Principles I have found...

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~

Namast� VC

Please explain to me these words in practical terms. All actions need to be skilled? You mean these are voluntary actions unlike involuntary spontaneous breathing or heart beating? Several so called Geeta authorities lump all actions the same.

You mention steadfast in Yoga, does that mean to be disciplined oneself in one�s activities? Discipline sounds to me that it is attached and it is not free.

Before answering, please read (contemplate) the following HDF Posts :
http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/showpost.php?p=24210&postcount=3

http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/showpost.php?p=28731&postcount=3

http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/showpost.php?p=28833&postcount=5
Once these are read, reviewed, pondered, let me know and then we can address 'skill in action' , steadfast, etc.

[proudhindu]

Pranaam Yajvan,

If i am not mistaken,It appears you have had saintly company most of your life and your posts show that.

if you dont mind i would like to query/examine your thought.

I have been introduced to a few principles over the years that I found hold true. ...

The world is as you are.That is, when you are happy or dull , the world takes on that appearance also. This is why when a person becomes liberated 'all is right with the world' as there are no issues occurring internally, peace and happiness is found within and without.

I heard and read this opinion several times but i am yet to find a person who can say this worked for them.May be i havent met too many saintly persons with lots of people to look after them.

You may get up in the morning with High energy and blissful state of mind , do Puja and when you go out to the world to engage in your wordly work you will have to face the realities of world.

Can one remain happy and peacefull when faced with a rioting mob, got your vehicle burned to char and a possibilty that your near and dear are going to be harmed?.

What will be your thoughts, God forbid, if you are in such a situation?.

When one is healthy and bright, then many challenges become opportunities. Yet if one is dull, lethargic and in general unbalanced, the sky is always falling on him or her and the universe is seen as a foe.

This largely agree with my personal experience.But there are times when the tunnel of darkness appears to be endless before light shine.

What you put your attention on grows stronger in your life or [I] what you think you become If one chooses uplifting subjects and conversations, that grows in one's life.

Could you please expand on this.

What you 'eat' you become.Eating here includes all the senses, not just the tongue. What we watch, read, associate with, are all inputs to the mind and to its processing and available to thinking and choices. Over time you reflect what you eat.

If i am a police man and handle crooks and thugs all the time will i become one?.if my duty as a policeman requires me to study criminal mind and attitude would i become a criminal?.Comes in to mind Sthitha pragnya from Gita.I would love to hear your opinion on this particualr point more than anything else.

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~

Namasté proudhindu

If i am not mistaken,It appears you have had saintly company most of your life and your posts show that. if you dont mind i would like to query/examine your thought.

I heard and read this opinion several times but i am yet to find a person who can say this worked for them.May be i havent met too many saintly persons with lots of people to look after them.

You may get up in the morning with High energy and blissful state of mind , do Puja and when you go out to the world to engage in your wordly work you will have to face the realities of world.

Can one remain happy and peacefull when faced with a rioting mob, got your vehicle burned to char and a possibilty that your near and dear are going to be harmed?.

What will be your thoughts, God forbid, if you are in such a situation?.

This largely agree with my personal experience.But there are times when the tunnel of darkness appears to be endless before light shine.

Could you please expand on this.

If i am a police man and handle crooks and thugs all the time will i become one?.if my duty as a policeman requires me to study criminal mind and attitude would i become a criminal?.Comes in to mind Sthitha pragnya from Gita.I would love to hear your opinion on this particualr point more than anything else.

Your questions are very practical. Let me offer a few things. I have studied all my life. Many things I got ( understood) , many I did not get till I started to mature overall - via sādhana. My 'company' was via my various teachers, and via the authors I read. 'Guru' has come all different ways guru & teaching , guru for dikśa, for learning, etc. this has been my blessing in this life.

Facing the realities of the world that you offer in your post can be done in various ways. One way is in ignorance - where the SELF (ātman) and the body are experienced as the same. In this condition everything affects one deeply.

Another way is when one is possessed of the SELF - then silence is one's anchor, and things happen but one's true nature is never shaken, one is anchored to that peace, to that stability of Silence of within. Hence things happening 'outside' are , well outside and do not touch the depths of the silence within. That is, you associate your state of being with the silence.

One example I have heard was offered by svāmī Lakṣman-jū. Let me improvise just a bit on the example, but the idea is exactly the same. Let's say you are possessed of the SELF and experience this silence all the time. Yet some one comes to you and says , Proudhindu, your car is on fire! If one were not possessed of the SELF, there is that attached feeling to the car, that which is mine is now lost, and one gets all upset, swells with emotion, etc. Yet, says svāmī Lakṣman-jū,
the person possessed of the SELF experiences that information that is given as if it were just individual collection of letters:
Y_O_U_R C_A_R I_S O_N F_I_R_E_!

One is not swept up by any whoosh of emotion because everything now has the SELF-referral quality to it. You are not identifying with the world of actions ( of big, small, fires, deaths, cars, fights, smell, war) but the world now is viewed from the stability of silence - that is in you, that is balanced.
Another simple example... Lets say you are well rested, calm, and without any chores to accomplish, yet alert, clear and with no troubles - alls well, life is good. A person very calmly walks up to you and says hello you to you in a language you never heard before. You are not threatened because you are calm, and the person addressing you is also calm, collected, of good spirit and there is no angst or anger offered in his body language , facial expression or tone of voice.
What you then here is just a collection of sounds, in a string, with no meaning TA_MA_BA_LA_KA, NO_CHA_KRA_ME_SO_BE.
Where is there angst or fright, or concern ? Yet this person could be saying the same thing - Proudhindu, your car is on fire.

Like that, how one experiences the world from that state of Being makes all the difference in the world.


You take care of your burning car. But the stress, emotional turmoil , grief, etc. is no longer part of the equation. One now operates from a balanced point of view , without the stigma of being tossed and turned like a ship in storm on the ocean.


That is why this wisdom is so practical to unfold. Now, it is very important to say, this is not a mood, a positive mental attitude, it is a level of Being that is cultured over time, and occurs within ones Being, one's physiology and mind.


praṇām

[proudhindu]

Pranaam Yajvan

Yet some one comes to you and says , Proudhindu, your car is on fire! If one were not possessed of the SELF, there is that attached feeling to the car, that which is mine is now lost, and one gets all upset, swells with emotion, etc

It is not about Handlimg emotions regarding loss of Car but how do you go about tackling the situation.

The example of car is about being under attack.If i stay in the car or anywhere near the attack site, me and my family members will be done to death.

The thoughts that eventually come to my mind is may be i should know how to defend myself.Buy a gun, take some shooting lessons etc...

Will such thoughts take me away from realising God?.

Did the Kashmiri saints teach about preparing for Self Defence?.

Did somebody like Swami Lakshman jhoo said anything about pursuit of wealth(Artha).

After all, the society has to earn wealth and maintain defence forces to enable Saints to flourish and help the ordinary people realise god.

We will discuss about the policaman case in depth later on

[sm78]

Pranaam Yajvan




It is not about Handlimg emotions regarding loss of Car but how do you go about tackling the situation.

The example of car is about being under attack.If i stay in the car or anywhere near the attack site, me and my family members will be done to death.

The thoughts that eventually come to my mind is may be i should know how to defend myself.Buy a gun, take some shooting lessons etc...

Will such thoughts take me away from realising God?.

Did the Kashmiri saints teach about preparing for Self Defence?.

Did somebody like Swami Lakshman jhoo said anything about pursuit of wealth(Artha).

After all, the society has to earn wealth and maintain defence forces to enable Saints to flourish and help the ordinary people realise god.

We will discuss about the policaman case in depth later on

Dear proudhindu,

There are various philosophies and religions within what we call Hindu, and one has to adopt the one which ties up and answers the doubt we face about our existence in this world.

Your position and problems were and are mine own, the complete and utter lack of proper reconciliation between the world we see and live in and the world we want to be in.

I have found solace in a particular world view, but I am not here to sell doctrines. But with each day of better knowledge of scriptures, it seems to me that this inability to reconcile our internal ideals with the external world in a honest manner does not go back far in history. If you are bold enough to be able to set yourself free from the personas that cloud the gateway to our religion (however fantastic be their life history or proof of their self knowledge), and start reading the original sources, you will not find any dichotomy or any inability to appreciate the problems this world presents before us.

I know it is easy to say with a few pegs of whiskey down the throat that world is how we see it, yet any genuine seeking for truth starts when we don't find the world to be what we expected it to be.

All our so called spiritual ideals and ideals of self perfection are an attempt to get pass this imperfection that have been thrust opon us on our birth, with which we are not at all happy. In fact they exist only in relation to this world. So when we loose focus of this basic problem in our attempt to
provide solutions, it is indeed unfortunate.

Knowledge of self which alone can wipe out all the imperfect cannot come by pretending to be pure and perfect, when by very birth in this human world, we are not.

Various people through the ages approached this problem in various ways, none of them totally dispensed with the practicality of the world. Yet some are less practical than others...for me the most orthodox view within hinduism seems to understand the difficulties of this world with best insight, many others loose the focus to the very problem that motivated them to seek an answer. With the advent of buddhism and heterodox cults, liberation became the prime focus of life ~ while prior to that it was never a serious object of persuit-for it can't.

While I don't find anything good or worthwhile with buddhism, the heterodox cults have provided us with many good things including the entire science of self purification. Their worldview is also not impractical, yet their development was halted midway when the catastrophic moslem attack played havoc with the native way of life and its development in this land.

So my advice to you would be start practicing and studying original hinduism and not get carried away by generalizations of the modern minds. When in doubt refer to the Gita and the story of bharata...for it is the first and greatest attempt to synthecize divergent theories of self-knowledge into one coherent thread without ever loosing sight of the main problem we face in our human existence~that of the world and its horrors.

It is the true triumph of indic thought, that needs to be repeated many more times.


Good luck.

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~

Namasté

sm78 writes,

Knowledge of self which alone can wipe out all the imperfect cannot come by pretending to be pure and perfect, when by very birth in this human world, we are not.

Your clarity on this matter is impressive.

proudhindu writes,

It is not about Handlimg emotions regarding loss of Car but how do you go about tackling the situation.

I now see your point and perhaps I was too casual in answering it in my last post. But before I go further my example was not of being under attack, that was not my intent.
Yet there are several questions you also bring up. Let me finish the first part, of the car on fire and how one would then handle it. It would be handled in a fair and balanced way - without angst and/or grief. That was my point to be made - life's activites would no longer overshadow the 'balance of SELF' one would experience.

you mention,

The thoughts that eventually come to my mind is may be i should know how to defend myself. Buy a gun, take some shooting lessons etc...
Will such thoughts take me away from realising God?

This I do not have an immediate answer for - but the intent to defend suggests the notion of being threatened... this the wise have talked about. This ties into your question,

...saints teach about preparing for Self Defence?

This discussion they offered may not be in the manner you may be thinking of...

• My teacher spoke directly on this by saying the best defense is never making enemies. He said that comes by the infusion of sattva into one's life and one's community. He said by creating a level of sattva, that even the notion of fear, or rebellion or negitive behavior would not even enter into one's mind or others minds.
• Who else says this? Patañjali’s yogadarśana, 2nd chapter , 35th sūtra says the following: As the yogin becomes established in non-injury (ahiṁsā), all beings coming near him cease to be hostile.
• And svāmī Lakṣman-jū also reviews this - he says, one who maintains this discipline of non-violence (ahiṁsā) on the level of body, mind, and soul influences even natural enemies by his presence - such is his vibrating power. Within the presence of this person immersed in that sattva, enemies are harmless to each other and to the yogin.

Regarding wealth - my teacher was in favor of abundance. I too am in favor of abundance + balance + giving. The question is, what is true wealth? What is binding and what adds to one's overall spiritual progress? We can talk of this at a later time as it derails the original posts and questions contained herein.

praṇām

[proudhindu]

Pranaam Yajvan,

Yet there are several questions you also bring up. Let me finish the first part, of the car on fire and how one would then handle it. It would be handled in a fair and balanced way - without angst and/or grief.

That is true.The priority at that point of time was to be safe and ensure safety of those who are with me.Thoughts of preparing for future attacks comes later.

That was my point to be made - life's activites would no longer overshadow the 'balance of SELF' one would experience.

I am afraid i dont understand what you are tryimg to convey here.Life's activities indeed effect me.I am not living in a protected place not to be bothered about life's activities.This is true for most of the people in this world.

This I do not have an immediate answer for - but the intent to defend suggests the notion of being threatened

The attack is real.This is not a notion.

this the wise have talked about. This ties into your question,This discussion they offered may not be in the manner you may be thinking ofMy teacher spoke directly on this by saying the best defense is never making enemies. He said that comes by the infusion of sattva into one's life and one's community. He said by creating a level of sattva, that even the notion of fear, or rebellion or negitive behavior would not even enter into one's mind or others minds.

Wel, i didnt make enemies of the people who are out to destroy and kill anything in their sight.

The Indians didnt make enemies out of Muslim Arabs or Muslim Mongols.But that didnt stop them from Invading Indian penisnsula kill people, enslave women and children.

I would suggest you to read
http://www.wikiislam.com/wiki/Histor...nst_the_Hindus

Particularly the paragraph

"Fierce and persistent Hindu resistance to the Islamic Jihad prevented the complete Islamization of India"

Who else says this? Pata�jali’s yogadarśana, 2nd chapter , 35th sūtra says the following: As the yogin becomes established in non-injury (ahiṁsā), all beings coming near him cease to be hostile.And svāmī Lakṣman-jū also reviews this - he says, one who maintains this discipline of non-violence (ahiṁsā) on the level of body, mind, and soul influences even natural enemies by his presence - such is his vibrating power. Within the presence of this person immersed in that sattva, enemies are harmless to each other and to the yogin.

May be the women captured and sold by jihadis in slave markets didnt practice yoga.Let me think about this.

Regarding wealth - my teacher was in favor of abundance. I too am in favor of abundance + balance + giving.

Now, that is something i can relate to.

[proudhindu]

Pata�jali’s yogadarśana, 2nd chapter , 35th sūtra says the following: As the yogin becomes established in non-injury (ahiṁsā), all beings coming near him cease to be hostile.

Perhaps there is more than this yoga has to offer.

Swami Ramdev is training Indian army and crpf personnel to beat stress.

The Us marines are training with Yoga instructors to beat stress and handle injuries.

http://www.ameriforce.net/PDF/AF2006...agyoga-206.pdf

“Military units need everything yoga has to offer because yoga is designed to clear the blockages in our personalities,” Saraswati wrote in a recent Yoga Magazine article. “Military personnel need to be strong-minded, confident and brave"

[proudhindu]

Dear proudhindu,

There are various philosophies and religions within what we call Hindu, and one has to adopt the one which ties up and answers the doubt we face about our existence in this world.
....

Well said, Sm Ji.

It is the true triumph of indic thought, that needs to be repeated many more times.

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~

Namasté proudhindu

you wrote,

Can one remain happy and peacefull when faced with a rioting mob, got your vehicle burned to char and a possibilty that your near and dear are going to be harmed?.
What will be your thoughts, God forbid, if you are in such a situation?.

I did not comprehend that this was an actual life experience for you i.e.

The attack is real.This is not a notion.

I was reading your post as 'what if this occurred' - not as it indeed occurred. Now I see your POV.

you write,

I am afraid i dont understand what you are tryimg to convey here.Life's activities indeed effect me.I am not living in a protected place not to be bothered about life's activities.This is true for most of the people in this world.

The point i wished to offer was based upon what indeed occurs in life, but how a realized soul would experience it. You also mention,

Perhaps there is more than this yoga has to offer.Swami Ramdev is training Indian army and crpf personnel to beat stress. The Us marines are training with Yoga instructors to beat stress and handle injuries

This is the natural bi-product of ones meditation - throwing off stress. It is the stress in the nervous system that overshadows its normal functioning. These stresses are impressions that are embedded into the 'village of the senses' as my teacher called it ( the nervous system) that overshadows its optimal functioning... Excessive impressions - they do not have to always be negative impressions, but they are impressions none the less that leave a 'dent'.

you mention

Wel, i didnt make enemies of the people who are out to destroy and kill anything in their sight.

I have no answer and I am of little help - because I am not a part of the situation, I can add little value to the solution and only offered what the wise have suggested from the level of yoga and yama and niyama. This was written about at these HDF posts:
http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2956
http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2970

I will review what you have offered as reading.

praṇām