Totapuri, sometimes Tota Puri, was a Parivrajaka, a wandering monk who followed the path of wisdom taught by Advaita Vedanta as well as being the teacher-guru that brought the full fruit of Awakening to Sri Ramakrishna. He was a member of the Naga sect of sannyasins, a highly austere and uncompromising monastic order. Nagas normally live with only "space as clothing" (Digambara), refusing to submit to any comfort the body or mind might enjoy. Totapuri was an adept of the formless reality, the cloudless sky of the absolute. He, like Trailanga Swami, was, it has been claimed by some, to be over 250 years old when he died. He regarded the worship of divine forms as childish. Naked and smeared with ashes, Totapuri strolled through Dakshineswar Temple garden and noticed Ramakrishna seated there, clapping his hands ecstatically and chanting the name of Mother Kali. Totapuri recognized at once that Ramakrishna, despite his appearance as a simple devotee of the Goddess, was inwardly prepared to receive initiation into the knowledge of the absolute, in which all forms and all emotions are left behind.
Totapuri approached Ramakrishna with the proposal that he receive initiation into Advaita Vedanta. Ramakrishna replied, "I must ask my Mother Kali." He entered the temple and received permission from the living divinity that he experienced pulsatiing through the stone image enshrined there. That evening, Toatpuri began instructing him in Formless Meditation. But as Ramakrishna concentrated deeply, the radiant figure of the Goddess appeared to his inner eye. When he reported this to Totapuri, the austere naked monk took a sharp stone and pressed it firmly against Ramakrishna's forehead, instructing him to concentrate on the pain and assuring him that he could transcend the divine form and merge into the infinite expanse of the absolute. Once more, Ramakrishna meditated and, as he later expressed it, "with the sword of wisdom, I cut through the divine form of Kali." Her form dissolved, and his individuality completely disappeared into Her formless aspect. For three days Ramakrishna was completely lost to the world in a near state of suspended animation called Nirodha, seated in the small meditation hut, motionless, all breathing and body functions slowed to a standstill.
Totapuri was amazed, because, like the Buddha's brother or cousin Ananda, Totapuri had practiced for forty years to achieve the same level of experience --- nirvikalpa samadhi --- the disappearance of individual identity in the Absolute. It occurred to Ramakrishna in a single sitting.
Ramakrishna remained silent for six days and finally, when he opened his eyes he thanked Totapuri saying "If you had not come, I would have lived my whole life with the hallucination. My last barrier has fallen away." He became Enlightened after he had cut the last barrier. But even the followers of Ramakrishna don't mention the incident because it makes the whole effort of worshipping futile.
Totapuri as an orthodox wandering monk never remained more than three days in one location. However, he became so awed by Ramakrishna's ability in Samadhi to remain 'rigid as a corpse for days on end', that he broke his longstanding rule, resulting in him staying eleven months at Dakshineswar Temple hoping to learn from the man who had previously been his disciple. During this long stay he contracted serious dysentery. There was prolonged and severe pain, which was distracting Totapuri during meditation. Since he considered the body just a medium, essentially unnecessary after the realization of the Absolute, he decided to give up his body by drowning in the Ganges. He walked out into the river, but, even though the river should have been extremely deep, at least in the middle, no matter how far he went the water never got above his knees. He ended up without ever reaching deep water. Eventually he came upon the bank on the far side and when he turned to look back, he saw the Kali temple gleaming in moonlight and experienced a sudden deep Awakening. He recognized sheer divine power and consciousness, moving through all beings and controlling all events, including his own attempt to discard the body. Totapuri thus accepted the manifest universe and its energy as a radiant expression of the Absolute. The demarcation between form and formless no longer existed for him. Although his whole life had been spiritual in nature, Totapuri, without any verbal teaching, had opened beyond he experience of the formless absolute into the continuum of consciousness, from which no divine, human, or natural forms are excluded and to which no particular doctrine exclusively applies.
Dakshineswar Temple seen from the Vivekananda Bridge.
The most interesting facet of the whole Ramakrishna-Totapuri Awakening phase is, that although Totapuri was a highly attained monk or guru at the time, he himself, as the above account seems to testify (and is verified in other accounts), may not have been Enlightened to the nth degree at the time he was coaching Ramakrishna. His Attainment may have been somewhere near, between, or similar to or akin to, what in Zen is referred to as Ken-chu-shi or possibly Daijo or maybe even Saijojo. You may recall, at the beginning of the Buddha's spiritual quest, before Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, he studied under two teachers. The first teacher taught him the first seven Jhanas. The second teacher taught him the Eighth Jhana. Both teachers told him they had taught him ALL there was to learn. But Siddhartha still didn't know why there was suffering, so he left each of these teachers and wound up doing six years of austerity practises. These too did not provide the answer to his question and he abandoned these for what has come to be known as Sunyata or the Middle Way. The Sutras indicate that on the night of his Enlightenment, he sat down under the Bodhi Tree and began his meditation by practising the Jhanas then moving to product of his own making, Vipassana Meditation. When his mind was "concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady and attained to imperturbability" he direct it to the "true knowledges" that gave rise to his incredible breakthrough in consciousness known in the sutras as Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi, beyond the beyond of the Eighth Jhana.
Totapuri's full and total Enlightenment transpired AFTER Ramakrishna's full Awakening when he walked out into the river and
saw the Kali temple gleaming in moonlight and experienced a sudden deep Awakening. He recognized sheer divine power and consciousness, moving through all beings and controlling all events, including his own attempt to discard the body. Totapuri thus accepted the manifest universe and its energy as a radiant expression of the Absolute. The demarcation between form and formless no longer existed for him.
Not in the least unlike the same or similar type moonlight driven event FORETOLD by the Wanderling's Zen Mentor and described in Dark Luminosity:
"...the moon's pale-soft beams fell into my eyes unaware of my existance nor me of it, the light thereof poured on it's own down through my pupils and lightning like, a fist size feeling of something akin to bliss began to build and radiate..."
However, Totapuri's Enlightenment or lack of same notwithstanding, Ramakrishna was still able to reach Full Attainment under his auspices anyway -- not unlike the Buddha -- whose teachers had not attained the ultimate either. A similar example of reverse causality is recorded regarding the Awakened American spiritual teacher Lee Lozowick whose Attainment through his guru occurred one full year BEFORE he even met his guru. Of course, the venerated Indian sage the Baghavan Sri Ramana Maharshi would say and is on record for saying, "Abiding in the Self there is no space-time," which would seem to indicate for a spiritual master at the level of the Buddha, Ramana, Totapuri, or Ramakrishna, there's no such thing as the past, the present or future. (source)
AND NOW THIS:
In the above text there is mention of one Trailanga Swami. Trailanga Swami was as well a contemporary of fellow Benares Siddhi master Swami Vishudhananda, with both swamis said to have had lifespans upwards of 300 years or more. Vishudhananda was known to have had personal experiences being in and visiting the mysterious hidden spiritual hermitage high in the Himalayans known as Gyanganj --- also known under the names Shambhala and Shangri la --- on a regular basis.
The MOST comprehensive account of Gyanganj ever created, at least that has come down to us in modern times, was said to have been composed by a venerated Indian holy man by the name of Gopinath Kaviraj (d. 1976). It has been reported that Kaviraj's main source of information was his own guru, Swami Vishudhananda, Through that specific direct connection Kaviraj's book is said to have been written.
GOPINATH KAVIRAJ PART I
PART II------------------PART III
THE CODE MAKER, THE ZEN MAKER
SHANGRI-LA, SHAMBHALA, GYANGANJ, BUDDHISM AND ZEN
THE WAY TO SHAMBHALA
MOLLIFYING THE NAYSAYERS
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
(PLEASE CLICK)
ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT IN A NUTSHELL
SEE:
SEE ALSO
THE RAZOR'S EDGE: W. Somerset Maugham,
Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guy Hague, and Zen
CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
BUDDHISM IN AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS
MAJOR HISTORICAL BUDDHIST MASTERS, ZEN ANCESTORS AND ZEN PATRIARCHS
Bodhidharma, Hui'ko, Hui Neng, Hui Shen, Shih-t'ou Hsi-ch'ien,
Zhaozhou, Moshan Liaoran, Tung-Shan, Te Shan, Dogen
Most of the above excerpted from
Coming Home, the Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions
Lex Hixon
