Month: September 2018

There is one single characteristic that has existed in all the great people of the different traditions in the world, and that is selflessness. Christ, the Buddha, and Krishna all attained the highest wisdom, but they remained themselves. Your outer individual shell will remain exactly the same, but your inner light will expand and expand to universal consciousness. That individual flame of love will become a forest conflagration and will burn up the precarious weed of your selfishness. Selfishness is not needed; it will get in your way. Truth will automatically come to you if you learn how to love. Don’t approach love in a merely external or superficial way; offering your body to somebody is not love, it is merely lust. I am talking of that kind of love in which you are completely selfless. In such love, you want to give and you feel great joy in giving, and you feel that this is something great for you to do as a human being. You need to learn to give and truly love, and compassion is the first step.

While you are learning to teach your children, you should also have another goal: you should develop an enthusiasm about learning from your children too—children are also teachers for their parents. You can learn many things from your children; often the parent doesn’t have the intense desire to learn that a child has. You should learn to keep that zeal alive. Never close the gates of learning; they should remain open. There is no end to knowledge; don’t allow yourself to think that you know everything. Always remember that you still have more to learn, because there is no end to your learning. This knowledge is ananta, limitless. With such a love, you teach your children and attend to each child personally.

Set a time for your practices, because that is how you develop habit patterns and teach your children to do so. If you are used to eating lunch at one o’clock, you will feel hungry at one o’clock, no matter where you are, even without a clock. If you have developed the habit of waking up at five o’clock in the morning, your eyes will suddenly open at five o’clock, even if you are tired. It is helpful to form a habit of doing your exercises, breathing practices, eating your meals, and going to bed at exactly the same time every day. These are four important functions that you should regulate. You will enjoy life better if you do this.

Actually, all four of your appetites should be controlled. When you learn to regulate all your drives, that is real human development. When you are married, you know you have a spouse and do not go with another partner. This is part of what is meant by regulation of the sexual urge. You should also regulate the temporal aspect of your behavior—the times in which you do things. Don’t just decide to have sex the moment that you come home—learn to prepare yourselves for the experience. Sometimes a woman does not feel prepared for what her husband wants. Sexual desire does not originate in the body. Sexual desire has nothing to do with virility or strength; it has something to do with emotions and the way you channel and express your emotions. It is better to have an understanding of your partner and his or her feelings so that you are not disappointed in your expectations of the relationship.

You should also regulate your food intake and teach your children to do so. If you eat regularly at the same time, it helps the system to function. Your sleep schedule should also be regulated. Yogis reduce the amount of sleep to two and a half hours, and finally to no sleep. They call it “sleepless sleep,” and they go to a state of deep meditation instead of sleep. When meditation becomes your whole life then this change naturally occurs.

In a healthy lifestyle, you should have time for exercise, breathing practices, and meditation. You should also understand that you were born and anything that is born is sure to die. Brooding on death and creating fear is not a helpful thing to do. Sooner or later everything changes and everything dies. You will lose only body, which dies and decays. Why should you be afraid? Again and again you need to remind your mind of this, because you have not been taught to do so; you have been taught to look after yourself fearfully. People said, “Don’t go here, you will fall. Don’t go there, you will have an accident. Don’t go here, someone will kill you.” All those kinds of negative suggestions are stored in your mind, and thus, you become afraid. Most of the fears in your mind are imaginary. You analyze many things in your life, but because of your fears, you never analyze your own fears.

When you go to a teacher, you want to get rid of your fears. You explain them to him, and he gives you strength and inspires you. But the teacher can only inspire you. It is your responsibility to see that your children improve, progress, and remain fearless and happy. Even if you live for only five days, if you live those days cheerfully and fearlessly, they are wonderful. If you live miserably for five hundred years, then those five hundred years are of no use. If you want to live for a long time, learn to be cheerful.

Editor’s Note

Reprinted from Dawn magazine, vol. 10 no. 2

All of life’s events try to teach that out of death comes life. In the process there is an urge to know and feel something that cannot die. Jesus taught that “whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall save it.” In the next sentence Jesus asked, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Jesus meant that whoever is attached to the wordly life and this earthly body will lose them in death. But whoever lets go of attachments to this worldly life and this earthly body and identifies with the permanence or God-consciousness that Jesus represented, will never die. What good will it do to have all the riches of the world and all the world’s pleasures? They will all disappear in the flash we call a human lifetime. Focusing on the pleasures of the world keeps the mind too distracted to search for the inner Self.

Buddha’s four noble truths state that life is suffering, the suffering has a cause, there is a cessation of suffering, and there is a means to that cessation: a solution. Buddha’ s solution was to live life correctly and to travel through life productively and enjoyably. This path requires dealing with the desires and attachments that are the cause of suffering.

“For him who is wholly free from attachment there is no grief, much less fear. From craving springs grief, from craving springs fear; for him who is wholly free from craving there is no grief, much less fear,” said the Buddha.

Another Buddhist text states: “Through the abandonment of desire the Deathless is realized.”

“Put to death what is earthly in you,” said St. Paul.

Commonly we get the message early in life that happiness is earned by acquiring things and getting something from relationships. Things are lost, relationships change, and pain is the consequence. We have a parade of emotions and thoughts that we identify with, and this brings pain. We think we are our bodies, and when our bodies are sick or they age, or we watch the bodies of others get sick or die, we experience pain.

Pain is an alarm system that indicates that something is not in balance. What is the pain of lost objects, changed relationships, shifting emotions and thoughts, and deteriorating bodies telling us? One possibility is that is simply how life is. We arrive here, strive to obtain whatever we think we need, and suffer pain in the process. End of story. That doesn’t make much sense though. If someone felt pain in his foot, and the pain alerted him to an infection, would the person simply say, “Well, that’s the way it goes—have a foot, get an infection.” The infection would spread through the leg and kill the person. That’s not rational. The person would use the pain to identify an issue in his body that needed attention. He would see it as a problem that needed a solution. Life’s pain is telling us that we are perceiving our relationship to things, people, feelings, thoughts, and bodies incorrectly.

We are dependent on those things, people, feelings, and bodies. We identify with them and are attached to them. When they go or change, we feel pain. These attachments, along with ignorance, are the source of the fear of death. The more we are attached, the greater is the fear we have of death. Those without any attachments—those who do not perceive themselves as owning anything in their lives and who know that their bodies are just instruments—they are free from fear.

What does it mean to be attached to or to identify with something? Attachment means we believe we need something for our existence. This is the ego operating. It says, “I am so important and I need to have this car. This car is mine, this car means I am successful, this car helps identify me.” Or, “I need a relationship with this woman. Without her I cannot be happy. If she leaves me I will be forever broken, and life will be meaningless.” People get attached even to the idea of things. For example, in American culture people have been raised with certain images of what life ought to be. They see themselves from the time of childhood growing up to have wonderful marriages, living in white houses with picket fences and flowers, and having devoted children. They see themselves getting bigger houses, second cars, second homes in resort areas, and retiring early. These are the ideas the culture creates, and when these things don’t come about to match their ideas, they are miserable. They feel as if some bad trick has been played on them.

This is identifying with images. You see yourself, your identity, as this person in the white house with flowers and a perfect life. You think that is you. But that is not you. Don’t be attached to these images. Learn to flow with life and all of its ups and downs.

The same tendency works in the lower mind with emotions. We get angry, and we think, “I am angry.” Who is angry? To say “I am angry” is to identify with the emotion, to believe that the emotion is us. We cannot be an emotion. As humans we are capable of having anger and experiencing anger, but we are not anger or any other emotion.

Similarly, we are not our bodies. We have bodies. They are instruments for our use. We say, “I am 6’1″ and blond with blue eyes.” We are not that. Yet this is what we think. When someone criticizes our appearance we feel hurt. When we see our bodies getting older and slowing down, it scares us. Most of us remain in body consciousness and that is why we identify ourselves with the body. When one learns to separate the mortal self from the immortal Self, the faculty of discrimination dawns.

Death does not touch the real Self. That is difficult to believe only because we so strongly identify ourselves with our bodies and the world around us. Just because we are not conscious of something does not mean it doesn’t exist.

Yama says to Nachiketa, “When all desires and passions are removed, when perfect stillness prevails, the mortal becomes immortal.” That is the key. Death cannot mean an end because death has no effect on the Self. The cycle of life and death is not a random, unfortunate reality. It is an instructor. The Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu stated:

“Birth is not a beginning, death is not an end. There is existence without limitation, there is continuity without a starting point. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which one passes in and out without seeing it, that is the portal of God.”

Life is an ongoing Upanishad that directs a person to search for the eternal and identify with what is permanent, not with that which is impermanent, and thereby overcome death.

According to Vedanta we exist not because of our bodies but because of our very being. The inner self creates the body. During sleep we are not conscious of our bodies, but still we exist. Materialistic thinkers turn it the other way around. They look to the body, declare it is evidence of our being, and assume if there is an inner being, it comes by way of the body. Vedanta says just the reverse. Consciousness makes our body appear to exist.

Death is not something to fear but its function in life should be understood. Accepting death is a reality that will help you to realize that this life here is temporary, that the world is only a platform, that you have come here on a journey to learn and grow, and then the journey ends.

St. Paul referred to life as a slight, momentary affliction that prepares a person for eternal glory. “Everything in human life,” he said, “is for spiritual work.” In somewhat darker imagery, but with a similar message, Chuang Tzu said to “look upon life as a swelling or tumor and upon death as the draining of a sore or the bursting of a boil.”

At the same time remember that God, or the eternal Reality, is within you. Death reminds you not to attach yourself to this world. Learn from the world and let it go. See your body as just an instrument. It serves a purpose and then its work is done.

Editor’s Note

Reprinted from Sacred Journey

If you want to create a situation for meditation you have to pay attention to the point where the nostrils bridge to the upper lip – the point at which your mind notices which nostril is blocked and which nostril is open. Usually you will notice that one of the nostrils is passive and the other is active. When you have learned to change the flow of the nostrils with your mind, then after some time both nostrils begin flowing evenly. This may take some months or perhaps a year, depending on your capacity and the burning desire within you.

When both nostrils flow evenly the mind cannot worry, because it is disconnected from the senses. Mind does not know how to worry then. It attains a state of joy called sukhamana, the joyous mind. That state of mind is conducive to deep meditation. This is an accurate and effective procedure for you to follow, and it is important not to rush or be impatient.

For meditation, the finest of all breathing exercises is sushumna application. When you learn how to apply sushumna, there is no way for your mind to go anywhere but into the inner journey. At present, when you try to meditate you are disturbed and your mind is disturbed. Some days you have a good meditation and other days you do not, depending on your ability in sushumna justify.

According to the ancient yoga manuals and the science of yoga, there are three important points in the inward journey. The cream of yoga science is to learn first to apply sushumna; next to awaken kundalini and lead her to the highest dimension; and then to attain the knowledge of the Absolute.

This is the entire procedure of the yoga system, and these practices are meant to help you toward that goal.
The science of breath actually ends with sushumna application. It is the method by which you establish harmony between two aspects of breath. During that time both nostrils flow freely. Without sushumna application, meditation- the inward journey – becomes difficult, so you should learn the method of sushumna application.

When you attempt sushumna application, ask your mind to focus at the nose bridge. Let your thoughts come and do not be afraid. You are trying to discipline your mind. When you do that, your whole being will be alert, and the whole unconscious mind will become active and bring forward many hidden and forgotten things. When this happens people often get upset, thinking that the meditation is disturbing them. But it is not the meditation that causes the disturbance, it is what you have bottled up. You have to go through that process of release in meditation therapy. This is a very good process. Let the distracting thoughts come forward, and then allow them to go. After a while a time will come when no thought patterns disturb you, and you can watch your thoughts. Then you can witness your whole life. If a disturbing thought comes, you allow it to go away.

Editor’s note

This passage has been taken from the book Path of Fire and Light Volume 2, pp 41 – 75, by Swami Rama (Rama, S., 1988. Path of Fire and Light Volume 2. Himalayan Institute Press).