Volume 2, Track 1
Many years ago, my good friend the Zen writer Paul Reps dropped me a card suggesting I go to New York from Los Angeles and meet Ramamurti Mishra, the teacher from India. Soon after I did make a trip East, sending a rather provocative letter to Mishra before leaving.
Upon arriving in Manhattan, I took a cab to Mishra’s apartment on the East Side, near the United Nations building, and ascended to his living quarters, which were also his ashram on the 17th floor.
Sounds of a harmonium came through the open door of his place, and I walked in quietly without knocking. The teacher was chanting bhajans in a high-pitched Indian voice, and these spiritual songs have a very soothing effect on me. Without saying hello, I seated myself and quickly went into meditation. As the teacher continued to sing his devotions for a moment, I was back in the Himalayan foothills.
When the music finally stopped, I introduced myself and saw the other’s face light up. “Oh, you’re the one who wrote that impertinent letter,” he said with a smile. “Come have lunch with us.”
At that very moment, one of his student disciples arrived to take us to his car and off to a vegetarian meal at a Dairy Restaurant on West 54th Street. As we rode through the crowded, noisy, dirty streets in the open car, I noticed Mishra beaming in all directions. I was surprised.
“What’s a man like you doing in this place?” I asked. “Oh, I love big cities,” was his reply. Now that is real spirituality, a sense of peace and stillness in the midst of all this hubbub. It reminded me of what a Japanese Zen priest had once said to me: “Be the big hermit; anybody can be the small one.” In other words — meditation at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
On the way to the restaurant, the teacher revealed that he had grown up speaking Sanskrit in his household. This is exceedingly rare, and it stood him in good stead when he later wrote his fine translation and commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, often called the Bible of yoga.
He also told me that he had never known his guru in Bengal to sleep. He saw visitors all night as well as all day, never turning away one who had come for darshan of the Master. My own Indian teacher slept two hours a night, and when I once asked him if he could get along without that sleep, he explained that it was simply a concession to his bodily processes.
I have gone into these details about my meeting with Mishra because of two answers he gave me at that time, one about a recurrent experience that I had had in meditation for some time, and the other, a rejoinder to a rather silly statement of mine.
I told the teacher that for almost two years, my meditation was usually followed by the sight of my face in profile, then the sight of the Buddha’s head in pure gold resting on a table. Suddenly, flames would engulf the head, and when they subsided, there would be nothing there. Everything had disappeared. I had had this experience with certain features added at times when I meditated outside of Zen temple in Kyoto and in many other places in my travels.
“Don’t you understand the meaning,” he asked, amused. “No, I certainly do not,” was my answer. “It’s simple. With you, Universal Consciousness is burning up the individual.” At first, I was slightly skeptical, but as time went on, I never had that haunting experience again.
When Mishra asked me to give a talk to his students at a temple on Riverside Drive in New York, I asked, “Why would you want someone who has made all the mistakes I have made in my lifetime?” “Those were not your mistakes,” he answered vehemently. “Those were not your mistakes.” This surprising rejoinder is open to many interpretations and has deep meaning. I will leave it like a koan for the listener to ponder on or better yet, intuit without explanation. The meaning you arrive at must be your own meaning.
To listen to Justin reading Spiritual Stories of the East, click here.