THE MYSTIC: PART I - THE SEEKER (Part 1 - THE SEEKER)

by Arindam Bhattacharjee

  Acharya breaks for few seconds to continue,

  “Well these are also words. The Christians call this as Suchness, the Chinese call this Tao, The Buddhist calls this as Tha Tha Tha. But all these things are not very important. The whole question is who are you? You may be an engineer or a businessman, but have you ever tried to look into your mind and see what are you? Have you ever seen yourself?” Raghav gave the puzzled looks.

  “But you need to understand something which me do as part of practice. Nagarjuna said there are three bodies and not one which becomes part of your identity. They say it is nirmankaya, sambhogkaya and dharmakaya.”

  “The blood, flesh, marrow, bones and muscles form the nirmankaya. What you are seeing is my nirmankaya; it is the way one is formed. Then you have sambhogkaya; the one which experiences is your brain and your entire nervous system and millions of neurons. This is what we perceive and experience through the five gates or your five senses. The dharmakaya is the astral body. Have you ever felt that there is something in you apart from your brain and your body?”

  Acharya looks at the shishays who were aware of this philosphy and were smiling.

  “Do you know that in our hatha yoga practice we destroy our three bodies which are our identities to go to the state of meditation. This is why we do such hectic performances of martial arts to destroy our physical body. To destroy our psychological and astral bodies we have our philosophies and our siddhas.”

  “All this to achieve sudden awakening and invoke the internal shakthis. These philosophies were followed by Tantrayana, Mantraya and Vajrayana schools of Nalanda University which you see in our actions.”

  Acharya asked Raghav,

  “Do you understand what I am saying.” “I guess you are saying something about the Tibetan cultures where the monks are supposed to fly.”

  “Well this is what we practice every day. Buddha actually gave the idea of Vipassana which actually meant being one with the nature which is what we practice and preach everyday.” Acharya smiled...

  “Now let me talk about the inner mind. If you want that this should surface - the external mind has to collapse. You know what happens in these mountains is that the external mind collapses. So if you climb these mountains your entire body gets demolished and you want to sub-consciously participate in the practice of meditation. It’s a spiritual experience in itself.”

  “When you will move through these mountains for 20 kilometers or climb 25000ft and then sit on a rock you will realize that you will automatically turn inwards. Your outside self is demolished and you will start crying. You will be in this stage where you don't want to get disturbed. You will be in one with yourself.”

  “But at the same time you can indulge in liquor and eat nonsensical things; you can pamper your senses to the extent that you will become a rogue. But if you know that you will die in the next few days, you will spend the rest of the time in meditation. You will be smiling at everyone but now you don't do that.”

  “The reason is that you think that everything is permanent. The time you have in the world is so small compared to the time scale of the universe but still one is arrogant. So the monks have devised a method on how to turn inward. The place where you are is called Tapovan where monks have been practicing meditation for uncountable years.”

  Listening to Acharya has already put Raghav in a meditative stage as he is completely understanding what he is being told and at the same time he was aware of the beauty of Tapovan and activity around him.

  “People who became famous in the 2600 years of history are those people who worked with the mind and not the brain - be it Einstein, Fermi, Bell or Buddha or Nagarjuna. You cannot become like them. In the entire human history you just have these few leaders whom the world follows even now and do you understand why.”

  Raghav nods while the shishyas are still in awe witnessing how Acharya is speaking into Raghav’s conscious.

  Acharya continued “The essential point is how you perceive the dimension of time and space; these things are not taught or even thought about in modern education centers. The education system has become fragmented in India today.”

  “An engineer may know about electrons and nano-particles but he does not know about history of Buddha. Science is dealing with the world in a fragmented way but the truth comes when you deal with the totality of things – think of it as one but if you start treating it as separate instances then you cannot reach the truth.”

  “So to be one with the body is important and meditation is one of the ways. But as Bodhidharma says, the more you speak or write about it the more it will try to go away. The truth will start to move away from you. As I had explained before, people these days offer meditation course covering six days and for this they even give out certificates!”

  “Have you then become enlightened?. It took 44 years for Ananda, the cousin and disciple of Buddha to become enlightened even after he had lived with Buddha day in and day out. So these monks have devised the concept of meditation after years of practice. Earlier you had Ashtang Yoga and with Buddhism came Hatha Yoga and with this martial arts have also started coming.” Raghav nodded in compliance

  “Now let’s go back to everything being relative. Even Time is relative. If you go to event horizon you will never die. And on this concept of relativity monks have played upon. Otherwise how could it have been possible for Bodhidharma- going to China at the age of 141 years and causing a stir by teaching them Kungfu? Can you even with the most scientific advances make a man of 70 years do that? Even kings were scared to look into the eyes of such yogis – such was their inner power. Today in this ever competitive world stealing an hour is something great but to these people Time is timeless. They spent so much time with themselves. But you don't have to become like them. You can strike the middle path.”

  “They say that the Almighty is omnipresent. If they say that then it is inside you. If he is not in you then he is not anywhere else. Your bodies are temples. Nothing is greater than your own life and life is the greatest gift of God and that is why they say turn inward and not outwards. But all religions ask you to go on pilgrimages to find God but they don't tell you that it within you.”

  “Earlier scientific theories talked about one centered universe theory where you talk about big-bang but now the world has accepted the multi centered universe theory where you become part of the wave in the universe. The wave rises and then goes down and meets the ocean again. You are part of this wave. You switch off all your five senses and then only can you can turn to your sixth sense which we are indulging in.”

  After listening to all this, Raghav is in the state of bliss as he understood his mistakes of the past.

  “I can only show you the path but the experience is exclusively yours. As per this theory the intellectuals are the most dangerous things in the world because they define and structure things. They put you in an aquarium but will never place you in the ocean. They will put conditions on you.”

  “So earlier in Ashtang Yoga you had yama, niyama, asanas, pranayama, pratihara, dharnas, dhyana and samadhi but when Buddhists brought the Hatha Yoga they removed the yama niyama from ashtanga yoga and built up Hatha Yoga. So in this philosophy there is nothing like abstinence and there is nothing like good or bad because that is also relative. In man-made structures people have made these rules. In Hatha Yoga they felt that controlling oneself is a bad thing because it grows like a devil inside you and then it starts controlling you.”

  “Here they don't propose to abstain from drinking or woman. Actually they had proposed methods in which they annihilate the desire to have it. By the act of Tsumo I performed in the glacier I mentally engaged in increasing my body temperatures by involving in sex in the mind. But I cannot explain to you this anymore. But I have my own happiness because happiness is relative.”

  Now Raghav has a permanent smile in his face while the shishyas looked expressionless.

  “Taking this they started watching the animals. The
y say in evolution humans are the greatest but still we cannot run as fast as panthers. We even lack the abilities of what a grasshopper and an ant have. In Hatha Yoga the monks started experimenting with animals.”

  “So for fleeting or anti-gravitational methods they looked at the crane, for a robust strength they looked at the bear, for agility they looked at the dragon, for a flexibility they looked at the snake, and for explosive strength they looked at the tiger. They turned their bodies into laboratories and experimented on themselves.”

  “As a result of this your brain works in the beta cycles but my brain works in theta cycles – much slower than how your brain works and this I gain from the mountains. You can also go to beta or delta in mind where there is no movement. In this stage my mind kills even the brain and you remain in a suspended state. In this state you neither die nor grow old.” Raghav stays smiling.

  “This is why there are so many temples on the mountain tops. They want your entire nirmana kaya to crumble so that you can go into meditation. But nowadays the entire purpose is defeated. In Dharmapada Buddha has said that the one who defeats himself is the strongest….. Also knowing others is knowledgeable but knowing self is the strongest. So martial arts were devised to defeat the self. To add to this Buddha and Bodhidharma have said – ‘don’t read the religious books because they hijack you.’”

  “And two books have survived from those times that brings back the understanding. One is the Manjushree Mulkalpa that belonged to the third century AD and the second treatise belonged to the first century BC - the Milind Pranhar. All other manuscripts have been burnt down and destroyed.”

  Suddenly the smile went off Raghav’s face.

  Acharya continued, “As I said before Bhaktiar Khilji came to the Nalanda University in the 11th Century AD and burnt the thirteen storied library; it burnt for weeks. So we don't have anything left in India and we borrow from either Tibet or China.”

  Acharya asked Raghav,

  “Now do you understand what is the mind or do you not.-?”

  Raghav felt humbled after what he had heard and said,

  “It would be wrong if I say I know.”

  Acharya replied,

  “Let me tell you a story about mind written in Milind Pranhar. There is a dialogue recorded between Western Kshatrapa king Mirander and a monk named Nagasena. Mirander who was of Greek descent was called Zorbas in the East. The Greeks worshipped the body but he noted that Indians were proud about their knowledge of metaphysics and epistemology. So he asked Nagasena to come and explain the mind to him.”

  “For three days Nagasena refused to come. Later the king asked his general to catch him and bring it to him. As ordered the general brought Nagasena to King Miander. King Miander ordered Nagesana to explain to him about mind. In response Nagasena showed him his chariot and asked to remove the horses….. He then wanted to know where the chariot was. Miander pointed to the cart and said that this was the chariot.”

  “Nagasena now asked Miander to remove its canopy and asked Miander again to show the chariot;he pointed to the carriage. Nagasena now asked the king to remove the wheels and completely dismantle the chariot and ask the same question….. Miander started to scratch his head. He told Nagasena to stop playing games and explain to him what mind is…. In response, Nagasena lighted a lamp and said if you could keep this lamp glowing till tomorrow I will explain to you what the mind is. Miander placed a guard to keep the lamp glowing till the following day. Next day when Nagasena returned he said ‘This is not the lamp I had lit.’”

  Acharya looked at Raghav and said, “Does this explain what the mind is?”

  Raghav replied “I think I get the idea.”

  “The art of Bodhidharma combines the body-culture followed by the Greeks or Westerners with the culture of Buddha to come up with the concept of Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body.”

  Acharya continued,

  “Now since you get the idea I will provide you with the concept of Yin and Yang that comes from the theory of non-dualism and the idea of relativity that I explained. Let me tell you the science behind this thought. This was the idea proposed by two brothers from Kashmir about the most basic form of matter.”

  Acharya looked at Raghav and asked,

  “If I ask you if the atom can be broken, what would be your answer?”

  Raghav replied

  “Well it breaks into protons, neutrons and electrons.”

  “So can the protons or neutrons be broken into smaller particles?”

  “I think so – maybe some subatomic particles like positrons, neutrinos bosons etc.”

  Acharya asked, “And can they be broken further?”

  Raghav replied, “Probably into smaller sub atomic particles.”

  “Then what will be the most basic form of matter? Is it something or does everything come from zero?”

  “I can't say.”

  Acharya smiled,

  “Well linear religions don't believe that atoms can be broken and so is the case with their religious texts. They will never be able to go against what is written in these books. On the other hand an extreme nonlinear religion which believes that everything is zero will never stand on any point. For them everything is Maya enveloping you.”

  “But these brothers from Kashmir came up with the concept that it is neither one nor zero. It is somewhere in between and is relative to the individual. They brought in the concept of the relationship of the object to the subject. They said, if the object is real than the subject is real. If the object is not real then the subject will also not be real. Do you understand this?”

  “Not completely.”

  “You see me standing naked in the cold because for me the object cold does not exist and so I don't feel the cold. But if you do so you will die of hypothermia. This is where you train your mind to go to those realms and this is where things are relative.”

  “Buddha had said that whatever he preached was not eternal; what I have told you follows this thread. It’s up to you to find your way. But before you start your journey I also need to explain something about the end if you ever make it.”

  The Acharya pointed to Raghav a peak towards the south of Tapovan which was not clearly visible.

  “Do you know what the name of the peak is?” Raghav shook his head.

  The Acharya continued,

  “This peak is called Rudrageda. The name has a major significance. Rudra is the name of the Shiva but it also has another meaning which is what we practice with - we practice with the anger and the highest stage in hatha Yoga is Shankar. But Rudra is also the last breath that leaves your body when you die. Now for most people in the world it leaves from the rear; for intellectuals it leaves from the eyes, but if you come to the stage where your mind has been trained to close all the exit points, this Rudra comes out from the top of the head piercing your skull where supposedly your third eye lies. If you are able to do so, you get out of the cycle of life and death. This is called Kapala Moksha and after this you become one with the universe.”

  Acharya asked Raghav, “Do you want to do this.” “ I guess not.”

  Acharya continued,

  “Buddha understood that life is nothing but suffering and with each rebirth your suffering worsens. Through this process you become tranquil with the universe with nothing to disturb you – you get out of the cycle of suffering. Till then you will have to endure the cycles of life and death. But also remember to follow the Madhyam Marg or the Middle Path in your life because again that truth might also be relative.”

  Anyways let’s take you to the Gaumukh today. It’s time for you to take a bath at the mouth of the Ganga. This will mark your initiation into the path that you need to travel on your own.

  8.7: The Journey through the Mountains

  Raghav stayed in Tapovan learning from Acharya for another four months till the western disturbance hit the Himalayas in late November. By this time Raghav had got used to the practice of Hatha Yoga, performing it every day with Acha
rya and learning different techniques of meditation. His body seemed to have recovered and regained strength; daily performance of Hatha Yoga had strengthened his bones and muscles.

  Acharya also gave him new mantras to practice to reach the higher stages of meditation. Raghav read more about the literature on Hatha Yoga He was part of ashramite group that climbed the twin peaks of Rudgeda and Kedar dome. For the first time in his life Raghav was with himself. He was not answerable to anyone like investors or auditors but listened to only his mind. Before the snowstorm was about to hit the mountains, Acharya asked Raghav to move down from Gangotri to Dehradun.

  Meanwhile Acharya had got him a job - installing solar panels near the Tehri Dam; it was a Government of India project. Acharya said that this would help him earn some money for living during the period when most of the Himalayas was closed to outsiders. Before departing the Acharya told him,