Newsletter January 20, 2010

Synopsis of last week's classes

Friday, Jan. 15 - Bhagavad Gita - Ch. 5 (Verses 12-16)
Sri Krishna's message of karma yoga is for us to do our work without desire for the results (praise, acknowledgement, financial gain, etc.). Of course money and other such things will come as an automatic result of it, irrespective of what you expect; but we should not do work in order to make money. Like a yogi, we should work for self-purification. Difficult though it may be at first, we must view ourselves as the "in-dweller" or the body. The mind and sense organs are doing the work, but they are really separate, outside of us. We have no one but ourselves to blame for our identification with the body, therefore we must take responsibility for ourselves and work to rid ourselves of this misidentification. We cannot blame God and expect Him to remove our delusions for us with no effort on our part. As Swami Vivekananda wrote, "Thine is the hand that holds the rope that drags thee on." Since ignorance is the cause of this confusion, Knowledge is The Remedy.
There were very good questions asked at the end regarding the practice of detachment.

Sunday, Jan. 17 - Teachings of Swami Brahmananda - Swami Tyagananda
Swami Brahmananda, the spiritual son of Sri Ramakrishna was a store house of spirituality. His teachings and reminiscences have been compiled in the book 'Eternal Companion', a guide to all sincere seekers of God. Swami Brahmananda defines spiritual life as 'Struggle, struggle, struggle!' Presence of hope is very much important to attain success in spiritual life. Do we do our daily spiritual practice with the hope of attaining realization? 'Dream about truer dreams!' Visualize yourself as an illumined person; then you'll know what things you lack now, and what you must do to fulfill your dream of becoming illumined. Swami Brahmananda once told his disciple - "My child, you should be always expecting me!" We are so much preoccupied with worldly things that we ignore God, who is knocking at our door. God is everywhere but we don't see Him/Her anywhere because we don't expect to see God. Spiritual life is not just intellectual understanding but giving up materialistic outlook and relearning how to look at ourselves and at the world. What we see outside is the reflection of what we see inside. Hence Vedanta tells us to look upon everyone as the pure, perfect, immortal spirit. An incident that happened in Brazil was narrated, which highlights how the power of Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother and their disciples like Swami Brahmananda is still working in this world. To read the story in detail, please click here- http://www.vedanta.org/reading/monthly/articles/2009/10.miracle_brazil.html

Tuesday, Jan 19 - Video Lecture

A Video 'The Message of Bhagavad Gita', with Swami Adiswarananda from Vedanta Society of NYC providing the lecture, was shown in place of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna class.

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