When we sit down to meditate and take an honest look at our minds, there is a tendency for it to become a rather morbid and depressing project. We can lose all sense of humour and sit with the grim determination to get to the bottom of this stinking mess. After a while, when people have been practicing that way, they begin to feel so much guilt and distress that they just break down, and they might say to someone they trust, “Where’s the joy in all of this?”

Pema Chödrön is an American Buddhist monk and principle teacher of the Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. The Enzo Circle has been reading her book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times [our reading list is chosen on recommendations by participants]. What you are listening to is an edited excerpt from the live session. You will not hear the voices of participants as sometimes people share deeply personal insights, thoughts, experiences and we maintain confidentiality of each member.

Members attend worldwide. We are on online, via Google Meet, on Sundays at 8 pm India time and sometimes on Wednesdays 8pm when the group feels it’s needed. We read together, in class, chapter by chapter and see what we resonate with, what it reminds us of, share what comes up and contest what doesn’t work for us. We lean on and learn from each other in the true spirit of a sangha.

You can sign up here: Join the Enzo Circle 2024

Our books for 2024 are:

* The Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate

* Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind Shunryu Suzuki

* The Courage to be Disliked, Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga

* Don't believe everything you think, Joseph Nguyen

* What makes you not a buddhist, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

* Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul, William Sieghert.

[NB: Not necessarily in the same order and books may be subject to change based on the group’s mutual decision. The fee is a one time fee for the year. It’s bring your own book. Recordings of sessions are available only to members for private viewing and may not be circulated publicly or privately.]

You can still listen to the free edited version on podcasts via Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts every week.

"After me repeat

~ Book the First, The Light of Asia, by Edwin Arnold

Welcome back to SkyGazing. Sorry, I have been tardy! Well, I have been away reading some fairly large books that I hope to share with you soon enough.

For starters, here’s a review of The Light of Asia; the poem that defined the Buddha by Jairam Ramesh, which is a commentary on the work of the poet, Edwin Arnold, the context in which he wrote the original poem, the deep influence it came to have upon a great many thinkers, writers and leaders of our time, from Swami Vivekananda to Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, Oppenheimer and Kitchener, Raymond Chandler, C.V. Raman, among others. The poem is written in blank verse and is divided into eight books. This commentary on it has four sections, Arnold’s pre Poona days, the influence and context of the poem, its aftermath, and Arnold’s legacy. In as such, the poem is a life apart from yet intertwined with Arnold’s.

For those of you who haven't already read The Light of Asia, I would recommend you go there before you come to this work. Also do go to the Lalitavistara Sutra, which is the original epic poem that outlines the life of the Buddha in full. I would also recommend you read Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri after, to capture the similarity of the cadences.

Arnold’s work is a biographical study of the Lord Buddha, but to my mind it is very westernised, casting him as the "Saviour” and divine, born again, with a very Christianised lens on divinity. So as much as Arnold believed he was travalleing away from or positing a counter to the monotheistic linearity of the church in his time, from the Indic lens, he very much remains embedded within that framework. For instance his line “And mercy cometh to the merciful” is very much a refrain of Matthew 5:7 “Blessed are the Merciful, for they will receive Mercy”. Arnold, in my opinion, was not as far removed or opposed to the constraints of his native lens as he seems to believe. So, it's important to read the poem in its original before you arrive here.

Also, my one pet peeve with Ramesh's work is his use of the term ‘Mutiny’ for the Indian War of Independence or the Rebellion of 1857. I find it too irksome and jars my reading of the book, building a sort of crescendo of annoyance. While he offers a note in the book, however I find that there was no need to use ‘Mutiny’ when not directly citing Arnold. I also find that when you read a book aloud, there are some evident grammatical omissions, bit of poor editing here, a missing 'to' and 'the' that kind of thing, nothing too big, but articles that become apparent by their absence. Still, a beautifully researched edition, and well worth the read.

Do remember this is just to give you an introduction to the book so I will be reading selected excerpts that I found interesting to whet your appetite, an asynchronous book club if you will. Please do engage with the book on your own. Of course I appreciate shares, comments and social media posts. Try not to tag the author if your comment is not favourable. That's just a bit rude.

The first section is a biography of Arnold and his context. It was a time of the great discovery of India in Britain, and Ramesh describes at length the socio-political climate in which Arnold arrived at his insights into the life of the Buddha. Born in Gravesend, on 24 June, 1832, to landed gentry, and his work prior, anthologies such as Poems: Narrative and Lyrical, The Light of the World, and Gandhi's favourite The Song Celestial. Ramesh also locates him in Poona, where Arnold would head the Deccan College, at a vibrant time when Jyotiba Phule was organising education for all and VS Chiplunkar was mentoring Bal Gangadhar Tilak. A time when the Christian missionary movement was strong, causing Arnold himself to question the wisdom of conversions. Many brahmins too converted, he notes, at a time when back home in England, the suitability of the influence of the Good Book was in question. The Christianity of the poem is in tone, but the content of the poem is so rich with knowledge both Vedic and Buddhist, his understanding of caste, king, hierarchy, what the Buddha was upturning, and what society of the time reflected, that there was no disputing the heft of the poet. Indeed, neither may we that of the biographer who captures every painstaking nuance across continents in a deeply complex time. In such social upheaval and churn, the book reflects the way in which England and India were realigning how we thought about religion, spirituality, society. It was a time of Florence Nightinglae’s India mission, the war effort, and the need for women to both cater to and be catered to in terms of social equality. And in that time of churn, the sort of non dogmatic, non ritualistic counter to what was being set aside both in England and in India, was the wisdom of the Buddha. Much of this is beautifully contextualised in the book.

To my mind, the most vital lessons, and the most relevant ones for us, in it come from the subtle but interesting comparison between the reclaiming of Ayodhya for Lord Ram and Edwin’s role in reclaiming Bodh Gaya for the Buddhists. That previous movement and hand over ended in 1953 peacefully, with the graciousness of the mahants, with joy on both sides, with the intermediations of men such as Jawaharlal Nehru and C. Rajagopalchari.

There is much more in the book that I have not mentioned, the depth of influence on Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, the King of Siam, on film and cinema, and Arnold’s own further life, in Sri Lanka and Japan, regional Indian translations. The book is rich with reference, and personalities that intersected in and out of the meridian that The Light of Asia was.

I do wish there was more about the actual poem itself actually. I would have loved to see notes that Arnold may have left about the poem, but apart from a few explanations on why he wrote it these are far and few between. It is more the perspective of this commentary that the poem rose as a product of its influences and their catalyst in its time. I also wish there was more critical referencing of Arnold and his role in the British ‘civilising’ mission.

The transmission of Buddhist texts and the biography of the Buddha has been unabated since the 2nd century CE, so what was it about this poem that caught the imagination where others didn’t? Was it metre, language, Arnold’s eminence and therefore his interactions with his contemproraries? I wish this book had more contemplation of the author (Ramesh’s) insight into the wherefore of its greatness rather than a mere clinical exposition of why everyone else thought it worked and how acclaimed it was. What does he, who has been in government himself, think of the Anglicised lens of an Indian Buddha? He does give us a brief glimpse of what he’s been thinking at the end, but overall, a lot of information, but he doesn’t join too many dots for us. Which could be good or bad, depending on how you see it.

One of the better non-fiction tomes on a key philosophical work, fundamentally a biography of its author. The narrative continues on to biographical nuggets like tracing the interesting circumstances surrounding the death of Channing Arnold, one of Edwin’s sons, on a farm in UP.

Towards the end, Ramesh points out that Shelley’s lines from Prometheus Unbound may well have influenced the title of the poem:

Asia! Thou Light of Life! Shadow of Beauty unbeheld!

Hmmm. It always surprises me when the coloniser adores their subjects. How good we must have been. Have a good read/listen!

Best,

Gayatri

P.S. A bonus read for you is my short story City Whisperer that appeared in the Out of Print online journal in April. Do let me know if you enjoy it.

I have held myself back from giving it all up and walking north with my dog several times over the last couple of decades, and I have met women on my journeys who did not share my restraint. You don’t need to look back to Andal or Miraabai to meet the woman mystic, even today, schooled, unschooled, regardless of caste or class, stripping themselves of the trappings of their origins, at Haridwar, Amarkantak, in Kanyakumari, in Mathura, at Ajmer, in gurdwaras, ashrams across the country, in Puttaparthi and Shirdi, you will find women who have walked away from children, family, property, material gain to follow the calling of their spiritual urges.

If women are already on the fringe of mainstream society, the woman spiritual seeker is on the fringe of that mainstream, and if those seeking outside the protection offered by the rules and disciplines of organised religion are even further beyond those limitations, exploring the periphery of true Freedom. Like madwomen.

The path of the woman mystic is vastly different from that of the man, in terms of infrastructure, backlash and expectation. This book is a long overdue account of four such women who map the inner landscape of spiritual India with their own vision and practice.

Women Who Wear Only Themselves by Arundhathi Subramaniam, published by Speaking Tiger, 2021.

The music is Sarasangi, by Mysore V Shrikanth and VK Raman.

NB: No copyright infringement is intended, just fair use critical use. Please do support the artists and author by buying the book and the music if you are so inclined.

Brought to you by Shamah | शम:

Gorakhnath asks Kabir:

“Tell me, O Kabir, when did your vocation begin? Where did your love have its rise?”

Rabindranath Tagore’s translations of Kabir’s poetry adds a transcendental layer to the language of the mystic. Purushottam Agrawal’s contemplation of the poet saint pulls it gently back down to earth and roots it in his context. The modernisation of Kabir, his new-ageification, is also a deracination of him, Agrawal reminds us, pointing to the depth of his knowledge, his philosophy, his study, his knowing. Kabir is no accidental mystic, born out of a bolt of revelation or an innocent belief, he reminds us, but self-crafted and canny in his weaving his way through the multiple strands of ideology such that he decodes a pattern and philosophy all his own, one that earns the praise of those who would be ordinarily opposed to him, and stands the test of time.

A beautiful exposition that brings together what the western or non-denominational lens has seen as contradictory strands. Especially to the unrooted, sans tongue, sans ear, sans anchor, like me, if you only knew the poet saint through a few couplets you had to learn by heart for an exam, this is an essential read. Kabir’s beauty is that he is incredibly rooted, and yet, so expansively free.

The music is by Pandit Chhannulal Mishra singing Kabir; Kaise sajan ghar jaibey ho Rama.

Lest you thought three books in consonance was too ambitious, I went for four. I have been reading multiple versions of Draupadi simultaneously and was just keen to share my thoughts. I revisited Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi, printed as part of Seagull’s excellent Breast Stories compendium (2016), since the DU decided to cast it out from their syllabus. She is the anti-Draupadi, sans constraint, sans education, sans high birth and royal intrigue and yet, sans putting up with any BS, the most raw manifestation of Draupadi there is. I was blown away by the lyrical and cyclic opening of Ira Mukhoty’s version, where death and birth are merged in elemental form. In The Song of Draupadi (Aleph, 2021), Draupadi is a manifestation of cyclic comings together. In birth and death, through air, water, earth, fire and ether and the lives of the characters, traced through their lives way before they realised they were interwoven. So then of course I had to go to Sai Swaroopa’s Draupadi: The Tale of an Empress (Rupa, 2018) which is a surprisingly radical Draupadi, I would say even more than the others, despite being rooted in convention and scripture. It is far more simply told and urgently so. Sai’s Draupadi is busy manifesting Ichcha Shakti, desire, into action and she’s vital and pulsing with ambition. This is a book of intrigue and undercurrent. I also returned to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions (Anchor, 2009) which is the tale of a woman filled with an overwhelming sense of despair as she comes to recognise the fallibility of the glistening patriarchal world, and prevailing despite it. It’s long been one of my favourite versions for its elegance yes, but also the knowingness of its divine interventions.

Each lens is unique, each serves its own purpose, and each woman drawn out is distinct. So don’t hesitate to pick one of them up just because you feel like you already have a summary of the story. Apart from the fact that each has variations in timelines and progression, Draupadi, like Krishna, is able to convince each woman who claims her that she is her own.

A disclaimer here that I am not doing a literary review. I am sure you’ll find far more educated and knowledgeable perspectives on this book elsewhere. I am simply a reader recording the contemplations that arise in me as I enter into these loaned narratives. My lens is also contemplative of the mystical, the sacred, spiritual, wellbeing and mental health. I don’t record my entire perspective, just an aspect of it that fits at the time. With books I note that these perspectives evolve over time which is also why I come back to old books more frequently these days. I enjoy re-reads. So do take me with a pinch of salt. It’s just a sharing and meant to urge you to pick up these books and use them to contemplate your self and your world.

The music in this one may seem a bit odd to you at first. It is Sharanam by Bombay Jayshree. I chose it precisely because Draupadi’s name is never chanted. We don’t pray to her or offer her worship in the way that we do Ahalya, Shabari, Radha or Rukmini, Sita, or define the Kunti-putra. Panchali is fierce and devoted, loyal and knowing, ambitious, political, and conscious. And yet, we do not seek her out and invoke her in the way we do others. Why is that? I hope it remains an undertone to your reflections in the way it has been mine.

I first read Sumana Roy’s How I Became A Tree (Aleph India), when it was published in 2017. Why am I reflecting on it now? I don’t think I can say with any honesty that I have finished reading it. It’s not that I am a slow reader, but that this is not a book one reads as words, but as a river. And the only way to read a river is to immerse oneself and be swept along with it. My journey along its course is still ongoing. It’s a book that causes you to circle back upon itself and run down meandering tributaries many times. It grows like a great banyan, constantly taking root and growing to its own spread and circle within the forest of the mind. Until I read it, I used to think of Herman Hesse as the great western mystic, greatly influenced by the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the teachings of the Buddha, in the midst of the raging World Wars. He remains a towering figure of mysticism no doubt. I don’t mean to diminish him by the comparison, but reading these two works, Seasons of the Soul and his oft-cited essay in the German compendium on trees, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte (excuse my German pronunciation in the podcast) in consonance with Sumana’s, brought home to me the dvaita-advaita of the Western-Eastern lens. I use Hesse and Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees as markers, observational lenses at both ends in their own way to explain why it is essential to read this book knowing how it differs from them and thereby understanding what it achieves. I will not finish reading this book for a long time. Twenty pages later you (or indeed I) may find my insights completely irrelevant and come to a juxtaposition and insight all your own. It is an evolving and evolution-inducing work. Do read it as such.

I hope you enjoy the reflection. It’s just above half an hour long so perfect for a glass of wine and easy evening listening.

Music in the background is Southern Bird from Elements by George Brooks, Gwyneth Wentink & Kala Ramnath. Just a fair use backdrop to a meditative reflection. Do buy a copy of the album too.

I haven’t forgotten about The Great Hindu Civilisation, just bumped it up, and you should have that shortly too.

Every contemplation of the Buddha’s teachings begins with a contemplation of the life of the Buddha. Why? Isn’t it sufficient to have read one version, or to have known ‘the facts’ of it? There are a number of reasons. The first is there is no one version. There are historical versions, hagiographic versions, devotional versions, fictionalised version, graphic versions, poetic versions. You learn something new from each one. Second, every teacher who narrates the life of the Buddha lends you his lens. It empowers you to take what works for you from it. The Nalanda method of learning emphasised listening as the first step for this purpose. What falls on your ears, draws you in, is for you. Listening to the life of the Buddha is not about what is historically accurate, but to know how to contemplate his life. The Buddha offers himself up as the basis of a methodology of practice. Research and intellectualise and go to the scholars, listen to teachings, read, yes, but in the end… think! Is this pragmatic? Does it seem reasonable? Is it applicable? How does it translate? And above all, be convinced for yourself. Don’t accept simply what is passed down to you as a teaching.

I find Arundhati Subramaniam’s The Book of Buddha a beautiful way to contemplate the Buddha not because it is well researched or nicely penned, both of which it is, but because it shows you how to think about the Buddha. I do hope this review/contemplation/reflection inspires you to pick it up for yourself.

The music in the background is the beautiful Shakyamuni Mantra by the Bodhi Bhajan group which I use in my meditations and that was given to me by my teacher Asha Pillai-Balsara. No copyright misuse or disrespect is intended. It simply offers a meditative basis in which to reflect on the Buddha’s life.

May it aid you in your contemplation.

Next week: Pavan Varma’s The Great Hindu Civilisation.

Sky Gazing is a podcast on drawing inspiration from books, poetry on well being, mental health, spirituality and body work.

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