Swanwick Star Issue No. 13 (2020)

A Bird in the Verandah

 

 

VIII                                                      January 10, 2010

 

CS –      What is spirituality?…this question never seems to end for me.

 

AA –     There is no end – you cannot pin it down or answer it.

 

CS –      Mindfulness in relationship as the mirror of the self seems to be my meditation, now. I can see the reflection of my wilfulness, arrogance, etc.

However, I found it disturbing recently to hear a quote from K. to Pupul Jayakar, saying, “Where you are, the Other is not”, because there is a lot of me around these days!

 

AA –     That would be disturbing as it is false; for, the Other transcends even the limitations of species.

 

CS –      Yes, that reminds me of my relationship with my cat. As a friend said, she is one of my best friends. Being a predatory hunter, the cat has great Awareness and, yet, is thoroughly concerned with self. In fact, she is similar to me in this respect. She always wants the best of the best.

(laughter)

 

AA –     The cat has a perfect sense of timing probably developed while hunting in the wild; it has no more than two or two and a half chances to succeed, or, it goes hungry and dies.

 

CS –      And, I am sure it does not worry about the distinction between “the Other and the self” or “the observer and the observed”.

 

(more laughter)

 

AA –     I once challenged K. about that, saying, “If I am the Other and the Other is me, there is no space for deliberation”; he agreed, but, sadly, never changed his stance in his lectures.

 

CS –      Perhaps, he had established a certain terminology like a professor and did not want to vary it in his talks. Can you imagine the confusion?

 

AA –     Yes, and, he lacked precision at times as a result of this.

 

CS –      In a way, lectures are an artificial medium for spirituality. Our discussions do not seem to rely on any established terminology but are moving, changing, living, and vital. It is what is behind the words that is so much more important than the words themselves.

 

AA –     Thank God!

 

CS –      This sense of timing – I am sure it is what allows us to break out of the bounds of space and time.

 

AA –     Yes…as a part of Presence.

 

[These are personal impressions of dialogues with Professor Allan W. Anderson printed with his permission given on May 23, 2010; in no way does Chanda Siddoo-Atwal (CS) purport that these are verbatim discussions, but only excerpts recalled after conversations in which she has tried to “pluck out” their essence from her notes taken during these talks. It shall be serialized in its entirety as a tribute to his life and work in the coming issues of The Swanwick Star. This is the seventh serial installment from a compilation called “The Bird in the Verandah”]

 

 

A baby hummingbird flying through the netting to drink the nectar from these purple flowers