Laughing all the Way to Eternity

When I travelled in India for a year in 1979 I met with many teachers. One I remember well. I met him in Rishikesh where there were many ashrams by the banks of the River Ganges that flows down from the Himalayas. He was somewhat of an enigma. I don’t know how old he was but by the look of his skin he could have been a child. The clothing he wore was simple, radiant, orange cotton fabric. It never seemed to have a crease in it. He slept in a home no bigger than a large frame tent and it was always tidy and the dust of an Indian summer seemed not to cross the threshold of his little home.



He seemed to be what I now refer to as one of the beautiful people. He knew and understood time in a very different way that manifested in a body of a man older than myself but as young as a child. One other thing about him that struck me was his laugh. He laughed as if he needed to be heard in New Delhi, which was sixty miles away. I think that laugh that skin, those clothes that ironed themselves were a kind of teaching that my heart wanted to know and he that knowing.


After all I had come to that land to find again what I had lost. I had been given to know the radiance that I AM but lost it when I began to use it to get what I wanted in the world. When I asked if I could be his disciple he said no he wouldn’t teach me. He said in no uncertain manner that I was too arrogant to learn and that I already thought I knew too much. At the time I felt hurt by what he said and his words have always been a sore point.


I think that masters, and I think he was a master by his presence and radiance – childlike, innocent, and playful but also faithful – encourage the seeker this way. The seeker sees manifest before their eyes the beauty of the divine in form. This was a beautiful man with dark skin contrasted against his orange robe with a radiant aura.


His response to me was similar to receiving what is called a Zen slap. It has been a reminder for me to stop and ask myself questions about my own propensity to arrogance. This is important because the kind of revelation that graces a seeker when the light flows through them contains the quality of certainty. Friends down the years have assured me that I am the most arrogant of people. This is, I think, because I do not compromise on what grace has been good enough to allow me to be the knowing of.


As I get older I no longer enter debates about knowing what it is people ask me that I know. As I get older there is a sense of myself becoming younger. What becomes important is not debate ‘about’ but presence that arises from contemplative silence. This then moves as love in action with the intention of alleviating suffering. This moment of love in action is beyond ‘doing good.’


I am not against doing good but doing good that does not arise from the Goodness of Being is laden with all kinds of karmic attachment. There is absolutely the need to alleviate suffering in all its forms. Yet the surest way to do this is to invite the one who suffers to feel and live from that which knows no suffering. This is part of the great Bodhisattva vow. The Bodhisattva is one who having attained enlightenment they vows to return through many lifetimes to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings knowing that at the level of non-dual consciousness all suffering is an illusion.


When I hear spiritual gurus teaching that suffering is an illusion I balk at their language. I think there are different kinds of levels to enlightenment. I suspect that some teachers, while cognitively enlightened, are emotionally in the dark. It does not help to tell people who are in deep suffering that their suffering is illusory. To me this is true spiritual arrogance.


It is different when you sit and be with someone suffering and consciously be with them while keeping an aspect of yourself detached and available to the source of infinite love manifesting in all forms and loving all forms into existence. Detachment here does not mean an absence of feeling but the absence of attachment to a feeling as being able to define who in truth you are. In this way you plug into the ‘national grid’ rather than recharging from your personal limited battery of ideas and positions on what it is to suffer or how it is to be healed.


So I remember my meeting with the Master in Rishikesh with affection. He wounded me in part. It happens. Masters are not perfect human beings, even enlightened ones. Perfection is a limited idea that is dualistic and enlightenment is a state of non-duel consciousness and unlimited. The boundlessness of love is not so limited. This is why it is important not to engage in judgement. Judgment is always dualistic. Master Jesus referred to this as the Law rather than the spirit, which is never rigid.


Many people spend their whole lives clinging to heavy moralistic Laws and consequently lock the doors to Presence. You will be graced if you meet with anyone in form who informs you through their presence. They offer you the glimpse into who you truly are. This is a great grace for both those who give and receive of this presence.


This happened around the person who became St. Benedict. It happened around the person who became known as St. Francis of Assisi. It happened around the person who became Ramakrishna. It is happening now. People go and hang out with these people because they radiate what the heart of the seeker intuits. They have the perfume of the eternal permeating their body, mind and spirit. This perfume is that which cannot be bought for any price and by any action but paradoxically right action is needed to connect to its beyond sensational experience.


Masters can get attached to the way their tradition honours the disciple/teacher relationship. Sometimes, as it did in my case, with that childlike old man in Rishikesh, there is a clash of cultures where one party is attached to a particular idea of teaching or transmission as dialogue while the other utilises the method of surrender and humility.


I am arrogant in the sense that I have fidelity to and trust the inner voice given to me through grace. I am one connected to the stories of Irish mythology. In my Irish tradition this voice would be held within the story of the Stone of Destiny. This stone screams my true name when I am seen as the rightful King of Ireland who is required to protect the sovereignty of the sacred land of Erin.


To claim oneself as the sovereign lord of Erin appears to be the height of arrogance? Yet from a mystical point of view this is exactly what takes place within the heart of the seeker who sincerely and humbly wills to be an instrument of the divine. They surrender their will to allow the arising of their unique Kingship that expresses through the body (the metaphor here being the Land of Erin).


This is not arrogance. It is the willingness to allow the light that birthed you into the light to be seen on the high hill of non-dual consciousness. It is willingness to be the voice of Love you have been created to be. Paradoxically, it is the height of arrogance to think that you are NOT this, and that you are in any way apart from or could ever be separate from this.


I do not regret meeting with this old Indian version of a Tir Na Nog child/man with his Passionate Presence. When I think of him I see his skin, his bright eyes and saffron robe and I hear him laugh his laugh all the way to eternity. Bless him!