Why Tell Shiva To Cool It…

When Everything Is Really A High-Five

From Buddha?

First off, I think I should say, SHIVA is a heavy hitter in Sanskrit and Hindu mythology, and is considered a god. Shiva, in Sanskrit, can mean the Auspicious One. Shiva can also mean the Destroyer—the Destroyer and Dissolver … of the illusion of you (and all things) being other than God. 

That is a biggie! Major league. No worries left then! No worries left then! Who wouldn't want that?

And a real God to me knows it is more of an IT, or an eternal TRANS, more than just a mere He or She. Thus, I think you can easily have your choice in calling any god anything you want, and you can't be wrong or be right. That is: anything you could call a real God, really has nothing to do with them anyway. Beneath the final veil the names stop. Beneath the final veil… there is just the Radiance. The Radiance.

Okay though, now down to business the best we can, under the rather extraordinary circumstances as we may have established above. Which is basically: you could probably use a lot of therapy if you would ever argue anything about IT; about the Most Dear One. The Most Dear One. 

Seems I can't help but to get caught by and repeat lovely phrases. They are manna to me. Try saying something out loud or in a whisper— that might be on a billboard in heaven; it could turn into an angel nearby, caressing your cheek. 

OOOO, how can I have so much to sing? I guess it was all written on a chalkboard in a classroom where I sat. 

There is so much spiritual patty-cake that goes on in this world. My own teacher, with whom I spent hundreds of hours alone with in India (and was the human being closest to Meher Baba), once said to a group of westerners (whom one might have thought to be rather sophisticated in some spiritual ways), said to them in response to some questions, but said very gently:

"To be frank, not only is most everyone in this room not only not even in spiritual kindergarten, but they are barely in spiritual nursery school. So how can I tell you what a soul can know about God? Her exquisite beauty, her exquisite beauty, and the myriad divine intimacies, She longs, so longs to share with us, when your mouth can kiss the Sun, and warm Her face.”

When your mouth can kiss the Sun

and warm God. What else would 

you ever need to touch?

— Hafiz 

There is a story of Hafiz I tell in an article the BBC invited me to write on Hafiz, which is linked here. And it occurs to me now, there is something in that story that could be a decent gauge to figure out where you are on the spiritual totem pole— on the enlightenment ladder— if you wanted to.

The Story

Once a young woman came to Hafiz and said, "What is the sign of someone knowing God, knowing the Truth?'

And Hafiz looked very lovingly into her eyes, and then said:

"My dear, they have dropped the knife. The person who knows God, who knows the Truth, has dropped the cruel knife—most so often use

upon their tender self and others."

* * *

Sooo, how many times in a day or a week— do you stab yourself, or someone else—or something else— in thought or word or deed? How often are you at war with something? Not loving? Not at peace? Unable to deeply accept? Unable to deeply bow to the miraculousness of everything?!

Another line of Hafiz goes:

I am no longer at war with the holy,

which is every aspect of myself, and

all things.

I like the phrase I have used, and seemed to have coined: Buddha after hours in a bar. Yeah, that is where the patty-cake can stop, and some real spiritual thought might be considered. That is where we can start to try and get out of the so many cages of duality which is the same as prejudice, isn't it?

I like one of the Sanskrit definitions of the word— advaya, which can mean: not two. That is: there is no reality but Oneness. 

I hope we get there gender-wise one day, there being not two, just us, the same, the fantastic, sometimes-lost angel-creatures, with beautiful fur meadows and amorous and celestial desires; wanting to love. We really always want to love, but can just get so entangled with illusions, and with the great and so deeply-embedded ideas of right and wrong society planted in us that segregate us from our self.

But where does right and wrong fit into advaya? Where does that fit into nondualism? Where does that really fit into any True Enlightenment and True Understanding, and True Compassion? Real Intelligence; and no more crazy, crazy childish patty-cake.

Graffiting God! How often do we graffiti God (that which is ONE) with our ideas of so-called virtue, or one thing being better than another?

Our wings (one’s consciousness) are still unfolding, until ALL is a golden feather attached to our body. Our body, in its ultimate destined awareness, is union with the body of the Christ. The body of Christ. The sublime luminous eternal union with the expanding infinite form of all Existence. That is just the way it is gonna play out.

The expanding infinite form of all Existence. Wow wee!

I wanted to share, in part, verbatim (see below) what I offered to an international spiritual web-chat room the other day. You might have to slow down a bit to follow it. And even left the subject line there as it would have appeared to any who saw it. And Eruch was the person whom I considered as my living teacher; I have spoken about him often in my blogs. I’ve written of him the most in my Penguin-published book: The Purity of Desire, 100 Poems of Rumi. I dedicate a couple pages to him, beginning page xix.

The below goes deeper into some: Buddha after hours in a bar glass clicking and real cowboy and cowgirl (I mean non-gendered, some non-dualism) chat. Some, hey— let's stop drowning in any non-rock-n-roll about the Most Dear One.

And hey, let's stop spray-painting or graffiting the Rembrandt— existence.

And that new book mentioned in the below:

                         The Love Of Something

                     The Biography Of Everyone

I think my next blog will be posting that introduction.

Thanks for your time,

Daniel

PS. Yeah:

Why tell Shiva to cool it? When everything

is a high-five from Buddha!

E-mail Subject: Eruch and some hip hop lingo. And: The Love of Something, The Biography of Everyone. And: Why tell Shiva to cool it!?

Eruch and some hip hop lingo. Aka: Buddha After-Hours In The Bar.

…Well, I can't tell you what he really said: I just don't think you are cowboy or cowgirl enough to really handle it. And he asked me not toooo!

But one morning walking with Eruch (Eruch Byramshaw Jessawala), as I had hundreds of times, alone in the very early mornings in India, I asked him: 

“Is there anything in this world you would like to change?”

And Eruch did not respond for a while, maybe a couple minutes; we just walked in silence. And then he said some things to me, which first was to ask me a question. He said:

“How do you think Meher Baba would respond to that question if you asked him?”

Then for almost 30 minutes we talked about all this at what I thought was a unique, poetic, theological level. And then Eruch said to me, as he had only once before:

"Don't share that information directly with anyone. But you can surely paraphrase all I said anyway you want in your poems, and writings."

And after all of these years, I just started to do that in the most direct and complete manner so far— in an Introduction (and then within the book too) to a hopefully significant and lasting (and hopefully tying-a-lot-of-my-literary-stuff-together-before-I-adios-the-planet) book, presently titled:

The Love of Something

The Biography of Everyone

But in this Introduction, I watered down even more of what Eruch had told me and hip-hopped it (a few lines) via a young, gifted woman character I invented for a play who gets mentioned in this Intro. Her name is Amara; and in the intro she says:

“I don't want to spray paint— graffiti— the

Rembrandt * with my ideas of right and wrong.

What sane person would do so?

      “Let Shiva dance anyway she wants. It is her 

       creation, I am just a guest in her house. And 

       I should, the best I can, always applaud her

       offerings to me— even deeply bow to them. As they

       came from her infinite womb of wisdom, and 

       love for me— love for us.

       “Why tell Shiva to cool it? This cowgirl won't.

       And isn't everything, everything a high-five 

       from Buddha? But still, still, I will always do         

      everything in my power to never harm another

      creature. I have dropped the cruel knife."

                             ***

Yeah, why tell Shiva to cool it? * Rembrandt is a metaphor for: that which is Perfect. 

How often do we graffiti God with our ideas of right and wrong? Or wanting to change anything? 

Why Tell Shiva To Cool It? 

Sounds like another good book title, that I will probably never ever finish. Maybe I could at least have a bumper sticker made that says that. But hope Donald Trump would not put that on his car… or airplane. 

Could it all really be a high-five from Buddha? 

I think so! And we are on the field of a wild, albeit beautiful game. Lila (or Leela) is another Sanskrit word, which means divine play or divine sport. And in a standing ovation is the soul, and the eye that sees.

As the angels wake, their wings help.

—Hafiz

Helping the way a beautiful full moon can, love in your eyes.