just diary notes here, about travelling and how it forces us to confront the present arising state, much more so than in the safety of regular living
20/7
“There must be someway out of here said the joker to the thief” ~Bob Dylan
A thick fog has descended on me in relation to Beloved Adi Da and Practice. I have seen this happen many times (almost inevitably) when travelling. It forces me to contemplate arising “reality”, motel rooms, roadhouse meals, hotel lobbies, confined spaces, endless driving and all the objects that flash by. The only conscious moment then becomes “this” and slowly this arising life event, right in your face, the so called “here and now” starts to show signs of the Guru.
Did you read about my find in the Cairns bookshop? here, to others may be dismissed perhaps, but in my present “available” state it was like finding a dream object (and photographing it for proof) in so called “reality” gob-smacked and mind-blown perhaps but very happy
21/7
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
~Jack Kerouac
Travelling puts us in a raw state, more open perhaps to the spontaneous nature of arising events. However there is a bleakness to objects in themselves, if you look “too” closely at them, in a sense the non-theists and hardline Buddhists are more correct, there is no sign of “God” obvious in objects, Bhagavan says they are “Klick Klack” mere patterns and patterning. When you are cramped up in car hurtling down a wet highway with tropical rain thumping the windscreen and in a “truck sandwich” (stuck between 2 high-speed trucks) at night, this may become a little more obvious than in the safety of ordinary living.
In this position the brain is starting to turn to mush from the fatigue of driving for hours on end, I turn on my mp3 player, and choose to listen to old tapes “Invisible Man” and “The 4 Dharmas”, grateful, truly grateful to have this option, because the non-theists and hardline Buddhists are only partly correct, the Spiritual Master reveals the Absolute and Real Divine Condition, knowable under even the difficulties of any moment.
22/7
“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.”
— Jack Kerouac
I often think that a traveler(or wanderer) is more akin to a renunciate than any other conventional choice. I am now beginning to “meditate” on arising conditions almost constantly, what I mean by this is that the incessant flow of arising events has forced me to just start observing the present state, a lot of things can be said about this. One obvious thing is that we don’t normally notice much of what actually arises, we are very filtered in our outlook, I believe Bhagavan says somewhere that the brain filters a lot out of our perception for many good reasons.
When you are thrust into an environment you can’t control or have little choice, the sense of confinement can be really painful, early mornings I have begun to demand the “right” to meditate in peace. I clamber through the dark room in some stinky hotel, and find my pitch black corner, I put my little Murti Image in place, shine my torch to see His Form and then sit in the solid blackness and feel my navel center drop open, no dilemma, no problem. I remember sitting early morning in “Mindless Company” (a temple on Naitauba Island) in the inky darkness and feeling the exact same sensation.
23/7
“The whole yard could be full of Avatars for all I know!”— Adi Da (in jest)
Listening to old tapes via mp3 of Adi Da Samraj (The 4 Dharmas & Invisible Man) it occurred to me that the Great Avatars- Jesus, Gautama, Krishna apart from the immense religions formed around them, represent a partial “story” because they did not and do not represent the the full and complete Divinely Enlightened condition to modern man. Another way of looking at it, is the Avatar must be a current Incarnation, as Adi Da says they are only “One Being”; it clearly could not be otherwise. So the Avatar represents the highest Realization of man (or beyond man) and an even more radical way of viewing this is that the Avatar must be always a current incarnation or incarnation in present consciousness itself. A past Avatar, is an historical fixture, an unknowable quantity in present time. The Great Ones of the Past must currently appear in present consciousness and they cannot because they must always remain unknowable (completely) because they are in the past
