on this planet. Life itself I guess you could say. Life is light; Life is love.

Peace

The Beginning of Devotion: A Poem

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The Paradox of the Hermit Life (Courtesy of @travellinghermit3)

THE BEGINNING OF DEVOTION

Attention, paying attention.
It’s the beginning of devotion.
And when you see? When there is seeing?
Well, seeing is praise.

When we see, what we see,
is God.
Not the god, or this or that god.
There aren’t lots of gods,
or so it seems.
And in the end, there isn’t even one god:
there is only God.
So it was said by the sages.

My take on Dharma, Karma, & Living a Good Life Part 2

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The inclination to seek knowledge is, for me, a gift, a blessing. And we live in a time when there are so many sources, so many resources available, and many are freely available too. There seems to be no limit to what the genuine seeker of knowledge can uncover.

Yes, of course, we’re swamped with information from all sides. We are deceived by fake news. And everything these days is a commodity, a thing to be bought, sold, acquired, or otherwise used for profit in the material world.

All true. However, this is where one’s discernment comes into play. It’s up to each of us as seekers of knowledge (on whatever topic or subject) to discern for ourselves the truth or otherwise of the information we use to form the knowledge we are seeking.

In my last post, I began to talk about two notes that I made in my notebook. These notes were quickly jotted down while seeking knowledge from two different sources about two distinct topics. Feel free to have a look at that post here if you happened to miss it.

Do your duty
Follow Dharma
Live a righteous life

These three lines are the sum of what remains of a session with my teacher, Swami Tadatmananda. It’s his short, succinct summary of the teachings I was trying to absorb from him that day.

You’ve probably guessed I am not a great note-taker; I like to just let sink in what wants to sink in, absorb what resonates for me. Perhaps on that day, I felt the summary was all I needed as a basis for later contemplation.

With that in mind, I would like, in this post, to reflect on these three injunctions, try to work out how I’m doing when it comes to taking notice of them, and actually where I’m at with actually living by them.

Do Your Duty

What does it mean, ‘Do your duty’? And what does it mean, for me, to do my duty?

Firstly, let me try to define duty. Not from the dictionary meaning, not from some outside ‘authority’. No, this is me talking about how I define duty.

Duty, for me, is defined by the activities I choose to prioritize in my life. These are the things that I believe best serve my true, essential nature. Acting in accordance with this true nature includes responsibilities such as taking care of my physical, emotional, and mental health. While this may not always be easy and sometimes feels impossible, it is my duty because my mind and body are manifestations of my true self, of the divinity.

Duty, again for me, means persuing activites – in the world as well as within myself – that nurture, protect, and grow, who or what I percieve that Self to be.

This Self I refer to is not restricted to the apparently separate entity I call ‘me’. That apparent separation is just that, an appearance: Self is all there is; I am not simply bonded or joined with all other living (and non-living) beings: I am those beings, just as they are me.

As such, my duty is to act in ways that benefit (or at the very least do as little harm as possible to) all beings, all life. Here, I guess, we could talk about Karma. But let’s leave that for now. It’s enough to say that nobody can tell me – or you – what is our duty. In fact, the truth is I already know the full extent of my duty, as we all do.

The only thing lacking for me is what I might call a full disclosure of what that duty is. That full disclosure can only come from me – as in the Self. As they say, I might know in my head what my duty is, but I’ve yet to fully realise it in my heart. And if I’m honest with myself I can say that my aspiration to do my duty is a constant reminder and motivation to do always the best I can to fulfill my duty.

In some areas I think I do my duty pretty well, but in others I have a long way to go.

Courtesy of @travellinghermit3

In my next post (and the final one in this series: there just seems to be such a lot to think about when contemplating this topic), I will look at what it is to follow Dharma. Once again, it’ll be a very personal, subjctive answer because, to put it perhaps too simply, I like to think that I know right from wrong.

I hope this post has been of at least a little interest and value to you. I will look forward to seeing you here for my next post.

Thank you and I wish you peace.

My take on Dharma, Karma, & Living a Good Life Part 1

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Most likely I’m not alone when I say that when first listening to new information, a lecture, teachings or anything else for that matter, I will often forget either part of what I’m trying to learn or even all of it. In fact, I’m sure there are more than a few scholarly research papers that will tell us all about this universal phenomena with all facts and figures along with all the whys and wherefores.

Anyway, I was listening to my teacher ( Swami Tadatmananda) recently. He summarized the teachings he was giving on that occasion in three succinct, pithy lines. Thinking back now, I have no memory of the teachings being presented, and all I have is a quick note jotted down of the teacher’s summary:

Do your duty
Follow Dharma
Live a righteous life.

Fast forward a couple of days and I was watching a video about 19th Century English poets. Once again I’m not able to tell you the names of all those poets or what the show was about (actually to be honest, I got bored and stopped watching half way).

And, again, all that remains is a scribbled note about the pioneering of a particular rhyming scheme by one of the featured poets.

That revolutionary rhyming scheme is ABBA (where the first line of a verse rhymes with the fourth, and the middle two rhyme with each other). It’s as well that I did jot down a note: I have never been able to take in, much less retain in memory, all the technical stuff to do with poetics. Never.

But for some reason this particular idea appealed to me. Maybe it’s to do with how I was once a big fan of the Swedish pop group Abba? (okay, maybe I still am)

As it happens, my note on this appears in my notebook just below the first one I mentioned above. So, as I thought about ABBA (the rhyming scheme, not the pop group), I saw that first note and started playing with it:

Do your duty
Follow Dharma
Earn good Karma
Do nothing naughty

Okay, I know, it’s not exactly great literature is it? Never mind; it’s only an experiment. But, having said that, I do quite like this little, what shall we call it? This little ditty. It seems to be a nice, even quirky, little rephrasing of my teacher’s own summary.

This is all very well and good you might think, but what does it all mean? Does it actually mean anything? Well, my short answer is yes: for me it does indeed definitely mean something.

Actually, it means a lot. But as this post seems to be dragging on a bit, perhaps we will have to continue in another post.

Meanwhile, be blessed

Looks Like a Comfy Chair

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‘Looks like a comfy chair’.

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.

Peace and love

NETI NETI

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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.

A Seaside Musing

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Yellow-Golden sands
carpet the floors
of tidal rockpools,
home to crustations and seagrasses.
And the coffee tasted like medicine.

Suffer the Little Children

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Suffer the Little Children

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

On the Road Again and a New Photo Blog announcement

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Namaste friends

Welcome again to my blog. It’s always a good feeling when I sit at the keyboard to begin a new post to you.

And for this post,I have some news: this hermit is back on the road again. But, I hear you asking: aren’t you as a pilgrim always on the road, on the move? Yes all true; a pilgrimage like mine (life) is never-ending, permanent. Just a state of being you could say.

So, after a few months in the desert hermitage, we felt lead to move to Sydney, to another cave; another safe haven by the side of road.

This move has felt right and gone smoothly from the first thought, the initial feeling, to the actual trip here, right down to the comfort and contentment we feel in this new hermitage (in reality a small apartment beneath a house with a lovely garden, in a quiet street).

My second piece of news is that I have made another blog, one just for my pictures. Of course my posts here are always illustrated with my photos, but after deleting all my social media accounts (another bit of news I suppose) I felt the need for an alternate place to share my art. It’s on a different platform and it would be terrific if you could follow me there.

The blog is called Pictures from the Heart of a Pilgrim, and you are invited to visit, to follow, to comment. to connect. Just click on the link here.

There are only a handful of pictures on that site so far, but I’m working on expanding it, so please make sure you visit more than once. Better still, subscribe so you can be notified whenever I post.

I think that’s it. Maybe I will post about deleting social media accounts. But, somehow I don’t think I will: they’ve gone and I’m happy about that. I’m not alone I know in making that decision.

So, till next post, thank you for your support.

Love and Peace

Paul