Just Be

To know the self through intellect or the mind is impossible. This self-knowledge is pure awareness,does not come with the reading. Reading and punditry may in fact boost the ego and become an impediment. Just Be and that being will swell and rise to be the ocean. Be one with it.

Even rituals that we do will at best be cleansers which can lead to chitha suthi. Can not give deliverance.
The mantras we chant, until we have the bhava we are chanting can at best give an ambiance and vibration which leads us God ward but can not give vision of the Divine. Unless of course the Japa becomes Ajapa Japa and gets into the core of our being and we unknowingly chant it day in and day out, sleep with it and arise with it then the mantra becomes us and the devatha verily will reside in us.

My Guru's analogy of the pole vaulter always stays imprinted in my mind. Mantras and rituals are the pole which the pole vaulter uses to reach his destination.But once the destiny presents itself unless he lets go of the pole which he used for crossing over he will fall short of the target. Most of us are like the vaulters who refuse to let go.

The understanding has to be clear that Bondage is a Bondage even if the chain is made of Gold. All the physical attractions we develop are iron chains and the rituals and external applications are the golden chains.

So better to be just be, this just being is not an advocacy of idleness! Our body can be involved in any number of activities but mind and awareness has to be steeped in the Atma. A being thus soulfully engaged in any activity in facts excels at it. There will be no mediocrity.

Just Be and Be Joyful.

Krishnamachari Santhanam

Great Joy in Small things.

In the last one week the dictum simple things bring great joy was emphasised and reemphasised,like a drilling machine going grrrngg.grrrng.

Was walking with my daughter to the super market and just passed by a tree in the perimeter of my complex. It would not be much taller than say 6 feet but dense neverthless due to the constant pruning done by the overzealous gardener keen to retain his job! It would look more like a globe of green mounted on a thin leg with varicose veins.

Anyhow,there i was passing by this tree and i heard a sweet chirp. It was more like kwee..kwee. I was curious.The sound was unfamiliar and sure it was not a sparrow. Down here where i live there are plenty of sparrows which sat on a dhow and came along with the Mynahs and overstayed just like the compatriots in Dubai. It could not be a myna too as the long shrill tweet of the mynah is too familiar even to my untrained ears. So i decided to stop and investigate.

First I found a few thin dry twigs resembling more like brown wires jutting out of the bushy green globe.Inside i could still hear the jabbering Kwee Kwee and lot of hustling noice. I went closer to peep. The tempo of the Kwees became faster and agitated like my child's words which picks up tempo when she is about to be negated! In the end she gave up the game and came out in all her beauty and regally perched on a window sill above to grant me a glorious audience.

It was a Bulbul with the a shocking red crown of hair and a bluish grey beak to match her feathers. Just as i saw this and thought wow! what a sighting it flapped its wing to fly away revealing a shocking blue feather underneath.

It makes me think, all the gizmos and gadgets laptops and projectors, cars and houses had not given the simple joy this bulbul could impact on me. The rest of the week i went Kwee Kwee.
Krishnamachari Santhanam

Consciousness

The sweetness is the nature of sugar; but that sweetness is there only so long as the sugar is present. Once the sugar has been consumed or thrown away, there is no more sweetness. So this knowledge "I am," this consciousness, this feeling or sense of Being, is the quintessence of the body. And if that... body essence is gone, this feeling, the sense of Being, will also have gone. This sense of Being cannot remain without the body, just as sweetness cannot remain without the material, which is sugar.

Nisagradatta Maharaj