Hail to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas!
The following topics are very difficult to articulate to oneself, let alone to put them for others to read. The terms are so loaded with theological or philosophical implications that discussion is almost futile. Nevertheless, we feel that some readers can intuit what we are seeking to express, or at least frame for one’s own contemplation. We have endured the ordeals unleashed this year that will continue to pour out of the abyss. We know that you, dear reader, have felt this pressing, incessant assault and pressure, the deep intuitive embodied feeling of unfathomable events, change and dissolution gathering like storm clouds. We have stood alone upon the mountain top and confronted this reality, and felt the icey, piercing entropic winds blow through every atom of our being.
Our seal is two crossed Ruyi (Chinese: 如意; lit. ‘as desired; as [you] wish’) is a Chinese curved decorative object that serves as either a ceremonial scepter in Chinese Buddhism or a talisman symbolizing power and good fortune in Chinese folklore. The Chinese term ruyi is a compound of ru 如 “as; like; such as; as if; for example; supposing; be like; be similar; accord with” and yi 意 “wish; will; desire; intention; suggestion; thought; idea; meaning; imagination.” Standard Chinese uses ruyi either as a stative verb meaning “as desired; as one wishes, as one likes; according to one’s wishes; following your heart’s desires”, or as an adjective meaning “satisfied, pleased, happy, comfortable.” The word is combined with suanpan 算盤 “abacus” in the expression ruyi suanpan to mean considering things only from a positive perspective; to be overly optimistic in one’s plans. “Some suggest the meaning “as desired” signifies a backscratcher owing to “its apparent ability to reach otherwise inaccessible areas of the human body.” We have chosen it as our symbol because the various lineage holders of the Traditions we have joined all carry these items. It is the highest symbol of skillful means, in reaching the ‘itch’ that otherwise one cannot reach within their own limitations. The crossed scepter as back scratchers is a serious jest that means the same thing in English, of mutual assistance and granting favors or giving relief, or “scratch my back and I will scratch yours.” Even the origin of that term is instructive, The phrase “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” originated in the English Navy during the 1600s. It refers to a punishment for indiscipline where the offender would be tied to the mast and lashed. One prisoner could scratch another but not himself, so it was the only way to not suffer in agony. From this arises the seed syllable that is lotus-born, which itself arises above the muck and dirt to blossom.
We must preface this discussion into the power and curses/boons of the Rishi Durvasa. Known to be ill-tempered, or short-tempered as we prefer to say, this Hermit Sage had powers enough to curse the Gods themselves and to cause their powers to wane. Here is a fundamental truth of the universe, of one that can conquer their existence through such discipline, to become so vast and immense of power that the Gods themselves must show one respect. Of course, his insights, his powers, his ascetic devotions produced such power, and therefore his respect is earned. This Rishi, counter to the New Age notions of the spineless, always cheerful, hippy notion of the Guru, is brutal, forthright and vengeful in his teaching of Dharmic lessons to the most powerful Gods to mere mortals. His lesson is that we get what we deserve, a saying which is the distilled essence of the doctrine of karma.
Rishi Durvasa’s curse makes us clarify a statement above. We refer to those in this realm as ‘mere mortals’ but the Gods are not necessarily immortal. They need sources of power, of energy, through their holy herbs, meads, soma/haoma, elixirs, through incenses, prayers and sacrifices, through the energy of devotees. Thus, our relationship is reciprocal, co-dependent, and all subject to karma and fate. The Gods can be injured, punished, suffer, but they are beyond causal and linear time and space. They have glimpsed and Remembered that primordial light in proportion to their luminal being, and those illuminated or seeking ‘enlightenment’ retain that partial Memory. Their seeking, their quest, their Great Yearning is to encounter and to presence this light. The churning of the ocean is the quest of the god and demons for this everlasting source of power, the devas’ and asuras’ desire for immortality has them cooperate, each thinking they will gain the final advantage and trick the other.
It was a careless disrespect to a human of unfathomable ecstatic power that caused the Gods to lose their power with an insult to this Rishi. It was the vulnerable point that the demons could exploit and attack, and led to the grand scheme to churn out an eternal source of divine power. The Vedic mythos of the Gods and Demons working together to produce the amrita through churning the ocean ‘Samudra [Ocean] Manthan [the Churning]’ is the conspiracy of the divine and demonic powers, of Mystery Schools and rival lineages in a provisional peace for a greater agenda. What power is latent in the chaos of such deep waters, what elixir can be transmuted from the unfathomable dark abyss? This is the Macrocosmic Great Work we are beholding as the forces of good and evil converge around us in what seems like a unilateral, coordinated, and cohesive set of events and actions. It is a collusion, a Mystery, one of the grooming, preparing, the teleological coming to a head of history, of life, technology, an impending series of convergences towards the finale, the moments beyond the twilights of the Gods, past the darkness of a dead world.
What Is Your Reason For Living?
All of these topics, when taken to their deepest implications of individual existence or Being, of a true ontology, strike to the meaning of life’s existential purpose. These are of immortality, the nature of the Gods, the meaning of existence, and what is the nature of Being. What is the goal of all of this? What is the Great Work? Do the Gods have their Magnum Opus, higher esoteric forms of divine alchemy? Or is Immortality simply, or only, a sublime paradise? Do the wars of the Gods suggest infinite realms of endless conflicts and conquering, the eternal immortal form of the ‘will to power’? Is it the ‘serious game’ of strange forces? Is the chief end of man to glorify God? To be liberated, the cessation (Nirvana) of the Buddha? The Union of finite with the absolute? A process of individuation to become Godlike, a spiritual process of evolution that is infinite? The vastness of the Mysteries such as that will never be exhausted? Is it a freak of energy? A grand mistake? The Great Game? ludus puerorum (child’s play)? What is the chief end of the Gods, or God? The creative activity of the Divine is called lila, the play of Gods, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play? Are all born to suffer and die? To fight to preserve what is only inevitable? Must all taste of oblivion? To be unified and absorbed back into the Monad? Individuated but consigned to some abiding existence of eternal contemplation?
What do men struggle and suffer for? Fame and glory? Trophies of war? Wealth and descendants? Union and absorption to God or Godlike individuality? If Life is a lesson, what is it? What have you learned? What is certain in life? Death, loss, everything one loves, cherishes, taken away. Competing to stay alive, struggling to have nourishment at the expense of other life? Is all a type of Self-preservation, a paradox of being forced to nourish spirit within, forced to feed the body from without? Is life a prison? A school? A hell? All of the above? What does nature teach of its brutal eat or be eaten, survival of the fittest? Yes, there is symbiosis, but there is pure violent conflict for resources. What do we learn in the ‘systems’ of wealth, of elite power, of the indifference of the few to the many? Do these systems and expressions of life speak to deeper principles of reality? This struggle for what prize? What is an endgame against a backdrop of infinity? What explains the forces that prime reality for these specific outcomes, aggregations of power, the lessons of the futility in world struggle and gains?
Are there, as the Epic of Gilgamesh and many other mythos suggest, ‘passports to heaven’? Then one just abides in infinite bliss, the antithesis of this realm that demands conflict, karma, life through death in cycles, the wheels of life that turn faster as the epochs crumble? What is heaven, the cessation of suffering and endless luxury and happiness? What is potential unchallenged? Strength untested? Is heaven earned? Achieved or given by grace? Is it the end then of glory, of inquiry, of expansion and individuation? Are the karmic knots we tie to entertain ourselves over an infinity in untying? A vast game made real by drinking the potions of forgetfulness in endless cycles of play? Must not the agony and joys feel real, or made to feel real by that yearning desire to not only fill the void within but the outer void and abyss with life, no matter how tragic and painful it may be? Or can one ever truly escape the impending horror and dread of life, of consciousness itself, crushed under the weight of time and circumstance?
Is Life simply the will to power? The conquering hero over the ‘last man’ who complies, bends the knee, crawls and begs for security and luxury? Is it the Siddha process of the perfect man, the man of light, the Buddha, the immortal? Is the game for those that master themselves, that quell the fear and forgetfulness? Those that resists the hostile forces of entropic destruction, the engulfing fields of decay and oblivion that want to consume and harvest and obliterate all and everything in the expanding and endless absorption into the abyss? The Gods and Perfected Ones must sustain this position, to withstand the incessant assaults that slowly erode Being and decay the individual consciousness back into sunken, formless chaos. But what is taste of such liberation, alone? In other words, then what? Without kith and kin is it not too bitter, as the Siddha lament in their poems, to enjoy such sweet fruit alone? This is the origin of the Bodhisattva vow to work on behalf of all and to hold out on the final steps until all are liberated. There is only truly the intimate bonds of love, but they too must be shattered, broken and taken from us all. It is from this vantage point that the Bodhisattva consciousness arises, that none are liberated unless all are free or able to be freed. Some will refuse this liberation and this is the same seed of consciousness that produces the demons: when one is shown the Way, the Good, the True and rejects it, knowing better and refusing to transmute and dispense with deviations, faults, and parasitic modes of being.
What should the secular or scientific human yearn for if they were to achieve the organic immortality of the sages? Or even if some counterfeit virtual or transhumanist longevity or immortal being. What does man do with this power, with life? What of the Gods or the divine purpose? What is their source of meaning as glimpsed through their confines and limitations as expressed through the mythos? Clearly, the Gods can die, be wounded, punished, tormented. They intervene in history, in human affairs, they are linked with humanity in devotions and sacrifice. They are sustained through human consciousness and energy, just as humans are likewise given this measure of divine spark, energy, life or vital force. But Saints and Siddhas can lose their station, be cast down or lost in hells or infernal realms. None are safe.
But what occupies, entertains, inspires noble minds? Consider the range of media that is consumed is always of conflict, some aspect of crime, of betrayal or unrequited love, of violence. So many are fascinated with true crimes, but they are too mundane to investigate the True Crime. This is of the original attacks of the occult wars to extinguish the Mystery Traditions and trap humanity in a virtual hell of prison through complete dominance of consciousness and spirit. The demonic end game is to obliterate the initiatory traditions, wipe Memory from history and culture, eliminate vast parts of the population, control birth and genetic expressions, and thus bind and lock the souls that would reincarnate in the bardo realms. The ‘elites’ of this planet hope to forgo the spiritual evolution, the alchemical Great Work of the Way and trust demons that they will achieve a technological, transhumanist version, a faux immortality.
What of the ‘elites’ of our time? How much of the truth have they been given to show them the nature of the world, of reality? How much have they defiled their original spirit in the heart and soul tarnishing evils from which there is no cleansing? What happens when luxury, supreme abundance, no morality, no accountability all converges in a debased world age? What type of monsters are produced who no longer can enjoy life’s beauty, that have grown to hate humanity, and thus themselves? The further they slip away from a True Human Being, the more numb, the more addicted to pain, the more madness and toxic energy controls and possesses them until they are conduits, portals for the dark forces. There is a reason why the lore has so many tales of the illegitimate and false royalty, usurpers, false magus, false teachers, anti-adepts that are not the true aristocrats and nobility. Just as the ‘scientists’ and experts today are the epitome of hubris in conflating dark agendas with their near priest like power to arbitrate and curate reality itself. Therefore, you can find a conflicting study on any aspect of medicine, or any subject. There is only a false, fake, contrived consensus that exists to shape the narrative and worldview of policy and culture. It is reality curation refined over the aeons. We cannot get more specific in aspects of the biological warfare or we will be further censored and deplatformed as has already happened for daring to question certain ‘facts.’ But we see the patient agenda so hubris in its own certainty, that it no longer hides in the shadows. We will see this grinning evil look us all deep within, as the abyss itself gazes into those that behold it.
What of the Gods and demons? The mythos tells of their occupations to secure the precious soma, and of their interwoven and intervening relationship with humanity? Are we mere trophies in this game? Are we simple vessels for presencing these forces? What are the benevolent Gods, ancestral energies that crossed the abyss and generated life in the darkness? What are the demons, the spawning embodiment of rot and disease, of malice and suffering? We are living in the times that will see these wars become kinetic, open and outright in ways that should strike fear into all that thought they would have more time to do the Work, to Love, to Create. Soon the bell will toll for all. Because the fetters to certain dark intrusions have been unbound, and the darkness is not unchecked as the Gods and demons churn, as their attention has been usurped and thus there is no longer the balance or stability of a world age.
Such parasitic consciousness invades every aspect of life, even in what appear to be exoteric matters. For instance, the past generations perfected the arts and crafts, the artisan methods that built the most beautiful examples of civilization. These are mostly destroyed by an inhuman, mechanistic notion of progress that robs of all meaning of life. This is the nihilism, the inexpressible angst of modernism, cut off from this heritage of craftsmanship, of things built to last, of each generation building upon the former. All this was wiped away in the revolutions, the materialism, the anti- and counter-traditional assault on nature, community, on family. It is the devouring of purpose, the erasure of meaning, the decay of Being itself. The world wars accelerated the technology which quickens the consolidation, which feeds the technology in the dystopian nightmare feedback loop. We see the dark fantasies of the kabbalistic anti-tradition, who always wanted the golem, the artificial being to replace humanity. The mandates and forced injections are the next phase of this conversion, a consolidation and altering of life to the genetic level as prerequisites for far, far worse agendas.
What does this force hate the most? What are its targets? Tradition, beauty, nature, organic life. It hates harmony, it hates stability, it wants chaos, it feeds upon suffering and misery. The world becomes an asphalt and industrial hell, terra formed into a post-human world where all the DNA, all of the organic life on earth is awash in the toxic poison of these predators. They assault the health, fracture the psyche, drain the energy with stress, with angst, with misery. It creates an atmosphere of hopelessness, helplessness, there is the superficial attempts to insulate the suffering and pain. All the supports that have existed for the aeons, that of some cohesive worldview, some family or social unit, a tribe, a village, community, for context, security, a narrative to live by. Again, these are the primary targets, as is anything decent, wholesome, anything positive, life-affirming. Everything becomes a toxic inversion of the primordial way. What is diseased, degenerate, and hideous is worshipped, what is worthless is praised, what is dishonorable celebrated. This is the demonic spirit of the Kali Yuga.
How then do we live? It may seem easier to give up, to surrender, to grow cold, weak, vulgar. It appears easier to slide into the morose, meaningless nihilism, to live a superficial life seeking stimulation and entertainment. Notice how so many of the world’s richest, or the known wealthy nouveau riche, often do extreme sports, are involved in nefarious islands of questionable associations, how billionaires are trying to be the first to space. It is the goal of some to be the richest, to have the most land, the most sexual conquests, the most power or influence over others, to conquer space travel, to infect the world with their DNA. Mankind needs new frontiers, but they will not face the true wilderness, the deep unknown of the True Self. Thus, their efforts are the anti-thesis of the authentic Great Work in always looking for an external way to fill their internal void. They are powerful, having achieved a distorted singularity of their own demonic purpose. They are driven by dark forces that possess their thoughts, words and actions but to insidious purposes and agendas beyond their own understanding. They are the saints of the demons themselves, an anti-elite, vehicles for this artificial power to manifest into this world.
The Gods themselves become householders, move through phases of life, and have their own quests, tasks, karma and are subjected to injury, curses, pain, punishment and even death. Thus their biographic details, such as Shiva’s continual phases of practice are templates for the sacred Dharma that permeates all existence: To refine every aspect of being, from thoughts, to speech, actions. This is Trikaranaśuddhi, which is the purity and unity of (1) manasa (thought), (2) vāchā (word/speech), and (3) kārmana (deed/action). Thus the enlightened ones heal, wage holy wars, and protect and insulate the innocent. They create gardens, they seed culture, art, beauty and express the truth in every atom of their work. The demons do the opposite, but it is so much easier to destroy than to create. Thousands of years of study, art, learning, can be destroyed in an instant by the truly wicked. Just as our society has been ‘reset’ by a small cabal that has inflicted their dark worldview on the entire earth in this present time.
The soul/mind/body complex is a crucible within a crucible. It is an alembic, an alchemical vessel. Even if it is not used as such in a conscious, adept manner, it still functions this way, distilling sensory data, food, inputs into reality, into energy, into an experience of self and other. The frustrations, pains, the horrors of life, produce a type of toxin within, a poison that can harden the heart, fracture the mind, and sicken the body. It is the source and seed of the spiritual diseases that become physical, the physiological response to a psychic, emotional and spiritual angst, turmoil, and anguish that builds up like the toxic filth in the body. The adept, the alchemist, the Buddha transmutes this toxic energy into elixir, it is liberation.
The true sage is a hero, a warrior, a healer, an elder, an artist, a creator of worlds and mythos, a mediator between realms. Their life is their Art, their mode of Being the most personal and intimate creation, the most authentic mode of living that integrates all these aspects into a complete person. The path IS the Goal. The way, the wayfaring through the realms and spheres is the generation of meaning, the assertion of significance, the nourishing of Mind through the dissolution of the vast degrading forces of chaos.
The sages refine themselves in secret, in silence, in solitude. Their joys might be to meet an immortal in a mountain refuge for some tea, some chess, maybe some wine or literati joys. They prepare to be the Host and Guest, supremely perfected as True Human Beings. But the trophy is this fiery consciousness lit by the sacred mead, the elixir, the soma plant, all of which spark the fire of Mind, of Godlike intellect. In Hermetic literature this is the Nous, in the treatise on the Krater (The grail and soma cup), is described as the trophy to be fought for, “Tell me then father, why did Theos not impart intellect to all men? – It was his will, my son, that intellect should be placed in the midst as a prize that human souls may win.”
Those that reckon the final, highest truths, the supreme tantras are thereby Godlike or can become vampiric demons through the liberation of insight. The corrupt, the depraved libertine, amoral, jaded, warped, and debauched becomes the lured into darker acts. Normal pleasures, love, family, art, creation, they cease to please, to satisfy, and engage. Like addicts of pornography or hard drugs, they need more and more, stranger, more extreme forms to feel anything. They are not sinful against the Gods, they dull one’s own spirit and embarrass the ancestors. There is nothing sacred, nothing true, there is therefore nothing they will not do or refrain from some noble or honorable objection. Lesions form on the soul, the diamond of the mind never arises, nor the transmutation of the heart to gold. They become the vehicle of dark forces, the agent of entities that are magnetically drawn to suffering, to pain, to iniquity. But not of a normal nature such as the life and death struggle of biology, but an intentional, truly abhorrent pleasure in defiling innocence and beauty. Such a one can have no noble aspiration, no honorable personal code, no sense of mission and purpose that drives them to alchemical refinement. Such a life is the collapse into failure in facing the ultimatum of what we do with our existence.
Likewise, many have their empathy, their compassion, the sense of higher purpose hijacked by inferior forces that fill the vacuum left of no legitimate Tradition or initiatory system. There are placebos, watered down, infiltrated, and subverted institutions that are shells of their original purpose. This displaced energy of the Great Work, of the pursuit of the numinous is transferred and harvested by dark forces, always working under the guise of the ‘greater good.’ They create an extreme worse than the other, one of enabling through tolerance, encouraging through affirmation, seeding the latent misery and victimhood to a critical mass of an enfeebled, helpless, and broken society/civilization. Even if they have a glimpse of understanding of the Way, they want it all handed to them, given with no achievement, no struggle, no transcendent, heroic overcoming. In the contrast between such forces, the piercing realization of incompatible worldviews emerges. It is of such fractured and fragmented that the basic notions of the ‘good’, the beneficent, even conceptually cannot not be agreed upon.
We have arrived at the threshold of a full technocratic, medical dictatorship enabled by the last few generations, which can be said to have been bred to be the most naive and docile generation in history. A critical mass of possessed and broken has been achieved, they are the proxies for the final phases of aeonic occult wars. They have filled in the vast Mysteries of Life with banal theories, superficial narratives to sterilize, demoralize and destroy every last bit of the sense of sacred, holy, divine from the daily experience of life. All this justifies even more misery, more tyranny, more destruction as this nefarious worldview seeks only consolidation of a certain inversion of power, just as a virulent sickness is the antithesis of strength and health, though possessing an inversion of the qualities with the same intensity.
The world, the masses, all of us feel the psychic, emotional, the mental and spiritual terrorism that has been unleashed upon the world. It is coordinated over attacks on food, air, water, on medicine, on health and DNA, on consciousness, on the essence of our humanity. It is to turn us cold, dark, numb and to rot the sensitive, empathic aspect of our being that makes us human. It is what makes us essentially human, these higher qualities that differentiate us from mere beasts, that are also the mechanism to godlike liberation or enlightenment. It is our ability to love, to yearn for higher modes of life, for seeking the numinous expressions of our being. Thus, a healthy, strong, human is kind, gentle, subtle, and refined. They are exquisite, noble, merciful, beautiful in every way. They have purged what is base within themselves, what clings to suffering, misery, what is noxious and destructive to their integrated self. Thus, their individuation is not mere ego, it is exultation of possibility, it is the realization of potential, of the Way as the Goal itself, the transmuting, transforming eternal perfection of Becoming.
What conditions truly make humanity flourish? What is the greatest world for the purposes of initiation? Of the Great Work? An artificial peace, an enforced equality, a monoculture and melting pot that seeks to abolish all discomfort and give luxury to all? This is like the artificial state the Buddha was trapped in by his family that wanted to hide all suffering from him so he would not abandon the lower dharma for the Higher Dharma. It was the confrontation of suffering that awoke him to the true liberation, not of pleasures and luxury. What conditions awaken someone to the profound aspects of reality, what would pierce the veil of lethargy, mindlessness and cause them to confront what they cling to, what they desire, what inflicts suffering in this temporal, fleeting flash of an incarnation? We do not need to see pain, misfortune, and suffering, it will come and find us. It is woven into the fabric of reality, the warp and woof of karma and destiny. It must produce a profound empathy, a compassion of our unified experience, but also, a warrior, a dharma protector for those that seek to produce extremes that stifle the initiates’ Way. There is no hiding from the thieves of time, of illness, death, of loss and sadness. We must confront and learn to transmute emotion into the fire for enlightenment. We must burn out those aspects of self that cling to notions of permanence, of seeking mere comfort, safety, luxury. But there is a deeper security, one that can never be taken away, that of a true disciple of the Way. If the recent and immediate events do not shock you into awakening, it is doubtful that anything will.
Rishi Durvasa wandered the earth in ecstatic bliss, and his acts were so infused with this energy that to ignore them, disrespect them, to violate his status of achievement was to violate not only his standards of rules, but to violate the laws of Dharma valued most in all the realms. His teaching is of a respect and place in the world that is earned through his unified being, where the consciousness expresses the Dhrama from within and expressed without in word and deed. It is the pursuit of this ecstatic energy, that sustains life and the universe and those that do not show it respect and honor, are the embodiment of obstacles, of stagnation, of friction. To transgress a pure being in their supreme devotion, to violate his embodied holiness is such a disrespect as to bring misery down upon oneself.
Thus, the trophy of life is the secret fire, the divine energy, the being fed by love, by rituals, by herbs, meads and elixirs, by imagination, by yearning, through suffering and struggle. It is the rousing and refining of this energy that then transforms to action. It is not a mere form of hedonism or a pursuit of bliss, this is a by-product of intention and energy produced to evolve into higher forms of Being, capable and empowered for higher forms of creation. This infinite becoming, a process of individuation and co-creation is the assertion of life and meaning over nothingness. It is the only purpose, but one so fragile, so precarious and precious that it must be guarded at all times with the vigilance of Memory and Mindfulness, protected by compassionate wrath. It is this conscious recollection of Dharma, of this purpose that is the very essence of existence. The imperative and ability to perceive and experience this truth, of existence in totality from the most sublime pleasure to the most agonizing pain is essential for the complete, eternal becoming. Such a spectrum of experience, such a sensitivity, such vulnerability to feel, is to be alive, to exist, to be.
Many have experienced profound, enlightened clarity, that is then forgotten. These are micro-experiences of enlightenment, flashes of insight that dissipate to some degree, or degrade rapidly in some cases. We would venture that all reading this have experienced such a state, such a perfect moment of perception into reality, bliss, all-encompassing loving kindness, such a warmth, where the priorities and meaning of existence illuminate themselves within in such a bright vivid focus. But then life creeps in, worries, anxieties, distractions, and that serene lucidity fades and its obscured by the shadows of delusions, the dust of the red world. The aspects that deepen these experiences then become neglected, the practices, the devotions, the discipline declines as the excuses, the procrastinations arise and the separation from that Insight dims back into the darkness.
Many wait for the prime conditions to begin their practices, or because they have a failure or faltering in certain phases, use this as excuse to quit or lessen their effort. Practices, from simple prostrations to the most elaborate rituals and empowerments are to emblazon the insight so deep, to provoke an awakening so profound that one cannot forget it, it cannot be lost even in the direst of circumstances. Yet is in the mundane tasks, the daily life, that many often forget the most, drifting into a numb, detached, or dissociative existence of self-told lies and delusions. One holds this mindfulness, this Memory, in complete attention, it is so condensed and crystallized within that it becomes the diamond-like consciousness that can not be shattered or broken. The short temper of the Rishis attacks any that cannot contend with this focus, this razor sharp Mind, it is like playing with a tiger. It is the ultimate compassion in forcing awakening, in a supreme intolerance for the mind states that drags the self down into the lowest distractions, that engage one in dissolving one’s own being through the delusions of forgetting what one must do with their precious incarnation.
Many likewise feel trapped in their circumstances, but they have often wasted most of the precious time in absolute nonsense, trivial distractions and have not accumulated anything for this world or the next. They do no real work, training, they refine no skills of exoteric or esoteric nature and thus the outcomes are always the same for them. How much deeper into the trap will they fall as more time and life and energy are wasted in folly? How much more do they waste of all existence by frivolous dissipation of time and power? They do nothing to prepare for the storms we have warned about, but they complain the loudest. It is a lesson for all, to be worthy of saving, of caring for, to earn your place amongst the perfected ones, to strive and overcome excuses, limitations, obstacles and to prepare and gain strength that you can help yourself and others. So many waste their good health and youth, and have nothing when they get sick or old. It is the same in spiritual life, you will perhaps get to the autumn or winter of your life and perish in the coldness of your own lack of true effort and absence of essential humanity. Thus, we damn ourselves to hells, to futile ends, that end in misery as we waste Mind/Consciousness on the most base and lowest of delusions.
Compassion is the ultimate skillful means. It is often taught merely as a good thing, with no explanation other than generating merit. There can be no compassion without empathy. There can be no true compassion without the strength needed to take it from a passive form of almost pity, to active engagement in reducing suffering. So many confuse compassion with other aspects of indulging error or enabling worse conditions under the misguided notion of helping someone. It is not helping someone to fund their addictions or to relent to a child’s crying because it wants more and more candy that will make it sick. It is such a situation where the ‘builders’ of modernism have created the population that exists. They were broken of autonomy, of tradition, of time honed skills and modes of living for an experiment of machines and technology. They bury the trash in the earth, dump it in the oceans, pollute the air and corrupt every atom of DNA with poisons. Yet in their hubris, they blame the masses, they have a disdain for the people who just want to live, to have families, and to have the most simple existence of human life.
Compassion is necessary for creating the internal elixir, for creating the atmosphere of calm, pacifying conflicts and distractions and intrusions. It is the empathy of our collective situation, the crisis of all. To pretend otherwise is to feel safe on one side of a boat because the whole and water is entering from the other side. It is all sinking. Many think they are good because they treat people nicely, or they follow the trends that signal specific modern type of virtue or social causes. It is not that simple because it is very easy to be nice when laws are in place and/or you have a comfortable life. What really shows who are you is what you do when nobody is looking, when the veneer of this false civility crumbles and the true chaos emerges.
Rishi Durvasa’s anger is not from ego, or unwholesome states of mind. It is wrathful compassion, the yogi and warrior justified response in a greater disrespect waged, not against him, but what he represents as one who is accomplished. Disrespect to him is disrespect to the entire Dharma, to the ability for all beings to evolve and achieve stations of perfection through discipline and tapas. To ignore the achievements is to disrespect the universal laws, it is to insult the very essence of existence and life itself. It is a lesson to all to know their place, their own weakness and to honor those that are superior to them in discipline and who are seasoned in the Dharma. But even deeper, it is a lesson that our own sovereignty is supreme when achieved through Dharma. It is of a nobility that demands respect from Gods and demons, and that to violate such a sage is to bring curses down upon one’s self. One must become so regal, so adamantine, so refined and transmuted that to transgress one’s personal space, to violate one’s basic humanity, to intrude upon one’s sacred being is to engage in a purely demonic criminal act that the myriad beings of the infinite realms will punish. To be such an expression of Dharma, to be so honorable, so noble is to earn a place in existence, it earns the right to protection, to special consideration in the karmic exchanges of these occult wars.
The restless energy, the angst, the depression, the sadness are all aspects of life experienced as emotions. They can be the fuel for demonic states of insanity, frenzy, loss of nobility, or they can be the base material for transmutation into higher states of consciousness or higher Mind. Such deep yearning, such sense of exile, sorrow and suffering are catalysts to awakening. They can be wayward or healing forms of energy. All are given a portion of this energy, some know how to imbibe it from the dew, some from the plants, some from the rites, from erotic or creative energies. Some take their anger, their dissatisfaction and apply the pulsing energies of life to alchemical refinement, harnessing what is lost by most through dissipation.
We must achieve certain goals in this finite time and resources. We must stabilize this flowing energy, we must experience this divine war of saints and demons from within and churn our elixir of meaning of the abyss of the inner void within. We must sublimate the fire, calm, quiet the whisperer within, and abide in the supreme Silence that engenders clarity. We must identify that which is Noble, Beautiful, Empowering, that which is the presence of Dharma, the essence of the Supreme and True Good and working with unceasing devotion to elevate our being to be vessels for such numinous expressions. This incessant refinement, of thought, speech, action, of right conduct in every way, governed, mastered, controlled composure is the most complete Yoga, the absolute fixing of the volatile, ennobled and transmuted and exalted above its previous inferior and base condition. It is the Supreme Mudra, the crossing of the threshold to liberation and sovereignty of Being.
