Gurus

Tara on Tour

Gurus - that peculiarly Eastern term for a spiritual teacher. Literally meaning "dispeller of darkness". I'm in Oxford this week, staying with a close friend and someone who has played a very big role in my spiritual life: she taught me to meditate (apparently I sat and cried throughout the first 3 sessions until I was given a mantra to recite!! I do remember being rather scared and overwhelmed by the experience, but this is an embarrassing confession nonetheless).

Also here this week, visiting from India, is one of the teachers from the Kagyu lineage of Buddhism: Thrangu Rinpoche is a senior teacher (guru), a real scholar and the main teacher for the four regents of the lineage, including His Holiness the Karmapa. I haven't seen him yet but am looking forward to being reminded of the benefits of proper meditation practice!

Meanwhile, I've been reading the biography of one of India's most celebrated gurus: Sri Ramana Maharshi. Which has had/is having quite an impact. He was born in South India in the late 19th century and at a very young age left home and took himself off to live an austere and intense life of silence, meditation and solitude within the halls of a local temple. He renounced the world completely, shaving his hair, giving away the last of his very little money and donning a loincloth in place of ordinary clothing. He ate very little and ignored all attempts to be lured into conversation - he just sat and sat; moving occasionally if need be but so absorbed in meditation that he seemed largely unaware of the world around him.

He was eventually drawn to the mountain of Arunachala - considered to be a holy place, the abode of Siva, Hindu God of Light. There he remained for the rest of his life, gradually shedding the last remnants of his identity as an ordinary person and becoming, if such a person can really be described, a fully-embodied Divine Being. "Extraordinarily ordinary" at first glance, and yet so powerful was the energy emanating from him that people came from all over the world just to be close to him. To receive his grace - which was regarded as none other than the Grace of God. His teaching was very, very simple: he did not profess to belong to any religion, but thought all religions led to the same "place" - the experience of Oneness, where any vestige of ego was left behind and the mind was absorbed into the heart of its very source. Advaita. Non-duality. Here there is total silence - but not the silence of no noise, the silence of no thought.

This is an experience I have once had; in the house I lived in in Woodstock. All of a sudden every noise stopped dead - I remember asking "why have all the birds had stopped singing?" Then a kind of blank, but not a vacant blank, a buzzing alive blank. Pure peace. Absolute nothingness. It was heaven! Then a roaring sound, the word "advaita" appeared in my consciousness together with the distinct sense of that pure nothingness "falling" and becoming fragmented into discrete entities of thought, object, form.

This was, I think, a brief experience of the state of mind the great spiritual masters abide in.

Ramana Maharshi taught through silence. He gave very little teaching. Except to ask students (devotees as they're usually referred to) to contemplate the question "Who am I?" There is nothing more important than to trace this "I" back to its source and there to lose it!! The "I-thought" is the thought preceding all other thoughts and is therefore the root of our human condition. To transcend that, with all its attendant confusion and suffering, is to experience the truth of who we really are, is to know Heaven on Earth.

He believed that, at a certain point in our development, it is necessary to be with a Guru in order to be able to reach realisation.

Reading this has stirred that realisation within me too. I have often felt it, and in fact Akong Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe and Ringu Tulku fulfill that role for me. But there are times when the longing becomes very intense - such as it is now - and perhaps that's because I'm not physically close to any of them right now, perhaps it's because I've reached a point of being ready to be close again. "When the student is ready, the teacher will come".

So how does this relate to Tara? Well, I've been wondering that and meditating on that question. The deity is also the Guru, but it can be hard to have a very strong, clear connection with the deity: they are not in form, but are only visible in the mind's eye - which is obviously subject to all sorts of interference and interpretation by the rational mind.

It's interesting to have reached a point of apparent separation between Guru and deity. That's ignorance. But it's there!

I wonder if this will be healed a little through seeing Thrangu Rinpoche. Or perhaps more so through the visit of Amma to London in October: she is another Indian saint, said to be the incarnation of the Divine Mother and therefore would be regarded as an incarnation of Tara.

I'm working with two little Taras at the moment: Tara Protecting from Thieves, and Tara of Increasing Power. I feel it would be appropriate to take Tara of Increasing Power to Amma personally and to give her to Amma. But that's just a thought for now!

Travelling Taras

Tara on Tour
Having placed the fifth Tara last week, there is now a shift taking place in terms of how the pilgrimage will proceed. The ground for this was laid a few weeks ago when the "I am not just me" realisation opened the door for others to become an integral part of this journey. It looks as if the next few Taras will be travelling to different parts of the world - with different people, all of whom have a connection with Tara and whose reason for travelling is aligned to her essence and activity.

I am hoping that each person will also write an article about their particular journey and that this can be included in the blog.

My stepfather and mother have taken the sixth Tara to Australia.. Allan will have given his lecture by now and his intention was to leave this Tara - who represents the "increasing of activities", in particular enrichment through the increasing of eloquence, intelligence, knowledge, etc. Since the conference in Sydney is a gathering of some of the world experts involved in the study of the brain, this seems very appropriate indeed!

The seventh Tara - Tara of Indestructible Protection - has gone with Rob Parry to a new community outside Seattle in the American North-West. This Tara protects from volcanoes, meteors, hailstorms in the external world, and from desire, envy and hatred within the mind. Rob's intention was to climb a 1400 ft volcano and leave Tara at its summit, but it may be too late in the year to make that trip, so we'll see where she ends up and what particular journey they make together.

The eighth Tara - Tara protecting from Politics - is going with Sara Trevelyan to Tibet. This Tara protects from oppression and tyranny through government and leadership, from the kind of suffering many people suffer at the hands of dictators. After the terrible atrocities committed in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution when China moved in to claim the country as their own, killing, torturing, raping and maiming thousands whilst destroying monasteries, palaces, statues, scriptures - as much of the Tibetan culture and way of life as they could - it is significant that one of the Taras returns to her homeland. Sara is going on a 3-week pilgrimage and, with her own strong and active commitment to peace and to alievating suffering in the world, is very much the right person for this particular mission.

The ninth Tara - Tara protecting from Weapons - is going to Russia with my friend Natalia, when she returns home at the end of the month.

The tenth Tara - Tara protecting from Thieves - is sitting with me now; she may be going to India but at the moment this one isn't certain. So I'll say no more.

The expansion of the pilgrimage and the project in this way feels very appropriate and both liberating and joyful. More inclusive and more shared. Interestingly, the lessening of ownership, of "self", that has perhaps been forced by the recognition of limits, is a curious feeling. On the one hand, from the point of view of the project, and I think the "real me" it's joyful and heart-warming. From the point of view of the "Anna-self" it's threatening. Simply because I grabbed onto this project as some kind of salvation: from the devastating losses of the year and from the inability to gain control and restructure my life at that point. Mixing ego with spirituality is inevitable I think while the ego has such an unconscious hold still, but i can also see how ridiculous it is. Using spirituality to bolster the ego, however subtlely, is going to produce flawed actions, and a lot of confusion. The best one can hope is that consciousness gradually dawns anyway, and the ego is weakened in the process.

So, this morning, when I awoke with the familiar heart palpitations and surge of anxiety, I looked more directly at what the mind was reacting to. What I "saw" was a void, an abyss, a great chasm of nothingness. Into which I am called - and to which I am reacting. With fear. Within the Void I can sense clear light, clarity, boundlessness - which is going to obliterate all the "past" that I have been grieving the loss of whilst hanging onto at the same time. Can I let go into that? Can I really trust and surrender to it? It's a precious opportunity - to go in and experience it, knowing it is probably the only direction to go in if something new is going to emerge from the ashes of the past. Something really new. I don't think it's actually time to physically die just yet, and so form is still relevant..... and so it's better to surrender to the Void and let go rather than to hang on to the sides and be in a state of paralysed tension!

Hmmmmmmmm.... watch this space!

Greenwich Park

Tara on Tour
Today - again unexpectedly - I have placed the Fifth Tara, Tara protecting from wind and from jealousy. It's not going to be easy to write this entry because there are feelings of shame around encountering the degree to which I can experience feelings of jealousy! And not previously even have recognised them as such....

But here goes.

Today, it's the birthday of someone who has probably triggered more jealousy in me than anyone else. I won't give his name, but I was once completely in love with him and it wasn't mutual..... we had a brief relationship, but it ended: I couldn't really accept this and it wasn't until I walked into a pub and found him with his new girlfriend that I realised my dreams were nothing but fairytale castles in the sky. Amongst the many feelings this incident gave rise to, jealousy featured strongly. In fact I became so paranoid that every woman in the city of Edinburgh represented a threat!! I was taken over by the green-eyed monster and unable to really face the pain "not being loved or wanted" was creating. Because I couldn't face that pain directly, it took on a monstrous form - jealousy and paranoia.

To say that jealousy creates a "storm" of emotions, thoughts and feelings would not be an exaggeration. It seems to come from feelings of rejection and assuming that not being "wanted" is the same as not being loved, not being good enough. These old fears, old feelings - which in the distant past were tied up with feelings of abandonment and loss - get re-activated in situations where someone we have decided we "love" doesn't behave the way we want or think we need.

Most of my life, if I'm really brutally honest, I've suffered from feelings of insecurity and not being good enough - particularly when it comes to being loved by a man. This of course mirrors, or stems from, my relationship with my father who was imprisoned within his own mind to such a degree that I couldn't reach him, nor could he respond to me.

Jealousy has arisen with every man I've ever loved - mostly because they have all gone off with other women! Now, normal and understandable as this may be, it's still painful and still a cause of suffering to me and to others. The jealous response is my own; it's not created by anyone else, no matter what the apparent provocation.

News then came today that another dear friend, whom I also once wanted to be in a relationship with, is getting married. I'd been thinking of him a lot in recent days and the news came as a shock. Like the other "losses", i felt my heart open and tears came, but this time I could feel a lot of love being released for this person...without any wish to hold on or resist what is happening. This seems like progress!

Over the course of today I've been seeing the many faces of jealousy within me - and although I feel some shame about it, it's better to open to it and feel it directly. And have compassion for the heart that wants to love and be loved. I have to open and love this part of me; otherwise it will continue to eat away at my happiness and capacity to be happy for others; and it will mean I will recoil from others when I see jealousy in them.

The friend who is getting married loves trees, and taught me a lot about the appreciation of trees - simply through his love for them. There is a beautiful, big old chestnut tree in Greenwich Park, planted in 1642, and I decided to take some beads from an old crystal mala and offer them to the tree on behalf of this friend. As I was leaving, the little Tara dedicated to transforming jealousy practically jumped into my pocket....so I took her too and placed her inside the tree, surrounded by the crystal beads.

That tree has withstood all the elements for nearly 400 years; how many storms have battered the Park during this time? How much does this tree represent protection from the wind element? There are few living beings that stay with us over this amount of time, growing quietly and witnessing the many joys and travails of the Earth and of people. Kings and Queens have come and gone; the Great Fire of London; the Black Death; Victorian times; World War I and II; there are so many huge events that tree has borne witness to...and survived to tell a tale that lives on in the bark of its great girth and whispers through its branches. Past, present and future merge in the mightly presence of such a being.

Australia

Tara on Tour

The first of the Taras to travel abroad leaves with my stepfather and mother for Australia next week.

Having reached an unbearable point of tension as a result of the conflict between what I'd set out to do and what I am currently capable of doing myself, there was a sudden breakthrough moment.... when I realised "I wasn't just me". That the seemingly separate "I" committed to this Peace Pilgrimage wasn't a separate entity at all. At the level of Tara herself, there are many beings who are part of this work and it doesn't matter who takes the Tara blessing around the world... the more the merrier, in fact. Especially as the connection each person has with Tara on a personal level is strengthened by their willingness to act in this way: and that means her blessing is spreading in more ways than I envisaged in the first place.

Allan is giving a lecture at a medical conference in Sydney. He will be talking about the research he has been doing for 30 years, looking at the tangible benefits of Vitamin B thiamine when given to patients with chronic alcohol problems: that long-term brain damage can be prevented is this vitamin is administered in time. I am hoping he will write a short piece himself for the blog when he comes back...

The Tara he is taking is the 6th one: Increasing Activities. This is a Tara of enrichment, who increases intelligence, eloquence, knowledge, success, wealth, etc.

My mother is going too, and she will look after this Tara - and Allan! - while she is there. I have a strong wish to give my mother one of the Taras, one that she will have responsibility for and a strong connection with - but that is one is yet to manifest....