Meditation, Sightseeing, Love and Partiality

Meditation Sight Seeing, Love and Partiality

All my attempts to prayer and meditation were grand failures. My mind will remain very calm and still all through the day, till I sit down for just a few minutes of meditation. As if on clue, my mind will start its journey on the fastest steed.

One second it will be thinking about the blunder I had committed in my client’s tax returns that day and the next second it will be happily ogling a beautiful lady I had met several years ago. Then it will switch over to the money worries, and fly over to Allan Watts’ book I had read several years ago.

The meditation books and the Masters repeatedly assured me that it will be like this to start with. Soon my mind will be in my control, they thundered. But I never crossed that “to start with” stage.

One day in exasperation I abandoned all attempts to meditate and intent on breathing fresh air and looking at people, I took a ride on my motorcycle. Soon I was on the main road. The motorcycle was running on top gear.

The rhythmic sound of the pistons going in and coming out of the cylinders, the moderately congested Tallakulam Area, the laid back atmosphere very typical of <st1:city><st1lace>Madurai</st1lace></st1:city> – all these conjured to create a magic in me. I and my bike were one and the same.

I could not pin-point where my boundaries ended and those of the motorcycle started. It was the I-Bike entity moving all on its own. My mind was unusually calm and soon I realised that I was meditating.

After this experience I started to go on bike-rounds quite often. But on 99 out of 100 occasions there was no meditation. Just sight-seeing. But whenever meditation happened (I did not cause it) it was complete.

Then I tried the slokas route. I used to get a lot of them by heart and religiously recite them in the Puja Room. I remember in 1977 some astrologer had warned my father that I will be going through a very bad period of about two and a half years.

And the prescription that was given to me was to recite Kolaru Thiruppathikam, Saneeswara Sthotram and Hanuman Sthuthi.

Whatever astrologer predicted happened. It was far worse that we all feared. My adoptive father died. We were caught in a legal case concerning the family’s agricultural lands. There were visits to courts, tehsildar offices and police stations.

The only peaceful time of the day will be my sloka chanting time around six in the evening. The moment I finish chanting, my father will take me to some lawyers office for some discussion or to a Government Official’s house for the next move and we will come back home late in the night. Many times we did not even have the money to pay our lawyers. The slokas really helped; but for them I would have lost my sanity.

But there was a serious drawback.Once you know the slokas by heart the mind switches the recitation to autopilot and goes on its loafing expeditions.

Then later in life I took to the study of scriptures – particularly The Gita and The Upanishads. I even tried to read Yoga Vashistam in English. But one thing I found out was that all these things were purely intellectual pursuits and served only to harden my ego, which was already pretty hard. I learnt pretty fast how to look down upon people.

After giving a few lectures on Gita and Sankara’s works my mind was at the peak of its arrogance. Any pride kills joy. But spiritual pride is the worst of all. It kills everything that is spiritual in us. I got out of it before it was too late.

Religion is basically about love. It is about the imperfect, selfish, ulterior love we have for the Alladin’s Genie which we mistakenly call as God. It is more about the perfect, self-less and blemishless love the real God has for each one of us. Let me cite some instances of such love.

Nammazhwar while describing God tells us that he ஈடும் எடுப்புமில் ஈசன் He does not discriminate among His devotees. The Great God does not prefer any of us to the other. Nor does he love any one more than any other. (எள்கள் இராகம் இலாதான்)

 

Re: “Your Religion? Money!” – The Lamentations of An Accountant! II

We all know that He has the same treatment for the rich and the poor, the mighty and the weak, for King and the beggar. But Her (I mean God’s) love is so great that She does not even distinguish between Her devotees and atheists. It will be absurd to think that God loves Her devotees more and hates those who do not believe in Her. To me, that would be the worst form of blasphemy, as we are lowering Her stature to that of a fool surrounded by sycophants.

”But I find His devotees generally happier than those who do not believe in God? The psychologists are unanimous that the Believers generally enjoy better mental health? Is that not a kind of favourtisim?”

A friend opposed my point of view.

“No my friend.” I countered. “It is not what God gives. It’s people’s own making. God’s love is there for every one to enjoy. Visualise this situation. Food is made available in infinitely large quantities; but is kept in a large vessel for every one to see. Some go and fill up their plates. Some take very little. Some do not go near the vessel at all. Now can you say the host discrimnates between his guests?”

You might have heard of the fable The Prodigal Son. Out of the two sons, a father has, the younger one falls into wrong company, fights with his father, gets his share of wealth and goes away. The elder son is faithful to his father and stays with him.

That does not mean that the father loves the younger son less and the elder one, more. When the younger son returns to his father as a penniless beggar, the father hugs him and takes him into his fold. The elder son seeing this is a little upset. That attitude is shared by most of us who believe in God. We want God to punish, to kill, to maim the atheists. We are upset when the atheist also receives His blessing.

But if God were to partial to those who love him then he is no God. His love is universal. His love for the man who breaks his statues and burns his pictures is no less than His love for the man who spends all the time praying before his statue or picture. That is why Nammazhwar adorns Him, “ ஈடும் எடுப்புமில் ஈசன்”

Eisenhower after winning many victories for America returned home a national hero. His mother was interviewed by the press. She had five sons of whom Eisenhower was one.

A reporter asked her, “How do you feel about your son’s success?”

She asked him: ‘Which of my five sons are you referring to?”

Please remember God’s love towards each one of us is several billion times greater than the love of Eisenhower’s mother who simply did not know to show more favours to one of her sons, though the rest of the world was doing that.

 

Dear Sudha,
This came under the same heading as the earlier post Your Religion Money.. Then I thought that the topic was a little confusing and ILites were confused between this week's post and the previous week's post.
So I requested Admin to change the name of the thread.

But if you had written a reply I would have got it in my mail. Or may be it got lost somewhere. Probably it was not destined that I should read it. ha ha

Even if your reply pops up else where in the site, let me know.

regards,

 

Dear Gem,

As your name implies that was really a gem of a piece of writing. You seem to echo my feelings and my thoughts on this tricky subject.

Our minds (I mean people like Varalotti and Gem; there are those who can at the drop of their hats, drop in to an hour long meditation) are not designed to sit alone and savour the calmness; it is made to enjoy the world, beautiful songs, works of literature, or just people, or the natural scenery.

After ages and ages of experience I have come to define meditation as the time when we completely forget ourselves. Where we start doing an act and suddenly the doer vanishes and what remains is just the act doing itself. I have this experience when working on a complex tax problem, when writing a story, at times when just idling around the city in the bike, the engine running at its optimal speed.

I see that writing is bringing you peace and quietitude. Start writing. Post in this site, in all the forums. May your meditative moments be shared by us all. Best of luck.
regards,