A Joyful Christmas

Persian paintings of Mary and Jesus.

Kuan Yin

Digital montage by Graham Brown.
Like the Indian goddess Shri Jagadamba, Kuan Yin was said to have ridden a tiger.

Shri Nimbarka

Shri Nimbarka is a philosopher saint from the 13th or 14th century AD, who is believed to be an incarnation of the Sudarshana Chakra (discus) of Lord Vishnu. He was born in the region of India now known as Andhra Pradesh, and taught the philosophy of Dvaitadvaita - duality and non-duality at the same time.

To illustrate this principle he used the analogy of a snake in a coiled state. The coil is different to the snake yet it consists of the snake. The myriad forms that we see in the world are different to the Self/Brahman and yet they consist of the Self. So in one sense, world and Self are different, but in another sense they are one and the same.

The god Brahma, disguised as a renunciant, once visited Shri Nimbarka. When they had finished discussing philosophy, the renunciant got up to take leave but Nimbarka told him that he should stay and accept a meal. Lord Brahma replied that the sun had already set, and it was against the rules of ascetics for a renunciant to eat after sunset. Nimbarka did not want to break the rules of hospitality, neither did he want his guest to break the rules of asceticism, so he placed some of his radiance in a neem tree where it shone as brightly as the sun, making a day of night. Lord Brahma was pleased with the saint, and gave him the name Nimbarka, meaning sun in the neem tree.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves - in Man... For no man seeks to hear his own echo, or to find his reflection in the glass.”
 

“I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.” 


“I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.”

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.”

“But the conceited man did not hear him. Conceited people never hear anything but praise.”

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”

“He who must travel happily must travel light.”

“The important thing is to strive toward a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.” 

“We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.”

“Fais de ta vie un rêve, et d'un rêve, une réalité.” 
(make of your life a dream, and of a dream, a reality)


“The arms of love encompass you with your present, your past, your future, the arms of love gather you together.”

“Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than itself.”

“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...”

“Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.”

“For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have; and if you go to draw at the fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.”

“Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.”

“if you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to collect wood and dont assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

“In giving you are throwing a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.”

“Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself”

Flora

Digital Painting by Graham Brown

The World is a Bridge

Islam and Christianity are not as far apart as is generally believed. Indeed, a bridge was once made between the two faiths. 

The Muslim Emperor Akbar the Great had the following saying of Jesus inscribed prominently on the entry gate to the Mosque adjacent to his palace and administrative capital, at Fatehpur Sikri: 

"Jesus, Son of Mary (on whom be peace) said: The World is a Bridge, pass over it, but build no houses upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity; but the World endures but an hour. Spend it in prayer, for the rest is unseen." 

Visiting Fatehpur Sikri as a young backpacker, the English writer, William Dalrymple, was surprised to discover this inscription on a muslim monument, and later to find out that it is one of several sayings that Islam has retained but which western Christianity has lost.

These sayings of Jesus circulated around the Muslim world from Spain to China, and many are still familiar to educated Muslims today. They fill out and augment the profoundly reverential picture of Christ painted in the Koran where Jesus is called the Messiah, the Messenger, the Prophet, Word and Spirit of God, though – in common with some currents of heterodox Christian thought of the period – his outright divinity is questioned. 

There are also frequent mentions of his mother Mary who appears in no fewer than 13 surahs (chapters) and who is said to be exalted "above the women of the two [celestial and temporal] worlds" and, like Jesus, a "model" for Muslims. Mary is in fact the only woman mentioned by her proper name in the entire Koran, and appears more often in the Koran (34 times) than she does in the Gospels, where she is mentioned only 19 times.

-  William Dalrymple

Mughal Nativity Scene, National Museum, Delhi

Akbar the Great laid the foundations for the non-denominational religious neutrality of the modern, secular Indian state.

Read the full article

Sophia

Vladimir Solovyov (sometimes written in English as Soloviev) (1853-1900), was a Russian philosopher, poet and mystic. He is considered by many Western academics to be Russia's greatest philosopher. 
Solovyov had three encounters with Sophia, the Divine Feminine. 

The first encounter occurred in childhood. The second time he was in London, studying at the British Museum, and he saw her under the gold and azure dome of the Reading Room. He saw only her face, but he pleaded with her to see her full form. 

"She asked him to meet her again in Egypt. He went to Egypt and Sophia once again appeared to him in the desert at dawn. This time she revealed herself to him fully, completely transforming him. She also showed him a vision of the Earth transfigured, all of nature, all things, unified within her form as the Divine Feminine. After his return to Russia, Solovyov briefly taught philosophy at Moscow University, but soon left because he disliked university politics. He then moved to St. Petersberg where he wrote and taught. Solovyov taught an engaged Christianity of service and activism, in which the binding power of Sophia - the Mother/Wisdom/Love nature of God - could heal the world. For Solovyov art could be a modern form of prophecy to bring greater awareness of this mystical unity to humanity. Among his many works of poetry, his masterpiece is Tri Svidaniya or "Three Meetings" describing his three mystical encounters with Sophia. In his poetry, his encounters with Sophia are permeated with radiant azure and violet.

Solovyov was a good friend of the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky."

- Source Poetry Chaikhana

What is, what was, what shall forever be -
All, all was held here in one steady gaze...
The seas and rivers blue beneath me,
Distant woods, snow-capped peaks.

I saw all, and all was one --
A single image of womanly beauty...
Pregnant with vastnesses!
Before me, in me -- only You.

-Vladimir Solovyev, Three Meetings, 1875

How to Make an Origami Lotus

This could be fun for the kids to try on a wet day. YouTube is full of these wonderful instructional videos these days. So much easier than trying to follow diagrams in a book.

It's in Portuguese, but there are English subtitles. I probably could have found an English video of something similar, but I love the sound of Portuguese. Their word for red sounds like English vermillion.
Strictly speaking, there are no red lotuses, as far as I know; only pink or white. Waterlilies come in many other colours, however. The blue lotus, is actually a type of waterlily. 

Miniature Painting

Graham Brown, Angel Reading, Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm, 2011.

Emptiness and Joy

"To enjoy Sahaja Yoga, in Niranand (absolutely without anything else but joy) then one has to know that he should give up all the myths with which he is living. All kinds of myths there are. Some people have myths: “We are very poor”. Some have myths: “We are very rich”. Some have this thing that “We are very unhappy”. Some have that “We are very happy”. All kinds of myths these are. These are all myths. What is the thing is the complete emptiness; complete emptiness. That is joy. This emptiness is filled with joy. Complete emptiness. Then you don’t expect anything from anyone. And this emptiness from within, it actually gives chance to compassion and love to enter into you. Supposing there is something in a pot already, what can you pour into it? What can you give into it? So if you are completely empty within, there’s nothing of this nonsense of the past and the future: the aspirations, the ambitions, all those things, and falsehood. If you just become empty, it is filled in with nothing but joy, and joy of such a eternal nature. You never asked for it; you do not look forward to it. It is there, all the time. And this is what I wish today you people can feel it: the quality is of compassion and love, fearlessness and courage and the complete emptiness. In this emptiness, then, you are not worried about what you have to achieve."

- Shri Mataji's Navaratri talk 1994

Ganges

Here are some stills from the beautifully shot BBC documentary series Ganges.
The last image is a photo of a Hindu personification of the river, the goddess Shri Ganga.

I once visited the Ganges at Haridwar. I recall the water seemed to be carrying flecks of mica, which gave it a magical glitter. Splashing some of the water on my head, and soaking my feet,  I found that a cold and various aches and pains I'd been nursing for several days, simply vanished instantaneously. Perhaps is was psychological, but the effect was unexpectedly dramatic. The water was too cold and the current too fast to risk a full emersion, though I did do this on a subsequent trip to the confluence of the Ganges and Jumuna rivers, at Allahabad, where the water is much warmer.

The Self is like the Ganga, which has its source in majestic peaks, originating from the purity of snow, and ultimately merges with the ocean of the universal.
A river has many 'selves' - sources, tributaries, rapids, wide slow meanders, deltas, mouths - yet all these aspects are inseparable from the Self of the entire river. The identity of a river is not altered by its currents and waves.
In Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, the protagonist learns from a river that time is an illusion. From the perspective of an object floating down the river, it seems as if passing things are lost irretrievably; but from the perspective of the river itself, nothing is ever lost. All the past and future are contained within the present moment. This is why meditation is such a powerful thing. Though it seems like it contains nothing, it contains all that ever was and will be. 

Annihilation of ego

"Fanaa (فناء) is the Sufi term for extinction. It means to annihilate the self, while remaining physically alive. Persons having entered this state are said to have no existence outside of, and be in complete unity with, Allah.

Fanaa is similar to the concepts of nirvana in Buddhism and Hinduism or moksha in Hinduism, which also aim for annihilation of the self. Fanaa may be attained by constant meditation and by contemplation on the attributes of God, coupled with the denunciation of human attributes."

-Wikipedia

The 'self' to be annihilated refers to the ego, while 'Allah' is the Self of the universe.
The term Jihad originally referred to the struggle against one's own inner enemies: the false desires and aversions, and ego that drag us away from the Self. Like so many things in religion, a spiritual, internal concept has been debased into a physical, external one, and has come to be interpreted as war against others instead of the ego-self.

"In western societies the term jihad is often translated by non-muslims as "holy war". Scholars of Islamic studies often stress that these words are not synonymous. Muslim authors, in particular, tend to reject such an approach, stressing non-militant connotations of the word."
-Wikipedia

The Goddess fighting demons (symbolising inner enemies such as lust, greed and the ego), Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The Goddess in Shelley

Alastor: or, The Spirit of Solitude

Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries.
-Shelley

Foot-soaking

Mughal miniature painting of a princess cooling her feet in a pool of water.

Meditation is the best way of connecting with the Universal Self, beyond thought. Often, especially with busy modern lifestyles, the subtle energies in the body are not in balance, which disturbs the attention and makes it difficult to go into a state of thoughtless awareness. One method to balance the energies of the subtle body, as an adjunct to meditation, is to use water as a treatment. Foot-soaking is a simple and relaxing technique taught by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, the founder of Sahaja Yoga. It is used to cool down the fiery sun channel on the right side of the subtle body, to bring it into balance. For an even more cooling effect, a bag of ice can be held on the right side of the body over the liver.

When I was a child, if I was feeling unwell, my own mother used to fill a basin of water with salt in for me to put my feet in. This seems to be a traditional treatment that has been forgotten about.

You can footsoak at the sea, as the water is salty. The salt acts to absorb the negative energy and toxins from the body. The soles of the feet seem to have larger sweat pores that can exude the toxins more readily.

Shri Ganesha Chaturthi Greetings

Shri Ganesha, Bangladesh, 11-12th century.

I was a little late posting this; Ganesha Chaturthi was on Thursday this year, and it's now the early hours of Friday. Anyway, this Hindu festival is an auspicious day sacred to the Elephant-headed son of Lord Shiva and Lady Parvati. Chatur means 'four', referring to the fourth day of the lunar cycle, at this time of year. The number four is associated with Lord Ganesha, who is connected with the earth and the foundation of all things.
He is usually depicted with four arms, (though often with more) perhaps representing the four directions of space, as He gives us our sense of direction. He also rules over the carbon atom, which has four valencies, and is the basis of life.

In Australia, the land of Shri Ganesha, this special day also coincides with the start of Spring, when the earth becomes fragrant.

Swa

In Sanskrit, the ancient Indo-Euroean language of India, Swa means "self" or "own".

Swedish, like most European languages is descended from an ancient Indo-European tongue very similar to Sanskrit, and reading a brief history of Sweden recently, I was interested to discover that the "Swe" in Swede is thought to have come from an old Indo-European word meaning "us" or "our own" (people). It suggests that the ancient term for self could be used in a collective sense. Today the word 'self' refers to something entirely limited to the individual.