The Life and Sayings of a Rare-born Mystic
The Life and Sayings of a Rare-born Mystic
edited and compiled by Betty Camhi and Elliott Eisenberg
North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California ©1990 145 pp.
He moved to England in 1911 and worked there as a simple gardener until 1933 when he moved to India following a suggestion by the poet Rabindranath Tagore to “come to India to teach Silence.” There, he lived in a hut in the Himalayas for 41 years where his job was, as editor Camhi puts it, “simply to BE.”
On a third visit to Ramana, Sunyata received a telepathic message from him that said “We are always ever sunyata. Sunyata took these words as “recognition, initiation, mantra, and name,” and there after called himself Sunyata, the Buddhist term meaning “the void” or “emptiness.” Camhi says, “Like a crystal that reflects many colors yet itself remains pure, clear, unaffected, that's who he would always be, no-thingness. Tat twam asi, he was fond of saying —'Thou are that.'”
In 1975, he moved to Mill Valley, California at the invitation of the Alan Watts Society, and remained there for the last six years of his life.
During his time in India, Sunyata wrote a short but intensely beautiful and profound spiritual autobiography called Memory. This book includes that work along with many of his favorite sayings. I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who, as I do, adores spiritual autobiographies. Sunyata’s is short and simple, but incredibly wise. It is truly inspiring and enlightening! Don’t miss it, trust me. The guy’s an original!
-- reviewed by Karen Fierman