Morning Raga

Listen! In the first faint light of  dawn, silence begets the origin of all song.

Soft gurgle of water flowing downriver, the first whispers of wind in the trees;

Cuckoos cry to the world to awaken, splash of a fish leaping and falling,
the slither of oars and the soft hiss of the boat against the stream.

The first women washing clothes on the bank swish, thud ! swish, thud!

 like souls being cleansed in the river of Grace in a rhythm as old as the earth.

Far away a herd-boy calls to his sleepy cows to cross at the ford while the water is low.

Bird-songs begin and resonate in chorus, do you hear the clouds drift secretly across the sky?

It seems everything is singing in harmony…where does that deep underlying chord of Om arise?

See! The vast dark sky  blushes so delicately as Space reveals hidden beauty at the fading edge of night.

A still-bright sliver of moon slides down the horizon, as day triumphant drifts up all orange and gold.

And oh look! The magnificent splendour of a rising sun!

No thoughts, no words, no stories: only this effortless, blissful perfection of every new dawn.

If this is illusion, what artist created such glory?

If morning does not open your heart to the sacred,

nothing will!

Who Am I ?

                                

“Chidananda rupa Shivoham Shivoham”

(I am consciousness and bliss, Shiva am I, Shiva am I)

Atma Shatakam, Jagadguru Shankaracharya

(Talk about bungee jumping! Self inquiry is diving off the cliff with no parachute!)

Who am I?

I am not body or mind or thought or feeling; I am not air or water or fire or earth.

I am so fine I penetrate all matter; indeed, everything is made of me!

My inbreath begins in the farthest heaven and my outbreath reaches the deepest hell.

I have no boundaries or limits.

I am infinite space and the eternal now.

All the universes are contained in me.

I have no names or forms, yet all names and forms are like foam on the surface of the ocean that I am.

I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything.

Without beginning or end, unchanging, perfect, eternal, unending peace and joy am I!

Hiding in the tiniest heart of the atom, I am the swallower of worlds!

I am the lowest of the low, the least and the humblest; thus am I greater than all that exists!

Infinitely aware and eternally awake, I am that living consciousness that is the source and the substance of all things.
Subtler than the subtlest, you cannot know me- you can only Be me.

Every living being contains Me in its Heart of hearts; I am the life-force and the grace and the loving intelligence that creates and sustains and destroys.
There is only Me

                          Dancing so blissfully across eternity.

Throw it all away!

“When you haven’t understood yourself, what is the point of understanding other things?

When you have understood yourself, what else is there to understand? “

Atma Vidya - Bhagawan Ramana Maharishi.

"Not till your thoughts cease all branching here and there.Not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something.Not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone ,will you be on the right road to the Gate."  Huang Po.

We are so proud of our so-called knowledge. 

We are inflated by our academic prowess, our degrees and doctorates, our mental libraries and museums.

We read obscure books and ancient tomes and learn all kinds of rubbish by-heart.

We collect facts and figures and paragraphs and pages  and long arguments like we were collecting some great treasure. 

We are nothing but crazy, insecure rag-pickers with a huge sack of garbage weighing us down!

Throw it all away!

Sink into silence and stillness…find the root of thought….find the source of ” I”.

Inner energies awaken and divinity takes over.

There is nothing else you ever need to do.

Oh Lord of Hearts!

O sweet Gurudev, how can I begin to sing your praise?

There are no words to thank you for your mercy, your blessings,

your compassionate and infinite grace.

In trying to sing of you, I have lost my tongue and forgotten my name;

I am dumb and silent and still; some call me insane.

Tears flow like rivers down my cheeks, O King of my Heart- what can I say?

No matter how many times I fall, you pick me up again and again

with greater love and patience than any mother .

No matter how stubborn and stupid I am, you teach me again and again

With greater love and patience than any father.

No matter how fearful and needy and desperate I am, you never refuse me-

Answering every prayer.

You who are ultimate tenderness, infinitely forgiving, ocean of love and light,

You who are father, mother, God, Goddess, teacher, beloved and joyous delight.

You who make me fearless with your total protection, who grants my every need.

You who are the Emperor of emperors, the Light of the Universe

Who deigns to shine like a warm soft jewel in my Heart through all the lifetimes ,

Who never lets me go!

You who welcomes me like a fire in the forest, like an oasis in the desert, like an island in the sea

You who teach me how to truly BE;

You who loves me without limit and kills me with oneness and bliss!

Who, dear Lord of Hearts, can begin to describe this?

Fading Story

“If I should die tomorrow, dearly beloved, pray do not grieve for me;

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice! At last, I am free!

I have cut the knots that bind me, split my chains asunder, leapt joyously into the freedom of the sky

No more imprisoned in the body, I am everything; no more I !

Know that I have been blessed with endless grace

And watched over by gods and angels all through my days.

Your presence and your love have blessed me a thousand fold-

You have supported and cherished me in so many different ways.”Mickey

How long will this story last?

When I am dead, will anyone still visit my blog or  Facebook page or read my  Tweets?

We come and go like passing clouds; all that is left of our bodily existence is a few memories like the faded photographs of ancestors unremembered after a generation or two.

Is this the story we so desperately cling to? Why do we forget, again and again, our roots in the Self and wander like hungry ghosts in the world of the senses, tormented by fear and desire?

The Master’s words fall on deaf ears; no matter how much he exhorts us to remember who we really are, to awaken to our own eternal perfection, our inherent divinity. Why are we so stupid that we repeatedly leave the cool bliss of his protective shade and suffer in the blazing desert of the dream that is the world?

Why do we fall again and again into the traps of intellect and conceptual thought and pride?
 How can we be so blind , when we are blessed to be His devotees, surrounded by grace and love beyond compare? 

Oh sweet Lord of mountains, Arunachala Shiva, why do you not burn up these vasanas that poison us lifetime after lifetime ?  

Again and again we lose our way: will you not bind us firmly to yourself with the silken thread of your love?

I am tired of all the blunders, of  the mistakes of ignorance, of the forgetfulness and the ego-trips and the banal alternating rhythms of pleasure and pain.

O gracious Guru of Gurus, launch your thunderbolt at me!

Destroy me once and for all and let me merge with the dust beneath your feet.

Being Love

“Love is a deep mystery. It is the blossoming lotus and the bee drunk with nectar. It is a vast ocean that contains all creation. It is that state of total unity where no trace of duality remains. It is infinite compassion, unshakable peace, ecstatic harmony. Once you have tasted it, nothing else will satisfy you. “

Lightsongs – the book.

What is love? 
Throughout human history, philosophers, poets and sages have attempted to define this term. Is it an emotion, a feeling, a quality of personality? Or is it more – a force, a power, a divine emanation?

Are there different kinds of love? The absolute infatuation of the lover and the beloved, the unconditional bonding between mother and child, the selfless devotion of the compassionate care-giver, the heartfelt surrender of the devotee – are these all different versions of love? Or are they but pale shadows, reflections of the sun in a puddle, just a glimpse of the real Love?

The sages and mystics tell us that love is the very form of the Divine, the source and the substance of all things. 
This love is the greatest power in the universe, containing within itself all good, all joy , all peace, all consciousness and all creative energy. It is infinite, eternal perfection, shining without effort and without volition.It is in you, the very centre of your being.

You cannot know or understand or feel this love with your intellect or any of your senses. You can only BE it.

All sadhana, all the spiritual paths, eventually lead to this same centre of being. Once you touch it, you will never let go…until you drown in it like salt in the sea.

When there is no separate ‘you’ left, there is only love.

( Picture Courtesy Karin Murad) 

The Jewel in the Lotus

When the mind is silent, we can experience ourselves and the universe directly - we can reclaim the wonder we all knew as little children.

All of us experience brief moments of magic, when the mind stops in an “aha!” moment, no thoughts, no words, just awe: when we experience the perfection of a sunrise or a flower or the hushed mystery of a forest , or  the infinite, unconditional  love  we feel when our baby smiles.

 However brief and fleeting these moments are, they are reminders of our true nature, our inherent divinity.

Every night,in the depths of dreamless sleep, we experience true peace and rest and rejuvenation, so that when we awaken once more to the ticker-tape world of the mind, we feel refreshed, our souls recharged by returning briefly to their source.

Om Mani Padme Hum.

Prince Gautama refused to accept that human existence is merely a fleeting process of birth, suffering, old age and death. He went through all manner of effort and struggle until, in total exhaustion, his mind stopped:  he found the treasure and became Buddha. When asked about his enlightenment he described it as “ the end of suffering.”

All the saints and sages and prophets who ever existed have been saying the same thing.

Were they all crazy?

How ironic that we assume the limitation of this brief and fleeting existence in a body and live our entire lives alone and afraid in the shadow of Death!
How sad that we waste our precious moments in pursuit of baubles instead of finding the pearl beyond all price that is right inside ourselves!

The search for God or peace or joy leads to the silence that is the source of the mind.
Whether the path chosen is through devotion, prayer, self-inquiry or selfless action, all paths eventually lead to this same silence.

This is the greatest gift we have been given as human beings: the ability to discover our infinite true nature and our intrinsic oneness with all creation.

This is your very core , the secret Heart that every human being is born with, the jewel in the lotus, the divine Self that is your birth-right and your treasure : Sat-Chit-Ananda…Being-Consciousness-Bliss.

All you have to do is dive within.

You are already divine: just awaken from the mind-dream and drink in the sunrise of the Self.

Don’t wait: do it now!

The Center