Vignana Bhairava Tantra

Many ways to meditation

If there is a text to suit the ways and means of each human being in converting ordinary and extraordinary situations in life into a means for meditation - it is the Vignana Bhairava Tantra. These over a 100 ways to meditate as told by the Guru of Yoga - Lord Shiva to his consort Parvati who questioned him as Arjuna did to Krishna in the battlefield on what it takes to experience the divine awareness.

Many a situation in life - a technique from a verse in the Vignana Bhairava Tantra has come to my rescue in understanding what the masters say when they talk of the Self. I wish to share here with you - a verse a time, picked not in any particular order, but at random.

If meditation is being in that space where thoughts come and go - float like clouds in the sky, then each technique of the Vignana Bhairava Tantra is the way to be in the present moment - in the consciousness.

When you happen to be in a vast open space, where there is not a soul to even holler out to, it may be a vast desert with the sun's rays beating down, it may be the big wide sea and just yourself before it, it can be alone on the slope of a mountain or just by yourself on the terrace, staring into the dark night's sky....

Nirvriksha Giribhithyadi Deshe Drishtim Vinikshipeth

Vileene Manase Bhave Vrittih Ksheenah Prajayathe.

You may be walking past a mountain where there are no trees. You may just gaze at a big rock. Look into it fully and be there. The numerous thoughts that arise, with the support of images that you see outside will stop. The thoughts will become lesser and lesser and will disappear. Next time you happen to be alone in a wilderness, it is the place to meditate with eyes wide open.

(Pic. The lone trail to Charan Paduka, behind the crowded temple for Lord Vishnu at Badrinath in the Himalayas.)

Row Row Row

Gently Down The Stream

The journey of life
Is like going to school
Having born, we have to go through
Education is the purpose of being
Just as athe child goes to school
Life exists as we breathe in and out
Each year passes by with a promotion
And life too rolls on to the next grade of experience.
As much as the student is endowed
With intelligence and the right environment
There is success or failure
Joy or sorrow through the school
Just as dropouts stagnate
At that level of study
Life's quitters hover around
The same wavelength of experience
They have to enroll again to move on
One does not mourn the end of school days
When they have to go ahead and
Meet the challenges of the world without.
Just so with life, when death comes
It is just the last day
In the school of Earth International
A preparation for our work and life
In the Universe beyond.

- Swahilya Shambhavi

(Pic: The quiet and deep Ganga beneath the Ram Jhoola at Rishikesh.)

Zen

...in everyday life

It has been many times now. A look into the mirror has taught me so much. From Who am I, to I am That - every spiritual truth has expressed itself so beautifully when I look into the mirror.see myself in reflection.

Once I saw my face on a glass pane of a car moving ahead of me. I saw myself. But I thought at first that the face I saw was me. But then every reflection shared its space on that single glass pane - the other motorists and their vehicles, the trees, the birds that flew past, the blue sky, the sun and all it's glory. I saw myself indeed! It took just a moment before my mind expanded from 'i' to I - the little me to the big universal myself.

I realised today why tea is most celebrated in the land of Zen. Today I sat on a jute swing to spend some quiet moments with a cup of the brown liquid. Beside me, on a bookshelf was Adi Sankara's Dakshinamurthy Stotra - verses that tell that this Universe is a solid dream, just as the one we have in sleep is an amorphous transient one.

Seeing the name Dakshinamurthy took me to my being of Silence that the incarnation of Shiva is said to embody.

I sipped my tea in this thought and I discovered that the liquid was flowing through consciousness, in the space of the foodpipe connecting the mouth with the stomach. It simply travels through silence and rests there for a while. Anything eaten, drunk, spoken or done are just movements in consciousness. That I call some Zen Tea!

- Swahilya Shambhavi

Swaha...

Meditation on fire and other thoughts

Sunday seems to me for sure a day of sun, light, fire and sparks of consciousness.
Much fire has happened, too much to share but yet I shall. Waking up in the morning,

I sat up to pen down the thoughts that began to flow...

Spiritual Progress?

The garment bought in the market is good enough
The master wears it, it collects grime over time
Has to be washed, however well kept it may be
There the process begins - soaking in soap water
A time when the mind garment is dumped with company
Other mind ideas that have the power to cleanse
The cloth then is taken out, from its wet existence
Subject to a more subtler process here
Rinsing in the pure waters that wash away accumulated tendencies
That over, yet a lot remain
It has to be wrung dry of even the holy waters
The master holds the mind's cloth in his hands
Tightens his grip into the now rope-like fabric
Spins it hard and squeezes mercilessly
There is yet the influence of water
Pure though it may be
An alien impression nonetheless
There it finds its place beneath the sun
Spread out on the clothesline with many others
Exposed to the scorching rays of consciousness
Chilling out, yet giving away
The few little ideas it holds on to
Even that is not enough for a product final
There is a gruelling process of surrender
Red hot coals from the depths of the earth
Flatten and iron out the tenacious wrinkles of distortion
The cycle goes on no end
But for the Master who does it all,
There is no pain, no gain
No thing whatsoever.

- Swahilya Shambhavi


Truth

The poem is not the truth
There is a silence
A nothingness
An empty space
After all the eddying words have poured out
There my dear, is the truth
Hold on to it and dissolve
Into eternity.

- Swahilya Shambhavi

Thoughts

When you open your eyes
You see trees, cars, buildings and people
The are there out alread
They are in motion and keep changing
But they have been and will be there for sure
You close your eyes
You see images floating past
Ideas, plans, love, pain, activities
They too like objects are there
And can't be wished away
Just see objects moving about
In the vast expanse of space
The clouds of thought float around
In the skies of Consciousness
As refreshing as an airplane ride
In the sunshine above the clouds
I meditate in my heart's cave
My towering mind nestled in thought clouds
Just as Shiva sits in Silence
In the mighty Himalaya.

- Swahilya Shambhavi.

Evam Eva Jagat Sarvam Dagdham Dhyathva Vikalpataha
Anyachetasah Pumsaha Pumbhavah Paramo Bhaveth

- Vignana Bhairav Tantra

"Having meditated with an unwavering and one-pointed mind on the entire universe being burnt by the fire of time, that man becomes a godman or attains a supreme state of manhood."

Consigned to flames!

Many a time have
The thoughts of the past
Penned or unsaid
Consigned to flames
And as I look into the fire
I see my mind is gone
With all the desires
Wants or vows
Everything goes
Into the flame of time.
All that remains
Is an emptiness
No direction and no thing.

- Swahilya Shambhavi.

Jotting down

...some contemplations

I had a lot of photographs with a white space to it on one side. Though the pictures had no use, I did not feel like throwing them away into the dustbin. I wrote on the space instead. It began with two quotes that I got from friends and the remaining were the bits and pieces of words mined from consciousness whenever I sit down to meditate or contemplate. These cards I keep them on my table at office. There are always those moments when I pick one to meditate upon for a while to get anchored again....

- Never change your originality for others. Because no one can play your role better than you - Suryopanishad.

- Ideas are like pictures on the album of consciousness. If just placed, they can be removed easily. If glued to the screen, it has to be torn off and wiped clean. The process may be painful, but inevitable.

- This body, breath and mind is like a pump that brings out the essence of existence. Deeper the plumbing, purer the quality.

- Just like a coal or a gold mine, every idea is waiting to manifest in the Earth of pure Consciousness.

- Each one is a wave, in the ocean of existence. The greater the depth, the bigger the manifestation.

- Voyages through inner space is true voyage.

- Every object and being of this Universe is an expression of Consciousness.

- Sadhana is to dig deeper into the essence daily and begin from the point left the day before.

- Conception of a conscious being happens when the seeds fuse together in the subtle fire of love.

- Food, water, clothing and recreation is to sustain the spacecraft called humanbeing through his journey of Consciousness.

- Tears are raindrops that fall off thought clouds, clearing the skyto let the sun of consciousness shine brightly.

....with more moments of meditation and more white space, more thoughts will follow....

Varsha Gyan

When it rained....

It is raining cats and dogs, frogs and fishes
I see the water outside
Falling on me drenching thoroughly
But somewhere within
The person who watches the rain
Is not wet
Is not touched by the water
The water falls on him-her - no It
And that's the being in its totality
Consciousness that is untouched.

- Swahilya.

Nothing...

Enlightenment!

An idea was given to me

It came as a joyous infant

Fell into my outstreched arms.

For years four I nurtured it

It made me forget the world

It gave me a high

Lifted me when I was down and low

Whenever I thought of it

I prayed to any god I saw

Wherever I went and whenever I remembered

The idea was there growing

Like a happy child

By leaps and bounds.

And so many saints were there

Whose words I trusted

Go to sleep with the idea, they said

And when you wake up in the morning

'Tis there, sure as dawn's light.

"When you wish upon a star,"

said another

"Makes no difference who you are

Anything your heart desires,

Will come to you."

Emboldened I was taking them for sure,

Like oxygen for the burning fire

I let them stoke the idea's fuel.

But death always lurks around

And who am I to wish it away

Leave alone the flimsy thought.

He cast his leash with a noose and sure

Slung it right around its youthful neck

And dragged it away before the beloved's eyes

In a trice was gone the fictional existence

As if an imaginary theatre vanished

With characters, set and stage.

Now I stand in the vacant void

With nothing to hold on, not even an idea

And in the silence I hear a sound

Om..... it says

But even that trails away

The emptiness and the silence

Is all left of me.

- Swahilya.

(Picture: Sulphur rock heating up the waters of Alaknanda at the Tapt Kund in Badrinath.)

Alluring

Himalayas!


Poets have sung its glory. Saints have sat in its caves and river banks. The seekers went and found their enlightenment. Village folks also live their life there, grazing cattle, cutting wood. Tourists go to stare in awe and wonder at the snowy peak. Trekkers climb and mountaineers try to conquer its heights. But for me, the sight of white snow against the black rocky slopes of the Himalayas, the blue sky behind and the sunshine adding to the aura never fail to send waves of joy, inspiring my being and lifting my spirits. Ever since I went the first time to Rishikesh, Uttar Kashi, Gangotri and Gomukh and the second time to Rishikesh, Badrinath, Kedarnath and Haridwar, it's always a feeling of wanting to go there again, of being there - though I wonder why.
I recently read in an article in The Hindu about why such places as the Himalayas, Kailash Manasarovar and many other places in the world that people visit for its spiritual power. The earth in those regions considered holy have a certain kind of free elements present abundantly. When the traveller enters the region, he is engulfed in its presence. There is an atomic exchange that happens. What I am goes out and what is there gets in to me. This is the secret of inspiring. Spire has its roots from Spirit and InSpire means to experience the spirit within.
While it is not required that one can know the spirit only by visiting the Himalayas, what you see is what you are. In the crowded world out below, all we see is pollution, corruption, crowded thoughts assaulting from all around, disease, poverty and just about everything we do not want to be reminded of. But up there in the mountains, there is silence, space, nature, serenity, calmness and tranquility. So we become all that we see there. So it is a lure of the breathtaking heights that eternally draws me up there again and again....

Picture: The peaks of Kedarnath, behind the Jyotirlinga Temple.

Flowing through: The Mandakini meanders and gushes through the Kedar Valley.

Sunday...

A glimpse of light...

A very auspicious day it was. Sunday - when I got to see what it means when they say light. A day for contemplation when there was nothing official to do, resting and restfulness. Clarity on what it means to be. When the past was burnt and the future there was none, it was a deep summer nap when nothing existed. In a half waking state, I had a glimpse of what the Masters call Light. As if through a chink, when the surface of the being crumbles into luminous shreds, getting absorbed in a massive light. A light that is whole and complete. The one who sees it also gone. There is just light which is much brighter than what we call day. No heat but just light. And that is what has got many names - substratum, consciousness, Om, God, Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Tao, Zen, Being, Living, Nothingness...as many names as there are people to say them. Thank God, the animals and the plants were not speaking! And that's all. There's nothing more to it than just light. Everything that is around is just light in different states of being. What else can I say? That's all there is. Light. And beyond....nothing.


Pic:- The morning rays of the sun streaming through the temple dome atop Parvatamalai.

Sri Lanka

The Verdant Teardrop

Just an hour from Chennai by flight, I reach a foreign capital. The Bandaranayake Airport's Green Channel welcomes me as a foreign national into a country that I feel very much at home. I am talking of Sri Lanka where I spent four five days recently.
Just like the green view of Kerala, there is nothing that I miss along the three-hour drive from Colombo to the hilly Kandy region. The Maruti 800, Alto and Wagon R, Bajaj Autorickshaws, Lanka Ashok Leyland Buses all go to make me feel that Sri Lanka is part of the Indian landmass, just separated by a stretch of water called the Indian Ocean. It has retained the essence of India. The name for a river in Sri Lanka is Ganga. So the Mahaweli river is called Mahaweli Ganga.
Everywhere I turn, there is a Buddha seated in meditation, around road bends, on top of hills and in the temples. Sri Lanka is a land where Buddha is celebrated with a national holiday on the new moon called Poya Day when the Buddha's teaching was supposed to have been brought.
The value of freedom of thought, speech and action - I learnt in Sri Lanka. Owing to the political situation, one has to carry their passport or the national identity card even while going on morning walk, to a temple or to buy something from the neigbouring shop!
I immensely breathed in the air of Sri Lanka. It felt good. Freedom is after all a state of mind and I wish all becomes well soon - for there is so much beauty that the whole world should know!