"If you should speak, your words must be like a string of pearls, your words must be like a ruby's glow, your words must be like a crystal needle. Your words must make the lord say, 'Yes, quite so.' If you do not live up to your words, how will Kudala Sangama be pleased?'
"What sort of religion can it be without compassion? Compassion must be shown to all living things. Compassion is the root of all religious faiths. Lord Kudala Sagama won't accept what is not like this."
"Wider than the world, the sky, wider still your size. Further down than the nether worlds, your Holy feet. Further above the cosmic shell, your holy crown. O, Linga, unfelt, unseen, unparallelled. O' Kudala Sangama Deva. O' Father so tiny when on my palm."
" Why try to correct the world's crookedness? Calm your own bodies first. Calm your own hearts first; Kudala Sangama Deva does not like those intruding on neighbours concerns."
Basavanna, Prime Minister to Emperor Bijala, 12th Century. (Found on a statue in Bangalore).
(II)
"Reality is ineffable." I met him on the streets of Mysore. " The truth is, we can never know how things really are." We walked some more more. The streets of Mysore are busy. I lost him in the crowd (or he lost me).
I travelled across the southern Maidan by bus. A Buddhist monk sat next to me and said "This is Sera Jhe, Buddhist Temple", before descending. I stayed on, climbed along rough roads indo the mountains and coffee plantations of Kodagu, "The Scotland of India", I was to find out. I walked upThadiyandamol, with Manu, Sudhee and Devia. They were young, in their twenties, Sudhee and Devia married, Manu their best friend. We didn't reach the top, sometimes that's better for the soul, to chose not to conquer (and we were in sandles).
There was a Tamil family also staying in our Homestay lodge. The daughters ' name was Shruti. Devia said " Her name means revelation, rhythm, that which can be heard." Traditionally The Veda was understood to be heard by inspired sages at the beginning of each cycle of creation. The phonemes that constitute them are eternal and ubiquitous. A mantra is the sonic form of a deity. It is the diety. The path of mantras is thus a path from the plurality of the phenomenal world back into the unity of God.
OM MANI PADME HUM
The Kodugu are a distinct tribal people, with their own language and culture. One legend has it that they were descended from the soldiers that refused to follow Alexander The Great (or destroyer) any further. They keep a room for their ancestors, with portraits of their pregenators and an oil lamp, which when lit means that only truth should be spoken in the room and any agreement reached then is as binding any formal legal contract.
Prakash the older, bachelor brother running the guest house came to my door just as I was preparing for bed. "Come, I show you something good of nature." We sit on the steps a little way from the lights of the house, laying back, we watch the lights of the heavens rising through the sky first stars ("Look behind them, you see more and more") then the moon, most way full. We listen to classical Hindi music on Prakashs' transister radio. "I never marry" he admits to me. Two ageing bachelors, we agree women can be hard work! ("...and expensive!") anyway enough children in the world ne?. In the dry season Prakesh spends this hour here everynight, smoking, unwinding from the day.
Later he says "if you are bored, you can go." When he repeats it, I presume he wants to be left alone with his stars. I say goodnight and go to bed.
The next day I leave Sudhee, Devia and Manu, they pack me onto a "private bus" with worried looks on there faces. I say "I'll end up somewhere, I always do!" I bump and wind across Karnataka, feet balanced on the spare wheel. I am going off guide book, to a place rumoured to be closed to foreigners (or at least requiring a police bribe). Sera Jhe, the monastery at the centre of the Tibetan refugee community. I get there and everything is fine. I book into the Monk run guest house, no problem. In my room, the peace of the place immediately strikes me. Not just the quiet, the Peace. I have stepped out of India. Up near the temples there are some old signs saying "foreigners should not enter." I wander through the village, Temples, balconied courtyards, monks, mostly monks, everywhere in their gorgeous gold and maroon robes. And reserved, some shy hellos, quiet glances. I am out of India. Wandering the by ways I bump into Karmaratna. He's a cool nineteen year old, a global citizen from Bhuttan. Two of his brothers are monks here. " I slapped a Scottish prince on the head once, when we inaugurated our new king in Bhuttan. I didn't know he was a prince, they told me afterwards. I slapped him on his bald head." William? Edward? I wonder. " You should go round the temples clockwise." "Go and see the monks debating, Tibetan Style, outside the monestary at sunset." I pick up tidbits of knowledge, about this very different world, to all intents closed to me, viewed from the outside.
I take my leave and wonder across the harvested corn fields to the Golden Temple. There are lots of Old School wee Massey Fergusson tractors here. I think about Mayer and our shared enthusiasm for the Wee Red Massey.
The Golden Temple is hugely ornate containing massive golden sculptures of the different incarnations of the Buddha. In another smaller temple young monks eleven or twelve years old are reciting the sutras, each completed sutra rounded off with bells and horns and drums. karmaratna later explains that the young monks get a sutra to learn every day, and if they don't learn it they get beaten, very old school.
I don't really get these graven images of The Buddha, they don't move me at all. I am moved by the quite order as the monks go about their lives, sitting in small groups talking, reciting their mantras at sunset. They have mobile phones in their robes and internet cafes, but no TV blaring.
The way of meditation is interesting, I have both researched and practiced it in the past. As I understand it it is about reaching in to a precognitive consciousness by stilling both mind and body. If we see a chair for example we perceive it and instantly conceive it; we call it "chair"., this is conception, this naming process. Meditation, and I'm not a master, is about staying in that blissfull place of just perceiving, perceiving, perceiving...
On the bus back to Mysore I repeat my mantras
Prakash the older, bachelor brother running the guest house came to my door just as I was preparing for bed. "Come, I show you something good of nature." We sit on the steps a little way from the lights of the house, laying back, we watch the lights of the heavens rising through the sky first stars ("Look behind them, you see more and more") then the moon, most way full. We listen to classical Hindi music on Prakashs' transister radio. "I never marry" he admits to me. Two ageing bachelors, we agree women can be hard work! ("...and expensive!") anyway enough children in the world ne?. In the dry season Prakesh spends this hour here everynight, smoking, unwinding from the day.
Later he says "if you are bored, you can go." When he repeats it, I presume he wants to be left alone with his stars. I say goodnight and go to bed.
The next day I leave Sudhee, Devia and Manu, they pack me onto a "private bus" with worried looks on there faces. I say "I'll end up somewhere, I always do!" I bump and wind across Karnataka, feet balanced on the spare wheel. I am going off guide book, to a place rumoured to be closed to foreigners (or at least requiring a police bribe). Sera Jhe, the monastery at the centre of the Tibetan refugee community. I get there and everything is fine. I book into the Monk run guest house, no problem. In my room, the peace of the place immediately strikes me. Not just the quiet, the Peace. I have stepped out of India. Up near the temples there are some old signs saying "foreigners should not enter." I wander through the village, Temples, balconied courtyards, monks, mostly monks, everywhere in their gorgeous gold and maroon robes. And reserved, some shy hellos, quiet glances. I am out of India. Wandering the by ways I bump into Karmaratna. He's a cool nineteen year old, a global citizen from Bhuttan. Two of his brothers are monks here. " I slapped a Scottish prince on the head once, when we inaugurated our new king in Bhuttan. I didn't know he was a prince, they told me afterwards. I slapped him on his bald head." William? Edward? I wonder. " You should go round the temples clockwise." "Go and see the monks debating, Tibetan Style, outside the monestary at sunset." I pick up tidbits of knowledge, about this very different world, to all intents closed to me, viewed from the outside.
I take my leave and wonder across the harvested corn fields to the Golden Temple. There are lots of Old School wee Massey Fergusson tractors here. I think about Mayer and our shared enthusiasm for the Wee Red Massey.
The Golden Temple is hugely ornate containing massive golden sculptures of the different incarnations of the Buddha. In another smaller temple young monks eleven or twelve years old are reciting the sutras, each completed sutra rounded off with bells and horns and drums. karmaratna later explains that the young monks get a sutra to learn every day, and if they don't learn it they get beaten, very old school.
I don't really get these graven images of The Buddha, they don't move me at all. I am moved by the quite order as the monks go about their lives, sitting in small groups talking, reciting their mantras at sunset. They have mobile phones in their robes and internet cafes, but no TV blaring.
The way of meditation is interesting, I have both researched and practiced it in the past. As I understand it it is about reaching in to a precognitive consciousness by stilling both mind and body. If we see a chair for example we perceive it and instantly conceive it; we call it "chair"., this is conception, this naming process. Meditation, and I'm not a master, is about staying in that blissfull place of just perceiving, perceiving, perceiving...
On the bus back to Mysore I repeat my mantras
OM MANI PADME HUM
NAM YO HO RINGE KYO
NAM YO HO RINGE KYO
One day I'll find out what they mean, or then again maybe not...
"
See they have come and gathered together in the courtyard
They've taken the grazing cattle to the pasture, and now they're free
The breeze swings in the limbs of the thin bamboo, in the spaces between the narrow leaves.
In the darkness
The evening star has blossomed out.
The boys and girls of the home
Are sitting about in groups,
In the midst of this you have taken your seat,
They call on you repeatedly, as on a familiar person
They call out your name
When evening fails
None of these are honoured by honoured people
The doors of the kings home
are closed to them
In the dust
They spread out the edges of their threadbare clothes
for you and dance enthusiastically
Their bodies are soiled
But they hold your feet in hope
The night birds have started calling
On the riverside
The outline of the waining moon
Lies over the forest
Fire flies glow in the trees
There's no one on the village path
In the empty field
jackels call aloud in the darkness
How often the sun blazes and dies out
in the whole Universe
In the Kings palace
O how power and majesty wax and wain
In the midst of all this
during the darkness of night
in the courtyards of the village houses
Your name rises up from the voices
of the poor
Filling the sky.
"
Tagore - Garland of Songs 13
"
See they have come and gathered together in the courtyard
They've taken the grazing cattle to the pasture, and now they're free
The breeze swings in the limbs of the thin bamboo, in the spaces between the narrow leaves.
In the darkness
The evening star has blossomed out.
The boys and girls of the home
Are sitting about in groups,
In the midst of this you have taken your seat,
They call on you repeatedly, as on a familiar person
They call out your name
When evening fails
None of these are honoured by honoured people
The doors of the kings home
are closed to them
In the dust
They spread out the edges of their threadbare clothes
for you and dance enthusiastically
Their bodies are soiled
But they hold your feet in hope
The night birds have started calling
On the riverside
The outline of the waining moon
Lies over the forest
Fire flies glow in the trees
There's no one on the village path
In the empty field
jackels call aloud in the darkness
How often the sun blazes and dies out
in the whole Universe
In the Kings palace
O how power and majesty wax and wain
In the midst of all this
during the darkness of night
in the courtyards of the village houses
Your name rises up from the voices
of the poor
Filling the sky.
"
Tagore - Garland of Songs 13
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