#Guru-Bhakti

[shinymoonbird]

🔱  Om Namo Bhagavathe Sri ArunachalaRamanaya   🔱  

🕉️  

The Paramount Importance of Self Attention, by Sri Sadhu Om, As recorded by Michael James

Part Six - Mountain Path: July – August 2013 - Excerpt

Note of 7th January 1978 (Part 1)

🕉️  

Sadhu Om: When waves of passion such as desire, lust or fear arise, either try to duck beneath them by self-attention, or else reflect on their uselessness and avoid them by viveka [discrimination] and vairāgya [dispassion]. If the waves continue to come more strongly and none of these methods help, pray to Bhagavan. Prayer coming from an agonised heart has its own power. Whenever we feel helpless, prayer is our best weapon. He is always ready to help the helpless if their prayer is sincere.

Meritorious actions (punya karmas) done with kamyata (desire for personal benefit) do not purify the mind. Actions done without such desire (nish-kamya karmas) purify the mind, but they are the least efficacious means.

Unless worship and prayer are done with an attitude of ego-abasement, they will not purify the mind. Worshipping with pride only feeds the ego. Better than worship is sravana [hearing or studying the guru's teachings] and manana [reflection on them]. Reading about the lives of saints and reflecting on their behaviour and teachings will help us to subside our ego. Better than that is satsanga: in the company of real sadhus [jñānis], we cannot but act with humility. Satsanga [association with sat, truth] purifies the mind in many ways, but the best satsanga is to remain quietly as 'I am'. As Sankara says in Vivekacudamani [verse 364], a hundred times better than sravana is manana, but one lakh [a hundred thousand] times better than manana is nididhyasana [contemplation], which is just remaining attentively as 'I am'.

The reality of whatever is seen is the same as that of what sees it. The God you see is only as real as you who see him. If you worship God in a name and form, your mind will be purified, and when it is sufficiently purified, he will appear as guru to teach you the practice of self-attention. The guru is not just to be worshiped — he is to be obeyed. In verse 274 of Guru Vachaka Kovai Bhagavan says:

Those who do not have [the clarity of] mind to recognise that the jñāna-guru — who appears as a human form [though he is actually] abiding firmly as the supreme space [of consciousness, 'I am'] — is formless, [thereby] bear the yoke of wicked conduct and sin.

This is not to say that guru-bhakti [devotion to the guru] is wrong, but that our devotion is not true guru-bhakti unless we also practise what he taught us. Though the outward form of the guru and his teachings are a projection of our own vāsanās (tendencies), they will nevertheless wake us up, like a lion that an elephant sees in its dream. Self-attention is the most effective means of purifying the mind. The more you try to attend to self and the more you thereby experience the happiness of self-abidance, the more clearly you will understand and be firmly convinced that all happiness comes only from self, and that rising as 'I' is misery. Thus your vairāgya (desirelessness) will increase and your attachments to things will become less.

Whenever you have some moments free, reflect: 'What is this ego-life? Now I take this body to be 'I' and this world to be real. I feel attachment to things, people and circumstances, but I have only experienced this life for a certain number of years, and some years from now I will cease experiencing it forever. Therefore why should I take interest in or be ambitious for this transient and futile life? All these things seem to exist only because I exist, so should I not try to find out the truth behind this 'I'?' The more you reflect in such a way, the more you will lose interest in your life and the more you will wish to remain just as 'I am'.

When people used to say to me, 'You are lucky because you were with Bhagavan', I would sometimes find some ego rising in me with pride. However, by Bhagavan's grace I thought of a good reply: 'In a hospital there is an outpatient department to treat minor cases, but the worst cases are admitted into the inpatient department to be treated under the personal supervision of the doctor. The same happens in this spiritual line, so I am such a helpless case that Bhagavan had to admit me into his inpatient department to treat me under his personal supervision'. Those who were not in Bhagavan's physical presence are lucky, because they are protected from the delusion of mistaking him to be his body.

🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱

[krishnaart]

A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

[santmat]

"Of all religions, the highest is the contemplation of the Lord's Name and purity of conduct. Of all deeds, the most righteous is To cleanse oneself of evil thoughts by keeping the company of the good. Of all works, the most noble is The constant contemplation of the Lord. Of all the utterances, the sweetest is that by which one hears the praise of God and utters it to others. Of all holy places, the most sacred is Where one dwells on the Name of the Lord." -- Guru Arjan Dev, Book of Sukhmani, Adi Granth, Sikh Scriptures of India, Peace Lagoon translation

[mysticalblizzardcolor]

ISKCON NYC TV Darśana-āratī & Guru-pūjā | 16th October, 2024

*ISKCON *Hare Krishna *Bhakti Yoga *NYC *Brooklyn *Queens *Bronx *Staten Island

[sorru1792]

Everyone knows the four Vedas Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samveda and Atharvaveda but which is the fifth Veda "Sukshma Veda"?

To know this read the book "Hindu gentlemen do not understand Gita, Vedas, Puranas"

#अनसुना_पाँच��ाँ_वेद

सूक्ष्म वेद

https://youtu.be/hmrT3u503k4?si=zEZq8lkFGhIALgoq

[mountain-sage]

[keshavsmelody]

"Guru Govind dono khade, kake lagu paay. Balihari Guru aapno, Govind diyo batay."

"Both the Guru and Govind (God) are standing before me; who should I bow down to?" I choose to bow down to my Guru because it is through him that I have realized the presence of God." ~Saint Kabir Das

[teanicolae]

Caturāvṛtti Tarpaṇam

my Lord,

melt me on the betelnut leaf

show me that i am rough on the surface

but soft all the way through

my rugged edges,

my delusions of mass

my convictions of being,

my frights of flow

in the melding of haldi

and sanctified water,

apaḥ sips my contractions

pours of holy water,

my fissures dissolve into You

fingertips adorned in yellow hue

and moist eyes of velvet,

i throw my head back and gasp

𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓂𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝒷𝑒 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒

photos: the ecstatic Caturāvṛtti Tarpaṇam, completed in forty-one days with my saṅgha of Śabda Yoginīs.

[rishabh4832]

#पूर्णगुरु_की_पहचान

Complete Guru Sant Rampalji

पूर्ण गुरु के लक्षण

पूर्ण संत (पूर्ण गुरु) तीन प्रकार के मंत्रों (नाम) को तीन बार में उपदेश करता है, जिसका वर्णन कबीर सागर में बोध सागर खंड के अध्याय अमर मूल में पृष्ठ 265 पर व गीता जी के अध्याय 17 श्लोक 23 व सामवेद संख्या 822 में मिलता है।

[shinymoonbird]

🔱  Om Namo Bhagavathe Sri ArunachalaRamanaya   🔱

Photos by Guy Gonyea

🕉️

The Paramount Importance of Self Attention, by Sri Sadhu Om, As recorded by Michael James

Part Four - Mountain Path: January – March 2013 - Excerpt

Note of 1st January 1978

🕉️

Sadhu Om:   When we awake from sleep we experience a new clarity of knowledge before we become aware of the body and world. The practice of sādhanā is trying to cling to this clarity.

Sitting in the Old Hall [where Bhagavan lived] is not essential if you are able to be aware of this clarity at other times. [...] There is something special in the Old Hall that automatically reminds us of our own being, but of course we can be aware of our being anywhere else as well.

Effort is unnecessary for self, because self-attention is natural and effortless. Effort is only needed for the mind. It is the nature of self to attend to self, and it is the nature of the mind to attend to second and third persons. Sādhanā is only for the mind, and the effort to attend to the feeling 'I' is only to keep the mind quiet — in its natural state of pure self-awareness.

It is not strictly true to say that self-enquiry begins with effort and ends with effortlessness, but for the sake of the sādhaka [practitioner] we may say so. Effort is required so long as the mind needs to be reminded of its true nature, 'I am', but when even awareness of second and third persons automatically reminds one of one's own existence, 'I am' (because what is aware of them is 'I'), then effort is no longer needed. When we can see only waves we must make some effort to notice the ocean underlying them, but when we knοω that the waves are nothing other than the ocean, effort is not needed.

All thoughts contain an element of the past or future in them. Can you make a thought about the present moment? If you seriously try to do so, all thoughts, including the thought 'I', will cease. This is another clue for self-attention. There are so many clues, you see.

🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱 

Question: In practice we never actually attend to self. All the time we spend in the Old Hall we are only trying to do so. If we really attended to self for one moment, that would be liberation, would it not?

Sadhu Om: What, do you mean to say that even now you are not liberated? Are you not always attending to self? You knοω 'I am', and you only knοω something if you are attending to it. Even when you attend to second and third persons, it is 'I' that is attending, and that 'I' is always aware of itself.

Such manana [cogitation or deep reflection] is essential until you understand thoroughly that self-attention is natural and eternal and that all else shines by the light of that self-awareness. This manana will lead you right up to the boundary. Nididhyasαnα [contemplation, the practice of pure self-attention] is actually only for a moment. When you really practise what you have heard and understood, you cross the boundary, and that is jñāna.

Ignore the mind, it needn't concern us. We are not the mind, so when we lose interest in it, it will die a natural death. This is why Bhagavan is always drawing our attention to self. He never allows us to become interested in the thinking mind or anything other than the feeling 'I'.

'What is this 'I'? What is the source from which it appears?' — All that is required is that our interest in this feeling 'I' should increase. That is bhakti.

Enquiry, faith and bhakti are not contradictory. They are all necessary. Enquiry begins with faith. Unless we have faith in the guru who tells us that self-attention is the means to true happiness, we would not be interested in attending to the first person. And when we practise self-attention, our experience of inner clarity confirms our faith, and thus our love for the guru increases.

Some people think that they can practise self-enquiry, so they do not need faith or bhakti. Such people know neither what bhakti nor what enquiry actually is.

The purpose of the outer guru is to make us understand the need for self-attention and to enkindle love for it in our heart. A living person is of course not needed for that. Bhagavan's books serve the same purpose, and he provides us with fellow devotees and other outer aids as and when necessary. The environment or circumstances in which we live are provided by the guru, who knows what the most suitable environment is for maturing us.

When we start trying to attend to the first person, the guru within, who is self, will start working. Whenever we attend to 'I', the guru's work is going on. Once we have been given a taste for self-attention, our love for it naturally increases and matures, like the momentum of a rubber ball as it bounces down a flight of stairs. 

To think of the real greatness of a jñāni is a good means to quieten the mind. When Arjuna's grandson, King Parikshit, was cursed that he would die in seven days, he went to his guru, Suka Brahmarishi. Suka told him that he was fortunate, because he was assured seven days, and then he started to tell him the story of Krishna. Parikshit was so absorbed in hearing the greatness of Krishna that six days passed by unnoticed, and when Suka reminded him that he would die that day, he replied, 'Who will die, only this body!' Hearing about Krishna had given him jñāna. Sometimes, when I used to think of Bhagavan and his real greatness, hours would pass without my noticing them. Great jñānis are such that even thinking of them can quieten our mind.

🔱  

[krishnaart]

A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada

[santmat]

  A Critique of  Ascender's Comment and My Own Comments Regarding This Wonderful Book of Kabir Panth Prayers, by James Bean

Reviewer: ascender - August 15, 2024

Subject: Need for a Living Master

"Sant Kabir was the Guru of His time. Only those to whom he personally gave initiation while in His human form can return to Sat Lok in His Name. The vast expanse of darkness of Mahasunya or Maha Sunn is said to be 80 billion miles, it cannot be crossed without a living Satguru to take the soul across to the purely spiritual realms above the region of Sunn. The worship of dead saints cannot liberate the Jiva. Only a living Master can do so. The search for God in the human form; Shabd incarnate, "The word made flesh and dwelling amongst us" is the greatest imperative for the devotee wishing to reach back to the Absolute Lord. However, the sacred bani of the sants, of Kabir Sahib and others, is a guide and inspiration to assist us in our understanding, and increase our longing for our True Home."

My critique of the review left by the person with the username Ascender made on August 15, 2024 at the Internet Archive titled, Need for a Living Master, as well as a brief exploration of the book being commented upon, Kabir Panth Book Of Prayers -- Sandhya Path -- The Path of Spiritual Realization. And this also serves now as a kind of Forward for this rare book in the Sant Dharam Das Kabir tradition of the Anurag Sagar.

Not as Ascender suggested, but as the contents of the book and the title of the book clearly state, this is NOT a collection of verses all attributed to Guru Kabir but actually represents a compilation of compositions made by many over the centuries in the Satsang Community of Kabir. These are used as prayers, psalms (hymns)  and sayings of wisdom by those satsangi disciples part of the living sangat related to Kabir. Indeed, the modern-day lineage of Sant Satgurus of Sant Mat connects directly back to the Sant Dharam Das line of gurus of this Kabir community in fact. There are many such collections of writings from the Sant Dharam Das line of Masters, and some of those other texts such as the Anurag Sagar (The Ocean of Love), Kabir Sagar (Ocean of Kabir), and others have also been uploaded to the web as wonderful ebooks, done with the motivation of edification and education of those curious about the spiritual path. "You can not just brush the surface of a culture and pretend that you’ve found an answer. We must turn inward to the deepest of our own roots to find the very best of who we are." (Ravi Shankar)

So, yes Kabir taught the need for a living Master as have his many spiritual successors all the way up to the living present time. It would be a fallacy for anyone to suggest being curious about the earlier writings of the Sant tradition of India somehow would mean that one would not be interested in being initiated by a living Master. Rather, it's the opposite of that. It is not an "either or" proposition. The interests of the faithful devotee of Sant Mat encompassess both. Those who are initiated by contemporary Masters, those who are followers of the spiritual practices of Sant Mat, are precisely the ones who are most-of-all fans of the literary treasures, the spiritual classics, scriptures, the poetry and prose, the banis and bhajans of the earlier generations of these Saints and Mystics. Studying the teachings of the Masters is also a way to break free from being stuck in one's mind -- our habitual thinking patterns, and practice Remembrance of the spiritual path (satsang).

And if one actually takes the time and reads this, Kabir Panth Book Of Prayers, they will soon discover that it does advocate sitting at the feet of a Living Teacher of one's own time: "By devotion, all the sufferings of Dharam Dass vanished. It is by the good deeds of millions of births that he met Satguru Kabir." "Who is greater than Ram and Krishna? Even they accepted a guru. They were masters of the three worlds, but were humble before the guru." "As many saints, mahants and sadhus there were, they all served at the lotus feet of the guru." "Do not go through life without a guru. Keep this firm principle in mind!" "Without a guru, who else can remove doubts? In what way can the heart possess discriminative spiritual knowledge? Without a guru ignorance cannot be removed, and the soul does not realize it's true form." There are whole sections of this book extolling the need for a living master of the time! 

The traditional format of a satsang is for someone to recite or sing from some earlier collection of Sant verses such as from the Bijak of Kabir, the Adi Granth, Anurag Sagar, Paltu Sahib, Namdev, Tukaram, Tulsi Sahib, Soamiji Maharaj, etc... and then a Master or whoever is giving the satsang discourse comments upon those verses. Traditional Sant Mat from India, as it has always been, focuses upon the teachings of the living Master, the earlier Masters of the lineage as well as the great collection of banis, bhajans, granths, all this vast Sant literature that has accumulated over the centuries out of the utmost respect for all of these great Masters, Saints and Sages that have blessed the world over the millennia, the various yugas, great epochs of time. One is counseled constantly about the need to have satsang every single day, to hear from one's teacher (Sant Satguru), to spend some time studying the instruction and wisdom of the Saints, to do simran and to meditate each and every day. "You should do your Bhajan and Simran every day." (Baba Jaimal Singh) "Do not live even a single day without inner meditation." (Baba Devi Sahib of Moradabad)

This Kabir Panth Book of Prayers is one such valuable collection, I dare say, is one of the more colorful assemblages of verses intended to inspire the satsangi to do the spiritual practices of the Sants: Simran: the Remembrance of names of God, Dhyan: inner visions of Divinity, radiant forms of Light, and Bhajan: the Unstruck Melody of the Sound Current or Audible Life Stream. And beyond these, one is encouraged to become a bhakta, a devotee approaching the Supreme Being with a spirit of love and devotion at every step. One is the "drop" of the soul merging into the Divine Ocean of Love. So the place we wish to ascend to is not to just any astral occult realm of esoterica but the Most High heavens of the Eternal Truth and Love, "the Far Country" that is the Goal of this Path of the Masters. 

"The tenth gate is the gathering point of consciousness. Therein lies the path for our return. The tenth gate is also known as the sixth chakra, the third eye, Bindu, the center located between the two eyebrows. This is the gateway through which we leave the sense organs' gates, enter the divine realms, and finally become established in the soul. We travel back from the Realm of Darkness to the Realm of Light, the Light to the Divine Sound, and the Realm of Sound to the Soundless State. This is called turning back to the Source." (Swami Santsevi Ji Maharaj, Book of Sarvadharma Samanvy)

How could the love between Thee and me sever?

As the leaf of the lotus abides on the water, 

so thou art my Lord, and I am Thy servant.

As the night-bird Chakor gazes all night at the moon, 

so Thou art my Lord, and I am Thy servant.

From the beginning until the ending of time, 

there is love between Thee and me;

And how shall such love be extinguished?

Kabir says: "As the river enters into the Ocean, so my heart touches Thee." 

(Guru Kabir, Songs of Kabir)

Free Online Book at the Internet Archive E Library: Kabir Panth Book Of Prayers -- Sandhya Path -- The Path of Spiritual Realization: 

https://archive.org/details/KabirBookOfPrayersSandhyaPath/mode/2up

Archive of All Past Posts With Search Engine: 

https://SantMatRadhasoami.blogspot.com

Free Sant Mat Radhasoami E-Library Online:  

https://santmatradhasoami.blogspot.com/2019/01/sant-mat-radhasoami-books-main-page-e.htm

[mysticalblizzardcolor]

[sorru1792]

क्या वर्तमान में समाज में प्रचलित पूजा, सनातनी पूजा है?

जानने के लिए देखिए "सनातनी पूजा के पतन की कहानी, संत रामपाल जी महाराज की ज़ुबानी" का पार्ट 1 व 2