skip to main |
skip to sidebar
It would be obvious to any analytical mind that atmasuddhi or clarity within is measured by the wisdom and maturity that one obtains. As noted by Montaigne, the most manifest sign of this wisdom is ‘continued cheerfulness’. It thus automatically follows that any process or steps towards atmasuddhi would also be marked by cheerfulness, peace and healthy acceptance.
The intelligent aspirant (sadhaka) would thus evolve for himself the appropriate ‘road map’ and a system of dos and don’ts (sadhana), as best suited to his individual nature for attaining his spiritual objectives and cherished dreams.
Besides the basic and obvious steps — such as on right observances, needed physical and mental exercises, healthy habits and lifestyle, satsang, joyful hobbies and pursuits — the aspirant would naturally be led, where required, also to the higher stages. Prayer, in its right and true sense, indeed is also applicable to agnostics. When directed to the evolved self within and those motivating forces, which abound all over, these would be more efficacious than cringing pleadings for personal favours.
In a highly powerful article (Reader’s Digest, July, 1983) on attaining this authenticity, strength and clarity within, Ardis Whitman outlines particular steps to, and guidelines for, such a pursuit. Paying attention “to what is going on in your life, inwardly and outwardly” and spending “time with yourself” — these would help unlock those latent powers, releasing the accumulated clutter and the spiritual vacuum within.
Steps to such atmasuddhi would also be similar to attainment of excellence in any field. Hence, the modern management concepts would also be applicable for this pursuit. Planning, organising, controlling and leading, by also ensuring timely review to guard against the ‘single slip’ and against the weeds of the past sneaking in — these would follow, manifesting in that wisdom (‘continued cheerfulness’), balance, poise, precision and maturity.
Signs of such cleansing within would be easing of situations, relationships and circumstances all over and the aligning and coming together of things with the increased harmony within and without — Henry Thoreau’s concept of “living with the licence of a higher order of beings”. No “dreary intercourse of daily life” would ever prevail.
Various indeed are the manifestations and signs of atmasuddhi as it guides the seeker in his progress, the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’!
K Vijayaraghavan
British screen goddess Kate Winslet has revealed that her curves inspired Jaguar chief designer Ian Callum to create their new XK model. The Oscar-winning actress joked on an American chat show that she would have liked to be have been involved with the design (“The headlights are too small. They will have to go! It needs a bar under the dashboard, and wings and inflatables”).
On his part Callum, who has also worked on the Aston Martin DB7, gallantly confirmed that the blonde diva was indeed his ‘ideal woman’. “She’s naturally very shapely, very British with an underlying integrity and ability,” he added. “Like a car, she’s got substance; she is not just a pretty face,” Callum elaborated, providing a new spin to the centuries-old form-versus-substance debate.
One epigrammatic take on it is: beware of appearances. For things are not what they seem to be superficially, especially if they are heart-stoppingly pretty. This is further epitomised by the proverb, Munh mein Ram, bagalia mein chhuri, which describes the hypocrite who goes about with the Lord’s name on his lips with a dagger clutched behind his back!
To be fair, the winsome Ms Winslet provides a refreshing contrast: British economists analysing her brand value have recently described her as a ‘national treasure’ worth £60 million that despite blockbuster billing still prefers to appear in cheaper art-house films.
Critics could cavil that the actress can afford that luxury only because of her stardom. The counter-argument is that stardom (or the lack of it) is just a state of mind. “Unfortunately, most beings are not aware of it,” Robert Thurman explains in his Jewel Tree of Tibet, “They think they are dwelling in the reality of insufficiency, a self-centred reality where they are pitted against the world and the world is pitted against them. To them, the world is always suffering and always causes them frustration and always overwhelms them. The Buddha’s good news is that you can actually take a break from this struggle. Relax. Ease back.”
The Sakyamuni taught us that where we are is actually perfect. The wonderful thing about his insight is that this reality itself is the great bliss state, which he came to describe as ‘bliss void indivisible’. The extinction of suffering and the achievement of perfect happiness is the reality of our world. This is the Buddha’s good news.
Vithal C Nadkarni
In the 2005 romantic comedy Hitch — not entirely an unpredictable film — the character played by Will Smith seems unusually spring-footed one morning when he has no real reason to be so. On being queried about this unexpected jauntiness, he replies something to the effect that one should wake up everyday “as if it was on purpose”. Now, there’s what appears to be a totally throw-off thought that to this writer at least seemed to define the film and perhaps see it in a new light. Because, otherwise, our usual purpose of waking up each morning is mainly due to rote — a mechanical process stemming from routine by dint of repetition without full attention or understanding, and possibly quite forgotten over the course of time.
Yes of course there’s always a general purpose to waking. Physiologically, our bodies follow a circadian rhythm of a daily activity (and inactivity) cycle, based on 24-hour intervals that requires us — among other things — to wake at roughly the same times each morning in order to perform optimally. It’s an important biological purpose. In a more societal context, we wake to attend to the demands of home, kids, studies or work, every one of which is very necessary when we’ve opted to live in units or communes. It’s an important social purpose. So-called creative people have to wake to create their masterpieces. And so on and so forth. So, sure, there’s a ‘purpose’, but note: not ‘as if it was on purpose’. Big difference.
For, while in the former the underlying motive expressed is something like, “I have to wake up (to take care of things which simply cannot go unattended)”, in the latter, it is, “Tomorrow, I intend to wake up (because I seem to have a new or long-unfulfilled agenda)”. Suddenly, a sense of far more involvement in what will happen manifests itself in our midst.
And finally note, too, that the ‘as if’ as used by the Hitch character is not in the sense of make-believe either — like in a pretend game of motorised waking that we apparently are all getting constantly better at the longer we live. Rather, it’s used in the sense of becoming spontaneously alive and maybe even raring to go. That is to say, instead of merely waking from a long night’s sleep, we need to open our eyes after a lifelong slumber. The only hitch is, in order to do that, we have to redefine the meaning of purpose so that it serves a higher and more meaningful intent.
Mukul Sharma
Innocence means purity of the inner space, not being affected by thoughts, our engraved memories. Even if you are not expressing your emotions like anger, greed and lust, if they are present in your inner space, you are not as yet a total and innocent person. Socially, you may be pure.
On the other hand, if you express your anger, lust and greed but nothing touches your inner space and you live like an innocent child, then be very clear, you are a pure being.
If you watch children, their eyes will be filled with wonder and freshness all the time. They don’t hold any opinion about anything. They are ready to receive. Their readiness is expressed in their glowing eyes. We lose this glow as we grow older. Our knowledge might increase tremendously, but this knowledge should not dull us in any way.
If you just look at life without any opinions or fixed ideas, then you are like an empty teacup into which brewed tea can be poured. You receive because you hold nothing, because you are empty. Then you never lose your enthusiasm. You are never bored. You are like a child, innocent and fresh.
A young girl was writing something on a piece of paper. Her father asked her what it was.
She said, ‘I am writing a letter.’
He asked, ‘To whom?’
‘To me,’ she replied.
‘What does the letter say?’ he asked. She replied, ‘How do I know? I have not mailed it and I have not received it yet!’
There is so much freshness behind innocence. Life becomes an unfolding mystery every moment with it. Mind is the culprit, which typecasts life. The mind constantly wants life on its own specific terms. Innocence embraces life with life’s own terms. But the mind does not allow life to find a gateway to enter with its mysteries. With innocence, life is welcomed to share its mysteries.
If you watch children’s eyes, they will be clear and empty and innocent. This is why they are in bliss. As you grow up, your eyes become filled with knowledge. Then you may have sight, but not insight; because you see through your eyes filled with opinions, judgments and beliefs. It is filtered and clouded. You see through the filter of your beliefs and conditioned memories. There is nothing new to learn from what you see because it becomes a repetition of your past memories. The learning is missed.
Try to see with empty eyes. Then everything you see goes deep and causes fresh insight. Life becomes an eternally unfolding mystery. The very nature of your questioning changes. You retain your innocence. Be Blissful!
PARAMAHAMSA NITHYANANDA
As you tap in your text, twitter away 19 to the dozen, or simply scroll down Facebook on your mobile, the death of the good old-fashioned narrative is hardly on your mind. Yet, that is the stark message sought to be delivered by the setting up of the Institute for Future Story-telling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s redoubtable Media Laboratory.
Of course, the centre is being envisioned as a ‘labette’, a little laboratory. Still, it will get $25 million over next seven years to examine whether the old way of telling stories — particularly those delivered to the millions on screen with a beginning, middle and an end — is in serious trouble. In today’s mobile world of data, chatter and noise, old (read long-winded) narrative may look like an endangered beast to some. But others argue that narrative is too deeply wired into our brains for us to predict its demise beginning with the next killer application.
Starting in 2010, ‘principal investigators’ will join hands (or minds) with grad students and interns along with seers and savants from the film and book worlds, “to examine how virtual actors and ‘morphable’ projectors (which instantly change the appearance of physical scenes) might affect a storytelling process that has already been considerably democratised by digital delivery”.
Ironically, ‘morphable’ characters, if not projectors, are as old as spinning of yarns, the very sort of stories that Wendy Doniger, the noted cartographer of myths from University of Chicago, serves up in her latest brick of a book, The Hindus: An alternative History. “The central actors and their actions are threads around which the great narratives of Hinduism coalesce like crystals in a supersaturated solution,” Doniger writes. Linguistic and cultural ambiguity and complexity have enriched this process immeasurably, she adds.
For example, “the verb on which ahimsa is based, han, is ambiguous, meaning both ‘to strike or beat’ and ‘to kill’. Ahimsa, therefore, when applied to cows, to take a case at random, might mean refraining from beating them or killing them — quite a difference. In any case, ahimsa represents not a political doctrine or even a social theory, but the emotion of the horror of killing (or hurting) a living creature, an emotion we will see attested from the earliest texts.”
Ahimsa-nama is coming online on Jainpedia.
Vithal C Nadkarni
The space in between — that gap of nothingness which separates things like planets, particles of dust, parallel universes, protons and electrons, past from present, the self and others, mind and matter, life and death, etc — is as important as the things it separates. Some would even go so far as to say that it’s more important since it’s the medium in which existence, co-existence and different types of spatial and temporal existences can happen. It probably has to be there for such events to occur. Of course, it goes without saying that without stuff embedded in it, the nothingness too loses its importance because each ultimately defines the other and depends on it. Yin and Yang.
But is this nothingness really a nest of nothing? A void of shunyata beyond and beside the pale of all? Not quite. On the contrary, it appears to be seething with potential. We learn from modern physics, for example, that a qualitative description of such ‘empty’ space at incredibly minuscule microscopic distances becomes what is called a quantum foam constituting the fabric of the universe. And that at such small scales, the uncertainty principle allows particles and energy to briefly dance into existence, and then annihilate, without violating conservation laws, among which is the one that says matter or energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Many decades earlier, Albert Einstein had similarly theorised that what we call gravity — things attracting one another — is due to the presence of matter warping the space-time around it which then makes things fall into the warp. Hundreds of subsequent experiments have since then confirmed that our Sun, for instance, warps the space around it significantly enough to make light waves travelling from distant stars behind it to deflect off their paths to a degree which can easily be measured on Earth. In other words, nothingness can be bent.
And, most importantly, as far as we are concerned, nothingness can also explode, like it did at least once some 13.7 billion years ago in the Big Bang which created everything we have today: including all matter, energy, time, life and, paradoxical as it may sound, more nothingness of more space. It’s almost as if nothingness did this because it needed to be defined by being that which exists between them. And vice versa. No wonder some people believe the nothing of death is no big deal. Like, how can we possibly be less?
Mukul Sharma
Sadly, particular concepts, phrases and quotes originating from religious texts or scriptures are frowned upon by those who profess a ‘modern’ outlook. These are summarily dismissed as outdated, inapplicable or superstitious. In this regard, it is necessary to recognise that all concepts should be welcomed and worked upon, as long as these can stand scientific and rational scrutiny, for obtaining tangible and practical benefits.
Atmasuddhi is one such concept, meaning clarity of the self within. This is obtained through stress release, cleansing of related physical and mental toxins and, consequently, resolution of contradictions and conflicts — Bhagavad Gita concepts as in 2,45; 5,3 and 5,25. In this state, every aspect of the personality works in joyful partnership with the other. This also is the allegory of the Gita — the chariot of life with the jeevatma (Arjuna) moving truly forward, guided by his own evolved and integrated self within, the paramatma (Krishna), skillfully regulating and directing the reins and horses (the human senses, perceptions and actions). It is in this state of clarity that one attains ‘flow’ with no ‘single slip’ or militating forces within, undoing the benefits of all previous efforts.
This state of true atmasuddhi also presupposes dissolution and cleansing of all past impressions, scars, trauma and withholds upon the psyche. This naturally is effectively living in the present — instinctively thus making up for all past bad karma by present good karma.
More easily talked of than accomplished, the beginning is through observance and following those basics, on which one has control and which he can implement through some simple discipline and watchfulness. Restraints or applications (yama and niyama), right physical exercises rooted in awareness and elegant comfort (the concept of asana), simple breathing regulations and exercises, healthful habits and lifestyle, inspiring company (satsang), well-suited pursuits, consciously being brisk and avoiding drag and drift, also giving expression to the calls of the spirit within — all these would go a long way to cleanse retarding forces and negative impressions within.
Other processes, as per individual need, would naturally follow, in pursuit of atmasuddhi, leading naturally also to realisation of one’s pet dreams, aspirations and objectives.
Indeed, atmasuddhi would, thus, have much to offer to modern times and the modern man!
K Vijayaraghavan
