Poetry and friendship

 

 

I remember the first blessing I got from my Guru.  It was the Fall of 1998, and Sri Chinmoy and his students organized an aid station at the New York City marathon, as they did every year.  I was a brand new disciple, and I was excited to help out.  I don’t remember much from that year- I just remember handing out lots of cups of water, cheering on runners, and having a friendly discussion with an Australian disciple as to whether or not I should swat at the wasps that kept crowding around the juice station.

Anyway, the woman who directed all of the disciples in giving out refreshments complimented me on my work, and also thanked me for helping out on my birthday (November 1^st).  The next day one of Guru’s attendants said that this lady had been praising my work to Guru directly and Guru was wondering if I could stay in New York an extra day for a daytime function.  When the attendant asked me about my plans I said that of course I’d be happy to stay!

The next afternoon there was a walk-by meditation at our Aspiration Ground/tennis court.  The Master sat by his temple, all bundled up.  We all walked by him as he meditated.  When I passed in front of Guru he didn’t say anything.  Usually Guru gave his spiritual  children a flower and meditated on them for their birthday.  But Guru didn’t do that.  He just looked at me, for just a second.  But that one second was special.  That one second seemed suspended, removed from time.  I felt I was a third-person observer, observing both Guru and me.  In that detached, “suspended” state, I saw Guru’s face elongate and stretch until it embodied not only Guru’s face, but mine as well.  It was Guru extending his own consciousness and personality to embody me.  I also felt, as I was looking at Guru’s eyes, that I was peering into a tunnel, but that tunnel was sky-blue, and as I looked into the tunnel I saw that it was leading me to this vast sky-blue expanse, infinity.  I also felt, in a more abstract way, Guru’s oneness-identification with me.  I intuited that he felt and experienced everything I have ever suffered, and that my suffering now belonged to him.

It was just a second in time.  He did not acknowledge me in any outer way.  It was just a glance.  But over the years I have come to feel it was one of my most significant experiences with Guru.  He actually paid me a tremendous compliment by giving me his blessings in silence.  He felt I was receptive enough to receive him that way.  I hope to remain always receptive.

 

—-

I went back to prison for my most recent birthday, to teach.  As I was putting my belongings through the x-ray scanner, the security guard, a Trinidadian man, looked at me and said “Your spiritual leader is from Pakistan?”

I said, “No, he is from Bangladesh.  But, excuse me- how did you know I had a spiritual leader from India?”

He said, “I see it in your aura- he’s in your aura.”

 

I wondered why he bothers to use the x-ray machine if he has this kind of vision, but then I realised that subtle vision is probably better at detecting auras and x-ray machines are better at finding shanks!

—

I was talking to another teacher after school hours.  This was just in a regular high school.  He told me he swims often at the local YMCA, and he feels swimming is a meditation all by itself.  So I recited the following poem from Transcendence-Perfection:

He swims in the ocean of hope,

He swims in the ocean of failure,

He swims in the ocean of tears.

Something more:
He swims also in the ocean

Of his surrendered will

To his earth-Heaven-life’s

Pilot Supreme.

(typed out from memory, so please check exact words)

 

Then he repeated, out loud, most soulfully, “Hope, failure, tears, will, pilot, Supreme.”

Then he said each word again: “Hope, failure, tears, will, pilot, Supreme.”

Then he closed his eyes and reflected in silence for a few seconds and said, “I really needed to hear this.  Thank you so much.”

It’s interesting how Guru’s poems help me to create a bond with people.  I like having that possibility to connect.

—-

One of my friends, Dan, used to come by my register almost every week and ask me for a poem.  He was really sad when I lost my job but we already had each other’s contact info so we recently got together and went to a Christmas brass concert at an old Catholic church in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago.  The synchronicity of religions is really special, because the church has the feeling and décor of an ancient Hindu temple, a Krishna temple.  I think Pierre Tielhard d’Jardin said that “All that rises must converge.”  It is a temple that has kept all the old Cathoic reliquaries and altars and statues.  It is lavish and simple at the same time, and full of heartfelt prayers.  The music was beautiful, performed and sung by local musicians.  I can always tell when performers feel and believe in the music.  These people did.  I felt I was meditating on Guru spontaneously a few times during the performance.  I saw myself again as a new seeker, seeing Guru enter PS 86, in his blue dhoti.

Afterwards we were sitting in his apartment, drinking warm Amish milk, and he told me that his friends used to laugh at him when he told them that his Friday night plans were to go to the local supermarket and talk to the cashier!

I remember once I told him the following poem:

O Saviour-Christ,
Please tell me,
What did you mean
By your strongest affirmation:
‘I and my Father are one’?
Tell me in what sense you and your Father are one.

“O dear brother,
Of all people, how is it that You, my wise brother,
Do not understand my simple message?
On earth I am my Father’s Face,
In Heaven I am my Father’s Eye.
In that sense we are one, inseparable.
This is what I meant when I said:
‘I and my Father are one.’”

(From The Dance of Life by Sri Chinmoy)

And he reflected that we think of Christ as a person, but actually he is a spiritual energy, and that energy is involved in all of the lives he touched.  He set something in motion, and all those people he touched went on to influence other people, but they are also part and parcel of that energy, that chain reaction of events.  It is the combination of Christ’s human life and the system that he set into motion, and all the people involved, who make up the divine reality of Jesus Christ- face and eye.

I have quite a few friends who are Evangelical Christians, and they find Guru’s poetry helpful in their own prayer-life.  Dan, for example, told me that Guru’s utterance “Patience is the light of truth” has become part of his own life-breath.  I think these people are doing the right thing, because Guru’s poetry has to be lived.

I am happy and lucky to have a number of prayerful and soulful friends.

“To me, a seeker-friend is a rich supply of spiritual energy.”  (Sri Chinmoy)

—-

I was at a wrestling tournament recently, and one guy, a 197 pound colossus ran up to me and hugged me.  I thought I was going to get a cracked rib.

“Who are you?” I asked him after I had caught my breath.

He said, “My name’s Striker” (men who wrestle sometimes name their sons after wrestling moves.  “Striking” is when, from a neutral position, you lunge at your opponent’s legs to take them down).

“How did we meet?” I asked him.

He said, “Last year you met me and my friend Will at the big wrestling tournament.  When you found out his name was Will you wrote down a special message for him, and he framed it and put it on his wall.  He told me it’s one of his most fond possessions.”

Then he pulled it up on his phone and I saw a handwritten note, my handwriting: “Fate shall be changed by an unchanging Will- Sri Aurobindo”.

I was so, so happy and so grateful!

Perhaps an “unchanging Will” should be added to the regimen of every wrestler.

I have no hesitation in sharing these messages with the world.