Sermon VIIII

As If It Were Your Last Day

“If a student is not keen, what can the teacher do. Knowledge is a seed. The mind should be fertile.” –Guru Dhronacharya to Arjuna

“The warrior has two enemies – sleep and tiredness. He has two friends – hard work and caution. The warrior who can vanquish these enemies and befriend the two friends will be undefeatable.” –Guru Dhronacharya to Arjuna

Hail to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas!

In Mahabharata, the sage Yudisthira is asked, “Of all things in life, what is the most amazing?” Yudisthira answers, “That a man, seeing others die all around him, never thinks that he will die.”

If you have heard the warnings that have been given, the stark predictions from the diverse Masters, you would not waste your days. We have had the highest empowerments from the Lamas of Tibet and Bhutan, we have engaged in the training at Siddha monasteries, the Buddhist masters, we have trekked to meet great Guru and Shaykhs. Our Members have spent their collective lifetimes seeking this wisdom, knowledge and skillful means, the medicines, the narrative of the Dharma. All these great teachers, every one, told us to prepare for the most dire calamity.

They said it was beyond our comprehension, beyond description, but to prepare, in body, mind and spirit. It was told to infuse the body with the medicines, to concentrate breath and spirit and focus, to prepare in all ways to endure, withstand the endless psycho-spiritual assaults, the calamity, the dynamic changes and collapse of the world age. There will be shocking events above and below, the stars and sun and moon harbingers of the events that will accelerate. It is a war of all against all but is a spiritual war, a war of attrition against health, against Mind, against Being. It is a sickness unleashed to harden hearts, twist and disease the soul, to darken the spirit. It has been called many things, the silent weapons for quiet wars, or simply, how to have world war three but leave most of the infrastructure intact.

This is why the cohesive action of the world’s ‘elites’ have been in lockstep. They are aware of a timeline of reckoning, of massive shifts and they must shock and awe, stun the population into regressive and fearful states. It is the fear and depression, of doom and inevitable suffering that either destroys or liberates. It is calculated to exploit every fear, every anxiety, empathy, and, like dark sorcery, focus all the negative energy to their intention. One must choose to face the pain and let go, to ungrasp and let go of the sorrow that is a binding snare to this false security and superficial comfort that one seeks.

It is impossible to have lasting happiness, satisfaction or enduring contentment in this realm. At best, any joy is fleeting, it is a dream that can become a nightmare, torn from the grasp with inhuman disregard. This world is conflict, a constant paradox of life and death with each breath. This deep fact creates in many a slow suicide of their worst self in the choices they make of this precious life, each precious breath. But each day is a microcosm of life and death, to awaken is the birth, to die is to sleep, we age through the day. What we waste time upon, what distracts and dissipates our energies, our priorities, defines our day, week, month, year, and finally our life. Some even weaponize their incompetency and drag down everything they are associated with, through a stagnant, malignant atmosphere and ambiance they exude and spread like a true pandemic of misery.

Even without the world collapse, the Kali Yuga demonic forces, life would be a fleeting dream, a quest of self into Self, or morality of the body faced with the possible immortality of Mind and Spirit. Some will need great illness to awaken, great loss, struggle and pain, they must taste the pain directly and seek the deep root of their sickness and illness. If there were perpetual calm and bliss, there would be no growth, no learning, the soul and spirit has no opportunity to grow, to realize, to attain higher realities.

“Persons who are led by the material conception of life do not know that the aim of life is the realization of the Absolute Truth and they are captivated by the external features of the material world, and therefore they do not know what liberation is.” –Lord Krishna to Arjuna in Bhagvad Gita

This is our Great Work, we are incarnated through karma and destiny in these times. We face the collapse of life as we know it, the threat to life, to the very essence of humanity in an enemy that wants to edit DNA and transform all life into an inversion of true alchemy. We must make the contracts with self, do the heroic tasks to clear the obstacles and set about the true inner training and transmutation as if our very life depended on it. Because it does.

“Through continuous pursuit of Satya (truthfulness), Tapas (perseverance, austerity), Samyajñāna (correct knowledge), and Brahmacharya, one attains Atman (Self, Soul).” Mundaka Upanishad, 3.1.5

In the most ancient myth, that of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero attains the plant of immortality, but falls asleep and loses it. In the Grail myths, which go back to the ancient Soma rites of the Vedas, the failures in their quest are lured away through seductive vices, but many times just wither away in tests of energy, in resolute will. Many cannot stay awake. It is a metaphor for your sleepwalking through life. It is a safe way to hide, to tell lies to yourself, to shrink from the responsibilities and imperatives that are one’s duty. It is the seed that instigates all the other vices, because it is born of an apathy. The soul must be enlivened, infused with energy. This is the true herbal and alchemical protocols that exalt and amplify this energy to radiant levels of power and focus.

“The one who seeks success has to abandon six vices: drowsiness, sloth, fear, anger, laziness and putting on work to a later time.” – Udyogaparva, Mahabharata

Begin your 108 day protocols with discipline, with ecstatic zeal and devotion, with the patient understanding of the ordeals of overcoming self. Guard the one, the essential energy, replace the dense, the heavy, the toxic with the light, nourishing essences of the rasayana and spagyric herbs, the fasting minerals. Build the body, quiet the mind, and set the inner balance within the microcosmic inner kingdom that the spontaneous purity and health will arise.

“If you start a work, take rest only after its completion; otherwise, the (incomplete) work will finish you.” -Devarata to King Shantanu in Mahabharata