Firefly

A post by guest author, Narada.

I’ve been invited to put this post on here by Swami Nishchalananda. It’s an honour to me, as I mostly consider he is the one who has something to say! I’m the student, he’s the teacher. 

Here’s what happenend. I’m making a movie, partly to promote Mandala Yoga Ashram as a centre of excellence established and directed by Swamiji, and most definitely to celebrate one of the great Yoga, Tantra and Advaita teachers of this generation. 

Many teachers of Yoga, Zen or Advaita have become famous in the last several decades. They, or their followers, have created high profile publicity which has been invaluable in promoting the pursuit of ‘spirituality’ in one form or another. Swami Nishchalananda was certainly well-known, and in much demand as a speaker, in India (where he received training with his teacher). But in the last 34 years he has quietly and most humbly inspired those of us in the UK and Europe who were willing to put aside our own opinions and listen – to his great experience, also to the simple teaching that is the ‘presence’ of one who lives Yoga. Certainly, I owe the growing sense of freedom, the growing natural joy which is my birthright, solely to the patience and vision of Swami Nishchalananda.

Anyway,
I am working on a project called ‘Movement and Stillness’, and a poem that I put to music struck me as the kind of thing we could do if Swamiji was happy to let me put some of his words into a movie setting with music etc.

But unexpectedly, he liked my piece so much he asked me to put it on this blog… so here it is…. please enjoy ‘Firefly’. A brief extract from the text, then the full recording below.

What we think of as ‘Life’ goes along in time.
We are born, we live our life in the flash of a firefly’s tail
then we’re gone. Dust to dust.

Is that Life? The Sages and Wise of all Cultures say ‘No’!
Life is that which inhabits the dust, until Time breaks them apart
It seems we must hold onto, and deeply question, this elusive ‘Life’.

But wait… ‘We’…. this ‘we’, are we dust or are we Life?
Some may say we are Life inhabiting dust
Advaita, the doctrine of non-duality,
would say there is only One
How could it be otherwise?
Everything that is, exists. Existence is only One.
Is this playing with words?
No. To say it again, even more simply, 
Existence is.

** To enjoy the audio fully, the rich bass and middle tones work best with headphones or good speakers

original music by Narada