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    Gentle Breeze, Rustling Leaves: Sing, my soul, your symphony of silence
    Gentle Breeze, Rustling Leaves: Sing, my soul, your symphony of silence
    Gentle Breeze, Rustling Leaves: Sing, my soul, your symphony of silence
    Ebook133 pages1 hour

    Gentle Breeze, Rustling Leaves: Sing, my soul, your symphony of silence

    By Dwaraknath Reddy

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    When the traveler through the vast vistas of life finally turns his gaze inwards in his search for Ultimate Reality, gentle breezes blow across the mind, stirring the leaves of contemplation, emotion, memory, love, wonder and awe. The rustling sounds of the caressed thoughts are the intoned whispers of the ego and its companion-Self in intimate conversation. Slowly the winds rest in space, the sounds sink into silence...

    A post-graduate in science (U.S.A.1948); chairman of a leading family owned company; ardent spiritual seeker. Committed to Self-Enquiry (“Who am I?”), meditative writing has been Dwaraknath Reddy’s personal path into self-education. Ramana Maharshi is to him the epitome of spiritual revelation, both the promise and the proof of man’s inherent ability for transcendence from relativity to Reality; form person to the Purusha; from the son to the Father.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDwaraknath Reddy
    Release dateMay 31, 2013
    ISBN9789382788331
    Gentle Breeze, Rustling Leaves: Sing, my soul, your symphony of silence
    Author

    Dwaraknath Reddy

    Dwaraknath Reddy, a post-graduate in science (L.S.U.; USA), built up a family-owned industry into national eminence and has donated all his wealth to serve the poor multitudes of his countrymen. All his adult life, his was a quest to know the ultimate goal of human existence. His was a soul in search of its beginnings, to enable understanding of its highest ultimate purpose. He saw clearly that the relative cannot contain the Absolute. Objective knowledge can and must end in subjective experience. The teachings of RamanaMaharshi convinced him that Ramana was the epitome of all scriptures, the promise and proof of attainable perfection. Of Ramana’s transcendence into Absolute Consciousness beyond concepts of time, space, and causality, he writes: “Long before Time could write Ramana’s obituary, Ramana wrote Time’s obituary.” Reddy, now 84 years old, is a seeker of Reality and lives at Sri Ramanashram, Tiruvannamalai (South India), which is the sanctified shrine of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi.

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    • 5/5
      Succinct treatise on Vedanta concepts . Enjoyed every moment .
      Thank you!

    Book preview

    Gentle Breeze, Rustling Leaves - Dwaraknath Reddy

    Gurudev,

    the acme

    of Love

    In the silent depths of the ocean flow

    Mighty currents unseen,

    In the truth of this moment lie

    All the ages that have been.

    You are all I have

    Obviously it is the human that needs to be divinised, it is the unclean that must be cleansed, the suppliant that must be supported. To whom is pardon if not to the penitent?

    Will you refuse me the helping hand when I reach out on tip-toe? Will you distrust me now when I lay bare my soul? Will you punish me when I stand with folded hands? Will you hold me to what I have abandoned when I plead for acceptance? Will you shut the doors of the sanctum sanctorum in my face even as, on weary feet, I struggle into the precincts of your temple?

    Here is the garland of random hues that I strung together with the wild flowers I gathered in my wanderings. It is the miscellany of my life. If I cannot leave it with you, what shall I do with it?

    My Gurudev

    Isit upon the bank and watch the river flow by, carrying in its flood endless variety of humanity. Some struggle and cry in fear Let me live, let me live but they go under, a faint ripple marking momentarily the end of their pilgrimage on earth. Some go laughing by, happy and playful, till they and their laughter recede beyond the horizon, and the sudden silence leaves in ominous doubt whether they and their laughter have already ceased, or have yet a little way to go. Some float by too lost in stupor to know their fate, much less to care, and they sink here or yonder, it matters not. Occasionally there passes the gnarled countenance of one who grabs a weak victim and suffocates him as though he decides who alone will survive, but a moment later that cruel one too vainly seeks desperate protection as the derisive waters part and unite, and a glossy innocence hides another secret.

    I watch this dismal awesome unending procession, and suddenly wonder why I am not a part of it. I realize then that my body is wet and the water is dripping from my hair. Evidently I must have been drifting all too recently in the river myself. How was I saved?

    I turn around and look up. I look into the face of Benevolence. Therein is a tenderness like the soft light of a candle. Therein is a radiance like that of the eastern sky at dawn. Therein is a fragrance like that of a dew-kissed rose.

    I cling to His feet, and He smiles. He smiles for the dead and the living. He smiles for the saved and the lost. He smiles for the river and the bank. Nothing is said. Nothing remains unsaid.

    Gurudev, I know not what you are. I know but a thousandth part of Thy Grace. Tears in the eyes must speak for me, not words upon the lips.

    The redemption

    In my youthful exuberance and blissful ignorance, I set forth upon a raft to traverse the wordly ocean of samsar. I wandered with joyous abandon for long, but when I found myself rimmed by the sky all round and no land in sight, I realized my limitations and the limitlessness of what I had presumed to unravel.

    The beseeching tears fell from my eyes into the sea, as though the tiny salt-drops from my tortured soul could claim kinship with the fathomless brine and plead mercy. The sea rolled on unconcerned, too mighty to pause for a tear or two. Wisdom dawned on me and I realized that prayer was my sail and faith my lodestar. Thou, my Lord, that art incomparably vaster and mightier than all the oceans and winds and mountains combined, would not let a tear roll in vain on to Thy Feet.

    Thy grace alone led me across the pathless waters back to the shore. Let me never leave Thee again, my Lord.

    Contentment

    Let me live with this love gently. Place it diligently in the precarious twilight zone between remembrance and forgetfulness, untouched by the passion of life or the decay of death, where unseen flowers nod to each other and unwatched children play together.

    I feel blessed. Gratitude must take the form of contentment.

    Pearls or pebbles?

    The soaring thought of our Rishis, in the rarified realms where intellect glows with intuition, has bequeathed to us words of brilliant import that can take us beyond words themselves. They are the last holds for the aspirant before he hauls himself into Reality. When relativity ceases, words have to cease. So the words of our sages are luminous planets of knowledge orbiting the sun of wisdom. Let us not mistake them for fire-flies in the dark firmament.

    Through fables to finality

    The reward the sage offers to humanity is not an extension of objective knowledge but the subjective kingdom of Peace.

    Philosophy is the quintessence of revelations of the ultimate, bequeathed to us through indicative pointers while words of accustomed usage are made to strain against the habitual meanings in their struggle for expression at the frontier of transcendence. Fables and fairy-tales and fantasies, parables and puranas exist in abundance and serve humanity nobly, for they preserve an expansive base for the mass-contact of humanity with higher strivings, and in time lead mankind, even unknown to itself, towards higher ideals and happier societies. But we do not expect Science to make an unholy mix of mostly the gross with slightly the sublime, scoff selectively at myth and mythology, and write an equation for God condescending to correct the philosopher. Adults do not read Shakespeare through comic strips.

    The ageless science of philosophy

    As science rests secure in repeatable and reproducible experiment , so philosophy rests secure in repeatable and reproducible experience . At the core, philosophy is rationalized extrapolation, followed by anticipation, followed by experience. That is the confirmation. The event is communicable. The complete narration, guidance, and even exhortation has been there for longer than long ago.

    Philosophy is not an infant aged two or three millenniums. Intellectuals may have helped to change diapers! It is the men of realization, the truly enlightened ones, that have held and adored the ever-smiling Eternal Child. Since time has no entry there, the Realized Truth can be described as the Eternal (Ageless) Child. Since that is the state of unbroken bliss, it can be thought of as ever-smiling. The sages of Self-Realization hold up that Child to our gaze. Are we interested?

    Do not just hear Listen

    How is this ignorance (Avidya) to be eliminated?

    The Lord of Mercy does not let His devotees call to Him in vain. When sincere hearts cry out to Him to lift the veil of ignorance, He sends a Guru to them, sometimes inconspicuously, sometimes magnificently. Guru is Grace personified. He will show us the path of Self-knowledge. Let our anguished hearts surrender to his love. Let our tired minds yield effortlessly. Let the oft-deceived ego repose its faith in him. The words that drop from his lips rise from the Wells of Truth.

    Hush…. Silence now. Oh world of ceaseless motion, be still. Oh mind of endless agitations, please be quiet a while. The truth is about to be revealed. I must listen, listen, with my whole being…‥

    My tryst with the Sadguru, Sri Ramana Maharshi

    My brother… he died.

    He was thirty-seven, I was thirty-five. Our skies were blue, our horizons free of clouds. Always together as children, students and young men, now sharing hopes and ambitions and the responsibilities of a promising family business, it seemed that our outstretched hands could pluck the stars.

    Then there was the head-ache (got some aspirin?) soon turning to an agonizing torture, and in the nursing home the dreaded words are whispered. Cerebral haemorrhage. Surendranath is dying.

    After the tears came the revolt. Revolt not against death or God (whatever that word may mean), the revolt against my own state of ignorance which made me helpless. I saw clearly that I must understand the method and rationale of life and creation, or forever be

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