How Great Masters Teach: A Few Stories

A legendary spiritual master born in Kerala, the land famous for acharyas like Shri Shankara, is Pakkanar, a pariah by birth. Numerous stories are told about how he gave lessons in the highest wisdom to people in his unique ways. In one of these stories, Pakkanar meets on the road a group of brahmanas who were on their way to Kashi, the holiest of holy places in India. He greeted these men as was appropriate for someone born to one of the lowest castes in the caste hierarchy and enquired of them where they were going. When they replied they were going to Kashi, Pakkanar showed them his walking stick and asked them, “Could your lordships do me a favour? Could you take this stick along and give it a dip in the Ganga too?”

They were offended by the request. They did not want even to touch a pariah’s walking stick. Why should they carry it all the way to Kashi and give it a bath in the Ganga and bring it back? But the man who was making that request was known to be not an ordinary pariah but a man of great wisdom. So instead of refusing him, they asked: “Why do you want the stick to be given a dip in the Ganga?” And all Pakkanar would say was that he would tell them when they brought the stick back. 

Reluctantly they took the stick with them.  

When the brahmanas reached Kashi, one of them dipped the stick in the Ganga and the force of the current carried it away. It disappeared before they could snatch it back. The brahmanas were upset about what happened, but there was nothing they could do. They finished their ritual baths in the Ganga and after visiting a few other holy places en route, eventually came back to their native place. When Pakkanar heard they were back, he went to them and after greeting them with due reverence, enquired about his stick. Did they give it a bath in the Ganga? Have they brought it back? And they told him they lost it. 

“Where did your lordships lose it?” asked Pakkanar.

“In the Ganga, in Kashi,” they answered. 

“Oh, that’s no problem then,” said Pakkanar with a smile. With that he went to the muddy pond that was close by and made a request to it, “Please, may I have my stick back?”
Legend says that the stick immediately rose up from the pond to the amazement of the brahmanas and Pakkanar picked it up. 

The brahmanas realized the invaluable lesson Pakkanar was giving them: Ganga is sacred. But every pond in the world is Mother Ganga herself, and all water is as sacred as the water of the Ganga.

Once we are able to see every place as equally sacred, all life becomes a sacred pilgrimage. Then you have no more to make special pilgrimages – be it to the sacred places of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any other religion.  And once you are able to see God in all living beings, then every breath you take becomes a sacred act.

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Sometimes even great masters fall under the spell of illusion in a rare moment of unawareness. That does not mean they are not enlightened; it only speaks of the great power of maya over the human mind. Speaking about this the Adhyatma Upanishad says it is like moss on water. You move it away with your hand, and a moment later it comes back: yathā apakrshtam śaivālam kshanamātram na tishthati, avrnoti tathā māyā prajnām vāpi parāngmukhām. A moment of inattentiveness, of carelessness, and maya takes over your enlightened mind. For that reason the Upanishad asks even great masters to be constantly aware of the power of illusion.

This story is about the great Acharya Shankara himself.  Once he was in Kashi and was walking along a narrow lane that led to the Vishwanatha temple accompanied by his disciples and a small crowd of devotees when he saw a chandala, the lowest of the low in the traditional caste hierarchy of India, coming across him, surrounded by his pack of dogs. The chandala was covered in dirt and had rags wrapped around him and the dogs barked continuously. Any chandala would have moved out of the way to give way to the acharya and his disciples, as was the social practice in those days, but this chandala was moving steadily towards the acharya, his steps showing no sign of slowing down, nor his eyes any sign of hesitation. “Gaccha! Gaccha!” the acharya shouted – “Move away, move away!”

But the chandala still did not slow down his steps or move aside. He advanced steadily towards the great master and standing before him with a smile on his face asked the him who had conquered practically all known scholars in India, “Mahatman, tell me one thing. When you said move away, what did you mean? Did you mean this body should move away from your body?  In that case your demand is ridiculous. Because my body is made of the same five elements that your body is made of and it consists of blood, bone, flesh and marrow as yours does. In case you mean my self, then you know that my self is as pure as yours. The soul cannot be corrupted at all – not by dirt, not by sin, not by pollution, not even by ignorance. What then did you want to move away?”

The acharya was shaken to his very soul by what the chandala had said. He was absolutely right. The body – his body as well as the chandala’s body consisted of blood, flesh, bone, marrow and other substances any of which you would take a bath if you touched. The soul was ever pure, its purity beyond the reach of all impurities. To what was he then shouting, asking it to move away?

The great acharya realized that in spite of all his knowledge, for a moment he had become a victim to habitual ways of thinking – for a moment he had been blinded by social expectations, the customs of the society in which he had lived all along. Instead of the Vedantin he was, he had become an ordinary individual bound by societal conventions.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the great acharya whose feet crowned heads touched in humble obeisance kneeled at the feet of the chandala touching his dirty feet with his forehead. The chandala had opened his eyes, reminded him of his own wisdom, the wisdom that he had taught so many people. The chandala was his guru, as much as Govindapada was.

Tears of joy flowed from the acharya’s eyes and he felt a current of rapture filling his whole being. With intense devotion the great master raised his head from the chandala’s feet and stood up, his eyes still closed in bliss. The ecstasy he felt in his heart found its expression in beautiful words as it had done on so many other occasions when was moved by rapture. What came out of the acharya in those moments of ecstasy and gratitude is what the world today knows as the five verses of Maneesha Panchakam, maneesha meaning wisdom. The acharya rises above social perceptions and declares fearlessly the truth of Vedanta in those verses and says:

chāndālo’stu sa tu dvijo’stu gururityevā maneeshā mama: whether he is a chandala or a brahmana, he is my guru, such is the wisdom of my heart.

At the end of the ecstatic song, the acharya opened his eyes and it was no more a chandala standing before him that he saw, but the great Lord of the Universe, the Master of the Holy City, the teacher of teachers, Shiva himself.

Was it that Shiva appeared as a chandala before Shankara or was it that the acharya saw Shiva in the chandala? Or does it really matter, since the entire universe is Shiva himself and all we need is the eyes to see?

The greatest of all teachers had given yet another lesson in his own unique way not just to Shankara but to all humanity.

Our tragedy is that in spite of all these great lessons, we live our life unconsciously, holding on to our petty beliefs, practices and concerns, thus reducing ourselves to ignorant men and women.

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In this story, Acharya Shankara Bhagavadpada forgets his wisdom for a moment. His eyes are opened and he is given a lesson in humility by Lord Shiva himself.

In another popular story Bhagavadpada himself opens the eyes of his scholarly disciples and gives them a lesson in humility. There are different versions of this story, as in the case of most Indian stories and the version I am narrating here is the one I heard from my guru.

One evening the acharya and all his other disciples except Sanantana were seated, ready for their daily session with the master. But on that day the acharya wouldn’t begin. The seated disciples asked him why he wouldn’t start the lessons and the acharya said he was waiting for Sanantana. This produced mild laughter in the scholarly disciples – the acharya must be joking. Sanantana was illiterate and served the master more like a personal attendant and less as a disciple. He was not expected to benefit from the scholarly expositions of the acharya who perhaps was the greatest intellect our land has ever seen. Why should he wait for Sanantana?

The acharya understood their silent question and told them they would all go and look for Sanantana. The disciples looked at one another and reluctantly got up and followed their master. Bhagavadpada went straight to the bank of the river near which they were staying at that time. They could see Sanantana on the other side of the river – he had gone there for some work. The acharya raised his voice so that it could be heard above the murmur of the river and called, “Sanantana, come! It’s time for class.” Sanantana raised his head as he heard the acharya’s voice. He looked this side and that – there was no boat available. Without another moment’s hesitation, Sanantana started walking towards his master across the river.

It is said that as Sanantana placed each step on the water, a lotus flower rose up and supported his feet. He crossed the river and fell at the master’s feet. The master raised him up, hugged him and looking at his other disciples who stood wonderstruck, said, “Now you know why I waited for him to begin the class. His strength is not scholarship but shraddha and in shraddha none of you excel him. And it is shraddha that gives the highest knowledge, not scholarship. Scholarship is no value when it comes to enlightenment, as the Upanishads themselves say.”

That day the great master renamed his fond disciple Padmapada, the name by which we know him today. Padmapada means Lotus Feet – the man who was supported by a lotus that rose up from the river as he walked on water like a great yogi at the call of his master.

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Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, my parama guru, is one of the greatest spiritual masters the world has ever seen. There are innumerable stories of miracles happening around him, though he never claimed, or even owned up, any of these miracles. One of my teachers who lived with him in his ashram for forty-five years was certain he was brought back to life from certain death when he was a young man by the Maharshi. But in this article I will not be talking about his miracles, but of his unique way of teaching. Of course, the Maharshi is famous for frequently teaching through silence, for which he is often compared to Dakshinamurti, Lord Shiva incarnated as a teacher. The incident I shall discuss here is much simpler, though – it is of someone asking him what nishkama karma is and the Maharshi teaching him what it is.

The incident is reported by Prof K Swaminathan, who at one time taught English at Presidency College, Madras and was the Chief Editor of the monumental 100-volume Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Let me reproduce here his own words, from the book Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi compiled and edited by Professor Laxmi Narain and published by Sri Ramana Kendram, Hyderabad.

“Once Rangachari, a Telugu teacher in a Vellore college, asked the Maharshi to explain nishkama karma [desireless action]. There was no reply. After a time, the Maharshi went up the [Arunachala] hill followed by a few devotees and Rangachari. There was a thick, strong, thorny branch lying on the way which the Maharshi picked up and began working on. The spikes were cut off, the knots were made smooth and the surface polished with a rough leaf. Hours of hard and careful work resulted in a nice stick that Maharshi presented to a passing shepherd boy who appeared dejected because he had lost his stick. Rangachari confessed that he had learnt a new lesson in the art of teaching, for this silent practical demonstration was the Sage’s perfect answer to his earnest question.”   

Of course Ramana Maharshi’s entire life was the most powerful teaching – in jnana yoga, in bhakti yoga, in dhyana yoga and in karma yoga. To speak of one more lesson in Karma Yoga, for years the Maharshi entered the ashram kitchen at 2.30 in the morning and began chopping vegetables so that breakfast could be served to the hundreds of people who came to see him every day from all over the world. They were coming to see him, to be in his presence and to be blessed by him – to be blessed by a man who had spent months at a stretch in Samadhi as a result of his intense meditation that lasted for years, who had climbed to the greatest heights meditation can take you, just by being near whom people went into powerful states of meditative trance and were healed of life-threatening diseases and perhaps even escaped death. But he would go to the kitchen hours before brahma muhoorta, long before these guests woke up, to help in the preparation of their breakfast! What could be a greater lesson in karma yoga?

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Here is another incident reported by Prof. Swaminathan that happened in the 1940s, a few years before Ramana Maharshi’s death. It was a day like many other days in the ashram. The Maharshi was reclining on a couch in the hall and there was a group of scholars seated in front of him, debating the intricacies of the wisdom of the Upanishads enthusiastically. The debate was absorbing and everybody seemed to be fully lost in it. All on a sudden Bhagavan rose from his couch and started walking towards a man who looked like someone from one of the nearby villages. He was standing with his palms joined towards Bhagavan. Bhagavan went to him and soon the two were engaged in deep conversation, oblivious to everything else. The scholars had stopped their debates and were now watching what was happening. After a while Bhagavan took leave of the man and came back to his couch to continue to sit as though nothing had happened, while the villager went away. The debates among the scholars started once again.

Prof. Swaminathan who was watching the whole incident with great curiosity rushed towards the departing villager. Stopping him, he asked the man what exactly had happened. Why had the villager come to the ashram and what had the Maharshi been asking him, coming to him getting up from the middle of an absorbing discussion on the ultimate reality as discussed by Vedanta?

The villager told Prof. Swaminathan that he was a stranger to the place and had come to the ashram to have Bhagavan’s darshan when the Master saw him and came to him. The Maharshi had made enquiries about him and his family and their welfare. He had asked the Maharshi how he could earn his blessings and the sage had enquired if there was a temple in his village and who the deity was. Then the sage had told him to repeat the name of the deity constantly and assured him he would receive all the blessings he needed through it. 

This is how Prof. Swaminathan concludes the incident: “I came back to Bhagavan’s presence, but lost all interest in the discussions. I felt that the simple humility and devotion of a peasant had evoked a far greater response from our Master than any amount of learning. I then decided that though a scholar by profession, I should always remain a humble, ignorant peasant at heart and pray for Bhagavan’s grace and blessings.”

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Years ago one of my friends, a Bengali gentlemen several years my senior in age, presented to me a beautifully produced copy of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, one of my cherished possessions which I open and read at random every now and then. The book refers to several meetings of Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab Chandra Sen, the great Brahmo Samaj leader. One of their last meetings took place in Sen’s house when the Brahmo leader was extremely sick. Here is how the Gospel describes that meeting:

“At this moment Keshab entered the room. He came through the east door. Those who remembered the man who had preached in the Town Hall or the Brahmo Samaj temple were shocked to see this skeleton covered with skin. He could hardly stand. He walked holding to the wall for support. With great difficulty he sat down in front of the couch. In the mean time Sri Ramakrishna had got down from the couch and was sitting on the floor. Keshab bowed low before the Master and remained in that position a long time, touching the Master's feet with his forehead. Then he sat up. Sri Ramakrishna was still in a state of ecstasy. He muttered to himself. He talked to the Divine Mother.

“Raising his voice, Keshab said: "I am here, sir. I am here." He took Sri Ramakrishna's left hand and stroked it gently. But the Master was in deep samadhi, completely intoxicated with divine love. A stream of words came from his lips as he talked to himself, and the devotees listened to him spellbound.”

What a complete change from the response Sri Ramakrishna produced in Keshab on one of the first occasions – perhaps it was their first meeting – when the master visited Sen. The following words are the master’s own, again from the Gospel:

"I visited him at his house in Colootola Street. Hriday was with me. We were shown into the room where Keshab was working. He was writing something. After a long while he put aside his pen, got off his chair, and sat on the floor with us. But he didn't salute us or show us respect in any other way.”

Well, of course, it was only by and by that Keshab Chandra Sen came to understand the master and learn to revere him. But there is more to it than that. The master, out of his infinite compassion, made sure that such a great man as Sen did not remain closed to his influence and thus miss what he could have learned from the master. He went out of his way to teach humility to Sen and thus make him more open. Here is how the master did it, in his own words:

"He used to come here now and then. One day in a spiritual mood I said to him: 'One should not sit before a sadhu with one leg over the other. That increases one's rajas.' As soon as he and his friends would arrive, I would salute them before they bowed to me. Thus they gradually learnt to salute a holy man, touching the ground with their foreheads.”

That was Sri Ramakrishna’s way!

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One of the most unforgettable lessons the saint of Dakshineshwar gave in his unique way was to young Narendranath, the future Swami Vivekananda. Narendranath’s family had at that time been living in extreme poverty, even finding two meals a day was difficult. This pained Naren deeply. The sensitive Naren was pained by the suffering of even strangers, what to speak of his own family that had once lived in rather lavish style, since his father was a lawyer who had a solid income. Unable to endure his pain, young Naren asked the master, on whose spiritual powers he had by then developed great faith, to pray to Mother Goddess so that she blessed him with some wealth. Naren was sure that Mother Kali would never refuse anything to the master – he was her child, Kali’s child.

Sri Ramakrishna understood the dire straits in which his young disciple found himself and his need for money, even if it was only so that he can focus more on his sadhana. When your family’s poverty and hunger are constantly pulling you down to misery, how is anyone with a sense of responsibility to concentrate on his sadhanas? The master explained to Naren that the mother was the source of all knowledge, all wisdom and all power and if it was her blessings in the form of money that he wanted, why doesn’t he himself go to her and ask her? She is capable of giving anyone anything – she has created the universe and what can she not do? The master added that it was a Tuesday, a day special for the worship of the Goddess, and he should go to the Mother that very evening and place his need before her. 

Young Naren went to the temple of Bhavatarini at nine that evening. As he stood there, he forgot all about his family and its poverty, all about his suffering and instead was enveloped by a divine feeling of pure bliss. The Mother Goddess’s name came out of his mouth in a never ending torrent and he felt boundless love emanating from the idol before him. The Mother appeared to him the source of all beauty, all bliss and all knowledge. All he could do was to stand transfixed in devotion before her, fervently repeating her name. Eventually when he brought himself to ask the Mother for something, it was not for financial help that he asked, but for the highest knowledge and untainted devotion, for her repeated visions.

When he came out of the temple, Sri Ramakrishna was sitting outside, waiting for him. “Did you ask the Mother to help your family?” he asked. When Narendranath confessed what had happened, the master sent him back to the temple, telling him to make sure this time he asked for wealth from the Mother.

As Naren stood before the deity, once again he was immersed in bliss and it was fervent prayers for deeper devotion, for the visions of the Divine, and the bliss of knowledge that came out of him. He couldn’t bring himself to ask the Mother for money.  Naren came out of the temple in a state of ecstasy to find Sri Ramakrishna still waiting for him outside.

The master was rather rough with the young man this time. He scolded him for failing to ask for money once more and sent him into the presence of the Mother for a third time, strongly admonishing the youth for his repeated failure and instructing that this time he should not fail to ask for monetary help. But in spite of all the instructions given by the master in strict words, Naren failed to ask the Mother for wealth for his family once again.

Which of course delighted the master. That precisely was what Sri Ramakrishna had expected from Naren, knowing who he was, knowing his potentials, knowing what he was born to. The disciple had passed another test by the master. The master hugged Naren and congratulated him. He assured the young man that his family will never want for food and clothing, will always have enough to live by.

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Recently I was teaching a course to the students of 3-Continent Masters in Business Management in one of the top business schools in India. The students come from some twenty-five different countries of the world and do one part of their course in Europe, one part in India and one part in the US [hence the “3-Continent]. I was talking to the students about spiritual leadership when an American student suddenly raised her hand and said, “Professor, please tell me one thing. Why are all the spiritual masters men?”

I explained to her that was not the case – all over the world there have been several great spiritual masters who were women. In India in particular there have always been and there still are any number of great women spiritual masters – and I named a few beginning with Vagambhrini and Lopamudra of the Vedas down to today’s women masters venerated by millions.

The masters we have discussed so far are all men. So let us talk of a great lesson in the highest wisdom given by a woman master – by Rubia, one of my favourite Sufi masters and perhaps the most venerated of women Sufi saints.  

One evening a passerby found Rubia searching for something under a street lamp. The man went to her and asked her what she was looking for and she said she had lost her needle. Of course, the great Rubia was looking for lost needle – you couldn’t let her do it all alone and go away.  The man joined the search. Soon another person came by and he too joined them. And then another, and then another and soon there was a large group of people looking for Rubia’s lost needle under the street lamp.

A long time passed and the night was fast approaching. Suddenly one man stopped, stood up and asked Rubia, “Mother, are you sure you lost the needle here under this lamp? 

There was complete stillness as the group waited for Rubia’s answer.

Rubia laughed and said, “Of course not. I lost it at home.”

“Then why are searching for it here?”

“Because there is no light at home.”

Aren’t we all looking for what we have lost at home under the street lamp because there is light there? Every single one of us has lost a precious treasure and all our life, all that we do, is nothing but a search for that priceless treasure. The only problem is we are not looking for it where we lost it, but where all the razzle and dazzle of the world is, where all the neon lamps glitter.     

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I will conclude this article with a Zen story I love in which another great master teaches very unconventionally. The story is about Hakuin.

One day a soldier named Nobushinge came to the master as he stood chopping wood in his garden. “I have heard about heaven and hell. Is there really a heaven and a hell?” asked Nobushinge.

“Who are you?” asked Hakuin. The soldier said he was a samurai.

There was an expression of great contempt as Hakuin asked, “You a samurai? What kind of master will hire you as his guard? You look more like a beggar.”

Enraged, Nobushinge began to draw his sword. Unimpressed, Hakuin continued, “So you have a sword too! What is it for – slicing bread? It doesn’t look good for anything else!”

Nohushinge’s sword was out in a split second, ready to strike off Hakuin’s head. “Here open the gates of hell!” said Hakuin serenely.

Nohushinge looked at the master’s face. There was great calm there. He sheathed his sword and bowed to the master.

“Here open the gates of paradise,” said Hakuin

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Ancient India used birds as symbols for the highest awakening. For awakening is leaving our small world and soaring into boundless skies. And what masters do is give us wings to do so. And masters would use any method that would help us spread our wings and soar. Their interest is not in the method, but in giving us wings.

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Encounters of the Spiritual Kind: 3

In this ongoing series of postings of spiritual encounters, I am happy to give below the story of the first encounter of SS Cohen with my paramaguru Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Cohen subsequently became an inmate of Ramanasramam and lived in the presence of the Maharshi for fourteen years.

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The third of February 1936, early morning, saw my horsecart rolling on the uneven two-and-a-half-mile road from Tiruvannamalai railway station to Ramanashram. Two sleepless nights in the train from Bombay found me tired in body and mind. My head was swimming and my senses were confused. I had hoped for some rest in the Ashram, but when I arrived there at last, there was not a soul to be seen anywhere. Presently, a corpulent man with a giant rugged head and scarlet-red lips from perpetual chewing of betel-nuts appeared. He was, I later discovered, “the legal adviser” of the Ashram, who sometimes acted as the de facto sarvadhikari (manager) as well.

“Is that Mr. Cohen? Follow me quickly before the Maharshi goes out for his walk,” he called out. I obeyed, extremely eager to see the great Sage, who had haunted me night and day for three long months. I was led to a small dining room, at the door of which I was asked to remove my shoes. As I was trying to unlace them, my eyes fell on a pleasant-looking middle-aged man inside the room, wearing nothing but a kaupin, with eyes as cool as moonbeams, sitting on the floor before a leaf-plate nearly emptied, and beckoning me with the gentlest of nods and the sweetest smile imaginable.

He was the Maharshi himself. My mind, which was already in a state of haze, grew now more confused in my haste to enter. But the shoe lace resisted. So I tugged at and broke it.

Just then my guide appeared again and said: “If you have any fruits to offer, bring them now.” “They are in my suit case,” I replied, and plunged my hands into my pockets for the keys. But the keys had gone: I had dropped them in the train or at the station, I did not know where, in my hurry to race to the Ashram. I told this to the legal adviser and immediately forgot all about them and entered the room.

It was then the Ashram’s custom to honour the newcomer by giving him his first meal in a line directly opposite the Maharshi’s seat and at hardly four feet distance from it. My leaf-plate was thus placed there with two rice cakes on it. I took no notice of the cakes, although my hand fingered them, but directed my whole look at the peaceful countenance of Sri Bhagavan. He had by then finished eating and was slowly rolling a betel-leaf for a chew, as if deliberately to give me a little more of his company, when a man entered from the back door, which was the passage to the small kitchen, and, in a low voice, said something in Tamil to him, from which I understood the single word “keys.” Then Maharshi rose, looked at me by way of farewell, and left the room. I hastily swallowed half a cake, gulped the cup of tea, and went out in search of the room to which my luggage had been taken. But alas, I could not have a bath or a change of clothes – everything was locked up in the suit cases. I was greatly embarrassed, and started thinking of breaking them open, when someone announced that Sri Maharshi was coming to the Darshan Hall. I stopped thinking and rushed straight to the Hall with my hat and full suit on. Behind me calmly walked in the tall, impressive figure of the Maharshi with leisurely though firm steps.

I was alone in the Hall with him. Joy and peace suffused my being – never before, had I such a delightful feeling of purity and well-being at the mere proximity of a man. My mind was already in deep contemplation of him – him not as flesh, although that was exquisitely formed and featured, but as an unsubstantial principle which could make itself so profoundly felt despite the handicap of a heavy material vehicle. When after a while I became aware of my environment, I saw him looking at me with large penetrating eyes, wreathed in smiles rendered divinely soothing by their child-like innocence. All of a sudden I felt something fall in my lap and heard the jingling of keys – my keys! I looked up at the Maharshi extremely puzzled. The man – Sri Ramaswami Pillai – who had dropped them through the door behind me came in and explained that he had gone to the railway station on a bicycle and found the station master waiting for him. It appears that during the few minutes that the train had stopped at the station a passenger had providentially entered the very compartment I had vacated, and, seeing the keys on the seat, he picked them up, and, wonder of wonders! ran up to the station master and handed them over to him. The latter by an unusual flash of intuition surmised that the keys belonged to an Ashram visitor, whom he might have seen detrain in the morning, and awaited a claim for them.

It was a series of miracles which occurred on my behalf in the short space of barely ninety minutes, of which I was blissfully ignorant, absorbed as I was in the entrancing personality of this magnificent human magnet – Sri Ramana Bhagavan.

It is needless to say that from that day Ramanashram became my permanent home.

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Days melted into weeks, and weeks into months and the foreigner impatiently awaited the Great Experience: each day was the day, and each moment the moment. The Indian is never in a hurry: he knows his work well, and, looking wistfully ahead, continues his practice, full of unshakeable confidence. But the foreigner, being used to work on a timetable, fixes hour and date, as if for an interview. As the clock strikes, he buckles on his belt, sits stiff, shuts his eyes, and waits for the interview. The clock strikes again, he opens his eyes, unbelts himself, and rises, postponing his hope to the evening or the next morning, and so on and on he goes. When many months thus rolled by and nothing startling happened, he cried with all the fervour of his soul:

“How long, O Lord, how long?” But lo! what had happened to him! He looked back at his old self and looked at the present one – what a change, Good God! And he wondered what could have happened in six short months. Then the Great Secret dawned on him – the secret influence of the Divine Man in whose radiant ocean he had been daily bathing: the interview, after all, did take place, although the foreigner was not aware of it.

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Excerpted from
Guru Ramana: Memories and Notes, by SS Cohen
Courtesy: Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai

Maitreyi Upanishad

There is a beautiful story about my parama guru [teacher’s teacher] Ramana Maharshi. Once a European journalist met him. During his interview, the journalist asked Maharshi: “Do you believe in God?”

“No. I don’t,” said Maharshi.

The journalist was taken aback. He was sitting in front of the greatest sage of India, revered by millions, and he was saying he did not believe in God. Perhaps he had heard it wrong. He wanted to confirm. He asked, “Did you say you do not believe in God?”

Ramana Maharshi said, “Yes, I did. I do not believe in God.” Then the sage of Arunachala saw the confusion in the eyes of the journalist and added after a pause, “I do not believe in god, I know God.”

The Maharshi could have said “I am God,” but he must have realized how much more confused the journalist would have become when he heard that.

Nisargadatta Maharaj did say that, though. In fact, he said more than that. He said, “The world is my garden and God is my gardener.”

Each teacher teaches the path by which he has awakened into the truth. Neither Ramana Maharshi nor Nisargadatta Maharaj followed the path of rituals to reach the truth and for that reason, in their teachings they express no need for external rituals. These teachers go direct to the truth rejecting everything else. In this, they are in a class with the teacher of Maitreyi Upanishad, who, I love to believe, is the Maitreyi of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, who asked her husband Sage Yajnavalkya, when he said he would divide his wealth between her and his other wife Kalyani, ‘kim aham tena kuryam yenaham namrta syam?” – “What shall I do with that by which I shall not become immortal?” Maitreyi chose, instead, his discipleship and wisdom.

The Maitreyi Upanishad is a rare beauty even among the Upanishads which are all, without exception, incredibly beautiful. It is counted among the minor Upanishads, but there is nothing minor about this Upanishad.

Here is a mantra from the Upanishad.

“chittam eva hi samsarah, tat prayetnena shodhayet.”

What we call samsara, the world of changes in which we live, the world of joys and sorrows, is nothing but our chitta, our mind. Purify the mind, and that is all we have to do to end sansara and awaken into the truth behind it.

There is a beautiful story about a Chinese painter who reached the court of the Sultan of Turkey. He introduced himself to the Sultan and challenged the best painter in Turkey for a painting competition. The Sultan was a lover of paintings and he was delighted – it would be really wonderful to have a competition between this travelling painter who has come from so far and his own best painter. The time set for the completion of the paintings was forty-five days. The Sultan asked for the painters’ requirements. The Turkish painter gave a long list but the Chinese painter said he did not need anything – no brushes, no paints, no canvas, nothing. The only thing he required was that nobody should peep into his work, he needed complete privacy. Of course, it was granted, but everyone was confused about it all.

Then the painting began. The painters were given two sides of the same hall. The Turkish painter worked on one wall and people could see a magnificent painting coming into being slowly there. The Chinese painter’s side of the hall was closed in, with nobody getting even the slightest glimpse. But people knew he was working there – occasional sounds could be heard.

Time passed soon. The fortieth day came, then the forty-first, the forty-second, and people could see what a splendid work the Turkish painter was producing. They were sure there was no way the foreigner was going to beat their painter – it is not possible that anyone could paint more beautifully.

The final day came. The sultan was the judge, of course. He came to visit the finished paintings. He first went to the Turkish painter and saw his work. He almost declared him the winner on the spot, even without taking a look at the Chinese painter’s work. He was sure, as other people who had seen the painting were, that nothing could surpass this. But then to be fair to the Chinese painter, he decided to take a look at his work too.

The partitions that covered the Chinese painter’s part of the hall were removed, and the sultan and his ministers entered. And then they stood thunderstruck. There on the wall before them was precisely the same painting as the local painter’s, only it was still more beautiful than his work. It had a certain quality that the Turkish painter’s work did not have, a certain depth, a certain something mysterious.

“How did you do that?” asked the Sutan, amazement making his voice thick. And the Chinese painter said, “My apologies, Your Highness. I am no painter. I do not know how to paint. I am a Taoist monk. All I did was to make this wall a perfect mirror. And what you see here is my rival’s work, reflected in that perfect mirror.”

Our mind is capable of reflecting the world perfectly, showing us the world exactly as it is. All that it needs for this is that the mind be a perfect mirror. A perfect mirror means a mirror without deflections, without dust on it, or other impurities.

And this is precisely what the Maitreyi Upanishad is speaking about. Tat prayatnena shodhayet – purify the mind through your prayatna, hard work, and you see reality reflected in it exactly as it is, without distortions. At the moment our mind is full of impurities and we do not see the world as it is. All we need is to purify it, and nothing else is required. Vrittikshaya, the Upanishad tells us, is the only requirement – vrittikshaya means the silencing of the disturbances in the mind.

Vrittis are like waves and ripples in water. When the surface of the water in a lake is disturbed by waves and ripples, it cannot reflect the sky perfectly. Quieten the ripples and waves, quieten the vrittis, and the reflection will be perfect.

Patanjali defines yoga as chittavritti nirodha – as the process through which the cessation of the vrittis of the mind is achieved, the path of achieving stillness of the mind. When the mind is still, what we experience is reality without distortions.

Maitreyi Upanishad goes straight to the truth, as Ramana Maharshi does, as Nisargadatta Maharaj does, as Patanjali does.

After saying that all that you need is to stop the vrittis in the mind and achieveng purification of the mind, the Upanishad takes time to point out what it calls an eternal secret – guhyam sanatanam. And this secret is: yacchittah tanmayo bhavati – you become what your mind is. A truth on which volumes have already been written and volumes more will be written. We are what our mind is. The difference between the saint and the sinner is the difference in their minds, the difference between the happy man and the unhappy man is in their minds, the difference between the conqueror and the conquered is in their minds, the difference between the winner and the loser is in their minds.

One of the books I am reading at the moment is Herbert Benson’s Timeless Healing. The book is subtitled The Power and Biology of Belief. The book says it is our mind that decides whether we are sick or not, and healing is as much a mental process as a medical one, if not many times more. And Maitreyi Upanishad says: yacchittah tanmayo bhavati – you become what your mind is. If your mind is sick, you are sick. And when your mind is healed, you are healed.

Having pointed out that eternal truth, having pointed out the direct path to the eternal truth by saying “chittam eva hi samsarah, tat prayetnena shodhayet,” the Upanishad moves on to reject the common paths that are circuitous, which too lead to the truth, but which are like going round and round the mountain to reach the top, and not climbing straight to the top, and some of which are ways of avoiding to journey to the truth rather than travelling towards it.

Speaking of temple worship, the Upanishad says the real temple is not the temple out there, but your own body and the real deity is not the deity in the garbhagriha – the sanctum sanctorum – of the temple, but the deity residing within your own body.

“deho devalayah proktah, sa jeevah kevalah shivah.
tyajed ajnananirmalyam, sohambhavena poojayet.”

This body is spoken of as the temple, and the inhabitant of the body is none other than Shiva himself, says the mantra. Cast away yesterday’s garlands [nirmalya] of ignorance and worship him with the bhava [attitude] that I am He.

pashana-loha-mani-mrinmaya-vigraheshu
puja punar-janana-bhogakari mumukshoh;
tasmad yatih svahridayarcanam eva kuryad
bahyarcanam parihared apunarbhavaya

This is the glorious mantra of atmapuja – of worship of oneself, and if that term is shocking, then worship of the Self. The mantra reminds us strongly of the beautiful Atmapuja Upanishad, which says: sohambhavo namaskarah – true prostration before the deity is the attitude that I am He. And of the Avadhuta Gita which apologises to the Lord for going to the temple and thereby declaring He is out there in the shrine and not in one’s own heart; for going on pilgrimages, thereby declaring that God is elsewhere and not right here; and for chanting His names in devotion, thereby declaring that he is other than oneself.

The Maitreyi Upanishad mantra says: “If you are a seeker after liberation, remember: worshipping God in idols of stone, metal, jewels or clay only brings repeated births [as a limited ego]; and for that reason, worship only [the deity in] your own heart and no other. Do you want apurnarbhava – the cessation of births as a bound self? Then abandon external worship.”

Continuing, in the shortest possible way, the Upanishad defines knowledge and meditation. Knowledge [jnanam] is seeing non-difference [abhedadarshanam] and meditation [dhyanam] is when the mind is without thoughts [nirvishayam manah]. You cannot be more precise than this.

To Maitreyi Upanishad, real shaucha [cleansing through washing] is the control of the senses [indriyanigrahah] and bathing is throwing away the impurities of the mind [snanam manomalatyagah].

What is food that is allowed, and what is food that is prohibited? Food we should eat, says the Upanishad, is the constant remembrance of non-duality [advaitabhavana bhaikshyam] and what is prohibited is the thought of duality [abhakshyam dvaitabhavanam ].

What is the family a monk should give up? Your son, your brother, your home, and your wife, says the Upanishad. And then the Upanishad explains what it means by each of these. The son you must give up is your ego [ahankara-sutam], the brother you should give up is your mind [chitta-bhrataram], the home you must give up is delusions [moha-mandiram] and the wife you must given up is your ambitions and hopes [asha-patnim].

The teacher, Maitreyi perhaps as I said, does not believe in things like the evening rituals every twice-born is expected to do every day, for it is not rituals that take you to the truth, but emptying the mind of all content and seeing non-duality with that mind. Speaking about sandhyas, morning and evening ritual prayers, Maitreyi says: How can I perform the sandhyas? For my mother is dead and dead is my son too, because of which I am in sootaka [the ritual period of impurity following a birth or death in the family, when vedic rituals are not performed] twice over. And she explains: Delusion, her mother [mohamyi mata] is dead; and a son called knowledge [bodhamayah sutah] is born to her. How can she then perform sandhya – katham sandhyam upasmahe?

There is one more reason for not performing the sandhyas, says Maitreyi Upanishad. The morning sandhya is performed at sunrise, and the evening sandhya, at sunset. But in her case, she sees neither sunrises nor sunsets. In the sky of her heart [hrdakashe] the sun of consciousness [chidadityah] neither rises [nodeti] nor sets [nastam gacchati]. How can she then perform the sandhyas? Katham sandhyam upasmahe?

It was a special pleasure for me to come across in the Upanishad these two mantras about not performing the sandhyas. I was familiar with them from an old legend I had heard as a child, growing up in Kerala – the legend of Kakkasseri Bhattatiri,the genius who could as a child recognize which crows had come the previous day and which crows were new as he fed them grains. When he was accused of not following rituals and not performing sandhyas, these two verses were his response. Of course, I did not know at that time that Kakkasseri was quoting Maitreyi Upanishad – I took them to be his own words.

Maitreyi Upanishad arranges sadhanas in a hierarchical order. The best, says the Upanishad, is reflection on the truth [uttama tattvachintaiva], the mediocre is the analysis of the scriptures [madhyamam shastrachintanam], and the lowest is occupying your mind with mantras [adhama mantrachinta cha – repetition of the mantras, mantrajapa]. But no, there is one thing that is worse than the lowest – endlessly roaming from one pilgrimage centre to another [teerthabhranti adhamadhama].

I want to add a few words here, before the Upanishad is misunderstood. The Upanishad does not reject any of these paths. These are slow paths, and frequently those who use them, use them for avoiding the need to face themselves, avoid the need to face the truth, than for anything else. This Upanishad is not for all kinds of seekers – it is only for the bravest among the brave, who have the courage to look the truth in the eye. This is the path for heroes – heroes in the truest sense of the word. For people with nerves of steel, people like Maitreyi herself, who can say kim aham tena kuryam yenaham namrta syam – say and mean it. People who are willing to fearlessly face their final death – not the death that is like discarding old clothes, but death that is really the end; for people who are willing to become like water in a pot immersed in the ocean where it becomes one with the ocean and ceases to exist as separate [poornakumbha ivarnave], like the river merging with the ocean becoming inseparably one with it.

The Upanishad stresses this final experience so much, it laughs aloud, with no inhibitions, at people who only delight in intellectual knowledge without experiencing the truth it is speaking about. Their joy, says the Upanishad, is the joy of relishing the taste of fruits on a branch reflected in water – pratibimbita-shakhagra-phalaswadana-modavat.

The mantras I have discussed so far are from the first and the second chapter of the Upanishad. The third, final, chapter of the Upanishad is what Ramana Maharshi did not tell the journalist interviewing him: it is a song in praise of the Self – one of the most beautiful songs in praise of the self in Vedantic literature. It begins with: “I am me; and I am the supreme. I am Brahman, and I am the origin of all. I am the guru of the whole world and I am all over the universe. Such am I.”

“ahamasmi paraschasmi brahmasmi prabhavo’smyaham; sarvalokaguruschasmi sarvaloke’smi so’smyaham.”

Maitreyi Upanishad’s teachings are precious, but they are also dangerous. It is only for those who can travel to their goal straight like an arrow. For others, the Upanishad can become just another excuse for continuing to sleep, their eyes shut tightly, refusing to get up from their bed. It depends on whether you are sattvic or tamasic – if you are sattvic, this is the straightest path that leads you to the goal, and if you are tamasic, you can remain exactly where you are!

O0O

Gita, Ramana Maharshi and the Essential Man

In a passage very dear to my heart in A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Osho says: “All private goals are against the goal of the universe itself. All private goals are against the goal of the Whole. All private goals are neurotic. The essential man comes to know, to feel, that ‘I am not separate from the Whole and there is no need to seek and search for any destiny on my own. Things are happening, the world is moving – call it God – He is doing things. They are happening of their own accord. There is no need for me to make any struggle, any effort; there is no need for me to fight for anything. I can relax and be.’”

“This realization makes a man for the first time a little alert about his sleepiness, and then he starts moving more and more towards consciousness. When things are no longer important, only consciousness becomes important. When things are no longer significant, a new search, a new door opens. Then you are not rushing towards the without: you start slipping into the within. The kingdom of God is within. And once you drop identifying with things, suddenly you are no longer fighting—there is no point. You start moving with the river of existence.”

Osho then speaks of how you suddenly see everything is happening as it should once you start moving inward, how you see life is perfect and there is no way to improve upon it. “Then celebration starts,” he says. “When life is felt as perfect, when you suddenly see the tremendous beatitude, the tremendous glory surrounding you; when you suddenly see that you have always been at home—there was nowhere else to go; when you suddenly feel in your innermost core of being that you are with God and God is with you, that you are floating with the Whole, you don’t have a private destiny... the destiny of the Whole is your destiny also, so wherever this existence is moving, you are also moving. You don’t have any private goals.”

Earlier this morning I was going through Be As You Are, edited by David Godman. Be As You Are is a collection of the teachings of my param guru [teacher’s teacher] Sri Ramana Maharshi. Here answering a question about complete surrender, Maharshi says: “Complete surrender does require that you have no desire of your own. You must be satisfied with whatever God gives you and that means having no desires of your own.” Explaining surrender further, Maharshi says that surrender is complete only when you reach the stage `Thou art all' and `Thy will be done.'

According the Ramana Maharshi, the state of complete surrender is not different from jnana, spiritual knowledge born of self-realization, and the distinction between jnana and surrender is only illusory. For instance, speaking of the common feeling most people have that surrender is easier than jnana, Maharshi says: “Surrender appears easy because people imagine that once they say with their lips `I surrender' and put their burdens on their Lord, they can be free and do what they like. But the fact is that you can have no likes or dislikes after your surrender; your will should become completely non-existent, the Lord's will taking its place. The death of the ego in this way brings about a state which is not different from jnana. So by whatever path you may go, you must come to jnana or oneness.”

A question that naturally arises here is: Doesn’t renouncing all private goals make you ineffective in the world?

When Ramana Maharshi speaks of surrender and Osho speaks of the essential man, they are echoing what the Bhagavad Gita says. The Gita speaks of the spiritual man as a sarvarambha-parityagi, one who has renounced all beginnings. The concept of sarvarambha-parityagi is difficult to understand in the beginning, especially in today’s world when we are taught that one of the basic characters of an effective person is initiative. Doesn’t renouncing all beginnings make us men of zero initiative? Consequently, doesn’t that make us totally ineffective, since our effectiveness is directly proportionate to our initiative? And yet, that is what the Gita says: a spiritual man is a sarvarambha-parityagi, a renouncer of all beginnings.

I have always held that to understand the Gita properly, we should try to understand it along with understanding Krishna. That is, allow Krishna’s life to explain the Gita to us. What Krishna teaches us through the Gita is what he lived in his life. Krishna’s life is the greatest and the best commentary on the Gita.

And when we look at Krishna’s life, what we find is a man who is tirelessly active in the world. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a man more active than Krishna. To achieve his mission of establishing dharma in the world, we find Krishna constantly active, now negotiating for peace, now fighting a battle for dharma, now destroying an evil ruler who has been standing in the way of dharma. Now we find him killing his uncle Kamsa, the wicked ruler of Mathura, now getting Kala Yavana and Jarasandha killed, now fighting a battle with Salva the evil king of Saubha, now at Hastinapura trying to avoid the Mahabharata war and when the war becomes inevitable, aiding the Pandavas in the battle for dharma. True he takes a vow of not taking up weapons in the battle, but it is not as a passive driver of Arjuna’s chariot we find him as in the Mahabharata war, but as a very active individual, guiding not only Arjuna’s actions and but of the entire Pandava army. He is there with the Pandavas when Duryodhana hiding in a lake has to be located, challenged and killed; he is there when Dhritarawshtra tries to crush Bhishma in his arms; he is there when Ashwatthama has to be pursued; he is there when Gandhari wants to curse the Pandavas – and everywhere he is active. How do we then explain the meaning of the word sarvarambha-parityagi, one who has given up all beginnings, all initiative?

Speaking of Jesus in his beautiful book Jesus, the Son of Man, Kahlil Gibran says: “Jesus the Nazarene was born and reared like ourselves; his mother and father were like our parents, and he was a man. But the Christ, the Word, who was in the beginning, the Spirit who would have us live our fuller life, came unto Jesus and was with him. And the Spirit was the versed hand of the Lord, and Jesus was the harp. The Spirit was the psalm, and Jesus was the turn thereof. And Jesus, the Man of Nazareth, was the host and the mouthpiece of the Christ, who walked with us in the sun and who called us his friends.”

A sarvarambha-parityagi is like Jesus. He is like Krishna. Sarvarambha-parityagis become so empty of themselves, that they become vessels for the High. The music of the High flows through them as their music. Jesus becomes the mouthpiece of the Christ, the Word, who was in the beginning. Krishna becomes the avarata of God.

When you become a sarvarambha-parityagi, you become like Krishna’s flute.

Krishna’s flute does produce music. It produces the most enchanting music, which maddens with its beauty everyone who listens to it. The gopis of Vrindavan go crazy listening to it and, leaving their homes, go to dance with him on the banks of the Yamuna at midnight on moon-filled nights.

And yet that music is not of the flute. That music does not belong to the flute. That music is Krishna’s. The flute is just the emptiness – the hollowness – through which Krishna’s music can flow.

The sarvarambha-parityagi is exactly like that. He is active. Jesus was tirelessly active all his years on the earth. And so were Krishna and other great masters. But, as Krishna tells Arjuna in the Gita, he has nothing to achieve for himself in all the three words for there is nothing that he has not achieved: na me pārthāsti kartavyam trishu lokeshu kincana; nānavāptam avāptavyam vartaiva ca karmaNi ||BhG 3.22|| He becomes a vessel for the High, a vehicle for the High, a tool for the High. He is active, he performs actions, but those are not actions originating in him, but from the High. As for himself, as for actions originating from him, he has given them all up, along with his ego, his I-ness.

To ask again the question that was asked earlier: Doesn’t renouncing all private goals make you ineffective in the world?

The people who have given up private goals and become essential men are some of the most effective people the world has seen: Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad – the list is long.

Their way is the way of the essential man.

O0O