This, And A Good Cigar...

My irregular regimen (or sadhana) is as follows, more or less daily, according to how I order my day - ask my cat the Temple Kitty, if you don't believe me:

Sufi prayers of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and assorted others of my own choosing or composition; Hazrat's element breaths,  and specific other breathing practices out of the Sikh and Siddha and Kundalini traditions.

Dervish dhikr according to Sheikh Hassan of Nablus, with beads, softly on the breath.

Sikh mantras, with beads, as follows:
- Adi Mantra as internal invocation;
- Adi Shakti Mantra on the long slow inhale;
- Bij (or "seed") Mantra 4x on the held breath;
- Saruba Shakti Mantra on the long slow exhale.

- Hymns to Laksmi and to the Kundalini.

- Ramnam and Hanuman bhajan.

- The Five Tibetan Rites (of Rejuvenation).

- Krav Maga training two evenings weekly (when the evening's free) and at home, including weights.

- Monday evenings (when free) Demo-Walk, sometimes hold a talk.

- Friday evening Shabbos-Kiddush, regardless how late, as the case may be.

- Full time job as home health nurse.

- Writing, composing, researching, posting at PC.

All this, plus a mug of hot coffee and a good cigar...

Song of God

Belief is unsteady, faith is better, certainty still more - so
if I am here, God is proven; when I am gone, no less so.

In  my very core, then call it heart without sentimentality but pleasure;
the Song of God unceasingly sung, intoned in hues no rainbows measure.

Sound beyond sounds, all senses drunk, sturdy and solid, formless, knowledge knows;
current coursing like a sea, a river, a brook, active or idle, each moment devoted: love grows.

Still the mind, let it feed on inner tones, overtones, each syllable of mantra, bhajan, hymn;
His very form is in the word, each letter, so when you sing you're singing Him.

Stand firm in this, and face what comes, the reward your consciousness of Self
responding responsibly, acting through your very Being, for the benefit of sentient life.

With each breath drawn God calls in Song, wherever I stand God knows my place;
the fruits of action only He can determine, in stillness amidst the world my face

I turn to hear it better - at work or at training, at demos or at home, I am true now
to this Song which ever wakens me with:  "Therefore fight, O Arjuna!"

Fire of Devotion

 

The sun does not warm the earth by being nice.

In whichever old language divine praises are sung,

all Traditions are in agreement that it be done with devotion.

If it is not one's native tongue so much the better,

knowing the sense and direction of the content

neither requires knowledge of every word, nor will the mind

be thus hampered with linear conceptual thinking.

Pronunciation is of more value, also rhythm and melody.

For this, devotion is needed.

And what is this devotion?

It is the fire of present love, of love being present.

It is natural that one feels lazy, too familiar, unmoved, or some panic.

And it is natural to one's discipline, to resist this influence.

Go into that love, go into the gut of it, the heart of you,

renew it, fall in love every time and be a lover.

Nothing is ever lost, and the gain

is in every moment one returns inward to that love.

This love goes out to all who would awaken,

if you would just recite once more

that prayer, that mantra, that hymn -

for the sheer love of intoning it, hearing it,

in your own voice.

Inspirations may come, you keep at it.

Reminders may come, of those in need of succor.

You keep at it, and hold it in that gut, sing from your heart.

Be present, and if you are not present yet-

get there by love's own blazing radiant will.

Let every recitation count, every repetition, every syllable and note.

First time is the last time...is always the first time.

You fall in love - and stay there.

It will give you presence of mind for the outer life;

it will give you the tenderness to nourish others;

it will give you the intestinal fortitude to go forth into steady combat,

in defense against the tyranny of the day.

The tyranny of conformity and flatulently flat-talking relativisms,

of platitudes of political correctness and its iron grip on the soul,

of the deadening cudgel of manipulated thinking

by a jaded, complacent era.

And the tyranny of that which most deny exists,

much less appreciate the imminent and gathering danger.

When one takes a medicine against illness,
sometimes the active substance is given inside
a compatible, neutral fluid - as with infusions, injections, drops.
The fluid carries the substance into the intended environment.
Just so, is the devotional intensity of your love that substance,
carried through your singing and recitations,
neutral of ego, of preferences or self-consciousness,
into the intended environment - reaching you, reaching all.

Prana sends its breath throughout your bodily form,

strengthening your immunity, your patience, your determination.

When you sing with devotional prana,

it begins to sing you, carrying off into the world -

and you become the Word.

This is love, in action.

The sun does not warm the earth by being nice.

Word

Where words fail and thoughts - even the most refined or on-point -
appear as the mental chatter they are, like horses at the race track
heaving their disciplined weight on an eliptical course, always new and the same,
there is the Word  to bring you onto earth for grounding, or raise you
to inner heights nearer to its own realm.

By whichever Name of God the Word informs your intonation,
sober concentration holds the promise of entering meditation -
and this, the promise of absorption in the Name, which is the Word
as it absorbs.  Mantra in action blesses action.

Your weaknesses are hardly of import, indulging guilt a trap and distraction.
Your strengths are nothing, considered against the still, all-consuming power
of the Word.  That Word is formless, and has its form in mantra, taking form
in those embodying the Name of God in their own person.

Learn what it is to speak the Word once, and right.
It may take you a lifetime.

Meanwhile we study, we speak, we reflect, we write.
Spirit moves in the form willing to allow it,
love burns with devotion for conscious Being.
Grace may come, but in the Beginning was the Word.

Sovereign Presence

They stood over me glowering in disgust,
arrogant and assured of victory;
no point in discussion, they don't discuss.

"Your mantras and repetitions, bowing to images,
won't save but damn you," they said, "you'll never
see paradise, only burn in hell if you don't embrace what we are."

"It's alright,“ I said, “I'm not booking to paradise anyway –
and hell would be embracing you, so what could be worse?
I'm not going anywhere," I said, “but I'll tell you where we most differ:

We may both be prepared to be killed for our convictions,
but I will never be prepared to kill for mine."
"We'll send you to hell," they repeated, "but we serve the one true God!"

Reposing in the breath, trusting grace, I replied, "Neither
heaven nor hell await me when your sword falls,
only the Sovereign Presence, and I'll tell you now where I'll be:

In every face you have before you, in every eye you regard,
even as I'd placed myself between you and your victims
and looked you straight in the eye this very day:

I will be there looking back, witnessing, watching, reminding,
beckoning, haunting – you will have no rest. Sleep
will avoid you, no comfort in victory, that will be
snatched from your hands the moment your sword falls.

For you will never be rid of me, I'll be where I am now,
here in the Sovereign Presence, in mantra and in worship,
until that time your heart returns from the dead."

"Which Mantra, which Dhikr?"

 The best mantra to use, or the best dhikr, is whichever keeps you – and you exclusively, no one else – in closest, most initmate concentration on God, in this moment exclusively – and not what worked yesterday or what you think tomorrow will look like. Suppose you have knowledge and confidence in (A) through (M) so to speak, and they are all good, there is joy, there is release, there is love and fulfillment, there is focus, all that – and the balm for existential panic or fear or loneliness or grief or arrogance or anger – great, but you are only usng one at this particular precious moment. If you go with (A) don't think, maybe I should be doing (B)...this keeps it all in the superficial and complicated. Give us this day our daily mantra/dhikr, and lead us not into the temptation of leaving the present for some moment which isn't there, and where no need will be served, and the need of this moment will not be addressed..

In the process of life lived in the development of concentrations through mantra or dhikr and sacred inner work, siddhis may come to the practitioner, there could be power issues; but these will be likewise overcome for the Siddha, the Bhakta, the Jnani, when one returns again and ever again without fail to the repetition of the mantras or of dhikr -- of the Name, from which and from whom these siddhis came in the first place – so devotedly practicing further and ever further for the purpose of liberation of all sentient Beings, of realization of the Self, one is spared the pitfall of identifying with the phenomena or with being the doer of something.

Short Memoir of a Singing Masseur and Bhajan-Junkie; Puja

I have never been to India and can hardly be said to have been abroad, but for my seven weeks in Israel and one in Greece at age 21. The world of Dharma came to us, came to me in the House of Sadhana – Khanka, Ashram, by whatever name – under the guidance of my beloved Teacher. I have sung with hardly a let-up for some four decades, variations of Ramnam, of Sufi Zikr, of Bhajans and Mantra innumerable, sung and massaged, sung and massaged. I am still at it.  Much was embodied in the Dances.  We had so many house guests staying or passing through, of unforgettable visage - and I will never forget a single one, not a name nor a face - who'd ever stayed with us in Boulder.

Pir Vilayat, who, having received my foot treatment, told me to now go ahead and work out a full-body massage as I had the feet. I would have anyway, but this sort of feedback from a Sufi Pir, well... And there was Paul Reps, later Murshida Vera Corda, also Reshad Feild - under whom we actually learned and performed Sema, as well as deepening Zikr. I've lost count of how many times Yogi Bhajan spent evenings and taught as guest, or that we visited him. Murshid Hassan from Nablus on the West Bank, came to stay with us three different times, led and gave us the Hadhrat, left us that which I will never lose nor lose touch with. As had they all, as had they all.  Let me not overlook Karmu, little known healer, great in form and spirit and gifts, Murshid Sam had called him the "Black Christ" he'd once composed of in a poem before ever meeting this radiant beautiful guy of humble surroundings and radiant charisma; his stay with us was unforgettable.  And I'm only mentioning half of 'em here.

They all or almost all, had their feet washed and oiled and massaged by me. Tyaga-ji, a lovely yogi traveling through together with a young American named Ram Dass (not that one, just another one), having just returned from being with Mother Krishnabai and leaving with us a gift of dust she'd collected off the feet of the late Papa Ramdas, was one of our guests. He let me also massage his smooth, coffee back as he sat there. He also gave us a precious Hanuman Bhajan which I'll bet my weight in rupees I'm the only one who was there that remembers it now and can still sing it - as I do.

That was the mid- to late '70s, and in '79 we made room for Purshotamdas Jalota-ji, Bhajan-Master, to guest with us, he stayed for a solid month, left to visit others and returned to us because we knew how to host a guest in style. And that meant, he was treated like the most honored of guests, and we sat with him and received his instruction – he was such a natural uncle, we easily called him Papa-ji – whereby we learned so much Bhajan and moreover, his own arrangements, I wish I still had my notes today, as much of the Kabir has escaped me and appears irretrievable. Through this, our established regular usage of Nectar of Chanting (with Guru-Gita and more) was only deepened, the devotion given more scope and dimension.

Among so much else, he taught us the Ram-Bhajan which had been specially composed for Gandhi by his teacher, and which formed the basis and the engine for Gandhi's life and Movement. It was this Ram-Bhajan which got the British Empire outof India, all else was just putting oneself on the line and commitment.  Singing this makes your body feel like a sitting temple into which Ram the Presence of God is actually descending.

Whether I sing in English, Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Gurmukhi, French, Latin, or Aramaic:    I have never stopped singing since, and still can't quit. So I'm hooked.

Puja

Everything is Puja here, everything is Puja. Every picture in this place is there for a reason, lots and lots of the cats or of the kids all over – even the cats themselves are Puja, Puja-Mausi was my temple-kitty from the start and even Jimmy the tomcat has since been elevated to Puja-Jim. 

The ashes of my parents and their pictures are Puja, the marble headstone for a lost child there on the shelf with flowers and candle and incense and any snapshot of him and the 14^th century Madonna and Child wood-icon on the wall - is Puja. All the Swamis and Sheikhs and Murshids, Dervishes, and Mother T and Mother Krishnabai, and "Madeleine" and Cardinal Galen and two of the gentlemen who all opposed Hitler, and Pope J-P the First who'd been murdered in his bed, and Nityananda and Maharajji, Gandhi and King. And brothers and friends and books in overflowing shelves – everything, everyting is Puja and gets dusted Fridays for Shabbos-Kiddush (also Puja, of course). Puja is Seva and Seva is Puja - so cleaning or cooking is Puja, making someone a sandwich is Puja, feeding the cats. Going to work, paying the bills – Puja. Even Puja is Puja, and that healing & blessing concentration every morning with more names than I can count memorized in my noggin, is Puja as well as Seva. And after all the prayers and concentrations, comes the sacred nectar of Japa in the form of Dhikr-Allah and Ramnam, and Mantras to grease the axles of my beloved Sikh, Christian and Jewish traditions.

Having said this, for no better reason than it occurs to me to share here – the following occurs to me in this light. One evening in the Fall of '81, as I sat on the floor next to Sheikh Muzaffer of the Helveti-Jarrahi Order from Istanbul, visiting his Tekke in NYC, he observed out loud, through his translator, that anyone walking down a country road and spying a lump of dog shit will say, very logically, "Oh, a dog was here." Why then, he continued, doesn't everyone just as obviously look at the wonder of nature all around and observe, "Ahh, God was here!" This earthy, authentic manner of expressing the matter – is Puja.