Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
fulfilment - and ten thousand other concepts humankind has called
the sole purpose of existence.
From the extravagant enigma of Sathya Sai Baba to the perverse
and baffling actions of many Zen masters, spiritual teachers tend to
defy our expectations of them. They may act in ways that can be
deliberately off-putting (the alcoholism of Chogyam Trungpa) or
repugnantly antisocial (the cruel humour of George Ivanovitch
Gurdjieff). But our own expectations of such teachers are yet more
conditioned mental baggage from which their teachings are
designed to liberate us. The Hindus view the playfulness of Krishna
or the bloodthirsty violence of Kali as
lila
- a divine game. The
Vedas, the most ancient Sanskrit texts, believed by some scholars to
have been handed down through an oral tradition thirty thousand
years old, constantly emphasise the battle between clouds and rain.
The thunder and the sunshine war, yet the sun ultimately emerges
victorious. It is the battle between spirit and matter, the pendulum
swing all of us experience between our higher and lower natures.
This is
lila
, God's game, played out for his amusement - and thus
our
amusement, too.
Maharshi, however, did behave the way you expected holy men
to: he lived a humble, disciplined existence, feeding the poor, aiding
the sick, teaching those who wanted to listen, to learn. He detached
himself from any pleasures of the flesh. Similarly, beyond taking
the few standard medicines I'd noticed still in his room, Maharshi
detached himself from the pain of cancer in his later years. His
devotees were understandably distraught, begging him to heal
himself as he had healed others. 'The body has decided to get sick,'
he would reply. 'Why should I interfere with its decisions? What
has it to do with me?' The long process of dying was really the last
great lesson he had to teach them.
A few photographs show his emaciated frame in the final stages
of cancer. He must have endured agonizing pain, despite his
detachment. Those who were with him near the end describe him
as allowing himself virtually to disintegrate before their eyes so that
they would realise the nature of
maya
, the physical illusion, so that
they would cease confusing forms with reality. Those who witnessed
his actual death say it was like someone shedding an old coat. This
