On Hagiography

On Hagiography

I was born for hagiography.  For the lives of saints.  I recognize that now.  The mania that possesses me for taking notes, for times and dates, and what is overheard.  The unparalleled fondness of for hyperbole and superlatives.  What better task could be found for a writer with first-rate determination and third-rate talent?  The fact bears repeating: I was born for hagiography. 

It is a tremendous pity that history, in its collapse, has deprived me of a saint.  There is no function I could better serve, than trailing after a saint, asking questions and rarely understanding the answers, but writing absolutely everything down.

Hagiography, it seems to me, affords one of few opportunities for blinkered people of limited intelligence to create written works of real beauty and significance.  A beauty and significance which is not theirs, and does not belong to them, but is available because they did not attempt judge or interpret, but only took care to write absolutely everything down.

When I speak of great hagiography, I do not mean the homogenized variety, which assigns, to each holy man or woman, one pious father, one saintly mother, and one charming village to which their holiness shone forth even as a toddler.

I speak of great hagiographies like The Gospel of Ramakrishna by “M” (the model of the genre), or Swami Satchidananda’s Gosp el of Swami Ramdas, or Suri Nagamma’s Letters from Ramanasramam.  These are works in which the disciple was so awed by the saint that they did not presume to condense or interpret, but simply wrote absolutely everything down, convinced that every action or word of the saint must contain a sacred and important message.

These books are invariably gigantic and published on Bible paper with a cloth bookmark.  It is to the creation of such a tome that my life ought to have been devoted.  A hagiographer without a saint is a sad bit of business, forever taking notes to no purpose.

The great hagiographies are paradoxical in several ways.  The first surprise is how lovely they are to read, how engrossing it is to watch the saint go through his morning mail, suffer from rheumatism, and discuss the local population of squirrels.  Page after page, these books are full of actual life, unlike the official biographies that are written based upon them, into which what is important is supposedly extracted, and which are invariably dull and lifeless.

Another paradox: these hagiographies often become integral to the religious community which forms around a saint, particularly once the saint has died.  (Except saints do not die.  Saints drop the body, attain mahasamadhi, or merge with Arunachala.  They never simply die.)  However, because these books present a full and unedited picture of the saint, they are always threatening, to some degree, to the institution which forms around the saint, and which wishes to present a picture of the saint which is unified, simplified, and sanitized. 

That is why you will NEVER find a full English version of The Gospel of Ramakrishna anywhere near the Ramakrishna Mission.  They’ve removed the homosexual references, which they’ve decided we can’t handle.  That is why it took nearly fifty years for the publication a full and unified version of Suri Nagamma’s Letters.  (The Gospel of Swami Ramdas is protected by remaining almost universally unread.)

I understand a little, but only a very little.  Not very much.  That is why I am forever taking notes to no purpose.  That is why I would make a first-rate hagiographer, despite being a third-rate everything else.

If you know of other great hagiographies, could you please share their titles?  Sending me an actual copy would be especially welcome, as they books are often privately printed and difficult to find. 

More importantly, if you by chance should happen to locate a saint, please let me know immediately.  Perhaps I could throw together a resume.

Conduit

Conduit

Notes from Tiruvannamalai

Part  Three

What Is It You Actually Do?

While I was in Manhattan I saw an old friend.  Somehow she found time for lunch.  She talked about her job, her man, her car, her boss, her gym, her trainer, her house and her dog.  Then she wanted to know exactly what I was doing.  She wanted to understand.  I explained a little.  She excused herself to make a few calls. 

When she returned to the table she tried another tack.  She said, Tell me how you spend the day.  I mean, what is it you actually do?

Well. . .  I said.  Sometimes I walk in a circle.  Sometimes I sit in the corner.  I watch myself breathe.  Over and over again I ask myself, Who am I? But I don’t try to answer the question.

Insomnia

After the fifth consecutive night of insomnia, I got worried.  I thought, maybe tomorrow I will not be able to function.  So I started to ask around – at the German Bakery and at Raggini’s, outside the meditation hall – any time I got a chance to speak to someone.

Each person I asked looked somewhat incredulous; their tone of voice suggested I was spending overmuch time in my own small world.  I was like a camper in the deep woods, at dusk, complaining of mosquitoes.  Everyone was getting bitten.  People don’t sleep in Tiruvannamalai.

“They really ought to prepare a pamphlet,” said one man who was clearly tired of the question.  “We could just hand it to people as they arrive.  Welcome to Tiruvannamalai: The City That Cannot Sleep.”

It’s Arunachala, everyone says.  It’s the energy.  Certainly it was an odd and manic sort of insomnia.  I woke up at 2am ready to do push-ups, and jumping jacks, and any number of rugged yet luminous Nepali waiters.  It was also true that, after five days with almost no sleep, I should have been half-dead, but I was all right.  Shaky, but all right.

Still worried, I went to visit my wisest friend, who has lived here for twelve years and sometimes led tours.  He confirmed what everyone else had said.  People didn’t sleep much in Tiruvannamalai.  Some people on his tours were fine with just two or three hours a night.

After these reassurances, he brought me a cup of tea, and launched into a staggering account of Normal-seeming People Who Went Totally Nuts in Tiruvannamalai.  Here in town, this conversation is the primary form of entertainment.  This is a topic which cannot be exhausted, even if you start at dawn and continue on till nightfall.

Well, there’s the Lithuanian lady who whispers and goes everywhere in baby steps – had I seen her?  And just recently there’d be yet another man who burned his money and his passport – sacred bonfire and all – because he believed Bhagawan would take care of him.  But Bhagavan didn’t.  God himself couldn’t keep track of every last hapless renunciant.

There was the sad case of the very nice man who abruptly turned aggressive and started hitting up people for money in the street.  Finally he flew home and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.  In no time he was better.  He flew back, apologized to everyone, and paid back all the money he owed.  Two months later he was totally crazy again.  He got in a street fight with some boys and his leg was injured.  He went to the mountain and stayed in a cave.  People tried to help him.  He said, No, the mountain is healing me.  He died.

Turns out it is absolutely totally normal to go bat-shit crazy in Tiruvannamalai, lots of nice people do.  People you’d never expect, who’d seemed totally normal just days before.

I thanked him for the tea and the advice.  He wished me sweet dreams.

Conduit

The sixty-something Osho-Jewish lady at the next table over tells her breakfast companions, Insects gives me messages.  Then she shows them a picture of beetles on her phone.  The position of the beetles is significant, as is their color, green.  She explains the significance of beetles in her spiritual development.

Meanwhile, I am thinking, This is India.  She must get messages all the time.  Isn’t it exhausting?

But five minutes later, in another context, she mentions the really spectacular insecticide she uses, which is totally non-toxic and organic and citronella-based, and which she pours in every corner of her house.

Conduit / 2

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the victims of my eavesdropping.  I am heartily sorry. 

It’s just that I was sitting here, scribbling acres of dullness, when you came along, and said something brilliant, or which anyway illuminated the situation better than I ever could have done.

Who wants to hear my dehydrated insights, when the Osho-Jewish lady is explaining that cats are actually extraterrestrials used as conduits to send information to distant galaxies ?     

Five minutes later, this same woman, describing the swift changes to her body since menopause, says, We have to go through life with this body and the truth of her words rings out so clear that the entire restaurant falls silent for a moment, without knowing why. 

Conduit / 3

We have to go through life with this body.  Never once will I make up a day younger, or with two whole legs.  This thought astonishes me.  It is so far from my way of thinking.  It is possible I have received this thought from a cat in another galaxy.

Last night, while meditating, I happened to touch my upper arm, and was startled to find it thin and small and slack, with hardly any muscle at all.  And I was the one who for years was nicknamed Guns.  My biceps were my calling card, my primary queer credential.

I was devastated, for thirty seconds, but the feelings was as hard to hold onto as happiness.  I am something else now.  Soon I will be something else again.  (Certain bad habits I will keep, just so you can recognize me.) 

Like the Osho-Jewish lady, I’m a flow of wisdom and rubbish.  I am here to send knowledge to distant galaxies, just like any other cat.  I’m a conduit.

Hour of Power

I think I’m starting to adapt to life in Tiruvannamalai because now, when the power goes off, I’m not upset, and sometimes I think, Wow, that was maybe a whole entire hour!

Here is the electrical situation, according to Ali.  Ali answers all my questions.  Not because Ali possesses encyclopedic knowledge, but because he is so beautiful, in an Afghani insurgent sort of way, that I ask him questions just so I won’t be gaping at him, speechless.

Ali is not an Afghani insurgent.  He is something far more dangerous.  He is a Kashmiri carpet salesman.  Thus, if you ever learn that I’ve been found, along the road somewhere, with a love-struck expression, and no possessions other than a beautiful but over-priced carpet, you will understand that it is all Ali’s fault.  And it was worth it.

The power is usually on for two hours in the morning and two hours at night.  Besides that there are “teasers”, when you might be awakened by the fan, or have a chance to make a cup of tea with the electric pot.  This has been the situation for several years.  It is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

There is nowhere near enough power.  Most of it goes to Chennai.  Some is even sold, over the state border, to Bangalore.  The contracts of the international companies stipulate that they must have non-stop power.  Thus all the power must go to the cities.  Tiruvannamalai is lucky, actually, maybe because of the tourists.  Most of rural Tamil Nadu receives only five hours of power a day.

The governor is pushing for nuclear power, but people are scared since Fukushima.  (Everywhere I go, I notice that everyone pronounces the word ‘Fukushima’ flawlessly and without effort.)  Some people say that the power cuts are the governor’s way to force the issue, as in “Give me my nuclear power plants or I’ll leave you in the dark.”

Ali is actually very knowledgeable.  His eyes laugh as he speaks, bright sparks above his long black beard.  He is entirely on to me.    

Ali is as beautiful as a campfire in the desert.

  

The Explicit Details

Here is a true and comprehensive account of my sex life here in Tiruvannamalai.

Last week I got a haircut.

Sometimes the Nepali waiters at the German bakery brush against me as they deliver food to tables.

I do not mean to make light of these incidents.  Indeed, they are more exciting than some orgies I have attended in the past.

Dog Biscuits

I bought a box of dog biscuits.  I didn’t know why.  The first dog to whom I tossed a biscuit jumped up and ran away.  So did the next dog.  The third dog just flinched.  Then he got up and stood over the dog biscuit, but he didn’t eat it until I was further down the road.

These dogs were all missing the biscuit concept.  All they knew about were stones.  At ten feet away they seemed friendly, tails wagging, heads bobbing, but if you got too close to them, they all darted away or slunk off.  Some growled.  I feared my attempt at goodwill would end in a series of rabies shots.

Skittery and suspicious dogs, how utterly I resemble you in attitude and behavior, as well as in appearance.  I understood why I’d bought the biscuits.

Now I say, “Biscuit?” and make eye contact with the dog.  Then I set the biscuit down.  The dog comes up – often not until I have moved away.

Several dogs now greet me expectantly, as the old women do who sit in the dirt by the roadside and call out to me to buy them a cup of chai.  I would like to help the dogs to feel less afraid -- though I know that fear is likely to serve them better than trust. 

Above all, I wish I had better dog biscuits.  The dogs gather their courage, come forward, sniff the biscuit and look at me like, “Seriously?  This is all?”  These dogs deserve a really delicious biscuit, instead of this dull yellow soy-based variety, which I fear has sat on the shelf since 1994.

It’s hard to be a dog in a holy town; dogs have no holy credentials like cows or peacocks or elephants.  Think of the hard-luck stories dogs could tell, if only they’d pen their memoirs: Bad Dog in a Pure-Veg Town.

      

Darshan

It’s an entirely different experience nowadays, darshan, the chance to see and be seen by God.  That’s how it seems to me.  Because half the devotees are, as ever, gazing at the image of god and making prayers with joined palms – and half are taking a video with their phone.

Notice

I would like to hang a sign outside the temple which reads: All Phones That Ring in the Mother’s Holy Sanctuary Become Property of the Goddess.  (Devotional Ringtones Not Exempted.)

Anger

At the entrance to the Mother’s shrine, here was Padman.  At the other ashram, too, where I’d first met him, he was often on the edge of things, and ready for a chat.

“You were right about Udupi,” I said.  “It’s uninhabitable.”

He shook his head.  He’d tried to warn me.

Padman is a freelance renunciant.  About five years ago he tired of worldly middle-class Indian life.  Now he wandered holy places and lived in ashrams.

“Why don’t you take sannyas?” I asked, since he wore only white, the same as I did.  If he wore orange he could be a sadhu, a swami, and maybe get donations.

“What is sannyas?  It is renunciation.  It’s not about the color of your clothes.  I have renounced.  That’s what matters.  As for the rest – I do not want the attention.  I don’t want people around me.  If someone comes now and then, that’s all right.”

Padman must have been around my age, about 40, though he looked much younger.  What he said mattered less than his presence, which felt to me like aloe on a burn.  He didn’t speak to me as a teacher, but just like we were pals.

“Is it OK if I ask you for some advice?”

Padman paused and braced himself as if I’d asked permission to hit him.  “Go ahead.”

I told Padman the truth.  I told him I was flunking surrender.  Because a true spiritual aspirant accepts what happens, what comes and what doesn’t come.  He does not seek to win or to prevail, to be justified, to be heard or understood.

Instead I was so plagued by anger that sometimes I sat for an entire hour before my shrine and the only meditation I could do was to repeat, “Breathing in, I know I am angry.  Breathing out, I know I am angry.”

“What can I do?” I asked Padman.

“You must do japa,” Padman said.  To do japa is to recite the name of God.

“I do tons of japa,” I said.  “But even then I am writing angry letters in my mind.”

He looked at me like Dude.  “You need to be more serious about japa.”

I thought I should explain a little more.  I tried to explain how comprehensively I’d been lied to and endangered, how I now was being lied about.  Then I said, “And now I am supposed to just disappear!  How convenient!  Am I just supposed to agree to disappear?”

Padman smiled.  He was glad I was able to figure things out on my own.

God and the World / 5

Anti-Environmentalism and the Neo-Advaita

The modern day followers of masters like Sri Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj are known as “Neo-Advaitins”.  In recent years, this philosophy has become wildly popular in the West, much as Tibetan Buddhism was in the 1990’s.  Neo-Advaita teaches that Awakening is not a distant goal for only the most select.  Enlightenment is our own nature.  It may dawn in this very moment.  In fact, it’s already present – we need only recognize it.

I have observed a marked resistance to any notion of caring for the environment among some Neo-Advaitins.  This is not a universal attitude, by no means, but there exists a vocal group of Neo-Advaitins that deride caring for the Earth with as much stridency as some segments of the Republican Party.  The teaching proclaims: All is well.  Some Neo-Advaitins do not take it kindly if you suggest otherwise. 

I was wrong to lay the blame for this attitude on Sri Ramana Maharshi.  Indeed, his life and teachings can more easily lead to the opposite conclusion.  His life of apparent total renunciation and detachment expressed itself in a radical level of care and concern for all living things.  The world, he said, was God’s concern.  And Sri Ramana Maharshi, the man called God, or Bhagavan, did all he could to care for every form of life that crossed his path.

A more likely source for this anti-environmental attitude is H.W.L Poonja, or “Papaji”, an extraordinarily charismatic teacher who was visited by thousands of Westerners at his home in Lucknow, until his death in 1997.  Nearly all the Neo-advaitin teachers one finds in the West are his students, or students of his students. 

For the last several years of his life, Papaji refused to answer questions about the environment.  As far as he was concerned, the case was closed.  He was perhaps tired of wrangling about it.  When asked to explain why, in a video titled Who Wants to Know?, he said, “The world belongs to God.  Let him take care of it.  You take care of yourself.”

It is difficult to think of a message that would be more pleasant to the ears of the aging Boomers who form the majority of Papaji’s students.  (Indeed, at a screening of this video, I heard a number of people in the audience moan Yes at this moment.)  It is impossible to think of a message which they need less to hear.  Papaji might as well have told them to buy an espresso machine or drink more chardonnay.  They appear to be quite expert already in thinking of themselves.

I do not contest that H.W.L. Poonja’s was a teacher of great skill and caliber.  Many people attest to their lives being transformed by even a single encounter with him.  However, is it possible to admire Papaji, even to revere him, without considering him infallible?  No doubt the man himself wished he’d done otherwise than launch the career of Andrew Cohen, for example.  (Andrew Cohen is the most derided and scandal-ridden Neo-Advaitin teacher – a highly competitive position.)

It is entirely understandable if humankind, both ordinary people and saints alike, suffers from a failure of imagination at this point.  After all, it has been the experience of philosophers for thousands of years that, no matter how much human fortunes ebb and flow, the river flows on and on.

But that is no longer the case.

The sacred river Yamuna, as it flows past the Taj Mahal, has the very highest level of toxicity.  That means that any ordinary living thing placed in it will die within thirty seconds.  The Gangotri glacier, the source of the Ganges River, shrinks faster every year.  Hundreds of millions of people depend on that river, which may very well be holy, but is certainly not eternal. 

Neo-Advaitin teachers, their students and everyone else need to be aware of what is at stake in choosing at this moment to look away.  As Diana Eck shows brilliantly in her fabulous new book India: A Sacred Geography, India’s spirituality is embedded in the geography of India itself.  It is false to believe these teachings will continue to exist without the land, continent, or planet that gave them birth.  As even the most ardent devotee of Papaji will admit, the infinite boundless body of absolute truth still needs a sip of water when it comes time to speak.  

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: My Father's Guru

My Father’s Guru:

A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Addison Wesley, 1993

Nowadays Paul Brunton is little-known, his star eclipsed by an ever-more sophisticated group of spiritual entertainers, but his “spiritual adventure”  books were once very popular and several remain in print.  Above all, he was famous as the man who introduced Sri Ramana Maharshi to the West, with his bestselling book In Search of Secret India.

I was surprised and pleased to find this book in Tiruvannamalai, South India, in the library of Sri Ramana’s ashram, where it is has been read so many times it looks as though it has been put through a washing machine.  With good reason.  This beautiful book deserves to be found and read by believers, naysayers, and all of us in-between.  For anyone who has ever uttered the words “my guru”, it ought to be required.

This is a compassionate and clear-sighted account of a man who lived almost entirely in the world of his own fantasies -- and who convinced others to live in that world, and to bankroll it.  Though Paul Brunton may have created a full scale interplanetary Tibet-style theme park in his mind, what makes this book brilliant is how ordinary and recognizable Masson shows the underlying process to be – the way in which most us, as children and adults, struggle to construct and believe in worlds in which we matter, worlds where we are central and sometimes even heroic.

The surprise of this book is that, in debunking Paul Brunton’s spiritual adventurism and opportunism, Masson has managed to write a book that is vastly more fun and entertaining than anything Brunton ever managed.  (Here in Tiruvannamalai, I waited impatiently for the library to open each day so that I could continue reading.) 

This is the odd, sad and hilarious coming of age tale of a young man growing up in Hollywood in a wealthy and exceedingly spiritual home, subject to gurus, enemas, fad diets, and rumors of the end of the world.  Masson details all the loopy things he believed – that Paul Brunton was from a distant star, that he had secret powers, that WW III was on its way – and makes it clear how easy it all was to believe.

As he writes, “PB dominated my childhood imagination with a seemingly never-ending supply of magic fantasies, higher powers, adverse forces, other planets, adepts in remote caves high in the Tibetan mountains, occult abilities, Egyptian magicians, Indian sages, astral travel, memories of ancient incarnations.  I wish it were all true.  I wish PB had been the person we all thought he was.  How enchanting it would be to live with such a man, to be part of some master plan for the universe, the author of which shared one’s bathroom.” (p.172)

It is easy to love a writer who, while presenting an account of his adolescence, complete with extracts from the stunningly obnoxious spiritual letters he penned as a teen, writes, “It is hard for me to understand how I could have been such a pedant and prude, combining ignorance with arrogance and not have somebody tell me about it.”

As an enthusiastic student of Buddhist and Hindu traditions, I hope this book will be read by many people who are, like me, “devotee-types”.  First, because we are the ones who need it.  The questions Masson poses are questions we need to be asking, both of ourselves and of our communities.  Second, it is great fun, the best session of teatime spiritual gossip you may ever come across.  Third, his first-person account of India in the fifties – he met ‘the Mother’ in Pondicherry, Swami Ramdas in Kanhangad, Atmananda in Trivandrum – is something no starry-eyed devotee would want to miss.    

The Second-most Beautiful Cow in the World

The Second-most Beautiful Cow in the World

Notes from Tiruvannamalai

Part  Two

Lunch at Raggini’s

     Among earnest aspirants in Tiruvannamalai, Raggini’s is the pre-eminent choice for lunch.  The serious Western devotee types, if not staying in the ashram itself, will be sitting here on the straw mats at 12:45, waiting for Raggini to bring red rice, dal, curd, and two vegetables on a stainless steel thali plate.  The meals, prepared with little salt and without spice, are mercilessly sattvic* and nutritious; it seems likely that even the sickest, and most debauched, could be restored to health and morality, if only they would consent to eat lunch at Raggini’s three days in a row.

     I have come every day without fail for several weeks.  (My restoration is ongoing.)  I eat here because it is healthy and even tasty, in a quiet way.  It only costs 80 rupees, which is less than two bucks.  There are no options or choices, which is a pleasure after months on the road.

     Most of all however, I eat lunch at Raggini’s – to learn how to eat lunch at Raggini’s.  It reminds me of studying kanji in Japan: each day I am given a small test, which I invariably fail.  Every day I leave my shoes at the door, take a spoon and sit on the floor among the earnest devotee types.  Every day I am aware of my chest tightening, wondering where I will sit, if I should speak or remain silent, if I should smile or appear meditative. 

     Every day I leave feeling flawlessly nourished and even more nervous than when I arrived.  These earnest spiritual types are imposing, unpredictable, and, above all, overwhelmingly sensitive.  All of them, it appears, have been meditating in a cave since 4am and ventured out, just now, blinking into the light, in search of lunch.  There are French people who become offended if you even so much as nod at them, like, “I was nearly to nirvakalpa samadhi** and then YOU had to nod.”  There are luminous European yogi boys I can’t look at, can’t not look at, and feel ashamed for looking at, until I am about ready to go home and cry.  Loneliness is non-negotiable in my current way of living.   

     We are the earnest aspirants.  It appears that we are all trying desperately hard.  All of us, that is, except for Raggini, who is the only one actually doing anything.  She serves us all, and checks on us, and does so with so much tenderness and warmth that I cannot help but feel grateful, as well as a little foolish.

* That which is sattvic gives rise to what is most pure and spiritual in the body and mind.  In practical terms this means: no meat, no eggs, no garlic, no onions, no mushrooms, and limited spice.

** In nirvakalpa samadhi, it is reported, the world and body both completely disappear.  Enlightenment is  just a non-existent stone’s throw from there.  If only Americans would stop causing problems.   

God and the World

     Introduction to reality, which is sometimes called initiation, is most commonly granted by thought or by touch.  It is rare to bestow it, as Sri Ramana Maharshi did, with a look.  Here, in the Old Hall, is the couch where the Maharshi sat for thirty years, reclined upon a pile of cushions, his legs stretched out due to rheumatism, and, although he did speak now and then, most of his teaching was done in silence, by means of a gaze or a glance.  

     More than sixty years after his death, the Old Hall is set aside for silent meditation.  In this  simple narrow room, with stone floor and bare walls, many feel the Maharshi is still alive and present, still available and giving darshan.

     Personally I feel the space ought to be designated ‘Advanced Meditators Only’ since, considering the ferocity of the traffic noise and the cell phones going off every minute, it is unlikely that ordinary people will be able to concentrate.

     Although the Maharshi left his body long ago, his presence remains within the holy precincts of Ramanasramam.  If he were still physically present I wonder if he wouldn’t have long ago packed up and moved someplace quieter.

     The Maharshi would not have needed to pack.  He never possessed more than a loincloth, a towel, a cup for water and a walking stick.  He could have just gotten up and left. He stayed, he said, for the good of everyone else.  For years he did not budge from the ashram even to take a walk, for fear that someone might arrive, find him absent, and go home disappointed.  His duty he said, was to give darshan, to see and be seen.  He did not budge from it.

     About fifty years ago, Arthur Osborne wrote, “Not only the Ashram premises are hallowed but all the neighborhood around.  The peace that abides there encompasses and permeates: no passive peace but a vibrant exhilaration.”  Nowadays, visitors to the sacred neighborhood are advised to take care, lest they be mown down by vibrant exhilaration in the form of a bus.

     An earnest devotee must turn his or her attention within.  The body and the world are found to be essentially dreamlike and renounced.  We need not concern ourselves.  God will take care of the world.  The responsibility belongs to Him.

     This appears to be the final word.  However, I cannot help but wonder, as the world becomes swiftly more uninhabitable, if some notion of caring for it may yet be found, in the doctrines of the Bhagavan.       

Political Power

     Yesterday the power stayed on all afternoon.  It was unprecedented.  Evening came and the power was still on.  Like any long stretch of good luck, it was excruciating, almost, because it seemed doomed to stop the moment I noticed it.  It didn’t stop.  I felt lucky and happy.  I believed punishment must surely be on its way.

     In the evening I even went so far as to use the Internet and every message I sent was exclamatory, bubbly, and desperate, like my phone calls from India twenty years ago.  I just have a minute!  Can you hear me?  I love you!!!   

     When I paid for the internet, I said to the man how amazing it was that the power had stayed on so long.  He gave me the look my dimness warranted.  Of course the lights are on, he said, the politicians are in town.

     The street was lined with banners and flags and giant billboards of a smiling severely obese woman.  There were dozens of different images and it was completely interesting to study them, because each artist had had to make a decision about how to depict the lady’s multiple chins. 

     Some chose to include, even emphasize, the chins, as much a source of India’s rightful pride as the udders of a cow.  Others performed radical surgery.  Evasion was the most popular choice: the esteemed lady was shown in the pose of ‘The Thinker’, chins in hand.

     I celebrated the good this politician had brought to her community: one entire day of electricity.  In the middle of the night, when the power finally cut out, I lay sleepless, sweating into the bed and pleading, Bring the fat lady back!

God and the World / 2

     If everyone else received a quarter of a mango, Sri Ramana Maharshi became quite upset if he was given half.  Whether it was dinner or comfort, coffee or shade, the Maharshi refused to be given any more than the person deemed least important.

     He demanded that nothing be wasted, not even the scraps from the kitchen.

     Famous for his love of animals, he greeted each dog, cow, crow, snake, squirrel, scorpion, pigeon, monkey, leopard, peacock affectionately and with respect.  He considered their needs at least as significant as those of his human devotees.

     Although Sri Ramana may have shown many the path to self-liberation, there were only two whom he escorted there personally.  One was his mother, Alagammal.  The other was Lakshmi, the cow.

Video Darshan

     Some days it seems like all the good gurus are dead.  The ones who could wake you up in a flash with a bop on the head or a long hard stare.  Back then the masters weren’t nearly as miserly with miracles as they are now.  Nowadays you’re lucky for a little vibhuti -- holy ash --  and that’s if you can find a guru at all, one you can get anywhere near and afford.  If enlightenment is always available. . . why does it so often feel as like we’ve come around too late?  

     That’s why this is the age of video darshan.  The swami lives on, on TV.  Didn’t make it to Lucknow before the mahasamadhi?  Fear not: Papaji is showing on Thursdays at 7, in a fancy little room atop Ramana Towers.  Looking for a master in tune with your rock n roll lifestyle?  Catch Lee Lozowick on DVD, Sundays 7:15 at Triveni.

     Why do we bother to come to India at all?  Is it just to see the Taj Mahal and be groped on buses?  Is dysentery really so glamorous?  Are we disliked at home?  I foresee the next great wave of masters, who will have done nothing but surf YouTube.

Health Report

     Approximately thirty pounds lost, including ten he didn’t need and twenty he’d like to have back.  The ornamental muscle, gay bar credentials, has entirely departed.  The gait is slightly but discernibly more wobbly, as result of a crippled leg, which is bound to give out before a healthy one.  The face has been aged prematurely by sun and excessive self-concern.

     On a more positive note, meat and alcohol are no longer consumed.  The expression on the face, no longer swollen by stress and consumption of alcohol, is tranquil and alert.  Panic attacks and claustrophobia are absent.  Although sadness is sometimes evident, as may be expected in human life, there is no depression.

     While he recognizes that his condition is uncertain and his future may be short, the subject is in very good health.

Personal History

     That’s personal history, say spiritual people, with infinite distaste.  As if you were a weapons manufacturer.  As if you’d just given them crabs.  I saw a woman slap herself in the middle of her own colorful anecdote.  Just story bullshit, she said and silenced herself.

     The idea, as far as I can tell, is to encourage people to disengage with whatever grand narrative they’re hauling around.  For example, if a person is obsessed with the idea of being a cripple who was never fully welcome anywhere.

     In practice, however, this anti-story stance is just a handy way to shut down or shut out people one dislikes.  When people apologize for telling tales, I’ve learned to say, “I’m SO sorry, but I LOVE stories – can’t you just tell me?”  I promise not to report them for using the word “I” and the past tense.

     Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is made of stories.  Not atoms.”  It seems to me as pointless and nonsensical to hate stories as to hate atoms.  We are each an intersection of infinite stories.  Perhaps we ought to take heed of their multiplicity, instead of getting all caught  up in our one small precious pet doom, which we clutch to our chest and use to interpret the world. 

     It is true that there are stories from which we need urgently to free ourselves.  One good way to be free of a story is to tell it.

God and the World / 3

     In the 272 letters of Suri Nagamma about life in Ramanasramam with Sri Ramana Maharshi, there is only one occasion when he appears actually enraged.  It is in letter #42, dated April 20, 1946, when he discovers that the workers have been attempting to harvest mangos by beating the trees with sticks.

     Bhagavan: When you are to gather the fruit, do you have to beat the tree so that the leaves fall off?  In return for giving us fruit, is the tree to be beaten with sticks?  Who gave you this work.  Instead of beating the tree, you might as well cut it to the roots.  You need not gather the fruit.  Go away!

Pain-by-Numbers

     I don’t know how the thought occurred to me: I started giving numbers to my pain.  So that now, when I feel fearful about my body, as it shrinks by the day, I say “Three.”  I skip the monologue.  (I’ve heard it ten thousand times before.)  And when I feel worried about the future of this awkward and unprofitable misfit person, I say “Four.”  The plight of life on Earth is “Five”, which I’m ashamed to say does not show up nearly as often as my fears for my body and future, to say nothing of the fury, grief and helplessness of “One” and “Two”.

     When I say the number, I lightly touch the pain, but I don’t talk to myself about it.  I just say the number and resume being quiet.  Which is not to say that I push the pain away or say it is not real.  It’s real.  A lot of things could use some help, including (sometimes desperately) myself.  Still, I find it helps me exceedingly, to number so as not to worry, weep, or rage.

     Sometimes now, when I pray before the shrine, I simply place my hands together and slowly count to five.

The Second-Most Beautiful Cow in the World

     The black and white speckled cow who loiters near the shrine of Mahakali on the main street is a downright gorgeous cow.  Black legs, a sturdy build and a thoughtful expression -- I swear  she is the second-most beautiful cow I’ve ever seen.  As far as I’m concerned, she’s the second-most beautiful cow in the world.

   

      The second-most beautiful cow in the world has one broken horn.  The complete horn is painted blue.  The other horn is just a stub.  The broken horn is not a defect.  It’s a commentary and personal reinterpretation of the myth of Ganesh, who broke his tusk to serve as scribe.

     This is one subtle cow.

     How unfortunate that I remain trapped in my ordinary mind, a slave to comparisons, so that, for me, this can only ever be the second-most beautiful cow.  The number one most beautiful cow in the world was a cow I met in Sringeri, at the holy temple of Ma Sharadama, who is also known as Sarasvati, a temple founded by Sri Shankara himself.

     This celebrity cow went nowhere without an attendant.  This was a brown cow, though the word “brown” can hardly suffice.  There are so many excellent words for colors – does there not exist a word for a luminous and resplendent brown?

     This gleaming agate cow jewel was adept at gazing, with unblinking adoration, into the small sanctuaries beside the main temple of Ma Sharadamba.  Yet, even as the cow gazed enraptured at the god, it was obvious that the cow never stopped thinking, “Oh what a fantastic impression I am making!  Everyone is delighted with me!”

     As pilgrims came and, with reverence, touched first the cow and then their foreheads, the cow blazed with radiant self-satisfaction.  To tell the truth, this cow did not consider that her sanctity was of an ordinary sort, common to all cows.  Not in the least.  This cow believed that the devotion she received had everything to do with her personally. 

     Who blames her?  To tell the truth, I feel quite special myself.  To think I have known such beautiful cows!

God and the World / 4

Listen to me, Lady!

Know that only the wise man who never harms any form of life,

Whether insects, worms, birds or plants

Is a person seeking true knowledge.

One should never uproot any tree or plant (for use in worship)

Nor even merely pluck its leaves.  Neither should one harm

Any living thing out of anger.  One should not pluck

Even one flower mercilessly.

(From the Devikalottaram, a work of 24,000 verses.  Of the 85 verses selected by Sri Ramana Maharshi as essential, these are verses 69 and 70.)

Satya Sai Chicken

     The man spoke as if he’d been hired to live each moment of his life as a motivational speaker.  Even from the other side of the room I could hear him, as I sat eating lunch at Raggini’s:

     At that time I was a SERIOUS VEGETARIAN.  Had been for twelve years.  And PURE for the previous four.  NO milk NO eggs NO nothing.  And frankly I was SICK.  Nothing urgent but SICK.  Not that I wanted to ADMIT it.

     At that time I was staying in PUTTAPARTHI, right near Baba’s place.  A DEAR FRIEND of mine was taking care of someone who was SICK and so she was making him CHICKEN.  She saw me lying around, NO energy, NO gumption, NO nothing, and she said, You want some  CHICKEN?  And I said, No I haven’t touched the stuff in twelve years.

     She said, Are you sure you’re not living in the PRISON OF THE PAST?  Well, that just knocked me back.  Then I don’t know why, BIG MYSTERY, she handed me a piece of that chicken and I took it! 

     I tasted it.  My mouth said, OH TERRIBLE.  My mind said, OH TERRIBLE.  And my body said, HALLELUJAH!  I swear I could feel myself healing on the spot.  Like that was some kind of MAGIC CHICKEN.

     Right then I prayed to Baba.  I said BABA, you have got to COME TO ME and you have got to COME TO ME TONIGHT!  BABA, I have got to HEAR FROM YOU.

     That night I had the MOST INCREDIBLE DREAM.  I was at the temple and it wasn’t just an ordinary day.  It was the day of the big festival.  YOU KNOW THAT SAI BABA!  HE’S SUCH A SHOWMAN!  Baba was giving darshan and the line was so LONG.  I thought, I’ve got to go to the end of that line but, NO, people kept pushing me forward, pushing me forward, until finally I was right there with RADIANT SATYA SAI BABA.  He was so beautiful. Smiling at me.  Holding a covered plate of Prasad.

     He pulled back that cloth and YOU KNOW what it was.  You know it!  THAT WHOLE PLATE WAS PILED HIGH WITH CHICKEN!  And Sai Baba picked up a drumstick and shoved it straight in my mouth. 

     EAT THE CHICKEN!!!  said Satya Sai Baba.

     That Sai Baba!  WHAT A SHOWMAN!

         

Almost Always Too Much

Almost Always Too Much

Notes from Tiruvannamalai

Part One

Sanctuary

In the temple of the Mother of the Universe, who was also an ordinary Tamil woman whose teenaged son happened to become God one day when he was supposed to have been copying out his English homework, in this temple where all is shadowy and hallowed, where Ganesh holds court, as well as Skandha and Nataraj and the Mother of All, I was attempting to pray, when there appeared by my feet a very small beige puppy, which was very energetically circumambulating, keeping God on his right side as was respectful, and though the puppy was very clearly impressed, he was not in any way somber.

The puppy was maybe eight weeks old and, even though this was a temple, where dogs are usually unwelcome (most places don’t let in foreigners either) no one was bothered by the dog and no one interfered with him.  He seemed to know just what he was doing, as he scampered about, so enthusiastic about everything.  Looking at the puppy, I felt as if I’d been rescued.  If I’d thought of it then, I would have prayed to him.

%

Swami Vivekananda was feeling somewhat grumpy, presumably, the day he said that 95% of all spiritual aspirants go mad.  (What was the figure exactly?  Does anyone have the quote?)

Impossible to not be reminded of this, every other moment, as I look around Tiruvannamalai, which is full of tremendously spiritual white people, in flowing clothes, on scooters.  Mad as hatters, most of them, as far as I can tell.

The Spirit and the Body

Tiruvannamalai possesses a very nearly audible spiritual hum.  In all my years of wandering, I’ve never been anywhere like it.  Perhaps scientists will one day discover there really is something peculiar about Arunachala, the holy hill, which has been worshipped here, as a visible form of Shiva, for over a thousand years.  Maybe Arunachala is some kind of magnet.  Or a repository of rare elements.  Maybe it’s radioactive.  Or some entirely new kind of thing, which we are just about to discover.  Maybe soon investors will arrive, invest 650 million, and cart the whole hill off to China.

I hope not.

Tiruvannamalai is charged.  Shrines, temples and ashrams spring up everywhere, multiple devices off a single current.  Writing home, I attempt to explain, “It’s wonderful here.  Except when it’s too much.  It’s almost always too much.”  Days in Tiruvannamalai are, by definition, too much.  Too much pain and too much happiness.  The light, it seems to me, has been turned up far too high: too much is revealed.

God, it is rumored, is everywhere.  Buddha Nature cannot be escaped.  Well, in Tiruvannamalai, that’s actually how it feels.

This town is relentlessly holy.  It’s also relentlessly filthy.  I cannot look at Arunachala without feeling inspired.  I can’t see a stream without wanting to retch.  Every foot of unclaimed space is a clotted mass of filth and plastic trash.  Even by the standards of India, this place is disgusting.

Perhaps I have lapsed into devotion.  Come here if you can.  See what you think.

I cannot deny the spirit, though I sometimes ask, What good is it?

Welcome to Tamil Nadu

No matter how often I come here, I am always jolted by how different Tamil Nadu is from the rest of South India.  Somewhere, on the bumpy road here, we crossed the border from lush to rough, from flirty to adamantine.  Yes, the poverty is worse, but it’s not just that.  People are tough.  A smile is considered an extraneous and gaudy article.  Which is not at all to say the Tamil Nadins are without their charms.  Far from it.  Certainly it is effortless to imagine them repelling invaders for the last three thousand or so years.

Mine, Yours

Venkatesh the crippled beggar gets around in a makeshift wheelchair, a cart with a crank.  He’s very chatty.  In no time at all we were comparing deformities and discussing the possibility of surgery.  Our cases are similar, although my clubfoot was corrected, in a botched and limited way, nearly forty years ago, whereas his has not been fixed at all.

Right there beside the busy street that runs in front of the famous ashram, Venkatesh examined my leg with great care, looking first at my brace, then, with both of his hands, feeling my leg through my pants, and establishing, beyond reasonable doubt, that my leg was defective up to the knee, and strong beyond that, all the way up to the point at which I was, quite indisputably, a boy.

I made clear to Venkatesh that I was good for at least one meal every day.  As for further intimacy – Venkatesh please – not unless we are dating.

Beggars

I don’t understand why some people piously refuse to give money to beggars, why they say, in a outraged tone of voice, They’ll just spend it on alcohol.  These pious people – is honesty something they’ve ever considered applying to themselves?

If I were homeless, with no job, no prospects, no beloveds, and I was sitting on the curb, I would not in any way be averse to a tuna salad sandwich, lightly toasted, on seeded rye, with a generous portion of whatever fruits and vegetables were in season and thus at the peak of their freshness.

I would like a tuna fish sandwich very much, but I would not like it nearly as much as, say, a beer.  Or even something stronger.  If I were a homeless crippled addict, and I was sitting on the curb, I would not in any way be adverse to something stronger.

Those pious people.  Do they honestly believe, if they were on the street, they would decide, I’ll use that two dollars to go to Kinko’s and print my resume on beautiful paper.

Seriously?

Young Lord Krishna

Standing in the book shop of Ramanasramam, looking through the photo books of Sri Ramana Maharshi.  Most of these photos I’ve seen a thousand times but this one – never.  I think it is because he is too beautiful, his skin so smooth and lustrous, his hair black mixed with white and  so thick I cannot help but wish to run my hands through it.  Instead of Shiva the ascetic, I find the young lord Krishna, beckoning and enticing.

I am not to be trusted.  As the old saying goes, “A pickpocket in the company of a saint sees only his pockets.”  So, too, the sex addict hones in on the loincloth.

Douse

I can’t say I enjoy it, but it does seem like exactly the correct prescription, the right way to proceed.

If I were to hand over the care of this madman to someone else I would certainly tell them, “First thing in the morning, dump a bucket of cold water over his head.”

The Outfit

A simple off-white kurta pajama.  Standard ashram gear.  I apologize if this seems – an egregious example of false advertising.  It’s comfortable.  Among the sea of aspirants, I aim to pass unnoticed, at least by those persons who overlook my leering and debauched expression.

No doubt the principal benefit of my holy man costume is that it sometimes renders me to ashamed to make eyes at the today’s Kashmiri collectible hunk or auto-rickshaw Adonis.

Gentleman aspirants not yet entirely refined, take note.  Beneath your pajama, you must always wear underwear.  This flowing pious gear may give rise to unprecedented tenting.  The rain, be warned, renders these whites almost entirely transparent.

The Handbag

This is the only time in my life that I will ever have the right bag.  The ‘in’ bag.  The fashionable bag.  And I am savoring it.

In Tokyo it has got to be LV, Hermes or Chanel, whereas here in Tiruvannamalai the Ramanasramam bag that reigns supreme.  Available in the bookstore for just seventy rupees.  About a buck fifty.

Here in Tiruvannamalai, this bag is suitable for every occasion and displays a downright ravishing humility.  Anywhere else in the world, a Ramanasramam bag, hanging faded from your shoulder, indicates that you are a Genuine Spiritual Person.  Oh Sacred India!

I’ve already determined that the hippest spiritual aspirants wear their bags Tamil side out, English text against the body – so of course I’m doing the same!

In response to your question.  Yes, of course I can get you a bag.  But it’s going to cost you A LOT more than seventy rupees.

Chi

Yesterday at lunch the blonde bearded man at the next table over was explaining that recently he’d been acutely ill, not because of food poisoning, but because of bad chi.

“The more you practice, the more refined you become, the more sensitive you are, so that your food, if it has been prepared by someone with a lot of obscurations, a lot of rajas and tamas, can make you very ill.  At this point I really ought to be eating only prasad.”

Rajas and tamas are the wrong kinds of energy, desire and ignorance respectively.  Prasad means God’s holy leftovers.

My nausea had nothing to do with the food.  Or the chi.

Room / 1

The first few nights I spent in a noisy hotel in the alley near the Agni Lingam.  The third morning, recognizing that sleep was out of the question, I left at dawn and wandered on the other side of the road from Ramanasramam, where Tamil Nadu turns halfway into California as the rich build homes with access to holy Arunachala.  I was standing in front of a deluxe place called Ramana Towers, so soulless it might as well have been in Singapore, and I was wondering what was the point of it all, when a old woman in flowing white stopped and asked, “Are you looking for something?”

“I need a room,” I said mournfully.

“What’s your budget?”

“Medium?”  Cheap is what I needed, but not so cheap that I felt my life had gone entirely wrong.

“Ask at the Pink House,” she said, and pointed to a sprawling pink cement mass.

Five minutes later I had my room.

Room / 2

It is the primary and essential power, which precedes even being able to think: the power of having your own room.  Flying through the air and precogniting lottery numbers could hardly do more for one.  “Possibility” is nothing other than a room with a door that locks.

The room was small and rather dark, with chipped green pistachio walls.  The window held a jungly vacant lot with plastic bags and peacocks.  The room was meant for living, with a broom and a sink and adequate shelves.  I’d looked all over town, I’d hemmed and hawed, but this room I accepted immediately, at the first price offered, which was fortunately only about four dollars.

I liberated my suitcase from the noisy hotel, dragged it home, and began to feel like a man who’d recovered from a serious disease.

Spiritual Reasons

It appears that the man next door has taken a solemn vow to speak only to seriously spiritual French people.  He looks offended if I come anywhere near.  Addressing him in Sanskrit does not help.  He wants no part of me and my Hari Om.

Are the French closing in on enlightenment -- or is this man on his way to the madhouse?  I note that even the Dalai Lama rarely presumes to judge, not even in the world as it is, where bat crazy yogis are scandalously more abundant than yogis even halfway wise.

I only hope he’s not a screamer, like that Canadian I met in the Tibetan monastery, who threatened to hide my husband's body in the forest.  Buddhists are supposed to be gentle!  But then, so are Canadians.

Although I may have come here for spiritual reasons – no sign of sex or beer – I acknowledge, too, that it could go the other way entirely and I could wind up resolving to have nothing to do henceforth with capital S Spirituality and that dismaying breed, Spiritual People -- so desperately ready to fall for anything, and kindness so seldom a priority.

Holy places are always full of crazy people and hopeless causes.  Of course.  That’s why we’re here.  We’ve figured out that nothing short of great healing is going to do us any good.

Why?

Why exactly am I here?

Well. . .  I sputter, and delay, and gesture toward the peacocks, but finally have no choice to admit: a voice told me to return to Tiruvannamalai.

I was in Tokyo, miserable, waiting for what would never happen.

Maybe it was God.  I hate the word ‘God’.  Maybe it was Buddha Nature.  The small still voice within.  Maybe my subconscious was just groping around for some place that was way the hell away from Tokyo.

Whatever the  reason, I’m grateful.

I’m here now.  I await further instructions.