生 活 的 藝 術 之 南 境 知 識 棧

Question: Gurudev, why don’t we ever sing song about Lord Rama?

        Never mind! The mind can never go there, where you are. A wave can never go to the depth. By the time the wave goes to the depth it ceases to be a wave. So mind can never goes to you, mind can never be you, that’s why never mind. You are never the mind. Mind is superficial. The moment the mind starts going towards you, it is no mind. That’s why it is said never mind. You are accepted there, never the mind, your mind can never go there. Your mind keeps on asking questions why? Why? Why? There is no why? You know you had had this experience often, oh! It is all my minds stuff. That moment there is an alertness, an awareness that dawn. Have you noticed? You go on with the mind, galloping on the mind. Why? Why?.. Why? Suddenly for a moment oh! It is all my mind stuff and that very moment there is relief from the mind, yes? And more and more when you feel it is all minds stuff. This is first step of labeling, oh! This is all mind stuff. More and more you are aware of it, and then that it is, it just vanishes, that is abhyasa, this is practice.

        The next sutra Patanjali said,

sa-tu dirgha kala nairantarya satkara

        The effort to be still, the effort to be steady, is practice. For a moment you realize, this is this moment and then that vanishes from your sight. You say now! But the moment you have said now, then again you have lost the now. It’s not right to say you are lost but in some sense you feel you are not in the now. But this effort to be established steadily in the now because the now is not just linear, the now is very deep and vast. Now! It is the present moment. It’s not just a point, a dot. It’s infinity. It’s all-dimensional, from all sides, that is now. Practice is the stability in that moment. That is the purpose of practice and how can that be achieved?  It takes a long time ~ sa-tu dirgha kala; without a gap ~ nairantarya; with honour and respect ~ satkara.  Receiving it and practicing it with honor and respect, then it becomes firmly established.

        Anything in life that is of some value takes some time to culture. To master an art, whether it is cooking, playing a guitar, sitar, synthesizes, flute, and it takes some time. Isn’t it? It takes time. Though it is the same fingers but in flute you have to use the fingers for a while. Cannot say in one day you learn the flute, it’s not possible. To learn an instrument it takes quiet a while and to master it even more. Let alone the music; see games, a football game, it needs a coach. If you want to be a sportsman, you need a coach and you need practices. You go to gymnasium, you need a coach there. Body building doesn’t happen overnight. Muscles won’t grow. It takes quiet a long time. Body has its own requirement of time for its growth. Similarly mind needs more time for its growth.

        See, if you want to memorize something, you know it takes some time to memorize. In the same way, any practices take some time. It needs not be too long time, but sufficiently long time. And how? Without a gap. What we do usually. We learn something and leave it for something and again start doing it. If you just go as per the fantasy of our mind. If we feel like doing, we do; if we don’t feel like doing, feel a little lazy, we don’t do it then that connection is broken, then it does it happen. Without a gap, constant reminder, constant practice is essential. Just like you go to gymnasium for a couple of days and leave it and go for next month couple of days. Nothing will happen. You know. You learn to play music or a piano in two days you do it, you play and then you leave it for two months and then start playing. You know then these are not consistency, lack of consistency. You do not learn any art. Sa-tu dirgha kala nairantarya satkara. So a longer time without a gap ~ satkara.  This is another important thing, ie with honour and respect.

        Sometime “oh! I have to do it…” grumbling or gaping, doing something unenthusiastically, that is of no use, that is not abhyasa.  Abhyasa is something done with gratitude, gratefulness, honour and respect. This is something we lack in our life. Anything we do, we don’t do it with honour or respect. Even if you do something with honour and respect but it lasts very short period. If you have to do something for over a period time, you tend to lose that honour or respect. Do you see what I’m saying? If you have to arrange this stage here, if it is new to you, the first time you are doing it, the first day you do it, you will do it with all honour, all respect and everything, so much attention, so much love, so much heart and awareness you put it in. 

        But if you have to do it over and over everyday, becoming 5 months, 6 months, you will just do it, you don’t do it with the same spirit that you did it at the first day. As time goes, you seem to lose that alertness, that attentiveness, honour, respect. First day when you sit for meditation, you feel wonderful because you are there, you are taking it with all honour. But then later on you just simply sit, oh! I have to meditate, just simply sit and close your eyes. You know, it is not the same effective. Do you see what I’m saying? If any day your meditation, kriya or anything is little low, not charming, it is because you have lost respect for it. Not in the sense to disrespect it, that attentiveness, alertness towards it is reduced.

        That’s why from time to time when you come together in a course, your meditation goes deeper because here you are receiving it with honour, you are honouring the knowledge, you are honouring your Self.

        What is honour?   Have you ever thought about it? What is honouring? What is honour? Honour is total attentiveness to the present moment, with a tinge of gratefulness. You honour the mountain here that means you are looking at the mountain with all you heart, all your mind, without questioning or without debating in yourself. Just honouring. Being happy and grateful for what the mountain is. Isn’t it? You honour some noble scientist that means what? When the noble scientist is there, you are completely in the moment being with that with all your heart. Isn’t it?

        Respecting, honouring. Like that, respect & honour every moment in your life then, that is practice. You respect your own body that is asana. Asana is respecting your own body, every movement consciously. Respecting your breath, honouring your breath, that is pranayam. And keeping up that over a period of time. See this is just like the kriya and dimensions in kriya. What is needed there. We have to do the kriya but you have to be with the rhythm, the attention being there, honouring respecting over a period of time.

        Any practice is a practice when it is done over a period of time, without a gap, respectfully honoring it everyday. Then it becomes firmly established. Do you get this point? It’s very vital thing. Just notice, any day your meditation has become dull or not to your satisfaction. See, have I kept the continuity of the practice? Yes! I have been doing everyday but still it is not good! What is the problem? I have not honoured this mantra. I have not honoured this time of sitting with my Self, I am not honouring the life in me, so my meditation is going haywire. Now let me honour. All the events are secondary. Honour this moment. It’s very precious. However this moment is, this is very precious. Honour this word, this master has given me this word, this is so precious. Honouring the master is honoring the master’s word. Like simply they had said in one sentence, if you don’t have honour and respect for the master, your meditation will not work. Why? Why so?

        Because that honour and that respect brings up that consciousness in you, awareness in you, that helps you to focus on the moment so totally. If you don’t honour the master, the master will not lose anything. It’s your own mind that is at loss because it is unable to be in the moment totally. Dive deep into the source totally, satkara, so honouring the source of knowledge, honouring the master, honouring the knowledge, honouring the receiver, this is practice. Get it? Simple clues, just definition of a practice.

        A good musician will honour that music, the one who has taught him, one who have composed the song, his full attention is there. Do you see that? Same with a good sportsman. He will honour his coach. If he doesn’t honour his coach, he will not progress. Because of his attentiveness, the honour that he has for his coach, he is able to move ahead in his sports. Otherwise if you keep judging, oh! Coach says something. Let me do what I want to do. Then what is the need of having a coach? Then you know, it is broken there. Right? This is abhyasa.

        Now comes to Vairagya. Is this practice alone is enough? Patanjali says no. Two oxen are needed to pull this cart. One is abhyasa and the other is vairagya. Two wheels of this cart, Abhyasa one side and the other is Vairagya.

        What is Vairagya?

Darsta-anusravika visaya-vitrsnasya vasikara samjna vairagyam

Darsta-anusravika visaya ~ Mind gallops toward the world of five senses. So just sit quiet. Close your eyes or open your eyes, do anything. Where your mind goes? Your mind goes towards sense of sight. Sense of sight, it just runs towards that. You want to see something, somebody or sense of smell, taste, sound, touch. Do you see that? Or it gallops towards something it has heard, it has never seen or just what it has read, some thoughts. And this craving for any of these experiences in the mind can stop you from being in the present moment.

        Vairagya is what? For few moments, you say however beautiful a scene is I am not interested to look at it now. However great the food is, this is not the time, not interested to taste them now. However melodious the music may be, I don’t mind listening to is right now. However beautiful it is to touch something, I am not interested in feeling it. Do you see that? Even for a few moments, retrieving our senses from the craving or the thirst of its object back to its source is vairagya. Are you getting it? This is another basic requirement for meditation, whenever you want to sit for meditation, a deep meditation, in your mind this dispassion has to arise. Without dispassion your meditation is no good, it’s useless. Do you see what I am saying? It cannot provide you the rest that you are longing for.

        Your mind is tired, is burnt down through its galloping on desires after desires. It’s so tired. Just turn back and see all the desires you has achieved, have they given you rest? No! They have only created few more desires and you are on it. Have they given you that fulfillment? No! They only gave you more hope that you can achieve more, you can have more and that has put you on another trip. So you are on a merry-go-round. It’s not even merry. Only go round. You know the merry-go-rounds have these horses. You sit on it. The horses do not go anywhere. Just go round the same place. But gives you an illusion that you have traveled miles and miles and reaching nowhere.

        Life has been such a journey where you are galloping and galloping and galloping and reaching nowhere. This is what desire does to you. Mind is obsessed with desires, that mind cannot meditate. Are you getting what I am saying? Now, there are two types of attitudes. Some people say mind should not have any desire. This becomes another desire. Destroy the desires. Some people are on this trip to destroy their desires. They are beating around the bush. Nothing happens. Understand this principle very well.

        Vitrsnasya vasikara samjna vairagyam.  That craving for any of the sense objects or any heard celestial heavenly places that the mind gallops on is an obstruction. An expectation in meditation is an obstruction. You have heard somebody had big experience of light coming, somebody coming from the heaven and taking them by hand and you sit with you eyes closed. Oh! I want that angel to come up, that light to dawn on me and then I burnt into a million stars. All this idea, this becomes an obstruction.

        Says dispassion - says NEVER mind. I am not giving up for any of the pleasure. You desire for pleasure of happiness makes you unhappy. You examine whenever you are miserable or unhappy, behind that is your wanting to be happy. Do you get it? Craving for happiness brings misery. If you don’t crave for happiness, you are happy. You crave for happiness, you invite misery. When you don’t care for happiness, you are liberated. And when you don’t even care for liberation, you attain love. This is Parma Vairagya.

First step is when you don’t care for happiness then you are free, you are liberated. Second step is when you do not care for liberation.

        Happiness is a mere idea in you mind. You think if you have this you will be happy and when you have it whatever you wanted, are you happy? I don’t think it would have been like this before. Vairagya is putting a stop for craving for happiness. You get it? That doesn’t mean you should be miserable. It doesn’t say you should not enjoy, but the craving for joy, if you retrieve your mind from it, then you can meditate, then you can still all the five modulations. Then yoga happens. Get it? Your dreams and fantasies all are shut them. All your dreams and fantasies just offer them in the fire, burn them down. What great happiness you want to have? How long you can have it? You are going to be finished. You will be underneath this mud. Isn’t it? For sure! It is all going to end. Before this earth eats you up, become free, free from this feverishness that is gripping your mind, free from this craving for happiness. What great happiness you are having? Every object of pleasure that you have experienced have become styrofoam. Hasn’t it? Packing material. What is it? What do you call it? (Styrofoam) You know styrofoam, you eat what taste it has? Isn’t it?

        Look into every craving that you have, closely, carefully and remember you are going to die. You are craving for sweets, sugar, food. Ok, I’m going to have tons of them. Have it and see, consciously see, what is in this nothing. What else do you crave for? Beautiful scenes? Keep on looking at scenes. How long can you look? The best of the places, you’ll forget them. Few moments you can see, that’s it. Your eyes get tired you feel bore about it. What more craving you can come up in you? Sex! How much sex can you have? Have it! Finish it! You will see there is nothing in it. How long? Few moment that body looks like styrofoam which was so attractive. What other things? All these object of senses you will see they all have limitations but your mind is not ready for limitations, it wants unlimited joy, unlimited pleasure, which the five senses cannot give you. It’s impossible. You simply get burnt down going over and over and over same thing. Now, without blaming them, honouring all the objects of senses, skillfully come on to the Self. This is dispassion. This is vairagya.

        Often people who think they have dispassion, they keep blaming the world, blaming the objects of senses, afraid of objects of senses, running away from them and thinks it is a big temptation, something could tempt them. How could something tempt you? The fear of temptation is worse. Do you see what I’m saying? Oh! Something can tempt me… How can something tempt you?

        The second sutra says

Tat-param purusa khyater guna vaitrsnyam

        Once you know the nature of your being, total bliss, total pleasure even the fear about the Gunas, fear about the world will disappear. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s like a diabetic patient being afraid of sweets. Oh! What will happen if I eat it? Even looking at the sweet is frightened. It’s forfeited. But one who has sweetness in himself never mind sweets are there or not. This is parma vairagya, supreme type of Dispassion. Not being scared and running away from the world, but being in world and completely detached, centered. Don’t even say the word detach because it is being distorted so much. Like to use the word centered.

        People have very funny ideas about enlightenment. And every culture and every religion have got their own idea about enlightenment. Christian culture - a rich man cannot be enlightened. It is impossible. You got to be poverty in order to be enlightened. From the Christian point of view, Rama cannot be enlightened. He was a king. How can a king be enlightened? Even a camel can go though a needle but not a rich man. Once I was traveling in India from Bangalore to Delhi. I met a gentleman in the airport. He was a priest, a Christian priest, a father of church. He just looked at me, smile and I smiled back. He came to talk to me:

         “I feel like talk to you, my dear brother.”

         “Yes?” I said.

        “I like to talk to you. You are a very nice person, it seems. Do you believe in Jesus?”         He asked me. I said yes. He is a little stunned, so he asks me again do you really believe in Jesus? I said yes. But you are a Hindu, aren’t you? Perhaps. But you believe in Krishna? I said yes, I believe in Krishna too. He said how can Krishna be god? He is a butter thief, he was married. How can somebody be married and steal butter and all be god? He is not one who can give you savior. Jesus is the only way. I was also a Hindu before, now I become a Christian. By the time I become a Christian, every thing is happening, Jesus is taking care of me. I tell you, I advise you, you better become a Christian. And he was so sincere telling his own thing, trying to convert me (laughter…)

        How can Krishna be enlightened? Jains don’t think Krishna could not be enlightened. He created a war. Arjuna was going to go away, take sanyas, renounced the world. Krishna brain washed him, brain washed him, made him fight. Krishna was responsible for this huge war that has happened. How could he be enlightened? Stealing butter and having so many wives. It’s impossible. Jains don’t think an enlightened person, sadhu should even wear cloth. Their idea of enlightenment person should walk naked, null. One who is not null is little less great. Who knows what will happen? What desires will come up in them? Whether they are free from lust or not, how would you know? Where is the proof? Jain saddhus they are null, they don’t wear any cloth, they walk null. They are enlightened. These are the ideas of enlightenment. They simply don’t consider somebody who eats two square meals a day, that too enjoy their meals. Finished! They are not at all enlightened. Someone eats chocolate. Can a saint eat chocolate? Not a saint at all.

        Buddhist, they have their own scale of measuring who is enlightened who is not enlightened. Somebody sings, dances, looks at the whole world, lives in the world, not enlightened. Someone meets with their family members, sit with their family, definitely not enlightened. You have to renounce the family. I see so many of these so called sanyasi are so afraid of their own family people. They can’t meet their family - fear, oh! Maybe attachment could happen. They run away from their family. If you see them again some attachment may come up at any time. So scared. I remember in one of the ashram, one of the inmate so called the sanyasi there, denunciate who did not meet his mother, a poor old lady 70 years old she comes. But he could meet everybody else. What this poor lady has done, he could not even meet her. She would cry. They are very cruel to their own family people. Many of the denunciates so call nuns, brothers, fathers because that is the idea they have.

        Do you see what I’m saying? When you can love everybody, what sin they had done? Those poor people who gave birth to you or who are born with, your family members. Why can’t you see them in the same eyes? This is the concept, many sanyasi go through this big difficulty in their head. They don’t see their family members. Do you see what I’m saying? All concepts about enlightenment, this, this… that one is stuck with. The main essence we forgot there is dispassion, centeredness. Being centered in spite of all, being centered moving in the world is the second essential principle in yoga. Abhyasa and vairagya.

        Three gunas happen - Sattva, Rajas & Tamas, these three come in our lives in cycles. When sattva comes, there is alertness, knowledge, interest, joy, happiness, everything comes. When Rajoguna comes, more desires, feverishness, restlessness, sadness these come. When Tamoguna comes, delusion, attachment, lack of knowledge, lethargy, all these come. These three gunas comes in life turn by turn but the one who is centered will watch, witness & just move through them very naturally, easily, without being averse to it. See when aversion comes what happens? You are promoting it. Do you see what I am saying? Whatever you are averse with, you stay with it. And whatever you crave for you continue to crave for it, you allow the craving to continue. So without craving or aversion, moving through the gunas is the real skill and that is yoga. The skill in your action is yoga. Yoga itself means skill. Skill to live your life. Skill to manage your mind. Skill to deal with your emotions, skill to be with people, skill to be in love & not let that love turns into hatred. Everyone loves in this world, but that love does not stay too long as love; it immediately becomes hatred, almost immediately.

        Yoga is that skill, that preservative that maintains that love as love throughout.

        Jai Jai Radha Ramana Hari Bol…Hari Bol…