Virgo Rising

From where I live in the desert there is an incredible view of the eastern sky. Sitting on my patio swing I can look into the east for 20 kilometers and have an unobstructed view of a horizon that is doted with a chain of ancient volcanoes. This morning I watched a spectacular astronomical event. Some moments before sunrise, a tiny sliver of the moon, along with the shadow of its full disk, slowly rose over the horizon from behind these volcanoes. It was an incredible sight, one of life’s magical moments. But there was more. Along with the moon, Venus and Mercury and Saturn, also rose, but not only were the moon and these planets rising, so was the sun. They were all rising in Virgo. This is rare. A few minutes later the skyline became fiery orange and then, in a sudden burst, the sun exploded over the horizon sending a glorious blast of light that washed into my patio spreading the soft hues of yellow, purple and red. I was thrust into an altered state of being. The world became alive. The sun, the moon and all the planets became alive, and I could talk with them. This is how I started my day!

When I witness such beauty and I feel my response to it, whether it is in my desert home or in some other place in the world, I am reminded of the ancient teaching “The flash of lightning in the sky that causes one to gasp in wonder and exclaim “Ah!”– that Ah is Divinity.” Mostly I live my life and hardly reflect on the wonder and beauty of the world. The sun rises, the sun sets, the wind blows, and the rain falls, but how often do I notice the magic of these events? For a few moments this morning these seemingly routine occurrences, the rising of the sun and the moon, and the planets, suddenly opened my mind to a realm of beauty and possibility. A year ago I sat in a grassy field on Maui, an island in the South Pacific, and watched as the clouds and the wind danced around the volcanoes of that sacred place. On that day too, I talked with the world.

*Photograph by Malati Marvin 2011

Mes Chers Enfants

Savez vous quoi? Votre pita est programmeur de l’ordinateur! Maintenaint, j’ai ajoute une categorie “commentaires” a mon blog, qui s’appelle “Mes Memoires.” Je suis tres heureux. Ce travail m’a pris deux semaines a achever. J’ai ete oblige d’entrer au HTML a mon descripteur du programme “iblog.” Bientot, je vous enverrai l’url et le mot de passe. Jusqu’a maintenant, il y a plus de cent cinquante entrees la. Elles s’accroissent tres vite!

Je voudrais que vous me connaissiez mieux. J’espere que vous vous amuserez bien de cet cadeau biographique. 🙂

Je vous embrasse tous, tres affectueusement!

Pita

Dear Granny

I salute you and bow my head to you. Although I have never met you and you do not know me, I know a lot about you. I have seen your picture and your eyes tell me volumes. They tell of great suffering and great joy. But most of all they radiate steely eyed determination and caring. In my world I see a generation of grannies. They come from another time and place and I see them suffering alone in a world that they cannot understand. And although I can not speak their language, when our eyes meet we understand each other. A priest has one foot in the past as well as one foot in the present. And I know that I am supported on the shoulders of grannies, who are the past generations. And so once again, I thank you Granny for the work you have done bringing the present generation into the world. Goodbye Granny. I will miss you.

Love,

Shuka

Beyond Asceticism

When I was in my twenties, at a time when I was deeply involved with Krishna Consciousness, if I saw a beautiful sunset I would think, “This is maya , illusion.” Or if my mood was more devotional, I might think, “This sunset is the smiling face of Krishna.” In either case the sunset could never be what it actually was, a beautiful display of light in the evening sky. My reaction would be similar toward any object of beauty, mist rising over the mountains, a moonrise, a piece of art, some music, a dance, or a painting. All things were maya , illusion pulling me away from the source of all beauty, Krishna. Consequently, I tended to look at the world in negative terms. The beauty of the physical world was an evil; even my own body was an evil. In fact, before eating, the prayer I recited included these two sentences, “this body is a lump of ignorance…,” and “the senses are a network of paths leading to death… .” In our morning scripture classes I regularly heard such expressions as, “modern education is a slaughter house for the soul,” “women are nine times more lusty than men,” “never trust a karmi (non devotee),” and so on. In fact, these and dozens of other pat expressions were standard “mantras” that I heard on a regular basis. It was as if I was saint Jerome contemplating a skull. The world was an evil and I needed to be reminded of it at all times. There was only one beauty to be contemplated, Krishna. Consequently, my life was filled with the chanting of Krishna’s name, fasting, prayer and religious study. In effect I lived the life of an ascetic. This was my Krishna Consciousness, and in those days, I loved it! I was young and I had a taste for asceticism.

When the time for marriage arrived I was encouraged to maintain my ascetic view of life. Love created deep attachments and so it was an evil that bound a soul to this world. Sex was never to be enjoyed. It was only for procreation and even before engaging in relations, husband and wife were required to chant 50 rounds of the Krishna mantra (8 hours of chanting)! Hearing the name of God would offset the pleasure of relations was the reasoning. Television, radio, non devotee friends, restaurants, movies, vacations, celebration of birthdays and other holidays were all condemned. Such restrictions continued the “no” mindset, but what, in the context of a single student was advantageous, in married life was a complete disaster. You can imagine the effect such extreme views had on husband and wife relations and the raising of children. In those early days of married life I struggled to maintain my ascetic lifestyle. In fact, the two worlds could hardly be integrated and much of my early married life was spent coming to terms with this fact. In those days the Krishna Movement had no place for a meaningful married life. We only had the ideal of the celibate householder (brahmachari grihastha) to follow. As far as married life was concerned it was a position of guilt and shame.

Eventually my religious views changed. Mentally I had finished with the ascetic’s lifestyle. However, there seemed to be no reasonable alternative. I did not want to leave spiritual life or even my Vaishnava religious traditions, I just wanted to reconcile a religious life with a reasonable married life. To this end I traveled to India and asked many religious leaders, pandits and shastris, how they lived, how they raised their families, how they educated their children, how they held jobs; in other words, how they interacted with the world and yet maintained their religious traditions. I studied issues regarding the integration of tradition and modernity. I even wrote a book on the subject, “Hindu Encounter with Modernity.” Eventually I matured and reconciled myself to living the life of a householder and finally put to rest the struggles of my early spiritual life. Unfortunately my wife could not make the transition from asceticism to meaningful married life. From her perspective I was risking both our spiritual lives and where I was going was too much for her. In those days our Krishna movement had no place for a non ascetic married life, so in the end I left the “nest” of Krishna Consciousness and she stayed to follow her ascetic ways. Now I am living as a Hindu priest and teacher of modern Hinduism in the West and I am happy with my life and with what I do.

There was a time when I looked back on my asceticism and thought I must have been mad for subjecting myself to such an extreme lifestyle. Now that I have matured and have had time to reflect on my experiences I view this period of my life as the “boot camp” of my spiritual life. I could not be who I am today had there not been this ascetic training. As steel has to be heated and pounded in order to be shaped into something useful, so I needed the discipline and restrictions of this lifestyle to effect my transformation. This is why I refer to Krishna Consciousness as my “spiritual home.” And now that I have left this home, there is no need to return, yet still I offer it my respect as a son honors his father and mother. But not all of my God brothers and sisters have felt the need to leave. Many remain and they are happy. Others tried to leave, but fell to the wayside. Indeed, there is a substantial apostasy rate within Krishna Consciousness. Over the years things have gradually changed within the Krishna movement and better support is now provided to its members in this regard, but in my day there was no support for member in transition to a different lifestyle. The world was black or white. We were on our own to find our way and if one wanted to leave they were shunned and made to become a spiritual refugee. You had no spiritual home and many devotees faced terrible struggles including depression and even suicide as they faced the issue of staying or leaving the movement. In my wife’s case she could not leave. She could not see a spiritual existence for herself outside of her home. I credit my university studies for both creating my desire to leave as well as for giving me the ability to see beyond my religious home and to see a future for myself in the greater religious world.

I occasionally meet God-brothers and sisters, members of Krishna Consciousness who did not leave, or I meet religious leaders from other Hindu organizations, devotees who live within a similar religious home. I see that my religious perspective is now very different from most of them. Something fundamental was changed. They continue to follow the ascetic’s perspective—some degree of Saint Jerome—whereas I do not. Usually their lifestyle is not as extreme as my religious upbringing was, for even Krishna Consciousness has tempered its ways since my early days of involvement, yet asceticism still forms the foundations of their religious perspective. Devotees are still asked to renounce the world and adopt some form of an ascetic’s lifestyle. This is the way it always has been and will continue to be.

Reflecting on the matter today, I agree that asceticism should form the basis of a religious foundation. Indeed, renunciation and penance are a good training for a beginner, particularly an unmarried student. No doubt, I found great joy and spiritual “high” in my practice of asceticism, but, like most things there is another side to the “spiritual coin”. If the ideal of a Saint Jerome is posited as the complete spiritual journey then the religious path is incomplete and extreme. Indeed, my spiritual development has taken me down the path of asceticism, but it has not ended there. There is another phase.

Hinduism itself recognizes more than one side of the spiritual path. In the image of Shiva and Parvati, Shiva, dressed in a tiger skin with snakes and covered head to toe in crematory ash, is the quintessential ascetic. He is the God of Saint Jerome, yet his consort, Parvati, seated beside Him is dressed in silks and jewelry. She is the exact opposite of her male counterpart. She is the embodiment of beauty and sensuality. Such a combined image speaks to both the “no” and the “yes” of life, and it suggests that asceticism and sensuality are inseparably related. And this is precisely how my religious path has unfolded since my spiritual beginnings. The progress has been gradual, but steady. I have moved from saying no to saying yes to life, from asceticism to, not exactly sensuality, but to aesthetics. The sunset, which years ago was simply an illusion, has become what it actually is, a beautiful display of light in the evening sky. My focus is now towards engagement in life instead of running away from it. My worship is more towards the feminine form of God than the male. This is not to say I have blinded myself to ignorance and suffering, and to the pains of the world, it is just that my focus has changed. I no longer live just to avoid pain; I live to grow, and dare I say it, to enjoy. My life has become an exploration instead of a shunning. But neither am I speaking of hedonism, or of excess or even of atheism. I am speaking of the acceptance of life as it is, with all its beauty and with all its pains, as one might accept a rose knowing fully well of its thorns.

Of course, when one says yes to the universe, when one decides to become engaged in life, when you hurl yourself into causes and relationships, not only do you open yourself to endless possibilities, you also open yourself to suffering. You make yourself vulnerable. As you violate the rules of asceticism you take on risks. So why would someone who has “held the skull,” who has understood the transitory nature of life, who has gone through the rigors of asceticism, come to the point of saying yes to life with all its potential for pain? The answer is simple. For me asceticism became a negative state of existence that failed to satisfy the yearnings of my soul and ultimately was even stunting my spiritual growth. At some point I could no longer live just saying no to the universe; I no longer wanted to defend myself from the beckoning of life. I chose to view life as a positive state of being, something that should not be indefinitely thwarted. I now look at asceticism as a stage of spiritual development that one must pass through; it is not a stage to become fixed in. Unfortunately a religious tradition that stresses this negative stage of spiritual life and asks its followers to become fixed in this stage of “no,” opens the door to frustration, unhappiness and spiritual stagnation. The theory that says, “by shutting down the senses and curtailing interaction with the physical world and thereby sacrificing finite pleasure, one can open oneself to eternal spiritual joy” is incomplete. Such joy is idealized and theoretical. The inescapable fact is that we live as finite beings in a finite world and fulfillment comes from real commitments and relationships made within this finite world. The idealized and theoretical joys promised in spiritual life only come to us though our finite existence. Becoming dead to this world only makes you dead to yourself. I have come to realize after years of practice if one wants to experience the Divine, one can experience a glimpse of it in the relationships and things of this world, not by shutting off this world. By allowing the finite to act as a conduit for the infinite one opens a “window” into divine reality. The beauty in the sunset that I refused to see years ago, or the mist rising in the mountains that I used to avoid seeing is the divine if we have the eyes to see. This is the what the Kenopanishad is referring to as it says, “The flash of lightning that causes one to blink and say, “Ah!” That “Ah” is the appearance of Divinity.” In other words, when one sees a display of beauty in this world, whether it be a manifestation of the natural world, lighting in the night, a sunset, a moonrise over the mountains, or even dance, art or architecture, if that manifestation of beauty creates a state of “Ah,” in other words, if it evokes a state of aesthetic arrest, that state, that moment of “ah” is an experience of divinity. At that moment of wonder we are having an interaction with divinity. This is the aesthetic phase of spiritual life to which I have entered.

Suppose

October 6, 2010

Suppose we met somewhere in time,
I held you in my arms and we kissed.
Suppose we walked amongst lilies and pines,
You told me we’d been on this path before,
That you wanted me again and that you were mine.

Suppose we danced in some new land,
I saw you from afar and knew your smile.
Suppose I loved you and gave you my hand.
You wondered, “Why have you been away so long?
I’ve talked to the sun to please return my man.”

Suppose we lived in a home by a lake,
You cooked apple pie, cookies and bread.
Suppose we lived to taste all we could bake.
A life has only so many days, our time is short,
Let us be together. This time without heartache.


Pantheon

Wednesday, October 5, 2005

My first stop today was the Pantheon. It is an ancient temple to various Roman deities. The place is small, but absolutely magnificent. It is a combination of weight and lightness. It is an amazing structure. Once I entered the structure I was horrified to learn that it had been converted into a Christian church. This upset me no end. How dare the Catholic church defile this sacred and grand structure with their God. I also noticed that they placed a huge cross on the side of the Colosseum. How dare they! It is one thing to copy the classical architecture of ancient Roman to built their own cathedrals, but quite something else to defile this ancient art with their rubbish. I dislike the arrogance of Christians, They think they have some exclusive on religion and spirituality.

You can clearly see that ancient Rome is many meters lower than present Rome. Anytime I visit an ancient site it is always below ground level. Sitting in the remains of the biggest excavation site created an amazing feeling. Who were the people who built this city? They must have been giants.

The colosseum is massive both on the outside as well as on the inside. All of what I have seen is amazing. How did they move such massive blocks of stone? As you know I build a few things and so I pay attention to construction, but what these people have done is incredible by any standards. The ancient Romans must have been quite a group of people. In fact, just about everything I have seen from Paris to Rome to Florence has been built or painted or sculptured with war and exploitation laying somewhere in the background. The Romans had slaves, the principle Christian inspiration begins with a crucification, then the Christians had crusades, and an inquisition, Napoleon had his wars etc. All the art I have seen has war, slavery, or exploitation behind it. Ah this is the human condition. It seems that much of art and wealth arises from someone’s destruction or subjugation. What a pity.

Islam at the Crossroads in America

August 25, 2010

You are, of course, aware of the huge controversy unfolding in this country regarding Islam in America. Certain Muslim groups in New York City are proposing to build an Islamic Centre including a Mosque at the site where the world trade centers was destroyed by Islamic terrorists. Understandably, this has become an issue of contention in this country to the point where even the president has spoken out on the matter and given his opinion that Muslims are protected by constitutional rights that guarantee religious freedom like any other religion. While I heartily agree that Muslims should be treated in the same way as other religions, and they do have the right to purchase property and establish religious institutions in accordance with local laws, the feelings of the local community and the mood of the country must be taken into consideration. Even though the Muslim community has the right to have an Islamic community center, their attempt is in discord with the mood of the country. While this may be unfortunate for the Islamic community in America not to have its community center and mosque in this location, the current situation affords a huge opportunity for Muslim Americans to promote their religion not only in America, but throughout the Western world. There is now a golden opportunity for the leaders of the Muslim community to face the nation and say, “We know our religious freedoms are protected under the United Sates constitution and we know we have the right to build this Islamic center and mosque, however, given the unique circumstances surrounding the events of 9/11 and the feelings of the local community and the nation as a whole, we have decided not to locate our center in this location at this time.” If the members of the Islamic community took this approach they would score a public relations victory and engender a huge amount of goodwill from the American public. This would be Islam showing a new face not only in America, but to the world.

The American public still has not made a decision about how Islam is going to be accepted in this country. Americans in general want to be open and accepting, but so far the message they are getting from the Islamic community is not good. A gesture to withdraw the proposed islamic center and mosque from this location would show empathy with the feelings of this country and go a long way in presenting a new face of Islam to the world.

So the question is simple. Are the Islamic leaders going to force their religion on the American public using the same laws that protect their religion, or are they going to show understanding and sympathy with the sentiments of this country and waive their rights in order to achieve a higher cause? Will Islam take a confrontational approach or will it try to gain the support of the American public? Islam is at a crossroads in America.

Image Source: http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/michael-meeropol-islamaphobia-and-two.html

Mont Joli PQ

July 31, 2010

The Wedding Setup

One of my purposes in coming to Canada was to perform a marriage in the province of Quebec; that has now been done. Coming here, hundreds of miles northeast of Montreal, to the far reaches of North America, was not only a unique place to visit, being right on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, an extremely picturesque landscape, but also an immersion in the French part of Canada. I did not grow up in French culture, but I did grow up near French culture and at a time of great English/French turmoil. So coming to Quebec, in an indirect way, is coming to my roots.

Mont Joli

I was shocked by how much English is not spoken in this part of Quebec. I met a whole generation of youth, who hardly know a word of English. This is almost inconceivable to me. Every child attending school in Canada is required by law to learn French, even if they live in a part of the country where French is never spoken, which is most of the country, but it seems children attending school in Quebec, the French part of the country, do not have to learn English! This astounds me because it means the French in Canada, in their zeal to preserve their language and culture, have condemned generations of French Canadians to economic strangulation and cultural parochialism. I was picked up at the airport in Mont Joli by a 22 year old youth who spoke no English, and who did not even care to learn. I was returned to the airport by another youth who realized his handicap and who felt trapped, not knowing how to learn English unless he traveled away. I’m trying to learn French, he’s trying to learn English, but we both have no place to practice our language skills. His problem, however, is serious and mine is just an annoyance. His future is at stake and he knows it. The first youth was content to just be French and live outside the mainstream of North American culture; the second youth was deeply frustrated. And they both admitted that without English they could not survive properly even in Montreal. Is this what the federal government was forced to agree to when they granted special nation status to Quebec?

Sunset on the Saint Lawrence

In other matters, I performed the wedding nicely weaving the two cultures together in my usual fashion. I put square pegs into round holes. However, I failed miserably in my attempt to perform the marriage in French the way I wanted. In the last minute I caved in and took the help of a translator. The night before I successfully performed the marriage in French, in my mind, but when the moment of truth came, standing in front of two hundred non English speakers, on the most important day in the life of the bride and groom, I chose not to attempt the job myself. I probably did what was best for the bride and groom, but I did not do what I wanted. I am disappointed with myself because it means that I am still at the level of speaking to animals, and not yet to people, especially in a formal setting. Being in Quebec, immersed in French culture, I have periods of French lucidity. Give me a few weeks of prolonged immersion and I could cross that line at will, but having to worry about running a fire in the wind, moving the bride and groom through their paces, chanting Sanskrit prayers and providing commentary, I just could not add French to the mix. It was too many balls in the air at one time. I am sad.

My Hotel

This area of Quebec is cold country. I am told there are bear, moose and even wolves here. I only wished I could have seen a moose or heard the haunting howl of a wolf. I am a lover of the wild, of nature in its pristine condition. My father instilled this love within me as he took the family into the bush of northern Ontario every year for camping. I can never erase the cry of the loon or howl of the wolf from my soul. I can never forget the majesty of seeing a bull moose raise its head high to test the wind. I can never forget the magic of seeing the northern lights on a dark winter’s night out on a frozen lake. These things are inscribed into my very being, and for such reasons I also seek the solitude and wildness of the California desert. Coming to northern Quebec, seeing the endless chain of lakes, and the color of light in the northern summer morning reawakens my soul to the beauty of nature that is so difficult to find in my man-made world that I am compelled to work in. I spend much of my time in the finest hotels in the world, but here on the shores of the Saint Lawrence, with the water not more than thirty feet from my broken down old patio, I found a few moments of that same magic that I once knew as a child.

Toronto, My Beloved City

Today I broke away from my parents and headed out on my own. Toronto is awesome. The economy is booming, the streets are safe, the restaurants are full and there seems to be an endless stream of cultural activities. The downtown is packed with thongs of people, and given the size of the city I saw few homeless. Toronto has a population of about 5 million including its surrounding area, which makes it a fairly large world class city. It is also a very cold place. I went to the Eaton Center, which is a huge underground complex that runs for at least three subway stops right under the main downtown thoroughfare. This means, on the street level. there is the usual shopping and other activities you would expect on any downtown commercial street, including traffic and weather, but then there are three lower levels of underground life. Then even lower that there is the subway! It is simply amazing. There is a whole underground world in the downtown of Toronto. The city has become effectivity immune to its cold climate. And to top it off the place is packed! People are everywhere, shopping or just doing what people do on a good summer day in a northern city. But what makes Toronto unique from most American cities, and which gives its good marks for livability, is that people actually live in the downtown area. This means that at 6 PM the offices are rolled up for the day and the night life is rolled out. Toronto is a healthy city and a good place to live as far as large cities go.

I made a lot of Madrid having a largely homogenous white European population, but this is decidedly not the case with Toronto. There is no observable dominant racial group. It seems the whole world has moved to Toronto. When I lived here it was primarily a white Anglo-Saxon world with a strong smattering of immigrant communities, mostly from southern Europe and China. That has now all been pushed aside. The major immigrant communities now appear to be from India, Shri Lanka, the middle east and the far east, places like Vietnam and Cambodia. Although I can see it causes my parent some consternation, I like being in a city where I can find all the flavors of the world. They feel their Anglo-Saxon world has slipped away from them. Indeed it has.

Toronto’s art gallery does not measure up to world standards. Not because it lacks the Monets and the Manets, but because it has a horrible way of displaying its paintings. Half the collection has no fixed name plates (they are in a book that can be found in each viewing room) and the ones that do, have name plates that provide no contextual information about the work other than artist and date. In addition there is no self audio tour, nor is photography allowed. The building itself is first class, the presentation just fails. I sense the reason for this lays in the way the gallery is funded and managed. It appears to be a closed club. Donor walls are everywhere. There is even an exclusive lounge and dining area just for donors. As I stood in line to buy an entry ticket I was approached to become a donor! I’d never been in the place and here I was being “hit up.” It appears to me that the gallery has sold its soul to its donors and so has become beholding to a select group. This gives the institution a closed and snobbish feel and makes it quirky and unresponsive to public needs. Hence the odd way of presentation. There is a snobbish attitude that implies that the viewers are supposed to know about each painting in advance. One favorable thing I will say about the gallery is that its Henry Moore collection is outstanding and beautifully displayed. Apparently Henry Moore was so touched by the city after it placed one of his works, the Archer, in front of the city hall that he donated many of his molds of other works to the city. After visiting the gallery I walked to the city hall in the rain to photograph Henry Moore’s Archer that is displayed in the city hall’s common area. I remember the huge uproar that occurred when this sculpture first appeared in front of the city hall. They say the mayor even lost the next election because he supported Moore’s work being place at city hall. In my opinion it is an exquisite work that could be much better displayed.

My last comment is about Kensington Market. This used to be a vibrant immigrant neighborhood in the downtown area that was decidedly southern European in feel. You used to be able to find all kinds of Italian, Spanish, and Greek, cheeses, breads, fruits and cuts of meats. I could hardly find any of this today. Instead, I found that Chinatown and other south Asian communities, including even a Tibetan community had transformed the market area. The old southern European feel seems to have diminished. This suggests that these older immigrant communities have matured and assimilated into Canadian society and so moved on, and now these new communities from asia are restarting the cycle. I would like to know if my guess is statically true. At any rate I had a great time rediscovering downtown Toronto, my beloved city.

Desert Miracles

 

It has been raining since last night and it is still raining. That is 18 hours of none stop rain.

We have gotten a lot of rain this season! This means we should have an major flower bloom during March and April.

The California desert is famous for these blooms, but they only happen in a big way once every decade or so.

People travel from all over the world to see these blooms. I meet lots of Germans, British, French and Japanese tourists who come for the flowers.

Every year we have some degree of bloom, but a big flowerings only happen when we have had good rains. This may be a major bloom year.

The desert is so amazing once you see its hidden life.

 

Photo taken from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34932389@N03/