a
A
a
SRI KRSNA PURNA AVATAR - PURE CONSCIOUSNESS
a
A
a
a
A
A
A
A
"Don't struggle with the thoughts. It is the nature of the body to manufacture thoughts twenty-four seven.
They are always flowing. You give them too much attention, and by doing this you let them control you. This will change with meditation.
Why be a victim of your thoughts? Just let them flow past you. When you ignore the thoughts your confusion will lessen because you are no longer entangled in them. Keep ignoring the thoughts. This will lead to thoughtlessness."
-Ramakant Maharaj
a
ANANYA BHAKTI
Ananya Bhakti means one pointed devotion incessantly, without any deviation towards Lord considering him as the Highest Goal and nothing else. This kind of Bhakti is emphasised in Bhagavad-gītā at many places. In Bhagavad-gītā (13.10) Krishna while describing the things in knowledge, have included Ananya Bhakti:
mayi cānanya-yogena
bhaktir avyabhicāriṇī
constant and unalloyed devotion to Me (Krishna).
Adi Shankaracharya writes here:—
na anyō bhagavatō vāsudēvāt paraḥ asti? ataḥ sa ēva naḥ gatiḥ' ityēvaṅ niścitā avyabhicāriṇī buddhiḥ ananyayōgaḥ? tēna bhajanaṅ bhaktiḥ na vyabhicaraṇaśīlā avyabhicāriṇī. sā ca jñānam.
and with single-minded concentration, with a conviction in the form: 'There is none superior to Lord Vasudeva. Therefore He alone is our goal' ,devotion, love arising from the knowledge of (my) being the best of all; mayi, for Me, Lord Vasudeva, the supreme God; which is unwavering, which cannot be obstructed by any opposite cause whatsoever. That (devotion) too is a Knowledge.
It is Not that meditation--- ‘I meditate fifteen minutes, and twenty-four hours thinking of something else.’ Śrīla Śrīdhara svāmī says:
japāc chrāntaḥ punar dhyāyed dhyānāc chrāntaḥ punar japet
"After being exhausted at japa, one should engage in smarana, and after being exhausted at smarana, one should again engage in japa" — (Commentary to Viṣṇu-purāņa 6.6.2).
A
a
ADAPTIVENESS TRAINING
Moksha stands for salvation in English and is the ultimate goal of human life. When you attain Moksha you are free from the cycle of birth and death.
Hindus believe in Karma. There are four aims in life according to this doctrine. They are Dharma (duty), Artha (wealth), Kama ( desires), and Moksha (Salvation).
Among these, moksha is important. If one attains it, one is free from the concept of birth and rebirth. So human beings should strive to achieve ‘Moksha’. If you do good deeds and live your life according to the ideals of Dharma you can attain Moksha.
A
MORAL EVL V NATURAL EVL
The notion of moral evil (me)
The notion of moral evil (me) is applied to a suffering (sf as deq) caused by a moral agent, that is, somebody who acts (a) intentionally and (b) voluntarily. If either (a) or (b) is missing, the act cannot be considered as human, and the acting person is not morally responsible for it. The act, however, still causes evil defined as stcdeq, both in the person acting, who continuous changes for worse, and in the suffering of the person acted upon. According to some views on ethics only me can be considered as evil in the narrow sense of the word. This perspective stresses the agent’s responsibility, which can be assumed only if a moral law is known to the agent and possible to be fulfilled.[5] Depending upon whether the conventionalist or the absolutist approach to the g/e issue is adopted, the question may arise as to what extent moral knowledge has an impact on moral acts. Or to put it differently, what is the relation between intellects and will in a moral act? We certainly know that some people are partially or absolutely incapable of morality. This occurs due to their psychopathic personalities or to their mental or physical disabilities.[6] Nevertheless, people who are incapable of morality cause evil in that they bring suffering on others. However, due to their lack of moral responsibility, as the evil they ignorantly and/or involuntarily commit seems somehow to vanish. Still, from the victim’s perspective, it is the moral condemnation, strictly connected with moral responsibility, that counts. We can often see that the human sense of justice is fully satisfied only then, when the malefactor shows repentance as a sign of his moral responsibility. Even a severe punishment by the law may seem unsatisfactory. Because me is strictly connected with moral responsibility, other kinds of evil, such as physical or metaphysical evil, cannot be rationally explained from this perspective. Consequently, such forms of evil are declared mysteries, which does not necessarily help people who suffering from them.
The notion of physical evil (phe)
The notion of physical evil (phe) includes any suffering that is caused by the powers of nature (earthquake, flood, etc.), by chance (accident), or by organic development (disease, death). Phe is consistent with the definition of evil as stcdeq because the destruction of one equilibrium in favor of establishing another can be observed in animals, plants, geological structures, et cetera. Hence, phe as the suffering of all entities seems ubiquitous and consequently somehow necessary. Yet, even if the necessity of earthquakes and tsunamis due to global volcanism seems somehow justified if it doesn’t hurt any living being, phe seems evil when it includes pain. Evolution complained as “red in tooth and claws”[7] by Dawkins[8] and Darwin[9] seems to be full of inevitable pain, which from the perspective of the suffering individual appears pointless. One possible answer to this problem is to compare the pain in nature to the pain in the body. Body pain indicates either a stage in an organism’s development (growing pains, muscle ache, birth) or a malfunction of some of its parts. In the latter case, pain occurs in order to save the whole organism, as a system.[10] Another possible approach to phe is to expand the notion of pain beyond humans and animals. According to recent research, pain (p0), defined as susceptibility to stress, can be attributed also to plants.[11] It is very likely that p0 exists on every levels of life, from bacteria upward to humans. In accordance with the definition ev = stcdeq, we can even claim that everything, from the subquantum level up, is subjected to changes in these four stages: (1) equilibriuma, (2) destruction of the equilibriuma, and (3) additive energetic expense, which finally results in (4) equilibriumb. Consequently, everything seems to be subjected to p0, which occurs between stages two and three. The acceptance of the upper notion of phe makes phe inevitable. If the shift between equilibriuma and equilibriumb can be attributed to any system, phe cannot be considered as evil in the sense that evil is opposite to good. From this point of view, any attempt to draw parallels between me and phe is misleading. Hence, we can speak about cruelty in nature only in a metaphorical way. For nature, from physics to biology, simply lacks a choice to act differently as a whole system. Thus, any process of an individual entity is balanced by the process of another.
A
Old age as preparation for perfect awakening
A
This aging, it’s not something anyone seems to know that much about. Yes, there are the discussions of all the physical losses, increasing weakness, the increasing unreliability of mind and body, unreliability of digestion, excretion. There are many discussions of how the young should manage the old, but there is not much discussion of how it feels for the old to find the same mind continuing, its clarity and curiosity. This going-on-being mind that feels so strangely unchanged. Unchanged in a body that we, the occupants, can barely recognize, and that, with the symptoms just mentioned, is making it clear that things are coming to an end. And this ending cannot really be imagined, even as we know it is so.
a
Buddhaghosa, the great 5th-century Theravada Buddhist investigator of mind, wrote:
Aging has the characteristic of maturing (ripening) material instances. Its function is to lead on to death.
Aging is the basis for the bodily and mental suffering that arises owing to many conditions such as leadenness in all the limbs, decline and warping of the faculties, vanishing of youth, undermining of strength, loss of memory and intelligence, contempt on the part of others, and so on.
Hence it is said:
With leadenness in every limb,
With every faculty declining,
With vanishing of youthfulness,
With memory and wit grown dim,
With strength now drained by undermining,
With growing unattractiveness to spouse and kin,
To [spouse] and family and then
With dotage coming on, what pain
Alike of body and of mind
A mortal must expect to find!
Since aging all of this will bring,
Aging is well named suffering.—The Path of Purification, trans. Bikkhu Nanamoli
A
If you are reading this, your chances of ending up in a nursing home are just short of 50/50. That is to say, 4 out of 10 ofus are likely to end their lives in institutional care. And if you began reading this at all, you may decide to stop now. Later, maybe, it will be time to consider such things. But as Meg Federico wrote, people have to make the most difficult decisions, plans concerning the last years of their lives, at a time they are least capable of doing so. Nonetheless, we will age, and something will happen to us. Atul Gawande, a distinguished surgeon and commentator on the care of the aged, describes the likely situation in which we who live in the Western post-industrial world will find ourselves:
The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies of a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimens, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the comforts they most need. Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers.
—Being Mortal
A
It is important to understand that even if we are fortunate enough to be able to afford a relatively agreeable old age home or assisted living facility, once we have been moved into such a place we will no longer be considered full members of the living world. We will find ourselves in a kind of bardo where friends, family, doctors, and caregivers will no longer think of us as exactly alive. We will wield no influence whatsoever in the outer world and will have few ways of influencing the specifics of our daily lives such as diet, whom we live with, times we wake, sleep, bathe, read, what we watch on TV, and so on. Such choices will no longer be left to us.
a
As Buddhist practitioners, we will frequently have heard that we should practice to prepare for death. Now it will be clear that, as Buddhaghosa indicates, the path that will prepare us for death is old age itself.
A
In a Mahayana sutra from the Tibetan Buddhist canon, The Questions of the Householder Viradatta, the Buddha says:
“…[Those] who wish to fully awaken to unsurpassable complete and perfect awakening, should cultivate the spirit of great compassion for all sentient beings. They should be respectful, should stay close to them, should cultivate them.”
“[They] . . . should not be attached to the body. They should not be attached to life. Likewise, they should not be attached to wealth, grain, house, wife, sons, or daughters. They should not be attached to food, drink, clothing, vehicles, bedding, flowers, incense, perfumes, ointments, or garlands. They should not be attached to possessions.
“They should renounce extensively and fully, with total renunciation and without expectation for results.
. . .
“Where life is concerned, they relinquish all hankering for life, delighting in life, identifying with life as mine, craving for life, relying on life, and being attached to life. Likewise, they relinquish all hankering for, delighting in, taking as mine, craving for, relying on, and being attached to wealth, grain, house, spouse, sons, daughters, food, drink, clothing, vehicles, bedding, flowers, incense, perfumes, garlands, ointments, or any other possessions. . . .”
a
If the path that will prepare us for death is old age itself, then we can have confidence in our experience at this time, no matter how difficult, painful, and disorienting.
A
Generally, however, when we look at our experience, we tend to see things better. We see our body as a noun, an entity with fixed properties and functions. And because we tend to look at ourselves this way, when various qualities of our body change during the aging process, this is unpleasant; when our body cannot function as it used to, we are distraught, lost. If, however, we see our body as a verb, a combination of properties and functions constantly in motion, then it’s very different.
Lying in a hospital bed, confined in a nursing home, surrounded by chaos and noise, lost in a world we do not recognize, can we do this?a
Our experience of our body is an experience of constant change. There is the hunger in our stomach, the hunger in our mouth, the pleasure of chewing, the tastes and saliva in swallowing, the feeling of a substance reaching our stomach. These can be pleasant or unpleasant in varying ways. And then satiation. Then again perhaps discomfort. The array of sensations changing in, and in conjunction with, our body weave together: the seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling all intertwine in varying proportions and with varying intensities; depending on our attention, the senses filter in and out of our awareness as a body in its entirety. A body is an array of elements constantly changing.
Everything is changing constantly, but the awareness, the fact of being aware of sensations and change, does not change. There is always awareness. Awareness appears in the poles of subject and object. These polarities are inseparable and are, in fact, the natural display of awareness, which has never been divided.
Awareness has never moved or stopped moving, never been stable or composite, never been one thing or no thing.
The heart of Buddhist practice is to cease placing limits on the vast expanse of the awakened state. To let go of thinking that seeks to make the awakened state serve our anxious purposes, to let awareness, observation, attentiveness dissolve into the vast awakening as streams flow to the sea.
A
Like light in air, we cannot stop,
Every instant dissolves.
Awakening is not something we make happen
Awakening happens without reference point
Without boundary.
Like light in air
Moments do not stop in one self or an other.
Dissolving
Reforming
Awakening breaks open in the experience of whatever and all.
Here’s Dogen again: “The master doesn’t say that greatly awakening is becoming buddha, nor that returning to confusion is becoming a being, nor that greatly awakening gets frayed, nor that it vanishes, nor that confusion somehow just shows up. Greatly awakening has no beginning or end, returning to confusion had no beginning or end. Why? It just goes off everywhere, while the worlds are being destroyed.” (Trans. Kidder Smith)
a
No comments:
Post a Comment