Monday, January 15, 2007

Tranquil...


...Vision


Since January, I seem to be blessed with the knowledge of the means to remain in touch with my essence, to remain in that tranquility. It happened through withdrawing from the desires with the world outside, being with books, music, chanting and learning and enjoying the fundamental notes in my many musical instruments, the tampura, veena, keyboard and the mridangam.
I am delighting in being in the Saraswati state of consciousness, learning, reading and writing. I am in love with the notbooks, pens, pencils, colours, paints, brushes, all objects of matter that are the means to a liberated state of mind.
This morning, spending a tranquil Pongal and the beginning of the new Tamil month of Thai, which ushers in auspiciousness into people's life, I was chanting and I realised that every activity on the Earth or anywhere else, is just the conversation between the Consciousness and the mind.
The Consciousness provides the support for the mind to raise itself from itself, perform a specified task of thinking, working, speaking or resting, for a specified period of time - and then fall back into its own self. Everything, animals, birds, insects, non-living thing and human beings, fall in this dialogue between Consciousness and the Mind. They are too not different, but just the unmoving and dynamic states of the same self.

And in keeping with a Tamil proverb, 'Thai Pirandal Vazhi Pirakkum,' meaning with the birth of the Thai month, the way is born. In me, it was a way from the untruth of differences, to the truth of consciousness, from the darkness of emotions to the light of the one elemental unmoving stillness and from the fear of the impermanent to the confidence in eternity. Asatoma Sadgamaya - Tamasorma Jyotir Gamaya - Mrityorma Amritam Gamaya. Om Shanthi Shanthi Shanthihi. (The picture is of the Ganga Arathi at Rishikesh.)