Pilgrims to Openness: Direct Realization Tantra in Everyday Life by Sarasvati Shambhavi

Author:Sarasvati, Shambhavi [Sarasvati, Shambhavi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jaya Kula Press
Published: 2009-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

Varanasi Lights

The first time I visited Varanasi, I met the teacher of a friend of mine. Everyone in the neighborhood called this man “Guruji.” One day, I asked my friend to tell me his Guru’s proper name. I wanted to write it down before I left India.

“ I don’t know, ” my friend answered. “ I just call him Guruji. ”

“ Well, ” I continued. “ Does he work? ”

“I don’t know, ” my friend repeated.

“ Is he married? ” I persisted in my questioning.

“ I don’t know, ” came the answer again.

I tried one last question. “ Where does he live? ”

My friend sighed. His annoyance was evident.

“ Somewhere outside of Varanasi, I think. I don’t concern myself with such things! ”

Sheesh! Can you even imagine? Probably not.

Many of us have grown up in a culture that is obsessed with creating and telling the stories of our lives. We analyze our own stories and post our “life streams” to social media sites. We obsess about the stories of our family and friends. We watch television shows dedicated to the flaunting of life stories. We hire doctors to fix our life stories when they are “broken,” and lots of other kinds of professionals reward us when our life stories are working well.

Whole careers are dedicated to the pursuit of defining, analyzing, displaying, discussing, disputing, fixing, tweaking, provoking, and purveying the stories of our lives. I bet if Americans were as uninterested in life stories as my friend in India, our entire economy would collapse.

Really, what would we even talk about, think about, or care about if it weren’t for such stories? Our days would be empty. Our minds would be flapping in the wind. We would fall into the void. Uh oh‚ doesn’t that sound like. . .

The Tantrik Buddhist teacher, Ngakpa Chogyam, makes a useful distinction between personality display and personality habit pattern. 10 You can recognize a personality habit pattern by the following characteristics.

You think it is you. You guard it with your life. (Because it’s “you.”) It repeats. It repeats often without you being able to do anything to stop it. You talk about it over and over again. You experience it through habitual feelings of pride, shame, jealousy, anger, sadness, frustration, victimization, and pleasure. Especially pleasure.

A personality display is light flickering on water. It flashes. It moves. It appears and disappears. It adapts to changing conditions. It has a feeling of transparency. It is potent, playful, soft, sharp, watery, fiery, airy, and earthy.

A personality display is difficult to obsess about because it doesn’t stick around long enough. It has nothing to stick to: no constructed, congealed “self ” to call its own.

Personality display doesn’t really need any attention or coaching. It arises and subsides all on its own. Personality display is utterly uncontrived.

To live an uncontrived life is one good way of defining moksha or liberation. Most of what we call personality is contrived. It takes effort to maintain. It is even possible to contrive a

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