Some musings

I don't think I've mentioned this on the blog, and I don't know why. At the end of my time in Varanasi, my guru, Modov Shukla-ji gave me a very ancient and sacred mantra. In exchange, I gave him my honest oath that I would meditate with it every day for the rest of my life. He had me hold ganga water and swear that I would do it. It was perhaps the best decision I've made up to this point in my life; there's no way I would have started a regular meditation practice without that kind of earnest committment. So every morning (or, when I'm travelling, whenever), I sit with my Rudrach (A garlnad of beads sacred to Siva) and I say my mantra over and over to myself. I started saying it 11 times every time, now I'm up to 21, next I will go up to 54, and the final goal is to do it 108 times every day.

I think that engaging in this meditation has already begun to change my personality and my worldview. Specifically, I feel myself distancing from the idea that I am a doer in the world. I don't quite mean this in the strictist Hindu sense, but it is an ideal of Yoga; to realize that you are not actually an actor in the world, that you are only an instrument of god or fate, that everything that will happen already has happened already. This is the central problem of the Bhagavat-Gita; Arjuna feel that it is a sin to slaughter his cousins and uncles on the battle field, but Krishna says "I have already killed them" (not a direct quote). Do the way to Karma-Yoga is to act morally in the world, to do your duty fully, while not actually personally feeling that you are the actor, and recognizing that you are only an instrument of the eternal supreme way. The modification I personally make to this is only to emphasize that I know that I am god and that is all I know--I do not know any external, paternalistic god, I only know myself. So, in this way, I know that I am not actually an actor, that I am only an instrument of dharma. But at the same time, I know that I have ultimate and supreme control over what happens in my world, and all things in my life are a consequence of my own actions. It's hard to express this in words--verbally, it seems like a fundamental contradiction that I am ultimatly in control of every small peice in my life and also that I am not the autonomous doer, that I am only an instrument of Myself. Think about it like this: sometimes my spirit speaks up and tells me what I want to do, and I know I must obey it. For example, my spirit has told me that I need to have the next six weeks travelling independantly in India in order to gain wisdom and knowledge of the world and myself. I cannot disobey that--I could, but I won't.

The interesting realization that has come from all of this: I have begun more conciously reading my own life as a text, using the tools I have to make meaning out of narratives to understand my past actions and events. Becuase I am not a doer in the world, everything happens exactly as it has to happen, as the karmic or even direct consequence of the action that preceeded it. Therefore, I can now justify making meaning out events just as I do of art. The events are whatever they are, just as the text on a page is just inkstains. But we feel justified in interpreting and giving meaning to those inkstains, and now I feel newly justified in making meaning out of what happens in my reality. I could give many examples, and I will later when I'm less lazy about it. Thanks for wading all the way through this.
peace
jed

ps. In response to anonymous comment: I can insult the Dalai Lama because I'm not buddhist, and because I have spent hours talking with Tibetan freedom-fighters and activists who feel totally betrayed by his political stance. He has taken away their reason for fighting, their reason for being alive, and most importantly, any hope of ever returning to their homeland. But they would never insult the Dalai Lama, because he has the same mandate from heaven that entitled the European monarchs total control over their population. He's good at talking the spiritual talk, and he was a great leader of the tibetan people in the past, and we should respect him for all that.