Dharma - the purpose of life

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When I started this Blog, I was clueless about what I wanted to do and had no clue how this Blog platform worked. I had to learn and design as I progressed. So I started off with creating a number of Pages where I captured stuff that I had already written previously. One of those was a paper on dharma which I had completed about this time last year. That paper is available in PDF format, if anyone is interested.

I decided quite early that I didn't want my Blog to be burdened with long articles. So I split up my paper into 8 parts, each part on a separate Page. I provided links to each of the Pages in a top level Menu Page which was visible at the top of my Blog. I also provided links at the bottom of each Page to the subsequent Page. But I had never created Posts referencing those Pages. So anyone going through my Posts would miss those Pages. That's a defect I intend to correct.

The first Page introduces dharma, a Sanskrit word with a multifaceted meaning. I give a short history on the evolution of the religious landscape in India and the emergence of Adi Shankara's condensation of the vedic spiritual traditions in a comprehensive summary, and his effective rebuttal of the new traditions. That is the first stage of my paper.

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The Tao of Music

Today, I am introducing a new segment in my Blog - a dedication to music and song.

For a start, I will look at songs that helped me to attain clarity about one or another aspect of life. I have identified three to get started with and have provided links if you wish to listen to them. The videos I selected carry lyrics so that you can explore the songs on your own. I plan to discuss the lyrics at a later date.

I have also share links to three religious/spiritual songs. They represent three different moods. I plan to discuss those lyrics as well.

Finally, I have added some musical conversations that struck me as being symbolic of their genres.

From a philosophical viewpoint, music lies at the core of everything. That is my justification for including a segment on music. The illustration is simply a whimsical collaboration with my AI.

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No Birth, no Death

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Today's Post is again about the video that I mentioned previously. Today I wish to discuss these videos and expand on my understanding of the core subject.

First of all, there are several videos online bearing the same or almost the same title. And they are all about the same subject, albeit with slightly different takes on it. So the viewer may want to do a search and look through several of them to choose the one which looks the most appealing.

The video posted by "Life Lessons" is an on-camera narration by someone called Ben. This is a format that some viewers may prefer.

The video posted by Amira & Aryan Arora is an interview featuring Rupert Spira, a spiritual teacher of non-duality. In another video, Rupert Spira himself answers a question from the audience and goes on to explain the concept. Again, some viewers may find these formats to be easier to follow.

So there are many options for learning about this subject. I hope you find the one that works for you.

Meanwhile, there is another element of confusion that I should point out. The video I shared starts with a quote by John Wheeler, who is mentioned several times in the video. Clearly he is the inspiration behind the video. If you do a search for John Wheeler, you could end up looking at the profile of a theoretical physicist and imagining that he lived a double life. There is another John Wheeler, a spiritual teacher, who has written several books on the subject. Wheeler is a second level (via "Sailor" Bob Adamson) disciple of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a respected 20th-century Advaita Vedanta master.

All of that is merely secondary information, included here for any who may be interested. The essence of my discussion is captured for posterity in the Page linked below. This Post is transient and will age as time passes.

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Respond, don't React

Reaction and response are descriptions of the action we take when something happens.

• A reaction is compulsive. It is an unthinking knee-jerk action based on habit and conditioning. The consequence of a reaction is often negative.
• A response is well thought through and the action taken is the consequence of consciously deciding what is the best action to be taken at that time. A response obtains a good result most of the time.

The best illustration of the difference between react and respond is when applied to medication. When a person is given medication, what do we mean when we say react or respond?

React to medicine is negative, a bad effect. If the person suffers from some bad effect because of taking the medicine, we say that the person reacted to the medicine.

Respond to medicine is positive, a good effect. If the person is relieved of the illness and becomes better, we say the person responded to the medicine.

The same principle applies to the world at large. The intelligent, thinking person looks at what happened, thinks of the consequences of his actions and then takes the action which will yield the best result. Of course there are times when even the best thought through action can result in a negative effect because of uncontrollable circumstances, but most of the time, the result is positive. The probability of a positive result is higher.

The unthinking person simply reacts based on what he has done before or what has been done to him, giving no thought to what could happen as the result of his action. Of course, there are times when a reaction can obtain a positive result. We say the person got lucky. But most of the time, a knee-jerk reaction gets a negative result. The probability of a positive result is lower.

Sadhguru Says

The Goal of Meditation

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Continuing from my previous post... Having captured my thoughts on identification of the Self and shared them with the group, I wanted to go on to discuss the next stage — communion with the Self. As I developed the paper, I discovered that I was largely writing about my own experience, which was probably not appropriate for the group. So I completed the paper and then proceeded to develop this blog where I could share my personal thoughts with anyone else who was interested. I made mention of this objective in my first blog post. 

My first three posts were about an introductory paper which I had written several months earlier. Then a whole bunch of other things took hold of my attention. Yesterday, I finally got back onto my original track. This is the second part of that thought stream. Let's see if I develop additional commentary on this subject.

Yoga means Union! Yoga does not mean stretching the body into contorted positions! That idea was conceived in the West when they discovered the health benefits of hatha yoga, the physical component of the yogic path. The true purpose of yoga is to help the individual to attain union with their inner self. This union is an introspective process which can be approached along several paths. Hatha Yoga improves the physical balance of the individual in order to facilitate spiritual centering.

My second paper on the Inner Spaces takes a look at meditation as a whole and my personal experience with it.

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