In search of Saraswati…

A great book I finished recently, which I thoroughly recommend to everyone (independent of whether or not you are interested in social/non-profit work) is: “How Can I Help? Stories and Reflections on Service”, by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman.

What I appreciated most about this book was the concept of the “Ego Self” and the “True Self”. I’ve started asking myself that question a lot more recently; which “self” is speaking or acting?

Another interesting read I came across last weekend, while searching through the awesome book collection at the place we were staying at in Alibag/Awas Beach, was “Talks on Who Am I?”, by Swami Daya, that Swami Daya delivered to students at Gujurat University in 1983.

Here are some excerpts I took down…

Nugget #1:

Now I ask, who are you? “I’m the son/daughter of so and so.” But that’s not all you are and it’s only who you are in relation to another person/object. All you can really say is that “I am this physical body”.

I’d love for someone to use that line in a pick-up scenario ;-)…”So, who are you?” “I am this physical body.” Classic. Kind of like what the US comedian, Doug Stanhope, touched upon in one of his NYC comedy routines, when he complained about people identifying themselves with their star sign and using this to rationalize behavioral traits. He asked, “Why don’t people say, that’s my Ape coming through?”

Nugget #2:

We only experience fleeting joy when what we are seeking has been acquired/gained. Once we’ve acquired/gained what we were seeking, the process then starts again, and we start seeking something else. If we continue to seek, we will only ever experience fleeting moments of joy. We will never be able to experience joy as a constant in our lives. Swami Daya referred to this as the “seeker-saught” situation. I couldn’t find the exact “solution” to this problem (I was seeking it), but I believe one solution is to give up on seeking – a.k.a live in the moment, which I think I’m currently doing the majority of the time. I have an inkling I’ll come across more information on this while I’m here, but I’m not going to actively seek it out ;-).

Nugget #3:

“When a man/woman seeks recognition outside, when he/she wants people to recognize him/her, it’s not that he/she wants outside recognition – he/she wants recognition from himself/herself. His opinion about himself/herself is so demeaning that he/she wants somebody to give him/her recognition so that he/she feels acceptable. When someone expresses love at him/her, he/she wanders in disbelief because he/she is quite sure that he/she does not deserve to be an object of anybody’s love. That is why, after 20 years of marriage, the question, “Do you love me?”, remains. Nobody accepts himself/herself and he/she can’t ever accept “I love you” without a pinch of salt.

I’ll leave that one for you all to ponder over. I must say, I love the “pinch of salt” touch ;-).

P.S. If anyone has any tips/recommendations re: traveling in Himachal Pradesh, please send them on.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 7:20 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.