pieces from an article in sufijournal.org
(...)
I don’t know what you know about my history. Twenty years had gone by
since my Guru Maharaj-ji died. He died in ’73. And I hadn’t been
chanting. I mean, I might’ve sung a little bit with friends and stuff
but I wasn’t really chanting as a spiritual practice.
And I was standing in my room and I was struck with the understanding
that if I did not chant with people, much to my chagrin, then I would
never be able to clean out the dark corners of my own heart, myself.
Chant was the only thing I had to do it with.
This was the only lifeline that was being thrown to me. There’s no
question I was drowning. And I just knew that chanting was the only
thing that would work for me. I mean I had been meditating, sitting with
lamas, going to courses. I’d been doing things in my own way, but of
course not allowing it to change my heart at all. That’s what we do. But
then I knew chanting with people, that was the only thing I had.
It’s just what Maharaj-ji, my guru, gave me. I mean, we used to sing to
him because he liked it, not because we were trying to be spiritual. He
liked it and we got to spend time with him. We were, like, his
performing monkeys, you know. When the Indians were giving him too much
trouble, he’d call for the westerners to come in and sing.
(...)
What happens when you sing, when you use your voice?
I can’t tell you because I’m not there…What happens is my guru picks up
this old rusty pipe, blows through it, and makes nice music. And when
he’s finished he puts it down. And people in the room, they experience
the music he plays. It’s just transmission of his presence. And that’s
what people feel.
People come to sing with me, not because I’m the greatest singer in
the world and this is the best music in the world. It’s not. Personally,
I would rather listen to Bruce Springsteen, or The Rolling Stones, or
Steely Dan, or Ray Charles, or Van Morrison. But here I am and here they
are. And what we receive is the transmission of my guru’s presence,
which is the presence that lives within each person, that being that
lives within us—the indweller. That’s who he is.
So he’s bringing everybody into that presence through me. And I
suppose it’s good for me. He just knocks me out of the way and does his
thing, but of course I invite him. At least he lets me think I invite
him. [laughter]
But as I see it, he’s doing everything. And I want to surrender
completely to him, which I can’t do because surrender comes from grace.
So when he’s ready, he’ll surrender me. And my job is just to get ready,
to keep chanting the name, keep listening, keep hearing.
He didn’t tell me to do this. I’m doing this to save my ass. And on the
strength of that everybody else who comes is doing this to save their
ass. It’s not entertainment for me and it’s not entertainment for them.
In the Vedic tradition, there’s what they call non-dual Bhakti. It’s
seeing the non-dual in the dual, without any holding back. It’s seeing
absolute reality right there in the dualism. It honors absolute reality
and relative reality. They don’t think one’s better than the other. They
honor both.
You see this in Rumi and Hafiz so much, just seeing the absolute
divine in worldly love and the things that happen in daily life. And
there’s just no separation, you know, no mental concepts to keep you
locked up. I find that kind of devotion, that kind of love so
liberating. Devotion is just love. You can’t work at love, you know. You
can work at cleaning up your act, but love is what it IS.
You can work at the things that keep you locked out of your own
heart, but what’s already in there is exactly what’s supposed to be
there. And my guru was like that. We don’t know much about his
tradition, but he used to talk a lot to us about Kabir and also about
Samarth Guru Ramdas, who was a great saint I think in the 1600’s. He
found the non-dual through devotion to Hanuman, devotion to a form. He
went though the form into the non-dual. And he always said to people
this is the way to do it. You can’t do it any other way. That’s what he
used to say.
And what I get from that is that you can fully embrace this world and
the forms that are in it. You have to fully embrace this world and bear
witness to this world and everything that’s in it—all the beauty and
horror. You can’t hold back and say, oh, I only believe in that which
you can’t see, feel, think of, because how the hell do you know what
that is? It’s just an idea in your head, and an idea could never be what
it is. So it’s very difficult.
SitaRam SitaRam
Hans(uman)
www.kirtan.nu
www.dezingendeziel.nl
www.dansenmetdegoden.nl
www.stemyoga.nl
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