Swami Chetanananda

Swami Chetanananda has written Will I be the hero of my life? Read it. This section talks about a few of his thoughts. Most are still in the annotated book. I ran out of time to strip them out and put them here.

With different words, Swami's mysticism references the same God within as the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God of mysticism I have studied and practiced for so long. I hear the same mysticism practiced the world over as he demands an active surrender to what life within and without has put on our platter--and like the Judeo-Christian-Islamic mysticism, it is not a give-up surrender. Rather it is a surrender that accepts the status quo, the task, or the condition with joy ready to jump in and make the best of it. It is the surrender and active action that lovingly takes up the task but is not tied to the results. It is the surrender that does the task to the best of his abilities and doesn't care how it is accepted (whether with joy, hatred, riches, poverty, or with anything at all). The task is here to do, do it and move on. Life is here to live, do it and move on. "We are here to simply experience the joy of Life Itself and the joy of being." (p.33)

Our ultimate aim: Total detachment--from self, from action, from results, from detachment itself, from goals themselves, from even this ultimate aim--just be and do and be. Sounds an awful lot like what the Zen Koen asks, what the Christian monk asks, what life asks....

In my meditative reverie I write: I'm sitting here on my mountain top looking at these trees expecting them to speak--they don't--Thank God, that would be a shocker!