Newsletter February 04, 2009

Past Events

Synopsis of Last Week's Classes

Friday - Bhagwad Gita - Jan. 30
Ch. 3- Verses 29-30: The Bhagawad Gita is like our mother who destroys our bondage and showers us with knowledge of the non-duality of the Self. It should not remain just a matter of intellectual understanding; we must strive for the practical experience of this Truth.
Lord Krishna tells that we should dedicate all actions to the Lord; our actions should be like the flowers in a garland offered during worship. By ushering in the attitude of worship, all actions get transformed into spiritual practice. The principle in Karma Yoga is: "work works on the worker"; so let us use our work for molding and shaping us. The desire for recognition is difficult to overcome, but if we recognize it and practice dedicating our work to God, gradually this dedication will be spontaneous and the desire for recognition will drop away.
Second, we must also know we are neither body nor mind and act in accordance with this knowledge (an attitude beautifully illustrated in the life of Sri Ramakrishna). If we have the feeling of oneness with the whole of existence, there will never be cause for quarrel and competition.

Sunday - Earn and Learn - Swami Yogatmananda - Feb. 01
Life is meaningful so long as it is lived for learning. Learning becomes valuable when it is earned through hard work. In Karma Yoga, Swami Vivekananda says that all actions, small or big, are the manifestations of the will of man; the will comes from character and character gets formed by the result of Karma (actions). Nothing can be obtained unless one earns it. This is true of learning too. Learning has to be earned. True learning means acquiring knowledge through the process of inner transformation or 'earning'. Knowledge thus 'earned' stays with us forever. According to Bhagawad Gita, the means to gain spiritual knowledge are:
1. approach the teacher with humility
2. ask questions with earnest desire to evolve and not for intellectual curiosity
3. render service
In the book, 'Cloud of Unknowing', the author, a Christian mystic, says that a cloud of unknowing has covered the divinity. To pierce that, cover everything of the earthly existence with the 'cloud of forgetting'. That means: give up the attachments to names and forms; renounce even the idea that God is gracious and kind because nothing is our very own than God. Everything has to be sacrificed for the supreme knowledge as the Sufi saint-poet Rumi says- 'The wine (= ultimate bliss) we really drink is our own blood. .. We give everything for a glass of this...' The knowledge thus earned makes the person 'purna' or complete.

Tuesday - Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - Feb. 03

In life we are torn between contradictory feelings. We try to find new objects to find fulfillment and we're still unsatisfied; and worse, we get caught in those objects and not only that, we also work to bind each other more. Close relations, even the parents, usually try to bind down a person with emotional black-mailing if he/she tries to break free.
Identification of our real desire is the main problem of spiritual life. Sri Ramakrishna's words tell us how to remove the pseudo-desires which are obstacles to our spiritual journey. He took hold of Tarak's hand to see how much the young disciple could handle. The Master was always elated when his young devotees visited. They weren't that affected by the world yet and could absorb much of his teaching.
Sri Ramakrishna was concerned about Mohini's wife who was mentally imbalanced and had thoughts of suicide. He tried to warn her about the ill-effects of that. Suicide does not solve any problem; it only takes away the body, the instrument which could solve them.
Q: 'How to judge if some action is out of sense of duty or of attachment?' A: By our conscience; the conscience has to be made robust and powerful in life.