Reality Check

Reality Check, Saturday, April 18. 2015

IN Thailand, incognito with Bhakti Sudhir Goswami

Well, folks, it's been quite a ride.



We started out in Mexico at Christmas and traveled to Cancun, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Thailand, Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, Cambodia, over to China, Los Angeles, California and back to Mexico. I met a lot of wonderful people who enriched my life and learned some valuable lessons. Along the way, I've written 267 blog-posts with varying degrees of insight and originality.

In Angkor Wat

That said, I've just been through some really tough times health-wise. It's not clear how much more time I have left. When you're younger you have all kinds of different little aches and pains, but when you get older, they gang up on you. It's too personal for me to list all the different slings and arrows I'm being hit with; but it adds up. It's not easy being a truth-seeker in this world. It all happens so fast that most folks just try to grab what they can and survive before it's all over. It's been nice knowing you.

 Not everyone gets the chance to use the human form of life to make inquiry into higher things; and a lot of us get stopped before we get too far: mostly by our own egos. We get sidetracked into bad habits and nonsense. I'm no exception. I'm not sure if after all this, I've really made any progress at all. I like to think I have and that I'm closer to the truth today than I was before. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the negativity.

Sometimes when I hear negativity I say, "don't curse the darkness, better to light a candle." But sometimes the candle burns out,  the cold wind blows, and the matches are wet.

I don't know how much longer I can keep this going. I think someone must be reading this: I have over 13,000 pageviews. I'm convinced I have a  good version going, but I'm sacrificing time and energy to writing and hope that some readers out there are getting some light. Maybe some of you can light a candle out there and I will know that the message is getting out.

Otherwise I'll just keep scraping words together and hope they catch fire somehow.

Prometheus

The greatest gift a teacher can give his students is not knowledge of a subject matter. The real thing is fire. It's crazy to let your students play with fire, but if you give something less you're cheating them. And yourself. So, I've dedicated a lifetime to giving people fire. Sometimes they went crazy with it. Sometimes they turned around and burned me. It doesn't matter. Whenever I discovered fire, I tried to share it with others. Prometheus gave fire to the mortals. After seeing that the animals had been given various gifts by the gods, Prometheus had pity on the humans. The birds had flight, the tigers had massive jaws, the horse had speed, but the humans only had their wits. As he saw them going naked through the forest, freezing to death, Prometheus had pity on them. He stole fire from the gods and gave it to the humans. He taught the humans how to use fire: to cook, to forge iron and gold, to make weapons and tools. We've been going strong ever since.

But Prometheus was condemned for giving godly fire to mortals; he was exiled from Olympus and punished for his sins. Chained to a rock for all eternity an eagle picks his intestines with pointed beak. Every day the eagle slowly gnaws his liver away. At night, his liver is restored by immortality, only to be torn  again by the eagle.

Prometheus punished.

What Prometheus did was dangerous and for this he had to be punished. It's dangerous to empower others with ideas.
Consider Socrates. Another "Promethean" thinker.

1. The trial and execution of Socrates took place in 399 BC. Socrates was trialled on two charges: corrupting the youth and impiety (in Greek, asebeia). More specifically, Socrates' accusers cited two "impious" acts: "failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges" and "introducing new deities".

Socrates: A Dangerous Thinker

 When he was about to leave this world, he said, "You, therefore, O my judges, ought to entertain good hopes with respect to death, and to meditate on this one truth, that to a good man nothing is evil, neither while living nor when dead, nor are his concerns neglected by the gods."

Socrates accepts his punishment: Death by Hemlock poison.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to leave this world yet. Like Socrates I've done my best to speak the truth. And like Prometheus, well, I've been doing my best to give out some fire: I've been blogging steady every day since November.

 I started with my own spiritual odyssey.

My journey goes on. I'm a talented story-teller. When I was a kid my family moved a lot. I was the socially awkward nerd with glasses and a book. I've spent thousands and thousands of hours reading: from greek myths to stories of ancient egypt, to the Puranas. I never got tired of reading. Reading makes the writer and the story-teller.
At some point I became a teacher. When I first came to Mexico I was teaching English in a little primary school called the Vasconcelos.


Sometimes the children would get bored and ask me for a story. I told them the Ramayana. They loved it so much I made it a regular feature of my class. Once a week on Fridays I would tell Ramayana, stretching it out to make it last, savoring the actions of the characters, the smell of pine needles in the Panchavati forest on the banks of the Godavari. Sometimes when I'm walking down the street here in San Miguel de Allende, ex-students come up to me. Now bearded and in their 30s they say, "Don't you remember me? It's little Juanito from Second Grade." I scratch my head and look at the lumbering giant before and try to remember the innocent face he once wore so many years ago when we were looking up words in the dictionary together. "Juanito! Of course! you sat next to Toshio the Japanese boy." He grins. "That's me. I always remember the stories from Ramayana," he says and walks away, waving.

Ramayana

Now I'm telling stories from the Mahabharata on the blog. I'm trying to take my time and give them the attention they deserve. The problem is, for me to tell the story, I have to get in my time machine and go back 4,000 years to where Bhishma lived in Hastinapura.

Mahabharata

It's not easy to return in time and space to Vedic Hastinapura. I pray to Vyasadeva to help me. But sometimes I'm in midflight, there's a knock at the door and I have to answer. It's usually a man with a burro loaded with firewood or organic earth for plants. A wheelbarrow of fruit pulled by two young men with mangos and bananas and tomatoes. Or even, the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Firewood burros in San Miguel

I'm not complaining. I'm just describing the "creative process." Anyway, 267 blogposts later and here we are. I hope you enjoy these stories.  I hope they give you some light.

My idea is to retell the Mahabharata in a more universal way and reflect on the ancient wisdom traditions of India with focus on the teachings in the Gaudiya line.



I'm also trying to write and reflect on a lot of different subjects: maybe I'll turn it into a book someday: the true self, the Vedic vision of the universe, the nature of consciousness and transmigration of the soul, intelligence, language, and cognition, the chronology of the Puranas and the Vedic civilization, Vaishnava Ontology and Ancient, Vedic and Vaishnava metaphysical cosmologies. I'm interested in the ultimate path or self-realization, Avataras, the guru principle and the theology of mantras and the holy name. I'm interested in how scripture becomes revealed truth and the relationship between mythology, the collective consciousness, and human experience.

Indian Dancer

I enjoy writing the blog; I like the idea that others are keeping company with my ideas and sharing. I don't know who you are, but I look at the map and can see, aha! Russia! Aha! Ireland! Aha! United Kingdom. So thanks for checking in.

I'm reaching the end of my days. I love writing and sharing these ideas. But I have to admit, dear reader, that sometimes I grow weary. Drop me a line in the comments and let me know if you feel this is worth continuing. Maybe it's time for me to take a long vacation.

As always, truth-seekers, my sincere and humble dandavat, adios, sayonara, strastvuite, bon jour and see you later to all, Michael Dolan-B.V. Mahayogi.

Story of Prometheus

(As retold by James Baldwin)

I. How Fire Was Given to Men

In those old, old times, there lived two brothers who were not like other men, nor yet like those Mighty Ones who lived upon the mountain top. They were the sons of one of those Titans who had fought against Jupiter and been sent in chains to the strong prison-house of the Lower World.

The name of the elder of these brothers was Prometheus, or Forethought; for he was always thinking of the future and making things ready for what might happen to-morrow, or next week, or next year, or it may be in a hundred years to come. The younger was called Epimetheus, or Afterthought; for he was always so busy thinking of yesterday, or last year, or a hundred years ago, that he had no care at all for what might come to pass after a while.

For some cause Jupiter had not sent these brothers to prison with the rest of the Titans.

Prometheus did not care to live amid the clouds on the mountain top. He was too busy for that. While the Mighty Folk were spending their time in idleness, drinking nectar and eating ambrosia, he was intent upon plans for making the world wiser and better than it had ever been before.

He went out amongst men to live with them and help them; for his heart was filled with sadness when he found that they were no longer happy as they had been during the golden days when Saturn was king. Ah, how very poor and wretched they were! He found them living in caves and in holes of the earth, shivering with the cold because there was no fire, dying of starvation, hunted by wild beasts and by one another–the most miserable of all living creatures.

“If they only had fire,” said Prometheus to himself, “they could at least warm themselves and cook their food; and after a while they could learn to make tools and build themselves houses. Without fire, they are worse off than the beasts.”

Then he went boldly to Jupiter and begged him to give fire to men, that so they might have a little comfort through the long, dreary months of winter.

“Not a spark will I give,” said Jupiter. “No, indeed! Why, if men had fire they might become strong and wise like ourselves, and after a while they would drive us out of our kingdom. Let them shiver with cold, and let them live like the beasts. It is best for them to be poor and ignorant, that so we Mighty Ones may thrive and be happy.”

Prometheus made no answer; but he had set his heart on helping mankind, and he did not give up. He turned away, and left Jupiter and his mighty company forever.

As he was walking by the shore of the sea he found a reed, or, as some say, a tall stalk of fennel, growing; and when he had broken it off he saw that its hollow center was filled with a dry, soft pith which would burn slowly and keep on fire a long time. He took the long stalk in his hands, and started with it towards the dwelling of the sun in the far east.

“Mankind shall have fire in spite of the tyrant who sits on the mountain top,” he said.

He reached the place of the sun in the early morning just as the glowing, golden orb was rising from the earth and beginning his daily journey through the sky. He touched the end of the long reed to the flames, and the dry pith caught on fire and burned slowly. Then he turned and hastened back to his own land, carrying with him the precious spark hidden in the hollow center of the plant.

He called some of the shivering men from their caves and built a fire for them, and showed them how to warm themselves by it and how to build other fires from the coals. Soon there was a cheerful blaze in every rude home in the land, and men and women gathered round it and were warm and happy, and thankful to Prometheus for the wonderful gift which he had brought to them from the sun.

It was not long until they learned to cook their food and so to eat like men instead of like beasts. They began at once to leave off their wild and savage habits; and instead of lurking in the dark places of the world, they came out into the open air and the bright sunlight, and were glad because life had been given to them.

After that, Prometheus taught them, little by little, a thousand things. He showed them how to build houses of wood and stone, and how to tame sheep and cattle and make them useful, and how to plow and sow and reap, and how to protect themselves from the storms of winter and the beasts of the woods. Then he showed them how to dig in the earth for copper and iron, and how to melt the ore, and how to hammer it into shape and fashion from it the tools and weapons which they needed in peace and war; and when he saw how happy the world was becoming he cried out:

“A new Golden Age shall come, brighter and better by far than the old!”