walk in beauty

 28 feb 2024

 

The sixth chakra, on which people are most often advised to concentrate during meditation or the recitation of mantras, is situated between the eyes, at the root of the nose. There too is located the “third eye” of Shiva, his spiritual eye which looks within and sees everything with perfect truth in the light which alone shines inwardly––the light of the guha … (Prayer, 102)

 

They are doing a lectio continua of Abhishiktananda’s book Prayer here at midday prayer each day, which is great––the book itself and the fact that that is what they are reading. In the past it has been the often-lugubrious readings from the Liturgy of the Hours which were practically incomprehensible to some of the guys with English as a second (or third of fourth) language. This is much more practical as well as accessible and totally fitting the context. Reflecting back on my musings about Śiva, I don’t remember Abhishiktananda being so bold in mentioning Śiva in that book! Hence the above quotation among other places.

The groups here come and go. Several of the guys have mentioned how they feel like their hospitality (the main source of income) is still in recovery from Covid. There was quite a crowd here through the weekend, mostly Europeans, from England, France, Italy, Poland, Germany, more than Americans. The biggest part of them left last week––poor Fr. Martin, guest master, was wiped out––but a group of about a dozen, still very international remains for a week-long yoga retreat led by Dorathick. He came to us as a trained yogi already in his twenties, with also a good knowledge of Ayurveda. I pleased to see him still be able to offer things like this as well as keep up his own practice and study. He reminded me yesterday that it is part of the charter of Shantivanam to promote the practice of yoga and meditation. And it is a serious schedule. (I’ll attach a photo of it) starting with asana at 5:30 AM, two teaching sessions a day, and a session each on pranayama and yoga nidra, besides time for discussion and the regular liturgies of the ashram. Again, a very international crowd.

A friend of mine has a distinction that I had never heard of before (he thinks it comes from Czesław Miłosz), between the desert religions and the delta religions––not enough water and too much water, the former being what we would normally think of as the Judeo-Christian-Muslim monotheists as compared to the Asian traditions (or the prophetic traditions versus the mystical ones). He thinks that the religion itself is shaped by the landscape in which it was birthed. I was reflecting on that yesterday when again the day was swelteringly hot and the air was dusty. I wrote to him and said that in the same way I don’t think you can really understand Hinduism and the traditions that come out of India until you have experienced a day like that, or a lot of days like that. Somehow in the midst of that, not in spite of that, this great revelation occurs to the human psyche that there is a silent power within all that that is also the foundation of real human life, “the bliss of the consciousness of being.” And we are set free not because of comfortable conditions conducive to such enlightenment but by enduring the vicissitudes of a harsh landscape and seeing behind and before them.

 

Yesterday I got a tour of a beautiful little campus just down the road from us. It’s called the Swami Bede Dayanand Trust, and it contains an elder day care center, a kindergarten, a typing school and a tailoring school. It is all run efficiently by a little firecracker of a religious sister named Rosa. She came from another congregation but is now officially Camaldolese as well. I had remembered visiting an old folks’ home and tailoring center before. The former is still going, but these facilities have replaced the others. I was taken right away by how clean and organized everything is. (Gotta leave it to the women. It can be done, guys! Not that I am any shining example…) Sr. Rosa has been doing this since 1998 and has managed to get lots of foreign sponsorship. The buildings themselves are very sturdy and freshly painted, with the normal beautiful plat life all around. All that in the midst of real squalor in the village nearby. I went there with our Bro. Martin, and two other Camaldolese sisters from Andhra Pradesh, Rose and Lucy, who are down here visiting. I had half an idea to go and see their place too, somewhat near Indore about halfway between here and Delhi, but I decided not to complicate my trip anymore. Our Indian friends love to do that kind of thing, put us in chairs in front of a group of people and say something or do something–– or example they had me pass out cake to the old folks. Another one of those roles I feel uncomfortable in. I wouldn’t mind helping with the dishes, but being a visiting dignitary of some sort feels out of place for a monk in a backpack.

Rosa then had us all over at her house for lunch, and it was quite a feast. She had asked me the say before what I wanted for lunch, and I simply agreed to certain things without suggesting anything. So she made pasta (in addition to rice) and made me plain fish cooked with banana and curry leaves (besides making fish curry), plus three side dishes of vegetables, a sweet and sour soup, fruit salad custard and payasam, a tasty sweet made with jaggery (unrefined sugar) and some kind of cooling tisane plus buttermilk. She had worked very hard to prepare all that and we were all very appreciative. I for my part felt terribly overfed, though I kept my intake as low as I could without being offensive. Bro. Martin and I walked back home to burn off some calories and I slept the sleep of the overfed. That was when I was thinking about my friend’s idea of how landscapes effect our spiritualities. He’s convinced that we who have lived in the Santa Lucia Mountains on the central coast of California have a certain gift we bring. I was noticing of the other hand how I sleep so deeply after lunch here and wake up so groggy just as the real heat of the day is coming on. It takes even more discipline to get off my bed, face the sweltering heat and at least pretend to be reading, praying, or meditating.

This is actually my last day here in the Forest of Peace. I had my last English class with Arvind this morning and spent the rest of the day cleaning my room and re-packing my things. Tonight I have an overnight train to Bangalore, which could be an adventure, and then an elaborate plan of meeting someone who will give me breakfast (and maybe let me take a shower) and me wait until Jyoti Sahi comes to fetch me, the real goal of my side trip there. More on that and him later...

I’ve been working on two songs since I got to India. The first one is still kind of unformed, but this lyric has turned out nice and I keep strolling back over to my guitar to play it again, which is always a good sign. It’s a combination of the famous Navajo prayer, “Walk in beauty” that I have been carrying around for months wanting to set to music for John Pennington and my new collection that we hope to do in the spring, and a poem that I ran into recently by the English poet Charles Causley (husband of Sylvia Plath), and the two just seemed to go together. Here's a taste of it. I feel like I am so far on this sabbatical doing just that––“walking in beauty.” And ready for the next step.

 

today I will walk and

darkness will leave me

I will be as before

over my body 

cool breeze is blowing

nothing can hinder me 

 

I walk in beauty

I walk in beauty

I walk in beauty

 

I am the song that 

sings the bird the

leaf that grows the land

I am the tide that 

moves the moon the

stream that halts the sand.

 

I walk in beauty…

 

beauty before me

beauty behind me

beauty beauty below

beauty above me

and all around, my 

words will be beautiful

 

I walk in beauty…

 

I am the cloud that

dries the storm the

earth that lights the sun

I am the clay that

shapes the hand the

fire that strikes the stone

 

I walk in beauty…

 

wandering on a 

trail of beauty

lively lively I walk, in 

old age on a 

trail of beauty

living living again

 

I walk in beauty…