Pradakshina
By Charles Reeder
IN the Colorado mountains I look into a cluster of pine needles.
In the autumn sun they radiate clear and pure from the bough.
Has it really been eleven years since we first came to
Arunachala, to Bhagavan? Time itself has rotated like those
needles in the sun, and we can no longer find the point where
we started. And that itself is happiness, the endless turning
around of small pebbles in the swift current of his grace.
It is wonderful that Bhagavan's path of enquiry is not
something that gives itself to exact description or mapmaking,
for it is the stirring of the self in each of us. If we point to the
way or the Self as an object, we pretend to be strangers in our
own home. It is only Bhagavan who makes it clear to us --
we see it so plainly in his smile -- for who is he but our own
Self? And it is he who tells his devotees that wherever they
go in the world or beyond it, they continue to circle around
him and within him who is Arunachala.
And that is not all, for time and space themselves are forever
doing this pradakshina around their source. So we cannot speak
in some ordinary way about Bhagavan's centennial, for he was
not one who merely appeared and disappeared in time. The
centennial itself is doing pradakshina around him; the blue
sky is doing it as well. He sits with the deepest absorption in
the centre, blessing those who move. The pradakshina itself is
but his in-breathing and out-breathing, manifesting the original
pattern of being to all who can receive it.
To speak of Bhagavan's birth and passing is to do
pradakshina to our small conception of who he is, but this
too is resolved in him, for he is the most infinitesimal being
as well as the great one who manifests the being of all the
world systems. No matter which path we may take, we
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ultimately find ourselves worshipping in the most fundamental
sense that primal being who dwells within each of us. It was
and is Bhagavan's gift to the world to manifest this being so
unmistakably and so lovingly. On this, his centennial, the
human beings, the animals and the mountains, the dwellers in
the six realms, whether consciously or unconsciously all join
in the pradakshina of that unutterably great being.
Idol Worship
By C.L. Narasimha Rao
Softly, your head resting on your left palm,
You look at me from the corners of your eyes.
I feel a sensation creep from toe to top.
You smile, white teeth vying with white beard,
Face lit up with the glance and the smile.
Are you angry with me for dwelling thus on your
outer form?
What else can I do but stare at that
As if it were you?
Do I not think my body is `I'?
How can I see the light behind
The brightness of your face?
How can I see the God in the idol.
While I am an idol, nothing else?
An idol can only worship an idol.
But the god in that idol stirs to life
The god in this.
That sat swallows this aham
So in Soham, I in That
Disappear and cease to be.
And yet I am, I am, for I
Am now You and You are That.
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