March 19, 2024 - Lesson 342
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Sloka 32 from Dancing with Siva
Is There Good Karma and Bad Karma?
In the highest sense, there is no good or bad karma. All experience offers opportunities for spiritual growth. Selfless acts yield positive, uplifting conditions. Selfish acts yield conditions of negativity and confusion. Aum.
Bhashya
Karma itself is neither good nor bad but a neutral principle that governs energy and motion of thought, word and deed. All experience helps us grow. Good, loving actions bring to us lovingness through others. Mean, selfish acts bring back to us pain and suffering. Kindness produces sweet fruits, called punya. Unkindness yields spoiled fruits, called papa. As we mature, life after life, we go through much pain and joy. Actions that are in tune with dharma help us along the path, while adharmic actions impede our progress. The divine law is: whatever karma we are experiencing in our life is just what we need at the moment, and nothing can happen but that we have the strength to meet it. Even harsh karma, when faced in wisdom, can be the greatest catalyst for spiritual unfoldment. Performing daily sadhana, keeping good company, pilgrimaging to holy places, seeing to others' needs--these evoke the higher energies, direct the mind to useful thoughts and avoid the creation of troublesome new karmas. The Vedas explain, "According as one acts, so does he become. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action." Aum Namah Sivaya.
Lesson 342 from Living with Siva
Preparation For Adult Life
Very importantly, we must inculcate in youth a respect for family life, for marriage as a sacred union undertaken for the mutual spiritual advancement of husband and wife. They have to be counseled and counseled well in how married life is to be faced, what attitudes they should hold toward sex, how to keep a marriage strong and joyful, how to combat the pressures they will face in this modern world, especially if they come to live beyond the borders of our holy land. We must also inculcate in them a knowledge of monastic life, so they may understand and revere the satgurus and swamis of Saivism. Saivite monasticism was a powerful spiritual force in the world when the maharajas supported the monastics, and it will continue to be so through the support of the families, their children and their children's children. All this is accomplished through religious education. We call upon the youth of India, the youth of Sri Lanka, the youth of Malaysia and all other countries where Saivites are living to consider the two paths. We call upon those rare few to accept the dharma of the Saivite monastic and serve their God and religion through a selfless life, preaching and teaching throughout the world. There is a great need here. Too many Asian families relinquish their children to become Catholic priests and Protestant ministers and not enough encourage them to become Hindu sadhakas, yogis and swamis.
The youth must be taught that Saivism is not only the oldest religion in the world, but a vibrant and dynamic religion in this technological age. They must come to know its wisdom is for the farmer as well as for the computer programmer, for our ancestors and for our descendants. Saivism is the Eternal Path, the Sanatana Dharma. The youth working in science, working in space exploration, working in electronics, working in business, working closely with members of different religions, will encounter many challenges. They must be carefully taught how to remain within the bounds of their religion and their beliefs without being dissuaded, without accepting ridicule from those who have yet to comprehend Saivism. We must teach the Saivite youth who are now growing up around the world about the Hindu festivals and holy days, making these auspicious days vibrant and alive in their memories. We must explain to them the meanings behind every observance so they are not just following blindly.
Symbols are an important part of bringing Saivism into the hearts of the youth. Symbols carry great significance, and young people love and understand symbols. We should have Saivite symbols abundantly around us, in the shrine room and throughout the home. The Pranava Aum, swastika, Sivalinga, tripundra and pottu, ankusha, tiruvadi, naga, vel, kalasha, vata, rudraksha, seval, trishula, kamandalu, trikona, bilva, shatkona, konrai, homa, kuttuvilaku and mankolam.
We should have a kuttuvilaku, or oil lamp, in our shrine room. We should have pictures of the Deities and their vahanas, Nandi, peacock and mouse, in our home, sacred flowers and trees in our garden. We should, of course, wear the holy ash and pottu, our sacred jewelry and prayer beads, and see that our young people do also. All Saivites should become initiated into the Panchakshara Mantra and chant it daily upon a mala of rudraksha beads. Sights, scents, sounds, tastes and religious symbols--it is through these ways our religion is understood by the next generation.
Sutra 342 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Lunar Retreats From Guests And The Public
Siva's monastics observe the full, new and half moons and the day after each as retreats for sadhana, study, rest, personal care and ashrama upkeep, plus a fortnight's retreat at the end of each of the year's three seasons. Aum.
Lesson 342 from Merging with Siva
Enlightened? Stay Enlightened.
A sannyasin of attainment has had many, many lifetimes of accumulating this power of kundalini to break that seal at the door of Brahman. Here is a key factor. Once it is broken, it never mends. Once it is gone, it's gone. Then the kundalini will come back--and this gives you a choice between upadeshi and nirvani--and coil in the svadhishthana, manipura, anahata, wherever it finds a receptive chakra, where consciousness has been developed, wherever it is warm. A great intellect or a siddha who finds the Self might return to the center of cognition; another might return to the manipura chakra. The ultimate is to have the kundalini coiled in the sahasrara.
I personally didn't manage that until 1968 or '69 when I had a series of powerful experiences of kundalini in the sahasrara. It took twenty years of constant daily practice of tough sadhanas and tapas. I was told early on that much of the beginning training was had in a previous life and that is why, with the realization in this life, I would be able to sustain all that has manifested around me and within me as the years passed by. Results of sadhanas came to me with a lot of concentrated effort, to be sure, but it was not difficult, and that is what makes me think that previous results were being rekindled.
The renunciate's path is to seek enlightenment through sadhana, discipline, deep meditation and yogic practices. That is the goal, but only the first goal for the sannyasin. To stay enlightened is even a greater challenge for him. This requires a restrictive discipline--not unlike a military, at-base, on-call life, twenty-four hours a day--even in his dreams.
Many people have flashes of light in their head and think they are totally enlightened beings, then let down in their sadhana and daily worship to later suffer the consequences. Enlightenment brings certain traditionally unwanted rewards: attention, adulation; one becomes the center of attraction, knows more than others and can exist on words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, for a long time, even after the light fades and human emotions well up and new mixed karmas build. He then may become known as having attained the erratic human behavior of the "enlightened" person. This is totally unacceptable on the spiritual path. Once enlightened, or "in-light," even to a small degree because of daily sadhana, stay enlightened because of daily sadhana. Once having intellectually realized Vedic truths and become able to explain them because of study and daily sadhana, then realize these truths by intensifying the daily sadhanas, lest the remaining prarabdha karmas germinate and create new unwanted karmas to be lived through at a later time.
The advice is, having once attained a breakthrough of light within the head, wisdom tells us, remain wise and do not allow these experiences to strengthen the external ego. Become more humble. Become more self-effacing. Become more loving and understanding. Don't play the fool by giving yourself reprieve from pranayama, padmasana, deep meditation, self-inquiry and exquisite personal behavior. Having once attained even a small semblance of samadhi, do not let that attainment fade into memories of the past. The admonition is: once enlightened, stay enlightened.
Enlightenment has its responsibilities. One such responsibility is to have respect for and pay homage to the satguru and the satgurus of his lineage. These are the ones who, in seen and unseen ways, have helped you on your path. Another is to keep up the momentum. The wise know full well that the higher chakras, once stimulated, stimulate their lower counterparts as well, unless the sealing of the passage just below the muladhara has been accomplished. Diligence is needed, lest higher consciousness fall unknowingly on the slippery slide of ignorance into the realms of lower consciousness, of fear, anger, resentment, jealousy, loneliness, malice and distrust. The faint memories of the beginning enlightenment experiences still hover, and while now in lower consciousness but still emulating the higher qualities in personal behavior, the now unenlightened claims full benefit for the previous enlightenment. Shame! This is because he did not maintain his disciplines after enlightenment. He let down and became an egocentric person.