Why Enlightenment?
... long ago, worn to a husk by likes and dislikes, I died into the Love that cannot die and that casts no shadow.
Rumi
Pleasure and pain (as limits of self-awareness), big and small, rich and poor, gain and loss, conditional happiness and attachment, attack and defence, give and take, win and fail, conquer or be conquered, the dualistic world does not bring us meaning.
It traps us in disillusionment, craving, desperation, ruthlesness and division, selfishness, judgment, impatience, conceit (with ourselves and others). The mind becomes ruled by the tired past and the insecure projected future; petty ambition and sorrow follow from this and the tawdry world goes on.
We can waste time. Time is wasted when the inner world is not touched upon, where opportunities to find joy and connection are sacrificed to the cruel altar of fear and unquestioned conditioning. We lose sight of who we actually are; the realization of our deeper nature that has not been tarnished by the brush of sorrow and fear gets sidelined.
A poor workman blames his tools. A hammer can be used to build a house or to kill a man. Ignorance employs the mind to abuse ourselves and others. Love teaches us how to use the mind and time wisely.
Love only knows our unity and sanity. It knows not loss or gain. That is the domain of deception, insanity and fear. Our sanity only knows to love. It is inseparable from who we are. The spirit of this truth echoes through time and eternity.
When President John F Kennedy came to speak at his inauguration he spoke these inspiring words:
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
Life begins when we have something of our own to give. Love extends itself; it is defenceless and innocent and without the guile of insecurity. It does not need defending. Only insecurity profers defenses. Trust and love are brother and sister.
Fear attacks and defends. Love is all-encompassing and sees all fear as a cry for love. It knows not to condemn. It only knows to love. We are all cut of that cloth, whether we know it or not. And the flame of love within us can be smothered and denied, but it can never ever ever be extinguished.
The Power of Your Mind
Your mind has immense power. Far more than most of us can even imagine or give credit. The mind has the power to destroy and the power to heal. When harnessed by the power of love, it can only heal. Love only sees itself in all.
The Peace of Indianapolis
When Martin Luther King was shot, United States Senator Robert F Kennedy gave a speech in Indianapolis standing in the bed of a pickup truck. America burned that night. Looting, pillaging and rioting spread across the inner cities of the country. This was before the internet and the speech was not syndicated across national networks.
Robert F. Kennedy Announcing Martin Luther King’s Death, 1968 Credit: Indianapolis Recorder Collection, Indiana Historical Society:
Kennedy touched something raw and powerful in the pain of the people in his speech. There was not a single incidence of public disorder that night in Indianapolis. Kennedy, with his words, lit a fire of meaning in the hearts of its citizens. He helped end the push to violence and built bridges of hope instead of runways of pain.
The same quality of love and capacity lives in all of us.
This is his speech.
"I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.
In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.
Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.
So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."
Ending Suffering
We live in a time of accelerated speed up. Technology changes at such a rapid pace. But behind that veneer of change in physical stories, the mind of man remains the constant. Ending suffering is the focus of love, while ego thrives on grievances, nationalism, ideology and psychological conflict, all of which make us prisoners of a projected past and perpetuate an unquestioned cycle of condemnation, enmity, division and pain.
Man cannot solve his problems externally
He can improve and deteriorate external issues with advancements in technology and changes in policy but the root of his suffering lies in internal changes in his mind. There are all kinds of revolutions and activism touted, but when seen for what they are, we understand that they just make the mind dull. Superficial changes is like decorating a prison cell, it does not liberate. You have to leave the prison in your mind.
'I am never upset for the reason I think'
True change brings lasting inner peace. Real revolution means understanding oneself and ending conflict in the mind. This takes maturity. Inner maturity is not the product of time; it is the fruit of direct perception. Maturity is the end of psychological dependency and the ending of fear and the abuse of authority by the insecure mind.
Avaraciousness, envy, hatred, aggression, anger, pettiness and judgement, shoddiness and shame, all the psychological problems of the human being, his inner and outer conflict, all of it comes down to him being a prisoner of his misperceptions. Whatever changes geopolitically, technologically and physically, this fact of our psychological bondage is at the seat of all our suffering and can only change at the level of the individual who is determined to see differently and determined to end the activity of the projections of the victim and victimiser within. This is the way of inner peace.
He who says he is enlightened is not
He who is, does not say he is
He who is, does not say he is
Self-knowledge and awareness are still the only things that can liberate man from his neurosis, judgment and insecurity. Outside in the world, the wars and insanity continue because man has not confronted the chaos inside his own mind. Love confronts. It brings all problems in the mind to an end. It brings peace and the blessing of what is not of time. The man who says he is enlightened invariably is not. Yet enlightenment is the only thing that can set man free. It has become the domain of religion and gurus, and the churches and psychotherapists often make a mess of it. Lost in iconography, idols and the misused intellect, often it is like the blind leading the blind.
Go ॐ Om...
Walking each other home
And yet you are not alone and what is decent and good in our humanity can walk each other home to ourselves. It is these qualities that we choose to celebrate at sutranovum.
Our Focus
Sutranovum has been set up as a publishing company and merchandising company to point to what is important. It focuses on the fact that love holds no grievances and that love created you like itself. Our focus is to use art and design to build two brands (sutranovum and bodisutra) around the central themes that liberate man from his fear and condemnation, his attack and defence thoughts; such meditations liberate the human mind of the false identity and shackles that it created.
Looking at the nature of Perception
Wisdom and folly do not go together. The wise do not suffer fools gladly. The innocent fool is the student of wisdom. To come upon wisdom and love is to see beyond what is false and self-destructive. To understand this the holographic nature of perception has to be fathomed deeply. No school of thought can accommodate this. The right quality of seeing can end fear in the mind and bring conflict within and without to an end. Our conditioning must be examined and the discerning mind exists to bring the problem to the answer and heal the insanity of man. So much of man's efforts in the world exist to sponsor messages of ideology, war, 'my creed against your creed', my nationality against yours, my vested interest against yours: endless separation and unceasing conflict ensues.
The inspired focus of sutranovum is to sponsor meditations on peace, unity and liberation from the prison of thought. We are not bound by any belief system and we are exclusively interested in right perception and where it ultimately leads. Carl Sandburg, the Pulitzer prize-winning poet and biographer of Abraham Lincoln, wrote that:
"There is only one man in the world and his name is 'All Men.'"
Wherever you go in the world, the brain is the same brain. Healing of the mind, letting go of fear, involves different symbols in different places but healing is healing and when it has attended to its function, it need not be repeated. For most of us this a long and arduous journey; a journey rich in meaning and one that ends all sorrow, all selfishness and all thoughts that attack and defend.
We draw upon insights from yoga, the Course in Miracles and Ramana Maharshi. None of those things can be organized into religions, all involve inner changes in an individual instigated by himself. They all look at the nature of perception and how a mind can be transformed. Peace and love uproot sorrow, neurosis and fear when the ego is seen for what it is and laid aside.