riding the waves of consciousness on the surfboard of wisdom and compassion

Friday, April 27, 2007

Why having a guru is so important


Just try to learn the truth by approaching a spiritual master. Inquire from him submissively and render service unto him. The self-realized soul can impart knowledge unto you because he has seen the truth.

The path of spiritual realization is undoubtedly difficult. The Lord therefore advises us to approach a bona fide spiritual master in the line of disciplic succession from the Lord Himself. No one can be a bona fide spiritual master without following this principle of disciplic succession.

The Lord is the original spiritual master, and a person in the disciplic succession can convey the message of the Lord as it is to his disciple. No one can be spiritually realized by manufacturing his own process, as is the fashion of the foolish pretenders.

The Bhagavatam says: dharmam tu saksad bhagavat-pranitam--the path of religion is directly enunciated by the Lord. Therefore, mental speculation or dry arguments cannot help one progress in spiritual life.

One has to approach a bona fide spiritual master to receive the knowledge. Such a spiritual master should be accepted in full surrender, and one should serve the spiritual master like a menial servant, without false prestige.

Satisfaction of the self-realized spiritual master is the secret of advancement in spiritual life. Inquiries and submission constitute the proper combination for spiritual understanding. Unless there is submission and service, inquiries from the learned spiritual master will not be effective.

One must be able to pass the test of the spiritual master, and when he sees the genuine desire of the disciple, he automatically blesses the disciple with genuine spiritual understanding. In this verse, both blind following and absurd inquiries are condemned. One should not only listen submissively to the spiritual master, but one must also get a clear understanding from him, in submission and service and inquiries.

A bona fide spiritual master is by nature very kind toward the disciple. Therefore when the student is submissive and is always ready to render service, the reciprocation of knowledge and inquiries becomes perfect.

this post is from "The Hindu Universe" at Hindunet.com

Video: Free Hugs


www.freehugscampaign.org


About A Course in Miracles



This is the text of a letter that I sent to a new AA/writer friend of mine, gÃNgst€® Bo¥s¢oUt.








Hey, G! I hope you don't mind addressing you as "G," but I don't have the typeset to spell out your full tribes.net moniker. Actually, that's a lie. I am just lazy.

I swore after just writing you that I was going straight to bed. Naturally, when I declare I am going to sleep, I tell myself first that I can graze the web for another 5 minutes ... and here I am.

I saw your reference to "A Course in Miracles." My [AA] sponsor Rick Saslaw knew Marianne Williamson; they knew each other very well. Rick used to take me to hear MW speak. She spoke twice a week in LA during the 80s and early 90s. I was just 18 months into sobriety and quite raw. Rick took me to Alanon meetings and ACIM talks given by MW. A lot of my ideas about my HP came to me through Rick, through MW and ACIM.

MW was quite a delightful, conscious lady human being with a wise heart and a nose for bullshit. Nothing got past her.

Rick had AIDS. He had given so much to AA and to lots of charities throughout LA, but he almost always balked at getting or asking for help. MW helped to run an organization called Project Angel Food, which prepares and delivers meals to people with HIV/AIDS. Rick was running out of money and he would never eat at home.

Rick was brilliant and defiant: the worst combination in an alcoholic. I was pretty much Rick's primary caretaker; but he wouldn't ask Project Angel Food for help, and he wouldn't let me ask. Finally, I called Marianne. I didn't think she would remember me, but all I had to say to her was Rick's name, and that he was jeopardizing his life by not eating. We knew about AIDS wasting syndrome. Marianne called Rick right then. She prodded him until he was willing to accept Project Angel Food's help. THAT was a deep dish course in miracles. The next day, the deliveries began and Rick began to eat again.


I called Marianne again about a year later. Her book, "Return to Love" had become a bestseller, and she was in the middle of her second book tour. I let her know that Rick had died.

A half-year or so before, I caught MW at a break during one of her lectures. I introduced myself again. I asked her if she would officiate at Rick's memorial service when he died. She agreed on the spot. I don't think I told Rick. I must have. It's just that he and I could barely talk about his death.

It was shortly after the day that I last saw Rick; I placed a large sunflower from my garden on the back of his burly naked body: lying in the dark in his tiny bathroom. I didn't really get to see him. His body blocked the bathroom door from opening except for just a little bit.

Then the Neptune Society came, picked him up, cremated him, and later poured his ashes into the sea. The Neptunes don't let people ride on their boats to come to say goodbye. [I hope that it was dignified.]

Marianne paused her RTL tour and officiated at Rick's memorial at this postage stamp of a park tucked below Sunset Strip. All of Rick's eccentric friends and AAs -- crowded onto this petit lawn. Of course, we were in West Hollywood. A hundred or so feet above us, in the zenith of a sterling day, was the Sunset Strip, all its vampires vouchsafed until the night; three of four blocks below, down the hill, was Boy's Town and the bars.

It got hot. I was wearing this blue wool business suit, and holding on to Rick's huge stuffed monkey doll. The monkey made me itch more than the suit. At the podium, I made the most nonsensical remarks about Rick and his stuffed monkey. Marianne salvaged the hour's empty disposition, basically giving us an ACIM lecture, a discourse on Rick Saslaw. It was the most fitting tribute Rick could ever have had.

Rick's been gone 14 years now. I haven't seen MW since.


I have Rick's copy of RTL. I have read and reread the book dozens of times. My sponsee Matt will attest to all of the sentences covered with neon shades of highlighting pens, underlined by my ecstatic shaky hand, and my furious emphatic notes that cram the margins and whatever blank space I could find in the front and back. Lovingly illustrated with light bulbs, lightning bolts, happy faces, flowers and hearts, it's a hippie's journal. But it's my book, and I don't care if it does look kind of gay.


Matt has taken to reading RTL. With most of many sponsees, this strategy of mine hasn't worked.

I am always going on to Matt and my other sponsees about the necessity of cultivating positive spiritual energy in sobriety. RTL is the perfect spiritual energy textbook for this. And it's getting through to him.

At first, I lent Matt Rick's copy/my copy of RTL. Then, I bought him a mint first-edition hardback copy of RTL on Amazon. This outcome relieves me and makes me very happy. His ex-girlfriend loves RTL, too. Actually, I couldn't open the book for several years after Rick had gone, but I treasured it until I could read it.

Of course, RTL is something that I will always read. That and the Big Book and my book on the Prajnaparamita Sutra. I always have one or more of those books on me at all times. They are my talismans.

I have had four sponsors, one of which still works with me now, and they are all sacred to me. Each one of my sponsors has made me into the sober and spiritual mensch that I am today. [I will say I'm a mensch; they were for me, and now I am in their place.] With great giddiness and reverence, I talk on and on about my sponsors to my sponsees. I'm not sure if they are suffering this fool gladly, but I can't help myself.

Rest in peace, my wise and beautiful sponsor and best friend.
(And thanks for being there, Marianne.)

Thursday, April 26, 2007

The power of truth and responsibility is surfacing in the U.S. Congress


From Air America:

"The House on Wednesday narrowly approved a $124 billion war spending bill that would require American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1, setting the stage for the first veto fight between President Bush and majority Democrats. The Senate is expected on Thursday to approve identical legislation, which provides more than $95 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through Sept. 30, with the money conditioned on the administration’s willingness to accept a timetable for withdrawal and new benchmarks to assess the progress of the Iraqi government."




Video: Representative John Murtha, Chairman of the House Defense Committee, Pushes for Passage of the "Iraq Accountability Bill."



Video: Representative Patrick Murphy, Who Served in Iraq in 2003-4, Grieves the Loss of His Fellow Soldiers, and Demands a Fall 2007 Withdrawl of U.S. Troops From Iraq.










Thanks to AMERICAblog.com for the videos.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Article: US neuroscientists have declared the happiest man they have ever tested



Link to the article

Thanks to Dionysius at tribes.net for the article.

Can mysticism save us now?


Can Rumi save us now?
Life and words of the popular 13th-century Persian poet have special meaning for a 21st-century world torn by war, genocide and hatred

Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, April 1, 2007

During the last decades of his life, the Persian poet Rumi was surrounded by news of terrorism, just as we are eight centuries later. Those were the days of Mongol invasions that swept past the steppes of Asia into Anatolia, the Near East and other areas of geographical importance. Mass murders from war -- what today would be called genocide and ethnic cleansing -- were a routine part of Rumi's 13th-century world.

So, where's the bloodshed in Rumi's writing? Where are all the parables about gore and conflict and Mongol atrocities?

Nowhere, really, say Rumi scholars, pinpointing a central incongruity to the poet's life: Rumi, a man so advanced in Islamic training that he could issue fatwas, divorced himself from talk of revenge, retribution and eye-for-an-eye killings. Like Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Rumi insisted violence was an unsatisfying way of resolving issues. In fact, Rumi believed people could find salvation in their enemies' hatred.

"Every enemy is your medicine ... your beneficial alchemy and heart healing," Rumi says in his epic six-volume work, the Mathnavi, as translated by Majid Naini, an Iranian American scholar. "Carry the burden smilingly and cheerfully, because patience is the key to victory."

Sentiments like that have turned Rumi into one of America's best-selling poets -- someone whose thoughts on love and other matters are revered by hundreds of thousands of readers.

Rumi had already found an audience in America before 9/11, but interest in the mystic from Persia (now Iran) -- and in his beautiful words; in his sometimes funny stories; in his all-inclusive message that the faithful of all religions have a common humanity -- has mushroomed in the past six years. In recognizing this year as the 800th anniversary of Rumi's birth, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which is known as UNESCO, calls Rumi an "eminent philosopher and mystical poet of Islam" whose "work and thought remain universally relevant today."

Scores of concerts and events will mark the anniversary, including a celebration on Thursday and Friday in San Francisco that features Coleman Barks, the retired University of Georgia professor widely credited with popularizing Rumi in the United States.

Go to Borders, Barnes & Noble or any neighborhood bookstore, and you're likely to find many more Rumi titles than books by Robert Frost or Walt Whitman. Besides poetry shelves, Rumi is prominent in bookstores' calendar, religious and music sections. Rumi's words -- lyrical and resonant, especially when voiced in Persian -- lend themselves perfectly to musical expression. Charles Lloyd, the brilliant saxophonist who played with Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy in the 1960s, is among the jazz artists who've recently paid musical tribute to Rumi.

So, who is Rumi, really? He was a mystic and a scholar. He was an adherent of religious Islam (his full name was Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi) who did the hajj to Mecca, but who, in the later part of his life, famously said, "I am not a Jew nor a Christian, not a Zoroastrian nor a Moslem." By that, says Naini, Rumi meant that his faith in God, in Allah, knew no boundaries -- that it didn't matter what country he lived in, or what official religion he designated, because the love and longing that Rumi felt was everywhere, including his soul.

"Keep in mind that the holy Quran states there is no force in religion," says Naini, a Rumi expert who has lectured on the poet at the United Nations. "Rumi wants to remind us that we are all children and the creation of God, regardless of religion, race, color, nationality, etc."

Born on Sept. 30, 1207, in what is today the area of Balkh, Afghanistan, Rumi might have been a religious cleric all his life were it not for Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish whom Rumi met at age 38. As chronicled in Naini's book, "Mysteries of the Universe and Rumi's Discoveries on the Majestic Path of Love," Tabriz challenged Rumi's perspective by asking him if the mystic Bayazid Baastami was "higher" in stature than the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. By confronting Rumi in a public space, and daring to compare Bayazid and Muhammad, Shams unnerved Rumi, who encountered someone unafraid to make a spectacle and question religious orthodoxy.

Out of that first meeting in Konya, Turkey, Rumi and Shams became inseparable. Shams was at least 20 years older than Rumi, and untrained in strict Islamic theology, yet Rumi -- who was the highest Muslim authority in Konya -- chose Shams to be his mentor. As noted by Naini, Shams asked Rumi to relinquish himself from the trappings of his fame and fortune, and to focus just on an unadorned, selfless connection to God. To "disconnect from the world of desires and dependencies," as Naini notes, and to enter into a higher spiritual devotion to the Almighty, Rumi followed Shams' advice to perform a whirling dance called Samaa, and to listen to mystical music performed on a reed flute. (Rumi practiced the Samaa on an empty stomach, says Naini.) Islamic traditionalists considered Rumi's new actions heretical.

Seven centuries later, some Muslim fundamentalists still say the movement that Rumi spawned -- the Mevlevi, also known as the Whirling Dervishes -- is un-Islamic because of its emphasis on public song and dance. But Naini and other scholars rebut that, saying Rumi and his followers are emblematic of Islam's Sufi tradition, which emphasizes a mystical closeness to God, and to other humans, regardless of their faith. It's this universality that appeals to Rumi's readers and accounts for the still-growing interest in Rumi's work.

Westerners who may be otherwise afraid of Islam see in Rumi and the Mevlevi a form of the religion that features dancing, music and talk of brotherly and sisterly fellowship. They see someone from Persia who turned his back on hatred and revenge. In the current climate of war and warmongering, Rumi left behind volumes of work that have gained relevance as time has passed.

Rumi didn't try to sugarcoat his life or the lives of others. After Shams mysteriously disappeared, Rumi felt sorrow for many years. His stories of trying to retain a closeness to God through love and loss are at the heart of his writing.

In "Mysteries of the Universe," Naini emphasizes Rumi's thoughtfulness on science, music, and nature, but Rumi's biggest gift to readers today may be his emphasis on the power of love and tolerance.

"Rumi said, 'From love, thorns become flowers,' " Naini says. "Rumi teaches that even if the Devil falls in love, he becomes something like (the angel) Gabriel, and that evilness dies within him."

The Rumi Concert, sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies, takes place at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.ciis.edu/publicprograms/spring07/rumi_concert.html. E-mail Jonathan Curiel at jcuriel@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Become the Sky (a poem by Rumi)





It's worth seeing this video on the full screen at You Tube.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Introducing VAJRAKILAYA (Danger Angel's Protector)


This is the description that Danger Angel gives of Vajrakilaya:

Vajrakilaya – the awareness-being who stabs the roots of anger

Dorje Phurba (rDo rJe phur bu – Vajrakilaya) is shown here in union with Dorje Phagmo (rDo rJe phag mo – Vajra Vaharahi). Dorje Phurba, which means 'thunderbolt nail', obliterates the minions of aggression by plunging the self-existent dagger of non-duality into the heart of hatred wherever it hides and whomever hides it within themselves. Within the space of his vajra-destructiveness, dualised beings are unable to cling to callous imperatives. He wears the six human bone cemetery ornaments resplendent with thunderbolt nails, in display of his mastery of the six classes of the Vajrayana. The Kriya Tantra nails overpower the anger of puritanical pretence. The Upa Tantra nails overpower the anger of petulant propriety. The Yoga Tantra nails overpower the anger of pretended buddha karma of pacification. The Mahayoga nails overpower the anger of the pretended buddha karma of enrichment. The Anuyoga nails overpower the anger of the pretended buddha karma of magnetising. The Atiyoga nails overpower the anger of the pretended buddha karma of destruction.



Hey, I don't pretend to understand Vajrakilaya's spiritual qualities yet, but I like him! He looks like a dangerous angel! Welcome to Vajra Surfers, Vajrakilaya!

Link of the Day, April 23

"Focus,
not on the rudenesses of others,
not on what they've done
or left undone,
but on what you
have & haven't done
yourself."

-The Buddha, Dhammapada, 4, translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

I took this quote from the Tribe.net site of Danger Angel. Wow, check out her web site. I really respect her and I don't even know her yet.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Life is Like This

We can’t control what arises in the mind, but we can reflect on what we are feeling and learn from it rather than simply being caught helplessly in our impulses and habits. Even though there is a lot in life that we can’t change, we can change our attitude towards it. That’s what so much of meditation is really about—changing our attitude from a self-centered, "get rid of this or get more of that" to one of welcoming life as it is. Welcoming the opportunity to eat food that we don’t like. Welcoming wearing three robes on a hot morning. Welcoming discomfort, feeling fed up, wanting to run away. This way of welcoming life reflects a deeper understanding. Life is like this. Sometimes it’s very nice, sometimes it’s horrible, and much of the time it’s neither one way nor the other. Life is like this.

Ajahn Sumedo, "Life is Like This," adapted from a talk given at Spirit Rock Meditation Center (May 10, 2005)

About Me, the Vajra Surfer वज्र

My photo
Los Angeles, California, United States
Hi! ✌ I am a flower-picking ❀ redwood-tree-hugging, ♻ green-party-progressive, 21¼-century reincarnation of John ☮ Lennon from the ♆ spiritual vortex of Santa Cruz, California! I'm a Egytpo-Grecian☥, Neo-Platonic⊿, Gnostic☿, Buddhist⎈-Hinduૐ-Daoist䷀䷁ mystic⁂ and ϕhilosopher-king. 兡 Beyond my preternatural affability there is some acid and some steel.™ I've sober for ⨦20 years. 兡 I like to sing 吉 in my car like I am ☆ live onstage. I chant, which is kind of like singing, except more introverted. I pray for peace 平 and for the enlightenment of all beings. 曰月

Vajrapani, Holder of the Vajra

Vajrapani, Holder of the Vajra
om vajrapani hung phet