FOR HALLOWEEN

I am imagining a piece of music that is haunted.  Not haunting, but haunted.

BACK STORY

Whether a novel, a film, or a stage play, the characters will have a back story so-called, which is their history prior to their appearance in that novel, film, or play.

But then we, too, have a back story, such as, for instance, who our parents were, where we went to school, how many friends we had and who they and their parents were, whether it was a positive environment we grew up in or whether it was negative.

But there is another back story and that is who we were in our previous incarnations.  The details of this are not available to us directly, of course, but they can be supposed accurately enough, based on how our current lives are going.  Vedanta and Buddhism teach that the karma that we carry from our past lives determines our present fortunes.

If we are now enjoying good luck and happy experiences, then who we used to be was a person who was kind, generous, and helpful to others.  If in our present life we have much misfortune, tragedy and suffering, then it is certain that in our past lives we were horrible toward everyone and everything.

Interpreting karma is a tricky business, though, because there are gray areas where it is not clear whether something is positive or negative.  What decides it is the intent, what the person doing the act meant by it.
 
If, for example, a person gives a gift to someone, but does so with hate in his heart, then the result is bad karma.  But it is good karma if a person saves someone from drowning, even though the one drowning is a crook.  Crooks can change their ways.
   
While we cannot know the details of our past lives, how our current lives are going tells us a great deal about the intentions of who we used to be.

OFF-CENTER

Mystics are the “spiritually gifted” among us, those “with spirit,” those who are “God’s own.”  They are recluses, misfits, and eccentrics many times, not unlike Byzantine hermits in the 4^th Century who lived in caves out in the desert, or like Buddhist and Taoist hermits who lived, and still live, in huts in a forest somewhere.  Mystics are off-center, in this way.

Many, to escape the labels of outsider, misfit, and eccentric, compromise with society, so that they are half in and half out, no longer off-center but off-and-on center.  These are mystics who join institutionalized religions as priests, pastors, and teachers.  They, accordingly, are able to help humanity in a direct way, which is good for those they serve, but also good for them personally, emotionally.

In Vedanta, Sri Ramakrishna was a prime example of such a compromise.  He was prone to dropping into Samadhi without a moment’s notice, during which he appeared quite insane, and probably was.  But he lived in a Hindu temple, with followers who considered him not only a mystic but a saint as well.  When he was not in Samadhi he seemed well-adjusted enough, despite having both feet in another world.

The dilemma for mystics, therefore, is whether to remain true to the full experience of their spirituality, weathering being stereotyped, or whether to compromise.  Yet, it is difficult to imagine a true mystic meeting the outside world halfway, or even a quarter of the way, even Ramakrishna. 
 
Trappist monk and mystic Thomas Merton wrote a book that may hold the answer.  It is called No Man is an Island.  Mystics may consider themselves islands, and indeed in the beginning may be islands, but over time, for a host of reasons, the condition loses its appeal.  More appealing is something in or near the center.

IN FACT

You are not your idea of yourself.

MUTUAL EATING SOCIETY

This world is a mutual eating society where small creatures, after having had their fill of plants and smaller creatures, are consumed by larger creatures, then the large creatures are eaten by still larger creatures, and all creatures, large and small, are devoured by diseases, wars, and time.

ON NAMING THINGS

We name a thing as though it were one thing.

The more names we give a thing, the more it is not the thing.

A lake is a lake but then we call it a lake and it becomes something else.

ONE FATE: A SHORT STORY

He believed that his life was going the only way it could go.  Why it was going that way, whether it was karma, God’s will, or something else altogether, he did not know, nor, he decided, was it necessary that he know.

One thing was certain, however, and that was that it was happening beyond his control.  It was like being on a raft heading for a waterfall, with nothing he could do to keep from going over the edge.  It was only a matter of when.

It affected how he viewed other people, though.  If his life was going the only way it could go, then their lives were, too, most likely. 
 
It aroused in him feelings of compassion, new to him, so that his life was suddenly going another way it could.  Yet, it was all one fate.

OUR DILEMMA

Getting in the way of what is happening of itself.

TRUST IT

When in doubt, trust it.  It knows more about it than you do.

ANCIENT FATALISM

Gosala Mankhaliputta was an ascetic teacher of ancient India who was born in 484 BCE.  His contemporaries included Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, and Mahavira, the 24^th and last Tirthankara of Jainism.  Gosala was the leader of a group who believed in fatalism.  Fatalism is the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable.

The ancient Indian philosophy and ascetic movement called Ajivikas believed in fatalism as well.  It held that a person’s reincarnation was determined by a precise and impersonal cosmic principle called niyati.  Niyati was completely independent of a person’s actions; it was not dependent on karma.
 
This form of fatalism had intriguing implications.  If all future occurrences were rigidly determined, then coming events could be said to exist already.  The future existed in the present, and both existed in the past.  Time, therefore, was illusory.   All phases of a process were always present.  Nothing was destroyed and nothing was produced.  If all things were already determined, it meant that their change and development were likewise an illusion.

What attitude should one assume if he agrees with fatalism?  An option is amor fati.  Amor fati is a Latin phrase meaning roughly “love of fate” or “love of one’s fate.”  It describes an attitude in which a person sees everything that happens in his life, including any suffering and loss he may experience, as good, or, at the very least, necessary.  They are the facts of his life and so are always “necessarily there,” whether he likes them or not.  As a result he is accepting and content with his life.

FROM THE MUNDAKA UPANISHAD

Meditation is not soothing the mind with idle thoughts.  Meditation is locking the doors of your senses so that your mind can be concentrated on the inner light that is Atman/Brahman.  As you continue to concentrate, to meditate, you begin to feel that, yes, Brahman, God, is within.  This is the central truth of Vedanta.

Next, you must long for God, discriminating between the eternal, which is God, and the non-eternal, which is the world of form.  Then you must feel dispassion regarding the experiences in your life other than God, as they are ephemeral. 
 
You will find it difficult to renounce the distraction of sense pleasures unless you have something greater than them to turn to.  For example, in the path of devotion, as your love for God grows, as you find sweetness in the thought of God, you will discover that your other desires and cravings leave you.

Knowing God is beyond the senses.  It is transcendental experience.  The purified mind, the purified heart is when there is no longer the desire for anything else but God.

PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG

You would not be reading this blog if the Atman in you was not awakening.  I am here to encourage that awakening, as I am the same Atman.

INCLUSIVITY

The beauty of Vedanta is that it embraces all other religions, which means that nobody is wrong.  It also welcomes differing views within itself, because how God is experienced varies from person to person.

PATH TO ILLUMINATION

The truth is considered secret knowledge because not everyone is ready for it.  In order to be ready for it, you must undergo certain preparations.   

You learn first of all to discriminate between the eternal and the non-eternal.  You discover, with this, that God alone is real. 
 
Then you must learn to yearn for God rather than to yearn for the enjoyments of the world, that is, specifically, for the enjoyment of the fruits of your actions.  The fruits of your actions are transient, whereas God is abiding. 
 
Then you are to act with the “six treasures” in mind.

The first of the six treasures is tranquility.  This comes when you detach your mind from all objective things by continually seeing their imperfection.  This allows you to focus fully on God. 
 
The second treasure is self-control.  You detach yourself from both kinds of sense organs, those of perception and those of action.  The result is a mental poise that tempers the intensity of external stimuli.
 
Third is forbearance, which is to endure every affliction without rebellion, complaint, or lament.

Fourth is faith.  Faith is trusting in the scriptures, as they are based on experience and not just on speculation and theory.
 
Fifth is self-surrender whereby God, not you, remains foremost in your mind. 
   
Sixth is longing for liberation which is the will to be free from fetters created by ignorance, i.e. by wrong thinking.  Even a little of this longing will grow in intensity over time. 
 
Lastly is the need for devotion, commitment.  Devotion is a constant recollectedness of God.

With these preparations, illumination will come to you.

ARTISTS VS. SPIRITUAL SEEKERS

Artists seek the sublime so-called, that euphoria that comes when a work of art is everything that the artist hoped it would be.  To add one more thing would ruin it.

Spiritual seekers also strive for the sublime, a bliss that comes when a moment with God, be it a prayer or a meditation, is everything that the seeker hoped it would be.  To pray or meditate another minute would spoil it.

SPIRITUAL LONELINESS

I have been admiring the paintings at the I Require Art website.  A lot of them appear to me to be the Atman in the artists struggling to awaken.  Much of it, accordingly, looks to be the artists’ frustration, even madness, noticeable in their hard brush strokes, to the extent that I feel quite insane myself afterwards.  Depressed, lonely, I find myself missing the company of God.

“Sweet loneliness” is what I call this state, what the Cloud of Unknowing terms “darkness.”  I have felt it in other circumstances.  Emotional loneliness is what I thought it was when it first occurred, but I have experienced emotional loneliness before, and this is something quite different.

Spiritual loneliness, then, is what it is, the Atman yearning for Brahman, its source, as in the artists.  Unlike the artists, I now welcome the loneliness, nurture and savor it even, hence “sweet” loneliness.  I call it this, knowing that God is just on the other side of it.

SPIRITUAL BROTHER

It was a revelation to me that as a young man Vincent van Gogh wanted to be a pastor.  Indeed, he came from a family of pastors, his father being a minister of the Dutch Reform Church, and his grandfather holding a degree in theology from the University of Leiden.
   
Vincent became a Methodist minister’s assistant, at one point, with the intention of “preaching the gospel everywhere.”  Alas, though, it was an unhappy arrangement and he spent most of his time either doodling or translating passages from the Bible into English, French, and German.

To support his religious aspirations, Vincent’s family sent him to Amsterdam to study theology.  He prepared for the entrance exam with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian and author.  Vincent, however, failed the exam.  He then undertook a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school near Brussels, only to fail at that, too.

A temporary post as a missionary in a coal-mining district in Belgium was what he attempted next, living like those he preached to, sleeping on straw in a small hut at the back of the baker's house where he was staying.  His choice of squalid living conditions, however, appalled church authorities, who subsequently dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood."

With this, he turned fully to art, the other family occupation; three of his uncles, and his brother were art dealers, and his father’s uncle was a successful sculptor.  Vincent wanted to be an artist but “in God’s service” as he put it, stating, “. . . to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces that leads to God. . . .”

A Sanskrit hymn reads:  “As the different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their waters in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through various tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to thee.”

BUDDHIST VIEW

In Buddhism, the words “I” or “me” do not refer to any fixed thing.

ILLUSION OF HOME, SELF

The town you live in is not one town.  It only appears to be one town.  In reality it is a town build upon a town built upon a town for generations.  The simple test is, which town is the actual town.

No less so you yourself.  You are a person built upon a person built upon a person for a lifetime.  You seem to be one person, think you are one person, but you are not.  The simple test is, which you is the real you.