Vanity of Vanities

The present day, while doing meditation for hours, i had a vision of leaving to somewhither one final time. I was offered a white shawl by family, i offered mine worldly possessions. Afterwards, i proffered father of what i had remained, he refused and granted three letters written by mother for me over a long period. I then asked the mother the symbolism of all's. She unravelled the meaning, “all you carry wherever you go is your doings and stories in their faithful form, nothing else, that’s what the white shawl and letters signify”. i further asked, you could have given the letter yourself, why father? she replied, “does anything matter, now go on”.

Mother was right, it matters no more, vanity of vanities, it’s all vanity!

Death - Pursuit of the Absolute?

Lately, I have found myself pondering quite a bit about the mystery of death. Why is everyone so scared of dead? We all will die, that's inevitable. Then doesn't it make sense to instead embrace it, understand it? I am not talking about hurting self, that's against the flow of creation. What I am talking about is following where the universe intends to take us. When you see a movie that indulges you, you enjoy it. However, could you still enjoy your most favourite movie in an infinite loop? Imagine the agony of a student who has failed and thus is compelled to repeat his class.

We need an end - like the period in a sentence. Everything that we dislike, hate, love or cherish must have an end. I feel we are mostly frightened of unknown rather than death itself. Didn't you sometimes in your life take a leap of faith and dived into. Many times the objective science did it too, that’s how we discovered the vaccine of polio. I don’t think, the leap of faith comes out arbitrary, you sense it, you observe it quietly coming, promising a gateway to the unprecedented horizon and gradually manifesting into intuition. It might work or perhaps would never. However, when you know what you are doing is not working either, isn’t it better to seek out the truth beyond the familiarity? If you haven't ever come across this intuition, which I doubt, I am truly sorry, you can't even know what have you missed. When death comes, instead of welcoming it, we start crying. Everything, including knowns and unknowns, is temporary, it will keep changing, everyone you know will die, everything you own will vanish eventually, it's all illusion. Again, No I am not arguing about harming self, that's pure sin, not because of what I have been told, but because in essence, you are asking for a favour from this universe to take you out of this loop of life and death and then you sway against its rule and hope to get what you want. You won't. You break your own pledge, that you had made to the cosmos when you had rearrived, to return only when you would be called. Besides getting rid of the physical body is too damm easy, what about disposing your fears, your lust, greed, envy, desires, pride and attachments first - can you easily get rid of them, too? When your time comes, and if you have already renounced these, you will not have fear of losing this physical existence, made of ashes.

I feel, there is nothing fearful about death, the death will be a celebration if we live our time nobly and justly, and then we will keep living in the hearts and stories, remembered and forgotten. We will exist nowhere and everywhere. If we embrace death this way, death will not barge into our homestead but instead would lovingly arrive as our dearest friend whom we didn't get to meet for a long long time. Do not repeat the mistakes, again and again, don't hurt a soul, including yours, consciously; make penance for your sins till you have time, change lives, do good, and perhaps you will return to the totality. We need to die, we must be willing to die someday so that we could relish this life before it comes to its conclusion, the final conclusion.

“Life is just a memory, bitter or sweet, it is nothing but a memory.” ~ Aghori Sri Vimalananda

Suggested read:

The first series of Aghora trilogy: Aghora I: At the Left Hand of God

The book gives a glimpse into the spiritual journey of Aghori Sri Vimalananda.

“The more you become aware of death’s certitude, he would say, the more urgently you will strive to live an impeccable life, to seek a healthy relationship with that infinite and permanent reality that lies beyond our world of the temporary and the mundane.”

Enlightenment of Detachment

It’s widely misunderstood when you hear about detachment. The majority take them as avoidance of suffering, recklessness, or abandonment of the world. It’s not that. What does detachment really mean is that you must orient yourself towards the higher good you can imagine and then having done that, act in the moment, that includes you must gracefully accept suffering, as well, as it enters, and let it go as it leaves, you become aware of self and surrounding. Even attachment to avoidance of sufferings creates its own suffering. In ancient Greek, there is a word for this - φυγόπονος, which means fear of pain that makes you avoid the pain. Pain is ultimately inevitable in most scenarios, however, suffering is optional. Your resolve might be tested along the way, through the fire, but don’t conflate what is expedient and comfortable with what is correct or perhaps the moral thing to do. Living in the moment without the higher goal is like slowly building yourself as the strongest enemy you could ever imagine. Every action has associated suffering, for example, a woman conceives and she will have to suffer the consequences of childbirth, you marry your love and your loved one will, for sure, die one day. If suffering seems so absolutely inevitable, does it necessarily stop you from orienting yourself towards the higher goal and living in this moment? It doesn’t because it’s always optional in nature. On the same note, people misunderstand attachment too, they say, in order to achieve enlightenment, one must renounce attachment whole because life is suffering and attachment makes it worse. It doesn’t, it only causes suffering when you can’t release things when it’s time to let them go.

Perhaps what you think suffering is for you was, in essence, a blessing from the beginning. Death, for example, people say it’s the end of life, so that must be terrifying. Perhaps it’s the ultimate silence, peace and calm you always yearned for. We exist as a dot on the timeline of this eternity, but our actions will have repercussions that would reverberate throughout time, the butterfly effect. We must thus decide to face suffering head-on and accept it as gracefully as possible. That’s detachment when ecstasy and suffering become one. In Finnish, there is a saying, "New snow is the death of the old snow". In order to move ahead, you must die to all you once loved and you must be willing to die, so that you may live and live abundantly.

- Prof. Jordan B. Peterson. Voice of sanity in the world of confusion. Thank you.

Words of Banaras

In spirituality, non-dualism, also called non-duality, means "not two" or "one undivided without a second", which primarily refers to a mature state of consciousness, in which the dichotomy of “I and other” is "transcended", and awareness is described as "centerless" and "without dichotomies". This might look uncomfortable idea for many, as in this age, people usually see everything keeping themselves in the center. In Hinduism, the ideal goal of a life is to seek moksha from the cycle of reincarnation - the final freedom, that you can hope to achieve once you realize your self’s identity with the absolute. I know it might be sounding too vague, it was/(still) is for me. I asked an Aghoris monk here in Varanasi, is it possible for a worldly person like me to get this final freedom - to never return once I leave everything behind. After all, most of my life, I have only done things for myself, keeping myself in the center - my happiness, my sorrows, my life, mine success, mine failures - full of “I”, “my” and “mine” - I can’t possibly get to that stage - at current stage, I am absolute opposite of what should have been. He listen and said, all the opposites, the two sides, all of them are ultimately illusory, because in essence all are same, you think you are on the opposite side of the river, but there is no opposite side in the first place, you are simply at the river, you don’t need to follow anyone or anything, but just perceive the illusory nature of the world around you, live consciously instead of blindly following expectations and customs, be kind to self and others, embrace degradation and pollution the same way as you would embrace purity and growth. To develop such equanimity in itself is called yoga in this life and moksha in afterlife. Everything that has had happened, it was perfect and to deny its perfection would be to deny the sacredness of all life in its full manifestation, as well as to deny the supreme being. You need to go into total darkness, then only you can appreciate the real beauty of light - that’s when self-realization happens. Every soul is Shiva but he let us choose our own path and we cover our soul with nooses and bonds, with fear, love, hatred, greed, obsession, sensual pleasure, anger and worldly possessions. On release from these bonds, there will not be any more “I” and then the soul obtains moksha. Strive for sangfroid - स्थितप्रज्ञ.

Har Har Mahadev!

- written with phone -