Saturday, May 30, 2015

Being Joyful Like A child

 
Sun, 10/12/2014 Quebec, Canada
There is one thing that everybody is seeking for, and that is happiness. It is not that people don’t find, they do find happiness but it doesn’t last too long. It is momentary; for couple of hours, or one or two days. But the tendency of the spirit is to find everlasting happiness; happiness that doesn’t turn bitter.
I would like to tell you a small story. There was a gentleman who was looking in front of his house for his keys which he had lost. He was looking for it under the street lights. A bunch of people came around to help him find the keys and they all started looking. Then one gentleman went and asked this guy, 'But tell me, where did you lose these keys?'
He said, 'I lost them inside the house'.
'But then why are you looking for it here?'
Every child is nothing but a bundle of joy but as we grow up, somewhere, we lose that joy.
The whole question is, how do we get back to the innocence we were born with?
It is very similar to what is happening in this world with everyone. Each one of us has abundant joy deep within us, yet we are looking for it somewhere outside.
Just remember, when we were kids what we used to do? We used to shout, play and enjoy. Every child is nothing but a bundle of joy but as we grow up, somewhere, we lose that joy. A child smiles 400 times a day. When a child grows up and becomes an adolescent, he smiles only 17 times a day, and when he becomes an adult, he smiles occasionally and that too when someone smiles. The whole question is, how do we reverse this? How do we get back to the innocence we were born with? How to smile back again? This is the quest.
So if you look at it, there are three things that stops us from being joyful like a child.
1. Prejudice
2. Insecurity
3. Stress
I don’t think there is any fourth thing. If you find any thing, tell me. Now we need to get rid of all these three.
Stress we can get rid of by making using of the breath. There are number of breathing techniques that help us relax and get back a lot of energy. If you ask me what is stress, I don’t know, but I see people having it. And when I analyse, I see stress is wanting to do a lot but having no energy and no time.
Now, either you have to reduce your needs or increase your energy. In these two things, what is most practical is not reducing your needs but increasing your energy levels. So breathing exercises, pranayama, meditation, yoga, all these increase the energy level in a short time of 15 to 20 minutes. If we relax consciously through meditation, it raises our energy levels equivalent to 6 to 8 hours of sleep.
Relaxation that you get from sleep is dull relaxation. Another kind of relaxation is conscious relaxation. That relaxation brings your energy levels higher. That is called meditation.
Meditation is not sitting and thinking something. It is going to the source of thought. So reducing and eliminating stress is the first thing.
Relaxation that you get from sleep is dull relaxation. Another kind of relaxation is conscious relaxation. That relaxation brings your energy levels higher. That is called meditation.
Second is to get rid of prejudice. There are many types of prejudice. There is prejudice between generations. Young people will not sit and share their heart out with senior citizens. There is generation gap. You find this all over the world. People of certain age group only stay together and talk together. They don’t open up and mix with elders or people younger than them.
There is prejudice about class, and about gender as well. May not be so much here in Canada but in many parts of the world, there is prejudice against gender and prejudice about religion, culture, language, and so on. So many types of prejudices. Wisdom is to rise above prejudice and see the whole world as one family.
If this idea of the whole world as one family comes, there will be no war, no crime and none of the problems that we are facing in the world today. See how many people are being killed. There is so much violence in the world. This is all because of lack of a broad vision and wisdom.
Third is insecurity. Insecurity of what? 'Oh, there is nobody for me. Who will take care of me?' I tell you, there is so much love and compassion on this planet, and there is a higher power which is all love and it will give us what we need when we need.
If you look at your own life, in the past, how many times have you felt insecure? See how that time has passed and how complete you are today. If you turn back and see, then all those moments you have spent feeling insecure, appears to be such a waste of time, isnt it? Count and see how much time you have spent being insecure in the past 20 years. How many times you felt insecure? How many days you spent in a gloomy mood? It looks like such a waste of time and energy, and not only that, it created toxins in your body. Your health gets disturbed by a feeling of insecurity.
Three things you must do:
Wisdom is to rise above prejudice and see the whole world as one family.
If this idea comes, there will be no war, no crime and none of the problems that we are facing in the world today.
There is so much violence in the world. This is all because of lack of wisdom.
1. Look back in the past and see that it was futile feeling insecure. This gives you strength
2. Know that there are good people on this planet. They will always come to your help
3. There is a power which is going to guide you and help you out
So with this wisdom and understanding, get over insecurity.
Now, once you have gotten over stress, gotten over insecurity and you have overcome prejudice, then you are like a child, full of joy, and happiness simply wells. It was already there, it is covered by these three things and once you removed all these three things, it becomes obvious.
So with meditation, yoga and breathing techniques, get over stress. With wisdom, get over prejudice, and reflecting on your own life and having the confidence and faith, get over insecurity.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Give Miracles A Chance

Sat, 10/25/2014 Chicago, United States
There are three components in life:
1. Effort. Without your self-effort, nothing happens. So you have to put your effort. Will everything   happen only through your effort? No.
You make an effort and sow a mango sapling today and you want the fruit of it tomorrow, it is not going to give you the fruits tomorrow. It will take its time.
2. That is the second aspect: time. Everything has a right time.
Similarly, even for acting there is a right time. Suppose in winter you sow a mango sapling and then you say, ‘Oh, nothing has sprouted’, it is not going to sprout now, unless it is in a green house. There is a right time to act and a right time to receive the fruit of action as well. So, time is the second factor.
3. The next factor is a higher power or grace; that of all possibilities.
You should always keep room for possibilities; give miracles a chance. Logically you may think that something is impossible, but many times it becomes possible. How many of you have had this experience? A gift from the higher power is that of all possibilities.
You can club the three components as perseverance, patience and possibility. These are the three aspects. This is knowledge.
At midnight, you cannot say, 'I made all the effort, I removed the curtain but the sun is not coming in'. No, the sun will only come at the right time. And if you have all the blinders on even when the sun is there, you will not get the light. So, all the three have to match.
Like in a cell phone, the charger, sim card and the signal, all these have to be there. If the phone is charged but the sim card isn’t there or the range isn’t there, then the phone is not going to work. So, all three aspects are needed.
If you put a lot of effort at the right time, there is achievement. But sometimes it also happens that you put very little effort but still you are very successful. This is because the unseen possibilities are coming to your help. For example: someone has not put any effort, but they won a lottery.
When time and possibilities come together, you call it luck. You say, ‘I don’t know how it all happened!’. In a devotee’s life this is more; the right time and the possibility come together.
When at the right time you put a lot of effort, it will give you benefit. When you put in a lot of self effort, but there is very little support from nature, that is bad luck. When there is little effort but a lot of support from the divine, it is good luck.
Solar eclipse is over just now. Eclipse is a very good time for mantra chanting and meditation. When the Earth, Sun and Moon are in one line, at that time it affects the mind, and they say that when you chant mantras at that time, it is much more powerful. This is the ancient saying.
One or two hours before an eclipse, stop eating so that the food gets digested well and during the eclipse time you have an empty stomach, and on the empty stomach chanting and mantras are done for maximum result.
What if a resolution breaks?

Monday, May 25, 2015

Sri Sri's Message on Diwali

Fri, 10/24/2014 Chicago, United States

Happy Diwali to everybody!
Diwali is the festival of lights, the festival of joy, prosperity, knowledge, wisdom and everything because light indicates many things. And it is not enough if one lamp is lit, we need lots of lamps to be lit for knowledge to blossom and for the darkness to go. So that is why on Diwali lots of lamps are lit.
A physical lamp is just a symbol. The real lamp is you and you have to be lit up, vibrant, smiling, joyful and full of energy because that is the real festival. And this can only happen with knowledge, not just with comforts, gadgets, money or friends. Real happiness comes with knowledge.
The divinity is everywhere but it is dormant, and pooja (prayer) is the process to awaken it.
Anyone who is in touch with the divinity has no dearth of any sort.
So today, we will do a Lakshmi pooja which is a thanksgiving to the mother divine, to the angels and to all the gods saying, 'Thank you so much. For the whole year you have protected me and given me what I wanted. Please continue doing the same for the next year too'.
So we pray and ask them to renew ourcontact with them; not contract but contact. We pray to renew the contact with the divinity.
Anyone who is in touch with the divinity has no dearth of any sort. So, being in touch with the divinity again and again (which is in every particle of us but simply needs to be woken up). The divinity is everywhere but it is dormant, and pooja (prayer) is the process to awaken it. Waking up the divinity!
So Panditji here will chant a very ancient prayer, which was one of the first prayers of mankind from the Rig Veda. He will be reciting the Sri Suktam for us.
So first we will do Ganapati pooja to remove all the obstacles from our lives, and then we will do kalasha pooja. With a pot of water we will invoke all the angels and pray for blessings for everyone on this planet, so that everyone is bestowed with a good mind, a good heart, a good intellect, and wisdom.
There are three types of energy in each person. They are:
1. Iccha-shakti (willingness of a person)
2. Kriya-shakti (the energy to function), and
3. Jnana-shakti (wisdom)
Similarly there is Mahakali (symbolizing power), Mahalaxmi (symbolizing material wealth) andMahasaraswati (symbolizing wisdom). These are the different aspects of life that are governed by the subtle energy, and pooja is a way of connecting to the subtle world.
The world that we see is just a tip of the iceberg because there is so much more, and pooja (prayers) and chanting is the ancient system to connect to the other side.
Now how do we do that? We just have to sit in deep meditation and listen to the mantras; bathe in the mantras. In India it is called 'Mantra Snanam', which is just sitting down and listening to the mantras and bathing in the sound. The vibrations of these ancient chants energizes our whole self or the soul.
Though we may not understand everything that is happening in the pooja, we just sit with eyes closed or eyes open and enjoy all that is happening. That is what is called shradha, which means falling in love with the unknown.
Though we may not understand everything that is happening in the pooja, we just sit with eyes closed or eyes open and enjoy all that is happening. That is what is calledshradha, which means falling in love with the unknown. We know that there is something, but we don't know what that is. Once we fall in love with it then we start knowing it. Then you feel, 'Wow, this is an energy'. Then you realize that mother divine is not just a concept that has come from somebody's mind, but it is a reality. It is a reality of the universe. The subtle energy is so real.
So until this becomes so real and obvious, we start loving this unknown.
There are two steps:
1. Love the unknown, and once you do that
2. You start knowing the unknown
When you know it, you realize it is a part of you and not different or away from you. This is the Veda and the Vedanta, i.e., knowing the divinity and merging into it.
Today is also the New Year for all Gujaratis. Happy New Year to all the Gujuratis and Happy Diwali to everyone else! It is so good to begin the New Year with prayers to mother divine and all the seen and unseen divine expressions.
All of us sitting here together in pooja, meditating together and singing together is calledyagna. Now what does yagna do? It brings swasti (health and centeredness), shradha(unshakable faith), meta (awakened intellect). Faith and intellect are often considered to be opposing to one another, but in a yagna both get sharpened. Faith gets deepened and reasoning becomes very sharp.
Like this there are many benefits of yagna: yasha (good name), pragya (heightened consciousness), vidya (education), buddhi (knowledge), balam (strength), veeryam (valor), ayush(long life), aishwaryam (wealth), and many many more.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Just Let Go!

Mon, 10/06/2014 Bangalore, India
(Below is a continuation of the post The Purpose Of Yoga)
Divinity is in the simplest state or form of awareness, i.e., feeling 'I don’t know. Who cares, I don’t know'.
When you relax what is happening? The body relaxes and the mind expands. But when you want to know something, the mind is focused, it is intense and concentrated. We are trained to concentrate. We are trained to be attentive and then the attention, attention, attention becomes tension. So the first step in yoga is to let go, to relax.
Now don’t ask me, how do I relax? How do I let go? Just let go, that’s it. The desires in the mind is something that holds you, that restrains or restricts you. Instead of thinking, 'I want this, I want this', have the feeling that 'I will get what I need'. Once this feeling is there, then where is the need to want something?
Only when the mind feels 'I may not get it', it starts running 'I have to do it, I have to get it'.
Instead we must be focused on just one thing, 'I will get what I need'.
That is why it is said, 'Samadhi siddhi ishwara pranidhana', i.e., by letting go or dropping it at the lap of the Divine, samadhi starts happening in you.
Only two sutras refer to god in the Yoga Sutras and one of them is, when you need to get samadhi you have to give yourself onto the higher power.
We are trained to be attentive and then the attention, attention, attention becomes tension. So the first step in yoga is to let go, to relax.
The purusha or God inside you is free fromklesha (suffering), karma (merit & demerit),vipaka (fruit of action) and that goes into higher knowledge.
We will stop here now. This is good enough.
The five vrittis come and go. We should not fight with them, we should just recognize them and relax. In the realm of mind, the way to get rid of something is through relaxation and not through action. 
In the physical realm, if we want to get something, action is essential. In the realm of consciousness, inaction is essential. So somewhere inaction and somewhere action is all what life is about.
Now let us talk about Vedic Wisdom.
See, nobody knows when the Vedas were written, but the historians of the world say that the oldest scripture that is written is the Rig Veda, there is nothing older than this.
So what are the Vedas? It is called 'shruti' which means 'we heard'. Many ancient Rishis in the past, when they went into deep meditation they heard something and then recited it. People who heard them repeated it and started recording it. So that which 'was heard' in deep meditation is called 'shruti'. In computer terms we can say they downloaded it. So those who downloaded the mantras are called Rishis. So the Rishis downloaded many of these mantras including Ayurveda.
How many of you know of the birth of Ayurveda? In the central part of India, in the forest, some thousands of sages or scientists of those days gathered together and said, 'We need to go into deep meditation and find out what is good for human beings; how can they be healthy and how to treat sick people'. There was no Materia Medica or any material before that.
Then they thought that if everyone goes into meditation, who will record? So one Rishi Bhardwaja said, 'I will not meditate, you all go into samadhi and you keep saying what you hear and I will record it'.
So in a state of deep meditation they said which herb is for which part of the body, what is the shape of the herb and everything was described; the entire herbology and how to prepare different medicines and how to treat different parts of the body.
If you find one Materia Medica in the world which is in the form of a poem, it is Ayurveda. Ayurveda is not in prose, it is all in poetry. The whole medical science (of Ayurveda) was downloaded and even today it stands good. It has stood the test of time and stands good in today’s scientific age, and it has proven to be very useful. Now even Allopathy is turning towards herbal and Ayurvedic medicines. They have started recognizing it one by one.
In the realm of mind, the way to get rid of something is through relaxation and not through action.
In the physical realm, if we want to get something, action is essential. In the realm of consciousness, inaction is essential.
One of the best examples of this is turmeric. In 1980, we had a conference in New Delhi and we had invited Allopathic as well as Ayurvedic doctors and they had a debate.
Ayurvedic doctors said that turmeric is very essential. It is good for anti-ageing and stops decay of the cells in the body. The Allopathic doctors just smiled at each other and said it is only a pigment and has no food value. They completely dismissed it. Today, the same Allopathic doctors say that turmeric has 19 important functions and does the work of 19 life saving drugs. It also arrests Alzheimers, is an anti-oxidant, a blood thinner and does the job of aspirin. Aspirin affects your stomach, turmeric does not affect your body in any adverse way. It is anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-cancer. All these benefits of turmeric have now been discovered.
Similarly butter; a whole generation went away from this world thinking butter is not good for health. They had been deprived of eating butter, but today, The Time magazine has a cover story about how butter is good for you. Ayurvedic doctors have always said how a little butter is good for your heart and not bad, contrary to what was believed in the past. So, Ayurvedic science is rooted in the Vedas.
Similarly, all the yagnas and the knowledge is so vast that no one person in one lifetime can understand and study all this.
There are 16 major branches of the Vedas and a person can study only one or two branches in his lifetime. It is like, someone cannot be a doctor for everything. One can only be a pediatrician, or a heart surgeon, or a brain neurosurgeon. Even in surgery, you can chose only one part. In engineering you can’t be an electronic engineer, civil engineer and an architect engineer as well. It will take you a lifetime to study all that.
To build a building you need a structural engineer, you need an interior decorator, you need an architect, you need a civil engineer. Like this, Vedic wisdom has got many avenues.
So for all those who are doing the Vedic Wisdom course, in this short period of 40 days, you will get an introduction and glimpse into of all this.
What is samadhi? Does it only happen with eyes closed?

Saturday, May 16, 2015

The Purpose Of Yoga

Mon, 10/06/2014 Bangalore, India
Let’s talk about yoga today.
You know, the definition for 'asana' is 'stable and pleasant'. You should feel comfortable when doing yoga asanas. That's why it is said, 'Sthiram sukham asanam'. Yoga is that which gives you pleasure and comfort.
So whenever you do a posture, how should it be done? Prayatna shaithilya – get into a position and let go of the effort, Then what happens? Ananta samapathibhyam: infinity abides in you. So each asana should be done keeping in mind that the goal of this is not the correctness of the posture but to experience infinity.
Whenever you experience joy, ecstasy, bliss and happiness in life, knowingly or unknowingly you are abiding in the form of the seer; in the nature of the seer. Otherwise, at other times, you are with different activities of the mind.
What is the definition of comfort? When you don’t feel the body. If you are sitting in some odd positions then you feel those parts of the body. Your focus is more on the discomfort there. When you do any asana, first what you feel is discomfort. But if you take your mind through it, you will find that in just a few minutes the discomfort has disappeared and you feel bodylessness. You feel an expansion or infinity in the postures.
How many of you have experienced this or are beginning to experience this? This is the main important thing in yoga asanas.
The purpose of yoga is not only to keep a good physical shape but also to experience infinity and timeless expansion. And that starts happening to you with a little practice.
What is the other definition for yoga?
'Chitta vritti nirodha tada drushta swarupe awasthanam'. This means that from the scenery you get back to the seer.
Now I am the scenery and you are the seer. For me, you are the scenery and I am the seer. So I take my attention from outside to inside. So first from the environment I bring my attention to the physical body. Then I go one step further because even the body is the scenery and I take my attention to the mind. Now when I witness the thoughts that are coming in the mind, even that becomes the scenery and so I go deeper.
So movement from the scenery to the seer, to the one who is seeing, everything is again another definition of yoga.
If you keep just these two definitions of yoga in your mind, that’s it, you are done.
The yoga sutras are very simple. They are just one liners but they are pregnant with meaning. 'Tada Dhrishta Swarupeawasthanam', which means, establishing oneself in the seer and not in the scenery.
The five activities of the mind continue to exist, but having control over them is what yoga is all about. 
Whenever you experience joy, ecstasy, bliss and happiness in life, knowingly or unknowingly you are abiding in the form of the seer; in the nature of the seer. Otherwise, at other times, you are with different activities of the mind. You become one with different activities of the mind (vrutti sarupyamitaratra).
So what are these different activities of the mind? They are, 'Pramana-viparyaya-vikalpa-nidra-smrutayaha'.
The modulation of the mind are of five forms, some are problematic and some are not problematic. Five modes of consciousness arises in yourself, five modes of the mind. You can call it the mind or consciousness, it is all the same.
1. Pramana: when the mind is engaged in wanting proof. When someone thinks, 'Is this correct? How do I know this is correct? I want some proof for it', this is pramana.
There are three types of pramana
  • a. Pratyaksha: seeing for yourself; your senses tell you. You see the sun setting and if someone says that the sun never set, you say, 'No, I saw it with my own eyes'.
    When the senses give you some knowledge that is pratyaksha pramana.

     
  • b. Anumana: guessing because of past experience. If there is some smoke somewhere, you see only smoke but then you infer that there is fire that is why there is smoke. This isanumana (guessing). If someone is behaving funny and you think, 'Someone must have told them something about me and that is why they are behaving like this', is anumana.
    Someone might be very busy and so they didn’t smile at you and in your mind you think, 'That person sat with that guy and that guy said something to this person and that’s why this person is not talking to me'. This is anumana.
     
  • c. Agama: when it is said in the scripture. There are many people who quote the scriptures for everything. Someone quotes the scriptures and engages in violence, someone quotes the scriptures and oppresses women or poor people. In some scriptures it is written that women are not authorized to do this or that.
    The wrong quoting of scriptures is very common these days. Today, the cause of terrorism is the quoting of scriptures. Some people think they are doing God’s job. Isn’t this pathetic?
So remember, when you do an asana the goal of your asana is to feel comfortable in that and then feel the expansion; not by wanting to feel but by letting go, by not ‘doing’ something.
2. Viparyaya: means wrong understanding. If you see, your life is full of viparyaya. You think that somebody else is thinking bad about you, but when you go and ask them, they will say, 'What? I have no time to think about you. I was busy with my own stuff'. But you thought the other was thinking something about you. This is viparyaya.
Many of you have this judgment and so you're mind gets caught up in the judgment?
3. Vikalpa: means such a thing doesn’t exist at all. It exists only in the mind and a beautiful example they give is the horn of a rabbit. Have you ever seen a rabbit with a horn? Or a flower in the sky? No. This is vikalpa.
4. Nidra: which means sleep
5. Smruti: living in memory
These five vrittis really bother a human being. It drains the potential of a human being. Not that they are bad. These five vrittis continue to exist, but having control over them is what yoga is all about. They are like horses. If the reins of the horses are in your hands, then you can give them direction, but if you are at the mercy of the horse then it takes you wherever it goes.
So it is said, 'Yoga chitta vritti nirodha', these five vrittis need to be arrested, modulated, controlled and that is what yoga is all about. And how is it done? All these different methodologies have been given in the Yoga Sutra, one option after another. It is such a scientific exposition of spirituality. Yoga Sutras is the best yoga.
So remember, when you do an asana the goal of your asana is to feel comfortable in that and then feel the expansion; not by wanting to feel but by letting go, by not ‘doing’ something.