Month: April 2020

Concern for Humanity

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For me, Swami Rama again and again stresses concern for humanity.

The point that Swami Rama emphasises is important:

“We have to transcend our racial vanity, and we have to search for a lifestyle to restructure a new, reformed society.” (A Call to Humanity, page 112)

“Today, humanity needs a moral and intellectual revitalization.” (A Call to Humanity, page 114)

“Today, we cannot live in seclusion and cannot separate ourselves from the problems and concerns of the rest of society. How is it possible to disregard the problems of our neighbors? There is no way to be happy if our fellow beings are suffering from disease and poverty.” (A Call to Humanity, page 115).

Inspired by his call, looking at the present dilemma of the world, I see very complex issues humanity is facing; it’s not just the virus. Silence and acquiescence are not helpful.

As Swami Rama says: we cannot separate ourselves. In fact, what is yoga? Ultimately when we talk of oneness, it means one with all of existence. We are part of nature… part of earth, interference with what makes life is a threat to all of us. What to do? We must somehow find a way to make societies and governments more aware.

“To have concern for others is to be human. By being selfish and self-centered, we fall from our true human status. Now we must strive for peace and happiness as a group. Before committing ourselves to working together, we have to create a sense of equality. We have to raise our moral status and design a new world that is free from complexes and in equities. In this age of high technology, no community or race can maintain its existence without associating with other communities and races. So there must be better understanding among human beings. We have to share one another’s losses and gains. We have to learn from each other’s experiences for our own growth.” – Swami Rama, A Call to Humanity, pages 114-115

“The human race is suffering from its ego-born narrow-mindedness.” – Swami Rama, A Call to Humanity, page 115

Karuna – Compassion

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Buddha

Buddham sharanam gachhami…
I come seeking your protection, O Buddha.

Karuna: The feeling that we have to experience the pain or distress of another as if it is our own. The English equivalent, compassion, is derived from the Latin com meaning with, and passio meaning suffering. Karuna is not just sympathy (anukampa) or feeling sorry for another, but rather empathy (annudayana), actually feeling the sorrow of another.

According to Buddhist and Jain philosophies, karuna is one of the main emotions of humans that must be felt in a practical way.  In Bharat Muni’s Natya Shastra, the volume on Performing Arts, one of the best texts that lists human emotions, compassion (karuna) is marked as one of nine rasas (literally meaning flavor) interpreting emotions. The others are devotion (bhakti) pleasure (rati), sorrow (shoke), anger (krodha), courage (utsaha), fear (bhaya), disgust (jugutpsa), and awe or surprise(vishmaya).

According to the Buddha, to experience the selfless compassion of karuna is to feel a quiver in the heart to such an extent that when suffering is seen in another it should become one’s own. One must not only feel it but be compelled to act.

How does karuna come into play in today’s world, and how can we truly practice it? Emotions that register and operate through the mind arise both from internal samskaras and external inputs.  Emotions are like the waves of the oceans – they rise and fall. While the movement of the waves depends on tides, the burst of emotions depends on how the mind observes internally and externally and then reacts.

Swami Rama (Babaji) in his book Lectures on Yoga wrote, “The mind is a collection of thoughts and habits. It is a huge heap of desires gathered from contact with different forces of the world.  It is the habit of the mind to collect feelings aroused by worldly disturbances.”  What Babaji says here applies to how we are reacting to what is happening in today’s world. In times like these, one sees that humanity has formed habit patterns in terms of how we react to situations. This ‘worldly disturbance’ plays on our fears of disease and death.

There are 2 questions that come to mind with regards to the mind during this pandemic:
Why is the mind affected by worldly disturbances? What can we do to mitigate the negative effects of worldly disturbances on the mind?
Let’s look at the mind to see why it’s affected by worldly disturbances. The mind is the instrument that works through the senses to observe, absorb, be passive, act, or react. So, the answer to the first question is that the mind is affected by worldly disturbances because it reacts to the input from our senses (this is, of course, a simplified answer for the purpose of discussing karuna.) There are many other factors such as the performance of our dharma, karma, meditative practices, and Grace.

Now that we know why the mind is affected, how do we mitigate the negative effects? We must train our minds to be the best instrument for our use. One of the easiest ways to train the mind is to follow the teachings of the ancient sages whose personal experiences led them to formulate systems of philosophy that we today may follow to understand ourselves, how we think, speak, and act. Meditative practices guide us to accomplish this by helping us to understand how the mind works by observing it. What is it absorbing from the outside? How does that affect what is already inside? And then, what do we do with what the mind has absorbed?

In the Himalayan Tradition, when we have reached the stage when we become aware, we begin to empathize with what’s going on around us, compassion develops and comes to us naturally. It is simply part of the progression of a meditative practice. For it is no longer ‘me’ and ‘them’, but rather, ‘all’.  Then we awake in that karuna that the Buddha speaks of, and we become one with All.

In the cave of my heart
There is a Light
I can feel
I can see
A brilliant flame burning constantly
Its glow suffuses me then
Expanding slowly
It fills my being with its Self
I spread with It
Radiating, a lava like flow of waves
This self i’ve known for some time is no more
That little ‘i’ has become
All – All – All  and
Finally, ‘aham brahmaasmi’
And Karuna is the new name.

***

Karuna
Lalita Arya
Boston, Massachusetts
April 12, 2020

Buddha in oil paints
Lalita Arya
Princeton, New Jersey

Editor’s Note:

Founder of KHEL charities, Ammaji is a mantra initiator and a member of AHYMSIN’s Adhyatma Samiti (Spiritual Committee). She has also authored the book Eyeful of Sky: Poems.

You Are the Architect of Your Life

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You are the architect of your life and thus have the capacity to change and shape your destiny. You choose what you want to be. One way to understand this is to think of yourself as an archer. The arrows you have previously shot are the past, and you cannot take them back. They are gone and will not be returned to you. You cannot undo the karma you have performed and you will have to reap the fruits of that karma. Even though you have no control over your past actions, you can have perfect control over the arrows that you have in your quiver and that you are shooting now. These represent the present. The arrows you are holding on your back and intend to shoot toward the target later correspond to the future. The past is gone, but what you do now and in the future is in your hands. The present is the link between the past and the future. If you keep thinking only of the past or imagining the future, you are missing the link of the present.

Editor’s Note

This is an excerpt from Sadhana, the Path of Enlightenment: Yoga the Sacred Science, Volume 2, by Swami Rama. Chapter “If the Cause Is Imperfect, the Effect Will Be Imperfect,” page130.

For all Swami Rama’s and Swami Veda Bharati’s published works, please email hyptbooks@gmail.com

Published works of Swami Rama and Swami Veda Bharati are also available at other venues.

Seeking God

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The God of the atheist is one for whom the atheist does not know he is searching, though he is indeed searching. When you take to a bottle of alcohol, you are searching for God. When you are angry and frustrated, you are worshipping God. When you buy a Superman comic, you are looking for someone who is greater than you – which is God. When you go into a brooding silence alone to nurse your suffering and self-pity, there is something within you that is calling you to your God. When you go out looking for a dancing crowd in whose collective movement you can merge the movement of your body, you are looking for that collective spirit that is God. When you merge the sound of your flute into the entire orchestra around you, you are merging your individual consciousness into the total consciousness, the superconsciousness that is God. That is the God of the atheist who has not yet acknowledged his search for God.

There is the God of the agnostic who does not know if there is a God or not, but who acknowledges a search because he is searching for truth. And before you search for God, you search for the truth as to whether or not He exists. That too is a search for God.

There is the God of the man of intellect, the God of the theologian, of the philosopher who speaks in carefully selected words, in very clear terms which later on, when he becomes a man of devotion, he realizes were not really quite as clear as they seemed to him when he was a mere theologian or philosopher.

There is the God of the bhakta, the devotee. Someone very near and dear recently said to me, “If I feel sad and have an urge to cry, what should I do with it?” I replied, “Can you think of a saint in the history of mankind or of one great soul in the East or West, who fulfilled his aspiration, without crying vehemently before coming to any realization of God? A civilization or a family in which tears are suppressed is an enemy of God. If you have an urge to cry, let it become bhakti, an emotion directed to the sublime. Why cry before a man? Why cry to a pillow? When all your emotion becomes directed to the One being, it becomes bhakti – your joy, your suffering, your pain, your pleasure, your longing, your fulfillment.” The God of early Christianity is the God of the bhakta, the God of devotion directed to the One. Bhaktas understand God as their personal Someone.

Now we come to the view held by the Vedanta philosophy. Beyond the God of the atheist and of the agnostic, beyond the God of the man of knowledge and the man of devotion there is a transpersonal God – not an impersonal God, a transpersonal God. We must understand God the transpersonal, the transcendental. We must also understand God whose emanation is the universe – God the immanent. We must understand God as the collective (but more than the collective) consciousness of all the universe.

Every person has a feeling of unreality in relation to God. It is a very strange feeling. There is a part of our being that is always in search for something else; we ask ourselves if there will ever be a time when we are no longer searching, and we give up in hopeless despair, all of us, because we are always searching for something way, way over there.

In yoga the search ceases. The follower of the yoga path states no credo. Instead, he purifies his mind and sees the presence of God within. Of the three stages of prayer – stuti (praise), prarthana (petition), and upasana (the practice of the presence), his is the last stage. Whatever he says about God’s nature is from his personal experience of such a presence. “I have seen It. You can, too,” he says confidently.

Editor’s Note

This is an excerpt from God by Pandit Usharbudh Arya, 1979, Chapter “Seeking God,” pages 3 – 5. Pandit Usharbudh Arya became Swami Veda Bharati, and the author of the book is sometimes listed as Swami Veda Bharati.

Love as Healer

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The key to healing is selflessness.

When I was young I used to follow my master wherever he went. Once we went to a city called Heta in UP district to visit a railway officer whose only son had very severe smallpox with huge abscesses all over his body. When we were traveling it was customary to go to different households and ask for food. Being young I dashed in front of my master and knocked on the railway officer’s door. When the door opened, I immediately asked, “Mother, could you give me some food?”

She came out and angrily said, “If you are really swamis, you should know that we have only one son and he is dying. Instead you are behaving like a fool and talking of food.”

That really affected me. When my master reached I told him what had happened and he smiled and said, “Let me go inside.”

When he saw the condition of the child he asked the mother what she had said to me. She repeated, “If you are a swami you should have known that my only son is dying. Instead of helping me you are being very selfish in asking for food.”

Then again he smiled and said to me, “Son, I am going to cure him.”

He then removed the bed sheet that was covering the boy and wrapped himself in that. Immediately his whole body became covered with smallpox eruptions, while the boy was completely cured. Both parents fell down at the feet of my master. He said, “Now I am going to transfer this to a tree.”

Later I asked him how it was possible for him to cure that child, so he gave me one example: “Suppose there is a house that is burning, and the family members of that house are crying and screaming outside because their only child is inside that house. They have no strength to go inside and save him. Suddenly a stranger comes and hears about the child. Without hesitation he runs into the burning house and after a few moments brings the child out. How can you awaken such love where you are willing to put yourself in danger to rescue someone else? Love requires sacrifice and courage. Anyone who knows what sacrifice is and what it means to give, is a real lover.”

Above and beyond medicine you can heal others if you have an intense desire to serve others with love. You have that potential, but you have not yet explored it. Human beings are still incomplete in the process of evolution. That completion will be possible when you learn to love others and serve without any selfish motivation.

The key to healing is selflessness, love, dynamic will and undivided devotion to the Lord within. Christ and all the great messengers had the capacity to heal. You also have that same capacity; you simply have to come in touch with it.

When India was ruled and controlled by the Mogul dynasty, one of the rulers, Babur, had only one son, Humayun, who was on his deathbed. So Babur went to different swamis, sages, fakirs and priests, but nobody could help that dying child. Then one of the women sages came forward and said, “You have healing powers. Why do you not heal your child?”

“But I am not a spiritual person. I am not pious and holy.”

She said, “But still you have the power to heal. You can use it if you are prepared to give up your life for the sake of your son.”

“Yes, I have lived for a long time, so I am willing to give up this life. If he doesn’t live, I will have to go through so much sorrow in my old age.”

So the lady said, “Hold this glass of water while walking around the cot four times and repeating: ‘O Lord, give this span of life to my child. I quit, I surrender.’ And then drink this water.”

Having followed her instructions, he abruptly died. And the child was cured and got up from the bed.

Love is the real healer.

Editor’s Note

Reprinted from The Ancient Traveler: Writings on Love, by Swami Rama

Would a personal mantra help me with my anxiety?

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Question

I suffered from mental anxiety and heart palpitations from the year 2009. From then I tried different yoga and meditations. I get benefited from that for some time but after some time like 6 months, I again suffered from the same mental problems and heart palpitations which did not allow me to practice meditation. For that, I was thinking of taking mantra initiation so that by practicing mantra meditation I can change my personality. I have been practicing some mantras but I am not able to find out that which mantra will be suited to me. Please help me and guide me.

Answers

Stephen Parker (Stoma) and Carolyn Hume have answered this question.

Stephen Parker (Stoma)

You have done well using your yoga practice to deal with anxiety. It is one of the most effective strategies there is for many reasons, both spiritual and physiological. For many people, this is an ongoing process that has better times and worse times, even with a mantra initiation.

A mantra initiation is an intuitive process where the “choice” of a mantra is up to the intangible guru-force which moves through the initiator. It isn’t made on an intellectual basis. We sit together in meditation within a common mind-field, a gentle request is made to the guru and then whatever mantra comes clear is what is given. If I know the person ahead of time, I may have an opinion about which mantra would be good for them, but when it comes to initiation, my opinion doesn’t count. I must pass along only what we are given. Sometimes the person recognizes that it is a sound with which they are already familiar. This may indicate that they have brought that mantra into this life with them and it is being reinforced.

What is most important is that the intangible link to the guru is established and/or strengthened in the process of initiation which makes it possible for the guru to use that mantra from within the mind of the disciple to guide them. Ultimately, one’s ātman is the guru and the process of initiation and mantra meditation helps to awaken and fortify that presence within your mind. An external guide simply assists that process until the inner voice is clear.

Carolyn Hume

While it is true that heart palpitations can be caused by anxiety, it is also possible for there to be an underlying medical condition, such as thyroid problems, arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation….  So you may want to consult a medical doctor to confirm or eliminate these as possible causes.
Taking a foundation course in our tradition and learning or practicing some of the practices under the guidance of a teacher, completing a course of classes in breathing, sitting, and other preparations of yoga meditation with the teachers may be helpful.  This could be a preparatory step towards mantra initiation. Preparations include: Joints and Glands Exercises, training the legs, sitting correctly: with a straight spine, relaxation procedures, diaphragmatic breathing, breath awareness, and breath awareness with so-ham.

Editor’s Note

If you have any questions about your spiritual practice, you may write to the AHYMSIN Spiritual Committee at adhyatmasamiti@gmail.com.