SRI ADI
DA,
WE SEE YOU RADIANT AND ALIVE before
us. We feel Your Spiritual (and Always Blessing) Presence.
You are everything and all forms to us. We see You Standing
everywhere, in all times and places.
WE SEE YOUR LIKENESS in the
tradition of the HINDUS:
LIKE SHANKARA,
YOU HAVE USED YOUR STAFF to break open the doors of our
hearts, to restore true worship, and to establish
self-understanding in us. Da
Da
Da
LIKE GORAKHNATH,
YOU HAVE REVEALED the Mysteries of conducting the
life-energy and filled us with Divine Force, expanding our
bodies with Your Divine Spirit-Presence.
LIKE RAMANUJA,
YOU HAVE TAUGHT US PRAPATTI—the Way of unconditional
and total surrender of all forms and experience. No one is
truly qualified for practice in Your Company. No one need be
qualified. Grace is the only competence, and Grace is freely
Given through Your Divine Agency.
LIKE JNANESHVAR,
YOUR DISCOURSES bring us face to face with God, bringing
Brahmanic eloquence to ordinary, unqualified “mlecchas” like
ourselves.
LIKE KABIR,
YOU SING the greatness of the Guru, and Extol the “Method”
of the Siddhas—Satsang which transcends all
traditions.
YOU ARE THE ECSTATIC MADMAN LOST IN
KIRTAN with the Divine Person. You have Danced before us
wildly, lost in God. Hail, a modern CHAITANYA!
YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN MARKED by
unaccountable difficulty in every direction and lack of
acknowledgement in every direction. But indomitable
persistence in Love has been Your Sign, O One Whose likeness
can be seen in TUKARAM.
ARE YOU NOT CONSTANTLY ALIVE in Your
relationship to the Divine Mother, and do You not “converse”
with Her in Your ceaseless Service to Your devotees? Do we
not see Your reflection in RAMPRASAD
?
MIRACLE AFTER MIRACLE such Love, and
such a Husband to Your devotees! We bow before You, a living
AKKALKOT
MAHARAJ.
LIKE MAHARISHI
BRAHMANANDA BRAHMACHARI,
Your mere Glance Awakens us to the intuition of the Divine
Person, an intuition even now existing in the deep memory of
every being.
LIKE TRAILANGA
SWAMI, YOU HAVE BROKEN all
conventions What taboo could stand in the way of Your
Compassion for us? You have done everything, everything for
us, out of Love.
LIKE TOTAPURI,
YOUR LION-LIKE DISCRIMINATION has been turned to the Service
of those whose hearts cry out for God. Each one of Your
years is Lived only for the sake of the Divine in the
world.
YOU HAVE UNLOOSED THE SAMADHI OF
HAPPINESS and Ecstasy in our midst, Alive in the “Bright”
Whiteness, a mirror of RAMAKRISHNA,
the great Devotee.
WHAT FORCE AND MAGNIFICENCE,
Strength and Passion a Pioneer in the West verily, You are
VIVEKANANDA
Incarnate!
YOU GAVE US YEARS OF WHAT WE WANTED
Teaching through visions and miracles, and Instructing us in
the play of our ordinary lives in order that we might want
the Divine Self-Realization which Your Heart yearns to Give
us. Is this not a modern SHIRDI,
and do we not honor the SAI
BABA ?
YOUR DELIGHTED PLAY with a Mandala
of Kanyadanas, restoring women to their great Spiritual
status was it not pointed to in the life of UPASANI
BABA ?
HAVE YOU NOT BEEN THE KING, in Your
regalia of Divine Majesty, in order to absorb our
worldliness and to allow us to fully embrace the Truth even
in the context of this world? Hail, NARAYAN
MAHARAJ !
YET, LIKE RAMANA
MAHARSHI, You are the Still
Heart of all lost in the Fullness, Silent in the Deep
Enjoyment. You show what is beyond even the Still Heart, the
Amrita Nadi and its Bliss.
AND WE SEE YOU STANDING IN THE
TRADITION of the BUDDHISTS:
LIKE PADMASAMBHAVA,
YOU HAVE TAMED the local gods wherever You have gone. We see
You at the Center of a vast Tantric Mandala, the Vira or
Hero of all experience.
LIKE TILOPA,
YOU WERE MET by a Dakini, and You were led by Her until You
Embraced and Mastered the Great Woman, and in Your
Liberation, She became Your Agent for the Service of all
others.
LIKE NAROPA,
YOU TEACH THE WISDOM-CALL of Consciousness always coupled
with the bodily secrets of circulating the life-force. The
Mysteries of the “Great Gesture” and all Yogas are Given new
life in Your Testament of the Dawn Horse.
O INCARNATION OF MARPA,
SPARE US NOT the purifying trials and tribulations of
MILAREPA‘s
stupa of seven stories. How many times have You not told us,
“I must have been tipsy when I Gave that command?” You have
Shown us that all experience has one flavor Bhava,
Bliss.
LIKE DRUKPA
KUNLEY, YOU HAVE EMBRACED
the whole body. Have You not initiated us into
emotional-sexual Wisdom in the Chung rooms of the modern
era? Do You not Love, and Embrace, and Transform this maya
as Only God in Your Freedom?
LIKE BODHIDHARMA,
YOU HAVE COME TO A COUNTRY foreign to the Dharma to begin
the Way anew, a great Spiritual Pioneer in the land of the
barbarians. Praise to the Divine World Teacher, Alive as the
Heart.
INSANE ADEPT, FOOLISH JOKER, HAPPY
MAN to Whom everything is as it seems, we see Your likeness
in those Mad Monks, HAN
SHAN and SHIH
TE.
LIKE HUI
NENG, AS YOU HAVE TOLD us,
You assert and deny, and then deny what You have already
asserted, and assert what You have already denied. Your
Wisdom is vanished. Altogether, that is Your
Wisdom.
HUAI
JANG, FANCIFULLY GRINDING
STONE into mirror on the floor before his disciples, lives
in the modern era in the form of You, Heart-Master Da
Love-Ananda. There has never been a greater Teaching
Demonstration in the history of this planet than the Sacred
History of Your Work. Let the wondrous Story be told far and
wide.
LIKE SHIH
T’OU, YOUR SPEECH IS A
PARADOX of Grace, propelling devotees beyond their minds
into Love-Communion with the Real.
LIKE MA
TSU, YOU STOP THE MIND with
koans of the tongue and of the Heart.
A MODERN HUI
HAI, YOU TEACH THE DHARMA
Prior to the mind Divine Ignorance that confounds thinking,
opening the Heart to the enjoyment of boundless freedom and
humor.
LIKE PAI
CHANG, YOU HAVE CREATED an
entire tradition of practical Instruction, Giving form to a
culture of preparation and Enlightenment. Nothing has
escaped the notice of Your Graceful “Consideration” in Your
desire to Give us every possible Help to Realize the
Condition You Are.
LIKE HUANG
PO, YOU HAVE BEEN A
SPIRITUAL HERO one-pointedly bringing Truth to everyone and
everything. Have You not Served whoever has come into Your
Domain with Heart-Instruction, unrelenting Grace, and the
Divine Demand for self-transcendence?
LIKE LIN
CHI, YOU “SHOUT” when we are
confused, and “beat” us when we fall asleep. May we never
fail to bow in understanding before each blow.
LIKE HAN
SHAN, YOU REGENERATE the
real tradition everywhere, exhibiting all extraordinary
Spiritual Powers, healing Your devotees, and absorbing their
karmas.
LIKE HSU
YUN, YOU CRY WITH PASSION at
the wasteland of religion in Your time. You have “radically”
reformed all of the religious Ways that have gone astray,
restoring their greatest principles.
LIKE DOGEN,
YOUR INTENTION for the Liberation of Your devotees has been
greater than their own. Do we not see Your unstained
integrity? What else do You want from Your lovers but their
practice, their heart-submission? May we always grant You
this gift in love.
LIKE IKKYU,
YOU ENTER INTO THE PLACES where You should not go, You say
what You should not say. You make jokes about what should be
sacred, and You make sacredness out of the ordinary. What
distinction can You make in Your Blissfulness? To You,
“There is Only God.”
AND, LIKE HAKUIN,
in the realm of the ten thousand Buddhas, You are detested
by all ten thousand Buddhas. In the realm of the hundred
thousand Bodhisattvas, You are hated by the hundred thousand
Bodhisattvas. Your filthy blind old shavepate Wisdom is not
understood by the mere custodians of the Teachings, but only
by those whose hearts are broken, Your lovers.
WE, YOUR DEVOTEES, WHO HAVE HEARD
YOU and seen You, testify in Ecstasy to the Vision of God
that You Are:
WHAT A WONDER! SRI SAT-GURU
LOVE-ANANDA, You are the Parama Guru of the One and Single
Great Tradition. You are the Divine Person Incarnate.You
Stand before us on the threshold inside and out, everywhere,
beckoning us into the Divine Domain. This You do through
Your Love, Your Smile, Your wounded Heart, Your Touch, Your
Glance, Your ever-Given Grace, Drawing us beyond ourselves
into the Bliss-Place even now.
GREAT GOD, GREAT BEING, GREAT LOVER,
Great Friend, Great Giver, may we always Contemplate You in
Love through self-understanding and
heart-submission.
BELOVED MASTER, may we always clasp
Your Feet and be carried by Your Spiritual (and Always
Blessing) Presence into Your Very (and Inherently Perfect)
State.
LET US ENTER EVER MORE DEEPLY into
the sacrifice of ourselves via the Sacred Ordeal.
LET US FIND OUR PLACE in Your Great
Mandala of Heart-Transmission, and so be filled with Your
Blessings and lost in Your Fullness. Let us always bless our
friends and draw each other into this Bliss.
LET US BE RAGGED ENOUGH to allow
everything to be released and absorbed so that we may stand
before the Sacred Fire with You and watch the Dawn Horse
Appear—white and four-hoofed with all the Forms of God
Alive in that Great Form. What a Vision!—the
Heart-Master at the center, Drawing all into submission
beyond themselves—and devotees, one by one growing to
be Your Instruments and Agents, forming a Great Circle of
the Incarnation of Your Blessing.
RADIANT ADI DA SAMRAJ, hearing Your
Word, seeing Your Forms, practicing Your Great Way having
gained the Heart Supreme, we bow down again and again at
Your Feet in love. May we never fall out of this Love, this
Understanding, this Sacred Ordeal, this Bliss.
Da Da Da
[James Steinberg,
1985]
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