The "secret" is out: I am not just a "Buddhist belonging to Jesus." I am more than that. If I were to be truly honest with myself, taking into account the totality of my spiritual formation as a person, there is another crucial element of my life that I have downplayed for the past two decades. This is none other than my nominal identity as a committed practitioner of the Yoga and Tantra of South Asia — as an Ananda Margi.
In my book The Christ-Awakened Life: Meditation Beyond Boundaries, I described somewhat tersely my formative experience with my Tantric guru Shrii Shrii Anandamurti (1931-1990) and the lessons he imparted to me primarily through his senior acarya and my acarya-mentor Dada Kamaleshvarananda Avadhuta, a sterling Yogi and Tantrika. Till now, I have not highlighted (though not withheld) this fact in my teachings and sharings with my friends and students. This was because I felt unready to do so. For I wanted time to more completely digest and carefully integrate my training and experience in Yoga and Tantra into my largely Buddhist spiritual formation. Now the time has come to express this area of my spiritual life, in my writings and in my way of contemplative living and teaching.
Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, whom we endearingly call Baba, was a Renaissance spiritual master of the highest calibre, in my view. He delved deeply into Tantric spirituality; Yogic science and medicine; poetry and song composition; spiritually-centred fiction for children; cultural renewal and ecological protection; gender and social equality; upliftment of the poor and disenfranchised; integration of science and spirituality; neohumanistic philosophy that embraces all of life beyond class, caste, species, and sentience; and a transformative socioeconomic and political theory focused on the wellbeing of humanity, ecology, and the cosmos. He was in short a spiritual master unlike any other in contemporary times. My felt experience of Baba was also filled with an immensity of presence, energy, bliss, and consciousness unlike any other experience I have had with any other teacher. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but the highest respect for and deepest inspiration in all my teachers across different Buddhist lineages and traditions. But as far as spiritual power (Skt. shakti) was and is concerned, no one comes close to Baba. Be it in personal meditation, everyday life and night dreams, or meditating in Baba's room during a memorable retreat, I have glimpsed an ecstatic infinitude and profundity that literally transcends all my conceptial categories and linguistic ability. Baba was simply a spiritual teacher in a class of his own. Like the Buddha. Like Shiva. Like Krishna. Baba was a sui generis Tantric guru. Baba calls his approach Ananda Marga or the "Path of Bliss."
In a relatively short span of time, I received initiation and transmission into all the Six Lessons of Sahaja-Rajadhiraja Yoga designed by Baba. I adopted a strict yogic vegetarian diet including regular fasting without food and water for 36 hours once a fortnight, and practiced a wide range of yoga-asanas (postures) that regulated the body, its glandular and hormonal balance, its sentient vitality, its pranic flows and energy, its energy channels (nadis) and centres of psychospiritual elevration (chakras). Daily devotional and yogic dancing (lalita marmika, kaoshiki, and tandava) and spiritual chanting (kirtana) to the universal mantra Baba Nam Kevalam were my contemplative nutritional supplements, as was meditative singing of devotional songs (mainly in Bengali) called Prabhat Samgit composed by Baba. I sustained this discipline for over eight years, gradually tapering off subsequently upon embarking on further training in Indo-Tibetan Sutra and Tantra. But this period of intense and ever-deepening practice of Ananda Marga Tantra and Yoga was an illuminating and fruitful time, with personal direct realizations of the many "higher" or "advanced" states of meditative concentrations (Pali. jhana) and absorptions (Pali. aruppa). These were collectively termed as samadhi (single-pointed immersive collectedness) in its various stages. This was made possible by the intricate dynamics of the meditation techniques themselves coupled with the contemplative infusion and perfusion of Baba's spiritual power. In fact, Baba's super-potent blend of spiritual energy and consciousness (citishakti) suffused with his sweet blissful grace (gurukrpa) was the quintessential impetus and primary efficient cause of my meditative experiences. My experience of devotional flow towards Baba increased and deepened over time. One thing became clear: the higher reaches of meditative concentration are not mere myths.
Socioeconomically, Baba's ideas and vision intrigued and inspired me. I could see for myself the ravages of exploitative capitalism and their immediate impact on me and my family. I could also envisage the stagnancy and constriction of statist communism that disregarded individual freedoms and initiative. Baba's progressive and spiritually-centred theory of economics and politics made sense to me — rooted in a spiritual and cosmic vision of life and existence; attuned to macrohistorical cycles and dynamics; accounting for spiral evolution of society through changing dominance of social mentalities; demolishing all forms of human discrimination and division particularly the Indian caste system; attentive to individual freedoms while oriented towards collective wellbeing; rational distribution and progressive utilization of physical-psychic-spiritual resources; emphasis on agricultural base with positive embrace of science and technology; collective ownership of essential energy and water infrastructure; focusing on basic needs of all before luxury for the few; maximum and minimum income values with minimizing of income gap between the highest and lowest paid in society; a "family" paradigm for economic organization where all members of the human family are cared for and basic needs met before excesses and luxuries are to be enjoyed by the meritorious; and a cooperative-centred system of collective ownership of enterpise and industry so that every worker feels that they belong and have a stake in their own company.
All these and more was part of Baba's integral Tantric vision of a cosmic society, one where all ethnicities, cultures, species, classes, tribes, sexualities, genders are included, valued, cherished, and seen as ultimately belonging together to the cosmic family of divine consciousness. Perhaps because of his intense commitment to spiritual liberation coupled with sociopolitical transformation, Baba was deemed controversial and heavily vilified in his time. It did not help that eye-popping headlines of violence, perpetrated by enemies of Ananda Marga and a small number of misguided Ananda Marga members, shrouded Baba and his work. My own graduate studies in international relations and politics extended my passion in this Tantric vision of global and universal society into a more grounded and practicable enactment of this vision in the everyday political reality of my adopted country, Australia. The Australia 2020 Summit hosted by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was the platform at which I was able to present my spiritually-engaged cosmopolitanism to other invited participants of this historic Summit, all present by invitation from the Prime Minister as part of Australia's cohort of 1,000 "best and brightest" individuals. Unfortunately, Australia's political inertia, party machinations, and divided consciousness of the Australian polity entrenched in partisan duopoly thick with defilements of greed, hostility, and delusion make for the absence of any sustained progress. On the contrary, Australia seems locked in a nation-crippling stagnation where one step forward is stunted by two steps back. So much for "liberal democracy." Without inner enlightenment, narrow and short-term "national interests" trump genuine elevation of the human condition towards evolved consciousness.
The motto of Baba's spiritual and social approach is atmamokshartham jagadhitayaca which means "Self-realization and service to all creation." It expresses the spirit of inner spiritual evolution and enlightenment conjoined with the activism of outer transformative engagement with the world. For Baba, a genuine and transformative Tantra is an integral and holistic endeavour that transcends boundaries of inner and outer, self and other, created and Creator, human and Divine, small and Great in a nondual ecstasy of pure consciousness.
The beginning of the second chapter of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti's powerful classic Ananda-sutram says it well when it explains the nature of happiness as bliss which when infinitized is none other than the Divine:
2-1. Anukúlavedaniiyam sukham
2-2. Sukhánuraktih paramá jaeviivrttih
2-3. Sukhamanantamánandam
2-4. Ánandam Brahma ityáhuh
A congenial mental feeling is called happiness.
The attachment to happiness is the primary vrtti (propensity) of living beings.
Infinite happiness is ánanda (bliss).
This ánanda is called Brahma.
All this might sound outlandish or nebulous, given that most of us, if not all of us, have never experienced what it is like to be in a state of "bliss." This experience is not only possible but empirically verifiable by anyone who seeks deeper bliss beyond sensorial stimulation of the world and trains well in meditative equipoise and wisdom. An open heart of devotional yielding moistens and enlivens this process, enabling its efficient realization. Much more can be said but for now, I shall wrap up this reflection.
Over the past nine years of ongoing spiritual evolution following my faith encounter in Jesus Christ, I have come to a place of integrative peace and understanding on the nature of Baba, my Tantric guru, and the episteme of Tantra in my own spirituality and faith. For a while, I found it difficult to reconcile Baba and his Tantra with Buddha Dharma, but over time I succeeded in doing so. Then, I found myself challenged in reconciling Baba and his Tantra with my Christocentric faith commitment and Jesus-belonging. No longer. For me, I have come to realize that Baba is not antithetical but richly integral to my Christic journey of spirituality. Here, I use the term "Christic" and not "Christian" because while I have no time for institutional Christianity, I have a lot of time for Christ. My engagement with Christ and in Christ goes beneath surface allegiance to religious practices or blind belief in doctrinal propositions. Rather, I see myself as a mystic or mystical contemplative deeply rooted in Christ as my Alpha Origin, flowing in Christ as my Primordial Ground, and moving towards Christ as my Omega Point. Hence, I am a Christic relentlessly inquiring rather than a Christian complacently believing. As a Christic or mystic in Christ, I remain open to the plurality of world spiritual and wisdom traditions but especially to the Buddha Dharma and Ananda Marga. I have a special connection to the Dao as well, finding the Daoist episteme ecologically resonant.
For me, Baba Anandamurti is none other than a post-incarnate Christophany, a divine manifestation or appearance of Christ in historical time that comes temporally after the person-event of the Incarnation. Just as Gotama Buddha, Sadashiva, and Krishna are pre-incarnational (prior to the Incarnation) Christophanies in the cosmotheandric reality of God, cosmos, and humanity conjoined in seamless whole, in my particular moment in history. Baba (as is the Buddha) is indeed a person-event that is central to my personal history inconceivably synchronous with the timeless reality and mysterious movement of Christogenesis. Therefore, I can say with unfettered heart that in and to Jesus the Nazarene who is the cosmic Christ, I truly belong. Belonging in Christ too are Baba and Buddha; Shiva and Krishna; Padmasambhava and Tsong Khapa; as are Bodhidharma, Hui-Neng, and Dogen. As are all my lama-yidams, gurus, and roshis. In fact, Baba is seen by his disciples as Mahakaula and Sadhguru, who as the embodiment of cosmic bliss is Taraka Brahma — the liberative aspect of cosmic consciousness who bridges the manifest and non-manifest dimensions of reality. This devotional concept thus reflects as type and shadow the full reality of the cosmic Christ in his incarnational and crucicentric redemptive arc of grace.
I am not just a Buddhist belonging to Jesus. I am an Anandamargi Buddhist Christic (ABC) belonging to Jesus the Nazarene who is the cosmic Christ — Son of Man and God the Son in that ineffable cosmotheandric and transcosmic Reality of the Triune communion and union of Father-Son-Spirit who is Love-Light-Life, forever and ever yet always now and here — being nobody, with nothing to do, going nowhere.
Image credit: iStock photo (Pexels).
