The bhutan observer
August 2018
seeking the ultimate
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How can I attain Mukti or liberation? This is a million-dollar question in our minds. This implies you want total emancipation and achieve that sublime state of being. 1000 lies cannot make a single truth. Hence the journey begins with truth which is characterized by complete submission from the fathoms of your heart. Here submission means you surrender to the source of creation free from assumptions and seeking from your inner self to know the ultimate truth. Your pathways will slowly broaden and take you to the realms of realization.
Swami Ananda Prabhu brings out a very beautiful verse in his Swabodh Bhajanaamrit wherein he says: Where mind and the senses cannot go and where intellect cannot reach; where the sound also cannot go – one cannot know this without the grace of a Guru. Where there is no meditation, meditator and object to be meditated upon or there is no knower, process of knowing and the known; where there no place, time or matter; only a seer can guide you. Where there is no form or attribute and there is no name or place of worship, where you cannot say if it is the truth or untruth; only your Guru can explain that to you. The word Guru is composed of Gu meaning darkness and ru meaning dispeller. So, Guru is a dispeller of the darkness and guide us to light. It is sometimes asked why we need a guru but as the scriptures also enjoin that one cannot attain knowledge without the guru and his blessings. A guru is like a GPS which you need while traversing through an unknown terrain. You needed a guru to learn the very alphabets which were so difficult during that time. A real guru is the one who breaks through the assumptions and establish you in the path of seeking. It is said that for a devotee, a guru must take birth many times - God is in the command of a devotee. The traditional concept of being enslaved to a guru is not at all true. Because both the guru as well as the devotee only play a role to ensure the
flow of knowledge and enhance spiritually. This has been happening since times immemorial.
Like it is necessary for any endeavor, there must be focus on the object of seeking. For someone with this, truth will naturally happen. We are most of the time confused and try to make our own presumption which hinders the process of knowing. Like someone frantically looking for his watch which is right on his own wrist realizes later that it had been there all along, the sense of perception which is also referred as the third eye [which is not a crack on the forehead; it is perception beyond the five senses untainted by memories] clicks to the individual and everything becomes an open book. As I talked earlier you can know the truth eyes open or eyes closed.
Movement of matter into spirit is like leaving the physical for the spiritual. What is exactly realized? Realization means to know in completeness. It must not be understood that we discover something. We do not because we only realize what has always been there all along. You do not know anything in isolation. It is the integration of everything in its entirety. We need to remember always that we take an inclusive approach. However, we realize that matter is temporary or destructible. It becomes easy to comprehend that the permanent which was there, which is there and will always be there can only be the indestructible spirit. When one comes to the root of this realization it is nothingness, nothingness and nothingness infinitely which we call the Ultimate.
If we delve further, we know that the ultimate is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent which is how the whole cosmos is governed. It is a simple logic that what is omniscient must be omnipresent and omnipotent. The spirit or consciousness or the awareness inside is not something physical you can touch. Scriptures mention that the supreme knower knows everything that is going on in an individual spirit. When we come to true realization, all the names of religions, gods and goddesses or any other names will mean a very little because God is above all these. If we refer to the verses of Ananda Prabhu above, it becomes very clear where we will be heading for. A calm, equipoised mind is a prerequisite for knowing them.
Like the purity of crystal clear water, the divinity prevails everywhere in serenity, peace and calm. Buddha also insisted that we allow time to settle the impurities such that a clear water is there on the pool to quench our thirst.
The vibration of divinity throbs in every human heart. There is a difference because of the varying degrees of illusions we carry with us. For example, a set of multi-colored electric bulbs will appear to be of different colors depending on the color of the beholder's bulb. But once the color is removed, which is illusion, the natural colorless light will radiate.
flow of knowledge and enhance spiritually. This has been happening since times immemorial.
Like it is necessary for any endeavor, there must be focus on the object of seeking. For someone with this, truth will naturally happen. We are most of the time confused and try to make our own presumption which hinders the process of knowing. Like someone frantically looking for his watch which is right on his own wrist realizes later that it had been there all along, the sense of perception which is also referred as the third eye [which is not a crack on the forehead; it is perception beyond the five senses untainted by memories] clicks to the individual and everything becomes an open book. As I talked earlier you can know the truth eyes open or eyes closed.
Movement of matter into spirit is like leaving the physical for the spiritual. What is exactly realized? Realization means to know in completeness. It must not be understood that we discover something. We do not because we only realize what has always been there all along. You do not know anything in isolation. It is the integration of everything in its entirety. We need to remember always that we take an inclusive approach. However, we realize that matter is temporary or destructible. It becomes easy to comprehend that the permanent which was there, which is there and will always be there can only be the indestructible spirit. When one comes to the root of this realization it is nothingness, nothingness and nothingness infinitely which we call the Ultimate.
If we delve further, we know that the ultimate is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent which is how the whole cosmos is governed. It is a simple logic that what is omniscient must be omnipresent and omnipotent. The spirit or consciousness or the awareness inside is not something physical you can touch. Scriptures mention that the supreme knower knows everything that is going on in an individual spirit. When we come to true realization, all the names of religions, gods and goddesses or any other names will mean a very little because God is above all these. If we refer to the verses of Ananda Prabhu above, it becomes very clear where we will be heading for. A calm, equipoised mind is a prerequisite for knowing them.
Like the purity of crystal clear water, the divinity prevails everywhere in serenity, peace and calm. Buddha also insisted that we allow time to settle the impurities such that a clear water is there on the pool to quench our thirst.
The vibration of divinity throbs in every human heart. There is a difference because of the varying degrees of illusions we carry with us. For example, a set of multi-colored electric bulbs will appear to be of different colors depending on the color of the beholder's bulb. But once the color is removed, which is illusion, the natural colorless light will radiate.
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- DILIP BISHWO, Iowa, USA
Contact the writer at: bishwod@bhutaniowa.org
Contact the writer at: bishwod@bhutaniowa.org
The article presented in this column is the personal opinion of the writer and doesn't represent the opinion of BCI or any other organizations what so ever. The BCI has only offered the medium to the writer for expressing his opinion through this website.
