Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Bodhisattva

As you can well imagine, I occasionally take the “slings and arrows” of outrageous criticism for my views.  If I’m doing my job on this blog, you won’t find many partisan discussions of controversial issues that plague our bipolar political culture; however, I’m not averse to making a stand on certain issues that are important to me.  Most of my readers understandably agree with me, but there are a few contrarians out there.  The time has come to address my critics.  For instance, a colleague, in response to one of my blogs, asked me if I think of myself as some kind of enlightened one who dismisses other viewpoints.  Well, as it turns out, I am an enlightened one.  When I say enlightened, I mean this in a literal and technical sense.  You see, when I wore a younger man’s shoes, I gave up everything, all my possessions, including the shoes, and traveled to a remote Hindu monastery in the Himalayas to find wisdom and solace in this life.  I studied under some of the great Hindu masters of the past two generations.  I really don’t want to brag, but I would be remiss not to mention my discipleship under Swami Chandrasekharan Aranya who guided me toward sannyasa via the Dashanami Sampradaya tradition.  And I don’t mean to drop names here, but I studied under Mageshkumar and Jagmohan Taranjit Balakrishnan.   Anyway, I was able to renounce all material possessions and earthly desires.  Through a strict regimen of rice and spiritual meditation, I emptied myself of the self, achieved a blissful state of detachment from the world, and reached the pinnacle of complete humility.  I guess what I’m saying is that my views aren’t so much opinions as they are oracles of wisdom, sagacious sayings that few would dispute if they too were enlightened (my italics).