Month: October 2022

With the auspicious celebrations and austere practices during the 9 days of the Navaratri, we invoked the Grace of the Mother Divine at the ashram [Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama] and sought Her loving guidance and blessings for the beginning of a new chapter in our lives – the Gurukulam.

Keeping up with the traditional way of celebrating the Navaratri, this year too, we continued with the 24-hours non-stop recitation of the Lalita Sahasranaama with both the priests and the residents during the nine days. The priests did the chantings for 12 hours each day, while the residents did the chantings for the remaining 12 hours. The Navaratri days bring forth a new force of energy within all of us in the ashram. One could hear the surroundings vibrate through the chantings of the Lalita Sahasranaama, where one is naturally drawn to immerse oneself within that force-field.

On the 9^th day of the Navaratri, we worshipped 9 little girls (kanya pujan), representing the nine forms of Goddess Durga (Navadurga). They are considered as manifestations of Shakti, to whom the offerings of mantras, food, clothes, and other gifts were made.

          

With the Grace of Gurudeva Swami Rama and our beloved Swami Veda Bharati, and with the blessings of Swami Ritavan Bharati, we feel blessed to share with you that the Swami Rama Dhyana Gurukulam accepted the new batch with five students on the auspicious day of the Vijayadashami (or the Dusshera).

This one-year program for the Gurukulam has been carefully designed and planned to include the teachings of the Himalayan Tradition through Swami Rama, Swami Veda, and attempt has been made to include as many aspects of the ancient traditional Gurukula systems of spiritual education and training as possible.

We began the new session of the Gurukulam with purification through the fire ritual – Virija Homam, and seeking the blessings of Lord Ganesha, the Guru Lineage, and the Divine Mother Saraswati (the Goddess of Wisdom). The blessings of the Mother Saraswati were invoked through the chanting of the Medha Suktam and the Saraswati Suktam.

The students and the faculty walked to the Sadhana Mandir, the seat of Gurudeva and sought the blessings of the Lineage. Together, we meditated in the Meditation Hall and Swami Veda’s Silence Hall.

At SRSG, students were briefly introduced to Swami Veda’s teachings on the ‘Unifying Streams of Religion’ as they paid their obeisance and prayed at all the places of worship in the ashram. The students offered flower garlands, fruits, sweets, and Dakshina (Love-offering) at the Initiation Room, the Buddha temple, the Mother Mary temple, the Adi Sankaracharya temple, the Ma Tara temple, and the Shiva Temple, and at the altars of Mahavira and Ma Saraswati.

The five young Gurukulam students, who have arrived at the ashram and joined the one-year program, brought a new force of energy with them. Our students arrived two days before the program began, and cleaned the entire Gurukulam building. They then proceeded to clean the Knowledge Center (KC) and removed the two layers of carpets from the KC. The carpets were hand-washed twice. It took them about 4-5 hours each time. They began the cleaning at 3pm and they worked non-stop until 8pm, even though they had to wake up at 4am the next morning. It was so heartwarming to see them preparing their classroom space with such enthusiasm and joy.

The program then had already begun with their loving Seva (service) towards the ashram. They are now studying Sanskrit and Vedic Chanting, along with classes on Hatha yoga, meditation, proper sitting and breathing. Their self-study plans for the first month is to study and contemplate on Gurudeva’s writings – the Living with the Himalayan Masters and Inner Dialogue.

The students and teachers adopted the system of eating meals only twice a day and will be having their brunch at 10 am and dinner at 7 pm. They will be cooking their own brunch. Once the food has been prepared and served, the students chant the 15^th chapter of the Bhagavad-gita and the ashram meal prayers.

We all know that the Gurukulam was very dear to our beloved Swami Veda and he laid much emphasis on the continuity of the teachings through long-term Gurukulam studies at the ashram. We feel humbled to be able to continue his vision of the Gurukulam.

We seek the unseen blessings of the Lineage and pray at the feet of the Masters for our self-purification so that this endeavour may be successful. I am sure that the Gurukulam will provide an opportunity for all of us to learn, practice, and live the teachings of the Tradition.

We are grateful to everyone who continues to contribute towards this vision, inlcuding our DMT trustees, AHYMSIN family members, teachers, Ashram sahayakas and all well-wishers. We seek Swami Ritavan’s continued guidance on the path forward.

Om Tasmayi Shri Gurave Namah,

Rabindra

When I was a child, my family took yearly summer vacations to Sedona, Arizona. Back in those days, nobody knew about this beautiful place. It became popular many years later. We’d drive, and the start of each trip was on multi-lane highways out of Los Angeles. Soon we turned onto smaller, two-lane country roads with cars coming from the other direction just over the center line. For the whole day, we’d drive through the vast empty expanse of desert, the gray road stretching seemingly to infinity before us.

There were places in those days, where the road rose and fell over tiny hills and dips, and in those areas, it looked like there was water on the road that we about to drive right into. But that water would always disappear as we approached. I also saw huge lakes in the distance, but they too disappeared and became desert as we approached. The water on the road and in the desert was not water at all, but mirages. They were an illusion caused by heat and light. We were lucky we didn’t need that water to survive. But by experiencing those mirages, I came to understand how one could be tricked by seeing something that didn’t exist.

As I grew up, I found there is another mirage that most of us get taken in by. The great Himalayan yogi, Swami Rama, explained it well: “seeking happiness in the external world is like chasing a mirage: no matter how fast one may rush toward it, he never finds anything even when he reaches the place where he thought his goal lay” (Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita, Pp. 219).

The mirage Swami Rama points to is such a good illusion that often we don’t even realize we’ve been fooled. The reason for this is a slight-of-hand by our very own minds: although we often experience a momentary pleasure upon satisfying our desire, before we have time to realize how puny and short lived that pleasure is, the mind is already off after the next desire.

For most of my life—I’m 70 years old now— I tried to find happiness by chasing desires, obtaining things and having experiences and, although I often experienced the momentary pleasure upon obtaining my goal, I also experienced a constant low-level frustration. Looking closely at the origin of that frustration, I realized that nothing, no experience, no object, really satisfied me. Momentary pleasure is not the same as happiness. I wanted to be happy, to be eternally fulfilled, and no experience gave me that. Eventually, I realized that I was spending my whole life chasing mirages. If I wanted to be happy, that happiness had to come from somewhere else.

So where does happiness come from? Swami Rama says, “It is impossible to attain happiness in the external world, for happiness is only found deep in the innermost chamber of one’s being. The Self is the center of happiness. Those who are realized are always filled with the happiness of the Self, and they alone find real peace in their hearts” (Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita, Pp. 219-220). Meditation is the path to find that center of happiness within.

Over the many decades that I’ve been practicing meditation, at times I’ve tasted a happiness mixed with love, and a sense of fullness and connectedness, that is not dependent upon anything external. It just is. As one advances in his or her meditation practice, it becomes possible to dip into this great happiness more often. The key is to keep practicing.

Editor’s Note:

Randall Krause (Mokshadeva) is a Senior Teacher and Mentor in the Himalayan Yoga Meditation Tradition. He spent years learning closely from Swami Veda Bharati, and time personally attending to Swamiji in India and elsewhere. He has taught the Himalayan Tradition in the USA, Europe, India (at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama), and in Thailand and Taiwan.