Lineage, tradition, satsang, guru

"Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there."

~ Grateful Dead, Box of Rain

 One afternoon while sitting in front of Ram Dass’ home, taking in the view of the endless sea, watching the brightest part of the day start to recede, I began to weep.I had been sitting there, contentedly humming the Hanuman Chalisa in my head, feeling the fullness of my heart, when suddenly a thought came into my mind – I wanted my relationship with Ram Dass to be longer. But not just longer as in the future, I wanted to know him longer in the past. I wanted to know him in the period right after the stroke, I wanted to know him when he had the stroke, I wanted to know him before. I wanted to know him in India, to sit at the table with him at the Evelyn Hotel, along with all the other Westerners as he described and illuminated the days events with Maharaji. I wanted to know him as a lecturer, I wanted to be there at the lecture, as his student and friend. I just wanted to know him as long as possible.I wanted to know - if I had felt the kind of absolute love and encouragement that I feel from Ram Dass now, the feeling of profound security, of self-esteem, of essential worth, even amidst my day to day neuroses - I wanted to know who I would be now if I had known that longer. I feared too, that if Ram Dass was gone, that feeling might leave too and I would be left again, alone, insecure and longing. The recognition that I only had so much more time with Ram Dass made me feel ungrounded and bereft. And now I was weeping.I wanted to tell that to Ram Dass, but I already knew what he would say. He would tell me that he is there with me now, and that he will always be with me. That my heart is in his heart. Or something like that. Something sweet and deep and light and loving.

"Look out of any windowany morning, any evening, any dayMaybe the sun is shiningbirds are winging orrain is falling from a heavy sky -What do you want me to do,to do for you to see you through?"

I recall after working for some time with a young veteran who had returned from Iraq as a quadriplegic, that upon his decision to die and after his death, his wife showed a sense of openness and forbearance that it some ways seemed unusual. She talked to me about her experience of grief and reconciliation, as it were, and her process of arriving at this place of quietude. Her words stayed with me and I recall them now, “No amount of time would have been enough to spend with him.” Not a thousand years or a few precious minutes. I understood that then and I understand it and feel it now.There is a beautiful story about the 20^th century Indian saint, Ramana Maharshi. It is said that at the end of his life, after having been diagnosed with and undergone many treatments for an aggressive cancer, his devotees were utterly bereft and begging him, “Maharshi, please cure yourself. Don’t leave us.” To this the great sage was said to have responded, “But where would I go?”On some evenings with Ram Dass, I would be cognizant of the amount of time I had been in his room, as the light dwindled and the sun set over a brilliant pink ocean, and not wanting to overstay my welcome, I would say to him, “Well Babaji, I should get going.” He would answer first with his huge smile, an oceanic smile that seems to come straight from his heart, then he would say, “But where would you go?” And I would sit back down and relax, just being with him until dark.Ram Dass would attribute all of this, all of this grace, all of this love, this deep contentment, to his time with his guru, Maharaji Neem Karoli Baba and to the experience of the lived teachings of Maharaji.When I first met Ram Dass, we talked about the idea of tradition, lineage and the guru and I told him about my deep longing, my searching, my evolving, and finally of my settling into the place of “no guru.” I told him that while I was content with that settling, I still believed I would feel more powerful, more grounded with the support of a community, a satsang, based on the same values that were the cornerstone of my life. He pointed to a huge picture of Maharaji on his wall and said, “I give you my guru. He has been guiding you here all along.” In that moment, I felt completely awestruck, “Ram Dass is giving me this guru, his guru. He is inviting me into this community, this experience, and he is joining me there.” I felt like I was floating. But as soon as Ram Dass left the room, I looked up at the picture of Maharaji and thought to myself, “That guy can’t be my guru. That’s a funny looking old guy in a blanket. I am not devoted to him, I don’t even know him.”The next day, I said to Ram Dass, “Ram Dass, I want to know God directly. I don’t want an intermediary.” Ram Dass smiled, his face lit up mischievously, “Ok, then I’m taking my guru back.” Even though I really already felt that I did know God directly, there was truth in my quest, still, to be in relationship with God, and to feel a sense of companionship and faith through that relationship, in the way that ram Dass felt with Maharaji. But there was truth, too, in my immediate reaction of “Don’t take the guru – the intermediary - away from me!” What I could see was that Ram Dass had something he attributed to his guru, and I wanted to have that same thing. I would keep the guru.

“Walk out of any doorwayFeel your way, feel your wayLike the day beforeMaybe you'll find directionAround some cornerWhere it's been waiting to meet you.”

In fact, I have often marveled at how the devotees of Maharaji are so deeply connected to their guru, and at the same time so generous with him, making it seem almost irrelevant whether devotees had actually met him. I can’t help but think that in the same position, I would tend towards an attitude of superiority because I had actually been with the “real thing” while others were only enjoying an imitation.As it happens, around this same time, the Grateful Dead were playing their “final” show in Chicago and many people I knew were doing everything they could to get tickets. The problem for me, having been a Deadhead in my teens and twenties, was that Jerry Garcia had died in 1995, fully 20 years prior to this “final” show. In my mind, it wasn’t even worth paying attention to. Jerry wasn’t going to be there. But now I was thinking of this from a new perspective: When Ramesh Maharshi was dying he was also to have said to his students, “Why are you attached to the body? Let it go.”

"What do you want me to do,to watch for you while you're sleeping?Well please don't be surprisedwhen you find me dreaming too."

In this realization I could see that by focusing on the “guru” alone, I was trading in the person – the body - for the greater experience of the community, traditions and legacy. All of this exists because of this person and around this person, and yet “this” person was always going to die. In some sense, it was the same with the Grateful Dead concert. People less attached to the body could open up more fully into the message and the experience itself.

“Look into any eyesYou find by you, you can seeClear through to another dayMaybe been seen beforeThrough other eyes on other daysWhile going home”

Honestly, in retrospect, following the Grateful Dead gave me many early experiences of being a part of something much larger, something I could easily tap into even when I wasn’t with that community, and still more-so when I was. There were rituals and songs and sayings and gatherings that kept the tribe, the satsang, loosely defined. The focus of the satsang was the band, and what the band stood for – community, the power of group consciousness and involvement, and social responsibility. I thrived within that structure, feeling I had a place in something big and lasting.Later, when I discovered Ashtanga yoga, I felt a familiar ease - chanting the Ashtanga yoga mantra, the breathing, the predictable sequence, postures increasing in humility and inquiry as I evolved – this structure also allowed me to thrive. I was able to be in my own process, on my own path, within a context of teachers and traditions. But as I looked back across the lineage that brought us Ashtanga yoga, back through the guru and the traditions associated with him, I found comfort in being connected through time and space, but I couldn’t find the thing that spoke most deeply to my heart.It was during these Ashtanga years that I started The Samarya Center, and felt some contentment and belonging in the Samarya community, a satsang I did believe was based in love and radical acceptance - a community where everyone belonged, without any rules or prescribed ways of showing devotion or connection. In my desire to create the kind of structure that I had found in other spiritual communities, and especially in my Ashtanga community, I invited all of my students to learn the Atma Shatakam. We would have our own mantra, our own chant that would signal our intention and create a sense of structure and focus. But I certainly didn't want to be the guru, and aside from a vague sense of connectedness to all the radical change makers before us, we didn't have a lineage. It still didn't quench my thirst, nor provide me with the feeling that I would feel equally connected in its physical absence.

"What do you want me to do,to do for you to see you through?It's all a dream we dreamedone afternoon long ago."

I wanted more than the satsang. I wanted more than the guru. I wanted more than the songs and rituals. I wanted the central message to be one of love. Of deep, abiding, impersonal and active love. I wanted this to be the organizing principle of the satsang. I wanted this to be the primary and lived message of the guru. I wanted the songs and rituals to be inextricably linked to that same message and its embodiment.And this, in fact, was the immediate experience I had with Ram Dass. And of course, in his presence, never having met his guru, I believed that it was Ram Dass himself. That he was the one I wanted. At the same time, even though I could feel all the people around him who wanted his attention, I could also feel that for so many of these, it was really only Ram Dass as access to Maharaji that they craved. What I felt most of all, was that these were people who were devotional, kind hearted and a little magical in their thinking. But this was a magic that made sense to me. When I left Maui for the first time, I asked Ram Dass’ assistant Dassima for the blessing to hold a Ram Dass satsang to share with my students. I remember her asking, “Do you mean a Maharaji satsang?” In my mind, it was Ram Dass who was the source, in her mind, it was Maharajji.Maharaji Neem Karoli Baba had one clear message: Love Everyone. Feed them. Remember God. He was believed to be an embodiment of Hanuman, who is an incarnation of Shiva. Shiva is said to pre-date the Vedas, the oldest surviving literary texts. When Dassima reminds me that it is Maharaji, she reminds me of a powerful lineage, of a larger satsang, and of the importance of the message of the guru: Love Everyone. Feed them. Remember God. And when I consider this, and I consider the devotees I have encountered, I find that each of them has found their own life of service, of love expressed actively, through dedication to the guru, to the lineage and to the satsang. I meet person after person who talks about the feeling of sweetness and ease in the presence of the guru, I read accounts of Maharaji’s mischievousness and unpredictability, and I hear countless stories of feeling truly loved, of coming home to the heart.Paramhansa Yogananda, in his teachings says, "The guru-disciple relationship is the highest expression of friendship, for it is based on unconditional divine love and wisdom. It is the loftiest and most sacred of all relationships. Christ and his disciples were all one in spirit, as are my master [Swami Sri Yukteswar] and I and those who are in tune with me, because of the common bond of God’s divine love....One who partakes of this relationship is on the way to wisdom and freedom." It is sometimes said that "the guru doesn't show you the way, the guru IS the way."

“Walk into splintered sunlightInch your way through dead dreamsTo another land

Maybe you're tired and brokenYour tongue is twistedWith words half spokenAnd thoughts unclearWhat do you want me to doTo do for you to see you throughA box of rain will ease the painAnd love will see you through”

There is an inner structure to the Maharaji satsang that is passed down across millennia. The lineage gives me a sense of timelessness. The traditions – like singing the Hanuman Chalisa – give me a sense of ritual that keep me calibrated, oriented and connected. The guru gives me a sense of direction, in the case of Maharaji, one that speaks to my core values and life’s purpose. It is through this guru that I came to know Ram Dass. And it is through Ram Dass that I had the experience of being loved absolutely and unconditionally, yet impersonally. Through that love alone, I became infinitely more emboldened in my own goodness, feeling at once more resilient and powerful, and more ready to be still.I don’t think of Maharaji, or Ram Dass, as being the ends of my devotion. They, like Christ or Buddha, are portals to an understanding of God in my life, but ones that speak to me in a direct and deeply personal way. And in a way, like my days as a Deadhead, I don’t actually have to do anything to be a part of the lineage to benefit from it. There is no prescribed technique to follow, no single person to worship, no set of rules or dogma, just a loosely organized community based on the guru and his lineage. And this community finds its structure in chanting the Hanuman Chalisa, by keeping alive stories of the guru and his message, by acting from the message itself.

“Just a box of rain,Wind and water,Believe it if you need it,If you don't just pass it onSun and shower,Wind and rain,In and out the windowLike a moth before a flame”

I can’t know Ram Dass any longer than I have. And I still weep with the longing to spend a little more time with him. I am sure I will still feel bereft and ungrounded, at least temporarily when he leaves his body. But then I realize, no amount of time would have been enough. I have the lineage, the satsang, the guru. I have the reminders and a way of surrounding myself with his spirit. His deep and abiding love for me. His Spirit.Because, where would he go?

"It's just a box of rainI don't know who put it thereBelieve it if you need itOr leave it if you dareBut it's just a box of rainOr a ribbon for your hairSuch a long long time to be goneAnd a short time to be there."

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