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tantidharo
Age: 54 Gender: 
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Joined: 06 May 2006
Posts: 71
Location: Singapore
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 Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 5:09 am Post subject: A Note On Swami Sivananda's Approach |
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The first thing Swami Sivananda said to Chod was, "What religion do you profess?"
"I'm a Buddhist," said Chod.
Swami Sivananda then clapped his hands loudly and shouted — "WE'RE THE SAME!"
Nine years before this eventful meeting Swami Sivananda completed the most difficult of pilgrimages to sacred Mount Kailas in western Tibet. It was the summer of 1931 when with royal entourage he began the arduous 72-day trek from the Almora region of the Indian Himalayas, walking the entire distance of 460 miles. Wrote Sivananda,
| Quote: | | There is no place on all this fair earth which can compare with Kailas for the marvellous beauty and everlasting snows. We all had a dip in Lake Manasarovar and went around Mount Kailas...It is also called Mount Meru, meaning "the axis of mountains." |
Since very early times both Hindu and Buddhist yogis alike have regarded Mount Kailas (Meru or Sumeru) as "the navel of the universe" or the "cosmic axis."
What is more, the mystical or esoteric teachings of yoga have always viewed the human body as a micro-cosmos and identified the spinal column with Mount Kailas, the centre of the universe. Correspondingly, symbolism found in certain Buddhist traditions has macanthropically identified the historical Buddha with the totality of the cosmic universe. In this way Gautama's spinal column is also called the merudanda (danda, Sanskrit, 'pole, shaft'), a singular bone symbolic of the withdrawn, non-differential zone of autonomous reality beyond time and space called sunya in the Sanskrit language. The teachings furthermore depict this backbone as a secret cavern within the mountain where supreme mystical truth is revealed to yogis during intense meditative absorption. This also explains why, according to an ancient legend, the Buddha was unable to turn his head, but had to turn the whole of his body around because his spinal column was fixed and motionless like the axis of the universe.
Originally published at http://bauddhamata.blogspot.com/ |
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