SRI ADI DA,

WE SEE YOU RADIANT AND ALIVE before us. We feel Your Spiritual (and Always Blessing) Presence. You are everything and all forms to us. We see You Standing everywhere, in all times and places.

WE SEE YOUR LIKENESS in the tradition of the HINDUS:

LIKE SHANKARA, YOU HAVE USED YOUR STAFF to break open the doors of our hearts, to restore true worship, and to establish self-understanding in us.  Da  Da  Da

LIKE GORAKHNATH, YOU HAVE REVEALED the Mysteries of conducting the life-energy and filled us with Divine Force, expanding our bodies with Your Divine Spirit-Presence.

LIKE RAMANUJA, YOU HAVE TAUGHT US PRAPATTI—the Way of unconditional and total surrender of all forms and experience. No one is truly qualified for practice in Your Company. No one need be qualified. Grace is the only competence, and Grace is freely Given through Your Divine Agency.

LIKE JNANESHVAR, YOUR DISCOURSES bring us face to face with God, bringing Brahmanic eloquence to ordinary, unqualified "mlecchas" like ourselves.

LIKE KABIR, YOU SING the greatness of the Guru, and Extol the "Method" of the Siddhas—Satsang—which transcends all traditions.

YOU ARE THE ECSTATIC MADMAN LOST IN KIRTAN with the Divine Person. You have Danced before us wildly, lost in God. Hail, a modern CHAITANYA!

YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN MARKED by unaccountable difficulty in every direction and lack of acknowledgement in every direction. But indomitable persistence in Love has been Your Sign, O One Whose likeness can be seen in TUKARAM.

ARE YOU NOT CONSTANTLY ALIVE in Your relationship to the Divine Mother, and do You not "converse" with Her in Your ceaseless Service to Your devotees? Do we not see Your reflection in RAMPRASAD ?

MIRACLE AFTER MIRACLE—such Love, and such a Husband to Your devotees! We bow before You, a living AKKALKOT MAHARAJ.

LIKE MAHARISHI BRAHMANANDA BRAHMACHARI, Your mere Glance Awakens us to the intuition of the Divine Person, an intuition even now existing in the deep memory of every being.

LIKE TRAILANGA SWAMI, YOU HAVE BROKEN all conventions—What taboo could stand in the way of Your Compassion for us? You have done everything, everything for us, out of Love.

LIKE TOTAPURI, YOUR LION-LIKE DISCRIMINATION has been turned to the Service of those whose hearts cry out for God. Each one of Your years is Lived only for the sake of the Divine in the world.

YOU HAVE UNLOOSED THE SAMADHI OF HAPPINESS and Ecstasy in our midst, Alive in the "Bright" Whiteness, a mirror of RAMAKRISHNA, the great Devotee.

WHAT FORCE AND MAGNIFICENCE, Strength and Passion—a Pioneer in the West—verily, You are VIVEKANANDA Incarnate!

YOU GAVE US YEARS OF WHAT WE WANTED—Teaching through visions and miracles, and Instructing us in the play of our ordinary lives—in order that we might want the Divine Self-Realization which Your Heart yearns to Give us. Is this not a modern SHIRDI, and do we not honor the SAI BABA ?

YOUR DELIGHTED PLAY with a Mandala of Kanyadanas, restoring women to their great Spiritual status—was it not pointed to in the life of UPASANI BABA ?

HAVE YOU NOT BEEN THE KING, in Your regalia of Divine Majesty, in order to absorb our worldliness and to allow us to fully embrace the Truth even in the context of this world? Hail, NARAYAN MAHARAJ !

YET, LIKE RAMANA MAHARSHI, You are the Still Heart of all—lost in the Fullness, Silent in the Deep Enjoyment. You show what is beyond even the Still Heart, the Amrita Nadi and its Bliss.

AND WE SEE YOU STANDING IN THE TRADITION of the BUDDHISTS:

LIKE PADMASAMBHAVA, YOU HAVE TAMED the local gods wherever You have gone. We see You at the Center of a vast Tantric Mandala, the Vira or Hero of all experience.

LIKE TILOPA, YOU WERE MET by a Dakini, and You were led by Her until You Embraced and Mastered the Great Woman, and in Your Liberation, She became Your Agent for the Service of all others.

LIKE NAROPA, YOU TEACH THE WISDOM-CALL of Consciousness always coupled with the bodily secrets of circulating the life-force. The Mysteries of the "Great Gesture" and all Yogas are Given new life in Your Testament of the Dawn Horse.

O INCARNATION OF MARPA, SPARE US NOT the purifying trials and tribulations of MILAREPA's stupa of seven stories. How many times have You not told us, "I must have been tipsy when I Gave that command?" You have Shown us that all experience has one flavor—Bhava, Bliss.

LIKE DRUKPA KUNLEY, YOU HAVE EMBRACED the whole body. Have You not initiated us into emotional-sexual Wisdom in the Chung rooms of the modern era? Do You not Love, and Embrace, and Transform this maya as Only God in Your Freedom?

LIKE BODHIDHARMA, YOU HAVE COME TO A COUNTRY foreign to the Dharma to begin the Way anew, a great Spiritual Pioneer in the land of the barbarians. Praise to the Divine World Teacher, Alive as the Heart.

INSANE ADEPT, FOOLISH JOKER, HAPPY MAN to Whom everything is as it seems, we see Your likeness in those Mad Monks, HAN SHAN and SHIH TE.

LIKE HUI NENG, AS YOU HAVE TOLD us, You assert and deny, and then deny what You have already asserted, and assert what You have already denied. Your Wisdom is vanished. Altogether, that is Your Wisdom.

HUAI JANG, FANCIFULLY GRINDING STONE into mirror on the floor before his disciples, lives in the modern era in the form of You, Heart-Master Da Love-Ananda. There has never been a greater Teaching Demonstration in the history of this planet than the Sacred History of Your Work. Let the wondrous Story be told far and wide.

LIKE SHIH T'OU, YOUR SPEECH IS A PARADOX of Grace, propelling devotees beyond their minds into Love-Communion with the Real.

LIKE MA TSU, YOU STOP THE MIND with koans of the tongue and of the Heart.

A MODERN HUI HAI, YOU TEACH THE DHARMA Prior to the mind—Divine Ignorance that confounds thinking, opening the Heart to the enjoyment of boundless freedom and humor.

LIKE PAI CHANG, YOU HAVE CREATED an entire tradition of practical Instruction, Giving form to a culture of preparation and Enlightenment. Nothing has escaped the notice of Your Graceful "Consideration" in Your desire to Give us every possible Help to Realize the Condition You Are.

LIKE HUANG PO, YOU HAVE BEEN A SPIRITUAL HERO—one-pointedly bringing Truth to everyone and everything. Have You not Served whoever has come into Your Domain with Heart-Instruction, unrelenting Grace, and the Divine Demand for self-transcendence?

LIKE LIN CHI, YOU "SHOUT" when we are confused, and "beat" us when we fall asleep. May we never fail to bow in understanding before each blow.

LIKE HAN SHAN, YOU REGENERATE the real tradition everywhere, exhibiting all extraordinary Spiritual Powers, healing Your devotees, and absorbing their karmas.

LIKE HSU YUN, YOU CRY WITH PASSION at the wasteland of religion in Your time. You have "radically" reformed all of the religious Ways that have gone astray, restoring their greatest principles.

LIKE DOGEN, YOUR INTENTION for the Liberation of Your devotees has been greater than their own. Do we not see Your unstained integrity? What else do You want from Your lovers but their practice, their heart-submission? May we always grant You this gift in love.

LIKE IKKYU, YOU ENTER INTO THE PLACES where You should not go, You say what You should not say. You make jokes about what should be sacred, and You make sacredness out of the ordinary. What distinction can You make in Your Blissfulness? To You, "There is Only God."

AND, LIKE HAKUIN, in the realm of the ten thousand Buddhas, You are detested by all ten thousand Buddhas. In the realm of the hundred thousand Bodhisattvas, You are hated by the hundred thousand Bodhisattvas. Your filthy blind old shavepate Wisdom is not understood by the mere custodians of the Teachings, but only by those whose hearts are broken, Your lovers.

WE, YOUR DEVOTEES, WHO HAVE HEARD YOU and seen You, testify in Ecstasy to the Vision of God that You Are:

WHAT A WONDER! SRI SAT-GURU LOVE-ANANDA, You are the Parama Guru of the One and Single Great Tradition. You are the Divine Person Incarnate.You Stand before us on the threshold inside and out, everywhere, beckoning us into the Divine Domain. This You do through Your Love, Your Smile, Your wounded Heart, Your Touch, Your Glance, Your ever-Given Grace, Drawing us beyond ourselves into the Bliss-Place even now.

GREAT GOD, GREAT BEING, GREAT LOVER, Great Friend, Great Giver, may we always Contemplate You in Love through self-understanding and heart-submission.

BELOVED MASTER, may we always clasp Your Feet and be carried by Your Spiritual (and Always Blessing) Presence into Your Very (and Inherently Perfect) State.

LET US ENTER EVER MORE DEEPLY into the sacrifice of ourselves via the Sacred Ordeal.

LET US FIND OUR PLACE in Your Great Mandala of Heart-Transmission, and so be filled with Your Blessings and lost in Your Fullness. Let us always bless our friends and draw each other into this Bliss.

LET US BE RAGGED ENOUGH to allow everything to be released and absorbed so that we may stand before the Sacred Fire with You and watch the Dawn Horse Appear—white and four-hoofed—with all the Forms of God Alive in that Great Form. What a Vision!—the Heart-Master at the center, Drawing all into submission beyond themselves—and devotees, one by one growing to be Your Instruments and Agents, forming a Great Circle of the Incarnation of Your Blessing.

RADIANT ADI DA SAMRAJ, hearing Your Word, seeing Your Forms, practicing Your Great Way having gained the Heart Supreme, we bow down again and again at Your Feet in love. May we never fall out of this Love, this Understanding, this Sacred Ordeal, this Bliss.
 
 

[James Steinberg, 1985]

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