Meditation Counsel
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Elucidations
After one third of the SRF monastics left the SRF premises around 2001 or so, it is harder for some involved to feign that everything in SRF is perfectly fine and so on.Q: I got banned from the SRF Walrus for quoting George Orwell.
"It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good [Proverb, Op 144]." You can be trained to consider difficulties to be great or small opportunities; it is easier when they are small. The sooner you solve problems, the better off you can be later too.Well, it was not George Orwell who was the reason. The Nobel prizeman George Orwell did not get the question-able fellow into trouble, he did it himself, by writing denigrating, crass and fiendish posts.
We may get Orwell to "lay gold eggs" for us - all the quotations below in sections 1, 2, and 3 (but not the headings) are by him [LINK].
"Prepare for the hard while it is still easy. Deal with the great or big while it is still small. The hard has to be dealt with while still very easy. Everything great [to look at] must be dealt with while it is still small.
"Therefore the wise man never has to deal with the great.
"Who takes things very easy is surely in for dealing with more difficulty in the end. So "many easies" means many a hard. Who makes light of many things could find many difficulties." [Tao Te Ching, Ch 63, passim]
Ambivalence
Q: Still enjoying your site . . . I go from a believer to a non-believer several times a day, but today is the last for me.It's not always easy to be consistent, especially if a part of our natures wants this, another part wants that, and other parts want still other things (ambivalence is the technical term for it). A good balance is not always easy to come by, but not a few alternatives may be worse.
Q: I think I'm going to come up with my own take on the nature of life. I think I have laid the important ground work already. Not that I am even competent to do such a thing and make it useful, but that I can satisfy myself in the process.
A Trifle Jewish?
Q: Sankara Saranam . . . set out to show how Yogananda's take on the Bhagvad Gita and references to Christianity were wrong.How?
Sankara Saranam has devised . . . a means to utilize our current educational system to one's greatest advantage. [Sankara Saranam]How can we tell and be sure? That's a recurrent problem.Teology, referred to by historians and philosophers as liberty's greatest foe, has often been used as the justification for torture and murder. [Sankara Saranam]
Being allied with good science is no small thing, methinks.
Q: Sankara Saranam . . . gets a lot of critics these days . . . To put it boldly, does kriya yoga work?
Yes, it does. Many have said so. It is scientifically documented too.
In the 1950s the researchers Das and Gastaut performed electroencephalographic [EEG] examination of seven kriya yogis and observed that as the meditation progressed the alpha waves gave way to fast-wave activity at the rate of 40-45 Hz [i.e., Beta-waves], etc. [Das, N., and H. Gastaut. "Variations de l'activité electrique du cervaux, du coeur et des muscles squelettiques au course de la méditation et de l'extase yogique [Variations in the electrical activity of the brain, heart, and skeletal muscles during yogic meditation and trance]." Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, supplement 6. [1955: 211-219]. (French). [MORE]
Q: Are you aware [I think Sankara Saranam] is a brainwasher [?]
[Inserted:] Sankara Saranam is an ascetic philosopher with a wife and a son, living in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Northern Georgia. A poet, composer, and classical guitarist, he graduated from Columbia University. His Pranayama Institute encourages anyone interested in doing pranayama to consult with a doctor before beginning a regimen of yoga. You are not required to send a check for the amount of your order from that institute, but your check can be of any amount.
This world is the ocean of hell. [Lahiri Baba, in Gv 12]
Q: I think Yogananda was right when he said, "People are so stubborn in their ignorance."
It is often like that. The question, "Is Sankara Saranam living in a hell?" Asceticism with a wife and a child can be tough!
Dolls, are they nice?
It is not the habit and hood that makes the monk good.It is the similarity with a human being that makes the doll nice-looking. Inside, however, the doll is dead.
What about "devotee dolls" of both sexes? Are they completely dead inside, or in a process of going down, teeming with excuses (rationalisations)?
History has repeatedly shown that many "devoted followers" are downright nasty fellows. Many sorts of nasty people try to hide how they are and use a God-coating or guru-is-good coating for their own faith and offensiveness. Those who fostered the Great Inquisition are neat examples, in that they tortured and killed millions, and the "coating" was of love for the souls of those they killed for the sake of conformity - which served a reign of fear. Godly fellows have to be suspected as dangerous ones in line with psychoanalytic thinking, unless they are upright in the first place.
Perhaps godly fellows try to function according to the more shit and trouble inside, the more adoration of others (gurus) is supposed to pay. If so, it is strangely aligned to something Yogananda is credited with in The Science of Religion: "It is when we are in trouble we pray to the almighty. It is paraphrase of an Indian adage, "We pray to the Ever-Merciful when we get stuck." [Srg 4] It follows, but not necessarily, that "the more troubles, the more prayers", and more likely still: "The more prayers, the more troubles". Accordingly, the more show of uncivic devotedness with prayers and cheap, conform enough ceremonialism one may see, the more shit and maimed id life there may be - perhaps. And the more awkward adoration gambits onwards - perhaps again.
So when a guru teaches he helps you just as much as your efforts and double the effects of your efforts, and God doubles all that again for you - it could be a nice-looking bait for offensive guys who try to be devoted for the gains and favours it could yield.
Feigned devotion is for pleasing someone. - Jetsun Milarepa, "the cotton-clad one", cf. Tm 300Q: I am trying to understand all this.Unfortunate beings cling to worldly things. - Cf. Milarepa, cf. Tm 179
I got the Tao te Ching from the library yesterday as I thought it might be a good idea to be familiar with it. You seem to value it quite highly.
It's a good book. [LINK] And higher still:
Accustomed long to meditating . . . I have forgot all that is said in written and in printed books. - Milarepa, [Tm 246]Q: By the way, what makes kriya so effective a technique? Surely all meditational techniques of using a mantra with the breath achieve the same effects of slowed breathing? Or is there, in fact, grace involved?
A few technical, delicate "things" brings about the hurrahs -
Q: What books or spiritual figures would you recommend to me?
Books? . . . Figures: What about your inmost self? Should not be overlooked by anyone.
Q: If you could sum up your feelings on Yogananda, life, kriya and God, what would you say (be nice and detailed)?
This:
On Yogananda and life: "Man's tongue is soft and bone does lack, yet a stroke therewith may break a man's back." (Wisconsin proverb)
On kriya: "A lot still remains to be done."
On God: "Don't throw out old clothes before you get new ones." (American proverb)
You may treat each as a koan and practice that thing too.
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Literature
Ap: Mieder, Wolfgang (main ed.), Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie E. Harder: A Dictionary of American Proverbs. (Paperback) New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Gv: Satyeswarananda, swami, tr. Complete Works of Lahiri Mahasay Vol. I: The Gitas: The Vedic Bibles. Guru Gita. Omkar Gita. Abadhuta Gita. Kabir Gita. 2nd rev. ed. San Diego: The Sanskrit Classics, 1992.
Op: Simpson, John, and Jennifer Speake. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Srg: Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Science of Religion. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1982.
Tm: Evans-Wentz, Walter Yeeling, ed. Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa. 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
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