Homepage of John Grimes

John Grimes is a professor in Michigan State University and author of the book on Vivekachudamani and Ganapathi. This is from the entry on Vivekachudamani in his publications page.

This book is the fruit of a lifetime of enquiry (jijñasa). Much reflection and discrimination (viveka) and detachment (vairagya) has flowed under the bridge. Friends, fellow well-wishers, and yes, even evil-eyed enemies have contributed much. Whom to single out? They all played their alloted parts and departed for places elsewhere. It seems so long ago that I was walking towards the Pakistan-India border station in the burning dust of summer. Rushing to greet me was a collage of odours comprised of fragrant flowers and rotting filth, of exotic spices and suffocating fumes, of incense and mysticism, of antiquity and modernity, and that land wherein wisdom breaks open hearts like tamarind rinds. Through the Khyber Pass - that unbelievable, almost untransversable ribbon of rock, and into the land of enchantment. A sannyasin met me as I crossed the border and said, "You imagine things and you so seriously ask about fulfillment. Life is too short to spend all of one's time analysing everything. Laugh with the barking dogs and welcome naked thoughts with open arms. Things don't just happen, they happen just. Where you come from, you imagine that things happen, perhaps (as his eyes twinkled). But never in Bharat. Bharat is not a place, but a state of being. Chance means that one does not know the law of things. Permutations and combinations, the whence and the wherefore. When thought, word, and deed are one, there are no chance occurances. Then, even a blade of grass does not grow by chance."