The eye of the hurricane
Asked for a first step for someone in real distress, the swami gave four, in order, and none of them was a belief.
By Sovandarapor (James) Kong · · Nondual
Chapter 18 of 18 in Ninety minutes with a swami
The practical question comes last. For someone in deep distress, who naturally looks outside themselves for help, what is a first step.
Swami Sarvapriyananda gave four, and I am recording them mostly in his order.
First, notice that suffering is universal. Death visits everyone. Sickness and loss have visited every human being in history and will visit everyone now alive, him included. He says this broadens the suffering mind, because it turns the thing from a personal insult into an impersonal fact, and as a side effect it produces real sympathy, because now you are feeling what the others feel rather than reading about it.
Second, take help. Therapy, counselling, meditation, devotion, whatever it is. He does not rank them. He says that all of them, including reliance on a higher power, end up pointing you back at yourself. And he is generous about the devotional route, more than I expected. It is hard to do this alone. You are one small being against the weight of the universe, however clever or well read, and what bhakti offers is a vast power on your side. He quotes Jung's remark that most of the crises he saw in people past middle age could be traced to a divorce between them and their church, and he does not say Jung was wrong.
Third, stillness. Here he makes the observation that I have been turning over since. Most people think the mind is restless because the world keeps throwing problems at it. The yogi, he says, reverses it. The problematic world is there because of the restless mind. The quieter and more inward the mind, the less the suffering, not all of it, and the suffering itself, he adds, has a meditative quality. It stills us and makes us serious.
Fourth, the knowledge. The non-dual understanding of the oneness of what exists, which denies neither suffering nor science, and which lets you cry and at the same time know that beneath the tears there is a place that is not disturbed. His image for it is the eye of the hurricane. Calm in the middle of the storm, not instead of the storm.
I notice that the first three steps would be given by a good doctor, a good friend or a good Buddhist, and that only the fourth is specifically his tradition. I think that is a strength. He did not tell a person in distress to read the Upanishads. He told them to notice they are not alone, to accept help, and to sit down.
The hurricane image I will keep. I live in a country that gets the edge of them most years. The eye is real and it does not last, and the storm on the other side of it is the same storm.