tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post1849289301553357287..comments2024-03-26T13:06:41.178-04:00Comments on Jagat: MindfulnessJagadananda Dashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05887720845815026518noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-55725788682570060332016-10-10T08:49:07.601-04:002016-10-10T08:49:07.601-04:00
gurucharanaambuja nirbhara bhakatah
samsaaraadach...<br />gurucharanaambuja nirbhara bhakatah<br />samsaaraadachiraadbhava muktah<br />sendriyamaanasa niyamaadevam<br />drakshyasi nija hridayastham devamAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-42267881983421248812016-10-10T07:54:54.738-04:002016-10-10T07:54:54.738-04:00Much water has passed under the bridge since 2008 ...Much water has passed under the bridge since 2008 when you kindly wrote this blog posting on the subject of "Mindfulness" Jagadananda Das.<br /><br />"The only way that the mind becomes full is when in truth it first becomes empty."<br /><br />Dearest reader, let go of all thought constructs, bring the mind to one undivided point (of no mind), "mental silence" is mindfulness, mental silence is the only way you are going to reach the undivided state that will carry your lucid consciousness across the threshold of life-and-death in the vehicle of the light body to become as one with the primordial being (the one before all others)."<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-33521859443417814652008-01-15T15:01:00.000-05:002008-01-15T15:01:00.000-05:00namaskaramnamaskaramAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-68705131230850139552008-01-12T16:19:00.000-05:002008-01-12T16:19:00.000-05:00A noble response.Thank you, Jagat. satyam param dh...A noble response.<BR/>Thank you, Jagat. <BR/><BR/>satyam param dhimahiAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-43386995388115652262008-01-12T05:58:00.000-05:002008-01-12T05:58:00.000-05:00Dear Wayfarer, The reward for moral action is a pe...Dear Wayfarer, <BR/><BR/>The reward for moral action is a peaceful conscience. Without a clear conscience, how can you expect to find peace or spiritual blessedness? <BR/><BR/>We look for material rewards--whatever they be--for our spiritual endeavors and we become disheartened when they don't come. <BR/><BR/>The Divine Couple is in your heart, radiating love and understanding. They tell us that the sufferings and shortcomings of this world really are a mist that will disappear with the rising of the Sun of knowledge and love. <BR/><BR/>That is all we should seek, that is all we need, and whatever else we need, if anything, will be added.<BR/><BR/>I doubt that the way you sought self-realization when you were young is identical to the way you feel about it today. How could it? But I think that there is a samskara, a deep impression in our psyches, that cannot be made to disappear even by the long practice of carelessness or sloth, not even by immorality. Your desire for self-realization has not disappeared, only changed form. Perhaps it is resting, recharging its batteries. But surely you care about your life and its meaning. You want it to have a meaning, don't you? Or is it, just as Shankara says, <BR/><BR/>punar api jananam <BR/>punar api maranam <BR/>punar api janani-<BR/>jathare shayanam. <BR/>iha samsare <BR/>khalu nistare <BR/>kripayapare <BR/>pahi murare.<BR/><BR/>Is that all there is? Again and again being born, again and again dying. Just filling in the space between birth and death so that we can go through it again, entering another mother's womb, still not getting the lesson. Oh Murari! You of unlimited mercy! Please take me across this ocean of repeated cycles of birth and death and save me.<BR/><BR/>Jai Sri Radhe Shyam!Jagadananda Dashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05887720845815026518noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-38537112512698050112008-01-10T18:36:00.000-05:002008-01-10T18:36:00.000-05:00I was a 'mayavadi' follower in the 1970's, but joi...I was a 'mayavadi' follower in the 1970's, but joined Iskcon when I felt a need emerging in meditation to submit to the will of a higher power. After exploring it in so many ways in succeeding decades (mostly outside Iskcon), that need has pretty much evaporated and I'm more-or-less back to square one, if more relaxed and less desperate for 'enlightenment'. (Was it hormones?)<BR/><BR/>After some recent close encounters with death, what remains in me is a need to explore religious discussion of immortality, ultimately not bodily immortality which makes up maybe half the old texts and traditions, but the other ineffable kind. <BR/><BR/>But here's perhaps my deepest doubt, which I want to put before you all here - it is that I don't think it matters if you lead a moral life. I have, mind you. I have (perhaps even obsessively) taken the moral implications of every action of mine into consideration throughout my life - I have gone far out of my way to avoid harming others. This has gained me little in this world as far as I can see, and I have come to doubt it will gain me anything in the next. I expect, if there is an afterlife, to be amongst the souls of the greatest criminals in history, as well as the greatest saints. Because it is all a matter of perspective, ultimately insignificant. Confessing this in a public forum is probably the most immoral thing I have ever done. <BR/><BR/>What say you?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-23495744755025741862008-01-10T05:24:00.000-05:002008-01-10T05:24:00.000-05:00There are a few books that have helped me to chan...There are a few books that have helped me to change perspective a little. The were all non-vaisnava and non-vedic books and of course for an orthodox vaisnava that is considered hazardous.<BR/>One such book I previously pointed out was 'The Guru Papers; masks of authoritarian power'. As with 'God delusion' I do not agree with all the content, but I can now more clearly distinguish between religion mainly concerned with holding the tribe together and religion concerned with finding truth. As religion moves further and further from the founder (if the founder was considered with truth that is) through time it becomes more and more a tribal thing wielding authoritarian power over its followers.<BR/><BR/>I can write a book myself about what I think are examples of this, but more personal it means that I myself made holy/sacred certain things that are completely irrelevant (even opposing) to my own spiritual growth. For example..... in my teenage years I spend months figuring out which 'varna' would suit me best while neglecting the context I was brought up in and not finishing high-school because my bhakta-leader in Belgium told me that materialistic school was useless anyway. Mmmmh,... my search for a suitable 'varna' was sacred though, because my tribe pronounced THIS sacred over THAT and 'varnasrama-dharma' is very very sacred. Yes, weird indeed. And dangerous especially when being in puberty. Identity crises all over. Concluding that my own religion (one I chose to connect with and was not born in) is authoritarian in many ways and doesn't always allow free thinking was revealing in a predictable kind of way...<BR/>I became disgusted without knowing why and left the tribe. <BR/>I came back though after a few years because living without religion was also not satisfying to me. <BR/>But now I didn't want to make the same mistake again and tackling sectarianism and authoritarianism became key themes in my life. But it is hard if you don't know any better and religion seems always to have strong elements that oppose spiritual growth and free thinking.<BR/><BR/>Most of the time we just exchange one authoritarian system for another..Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-18865400320102572712008-01-10T02:30:00.000-05:002008-01-10T02:30:00.000-05:00There is no need to fear criticism from any quarte...There is no need to fear criticism from any quarter. If it does not kill you, it will only make you stronger, as even the atheist Nietzsche could point out.<BR/><BR/>God appears to individuals according to their level of advancement, according to their position in the modes of material nature. So we should not be surprised that a lot of nonsense goes on in God's name. I keep saying this: for the kanistha, a BIG kanistha is the ideal. But he is still a kanistha for a' that.<BR/><BR/>God is a vague or "empty" concept (as everybody creates their own definition) and therefore easy to "defeat" (remember that this is a tamasic approach to knowledge) if you choose the particular definition you want to do battle with. If you take a literal view of Krishna, for instance, as residing in a quasi physical world named Goloka, which exists physically somewhere beyond a barrier called Viraja, etc., etc., as described in our texts, then I will not do battle with you to defend their literal interpretation. Someone who does will end up looking foolish and rightly so. Does that mean that we must jettison the whole edifice of Krishna bhakti? What we have to do is <B>work</B> at an analysis of essences based on our own experience.<BR/><BR/>If you take historical instances of evil done in the name of religion, which is Hitchens' approach, then that is like shooting fish in a barrel. One instance of beatitude defeats all instances of evil. <BR/><BR/>The point is that we do not have to fear the possibility that religion and spirituality are HUMAN PHENOMENA. That does not discredit them. We are not further along in understanding the purpose of life by giving all the teleological credit to genes that seek their own survival. We need to look for God in the <B>impetus</B> to experience beatitude, to understand human purpose, to perfect our lives on earth as human beings. And that is as true for an atheist as it is for a devotee.<BR/><BR/>Even if you were to find an evolutionary purpose for such things, that would not diminish their glory and their holiness--even in their failure. Therefore we say api cet suduracharo, etc. <BR/><BR/>Moreover, the miracles of existence, consciousness and joy, are none of them meaningfully explained by any recourse to science. The key word here is meaningful.<BR/><BR/>Reductionism is the result of shallow thought. If I think God can be explained away by whatever the latest device of the atheists is, whether it be projection (still a popular one) or memes (Dawkins' gift to posterity), then I am simply taking one side of a circular argument. The capacities and tendencies to look for the ideal in transcendence, whether true or erroneous is, in my opinion, sufficient proof of an existence. Though this argument (a version of the ontological argument) cannot stand the scrutiny of rigorous philosophers, it does not bother me, because I am by the same token convinced of the inadequacy of dry argument to do much more than offer help in cutting away some of the grosser difformities of religious life, and certainly not to touch its essence.<BR/><BR/>That essence, I am afraid, is something that only the "deluded" can know through experience. This has always been known to the devotees. The atheists may successfully win ALL the logical battles, but fail to provide a single reason for living other than to fill in the space between birth and death. They shall me I am doing the same, (Hitchens would probably say I am benighted, but at least doing no harm) and we will have to leave it at that.Jagadananda Dashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05887720845815026518noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-53798415941343867822008-01-09T12:35:00.000-05:002008-01-09T12:35:00.000-05:00Anuradha, I recently read Dawkins' 'God Delusion' ...Anuradha, I recently read Dawkins' 'God Delusion' and I was very disappointed by it. I have always admired him because he has written classic texts on evolution etc. that are essential reading for a psychology undergraduate. I had known that he was also an atheist who never resists the opportunity to take a dig at God or religion in his tomes, so I was enthusiastic to read a text that was apparently devoted to the subject.<BR/> <BR/>I'm sorry to say that I found his arguments unappealing, inconsistent, frankly ignorant and sometimes laughable. Apparently I am not the only one who thinks this way as Dawkins has been criticised for this book <I>by religionists and atheists alike.</I> I wanted to write a chapter-by-chapter book review on my own blog but couldn't for lack of time, but some of his observations were frankly embarrassing. His argument basically boils down to: "God doesn't exist because there is no reason to believe that he does." Another one is that science has discovered thing that are infinitely more wondrous than anything found in old texts. A fair point.<BR/><BR/>Although I <I>did</I> eventually appreciate the book in that it gave me an idea of atheistic thought coupled with a few scientific rationales here and there. I agree that, <B>in general,</B> religion has a long long way to go before it even comes to the point of being worthy of intellectual consideration. Dawkins' arguments, weak as they are, at least give a representation of questions that religion has historically failed to answer.<BR/><BR/>Right now I'm reading Christopher Hitchen's "God Is Not Great". It is far better than Dawkins in terms of writing style, but I don't think Hitchens is any better at criticising religion than Dawkins. Hitchens' hook appears to be: "Religion houses too many man-made contrivances for it to be taken seriously as originating from a divine source."<BR/><BR/>Not impressed with atheistic thought so far, although I appreciate the fact that religion needs to come up with some creditable answers. Right now I think religion is on the losing side in the debate.<BR/><BR/>I sympathise with your feelings about agnosticism or teetering on the brink of atheism. I sometimes feel the same. I only allow myself to read atheistic thought because I have an open mind and would like to hear both sides of the argument. One massive objection I have towards atheistic thought is that it almost always concentrates on decrying Judaeo-Christian forms of religion, I have seen very little in terms of a serious rejoinder to Hinduism and other Eastern religions save a few pro-Islamic sites talking about necrophiliac fire-yagnas and other sorts of nonsense. For example I would like to hear serious criticisms of the principle of karma, reincarnation, etc.<BR/><BR/>Hitchens' entire chapter on Eastern religions was dedicated to decrying a form of Buddhism. Not impressed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31351038.post-84953149677955470992008-01-09T02:48:00.000-05:002008-01-09T02:48:00.000-05:00"I opined that I often found myself siding with th..."I opined that I often found myself siding with the atheists and agnostics in many of their arguments,...."<BR/><BR/>Indeed I recently saw a discussion on BBC (I believe it was Talking Point or something)where Richard Dawkins was attacked from all sides by lame, dogmatic and silently very fundamentalistic people that think of themselves as rational.<BR/>It inspired me to read his book "The God Delusion" and strangely enough I find it uplifting, even for a theist like me.<BR/>I disagree with his stance that the existence of God is highly unlikely and with a number of other things too. Nonetheless the way he points out many of the inconsistencies in the widely accepted arguments used by theists in trying to proof God or the validity of their holy book was uplifting and funny.<BR/><BR/>If I am also an agnostic now ? Or on the brink of becoming an atheist ? No, but it surely helped me not to take sides anymore in many of these <BR/>debates on the ultimate truth and it made me reflect on many of the things I accept (as truth) only in order to be accepted by my tribe.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com