Religion and Social Values - 1-1. Swami Krishnananda

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, August 27, 2020.
Chapter 1: The Circumstances in Which We Have to Live in the World -1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


1.
During this period of Sadhana Week, it is obviously your intention to gather a new strength into your own selves and return home as a rejuvenated personality, and not as a person who has attended a festival, a mela or a rejoicing—after which, generally, your energies are depleted. You go as a weakened person after a dramatic performance or a presentation which stimulates your vitals, stirs up your emotions, and agitates the cells of your body. Sadhana Week is not a dramatic performance. It is not an enactment by performers on a stage, and it is not your function to witness the presentations as if they are performances in a theatre.


2.
You have come with a different purpose, with personal difficulties which are eagerly waiting to come to the surface of your consciousness when the door opens and when you are left to your own selves. The din and bustle of life—the activities, the responsibilities, and the types of relationships you maintain in human society—manage to keep you out of yourself. They so dexterously operate that you feel you are leading a normal life.


3.
That which is normal does not present any difficulties before us. Anything that pinches us, like a nail in the bottom of the shoe—that which irks us and keeps us out of alignment, whether outwardly in our social relationships or inwardly within our own selves—these symptoms which keep us restless in any measure, and anxious to some extent, may be considered as symptoms of certain behaviours and operations within our own selves which cannot be regarded as normal.


4.
The normalcy of the physical body, which we call health, is also a state where we are buoyant with a new type of freedom. The greatest freedom is health, in which condition of freedom from every shackle we feel buoyant and often forget our own selves. The healthier we are, the less we think of ourselves. When an illness of any kind enters our body, we become conscious that we are. We begin to be aware of each limb of the body. An eye, an ear, a tooth, a finger, a toe, or any blessed part of our body attracts our attention when it is set out of tune with the normal function of the body.

To be continued ...

=================================================================

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PRACTICAL RELIGION : BREATHING AND MEDITATION - 2.

-
Image
Opinion               25/12/2017.                    1077                 All Members,          Respected family members of this great holy Nation. Everyone's idea of practical religion is according to his theory of practicality and the standpoint he starts from. There is work. There is the system of worship. There is knowledge.           VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE PRESENT DAY STUDENTS : - This article was recorded by Ida Ansell in shorthand. As, however, Swamiji's speed was too great for her in her early days, dots are put in the articles to indicate the omissions, while the words within square brackets are added by way of linking up the disconnected parts. (Delivered in San Francisco, April 5, 1900) Sub : PRACTICAL RELIGION : BREATHING AND MEDITATION - 2. Swami Vivekananda We are always talking [about] practical religion. But it must be practical in our sense. Especially [so] in the Western countries. The Protestants' ideal is good works. They do not ca
Read more

The Realisation of the Absolute :3-5-1

-
Image
Chapter 3: The Need for Integral Knowledge -5 5. THE REALISATION OF ONENESS IN THE SPIRIT -1 One must go beyond all that causes duality, even the intellect, and take resort in the transcendent silence. "One should not play too much upon words, for it is mere weariness of speech." "The Brahmana should, knowing Him, renounce learning, and stand childlike and The intellect is the seat of egoism, and the highest learning is only apara vidya, not above the phenomena of nature. The intellect has no light of its own, independent of the Self, any more than the moon has any light other than that of the sun. Consciousness gets diffused through the distractive intellect and creates the perception of multiplicity. "Dismissing all other words, He alone is to be meditated upon and known, the bridge to Immortality." Further, it is erroneous on the part of an individual to take seriously the many forms of perception. These forms float in Truth even a
Read more

HINDU FASTS & FESTIVALS: 3 - Sri Swami Sivananda.

-
Image
=========================================================== Thursday, 14 Sep 2023. 05:30.  3.Durga Puja or Navaratri Post-3. ============================================================= 3.Durga Puja or Navaratri SALUTATIONS to the Divine Mother, Durga, who exists in all beings in the form of intelligence, mercy, beauty, who is the consort of Lord Shiva, who creates, sustains and destroys the universe. This festival is observed twice a year, once in the month of Chaitra and then in Aswayuja. It lasts for nine days in honour of the nine manifestations of Durga. During Navaratri (the word literally means “nine nights”) devotees of Durga observe a fast. Brahmins are fed and prayers are offered for the protection of health and property. The beginning of summer and the beginning of winter are two very important junctions of climatic and solar influence. These two periods are taken as sacred opportunities for the worship of the Divine Mother. They are indicated respectively by the Rama-Navar
Read more