Underneath the surface

We dare not disturb the sea’s meditative posture

We dare not disturb the sea’s meditative posture

Ringside Review by Afreeha Jawad

Daily News – 19^th January 2005

If you ever thought meditation to be the restricted preserve if not the treasured privilege of only humans, sadly, you’ve got your wires crossed. Turn to Chandogya Upanishad 6.1 and what lies there in will most surely not only surprise you but baffle you as well.

Here it goes:

“Meditation is verily greater than intelligence. The earth meditates as it were. The water meditates as it were. The sun meditates as it were. Therefore, those who attain greatness among men are they who have attained the benefit of meditation as it were.”

Significantly, the fact that water meditates should draw our attention, particularly against the recent tumultuous tsunami uproar.

All of nature shares the common bondage of meditation except man, ironically through fully facilitated biologically to do so.

Not only does he turn away from meditation but also denies the sea, earth and sun of its meditation by meddling with it – is regretfully astonishing. The backlash that follows is best described by man himself as unprecedented.

This then reminds me of the Islamic requirements of greeting the sea. Something which my Dad always insisted whenever he drove past Galle Face green.

As a child, I never saw the logic and depth of his insistence in carrying out the Prophet’s instructions. Time is shall we say, a great “evolver”.

I now realize, more over in post tsunami time how important it is to wish the sea all peace Assalaamualaikum.

That the sea underwent turbulence and peacelessness of a sort, never evidenced in severity before, at least in its recorded history shows how important it is for the sea to maintain it’s peace.

Human encroachment on the sea’s surface and beneath, the like of confronting its treasure – fish, oyster and coral, nuclear waste dumping, the damaged ozone followed by massive ice block movements into the sea, heavy artillery transport and other activities too numerous to mention – have deprived the sea of it’s meditative posture. It was this interference with the sea’s meditative state that propelled spiritualists into prophesying disaster.

While religious books predict the zenith in human “development” they also unfailingly refer to eventualities. The Bible refers to the eath-spliting a sunder and the ocean boiling over occurrences of which we ere witness to in the recent sea earthquake followed by the devouring wave – similarities of which understandably is world’s end or as revealed in Buddhist scripture – Kalpa Vinasa.

By denying the earth its adornment – the trees –floods and landslides have throughout these “developmental years” brought disaster and death to hundreds of thousands all over the world.

Truly, here too we see how man tore apart the earth’s meditative splendor

Such thoughts coming off the ancient Hindu Upanishads may sound very preachy and appear distasteful to highbrow learning – nevertheless pregnant with truth.

- Afreeha Jawad

Published in Daily News Sri Lanka on 19^th January 2005.

posted by Rivi @ 7:59 PM