Month: February 2024

Rasa – The Flavor of Essence

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[Swami Ritavan completed a weeklong seminar on Intensive Meditation that was well received by those attending where he introduced the importance of rasana-buddhi. Through mindfulness and meditation, the experience of any perception can be transformed through entry into the subtle body and experiencing the sacred in buddhi. This art of joyful living will be the subject of the upcoming 10-day Entrance to the Subtle Body seminar at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama, Rishikesh from 25th February through 5th March.]

Entering the subtle realms of Mind in the Buddhi

There is a word in the Sanskrit language. The word is RASA. The word, rasa means a juice, the flavor, as the essence. Rasa means that essence as the experience. That which you taste, not merely the object of taste but the object of taste, the process of tasting, and the experience of tasting.

The object of taste, the process, the interaction that occurs between the one who is tasting and that which is being tasted, and the experience of taste itself. The sense and the experience of the juice. The sensation of the experience and the juice of what you are tasting all combine together – not as divided ideas but as a singularity that is called RASA. And, when you know the art of tasting, the art of experiencing the juice, the flavor, the subtlest possible essence, then you know the art of life.

We have lost the art of enjoying life. In the ancient texts of the meditative tradition, there are some passages; and in the Bhagavad Gita 4:24, the verse Brahmar Panam… That (Brahman – God) is rasa. Brahman is the flavor, Brahman is the essence of everything. All pleasure that flows from Brahman, and Brahman alone remains. When any pleasure becomes an experience of Unified Consciousness- a Divine presence, then you are experiencing, you are enjoying, RASA. The yogi lives in the mental field of that RASA, that essence, that ecstasy, that flavor, that juice of universal existence — becomes so blissful. When you are enjoying your food, when you go to its subtle-most essence, you are then enjoying that omnipresent God which being omnipresent is also in the food.

People try to derive pleasure by paying attention to the object of enjoyment. The term RASA implies that you concentrate on the experience itself, not only on the object.
There are two sources of pleasure.

  1. One source is restraint so that you engage slowly with awareness from moment to moment.
  2. The other source of pleasure is concentration itself, absorption of the experiencer, the object of the experience, and the process of experiencing.

Moment to moment concentrate on the smallest, the littlest taste bud that has been touched. The RASA is the essence, revealing the universal principle, Brahman – God, the ever-present omniscient consciousness.

Then you have understood how to enjoy in the totality principle and this is the art of enjoying.

A yogi, whose awareness rests in atma-artha operates from the rasana-buddhi and is called a RASIKA — the enjoyer. It is a term used in the ancient literature as the enjoyer. The yogi’s game is the whole universe. He plays with universal consciousness as a game called reality. He can change water into wine, or feed a multitude out of five loaves. What a game, what a play, what ecstasies he enjoys and experiences.

The entire essence of the experience of body and mind is hidden in the subtlest faculty of buddhi. When the sattvic buddhi is filled with light, the rasa – enjoyment of this sublime illumination, becomes the flavorful juice(amrita) that assimilates into the entire personality. This nectar of immortality-rasa drop by drop is introduced throughout the body and mind as the experience of aliveness. The essence of our entire sense experience becomes a light, drop-by-drop, sent forth through every possible cell of the body. Then one enjoys not only the objects of senses but that faculty of mind from which enjoyment proceeds. His joy is not in the sensual pleasure of the physical act. Only the novice is aware of that enjoyment in a physical object. He is the master who enjoys the very principle that enjoys. That principle is rasana-buddhi, and that rasana-buddhi is the reflective mirror of the Atmartha, where Atman remains Brahman as pure Consciousness.

It is with that experience within the buddhi that the modification or alternations may occur through the practice of mindfulness and meditation. By imbuing any particular experience with something more pleasant, virtuous, sacred that the experience changes. Rightly or wrongly, by whatever samskaras and associations the experience changes. When you put the spiritual, the atmartha into that same normal ordinary meaningless experience, which caused attractions and aversions, the experience is transformed and now becomes a holy act.

To apply this principle in your life, there are two steps in your introspection, in your spiritual observation, examination, and analysis.

First ask yourself: “Does this emotion lead me to the sublime? Examine the feeling. and if not, then discard it for it is not worth pursuing. Next, ask yourself, does my present emotion lead others to the sublime?

These two questions are the basis of your examination and analysis: does it lead me to the sublime, and does this state of mind emanating from me lead others to the sublime? If not, discard it, It is not worth pursuing. When you have cultivated a sublime emotion within you, that sublime emotion becomes so filling, makes you so full that it overflows, you become so full, that you overflow with that- sublime emotion and carry everyone along who is near you into the flood of that emotion. Cultivating such a sublime emotion is an art; then you learn to learn this art of entering the subtle body and enjoying life.

(Adapted from HSP #2506 – 06-07-1984 from Yoga concept of God: Rasa – the Flavor of Essence by Swami Veda Bharati)

Himalayan Yoga at LMU—Los Angeles

Posted on by Mandala

It’s not every day that one meets a teacher like Professor Christopher Chapple. He is the Founder of the world-class Yoga Studies Program at Loyola-Marymount University, in Los Angeles. (LMU). I was fortunate to meet him many years ago while assisting Swami Veda on a couple of visits he made to Los Angeles. Years later, after consulting with Dr. Chapple, I enrolled in, and completed, LMU’s Certificate program in Yoga Philosophy and found the program to be phenomenal. I especially loved the weekly Sanskrit class with Professor Chapple in which we worked as a class to translate ancient Sanskrit texts.

Over the years, I’ve come to have the greatest respect for Dr. Chapple, not only is he a distinguished academic (he is the Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at LMU, the Founder of  LMU’s respected Yoga Studies Program, and the Director of LMU’s Master of Arts in Yoga Studies program), but also a true disciple of Yoga who strives to embody his Gurudevi’s teachings. I’ve have found him to be brilliant, humble, kind and extremely approachable and generous.

In the years since completing the Certificate Program, I’ve worked with Dr. Chapple to bring programs to LMU to familiarize their students with the Himalayan Tradition. We’ve now held several such programs, with teachers including Stoma, Swami Radha, Sanjay Shastri, and myself.

This year, Professor Chapple contacted me with a request for another program, and Swami Ritavan asked me to put it together. So I had the joyous opportunity to work with Dr. Chapple and his delightful staff and teachers to design it.

The two-day meditation retreat occurred over the weekend of January 27th and 28, 2024, at the LMU Center for Prayer and Peace. There is a small plaza just outside where one can view the Pacific Ocean in the distance. It was an exquisite environment for a meditation retreat. Some folks sat on the floor and others on chairs. Dr. Chapple and Zoe Slatoff, who teaches Sanskrit at LMU, offered prayers and mantras to get us started in the mornings.

The retreat provided basic practices that would enable attendees to build their own personal daily yoga-meditation practices, and covered joints and glands practices, sitting, breathing, relaxation, mantra and meditation, and contemplative walking (with a view of the Pacific ocean), spiced with philosophy and stories from my experience in the Tradition. About two dozen people attended over the two days, sometimes more and sometimes less. The participants were very attentive and interested.

I was especially moved when Zoe Slatoff led the group in chanting mantras and when Professor Chapple opened the Sunday morning session by placing us in time and space as one might do at the beginning of a Puja. He even alluded to the indigenous people who lived in the area before America was born.

It was a beautiful weekend, and much was covered. Professor Chapple later wrote to me saying people were very enthusiastic about what they had learned.

Atma Tattva Avalokanam – Swami Veda’s Address to the Gathering of the Sangha, February 2nd 2010

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Meditation: “The Breather Observing the Breath”

Free your mind. Free your mind of all the parigrahas, everything that mind has grabbed onto, hold nothing. Let your mind calm. Come back home, to the divine temple that is your body, that is your being, that is your prana, that is your mind, that is your self. You the Atman.

Be aware of your self. No names, no conditions, no limitations, nothing that the mind has identified with. Be your own pure silent Self.
Only be aware of your being.

No ripple in your being, only the silent self. Know yourself to be free of all becomings, all motivations, all vrittis, all operations of the mind. Only dwell in Atma Tattva Avalokanam, awareness of Atman the Self.

As the mind wanders, come back to your pure silent being, wherever in you, you experience it.

Maintain this pure being and know that this being receives the grace of Divinity, Shakti energy, that passing through many interior subtle layers comes to manifest itself in the form of your breath. Observe the Being, the Breather, observe the Breather breathing.

Observe the volition, the will that breathes.

So long as you’ll have the Breather being observed, the pure being who breathes, your breath will flow smooth, gentle, slow, without a jerk, without a break between the breaths. Observe the Breather and the Breather’s volition breathing.

While maintaining this flowing observation, observe the maintainer who maintains the mantra, all the maintainer and the breather are one breathing the mantra in each exhalation and inhalation.

Who breathes? Who maintains? Dwell in that one.

Let there be no other ripple in this observation of the one who breathes, of the one who maintains the mantra.

For a moment no awareness, for a moment no awareness even of the breath and the mantra, only the One, you the Self in silence of the heart and the mind.

From this silence the barest stream of consciousness going into the breathing and the mantra.

Dwell in this awareness of pure being, remaining in the stream of the breath and the mantra gently open your eyes but no change in your consciousness. Dwell in the same Atma Tattva Avalokanam even with your eyes open.

Lecture: “Sangha and the Guru’s Mission”

May Gurudeva bless us all;
May the all Lineage bless us all with their presence and their guidance;
Inspiring our way of walking, inspiring our way of conversing, inspiring our way of discussing, inspiring our paths of action, inspiring how we eat and how we sleep.

While you are here, do all activities of mind, speech and body in this awareness of pure being, Atma Tattva Avalokanam; keeping the inward doors open to receive the inspiration.

Do not speak from your thoughts; speak from the inspiration received from the Atman, from the Divine self, from the Gurus.

Hari Om Tat Sat

While you are here please think in your mind, “The Guru’s mission is alleviating pain and suffering in the world. All pain and suffering arises from our mind: from the conflicts in our mind, from the selfishness in our mind, from the greed and anger and desires in our mind. Meditation serves as a way to heal the wounded mind.  You are all training to be doctors. Some to provide first aid to the wounds of the mind, some to give the medicine of meditation to the mind, some even to do surgeries on the mind. That privilege is very sacred and limited to a very few on this earth. My master was a master of that surgery and I’ve gone through that surgery. The surgery is not completed on me. I’m just slowly, slowly learning. So in your mind decide what area of the pain of the world you want to alleviate, by what means, and offer your services there. People who have been serving for a long time, people who have been serving outside the circles come up and come forward and say, “I’ll do this.” Not, “Swamiji, what shall I do?” Not, “Committee, what shall I do?”

Whether you are in a committee or you are not in a committee, you are committed.  Let your commitment come through. Whether you hold or do not hold a position in a committee, you are committed.  Come up from your self, seeking no credit, seeking no position, and above all this process of Atma Tattva Avalokanam.Don’t let it be only something you attempt while the Swami is guiding.

Let it be your state of consciousness while you are eating, remaining in that Atma Tattva Avalokanam so that you are eating, not the act, as is stated in the scriptures. Eating becomes a Homa (Fire Offering): Pranaya Svaha, Apanaya Svaha, Samanaya Svaha, Udhanaya Svaha, Viyanaya Svaha. You can set a time, this fire into which you make the offerings, the fire of the navel center, that is called eating. What is called eating? People don’t know the art of eating, people don’t know the art of sleeping.

In the Veda there is a passage:

ahamannam ahamannam ahamannam
ahamannado ahamannado ahamannadah.

I am the food, I am the food, I am the food.
I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food.
The food is food. This body, sa esha purasho’nnarasamayah, is made of food. Food is eating food.  Atma is not eating food.

Be aware of That when you are eating, be aware of That when you are walking. Who is the walker? Who is the sleeper? Go into your sleep with that state of consciousness and wake with that state of consciousness.

So when you go back, you feel you are truly in a spiritual Ashram and you did something with your consciousness that you don’t ordinarily do.

Now you have to take responsibility. And I’m not naming everybody but I have my mind on people and I’m waiting to see whether they come up and don’t sit there, “shy.”

Shy?! To serve?! Shy to alleviate pain of others?! Someone lies wounded, are you shy to reach him?! The world is wounded and you are shy?!

I leave you with that thought, God bless you.

Breath Control

Posted on by Mandala

Almost everyone has felt the influences of stress at some point during life, perhaps relating to a situation at school, work or in one’s family. Although the stresses in our environment cannot be controlled, our reaction to them can be. Breath can be used as a very powerful tool in the regulation of both the mind and body, and thus also in the reduction of stress. Most people, however, have never observed their own process of breathing; its qualities and patterns have remained unknown, hidden in the unconscious mind. Although the breath is maintained by unconscious mechanisms in the body, it can be brought under our conscious control, and unhealthy breathing habits can be corrected. In doing this, one can decrease the level of stress in one’s life and feel more balanced and relaxed.

Despite the obvious importance of the breath, a majority of us have poor breathing patterns, which disturb us physically, mentally and emotionally. These improper breathing habits thus create stress and can eventually lead to other imbalances and complications. The importance of good breathing is paramount, for it continually provides us with nourishment and cleanses our body; the oxygen inhaled is utilized by every cell of our body. When this gas exchange does not take place efficiently, the entire pulmonary-cardiovascular system must work harder in order to properly oxygenate the blood.

By paying attention to one’s breath, one can become aware of its irregularities and dysfunctions. Observe your own breathing for a moment and you may notice pauses and jerks that interrupt its flow. The breath should be allowed to flow smoothly. Pauses and jerks arise from poor breathing habits and disturb the nervous system. These irregularities in the breath can be corrected with consistent, daily practice of smooth, even breathing, which in turn will give rise to greater control over the respiratory motion and lead to a state of mental and physical calmness and alertness.

The most fundamental requirement for proper breathing is to breathe diaphragmatically. It is easiest to observe this process and to practice breathing diaphragmatically, when in a comfortably seated position or lying with the back against the floor. Place one hand on the upper region of the chest and the other hand on the soft part of the abdomen just below the rib cage. With each inhalation one should feel the abdomen gently rise and with each exhalation the abdomen should gently fall. One should be careful not to force the breathing or to push the abdomen in and out with the abdominal muscles. As the air enters and exists the lungs, the abdomen will slowly rise and fall on its own accord. It is important that the chest region be still so that one is not breathing with the chest. Accurate diaphragmatic breathing is established by allowing the breath to reach the depths of the lower lungs rather than to circulate only in the upper regions of the lungs.

After ensuring that one is breathing with the diaphragm rather than the chest, one should allow the breath to be smooth and even, so that inhalation and exhalation are of equal length. The mouth is kept gently closed so that one breathes through the nose. Eliminate any noise and jerks in the breath as well as any pauses occurring after inhalation or exhalation. Each breath should be full and relaxed, rather than shallow. The coordination and integration of these important qualities into one’s breathing pattern will occur with a little consistent effort. Although long term changes will occur more gradually, the benefits of practicing these techniques for 5-10 minutes daily will be noticed immediately.

Diaphragmatic breathing leads to autonomic balance and a more relaxed state of being. After some weeks of practice, more subtle changes will be noticed. The rhythm of the breath will become more relaxed and regular. This steadiness leads to a greater efficiency of the breathing process and reduces the amount of work required for proper ventilation and oxygenation of the blood.

By establishing an even, steady breath, a state of physiological balance is maintained, and the mind remains balanced and tranquil. A significant degree of control over the emotions can be achieved when one learns to regulate the breath. This is no small benefit, for it is often our emotions that lead us to feel increasingly stressed in life, and the regulation of these emotions through healthy breathing will greatly aid us in creating balance and equanimity in the face of life’s difficulties.

Editor’ Note

Reprinted from The Hindustan Times, Dec 27, 1992