Drops of Water on a Lotus Leaf by Ranchor Prime

By Ranchor Prime 23/09/2011

‘Life is insecure, like a drop of water on a lotus leaf,’ sings a sacred song.

Growing up I felt the same. I was out of step – my friends wanted to play football when I wanted to sit and talk; when they wanted to talk and I needed to be quiet and walk in the woods.

Then at 19 I found the Bhagavad Gita, and even though it was 5000 years old it felt like coming home. It was a voice of comfort and reassurance. Gandhi had the same experience.

‘When doubts haunt me and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to the Gita and find a verse to comfort me,’ said Gandhi.

I left art college and moved into a Krishna ashram the year before the Beatles broke up. The same year I sang Hare Krishna with George Harrison. It seems like another lifetime, yet the Gita stayed with me, my companion for all seasons. In it I kept finding something new.

When I started teaching the Gita at Alchemy I made another new discovery: the Gita grew out of a time of crisis, and it took on new meaning when the ones who heard it were in crisis.

In these turbulent times many of us feel we are living in an age of crisis. On an internal level we are learning deep lessons all the time. And in our lifestyles we are having to change the way we interact with the world.
Looking at the Monopoly game that is world economics, I see my savings or my pension could soon be worth nothing – even my bank could vanish. Security, so long the privilege of Europeans and Americans, is a thing of the past.

I am always amazed how people attach themselves to the fragile assurances of jobs or money or homes when we all saw how unreliable these are.

‘When your intelligence has passed out of the forest of delusion you will become indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is to be heard.’
These words from the Gita urged me not to be taken in. I learned from the world, gave myself to it with all my might, but I never was quite taken in by the dream. At the end of each day and at the start of the next, I remembered what Krishna said:

‘As the lotus leaf is untouched by water, if you work without attachment and devote your actions to me, you are free.’

I am not part of the dream. I am real. I am free.

Ranchor Prime is author of Bhagavad Gita: Talks Between the Soul and God – he welcomes you to come and share the Bhagavad Gita with him at Alchemy, with chanting, meditation and discussion every Tuesday 4:30 – 5:45 pm.

Picture credit: tanakawho