I am absolutely and positively floored by the idea of the Jesus Prayer. I had been reading or rather re-reading Franny a few minutes ago. I was pretty agitated when I read Franny the first time, this is only the second time I am reading it and for the first time in my life I am typing fast, faster than I could accumulate all my thoughts. Well, I did read Zooey a bit more times, but Zooey is so much safer, the reason why I guess critics like it better. I do all this crazy research on anything I read - all wiki and all that - I do not know at times what I am coming to. It is as if i wanna get into the goddamn body of the person who's in it or who wrote it or such like. I have also decided that this time I would not be changing paragraph and would stop whenever i lose the impulse, however abrupt it may be. And there will be no drafts to this mind you, for it will all get published as it is, bar one single looking over for spelling errors and such trifles. So I was talking about the Jesus prayer. Now this is one aspect of spirituality that kinda appeals to me - I mean really, really appeals. I say that because I could never have a faith on a doctrine that is judgmental. Honesty, truth, love towards one and all, I doubt whether such things move me thoroughly. And I guess this appeal thing that I speak of also stems from a deep, ingrained overpowering greed that I have for more and perpetual happiness, a greed that transcends all the desire for money, luxury, or women. I do feel that it is partly strange that all this bothers me so, for I have been working up quite a pace now on the keyboard. That is because I am a Hindu, a part of the culture that has forever known the merits of the Jesus Prayer. Notice that I do not use 'merits in' which at once renders it so much more beautiful and comprehensible. But there is no Jesus Prayer left in us Hindus now any more than dinosaurs on earth. We have, in our greed to understand the 'nature' of things, even have tried to analyze the meaning of the 'aum'. I wonder why on earth the 'aum' should have any meaning at all. The aum is a beautiful word, in the sense that you have to use up a lot of your earthly faculties in saying it right. I heard that a good 'aum starts right from the bellybutton and moves all the way up in synchrony with your breath. So it is a very involving, engrossing word, not necessarily pregnant with meaning. But what I do not understand is how i talk to people mouthing the Jesus Prayer at all. I mean, its hard enough to read and I have had to pause it temporarily while I write. So how does a person go about his daily business mouthing that I wonder! Maybe they sort of retire from the cares of life to go into the forest or some and come back only when the necessary synchronization has been achieved, when their minds have been properly trained, not before. But i guess to have all that to yourself, I mean the prize - yes, that's the name I use for it and therein lies its true beauty. As the book says - I have not read 'The way of the Pilgrim' because i could not find it online and you cannot certainly find it in the stores around here - maybe I'll look for it at Amazon. this is the first deep breath I take ever since I started to write. It would be so rewarding if the authors of the better books wrote in footnotes exactly what they 'felt' at the time of writing a particular word or a sentence. then we would really begin to understand that greatness is a quality that is totally separate from the person in whom it manifests. Or 'greatness' is too shoddy a word - perhaps 'beauty' would serve us better. But never you mind. The Jesus prayer, Franny says can be uttered by anyone - that includes sinners, people without faith and even people who are secretly embarrassed by the thought of doing it. I mean they can be embarrassed by it while simultaneously doing it - isn't it just marvelous? As I said earlier, it does not behove the world to be judgmental. We live in this goddamn world. Its like you take a bacteria or a germ from your body - you kill it if it becomes a bother to you, but do you grab it by the ear and scold it, or say unto it a sermon to mend its ways? Its just the same with us and this world. If we are sinners, it is okay that we sin because that is the way we were schemed out to be - and if we are a bother to the world we live in its okay if we are exterminated, but whats the big deal about it? But I would like to pray incessantly - that's one thing that I would sure like to do ( I just scratched my shoulder, and incidentally am not praying 'cause I cannot simply do the two things together, the writing and the praying part I mean - its all too much, but I am determined to learn) and I want to see the God I do not believe in at all - would that be asking to much, I wonder! And of course there is the fact that if I was made out to be a non believer that does not infringe my right to meet up with God in any way. So the original Jesus prayer is something like - 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!' which Zooey explains is 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!'. And I guess you may change this sentence to virtually anything of your choice. I have decided to take the liberty to remove the Jesus Christ thing - not because of any anti-Christian ideology, i assure you, but simply stemming from the conviction that I ought not utter the name of the God I do not believe in. So my prayer is simply - 'Have mercy on me, a sinner!' - a lot shorter. I like the mercy part, for who does not pray for a little charity, and I have retained the sinner part - for its right to call yourself that when you know that you will never be chosen to cast the first stone! So now I depart - back to the prayer, after I publish this and add a footnote that is - I just burped, incidentally - and maybe tell you all about how this thing proceeds in subsequent editions.
Yours sincerely
Jude
[P.s. - For the uninitiated, 'The way of the pilgrim' is a Russian book by an anonymous author that tells the story of a peasant who asks what it means to pray incessantly (the bible) - and travels to many places in search of the right answer. He finally meets some spiritually advanced people who tell him how - to utter the aforementioned Jesus Prayer consciously as ceaselessly as possible, and then something would happen that would sort of miraculously make it an automatic involuntary response of your system. And that will have some rewards therein.]
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