Jo Ho Jaye

[Guest guest]

Anandamayi Ma often repeated the phrase " Jo Ho Jaye. " Live by these

three words and you will discover all View, all method, and all fruit.

 

Jo Ho Jaye is most often translated as " Whatever happens happens, "

or " Wait for whatever happens. "

 

This is not a statement of fatalism or nihilism. Life is happening.

Only tension causes us to take up a particular stance toward this

ongoingness, for instance, that I like it or I don't like it, or that

it is good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

 

Life simply is. Or, as Chogyal Namkhai Norbu says: Everything is

fine. This means, if we want to live in open awareness, we should try

to relax our compulsion to accept, reject, categorize, fix, predict,

and manipulate everything. Be content in the openness of life

happening just as it is.

 

Our first job as human beings is to apply effort to relax the root

separation and realize ourselves as nondifferent from this cosmic

play. We are not throwing up our hands helplessly. We must make an

effort to surrender our fixations and fixed concepts. Our effort is

also part of the play. Everything belongs.

 

Inevitably, our little " I " , our ego, or small ahamkara wishes to win

for itself; it wishes to survive and assert itself against the free

flowing, open creativity of life. But the small self is only an

expression of the play of the whole. And the whole is victorious.

 

Small self operates under the illusion that it chooses and decides

via its own individual will and can therefore get what it desires.

But as long as we continue choosing, deciding, planning, and

projecting from the point of View of the separate, self-willing ego,

we reinforce our tensions. Even happiness derived from these

activities of small self is limited by fear of losing what we believe

we have gained. When we relax into greater awareness and follow the

promptings of cosmic wisdom, we move in the direction of Self-

realization.

 

But in either case, the life process is totally victorious. It

asserts and expresses itself in every moment and in every happening.

Through our very ignorance and resultant suffering, what we

eventually figure out is that the greedy, self-serving desires of " I "

are nothing but cosmic wisdom virtues under tension. Luckily for us.

 

In every moment, in every happening, Life celebrates itself through

expressing its wisdom, its power, its sweetness, and its compassion.

This is true despite what little " I " feels about good and bad,

desirable and undesirable. What happens is a celebration of Self.

 

Finally, whatever happens is praise. The Kashmiri yogini poet Lalla

wrote: Whatever work I've done, whatever I have thought, was praise

with my body and praise hidden inside my head.

 

The world Self moves with the gestures and rhythms of a natural

devotion of Self to Self. The entire cosmos is engaged in making

offerings with ritual gestures. Our famous compulsiveness is nothing

but a limited reflection of the natural arising of the world as

ritual. The entire world and all of its dimensions is a mandala

within which is enacted puja, yajna, mudra. Out of infinite

potential, there arises a play of devotion. Everything that happens

is this.

 

After doing sadhana for a time, when the possibility of deeper

relaxation comes into View, people often feel fear knowing that, at

some moment, they will have to surrender to life. They will have to

stop asking incessantly " What should I do " ? " How should I live " ? They

will be called upon to relinquish their problem-solving approach and

let the totality of life direct all of their activities.

 

This fear is based on ignorance of the wisdom, awareness, and

responsivity of the life process. Our teachers can give us a glimpse.

We can be inspired by stories of those who have gone before us. But

the fact is that we cannot develop full confidence in Life, in the

world Self, until we consciously begin to allow ourselves to be

guided. For most of us, this happens little-by-little, step-by-step.

 

Remembering Jo Ho Jaye is a practice that can support us in this

process.