Itsetutkimus/Self-Investigation 24.1.2021 special guest David Godman
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ต.ค. 2024
- Itsetutkimus Zoom kokoontuminen pidettiin sunnuntaina 24.tammikuuta.
Palautteen perusteella tilaisuus oli onnistunut ja David Godman kertoi myös nauttineensa hyvistä kysymyksistä sekä tilaisuuden rennosta tunnelmasta.
Self-Investigation Zoom meeting was held on Sunday the 24th of January.
Based on the feedback, the event was a success and David Godman also said he enjoyed the good questions and the casual spirit of the meeting.
I am very impressed with the level of english spoken by the various contributors for whom english is a second language - particularly as there are some very complex issues being discussed here .
Highly delighted to see the Universal appeal of Bhagavan 🙏🕉️
37:40 repeating "I,I,I,I,I" intellectually will automatically bring attention to the sense "I"
at that objects are discarded and only subject remains
and eventually sinks into Source
46:30 the lady makes a good point regarding purification.
GVK v763 states, “Only to such a mind which has gained the inner strength of one-pointedness, Self-enquiry will be successful. But a weak mind will be like wet wood put into the fire of jnana-vichara.” (James)
If mind is not first one-pointed (pure), vichara will be unsuccessful.
Does that mean we have to purify the mind first (as prerequisite) before the practice of self enquiry, making the wood dry first?
@@palanichidambaram No, trying to practice vichara is itself a means for purification, but you can use a mantra or other methods as a preliminary if you want
It is interesting that Bhagavan opened the door to self-awareness for Lakshmi, I thought that animals are permanently in samadhi, as David Godman calls it, sahaji, natural state. So, the nature is not in natural state. (I could not participate in this zoom session, since I have never gotten zoom working)
Perhaps this is residual Christianity in me, mankind has fallen, but the nature has not.
I have chosen an intellectual way of life and I view life like a chess board, but then I observe that someone is playing on my side and this entity is much better at this than I am. You can call it Bhagavan's grace or Arunachala working in my life.
Bhagavan considered that in some cases animals were people in their previous lives, like Lakshmi for example. Let's find a solution for your Zoom problem.
Hey Stacy! You may be interested in this David Godman's nice video about Lakshmi the Cow, there is a lot of amazing and interesting information in it: th-cam.com/video/M-POLMrAspw/w-d-xo.html
And also, as to the fallen mankind you mentioned, if it's interesting to you, there are words (that I personally like) from one of Michael James' videos, for example: "In Christianity it's said the problem is sin, original sin (who has original sin?). In Buddhism they say the problem is desire (but who has desire?). In Advaita philosophy, they say the problem is a avidya, ignorance (but who is ignorant?). So, the root of all the problems, root of sin, the root of desire, the root of ignorance, the root of everything, is the ego. Until we get rid of the ego, we cannot free ourself from ignorance, we cannot free ourself from desire, we cannot free ourself from so-called original sin. In fact, Bhagavan said, original sin is nothing but the ego". (th-cam.com/video/dhsKp1GNSfA/w-d-xo.html)
So, when the body is fake, why keep feeding it sattvic food, or any food at all. Weren't the guys at Arunachala right all along when they smeared Bhagavan with chili paste. If you do not identify with this body, then you do not mind any of its suffering. Bhagavan did have ascetic lifestyle (but he did not give any advice on how others should live their lives).
Of course, there is a whole history of gnostics, who rejected or even detested everything physical or fleshly.
My own experience is that honey catches flies better than vinegar.
Guru says it's illusion, but you have to prove it to yourself, that's why until you prove it, you need to feed it and better with sattvika food, as Guru says, so it's easier to keep your mind purer and more capable to practice your sadhana and achieve the necessary results.
So, as Michael James says here (32:40), “…so long as we are suffering from the illusion, it’s not very pleasant, so we should take it seriously enough to want to know what lies behind this appearance…”
th-cam.com/video/13QrGC4K7I4/w-d-xo.html
1. “So, when the body is fake, why keep feeding it sattvic food, or any food at all”.
There are many places you can find in the books about Bhagavan’s teachings where this subject is explained clearly. For example, this is from David Godman’s Be As You Are based on the reliable Ramana literature:
“Q: We see pain in the world. A man is hungry. It is a physical reality, and as such, it is very real to him. Are we to call it a dream and remain unmoved by his pain?
A: From the point of view of jnana or the reality, the pain you speak of is certainly a dream, as is the world of which the pain is an infinitesimal part. In the dream also you yourself feel hunger. You see others suffering hunger. You feed yourself and, moved by pity, feed the others that you find suffering from hunger. So long as the dream lasts, all those hunger pains are quite as real as you now think the pain you see in the world to be. It is only when you wake up that you discover that the pain in the dream was unreal. [...] The hunger in the dream has to be assuaged by the food in the dream. The fellow beings you found so hungry in the dream had to be provided with food in that dream. You can never mix up the two states, the dream and the waking state. Till you reach the state of jnana and thus wake out of this maya, you must do social service by relieving suffering whenever you see it. But even then you must do it, as we are told, without ahamkara, that is without the sense ‘I am the doer’, but feeling, ‘I am the Lord's tool.’ Similarly one must not be conceited and think, ‘I am helping a man below me. He needs help. I am in a position to help. I am superior and he inferior.’ You must help the man as a means of worshipping God in that man. All such service too is for you the Self, not for anybody else. You are not helping anybody else, but only yourself”.
2. “Weren't the guys at Arunachala right all along when they smeared Bhagavan with chili paste. If you do not identify with this body, then you do not mind any of its suffering”.
There also were other “wonderful” guys who, for example, wanted, before they robbed the garden they’d got in, to blind Bhagavan, so he, even though he was calmly sitting there with his eyes closed, would not be able to reveal them. He heard them talking about that intention and continued sitting calmly showing no fear and reaction. There were many people, according to what is said about Bhagavan’s life, who wanted to cause him harm in one way or another, but it’s quite difficult to call all this unnecessary cruelty right. All that was done by ignorant people in tamasic state, so what is good about dullness of those who had only such ways of checking Bhagavan’s capacities. But yes, he didn’t mind his suffering it seems.
3. “Bhagavan did have ascetic lifestyle (but he did not give any advice on how others should live their lives)”.
Well, some advices he did give in this way or another. About moderation, regarding karma etc. And so was his own life.
From David Godman’s Be As You Are, for example:
“…This time-honoured structure sustained the common Indian belief that it was necessary to abandon one's family and take to a meditative life of celibate asceticism if one was seriously interested in realising the Self. Sri Ramana was asked about this belief many times but he always refused to endorse it. He consistently refused to give his devotees permission to give up their worldly responsibilities in favor of a meditative life and he always insisted that realization was equally accessible to everyone, irrespective of their physical circumstances. Instead of advising physical renunciation he told all his devotees that it would be spiritually more productive for them to discharge their normal duties and obligations with an awareness that there was no individual 'I' performing or accepting responsibility for the acts which the body performed. He firmly believed that mental attitude had a greater bearing on spiritual progress than physical circumstances and he persistently discouraged all questioners who felt that a manipulation of their environment, however slight, would be spiritually beneficial. The only physical changes he ever sanctioned were dietary. He accepted the prevailing Hindu theory of diet which claimed that the type of food consumed affected the quantity and quality of one's thoughts and he recommended a moderate intake of vegetarian food as the most useful aid to spiritual practice…”
From Happiness and The Art of Being by Michael James:
Bhagavan says in Nāṉ Yār?:
“…By mita sattvika āhāra-niyama [the restraint of consuming only a moderate quantity of pure or sattvika food], which is the best among all restrictions, the sattva-guṇa [the quality of calmness, clarity or ‘being-ness’] of the mind will increase and [thereby] help will arise for self-investigation”.
Michael continues:
“…Since the quality of our mind is strongly influenced by the quality of the physical food we eat, Sri Ramana says that by consuming only moderate quantities of sattvika food the sattva quality of our mind will increase, and this will help us in our practice of self-investigation. In order to cultivate this sattva quality, we should not just consume only sattvika food, but should also consume such food only in moderate quantities, because if we eat an excess quantity of even the most sattvika food, it will have a dulling effect upon our mind…”
And this relates to the behaviour too:
“…in the final paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? Sri Ramana concludes by saying:
‘If [our individual] self rises, everything rises; if [our individual] self subsides [or ceases], everything subsides [or ceases]. To whatever extent we behave humbly, to that extent there is goodness [or virtue]. If [we] are restraining [curbing, subduing, condensing, contracting or reducing our] mind, wherever [we] may be [we] can be [or wherever we may be let us be]’.
The key word in the second sentence of this paragraph is taṙndu, which I have translated as ‘humbly’, but which is actually the past or perfect participle of taṙ, a verb that has many meanings such as to bow, worship, fall low, be low, be bowed down, become subdued, be suspended, be deep, be engrossed in anything, descend, decline, sink, diminish, decrease, stay, rest, stop, bend, droop or hang down. In this context, therefore, proceeding or behaving taṙndu means conducting ourself humbly in this world, submitting to the will of God, with our mind subsided, subdued, submerged or resting calmly in our own essential self-conscious being.
To the extent that we live our life thus, says Sri Ramana, there is naṉmai - goodness, righteousness, benefit, benefaction, virtue or morality. That is, the relative goodness of any of our actions or of our behaviour in general is determined solely by the extent to which, while acting or behaving, we are truly humble, subdued, desireless, calm, equanimous and resigned to the will of God”.
4. “My own experience is that honey catches flies better than vinegar”.
As to ”honey and vinegar”, sure, it is definitely better, and so is according to those who have been studying the main Bhagavan’s subject. For example, Michael James often says, ”slowly, slowly, gradually, gradually” in regard to all spiritual efforts, and just two more places from him and David Godman.
From Happiness and The Art of Being by Michael James:
“This process of gradually fixing our mind or attention more and more firmly in our own essential self-conscious being by repeatedly and persistently withdrawing it from all thoughts of anything other than ourself is clearly described by Sri Krishna in two extremely important verses of the Bhagavad Gītā, verses 25 and 26 of chapter 6, which Sri Ramana has translated into Tamil as verses 27 and 28 of Bhagavad Gītā Sāram, a selection that he made of forty-two verses from the Bhagavad Gītā that express its sāra or essence:
‘By [an] intellect [a power of discrimination or discernment] imbued with firmness [steadfastness, resolution, persistence or courage] one should gently and gradually withdraw [one’s mind] from [all] activity. Having made [one’s] mind stand firm in ātman [one’s own real self or essential being], one should not think [even a little] of anything else.
Wherever the [ever] wavering and unsteady mind goes, restraining [or withdrawing] it from there one should subdue it [by always keeping it firmly fixed] only in ātman [one’s own real self]’”.
So, “gently and gradually” as it’s said.
From Introduction to Ramana Maharshi by David Godman:
“Bhagavan likened self-enquiry to holding a bunch of fresh grass under the bull’s nose. As the bull approaches it, you move away in the direction of the stable door and the bull follows you. You lead it back into the stable, and it voluntarily follows you because it wants the pleasure of eating the grass that you are holding in front of it. Once it is inside the stable, you allow it to eat the abundant grass that is always stored there. The door of the stable is always left open, and the bull is free to leave and roam about at any time. There is no punishment or restraint. The bull will go out repeatedly, because it is the nature of such animals to wander in search of food. And each time they go out, they will be punished for straying into forbidden areas.
Every time you notice that your bull has wandered out, tempt it back into its stable with the same technique. Don’t try to beat it into submission, or you may be attacked yourself, and don’t try to solve the problem forcibly by locking it up.
Sooner or later even the dimmest of bulls will understand that, since there is a perpetual supply of tasty food in the stable, there is no point wandering around outside, because that always leads to sufferings and punishments. Even though the stable door is always open, the bull will eventually stay inside and enjoy the food that is always there".
@@olena7834 Thank you! There is a lot in his books that I have missed when I have just watched his videos.
@@stasacab 🙏❤