This week’s unedited notes randomly collected, loosely or directly related to this week’s podcast:
The Soul, the Key to Healthy Relationships; The Mind and Immortality
The knowledge is infinite. I know only a thin sliver. We can spend a lifetime of study and will not know it all. Even Vedic pandits know only one of the four Vedas. Focus on what evolves you, thereby know the one thing by which all else is known.
Someone asked me what I experience from reading Sanskrit Vedic Literature. Sanskrit letters are the seeds of foundation of relative existence. Reading it, one can feel it. Attune to most fundamental level of existence… those are the manifestations of the finest level of existence… the fundamental building block of existence… pure knowledge, truth within source of ones being, the Self.
Vedic sounds are more important than the meaning
Maharishi Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: I like the following verse as a guideline to relationships:
1.33 In relationships, the mind becomes purified by cultivating feelings of friendliness towards those who are happy, compassion for those who are suffering, goodwill towards those who are virtuous, and indifference or neutrality [equanimity] towards those we perceive as wicked or evil [negative… Rakshasa value]
This can also be read to include relationship with your own self.
Brahma Chaitanya is a supreme attainment, yet the house can still be made of mud. The mind is like a monkey jumping from tree to tree. Its purification is leads to the next step: jivanmukti leads in the direction Chiranjivi (Sanskrit: चिरञ्जीवि) the immortals
the power of speech… your rate of evolution comes to a significant degree from your speech.
‘controlling’ the mind… effortlessly verses with effort… two distinctly different interpretations of scripture, e.g. Yoga Sutras.
speaks to reality continuum existence .. levels of existence, of understanding of sanskrit and sutras.
I read Yoga Sutras in Sanskrit, listen to the recitation, read different translations and compare translations…. each from its own level of understanding/interpretation.
A significant example is the interpretation of the word ‘control’ … for example, controlling the mind.
Some say effortless by resting into transcendent, like in Brahma Sutra verse about Dharma coming from Brahman
Yet more often traditionally control comes from effort on surface of life.
Both are true. As is said, Effortless control comes from the depth of being; but surface control is of value as well: don’t do what you know is wrong, and if you even think it might be wrong, don’t do it. But practically speaking, just do your best. “Do not look for perfection in the relative, it is not there..”
Before enlightenment people reincarnate to work out karma. After enlightenment they reincarnate to fulfill a purpose. Yet after enlightenment, the body still can have karma. That becomes obvious if you study the lives of the enlightened.
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Thank you
I loved the way you talked about that Patanjali Yoga Sutra 1.33 and the application to the world of self. I could do with more equanimity towards those parts that I struggle with. Thank you always for pointing us in the right direction.