A DEVELOPMENT: A SHORT STORY

He closed his blog on the four-year anniversary of its launch.  The blog contained 275 posting on the subject of Buddhism and Vedanta, mostly Vedanta.  The reason he ended it was because of a spiritual turning of the tide for him.

It came with his realization that for him the contemplative life, what he wanted, was not thinking about God, which was what writing a blog was, but being with God and God being with him.  This last phrase “God being with him,” was the key to his decision, because he’d never before thought of his relationship with God in quite that way, as a reciprocal relationship, where they both participated in it.  This was good.

How was it, though, that he was able to keep writing about Buddhism and Vedanta for so long?  Well, Buddhism he was already familiar with, having been a student of it since his college days back in the 1960s.  Vedanta, on the other hand, was completely new to him, so he had a lot to learn, hence much to share with his readers.

Why Vedanta?  He became interested in it thanks to Christopher Isherwood, the novelist, who was an initiate of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, headed by Swami Prabhavananda.  Oddly enough, he had been introduced to Isherwood’s writing by way of a lady who lived downstairs from him when he lived in Whittier, California. 
 
She loaned him her copy of A Single Man to find out, he came to assume, whether he, like Isherwood and the central character in the novel, was homosexual.  She had had designs on him for some while and wanted to discover whether she was wasting her time with him or not.  She would know by his reaction to the book.  It so happened he liked the book very much but not for the reason she was looking for.

Anyway, via Isherwood he became more and more interested in Vedanta and before long found himself in a Vedanta spell.  Only after writing his blog on the subject for four years did the bubble finally burst.  Ironically, he had just purchased Shankara’s Crest Jewel of Discrimination translated by Prabhavananda with commentary by Isherwood, but now, it appeared, he would have to set that aside.

The question remaining was where did he go from here?  Did he head off in a different direction, a poetry blog maybe, or just be content with keeping his mouth shut from here on?

Here’s what it cames down to:  The primary motivation, the engine behind his staying with Vedanta, and Buddhism, for so long was something he did not know he was still carrying with him.  Back in 2009, he experienced what he took at first to be Zen samadhi but what proved to be, as described in Vedanta, the Atman in him awakening into Brahman, God.

So, again, for him the contemplative life, what he wanted, was not thinking about God, which was what writing a blog was, but being with God and God being with him.  What he did not anticipate was that when one had such a relationship with God, the Atman, who is the personal aspect of God, was inclined to speak up.  Now he had to find someplace to put this speaking up.