Guru Punch!

The truth about ourselves needs to be updated. We need to revisit them and ask ourselves these questions again and again, ‘What do I want?’ ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ ‘Am I happy?’ ~ Sri Sri

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 1 - Verse 15

Chapter 1 -- Verse 15

Verse: pancajanyam hrsikeso
devadattam dhananjayah
paundram dadhmau maha-sankham
bhima-karma vrkodarah

Translation: Lord Krishna blew His conchshell, called Pancajanya; Arjuna blew his, the Devadatta; and Bhima, the voracious eater and performer of herculean tasks, blew his terrific conchshell, called Paundra

AOL Knowledge Sheet!----LOVE

Do you love someone, because they are great or unique? I tell you - you are hopeless!

Why do you love someone? Is it because of their qualities or is it because of a sense of kinship or intimacy?

You can love someone for their qualities and not feel a sense of kinship. This type of love gives rise to competition and jealousy. Such is not the case when love arises out of kinship.

If you love someone for their qualities, then when the quality changes or you get used to the quality, love also changes. However, if you love someone out of kinship, because they belong to you, then that love remains for life-times.

People say "I love God, because He is great". This is no big thing. If God is found to be ordinary, just one of us, then your love for God collapses! If you love God, because He is yours, then however God is, whether He creates or destroys, you still love Him. The love for kinship is like the love for yourself.

Question: Many people do not have love for themselves?
Answer: No! It is the other way around. They love themselves so much, that they want better qualities and better appearance for themselves. This love of qualities makes them be hard on one self.

If love is based on the quality of a person, then the love is not stable - after sometime the qualities change and the love becomes shaky. Loving someone because of their greatness or uniqueness is Third-rate love. Loving someone because they belong to you, great or otherwise, is unconditional love.

Knowledge, Sadhana, Seva and Satsang help to bring about a sense of belonging in no time. When love springs forth from a sense of belongingness then the actions and qualities do not over shadow the love. Neither the qualities nor actions can be perfect all the time. Love and a feeling of kinship alone can be perfect.

Guru Punch!

Violation of the laws of nature or ignorance will bring you suffering. Even if you have violated the laws of nature in the previous lifetimes, it will bring you suffering. Knowledge and understanding will remove ignorance ~ Sri Sri

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 1 - Verse 14

Chapter 1 -- Verse 14

Verse: tatah svetair hayair yukte
mahati syandane sthitau
madhavah pandavas caiva
divyau sankhau pradadhmatuh

Translation: On the other side, both Lord Krishna and Arjuna, stationed on a great chariot drawn by white horses, sounded their transcendental conchshells

AOL Knowledge Sheet!----Holi

Holi is a festival of colours. This whole world is so colourful. Just like nature there are different colours associated with our feelings and emotions: anger with red, jealousy with green, vibrancy and happiness with yellow, love with pink, vastness with blue, peace with white, sacrifice with saffron and knowledge with violet. Each person is a fountain of colours which keep changing.

Puranas are full of colourful illustrations and stories and there is a story related to Holi. An asura king, Hiranyakashyap, wanted everyone to worship him. But his son Prahlad was a devotee of Lord Narayana, the king's sworn enemy. Angry, the king wanted Holika, his sister, to get rid of Prahlad. Empowered to withstand fire, Holika sat on a burning pyre holding Prahlad on her lap. But it was Holika who was burnt, Prahlad came out unharmed. 

Hiranyakashyap symbolises one who is gross. Prahlad embodies innocence, faith and bliss. The spirit cannot be confined to love only matter. Hiranyakashyap wanted all joy to come from the material world. It did not happen that way. The individual jivatma cannot be bound to the material forever. It's natural to eventually move towards Narayana, one's higher Self. 

Holika symbolises past burdens that try to burn Prahlad's innocence. But Prahlad, so deeply rooted in Narayana Bhakti, could burn all past impressions (sanskaras). For one who is deep in bhakti, joy springs up with new colours and life becomes a celebration. Burning the past, you gear up for a new beginning. Your emotions, like fire, burn you. But when they are a fountain of colours, they add charm to your life. In ignorance, emotions are a bother; in knowledge, the same emotions add colour. 

One legend talks about the time when Parvati was in tapasya and Shiva was in samadhi. In facilitating the divine union of the two, Kamadeva, the Lord of Love, gets burnt to ashes by Shiva. Shiva had to come out of samadhi to join Parvati, `Parva’ is festival and `Parvati’ means `born out of festival’ - celebration! For samadhi to unite with celebration, the presence of desire was necessary. So, desire (Kama) was invoked. But again, to celebrate, you need to overcome desire. So Shiva opened his third eye and burned Kama. When desire in the mind is burnt, celebration happens and life becomes colourful.

Like Holi, life should be colourful, not boring. When each colour is seen clearly, it is colourful. When all the colours get mixed, you end up with black. So also in life, we play different roles. Each role and emotion needs to be clearly defined. Emotional confusion creates problems. When you are a father, you have to play the part of a father. You can't be a father at office. When you mix the roles in your life, you start making mistakes. Whatever role you play in life, give yourself fully to it. Harmony in diversity makes life vibrant , joyful and more colourful. 

The joy you experience in life is from the depth of your Self - when you let go all that you hold on to and settle down being centered in that space. That is called meditation. Meditation is not an act; it is the art of doing nothing! The rest in meditation is deeper than the deepest sleep that you can ever have because in meditation you transcend all desires. This brings such coolness to the brain and it is like servicing or overhauling the whole body-mind complex.

Only then we are able to understand the uplifted state of the being and see that the whole world is all spirit or consciousness. Celebration is the nature of the spirit and the celebration that comes out of silence is real. If sacredness is attached to a celebration, it becomes total, complete. It's not just body and mind but also the spirit that celebrates. 

In a state of celebration, the mind often forgets the Divine. We should experience the Divine’s presence, the Divine’s light around us. You should have a desire to experience the something by which the whole world is running. To experience this through your prayers, there should be total involvement. If the mind is preoccupied elsewhere, then that is no prayer at all. 

When you are faced with obstacles, deep prayers can work miracles. Prayer happens in two situations, or in a combination of situations. When you feel grateful or when you feel utterly helpless. If you are not grateful and prayerful, you will be miserable. The feeling that “I am blessed” can help you overcome any failure. Once you realise that you are blessed, then all the complaints disappear, all the grumbling disappears, all the insecurities disappear. 

Celebration dawns spontaneously and life becomes colourful

Patanjali Yoga Sutras----Knowledge Sheet 10

Explanation of the Patanjali Yoga Sutra #15 continues from previous post.

Vitrushnasya vashikara sanjna vairagyam

The mind that gallops is an obstruction. An expectation in meditation is an obstruction. You have heard somebody’s experience that light appears, somebody comes from heaven and takes them by hand and you see it with your eyes closed. All these ideas are the construction of fiction. 

Your desire for pleasure or happiness makes you unhappy. You examine that whenever you are unhappy or miserable, behind that is your wanting to be happy. You got it? Craving for happiness brings misery. If you do not even crave for happiness, then you are happy. You crave for happiness and you invite misery. When you do not care for happiness, you are liberated and when you do not even care for liberation, you attain love. The first step is when you do not care for happiness. The second step is param vairagya (supreme dispassion). When you do not even care for liberation, then you are free. You are liberated.

If you have whatever you wanted, then are you happy?

Happiness is just a mere idea in the mind. You think that if you have this you are happy. If you have whatever you wanted, then are you happy? Vairagya is putting a stop to craving for happiness.

That does not mean you must be miserable. It is not that. It does not mean you should not enjoy yourself, but the craving for joy, only when you retrieve your mind from it, only then can you meditate. Then yoga happens.
Your dreams and fantasies, just shatter them. All your dreams and fantasies, offer them to the fire. Burn them. What great happiness do you want to have? How long can you have it? You are going to be finished. It is all going to end. Before this earth eats you up, become free.
Free yourself from this feverishness that is gripping your mind.

Free yourself from this craving for happiness

Look into every craving you have closely and remember you are going to die. Your craving for sweets, sugar, food. Ask yourself if you want to keep eating them. Ok, eat for as long as you like. See consciously, what can they do? Nothing. What else do you crave for? Beautiful views? Keep on looking at the view. How long you can go on looking?
Sex. How much sex can you have? Then you will see that there is nothing in it. How long? Few moments later, the body looks like styrofoam, that which was so attractive before.
What other thing? All these substances you see have limitations, but your mind is not ready for limitations. It wants unlimited pleasure, which the five senses cannot give you. It is impossible. You simply get burnt down, over and over again.
Skillfully handling the objects of senses and bringing it to the Self is dispassion or vairagya.