Drinking Trough

Tend Your Live, that Rose Plant

A historian is trained to avoid mere gossip. What is good proof? Yogananda repeatedly told the world is a dream. If so, it is sometimes a wet dream also. So what other proofs are given by him that are better than his dreams? That is for you to find out if you care to.

Tend the rose of happiness in the garden of your life

Roses have thorns.

To survive is in part like tending a rose, Yogananda writes:

"We are usually born rich with smiles, youth, strength, beauty, health, mystic aspirations, and swelling, thrilling hopes. As we live and grow, we begin to lose those riches, and the roses in us begin to fade . . . Are we to grow warm with riches and then suddenly be frozen by the chill . . .? . . . Does our happiness come only in order to vanish?

No, the rose usually dies on the bed of beauty, yet some roses, worm eaten encounter a premature ugly death. We want to bloom with good actions, fragrant with happiness, and to rest forever with the memories of those who appreciate us. We do not have to die devoured by poverty, sickness, or sorrow.

To guard our rose plant, we must attend to it properly with much digging, watering, feeding, and guarding it from pests and chill. The rose plant of our happiness can grow only on the abundant fertile soil of our peace. It can never grow on hard, stony, unfeeling soil of human mentality. We have to constantly dig into peace with the spade of our good actions. We have to keep our happiness plant well watered with our spirit of love and service. We can only be happy by making others happy.

The real food for the happiness tree can be supplied only through meditation and actual contact with God in daily life. Without our contact with the Infinite source, from which all our human faculties and inspirations spring, we can never grow perfectly and completely.

The worst pests which attack our plant of happiness are lack of the desire to progress, self-satisfaction, and skepticism. The chill of inertia, or lack of definite, constant effort to know the Truth, is the greater ill from which our happiness plant suffers.

We can never be happy until we keep progressing and seeking satisfaction in doing so, and guarding that happiness from all the influences which destroy it."

[Swami Yogananda. "Creating Happiness". East West, March, 1933 Vol. 5-5.]

Yogananda here holds a dreaming gardener's view, and at other times a hysterical view.

Hysterical Yogananda

In 1915 a stray bullet ended its furious flight in my chest. I fell groaning to the ground. My whole body was paralyzed.

"At last the mysterious footstep of Death has caught up with me," I thought. With a final sigh, I was about to sink into unconsciousness when lo! I found myself seated in the lotus posture.

Hysterical tears poured forth. I rocked to and fro. Amidst these self-congratulations, again I found [myself in a] dead body.

I prayed, "am I dead or alive?"

"Awake. Awake!" Chapter 30, abridged.

Joys

Happiness can be the harvest of a quiet eye. [Austin O'Malley]

The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it. [Michel de Montaigne]

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. [Ingrid Bergman]

A Fisherman's Look at "Move on"

Some on the Walrus Discussion Board do not trust each other, says "Didgeridootoo" there.

Now a fine discussion board might assist those members who want it, to think and express in neater ways by steps and stages. Such development should help easy recognition of material that is valid, reliable, and interesting, to name a few basics.

There is much evidence in the gospels that goes much against proclamations by Yogananda. The Bhagavad Gita says the true yogi is non-attached. Attachment - also to a master, his decrees, and his organisation - can be hard to deal with. In fact, it looks like a basic problem of guru followers. The Gita says you must rise above such fallacies.

Then what about moving on? When, why, how, and who had better do it, and under what conditions? To the exhortation, "Move on" (American credo that fits restless nerves). Where to?

AGAINST THAT: "I am always here. Where can I go?" (Ramana Maharsi). He spent his adult life on a hill-side.

SOLUTION: Use the past as the trees use the soil - to draw nourishment from it for "the present and possible future unfolding". A tree is rooted. On top of that it is firm at bottom, and somewhat flexible further up among tender twigs, for example.

Former SRF members on the SRF Walrus Discussion Forum have been met with "Move on" by other posters. It is not sensitive to do so in some contexts. In Rogerian councelling, it is the client who is to find out his or her feelings and what to do - through a delicate, increasingly sensitive process of rumination. What may come out of it is not for the councellor to say in advance.

Instead of "Move on", I prefer "Make the best out of it." Instead of "Make the best out of it": Hah! A tree on a hill-side lives like that - it does not need exhortations to fulfill its design fairly well. Along with unfoldment of branches and leaves, there is a need for deepening and broadening roots.

Hovering one, you may be told to move on and do it because:

• You thought you had formerly been given valuable counsel without evidence of that?
• You never stopped to think twice, considering that some second thoughts could be very, very good?
• To move is to "die" a bit (French wisdom) and you need that?
• One often loses much through moving and you found that out too late?

When other fishers ask you to move on from where they are circling in the sea, could there be ulterior motives? Do they want the "pasture down there" for themselves, for example? It has to be considered. At any rate, if they do not tell you where to go and why, you may end up in a worse situation, nay, a pligh.

When we get aware of guru fallacies or marring teachings, much depends on how well we live up to what we perceive, and our strategic skills, and on our resistance against repressions which may set in. I hope you are still up to it by letting fairness help you to crack hidden codes or ulterior motives - whatever is not fit.

Compare to looking at the sea or a landscape - observe calmly: Listen to its distant booming thundering roars, look at the bright waves and billows - do they dance playfully or turn sinister? A seaman must be prepared for foul weather at short notice too.

And the boat of your handling and skills probably cannot afford having big holes or many small holes beneath the water surface. Things like these matter figuratively too.

Literature  



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