Jagat

When working on the Yoga taraṅgiṇī , one of the things I realized early on was that the Gorakṣa-paddhati is a streamlined or simplified but comprehensive haṭha-yoga-sādhana , containing the essential practices as preserved in a particular tradition. The compendia like Haṭha-yoga-pradīpikā and Gheraṇḍa-saṁhitā , among others, encourage a wide knowledge of different useful practices, coming from numerous such traditions, all of which would ultimately become subsidiary to a principal set of practices. When one follows a particular guru in a particular tradition, it is natural that instructions will be simplified and streamlined for maximum benefit, especially at the beginner level. In Gorakṣa-paddhati it is stated that there are really only two āsanas that need to be mastered, padmāsana and siddhāsana . The other āsanas are auxiliary to the purpose of sitting in meditation for long periods of time without being disturbed by the body. Thus āsana-siddhi really only comes with sam...

I have been in Birnagar for a couple of months now, acclimatizing myself to the environment, which has been quite edifying. This is the first time since 1982 or something that I have stayed in my guru's ashram, and this is the longest time that I have ever lived here. In general, I find that my spiritual life is always progressing, but being in the presence of my Guru's spirit has been especially beneficial. I am not only getting the opportunity to give classes on Bhakti Sandarbha every day, but have also been getting calls from people in the area to come to speak. On Janmashtami I will be giving talks to devotees in Badkulla, which lies about halfway between Birnagar and Krishnanagar, and in Aramghata, a small village east of here where there is a private ashram associated with one of the Gaudiya Math's many branches. Harigopal Dasji, as I have mentioned, is putting a lot of energy into fixing up Dwadash Mandir. Although I have some nostalgia for the old world, p...

After a discussion on Facebook, I posted two articles I wrote on "Sex and Bhakti Yoga" ( Part I and Part II )  Prisni responded by saying "The biggest problem is not sex, but the identification of love with sex, and the inability to feel love except through sex. Men want sex, then its over, and they can go on doing whatever they really want. Fixing cars, fighting with swords, or playing football, or becoming a celebrated scientist." This led to the following response: You have correctly described the material situation for sex. This is why the appropriate practice is to retain the semen. Nobody in the world learns this technique and so all the anarthas related to sex arise. It is not that retaining the semen on its own solves the problem, but it is an important ingredient in the solution. When orgasm ceases to be the goal of sex, then one's mind is freed to enter into other dimensions of meditation and awareness. I hope you will understand that this is ...

One of the great good fortunes I had in my life was to get the association of Swami Veda Bharati. Two things he taught me come to mind this morning:   The actual meditation takes place on the outward breath. So lengthen the outward breath." And, "It is one thing to meditate in a secluded place, but can you maintain that same meditative state at the main crossroads of the Rishikesh bazaar?" What fortune that I have a place in the Dham where I can sit in silence and contemplate the name of the Lord. At the same time, I do have occasional contretemps which challenge my equilibrium and pretensions to saintliness. May love and peace rule our hearts and minds. Jai Radhe. For those wishing more information about breathing and meditation, you can look here for more information ). In short, the sequence of learning goes through the following steps: (1) abdominal breathing through the nose; put an end to mouth and chest breathing; even when chanting japa, mouth breathing s...

Yoga takes one only as far as kaivalya , which is the perfection of the singular, going "solo." All other yoga systems, including bhakti , also pass through kaivalya , in the sense that they are the establishment, as far as is possible, of the self in the self, without which relationship is meaningless. But in the relishing of bhakti-rasa , it is indeed only a stage: both the work of vidhi-bhakti and yoga are elements of the pravartaka stage or preliminary stage of practice in rasika-bhakti . This is because in yoga, the culture of love is restricted to the yamas and niyamas and some other general internalizing processes, whereas in bhakti, love is the culmination, both the means and the end. In other words, in yoga, love is one of the means, and a subordinate one at that, but in bhakti, love is the one and only all consuming goal. Nevertheless, the gains of yoga, both as a psychological force (as expounded on in the Yoga-sutra ) and as a psycho-physical force (fro...

In the last two posts I spoke about meditation and sitting. I added a link at the end of the sitting post to another older one that had the same subject but gave a little more detail about the different meditation sitting postures, which you can check out. Now I must continue this little discourse with a few words about breathing. As I may already have said, the elaboration of prāṇāyāma in haṭha-yoga is not directly connected to the aṣṭāṅga-yoga system. Any attempts to introduce this elaboration of breathing exercises into the aṣṭāṅga - or rāja-yoga process of meditation is not of great interest to us, though a knowledge thereof may have some beneficial aspects in the service of meditation and general physical health. Physical health as taught by haṭha-yoga is entirely intended to serve the purpose of mental control and single-pointedness on the object of concentration. Breath actually serves as an intermediate point of concentration and a vehicle for channeling the mind towar...

In my last post, I wanted to stress the following point, but perhaps I missed saying it. I have seen that many devotees eventually come to a point where they lose faith in the mythology or some aspect of the theology of bhakti, or they become disillusioned by the kind of people who profess to follow these teachings, and so on. In my experience one needs to have a strong baseline of spiritual experience that one can fall back on, a base line that one can return to in order to retrace one's steps until one restores one's mental stability and renews enthusiasm for sadhana, even when efficacious association is not available. Things like the existence of God, the nature of the self as a spiritual being, the necessity for sadhana, the ultimate goal of prema... all these things seem like flimsy possessions when one is in an undeveloped state of spiritual life, and it seems that they are quite persistent, even in people who are acclaimed as having high levels of realization, or hav...