The Dead-end Up Here

Although this is called gratitude journal 3, it feels like the final one as I am utterly, forever, absolutely and uncoditionally grateful to shakti. In fact all I know is shakti, all I could ever know will be shakti. All there is is shakti. I better explain. Shakti is a sanskrit word which simply means energy. Now, everyone knows energy. Right? Really? What is energy? And don't give me the textbook definition, I have spent decades learning that and even after decades of not thinking about the mathematics of energy transfer, I could have a dialogue with you. Yet the dialogue will be inconclusive for I can't really explain to you what energy is? My profs or texts couldn't. As a confession I have not read any of latest works by Hawking, which I will. And so there is the reason this is only the gratitude jounral 3. A fourth may come. Any discussion on the origin of energy takes one quickly to big bang. As Jay knows, we can always blame it on big bang. Try it ernestly and...

1.  I am grateful to the five senses which allow the body to hear tranquil sounds, to construct beautiful images from simple play of light, to translate simple friction of touch into tantalizing sensations, to turn dead chemicals into exquisite taste and turn simple gases into heavenly scents. 2. I am also grateful to these senses to quickly report upcoming distraction as pain and suffering. Without these warnings, the body would have perished long ago. It is the pain and suffering that endures life. 3. I am grateful to the brain of this body without which none of the senses could work, poetry would never get written and music would simply be noise. Above all this would be a thought less world. Joy would not be joy, tears would never arrive either of joy or of sorrow. 

1. I am most grateful to a score of teachers who have made it possible for me to know that everything I sense or think about is untrue. 2. I am grateful to the inherited biological system that has made possible to see this delusion. 3. I am grateful for the complexity of this universe which is the source of much joy and other pointers   which makes this dream ever interesting.

What is the purpose of life? Why do we do what we do? What is the program, today, this week, this year, rest of your life or even this second? Is there a theme? Every cell, every living being is programmed to seek happiness, joy, bliss and love. Even the most difficult pain and suffering is for love . But it is in search of this love, the essential purpose of all life, something happens. From birth, we seek and relish love and joy, often through a complicated chemical process designed in the body and it's brain. Craving for more, the brain embarks on storing these experiences through its detectors or our senses as memory. That memory becomes thinking. We lose the child like process of instantaneous joy and start using logical faculty of the brain to recreate, repeat and seek love in ever more complex methods. This diluted love never equals in purity and intensity to the first love. Until we embark on the direct path to love. That direct path is through eliminati...

Joy, any joy or bliss you feel is when your body touches truth and love. Albeit briefly, meditation can make that happen without an addictive prop. It's up to you to make it your whole life. Practice Monday night at 8 pm. At Be Yoga Wellness, Burlington. Much controversy exists whether fireworks, feeling of joy, bliss, kriyas are useful or something to be ignored during meditation. I am of the view that I will take good clean joy any day and then try to deal with an addiction with such feelings. Surely it can't be worse than kicking a smoking or drinking habit. Besides I am in a human joy-seeking instrument called the body which likes to be bribed to pursue anything. Touching that spot where joy permeates during meditation is not that difficult. It is easier than running a marathon or becoming a tennis pro or getting drunk. Just sit in meditation regularly for a few weeks.  sunilk.vidyarthi@gmail.com

Late Mr. Richard Rose a West Virginia mystic and founder of TAT where I had my first wow moment that liberation was possible in this life time  for everyone, said you can't know the truth, you can only become truth. Like everything on this path, it has taken me nine years to understand this and even then I am not sure because as he said, I can't really understand the truth. What he went on to say is that to try to know truth is a fruitless exercise. It is however possible to know what is not true. And that is just about everything including the idea of you. All your senses lie to you. Even the sixth sense, if there is one is telling you a lie. Your thoughts are untrue, your memory is untrue, all you see, taste, touch and feel are untrue. All these lies create this illusion which you take to be you, another big fat lie. What is left after all these eliminations ends up being the truth, which you may refer to as you albeit erroneously. Shankaracharya said something similar...

Nisargdatta said that the most critical requirement to liberation is earnest desire. Buddha talked about noble suffering and Jesus said the rich has more difficulty than a camel to pass through a needle. And of course the dictum that when a student is ready the teacher shows up. Look in your own life. You are where you are because in all honesty that is what you wanted and needed. I am not talking of what nature has provided you as a body and other resources. I am talking of what you wanted to do with what you have. You are rich if that's what you needed to be, you are poor because you didn't want to do what was needed to be wealthy. You are loved because you wanted love and you are alone because you need to be alone. Not much different in spirituality. You must need to be enlightened before you can be liberated.