Category: writing

 

An old woman came to my line today.  Her hair is blond; I’m sure she dyes it.  She has youthful eyes, the eyes of a child.

She was fascinated by my name.  I told her I got my name from my spiritual Master, Sri Chinmoy, and that it meant “fast-climbing tree.”

She told me I was doing the right thing, I was on the right path.  She told me that fifty years ago she used to read “Be Here Now” and other spiritual books on a regular basis, but she didn’t pursue it.  Her greatest regret in life is that she never took the time to develop her spiritual self.

I asked her if she wanted to hear a poem, she said yes, so I recited this great mantra from Sri Chinmoy’s The Golden Boat:

 

“I have just begun my long journey
With my first step.
Look,
My Lord says that
I have far advanced on the path.

I have just begun to meditate
In the early hours of the morning.
Look,
My Lord says that
My Goal no longer remains
A far cry.”

Sri Chinmoy, The Golden Boat, part 10, Agni Press, 1974

It brought her to tears.  I then wrote down “Beyond Within” and “Sri Chinmoy” on a slip of paper and handed it to her.   I told her this book was written by the man who wrote the poem and who gave me my spiritual name, and that it changed my life.

She told me she felt she was destined to meet me.

 

I took the bus home from work as it was raining heavily.  A burly, grizzled old man was sitting across the aisle.  He noticed I was reading “A Lost Friend” by Guru and he asked me wat it was about.  I told him it was a book of spiritual philosophy, by my spiritual Master Sri Chinmoy.  He nodded with knowledgeable appreciation, but didn’t say anything.

I noticed he looked a little disoriented, perhaps drunk, but that he had a regal demeanor, great dignity and shiny eyes.  Before I got off the bus I told him I felt Shiva consciousness in him.  He said, “No, no- I am Agni.”

He knows some of the cosmic gods!  Not many people know that Agni is the fire-god.

I told this man that Agni is one of my very favorite gods, because he is a literary god, a lover of the arts, and also kindles within human beings the flaming hunger for self-knowledge.

Interestingly, when Agni appeared before Guru, he spoke in English!  (Please see this page on Sri Chinmoy Library:  https://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/awa-28)

I have heard, but have not been able to confirm, that when Thomas Edison invented the radio, he asked the world’s foremost Sanskrit scholar to recite the opening of the Rig Veda as the first transmission (“Agni mile purohitam…”  It is an invocation to Agni.  Apparently he wanted the most ancient scripture in the world to be relayed by the most recent technology.

I try to read my Guru’s books for two hours a day.  I may not be the best at silent meditation, but I can access Guru’s consciousness behind the words.  Often I have seen the Transcendental Photograph when I read Sri Chinmoy’s poems and inspired talks.  Definitely studying his writings is another approach to his highest consciousness.

 

 

Today an older couple came to my line.  The man had deep wrinkles, and grey eyes.  He had hair like Dylan Thomas, so I offered him a discount if he could name the author of a particular poem.  He accepted the challenge, so I recited the first and the last stanzas of Thomas’ great poem, “Fern Hill,” which deals with the vanishing landscape of childhood and the innocence we can never fully recover.  The concluding line stays with me: “Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

 

I knew I was reciting well because I felt myself step away from my body and I just observed my lips move and I felt the sound being generated by my throat, but I wasn’t involved.  I don’t have that experience very often, where I enter into a state of trance, but when I do experience that kind of dissociative “trance”, where I’m not there, then I know I’m reciting well.  That’s the experience I had today.  Both he and his wife were so moved.

He paused and asked if the author was Dylan Thomas and I said “Yes!”

 

So I gave him a free health candy bar.

 

Sri Chinmoy wrote something interesting about Dylan Thomas.  He happened to have been speaking of Emily Dickinson but he said something also about Thomas, almost as an aside:

 

“Emily Dickinson wrote thousands of psychic poems. One short poem of hers is enough to give sweet feelings and bring to the fore divine qualities of the soul. Dylan Thomas’ poems also have that quality, although Thomas sometimes has been misunderstood.”

 

(Sri Chinmoy, I need my country: Beauty’s Soul, Agni Press, 1975)

 

Dylan Thomas is of course the great Welsh poet.  Vidagdha Bennett, a scholar and chronicler of Sri Chinmoy’s life, recorded the Master’s impressions of Wales from 30 October 1991:

 

“When I was there first time, everything was crying with joy.  Such haunting memories!  There I was born and raised.  Who can forget Wales?  Such simple people.  When I see my development since that incarnation, not in simplicity ways but in other ways.  For simplicity I should go back to that incarnation.  When I see simple people I get such joy.  They are real jewels.”

(Taken from “Notes from a Vagabond Disciple 1991, 1992, 1993” by Vidagdha)

 

I feel a strong attraction to Wales.  I have never been there, but the very name gives me great joy.  I grew up in a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania that had been founded by Welsh settlers.  All the towns and villages around had Welsh names: Bryn Mawr, Bala Cynwyd, Gladwyne, Radnor, Wayne.

 

I read and re-read The Lord of the Rings in middle school, and fell in love with Elvish names- Galadriel, Lothlorien, Sindarin, Elendil.  Much later I learned that Tolkein had been inspired and influenced by Welsh!

 

I read Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series as a child, a refiguring of Welsh mythology for the twentieth century.  I can still recite the opening couplets by heart:

 

“When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning; stone out of song;
Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;
Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.
Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.
All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree.”

 

Also as a child I read Lloyd Alexander’s wonderful fantasy series The Chronicles of Prydain, also based on Welsh mythology.  Such beautiful books!  How I wish we could inspire young people to start reading again!

—

A very nice older lady came to my line today.  Her name is Nadine.  She asked me how I was doing and I told her my hangover is getting better.  She laughed (thank God!) and then she told me she comes to my line whenever she can to hear some wisdom.  She was wondering if I had any wise words to impart.

 

I recited this poem by Sri Chinmoy:

 

“Be indifferent to blame and praise.
You will be happy.

Don’t be sick of solitude.
You will be happy.

Discard the splendour of desire.
You will be happy.

Recognise not the ranklings of jealousy.
You will be happy.

Let death be inaugurated in your vital’s volcano-pride.
You will be happy.”

Sri Chinmoy, Transcendence-Perfection, Agni Press, 1975

 

 

She smiled, radiant and sincere, and told “This wisdom I have received today.”

 

I then asked her a question I often ask my customers- to tell me three things, apart from health and family, that she is grateful for.  I ask people to put aside health and family because those are stock answers, and I just want people to think a little.  She came up with three things for which she is grateful:

 

• The awareness of how to be grateful
• To give and receive a smile
• The emotion of awe

 

I knew then that this woman is a spiritual seeker, and I asked her to repeat her selections and I wrote them down.  Nobody has ever given me such excellent answers, founded upon the heart’s awakening, wisdom that comes from heart-cry.

 

 

—

 

Last week, many people at my store caught some virus and had to call off.  So I did not have time to recite poetry for my customers.   I was too busy, the lines were too long, we were short-staffed in the extreme.   So I just sang the Master’s Kali bhajans, devotional songs for Mother Kali (the Goddess of speed and power) as I rung and bagged.  People smiled at me as they heard the songs..  They saw that I was happy and in a good consciousness, and that made them happy.  True, I could not recite any poems last week, but I could sing and chant, and offer Guru’s light in a different way.  I’m not the best singer, but I am not shy.  There is always a way to manifest.

 

 

A few weeks ago, I dreamt I was at our little diner in Jamaica, Queens- “The Smile of the Beyond”- founded I think in 1975.  It’s just a little breakfast house tucked away between a laundromat and a dry cleaning store, and is operated by fellow devotees of Sri Chinmoy.

It was late at night and my dear friend Sanatan, who passed away a few years ago, was working behind the counter, maybe cutting vegetables.  He used to do a lot of the chopping, I think.  He also worked as a merchandiser for local supermarkets.  Unknown to most of his colleagues in the outer world, Sanatan was also an artisan, a craftsman, an artist, and an absolutely sleepless server to my Master, Sri Chinmoy.  He was a rare breed.  I miss him very much.

I asked him in my dream a very simple question: “Sanatan, now that are no longer alive, now that you are in the soul, can you tell me something about God?”

And Sanatan just paused in his chopping and he reached for a bag of corn chips and opened it.  He reached inside for a chip, and before biting down on it he just looked at me and said, “I am what I am.”

What does this mean?  I think Sanatan was trying to warn me against unnecessary intellectualization.  God is something to be experienced and felt, not to be analyzed.  God doesn’t care for our mental analysis.  God just is.  Sanatan is telling me to live in the heart.  The heart accepts life as it is.  Only through accepting life can we transform it.  I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, where I saw a graffiti mural on the wall of an underpass- it was an image of balloons in the evening twilight, all different colours.  Hovering just above the other balloons was one sky-blue balloon, set off against the dark blue of the sky.  Inside this balloon there was just one thought-bubble.  It said: “Be.”

Just be.  One of Guru’s books is entitled “God IS”.

God is.

“I am what I am.”

Thank you, Sanatan.