Dalai Lama on collaboration between Science and Religion

Both science and religion scrutinize human behaviour.  However, you don’t have to be a scientist or a religious person to prove that destructive emotions lead to problems at home and abroad. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14^th Dalai Lama, offers a remedy.

He says, “I believe we have a valuable opportunity to make progress in dealing with them, through a collaboration between religion and science.”

”With this in mind, I have, since 1987, engaged in an ongoing series of dialogues with groups of scientists. Organized by the Mind & Life Institute, they have been on topics ranging from quantum physics and cosmology to compassion and destructive emotions.” 

Growing up, I was not very interested in science: proving something to be true by constant experiment.  And religion, with its premises that led to logical conclusions left me bored.  Only when I entered the world of mystical literature and my own experiments with a priori experiences (deductive as opposed to presumptive reasoning), did I begin to understand my own nature.

Today, the words of His Holiness excite me.  He explains, “Buddhist teachings stress the importance of understanding reality. Therefore, we should pay attention to what modern scientists have actually found through experiment and through measurement—the things they have proved to be reality.”

We soar through space able to observe our outer universe up close.  But where is the spaceship that navigates the Inner Reality? Science discovers and proves primarily the outer.

The Embodiment of Compassion, says, “In contrast, Buddhism, an ancient Indian thought, reflects a deep investigation into the workings of the mind. Over the centuries many people have carried out what we might call experiments in this field and have had significant, even extraordinary, experiences as a result of practices based on their knowledge. Therefore, more discussion and joint study between scientists and Buddhist scholars on the academic level could be useful for the expansion of human knowledge.”

The 1975 Shambala Publications book, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism by physicist Fritjof Capra brought me to a new awareness of how the coupling of science with spirituality leads to an acceptance of the reality of our interdependence, our oneness with all beings, and to the fruition of our hopes and dreams of peace and prosperity for all.

What’s more, His Holiness, suggests, “Experiments have already been carried out that show some practitioners can achieve a state of inner peace, even when facing disturbing circumstances. The results show such people to be happier, less susceptible to destructive emotions, and more attuned to the feelings of others. These methods are not just useful, but cheap: you don't need to buy anything or make anything in a factory. You don't need a drug or an injection.”

And you certainly do not have to dole out fortunes to those who claim to be in the know about esoteric matters to voyage through Inner Space.  It is a free and personal adventure.

Who Is Sai Baba? Part 2

It was only after I got off the phone that I realized what had happened.  Sai Baba had answered my request by providing me with enough money to buy a good used car.  But I still could not believe he was God.  Nevertheless, I took the check to the bank and, after cashing it, went to a good used car dealership in nearby El Toro, and bought a bizarrely bright orange 1975 Chevrolet Citation.  Actually, I felt as if I was pulled towards that car parked way in the back of the lot.  Beams of morning sunlight were bouncing off it as I headed toward it.  The salesman was eager to show me other late-models and more expensive vehicles.  However, the weird persimmon color car that I ordinarily would never have been attracted to, just kept me fascinated.  Although it was 15 years old, it looked like it had never been driven before and the original interior was fresh as new.  In a daze, I agreed to buy it, registered it, and drove it off the lot. 

I felt like I’d been given wings. On the way home I realized the whole initial transaction had cost me exactly $1200, the amount of the check—even that was a miracle in high-priced Orange County. After getting my job I had to make two more payments because the car was priced at $2,700.  But the fact that the dealership gave me, a person with zero money in the bank, zero plastic, and a minimum-wage job, credit is also inconceivable.  But there I was, behind the wheel of a well-maintained car on my way to the biggest adventure of my life.

By now, I had read the book, The Ultimate Experience exactly four times looking for “mistakes”, ways to prove that the author was a fraud and that nothing she wrote could be true about God walking on the earth in the remote village of Puttaparthi in South India.  So when I got back to my apartment I decided to read this book once more.  I was determined to understand how this phenomenon of asking Sai Baba for a car and getting a check from a woman who claimed God had told her to send me money had happened.  I immediately went to the table where the book was.  I picked it up and opened it.  Before I could read a word a photo tumbled out of the pages.

I had not placed any photo in the book. What is going on?  I wondered.  The photo had fallen on to the floor backside up.  I reached down, picked up the picture and turned it over.  I was shocked!  It was a photo of Sai Baba standing beside the car I had just purchased.  

As I stood there in the middle of my flat holding the picture of Sai Baba beside my 1975 Chevrolet Citation (a car most likely never manufactured or sold in India), I began to shake with the magnitude of my discovery.  I knew then that he was definitely God and I fell to my knees and wept.  I cried with joy and with relief.  Suddenly, becoming aware of the fact that the nebulous God I’d been yearning to believe in all of my life was actually here on Planet Earth filled me with humility, with wonder, and with ineffable emotions.

When I went next door and told N what had happened she coolly said, “Sometimes Baba gives a second miracle if you doubt the first one.”  That was me, Doubting Terry.

Before long, I sold nearly all my possessions to help finance my trip to see him.  I put a few things in storage, again,  took leave from work, gave a poetry reading for the Laguna Poets who paid me $500 US dollars, and before I knew it I was off to India. That was 23 years ago. I am still in awe.  And I am still in India!

A SHORT STORY OF SATHYA SAI BABA OF INDIA

For His Eminence Tso Ser Thri Rinpoche who I had the great good fortune to teach English to while he visited Puttaparthi on several occasions and who asked me to write a story for him explaining who Sathya Sai Baba is.

Sathya Sai Baba is a Poorna Avatar.  In Hinduism, a Poorna Avatar is the full embodiment of all that is—God, or Absolute Consciousness, as some call It.  An Avatar is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, can turn sky into earth and earth into sky. The Avatar comes from time to time in answer to the prayers of saints and holy persons; the Divine Incarnation takes the form of a human being in order to walk among us to uplift, comfort, heal, and most importantly perhaps to transform. Lord Buddha was an Avatar, as was Lord Jesus. The main purpose, therefore of Absolute Consciousness taking a body and coming to earth, is to minister to suffering humanity.

Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba walked the earth for 85 years and outwardly appeared to be a mere human.  However, multitudes experienced his divine powers and claimed him as their Guru and their God. 

And though he left his body on April 24, of 2011, according to his followers, he never left his devotees and his mission continues.  Crowds from all over the world still throng to Puttaparthi to take darshan (to see God) at his Mahasamadhi where his body was laid to rest.  This tomb is engraved with the essence of his teaching, “Love all.  Serve all.” The words Sai Baba mean: “Mother-Father God.”  It is said, that as a mother, he loves unconditionally and as a father, he punishes when necessary. 

Historically, God has incarnated in many forms before. In this Incarnation, as Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, The Lord was born Sathyanarayana Raju, into a Hindu, Telugu-speaking family on November 23, 1926.  The once rural village of Puttaparthi where the divine birth took place is located in Anantapur District in the state of Andhra Pradesh, South India.  It lies in a desert-like valley surrounded by rocky hills and mountains. At the time of Sai Baba’s birth, tigers dwelled in the caves of the mountains and scorpions, cobras, and stinging red ants were plentiful.  A beautiful, fresh river, Chittravathi, ran through the village and cool breezes swept across the golden sands of the river.

When his mother Eswaramma was pregnant with him, many mysterious events occurred.  For instance, during the nights musical instruments, particularly the maddala and tambura, could be heard throughout the village.  They played on their own in synchronicity and harmony, beginning and stopping as if on cue. Rumors spread as people speculated on the cause.  There was gossip that the unborn child could be heard talking in the womb.

The father, Sri Pedda Venkappa Raju, baffled by these inexplicable events, went to the nearby village of Bukka Patnam to consult with an astrologer whose divinations he trusted.  When asked why such mysterious things were occurring, the astrologer replied, “It is due to the power of the Divine. These happenings make the people happy.”  Sri Pedda Venkappa Raju could not have imagined then how many millions of people, decades later, would be made happy hearing stories about the events preceding Sathya Sai Baba’s birth.  Nor could the young father have known that millions of persons of all religions and from all around the world would be worshipping his son as God Almighty. 

Not long after consulting the astrologer, on November 23, 1926, a Monday, the Divine Incarnation was born. His mother, Eswaramma, had an easy delivery and the family was thrilled to behold the beauty of the baby. It was the month of Karthika, the month of Lord Shiva. The parents named the boy Sathyanaraya because they were devoted to Lord Sathyanarayana and they believed that this Deity was responsible for granting Eswaramma her wish to have another son.  The baby, who had an older brother and sister when he arrived, was called Sathya, which means Truth.

Sri Aurobindo in his book, Sri Aurobindo on Himself and the Mother, wrote: "November 24, 1926, was the descent of Krishna (One of Sathya Sai Baba’s former Incarnations) into the physical. A power infallible shall lead the thought and earthly hearts kindle the Immortal's Fire.  Even the multitude shall hear the voice."

It happened that Sri Aurobindo was in a meditative trance during the birth of Sathya Sai Baba.  But on the 24th the Pondicherry Master came out of the trance to tell his devotees the news.

More mysteries and paranormal experiences occurred soon after the re-born Krishna’s arrival.  One day little Sathya was sleeping on a mat on the floor.  His mother sat beside him.  Suddenly the baby’s mat began rocking; it was being raised and lowered by something underneath.  The mat was lifted up very slowly and those present were astonished to see that the rocking was being done by a cobra.  The snake vanished instantaneously into thin air as soon as the mat was lifted.

To be continued….

MY (MAGICAL) PURPLE COAT

SUNDAY IS FUN DAY (Special)

Miracles are fun.  I love it when I experience them.  Sometimes sad things that happen can result in very happy events after time.  When I became a spiritual warrior, someone who fights for justice through truth and non-violence, I was given a purple coat by a group of strangers, people that I hardly knew.  It was not until 30 years later that I realized their gift was magical!

The Warm Springs Indian Nation is located in Warm Springs, Oregon in the USA; and I worked with a spiritual elder there, Lucinda Green, who was one of my spiritual teachers.

Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, my Guru who was living in India, performed a long-distance miracle at the Warm Springs reservation with some Vibuthi (sacred ash from his ashram, Prasanthi Nilayam). On one of my visits to the reservation, I gave Lucinda some Vibuthi blessed by Sai Baba.  She got a plastic sandwich bag out of the kitchen and put the little packet, about the size of a stick of gum, into it.  Then she nailed the plastic bag to the longhouse wall under a round mirror with three feathers stuck in it (that is the symbol for the Warm Springs religion: THREE FEATHERS).

We said our good-byes and I promised I would visit again before I left for India.  When I returned to the reservation, a few months later, the plastic bag was still hanging on the wall under the mirror.  BUT it was overflowing with Vibuthi. The Vibuthi was just piling up by itself, multiplying right in front of my eyes.  It had changed from grey to deep black.  I walked right up to it to get a closer look.  It just kept deepening as if there was an invisible faucet dripping the sacred ash into the plastic bag.

Then I looked at Lucinda.  I said, ‘It's black now!’ She stared right back at me and shouted, “Don’t you ever question the ways of God.”

I had never told her that I believed my Guru, Sai Baba, to be God.  However, I understood that she knew this increasing Vibuthi was coming from her God, who she called, The Creator, and that He was making it black instead of grey for His own reasons, just for FUN perhaps.

Before I left the USA for India to end up living here, which I had never anticipated, The Warm Springs people invited me to a few special gatherings, most notably a private healing dance where they removed all sorts of negativity from me—energies that they could see,  but that I could not.

After that they asked me to give a talk on incest to the whole reservation.  I felt weird and I told Lucinda that I didn't believe anyone there would identify much with a white middle class woman's story of childhood sexual trauma.  But, she assured me that she and other elders had been guided to me in the first place for just that special purpose.  I forgot to mention that they had contacted me by phone in California where I had been living; and they paid my airfare and all other costs to meet them on my first visit.  When I kept asking how they could possibly know me, how they had gotten my phone number, Lucinda simply said, “We have our ways.” This was before Internet even existed!

I touched the beaded necklace I was wearing.  I had found in a grocery bag one day—a necklace that I had tried to return to the store but the manager insisted he would not keep it in the lost and found—a necklace that I had worn everyday after it came to me. Lucinda replied to my unspoken question.  “It’s Apache, and yes, that was one of the ways…..”

Indeed!  Now she was assuring me that I was the most convincing person to relay that incest and sexual trauma happen outside the reservation.  Perpetrators are from all walks of life, all religions, and they are not lurking in the shadows; they are often living right inside our homes, working in our schools, preaching in our churches….

The victims as well as the perpetrators of incest and childhood sexual trauma at the reservation never imagined that "nice white people" had this particular problem.  Anyway, I did give the talk to a very crowded longhouse and the result overwhelmed me.  Mostly, everyone—men, women, and even children got in a line to come up and cry with me and tell me their stories. It was a humbling experience.

Later, the beautiful and original hand-painted, all-weather purple coat was presented to me. Lucinda explained that the designs were actual copies of the ancient cave paintings of her people.  “She who Watches” is the female deity or primal spirit who sees all and observes all in silence—The Witness. I understood that I was being gifted this for my willingness to share my story.  Lucinda said, “You will wear this as you travel around the world and it will make people happy.”

Her words came true. That’s the magic part!  The coat has crossed many oceans and visited many lands; and people come over to me and ask me about it.  They like hearing about the Native American Warms Springs Nation, about my travels, about Sai Baba, and about my complete recovery from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder I suffered for years as a result of the abuse.  As it turns out, my magical purple coat has literally made thousands happy.  But I am the happiest!

Have a Super Sunday filled with Lot’s of Fun!!

SECRET MEMORIES

When I became a published writer I began losing pieces of my private life.  The first thing to go was time.  Living in the suburbs, being married and raising a family became my second priority.  There was a new baby in my life and it was called, “My Work.”  This became my first priority and quite a few relatives, friends and neighbors did not like it.  This was before they even knew what exactly I was sitting in my little studio, attached to the garage, writing about.

   My first book of poetry, Durango, came out in 1979 after about four long years of wrestling with my inner demons.  It told the secret side of my life, told the pain I had gone through as a child, as a survivor of incest and sexual trauma. It was also feminist to the core—Amazonian in its strength of purpose: To warn women to protect themselves from their own worst enemy, themselves.  It predicted, though I could not see it then, what was about to happen to my life as I had known it.

 The fact that Durango was poetry and not prose made me feel that I had still managed to keep the ugliest experiences somewhat hidden, while at the same time exposing them. But readers are sleuths.  They not only read between the lines, they read the minds of writers.  Some began identifying with the persona of these poems. I was shocked by this.  I had thought my life so unique, the damage so especially my own.  Well, it turns out that about 90% of humanity has not had a happy childhood.

So, not long after that, everything just went weird for me.  I remember how I had written that book to stay alive, to keep myself from succumbing to the depression I was going through as a post-cancer-surgery patient, a suburban housewife suddenly addicted to writing, trying to be honest while living in the shadow of my own lies, trying to convince myself that life has meaning, has purpose when I felt quite contrary to that.  I just couldn’t hide the truth of who I really was anymore—an angry, hurt, neglected, abused, incested, and now cancer-damaged, extremely sensitive “child.”  This emotionally arrested child was imprisoned in an adult body with a highly educated adult mind.

  If God hadn’t flung me out of my closet writing space into the public arena, I might not have eventually celebrated my past. It made me strong, not weak.  It made me hyper-vigilant, not blind.  It made me out-spoken, not silent.  It was going through the horror of it that made me capable of opening my heart to others.  I am certainly no Emily Dickenson.  I was not meant to be a recluse.  My spirit longed to soar, not just to fly with the eagles, but far above the clouds.

 At the time, though, even while giving readings from Durango, I was tormented, as twisted up as a corkscrew run over by a truck. Fear grew into a perpetual state, relieved only by sleep.  Sometimes I became so full of terror I could barely function.  On occasion I would be paralyzed.  I started to have migraines that lasted up to four or five days. And often I felt nauseous, the way I had when I was pregnant.  Now that the book was out, so was I.  I was naked in suburbia, naked as a newborn baby.  But there was no lullaby to hush me up.

 What’s more, for me to write Durango was a paradox at that point in my life.  For example, though I wrote the truth of what had happened, I had no conscious memories of the actual acts of rape committed against me. Conscious memories did not come until 1990.  Prior to that I knew I was “molested” but I was not connected to the images or to the pain of those past events. I was writing from behind the veil, so to speak.  Once the truth came out, there was no more veil to hide behind.

  It was as though the persona, the writer of that book, was another aspect of Terry, the dutiful and the sacrificial.  It was an alternative personality that one of my psychotherapists would later identify as “a helper.”  Here was the writer who dared to explode the Keeper of the Secrets.  Not surprisingly, this persona was also the Integrator, She who would weave all the parts together, She who would continue to be the Warrior, the Wounded Healer, who would fight for the rights of others, She who would eventually merge with the God Self.  But I was also the She who was the Brand New Poet, the Voice that had to speak in metaphors and similes to not completely strip the sheets off the corpse.  Now I am grateful about this emergence, the butterfly easing itself out of the confines of the cocoon. I’m not ashamed to stand as bare as an egg in front of you—in front of myself.

Back then, though, I felt raw and defiled, betrayed by my own pen that opened me up and showed readers I wanted more, much more out of life than what I had—a life that other women I knew envied.  I hated the fact that my own work made me feel ashamed.  I could have felt proud, but I didn’t.  For one thing, I wasn’t ready to be a person who had survived incest, a woman with excessive passions, a woman who believed in love, but not monogamy, a woman who refused to be kept, a woman relishing her bits of freedom.  In those days, very few were talking about sex abuse, wife abuse, child abuse.

  My mentor, the poet Anne Sexton, who was also my field faculty advisor at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, had made such historic references to the abuse of women in her earliest books, and so had Sylvia Plath.  This is why they became my most influential modern poet heroes.  But unlike them, I came to see I was breaking new ground. I had no intentions of doing myself in, as they had done, because of the trauma; I was going to fight back.  I was determined to survive.  Nevertheless,   I was still quite split.

After Durango was out in the bookstores, I started wearing dark glasses every day (and night) of the week.  I began isolating myself from the suburbs and the small-town gossip mongers I believed were there.  I quit the PTA and rarely attended churches of any kind. I was soon spending more and more time in Cambridge and in Boston with what Lee Kennedy, the father of our three children, Lee Michael, Shaila, and Eugene, called my “Bohemian friends.”  But the truth is, I felt separate from them too.  At that early beginning of my career, they were after artistic kudos, most of them.  This was the way the Arts World functioned then.  If you couldn’t get money, artists felt, you should at least get acceptance by your peers. On the other hand, I was more interested in ridding myself of my fears.  I was looking for a God I could live with, one that would love me and save me, one that would explain me to myself.  Finally, I could see that in order for me to answer the mystic question: Who am I? I would have to start again at the very beginning and look for clues to my existence.  I believed that to understand who I am, I needed to know who I had been before.