WHATEVER YOU NEED

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness."--Eckhart Tolle

FIRST SIGN

"The first sign of your becoming religious," Vivekananda said, "is that you are becoming cheerful.  To the yogi everything is bliss, every human face that he sees brings cheerfulness to him . . . What business have you with clouded faces?  If you have a clouded face do not go out that day, shut yourself up in your room.  What right have you to carry this disease out into the world?"

THE PURIFIED MIND

The physical body is the most outward manifestation of our consciousness.  As our minds become purified, we naturally lose our sense of identification with our bodies.  As a result, we grow indifferent toward them, seeing them as no more than external garments. 

Moreover, we cease to desire the bodies of others.  This is because we no longer identify those bodies with the consciousness that inhabits them.  If we truly appreciated the Atman within others, the sexual act is utterly meaningless to us.  When the Atman is understood to be everywhere and always a unity, why should two outer coverings embrace?

BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH

Bhagwan Shree Rasheesa was an Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher who gained an international following.  He was not a Vedantist, although he included Vedanta among those philosophies and people that influenced him most in his career.  The other influences were, he said, Zen Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, Bodhidharma, Krishna, Mahavira, Lao Tzu, Nagarjuna, Patanjali, Gorakhnath, Adi Shankara, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Meera, Ramakrishna, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Samkhya, Tantra, Sufism, Western mysticism, G. I. Gurdjieff, and the Human Potential Movement.

The Bhagwan was born Chandra Mohan Jain on December 11, 1931.  During the 1960s he was known as Acharya Rajneesh, then in the 1970s and 1980s as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and finally as Osho from 1989 to 1990. 

A professor of philosophy in the 1960s, he travelled throughout India as a public speaker. He became controversial when he began criticizing socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, and institutionalized religion.  He also advocated a more open attitude towards sexuality, to the extent that he was called, by the Indian and later by international presses, the "sex guru."

In 1970, he settled in Bombay, where, taking on the role of a spiritual teacher, he initiated disciples, calling them neo-sannyasins.  His discourses at this time were a reinterpretation of the writings of religious traditions, mystics, and philosophers from around the world.

Moving to Pune in 1974, he established an ashram that attracted increasing numbers of Westerners. The ashram offered therapies that made news in India and abroad, primarily because of the permissive climate and provocative lectures there. By the end of the decade, there were mounting tensions with the Indian government and the society at large.

In mid-1981, the Bhagwan relocated to the United States where his followers established an international community, later known as Rajneeshpuram.  This was in the state of Oregon. Within a year, however, the leadership of the commune became embroiled in a conflict with local residents, chiefly over land use, resulting in hostility on both sides.  A fleet of Rolls-Royce cars purchased by the Bhagwan's followers for his use also attracted criticism.

The Oregon commune collapsed in 1985 when the Bhagwan disclosed that the commune leadership had committed a number of serious crimes on the local residents.  He was arrested soon after and charged with immigration violations.  Following a plea bargain, he was deported from the U.S.  Twenty-one countries subsequently denied him entry, leaving him to return to India, where he died on January 19, 1990.

TERENCE STAMP

Terence Henry Stamp (born 22 July 1938) is an English actor who, since starting his career in 1962, has appeared in over 60 films.  He is in the current film "Unfinished Song" opposite Vanessa Redgrave.  He was asked on National Public Radio (NPR) this past weekend whether playing a person whose wife is dying of cancer makes him think about his own mortality.

Stamp said, "Oh, I mean, I think about it all the time. It's not just something that's with my increasing age (now age 74). I've always thought about it. But, to be frank, I just regard it as--death is the price of having been an individual, really.

Does he have any clear thoughts about the afterlife?

Stamp said, "I think of it as a kind of the bare awareness, as it were. It doesn't really have any sort of characteristics. But it knows thought, it knows feelings, but thought and feelings don't know it. (It's a kind of) spacious silence. . . I'm just assuming that when the breath leaves the body and the body dies, there's just more of an abstraction, you know.  I think one is--one is back in the state that one was in before one got a body."

(If there is a slight Indian ring to these words, it may be explained by Stamp's moving to India in the 1970's.  There, he spent time in Pune at the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, meditating and studying the Bhagwan's teachings, and dropping out of society for several years.)

HUSTON SMITH AND VEDANTA

Born May 31, 1919, Huston Cummings Smith is a religious studies scholar. His book The World's Religions (originally titled The Religions of Man) has sold over two million copies and remains a popular introduction to comparative religion.

Influenced by the writings of Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley, Smith, while a young man, turned from traditional Methodist Christianity to mysticism.  In 1947, before moving from Denver to St. Louis, he set about meeting with then-famous author Gerald Heard.  Heard responded to Smith's letter, inviting him to his Trabuco College, which Heard later donated to the Vedanta Society of Southern California. 

Heard arranged for Smith to meet the legendary author Aldous Huxley.  Heard and Huxley, both initiates of Vedanta, then recommended that Smith, once he settled in St. Louis, look up Swami Satprakashananda.  Swami Satprakashananda was the founder and head of the Vedanta Society there. So began Smith's experimentation with meditation and the philosophy of Vedanta.

Smith practiced Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and Sufi Islam for more than ten years each.

LOOK WITHIN

All spiritual wisdom is inside ourselves; the Kingdom of Heaven is within. 

"After long searches here and there, in temples and in churches, in earths and in heavens, at last you come back, completing the circle from where you started, to your own soul and find that He, for whom you have been seeking all over the world, for whom you have been weeping and praying in churches and temples, on whom you were looking as the mystery of all mysteries shrouded in the clouds, is nearest of the near, is your own Self (Atman), the reality of your life, body and soul."--Swami Vivekananda.

REALIZATION

The word "realization" in Vedanta means the discovery of the reality of God through direct spiritual experience.  You "realize," either suddenly or gradually, that the phenomenon of God is real.  When you meet it, you have no doubt what it is.

HOW LONG YOU LIVE

You live as long as you have to, remembering that the purpose of life is to find God.

RENUNCIATION: A SHORT STORY

A man discovered, or rediscovered the meaning of renunciation when he stumbled on to YouTube films of the late pianist Van Cliburn playing Rachmaninoff concertos. Unfortunately, it was like handing candy to a baby, for after watching Van Cliburn, the man turned to his own collection of other Rachmaninoff recordings, played this time by pianists Rubinstein and Horowitz.

The price he paid for this was that the music, the melodies, stayed with him, along with the euphoric mood they generated in him, all the next day, to the extent that nothing else could get in.  He'd allowed his mind to be hijacked, taken hostage.

It was then that he recalled spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now. In it Tolle describes the present moment, the Now, as spaciousness. Buddhists call it emptiness, and the void. It is also God, Tolle said.

If one fills this space, or spaciousness, with all the sensory experiences available these days, including musical melodies, to say nothing of whatever floods the ear buds of all the cell phones and IPods that everyone has these days, then it is plain to see that there is no room for anything else, not the least of which is God.

The grace of this lesson left him humbled whereupon he returned to his renunciatory life.

WHY THE UNIVERSE EXISTS

The universe exists in order that the Atman may experience it, and thus become liberated, according to Patanjali.  This is to say, everything that happens to a person, no matter how trivial, throughout the day, is for the purpose, ultimately, of liberation.

JIVA

Jiva, or jivatman, is the soul living in ignorance of its divine nature.  Philosophically speaking, it is the Atman identified with its coverings--body, mind, senses, etc.  Ignorant of its divinity, the Atman experiences birth and death, pleasure and pain. 

A related term is jivanmukti which is the Atman's attainment of moksha, or liberation, while living in a body.  At this point it is known as a jivanmukta.

ATMAN ALONE EXISTS

The Atman, our real nature, is "the experiencer," while the totality of the relative world, including the mind and the senses, is the "object of experience."  In reality, the Atman alone exists. 

When, however, by way of maya, our present predicament, the Atman falsely identifies with the individual ego, it is subject to all the thoughts that arise and trouble the mind.  This is why a person imagines that he is "unhappy" or "happy," "angry" or "lustful."

The Gita reminds us that this is not really the case:

The illumined soul . . . knows always, "I am doing nothing."  No matter what he sees, hears, touches, smells, eats . . . this he knows always, "I am not seeing, I am not hearing.  It is the senses that see and hear and touch the things of the senses."

TRUE DEVOTION

In Vedanta, there are three ways of salvation: the Way of Works (Karma Marga), the Way of Knowledge (Jnana Marga), and the Way of Devotion (Bhakti Marga).  Concerning the latter, Swami Prabhavananda said, "Anyone who says he has devotion or thinks he has devotion doesn't have it.  People come to me every week and talk about their devotion to God.  And I don't believe them."

Why would the swami say this?  The reason is because true devotion is not something that the egoic mind, in which most of us function most of the time, accomplishes.  True devotion is not something that one wills to happen.

Devotion is remembering God, but the remembering is done by the heart.  It is not incense and chants and rituals and scriptures, but that intuitive, spiritual state that comes when one surrenders him or herself to God.  Surrendering is an emptying which in turn permits God to come in.  Remembering, surrendering, is true devotion.

SACRED SUBJECTS TO MUSIC: PHILIP GLASS

The contemporary composer Philip Glass is not a religious composer, but his interest in sacred subjects has resulted in some of his most stirring scores. 

For example, in his 1979 opera Satyagraha, he set to music the Bhagavad Gita.  The title Satyagraha refers to Mohandas K. Gandhi's concept of non-violent resistance to injustice. The text of the opera is sung in the original Sanskrit.  In performance, translation is usually provided in supertitles.

In his soundtrack for the 1997 epic film Kundun, Glass set to music the life of the Dalai Lama.  The word kundun means "presence" and is a title by which the Dalai Lama is addressed.  The film by Martin Scorsese was released a few months after Jean-Jacques Annaud's film Seven Years in Tibet and shares the latter's location along with the depiction of the Dalai Lama at various stages of his youth.  The Scorsese film, however, covers a period three times longer.

In his 2006 choral symphony The Passion of Ramakrishna, Glass tells the story of the Bengali mystic who, despite suffering from throat cancer which made speech for him excruciating, continues to preach about the unimportance of physical suffering.  The part of Ramakrishna is sung not by a soloist but by the entire chorus, echoing the words of Ramakrishna's wife, Sarada Devi, "No one is a stranger.  Make the whole world your own."

ALL ONE PLACE

Traveling somewhere only appears to be traveling somewhere, as it is all one place, Brahman.

NOT NONEXISTENT

The relative world is illusory but not nonexistent.

NOT FOR NAUGHT

We worry about getting to the end of life and feeling that it has all been for naught.  Alas, though, it has not all been for nothing, even though we may feel it so. 

Behind the scenes of ourselves there has been an evolution taking place, as the Atman in each of us works its way to its awakening.  Many lifetimes are required for this purpose to be realized, but realized it will be, for it is a process. 

Because it is a process, there is the phenomenon of time. The Atman is in everything, and everything is in time.  Even a rock, which appears to be doing nothing at all, is still subject to the influence of time.  It too is in the process of awakening, not as a rock but as the Atman within it. 

We need not fret that our lives have been for naught, therefore.  Nothing is for naught.  Everything is the Atman evolving to its awakening.

NOT THE FIRST TIME

Knowledge of Vedanta did not enter the Western world for the first time with Vivekananda in 1893.  Schopenhauer, Emerson, Thoreau, and their circle, along with Max Muller and his fellow orientalists, to name just a few, had all studied, discussed, and publicized the philosophy years before that date.  What Vivekananda did bring to the West was the living example of a man entirely dedicated to the practice of the philosophy.  His example was far more inspiring and convincing than any book could be, as Emerson himself would have been the first to confess.

VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY RECAP

In his introduction to the collection of essays entitled Vedanta for Modern Man, writer Christopher Isherwood provides the following excellent recap of Vedanta philosophy:

"Vedanta is a nondualistic philosophy.  It teaches that Brahman (the ultimate Reality behind the phenomenal universe) is 'one without a second.'  Brahman is beyond all attributes.  Brahman is not conscious; Brahman is consciousness.  Brahman does not exist; Brahman is existence.  Brahman is the Atman (the Eternal Nature) of every human being, creature, and object.  Vedanta teaches us that Life has no other purpose than this: that we shall learn to know ourselves for what we really are; that we shall reject the superficial ego-personality which claims that 'I am Mr. Smith; I am other than Mr. Brown,' and know, instead, that 'I am the Atman; Mr. Brown is the Atman; the Atman is Brahman; there is nothing anywhere but Brahman; all else is appearance, transience, and unreality."

CHOOSE ONE IDEA

In his lectures on Raja Yoga, Vivekananda said, "Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life--think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, this is the way great spiritual giants are produced."

PRINCIPLES RATHER THAN CULT

When Vivekananda first visited the United States, he did not come as a missionary of a Ramakrishna cult but as an exponent of Vedanta philosophy.  In the majority of his lectures, he referred to Ramakrishna rarely or not at all. 

On his return to India, when he talked about this period, he often said, "If I had preached the personality of Sri Ramakrishna, I might have converted half the world; but that kind of conversion is shortlived.  So instead I preached Ramakrishna's principles.  If people accept the principles, they will eventually accept the personality."

UNIVERSALITY OF RELIGIONS

In 1893, Swami Vivekananda addressed the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, Illinois.  The theme of his speech was the universality of religions, which he illustrated with the following two passages from the Shiva mahimna stotram, a Hindu hymn:

"As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!"

And "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me."

VIVEKANANDA HOUSE(S)

Vivekanandar Illam, or Vivekananda House, earlier known as Ice House or Castle Kernan at Chennai, India is an important place for the Ramakrishna Movement in South India.  It is remembered as the place where Swami Vivekananda stayed for nine days when he visited Chennai (then Madras) in 1897.  This was following his triumphant return from the West.  Vivekanandar Illam now houses a permanent exhibition on Indian culture and Swamiji’s (Vivekananda's) life, maintained by the Chennai branch of the Ramakrishna Math and is a source of inspiration to thousands of people who visit it every year.

In 1900 Swami Vivekananda stayed for six weeks in a house, also now known as Vivekananda House, in South Pasadena, California.  Built before 1877, the two-story house is a good example of Victorian architecture.  It has, for example, a gabled roof and distinctive sunburst designs.  It is a coincidence that the Vivekananda Cottage in upstate New York, at which Vivekananda stayed for seven weeks in 1895, is in the same architectural style.

The interior of the Vivekananda House, South Pasadena, has been restored to its original decor wherever possible. The bedroom where the swami slept is now a sanctuary for meditation, and the table at which he dined is still downstairs near the fireplace. Devotees can walk through the parlor where he spoke, the kitchen where he cooked, and stroll in the garden where he often played with the children.  The house is located at 309 Monterey Road, South Pasadena, California 91030.  The phone number is (323) 254-1546, and the email address pasadena@vedanta.org

VIVEKANANDA COTTAGE

Vivekananda Cottage is a Victorian cottage and grounds on Wellesley Island, Thousand Island Park, New York.  Thousand Island Park is a remote area about 360 miles from New York City, on the St. Lawrence River, near the Canadian border.  The cottage was owned originally by Elizabeth Dutcher, an artist.  Vivekananda visited the cottage from June 18 to August 6, 1895.  He was invited there by Ms. Dutcher, who had attended his spiritual classes in New York City.

The property was purchased by The Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center in 1947 as a spiritual retreat.  Since then it has been used as a summer retreat by the various leaders of the Center, Swami Nikhilananda, then Swami Adiswarananda, and currently Swami Yuktatmananda.  The second floor bedroom of the cottage where Swami Vivekananda studied and wrote is maintained as a shrine to him and a place for contemplation. A rock and tree about a quarter mile back of the cottage is the site where Vivekananda meditated and taught.

During most of the summer there are no classes or lectures at the Vivekananda Cottage, but devotees may attend the afternoon vespers (arati) and meditation at the Cottage at 4:30 PM. The exception to this is when Swami Yuktatmananda conducts his "seminar classes,” usually in late summer.  During the seminar days, the program includes morning meditation followed by Swami’s discourse and discussion, afternoon vespers (arati) and meditation, and evening readings and discussion. Those who wish to attend the classes are requested to seek permission from the Center in advance.