Eid, festival of peace
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Sep 10, 2010, 12.00am IST
Eid is celebrated on the first date of Shawwal, that is, the tenth month of the Hijra calendar. During the festival, Muslims exchange gifts, greeting their neighbours as a mark of solidarity and brotherhood.
Eid is celebrated on the first date of Shawwal, that is, the tenth month of the Hijra calendar. During the festival, Muslims exchange gifts, greeting their neighbours as a mark of solidarity and brotherhood.
It is reported that when the Prophet of Islam saw the new moon at the coming of the month of Shawwal, He said: "O God, make this moon a moon of peace for us." This saying of the Prophet expresses the true spirit of Eid that is meant to promote spiritual values among people and create a peaceful environment in society.
Rituals observed on the day of Eid are very simple. Muslims wear new clothes and visit the Eidgah to offer two units of the Eid prayer. In this prayer, they call to mind those teachings of Islam that advocate peace and spirituality and pray to God to bestow His blessings on humanity and help all men and women to promote a healthy society.
After completing this prayer at an Eidgah, Muslims visit their relatives and neighbours to offer greetings, meeting them with the invocation: "May the peace and blessing of God be upon you."
The full name of Eid is Eid ul-Fitr, that is, the Eid that marks the breaking of the fast. In the spirit of Eid ul-Fitr, God and His greatness are acknowledged, His blessings for humanity are acknowledged and thanked. The faithful make a promise to Him that everyone will live together in peace. There is no prescribed ritual for Eid ul-Fitr except for the two units of namaz or prayer.
Generally it is held that Eid ul-Fitr is the Eid of sweets. They are not a religious part of Eid ul-Fitr, but certainly they represent the spirit of Eid, for sweet dishes are always considered to be the sign of love, compassion and good wishes. Gifts of sweets distributed on the day of Eid represent the true spirit of this Islamic festival.
The Prophet of Islam once said that an exchange of gifts promotes love in society. So, sweets are not simply sweets: they also have a spiritual meaning. Sweets represent not only the spirit of Eid, but also the true spirit of Islam.
Prayer on the day of Eid is offered in congregation. All Muslims, including women and children, gather together in congregational prayer in order to promote harmony and brotherhood, not only among Muslims but others also.
Eid comes just after the final day of fasting. The month of fasting and the day of Eid ul-Fitr both represent two very important features in Islam. The Prophet Muhammad said that the month of fasting was a month of patience. That is, it is a month of self-restraint, a month of self-discipline, a month of self-control, a month of promoting duty-consciousness.
Eid ul-Fitr represents the reward of God, which will be granted by God to those who observe one month's fasting. In other words, fasting represents dutiful worldly life and Eid ul-Fitr represents the reward that will be given in return by God to man.
According to tradition, the day of Eid is the day of divine reward. When believers observe their duty in the month of Ramzan in the true spirit of the season, God declares: "O angels, be witness that I have decided to bestow upon them paradise in the world hereafter."
In short, the month of fasting represents the responsibilities of the believers in this world and Eid ul-Fitr represents the reward given to them in the world hereafter.
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Everything is relative
R K Gupta, Sep 10, 2010, 12.00am IST
By the time you read this, we would have traveled great distances. We would have moved through space - the earth, the solar system and the galaxy of which we are a part, are all moving at tremendous speed.
We are no longer where we were a moment ago. Yet relatively speaking, with reference to our own surroundings, we are in the same place. Buildings, towns, cities, rivers, oceans and mountains, all of them stand in the same place with reference to each other, although in absolute terms this would not be so at all. A person located in space might see us moving, but we ourselves do not see this. This is what relativity is.
Everything is changing every moment but in a short span of time, the change is not noticed. In fact time and relativity are interconnected. An atom and its sub-atomic particles all rotate on their own axis. The fundamental particle, that is, the smallest sub-atomic particle, also rotates on its axis. The time taken by it in making one rotation on its axis is the fundamental unit of time. Every particle and all celestial bodies have their own time. We are aware of the moon-day, which is much shorter than an earth day. The rotation of the particle around its axis is what relativity is. Since the particle moves around itself, for the viewer, change keeps occurring continuously. It is the relationship between the seer, the one who sees, and the scene, which determines relativity. This duality between the seer and the scene is the root cause of relativity.
Philosophically, what is called maya or illusion is in fact relativity. Things are as they are, but different viewers see them differently depending upon their own relative position. In other words, it depends on their perceptions. Maya does not mean falsehood or non-existence; it is anything and everything that is constantly changing and therefore, causing an illusion. Since things keep on changing, they do not have permanence and hence they are called illusionary. The same things put differently or in different circumstances appear differently.
The example of a fabric is apt to illustrate the nature of things. A piece of fabric is an arrangement of yarn. Yarn in turn is a combination of fibres and fibese are made of molecules and so on. At different stages they all look different but their reality remains unchanged. It is the manifestation of the same fundamental existence in different forms that gives it different names and character and the viewer sees them differently.
At the level of consciousness, the field of relativity is set because of i-ness; that is, because of the feeling of 'I' and 'you'. This duality of 'I' and 'you' is the subtlest level of relativity. Every person sees the whole world from his own perspective. He keeps himself at the centre of the whole world around him and relates every thing to himself.
All creatures thus see the whole of existence from their own perspective and gain different impressions of the same event or happening. What is good for one becomes bad for the other and vice-versa, which gives rise to agony and suffering. But when this feeling of duality ceases to exist, one sees the same Self that is present and acting in all living beings, which makes the perceiver realise the truth.
That is, it confers on him the ability to penetrate the veil of relativity. It then makes him content and peaceful.
We are no longer where we were a moment ago. Yet relatively speaking, with reference to our own surroundings, we are in the same place. Buildings, towns, cities, rivers, oceans and mountains, all of them stand in the same place with reference to each other, although in absolute terms this would not be so at all. A person located in space might see us moving, but we ourselves do not see this. This is what relativity is.
Everything is changing every moment but in a short span of time, the change is not noticed. In fact time and relativity are interconnected. An atom and its sub-atomic particles all rotate on their own axis. The fundamental particle, that is, the smallest sub-atomic particle, also rotates on its axis. The time taken by it in making one rotation on its axis is the fundamental unit of time. Every particle and all celestial bodies have their own time. We are aware of the moon-day, which is much shorter than an earth day. The rotation of the particle around its axis is what relativity is. Since the particle moves around itself, for the viewer, change keeps occurring continuously. It is the relationship between the seer, the one who sees, and the scene, which determines relativity. This duality between the seer and the scene is the root cause of relativity.
Philosophically, what is called maya or illusion is in fact relativity. Things are as they are, but different viewers see them differently depending upon their own relative position. In other words, it depends on their perceptions. Maya does not mean falsehood or non-existence; it is anything and everything that is constantly changing and therefore, causing an illusion. Since things keep on changing, they do not have permanence and hence they are called illusionary. The same things put differently or in different circumstances appear differently.
The example of a fabric is apt to illustrate the nature of things. A piece of fabric is an arrangement of yarn. Yarn in turn is a combination of fibres and fibese are made of molecules and so on. At different stages they all look different but their reality remains unchanged. It is the manifestation of the same fundamental existence in different forms that gives it different names and character and the viewer sees them differently.
At the level of consciousness, the field of relativity is set because of i-ness; that is, because of the feeling of 'I' and 'you'. This duality of 'I' and 'you' is the subtlest level of relativity. Every person sees the whole world from his own perspective. He keeps himself at the centre of the whole world around him and relates every thing to himself.
All creatures thus see the whole of existence from their own perspective and gain different impressions of the same event or happening. What is good for one becomes bad for the other and vice-versa, which gives rise to agony and suffering. But when this feeling of duality ceases to exist, one sees the same Self that is present and acting in all living beings, which makes the perceiver realise the truth.
That is, it confers on him the ability to penetrate the veil of relativity. It then makes him content and peaceful.
Prophet said be realistic
Maria Khan, Sep 9, 2010, 12.00am IST
The Prophet's Mecca strategy was based on realism. Realism is an essential part of the teachings of Islam.
The Prophet's Mecca strategy was based on realism. Realism is an essential part of the teachings of Islam.
When the Prophet of Islam started his mission in Mecca, during the first 13 years he had to face severe opposition from leaders of the Quraysh tribe who ruled Mecca. To counter the atrocities committed by the Quraysh, Umar Farooq, the Prophet's companion, sought permission for an armed conflict with the Quraysh. But the Prophet was not in favour of confrontation. Conflict, he realised, would have been counterproductive in this case. The Prophet's Mecca strategy was based on realism. Realism is an essential part of the teachings of Islam.
There are two ways of dealing with a problem. One is planned action after due consideration. The other is impulsive action driven by emotion, without a thought for possible consequences. The Prophet followed the first; he avoided confronting those hostile to him and migrated from Mecca to Medina.
While in Medina, the Prophet dreamt that he and his companions were performing Umra in Mecca. Prophet Muhammad and his followers set out on a peaceful journey to Mecca. When they reached Hudaibiyyah near Mecca, the Quraysh stopped them. At this point, the Prophet started negotiations for peace with the Meccans. The Hudaibiyyah Pact, a 10-year no-war pact, was signed between Muhammad and the people of Mecca. One clause laid down was that the Prophet would not enter Mecca. He had to return to Medina from Hudaibiyyah. The conditions he'd agreed to were disadvantageous to Prophet Muhammad and his companions, but he realised the importance of a treaty that guaranteed peace in the region for a decade, and enable him to teach Islam unhindered.
A non-confrontationist approach was preferred. The Prophet was a stronger believer of status quo – not just accepting a situation passively but taking action of an exalted nature. Controversies are sorted out. At this stage, the unwise think that if they surrender, their prestige will suffer. However, a wise person refrains from entering into any further conflict, as that only results in greater losses. With an unemotional approach and reasonable thinking, both sides can move away from the point of conflict and find ways to resolve the issue. The Prophet did exactly that. He removed away from the area of conflict and diverted his energies to the peaceful propagation of Islam.
The Prophet firmly believed that one should not react impulsively to a problem. It's better to find a way out using the opportunities available. Even if one has to accept all the conditions of the opponent, to begin with, it might be pragmatic to do so.
After sorting out controversial issues, one can strengthen oneself to the point where the equation of power changes and the issue gets resolved without any conflict. This is what the Prophet did at Hudaibiyyah.
After he returned to Medina, two years later, as a result of his preaching, there was an enormous increase in the number of his companions. And when the Meccans violated the pact, the Prophet marched with his companions peacefully towards Mecca. The peace treaty gave the Prophet the opportunity to strengthen himself. Seeing the increased number of his followers, the Meccans embraced Islam without any bloodshed.
It's in nature's scheme of things that where there are problems, there are also opportunities. Success can be attained simply by availing of those opportunities. But people generally get entangled in problems thinking that unless hurdles are first removed, the journey ahead cannot be undertaken.
River of enlightenment
Bindu Chawla, Sep 9, 2010, 12.00am IST
Long before the universities packaged the deeply spiritual science of Hindustani music into classroom textbooks, the masters used very little verbiage to communicate its essence.
Long before the universities packaged the deeply spiritual science of Hindustani music into classroom textbooks, the masters used very little verbiage to communicate its essence.
They explained little, but when they did, it was in the form of idioms, proverbs, hyperboles, and adages. But these would show you the world!
For instance, lesson one, they would say, 'paanee karo', asking you to repeat. Like the word simran or internal repetition in scriptures, you were to repeat the notes, phrases, scale, and words, not just a few times, not for some time, but for hours – nay, for years, till your words and musical phrases flowed to perfection.
Renowned master Ustad Amir Khan Saheb would often nod and hand over the so-called 'simple' prescription to his disciples: "Hmmm, sapaat..., karte raho". The word sapaat means 'straight', and he referred to the straight up and down movements of the scale or the raga, to be repeated at length till the gems of enlightenment about its inner nature began to flash through your mind in intuition, and the raga shed its heaviness, flowing out of you like a river of enlightenment.
Once, when Khan Saheb had just finished singing a big raga seated among his disciples, Pandit Amarnathji smiled at him and said, "Khan Saheb, you have turned the singing into light music," at which one of his gurubhais saw red, thinking it an affront. But Khan Saheb smiled at Panditji affectionately, saying "I appreciate your understanding". He knew what he meant to say. That the greatest of music 'sounded' simple though an immense amount of hard labour had gone into reaching its state of lucidity.
On another occasion, after he performed the muhurat for `Garam Coat,' a film whose music was composed by Panditji, his disciple, Ustad Amir Khan Saheb asked, "Son, how long did you take to compose this song?" It was the beautiful 'Jogia se preet kiye dukh hoye', a Meera bhajan sung byLata Mangeshkar. "About 15-20 days", was the reply. To which Khan Saheb said, "If you were to take the same amount of time to compose your rendering of any raga before each concert, how would it be..."? It was the same lesson in 'simplicity'.
Beyond the rational mind, it was repetition alone that took you to the highest peak in your sadhana —to samadhi state, union with the Supreme. The very words aalaap and taan in the Hindustani khayal refer to dhyana or concentration on the raga's form till the point of its dissolution in the mind during singing, both slow and fast. Aalaap means to expand or 'spread the notes wide' during slow unfolding of the raga's scale, and taan means to 'stretch them taut' in the faster portion, as the artist reaches the peak of exhilaration in dhyana, forgetting all else. And in the process, taking along his listeners as well!
Pandit Amarnathji would say that the image of the raga's scale in your mind should be horizontal, not vertical, talking of the raga's inner direction during meditation, which is meant to take you to another kind of 'high'—and to the 'mental release'. Finally, as he said, "meditation means not to concentrate on anything when you sing".
That is why, when Panditji sang it, the raga was no longer a ladder-like scale. It was an aural poem.
Why we are the way we are
SADHGURU, Sep 10, 2010, 12.00am IST
Whichever way you have 'become', you have only created and cultivated a small part of it consciously.
Whichever way you have 'become', you have only created and cultivated a small part of it consciously.
A large part of you is unconscious because most of what you perceive is not in your awareness. Sense perception is like that – everything that goes in through your sense organs gets established in your system to be remembered forever. This is karma. Every impression that the five sense organs take in is stored. This is not against you; this information is useful. If you clean up all this information, you will not know how to handle even the simplest aspects of life.
It is only because the information is coming in such torrents, it is so complex, and most of it goes into you without your consciousness so it has become a problem. How you became the way you are is just a tendency that you developed because of the information you gathered. This tendency is traditionally called vasana. It is like a smell. Whatever is there in maximum quantity is the kind of smell you experience. Because you produce this kind of smell, a certain type of life moves towards you, and you also tend to move in that direction.
Now, you use perfume to cover the smell. In the first meeting, people may get deceived. The moment they notice the stink, they are going to run away. Is that the way to live?
So it doesn't matter what impressions you have gathered, what you make of it is in your hands. An unpleasant experience is carried by most like a badge, always talking about it. "This happened; somebody did this to me, that's why i'm like this." They try to cover all their unpleasantness with this one badge.
One basic symbolism in yoga and Indian spirituality has always been a lotus. This is essentially because a lotus grows best wherever there is dirt. Either you can resist the dirt; you can become the dirt, or transform it into a wonderful blossom. It's your choice.
If unpleasant things have happened to you, it is all the more important that you turn wiser and more beautiful as quick as possible, because you know the pain of unpleasantness. If unpleasant things have happened, all you have to do is see how such things do not happen again to you or to those around you. Whatever you are right now is your own creation, perhaps an unconscious one. Unconscious processing of your impressions has landed you where you are now. If you consciously process the impressions, you could turn them into something else.
To drop your vasanas, and get released from these tendencies is an endless work because in the process you may end up creating more karma. So, instead of trying to erase the smell, you need to distance yourself from the source.
Whatever the nature of karma, the recording mechanisms are only two – your body and mind. If you create little space between you and your physical body and mental structure, then whatever the karma, or vasanas, they have no impact on you. Then, they just die.
The choice is yours – you could be a victim, a spectator, or the master of your life.
Buddha, sangha and dharma
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Sep 8, 2010, 12.00am IST
On the spiritual path there are three factors: Buddha, the master or the presence of the enlightened, sangha, the commune or group, and dharma, your true nature. Life blossoms naturally when there is a balance between the three.
On the spiritual path there are three factors: Buddha, the master or the presence of the enlightened, sangha, the commune or group, and dharma, your true nature. Life blossoms naturally when there is a balance between the three.
The Buddha is a doorway, and the doorway needs to be more charming than what lies beyond so that people come to the doorway. If you are out in the street and there is rain and thunder, or scorching weather, you feel the need for a shelter. You look and find a doorway. Have you noticed that then, the doorway is more inviting and joyful than anything else in the world?
Similarly, the closer you get to the master, the more charm, newness and love you feel. Nothing in the world could give that much peace, joy and pleasure. It's like depth without a bottom. This is a sign that you have come to the master.
Once you enter the door, you see the world from there, from the eyes of the master. Then in any situation you will think: How would the master handle this? See the world from the eyes of the master and the world looks so much more beautiful as a place filled with love, joy, cooperation and compassion.
Looking through the doorway there is no fear. From inside your home, you can look at the storm and the bright sun too; yet you can be relaxed as you are in the shelter. Such a sense of security, fullness and joy comes. That is the purpose of having a master.
Sangha is charming from a distance, but the closer you get, it pushes all your buttons and brings out all the unwanted things from within you. If you think a group is good it means you are not yet completely with the group. When you are totally part of that group, you will find that some bickering will come up. But you are the one who makes the group so if you are good, your group will also be good.
Sangha has a reverse nature to Buddha. Buddha makes your mind one-pointed; sangha, because it is of so many people, can scatter your mind, fragment it. Once you are used to a sangha, it loses its charm. This is the nature of sangha. Still, it is very supportive. If it were repulsive all the time, then nobody would be part of sangha.
Buddha uplifts with Grace, love and knowledge, Buddha pulls you up from above, and sangha pushes you up from below.
Dharma is to be in the middle. Avoiding extremes is your nature to be in balance, to smile from the depth of your heart, to accept entire existence totally as it is. Often you crave for Buddha and are averse to sangha, and you try to change; but by changing sangha or Buddha, you are not going to change.
The main purpose is to come to the centre deep within you, which means to find your dharma. A sense of deep acceptance for this moment, for every moment, is dharma. All problems and negativity are generated from our mind.
The world is not bad; we make our world ugly or beautiful. So when you are in your dharma, your nature, you will blame neither the world nor the Divine.
Dharma is that which puts you in the middle and makes you comfortable with the world. It allows you to contribute to the world, be at ease with the Divine, to feel part of the Divine.
Wheel of existence
Sep 7, 2010, 12.00am IST
Pythagoras's is the first experiment in creating a synthesis. Twenty-five centuries have passed since then and nobody has tried it again. Nobody else before had done it, and nobody else has done it afterwards either. It needs a mind that is both scientific and mystic. It is rare.
Pythagoras's is the first experiment in creating a synthesis. Twenty-five centuries have passed since then and nobody has tried it again. Nobody else before had done it, and nobody else has done it afterwards either. It needs a mind that is both scientific and mystic. It is rare.
There have been great mystics like the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. And there have been great scientists like Newton, Edison, Einstein. But to find a man who is at home with both worlds is difficult. Pythagoras is a class unto himself.
The synthesis was needed then as it is needed today because the world is again at the same point. The world moves in a wheel motion. Samsara in Sanskrit means 'the world', it also means the wheel. The wheel is big: one circle is completed in 25 centuries.
Twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, Atlantis came to an end because of man's own scientific growth. Without wisdom, scientific growth is dangerous. It is like putting a sword in the hands of a child. Now 25 centuries have passed since Pythagoras. Again there is chaos. The wheel has come to the same point.
Uprooted, life loses meaning as values disappear. A great darkness descends. There's no sense of direction. One simply feels accidental. There seems to be neither purpose nor significance in life that seems to be all chance. It seems existence does not care for you; that there is no life after death and whatsoever you do is futile, routine and mechanical. Everything seems pointless.
Chaotic times can either be a great curse, as it happened in Atlantis, or can prove to be a quantum leap in human growth. It depends on how we use them. It is only in such great times of chaos that great stars are born.
Pythagoras was not alone. In Greece, Pythagoras and Heraclitus were born, just as in India, we had the Buddha, Mahavira and others. In China, there were Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, and Lieh Tzu. In Iran there was Zarathustra. In the Brahmin tradition, there have been many great Upanishadic seers. All these great masters were born at a certain stage in human history, 25 centuries ago.
Now we are again in great chaos, and man's fate will depend on what we do. Either we will destroy ourselves like the civilisation that destroyed itself in Atlantis; we will be drowned in our own knowledge; in our own science or, there is a possibility that we can take a quantum leap.
Ordinary people, the majority, live in unconsciousness; so they can't see even a few steps ahead. If we can create a great momentum for meditation, for the inward journey, for tranquillity, stillness and love, humanity will be born anew. A new man will be born. And once you miss these times, then for 25 centuries again you will remain the same. Only a few people will achieve enlightenment. Here and there, once in a while, a person will become alert and aware and divine. The greater part of humanity goes on living in hell.
I feel a deep spiritual affinity with Pythagoras. I am also bringing you a synthesis of East and West, of science and religion, of intellect and intuition, of male and female mind, of the head and heart, of right and left. I am also trying in every possible way to create a great harmony, because only that harmony can save and bring new life.
(Talk: Osho; excerpt from Philosophia Perennis, courtesy: Osho International Foundation.www.osho.com )
Working with values
Janina Gomes, Sep 6, 2010, 12.00am IST
Professional life flowers best in situations where collaboration and partnership with others is the norm and where there is mutual trust and understanding.
Professional life flowers best in situations where collaboration and partnership with others is the norm and where there is mutual trust and understanding.
However, when employees are driven to deliver results on the basis of unhealthy comparisons, there is trouble. When the Bhagavad Gita speaks of the need for action and remaining detached from the fruits of one's action, it is saying what our elders often repeat to us: To work with detachment.
Sometimes, hierarchy can help smooth the flow of development. An atmosphere of mutual trust and give and take can ensure that participation is democratic. There are spiritual models of functioning based on hierarchy that do promote spiritual growth. There are, however, also holistic models that are more flexible and that ensure a two-way flow, where every aspect of our lives – physical, psychological, emotional and social – is integrated.
This model requires participants to have spiritual and emotional maturity. A head honcho would combine intellectual prowess with compassion and kindness and enforce discipline without stepping on toes. The strengths of each individual would be tapped and together a family of employees is created, anchored to eternal values.
A value-driven organisation has a different mindset. The open way of functioning ensures that each individual is valued for what he can contribute. No unfavourable comparisons are made. If at all, comparison is only meant to create a higher benchmark and so is aspirational.
Too much emphasis on academia and brilliance and on rewarding results has sometimes given rise to lopsided priorities. What often get rewarded is superficial success, and not long-term commitment and loyalty to the organisation or mission.
The business world is changing. Management practices are now increasingly including a spiritual perspective. There is so much more listening than talking. There is a greater sense of cooperation and collaboration in a spiritually empowered marketplace.
Although the younger generation is much more market savvy than the previous generation, they do require spiritual inputs to cater holistically to changing environments and values. The words love, acceptance and transformation are back in circulation in the workplace, thereby giving less room for authoritarianism.
New Age spiritual teachers are faced with the task of conveying in contemporary easy-to-understand terms the priceless messages contained in sacred texts of yore that explain eternal values, so important for right thinking and living, whether at home or at the workplace. There is an effort to find what unites rather than divides. The quest for eternal values like love, peace, joy and fulfillment are being given fresh lease of life.
In the pursuit of holistic development of employer and employee, a professional worker is required to be not just excellent in his job but also display evolved qualities that make him less militant and more cooperative, less of a complainer and more of a doer. The more the employee is engaged in service of others, the less he tends to focus on selfish motivations and ends that might sometimes egg him to veer off the straight path. And service thus rendered with a positive and wholehearted approach can only add to common benefit.
Definitely, there is a place for professional excellence in your working life. But that has to include also spiritual progress that will get reflected in the quality of work you do as well as in the manner in which you relate to others in the workplace and outside.
Life, gross and subtle
P V VAIDYANATHAN, Sep 5, 2010, 12.00am IST
Life is complex, its nature is duality, it's complicated, unpredictable, and it's multi-dimensional. But more than that, life is a combination of the subtle and the gross. The gross, though easy to comprehend, has its own set of problems and the subtle is difficult to comprehend.
Life is complex, its nature is duality, it's complicated, unpredictable, and it's multi-dimensional. But more than that, life is a combination of the subtle and the gross. The gross, though easy to comprehend, has its own set of problems and the subtle is difficult to comprehend.
For example, the body is gross, the mind is subtle. Again, the mind is gross in comparison to the soul, or being. While moving from thoughts to words to actions, we are moving from subtle to gross. Actions and words are such that anyone can understand and control them, but thoughts are difficult to control or understand. Emotions, feelings, and intuition belong to the subtle world, while doing is usually of the gross world. Even in emotions, anger, jealousy, greed, and worry are gross and easy to acquire, while love, patience, honesty, forgiveness and altruism are subtle, and difficult to cultivate.
The gross elements in life are useful, but without the subtle elements, their use is limited or is accompanied by much pain and sorrow. For example, any medicine that doctors use to cure an illness is a gross thing. While medicines do their job quickly and efficiently, they also cause a lot of side effects, and can even prove fatal. The same effect or cure can be achieved by going deep into the mind, using positive thoughts, energies, emotions and feelings to boost one's own immunity and fight the disease. This subtle level treatment is without any side effects, but takes time, and is not possible for everyone. Only those who are highly meditative and who can see inward, can harness their subtle energies and bring them together in a strong manner, to achieve this. But one can at least combine both, to get better results.
Once we are aware that life has these components, we can literally feel the days when the body is loaded with negative energy, and is feeling unmotivated, lethargic, tired, listless, and futile. Such are the periods when you need to sit quietly and meditate, go deep into your inner recesses, and find your innermost being or soul, which is a powerhouse of energy. If we don't, then these frustrations will eventually act on our appetite, sleep and our immunity, making us victims of disease — stress, acidity, hypertension, insomnia, diabetes and cancer.
A rose is the gross element. Its fragrance is the subtle element. A flower is incomplete without fragrance. Similarly, human beings can exist as physical bodies for 70 or 80 years, but they can be fruitful, or life can be meaningful, and they can be existentially successful only if they are able to discover their fragrance. A human being is declared as being alive or dead only on the basis of the presence or absence of his sukshma sharira or subtle energy. Apart from this subtle energy running through us, there is no difference between someone alive or dead.
Our aim should be to acknowledge and get in tune with this subtle force or energy, what is known as prana, or soul or atma. It is by connecting to this that we get an inkling of the subtle elements, and can harness unlimited potential and energy, to live our lives with joy, happiness, good health and peace. Otherwise, we will go on living at the gross level, finding life only good in phases, often finding life meaningless and frustrating.
Taste the sweetness of life
DISCOURSE: SADHGURU, Sep 5, 2010, 12.00am IST
When you exist here as body or mind, your suffering is inevitable. Your body and mind are always subject to the forces of duality, so circumstantial aspects will rule.
As long as this is so, you being happy or unhappy, peaceful or not, is not in your control – the way you are right now depends on the situations you are in. Meditation means to transcend limitations of physical body and mind so that you exist in a state where body and mind are not deciding the quality of who you are. During meditation you are in touch with the source, the basis of your body and mind. The basis of all creation is what you are referring to as God. Body and mind are something that you gathered from outside. They are not the basis of life, they are only the surface.
The physical reality of existence is only the peel of the fruit. Only as a protective layer for the fruit, the peel has some value; not by itself. You have to feed your body, clothe it, decorate it, and pamper it in so many ways. This seems very important right now. But if that something which is the basis of your body and mind, that which you have never experienced so far, leaves this body, nobody is interested in this body anymore. The fruit is gone. Nobody is interested in the peel alone. Only because the fruit is inside, we value the peel. But right now, you have gotten so deeply involved with the peel that you have forgotten about the fruit. If you are eating the peel of life, how can life be? It has to be bitter. But the problem with the peel is, it has spots of sweetness in it. Right now, your whole life is about searching for these spots of sweetness. These spots of sweetness have come only because of the fruit. If you transcend the peel, if you go beyond the peel and taste the fruit, your life will become completely different. Physical existence is just the peel of life.
Right now, your whole experience of life is limited to the physical existence because you experience life only through your five senses. Sense organs can only experience that which is physical. They cannot experience anything beyond that.
If you want to experience something beyond the physical existence, you need to go beyond the five senses. Right now, you can only talk about God; you cannot experience God. But if you can experience the fruit beyond the peel and access that which is the source of creation, there is a possibility for you to live every moment of your life in the company of the Divine – an intelligence and competence that will make your life magical and blissful. If you do not utilise this possibility, why exist here as a human being? If we have just come here to eat, sleep, reproduce and die one day, we don't need this kind of intelligence; we don't need this kind of body. Once you have come here as a human being, you have come with the capability of knowing and experiencing life beyond the physical dimension. That is what meditation means – to know life beyond the limitations of the five senses; to know life beyond the sphere of that which is physical; to know and experience life at the source, not the surface. To live, and to live totally.
True love knows no fear
Damodara Pandita Dasa, Aug 30, 2010, 12.00am IST
The power of love is so overwhelming that even its skewed form, lust, impels two incompatible people to come together in the name of love.
The power of love is so overwhelming that even its skewed form, lust, impels two incompatible people to come together in the name of love.
Genuine love essentially commits itself to first giving or offering the best from the heart with an attitude of pleasing the recipient and where high expectations of returns are practically never there in one's list of priorities.
Lust bears the indelible stamp of taking from another, because pride condemns the very act or thought of giving as a defilement of one's self-respect; demand levels are so unreasonably high that one may even go to the extent of turning violent if what one receives falls short of irrational expectations. Lust feeds on feverish praise recognition and dominance, whereas love maintains detachment from selfish gain, being willing to sacrifice everything for the welfare of the beloved.
Here's an analogy: Both gold and iron sell in the market as metals; but, a few grams of the lustrous, soft rarer metal costs more than a tonne of its hard and dull counterpart that is available in an incomparably larger quantity. Just as quantity does not assure quality, similarly, selfless love does not lose its unprecedented value just because it is rarely experienced.
Pretentious words and vain promises are favourite disguises of lust. Love, on the other hand, wears the garb of simplicity, speaks the language of purity, walks the path of humility, adopts the code of tolerance and commits itself to the religion of respecting every being, both moveable and immoveable, as the precious creation of God. No one is more exalted than the other.
Gentle love is invincible whereas brutal lust stifles by the impetus of its own inflammable nature that burns to ashes all traces of reason, compassion and empathy. When one's lustful advances are spurned, and the lusting is frustrated, all the illusory sheen of false attraction and attachment instantaneously turns into contempt and retaliation in the form of abuse, defamation and destruction. There is no trace of love, here.
Until and unless one is able to discriminate between true love and deceptive lust, one is unable to genuinely appreciate the unfathomable treasures of wisdom lying concealed in Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's 'Shikshastakam', wherein the ardent lover of God manifests such a degree of resignation that he is fully prepared to undergo any kind of adversity – birth after birth – to attain to the Lord's lotus feet. If, in spite of all this surrender, he never ever gets a glimpse or is shunned by his beloved Lord, still his faith would not diminish even an iota; rather, his inexhaustible affection would increase a million-fold without a trace of misgiving.
This simple but true story says so much. Once, Krishna had a splitting headache. No doctor could cure Him. Finally, Krishna revealed that only the dust of the lotus feet of His unalloyed devotees could give Him relief. The moment the gopis heard of this, they offered all the dust from their feet. When admonished for even thinking of allowing the dust of their feet to be put on the head of their venerable Lord – an offence that would send them to hell – they joyfully replied, "We don't care about going to hell! We would willingly suffer in hell, for all eternity, if it gave a moment of relief to our beloved Krishna!"
(The writer is a member of ISKCON, Pune.)
A contemporary religion
Ashok Vohra, Sep 4, 2010, 12.00am IST
Whether religion is science is a question that has occupied a central place in debates among believers and the faithful on the one hand and empiricists and scientists on the other.
Whether religion is science is a question that has occupied a central place in debates among believers and the faithful on the one hand and empiricists and scientists on the other.
Modern science accepts a theory or a practice only if in principle it can be proved and confirmed by experiments and observations. According to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, conventional religion is not able to provide the kind of proof demanded by science -- theories of creation, human nature, ethical and social values.
Science, however, is able to give such answers. For example, scientific theories of evolution are able to present satisfactory and rationally acceptable explanations of the existence of human life than any theology has done so far. Astronomy conclusively demonstrates the insignificance of earth as compared to other celestial phenomena. Theories of good moral conduct can be better explained as social conveniences rather than the embodiment of eternal values as theology does. Psychological behaviourism explains human nature in terms of stimulus and response.
Religion from a psychoanalytic view is an illusion. Karl Marx goes to the extent of saying that religion is opium to people. Scholars of comparative religion and social anthropology maintain that all religions are manmade. So much so that men "can make a god out of glands, if only we set about it". `Proofs' advanced for the existence of God by all religions and theologians are far from satisfactory.
Religion faces formidable challenges not only from science, but is also threatened by much more damaging inter and intra religious contradictions. According to Radhakrishnan, "Nothing is so hostile to religion as other religions." This has disastrous effects for all religions. It makes the conventional and established religions morally ineffective. From this he concludes that, "The world would be a much more religious place if all religions were removed from it."
Sectarian religions are the outcome of the illogical belief in a single religion for mankind, and this is because of 'unreason and intolerance'. The religion we need is that which rejects this mistaken belief. It subscribes to the concept of a universal God, as advocated by mystics. It asks us to get behind all outward manifestations like churches, temples and mosques and worship the nameless that comprehends and transcends every name.
The purpose of such a universal religion, according to Radhakrishnan is not communicability; rather, it "is spiritual certainty, the conviction that love and justice are at the heart of the universe, that the spirit which gives rise to man will further his perfection". Its outcome is universal brotherhood. Such a religion, even after undergoing the onslaught of conventional religions, shall persist with the conviction that "though the waves on the shore may be broken, the ocean reigns, nevertheless".
We need a religion that recognises that man is mind-body-spirit and divine by nature. Its goal would be total harmony. The objective is not just self-perfection but social redemption as well. The moment we realise that all human beings are divine "we could not rest until the whole world was redeemed. No one was really saved until the world was saved".
The religion we need, according to Radhakrishnan, will have to be "a vital religion, a live philosophy which will reconstruct the bases of conviction and devise a scheme of life which men can follow with self-respect and joy". Contact with the given reality, fulfilling metaphysical requirements, balancing spiritual needs with a scientific temper would be its hallmark.
The writer teaches philosophy at Delhi University
When you walk alone
Radha Kumar, Sep 7, 2010, 12.00am IST
When large scale copying of ideas and lifestyles is the norm, it is unusual for one to embark on an unexplored path out of conviction.
When large scale copying of ideas and lifestyles is the norm, it is unusual for one to embark on an unexplored path out of conviction.
On uncharted territory every decision taken is a unique one as it has no precedence; so it's a challenge. To do so requires tremendous courage,conviction and faith in one's own capability. Taking a known path is safer, as one would know what to expect or what turn events might take. When youwalk alone, there is the danger of giving in to self-doubt or feeling vulnerable at being ridiculed for having taken a "brave decision." Some might call it arrogance.
When frustration sets in it is important to replay situations that propelled us to take the unbeaten path. When in conflict, go and relive the decision. That would help clarify your purpose and motivation. When that is sorted, out, the next step is to analyse the present situation. You would perhaps conclude that conflicts in the mind arise when there is a gap between what was expected and what is currently occurring. It is when these conflicts occur that depressing doubts begin. Stress, anxiety and other psychosomatic problems begin to emerge causing health problems.
What is the way out? Gautama Buddha's Second Noble Truth -- Patticasamuppada or Dukkha samuddaya -- focuses on 12 parameters. These interconnecting links help to deal with challenging situations that might confuse and confound. Buddha's process of deduction provides a logical perspective.
We doubt because the sense object contact inevitably brings forth various emotions, according to Buddha. But the turmoil that occurs inevitably is because we identify our emotions with what is occurring around so completely that all rational thinking is lost. Clinging to emotions that arise due to occurrences should be avoided.
Buddha's aim was to provide a logical solution which manifested in the four Arya Satyas. Because of its innate simplicity Buddha's teachings attract the common man and help him to overcome self doubt and dissatisfaction. In order to apply his practical notion to our day-to-day life we would have to comprehend the following: Firstly, nothing is permanent, so accept where we are now and not cling to the effects that are thrown our way. We should be pragmatic and clinically study why we are in a state of turmoil or take it one notch higher and introspect to see if we are really in a state of dissatisfaction. On dispassionate analysis we will see that every situation that we are in is because of the way or the manner in which we have handled or perceived the occurrences around us.
Walking alone is not a problem but to stay on course, understand and face challenges therein is the true test. It would help then to look at achievers who have reached the pinnacle of excellence in their respective fields. Are they not people like you and me who have broken the set stereotype and gone beyond the paradigm? Have they not set an example that is beyond the ordinary? The difference is that, though they walked alone, they did so with conviction, confidence and commitment like the Paccheka Buddha of early Buddhist philosophy who was an individual in pursuit of a way out of the daily trammels of living, but charting his own course.
(The writer teaches ancient Indian culture at St Xaviers College, Mumbai.)
Conscious and unconscious
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Sep 4, 2010, 12.00am IST
The human mind is divided into two parts: the conscious and the unconscious. These are integral parts of every individual mind, whether male or female.
The human mind is divided into two parts: the conscious and the unconscious. These are integral parts of every individual mind, whether male or female.
The conscious mind deals with everything that is within the realm of our awareness, whereas theunconscious mind deals with all those thoughts that the individual is unaware of but which influence his behaviour.
Our body is a highly complex organism. There are numerous functions going on at all times in our bodies like seeing, hearing, digestion, respiration and different kinds of movements. Almost all these functions are governed by the unconscious mind. Little effort is required on the part of our consciousness for the smooth functioning of these bodily requirements.
The conscious mind has unlimited capacity for thinking and analysing facts. But if everything is placed in charge of the unconscious mind, according to the divine plan of creation, what is the role of the conscious mind? It is to seek out the truth. The Creator has made the conscious mind free to involve itself solely in the great quest for truth. To search for truth is our greatest task.
What is truth? Truth is, in other words, the reality of life. We must try to know the secret of life, its purpose and goal, to know what is right and wrong, what are the minus and plus points, what is negative and positive thinking, what is good for the individual and for society.
The answers to these questions are not written on any mountainside. It is up to us to discover the truth. Knowledge of truth is so important that the Creator has consigned our bodily affairs to the unconscious mind.
People frequently live in a state of frustration. And great men are no exception. They live frustrated lives and they die frustrated. Tension and stress are ubiquitous.
The reason lies in people's failure to find the truth. Everyone is a seeker by birth, but everyone lives his life without knowing what the real purpose of life is. Due to this aimlessness, people are living in a state of confusion. They speak and write, but without clarity. They live lives fraught with contradictions. They yearn to find something but without knowing what that something is.
A tension-free mind is one that can function positively despite contradiction. People work, but without job satisfaction. People run after money, but without experiencing inner satisfaction. People have adopted the formula: Enjoy life! But they don't know what life is and what its real enjoyment is. It is a paradoxical situation and everyone is living in this state of self-contradiction.
It is a self-created problem. When the Creator has given you a mind and made you free to use your mind, you should make use of this opportunity. You have to activate your thinking capacity. You have to discover the reality. You have to read what is hidden in nature in an unwritten form. That is the only way to extricate yourself from this psychological chaos.
The consciousness of truth is interwoven in your nature; it is very easy, therefore, to discover the truth. The only condition is to shun distraction, to follow the well-known principle: simple living, high thinking. If you want to save yourself from going astray, activate your thinking faculty. Think and you will surely reach the gates of truth.
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Divine and personal
Swami Kriyananda, Sep 3, 2010, 12.00am IST
A person doesn't have life unless he has a personal relationship with God. I am talking about a life that is filled with divine consciousness, and its accompanying joy of living, the joy of the Self within.
A person doesn't have life unless he has a personal relationship with God. I am talking about a life that is filled with divine consciousness, and its accompanying joy of living, the joy of the Self within.
I remember once traveling in a subway in New York, and watching people around me as they stared unthinkingly into space, then picked up their lives again when they reached their destination. How many people's entire existence is like that, as though spent waiting for something to happen. Is that living? Until you have at least something of God-awareness, you don't really have life.
The spiritual path is like climbing a mountain, moving upward for a time, then descending into a depression, then upward to fresh heights. In our relationship with God, we rise consciously toward Him for a time, and then suddenly discover things coming from the subconscious that pull us down—hopefully, temporarily. When this happens, we find ourselves needing to work at getting back. It may seem to us that we've gone backwards. But if we are trying steadfastly and sincerely, this very dip of consciousness is part of the overall climb toward Him.
In this divine relationship, you find your inner joy ever increasing. The higher you climb up the mountain of spiritual attainment, the more you feel an underlying current of happiness in everything you do. You feel guided in everything. You find that you have only to ask; and suddenly, you know the answer.
When people ask me questions, and i try to answer them out of my anxiety to help them, i often come up with no answer at all. But then i remember: I'm not the one who has the answers. I then pray, "You tell me what to say." Then, almost always, the answer comes to me immediately.
The more we feel God's presence, the more we find Him playing an active part in our lives. Things that we need are there when we need them. Right opportunities seem to materialise almost as if by magic. Inwardly, we feel an ever-increasing sense of security, happiness, love, and joy, until joy itself begins to pervade everything we do.
In addition to prayer and meditation, cultivating a personal relationship with God involves your attitude toward your work, and toward others. It's here that descent into life's valleys often occurs. When people lose touch with the joy within, it is mostly because they have allowed ego to intrude. Real spiritual work takes place inside, in the realm of consciousness. The outward work that you do is secondary. Offer whatever you do to God: to try to serve Him in others - not thinking what you want from Him in return, or what others want from you, but rather what God wants from you.
The essence of spirituality is impersonality - not coldness or indifference, but absence of ego- motivation. Cultivate a direct relationship with God. Not to ask oneself, "What would God think?" but what do You think?" This practice brings your thoughts to Him directly, instead of in a roundabout manner. In everything you do, hold the thought that He is there, listening to you, guiding you. Share directly with Him everything that you do. This has been called "practicing the presence of God." The more you continue this practice, the more it will become natural for you, and the most rewarding thing you can do in life. And you'll see, gradually, that is really very simple.
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All reality is relative
Pranav Khullar, Sep 2, 2010, 12.00a
Ahimsa, the most important tenet in Jainism, explores the psychological intent to hurt and harm another and turns the focus inward from an actual act of violence to the intentionality of the act.
Ahimsa, the most important tenet in Jainism, explores the psychological intent to hurt and harm another and turns the focus inward from an actual act of violence to the intentionality of the act.
Ahimsa is seen as the abjuring of violent and hurtful thoughts for another, possible only when we realise the relevance of `parasparopagraho jivanam' - the concept of interdependence. All life is inextricably connected and ahimsa is nothing but expression and mindfulness of natural empathy for another.
Ahimsa, an ethical principle, is rooted in the Jaina metaphysics of anekantavada which details the many-sidedness or anekanta of reality; that no single point of view can be construed as being the whole truth. The story of the five blind men who gave their own perspective of the elephant is a good example of the way we tend to see one or two aspects of anything and perhaps jump to the conclusion that what we perceive to be is the whole truth, whereas it is not the only truth. There could be as many versions of the truth as there are those trying to comprehend it.
The philosophical concept of anekantavada is further elaborated upon in the abstruse logic of 'saptabhanginaya'--- the doctrine of seven conditioned predications, wherein each statement is expressed from seven different relative points of view, and each view is prefixed by a "maybe" or "relatively" (syad), so perhaps a thing is real, and perhaps it isn't, in relative terms, and it could be both real and unreal. Similarly, something could be indescribable, maybe real but indescribable. This dialectic of the relativity of knowledge, popularly known as syadvad, rules out any categorical or absolutist pronouncement, and shows how each judgment can effectively be only relative and conditional. Syadvad dissects the empirical world psychologically, and in so doing, seeks to reveal the relativity of the mind itself.
This theory of dealing with partial truths is also the philosophical basis for ethical living with the principle of ahimsa, for it prepares the ground for acceptance and respect of opposing views. This would help introspection of one's own claims and enable respecting varied opinions.
Anekantavada is positioned midway between the Vedantic assertion of Brahmn as Absolute and the Buddhist postulation of 'change as permanent' and offers its own pragmatic blueprint for a more peaceful existence, where all views are accommodated out of the belief that all minds are relatively conditioned, and are actually interdependent. But this analysis of the empirical world is also ironically meant to be a call to the path of renunciation, after having understood the unreal and relative nature of things, and who, through right conduct, right faith and right reflection, has progressively detached himself from externalities and is now ready to follow and attain the `Mahavira state of mind' -- "where karmic matter has thinned out and the soul expands to be one with the cosmos."
Anekantavada is the cornerstone of Jaina thought, the metaphysics of which defines the Jaina ethical way of living with compassion through the five anuvratas laid down for the shraviks or laypersons. The five anuvratas are: ahimsa, satya, asteya or non-stealing, brahmacharya or celibacy and aparigraha or non-possession. It then provides, in rare cases, the trigger to pursue the Jaina ideal of renunciation -- Kaivalya-Jnana - possible by living the ascetic life of a sramana. This was how Mahavira set out in search of the real nature of reality, to explore what lay beyond the contours of the conditioned mind.
Tomorrow is Mahavir Jayanti.
SMS for the birds
SANJAY DEV, Aug 31, 2010, 12.00am IST
There are psychological moments in life and aninsight received in such a moment can change our perspective and transform the quality of life for better, and enrich it.
There are psychological moments in life and aninsight received in such a moment can change our perspective and transform the quality of life for better, and enrich it.
It was peak summer time. As is and was my wont the first thing I do after rising early in the morning is check my mobile inbox for messages that friends send me, particularly through the night.
There it was, this innocuously simple message which went: "Do you know several thousand birds die each summer for want of water.
So, put a water pot in your balcony, terrace, or window sill. Forward this message to your friends as well."
The sheer simplicity and exhortation of the message subliminally settled in my mind, and set me thinking, of birds and nature. The sight of earthen water pots hung in hessian baskets, or perched atop balconies swam before my eyes for a moment. Having absorbed the pregnant purport of the message the first thing I did was forward the message, as required, to my benevolent friends. I read this message to my dear wife and children as well.
After a while in the day I headed straight to an earthenware seller who had laid out his wares under a Banyan tree. I looked for a particularly flat-bottomed deep earthen pot. After handling a few, I could lay my eager hand on not one, but two; one of which I told myself, I would use for birdfeed for the added measure, and the other for water as planned.
As I walked back home I stopped briefly to buy some birdfeed.
I put out a handful barley birdfeed into the new earthen pot and poured to the brim water in the other and put both the pots on a particularly wide window-sill overlooking an abundant tree. Happy at the thought of having been inspired by the message to do a simple good turn, I progressed through my routine, and at dusk returned to check how the birds liked to respond to my gesture.
To my delight, I found the water-filled pot half-empty and grains of barley strewn around the pot, testimony that birds had been pecking here.
Next morning I replenished the supply with renewed interest and continued the routine for a few days. After which I found to my dismay, that the barley birdfeed would be left untouched. Perhaps the birds had had enough. Don't we get bored of the same fare if given the same thing for days?
For a change, I bought some jowar grains, bigger and easier for birds to pick, I thought. At the end of each summer day, I noticed the replaced birdfeed polished off by birds. The sight of the empty birdfeed pot gave me an incredible satisfaction – and all because of an sms. Save My Soul, I thought. Yes – that was what it was.
Trees and birds are just part of the big picture of nature which we share with them. We are all inter-connected and inter-dependent. Fed on water and birdfeed, the content little birdies have taught me a valuable lesson in the virtues of charity which begins at home, in your heart that has immense potential to save not just the individual soul but that of others as well.
Is God playing games?
TNN, Aug 31, 2010, 12.00am IST
How often have we heard someone ask: 'Why isGod playing cruel games with us?' It is perhaps a question that comes to mind when one fails to find a satisfactory explanation of the inexplicable. But the question itself is not a satisfactory approach to understanding.
How often have we heard someone ask: 'Why isGod playing cruel games with us?' It is perhaps a question that comes to mind when one fails to find a satisfactory explanation of the inexplicable. But the question itself is not a satisfactory approach to understanding.
We can give explanations, but explanations need not be answers.
What is life and what is death? You are looking at death as the opposite of life. So, our encounter with death is conditioned by our definition of death as being opposed to life. Look at it another way: Death is one more expression of life. Life scientists declare that death is the most critical defining feature of life. All and only living things die. When you die, you are making the ultimate undeniable assertion that you have been alive. In fact, death is even a precondition to life. The Holy Bible says, "Unless a seed falls into earth and dies, it cannot produce any grains". That is, a seed has to cease to be itself in order to be a source of life to several others like it.
The most comfortable place for you is to be is in your mother's womb. After birth, many times yousearch for that same comfort. That is why in Hindu temples, the sanctum sanctorum is called garbhagudi – representing a mother's womb. At the time of delivery, the body of the mother pushes the child out. When it is pushed out, every child goes through what is called birth trauma, experiencing a form of death. Tagore asks, "Is it death or is it life?" What do we experience? Birth, exit from the womb where life originated and was sustained for about nine months and into the world outside – is a form of death that leads to life although in different environments. Similarly, death – exit from the world – could be a door to some other form of life or life at yet another plane.
Don't we cast off worn-out clothes in order to wear new ones? Why get so attached to physical phenomena? During the great dotcom bust of the post-millennium years, a lot of people went through depression all over the world, but especially so in California, the hub of all that dotcom activity. Let us think of what really happened. Nothing more than the fact that what had been hyped sky-high was brought down to earth. The same thing had happened in Bangalore real estate. It happens cyclically in stock markets across the globe. You build the bubble, and, when the bubble breaks, you feel depressed. Those who know that the rise is artificial make all the profit while gullible believers in the longevity of the bubble lose everything.
The value we attach to objects of speculation like stocks, shares, land, and commodities is purely psychological; they are illusory or insubstantial. Likewise, all sorrows are chiefly created by the mind. You invest 10 million rupees on a piece of land expecting to make a profit of 10 million, but the profit is only notional in the sense that it is based on your expectation that the value of your purchase will double within the time frame of your expectation. If your expectations are defeated, you start suffering. It's all in your mind, isn't it?
Therefore the trauma that you feel at events like accident or death is also mainly psychological, and so death is something you can overcome through spiritual discipline.
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The saint and the scorpion
SWAMI CHIDANANDA, Aug 30, 2010, 12.00am IST
One day a sadhu went to the river to bathe. There he noticed a scorpion struggling in the water. Scorpions cannot swim and the sadhu knew that if he did not save the scorpion, it would drown...
One day a sadhu went to the river to bathe. There he noticed a scorpion struggling in the water. Scorpions cannot swim and the sadhu knew that if he did not save the scorpion, it would drown...
Therefore, carefully picking up the scorpion, themonk rescued it from drowning and was just about to set it down gently on land when the scorpion stung his finger. In pain, the sadhu instinctively flung his hand and the scorpion went flying, back into the river. As soon as the sadhu regained his composure from the sting, he again lifted the scorpion out of the water. Again, before he could set the scorpion safely on land, the creature stung him. This drama went on for several minutes as the sadhu continued to try to save the life of the drowning scorpion and the scorpion continued to sting his saviour's hand before reaching the freedom of the riverbank.
A hunter watched as the saint carefully and gingerly lifted the creature out of the water, only to fling it back in as he convulsed in pain from each fresh sting. Finally, the hunter said to the sadhu, "Forgive me for my frankness, but it is clear that the scorpion is simply going to continue to sting you each and every time you try to carry it to safety. Why don't you give up and just let it drown?"
The sadhu replied: "My dear child, the scorpion is not stinging me out of malice or evil intent. Just as it is the water's nature to make me wet, so it is the scorpion's nature to sting. He doesn't realise that I am carrying him to safety. That is a level of conscious comprehension greater than what his brain can achieve. But, just as it is the scorpion's nature to sting, so it is my nature to save. Just as he is not leaving his nature, why should I leave my nature? My dharma is to help any creature of any kind – human or animal. Why should I let a small scorpion rob me of the divine nature which I have cultivated through years of sadhana?"
In our lives we encounter people who harm us, insult us, plot against us, whose actions seem calculated to thwart the successful achievement of our goals. Sometimes these are obvious acts, such as a co-worker who continually steals our ideas or speaks badly of us to our boss. Sometimes these acts are subtle – a friend, relative or colleague who unexpectedly betrays us or who we find has been surreptitiously speaking negatively about us behind our back.
Slowly we find that our own actions, words and thoughts become driven by anger and pain. We find ourselves engaged in cunning thoughts of revenge. Before we realise it, we are injuring ourselves by allowing negative emotions dominate us. They insulted us or plotted against us or sabotaged a well-deserved achievement at work. But we injure ourselves more deeply and more gravely by allowing our hearts and minds to darken.
Our dharma is to be kind, pure, honest, giving, sharing and caring. Others, due to ignorance, lack of understanding or due to the way in which their own karmic drama is unfolding, may act with malice, deceit, selfishness and indifference. But we must not let their actions or their ignorance deprive us of fulfilling our dharma. We must not allow ourselves to be lowered by their ignorance, their habits or their greed. The darkness in their heart should not be allowed to penetrate into the lightness of our hearts.
Parmarth Niketan, Rishikesh
Try an awareness bath
MARGUERITE THEOPHIL, Aug 28, 2010, 12.00am IST
An old, uneducated woman approached theBuddha, wanting to meditate, saying that she was coming to it so late in life; she might not really be able to learn how.
An old, uneducated woman approached theBuddha, wanting to meditate, saying that she was coming to it so late in life; she might not really be able to learn how.
He gently advised her, as she drew water from the well each day, to remain mindful and aware of every single movement of her hands, knowing that if she did so she would soon find herself in that state of alert and spacious calm that is meditation.
After several people had claimed that meditativeawareness was hard enough to practise on the meditation cushion, to suggest that we bring it to the everyday is perhaps one of those nice sounding but ridiculously impossible things. I suggested what I thought was a simple mid-session project on taking an 'awareness bath'.
A woman leapt up, furious. Tired after a rough week at the office, she yelled at me about all the 'rubbish' i was talking. She had to knead, roll out and cook about 30 chapattis every single evening soon after getting home from work. Completely exhausted by dinner-time, she barely soaped all over in the shower before collapsing on her bed. She even added that maybe it was only 'jobless' people like me who could afford this silly luxury!
My first instinct was to argue with her; to convince her... But thankfully I remained aware – and shut up and went inwards. To my surprise, I got in touch with the sensory pleasures of making chapattis.
Without addressing her directly, i acted out a slow, invisible chapatti-making routine, all the time talking aloud of how my senses responded as i went along – measuring out the ingredients, the feel and colours of the deep red measuring bowl and flat silvery shiny thali that reflected my hands and movements. Really feeling the dry flour on my hands, pouring in cool, clear water, then the sticky-clingy coming together of the dough, the rhythm of kneading, breathing and the alchemy of the transformed 'just right' feel of the dough, all the time noticing the aromas changing constantly in the process. Then the rolling and flattening of individual chapattis, the feel of the weight of the rolling pin, sometimes the perfect round ones that showed up, the amazing smell of the fresh roasted ones, how they puffed pleasingly at the end, then slowly flattened down...maybe a few drops of aromatic ghee dribbled on each.
It took just a few minutes, and there was total silence. In fact, I recall the session for that day ended right there.
The next Saturday the same woman said smilingly that chapatti-time was now her stress management time. Not just that – it relaxed her enough to enjoy a really 'aware' bathing time.
Another called me last week – full three years after the sessions – telling me that over the years this has become her 'holy time' of the day. She willingly takes longer over it than before, and everyone, including her mother-in-law, agrees no one makes chapattis that look and taste as good as the ones she makes.
We can bring meditative awareness to washing dishes, eating, writing, walking, relating. We can let go of our usual excuses of 'no time' or 'wrong place'. Everyday things and actions can offer us unusual moments of holiness and blessedness.
weave@vsnl.net
A latter day religion
PAUL DAVIES, Aug 28, 2010, 12.00am IS
Humans have a basic need to perceive themselves as part of a grand scheme, of a natural order that has a deeper significance and greater endurance than the petty affairs of daily life.
Humans have a basic need to perceive themselves as part of a grand scheme, of a natural order that has a deeper significance and greater endurance than the petty affairs of daily life.
The incongruous mismatch between the futility of the human condition and the brooding majesty of the cosmos compels people to seek a transcendent meaning to underpin their fragile existence.
For thousands of years this broader context was provided by tribal mythology and storytelling. The transporting qualities of those narratives gave human beings a crucial spiritual anchor. All cultures lay claim to haunting myths of other-worldliness: from the dreaming of the Australian Aborigines or the Chronicles of Narnia, from thenirvana of Buddhism to the Christian Kingdom of Heaven. Over time, the humble campfire stories morphed into the splendour and ritual of organised religion and the great works of drama and literature.
Even in our secular age, where many societies have evolved to a post-religious phase, people still have unfulfilled spiritual yearnings. A project with the scope and profundity of SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) cannot be divorced from this wider cultural context, for it too offers us the vision of a world transformed, and holds the compelling promise that this could happen any day soon. As writer David Brin has pointed out, 'contact with advanced alien civilisations may carry much the same transcendental or hopeful significance as any more traditional notion of "salvation from above". I have argued that if we did make contact with an advanced extraterrestrial community, the entities with which we would be dealing would approach godlike status in our eyes. Certainly they would be more godlike than humanlike; indeed, their powers would be greater than those attributed to most gods in human history.'
So is SETI itself in danger of becoming a latter day religion? Science fiction writer Michael Crichtonthought so. He said: "Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof," he explained. "The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief."
Writer Margaret Wertheim has studied how the concept of space and its inhabitants has evolved over several centuries. She traces the modern notion of aliens to Renaissance writers such as the Roman Catholic Cardinal Nichols of Cusa, who considered the status of man in the universe in relation to celestial beings such as angels. "Historically, this may be seen as the first step in a process that would culminate in the modern idea of aliens," writes Wertheim. "What are ET and his ilk, after all, if not incarnated angels – beings from the stars made manifest in flesh?"
With the arrival of the scientific age, speculations about alien beings passed from theologians to science fiction writers, but the spiritual dimension remained just below the surface. Occasionally it is made explicit, as in Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker , David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus , or Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind , which is strongly reminiscent of John Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress . These are iconic images that resonate deeply with the human psyche, and shadow the scientific quest to discover intelligent life beyond Earth...
For many non-scientists, the fascination of SETI is precisely its quasi-religious quality, and its tantalising promise of celestial wisdom and unbounded riches in the sky – just a radio signal away.
Extract from the writer's The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone In The Universe ?
It's all in the mind
GIRISH DESHPANDE, Aug 28, 2010, 12.00am IST
Do you honestly want to start taming your mindand be happy? Do you have the right motivationand intention to begin?
Do you honestly want to start taming your mindand be happy? Do you have the right motivationand intention to begin?
Are you serious about it? If the answers to these questions are 'yes', know that there are three prerequisites to keep your mind under control:
First, there cannot be a beginning without knowing what to begin on. So, first, get started on the teachings. Although as Buddhist I would recommend the Buddha Dharma to you, you may choose any other teachings. Whatever you decide on, please have confident faith in it. You need to have a competent teacher to help you find answers to questions, to enable you to overcome roadblocks on the way. Masters say: "Learning to meditate without proper understanding of the teachings is like trying to climb a tree with no hands!" You must know what to meditate on before starting, and for this, you need to have a reasonable understanding of your lineage teachings. A special motivation or bodhichitta must be humbly awakened within to begin spiritual practice.
Second, Tibetan wisdom says: "Gompa ma yin, kompa yin", which means: Meditation is not, getting used to is. Meditation cannot be 'done', or for that matter done sporadically. It is not enough to stay calm during the practice and be volatile right through the day. You have to get so comfortable with meditation that it becomes embedded in your system. It becomes something that we can do anywhere and anytime and then finally all the time! However, to reach this stage, you have to calm the mind to a reasonable level of steadiness. How? The Buddha taught 84,000 ways to calm down and ease negative emotions. There are countless ways to meditate, choose yours. Be regular with your meditation; assign a time for it daily. Early mornings suit me.
Finally, be ever vigilant of the mind, of its thoughts and emotions. In an average human mind, over 50,000 thoughts and emotions come and go each day. Just let them be. Don't engage them. Especially the disturbing, negative ones. Let them rise and fall. Be at peace with their rise and subsequent fall. Never get difficult with them. They will go just as they have come. Look at the mind like an ocean and the rising and falling thoughts and emotions like the waves. Whoever has heard of the ocean being disturbed by the waves? Be like the old grandfather watching the child play. He knows the pranks going on and is amused by them too, but is vigilant of the child not causing any harm to himself or to anyone else around. In short, be mindful. The mind can slip away faster than you have realised its departure.
We take so much trouble and spend much money to get physical exercise in a gym. Why not consider a little bit of time and no money for our mind's wellness too? Imagine a world of people with strong bodies and untamed minds! It would be a terrifying place to live in, isn't it? An approach to tone both would be in everyone's interest.
Now that you will begin in right earnest, whatever goodness accrues from this, dedicate all of it to your near and dear ones, your teacher, the elderly or those you are indebted to in your life and other sentient beings around you. This way more benefit, peace and happiness will come your way.
May the Buddha smile upon you.
The writer is a Pune-based Dharma practitioner. lamagirish@gmail.com
The spirit of Ramzan
M Aslam, Aug 27, 2010, 12.00am IST
Fasting during the month of Ramzan not only serves as annual training for body and soul -- which helps in renewal of life and encourages the spirit of sharing and giving -- but also contains all possible attributes which can promote spirituality and human excellence .
Fasting during the month of Ramzan not only serves as annual training for body and soul -- which helps in renewal of life and encourages the spirit of sharing and giving -- but also contains all possible attributes which can promote spirituality and human excellence .
The first wisdom to be gained in fasting is taqwa or self-restraint. The Quran states: '"O you who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you that you may (learn) self restraint." 2:183.
It becomes evident to those who sincerely observe fast that fasting instills the essence of consciousness of the Creator in the devotee's heart. It also instills moral courage and guides the seat of our emotions on moral issues. Since fasting helps in conditioning the heart, soul and body, it simply leads to tranquility and calmness in the face of adversity. This helps one become patient. Patience is the pinnacle of discipline and spiritual suppleness. Jalalluddin Rumi said: 'Have patience, for that is true worship'.
We acquire habits. Some of these are good habits and some are bad. Take smoking, for instance. It is difficult to kick the habit. But during Ramzan, the roza helps control the urge to smoke. Fasting provides the observer an opportunity in helping control or change his habit, as smoking is prohibited during fasting. I was a chain smoker 12 years ago and it was fasting that created in me the necessary level of determination, enabling me to kick the habit forever.
The Ramzan fasting is a sentinel against common prevalent diseases such as obesity, and blood pressure , provided the person fasting follows the strict dietary rule: eat during fast-breaking time and avoiding over-eating. God states: "...Eat and drink, but waste not by excess, for Allah loves not wasters." (Qur`an 7:31) My blood pressure levels remain absolutely normal during the month of fasting.
Sociologically speaking fasting is an expression of solidarity with the poor by giving generously, with family, friends and society by bonding, praying, fasting and eating together. During Ramzan the family eats together twice a day for a month.
Tajuddin B Shu`aib in 'Essentials of Ramadan, The Fasting Month' summarises the essence of fasting as a tool for reconstruction of our spiritual faculties: "Fasting is a unique form of worship prescribed as part of an overall system of Islam. Its uniqueness mirrors the uniqueness of the human being... a creature of physical and spiritual parts whose excellence depends on the right proportion of these two parts. Too much of the physical material will ruin man, and too much of the spiritual will, too. Fasting orients the observer to the art of balancing the spiritual essentials with physical needs, a vivid proof that there is in all of us the will power, a pivotal element that controls our actions. This will be needed to help us curb the animalistic tendencies originating from the stomach, in full. It makes us forget about our beginning, it awakens the mind and kindles clear thinking and consciousness of Allah. Fasting is the sobering of a mind and reconstruction of our spiritual faculties." I pray that our spiritual faculties get awakened during this month of fasting and we are able to balance the spiritual essentials with our physical needs.
The writer, a sociologist, is currently director, School of Continuing Education at IGNOU, New Delhi.
Twilight of the Gods
Henryk Skolimowski, Aug 27, 2010, 12.00am IST
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, at the end of the 19th century, announced the twilight of the gods. Finally, he said: " God is dead," referring to the principal god of Abrahamic religions. From this time on, the Christian religion has been in a state of permanent crisis.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, at the end of the 19th century, announced the twilight of the gods. Finally, he said: " God is dead," referring to the principal god of Abrahamic religions. From this time on, the Christian religion has been in a state of permanent crisis.
Around the same time, the Hindu religion, supported by a cast of 33,000 gods and the living presence of Swami Vivekananda, was flourishing. The Indian subcontinent was then under British occupation.
Then India gained her liberation and freedom. However, 60 years later, the quest for material satisfaction remains paramount. But the feeling of inner emptiness is acute. Many younger people are now looking for liberation in a new form of spirituality that is individual and free of religious constraints.
Are the thousands of gods who have been helping Hindu people, no longer willing to help? Or are they unable to help? Might it not be the case, per chance, that these gods are no longer relevant?
After having been around for thousands of years, maybe the gods have gently retired, unable to understand the world run by computers. Perhaps gadgets have replaced the gods swiftly and adroitly—and we are rather embarrassed to admit it.
One way or another, we are in an altogether new situation, in which traditional religions—East and West—appear to be worn out, shabby and irrelevant. Hindu people, for instance, are experiencing the "twilight of gods" just now. Perhaps Nietzsche was right, after all. He saw the coming crisis of religions much sooner than most of us did. The Hindu religion was quite oblivious of this coming crisis. It was too intoxicated with its own perfume to be able to pay any attention to the mad prophet philosopher from Germany.
But now the Hindu people are exposed to another kind of perfume, or shall we say they are exposed to the noxious fumes of Western progress, accompanied by an increasing craziness of their individual lives. The old world charm of gods no longer holds or helps. The new gods are Mechanos and Electronos combined. Yes, there is another part of the unholy trinity: Mammon.
Now you have an answer as to why the old religions have been waning and sliding. Perhaps they have been doing so for some centuries. But nobody wanted to notice it. 'Who, us, declining? Never! We are the oldest religion in the world!' Such has been the unspoken response to any criticism of traditional Hindu religion.
But everything evolves and changes; disintegrates and renews itself—sometimes in quite radical forms. You have to look at the situation from high above, from the position of the Ultimate Light. If you take this perspective, then you can see that the period of patriarchy is coming to an end; and with it the period of patriarchal religions; and with it the reign of Brahmins and priests.
We are at the dawn of a new era of Light. It is precisely this new liberation, unfettered and unbound by traditional religion, that is sought after by those who opt for open spirituality instead of a closed religion. You have to be strong to do that. To follow directions is easy. To be your own master and to follow your own Light is difficult. But you are not alone. The Big Light is with you. Identify with the Light, which predates all religions, and you will see that the New Light will prevail... because it must.
(The writer is author of 'Let There Be Light')
Walking the pathless path
Deepak Chopra, Sep 19, 2010, 12.00am IST
Sometimes a lesson has to be repeated for thousands of years, not because it wasn't learned the first time but because new people arrive on the scene.
The lesson I'm thinking of was Siddhartha's, a prince on the Nepalese border of northern India. He dropped everything and hit the road, becoming the original, or at least the most famous dharma bum. He travelled from master to master with his begging bowl, seeking enlightenment. As Gautama the monk he became impressively austere. Instead of a loving wife, a warm bed, and feasts, he tried the opposite: solitude, sleeping by the wayside, and subsisting on whatever scraps of food he could beg for.
It's still an appealing choice, because we equate austerity with virtue. If the stress of a chaotic world is too much, perhaps harmony lies along a different, quieter, more solitary road. But the moral of Siddhartha's tale led a different way. Leaving home didn't bring enlightenment, nor did austerity, poverty, starving his body, or trying to force his mind to be still. Instead, Siddhartha became someone entirely transformed – the Buddha – when he hit upon a new road, the one called "the pathless path".
The pathless path isn't a straight line; it doesn't even lead from point A to point B. The journey takes place entirely in consciousness. A mind overshadowed by fears, hopes, memories, past traumas, and old conditioning finds a way to become free. This sounds impossible at first. How can the mind that is trapped by pain also be the tool for freeing itself? How can a noisy mind find silence? How can peace emerge from discord?
The Buddha offered his answer, which is a variant on an even more ancient answer from the seers or rishis of Vedic India: transcend the personal mind and find universal mind. The personal mind is tied to the ego, and the ego is forever swinging from pleasure to pain and back again. But if you look at awareness when there is no pleasure or pain, when the mind is calm while simply existing, a fascinating journey begins. You have made the first step on the pathless path.
This is not to dismiss the other path, the one that takes you away from home into a retreat, ashram, meditation centre, or holy place. They have their own atmosphere; seekers have stopped there for a long time; therefore, the mind can breathe a different kind of air, so to speak, an air of tranquillity and peace. When you arrive at such a place, two things usually happen. You soak up the peace, enjoying the contrast with your busy life at home. At the same time you notice how loud your mind is, how much chaos it has absorbed. So these holy places cannot do the work for you. They can only suggest what the pathless path is about.
Kabir sang of spiritual travellers: "There is nothing but water in the holy pools./ I know I have been swimming in them./ All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can't say a word./ I know, I have been crying out to them./ The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words./ I looked through their covers one day sideways./ What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through./ If you have not lived through something, it is not true."
These lines don't deny the worth of spiritual journeying, but they tell us that there is no substitute for first-hand experience. Where you go to find it is irrelevant. The true seeker after truth discovers, sooner or later, that truth was seeking him all along.
DeepakChopra.com
The lesson I'm thinking of was Siddhartha's, a prince on the Nepalese border of northern India. He dropped everything and hit the road, becoming the original, or at least the most famous dharma bum. He travelled from master to master with his begging bowl, seeking enlightenment. As Gautama the monk he became impressively austere. Instead of a loving wife, a warm bed, and feasts, he tried the opposite: solitude, sleeping by the wayside, and subsisting on whatever scraps of food he could beg for.
It's still an appealing choice, because we equate austerity with virtue. If the stress of a chaotic world is too much, perhaps harmony lies along a different, quieter, more solitary road. But the moral of Siddhartha's tale led a different way. Leaving home didn't bring enlightenment, nor did austerity, poverty, starving his body, or trying to force his mind to be still. Instead, Siddhartha became someone entirely transformed – the Buddha – when he hit upon a new road, the one called "the pathless path".
The pathless path isn't a straight line; it doesn't even lead from point A to point B. The journey takes place entirely in consciousness. A mind overshadowed by fears, hopes, memories, past traumas, and old conditioning finds a way to become free. This sounds impossible at first. How can the mind that is trapped by pain also be the tool for freeing itself? How can a noisy mind find silence? How can peace emerge from discord?
The Buddha offered his answer, which is a variant on an even more ancient answer from the seers or rishis of Vedic India: transcend the personal mind and find universal mind. The personal mind is tied to the ego, and the ego is forever swinging from pleasure to pain and back again. But if you look at awareness when there is no pleasure or pain, when the mind is calm while simply existing, a fascinating journey begins. You have made the first step on the pathless path.
This is not to dismiss the other path, the one that takes you away from home into a retreat, ashram, meditation centre, or holy place. They have their own atmosphere; seekers have stopped there for a long time; therefore, the mind can breathe a different kind of air, so to speak, an air of tranquillity and peace. When you arrive at such a place, two things usually happen. You soak up the peace, enjoying the contrast with your busy life at home. At the same time you notice how loud your mind is, how much chaos it has absorbed. So these holy places cannot do the work for you. They can only suggest what the pathless path is about.
Kabir sang of spiritual travellers: "There is nothing but water in the holy pools./ I know I have been swimming in them./ All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can't say a word./ I know, I have been crying out to them./ The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words./ I looked through their covers one day sideways./ What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through./ If you have not lived through something, it is not true."
These lines don't deny the worth of spiritual journeying, but they tell us that there is no substitute for first-hand experience. Where you go to find it is irrelevant. The true seeker after truth discovers, sooner or later, that truth was seeking him all along.
DeepakChopra.com
Dynamics of ahimsa
Surendra Bothara, Aug 25, 2010, 12.00am IST
The universe is dynamic. Irrespective of its speculated origin with the Big Bang or otherwise, its existence as we see it is a consequence of dynamism in a sustaining balance.
The concept of static is therefore a relative phenomenon. For instance life is dynamic and death is static, or so it seems. Though antithetical, the two states are inseparable. One without the other is untenable. Whatever our perspective, we find that equilibrium is the ultimate phenomenon in nature. Imbalance leads to chaos and destruction.
Once Jain guru Mahavira transcended from contemplation to direct perception, he realised that he lived within a dynamic system. He found his soul and body to be dynamic. Whatever object he set his eyes on he found to be intrinsically dynamic. He paused at anything that he apparently found static but after closer inspection he found that it was indeed dynamic. Once he established that the only thing static in this universe was death or extinction of the form under consideration, he set about framing codes of how best to live in such a dynamic system and pursue the goal of ultimate balance, the state of eternal bliss.
When dealing with a dynamic system we have to be careful not to disturb it and so precautions have to be taken. Any proposed variations should be thought out carefully. This is applicable when we are outside the system. However, when we are within the system or part of the system we have not only to be careful about such changes but also about changes within us, and our behaviour within the system. To pursue what one desires in such a multi-dimensional dynamic system is a daunting task. However, Mahavira devised a simple and universal formula — he called it ahimsa. As transgression is himsa, non-transgression or limiting needs and desires within these systemic standards is ahimsa.
Mahavir's definition of the living starts with visible forms of life, covers microscopic forms and extends to life-sustaining components of nature like earth, water, air, fire and plants. In Mahavira'sahimsa way of life, non-transgression has been discussed in detail and given a wide definition. It is a fundamental principle and can be applied, with necessary variations, to every dimension and at every level within a specific dimension. At the micro level it covers all that is covered by particle physics. In biological field it covers all things and activities of the world of living, micro and macro. At gross levels it covers everything and every process existing in nature. At subtle level of human psyche it covers all disciplines of humanities.
Success of a complex system, like human society, lies in continued interaction and cooperation among its numerous components in terms of action and the driving thought process. Mahavir's ahimsa way of life involves three vital factors -- dynamism, discipline, and equilibrium or equanimity. These factors are linked with ahimsa way of life forming a mutually dependent progressive cycle of development. When any one of these factors improves it automatically brings improvement in other factors and the whole system.
The edifice of Jainism is raised on the foundation of this dynamic ahimsa. Mahavira expanded it into a way of life that helps one transcend into the spiritual realm. But prior to that, it ensures meaningful survival in this highly dynamic and fragile ecosystem by providing a symbiotic methodology of living based on ahimsa.
Collision of egos
Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, Sep 19, 2010, 12.00am IST
We cannot be successful in either the external world or the internal world while we are tossed about by a powerful ego. What is required is a strong will.
We cannot be successful in either the external world or the internal world while we are tossed about by a powerful ego. What is required is a strong will.
The difference between ego and will is that the ego is blind but the will has vision. Will has its source in the pure Self. Ego springs from a false sense of identification (avidya) with the external world, and is usually concerned with preserving self-image and self-identity. Ego is characterised by stubbornness, selfishness, and unwillingness to compromise.
The ego is like a little pool. An egotistical person is like a frog crouching in that little pool – his world is small, his borders insecure. He has only a vague awareness of the trees encircling his pool, and he cannot begin to imagine the frog-filled marshes just beyond. From his perspective, only his own feelings and his own voice are meaningful.
The power of will, by contrast, is like a spring whose source is the Pure Being. It infuses mind and body with enthusiasm, courage, curiosity, and energy to act. In spiritual literature this force – the intrinsic power of the soul – is called ichcha shakti, and it is from this force that all aspects of our personality, including the ego, derive energy to carry out their activities.
Becoming successful in the world requires a strong will, and that strong will needs to be properly guided so we develop a strong personality. A strong personality exhibits tolerance and endurance. It has the power to vanquish and punish an opponent, but chooses to forgive and forget instead. When we are egotistical, on the other hand, we demonstrate our weakness by answering a pebble with cannon. We lose our composure the moment our feelings are even slightly bruised. We have a hard time forgetting the injuries we have received from others, but an even harder time remembering how much we have injured others.
All problems – at home, work, in politics, everywhere – are caused by colliding egos. These problems are not overcome by one ego dominating others, but by a person of strong will and clear vision coming forward and overshadowing the trivial egos of those who are quarrelling.
A strong ego is as much of an obstacle in spiritual practice as it is in worldly matters. The stronger the ego, the bigger the hurdle it will create. However, the solution is not to kill or weaken the ego but to do our best to purify, transform, and guide it properly. We can do this by employing both our intelligence and power of discrimination. When we meditate, practise contemplation, pray, study the scriptures, serve others, and seek the company of the wise we make our ego pure and less confined, and this in turn inspires us to move one step forward. As we do, the purified ego, accompanied by a sharpened intellect, gets a glimpse of the next level of awareness, and naturally aspires to reach it. Thus the ego becomes the tool for purifying and expanding itself, and in this way the petty ego is gradually transformed into an expanded, more purified ego.
This transformation must end with the ego dissolving and becoming one with the pure Self and experiencing its union with Universal Consciousness. As the ego of a dedicated seeker merges with the Infinite, all confusion disappears, the veil of duality lifts, and the purified ego sees the whole universe in itself and itself in the whole universe.
www.HimalayanInstitute.in
Know your value system
Homayun Taba, Aug 24, 2010, 12.00am IST
Every choice we make has consequences, whether obvious or not. What seems a great choice at the moment may perhaps have negative consequences later on. A holistic way to approach choices and consequences is to examine our personal value system.
There once was a mountaineering team that had prepared for three years for a competitive climb. When they finally began, somewhere after the second camp they came across a seriously injured climber in need of medical assistance. Those were the days of no cell-phones. One of the members of the team, seeing the dire situation, and obviously out of a strong value system, decided to drop out of the climb and help to bring down the injured person. No amount of pleading from his team convinced him to do otherwise. And their argument was that "we have our own agenda and this case is of no concern to us."
If you have been brought up to be caring, as soon as a situation presents itself, you are prompted to action. Take the example of someone with a one hundred-rupee note on a busy street corner looking desperately for change to pay for an auto-rickshaw and getting refused by people around. As soon as you see this you know you have the required change as well as the willingness to relieve another from difficulty and anxiety. You also know that you might one day be in the same situation. "Do unto others what you would like them do to you" -- it is no surprise that this is termed the Golden Rule, because it is an eternal value.
So you approach the person, respond to the need and walk away. You feel good about yourself because there was congruence between your value system and the choice you made.
What is this 'congruence?' It is a match between value and action. Sometime we are faced with choices that are not congruent with our value system; extreme ones are like having to perhaps pay a bribe for something that is our legitimate right.
How we respond to a situation depends on how strongly we wish to uphold our personal value system. It helps if you take the time to write down a set of values that you believe in. Then comes the real test, of living the value. The strange thing is that whenever we make a commitment to ourselves, all sorts of situations pop up to test us.
Making a good living, being peaceful, helpful, sharing resources – these are all values. Out of these values we make choices and take action. Interestingly, every choice we make has a price. In the case of the mountaineer, he paid the price of not reaching the summit, with all the successes that could have followed; perhaps also of having let down his team. He let all that go for saving a life.
Values determine our action preferences and priorities. When asked why he had done this, the young mountaineer's response was, "If I had let that young man die, no matter what success I achieved, I could not have lived with the thought for the rest of my life." A rabbinic text encourages us: "In places where there are no human beings, be one."
The yogic scheme of yamas talks about values that are connected with interactions with others. Another is the four-fold maitri-karuna-mudita-upeksha or universal friendship, compassion; joy in others' happiness and consideration for others. If you add these two sets you get a comprehensive value system that can stand the test of time and you will notice that all spiritual traditions are in conformity with these.
orientationsconsult@vsnl.net
Paradox of liberation
DEEPAK M RANADE, Aug 23, 2010, 12.00am IST
Liberation is believed to the epitome of achievement of the human form. But the phenomenon of liberation is riddled with a great paradox.
Liberation is believed to the epitome of achievement of the human form. But the phenomenon of liberation is riddled with a great paradox.
The paradox is that the liberated entity disintegrates, dissolves and no longer remains to appreciate the state of liberation. The whole exercise of liberation therefore seems to be an exercise in futility when viewed from the standpoint of the individual endeavouring to seek liberation.
Liberation can never be an acquisition of the individual. Because liberation is not of a person, liberation is from a person. It is often said by sages that the search or efforts to seek liberation will end only when the seeker ends.
All attempts made in this direction only further crystallise the identity and discreteness of the seeker. The state of am-ness when suffixed by an identity automatically precludes any scope of salvation. Desire for liberation is an oxymoron, because liberation is absence of all desires. Does it mean that all endeavours like meditation, devotion and prayer are superfluous?
Sage Ashtavakra said precisely that. Liberation is merely a blink away. It need not involve any form of penance, effort or endeavour. The identity of self is totally a creation of the self and a figment of imagination. The name, the form is merely a projection. Liberation is instantaneously becoming aware of the absence of the subject-object dichotomy.
The meaning of the word Ashtavakra is "distorted at eight places". According to legend when Ashtavakra was in still in his mother's womb, his father would recite from Vedic scriptures. But his chanting was defective and every time Ashtavakra discerned an error, he would squirm inside the womb. As a result he was born with eight deformities; hence the name.
This story is symbolic. The squirming was perhaps at the futility of the chanting. Sage Ashtavakra was a realised soul and his discourse to King Janaka forms the content of the treatise, Ashtavakra Gita, that predates the Bhagavad Gita.
The name Ashtavakra has a far greater significance. Yoga as elucidated by Sage Patanjali is comprised of an eight-fold path. Ashtanga Yoga, comprising yama or restraint, niyama or self-regulation, dhyaan or meditation, pratyaahara, dharana, samadhi asana and pranayama. The eightfold path leads to samadhi or liberation. But Ashtavakra said that all endeavours only fortify the identity of the seeker. He said that liberation is the state where the subject and object become one. All endeavours only serve to underline the ego and are a detriment to liberation. Ashtavakra therefore seems to underline the distortion created by any path of endeavour by the seeker. The philosophy challenges the basic premise that one has to make any effort to seek liberation – for that matter even ashtanga yoga. This is a radical departure from all established though.
A specific form is merely the all-pervading consciousness cleaving itself into a subject and object. It then goes about believing all that is observed is as separate and discrete as its own self. The true nature of the Self is beyond all identity and ego. It is plain consciousness. The ego is adulteration of this consciousness by total conviction in this fleeting illusory identity. And then the game of seeking begins, like the dog chasing its own tail. Holding on to the illusion of identity, one goes about seeking. The form can never ever seek the formless consciousness of which it is a manifestation. It can only merge and this merger can happen only when the form realises the futility of all efforts to become the formless.
(The writer is a consultant neurosurgeon deepakranade@hotmail.com and neuroconsciousness.blogspot.com)
On an ego trip
ANIL K RAJVANSHI, Aug 23, 2010, 12.00am IST
Human desire manifests itself in different forms but the driving force is the same. It is power, fame and money and ultimately, all these boil down to the desire for control. Some call it an ego trip.
Experience fuels desire. Most of us wish to experience something, we're wired for experience and we find ways and means of maximising it.
As our brains develop, neurons form memory pathways. This process is accomplished by sensory perception -- inputs from the senses form memory. We constantly endeavour to add to memory with our experiences. This is the basis of desire, and so our desires and brain are interlinked.
An outcome of desire is the need for possession, whether of a person, object or idea. Possession provides anchor for experience and helps maximise it. As we absorb experience through our senses, the brain processes this information. It is during this process that we "decide" whether our desires are fulfilled or not. Fulfillment of desires therefore helps us find release from the need for possession.
A powerful processor like the mind would have to evaluate all possibilities and find fulfillment of desires without having to physically possess the object or objects of desire. A weaker brain with a short memory might need to possess a lot more things for fulfilling desires and this leads to greed. To live a sustainable life, one needs to have a powerful brain processor.
Desire is useful and necessary as it helps us achieve something and be active. Without desire we will be lifeless. However, we need to channel our desires so that they get fulfilled without having to exploit resources.
One way to satiate the desire to possess material goods is to sublimate the desire to virtual reality (VR) tools. VR tools are basically 3D video games like aircraft simulation systems that allow the mind to have enhanced experience. As technology for virtual reality systems evolves and VR becomes more `realistic' we would be able to take care of most of our desires with very little use of energy and materials. This should lead us to sustainability.
Satiation of desire requires energy and material resources and excessive desire leads to greed and hence to unsustainability. Unresolved desires produce memory knots or stresses that tend to direct the brain to generate anger, frustration and perhaps depression. This happens because thought production is channeled or influenced by existing memories. If the brain has more memory knots of unfulfilled desires then new thoughts will be centered and focused around them.
Anger comes easily when there is stress. You feel angry when things don't happen the way you want them to. If you have a powerful processor, then your brain would be better equipped to deal with conflicts and anger. It therefore follows that insecurity and anger could be related.
The power of the brain processor is increased by availability of its working memory. This can happen with cultivation of deep thought so that there is dissolution of other memories and psychological knots. As memories increase, the absorption and digestion of inputs also get enhanced since the mind becomes hungry for more experiences and this increases our desires. As our desires increase both in quantity and quality the powerful brain-mind complex starts looking for a higher purpose. The "mind opening" or God experience allows interaction of mind with external and higher dimensional knowledge space and allows access to existing information, which are the basis of most discoveries and inventions.
Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) Phaltan, Maharshtra
anilrajvanshi@gmail.com
Fasting with a happy face
Thomas Chillikulam, Aug 22, 2010, 12.00am IST
On Ash Wednesday, Christians began the observance of Lent. The Teutonic word Lent denotes 40 days of fasting, prayer and almsgiving in preparation for the commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Among the many Lenten practices, fasting is the most significant. Fasting has been around a long time as a spiritual discipline in almost all cultures and religions. To fast is to abstain from something that gives us pleasure and enjoyment in order that it may enhance our spiritual experience; it is not dieting or 'not eating'. It is a way to spiritual fitness.
Jesus fasted for 40 days before he began his public life. Yet, he does not make it an obligatory exercise. He does not say fasting is essential but says what kind of fasting is acceptable to God. Jesus discounts all such fasts done with a concealed intention to draw attention to one and to seek others' acclamation: "When you fast do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance so that they may appear to others as fasting". (Matthew 6:16). The one who fasts must avoid all sense of spiritual superiority and pride. This is why Jesus insists that the one who fasts must not "appear to be fasting" and must "oil your hair and wash your face." These are ritualistic observances but acts of love for God and so must be done happily and with a happy face.
An important reason to fast is that it helps develop more self discipline to transcend sensual and physical gratification. We tend to overindulge rather than exercise restraint and in this context, fasting is a good way of striking a balance. Prophet Muhammad's statement, "The worst thing man can fill is his stomach" comes as a deterrent to gluttony. The Buddhist Dhammapada goes a step further to compare a craving person to a "fat domestic pig" bound by the fetters of samsara.
Fasting takes us beyond the carnal level of existence to the realm of the divine within. A better articulation of this dimension of fasting can be found in the Sanskrit term for fasting, upavas. Upa meaning 'near' and 'Vaas' means 'to dwell'. Thus, fasting means to live or remain closer to God. It is not a negative act of abstaining but a positive step of obtaining God's love. Fasting is fuel for the soul that ignites faith and greater intimacy with God and thereby makes our lives happier and more joyful.
Fasting has a social significance. It cannot be a mere self-fulfilling spiritual activity. The Bible is emphatic that true fasting is not just to abstain from food, to bow one's head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes- "this rather is the fast I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, setting free the oppressed, sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless" (Isaiah 58:6-7). M K Gandhi used fasting as a spiritual weapon to bring about social and political transformation. In India it is women, especially rural women, who fast more than men. They seem to gain tremendous inner strength and power to overcome suffering, alleviate the pain of others and thereby become life-givers. True fasting will remind us of the bounty we enjoy on a daily basis, and sensitize us to the reality of forced hunger thousands of people in our planet go through day after day.
Freedom from biology
Swami Sukhabodhananda, Aug 22, 2010, 12.00am IST
What happens to our soul when our body turns to ashes on the funeral pyre?
What happens to our soul when our body turns to ashes on the funeral pyre?
Our physical body is called sthulashariram or gross body. Our limited self is called sukshmashariram or subtle body. There is a third entity called karanashariram or casual body. Now the sthulashariram is the abode of jeevatma, the spirit of life. It is not the body, but it gets identified with the body. The soul, along with the mind, is the seat of consciousness. The body is only a vehicle, and when it is consigned to flames after physical death, the soul is set free from its mortal coils. Then it searches for another body that will be its vehicle for another lifetime. At the end of this search, depending upon its karma, it is assigned to a particular body. The soul begins life anew in that body. In reality, the soul is immortal.
For example: The space in the room appears limited by the room. Is the space enclosed within the four walls of the room or is the room a small enclosure in the vast unlimited space of the universe? The room is a tiny speck in space. But we say there is space in the room. Think of the jeevatma as space and of the body as the walls of the room that encloses part of the space. Now suppose the walls of the room crumble down. Will the space previously contained within the room suffer any damage or dissolution? No, the space returns to its state of continuity which had earlier with the space outside the walls. To realize this is gnanodayam or the dawn of knowledge.
Doesn't the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth negate the law of karma?
No, it does not. It means the soul is on an unending journey of evolution. The question is whether you want to hasten this process, or you want to allow this process as it happens at its own pace. For example, if you are into agriculture, you pump water into your fields when there is no rain for a long period. The water enriches the process of crop growth which would otherwise be slowed down by delayed rains. Irrigation technology speeds up the agricultural process. Likewise, there are spiritual methods to enlighten the process of birth and rebirth.
Is time a dimension of the world of life even after death?
When you are conscious of the soul's essential transcendence of physical dimensions, you are beyond the confines of time. But if you don't have this awareness, that is, if you are operating from ignorance, you are subject to time, even though you have the potential to transcend it. For example, we know that space is not limited by the walls or the roof of a room. But space, not being conscious, is incapable of extending itself to its vast expanse outside until an external agency brings the walls down. It stays confined within concrete boundaries. The liberation that the heightened consciousness leads to is called jeevan mukti – liberation from biological life. If we remain ignorant of our true nature, we remain in bondage to our body nature with its trappings of kama or sexual desire, krodha or anger, lobha or non-restraint, and moha or greed. True knowledge liberates, whereas ignorance binds.
Student, "Where can I find God?"
Master, "Right in front of you"
Student, "Then why don't I see him?"
Master, "Why doesn't a drunkard recognise his own house? Find out what you are drunk with, and then you will find God in front of you."
Down memory lane
Janina Gomes, Aug 21, 2010, 12.00am IST
Memories are like story books. They record ourexperiences and the lessons we have learned from them. It is when we have quiet moments, or moments of introspection and reflection, that we allow memories to catch up with us.
Memories are like story books. They record ourexperiences and the lessons we have learned from them. It is when we have quiet moments, or moments of introspection and reflection, that we allow memories to catch up with us.
Memories, both positive and negative, always have the stamp of a culture and are embedded in our consciousness as myths, dreams and fantasies. Like a motion picture in progress, they come and go and we all reach a stage when we know that we have to, for sure, release certain memories if we wish to maintain our peace and our equilibrium.
When unpleasant memories stick for a long time and refuse to go away, that is perhaps nature's way of protecting us. Unpleasant memories can become a warning signal for us, so that we do not repeat past mistakes. There is a reason why distrust can serve a purpose. Memories remind us that not everyone and everybody is to be trusted. They surface again and again, reminding us that there are certain steps we can and must take to avoid further hurt.
Memories also come down to us from our ancestors. The good we learn from them as well as certain characteristics, are passed on to us. There are however, a lot of memories buried in our consciousness with a hidden content, that surface as unhelpful and disturbing thoughts. They are disturbing because we will destroy ourselves if we allow them to rule us.
One of the greatest minds of the 20 the century, Carl Gustav Jung, spoke about a collective unconscious. The good and the bad are stored up there. When we are in touch with the deepest part of ourselves, this memory storehouse of humanity is at play within us. All the wisdom of humanity can be accessed and a continuation established with our ancestors; what they thought and did.
We, each of us, do not have to reinvent the wheel. We have on tap all the wisdom and goodness of our ancestors. That is how we find help in processing our memories, retaining those that bring life and allowing what is not good to move away.
Walking down memory lane can throw up many things we had forgotten and put us in touch with the past. By reliving these memories and letting them go, we can move into the future with hope and confidence. We will not repeat the mistakes of the past. We will avoid, if possible the people and the situations that bring us grief.
The richness of the past- the religious, secular and the heavenly, we retain as memories because they complete us and add the missing dimension in each of us, when we learn to transcend them. Memories are not merely a choice when we choose to relive the past. They are an integral part of us.
When memories retain the pain attached to them, it is usually because they revolve around nasty experiences from the past. However, the more we are able to release them, the closer we come to our true selves.
When we are told to "Let Go", we are really being asked to release those memories that bind us. We are being told to live in the Now. We are being told to reclaim our past and to reshape our future. Memories are a great shaper of the present and the future.
Take a long walk down memory lane. You will know what to claim and what to bypass. Use your memories to enrich your life and not to destroy the great potential that remains often hidden within you.
So far and no further
Janina Gomes, Aug 21, 2010, 12.00am IST
It does not take many years or deep wisdom to realise that we all have our limitations.
It does not take many years or deep wisdom to realise that we all have our limitations.
It does not take many years or deep wisdom to realise that we all have our limitations. Theselimitations differ from person to person. Some are able to push back physical barriers by performing feats in athletics, weight lifting or hard manual labour. Those who are physically weak may turn out to be achievers intellectually and go on to become good scholars and researchers. Similarly, we have emotional, affective and spatial limits. We can go so far and no further.
Instead of being hamstrung by these limits, they come into our lives to help us grow. Until and unless we are tested by circumstances and events, we do not know our own limits and how far we can go. When confronted by difficulties, there is an inner force abiding within us all that makes us rise up and overcome the obstacles we face.
Obstructions and difficulties are challenges to growth. One becomes wise after learning from experience, for instance. And that generates inner strength.
When we watch games and matches on the fields, we see cricket, tennis or hockey players at their best, having spent long hours training and developing skills, and we have not been privy to their learning process. It is the same with an author, musician or artist- we see the finished product, not all the long hours that went into developing their skills.
However, whatever the field of endeavour, sooner or later we discover that we have our limitations. We learn, especially if we have lived for around 50 years, that there is a slow degeneration and decline of our physical bodies. We may be intellectually alert and prolific, but some things are just beyond our grasp. We find, perhaps, that relationships that have been fulfilling in the past no longer mean anything to us.
Slowly, we learn to let go and stay on with things and persons with whom we are comfortable. While a comfort zone is healthy, we still need to stretch ourselves beyond it, if we want to live a peaceful, purposeful and meaningful life. Sooner or later we begin to draw away from activities and work which are stressful and perhaps not a great priority for us any longer.
We prioritize our time and redeploy our resources. That is often what human wisdom consists of to know what to do, when to do it and when not to expend our energies and resources on what may be meaningful to others, but which no longer make sense to us, with our limited time, attention and resources.
Although our knowledge domains have expanded over time, we still cannot find answers to many questions. As medical science progresses, with it the number of illnesses increases. Technology produces all kinds of wizardry. Young children have the kind of exposure to life that was unthinkable a few decades ago. But, along with the exposure come many attendant problems.
So, whether it is spatial, physical, emotional or spiritual, our limitations will teach us to be truly human. We will not wallow in our weaknesses but learn to acquire strength and courage to live with them. We cease to look at the achievements of others as competition and instead look at how we can evolve, and give our best, notwithstanding our limitations. We will acquire stature and grow precisely because we have created for ourselves a purposeful life with and despite our limitations.
An incredible journey
Dinesh Verma, Aug 21, 2010, 12.00am IST
Soul is a dynamic system. We are all given a map at the time of birth that broadly determines the proportions of various elements in the soul but all this changes as soon as the experiences of our senses begin to leave their own imprint on the soul. The input from our senses can change this map at any time.
Soul is a dynamic system. We are all given a map at the time of birth that broadly determines the proportions of various elements in the soul but all this changes as soon as the experiences of our senses begin to leave their own imprint on the soul. The input from our senses can change this map at any time.
Sounds and smells can invoke any one of positive or negative feelings. As our experiences expand they are imbedded in our memories. A beautiful melody can touch our soul. There is a constant turmoil going in within our soul. It is the eternal fight between the Cosmic Intelligence and the negative forces that are nothing but emptiness on the soul map.
Those who live in reasonably happy surroundings, can sustain positive feelings most of the time and remain happy. The unhappy soul strays trapped inside an unhappy body. When the body dies the unhappy soul is released into the universe only to come back as another unhappy person. The cycle goes on. The grander purpose of life and the universe is unfulfilled. So staying happy by increasing the proportion of cosmic intelligence in our souls and getting rid of emptiness should be a common goal.
The key to finding that happiness is the so-called "sixth" sense or "sense of belief" as I would like to call it. This sense is the portal through which cosmic intelligence enters the mind. Even as a child this sixth sense. There is a sense of wonder, a quest to know more and to accept what we learn, in all of us. However, this sense of wonder is mediated by our upbringing, surroundings and education and that wonder starts getting clouded. But the good news is that it can be cleared of clouds by conscious effort.
Once the sixth sense is opened it allows direct communication between cosmic intelligence inside our souls and the all-prevailing cosmic intelligence in the universe. The more we "believe" the greater are the chances of our consciousness flowing freely and taking advantage of the vast ocean of positive energy flowing all around us. So the first and foremost step of achieving permanent happiness is to believe in something completely with your heart, mind or soul whatever you want to call it. This sense has also been described in mythology as the inner eye or third eye. ... Many people already have the sixth sense opened to a great extent. This manifest in them as the power of intuition.
... The Bhagavad Gita describes karma yoga, the practice that allows us to continue working and doing whatever we are doing as long as we do not work for ulterior motives, and follow the pure way of life with detachment from all results of our actions. We do not consider ourselves as the "doer" but believe that cosmic intelligence within us determines all actions or karma.
Be in the presence of people who know 'the truth.' Satsang simply works from the flow of cosmic intelligence between people. By sharing, it grows further. People who are in love with each other experience this feeling in the presence of the loved one. Your sorrow, pain and grief are diminished if someone else shares those with you. That is the key to compassion that flows from people who have high levels of cosmic intelligence.
Like Arjuna, seek counsel
N Andal, Aug 29, 2010, 12.00am IST
We often say that a human being is the noblest work of God, and that when God created this masterpiece He gave it a mind, body and soul.
We often say that a human being is the noblest work of God, and that when God created this masterpiece He gave it a mind, body and soul.
While the body is transitory and has a normal curve of birth, growth, maturity, decay and death and the mind that is encased in the body also goes along the same route, the soul is beyond death and destruction and joins the cosmic pool when it leaves the body. But God who created all living beings on this universe embedded humans with a special characteristic – that of an intellect capable of knowing his non-being also! But apart from this, our knowledge of the future is zero. We live in the past with our memories, we live in the present with our pains and pleasures and we live in the future with vague guess work.
Just as the physical body is vulnerable to injury and disease the mind, too, suffers as a result of what we say and do. Medical help is available with doctors and treatments for bringing the body back to good health. But when the mind suffers an aberration owing to traumatic events the consequences can be tragic for all those who are close to the person so affected and of course, the concerned individual. Treatment for disturbed minds is not so easily accessible. Moreover, seeking psychiatric help is viewed as something only 'mad' people do, and so there is a stigma attached.
Hence there is need for counselling centres and an openness to encourage people to come forward to seek help. This will help reduce the anxiety and stress levels, leading to a better quality of life for individuals and families and by extension, friends, colleagues and society as a whole. The more depressed you get, the more anxiously you seek isolation that only deepens the depression.
We are no strangers to this state of mind. Arjuna was the earliest known victim of this kind of dejection when the Mahabharata war was about to begin. His charioteer Lord Krishna empathised with Arjuna and took the responsibility of pulling Arjuna out of his predicament. The result was the Bhagavad Gita. The dilemma of Arjuna was that he found it unacceptable that he should wage war with his own kith and kin. Though as a soldier his duty was to fight, how could he be happy after killing his relatives?
Krishna advised Arjuna to be more focussed on his duties and the vows he had taken so that he does not suffer from inner conflict. The war was dharma yuddha, and when Draupadi was humiliated Arjuna had vowed to fight for justice and bring the violators to book.When the land of the Pandavas was taken away by his cousins fraudulently, he had fretted and fumed and vowed to remedy the adharma, the injustice, when the time came. And now at the battlefield the time had indeed come.
In everyone's life there are uncertainties. We all go through inner conflicts. It would be a mistake to think that all things are under our control. In times of frustration, dejection, grief and similar tragedies in life – it will be foolish to abandon hope altogether. It would be wise and prudent to go to someone you can trust and unburden your innermost feelings. Hope remains with us even when our own shadows do not. It is at times of pitch darkness that you realise the importance of light. This light can be provided only by wise counsellors like Lord Krishna.
Cherish your 'aloneness'
SWAMI BRAHMDEV, Aug 20, 2010, 12.00am IST
Billions of people live on earth. Every second, as many thoughts take birth and dissolve, even as beings come and go. There is a process in life: to come and to go. Have you seen any wave in the ocean that stays still? No, it comes and goes. Thoughts also come and go, reactions come and go, everything comes and goes.
Billions of people live on earth. Every second, as many thoughts take birth and dissolve, even as beings come and go. There is a process in life: to come and to go. Have you seen any wave in the ocean that stays still? No, it comes and goes. Thoughts also come and go, reactions come and go, everything comes and goes.
Considering the transitory nature of life, it makes sense to not cling to things. And why are we so serious? Perhaps we are so serious because we have so much negativity. Even if something happens that helps us, that brings us prosperity, we think negative and we refuse it. We are unable to see the difference between a diamond and mere stone.
What causes you pain often turns out to be the most beautiful blessing of your life. If any source gives you pain, feel gratitude for that. For suffering creates the opportunity for change. Sometimes we need pressure and pain to make us change for the better.
When a sculptor takes a stone, he removes all the unwanted parts and discovers the figure in that stone. Pain and pressure in life are processes that help remove all unwanted substances from our lives and realise our true Self.
Aurobindo said that pain is a hammer in the hands of the Divine. Divinity is trying to make a true figure; He is removing all the unwanted substances very slowly, and all around you, for some it could also be their near and dear.
Keep alive your aloneness. We came from One and we have to become One. One is alone; alonemeans One. The highest possibilities of life can come in aloneness. When you are two, nothing comes to you, two is a pastime. If our life is happy, if it is full of the divine blessings, blessed by divine grace, it is because life gives us the fruit of aloneness. Only the Divine is alone. The Divine is one, He's not two.
We should feel gratitude if something or someone gives us the experience of aloneness. Only when we are alone, are we able to understand ourselves, to know who we are, to become aware of ourselves, to see the value of our lives. But we are always afraid of aloneness. Nobody wants to be alone, to be single; we want to become two, and two takes you out from you. Becoming one is a process of life.
When i say, "I do yoga," what does yoga mean? To become One. You are two and now you want to become one. Yoga means to become One and One is God, One is the highest source of possibilities. If you want only a pastime you can become two, three or four.
If we feel alone, we should try to live with this aloneness for a long time. When we live with this and the seed of aloneness is established in us, a beautiful tree comes out. And the tree that comes from the seed of aloneness gives us love, peace, harmony, joy, bliss, everything.
But we have to hold this aloneness with all the patience. Remember that we are blessed with divine grace if aloneness comes into our life, because this comes to very few people. This world is so strange that it always keeps us involved, always busy. So keep alive your aloneness and play the game of life with that.
As told to Sudhamahi Regunathan .
Swami's e-mail: aurovalley@gmail.com
Nothing belongs to me
TNN, Aug 20, 2010, 12.00am IST
Who is responsible for action that takes place? If you think that you are, you will need to reflect on the question. Never consider yourself as the doer of actions.
God himself is the doer and the one undergoing action. You have not made this world and the weight of this world is not over you. If you surrender to the One who has made this world and who is taking care of this world, then whatever you do will be noble and good for everybody.
Krishna said to Arjuna in the Bhagvad Geeta: "Give up your pride, beliefs and attachment to body and then come to my rescue. I am all-knowing and am the supreme soul. By doing so, you will experience divine peace and reach the supreme blissful state."
By believing God to be the doer, the karta and the one undergoing action (Bharata), one surrenders to God completely. If you feed a beggar and then think that you were the one who fed the poor beggar, then this reflects petty behavior, it's tamas. A believer in rajas or action will think that he was fortunate to feed the beggar and thanks God for giving him this opportunity to offer his service.
While a believer of satva or truth will think that he was just a mediator, it was God who gave strength to his hands to feed the God who is in the beggar. Your heart will become pure if you believe that by serving your mother or a guest or anybody else you are actually serving God in another form. Don't think that you served the helpless mother or guest. Those people appear to be helpless in their physical form but in reality the all-knowing God is present in them. God is the doer and the one undergoing action.
You will be successful every time you believe in the presence of God behind every action. One enjoys meditation, japa, worship or service when there is the belief that, "My dear Lord is doing and He only is getting that done!"
Whenever you come in submission to God knowingly or unknowingly, your work becomes divine, you are able to complete work without being worried and after completion also you feel the sweetness of that work. The result of selfish and evil work is unhappiness, depression and loss of peace of mind.
People may praise an officer using attractive words even if he is not praiseworthy, in order to get their work done. The officer then starts thinking that he is indispensable to the work being done. But when that officer retires, nobody recognises him.
God is the only true officer of all. If somebody praises you that you are a big person, then you should understand that you are not big, He is big who is making your heart beat and brain work.
If you sit down for meditation for two hours and spend the rest of 22 hours in inflating your pride, there will be no spiritual growth. It is good to devote time to prayer and meditation, but the rest of the time one should think: "There is the hand of God in whatever work is being done, that very God is the doer and is the one undergoing action." If you start contemplating on this thought, then you will soon realise the true self of God.
There is nothing mine in me, whatever is there is yours.
www.ashram.org
(Discourse: Asaram Bapu)
Linking up above
Christopher Mendonca, Aug 19, 2010, 12.00am IST
A magazine I picked up recently had the following title on its cover page: "Towards a Spiritualityrooted in Religion". I said to myself: "Shouldn't it be the other way round?"
A magazine I picked up recently had the following title on its cover page: "Towards a Spiritualityrooted in Religion". I said to myself: "Shouldn't it be the other way round?"
The word 'religion' itself derives from the Latin religare meaning "to bind" or to link. It signifies the outward manifestation of an inner attitude, the expression of our being "linked" to the divine which we have experienced deep at the centre of our being.
Rituals, it would seem are an indispensable part ofreligion and are often identified with it. They serve a useful purpose as a pedagogical tool, and are meant precisely to keep alive the initial experience from which they emerged. Experience precedes the ritual. Ritual however has no meaning once it is separated from experience.
Our spiritual experiences grow deeper in proportion to our experience of being loved and being able to love in return. The progressive and in the end complete loss of self in the act of Self- giving enables us to connect with the divine for whom the whole of creation is just the outpouring of the Divine self. Truly, in God "we live, move and have our being". In love there is no room for fear. One of the characteristics of a genuine spiritual experience is therefore the absence of fear.
The experience of fear is so necessary for 'self-preservation'. At the physical level it enables us to ward off dangers and minimise threats to life. Yet, we often continue to experience fear long after the threat has disappeared and sometimes even when there is no threat at all. When this happens there has been a subtle shift in the origin of our fear. It is the ego that is struggling to preserve itself. At the physiological level it manifests itself in stress. It is not surprising, therefore, that meditation techniques are prescribed as the antidote to stress. Stress abhors unpredictability and it is so easy for one to use the 'predictable' ritual to soothe the pain of the wounded ego. But the ego is not easily deceived. At this point religion parts ways with spirituality. Religion degenerates into magic. A spirituality based on such a religion is nothing more than a caricature. Meditation on the other hand as the art of learning to "pay attention", becomes the link between the ritual and the spi-ritual.
In a New Testament scripture text that is familiar to most Christians, St Paul describes love, among other things, as 'never quick to take offence' and 'keeping no score of wrongs'. Love gives one the freedom not to see another's transgression as a personal offence. That knocks the stuffing out of the other's aggression – real or imagined. There is no room for fear because no threat has been perceived. One can then love in freedom. It is the practice of meditation that enables us to slowly begin progressively functioning not from our 'ego' but from our true Self. The true Self is God and God is love.
When religion is based on true spirituality, we are able to understand that differences need not cause divisions. Returning to our contemplative traditions and meditative practices is the surest way to eschew violence in the name of religion. It allows us to restore the original purpose of the ritual which is to enable us connect to the experience of God within. We need no security other than the awareness that we are in God and God is in us. Perfect love casts out all fear.
The writer teaches the practice of Christian meditation.
visit www.wccm.org.
Shake hands with life
Aruna Jethwani, Aug 20, 2010, 12.00am IST
Every body is floating in a vacuum, so to speak. Or, they're living on a surface. We are strangers to our own self. The world around us, glorifying glamour, celebrating the superfluous and taken up with virtual images, has become so disconnected. When one reads of a celebrity or student taking her own life, it makes me wonder, why would anyone wish to end what is essentially a beautiful life?
Loss of face, depression, weakness and fear of rejection by family and society are some of the reasons for dejection. All these point to one thing: lack of faith and stunted self growth.
Says Dada J PVaswani, "Depression is not what happens to us. It is due to what happens in us." However it is failures and difficulties that make life so interesting, he points out. It is unrealistic to accept success and profit all the time; it is foolhardy to consider life as nothing but a series of problems. "Learn to live life as it is. Bend and you will not break!" advises Dada.
During a crisis we do need emotional support from family and friends; but if such support is not available for some reason, it is necessary to find it within. Inner resource will help us detach ourselves from the maya of illusion. Remember the saying: 'This too shall pass away.'
Scientist and inventor Thomas Edison once remarked, "There is great value in disaster." It is true that disappointments, pain and suffering have made life difficult for many of us – but surviving those against all odds has also made heroes out of us. Like a tea bag, we tend to become stronger when in hot water. "For every hurt, for every plight,/ For every lonely pain racked night./ There is a reason. / But if we trust the Lord, as we should,/ It all will work out for our good./ He knows the reason."
There is a deeper meaning in life which is not seen immediately; it gets revealed slowly, later in life. But impatient as we are, we cannot wait – in our haste we forget to live and so we lose touch with our inner self that could have given us immense strength.
Insecurity grows by leaps due to lack of trust, and that hinders bonding and so leads to absence of true emotional support. Add to this the excess of material values, which makes an individual self-conscious of his weaknesses. He suffers then from low self-esteem. If only we could tap into our inner source, we would get empowered to face all odds. That is why it is so important to make the effort to shake hands with life; then it will meet us halfway.
Unfortunately, fear of failure haunts most people. We sail in the same boat. We seek support and security in a relationship, in materialistic risk coverage, in money, and friends. But the basic insecurity lies within. It can be transformed only with faith; by mental and spiritual exercises.
Perhaps the educational system should incorporate a curriculum of courage-giving courses to increase an individual's spiritual quotient. Half an hour of yoga, meditation, and storytelling of heroes and great souls and such inspirational talk would go a long way in making youth strong and courageous. And to face the challenges at the ground level, let schools and colleges make it obligatory for students to do social service to the less privileged. Let's meet life halfway at least.
The absence of self
Sumit Paul, Aug 18, 2010, 12.00am IST
Buddha's disciple Subhuti suddenly discovered the richness and fecundity of emptiness; the realisation that everything is impermanent, unsatisfactory and empty of self.
In this mood of divine emptiness, he sat in bliss under a tree when suddenly flowers began to fall all around him. And the gods whispered, "We're enraptured by your sublime teachings on emptiness." Subhuti replied, "But i've not uttered a word about emptiness." "True," the gods replied. "You've not spoken of emptiness, we've not heard of emptiness. This is true emptiness." And the showers of blossoms continued.
If i had spoken of my emptiness or even been aware of it, would it be emptiness? Music needs the hollowness of the flute, letters, the blankness of the page, light, the void called a window, holiness, the absence of self. "Divinity descends on a man who never seeks divinity," said a Persian mystic. Our minds are too cluttered with the ideas of self, divinity and spirituality. In our conscious endeavour to become spiritual we fall short of our objective and remain worldly. We're all too preoccupied with things that have no real significance in life.
A woman went to Lao Tse and said that she was constantly tormented by useless thoughts whenever she sat for her evening prayers. Lao Tse said, "Try to pray anytime in a day and come to me after a few days." She came to meet Lao Tse and told him that no thoughts tormented her now when she didn't set aside a fixed hour for prayers. "When you fixed a time, your self was conscious. You were aware of the need to pray at a given time. Now with random prayers, you've broken that stifling mould. You're no longer conscious, thus free of any pestering thought." Unawareness is a blissful state. With awareness comes a set pattern. It gives birth to a structure, a formula, a format.
Rumi said, "While talking to my beloved (Allah), i'm unaware at times whether to speak or not. I often remain silent because my beloved doesn't like much volubility." Silence is unspoken emptiness and is much more eloquent than any set or fixed prayer.
The trouble is we've set aside practices and rituals even for spirituality. One has to visit a Shani mandir only on Saturdays or wear a certain stone on a specific day. This has no meaning. Every hour is auspicious and every day is lucky.
Blissful ignorance is divinity. Only in a state of bekhudi or self-immersion you can reach the stage of enlightenment, called 'turiya avastha'. Buddha never felt that he had attained satori or enlightenment. It became integral to his mystic consciousness. Any effort to expedite the process of enlightenment is futile. In Ramz-e-bekhudi Allama Iqbal says, " Spirituality is not something mundane to attain, the way we put all our efforts into achieving an object in life. It occurs like a bolt from the blue when you least expected it."
Conscious endeavour cannot lead a seeker to his spiritual destination. Nor is the lifestyle of a monk assurance of achieving the state of perpetual bliss. The moment mind becomes free of wish, desire or wistfulness, a divine consciousness descends. Christ was a carpenter's son, Muhammad was reportedly unlettered, Moses was adopted and he was reportedly illiterate. "God finds his way through unconscious and unpretentious people. Because divinity resides in a blissfully unaware mind," Tagore wrote in the Gitanjali.
Please Value Compromise
SANJAY DEV, Aug 17, 2010, 12.00am IST
If you can't go that extra mile, meet someone halfway. Value compromise, but don't compromiseyour values. Life is not a smooth journey. It should not be. It is marked by ups and downs. People and situations move in and out of life. Some are easy to handle while others are difficult to deal with. It is the difficult ones that always come to us to test out abilities of how smoothly we manage to cope with them, with least resistance and friction offered in the effort.
We may not always get what we want. Does that mean we should not seek to get what we want? Or rue over the fact that what we set out to achieve is different from what we actually did?
Disagreement occurs, not so much for want of agreement as to the lack of our desire to agree. Our entrenched disinclination disposes us not to agree to something or with someone that is half as good. When we say half as good, we presuppose the half as bad already. This conflict between half as good and half as bad holds us back to arrive at a solution with regard to people and situations that are not past resolve in themselves.
When faced with people and situations caught in the spatio-temporal warp, different from our own, we fail to see them in objective light. Our subjective thinking gets the better of us. As a result what's obvious to others is not so to us.
The solution to resolve a deadlocked situation or parties involved in it exists outside this warp. But for that to happen, people need to cede their stance.
This ceding of position is not acceptance of defeat, or meek surrender. It is not something to be ashamed of or to feel conscious-stricken about. Rather it is the brave attempt at surmounting the inflated sense of ego that comes in the way of us arriving at an agreement. It is a conscious choice.
Adoption of such a way requires us to recognise others' point of view. We can start looking for merit in others' case only when we presume an element of demerit in ours. For truth is never absolute. We mistakenly chase the shadow and miss the image.
Compromise is intrinsic to nature's scheme of things to avoid resistance. When a fierce wind threatens to blow away and uproot all that comes in its path, even the mighty tree, otherwise firmly standing, begins to sway and bends and bows. The fury of wind doesn't last, but the submissive bending of tree manages to see it through the rough patch. A blade of grass flattens itself against the swift current of water only to pop up its head when the current slackens. Nature uses this defence mechanism for survival. It also teaches us to live in harmony with one another and at peace with ourselves.
Nature provides us with the option of compromise as an effective means to achieve harmony and peace in times of personal conflict and emotional turmoil and interpersonal clash and collective wars. We only need to wake up to the idea and bring it into play to attain peace within and outside.
It is certainly not a big price, rather a welcome value addition in the objective evaluation of compromise. What are we waiting for?
If you can't go that extra mile, meet someone halfway. Value compromise, but don't compromiseyour values. Life is not a smooth journey. It should not be. It is marked by ups and downs. People and situations move in and out of life. Some are easy to handle while others are difficult to deal with. It is the difficult ones that always come to us to test out abilities of how smoothly we manage to cope with them, with least resistance and friction offered in the effort.
We may not always get what we want. Does that mean we should not seek to get what we want? Or rue over the fact that what we set out to achieve is different from what we actually did?
Disagreement occurs, not so much for want of agreement as to the lack of our desire to agree. Our entrenched disinclination disposes us not to agree to something or with someone that is half as good. When we say half as good, we presuppose the half as bad already. This conflict between half as good and half as bad holds us back to arrive at a solution with regard to people and situations that are not past resolve in themselves.
When faced with people and situations caught in the spatio-temporal warp, different from our own, we fail to see them in objective light. Our subjective thinking gets the better of us. As a result what's obvious to others is not so to us.
The solution to resolve a deadlocked situation or parties involved in it exists outside this warp. But for that to happen, people need to cede their stance.
This ceding of position is not acceptance of defeat, or meek surrender. It is not something to be ashamed of or to feel conscious-stricken about. Rather it is the brave attempt at surmounting the inflated sense of ego that comes in the way of us arriving at an agreement. It is a conscious choice.
Adoption of such a way requires us to recognise others' point of view. We can start looking for merit in others' case only when we presume an element of demerit in ours. For truth is never absolute. We mistakenly chase the shadow and miss the image.
Compromise is intrinsic to nature's scheme of things to avoid resistance. When a fierce wind threatens to blow away and uproot all that comes in its path, even the mighty tree, otherwise firmly standing, begins to sway and bends and bows. The fury of wind doesn't last, but the submissive bending of tree manages to see it through the rough patch. A blade of grass flattens itself against the swift current of water only to pop up its head when the current slackens. Nature uses this defence mechanism for survival. It also teaches us to live in harmony with one another and at peace with ourselves.
Nature provides us with the option of compromise as an effective means to achieve harmony and peace in times of personal conflict and emotional turmoil and interpersonal clash and collective wars. We only need to wake up to the idea and bring it into play to attain peace within and outside.
It is certainly not a big price, rather a welcome value addition in the objective evaluation of compromise. What are we waiting for?
Have a sound bath
DILIP NADKARNI, Aug 25, 2010, 12.00am IST
I remember that day in the second year of my MBBS course when I was studying Pharmacology. Countless drug names had to be learnt by rote along with information of their actions and side effects.
I remember that day in the second year of my MBBS course when I was studying Pharmacology. Countless drug names had to be learnt by rote along with information of their actions and side effects.
Time was short and the pressure, enormous. To de-stress I tried taking a nap, but woke up with a horrible dream that I had missed the examination. Pacing the floor, I chanced into my parents' room, where my mother was practicing Raag Kalavati on the harmonium. I felt that the melody was familiar, somewhat similar to that of a Hindi film song. I asked my mother if I could try my hand at the musical instrument.
The moment I touched the keys and pulled the bellows of the harmonium, a fantastic feeling of calm filled me. My mother taught me the basic sargam and I got hooked. After an hour of experimenting and playing staccato notes, I knew I had found my stress management tool for life. Yes, that hour spent in the company of the musical instrument had driven away all the exam stress. I was refreshed and ready to face any challenge in Pharmacology.
From that day onwards, I would take regular breaks from my studies and play the harmonium. After a week of trial and error I finally got the basic notes of the song "Kahe Tarasaaye Jiyara ... " based on the raag Kalavati. Then on, the harmonium has become an integral part of my life. All the fatigue of the day, laden with surgeries and clinics, vanishes after a session on the keyboard.
In many clinical studies music ranks as the Number One stress buster. Whether it is listening, learning or performing, music has the capacity to produce calm and peace. Listening to the right kind of music at the right volume can be beneficial to mind and body. One can reach a meditative zone listening to music. Listening to soft music set to a tempo lower than 72 beats a minute, can induce deep breathing and a lower heart rate, consistent with relaxation. Music can act like a "sound bath" and help you wash away all your worries.
Learning to sing or to play a musical instrument can have therapeutic benefits. When you are in the process of learning the intricacies of melody and rhythm, you are completely in the moment. As you start developing "an ear" for music, you begin to enjoy facets of music you never thought existed. And when you workout a musical phrase or improvise a tune, it works wonders for your self-esteem.
Some composers are convinced about the use of Binaural Beats to provide stress relief. They say that when musical sound is presented to the two ears at separate frequencies, it influences the brain in creating a sense of relaxation. The difference in the frequencies is very small and hardly perceptible even to a highly trained ear. Binaural music also termed "digital drug" helps you enter theta state of mind. This type of music helps your brain release "happy chemicals" -- endorphins, encephalin, endogenous opiates and serotonin. More research is needed to confirm the efficacy and safety of this genre of music.
I am now convinced that music has "pharmacology" of its own. In fact music is one of the most efficient mood elevators and tension tamers and it is easily available.
(Excerpt from Calm Sutra, the Art of Relaxation, a Times Group Books publication.)
Three-in-one Philosophy
Ashok Vohra, Aug 16, 2010, 12.00am IST
Aurobindo's philosophy is called practical philosophy because its goal is both material prosperity and spiritual perfection of an individual. Integral Yoga is the name given to his technique for achieving perfection. It is called Integral Yoga because it does not aim at self-perfection alone at the cost of complete neglect of others. It is based on the principle that true individuality is not exclusive but inclusive.
Aurobindo recognises that an individual cannot either advance materially or evolve spiritually in complete isolation. According to him society is needed at least "as a field of relations which afford to the individual his occasion for growing towards a greater perfection". Society, though imperfectly, provides the conditions for human evolution from the present imperfect state to the distant perfect state, from mind to super-mind.
Aurobindo in The Human Cycle states that there are three echelons of human existence. These are: the individual, community, and humankind in general. He argues that the 'ideal law of social development' should aim at harmonious growth of each of these. They have their own definite destinies, distinctive modes of self-consciousness, truths, their own laws of existence, needs, and laws of growth.
Though all the three are autonomous, they are also interdependent. Like Plato, Aurobindo held that there is a parallelism between individual and community as one cannot be without the other. Moreover, the individual for Aurobindo is not merely an aggregate of 'body, mind, ethical ideals and aesthetic emotions' but more than all these put together. He is essentially spiritual Self. The individual and humankind are interrelated. The individual 'is not himself, but in solidarity with all of his kind'. He has 'to live in humanity' and humanity is manifested 'in the individual'. So, individual, community, and humanity are really one integral organic whole.
However, Aurobindo argues that even in the most evolved state, the conceptual distinction between the three must be retained 'for the purpose of mass-differentiation and the concentration and combinations of varying tendencies in the total human aggregate'. What is common to them is continuous evolution. Each evolves towards perfection according to its own true nature and dharma.
Aurobindo argues that the evolution from within is far superior to external development. He says, "As free development of individuals from within is the best condition for growth and perfection of community, so free development of community or nation from within is the best condition for growth and perfection of mankind".
Aurobindo's focus is on the eternal hope that human existence is full of possibilities. It is the conviction that 'man is what he can be' and that man has an unavoidable inherent tendency towards 'self exceeding', or 'self surpassing' the goals set by him in the past.
Since the evolutionary process advocated by Aurobindo aims at a comprehensive change and not at the emergence of something new, it is laboriously slow. It is able to bring about a comprehensive change because of an element of 'involution'. This process of evolution-involution operates at three levels. Only after the lower stratum becomes sufficiently complex, the higher form emerges. Even after its emergence the higher form does not reject the lower but transforms it radically. The newer and the higher form, in turn, expands itself and is ready to evolve into a still higher emergent form. The process goes on till consciousness becomes self-consciousness and mind becomes super-mind. The super-mind, thus, integrates in itself all lower forms of consciousness.
The writer teaches philosophy at Delhi University.
Aurobindo's philosophy is called practical philosophy because its goal is both material prosperity and spiritual perfection of an individual. Integral Yoga is the name given to his technique for achieving perfection. It is called Integral Yoga because it does not aim at self-perfection alone at the cost of complete neglect of others. It is based on the principle that true individuality is not exclusive but inclusive.
Aurobindo recognises that an individual cannot either advance materially or evolve spiritually in complete isolation. According to him society is needed at least "as a field of relations which afford to the individual his occasion for growing towards a greater perfection". Society, though imperfectly, provides the conditions for human evolution from the present imperfect state to the distant perfect state, from mind to super-mind.
Aurobindo in The Human Cycle states that there are three echelons of human existence. These are: the individual, community, and humankind in general. He argues that the 'ideal law of social development' should aim at harmonious growth of each of these. They have their own definite destinies, distinctive modes of self-consciousness, truths, their own laws of existence, needs, and laws of growth.
Though all the three are autonomous, they are also interdependent. Like Plato, Aurobindo held that there is a parallelism between individual and community as one cannot be without the other. Moreover, the individual for Aurobindo is not merely an aggregate of 'body, mind, ethical ideals and aesthetic emotions' but more than all these put together. He is essentially spiritual Self. The individual and humankind are interrelated. The individual 'is not himself, but in solidarity with all of his kind'. He has 'to live in humanity' and humanity is manifested 'in the individual'. So, individual, community, and humanity are really one integral organic whole.
However, Aurobindo argues that even in the most evolved state, the conceptual distinction between the three must be retained 'for the purpose of mass-differentiation and the concentration and combinations of varying tendencies in the total human aggregate'. What is common to them is continuous evolution. Each evolves towards perfection according to its own true nature and dharma.
Aurobindo argues that the evolution from within is far superior to external development. He says, "As free development of individuals from within is the best condition for growth and perfection of community, so free development of community or nation from within is the best condition for growth and perfection of mankind".
Aurobindo's focus is on the eternal hope that human existence is full of possibilities. It is the conviction that 'man is what he can be' and that man has an unavoidable inherent tendency towards 'self exceeding', or 'self surpassing' the goals set by him in the past.
Since the evolutionary process advocated by Aurobindo aims at a comprehensive change and not at the emergence of something new, it is laboriously slow. It is able to bring about a comprehensive change because of an element of 'involution'. This process of evolution-involution operates at three levels. Only after the lower stratum becomes sufficiently complex, the higher form emerges. Even after its emergence the higher form does not reject the lower but transforms it radically. The newer and the higher form, in turn, expands itself and is ready to evolve into a still higher emergent form. The process goes on till consciousness becomes self-consciousness and mind becomes super-mind. The super-mind, thus, integrates in itself all lower forms of consciousness.
The writer teaches philosophy at Delhi University.
Please value compromise
SANJAY DEV, Sep 17, 2010, 12.00am IST
If you can't go that extra mile, meet someone half way. Value compromise, but don't compromiseyour values.
Life is not a smooth journey. It should not be. It is marked by ups and downs. People and situations move in and out of life. Some are easy to handle while others are difficult to deal with. It is the difficult ones that always come to us to test out abilities of how smoothly we manage to cope with them, with least resistance and friction offered in the effort.
We may not always get what we want. Does that mean we should not seek to get what we want? Or rue over the fact that what we set out to achieve is different from what we actually did?
Disagreement occurs, not so much for want of agreement as to the lack of our desire to agree. Our entrenched disinclination disposes us not to agree to something or with someone that is half as good. When we say half as good, we presuppose the half as bad already. This conflict between half as good and half as bad holds us back to arrive at a solution with regard to people and situations that are not past resolve in themselves.
When faced with people and situations caught in the spatio-temporal warp, different from our own, we fail to see them in objective light. Our subjective thinking gets the better of us. As a result what's obvious to others is not so to us.
The solution to resolve a deadlocked situation or parties involved in it exists outside this warp. But for that to happen, people need to cede their stance.
This ceding of position is not acceptance of defeat, or meek surrender. It is not something to be ashamed of or to feel conscious-stricken about. Rather it is the brave attempt at surmounting the inflated sense of ego that comes in the way of us arriving at an agreement. It is a conscious choice.
Adoption of such a way requires us to recognise others' point of view. We can start looking for merit in others' case only when we presume an element of demerit in ours. For truth is never absolute. We mistakenly chase the shadow and miss the image.
Compromise is intrinsic to nature's scheme of things to avoid resistance. When a fierce wind threatens to blow away and uproot all that comes in its path, even the mighty tree, otherwise firmly standing, begins to sway and bends and bows. The fury of wind doesn't last, but the submissive bending of tree manages to see it through the rough patch. A blade of grass flattens itself against the swift current of water only to pop up its head when the current slackens. Nature uses this defense mechanism for survival. It also teaches us to live in harmony with one another and at peace with ourselves.
Nature provides us with the option of compromise as an effective means to achieve harmony and peace in times of personal conflict and emotional turmoil and inter-personal clash and collective wars. We only need to wake up to the idea and bring it into play to attain peace within and outside.
It is certainly not a big price, rather a welcome value addition in the objective evaluation of compromise. What are we waiting for?
Path of devotional love
Shri Kripaluji Maharaj, Aug 15, 2010, 12.00am IST
A devotee should always, every moment, remember his soul relationship with Radha-Krishna and feel affinity. The more you remember, the closer you get to Them.
A devotee should always, every moment, remember his soul relationship with Radha-Krishna and feel affinity. The more you remember, the closer you get to Them.
If you meditate on the form of Radha-Krishna with the intention of receiving Their vision and love, your meditation will be called remembrance, divine-love consciousness or raganuga bhakti. Meditation in raganuga bhakti is not a physical disciplinary act of concentration in the brain area. Meditation means feeling the divine presence of Radha-Krishna.
You can even feel Their touch, fragrance or the perfume of the garland They are wearing. You should try to visualise in your imagination any leela of Braj, Vrindaban or Barsana where you are either an observer or participant in that leela. You can be very close to Radha Rani or Krishna in the leela or be in the crowd, as you prefer.
If a devotee likes he can also take the help of a decorated deity for remembrance which he should worship with true reverence. He should try to form a lively mental image of the form of Radha-Krishna, which he should consider as divine.
Remembrance of any of the names, leelas, virtues, abodes, and the associates of Radha-Krishna can be done singly or collectively. Some devotees stress more on the name of Radha-Krishna, others on the form, the leelas, virtues, abode, and yet others on the form of their guru.
While chanting, listening to a chant or while remembering a chant in your mind you should feel the synonymity of blissful sweetness of Radha-Krishna with the name, and, at the same time, think of any leela, feel and imagine the presence of Radha-Krishna near you. Radha's name is as sweet as Radha. Feel an affinity with the name along with Radha-Krishna.
Concentration or meditation in any part of the forehead area is yogic technique, and meditation in the heart is related to the methodical forms of worship and devotion called vaidhi bhakti or anusthan. It is not done on this path. While remembering Radha-Krishna experience the love, affinity and longing for Radha-Krishna in your heart. You will then begin to feel Their presence. hile thinking of Their form think of Their full youthful form.
During chanting it is easier to pay full attention to meditation and engross oneself in divine love feelings. The rhythm of the chant helps to develop emotional feelings, and the sound of the music protects the devotee from outer disturbances. But during chanting one should not simply swing his head to the rhythm of the music and enjoy the song, he must do emotional meditation on the form or the leelas of Radha-Krishna, otherwise chanting will not be considered as devotion, it will simply be a pleasurable pastime.
Bhakti is the selfless remembrance of Radha-Krishna. It is accompanied by the feeling of affinity and a desire to increase longing. Such devotion purifies the heart of the devotee and qualifies it to receive the Grace of Krishna.
The practical and best way of Krishna devotion is to increase the longing for the vision of Radha-Krishna and to remember the divine relationship; meditate on the form and the leelas of Radha-Krishna affectionately. This meditation should be followed either by the continuous remembrance of the name of Radha-Krishna in the heart or the chanting, whatever one prefers or whatever suits one's nature.
www.jkp.org
Love, love me do
SOMA CHAKRAVERTTY, Aug 14, 2010, 12.00am IST
We say "God-fearing" of a man who is deeply religious person. Is that not a misconception? If the essence of God is love, why fear Him? Hasn't he created the universe and all life, providing us with resources? Why should anyone fear Him? The Bible (John) states: "He that loveth not, knoweth not God. For God is love. There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear."
We say "God-fearing" of a man who is deeply religious person. Is that not a misconception? If the essence of God is love, why fear Him? Hasn't he created the universe and all life, providing us with resources? Why should anyone fear Him? The Bible (John) states: "He that loveth not, knoweth not God. For God is love. There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear."
Fear is negative, it's limiting. It makes one weary and distrusting. It stops us from standing up against corruption, it prevents us from protesting against wrongdoing and it makes us hesitate to challenge injustice. In a state of fear we turn passive supporter of misdeeds. Since God is not only love but also upholder of universal law, perhaps we do need to fear Him.
Virtue is rewarded and ill-doing attracts retribution. If at all one needs to fear something, it is to fear retribution. On the other hand if one has nothing to fear, it means the conscience is clear, there is courage of conviction and life flows smoothly.
Religious diktats are followed not out of fear of God but because of fear of ungodly misguided people in authority who are themselves far removed from God. We fear pain, failure, separation. We fear situations that cafull of opportunities to learn and move on. If we resent setbacks and blame it all on God, then God becomes intimidating.
Yet, we do look up to God as our saviour. And when we do so, we pay more attention to rites and rituals, chants and intonations rather than on invocation. We are depriving ourselves of His love, losing sight of the soul, the integral part of the supreme soul; we are turning a deaf ear to the voice from within. "He who realises the joy of Brahmn is free from fear," say the Upanishads. "Only by love can men see me and know me and come unto me" said Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. According to the Svetavatara Upanisad "The one God is hidden in all beings, all-pervading , the inner self of all beings, the ordainer of all deeds dwells in all beings, the witness, the knower the only one.........." Therefore it is futile to try to hide dark thoughts and actions from the Divine. Make friends with the Almighty who could then be your sakha or ally in life and help you overcome anger, jealousy lust, passion and greed.
"Friend, stay in my heart, in my day's work, in my prayer, in my knowledge, in happiness, in sorrow, in laughter, in tears..." so prayed Rabindranath Tagore. He addressed the Supreme as his beloved and friend, mate, co-traveler, companion playmate, partner in deep realisation.
Sufism is perhaps the best example of complete surrender to the Almighty with devotional love, reflected so beautifully in Rumi's verse: "I thought of you so often, that I completely became you. Little by little you drew near, and slowly but slowly I passed away." With the strength of divine love Meerabai united with her beloved Krishna and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu got engulfed in the blue God's ocean of love.
According to Swami Surya Jowel fear acts as hindrance to freely love the Supreme. When we condition our love with expectation there are chances of disappointment ad fear of rejection. This creates distances. Divisibility of self creates room for dilemma, doubts, and insecurity. All fuelled by fear. "Turn to the Sun; he says you will realise how he takes care of life with love and light."
Independent of India
Asaram Bapu, Aug 14, 2010, 12.00am IST
If a wave tries to find water, it will turn out to be a difficult task indeed. But if the wave subsides and then tries to find water, it will realise that first, it is water and then only a wave.
If an ornament goes in search of gold, it will learn that it is first gold and then an ornament. An earthen pot on trying to seek clay, finds that it is itself first clay and then an earthen pot. Similarly, we are soul first and then individuals; then we are Gujarati, Sindhi, Marathi, Town Head, Prime Minister or Corporate Executive.
Particulars of caste, position and designation limit us. You belong to the wider human fraternity but by focusing on being an Indian, your identity gets reduced drastically. By considering yourself as someone belonging to Uttar Pradesh, you further confine your ambit. By believing yourself as someone who belongs to Lucknow, you limit yourself even further.
Nationality is a wide but artificial construct. Limiting yourself as someone belonging to Maharashtra, Mumbai or Nagpur narrows your perspective. Regarding yourself as belonging to Uttarakhand isolates you from India, making your outlook even smaller. Now if you talk of Haridwar within Uttarakhand – it gets still smaller. From Haridwar you restrict yourself to 'Har Ki Pauri' to make it even narrower. 'In Har Ki Pauri, on the right side of Brahmakund, my seat is on the left of Juggu temple priest and my name is so-and-so temple priest, MA, B Ed. Get rituals performed by me.' Now the temple priest thinks he holds a big title but in thinking so, he has definitely confined himself to a very small space!
As your titles keep increasing, you continue getting circumscribed and pettier in proportion. Forgetting your all-pervading nature you became entangled in the web of 'my and mine' and get trapped in the cycle of birth and death.
It is fine if you maintain titles in practice but intermittently shun all titles and recall your relationship with that All-pervading Supreme Self. When you go out you dress up, wear tie and shoes or evening gown and high heels, but when you come home and remove all these, you feel free and relaxed, don't you? Similarly all the phantoms of 'I am of such-and-such status, i am this, i am that' that your mind is possessed with – remove all these and like an innocent child sit down and reflect: 'Without ceremonial wedding, I am yours...'
If you have God's idol it is okay, even if you don't, that will also do. If you can light a lamp, its fine, if not, it doesn't matter. Appropriating the purpose of mantra recitation, lovingly pronounce Omkar in a protracted manner. Taking God's name is not counted as an action, but as a call.
Practice this technique ten minutes daily for forty days. You will find a tremendous transformation with immense benefits. The happiness you get from God's love, by calling out to God – that is real joy, bliss. Then your intellect sharpens, your wisdom increases; God's beauty, love and power get manifested in you.
Just reach out to God, lovingly, morning and evening. If you can afford to do this two-three times a day that is even better. You will realise that the time you wasted because of arrogance associated with meaningless titles -- that same time is now being saved and utilised in merging with the Truth-personified Supreme Being, in becoming pervasive, in making you attain joy of soul! Then gradually, the habit of getting immersed in real happiness will increase and by merging with All-pervading Brahmn, you will attain liberation and bliss.
www.ashram.org
Wrestling with God
Janina Gomes, Aug 13, 2010, 12.00am IST
Before we seek God, it is He who has already sought us.
Before we seek God, it is He who has already sought us.
Jacob, in the Bible, wrestled with God in his dream, whilst asleep under a tree. His experience is really a universal one, though it may manifest in many different forms.
Wrestling with God always and inevitably has a positive outcome. We become freer from within. We begin to see a meaning in conflicts and confrontation. When up against a wall, be sure God will meet us in the very impasse we are in. He confronts us, not in the inhuman way some people do, but with deference to our independence and respect for our deepest longings and desires.
Confrontation in real life is unavoidable. Confrontation if handled badly can lead to conflict. Conflict arises from difference and the inability of people to integrate this diversity. Conflict hampers full development because very often it is rooted in the past as unfinished business. A history of non-acceptance, of claims and counterclaims, of greed, jealousy, of disrupted social interactions, sometimes ending in violence and war can all make conflicts difficult to resolve and lead to an emotional overload.
Generations of people pass on the same hatreds from the past. They have been and continue to be at loggerheads. Acrimony and bad taste, attacks and counter-attacks. We are familiar with it all. On the other hand negotiated settlements require wisdom, detachment, statesmanship, a certain give and take, exploration of the unfamiliar and breaking of new ground.
In every situation that presents itself, we find that we encounter some powerful force that we cannot explain. The process of avoidance, denial and withdrawal are all ways in which we wrestle with the divine.
In our active consciousness, we question, look for firm answers and delay our responses. God extends a hand of invitation to us, best captured in Michael Angelo's painting on creation, in the Sistine chapel, depicting God the Father reaching out a hand to touch a human being to life.
Often we find in life, we want one thing and just another happens. All the best laid plans of mice and men come to naught. That creates a feeling of defeat and despondency. But, all the while, the shadow of God hovers and has been hovering over us in all situations both good and bad. A long extended period of wrestling with God's ways and His plans may finally lead us to accept that with God, what we must really do as created beings is to surrender our whole life to Him.
Once we have this framework in our lives, the rest becomes easier. Don't wait till the evening of your life to come to terms with yourself and God. If you are resisting and are enmeshed in the day-to-day pettiness that can ruin our lives, begin now. God, the very force you were wrestling with has already found you before you actively sought Him.
If we allow the grace of God to flow unimpeded in us, we will find that goodness flows naturally from us, like the river. Others will find refuge and solace in us and we will become messengers of God without great effort.
Time will be on our side. Nature will support and help us. We will walk confidently into the future. The God we evaded will flood our lives with His grace. And after a while we will find that there is no need to wrestle any more. God will be our all in all. Was that not the reason why we were born?
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