Posts Tagged ‘hindu’
Comments on: Vivekananda’s 1893 Speech at World Congress in Chicago
This speech marks the beginning of Hindu-ism as a religion, and as a “world religion,” that is, possessed of attributes going beyond a local culture, i.e., universal. As I see religion as politics, this is a political speech, if taken in the context of the times.
INITIATION BY THE FIVE GURUS
Initiation by the Five Gurus
Guru Dattatreya
A small troop of children followed me to a shaded area in the rocks where the barber would practice his art on my scalp as I considered my options. Should I make break for it and run? How far was it to the main road? How could I escape?
But, hold on. I wasn’t a condemned man walking slowly towards the gallows clinging to his one hopeless fantasy of freedom. It was only a haircut. Drop your attachments, I said to myself.
The barber handed me a small mirror in a rusty frame so that I could watch the clumps of hair fall from my head. The children giggled as they watched him shave my beard and then my scalp with his open blade. He smiled as I felt my smooth cranium, with one short tuft of hair remaining on the top back of my head. “Guru Ji,” he said, giving it a slight tug.
Hari Puri Baba had assembled four other sadhus in the ashram’s puja room. The room was dark and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. The walls were covered with rotting photos of awe-inspiring sadhus and posters of Indian gods and goddesses. Straw mats were spread on the floor and a few sticks of incense burned on an altar housing several deities and a few small Shiva lingas. Amar Puri Baba placed a bundle in front of Hari Puri Baba consisting of an ochre dhoti, a coconut, a rudraksha seed strung on the janeu string of the twice born, and two strips of white cloth that serve as a lingoti. Raghunath Puri, Silverbeard, a tall sadhu with long arms, directed me to sit down facing Hari Puri Baba.
Pandit Shesh Narayan entered the room with a brazier burning with red coals from the havan between two iron tongs. The pandit, Hari Puri Baba and I formed a triangle, with the brazier in the middle and the room started to fill with smoke.
With his eyes turned upward, the pandit intoned a river of mantra, magic syllables that flowed out of his mouth. I understood that he was invoking the great powers of the universe. At the end of each verse, each vedic sloka, he would toss fragrant powders onto the glowing coals, pronouncing “Svaha!” consecrating the offerings in the name of the fire deity’s wife.
I watched the white smoke rise from the coals, carrying the sacrifice of these sacred syllables to the gods. He dripped holy water into my right hand, then rice, flower petals, and more water, all the while intoning mantras. When he had completed the ritual, he took a large brass bowl, a katori, from the altar and commanded me in English to drink from it. The greenish liquid looked and smelled very strange. continue reading…
The Edge of Indian Spirituality
Baba Rampuri’s speech at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, March 2008.
You can read the whole speech here.
The Edge of Indian Spirituality – The Oral Tradition of Naked Yogis
The Samadhi of Kapil Puri Ji
Upstairs, in the Hall of Darshan, in the ashram of the Old Baba, Arjun Puri, a dozen frightened individuals gathered for this most terrific of yoga demonstrations.
Shri Mahant Kapil Puri invoked his lineage, reciting it backwards, starting with his guru, Shri Mahant Arjun Puri, back twenty five hundred years through Adi Shankaracharya, back another 2500 years past the advent of the present Age of Kali, and then back through countless millenniums, past the Dwapara Age, into the Treta Age, to the Lord of Yogis, the three headed Dattatreya, and past him, past Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, all the way back to the first guru, Maha Shunya, the Supreme Void.
His eyes rolled back in his head as he sat in siddhasana, his legs crossed, the soles of his feet facing his body. He cleansed his nerve currents with Pranayama, alternating the breaths through his right and left nostrils. He lowered his head and his last breaths shook the hall with thunder. continue reading…
