We met, by some twist of clich?, on a mountain top. He wasn?t seated in full-lotus on the summit dressed in a loincloth - he wore sensible mountain gear and was resting behind a rock some way from the top, eating a chocolate bar. We fell to talking.
As a child his ambition had been to be a great mystic; to live in a distant cave rapt in the sublime, effulgent vision of godhead; lost in the blinding light of the divine.
With time, things change, aspirations alter, goals move. He came to believe that his ambition was a form of pride, a form of grasping desire. Better to aspire to be a humble monk, silent in an austere cell applying himself to his disciplines. The Carthusians, he heard tell, were the most rigourous order in the Catholic Curch. He saw himself alone and unsleeping in his cell. Things change. He again came to believe that his ambition was a form of pride. Better to aspire to be a humble Benedictine monk following the rule of St Benedict that had guided countless aspirants quietly towards God.
As he got older he eventually came to think that if he just spent a little less time at the bar half-way up Wyndham Street shouting at his girl-friend across the table and knocking back expensive and bizarre cocktails, perhaps he would bump into God sometime.
He had studied religion at university. He knew that what he was looking for was the ?experiential dimension?. One of the theoreticians of religion had analysed religion into seven dimensions ? ?Ninian Smart?s Seven Dimensions of Religions? ? experiential dimension, myth, ritual, doctirine, ethics, the social dimention and . . . was it Grumpy or Sneezy?
Finally he seemed to find what he was looking for. For thirteen years, when I met him, he had been following the guidance of a spiritual Master, he had been meditating every day, he had been living a simple, spiritual life.
After all this time, surely now he had achieved some profound insights; some sublime experiences; a deep understanding of the meditative process? He demurred. He said he understood less now than he did before he started.
?But meditation,? I said, ?tell me about it.?
?I know nothing,? he maintained.
In the end he agreed to relate a couple of anecdotes that might explain a little of his experience of meditation, though he still claimed a vast ignorance of the topic.
?Twice a week,? he said, ?the group I belong to meet for a group meditation.?
He explained that once they have started meditating the doors are closed ? late-comers are not welcome to blunder in and disturb the meditators.
Once he had indeed arrived late but by a strange fluke had managed to get in. He snuck into the meditation room silently. ?I could see the meditation.?
Around the seated figures he could see a golden mist. It floated in skeins, at once milky and luminescent; pale golden light and drifting, almost-solid radiance filling the palpable silence.
On another occasion, he explained, he had been forced to interrupt his meditation, jump in a car and drive off on an errand. It was a lesson in the special and sacred nature of meditation. ?Sometimes you forget how special it is.? To go, without pause for assimilation or adjustment, from the meditative calm to the mundane world ? it was a shocking experience. The outside world seemed to him wholly bizarre and surreal. Reality was in one of the two experiences, and it certainly seemed, he thought, not to be found speeding down the southern motorway.
I asked for more tales. He chuckled.
?Once I used to give meditation classes. We were holding them in a slightly tatty little building that was some sort of hybrid between a hall and a church. They were evening classes, and the arrangement was that we were to pick up the key during the day and then at the end of the class a caretaker would come and collect the key as we locked up.
?It is a fact that meditation can change the atmosphere of a place. At the end of the class the caretaker arrived. He looked about the room and asked, ?Have they repainted in here?? In truth, in the couple of hours that we had been there we hadn?t rigged up ladders and planks, prepared, primed and painted the walls; we had just meditated.
?So there you are ? meditation: better than interior decoration.?
He picked up his pack and hefted it onto his back. By now the strong, biting wind contained a certain amount of horizontally lashing snow. He pulled his hat down over his ears.
?You seem to lead a blessed life,? I said.
?In 1650,? he said, his words whipping away in the wind, ?the emperor Shah Jahan saw a holy Muslim saint passing his palace. He lowered a basket out of the window and hoisted the holy man up into the glories of his royal residence. He praised the holy man for his great sanctity. The holy man demurred. He had, he explained, many undivine and highly unspiritual qualities. God out of his gratuitous kindness had simply been pleased to lift him up, all undeserving, to heaven just as the emperor had lifted him in the basket to the splendours of his imperial earthly paradise.?
My companion shook my hand in farewell.
?Meditation,? he said as he started with surprising vigour to jog up the scree and into the swirling grey, ?it?s not something you work to achieve, it?s just . . . loitering outside the palace waiting for the basket to descend.?
Barney McBryde Auckland - New Zealand
Barney McBryde is a meditation student of Sri Chinmoy. He is a member of the Auckland Sri Chinmoy Centre. He enjoys writing on a variety of subjects. | |
