Swati Chopra interviews Upul Gamage at Nilambe

UPUL NISHANTHA GAMAGE is the resident meditation teacher at a tranquil spiritual retreat – the Nilambe Buddhist Meditation Centre near Kandy in Sri Lanka. His deep understanding of the practice of meditation as well as the travails of modern life make him a wise and compassionate kalyanamitra (dharma friend) to many around the globe. In this, he carries forward the legacy of the Centre’s founder, Godwin Samararathne, a lay teacher who was widely respected for his wisdom and skill in guiding people on the path.

I spoke with Upul at Nilambe on a quiet morning, after a centring meditation session.

 How can one balance one’s spiritual quest with living in the world?

 We must understand that we have a responsibility towards ourselves, just as we have towards family, partner, parents, children, and society. If we know this, we will find the time for spiritual practice.

It is easy to confuse responsibility towards oneself with earning and consuming more.

 I can give you an example. Most hotels have gyms now where you can go and exercise to reduce cholesterol, blood sugar, and so on. Next to the gym is a restaurant. Half the time, people are either in the restaurant or the gym, and the other half they have to earn to pay for the restaurant and the gym! So, there is no time for the mind.

Do you think de-stressing is a good enough motivation to meditate?

 More than half the meditators start because of personal problems. You can see meditation as a medicine. Doctors send patients to meditate to overcome physical sicknesses, psychosomatic diseases. Some come because of psychological, emotional or relationship problems. Some want to know about themselves. Some want to achieve psychic powers. Some want to meditate because their religion recommends it. Any reason is fine.

You can use meditation as medicine, therapy, psychological exercise to increase memory and brain activity. You can use it as a microscope or a telescope, to see your life clearly, or to understand the world. The important thing is the practice. If you know how to practise, you can use it as and when you need it. If you don’t have problems, you can still meditate to develop spiritual qualities like joy, peacefulness, loving-kindness, compassion.

While meditating, we might achieve peace and equanimity. Do these automatically translate into our daily living, or must we cultivate them?

 It does affect daily life up to a point. If we sit in the morning, we can go to work with a fresh mind. That peacefulness and freshness remain for some hours, but gradually decrease. Sitting meditation is important, but it is not good enough. We have to learn how to apply meditation in daily life. This is why in the Centre’s daily schedule we have ‘working meditation’ – how to work mindfully, and remain in the present instead of thinking of the past or future. Both these thoughts lead to stress. If we can focus on our current work, we will be relaxed.

Also, we want to choose what we like to do, and reject what we do not. This is not always possible. If we do not know how to do work that we do not like, then we struggle. There are complications and resistance. The body suffers as a result. We have to learn how to let go of our likes and dislikes, and to see the importance of the work.

The other important thing is selfless action. We like to work for ourselves and our loved ones. We have to learn to work for others. Sometimes, we might not know who they might be. It does not matter. We can still do something. We can sweep the path even if we do not know who will walk on it.

At work, we can see our clients as meditation teachers. Because of them, we can develop metta (friendliness), tolerance, compassion, and equanimity, especially if they are demanding and unappreciative. There are many opportunities in daily life to practise meditation. Actually, if you live in a forest, you can cultivate only one side of spirituality. The other is immature. I tell people, ‘Do you want to be spiritually paralysed, where only one side is working?’ Good sitters are not necessarily good meditators. When they go back to their normal lives, they might not know what to do, how to face their emotions. It is good to have a retreat, but then we must go back and test ourselves.

How can we bring mindfulness to our relationships?

 We have pre-conceived images of ourselves and others, and we expect them to behave accordingly. We react to our image of the other, without understanding. We think, ‘This person is like this.’ This is especially true of spouses. I tell them, ‘You married an image, not the person.’ Let go of your images, models, frames. Be open to the other person and understand him or her.

Also, if you expect something from the other, say it. Communication is important. Meditation can help us have a friendly dialogue instead of arguments, listen to others, observe and understand them.

Mindfulness and metta help increase your inner capacity, so you have enough space for different opinions and ideas. A spacious mind does not react. It can accept and absorb. To have a wider and deeper mind is important. Otherwise, you always expect the other person to live within your frame.

The meditation techniques you teach are based on the Buddha’s teachings?

 Yes, like awareness of breath, contemplating the body, meditating on physical sensations, watching thoughts and emotions, cultivating positive qualities like kindness, compassion, metta, living in the present moment. Also, investigating what is happening now and why it is happening.

Website: www.nilambe.net

—–

This interview was published in The Speaking Tree, January 15, 2012.

Sanghamitta's stupa

If there is some transformation, and it is genuine, from deep within, it will affect every aspect of one’s being. For me, one of the ways this has manifested is through awareness of the interconnectedness of life and its innate sacredness. This has led to an attempt to live consciously, gently, kindly.

I try and be attuned to how my actions impact the earth, the physical and emotional environment around me, people I come in contact with, and the residues and impressions they leave on my own heart and mind. For I find if I hurt another, the greatest wound is inflicted on my own being. When I am able to forego a reaction born out of anger or jealousy or other afflictive emotions, the greatest good is done to me.

Living consciously has come to mean eschewing habits that harm the earth and all forms of life on it. Vegetarianism, conserving water and electricity, ‘need-based buying’ rather than ‘greed-based shopping’, wearing natural, handmade fabrics, limiting the use of plastics and other such products that pollute land and water, and opting for organic produce when possible, are some ways in which I attempt to translate high-minded spiritual ideals into lived experience.

For me, the path has a strong ethical aspect. Ethics as in not moral injunctions or religious strictures, but values that help one actualise insights gained on the meditation cushion once one gets off it. I see ethics as tools that engage spiritual understanding with the mess and chaos of the world, that bring the wisdom and compassion of self-realisation to bear on the injustice and inhumanity we are faced with in samsara.

Ethics form the ties that bind our inner, spiritual selves with our outer, in-the-world selves. I see them as inseparable, and through the connective tissue of ethics, the former can inform the thoughts and actions of the latter. For instance, I see the gap that exists between beautiful expositions of the Divine as universal oneness, and the simultaneous existence of a social system that denies basic human rights to a section of its own population, as being ethically untenable. As also the hypocrisy of worshipping the Divine Feminine in temples, and the widespread practice of female foeticide and infanticide, and the general devaluing of women. These arise from a gap between worship and practice, between the spiritual and the worldly, philosophy and reality.

Connecting with the innate oneness of life has enabled me to see the need for strengthening the connection between spirituality and its expression in the world, through a re-imagining of ethics based on a spiritual understanding of life as opposed to a materialistic one. It has become difficult for me to turn away from issues that I might have earlier categorised as social, political or environmental problems. In short, not mine to bother about.

Now, in my work as a writer, I am increasingly focusing on ethical, conscious, compassionate ways of dealing with so-called worldly issues. Can we find something in the nature-worship and earth reverence of old and indigenous cultures to counter climate change? How can the values of aparigraha (non-possession) and limiting one’s wants and desires function as an antidote to the greed of consumerism? How can dana, giving, and seva, selfless service, draw us out of our urban selfishness? Is there a way of translating worship of the Divine Feminine into greater respect for living, ‘real’ women? Could the slogan vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the world is one family) carry a solution to war and genocide? Could compassion and non-harming be credible responses to oppression?

In asking these questions, I must also look within myself for answers. I must try to live them, walk my talk. And that I find the greatest challenge, and growth experience, of my life as a seeker.

Sri Mahabodhi at Anuradhapura

Every December, on the day of the full moon, an Indian ancestress is celebrated inSri Lanka. She is Sanghamitra, daughter of Emperor Ashoka, who along with her brother, Mahendra, helped establish the Buddha dharma here in the third century BC. She is also revered as the one who brought a branch of the original Bodhi tree, under which the Buddha attained enlightenment, and which continues to be a powerful sacred presence in ordinary people’s lives even today.

On Sanghamitra Poya (‘poya’ is a full moon day), on 10 December this year, there is a festive atmosphere inAnuradhapura. Multitudes dressed predominantly in white arrive from far and near. They camp in the lawns of the ancient city, circumambulate its magnificent stupas, and bathe in its manmade tanks. The high-point of the day is a visit to the Bodhi tree, reverentially called ‘Sri Mahabodhi’, as if it were a deity in its own right.

That feeling grows as one steps onto the path that leads up to the tree. People carry flowers, coconuts, incense, and lengths of cloth to offer to Sri Mahabodhi. The crowd intensifies as one enters the compound that houses the tree, and one spots people sitting on the ground, in groups or alone, reciting mantras or simply praying.

The tree itself is cordoned off from the ‘general public’, and officiating monks scurry up and down the steps leading to it with devotees’ offerings. The larger tree in the enclosure is an offshoot of Sanghamitra’s tree, which one can still spot behind, distinguished by its lighter bark, as if whitened by age. In popular culture, Sanghamitra is always shown holding the sacred branch and it is in this context she is referred to on this day dedicated to her, as the loudspeakers come on and eminent monks take to the microphone.

Another branch that Sanghamitra brought with her was that of the nuns’ sangha, and along with it the opportunity for women to step outside patriarchal roles designated for them and into the spiritual freedom of the renunciate’s life. This branch withered away, unlike the Bodhi tree, and disappeared for a thousand years until its revival in recent times. At the Sri Mahabodhi, this renaissance is evident in the presence of several women in robes. Though not full-fledged nuns, they have taken for themselves the option of an alternative to worldly life, one that can be as liberating as it can be difficult to pursue.

In their courage in choosing this solitary path, not supported in the same way as monks’ organisations in this predominantly Buddhist country, these women keep alive Sanghamitra’s pioneering spirit. In their attempt to forge their own spiritual destinies, they appear to be true inheritors of Sanghamitra’s legacy.

Sanghamitta handing the Bodhi sapling to King Devanampiyatissa

Where are the women? You might find this title a bit odd. There’s a reason why I chose it, and why it is a worthwhile question to ask when we consider the topic of women and spirituality.

Some days ago, I was in the audience at a seminar in New Delhi. The esteemed speaker, a gentleman well-advanced in scholarship and years, was listing the notable saints and sages of Benares, the ancient sacred city. I listened keenly for the women saints of Benares. None was mentioned. I could not help ask the gentleman and other scholars on the panel – where are the women? They didn’t have an answer!

It is hard to imagine that in India, with its rich and ancient tradition of exploring the nature of truth and reality, and of spiritual adventuring and apprenticeship, that there did not periodically emerge women seekers, adepts and teachers. Yet this is what we are given to believe – that the women who did venture on to the spiritual path were few, and can literally be counted on the fingers of our hands. What’s going on here?

I think the problem is two-fold. One: of patriarchy, and two: of lack of documentation. And they are connected. Because women were not valued, their lives and pursuits were not considered worthy of documentation. This is a trend that is now recognised in history, not only vis-à-vis women but also those who were dispossessed and marginalised, and were the ‘common folk’. History has always been written under the aegis of those in power. In patriarchy, this would be the men.

This is the work of ‘Herstory’, or the recording of women’s experiences in their own voices. As many of the women interviewed for my research project on contemporary women’s spirituality, said, “It is not because there were few spiritually accomplished women that we don’t hear of them, it is because nobody wrote down their stories. Nobody thought it was important enough.”

Women masters have also not been documented because of their own wish to remain in the background – a sort of internalisation of gender-based cultural conditioning. For instance, there is an anecdote Tsultrim Allione recounts in her book, Women of Wisdom (Snow Lion Publications, 2000). Ayu Khandro is 114 years old, an accomplished woman master of Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet. Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche is a young 17-year-old student who is sent to her for spiritual instruction. And she says to him, “What can I teach you? Why do you want to know about me?” Allione remarks that she doesn’t believe there is one male teacher who would say the same thing in her position. The reason we know she existed at all was because Namkhai Norbu persisted with her, got her story, and smuggled it out with him when he escaped from China-occupied Tibet in 1959.

Since the beginning of 2006, I have been speaking to a diverse range of women, conducting interviews, travelling to homes, ashrams and nunneries all over India. Some of these women are gurus and teachers, some head monastic communities, while others juggle families and careers with their spiritual practice. They form a vibrant, motley group, and are drawn from a cross-section of religions, wisdom traditions, socio-economic backgrounds, even nationalities.

I have tried to be as inclusive as possible in terms of traditions and religions, and have given primacy to the spiritual over the socio-religious. This has meant emphasising the quest for deeper meaning, a seeking for the reality of life and, indeed oneself, over formalised religious institutions and practices.

What is women’s spirituality?
Despite being denied the option of valiant spiritual seeking and apprenticeship, women through the ages have managed to live spiritually rich lives. Some have ducked social mores to live as free-spirited thinkers. Others have lived within their families, and their inner journeys have been closely interwoven with their roles in their families and relationships.

Theirs is collectively what one refers to as ‘women’s spirituality’, different from mainstream wisdom traditions (or ‘men’s spirituality’). Does it have an idiom of its own, wedded to the rhythms of women’s lives? I will try to tease out its dimensions and defining characteristics through the examples of some of the women I have interviewed.

Integration
To begin with, because most of them couldn’t really leave their homes and relationships and set off to follow the call of the spirit, women found the means to look for meaning and achieve inner growth where they were. Even today, when many do have the option of checking out, the issues of homes, children and relationships remain. It is useful then to see how women living in the world (as opposed to a renunciate’s life) have harmonised the inner quest with their current contexts. Many wisdom traditions talk about the householder’s life with its myriad demands and problems as being a better testing ground for the fruits of spiritual understanding, than the rarefied and controlled atmosphere of an ashram or mountain cave. Women more than men, because of their circumstances, have exemplified this ideal of integration and harmony.

An outcome of this integration has been the incorporation and employment of their familial roles by women as opportunities for spiritual practice. Motherhood and parenting, nurturing and sharing, even household chores that women have been tied to in a way, have been creatively used as means for deepening awareness, connecting with a sense of being more spacious than one’s ego-self, for practicing compassion, patience, and unconditional love. By saying this, I do not intend to glorify patriarchal gender roles, but rather present an insight into how common householder women have practiced and achieved these spiritual values despite the repression and lack of opportunities. Those that got on to the path seem to have walked it with courage and skilful means – blood, bread, babies and all.

A movement that exemplifies this integration is that of Lakshmi Bhagavan, a spiritual teacher who lived in the city of Mumbai. Lakshmi Bhagavan lived in a one-room tenement, had been married and widowed, and earned her livelihood sewing children’s clothes. Her spiritual teachings were never didactic discourses, but in response to questions people put to her. Through her encouragement, discussion groups started around the country where women meet twice a day and talk about how best to cultivate and put to use spiritual insights in their daily lives.

The women of Lakshmi Bhagavan’s gatherings come from all walks of life: some face conflict and abuse, while others come looking for a more fulfilling way to live. Challenges are discussed, and the perspective of Divine Oneness applied to all issues. The basic teaching is of oneness, its applications are many and varied. All are welcome in the groups. Lakshmi Bhagavan actively discouraged and periodically spoke out against the making of any sort of distinctions, whether based on religion, caste or community, or self and other, for according to her this defiled the sacred unity in which we all exist, and which, in our realised selves, we are.

Emotionality
Because of the extraordinary development of women’s heart qualities, what with nurturing their families, and being natural emotional caregivers for their children, their spiritual paths too seem to acquire a primacy of emotion. It may play out in the form of their being more drawn to devotion, love and seva (service). Even when women study contemplative and logic-oriented disciplines, they bring a heart quality to its study that is unforced and unaffected. Women, for instance, don’t really need to be explained how to ‘care for all beings like a mother cares for her only child’ (a method of arousing unconditional love in Mahayana Buddhism)! And when they become teachers, they become mothers of the spirit – bringing warmth, nurturing and compassion to their students’ practice, even becoming strict when the need arises.

Women have innovated with emotionality as a path to inner realisation. To refine it into a spiritual practice, they have had to grow out of the confines of grasping and emotional bondage that often passes for love. One such path is that of Sufism, which, with its emphasis on an intimate love-relationship with God, can be characterised as a feminine path. Interestingly, many male Sufi mystics refer to themselves as women awaiting union with their Beloved (God). In this sense, their ‘maleness’ and their ego-self is surrendered to the Divine Beloved in a transcendental and transformational experience of love, and feminity becomes a metaphor for the spiritual thirst.

In these lines taken from a poem in Hindustani by Amir Khusrau (1253-1325 AD), addressed to his teacher and spiritual friend, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, the poet adopts the voice of a lovelorn woman.

Chhap tilak sab chini re mose naina milaike…
(You have taken away my identity with just a glance)
Gori gori baiyan, hari hari churiyan
Baiyan pakar dhar linhi re mose naina milaike…
(In my fair delicate wrists are green bangles
Which you have held just with a glance…)

Medieval women mystics like Rabia and Lal Ded, Meera and Andal have expressed this transformational divine love and an intimate relationship with God in beautiful poetry. Their words are drenched with God-intoxication and a sense of uncompromising freedom. Meera says:

“The earth looked at Him and began to dance.
Mira knows why, for her soul too 
is in love. 
If you cannot picture God
in a way that always 
strengthens
you,
you need to read 
more of my poems.”

Social engagement
Though the spiritual path is by definition of the individual, driven by her inner seeking and understanding, it has an important social dimension as well. One of the ways in which women have engaged spirituality with society is through seva, or unconditional service.

Perhaps because they see the wisdom of engaging with the concerns of home and community, women spiritual seekers and teachers are often involved in issues of social justice, peacemaking, education and empowerment. Through serving causes that may be considered ‘worldly’ at one level, they are affirming allegiance with the ideal that lies at the core of an integral perspective – of the profound interconnectedness of life and all its phenomena, and its indivisibility into compartments (even if these compartments are those of spirituality and the world).

Women spiritual masters who employ the ideal of motherhood in their relationships with their students are able to tap into this psychological space that dates back to our early infancy, and where we feel completely loved, thereby helping us get out of destructive emotional patterns born of insecurity and stress. To the guru as mother, we can bring our broken selves and hope to be made whole again.

In my experience, almost all women leading spiritually-oriented lives become engaged in social service of some kind or another in response to an inner calling to relieve the suffering of others. For instance, the nuns of Sri Sarada Mission.

The Sarada Mission is an independent sister organisation of the Sri Ramakrishna Mission, and takes its name from Ma Sarada, also known as the Holy Mother, who was Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa’s wife, and a realised spiritual master in her own right. Managed by the nuns themselves, the Sarada Mission provides women the opportunity to lead spiritually oriented lives, which includes education, scriptural knowledge, and active involvement in social service. In this, the Mission carries forward the legacy of Sister Nivedita, the Englishwoman who followed in Swami Vivekananda’s footsteps in making spirituality practical through her pioneering work in women’s education, her social activism, and her participation in the movement for India’s independence from the British in early 20th century.

These women bring spiritual insights and values to bear upon the problems of the world. Insights such as interconnectedness, compassion, dissolution of the ego-self and so on, can become powerful agents of change if applied appropriately in the social sphere. Also known as ‘engaged spirituality’, it calls for a widening of the sphere of spiritual practice, that spirituality needn’t remain confined to cloisters and ashrams, but spread out into the world and find creative and contemplative ways of dealing with its issues.

This is a space of innovation, and I will speak of the work of two women who have taken on this challenge in our times.

Mae Chee Sansanee Sthirasuta, a prominent woman spiritual leader of Thailand, started a centre some years ago to teach meditation. The suffering she witnessed among people who came for the courses inspired her to do more. Several projects were born out of this inner call, which have included working with abused women and children, taking care not only of their physical needs, but their spiritual well-being as well, and attempting to transform their pain into love. Realising that it was not enough to help the victims because they were not the only ones who suffered in a conflict situation, Mae Chee began visiting prisons to help inmates become aware of their innate goodness, and act from a place of service and love in order to “break the cycle of violence,” in her words.

Another spiritual innovator is the American ‘engaged Buddhist’ Joanna Macy, who has used the teachings of Buddhism to foster a new kind of environmental activism – one that is attuned with and based on the interconnected nature of reality. She is an eco-philosopher, and has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. Many thousands of people around the world have participated in her workshops and trainings. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.

Empowerment
In the Asian context, because they have been otherwise so repressed, women’s spirituality carries an additional patina of social revolution. Women spiritual masters, poets, and yoginis have been harbingers of change. By walking the path of inner revolution, they have broken through walls of prejudice, and widened the possibilities available to all women.

Also, when we speak of women’s empowerment today, we tend to emphasise its need in social, political and economic spheres – in the workplace, in social systems, in marriages, and family situations. But what about inner empowerment, born in the individual’s being, which comes of self-knowledge and freedom from ignorance? It can be argued that external liberation is of little use without inner freedom. It is imperative then, to distil a contemporary paradigm for women’s empowerment based on this inner spiritual aspect, through the examples of women who are walking on the difficult path of spiritual heroism, and have risen beyond their social and economic contexts to achieve liberation of self, mind and being.

——

First published in the September 2007 issue of Life Positive.

Fritjof Capra being interviewed by Swati Chopra

Eminent physicist Dr Fritjof Capra is best known in India for his landmark book, The Tao of Physics, published in 1975. In it, he explored emerging connections between quantum physics and ancient mysticism, famously using the metaphor of the dance of Shiva for the ceaseless motion of quantum particles.

His holistic understanding of life led Dr Capra to deep ecology, which is based on the view of the earth as a living entity, and seeks to evolve paradigms of sustainable living in accordance with ecological principles. He founded the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, which promotes ecology and systems thinking in primary and secondary education.

Apart from The Tao of Physics, Dr Capra is the author of The Turning Point (1982), Uncommon Wisdom (1988), The Web of Life (1996), The Hidden Connections (2002), and The Science of Leonardo.

Dr Capra revisited India in early 2008, after two decades. I spoke with him at the edge of a mustard field in full bloom, at Bija Vidyapeeth, a school for sustainable living run by the NGO Navdanya near Dehradun.

Thirty years after The Tao of Physics was published, do you think mainstream science is opening up to non-reductionist and non-linear ways of thinking?

The striking parallels between Eastern mystical traditions and the basic ideas of quantum physics and relativity theory had been noticed but had not been explored by scientists. I was the first physicist to do so. Among Western scientists, my book was often ridiculed. They realised I knew what I was talking about when it came to modern physics. But they didn’t buy the mysticism and thought that it should stay separate from science, that you couldn’t really compare the two.

This was based on an erroneous understanding of mystical traditions, of the very word ‘mysticism’. It is confused with ‘mysterious’, something that is nebulous and unclear. Scientists are eager to provide clarity and logical consistency in their theories, and to have them compared with something mysterious is offensive to them. Now, if you look at this from an actual knowledge of mysticism, you see that the knowledge the mystics strive for is actually associated with clarity. The word ‘enlightenment’ is from mystical traditions, and means an insight that provides clarity. There are metaphors such as ‘removing the veil of ignorance’, or ‘cutting through ignorance with a sword of clarity’. All these are metaphors of clarity, not of mysteriousness.

Now, 30 years later, the perception of physicists has opened up, they have become more tolerant, more philosophical. At the same time, the pursuit of a spiritual path, of practices that are Buddhist, or yogic, or Taoist, has spread enormously in the West. When I wrote The Tao of Physics, and was practising t’ai chi which I have all these years, I was part of a fringe group. Now this is accepted.

How was your own interest in mysticism sparked?

I was influenced by the cultural movements of the 1960s, which were an expansion of consciousness in two directions – spiritual and social. There was a strong interest in Eastern religious traditions. My mother was a poet and gave me the poetry of the Beat poets of the 1950s to read. My brother sent me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in the 1960s, before I read Zen and Alan Watts. Then there were the Beatles travelling to India and this whole trend of meditation and mysticism, and I was part of that.

But I always combined any kind of experience I had – meditative, with psychedelics, yoga, t’ai chi, Zen – with an intellectual approach, and tried to interpret and analyse them.

Since then, how have the Indic wisdom traditions impacted your work?

The kind of worldview that emerged from the sciences in the 20th century – a holistic or ecological worldview, as I now call it – is not reflected in the global industrial society, which is based on a mechanistic view of the world that is seriously unbalanced and unsustainable, and not this harmonious unity that we see in the paradigm that has emerged in science. However, there is an ideal vision in the spiritual traditions, which has been the guiding principle in work since the 1960s. I kept exploring it not only theoretically, but also experientially. I kept up my spiritual practice so I could check various aspects of it with actual practice.

I gradually became interested in ecology and began to expand my focus beyond physics to explore the paradigm shift in biology, healthcare, economics, ecology, psychology and so on, which all had to do with life. So I had to go beyond physics and my research interest shifted to the life sciences.

During the 1980s, I became an activist. The 1960s were a period of revolt, but without a coherent framework as an alternative. Then in the 1970s emerged two strong themes – the environmental movement, and feminism or women’s liberation, as it was called then. These movements created a new framework, and through my interest in ecology, I came to see ecological awareness and the deep ecological dimension of spiritual awareness as a Western equivalent of Eastern mysticism.

How was your spiritual practice helpful in checking the insights you arrived at as a scientist?

I can say that the main insights I have had in my work have not been arrived at rationally but have been intuitive insights, sometimes coming from a meditative practice. I then fleshed them out in a rational way and checked against data, and so on. I think I acquired the ability of getting into a state where the rational mind takes a step back and the intuitive mind takes over and puts things together.

One of the main discoveries of Complexity Theory in the last 20 years has been the dynamics of creativity. We see creativity now as a fundamental property of   life at all levels. Creativity is the emergence of novelty. The dynamic is, for instance, I sit at my desk, try to solve a problem. The more I study the problem the more confused I get. I give up and go for a walk – do something to get away from it. While I am relaxed, suddenly everything clicks, I have an insight where everything comes together and a new idea emerges. This is now technically understood as a process of instability of a system or a crisis, and a spontaneous emergence of a new pattern of order at that point of instability.

There is a point of view that change is inevitable so why resist it? How would you respond to this keeping in mind the current ecological crisis we face?

One of the aspects of the new scientific understanding of life is the understanding of the planet as a whole, as a living system – the Gaia Theory. The planet is a collection of ecosystems, which combine to create a system that regulates and organises itself. In this biosphere, life has evolved for billions of years according to certain principles that maximise its potential for survival. These are the basic principles of ecology.  Life evolved by forming networks, sharing resources, cycling matter continuously, using solar energy to drive ecological cycles, developing diversity to assure resilience, forming networks within networks, and so on. These principles of organisation have been tested over billions of years and are the ‘wisdom of nature’. Human endeavours of creating sustainable societies should be led by an understanding of how nature has done it for billions of years. This is what I call ‘ecological literacy’.

One of the things you learn when you become ecologically literate, is that in this very complex, non-linear system in which everything is interdependent and all matter moves in cycles, this complex web of life, no single variable can be maximised. They all have their optimal values. Maximising a single variable is the ecological understanding of stress. Permanent or long-term stress leads to collapse. The species that did not obey these rules, that evolved different ways of life, of maximising either their size, like dinosaurs, or other aspects, died out because it is not sustainable to do that. The species we see now are the  success stories who knew how to optimise, and not maximise.

Very late in evolution came the human species that evolved a whole cognitive dimension leading to consciousness and culture, which also gave us the ability to abstract ourselves out of nature and see ourselves as separate. By disregarding the wisdom of nature, we have maximised our variables like population and consumption.

Humanity on earth is almost like a foreign organism because we have not respected the laws of ecology and evolution. When a larger organism has a foreign organism, it often has an immune system that will reject it. You can see our global crisis in those terms. So, yes, things are changing all the time and they have changed for billions of years. But within certain patterns of organisation which we disregard at our own peril.

Now, fortunately, the other side of human consciousness can come into play. We can use our consciousness to reconnect with the wisdom of nature. The Latin term for ‘reconnect’ is religare, the origin of the word ‘religion’, so religious awareness in its most profound sense is this reconnection with the wisdom of nature, which we can and must actualise.

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This interview was first published in the May 2008 issue of Life Positive magazine.

I wouldn’t say spiritual values have been lost entirely. But there are signs of erosion, most evident in the loss of balance between the four aspects of life – dharma (ethical living), artha (wealth creation), kama (pursuit of pleasure), and moksha (liberation spirituality). Each had its place in the matrix of life, which is no longer the case, with artha assuming precedence over everything else.

A spiritual-cultural blueprint for the ‘good life’ exists in India, one that is in accordance with nature’s values of co-operation rather than competition, nurture rather than consumption, of taking only that which is needed and nothing more. We need to remember it today, not only because it makes spiritual sense in terms of cutting out the ‘noise’ of grasping, but because the earth cannot continue to sustain lifestyles that burden its resources.

‘Eco-literacy’ has a deeper meaning than merely information about the earth’s ecology. Scientist and philosopher Fritjof Capra defines it as “forming of networks, sharing resources, cycling matter continuously, using solar energy to drive the ecological cycles, developing diversity to assure resilience, forming networks nesting within networks, and so on”. In this complex, non-linear web of life, in which everything is interdependent and matter moves in cycles, no single variable can be maximised. In fact, maximising a single variable is defined by scientists as the ecological understanding of stress.

Our pre-globalisation way of life, still alive in parts of the country, had much of this holistic wisdom woven into it. Informed by the principles of integration, frugality and balanced living, it was an eco-literate lifestyle where all constituent variables were optimised, not maximised. According to it, the ‘good life’ was a balanced, mindful, meaningful, healthy life.

Individual wellbeing was assured through an ayurvedic cuisine that linked properties of food, seasonal variations and methods of cooking with individual constitutions, and yogic disciplines regulated physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Principles of frugality required not wasting, and reusing rather than throwing away.

The emphasis was on balancing, not maximising, the variables of one’s life. Santosh dhan (‘wealth of contentment’) was cherished over material wealth, explicated in this couplet by Kabir, ‘Sai utna dijiye, ja mein kutumb samaye, / Main bhi bhookha na rahoon, sadhu na bhookha jaye.’ (Lord, give me only as much as is needed to feed my family, / May I not go hungry, and neither the sadhu who comes to my door.)

We may not be able to replicate this lifestyle exactly as it once was, in a pre-industrial, agrarian society. What we can do is not forget this ancient wisdom, and rethink and re-imagine it in our contexts. A new blueprint is needed to meet the needs of our times, and it must have woven into it this valuable understanding of life.

Sheikha Cemalnur Sargut

Sheikha Cemalnur Sargut is a rare woman Sufi master who speaks candidly about her experiences on the path. I met her in Istanbul, at the Turkish Women’s Cultural Association office of which Sheikha is president.

What, according to you, is the path of the Sufi?

For me, to be a Sufi can be explained with an example given by my teacher. ‘I have two types of eyeglasses. The first for seeing things that are near, the second for those that are far. Being a Sufi means wearing both magnifications simultaneously.’ When you are dealing with worldly matters, you simultaneously know that you are in front of Allah. Whoever you are dealing with, you know you are dealing with Allah.

In this state, you don’t see suffering as suffering, but as honey. In Turkish, bela is suffering and bal is honey. The words sound the same.

The word ishq, which is deep love for Allah, is compared with the love between Majnu and Laila. Majnu worked for Laila’s father. Once, Laila was serving food. When it was Majnu’s turn, she pushed his plate away. Majnu was ecstatic. Others asked him, ‘You say Laila loves you. Why did she not serve you?’ Majnu said, ‘Would she treat me like everybody else?’

You are saying, transform the way we look at suffering?

Anything that comes from Allah is like a letter. In Medina recently, in front of the Prophet, I was praying for everybody. In the end, I remembered my son and prayed for a baby for him. Just then, I was pushed hard. I felt as if the Prophet was telling me, ‘You are in front of me. Why are you thinking of your son?’ I can’t tell you how happy I felt, like Majnu. I know He does not want to give me to anybody else. If you realise that suffering comes from love, then it is like a letter, to say ‘hello’ to you.

I cannot love Allah; He can love me. I can understand that He loves me, and I can feel love.

Our love can only be a reflection of His love?

Yes. At the time of Qayamat (apocalypse), each of us will be asked, ‘Who owns everything in this world?’ If you know that everything belongs to Allah, then you have died before you have died. The Quran says that the owner of jannat or paradise is Ridwan, ‘contentment’. So, if you accept whatever Allah gives you, you are in paradise. And when you say anything belongs to me, you are in hell. You have nothing.

Grasping is a psychological state comparable to hell. Is this also in terms of people and relationships?

In the Dars-e Masnavi by Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, there is a beautiful story. Prophet Nuh (Noah) was building his ark, but his son did not support him. Nuh turned to Allah, ‘Why doesn’t my son believe me? Isn’t he my son?’
Allah responded, ‘Why is he your son? I only gave him to you for one lifetime, in which your job was to teach him to love me. Love him, but he is not your son.’ If you understand this, it is a beautiful life!

How can we turn on that switch of awakening?

We need a murshid or teacher. Without our murshid, we are nothing. We must surrender before our murshid, be without nefs, ego.

Do we find the teacher, or does the teacher find us?

The teacher will find us. In a story from the Masnavi, one fish says to another, ‘There must be a sea somewhere. Everybody is talking about it.’ The other fish says, ‘Let’s ask the murshid.’ When they go to the murshid, they are told, ‘Everywhere is the sea! There is nothing but the sea.’

The first quality of a murshid is that they must practise in their daily lives the moral values given by Prophet Mohammad. What the teacher speaks is not important. It is how she lives that is important.

The murshid has to live in the world and the after-world in this world. If you are living in this world, then you should not leave it and go and think about Allah. You should live this life and the hereafter separately. Also, the teacher must take you to Allah, not to himself.

When did you decide to dedicate yourself to the spiritual path?

I fell in love with my teacher when I was four, in a dream. Later, I became interested in philosophy. It was the worst time of my life. I asked my mother, ‘Why do they never live what they say?’ I saw what Nietzsche and Schopenhauer wrote, but they were not happy. My mother gave me the Masnavi, and I came to Mevlana (Rumi). My life changed. I was 19.

Before you reach Allah, you must annihilate yourself before your sheikh or teacher. We have a word for this, which means ‘melting in your sheikh’. You don’t exist. Then, the sheikh supports your journey to the Prophet.

At first, you might think you know the Prophet, but you don’t. You realise that the Prophet is there always, but because of your ego, you cannot really see him. When I understood this, I fell in love with the Prophet. I began to learn about him. Then, I realised there is no Prophet, only Allah. Then, you go to Allah. You begin to see Him everywhere. Even when you are alone, you are aware of this.

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This interview appeared in The Speaking Tree paper on October 30, 2011.

Conditioning, barriers, perceptions — filters and masks through which one normally responds to the world — are knocked off and consequently whatever one experiences feels raw, direct, deep and true. Distinctions between self and the other and self and the world cease to exist, leading to a profound experience of interconnectedness. There are no thoughts in the conventional sense. Whatever arises naturally subsides without causing the mind to ripple after it. There is peace and stillness, and often, bliss.

The analogy of death is often used to describe an awakening. For the “old” way of being dies forever, one is no longer who one used to be in the moment before the awakening. Something dies so that something new can arise. In the case of awakening, it is the blinkered, afflicted self that dies, even as one is born anew into a radically changed way of experiencing oneself and the world. In some cases, this “death” seems to become mirrored in the individual’s body through physical pain and a loss of control. The mind, shorn of the crutches it used to manoeuvre its way through the world, appears to have collapsed. Mystics have at times been mistaken for madmen simply because they are liberated of the conditioning and social graces with which we “sleepers” operate.

Herein lies a dilemma for the awakened one. How to integrate their awakening with their worldly lives? For, the transformation of awakening appears to be so total that there is no going back to what one was prior to it. It is as if one’s eyes have been blown open and one can never go to sleep, to unknowing, again. Some find the balance in taking on the responsibility of sharing their journeys with others, becoming gurus and teachers. Others might continue to live everyday lives, their awakening informing every aspect of their being and conduct.

What about awakening itself? Is it like a thunderbolt, direct and immediate, or is it gradual? On close examination, one finds that it is really a process, a river that unfolds and undulates through the individual’s experiences. The actual realisation might occur in a flash, but often it is part of a process that includes questioning, perhaps working with a teacher, or self-study, and chipping away at emotional and mental blocks.

Even if an initial awakening happens through a thump on the heart or the activation of the point between the brows by a master, it often needs to be backed up with inner work. At times, the awakening might happen in stages, spread over a period of time, assisted by circumstances and teachers. And while the ultimate realisation might be similar, the paths through which people have arrived to it are myriad and many-hued, as varied as humankind itself.

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[This article appeared under the title 'Be the Awakened One' in The Asian Age, October 20, 2011.]

His Holiness blesses a copy of my book, 'Dharamsala Diaries' in 2007.

In a recent statement, the Dalai Lama has attempted to demystify the seemingly esoteric system of reincarnate lamas in Tibetan Buddhism. Here is a look at the system’s spiritual roots, and why the Dalai Lamas of Tibet might soon become a part of history.

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“I am held to be the reincarnation of each of the previous thirteen Dalai Lamas of Tibet, who are in turn considered to be manifestations of…the Bodhisattva of Compassion… I am often asked whether I truly believe this…when I consider my experiences during this present life, and given my Buddhist beliefs, I have no difficulty accepting that I am spiritually connected both to the thirteen previous Dalai Lamas…and to the Buddha himself.”

– Tenzin Gyatso, the 14^th Dalai Lama ofTibet

Reincarnation inTibetis not only a matter of religious belief. It has struck deep roots in its lived culture and led to a unique system of spiritual leadership most popularly exemplified by the Dalai Lama. Eminent teachers of Tibetan Buddhism are believed to re-enter the world upon death, in fresh bodies, to carry on their work. In a statement released on 24 September 2011, the Dalai Lama explains this phenomenon, “There are two ways in which someone can take rebirth: under the sway of karma and destructive emotions, and rebirth through the power of compassion and prayer.”

Conscious Rebirth

The ‘conscious reincarnations’, called tulkus, are identified through an elaborate process that includes clues left by the predecessor, divination, a search among plausible children taking into account auspicious events at birth, and an examination of selected candidates through signs such as familiarity with the deceased’s belongings and attendants.

The recognised child, usually three or four at this time, is installed in his predecessor’s position with much celebration. Then begins a rigorous course of study – training in spiritual disciplines, scriptures, philosophy and practices particular to the lineage. Once the tulku matures in age and understanding, he takes over the responsibilities of his predecessor.

It might be argued that any child put through a couple of decades of concentrated spiritual training will grow into a wiser human being. While this may be so, little tulkus usually display a keen aptitude for scriptural study, metaphysics and meditation, as also equanimity, balance and quality of concentration not common in other children of their age.

The Dalai Lama, who has an abiding interest in modern science, has said that he is willing to consider scientific proof that debunks reincarnation but that until then he would continue to believe in it. He has talked about his tutor, Ling Rinpoche’s reincarnation, who, at age two, crawled to the Dalai Lama’s room on his own and laid a ceremonial scarf on the bed!

Bodhisattva’s Vow

The key to understanding conscious rebirth is a word the Dalai Lama uses in the opening quote – ‘bodhisattva’. In his words, “Superiorbodhisattvas, who have attained the path of seeing, are reborn…due to the power of their compassion for sentient beings and based on their prayers to benefit others.”

The Buddhism ofTibet– Vajrayana – itself a branch of Mahayana, is essentially the way of the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva is the Buddha-to-be, who has chosen to delay his release from samsara for the sake of everybody else. Nirvana for oneself is unthinkable when countless others continue to suffer, and the bodhisattva in his deep compassion, chooses to return with only one motivation – to help as many beings, in as many ways, as he can.

For the young tulkus, it is an inspiring focus to develop in life. Where one’s raison d’etre, reason for being, has nothing to do with personal ambition, high-flying careers, or even families and children, like most of us. Every practitioner of Vajrayana, in fact, attempts to cultivate this attitude of compassion and dedicates his spiritual practice for the welfare of all beings.

Uncertain Future

Recognising the potential for manipulation in the tulku system, suitable checks and balances were put in place. These, along with everything else in the matrix ofTibet’s culture, were dealt a massive blow with the invasion ofTibet and the subsequent flight of the Dalai Lama out ofTibet in 1959.

One reason that has prompted the Dalai Lama’s recent statement is his concern about the politics that will be played with his reincarnation. His concern at the imminent subversion of a spiritual ideal that lies at the very heart of Tibetan Buddhism has prompted him to consider ending the institution of the Dalai Lama.

“When I am about ninety I will consult the high lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public, and other concerned people who follow Tibetan Buddhism,” he says in the statement, “and re-evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not.” Because a bodhisattva operates from a motivation of concern and service to the other, the Dalai Lama seems to have handed over the choice of his reincarnation to the other as well.

In one of the last decisions of his present life, he once again evinces what has been a lifelong commitment – pointing to the need to innovate with tradition, let go of aspects that are no longer tenable, and keep an open mind to the endless possibilities of life.

The Dalai Lamas of Tibet face an uncertain future. But they carry a valuable message for us in this age of materialistic greed, encapsulated in this prayer the Dalai Lama recites every day:

For as long as space endures,

And for as long as living beings remain,

Until then may I too abide,

To dispel the misery of the world.

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This article appeared as cover story in the October 16, 2011, edition of The Speaking Tree newspaper.

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For those of the faith, the call is to drop their work of the moment and turn to God. Because it happens at regular intervals through the day, one could say it is really a ‘return’ to God. One spends one’s time doing whatever one is required to do, personally and professionally, but five times a day, for a few moments, one turns within. It is a remembrance not only of God but of one’s own true nature, which one is liable to lose touch with in the busy-ness of one’s day.

Walking through the old quarter ofIstanbulthat stretches along the Bosphorus Strait towards the Sea of Marmara, one cannot help but marvel at the fact that this geographical area has been in constant human habitation since 660 BCE. Because of which it has also been a repository of diverse faiths and wisdom traditions, from the Greek and Roman religions, to Christianity, and since the fifteenth century, of Islam.

In old Istanbul, this multilayering of faiths and their parent civilisations is most apparent in the architecture. While the obelisks in the Hippodrome bespeak a Greco-Roman past, and the Blue Mosque and the Suleymaniye Mosque its Islamic Ottoman ancestry, the Hagia Sophia (‘Church of Divine Wisdom’) which started off as a church, moulted into a mosque, and is now a secular museum, mirrors the city’s own history.

Stepping into the Hagia Sophia’s cavernous central hall, one is filled with a sense of infinite space. The neck arches and the head tilts backwards to take in the expanse of the giant dome that caps the building, as the eye attempts to focus on the wisdom etched in golden calligraphy at its centre. The experience is not unlike that of childhood wonder at the immensity of the night sky studded with innumerable stars. Cocooned in awe, one can easily ignore the milling crowds of tourists and return to an interior space that can feel as vast and deep as the soaring silence of the domed space above.

It is said that all the later mosques of Istanbul were built in the style of the Hagia Sophia. Indeed, one feels a similar sense of space in the Blue Mosque just across from the Sophia. It is an active mosque, and so its centre is blocked for worshippers, with visitors being restricted to the periphery by a wooden railing. As the faithful congregate, one too can join in, in one’s own way, using this outer sanctum to retreat into the one within, igniting one’s consciousness with prayerful remembrance.