Spiritual-Teaching.org
Letter #1 - Confidence in Arunachala
“When we enter on the spiritual path we come with substantial baggage.
Our deep-rooted fears, our unreasonable expectations, our blindness, and our
folly. We think we are nearly there and that only a few advanced teachings
remain between us and the holy grail of realisation when all bow down to
our superior knowledge. As we discover to our grief it is not like that at all.
Quite the contrary, we are in a muddle and do not know north from south."
We all seek certitude. From the moment we are born, we seek comfort and the
confidence that that which gives us nourishment and security will always be
available. Ideally, we first seek it with our mother’s loving breast. We seek it in the
strength of our father’s arms, he who lifts us up and carries us. We seek it in the
comfort of a warm cot from where we begin to dream our lives ahead and try to
make sense of what we just experienced in an ever-changing and puzzling world.
We are always on the search for that which is utterly reliable and unshakable.
We could say that our life is a series of lessons; we learn the hard way about
disappointment, betrayal, regret, and sorrow. These are interspersed with These are
interspersed with moments of quite often unexpected pure joy, contentment and love.
When I was a boy, I looked first to my father and later to heroes in history who
could offer me lessons and guidance on how to conduct my life. It started with
Hanibal who dared to invade the mighty Roman empire at its very heart. His
courage in crossing the Alps with elephants, and his resilience in the face of
constant adversity inspired me but his ultimate defeat and his taking poison to
avoid capture showed me he had feet of clay. Next was Napoleon but that quickly
faded when I saw a sketch of him being hit on the foot by a cannonball. He was
not invincible as I had imagined, hopping around on one foot. For years after that,
I sought another hero but could not find one that satisfied my increasingly wide
knowledge and discrimination about the world. My mind became clouded and
progressively distressed.
In despair, I look elsewhere by traveling to other countries partly to escape
and partly in a desperate effort to locate someone or surely something that would
salve my heart. An encounter finally arose at Surakata or Solo in Java, at the
house of a cultured Javanese man, Pak. Suyono. He has a small library for
spiritual seekers who had clustered at Solo to practice Sumarah, a Javanese form
of meditation and not to be confused with Subud. In his library was a booklet,
Ramana Arunachala by Arthur Osborne. On the cover was a photograph of an old
man naked except for a loincloth sitting on a rock in front of a hill. He smiled
benignly as he confidently held an upright walking stick in one outstretched hand.
I did not think much of him. In my arrogance, I thought he had everyone fooled.
My disdain had no limits. Little did I realise that he was the one who would
eventually save me from myself.
It was a year later that I first looked upon Arunachala and sought sanctuary in
the ashram of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. The intermission between that
first meeting in Solo and my physical arrival saw many of my passing fancies and
delusions crushed. Not least of which was that peculiar sense of superiority young
males exude of being gifted for any task. In other words, an idiot. All that kept me
going was the indubitable conviction through a vision that occurred some months
after that first ill-starred meeting in the private library that I was on the right path.
The arrival at Arunachala was not the culmination of a search but the foundation.
And the first beginning was the recognition that I knew nothing. A terrible ordeal
followed in which a remorseless force created one humiliation after another until I
said sincerely in despair, “I don’t know.”
When we enter on the spiritual path we come with substantial baggage. Our
deep-rooted fears, our unreasonable expectations, our blindness, and our folly.
We think we are nearly there and that only a few advanced teachings remain
between us and the holy grail of realisation when all bow down to our superior
knowledge. As we discover to our grief it is not like that at all. Quite the contrary,
we are in a muddle and do not know north from south. All our previously acquired
knowledge is much like a song we cobbled together, only we cannot remember
the words in the right order. We know some ‘good’ bits that we can sing loudest
with conviction but how we got to that fragment by a series of mumbles and vague
out-of-tune stilted sounds is beyond our comprehension. It is a jumble of rubbish
and wise words and we do not appropriately know how to apportion the words in
the right order. It is all rather unsatisfactory and depressing.
To go forward we must dissolve the second-hand song and start again. We start
with the very staples of any successful spiritual search. Do not lie, do not steal, do not
slander, do not take advantage of others, do not hurt others… all our
elementary spiritual training is learning what not to do. It is a negative process that
can be boring and seemingly fruitless but it is necessary. This stubborn grey
landscape we travel through does contain those odd serendipitous moments when
the sun shines and gives us hope before once more the curtain is drawn and we
are stuck with our small-minded behaviour.
Though everyone’s journey is unique there are certain stations on the way
which are collective. Whether one is a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, or Buddhist,
there are universal principles applicable to all humankind on the spiritual search.
The language may be different, the clothes may be different, the education may be
different but if we scrutinize it carefully, the fundamental principles are one and the
same. The various signposts given by the great religions may be in a foreign script
and the terrain unfamiliar but all paths lead to the one summit. There are those
who argue that is not necessarily true but we will save that for another essay.
When I arrived at Tiruvannamalai I did not know of the greatness of Arunachala.
It looked like a large pile of barren rocks. It was said to be the earthly
manifestation of Lord Siva. Mount Kailash may be where Lord Siva resides but
Arunachala is the supreme manifestation of this universal spirit.
As time went by the significance and power of Arunachala became more
readily recognisable. And it was only when I started to let go of my numerous
preconceptions and let’s face it, plain ignorance, that a new confidence arose that
all would be well.
And this proved to be true.
