Mysorean

Quoting my dear friend Arjuna, on the strength of desire to see God. He quotes an incident involving Sri Ramakrishna Paramahmsa.

Once when Ramakrishna Paramahansa was standing in a river along with a disciple. The disciple told that he wanted to see God immediately. Ramakrishna then pushed the head of the disciple inside the river. The disciple could not hold it for long. But Ramakrishna did not relax his grip. But finally, the disciple gave a mighty push and emerged out of water. He asked why Ramakirshna did that to him. Ramakrishna then told that, if he had a desire to see God equal to that of him to emerge from water he had before, then God would immediately come before him.

Seeking the Divine is the goal of life. Reaching the Divine is the realization of life.

In this very miserable state of the body, we started out, we realized that infinite soul is inside us. If I hadn’t realized I would have lived in tremendous difficulties. Whoever knows the Atman goes beyond the stages of death. They become eternal. Those who remain in ignorance will come back to this world again and again.

(As told by Swami Gautamananda in his discourse on “Brihadaranyaka Upanishad” at Ramakrishna Ashram, Chennai)

Swamiji stopped here as it was time to wrap up. We shall continue when I attend the next discourse. I will not be attending the Sunday’s (14th August) discourse as I am in Bangalore for my cousin’s engagement. So we will lose continuity. My apologies for that. I will anyway update the blog daily. Thanks for reading.

Tomorrow: India and the last mile

Advaita says “I am brahma”. The body has created all ills. The body makes us ill. We think we are ill if our body is ill. Getting into a body is like gettting into a dense forest thinking I will come out easily. But actually, It is difficult to get out of a dense forest. The entering of a body is equalled to getting into an inaccessible forest. The Atman has entered the perilous body. There is no way to escape the miseries associated with this body.

Anything that is achieved by one man, must be possible to eb attained by everybody. When the awakened soul realizes that he is the infinite soul he realizes that he is the creator of the World. A person who has realized God, sees God in everyone.

For example, there was a lady called Gopalamma (Gopal is Lord Krishna’s another name, Amma is mother) who used to live on one end of River Ganga. The other side of which was Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa’s abode. Gopalamma was a widow ostracized from the society. But she had benevolent in-laws who would give her Rs. 500/- a year towards her livelihood. Gopalamma would donate that to a temple in her neighbourhood and also serve there. In turn, the temple would feed her with two meals per day. She used to stay in a haunted house. Haunted as considered by the local villagers.

One day, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa & a few of his disciples crossed the river and walked into Gopalamma’s haunted house. Once Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa entered the house, the ghosts became very restless and went and requested Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa to leave so that they could stay comfortable. When the spiritually enlightened enter, the lesser ghosts couldn’t even exist peacefully in His presence. So, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and his disciples left the house. He had not informed the disciples of the incident lest they get scared and create a commotion.

Gopalamma would live in this house peacefully. She was a powerful spiritual person. She would do lots of penance and it helped her gain control over the ghosts. The Ghosts’ presence wouldn’t bother her at all. Gopalamma attained such heights that she was able to see Lord Krishna everywhere. The Lord would appear in the form of a small child and play with Gopalamma for hours together. Such sessions sometime extended upto months together.

During such sessions, Gopalamma would answer questions from the villagers regarding spirituality and other issues. Lord Krishna would actually answer the questions through Gopalamma. As long as Lord Krishna was there, Gopalamma would be able to answer all the questions. But once the Lord left, Gopalamma would say, “I can’t answer anymore. My Lord Krishna has left”.

Such is the power of spirituality. The enlightened being feels the oneness with Lord Brahma. This comes to people through hard spiritual exercises. All can escape misery through the knowledge of self.

Do we like whatever we do in our life? For example, if you are living in Mumbai, you have to get up at 4AM and catch the 5.02AM train. Is it enjoyable? Certainly not. This is the misery of our body. When spirituality wakes up, the miseries go away!

(As told by Swami Gautamananda in a discourse on “Brihadaranyaka Upanishad” at Ramakrishna Ashram, Chennai)

Tomorrow: Sloka 14.

The Atman has no fear. Fear comes with the possibilityof destruction. Atman full of joy. When we think that this world is infinity and we are one with that world, there is no fear. Attachment to the body, will get us only sorrow. We should realise that we are different from the body. That’s when the grief becomes attached to the body and not to the Atman.

An enlightened man, if he realises that he is the Atman or infinity, will never be unhappy. The realisation that “I am one with Brahma, the creator, the protector and destroyer”. A man is enlightened if he realizes he is the Atman. He will not have any desires. Desire arises out of attachment to worldly pleasures. All pleasure & all joy is in our soul.

A person who has infinite joy gets detached from the worldly joys. Like the saints who don’t want wealth and name, while we struggle for wealth and name throughout our lives. We want promotions and hikes to prove that we are better than the other. It’s an unending game of one-upmanship. Aspiration for higher things is always there. Whereas we are higher than everything else. We should realise that.

Physically, many things might not be possible. But spiritually we can go beyond all and everything. We can reach the highest point which is being one with the Divine. We are the divine.

For example, there was this kid who was studying in the school where the Swamiji was the Principal. This kid was exceptionally brilliant. So, Swamiji gave her a double promotion from Class 3 to Class 5. In Class 5, she would still top the class beating the closest contenders by 25 marks. So, she was given another double promotion to Class 7. So on and so forth, the kid went on till the tenth standard. Then from there she went to college and joined corporate organisation.

The point that Swamiji was trying to drive home was that, if you think that you are the body then you can grow only to a certain level. There is a limit to which you can grow. But once, we realise that we are the soul which is the infinite, why do we need to struggle in this body? Enlightened people decide to leave the body once their mission in Life is achieved.

Swami Vivekananda wanted to leave the body for two years upto the age of 38 as his mission in life was achieved. Once the desires of the body are fulfilled the body may be left. And we can go the God from where we started. We are in this body by the will of God. We are here for a specific Mission. Once the mission is achieved, we shall all go back to God.

This shows that everyone of us can escape from this world of misery to an infinite World of joy.

(This is as told by Swami Gautamananda in the discourse on “Brihadaranyaka Upanishad” at Ramakrishna Ashram, Chennai)

Tomorrow: Sloka 13

The discourse was on “Brihadaranyaka Upanishad” by Swami Gautamananda. Swamiji started of with a recap of the last shloka of last week’s discourse. We had ended on Sloka 11, last Sunday.

Sloka 11:

The external actions have to bring in inner development. We do so many rites and rituals (for eg. Going to temple, etc.) without knowing our spiritual self. Once we get into the rites and rituals in a mechanical way, such rituals will take us to the abode of misery and darkness. A person who does not evolve himself into conscious spirituality decays into a world of ignorance and darkness.

For example, we go to tirthyatras, say Amarnath. We go keeping our mind above everything, seeing infinity everywhere, chanting the name of the Lord. This automatically takes our mind to a higher state. We should be able to retain the state of mind even after coming back. On our way, there are co-passengers. We should treat all ofthem equally. All of us are in pursuit of the Lord. This equality should be maintained when in our daily life too. Otherwise, there are no lessons learnt from the pilgrimage.

Rituals become mechanical activities if we do not do it with concentration bhakti. We should become one with the divine while doing them, that’s when the rituals have meaning.

We are not mere human beings. We are Gods. We should realise that. If we don’t, we will continue to live in misery. We get attached to the Worldly pleasures and think that there’s nothing higher than that. But on attaining realisation, we attach ourselves to something higher. The highest joy of the “Atman” (soul) is not attached to this world.

This was a recap of what we heard last week. From tomorrow let’s understand the subsequent slokas, the ones that Swamiji touched upon yesterday.

Tomorrow: Sloka 12, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad as told by Swami Gautamananda at Ramakrishna Math, Chennai.

The Hindu has an article on the acquittal of Geelani.

Giving Mr. Geelani the benefit of the doubt, a Bench consisting of Justice P. Venkatarama Reddi and Justice P.P. Naolekar said his conduct at the time of the attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001 was disturbing and created a serious suspicion about his role as he reportedly approved the terrorist act. Further, the Bench referred to Mr. Geelani’s untruthful pleas about his contacts with Afzal and Shaukat and said the needle of suspicion pointed to him. However, “suspicion alone is not sufficient to convict a person.”

In a press conference shown on Headlines Today News Channel, Mr. Geelani was stating how happy he was to be proven innocent especially after being convicted (and given a death sentence) by a lower court. His happiness is understandable. And my hearty wishes to him for his acquittal.

My discomfort arises from the last statement with which the TV coverage ended. “I realise I was convicted earlier only because I am a Kashmiri Muslim”, said Mr. Geelani. He was not responding improptu to questions from reporters. He was reading out from a paper which probably had the statement on it. All the National newspapers have rightly kept the statement out of their stories. But I am unable to shrug it off.

If he was convicted earlier just because he was a Kashmiri Muslim, the judgement of the Apex Court also shouldn’t have changed. Afterall, he didn’t change his religion before this judgement. He was hurt by the judgement of the earlier court. Anybody would have been. You punish an innocent person, the innocent person will obviously be hurt.

Being a professor, who teaches in a famous University, making such statements don’t suit his demeanour. Going into your lecture with the attitude that I am not treated on par with the others because of my religion, you will only end up poisoning more minds than teaching them to live in harmony with other people.

Have our tolerance limits really gone up to such an extent that we take such statements in our stride too? It’s a pity that such a statement was made in the first place. And despite getting justice, if this is the stand that a person takes then its dangerous to the society. I consider that statement as unnecessary. It is an open attack on the Indian tolerance levels.

By acquitting Mr. Geelani, now it’s unclear as to who we have acquitted. A Kashmiri Muslim who is such a danger to the country that he was once awarded a death penalty? Or an Indian who is living under a free democracy and an effective juidicary?

Tomorrow: The discourse at Ramakrishna Ashram

C. Rajagopalachari in his English translation of the Bhagavad Gita has this to say about the Soul:

The first step in religion is the realization of the existence of an entity behind the apparent body, i.e., the soul. The visible body is not the whole reality. There is in it an unseen but ever-active master of the house, the Dehi, the possessor of the body, whose existence we should realize before we can live the true life. This entity, the Self, should not be confused with the intangible functions of the brain. It is not mere thought, perception, emotion, will or discriminative intelligence. These are all but functions of the physical body. The Soul is an entity apart from and behind all this functions. It is not seated in any particular part of the body but pervades the whole of it and all the senses, unaffected by the law of “extension” even as ether was taken by physicists to pervade the whole of space and matter. Not only man, but every animal and plant, every living thing, has a Soul. The body is but the field of action, the Kshetra in which resides the soul, who is the Kshetri or Kshetrajna.

The Soul does not cease to exist when the body dies and is buried, burnt or eaten up by wild birds or beasts. Grief over death is foolish, the Soul being incapable of death. It is the body that is cast off in death even as we cast off old clothes.

Translation of a Shloka from Chapter II, Shloka no. 11.

The Lord Said:

You grieve for those who are not to be grieved for, yet you speak words of seeming wisdom. The enlightened grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.

Tomorrow: Mr. Geelani: Who did we acquit?

Swami Harshananda quotes in his book on “An introduction to Hindu culture”:

A human being is the conglomeration of several parts, apparently different from one another, but acting cohesively for a common purpose, that of a jivatman or the individual soul (a conscious entity) inhabiting them. They are: the physical body including the sense organs, the faculty of speech, the mind and the spirit. A proper training in culture has to tackle each one of these singly, but in a way that it does not interfere or overshadow the natural faculties of the others.

Such a training as envisaged by a holistic attitude towards the development
of the human personality can be on the following lines:

1. Meticulously observing the rules of health and sanitation. Physical culture
   including yogasanas. I need to start learning Yoga.
2. Cultivating the faculty of speech through the study of languages and grammar
   of those languages. Practising the art of speaking the truth at the right time and place, including the knack of presenting even unpleasant truths in a manner that is gracefully accepted.
3. Training the mind in developing discretion and discrimination so that the right decision can be taken at the right time within the limitations imposed by the circumstances. Exercising the intellect by the study of science, philosophy and logic.
4. Trying to develop a taste or interest in some of the arts such as classical music and dance, good and elevating literature, drawing and painting, drama and other theatrical arts that can rouse our finer sentiments and so on.
5. Faith in God and a regular habit of prayer.

Tomorrow: Definition of culture