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On Vaishak (Wesak) Full Moon Meditation

 Dated 2nd April 2025.


In my childhood we had a school holiday on the day of Vaishak purnima (or Buddh purnima or Buddh jayanti), a gazetted holiday in India. We were taught that this day commemorates the birth, enlightenment and attainment of Mahasamadhi by Gautama the Buddha. None of us understood the deeper meaning of this day.

 

In the last 5 years, as I read the Discipleship in the New Age book by Master Djwal Khul and his great emphasis on the full moon (Alice Bailey translated Vaishak to Wesak) meditations. I used to ask him inwardly, What is the significance of this natural phenomenon, Master... Why only this day ? And one day suddenly, yogic contemplation or the seed-based intuitive visualisation led to the aha flash moment as –

1. The Sun (of our higher self or the solar angel/soul, Surya-Svarupa) fully irradiates the moon (of our lower self or the lunar self/personality, Chandra-Svarupa).

2. The Master (as the Sun) illumines his group of disciples (who are learning to ignite their lamps but are still dependent on their master since they are not yet fully transformed into an independent Sun).

3. The full irradiation of the Moon signifies that the antahkarana (the rainbow bridge from the lower self to the higher self) is fully constructed and the direct line of sight between the Sun and the Moon is established. 

4. And specifically on the Vaishak night, Gautama Buddha (symbolic of the solar nature of each of us) as a fully enlightened Buddha illumines and blesses his group of disciples (the hierarchy of masters and their disciples, including all of humanity).

- Dairy Notes (February 2025).


Surya-Svarupa (a Sanskrit word meaning the Solar form of Energies) The solar energies represent the forces of the day, i.e., the centrifugal forces which tend towards conscious awareness, objective knowledge, differentiation and intellectual discrimination.

 

Chandra-Svarupa (a Sanskrit word meaning the Lunar form of Energies) The lunar energies symbolize the forces of the night, working in the darkness of the subconscious mind. They are the undifferentiated, regenerative, cen- tripetal forces, flowing from the all-encompassing source of life.


" ... after leaving the last check-post on the Ladakh side at Tankse, I branched off from the cara- van route into the no-man's-land which stretched from the region of the great lakes, Pangong and Nyak-Tso, towards the Aksai-Chin plateau. In those days there were no frontiers between Ladakh and Tibet in this region. It was one of the few spots in the world where man and nature had been left to themselves without interference of man-made `authorities' and governments. Here the inner law of man and the physi- cal law of nature were the only authorities, and I felt thrilled at the thought of being for once entirely on my own, alone in the immensity of nature, facing the earth and the universe as they were before the creation of man, accompanied only by my two faithful Ladakhi's and their horses. The horses more or less determined the choice of our camping-places, as we could stop only where there was sufficient grazing ground for them as well as water.

In spite of the feeling of smallness in the vastness and grandeur of the mountain land- scape, in spite of the knowledge of human limitations and dependence on the whims of wind and weather, water and grazing-grounds, food and fuel and other material cir- cumstances, I had never felt a sense of greater freedom and independence. I realised more than ever how narrow and circumscribed our so called civilised life is, how much we pay for the security of a sheltered life by way of freedom and real independence of thought and action.

When every detail of our life is planned and regulated, and every fraction of time determined beforehand, then the last trace of our boundless and timeless being, in which the freedom of our soul exists, will be suffocated. This freedom does not consist in being able `to do what we want', it is neither arbitrariness nor waywardness, nor the thirst for adventures, but the capacity to accept the unexpected, the unthought-of situations of life, good as well as bad, with an open mind; it is the capacity to adapt oneself to the infinite variety of conditions without losing confidence in the deeper connections between the inner and the outer world. It is the spontaneous certainty of being neither bound by space nor by time, the ability to experience the fullness of both without clinging to any of their aspects, without trying to take possession of them by way of arbitrary fragmentation." - Lama Anagarika Govinda. (The Way of the White Clouds)


 

- Photo - Lama Anagarika Govinda performing ceremonial ritual (seventh ray white magic) on the Full Moon Day in Tibet (Tibet in Pictures by Li Gotami).

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