Meditation on Swami Muktananda’s Words
Siddha Yoga Satsang in Honor of Easter
by Eesha Sardesai
Gratitude for Life
In the passage from Play of Consciousness that was read aloud during the Siddha Yoga satsang in honor of Easter, Baba Muktananda relates the story of a saint who was approaching his death. At the start of the passage, Baba writes:
[The saint] had foreknowledge of his death, and when the time came, he gathered everyone around him, asked them for their blessings and forgiveness, and then thanked them. After that he bowed to the four directions, to the five elements, and to his Guru, the giver of wisdom.1
I find this description very moving. I feel there is much we can glean about the saint, and about how he led his life, from what he chooses to do with the knowledge of his impending death. He does not bemoan his fate; he does not get into a race against time, scrambling to see and do whatever he can before leaving this earth. He uses his last moments to express gratitude. To me, this indicates the saint’s attainment of a real and lasting inner contentment, that he was at peace with his life. It also points to his profound humility.
Somehow I doubt that this saint’s life was all “sunshine and rainbows.” If you’ve read about the lives of saints—in pretty much any tradition—you’ll know that this is highly improbable. In Play of Consciousness, Baba speaks about how so many of the saints he encountered during his travels in India outwardly had very little. Baba tells us, for example, that the great Siddha Zipruanna lived “in dilapidated houses and huts away from the villagers.”2 The all-knowing saint Hari Giri Baba wore an assortment of fine clothing, yet he also spent his days wandering along riverbanks, and he obtained his meals by calling out to anyone around, asking if they’d give him something to eat.3
Just by virtue of being a human in this samsara, this ocean of worldliness, the saint that Baba speaks of in this passage would have encountered plenty of difficulties. That is to say nothing of whatever additional challenges may have come with his own particular path in life. Yet his words carry no resentment, no trace of entitlement.
We can learn from this. When we relinquish our demands on life, our expectation that it look and feel a certain way, I believe we then have a better chance of experiencing the abundance this world has to give. We arose from the matter of this universe, from its distinct combination of elements. Into these elements we will, eventually, merge again. What if we viewed everything that happens in between—this glorious, perplexing life, with all its peaks and valleys—as a gift? Not as a promise, not as payment owed to us, but as an opportunity? This is something I have been contemplating since the satsang in honor of Easter—and all the more so after rereading Baba’s story “The Value of a Human Birth,” which was featured recently on the Siddha Yoga path website.
In her book Courage and Contentment, Gurumayi asks, “Do you step lightly upon the earth or heavily?”4 I think often about this question. And it prompts me to ask more questions, of myself and of you.
How do you practice expressing gratitude for the people, the places, the circumstances, the things great and small in your life? Have you made time to breathe in the spirit of spring—to allow your very cells to be anointed by the enlivening scent of this exquisite season?
- 1Swami Muktananda, Play of Consciousness: A Spiritual Autobiography, 3rd ed. (S. Fallsburg, NY: SYDA Foundation, 2000), p. 270.
- 2Swami Muktananda, Play of Consciousness, p. 122.
- 3Swami Muktananda, Play of Consciousness, p. 112.
- 4Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Courage and Contentment: A Collection of Talks on Spiritual Life (S. Fallsburg, NY: SYDA Foundation, 1999), p. 4.
Audio recording by Eesha Sardesai