The Most Auspicious Luck in the Universe

The Most Auspicious Luck in the Universe. I would like to quote from "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Begin quote page 124 middle of page, "The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the Universe:

1. To have been born a human being capable of conscious inquiry.

2. To have been born with--or to have developed--a yearning to understand the nature of the universe.

3. To have found a living spiritual master.

There is a theory that if you yearn sincerely enough for a Guru, you will find one. The universe will shift, destiny's molecules will get themselves organized and your path will soon intersect with the path of the master you need. It was only one month after my first night of desperate prayer on my bathroom floor--a night spent tearfully begging God for answers--that I found mine, having walked into David's apartment and encountered a photograph of this stunning Indian woman. Of course, I was more than a bit ambivalent about the concept of having a guru. As a general rule, Westerners aren't comfortable with the word. We hae a kind of sketchy recent history with it. In the 1970's a number of wealthy, eager, susceptible young Western seekers collided with a handful of charismatic but dubious Indian Gurus. Most of the Chaos has settled down now, but the echoes of mistrust still resonate. Even for me, even after all this time, I still find myself sometimes balking at the word Guru. This is not a problem for my friends in India; they grew up with the Guru principle. they're relaxed with it. As one young Indian girl told me, "Everybody in India almost has a Guru!" I know what she meant to say (that almost everyone in India has a Guru) but I related more to her unintentional statement, because that's how I feel sometimes--like I almost have a Guru. Sometimes, I just can't seem to admit it because, as a good New Englander, skepticism and pragmatism are my intellectual heritage. Anyhow, it's not like I consciously went shopping for a Guru. She just arrived. And the first time I saw her, it was as though she looked at me through her photograph--those dark eyes smoldering with intelligent compassion--and she said, "You called for me and now I'm here. So do you want to do this thing or not?"

Setting aside all nervous jokes and cross-cultural discomforts, I must always remember what I relied that night: a straightforward and bottomless YES" endquote

I myself have met many masters both in the United States and in India and Nepal. To even meet one realized being in a lifetime is a very amazing experience. I have personally experienced on multiple occasions the universe shifting destiny's molecules for me to intersect with many masters in my life. I feel fortunate indeed in this lifetime to have met so many masters.

A Master's affect on one can be the most difficult to survive in ones lifetime. I am told this happens when a master sees a soul has a long journey and enlivens that one for quick travel to the destination of enlightenment. If so, then the teacher who was my teacher in childhood until my early twenties whose spiritual name is Lotus was the most influential in my life.

There is another master that I called Geshela, a Tibetan Lama that I met first in Santa Cruz, California in 1983 and then in Bodhgaya, India with my wife and kids in late 1985. Geshela was known for his long life White Tara initiation world wide(which my family and I received from him in santa cruz, Ca. in 1983). He did "Mo" for me on many occasions which is Tibetan divining. He reminded me in many ways of a Catholic Priest except that he began his training at age 6, several thousand miles away from his parents in Kham. He was trained in Lhasa, Tibet and left with the Dalai Lama around 1960 and migrated while being straffed by Chinese fighter jets all the way to India. He saw many Tibetans being shot by planes and freezing to death before reaching India and Freedom . Even thought Geshela was a very brilliant and talented man I could see growing up without his parents nearby took a toll on him as well as watching his Tibetan culture be destroyed(at least in Tibet). So even though people may become enlightened they still have real problems the deal with. I think it is important for all of us to realize this. Not being raised by his parents, watching friends be shot at and die from fighter planes and freezing to death and having to live in two new cultures, India and the United States as a Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Tibetan refugee took a toll on him. However, he carried it well with Honor and with Peace.