The Nadi
Readers
Imagine if you had traveled to a
far away and ancient city
and while wondering there you hear
of a secret library,
a library unlike any other on earth
and
you fortuitously are given directions to go there
and it
takes a long time
and the streets you travel are busy and
crowded and filled with people and cars
and the long sought
street the library is on,
is non-descript
and does not stand
out in any way whatsoever
and at the second story upstairs flat
there is a similarly unremarkable door
and you go up
the steps
and you remember the restaurant you ate at once
and where you lifted a bowl of soup to drink it on a
delightful night of nothing special
and saw the most
amazingly wondrous sight,
an orange chandelier
glowing in the bowl
and then as you look deeper you see
yourself,
with a different face,
living a different life
with different parents
and friends
and wearing exotic
clothes
and when ‘you’ look into the eyes of the
one who you see looking back at you,
you pass through the
bright doorway of the here and now
into a shabby room with
faded paint and dirty walls
and windows where a dark skinned
man with a red bindu mark on his forehead
and bright white
shining teeth is singing in ancient Tamil
reading off a tiny script
no more that 1/8” high
written long ago in Sanskrit
and
only several thousand years ago, at the direction of the Chola King
translated into Tamil, the
South Indian language
It is etched in black ink on a palm leaf
which has
been passed through the ancient dynasties that ruled
India,
the Cholas, the Muslims, Vijayanagar, the Portuguese,
the Moghuls, the Dutch, the French and finally the British
the last who ignorantly burned and destroyed much of the library
and
auctioned off the rest.
(It is now thought that over 60% of
the library has been destroyed.)
and
This brown skinned man singing
before you is reading the etchings on a palm leaf
that was
first recited by a Rishi
who had overheard a conversation
between the great Lord Shiva
and his consort Parvati,
a
conversation in which Parvati asks Shiva to tell her the
fate of her children,
which Lord Shiva then does
taking many,
many hundreds of years
and when you hear the story of your
own life sung and read to you,
starting with the names of
your own parents,
Norman and Marjorie,
that they are
deceased,
that you have an older brother from your Fathers
first wife
and that your girlfriends name is Gilda
your
mind is stunned with wonder
and you believe that perhaps you
could be Parvatis’ child
and that if you understand what is
being said
or what is going on here,
‘you’
will no
longer exist
and ‘you’
will pass through a bright
doorway into the here and now
where you are sitting in a
shabby room and there are children playing outside
and you
are hearing about your own life
written in a palm leaf book
thousands of years ago
and stored in Temples in South India
A 'book'
that has been pulled down from the dusty, old and wondrous stacks of that
ancient library,
found for you,
based only on your
thumbprint
a book about
‘you’,
as you are
right now, this moment, today,
and that somehow this book,
or the writer of this book,
knew that you would come to this
library
to hear this text today,
right now
it is your
Nadi
or destiny
and the chandelier glows in the soup bowl
and turns blue and sparkles and brightens into a white
brilliance
and you know that someone has a light
that
someone knew ‘you’
where ‘you’ have
been
what ‘you’ have done
and what will happen
to ‘you’ in the future
You hear that this leaf or book
was spoken and written
thousands of years ago by someone you never met
by someone your parents never met
by someone your
girlfriend never met
who knew the day you are and were born
the
month and the time
and knew that you would come in today
this day, this week, this year, this life
and the book would
be waiting for you
each of you entering into this moment
together
like the reflection of the moon that night
on a still lake
in summer,
with your dear friend,
when the world peeled back
like a covering
and the incredible blessing of it all
filled
with peace and wonder
spilled out over the lake
and swept
‘you’ both away.
When the Buddha became enlightened
under the Bodhi tree,
he remembered all his past lives.
He
looked into the mirror of life and understood
Imagine what it is like for a
person to live without a such a mirror
To never see oneself
It
would be like not having a memory of who you are
You
are
this person
And, just like that
this palm-leaf book in this ancient library
is a
mirror of who you are
To understand this is a
great mystery
It is to see who arranged the petals on a
flower
and because they are so incredibly
perfect and wondrous
and because you have so seen them
you
become a poor artist or a monk or a renunciate or a parent
or a thief
You are both a saint and a sinner
a lover
and a hater
and you love someone so much that you cry
and
feel the pain
that you are separate from what you love
and then
with the tears, dissolve utterly
and feel the pain
of not
getting what you want
and are thankful for that pain
and for
all that you have been given
"I was walking along a little road through a hilly
landscape;
the sun was shining and I had a wide view in all
directions.
Then I came to a small wayside chapel.
The door
was ajar, and I went in.
To my surprise, there was no image
of the virgin on the altar, and no crucifix either,
but only
a wonderful flower arrangement.
But then I saw on the floor
sat a yogi- in lotus posture,
in deep meditation.
When I
looked at him more closely,
I realized he had my face.
I
started in profound fright and awoke with the thought:
“Aha, so he is the one who is meditating me.
He has a
dream, and I am it”
I knew that when he awakened I
would no longer be."
-Carl Jung/Memories Dreams and Reflections
How wonderful to have been given
what we have been given.
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