GOD CANNOT BE BOUGHT

In his book My Guru and His Disciple, Christopher Isherwood records how Swami Prabhavananda was talking to him about grace.  He said that Maharaj (Swami Brahmananda, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, and Prabhavananda's teacher) had told him that there are some people who just get grace. 

However "God cannot be bought," Maharaj went on to say.  Even if you do all the japam, i.e. the repeating of one's personal mantram, and all the spiritual disciplines, you still will not know God. Knowing God is always given by grace.

FEMALE SWAMIS

Many will know that there are nuns in Vedanta, but not many will know that there are women swamis.  The term for a women swami is pravrajika, meaning "woman ascetic."

To become a swami, a woman follows the same path as a man, which entails first spending four to five years in brahmacharya, the initiation period in which the aspirant takes the first monastic vows. The woman is known as a brahmacharini, corresponding to the male brahmachari.

Brahmacharya is an active period of education and discipline at the literal foot of a guru, either at a guru's own home or at an ashram, that is at a retreat, hermitage, or monastery. The brahmacharini treats the guru as a father and as a god, in absolute obedience and practicing complete chastity.

Following this educational period, the brahmacharini is eligible to take final vows called sannyas.  This is formal entrance into monastic life, dedicated to the practice of complete renunciation of self and the attainment of knowledge of the supreme Reality, Brahman.  A brahmacharini who has taken the final vows is called a sannyasini, corresponding to the male sannyasin.

In the Ramakrishna Order, or, in India, with the Sarada Math, the sannyasini takes on the title of pravrajika, the same as the title of Swami. 

The Sarada Math, incidentally, is an order of nuns organized in India in 1954 in the name of Sri Sarada Devi, the wife of Sri Ramakrishna.  Sri Sarada Devi is also known as Holy Mother. 

On September 22, 1959, Christopher Isherwood recorded in his diary that Swami Prabhavananda had departed for a visit to India.  He said that the swami had with him five nuns who had just taken their final vows, thus becoming the swami's first pravrajikas.  These would have been nuns from the Vedanta Temple in Santa Barbara which was a convent.

MANTRAM AND JAPAM

"In the beginning was the Word," according to the Gospel of St. John, and "the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  This is not unlike the verse in the Rig-Veda, "In the beginning was Brahman, with whom was the Word, and the Word was truly the supreme Brahman."

In its various forms and modifications, the Word, philosophically, may be traced down from the ancient Hindu scriptures, to the teachings of Plato and the Stoics, to Philo of Alexandria, and again to John, the author of the Fourth Gospel.

In Hinduism, the Word takes the form of a mantram or mantra, which is given to a disciple by his teacher at initiation.  This consists of one or more holy names which the disciple is to repeat and meditate upon throughout the rest of his life.

The mantram is considered private and sacred, for it is the essence of the teacher's instructions to that particular disciple.  At the same time, it is the seed within which spiritual wisdom passes from one generation to another.  The disciple must never tell his mantram to any other person.

The act of repeating the mantram is called japam or japa.  The disciple can make japam aloud if he is alone, or silently if he is among other people.  Most spiritual aspirants make a certain fixed amount of japam every day.  Many use a rosary, moving one bead with each repetition of the mantram, thus eliminating the distraction of having to count. 

The making of japam is not confined to Hinduism.  Catholicism teaches it, as does the Greek Orthodox Church, among others.

MUDRA

A mudra is a symbolic hand gesture meant to aid in concentrating the mind.  It is found in Hinduism and Buddhism.

While some mudras involve the entire body, most are performed with the hands and fingers only. In Hinduism, they are employed statically in meditation and dynamically in classical dance.

Mudras are used in yoga practice.  A famous book published by the Bihar School of Yoga is called Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandha.  Asana are body postures.  Pranayama are breathing exercises.  Mudra are, again, symbolic hand gestures.  Bandha are "body locks," i.e. the way a participant holds the body postures in place.

As for Buddhism, common mudras are:

The Abhaya mudra represents protection, peace, benevolence, and the dispelling of fear.

The Bhumisparsha mudra calls upon the earth to witness Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. 

The Dharmacakra mudra represents a central moment in the life of the Buddha when he preached his first sermon after his Enlightenment.  In general, only Gautama Buddha is shown making this mudra.  It signifies the turning of the wheel of the Dharma.

The Dhyana mudra is the gesture of meditation, of the concentration of the Good Law and the sangha, i.e. the monastic order of monks.

The Varada mudra signifies offering, welcome, charity, giving, compassion and sincerity.

The Vajra and Jnana mudras are gestures of knowledge.

The Vitarka mudra is the gesture of discussion and transmission of Buddhist teaching.

The Karana mudra is the mudra which expels demons and removes obstacles such as sickness or negative thoughts. 

In Tibetan Buddhism, mudras are believed to establish actual contact with gods.   These mudras are directed to thirty-five or more Tantric deities, great and minor, and run in sequences which often require thirty to fifty hand patterns in each sequence.  They are believed to not only attract the presence of the benevolent powers but also to drive off the evil ones.

DALAI LAMA ON THE SELF

In a dharma talk from Dharamsala, India, on December 19-20, 2011, the Dalai Lama talked about the nature of the self.  "Who do we mean when we say 'I?'" he asked.  For instance, the "I" we are as a baby is not the same "I" we are as an adult.

He went on to present the well-known analogy of a cart, pointing out that a cart is made of parts, the wheels, the box, the pull bar, and so forth.  In the same way, a person, an "I," is made up of components.  They are called "skandhas" in Buddhism.  These are (1) the body, (2) the sense-perception, (3) the feelings, (4) the "sankharas" (difficult to translate but meaning approximately the instincts and the subconscious), (5) the faculty of reason.   It is the union of these "skandhas" that constitutes an individual. 

As long as the "skandhas" are held together the individual functions as a single being, lives, and has a history, even as each component is in perpetual flux.  The body changes from day to day only a little less conspicuously than the mental states. 

At death the union dissolves, the "skandhas" disperse, and the individual, the "I," ceases to exist.  In this way, then, the "I" is merely an appearance, and as only an appearance it does not carry on after death.  This is the Buddhist doctrine of "anatta," no-self.

TWO CHIEF MALE DISCIPLES

The two chief male disciples of the Buddha were Sariputra (Pali: Sariputta) and Maudgalyayana (Pali: Moggallana). The nuns Khema and Uppalavanna are the two chief female disciples, although little is known of them.

Close friends, Sariputra and Maudgalyayana both renounced the world on the same day and in the beginning were disciples of the religious skeptic Sanjaya Belatthaputta. They left Sanjaya's tutelage because it did not address their unresolved imperative of ending ultimate suffering.

Sariputra and Maudgalyayana went on to become Buddhist arahants, "ones foremost in wisdom," or saints, and are often shown together with the Buddha. Several sutras describe interactions between the three.

Sariputra was highly respected for his teaching, and is considered one of the most important disciples of the Buddha. He was awarded the title of "General of the Dharma" (Pāli: Dhammasenāpati) for his propagation of the teachings and is regarded as the founder of the Abhidamma tradition.

Maudgalyayana was reputedly a master of supernatural powers. Varying accounts have him, for example, speaking with the deceased; he did this so he could explain to them their horrific conditions and how their suffering came about. He hoped that by doing this they would be released from their suffering. He was able to use other powers of his, such as mind-reading, to give good and fitting advice to his students.

ABHIDAMMA TRADITION

The Pāli Canon, the scriptures of Theravāda Buddhism, has three general categories called pitaka, from Pali pitaka, meaning "basket."  The canon is traditionally known as the Tipitaka (Sanskrit: Tripitaka) "the three baskets."  They are as follows:

1.Vinaya Pitaka (discipline basket), dealing with rules for monks and nuns.

2.Sutta Pitaka (sutra/sayings basket), discourses, mostly ascribed to the Buddha, but some to disciples as well.

3.Abhidhamma Pitaka, variously described as philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, etc.

Regarding the Abhidhamma Pitaka (abhidhammapiṭaka), tradition holds that the Buddha developed it immediately after his enlightenment, then taught it to the gods some years later.  The Buddha then repeated it to one of his chief disciple Sariputta who then handed it on to the disciples.

Scholars, however, generally date the Abhidhamma to some time around the third century BCE, one hundred to two hundred years after the death of the Buddha. The consensus therefore is that the Adhidamma does not, for the most part, represent the words of the Buddha himself so much as the words of his disciples and commentators.

The Abhidhamma Pitaka consists of seven books:

Dhammasangani

Vibhanga

Dhatukatha

Puggalapannatti

Kathavatthu

Yamaka

Patthana

The importance of the Abhidhamma Pitaka is suggested by the fact that it came to have, like much of the canon, not only a commentary and a subcommentary on that commentary, but even a subsubcommentary on that subcommentary.

On the other hand, this relentless sub-commenting might be illustrative of what has been called "shastra-vasna" or "the lust for scriptures." 

In more recent centuries, Burma, now called Myanmar, has become the main center of Abhidhamma studies.

THE BUDDHA IN HINDUISM

Indian--Hindu--views of Gautama Buddha are mixed and confused at times, if not contradictory.  On the one hand, he is considered one of the greatest Indians ever to have lived, even as, on the other, his Buddhism is seen as merely one of many forms of an all-encompassing tolerant Hinduism.  Indeed, according to some Hindus, the Buddha did not intend to found a new religion at all, but merely sought a reformed, reasonable "middle path" in Hinduism.

The fact, meanwhile, that the Buddha did not mention God is taken as evidence that he was a Hindu who simply took God for granted, the obvious not needing elucidation. 

Scores of Hindu temples contain an image of the Buddha along with those of various deities and saints.  Pilgrimages to Bodh Gaya, the sacred site of the Buddha's enlightenment, and other Buddhist shrines in India, are also common in India. 

Such are the favorable views among a large number of Hindus, even while others, especially those with speculative or occultist minds, see the Buddha in a vastly different light.  They see him as sent to the world in order to mislead people, by opposing the teachings of the Brahmins.  They regard him as the embodiment of illusion and delusion.  To them, Buddhism is a sacrilege.

DISCRIMINATION

The task of a spiritual aspirant, according to Shankara in his Crest Jewel of Discrimination, is to learn the difference between what is eternal, i.e. abiding, and what is non-eternal, i.e. transient.

The purpose of such discrimination is to reach the ultimate truth.  That truth is Tat Tvam Asi, translated as That Art Thou.  You are Brahman.  Or as philosopher Alan Watts put it, "You're it. You're the whole works."

The place one finds this truth is not outside oneself but within.  As Christ said, "The kingdom of heaven is within."

Swami Brahmananda, one of Sri Ramakrishna's original disciples, said, "He who finds it within, finds it everywhere.  He who cannot find it within, cannot find it anywhere."

Discrimination has three steps:

(1) First, you have to hear about this truth, Tat Tvam Asi, from the scriptures and from an illumined teacher.  With the advent of the Internet, there is knowledge of this truth everywhere and from many illumined teachers.

(2) Next, you must reason upon this truth, understand it intellectually.  Does it sound feasible?

(3) Finally, you must meditate upon this truth.  You meditate until you feel in your bones that it is valid.  And with this, you no longer identify with your physical, mental, and intellectual self, what is called in Vedanta the sheaths.  The goal is to experience this truth to where you rise above body, mind, and self.

One's true nature is immortal, abiding, eternal, and blissful.  We experience this as the Atman, the subjective aspect of the Brahman.  The Atman is the experiencer of all experiences.  An important distinction must be made, though.  A person does not have the Atman, in the sense of having a soul.  Rather a person is the Atman. 

The nature of the Atman is quite different from that of the body.  It is the ignorant man who identifies himself with the transient body, with what is non-eternal.  This is not to say that a person cannot be conscious of the body, as when he is hungry, but then he can quickly detach himself from such consciousness and return to Atman consciousness, ultimate truth.  This is discrimination.

CATEGORIES OF CREATION

The term "creatio ex nihilo" refers to God creating everything from nothing.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).  Prior to that moment there was nothing.  God, therefore, did not, as some have argued, produce the universe from preexisting building blocks but rather from scratch.

Just to clarify, the Bible never expressly states that God made everything from nothing, but it is implied.  In Hebrews 11:3 it states, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”  Scholars interpret this to mean that the universe came into existence by divine command only, with nothing pre-existing.

This is difficult to comprehend.  The “first law of science” states that matter (the stuff the universe is made of) is neither created nor destroyed.  Matter can be converted from solid to liquid to gas to plasma and back again.   Atoms can be combined into molecules and split into their component parts, but matter cannot be created from nothing or be completely destroyed.  And so this idea that God created everything from nothing is not natural to us.  Creation was supernatural is why.   Judeo/Christian denominations, most of them, hold this view.

The next category, accordingly, is "creatio ex materia."  This is creation out of some pre-existent eternal matter, which is the belief of the Mormon church.

"Creatio ex deo" is creation out of the being of God and is where Vedanta is found.  Here, God IS creation.  God, in this viewpoint, literally shares in the existence of everything created through everything’s experience of it.  And as everything grows and develops so does God.

A fourth category of creation is no creation.  The universe, in this instance, had no beginning and will never end.  One model of this is an endless series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches lasting trillions of years, with God present the whole time.   God, here, is a separate phenomenon, an interpenetrating entity, or existence itself.   God is not the creator, though. 

The fifth possibility is also no creation, but this time there is no God present at all.   The universe is merely a phenomenon that always was and always will be.   Again, it might go through phases, such as a chain of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, but no God is involved with it.   This category is where Buddhism would be, since it does not accept that God ever existed, much less a creator-God.

AVIDYA

In Vedanta, avidya is defined as ignorance.  This ignorance is the ego burdening the Atman with every kind of irrelevance, denying the Atman its destiny, which is its identification with its source, Brahman.  This is to say, the Atman is by nature drawn to Brahman like the needle of a compass is attracted to a magnet. 

The ego, however, piles layer after layer of itself on top of the needle so that the Atman does not feel the attraction of the magnet that is Brahman.  Only by washing away these layers, by spiritual practice, will the needle feel once again the draw of the magnet and be able to connect with it.

Avidya in Buddhism is different, however.  Here the emphasis is on the psychological rather than the spiritual and concerns pain and suffering.  There are two types of avidya or ignorance in Buddhism.  The first is the innocent ignorance of not knowing any better.  A baby will put his hand in a fire not knowing he will get burned. 

The second type of ignorance in Buddhism, though, is what is termed ignore-ance.  It is ignoring what, from our experience, we know will cause us pain.  This is to say, we know that by putting our hand in a fire we will get burned, but we do it anyway.  We ignore the lesson of our pain.  Life is full of pain, psychological and emotional pain especially, but rather than pay attention to when, where, and how this pain comes about, we ignore it. 

BACKGROUND

A Vedantist and a guest were sitting in the backyard of the Vedantist's home. The Vedantist was talking about the necessity of a background for the perception of any figure.  He said to his guest, "Against what background do you see those flowers?"  His guest said, "Against the background of the hedge."  The Vedantist then said, "Against what background do you see the hedge?"  His guest said, "Against the background of the hills."  The Vedantist said, "And against what background do you see the hills?"  His guest said, "Against the background of the sky."  The Vedantist then said, "Against what background do you see the sky?'  His guest fell silent.  The Vedantist said, finally, "The background of consciousness."

BRAHMAN IS NOT GOD

The early Upanishads generally refer to Brahman as a neuter something, without movement or feeling, the impersonal matrix from which the universe has issued and to which it will in time return.  This It, this One Thing, is the substantial substratum of everything.

It is important to emphasized, however, that Brahman is not God, is not Pure Spirit as God would be.  Again, all words used in connection with Brahman are neuter, It not He.  And to call Brahman the Ground of All Being, as Western Vedantists do, is to understate the immensity of Brahman.

The subjective or immanent aspect of Brahman is termed Atman.  The pair may be used as synonyms or otherwise appear together as Brahman-Atman.  The fact that Brahman-Atman does not act in everyday life is additional evidence of the way in which Brahman-Atman is not God.

AVATARS IN BHAKTI

The Divine manifesting itself on the earth in some form, be it animal or human, in order to aid humankind in times of trouble, is the phenomenon of the avatar.  It is an underlying theme of bhakti, the way of devotion.  Krishna as the charioteer in the Bhagavad Gita is the supreme example of the avatar.  Avatars, though, are endless and beyond count in bhakti. 

While the Bhagavad Gita is the major bhakti text, the Bhagavata Purana is of equal importance. The Purana is a grand synthesis of the many themes and schools of bhakti, and contains not only bhakti presented in its fullest, but also many legends, folk stories, discourses, theological and philosophical asides, and bits of anthropology and sociology, centered around hundreds of avatars, saints, heroes, gods, and holy people.

KARMA IN BHAKTI

According to the Law of Karma, one is fated to undergo the suffering consequent to one's past lives, for whatever good or evil one may have done.  But in bhakti, the way of devotion, the Law of Karma is set aside.  The devotee expects that the Divine will return love for love and will alter or ignore the predestined course of karma.  As this is in conflict with traditional Vedic beliefs, brahmins (priestly caste) have balked at it.  The issue has yet to be settled, even as it is generally ignored by the masses.