Call of the Sacred River: Pather Panchali and Dreams of Varanasi

Wife

"Let's go to Benares. Don't the orators make lots of money?"

Husband

"We can't go. How can we? This is my ancestral home; how can I leave it?"

Wife

"Why not? You were away eight years before. You left me at my father's and never wrote."

Husband

"Then I did not know you sweet you are."

Wife

"Save your compliments. This is my home, too. But look at it; it's like living in the forest. At night the jackals prowl around. There are no neighbours I can talk to. You are not always here and sometimes I'm so depressed. You won't understand these things. You live in your work. Sometimes you're paid, sometimes not. I had dreams, too, of all the things I would do.

Outside Their Door, An Old Lady Beggar Sings:

"Those who came before are gone / I am left behind, a penniless beggar / Day draws to its close, night's mantle descends / Row me across to the other side"

From the film, Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

The same night I look back to Pather Panchali for a few words of wisdom on the experience of human dreaming, I coincidentally happened on the film, "Beyond" by NYC-based photographers Joey L. and Cale Glendening. The quote in the classic 1955 Bengali film Pather Panchali speaks to the luring effect that the ancient city of Benares commands, also known as Varanasi, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Indeed, it is impressive to see the holy tradition of sadhus depicted in the light of modern photographic excellence. The final scenes in Joey L.'s film are incredibly touching as a young sadhu teaches about how the world is made for peace, and all must be as the sun, seeing all beings as equals and offering the light of wisdom with an exuberant heart to all indiscriminately. Long Live Mother India! 

_________

As the world turns, dreams often fall into the abyss of earthly shadows and solar illumination 

The Jaws of Life by RK

We Are Not Above Extinction by RK

Light On The Little Road by RK

Bridge Under Serene Sky by RK

All Rivers Sacred by RK

__________

and silence, and nothing, and silence,
and how in silent searching , the wandering fades

a trespasser in the popular living happen-stance of  “honest” life,
stopped,
self-betrayed,
to tarry with biblical heat
and white-skinned eyes

paranoiac doom
in the aftermath of domestic civilization
...

calling back to the childless dream
Earth
...

returning from within
the simplest symbolic stare into the beaten human sigh
pointing downwards

upwards

west and east
with the surest of numbered lies,
telling children to fear death and bless the flesh with ungrateful ears, blocked
to the great mystery
that is not
that I am.

excerpts from "that I am silence"

Taoist Offerings in the Hall of Dreams

Kannon in YUMEDONO (Hall of Dreams) by Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko 

Summer grasses /
 all that remains /
 of soldiers dreams.

Basho interpretation by Lucien Stryck

Kannon is the Goddess of Compassion. Her Chinese name is Kuan Yin, and in Sanskrit, Avalokitesvara. A statue of the Kuan Yin stands, similarly as pictured above, in my apartment. My wife, a Taoist-Buddhist, cares for the sculpture with a love beyond regard for high art. Standing behind an attendant bodhisattva, the Kuan Yin is a living recipient of our most momentary aspirations and our immanent longings, as they rise and fall into the sky of the figured form with our sound, breath, movement and speech. With a physical offering, the life of the seemingly inanimate sculpture gives way to immortal reckoning. The statue has received such offerings as the favourite pleasures of my late grandfather (a can of sardines and a cigarette), as well as my Shakuhachi breathings. 

__________

I see my wife, long braided hair, in full red dress, dimmed by the party ambiance, she wails on her mother-of-pearl Egyptian doumbek, with the percussive force of a musical heart, true bravura of heartened artistry. 

Two Drummer Girl by Isaac Israels 

As I wade into a kitchen room, I feel the presence of sheer evil at my side. And looking down, blood pours delicately from a soft wound. The ghost of death blinds my nerves as my eyes fog with principal madness, looking at the mean-faced ignorant sex-fiend of my abusive past. 

Sitting young woman in Dutch Kitchen by Henrik Nordenberg

That shared abuse, culminates in a shot, straight through the gut, though strangely a painless death as the water of my eyes bleeds my vision into an all too wakeful death.        

__________

Boiled threat of another animal’s blood

Given over to the insect mind,

A natural reason, the rational cycle

Filling 0’s with my precious un-devoured anchor

That holds human bread to the sand of the unfed

Screaming over shopping carts, cringing with nicotine blinks

...

Ruined men and women whose hearts run dry

Like the rivers that once fed their ancestral lungs,

Filled with the mythic bird

And they rise from the ashes of Hindu lore

In the European brain,

A tell-tale crime, getting skinny in between

...

In exchanging monetary behaviorisms

In the psychic deep of abundant perceptions

Closed doors sink into the undertow’s warning

excerpts from "Bless the failed pilgrim's march"

Tara Sadhana for the Anthropomorphic Newborn

Three Bodhisattvas Witness World Compassion Harmonizing by Vi An Diep

Praising Tara by her divine actions of dispelling conflicts and bad dreams

Homage to you who are honoured by the kings of the hosts of gods,
And the gods and the kinnaras.
Through all your joyful and shining pervasive armour
All conflicts and bad dreams are dispelled.

Last stanza from “Offering the Mandala” 

Thus, O Sublime object of refuge,
Please quickly protect all living beings
From fears such as sickness, spirits, obstacles,
Untimely death, bad dreams, and ill omens.


Colophon: This sadhana has been compiled from traditional sources by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche in response to requests made by students of Tara Centre, and translated under his compassionate guidance. September 1989.

Excerpts from Great Compassionate Mother. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche. Tharpa Publications. 1990, 1993. 

______

It's a very ordinary day. It feels like afternoon to early evening. I feel the constant presence of an animal. My albino rabbit, named Salt in life, visited me. His head is in my hands. I pet him. I let him out in the yard. It was snowing heavily, and he, white as the snow, only appears through his beady, red eyes. Then, I notice a child running through the snow. The child came into the house and laid its head next to my lap, and proceeded to nudge into my hand to pet him. It's a boy, a mute boy. He looks at me with colorless eyes. I figured, how wonderful Salt shape-shifted into a young boy. Salt, now a boy, would hop out into the snow around the trees just like a rabbit. Immediately, he shifts back to a rabbit who hops out of my vision. 

A very silvery, glowing white cat with stripes. Upon recognizing the face of this cat, it was evident that it was my deceased cat. All the features of my cat were displayed. His charm and energy radiates. My hands are warm as I pet him. Suddenly, I cradle him in my arms, looking behind my shoulder, I see my husband smiling and laughing. I am speaking to Max, now as a child. He is an infant with the same eyes as a cat, but with the face of a child, staring back at me with such love and affirmation. I speak in English and say, "I want you to learn Chinese because I am your mother. I would like you to preserve my lineage through learning Chinese." My husband, the love of my life, is laughing in the background. In synchronicity my husband and young son speak in English. My husband says laughingly, "he already knows how to speak Chinese." The child says, "Mother, I already know how to speak Chinese." In my surprise I notice my cat turned child changed to four to six months old. Beyond a brick stone ledge, dawn approaches as a beautiful golden sunrise. His dirty blonde hair glistens. His eyes, expressing inquisitive curiosity and a loving recognition, are deep emerald green and brown. Sitting on that ledge, I taught him to say, "eyes (gnan)" in Cantonese. He stuttered, but was able to repeat, the word for eyes in Cantonese. "Gnan" he says. My husband smiles as if to say, why are you trying to teach him what he already intrinsically knows from you, his mother. The child chuckles and says, "eyes, ears, mouth and nose (gnan, yee, hoaw, bae)" I was shocked with such gladness and immense pure unconditional love for this being before me. "Ma" he would exclaim. I already know. He became a toddler and hopped off the sandstone ledge. His head rested next to my thigh as I stroked his beautiful dirty blonde hair, glistening in such glorious light. 

He, in another dream, the third of the sequence, shifts back to a silvery glowing, white, very happy cat. 

________

as her son climbs the dismembered mountain,

trembling with rocks of tragic failure

rolling down to kill my boulder of trash

damming the flood of human night

- excerpt from "My New Bride"