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JANUARY, 1983
joy, flexibility, and health-reverence and appreciation. It means turning oneself into a simpleton and appreciating the very fact of being alive, of having one more day to live and breathe and do what one, wants to do. It is feeling blessed. I can touch, taste, smell, see, hear, think, and intuit. I am a human being, mobile and aware. I have enough to eat, clothes to wear, a house to shelter me. On top of that, I am surrounded by trees, greenery, fresh air, and things which give an a thetic feeling. Each of my family members are loving, healthy, sensitive, and generous. There is no one with whom I have any quarrel. I have a few close friends, who are like precious gems to me. Unseen hands and hearts are silently present in everything I use for my survival. In a recent meditation, I felt like blessing everyone I have ever known in my life, from beginning to the present, and every inch of space I have ever touched upon. This made me feel my life to be a continuum, a stream of blessedness, free from pain, regret, and fear.
This attitude could not have come about without Gurudev's inspiration. “The wise one,” he says, "is he or she who does not take anything for granted.” This process of appreciation, I discovered, has another subtle benefit. As one is in this frame of mind, all the body cells imbibe joy, health, and happiness, and become nourished above and beyond the nourishment of food.
I now realize that the work of the meditator is one and the same as the work of the humanitarian. There is no us vs. them mentality. It is all of us working together with a global, universal outlook and an underlying reverence for the sanctity of each one's life. This reverence which came from appreciating my own life and from becoming a vegetarian helped my whole life fall into place, because now I see everyone else's life as precious, as is my own. When this happens, then no thing.. power, profit, tastebuds, any ism can ever again dominate or take priority over life and the right of all to live. This attitude can particularize the universal and universalize the individual.
Ultimately, each moment of existence is a utopia, if it is spent remembering the Self rather than forgetting or escaping it. By appreciating the miracle of life and one's share of the blessings, what better way of meeting that final moment of which I was always afraid ? At last, I have stopped seeing in terms of finalities, but instead I see as continuings as enrichments, as linkings with the wellbeing, prosperity, peace, and love of life vibrating continuously, visibly and invisibly, in all of space. So, no need to deny the utopian dreams ; dream on, but let the dreams be nourished by life, translated into life, for the sake of life.
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