Mira Prabhu's Blog, page 89

Psychotic or Saint? Who Killed Jasmine #4/4

Eastern philosophy has convinced me that just one invisible factor separates the psychotic facing the electric chair from a great being like Mahatma Gandhi — and that is karma. In order to evolve, it is essential we improve ourselves on all levels — and that begins with changing the root of our egocentric thought patterns. Practicing gratitude is a great way to do this, for it diverts the channel of our thoughts from negative to positive, even as it expands our appreciation of this dazzling cosmos and our role in it.

It is our responsibility to discover that we are all far greater than our bodies, our minds, and our circumstances. My own deeper quest began when I came to grips with the stark realization that mainstream life would never ever satisfy me, that when I assessed my worth in terms of shifting relative factors — appearance, talents, wealth, power — I was fighting a losing battle. There was always someone wittier, more talented, prettier and richer hovering in the wings. And even if I believed I was God’s gift to humanity, there was a fair chance no one else would perceive me that way; some might even see me as a major pain in the batootie.

As I graduated from the Cosmic University of Hard Knocks, spurred on by the whip of benevolent gods, I continued to seek that peace and joy that Indian rishis promise is our birthright. Many gurus — visible and invisible, human and non-human — enlivened my inward journey. Star among them is Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, who re-introduced the ancient wisdom technique of Self-Investigation or Vichara — which reveals to us that we are far more than our fabricated worldly identity — that we are the incandescent Self. When we begin to know ourselves in this way, what need to destroy the ephemeral, no matter how the external world treats us?

In his book Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the Seven-Point Mind Training, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, a powerful Tibetan Buddhist teacher, says:

No one knows when, or how, death will come. Bubbles form on the surface of the water, but the next instant they are gone; they do not stay. It is just the same with this precious human body that we have managed to find. We take all the time in the world before engaging in spiritual practice, but who knows when this life of ours will simply cease to be?

Which makes it all the more critical for committed seekers of true liberation to be grateful for all the circumstances of our lives — negative and positive. It is by cultivating skillful means, by dwelling on our true nature when our relative circumstances suck, that we learn to transmute our worst experiences into the pure gold of wisdom, inevitably leading to that exquisite peace that surpasses all understanding.

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EGO = Easing God Out. Who Killed Jasmine #3/4

Let’s face the bitter truth, Jasmine: it was not your circumstances that caused you (and those other celebrities) to snuff out their lives…the real assassin was and is the ego — the false self that seduces us into believing — despite all the misery and seeming unfairness of life — that we should be given all that our little hearts desire — in your specific case, a stellar celluloid career and the love of an honorable man.

There’s an acronym for the EGO that hits the nail squarely on the head: Easing God Out. When the untrammeled ego dominates one’s view of relative reality, sanity, love, compassion – all higher qualities – go right out the window. Who is “god” in this context? The noble part of your being, the Self which includes everyone and everything, manifest and unmanifest, and whose nature is, according to rishis and jnanis of the east, pure existence-consciousness and bliss.

If only you had summoned up the courage to stick it out, Jasmine, you might have gradually uncovered the peace that lies below all angst. There being no accidents, however, perhaps your suicide was necessary in order for you to learn a crucial lesson: the next time you are blessed to inhabit a human body, you may well be imbued with the gnosis that your spirit is immortal, and therefore learn to make the most of your precious life.

You Are The Light Itself

Dwell!

You are the Light itself!

Rely on yourself, do not rely on others.

The Dharma is the Light; rely on the Dharma.

Do not rely on anything other than the Dharma.

I first heard these words of Gautama Buddha during a sesshin at the now defunct Fire Lotus Zendo in mid-Manhattan. Next day, I printed it out in 40 point bold and stuck the sheet above my bathroom mirror. Boy, did it transform the sick way I perceived my existence! No more room for the self-pity that had haunted me for so long! Because I had an implicit trust in Gautama’s words, I now had no excuse but to find happiness within myself, and no way to blame the world for my misery. That process of mining inner gold still goes on….

What did Gautama mean? Simply that we must stop expecting others to make us happy — for the light shines within each and every one of us, and merging with this inner radiance brings ineffable peace and happiness. However, uncovering this light takes patient effort, wisdom and discipline; it is meticulous and relentless inner work that most humans shy away from for a plethora of reasons.

What is the dharma Gautama speaks of? In this particular context, it meant two things: one, the goldmine of eastern teachings so easily available in this age; and two, doing that which you were born to do, to follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell urged us, regardless of negative or positive consequences. As that old saying goes, Buddhas can only point the way — it is we who must walk the path.

According to eastern philosophy, the highest reason to be grateful is that we’ve been given a precious human birth. Precious human birth? I hear you snort incredulously. Didn’t you just present all those depressing stats on world hunger, poverty and illness? What’s so precious about living like that?

True enough; most humans on this planet do not possess the ingredients necessary to bask in their own inner light — because they are constantly engaged in the brutal battle for basics. But if you are reading this post, chances are you do have a precious human life —you are clearly literate, most likely open to change since you are reading a post many might dismiss as spiritual claptrap, and enjoying a standard of living that allows you to surf the net.

If we possess all our faculties and can access tools that expand mind and spirit, then we have been gifted with what the Buddhists refer to as “a precious human life”. What separates the intelligent human from other species? Viveka, or discrimination — while all of us are subject to the entire gamut of good, bad and neutral experiences, humans alone have the intellectual power to slice through the mess and discern how to avoid future suffering.

Why does practicing gratitude on a daily basis work so well? Here’s a simple answer: if the classical definition of karma is the movement of the mind, and what it produces in terms of speech and action (meaning, thought, speech and action), and if it is this karma that produces our perception of relative reality, then changing the very root of how we think must eventually transform our reality.

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From Bollywood Celeb to Mother Teresa? Who Killed Jasmine #2/4

Food apart, what about other critical issues? You probably had access to an excellent education, Jasmine, but did you know that nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read? Here are other shocking stats: less than one per cent of the global expense on arms could educate the world’s children — but few humans, least of all the super-wealthy who could make a difference, give a good goddamn.

Forty million live with HIV/AIDS; every year one million die of malaria; half of humanity suffers due to bad water and lousy sanitation; millions of women spend hours every day just collecting water; 1 billion live in slums, and 2.5 billion rely on wood, charcoal and animal dung to cook their meager food. As for money — the love of which the good book says is the root of all evil — would it have surprised you to learn that roughly less than one percent of the world’s population controls a quarter of the world’s financial assets?

Am I suggesting you could have sublimated your angst by trying to improve the state of our wretched and our destitute? That you could have metamorphosed from Bollywood celeb to Mother Teresa in order to improve the lot of Mumbai’s lepers and slum-dwellers? No, Jasmine, that’s not why I reeled off those horrific stats.

You see, I’ve come to believe that a Higher Power governs the cosmos via subtle laws — an omniscient power that sees past, present and future, yes, the whole staggering cosmic tapestry. Appearances to the contrary, everything is happening according to Divine will — which does not mean we should stand by passively when someone is in trouble — especially if we are in a position to bring solace. But if we widen our personal horizons to consider the appalling conditions of fellow human beings, perhaps we can begin to appreciate our own myriad blessings, and make the best use of our own precious lives.

Through A Glass, Darkly

By the way, Jasmine, I do know what it’s like to feel so bad you want to end it all. But, as a friend who suffers from manic-depression once said to me: suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And while millions of humans do consider killing themselves at some point or the other in their lives, most desist from this often cowardice-fueled act .

The unsung heroes of this planet are those who summon up the guts to struggle through tunnels of doubt and despair in order to wend their warrior’s way back into the light — no matter what! The inner tussle between darkness and light goes on for all of us, but the mature human never gives up. Some even hit that sacred point when spiritual gold begins to shower down; looking back, they realize that all the suffering was worth it in spades.

Like you, Jasmine, I too viewed the world through extremely dark glasses. But fortunately for me, even as I flirted with the demons of self-destruction, a wisdom path opened up before my astounded eyes. Decades of study and practice later, I’ve more or less managed to wean myself away from the usual selfish concerns of the mainstreamer: of looking good, feeling good, being adored by a fickle world, of focusing all my energies on ephemeral things incapable of providing deep satisfaction or happiness, assets I would inevitably have had to leave behind when Lord Yama, Lord of Death, came calling — as He does for all of us, rich or poor, young or old, brainless or brilliant.

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Hang It All! Who Killed Jasmine #1/4

Recent headlines about a young Bollywood star who hung herself one fine day in her posh Mumbai home set me to wondering just why a woman so blessed would resort to so irrevocable an act. I dug a little deeper: career and romantic problems, screeched the media, citing the same boring reasons that have led other glamorous stars all over the globe to snuff out their privileged lives.

Well, Jasmine, you certainly looked chic and spunky in those pics the media splashed around — a gorgeous celeb with everything to live for. So what really led you to kill yourself? Were you devastated because another star bagged the role you craved? Frustrated with sparse media and public attention? Or did the knife of shame and despair cut too deep when you discovered your boyfriend was messing around behind your slender back? Did a combination of all these — coupled with secret agonies you’d nursed since you were a little girl — hurl you into the abyss of depression and gradually lead you to tie that noose around your slender neck?

A pity some wise friend did not remind you that all humans without exception suffer, from beggar to queen, and to one degree or another — and that no matter how bad things seem in the moment, that everything passes. Had you allowed your sorrows to pass right through you, instead of sinking under their weight, this same ugly monster of grief might have turned into a glorious angel, sent to help you unfurl the delicate petals of your heart chakra and thereby connect you with the core of this unimaginably mysterious cosmos in threads of shimmering gold.

Luxury Problems

If by some bizarre twist of fate, you’d happened to confide your sorrows in me, Jasmine, I’d have done my damnedest to knock some sense of proportion into your lovely head. I’d have reminded you that you were in the top bracket of the world’s population, and that your seemingly insurmountable problems stemmed solely from a fragile ego. I’d have coaxed you to lift your pretty head out of the trough of narcissism and consider for a moment the blatant suffering of our world. Even if you had suffered from unrelieved depression — and I’m not dismissing the bleak horrors of that state — there are roads that lead out of endless gloom, especially if you are smart and rich.

Why the term “luxury” problems? Because on this planet you choose to leave so abruptly, millions don’t even have their basics. Just imagine if you’d numbered among the 2.6 billion forced to live on less than a hundred rupees (less than USD $2) a day! Let’s say you were an illiterate slum mother forced to care for a family of five on that tiny amount…not just food, but shelter, education, medicine, and clothes. What would you have done if your little girl got seriously sick? Reduced your daily meals from two to one in order to buy her some medicine?

Did you bother to consider the statistic that seven thousand children under the age of five die from lack of food every single day? Some die as a consequence of famine, flood or other disasters, but most succumb because their fledgling immune systems are powered down by malnutrition, leaving the door wide open for deadly diseases that result from extreme hunger. At this very moment, Jasmine, 925 million people all around the globe are hungry — not for the gourmet cuisine celebrities take for granted, but for basics…a little dhal, a few peanuts, some boiled rice.

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New Facebook Author Page for Mira Prabhu

Hello Wonderful People!

My kalyanmitra (spiritual friend) and blog administrator Raj has just combined a variety of elements to create a terrific Author Page for yours truly on Facebook – click on https://www.facebook.com/miraprabhuauthor and explore it for yourself…and please do SHARE this link with your email and social media contacts.

As Tiruvannamalai slips into November, bliss has seriously begun to stir within myself and the divine canines…for cool winds waft regularly down from the sacred mountain, a mild sun kisses our shaggy heads (I haven’t had a haircut for months), our hibiscus bushes keep bursting into shamelessly rich vermilion blossom, wee hummingbirds and regal kingfishers alight on the branches of our flowering almond trees…and this is just a taste of the abundance we are grateful for.

Today is Diwali, or Deepavali, the Festival of Light. It was on this day, a very long time ago, that Rama –having vanquished Ravana for the heinous sin of stealing his gorgeous mate Sita, with the aid of the mighty and resourceful Hanuman – returned to his kingdom of Ayodhaya –whereupon exulting citizens lit a gazillion oil lamps to welcome home their beloved monarch.

Meanwhile, on a more mundane level, Kali and Aghori have been seriously griping about the way humans celebrate this fabled victory. What, what, what, they bark in profound puzzlement, does this indiscriminate bursting of earsplitting firecrackers that threaten to shatter our fragile canine ear-drums have to do with the never-ending cosmic hoopla of Good overcoming Evil?

On our daily morning walks through field and forest, Kali and Aghori see no harm in stalking a resplendent peacock, lunging at a mischievous monkey making rude faces at us from a towering tree, salivating at a pretty bird perched on a quivering branch, or making a move on a new-born calf, standing precariously on skinny new legs; should they actually catch one of these unfortunate creatures, they could very well rip them to bits, and feast on their innards. Good and evil, you see, are lofty issues that do not concern canines.

As for why our locals like noise so much, I have no answer to offer the doggies. In fact, I happen to side strongly with their views  – my own ears, you see, feel the pain. To comfort them as another volley of earth-shattering bombs resound right around the corner from our home, I dish out yet another doggie biscuit, drop fond kisses on their sensitive snouts, and contemplate the strange fact that “dog” spelled backwards makes “God”.

Mika Nandri (Tamil for “Thank You!”) and lots of love from Arunachala… 

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Freedom From the Matrix – Samsara’s Seven Flavors #12/12

The goal of our practice is not to put up with crap, but to eradicate suffering in all its forms. These were the words of the guru who taught me Mahamudra and so much else.

That said, analytical antidotes to human suffering only help us cope with the endless pains of relative reality. Using only these seven flavors as antidotes to our suffering of body and mind is like using band-aids on the deep wound of our humanity — though I’ve heard it said that a complete understanding and acceptance of the final flavor of Mahamudra (that all we experience is the result of our own past thought, speech and action, or karma) is powerful enough to transform lower into higher consciousness.

Mahamudra practice alone cannot lead us all the way to enlightenment, nor does it remove problems; what it does is lighten the sting of our suffering by revealing the true nature of samsara. Once we’ve begun to unmask samsara, we must simultaneously begin to uncover our own true nature — which, according to great sages like Ramana Maharshi, is sat-chit-ananda, pure existence-pure consciousness and pure bliss.

The real journey of the committed seeker is an inner one which intensifies when we use tools such as Mahamudra to splash great arcs of light on to our individual paths toward the spiritual heart. To borrow Hesse’s poetic translation of the Mundaka Upanishad’s golden verse:

Om is the bow

The soul is the arrow

Brahman is the arrow’s goal

At which one aims unflinchingly. 

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The Sticky Web of Life – Samsara’s Seven Flavors #10/12

Say you’re a crack software designer with your eye on a dream posting in California’s exciting Bay Area. The job dangles before you like a luscious red apple. Everyone knows you’re the best candidate. You’re so sure the job is yours that you start preparing to split India.

Then you get a call from a pal in Human Resources — sorry, she says, but they’ve given the project to Bipin Ghatge. I know, it sucks, but what to do? He’s our Chairman’s nephew — didn’t you know?”

Foiled again! This time by that smug toady Bipin! You want to eviscerate him and shriek with wicked laughter as his guts slither out of his belly, but you don’t relish the idea of spending the next 50 years in prison. You think about that new pub where you could get rip-roaring drunk — but that road to oblivion will make it impossible for you to endure Ghatge’s snide looks tomorrow.

Your mind ranges like a bandit over all your options. In a flash, the thought pops into your head that perhaps its time to try that silly Mahamudra meditation Mira forced you to listen to, when you were in the throes of another crisis. Your memory’s always been like the proverbial steel trap. You actually remember all those seven points she drummed into you, flavors she called them, as if she was selling ice-cream!

Practicing Mahamudra – Samsara’s Seven Flavors #11/12

You slink home and drink some green tea with honey before parking your butt below the Buddha batik your mom gave you for a housewarming gift. You allow yourself to feel all your feelings about the loss of the Bay Area job. Ouch!

You apply the first step of Mahamudra: that all things are imperfect — and deliberately designed to be so — because if you and the world were both perfect, how would you grow? And though spiritual growth is not a priority for you, its weird how just accepting the inherently imperfect nature of this world makes you feel so much better.

You apply the second flavor — of impermanence. How many other disappointments have you dealt with in your thirty-one years? And just where are they now? Do you spend a second aching for that snooty chick who dumped you like a stack of dirty dishes crash bang into the sink of despair? Two months later, you met the amazing Aparajita — and boy oh boy, isn’t she a whole lot sweeter than that other shrew! Phew! As for this job, there are a thousand like it, some even better paying. Perhaps now is the time to leave a company that so blatantly practices nepotism.

No ownership. There it was, that seductive project in the Bay Area, right within your grasp, and then, whoosh, it was gone, without your permission! Who owned it? Certainly not you! Maybe there are invisible laws governing every little thing….

No accident. This one is tougher to accept. You’re a straight-up sort of guy and you don’t care for mystical bullshit. But hey, what to do, man, just go with the flow—accept that there are no accidents and see what happens.

No fixed judgment. You look back on your life and see the myriad times you judged something to be good or bad, and how that good turned into bad, and vice versa. What about that English writer who invented Harry Potter? Loses her job, is barely making it on welfare, then waves her magic wand and brings the boy magician to roaring life. Hey presto and abracadabra, soon she’s raking in millions. A clear case of Tragedy into Victory, what? And what about Stephen Jobs, your one-time hero, who had everything material a man could dream off…to die at his peak? This time the theme song’s Victory into Tragedy….and so on and so forth.

Transformation. Yes, you can transform this situation. You can quit this company pronto and accept that job you were offered last week. You’ve heard this new company plays fair and is run by an ethical board who respect their employees. Maybe by this time next year you will be working in the Bay Area….

Finally, did this whole incident flow from your own past karma? Did you actually set up this whole scenario in this or some past lifetime, just to learn a lesson? You’re not too sure about this, actually, it sounds kinda corny, but all right, okay, you’ll give this notion too a decent shot.

You continue to sit quietly, allowing these new views of the current crisis to percolate into your deeper self. It’s bizarre, but once again it feels like the sun is shining down on your precious head. Hey, this darn meditation really does work!

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Inherent Imperfection – Samsara’s Seven Flavors #9/12

Shaken to the core by Angelica’s unexpected rant, I rode the elevator up to my apartment. The thought flashed that here was a perfect opportunity to check out the efficacy of Mahamudra. So I sat in lotus position before my altar and watched the flow of my breath until I felt calmer. Then I pulled up the embarrassing scene in the subway.

Other passengers had watched Angelica go nuts: some had smirked; some had shot us looks of disapproval or irritation. Holding this scene in the foreground of my mind, I applied to it each of the six flavors of Emptiness. Tears welled up and rolled down my cheeks as I re-lived the humiliating experience. Strangely, when I was done, I felt peaceful and grounded. Surely Angelica’s outburst had been the result of some inexpressible agony! Compassion for her arose. As the lama had promised, Mahamudra did work!

A couple days later, Angelica called to apologize : she’d cracked up on the subway, she explained, because the following day was Mother’s Day, and she’d dreaded spending it with the woman who’d battered her for years. Unable to deal with the volcanic feelings that shot up every time she forced herself to play nice with her abuser, she’d vented on me. Could I forgive her?

It gave me a real kick to tell her that, thanks to Mahamudra, I already had.

This incident convinced me of the power of Mahamudra. Instead of running away from pain — emotional, physical, existential — I began to apply the six flavors to difficult situations and people. As I grew stronger in the practice, I began to teach it to friends.

One fine day I added another flavor to my own practice of Mahamudra — that samsara is inherently imperfect. This conclusion had leaped out at me after having practiced the other six for quite a while — for beneath my suffering I found lurking the insidious expectation that my life should be perfect; I suspected that most, if not all humans, felt the same way. I rated this flavor so high that I soon moved it up to first place.

If we are already perfect in our essence — which is the liberating teaching of the east — and if we incarnate for some mysterious reason known only to the omniscient, then it follows that the identity we form, as well as the circumstances into which we are thrust, must be imperfect — in order for us to grow.

Today I truly accept that some inscrutable power has designed all of life to be deliberately imperfect — and that’s a thought that makes perfect sense to me, and which restores me to peace.

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Karmic Tranformation – Samsara’s Seven Flavors #8/12

Flavor #5: Transforming Problems. If a great chef and a lousy cook are given the exact same ingredients and asked to prepare a meal, chances are the chef would produce a feast, while the novice would offer up a mess. Well, Mahamudra says that the circumstances of our own life are like those ingredients — what we have on our plates is the result of our own past karma; what we do with them depends on our skill as chefs.

Flavor #6: Our Personal Karma Creates our Reality. According to Mahamudra, everything that happens in our lives is the result of past karma. Over a decade ago in a monastery in Dharamsala, a group of us listened to a high lama speaking on the nature of relative reality . “Everything you experience is only the result of your past thought, speech and action,” he pronounced. “You are the only one responsible for both your happiness as well as your suffering.”

We’d all heard this numerous times before, but coming as it did from this teacher whose serene expression projected certainty, it had terrific impact. A German lady sitting under a whirring fan raised her hand. “Are you saying that every teeny weeny thing we experience is the result of our past karma?” He nodded. “Exactly right,” he said. “Even the breath of that fan on your cheek is the result of your past karma. But keep in mind that while you cannot manipulate your current experience of reality, you can create a magnificent future by learning to think, speak and act positively.”

So these are the six flavors of samsara in a nutshell.

And bizarrely enough, soon after I’d digested them, Angelica fought with me as we rode the subway back home from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn Heights. I was shocked by her ferocity, especially since I could think of nothing I had consciously done to upset her.

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No Accident & No Judgment – Samsara’s Seven Flavors #7/12

Flavor #3: Nothing Happens by Accident. Mahamudra claims that nothing that happens in our lives is an accident. Say I stop for petrol in a quiet Himalayan town and bump into a pal I haven’t seen since high school — well, that’s not an accident — my friend was brought there by certain karmic energies, and so was I.

This is a particularly important view to cultivate when we encounter tragedy — because it’s when the shit hits the fan that we really go nuts. Accepting that a horrid experience is the result of our own past karma, and that we are in effect creating our own experience of reality by how we think, speak and act —  can make all the difference to how we transcend the negative effects of hard times.

Let’s consider the specific feelings the first three flavors of samsara work with: impermanence works with the (wrong) feeling that things are going to last; the lack of ownership works on the (wrong) feeling that I own these things; no accident works on the (wrong) feeling of: why does bad stuff always happen to me? Why did I lose my job? Why did my lover get pancreatic cancer? Practiced with understanding, all three flavors can help us ground ourselves in the reality of what is.

Flavor #4: Our Judgments are Mere Constructs. Who decides a scallion should be called a scallion? We do. The problem is that humans are prone to think that the labels we give to things belong to them by divine right, forgetting that a label is merely a mutually accepted construct.

Say a professor you admired as a fiery young student stated that communism is the ideal state of government for everybody — and you went and believed him! Years later, the momentous failure of communism-in-practice forced you to accept that his statement was a personal construct that does not universally apply. The truth is that whether we perceive an anorexic supermodel as the most beautiful creature on the planet, or as aesthetically repellent, is, in the end, merely a personal construct.

Mahamudra slowly begins to strip away our justifications for seeing as we do: first, we stop thinking that things last forever; second, we stop thinking that we control the destinies of our assets or our relationships; third, we stop thinking of things as accidents. And fourth, we stop thinking that our judgments are right – because judgments too are just the way we are seeing something in the present moment.

If everyone practiced these four flavors, the conflict that flares up not just in our personal lives, but between castes, classes, races and nations, would dissolve into thin air. And wouldn’t that be cool?

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