All That Exists is One

At the beginning of the class I taught this morning, I led the "Guru Chant." This is a chant I have sung many, many times over the last 5 years, and yet today I felt like I understood it for the first time. We have these experiences often. Things we do over and over again suddenly, and for some reason, take on a new meaning or become clear to us.

A guru is whoever or whatever brings us from darkness to light, from discontent to contentment. The Guru chant gives us different ways to acess whoever or whatever does this for us. We can visualize God, love, or the divine in different forms, because some work better for us or resonate differently at different times. (Even in the bible, God takes on many "personas." There is the angry God who floods the earth, or the parental God who leads his children out of Egypt, etc.) The Guru Chant begins with Brahma, the creator -- that which is beginningless and endless. It then acknowledges Vishnu, the preserver. (When I chant this, I think of my parents, who are always there for me, and whose presence makes me feel safe.) Guru Devo Maheshwarah is another name for Shiva, the destroyer. (I think of the difficult people and circumstances in my life that felt like they were tearing me down. In rising from and beyond them, I became stronger and more certain of my path.) Guru Sakshat Para-Brahma - is the teacher we can see (it might be a neighbor, colleague, or someone who inspires us) and the unseen teacher (the voice inside our heads). Tasmai Shri Gurave Namah: I bow down to all of my teachers who are all inside my heart.

As I chanted this today, I realized that they are all the same. They are all inside of me and each one of us. The love and wisdom that I receive from my teachers is something for which I reach out of myself. I think it is outside of me and that I receive it. This is my mind creating an illusion. The fact that I recognize it "out there," is because it is in my heart all along. It is like the breath: I inhale and exhale what I initially identify as "my breath," but it is part of a great ocean of breath. My inhale was a part of someone else's exhale. My exhale becomes someone else's exhale. There is no separate breath that is "mine." We are all giving to, and taking from, the same vast ocean of breath.

Shoveling snow yesterday, I thought that the snow I was moving might have once been rain in Guatemala, or fog somewhere else. My mind makes it look like a specific piece of precipitation that is sitting on my car, but it is part of the same body of water that exists and has existed always. There is one body of air. There is one body of water. There is one enormous sea of love that we feel inside and outside: we are all a part of it. The more we see breath or ourselves as separate, the more we look outside of ourselves for happiness, love and contentment, the more we miss it completely. We are joy. We are love. We are compassion. It is inside and outside and always.

All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names.~THE VEDAS.

God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.~I JOHN iv. 16.

God is one whole; we are the parts.~EXPOSITION OF THE TEACHING OF THE VEDAS BY VIVEKANANDA.