It is still warm! In fact, it is supposed to be 50 degrees today! It has been raining, which has been helping to melt some of the snow piles. The street actually looks strange; I hadn't realized how thick the layer of ice and snow was until there were big cracks and holes in it. We had been driving on a good 4 or more inches. It was pretty cool to see the melting start to make grooves in it, mapping networks to the sewer grates that people like Jim had cleared the ice from with shovels. And on the main streets, we have full lanes back - almost - on the sides nearest the curbs. Sorry to go on and on, but the melting is just so wonderful I can't help myself : )
I will try not to be sad when the temperature drops back to 16 on Friday. I hope everyone reading is having weather they appreciate, too.
May 6, 2007
With all the craziness of last week, classes ending and getting the grading done, etc., you know what I almost forgot? Almost nicely and sneakily put out of mind the fact that I promised myself and the Universe that I would begin to meditate when classes were over. No more excuses. I've picked up that progress in the goals of meditation takes a long time. So I need to get started on it right now. Maybe it is that gains will be so slow in coming, and I, like my compatriots, am dedicated to instant gratification. But I don't know that it will be slow. I might see some slight improvement right away. I won't know until I begin to do it every day.
What I need to do is think about and remember the journey into me that began when I first met my own eyes. This is the same thing, but without looking. It's turning inside, to explore the me in there. How can that not be exciting? Knowing from my experience that god is waiting for me in there? Why am I not racing to find him/her/it/me? I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter, because I am not going to allow that part of me to run my life anymore.
Oh! I just had this vision/understanding of a big wall of invisible pressure that keeps us all from looking too hard for God, and realized that Hinduism accounts for it; if God is hiding itself from itself, It wouldn't want the game to be over too quickly, so of course there would be some kind of thing, which I'm seeing as a kind of energy shield because of my cultural milieu. And then it hit me – oh – this is what Krishna meant when he said "My divine magic is hard to escape; but those who seek refuge in me cross over this magic." Or at least, it's part of what he meant.
So, take refuge! There is the bridge – just walk over it. I'm not sure right when I wake up is best, because the pain is so intense, and when it isn't its sometimes hard to wake up due to the drugs. But I'll figure out a good time and do it.
As the Eighth Teaching goes on, Krishna details how to be sure that you will join him at the time of death, thus escaping re-birth. I don't know that I'm ready to forsake life. I like life, even with all its suffering and tribulation. But I would like my next life to be one in which I am able to devote myself more fully to this, to understanding how it all works, and to jnana yoga. Of course, I'm terrified to ask for that, because I know what happens when we ask for patience or humility; we are given a thousand things that make us/tempt us to be impatient, or a hundred things to humiliate us.
But earlier Krishna promised a higher birth, one in which material needs are provided for. I'd like that one, please! On the other hand, it would be lovely to go to god and know all the answers to every question, to see everyone, in all their lives and understand the pattern. But won't that come eventually, anyway? Of course. And I do love life.
To get either place one must follow Krishna's directions. And again he sounds like Jesus: "Therefore, at all times remember me and fight; mind and understanding fixed on me, free from doubt, you will come to me" v. 7 Next he offers this promise, or just statement of fact:
Disciplined through practice,
Her reason never straying,
Meditating, one reaches
The supreme divine spirit of man.
Disciplined through practice! It isn't going to happen any other way girl! You must practice being one-pointed through meditation. And I will find, if I do, that Me that is the best Me. This beautiful verse:
One should remember
Man's spirit as the guide,
The primordial poet,
Smaller than an atom,
Grants of all things,
In form inconceivable,
The color of the sun
Beyond darkness.
Follow the inner me, the one who creates this life for me. She grants all things. Beg her for self-discipline. Entreat her to meet me half way. To help me arrange my life in such a way that I devote myself to all my sacred duties.
It sounds weird, doesn't it? And if someone read this journal (blog) without the context it might sound as if I've lost my mind and become so egotistic, so full of delusions of grandeur. But even Judaism says we are higher than and more beloved than angels, and Christianity follows with the belief that we are made in God's image. Islam places humans even higher. I'm human! However, I am not even talking about manifest nature, this body and this person. I'm talking about the God inside me. Whom I know to be there, but do not really know. This is really helpful to me, to think of Her as the guide. I think it will help me get somewhere.
Krishna gives instructions on how to meditate, which echo Easwaran (or other way around) and he says it's easy! We'll see! But then he goes on to discuss cosmology, the way the Universe is set up. It's fascinating. It got me thinking about What the Bleep Do We Know [a DVD I highly recommend if you haven't yet seen it] and physics, and how Krishna may be referring here to clues to the physics. I definitely think that if I were a theoretical physicist working on quantum and string theories, I'd be giving these statements a lot of thought.
Krishna does put himself above Brahma here, so one can see where the Hare Krishnas get that. But he also says Arjuna, us – we are above Brahma. So I think what he is saying is that Brahma is an idea to help us understand. Because first, Krishna talks about how Big and Long – no, Vast, Brahma is: each day and night stretches over a thousand eons (take that Bishop Usher!). And that really means even longer than eons, because creation, the entire Universe, is brought into being at Brahma's dawn, and falls apart, is dismantled at the beginning of Brahma's Night. But then creation and all the creatures are born again at Brahma's next dawn.
Beyond this unmanifest nature
Is another unmanifest existence,
A timeless being that does not perish
When all creatures perish
It is called eternal unmanifest nature,
What men call the highest way,
The goal from which they do not return;
This highest realm is mine.
It is man's highest spirit,
Won by singular devotion, Arjuna,
In whom creatures rest
And the whole universe extends. v. 20-22
Universes within universes, isn't it? Or not, because this being outside of the universe is impossible to conceive with this human mind. But it seems clear to me that Krishna is saying that it isn't just that he is Lord of that realm, or just that humans can get there by devotion, but he seems to be saying that in some mystical, impossible-to-grasp way, humans are that place! Right? "It is man's highest spirit . . in whom creatures rest and the whole universe extends." Wow. There isn't much more one can say. Wow.
One last thing before I go. This teaching concludes by saying that even once men understand this, who "know the infinite spirt" v.24, they still might not rejoin that unmanifest existence, and it has to do with when they die. If we die at one time, during the "light" period (which could include bright lunar night) during the "sun's six-month northward course" v.24, we "reach infinity." But if we die during the dark period, we "reach the moon's light and return" v. 25. Is this just mystical gobbeldy-gook? Or is Krishna pointing out some feature of physics? Moreover, I think he might be saying there is a choice:
These bright and dark pathways
Are deemed constant for the universe;
By one, a man escapes rebirth;
By the other, he is born again.
No man of discipline is deluded
When he knows these two paths. v.27
Maybe he is stating a fact about the way the material universe is constructed and is telling us to know these pathways and choose the time of our death appropriately. [Since I have been studying the Upanishads I've found some early references to these paths of the moon and to the role the moon plays in reincarnation.] It's funny that it seems like here is an answer to my earlier dilemma about both seeking to know God with all my self, and also loving life. Maybe we can reach liberation, moksha, and still return to play the game if we are still enjoying it. Why not? You really can have what you want in Hinduism!
May 7
The Ninth Teaching: The Sublime Mystery
Mystery is certainly a good word for it! I feel like I wrote nearly the same thing last time though. Krishna seems to contradict himself, or offer a paradox, and again I'm longing for the Sanskrit, to see which words he used. I really need at least another, different translation. Not that this one isn't good, but one decision of hers I question is to always translate a word the same way. So jnana is always translated as knowledge, yoga always discipline, brahman as infinite spirit, etc. But words have various shades of meaning, especially a word like karma, which I've seen transliterated as work, action, cause and effect, sacred law, etc. I think she sometimes loses or twists meaning away from the original intent by using the same word; a different word would more accurately reflect the intended meaning.
Anyway, it would be lovely to have another translation, especially one written by a Hindu. This teaching has some confusing verses. Recall, Krishna is telling Arjuna more about who he truly is, and that realm of existence (his, ours) that is beyond life and death. And he reminds him how important meditation is, of course. And the rest will have to wait. I've read the whole thing twice, but I have to meditate and then go to work now.
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