Yesterday
I lived bewildered,
In illusion.
But now I am awake,
Flawless and serene,
Beyond the world.
From my light
The body and the world arise.
So all things are mine,
Or nothing is.
Now I have given up
The body and the world,
I have a special gift.
I see the infinite Self.
As a wave,
Seething and foaming,
Is only water.
So all creation,
Streaming out of the Self,
Is only the Self.
Consider a piece of cloth.
It is only threads!
So all creation,
When you look closely,
Is only the Self.
Like the sugar
In the juice of the sugarcane,
I am the sweetness
In everything I have made.
When the Self is unknown
The world arises,
Not when it is known.
But you mistake
The rope for the snake.
When you see the rope,
The snake vanishes.
My nature is light,
Nothing but light.
When the world arises
I alone am shining.
When the world arises in me,
It is just an illusion,
Water shimmering in the sun.
A vein of silver on mother-of-pearl,
A serpent in a strand of rope.
From me the world streams out
And in me it dissolves,
As a bracelet melts into gold,
A pot crumbles into clay,
A wave subsides into water.
I adore myself.
How wonderful I am!
I can never die.
The whole world may perish,
From Brahma to a blade of grass,
But I am still here.
Indeed how wonderful!
I adore myself.
For I have taken form
But I am still ONE.
Neither coming or going,
Yet I am still everywhere. . .
I am the infinite ocean.
When thoughts spring up,
The wind freshens, and like waves
A thousand worlds arise.
But when the wind falls,
The trader sinks with his ship,
On the boundless ocean of my being
He founders,
And all the worlds with him.
But, Oh how wonderful!
I am the unbounded deep
In whom all living things
Naturally arise,
Rush against each other playfully,
And then subside.
From: The Heart of Awareness
A translation of the Ashtavakra Gita by Thomas Byrom
I want to tell you about a very special 20 year old Vedanta Society devotee. Four years ago, at the tender age of 16, a beautiful sweet soul, "Kamal" came to live with the nuns at the Santa Barbara Vedanta Society temple. After finishing high school early he was granted a rare, (for an American teenager) three year, full scholarship to Vivekananda University near Kolkata run by the Ramakrishna monks. His major of concentration was "Sanskrit" and "Vedic Culture".
While in India, Kamal decided to start a blog about his adventures as a way to keep in touch with family and friends.
http://ripkynkamal.blogspot.com
Take a read through his blog. The posts are very informative with lots of photos and antidotes about local customs and his new Indian life. He was a very brave and wise spirit, old beyond his years, and everyone at the Vedanta temple was so proud of his maturity and high achievements. We all had hopes he would become a full fledged monk of the Ramakrishna order someday.
I pray his writings will inspire you like they have me. We will miss his passing but we take great comfort in knowing that he has returned to that infinite ocean of unchanging love. Now enjoying the bliss of samadhi with Holy Mother, Thakur & Narendra. Shiva, Shiva, Higher Birth!!
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EMAIL FROM KAMAL
Date: Saturday, June 23, 2012
Subject: Re: [India] New comment on Hey Mom, So I'm here at the University. They put....
Thanks so much for putting the idea of starting a blog in my head, I think that will be the easiest way to let people know what's going on with me. Thanks also for linking my blog with yours, hopefully some people can find it and get something out of reading it. I looked at your blog and was very impressed, it's very well done and has a lot of great information on it. Vedanta needs more people like you who are willing to use the internet to spread the word to people who are searching for it.
In the words of Swami Vivekananda:
"One day a drop of water fell into the vast ocean.
When it found itself there,
It began to weep and complain just as you are doing.
The great ocean laughed at the drop of water.
"Why do you weep?" it asked. "I do not understand.
When you join me, you join all your brothers and sisters,
The other drops of water of which I am made.
You become the ocean itself.
You have only to rise up on a sunbeam into the clouds.
From there you can descend again,
A blessing and a benediction to the thirsty earth."
- His Eastern and Western Admirers, Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama, 1964
