Newsletter April 02, 2008

Synopsis of Last Week's Classes

Friday - Bhagavad Gita Class - March 28

Ch. 2 Verses 48-50: The intellectual understanding or Sankhya must be followed by Yoga - the practical implementation. Ideally, work has the potential to purify the worker. To do work in that spirit is Yoga. The personal attachments, 'I & mine' must be kept away for the practice of Yoga.
Another important characteristic of it is SAMENESS. One should of course strive to get success, but yet be unaffected in success and failure, praise and blame, knowing they are all temporary conditions. Also since nothing is purely good and purely bad on the relative plane, we should just do our duty, keeping our intentions good.
Sri Krishna has already told that inaction is to be avoided at all costs. Let us work, but not get bound by that work; this requires a very special skill, since work naturally tends to bind. This skill in work, Lord Krishna defines as Yoga. External skill in a work is only about the external results; and while it has its importance too, what is more important is the internal result - the purification of mind - and work, if done with this skill of Yoga, helps a person to do that.

Sunday - Bhakti-Yoga: Preparation (5): Avatar: Myth and Mystery - Swami Tyagananda - March 30
The Incarnations of God are the greatest world-teachers whose extraordinary power, love and compassion can transform the lowest degraded characters into saints. They are born out of love for devotees to re-establish Dharma (righteousness) and to free human souls of sins. They provide a role model for humanity to shape their lives.
There is no objective test to recognize an incarnation of God who is the bridge between the human and the divine. The divine element is so predominantly present that although human, that person seems almost Godlike. What is the necessity of understanding God in Human form? Swami Vivekananda says that although God is infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent etc. as long as one has not transcended human nature, one cannot conceive God except as a human being. Religion is realization and God can be experienced in the depths of our heart. We create God in our own image. Until we feel God's real presence, we won't be able to see what God really is and hence Sri Ramakrishna advises us- listen to a few words and dive deep. Two kinds of people do not worship God: the human brutes because of their dense ignorance and free souls because of their oneness with the divine. All others need to undergo spiritual practices as shown by the Incarnations of God. What makes an Incarnation of God so special is not their power of doing miracles, but removing ignorance and transforming the lives of people. Sri Ramakrishna is considered by many as the Incarnation of God for the modern age.

Tuesday - The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna Class- April 1

There's a paradoxical statement in Vedanta about spiritual practice: 'God does not come because of spiritual practices, but without them He does not come'. Practices are necessary because they purify the mind and by purification, obstacles are removed and the Truth or the God shines forth spontaneously.
When Knowledge dawns, there is no duality of pleasure & pain. Sri Ramakrishna's divine awareness was not affected even when he was ill with cancer. He was beyond the erroneous awareness that "I am the body". He was pure divine light and beyond all duality. Our sense of good and bad is ego-driven and hence misguided. The root of all evil action is desire. When the desires are not fulfilled (and they are never fulfilled because they are bottomless pits), they get converted into anger and it's almost impossible to be peaceful then. Any crime is then possible. The remedy is to surrender desires; take up the relatively good desire to root-out the relatively evil ones and then go beyond both. To do this, one must take up spiritual practice. Sri Ramakrishna spoke of ultimate perfection. When this stage is reached, there is nothing left to be done.

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