Shyamatara Das

In the Service of the Divine Mother

Spiced Chai

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Spices for Tea

This is a delicious and healthy tea, based on the spiced chai that Yogi Bhajan encouraged his students to drink. It has excellent detox and anti-inflammatory properties, and is refreshing and reinvigorating, served hot or cold.

Ingredients:
15 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
20 black peppercorns
20 green cardamom pods, cracked with the flat side of a knife
a 3 inch length of fresh ginger (or two) cubed
2 black tea bags
2 quarts filtered water

Bring the water to a boil and toss in the cloves while you gather and prepare the other ingredients. There’s no need to peel the ginger, just chop it up into little chunks about the size of dice or smaller. The more ginger you add, the spicier the concoction will be.

Add all of the ingredients except the tea bags, and simmer, covered, for thirty minutes. Remove from heat and add the tea bags (which are optional).

Let this steep, covered, for about six hours, then strain through a wire mesh. It will keep nicely in the refrigerator for a couple weeks. To serve, I like to cut it with water (about half and half) for serving cold, or with (about 1/3) oat milk if warming it up. You can add raw sugar, honey, or whatever other sweetener you would like.

When I quit drinking alcohol, this beverage became my daily choice for “cocktail hour” at the end of the work day. It’s a healthy alternative to frothy coffee drinks, or heavily caffeinated teas. It’s good for digestion, and helps to bring balance to the nervous system as well. At least that has been my experience.

Let me know what you think if you try it!

Chili Con Tres Frijoles

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Vegetariam Chili

I found this recipe somewhere online years ago, and it’s become one of our very favorites. We still eat some dairy in our household, so as pictured here it’s not a vegan dish, but you could certainly use plant based cheese crumbles and cashew nut sour cream (or just leave those toppings off altogether) if you wish to forego the dairy.

Ingredients:
2 coarsely chopped large onions
several cloves minced garlic
vegetable oil

2 15oz cans dark red kidney beans
1 15oz can black beans
1 15oz can pinto beans
2 28 oz cans diced tomatoes
1 large green pepper, coarsely chopped
1 cup picante sauce
2 T unsweetened cocoa
1 package chili seasoning (we use the ones from Aldi)
1 can beer
a couple of dried Cayennes, or some red pepper flakes
kosher salt
ground black pepper
liquid smoke seasoning
1/2 cup old fashioned oats

Start by cooking the onions and garlic in oil, with a little salt and pepper. Deglaze the pan with a little beer, and put it all in a slow cooker with all of the other ingredients except the oats. I drain the pinto beans and one of the cans of red beans, but usually add the liquid from the rest.

After it cooks for three or four hours, check for seasoning and doneness and adjust as needed. I will sometimes move the setting on the cooker to low if it’s roiling too vigorously. Sometimes I’ll add Crystal or Tabasco sauce to kick up the flavor a little if it needs it. You could also include Habanero peppers or whatever else you would like instead of the Cayennes if you prefer.

About half an hour or so before you’re ready to serve,  stir in the oats.

We usually serve this over cornbread, with some cheese shreds, cilantro, avocado chunks, sour cream and such for toppings. I like to make a double batch, so we have plenty of leftovers for chili mac, chili cheese fries (or our favorite chili cheeseburgers – we love to use Field Roast veggie burgers for that).

The longer this chili  cooks, the better it seems to taste. Rich, savory, hearty and healthy, we actually find it tastier and more satisfying than the greasy ground beef variety. Long before I became a more conscious eater, this was my favorite chili. I prepare it several times a year, and we always look forward to it whenever “chili weekend” rolls around.

What to Expect from Meditation (and How it Works)

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Sun and Sky (Courtesy NASA)

Meditation, at least the way I practice it, is a simple proposition. We try to sit upright and still, and we bring our attention to the breath and mantra. When our attention wanders off, we do our best to notice, and to bring it back to breath and to mantra. That is all.

It seems odd that such a simple practice can offer such incredible benefits, physiologically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually – but research shows that it does.

Based on my own experience and study on the matter, here’s how I think meditation works, and the stages that we progress through as we become more experienced meditators.

Frustration and Perseverance

Early on, it is often a struggle to keep our attention where it is placed, or even to notice when it wanders off. We spend most of our time during practice with our thoughts wandering here and there, and may come to the end of the session feeling frustrated (and even ashamed). Our minds seem unruly, and turbulent, and we may wonder if we are wasting our time.

Fortunately, even during this early stage, there are significant benefits to the daily practice, and as we glimpse even brief small moments of stillness and clarity, we begin to sense that the pursuit may be worthwhile if we can just stick with it.

Learning to Pay Attention

Eventually, if we practice every day for awhile (and it doesn’t take hours every day, only twenty minutes a day or maybe twenty minutes twice a day) we begin to find it a little easier to notice when our mind goes off track. At this stage we still wander off quite a bit, but we “catch ourselves” more often and more quickly. We wander off. We come back. We wander off, we come back. Believe it or not, this is significant progress. We may find ourselves feeling even more frustrated at times, but that is only because we have learned how to better pay attention.

At some point (it may take weeks, or months, or even years, so hang in there) it begins to get easier to stay on track for a larger portion of the time we spend in practice. Most of the time we notice pretty quickly when our mind begins to wander, and we begin to learn how it feels to stay with breath and mantra for several minutes at a time. This stage of practice opens the gate to a truly amazing, exponentially powerful stage.

The Space Between: Truth and Joy in the Great Ocean of Consciousness

Once we are able, more and more of the time, to keep our attention on breath and mantra, we begin to experience the moments between the breaths, between the mantras, in a new way. It is difficult to describe, because what we experience is a profound sense of stillness, or emptiness, or perhaps nothingness. Our mind collapses into a quiet place where we are not experiencing thoughts, we are not experiencing emotions, we are not experiencing sensory information. We are experiencing only the sense that we are awake, alert, and alive as part of what Tony Nader calls “one unbounded ocean of consciousness.”

Such moments may be fleeting, but when we drop into them even briefly, they are moments filled with truth, beauty, wholeness and great joy. We begin to understand, in a direct firsthand way, that the consciousness at the core of our being is an expression of the source of everything that exists. We are not our bodies. We are not our thoughts. We are not our feelings. We are light. We are love. We are eternal. All is well.

It should be noted that this experience is not something reserved for hermits or nuns or monks or gurus or lamas or other spiritual masters. It is a fairly common experience reported by legions of ordinary household folks who develop the habit of meditating daily.

Real Liberation

As amazing an experience as that may be, there is yet more. If we continue to practice each day, we begin to notice moments throughout the day apart from practice when we drop into something akin to that same stillness. We may find ourselves in a tense situation where we would normally display a knee-jerk tendency toward anger or lashing out, and realize that we don’t want to feel that way, and don’t want to act that way. It begins to seem that we actually have a choice. The spaces between stimulus and response expand, and we begin, at least some of the time, to enjoy real freedom. We are liberated to behave as we would truly wish to behave. We are at last free to be our very best selves.

These moments may be rare at first, as well, but with continued practice, day in, day out, they too become more common. We begin to spend less time in negative states of mind, and more time as a living presence of peace and lovingkindness.

The great masters tell us (and demonstrate) that eventually, after a lifetime (or perhaps many lifetimes) of practice, we can rest in that space filled with light and love during each and every moment of the day, without regard to what may be going on in the world around us, without regard to whether life offers hardship or ease. We can live a life filled with that truth, beauty, wholeness, and joy – and compassion toward all beings – come what may.

Wouldn’t that be something?

What I’m Reading: Dr. Tony Nader

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Nader Book CoverDr. Tony Nader is a Medical Doctor (he has an M.D. in internal medicine and psychiatry and also a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the field of Brain and Cognitive Science). He was a Harvard Medical School Fellow at Massachusetts General teaching hospital.

In his book One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, he challenges the assumption that human consciousness is merely a function of biology, that our thoughts and emotions are nothing more than the consequences of physiological processes. He has come to believe that consciousness did not arise from the evolution of life on our planet, as is often implicit in any discussion of the subject – but that it is the cause of that life, and, in fact, the cause and essence of everything that exists.

This idea is startling enough, but Nader goes on to make the case that in meditation, we can experience this field of consciousness directly, and, further, that this experience can help us to lead fuller, happier, more productive and more peaceful lives.

I have experienced for myself fleeting moments of the sort of light and clarity that he describes, and was tempted toward some of these same conclusions, but had only an intuitive sense of the truth to lean on. With a precise and detailed analysis based both on science and on the wisdom of the ages, this book is an affirmation that I’m on the right track, and it offers an opportunity to learn more. For those who have yet to explore these vistas of consciousness, or for those who still hold to a strictly materialistic view of our lives and our universe, I would highly recommend this well reasoned and compelling book.

Seva

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I have worn eyeglasses since I was twenty years old. In my mid 50s, I started noticing that when I put them on, it seemed like the right lens was smudged. I’d take them off, and clean them, but things would still look blurry when I put them back on.

It turns out that this was the early manifestation of a cataract in that eye. I put off having surgery for as long as I could, but it got to the point where no prescription could correct my vision in that eye. My sight was something like 20/400 in it, and I began noticing a lot of strain on my other eye toward the end of the work day. So I had surgery in 2017. It is a relatively routine procedure, and once I healed up, my eyesight in that eye was better than it had been for thirty years. Between the bill for the surgeon, the surgery center, anesthesiology, and my own optometrist’s follow up, I believe it cost four or five thousand dollars out of pocket, but it was worth every penny.

I knew at the time of that first surgery that my left eye would eventually need to be done as well. It was in the early stages of degeneration already. Again, I put it off longer than I probably ought have (and, because of the pandemic, even longer than I had intended). By the time I finally got everything arranged a few weeks ago, the sight in my left eye was almost more useless than the right had been.

Two weeks post-surgery now, both eyes are in the 20/25 to 20/30 range uncorrected. This is truly a miracle, and I feel incredibly blessed and grateful to have clear and sharp sight once again.

This morning, I happened almost by accident (read that “grace”) onto a link to the Seva Foundation website. I had no idea what they were about, but I knew that “Seva” means service to God in Hindu. So I was intrigued by the name. It was a surprise and a delight to learn that the organization provides sight saving cataract surgery to folks in need around the world who would not otherwise be able to receive it. When I read that each $50 donation could restore someone’s sight, I was overwhelmed with joy, and signed up as a monthly donor, in gratitude for my own newly clear eyesight.

After I signed up for the donation, I read more about the organization’s history. Tears were streaming down my face at the realization that it exists by the grace of Maharaji. The wonder is that, having been exposed to the stories of Larry and Girija Brilliant (and also being a huge fan of Bobby Weir, who is a big supporter) I had never run across Seva before, or at least hadn’t bothered to learn about it, until this morning.

Here’s some information from Seva’s website.

Over a billion people have a vision impairment that was preventable or is treatable. Almost 90% of people affected with vision impairment live in developing countries, where not being able to see often means a life of poverty. It’s nearly impossible to work, feed yourself, or meet your basic needs.

90% of vision impairments can be prevented or cured, and more than half of the world’s blindness is caused by cataracts. What a wonder that it can be reversed with a 15-minute surgery costing only $50.

I consider it a great blessing to be able to help in the efforts of this organization, and commend it to your consideration.

Learn more at this link: https://www.seva.org/site/SPageServer/?pagename=donate.

Reading Patanjali

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Page from the Yoga SutrasI have begun to read the yoga sutras of Patanjali. It is the classic text on the theory and practice of yoga, dating from some time during the centuries just before or just after the beginning of the Common Era. Along with the Bhagavad Gita, it is the primary source for much of Paramahansa Yogananda’s lessons. It is also at the core of Ryan Kurczak’s teachings.

My wife, Claudia, had the book on hand, so when I mentioned wanting to read and study it, she loaned me her copy. It is relatively short, so I read one chapter a day, finishing it in short order. I’m going back through to study more carefully now, using Kurczak’s Kriya Yoga: Continuing the Lineage of Enlightenment as a study guide.

Although only four chapters in length, the book holds a depth of wisdom that might take a lifetime to absorb. It is presented as a series of aphorisms, each of which can be the object of nearly endless contemplation. In this respect, it reminds me of the Tao Te Ching.

Although some of the aphorisms seem a bit inscrutable on first read, each of them seems to ring true.

I would welcome any insights that you have on the text, any resources, or any experiences you have had integrating their wisdom and practices into your life.

Polishing the Mirror of the Heart

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Having polished the mirror of my heart with the dust from my Guru’s lotus feet, I sing the pure fame of the best of the Raghus which bestows the four fruits of life. – From Tulsidas’ Hanuman Chalisa

Many of us, when we begin getting serious about spiritual practice, do so in order to “improve” our lives and ourselves. We may be unhappy, or we may recognize faults in our outlooks or behaviors that we would like to change. We want to become better people.

The truth is that along the way we may very well note changes in our lives that we would consider to be improvements, but we aren’t really improving ourselves with spiritual practice. We are revealing ourselves.

I have come to see each of us (and for that matter, everything in our universe) as an expression of the one, changeless, eternal, divine consciousness. This source of pure light and love is projected into time and space, and becomes what we experience as material reality.

Human beings are manifestations (or reflections) of that light and love. Perfect. Limitless. Beautiful. Brilliant. Every single one of us.

But that brilliant perfection is dimmed by all of the muck and garbage that we collect from the time that we arrive in this material world. So we fail to see what we really are, and we fail to act like it.

We obsess about self-improvement, about changing ourselves, about becoming someone else. We are judgmental toward others, and loathe our own sorry selves. It is ironic that this sometimes seems especially true once we set our feet on a spiritual path.

But the process of spiritual development isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about realizing the true self who is already there. All we have to do is clear away the garbage and muck, and there we are.

So if, by love and right living, you wash off the filth that has become stuck to your heart, the divine beauty will shine forth in you. – From a Sermon of St. Gregory of Nyssa

It is difficult to see the light in the midst of the ugliness, the meanness, the greed and hatred in this world and in ourselves. Many of us spend much of a lifetime trying to find answers, trying to find a way to mitigate the madness. We look high and low, near and far, trying to find the solution somewhere out there. I know that I did.

We won’t find the answers out there. We won’t find the answers in new and improved versions of our garbage covered mucked up personalities and egos.

We meditate. We pray. We chant. We serve others. Day by day, little by little, we polish our hearts.

See how they shine!