This man was a reflection of what I would have become a few years hence had I continued with Buddhist practices. I had lost interest in anything sensuous. All actions, physical and mental, seemed mechanical.
Acharya Buddharakkhita Thera was very different. Extremely sharp, he always took a passionate interest in events around him. But he would also repeat, ‘Everything is dukkha.’ I began to find his insistence on dukkha very off-putting, and this attitude began to seem like a trap to me. Any attempt to label an experience with something borrowed, without being alive to the actual quality of experience, seemed inappropriate. To put it another way, words and experiences should correspond.
The writing was on the wall. If I were to continue vipassana meditation, which was based on Theravada Buddhism, my writing would stop. Vipassana may have been very good for those wanting to become monks, but if ordinary people took to it they would be condemned to the limbo between this world and the hereafter. People who attend vipassana camps for a few days or even a few weeks seem to love it. For them, vipassana is no more than a weekend mental health camp or a dose of an energy pill, even if they continue to practise it daily for short spurts. On the other hand, those who take to it seriously tend to have deeply disturbing experiences unless they are ready for withdrawal from active life.
I had also seen how people tended to be very short-tempered in spite of decades of vipassana practice. Looking back, I feel there is nothing wrong with anger though excessive anger is self-destructive. Within limits, however, anger can awaken us to individual and collective shortcomings. I found suspect those philosophies that declared anger to be a sin.
My experience has taught me that whether we label a thought or sensation as dukkha or not, the emergence of a thought vibration is immensely pleasing as it represents freedom and an expansion of consciousness. All thoughts, angry or otherwise, are just thoughts. We enjoy them unless we become imprisoned in them. If we do not lose our dynamic balance in the restful pause between two thought vibrations, and experience the silence that is deeper than movement or rest, then thought vibrations will not imprison us. Instead, they become the foundation for freedom.
It was obvious that my sadhana could not follow the Theravada Buddhist path. Had I taken to some form of Mahayana Buddhist practice, I might have stayed a Buddhist till now. While the Theravada emphasis is on withdrawal from samsara, Mahayana Buddhism is posited on the inseparability of samsara and nibbana. According to this system, Buddha refused to enter nirvana because of his compassion for other human beings and the suffering in the world. He vowed that he would not achieve this state until he had released the last blade of grass from dukkha.
O Siddhas! O Buddhas!
You have broken the shells of becoming,
Crossed limits of heavenly worlds
And, eating the Bodhi fruit
On the other side of the world
Where no voice can reach,
You have shed the desire for all fruits.
Still,
You are moved
When someone moans
Or someone groans
And return…
You, Bodhisattvas and Bhadantas,
As countless as grains of sand on the ocean shore,
Tell me
Where is the bridge
Between this shore
And the other beyond.1
However, there was nobody around who could initiate me into Mahayana Buddhist practice. There were some who understood the theory, but theory has no place in sadhana; after all, thought cannot give us the experience. The way we cannot learn music through books, we cannot do sadhana either. The master has to initiate the disciple by way of energy transmission. When such energy comes to us though familiar symbols, our mysterious unconscious feels familiar to us, thus making sadhana much easier.
Sadhana is basically meant to bring about radical changes in the depths of our unconscious mind. The conscious mind only recognizes thoughts and concepts whereas the unconscious understands only symbols. All the names and forms of gods and goddesses are nothing but symbols. Just as artists express feelings by giving them an external symbolic form, sadhakas use the names and forms of the Divine as a means to calm the mind. Those symbols that have been nurtured for ages in our collective unconscious have the strongest influence on us.
This insight put an end to my dependence on books as a means to achieve spiritual growth. I have since continued my practice using Shaiva and Shakta symbols, which are very familiar to me. I do not know whether such symbols work for people in a Western culture where ancient symbols are not used anymore.
According to me, the fundamental perceptions of the world in Theravada Buddhism are untenable. I don’t think this is the case with Tibetan or Japanese Buddhism though. These systems stress on an involvement with the world as the way to freedom, rather than withdrawal. My keenness to learn Tibetan Buddhist practices compelled me to reach out to Lama Anagarika Govinda, who had written extensively on Tibetan Buddhism. Unfortunately, I found that I could not resonate with the sacred sounds and symbols used here, which regarded vibrations as mere manifestations of dukkha and anitya (that which is miserable and impermanent).
Then, it occurred to me that just as Buddhists consider the Buddha figure as a means to sadhana, we can consider theistic gods for the same purpose. This thought set me along the paths of mantra yoga and kriya yoga, and I decided to learn yoga as a scientific healing practice.
It so happened that about three years after I detached from Theravada Buddhism, I had gone to the National Book Fair in Bangalore. Here I chanced to lay my hands on an English translation of Spandakarika.2 The first verse of this text captured my interest. I have rephrased it in my own words for you: I bow down to that Shankara, the opening and closing of whose eyelids leads to the appearance and disappearance of worlds.
In a way, this book confirmed the experiences I had during my vipassana practice. Spandakarika considers as ultimate reality the vibrations of consciousness characterized by the energies of will, knowledge and power. It further sets the process of vibrational experience as essential and blissful— the opposite of the Buddhist view.
Kashmir Shaivism corroborated with my personal experience of sadhana and I took to it. This is how my honeymoon with Buddhism came to an end. Though Kashmir Shaivism cannot be called theistic in the usual sense of the word, it is inclusive of theism. On the other hand, it does not negate atheism completely as it considers Shiva not a god but an experiential state of joy, freedom and creativity. Most important of all, unlike Buddhism or Vedanta, it celebrates beauty and the joy of the senses.
I now declared the Spanda school of Kashmir Shivaism to be my personal faith, and this remains.
Around this time, I also came to develop close links with the Bihar School of Yoga (BSY). Their method was based on the perception of the continuity of awareness, which is beyond the flux. Most techniques taught in the BSY, for example, antarmauna (inner silence) and kriya yoga, focus on the continuity of awareness with the simultaneous awareness of the flux. Visualization is a technique I found rather interesting. This technique is used to work with the emotions. For instance, it helps to transform negative emotions into positive ones.
FIVE
The Seed of the Mantra
My friend and the famous literary scholar K.V. Narayan first gave me information about the Bihar School of Yoga (BSY). Narayan, a hard-core rationalist, assured me that the approach of the BSY was completely scientific. I was curious and went to visit the BSY branch in Bangalore. The centre was being looked after an Australian monk called Swami Buddhananda, and I found this ridiculous. How could a foreigner teach us yoga? I could not imagine that I would soon forge a deep bond with him.
Swami Buddhananda was a very reserved person, and it was not easy to connect with him. However, once he became familiar with someone, he would get extremely close. He was also a well-known psychiatrist. His book Mulabandha reveals the depth of his knowledge about the human mind.
At this time in my life, I was oscillating between two extremes: complete self-restraint and total indulgence. Days of dispassion and self-abnegation alternated with periods of overindulgence in meat, alcohol and smoking. Actively involved in the theatre, I would go off with my theatre friends to a bar after the day’s rehearsal was over.
The BSY did not insist too hard on the dos and don’ts regarding food and drink. They said that one’s food habits should be appropriate to one’s lifestyle and spiritual practice. For instance, serious practitioners of pranayama should avoid smoking. I took this flexibility as a justification for my indulgences, and used yogic cleansing techniques to purge my body after bouts of heavy drinking.
My indulgence was not sexual because my marriage had completely broken down. I considered that life with a woman was a closed chapter for me, though I was aware of the dangers of sexual repression due to my considerable reading of Freud and Jung.
At some point, I was transferred to Smt. VHD Central Institute of Home Sciences in Bangalore. For the first time I had to work in an atmosphere where the majority of the staff and all the students were women. Since I had grown up in an atmosphere where there were hardly any women, I had a lurking fear of the opposite sex. My first days in this atmosphere dominated by women were rather traumatic. Fortunately, I got over my fear fairly quickly and started feeling at home here.
Confronting one’s fears is one of the greatest secrets of spiritual practice. Sooner or later, we have to encounter our fears, no matter how well we have hidden them, as fears distort the quality of our lives. Most people, whether spiritual or not, do everything possible to avoid their fears. People have all kinds of fears, for instance, the fear of death, of loneliness, of accidents, of sex and so on.
However, confronting fears is not an easy process. Further, there may be times during spiritual practice when it seems our fears have vanished, but this is only an illusion. The fear we think we have conquered may suddenly loom large later and perhaps in more frightening forms. This is because the circumference of our awareness goes on expanding at different stages of spiritual practice, and so we must revisit our fears at different levels.
Swami Buddhananda would encourage us to do all physical practices with mindfulness. He insisted that we should be aware of subtle changes in the body and the mind. Thanks to him, my health and state of mind improved a great deal in spite of my unfortunate family life in those days.
I was fascinated by his unique teaching style, and wanted to learn more from him. He taught me yogasanas and pranayama, and then went on to teach me spiritual techniques like trataka and yoga nidra. Yoga nidra was developed by Swami Satyananda Saraswati, the head of the BSY, and is based on tantric texts. It puts the body, breath and mind to sleep while keeping the awareness awake.
My trataka practice was also intense. Trataka involves gazing at a specific point or object continuously without blinking. Shiva yoga is a version where the sadhaka goes on gazing at a special type of Shivalinga that has a black and shiny surface, while chanting ‘Om namah Shivaya.’
One night, I had a dream where Swami Buddhananda was chanting the five-syllable mantra. A few days later, in another dream, I found myself chanting the same mantra. When I told him about these two dreams, he nodded and explained that mantra practice, even for a brief duration, is worth hours of asana practice. This is because mantras work at the subtle level of the being. He said that in my case, the mantra had clearly started working as it had penetrated my sleep and dream awareness. It simply needed confirmation by a mantra guru. Encouraged, I started chanting this mantra with vigour.
Then the news came that Swami Satyananda Saraswati was to visit Bangalore to inaugurate a three-day yoga workshop. He would also be giving mantra initiation during this time. I found myself looking forward to this workshop eagerly even though I still considered myself something of an atheist at the time. However, the day before I was to go to Bangalore, I fell ill. I had a high fever and was unable to walk. Though married, I was alone as usual, with no one around to help me. How could I go to Bangalore?
I had heard that such trials visit us whenever we are about to meet a great yogi. Brother Nandakumar, another holy man I met later, gave me an explanation. He said that according to the Bible, satanic powers can attack the person walking towards the Divine. While God has given the front of the body many shields, he has given nothing for the back; therefore, if the person turns around, there is absolutely no protection. If one uses this analogy, my sudden illness was a satanic attack meant to stop me from going ahead on my spiritual path.
Yet, despite my fever and exhaustion, I decided to go to Bangalore. The next day, by the time I reached the venue where the mantra initiation was taking place, my fever had vanished. I joined a long queue of seekers. When my turn came, Swami Buddhananda took me into the room and seated me on a mat facing Swami Satyananda Saraswati. He said to the guru, ‘This gentleman is a Shaivite by tradition. When he was a child, the five-syllable mantra was whispered in his ear.’
Hearing this, the guru called me closer and whispered a mantra in my left ear. I experienced a strange rush of energy when he did this. Then I recalled that this was the same mantra Shivakumar Swami had whispered in my left ear when I had been in my teens. For the next fifteen years, I had practised no other mantra. In fact, the mantra did not leave me even in my Buddhist days when I was doing sadhana that had no connection to the mantra at all. At night, the mantra work would go on in my dreams.
My mahaguru, Shivalinga Swami, reaffirmed this mantra as part of my sadhana years later. He also led me to higher stages of mantra practice by making me experience how all other mantras and seed syllables follow one’s own mantra like attendants once mantra power ripens.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, I had started chanting this mantra before my meeting with Swami Satyananda and it began penetrating the depths of my being, perhaps because of my past-life samskaras. After I received my initiation from Swami Satyananda, the mantra became closer to me than my breath.
Swami Satyananda’s personality was overpowering, but I was close to Swami Buddhananda and considered him my guru. Sitting in a crowded bus one evening, I closed my eyes and went into a meditation where I had a wondrous vision: Swami Buddhananda’s body had changed into Swami Satyananda’s. When I narrated this to Swami Buddhananda, he said, ‘What is strange about it? Guru and chela are one body. Through constant meditation on the guru, the disciple’s subtle body changes into the guru’s form.’
From Swami Buddhananda, I understood that kriya yoga was the highest form of sadhana and wanted desperately to learn it. Kriya yoga is an ancient practice whose beginnings are ascribed to Lord Shiva, the primal yogi. A closely guarded esoteric practice, it was passed on through the ages via oral transmission from guru to chela. It involves the combination of asanas, pranayama, mudras, bandha (the deliberate contraction of muscles in certain parts of the body to energize prana) and bhavana (visualization), and focuses on the movement of consciousness along a psychic channel from the base chakra to the crown chakra. Kriya yoga leads to intense purification by confronting the practitioner with the immediate physical manifestation of the material in the psyche.
I decided to go with some of my gurubhais to Munger, the headquarters of the BSY, where there was going to be a month-long course in kriya yoga. I was also very excited because Swami Buddhananda was going to accompany
us. My gurubhais had booked their tickets well in advance while I was late as ever, and unable to get reserved tickets from Bangalore to Munger.
I decided to go to Delhi and try my luck there. As it so happened, I had received a travel grant from the Karnataka Sahitya Academy to travel to Orissa and interact with local writers. So I planned to go to Orissa via Delhi and Bihar. I had influential friends in Delhi and was sure someone would manage a train reservation for me.
My friend D.V. Rajashekhar was the Prajavani reporter in Delhi. I decided to stay with him and try to get a reservation to Munger from there, but all my efforts failed. It seemed I was not destined to go. I felt great self-disgust and concluded that I was not yet ready for kriya yoga.
I was longing to see Swami Satyananda. With a heavy heart, I boarded the train to Orissa for my literary assignment. As my train sped down the east coast of India, the landscape outside my window became the backdrop of my desire for the guru. I recalled the mythological story of Gorakhnath, who travelled a long way to see his guru, Machhendranath. This story is narrated in different languages—particularly in Bengali and Assamese—in the form of epic poems, and appears in folk traditions as well. I identified with Gorakhnath and wrote one of my best-known Kannada poems, ‘Nadiya Naduglalli’, during this train journey.
Perhaps I was destined not to be close to my spiritual guru physically but was expected to see him everywhere. ‘Akhanda mandalakaram vyaptam yena characharam’ (He is of the nature of an unbroken mandala pervading the living and non-living). This is what is said in the ‘Gurumahima Stotram’ (Hymn to the Guru).
I finally got the opportunity to learn kriya yoga two years later from Swami Buddhananda and Swami Muktananda in Bangalore. We were given initiation on the first day and taught the first ten practices. I was elated as it was a dream come true. I returned to Bangalore the next evening. That night, I discovered how kriya yoga confronts one with both the positive and the negative potentials of mind.
Everyday Yogi Page 4