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Thursday, December 27, 2007

Bhakti Yoga -part 2-

It is important because it deals with our emotions. We are all born with wonderful soft emotions. Every child even at the age of two days looks at your face and gives a wonderful smile. In fact, the intellect is born not yet born in the child. It develops much later, maybe after one or two years of being in this world and interacting with this world. That is why Indian philosophy says we are all born with emotions and intellect is what the world gives us. We have other soft emotions like compassion and the sense of wonder along with love.
Every child is born with that sense of wonder. When you look at the child eyes you can find that, whatever the child is looking at, you would notice that sense of wonder. We were also born with love compassion and sense of wonder. When the child smiles, there is not reason behind it, whereas, as we grow up we have lost that smile on our face. Today if some one smiles, we start to wonder why he is smiling. That means our smile and other soft emotions are buried under our intellect. Now, opposite of this soft emotions like love compassion and sense of appreciation we have violent emotions like anger, hatred, and jealousy. Often people think that not only soft emotions but also violent emotions are also spontaneous. We have these two emotions – one set is soft emotions like love, compassion and sense of wonder, on the other side there are violent emotions like anger, hatred, jealousy and selfishness. Both appear to be spontaneous but they are not. The feeling of love comes spontaneously; the feeling of compassion comes spontaneously. Spontaneous means that which does not require any reason to be. On the other hand, anger, hatred, jealousy, and selfishness are not spontaneous.
Anger comes up because he did not do the way that ‘I’ wanted it to be done. Greed comes because he has it and ‘I’ don’t have it and that is why ‘I’ am greedy. Hatred comes because he did not behave the way that ‘I’ wanted him to behave so I hate him. You can see that every violent emotion is born out of that ‘I’ which is very important. Whenever one is in soft emotions, this ego is dissolved but when one is in violent emotions, this ego is very important. The most important form of this ego is attachment. Wherever this attachment is, there it leads us into anxiety. The mind becomes restless, and the restlessness results into uncertainty and further leads to anxiety. When the same ego further deepens into us, it leads us into confusion. And this confusion continued for a long time leads us into depression. When you look at whether it is depression or confusion, the deep routed problem is ego. Today most of our sickness is born out of mental disturbances. Yoga is a technique and a state of peace of mind. Peace of mind is our own nature.
Unfortunately, in the world today we have come away from our nature due to our ignorance and due to the influence of the world around us which has no education to go back to our nature. By developing the inner self control and discipline, we can go back to our nature and this is called Raja Yoga. The method of self sacrifice is called Karma Yoga to go to that same inner peace. By using the self analysis at the intellectual level, it is called Jnana Yoga. The problem which gives rise to disturbances of our mind as looked at from the angle of Bhakti Yoga is this ego or I. by becoming humble and surrendering this ego out of love, we can go to the state of satisfaction or love. Thus, the essential practice of Bhakti Yoga is to dissolve this ego. Now the most important aspect of Bhakti yoga is not to find god but to dissolve our ego. Whenever we are in the experience of soft emotions like love and compassion then with out any effort from our side we find our ego is dissolved. In love, our consciousness rises far above the level of ego. At that point-of-time, our experience is blissful.
In day to day life, there are two different occasions, when the ego is dissolved and one is resting in self. One experience is when one is in the state of love and the other is in the deep sleep state. When one is in the state of love, then ‘I’ is not important but the other is important. The moment one is in the state of love the other’s comfort becomes more important than of oneself. Normal experience in the world is we take something and we get happiness. On the other hand, when one is in the state of love, comfort of oneself is not giving comfort but the others comfort is giving comfort. The same is the case with compassion. When you are in the state of compassion, you would like to see that the other person is in the state of comfort at the cost of your own discomfort. Therefore in the soft emotions the ego is completely dissolved. And in these soft emotional states, you are very comfortable and very blissful. Similarly, another state where you have absolutely no ego, which is the deep sleep state. While you are in the deep sleep state, you know nothing because you are not there.
Therefore, the experience of happiness is there when the ego is dissolved. But later on the moment the ego comes up then the soft emotions get corrupted. Ego is like cancer. It poisons the love into lust. You have something which you appreciate but the moment ego come up then it turn into possession. Whenever you are in the experience of soft emotions, you become expansive and slow. Ego is of the nature of constriction and speed. This speed and constriction you can recognize in all the violent emotions like hatred and jealousy, selfishness etc. Another very important point is that these soft emotions give us health but violent emotions give us sickness. Love and compassion give us happiness where as jealousy and hatred gives unhappiness. Often people advice don’t be angry don’t be jealous. Anger and hatred are only outer manifestations but the cause is always ego which is deeply hidden behind. If we don’t want to give up ego but want to give up anger and jealousy it will not be possible.
If you don’t give up ego but we want to give up the anger all that we do is to suppress the anger. Bhakti Yoga is not about suppressing anger, hatred, or jealousy but it is to get dissolved. Surrender the ego. Often, people wonder how and where to surrender the ego. In the world, we cannot surrender ego to somebody else because that person also had ego. That is why Bhakti Yoga says, think of god, and surrender your ego to god. People have all kinds of questions such as, does god exist, is he taking care of us and where is he.

-to be continued

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Bhakti Yoga -part 1-

Bhakti Yoga Seminar in Nagoya/Japan
November 21, 2007

I bring the greetings from the Vivekananda yoga university, Prashanti Bengaluru
for all the people interested in the field of yoga, one very important text on the philosophy of yoga is Bhagavad-Gita. ‘Bhagavad’ means divine and Gita is poetry. Often people understand that ‘Bhagavad’ means said by god but I feel that it is more meaningful to say ‘divine’ knowledge. You may question why do I call it as divine knowledge and what is non divine knowledge? Is all non divine knowledge bad? What is the difference between ordinary knowledge and divine knowledge? What is that knowledge which is ‘bad non divine’ knowledge and what is ‘good non divine’ knowledge? Even to deceive some one and to cheat some one it requires knowledge and we can find people who can be experts in that and they are not only smart in doing so but they can also make it appear right to do that way. All this belong to the category of bad and non divine knowledge. Ordinary or non divine knowledge always deals with right and wrong good and bad and in the language of duality and further it will advice you to do right, and not to do wrong. This is an important knowledge in a society where people are not following right and following wrong! This knowledge given in Bhagavad-Gita is not a knowledge that talks about duality. This is not a kind of a text that tells us that what is right and what is wrong and do right always and not wrong. In order to tell this we don’t need a text like Gita. A simple book of law is sufficient. A book like Gita is one which must be giving us the knowledge of higher dimension. We will know more about this knowledge when we go into the understanding of this subject matter.
The episode of Gita in the historical event of Mahabharata has happened 5100 years ago. It is a discussion that goes on between Krishna and Arjuna in the battlefield where Krishna is a wise person and Arjuna is a confused person. The whole philosophy of yoga followed and taught is influenced by the teaching of Bhagavad-Gita that if you would have gone to our center Prashanti, you would see this statue there of Bhagavad-Gita.
Gita is part of a big book called Mahabharata. It is written by a sage called Veda Vyasa. The gist of the story is that, war that took place between the good and bad people. The good people are Pandavas and Arjuna is their leader in the war. The bad people are Kauravas and the leader is Duryadhana. In fact, it is very interesting that in all our lives there are several situations where we have a freedom whether to do right or to do wrong. For example, let us see the act called telling truth or untruth. Maybe we come across several situations where we can tell the truth but we can also tell the lie. Such situations would be there. We come across several situations in life where we can be helpful to others and we can hurt others. In that way life offers several situations, where we can do right and do wrong too. Many situations we chose the side of right. But many times, we also chose the directions of wrong. If you ask yourself then why did we take the side of wrong, we know very clearly it is all because we have inner weakness. The greatness of Arjuna was that every situation that he could take the side of right or wrong and he always chose the side of right. That means Arjuna is good by very choice. On the other side, we have Duryodhana who always chose the side of wrong. To cut the long story short let us come to the situation that the war is taking place between Pandavas and Kauravas and Arjuna is the leader of Pandavas and Duryodhana who is on the side of wrong. Another interesting aspect is that these bad people Duryodhana and others are also cousins and relatives of Arjuna.
When Arjuna came to the battlefield to fight the war, he saw his cousins and relatives on the other side waiting to fight the war. When he saw his own people on the other side, he has a doubt or confusion as follows. If he fights this war, he will be killing his own people. On one side, he is here to fight the battle and on the other side if he is fighting, he has to kill his own cousins and relatives. He tells Krishna, “Why should I fight this war where I know I am going to rule the kingdom which is drenched by the blood of my own people. I don’t want this war, I don’t want to kill people let me run away into the forest”. So on one side his mind says to fight the war and on the other side, another part the mind says, ‘don’t fight the war’. Whether he should fight the war or he should go the forest and meditate, he was not able to decide and had confusion.
The confusion whether to fight the war or not has happened to Arjuna but not for Duryodhana. Duryodhana was a bad person but he did not have any problem in fighting the war but Arjuna who was goodness personified, had a problem fighting the war. Bhagavad Gita is a message given to Arjuna who is a good, and not Duryodhana who is the bad person. Arjuna was already right and therefore this message of Bhagavad-Gita can not be a message asking him to do right. This message therefore must be higher than good and bad. That is the reasons why, this knowledge is a divine knowledge higher than the pairs of opposites like right and wrong. When you try to look at Arjuna, who tried to go to the forest and meditate, it appears, similar to the situation of Buddha who also wanted to go to the forest and meditate. When you closely watch there is a lot of difference between Arjuna and Buddha. Buddha was truly interested in peace and wanted to mediate to go to peace. Buddha had no sort of confusion in his mind. On the other hand, Arjuna had confusion in his mind. Arjuna’s confusion is because his interest in not in peace. His question was, ‘should I kill my own people for the sake of winning the war. It is not that he in not interested in the war but he is not interested in war with his own people. He has no hesitation to fight the war if the people in front were not his own people. Whole life he is trained to fight the war, he is educated to fight the war, and he is always the best student in the school at the time of learning and now he came here to fight the war. So in principle he has no aversion for war. All his aversion is of fighting a war against his own people. Therefore, his interest is not in peace like Buddha’s interest, but his interest really is in not killing his own people. To say ‘my’ people, ‘my’ relatives, ‘my’ kingdom etc, are all ‘my’ - attachments. It is this attachment, which brings about this confusion or despondency. Which is given in the first chapter is the Gita. And the whole message of Gita that Krishna gives is to see that this mental depression of Arjuna is removed. To remove this mental disturbance, the technology, the methodology used, is called yoga. The scope of yoga is far more than just doing some physical postures and Pranayama practices. Though, all the chapters and slokas in Bhagavad-Gita Krishna tried to convey the idea of peace of mind and mastery over mind, there are some chapters that are concentrated especially on some particular topic of yoga. How we can bring about the concept of peace of mind in the work that we do is given in the third chapter called karma yoga. Human being has wonderful tool called the intellect and all the development we see is due to the intellect. Using this intellect to go to the peace of mind is given in the fifth chapter called Jnana yoga. The sixth chapter is giving the method of discipline called the Raja yoga. Of all the chapters the smallest and the simplest is twelfth chapter, where Krishna gives the method in which we use emotions to go to peace of mind and this is called, the Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti Yoga is the most important chapter, and it is the point of discussion for today.

-to be continued...

Lecture at Bangalore

Topic: "Seva: A Spiritual Sadhana" lecture by NV RAGHURAM
Place: Venue Vijaya teachers Training college South end Circle
Time: Sunday, Jan 6th, 4pm to 5pm

The lecture will be followed by the organizational meeting of Youth for seva, Bengaluru.

It is organized by YOUTH for SEVA organization, Bengaluru.

All are welcome.

Monday, December 17, 2007

NV Raghuram received YogaShree Award

Raghuramji is honored with Yoga Shree award in the field of yoga. His award was presented by the chief guest M.N.Vekatachalaiah, Chief justice of India, in Bengaluru on 3rd of December, 2007.
YogaShree Award is a special award of excellence in yoga, which is handed out by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of India every year.