Uddhava Gita

Uddhava Gita is part of the Shrimad Bhagavatam. It consists of the advices given by Lord Krishna to Uddhava. With a pure mind one observe in all begins as well as in oneself only Me (Lord Krishna), the atman, who am both inside and out, and unobstructed like the sky. O great soul, he who, taking his stand on pure knowledge, thus regards and honors all beings as Myself, who has the same attitude towards a Chandala as well as a Brahmana, a thief as well as a patron of the Brahmanas, a spark of fire as well as the sun, and a ruffian as well as a kind man is considered a sage. Ideas of rivalry, jealousy, pity and egoism quickly depart from a man who always thinks of Me (Krishna) in all men. Uddhava Gita (Chapter XXIV, verses 12 to 15)

Nithyananda- Mahashivaratri

 

Paramahamsa Nithyananda on the Day of Mahashivaratri. 

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj: Next to Ramana Maharshi,Nisargadatta is the most popular of twentieth century sage in the West,

Born in 1897, on the same birthday as the Puranic monkey diety, Hanuman, Nisargadatta was a contemporary guru belonging to the Ichegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya and a major exponent of Advaita Vedanta (nondual knowledge).

His teacher, Siddharameshwar Maharaj, told him:

“ You are not what you take yourself to be.” He gave him a simple set of instructions:

“My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense ‘I am’. It may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked!”

“My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am — unbound.”

“I simply followed (my teacher’s) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being ‘I am’, and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared — myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.”

It should be noted that Nisargadatta’s unfolding took only three years. He became a saddhu, walking the Himalayas before returning home to Mumbai. Most renowned for his contemporary classic book of dialogues, I am That, Nisargadatta attracted many Western devotees to his humble apartment in Mumbai.

Sri Nisargadatta passed away at 84 in 1981

Kanchi Paramacharya-omniscience of God

Even telling God of our sorrows is tantamount to thinking that He is not aware of them. In other words we are truncating His omniscience. ‘Oh God, remove this difficulty for me, remove that sorrow for me,. Or at least change my attitude towards them so that they do not upset my equanimity’ –when we pray like this to God, we presume that God has to be told what we want so that He may come to our rescue. This again truncates the quality of God known as avyAja-karuNA – He showers Grace without reason, without being prompted. bhakti is not true bhakti as long as it underrates the omniscience of God, or His Grace. However, even this kind of prayer does, though temporarily, lighten the heaviness of our hearts and there is some taste of mental peace. It is good to the extent that we adopt an attitude of humility towards God and entreat His succour, renouncing the arrogance of the thought that we can ourselves accomplish everything.

Q & A with Sri Ramana Maharishi

1. What are the marks of a real teacher (Sadguru)? 

Steady abidance in the Self, looking at all with an equal eye, unshakeable courage at all times, in all places and circumstances, etc. 

2. What are the marks of an earnest disciple (sadsisya)? 

An intense longing for the removal of sorrow and attainment of joy and an intense aversion for all kinds of mundane pleasure. 

3. What are the characteristics of instruction (upadesa)? 

The word ‘upadesa’ means : ‘near the place or seat’ (upa – near, desa – place or seat). The Guru who is the embodiment of that which is indicated by the terms sat, chit, and ananda (existence, consciousness and bliss), prevents the disciple who, on account of his acceptance of the forms of the objects of the senses, has swerved from his true state and is consequently distressed and buffeted by joys and sorrows, from continuing so and establishes him in his own real nature without differentiation. 

Upadesa also means showing a distant object quite near. It is brought home to the disciple that the Brahman which he believes to be distant and different from himself is near and not different from himself. 

4. If it be true that the Guru is one’s own Self (atman), what is the principle underlying the doctrine which says that, however learned a disciple may be or whatever occult powers he may possess, he cannot attain self-realization (atma-siddhi) without the grace of the Guru? 

Although in absolute truth the state of the Guru is that of oneself it is very hard for the Self which has become the individual soul (jiva) through ignorance to realize its true state or nature without the grace of the Guru. 

All mental concepts are controlled by the mere presence of the real Guru. If he were to say to one who arrogantly claims that he has seen the further shore of the ocean of learning or one who claims arrogantly that he can perform deeds which are well-nigh impossible, “Yes, you learnt all that is to be learnt, but have you learnt (to know) yourself? And you who are capable of performing deeds which are almost impossible, have you seen yourself?”, they will bow their heads (in shame) and remain silent. Thus it is evident that only by the grace of the Guru and by no other accomplishment is it possible to know oneself. 

5. What are the marks of the Guru’s grace? 

It is beyond words or thoughts. 

6. If that is so, how is it that it is said that the disciple realizes his true state by the Guru’s grace? 

It is like the elephant which wakes up on seeing a lion in its dream. Even as the elephant wakes up at the mere sight of the lion, so too is it certain that the disciple wakes up from the sleep of ignorance into the wakefulness of true knowledge through the Guru’s benevolent look of grace. 

7. What is the significance of the saying that the nature of the real Guru is that of the Supreme Lord (Sarvesvara)?

In the case of the individual soul which desires to attain the state of true knowledge or the state of Godhood (Isvara) and with that object always practises devotion, when the individual’s devotion has reached a mature stage, the Lord who is the witness of that individual soul and identical with it, comes forth in human form with the help of sat-chit-ananda, His three natural features, and form and name which he also graciously assumes, and in the guise of blessing the disciple, absorbs him in Himself. According to this doctrine the Guru can truly be called the Lord. 

8. How then did some great persons attain knowledge without a Guru? 

To a few mature persons the Lord shines as the light of knowledge and imparts awareness of the truth. 

9. What is the end of devotion (bhakti) and the path of Siddhanta (i.e., Saiva Siddhanta)? 

It is to learn the truth that all one’s actions performed with unselfish devotion, with the aid of the three purified instruments (body, speech and mind), in the capacity of the servant of the Lord, become the Lord’s actions, and to stand forth free from the sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. This is also the truth of what the Saiva-Siddhantins call para-bhakti (supreme devotion) or living in the service of God (irai-pani-nittral). 

10. What is the end of the path of knowledge (jnana) or Vedanta? 

It is to know the truth that the ‘I’ is not different from the Lord (Isvara) and to be free from the feeling of being the doer (kartrtva, ahamkara). 

11. How can it be said that the end of both these paths is the same? 

Whatever the means, the destruction of the sense ‘I’ and ‘mine’ is the goal, and as these are interdependent, the destruction of either of them causes the destruction of the other; therefore in order to achieve that state of Silence which is beyond thought and word, either the path of knowledge which removes the sense of ‘I’ or the path of devotion which removes the sense of ‘mine’, will suffice. So there is no doubt that the end of the paths of devotion and knowledge is one and the same. 

NOTE: So long as the ‘I’ exists it is necessary to accept the Lord also. If any one wishes to regain easily the supreme state of identity (sayujya) now lost to him, it is only proper that he should accept this conclusion. 

12. What is the mark of the ego? 

The individual soul of the form of ‘I’ is the ego The Self which is of the nature of intelligence (chit) has no sense of ‘I’. Nor does the insentient body possess a sense of ‘I’. The mysterious appearance of a delusive ego between the intelligent and the insentient, being the root cause of all these troubles, upon its destruction by whatever means, that which really exists will be seen as it is. This is called Liberation (moksha).

Doughlas harding- A man with no head

.The best day of my life—my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head. This is not a literary gambit, a witticism designed to arouse interest at any cost. I mean it in all seriousness: I have no head.
It was eighteen years ago, when I was thirty-three, that I made the discovery. Though it certainly came out of the blue, it did so in response to an urgent enquiry; I had for several months been absorbed in the question: what am I? The fact that I happened to be walking in the Himalayas at the time probably had little to do with it; though in that country unusual states of mind are said to come more easily. However that may be, a very still clear day, and a view from the ridge where I stood, over misty blue valleys to the highest mountain range in the world, with Kangchenjunga and Everest unprominent among its snow-peaks, made a setting worthy of the grandest vision.

What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. A peculiar quiet, an odd kind of alert limpness or numbness, came over me. Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it was, this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of “me”, unstained by any observer. Its total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.

Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of this vision, it was no dream, no esoteric revelation. Quite the reverse: it felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last, of the perfectly obvious. It was a lucid moment in a confused life-history. It was a ceasing to ignore something which (since early childhood at any rate) I had always been too busy or too clever to see. It was naked, uncritical attention to what had all along been staring me in the face – my utter facelessness. In short, it was all perfectly simple and plain and straightforward, beyond argument, thought, and words. There arose no questions, no reference beyond the experience itself, but only peace and a quiet joy, and the sensation of having dropped an intolerable burden.

Swami Vivekananda

It is said that when Swami Vivekananda toured the US, his friends and co-disciples of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa were very unhappy with his teachings, as he taught only advaita and he never mentioned his Guru, much to the displeasure of those in India.

As we all know Ramakrishna paramahamsa was a great devotee of mother Kai and a great Bhakta. Where as Vivekananda taught the Jnana Marga and not Bhakti Marga.

Once he was asked by a disciple why he never spoke about his Guru, it is said that Swami choked up unable to answer the question as he was on the verge of shedding tears. Once he got back to his normal self he said that just hearing the name “ramakrishna” would make his body shiver and eyes well up.

Though he taught advaita and Jnana Yoga to the west, Young Vivekananda himself was a great Bhakta.

Though Outwardly he was a jnani, within he was a great Bhakta and Paramahamsa though all his life he lived at the feet of Kali and lived like a bhakta, he was a true jnani.

This was a great demonstration by both Guru-disciple about the oneness of all paths. That truth is one, regardless of your method of teaching or being.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

 

 

 Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was born Gadadhar in the village of Kamarpukur, in what is now the Hooghly district of West Bengal on 18th February 1836. Gadadhar’s parents, Khudiram and Chandramani, were poor and made ends meet with great difficulty. Gadadhar was extremely popular in his village. He was considered handsome and had a natural gift for the fine arts. He, however, disliked going to school, and was not interested in the pursuit of money. He loved nature and spent his time in fields and fruit gardens outside the village with his friends. He was seen visiting monks who stopped at his village.  He would serve them and listen with rapt attention to the religious debates they often had.

 

            When arrangements for Gadadhar to be invested with the sacred thread were nearly complete, he declared that he would have his first alms as a Brahmin from a certain low-caste woman of the village. This was a shock in the days when tradition required that the first alms be from a brahmin, but he was adamant.

            The family’s financial position worsened every day. Ramkumar, his elder brother ran a Sanskrit school in Calcutta and also served as priest in some families. About this time, a rich woman of Calcutta, Rani Rashmoni, founded a temple at Dakshineswar. She approached Ramkumar to serve as priest at the temple of Kali and Ramkumar agreed. After some persuasion, Gadadhar agreed to decorate the deity. When Ramkumar retired, Gadadhar took his place as priest.

            Ramakrishna became a full-time devotee to the goddess spending increasing amounts of time giving offerings and meditating on her. He began to question if he was worshipping a piece of stone or a living Goddess. If he was worshipping a living Goddess, why should she not respond to his worship? At one point he became frustrated, feeling he could not live any longer without seeing Kali. He demanded that the goddess appear to him. He threatened to take his own life with a ritual dagger (normally held in the hand of the Kali statue). At this point, 
he is reported to have seen light issuing from the deity in waves. He is said to have been soon overwhelmed by the waves and fell unconscious on the floor. Gadadhar, however, unsatisfied, prayed to Mother Kali for more religious experiences. He especially wanted to know the truths that other religions taught.

Ramakrishna was initiated in Advaita Vedanta by a wandering monk named Totapuri

Ramakrishna married Sarada, who became his first disciple. He attempted to teach her everything he had learned from his various gurus. She mastered every religious secret as quickly as Ramakrishna had. Impressed by her religious potential, he began to treat her as the Universal Mother Herself.
One extraordinary quality of Ramakrishna’s message was its universality of religion. 

 He developed throat cancer and attained Mahasamadhi at a garden house in Cossipore on 16 August, 1886, leaving behind a devoted band of 16 young disciples headed by Swami Vivekananda

Jiddu Krishnamurti at 25

 

 

 

A young Jiddu Krishnamurti. An enlightened teacher, who taught what many consider “Advaita”, or the jnana Marga, The way of the mind.

He followed no rituals, taught no mantras or ceremonies, accepted no dietiefied God. 

His main teaching was about the workings of the mind, “The observer is the observed”. That there is no differentiation in consciousness. That all was one. The perciever , the percieving and the perrcieved. 

He was found by the Theospohical society who hailed him as the Maitreya Buddha and groomed him during his childhood. However he lost his brother Nityananda as a kid while with the theosophical society, which made him go through a serious re-thinking about the supposed  Buddhahood. 

Coming into his own in his youth, he dismissed the Maitreya and taking charge of the new order. He travelled the world teaching Awareness.

Brahmotsav Celebrations-Nithyananda

Paramahamsa Swami Nithyananda

to light up your day

Nisargadatta: The Way to Self-Realization

The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. It is transfigured and becomes the real Self, the sadguru, the eternal friend and guide. You cannot approach it in worship. No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayers remain on the surface only; to do deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking. In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered.

via Nisargadatta: The Way to Self-Realization, Part Six.

A Happy New Year

A very Happy New Year to all from Lotus Sutra. 

Kali Maa represents destructive aspect of Nature, but the deeper significance is that she destroys egos. The garland of heads you see around her neck are the egos she’s vanquished. She’s prakruti(nature) and shiva under her feet is Purusha(primordial being)

So this year may our egos be vanquished, may Mother nature nourish us and mother us and let us all lay still and equanimous and at peace just like shiva at the feet of kali shakti, the universal energy. Mother.

Mother always wants the best for her children, no matter how harsh she may seem, she loves, she knows what’s best for her child. Let us surrender at her feet and let go.

Jai Kali Ma

 

A man named U.G

 

“If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you will never know what hit you.  Everything man has thought, felt and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place.”     “Whether you are interested in Moksha, Liberation, Freedom, Transformation, you name it, you are interested in happiness without one moment of unhappiness, pleasure without pain, it is the same thing.”   “We don’t want to be free from fear. All that we want to do is to play games with it and talk about freeing ourselves from fear.”   “Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separate self is ‘you’. There is nothing there inside you other than that.”   “When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are isn’t there any more, you are not in conflict with yourself.”   –U.G.

Baba sitting on the Nandi!

Intelligence does not in and of itself bring happiness. What brings happiness is acceptance. There is no purpose to intelligence, it is inherent within the energy of all that is. Intelligence and energy are one and the same. Energy is intelligence. Intelligence is energy.

Young Sathya Sai Baba!

 

 

Young Sathya Sai

 

Krishna-The Primordial Flute Player

The Primordial Flute Player.

A picture to brighten up your day. Hare Krishna. Love.

A glimpse of Haidakhan Baba

Have faith! Reciting the Name of the Lord is not the first, but the last stage of spiritual practice! When lions enter the forest, the other animals run away. Likewise, all evil thoughts will vanish with the recitation of the Lord’s name. Reciting the Name of the Lord will bring you the company of a good people and you will be near saints. Blessed are the few who will discard the kingdom of the world for the Lord’s name. Such a devotee always resides in My heart. In the womb, you take a vow not to get attached; but as soon as you come out, you get entangled. Abandon attachment! Your mind plays tricks on you! That is why you are after pleasures! All worldly things – including the desire for liberation – are obstacles to which you are attached. If you want divine peace, leave behind ignorant karma.

Nirmala -Awakening

One night as I was sitting there under the full moon, I recognized that the rock that I was leaning on was me—”Oh, yeah, this is me; this rock is inside of me.” Once I realized that about that rock, I saw the same was true of all the rocks in the huge field of boulders along the river’s edge. Then since the rocks were so obviously “me,” the river was obviously “me” too, not just this stretch of the river but the entire Ganges from one end of India to the other. Very quickly, I saw that not just the river but the whole continent was “me.” It struck me as obvious that it was all inside “me”—and then it was the whole world, and the whole solar system, the entire galaxy and universe. This kept going until the mind could not keep up. There was no longer any possibility of my mind containing all of this endless space, and yet it was all “me” in the same way that one of my limbs was “me.”

Then there was a wonderful moment when “me” included not only infinity in terms of space but “popped” to include all time. It was obviously who I had always been, and it included all the past and all the future. Then I laughed and laughed and rolled around in the gravel because it was suddenly so silly that I had imagined myself to have suffered. I had always been so free that I was even free to have this illusion of not being free. That’s how complete the freedom is. So I just laughed and laughed.

Ramana Maharishi

There are two ways of achieving surrender. One is looking into the source of the ‘I’ and merging into that source. The other is feeling ‘I am helpless myself God alone is all powerful and except throwing myself completely on Him, there is no other means of safety for me’, and thus gradually developing the conviction that God alone. exists and the ego does not count. Both methods lead to the same goal. Complete surrender is another name for jnana or liberation. 5

The Baba We Adore Sathya Sai Baba – Life, Love & Spirituality

“When I saw him and his childlike simplicity and overflowing love and total freedom from fanaticism, my heart throbbed. When I was listening to his message, my mind stood still. My doubts vanished. I now realize that Hinduism is all-inclusive, all-embracing, is the `Mother of all religions.’ I am convinced that the core and kernel of all religions are the same. To be a genuine Hindu is to be a genuine Christian or Muslim or Parsi and vice versa. Mere changing of label by formal conversion is unnecessary, nay, it is indeed irreligious.”
http://sathyasaibaba.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/the-baba-we-adore/