Ritam - Being in Balance. A Podcast on Wellbeing
Mental wellbeing is an escalating global challenge having serious impact on the quality of life, productivity in workplace etc. Our approach to wellbeing fundamentally depends on our perspective of ourselves. Are we just human beings, not much different from animals or something more? Over thousands of years the Vedic spiritual seekers dived deep within themselves to explore the inner space and they repeatedly verified that we all, without exception, are in essence really spiritual beings having human experiences. Their discoveries form Vedanta philosophy - the 'science of human excellences" - which explain in detail and with much clarity how we have multidimensional physical, mental, emotional and ethical layers of personality covering the fundamental Pure and eternal spiritual being. Along with this, the Vedic seekers developed systematic Yoga techniques to purify our minds and "dis-cover" our true Self.
The Vedantic conception of ourselves and Yogic mind-management techniques offer an alternative approach to address the mental wellbeing challenges. Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, Auckland has taken up a project to make available these Vedanta-Yoga teachings to empower individuals with the knowledge and skill-sets to better manage their minds, emotions, values etc. to live meaningful, peaceful and productive lives.
Ritam is the Vedic principle responsible for maintaining order, harmony and rhythm both in the macrocosm and the microcosm. Stress, tension, dis-ease etc arise when we lose this balance at different levels of our being and around us. We have limited capacity to influence change outside us but we can definitely integrate our mind to our inner Self to gain greater poise, balance and rhythm in life. Meditation is the art of turning the mind inwards and anchoring it to our eternal, omniscient, blissful and pure Self. The more we are integrated with our inner Self, the greater will be the influence we can cast around us. This is the spiritual way to freedom from the slavery to the eternal world and internal body, senses and mind.
Ritam - Being in Balance is our series of conversations with Swami Tadananda wherein we explore the Vedanta-Yoga teachings and practices to promote our wellbeing.
Ritam - Being in Balance. A Podcast on Wellbeing
37.Wellbeing - Jnana Yoga part 2
You'll gain insights into the essential prerequisites for embarking on the path of Jnana Yoga, including the cultivation of a strong power of discrimination, or buddhi, through practices like chanting the Gayatri mantra. Discover the importance of harnessing and intensifying your internal energy for higher realization and how traditional methods of focused cultivation are central to developing mental acuity for Jnana Yoga.
In another enlightening segment, learn how to integrate spiritual practice with everyday actions through the teachings of Vedanta and Karma Yoga. Find out how spiritual practitioners transform their daily work into acts of devotion by recognizing the divine in everyone they serve, embodying the principle of "Shiva Gyane, Jiva Seva." Swamiji also shares valuable insights on maintaining this divine perspective amidst life's challenges, emphasizing the power of self-knowledge and introspection for personal growth. Tune in for practical guidance on turning daily work into a spiritual practice, achieving personal balance, and transforming your responses to life's difficulties.
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Namaste to the listeners and Namaste Swamiji. How are you, swamiji? I'm good, sunil. Thank you. How are you.
Speaker 1:I'm great, thank you. I'm still at the Wellbeing Centre in Glenmurray and the centre looks amazing. As I said earlier, it's nice, calm and peaceful. It's perfect for recording podcasts, swamiji. Nice, it's perfect for recording podcast, swamiji. So we'll continue from last, the last episode. In the last episode, we talked about gyan yoga and swamiji explained it quite well using a very nice parable about the lion who thought it was a sheep and forgot its true nature. Still, swamiji, it seems. While I've understood it now, it just seems a very difficult practice. Is anyone and everyone competent to take this path up?
Speaker 2:In every particular field. You know there is a prerequisite you don't get enrolled in a MBBS course without having some basics, foundations, or become join an engineering course without having studied physics and mathematics, for example. Those are prerequisites for it. Essential then. Only you can build on that. So the prerequisites for Jnana Yoga is a very strong power of discrimination, discernment, what is called that buddhi that can compare two things okay and identify an error. One is better than the other. We use that all the time. You know, making a business decision, you'll take up the option that is more profitable. If you suppose, did not have the discrimination, you'll make the wrong choice, isn't it Okay? Everywhere we use that buddhi for giving us a better result. And where that discrimination is not there, people make mistakes and take the wrong turn and come to grief. All right. So we have that faculty, all of us.
Speaker 2:But it can be sharpened. It can be sharpened to make it so incisive and so broad that you can discriminate about the true nature of things, what appears and what is the reality. So what our senses show us is what is an appearance, what our mind, what we grasp through the mind, is an appearance. That's not the reality. How our mind is conditioned according through the lens. That colored lens we see and we color that thing. Different people are conditioned in different ways and each one has got their own perception and perspective. We talked about that earlier. The reality and the perspective are two different things. Most people take that perspective to be the reality okay and they think they've got it.
Speaker 2:This is my view, this is my perspective, and you'll argue and quarrel, but none of them. They are just having their own perception of things. The reality is something else. So if we remind ourselves and this is where all that earlier discussion also can be very useful that everything is only an appearance, the senses don't give us the full information. It gives us enough to do our practical things in this way, but it doesn't give us the ultimate truth, it hides it. The mind also.
Speaker 2:When information comes or knowledge comes into our brain and in our mind space, we create an information or vritti, or knowledge. That is a representation of something that's outside. You see a tree outside, light falls on. That comes through your eyes, goes into your brain and inside your head. You create an image and you say I'm seeing the tree. Well, if you have cataract, you will see something else. If you've got a different color glass, it will something else. It's not the reality. But we are not discriminating, we think we've got it right. 100 and now we are going to argue and you know, and that's react to that in that way.
Speaker 2:Now, if we come to this deep understanding that all these instruments are really a bit misleading. Yeah, they're not perfect for the high realization. So how do you sharpen that buddhi? Just like a knife, you sharpen, you know. With a dull knife you can't cut a tree down, or X, you know, you sharpen it and it makes life easier. So this buddhi is to be sharpened. That sharpening of the mind requires certain energies, you know. And so let's look at the old traditional system In a Hindu, certain energies, and so let's look at the old traditional system In the Brahmin family or somewhere. A child at the age of seven or eight is given these mantras Okay, to awaken that buddhi, the Gayatri mantra Bhargo devasya dhimahi, dhi buddhi, dhiyo yona prachodaya, and that mantra itself has that power to awaken that faculty and the child does his daily devotions and you'll find that after that, after some time, that particular nerve, so that aspect of the brain in the mind, awakens, become strong and sharp. Then he uses that for his studies, scriptures they used to memorize the whole of the scriptures and the vedas at a young age. Where did that tremendous capacity of memory and remembering and discriminating come from? Because they cultivated its sex.
Speaker 2:What do you call it Systematically? The other thing is another source of that energy, and this is a little bit of a sensitive topic that might require another discussion at some point. It's all about energy. The body is a bundle of energy. The mind is a bundle of energy. The energy can be dissipated and lost and nothing is there, or it can be harnessed and generalized and intensified. It's only when that energy is intensified, then something meaningful and fruitful happens, like sunlight is intensified through a magnifying glass or the light coming entering your eyes is first intensified through the eye lens, you know, and focus on the retina or the earlobe, you know it collects all the sound and intensified before it sends it down to the eardrum.
Speaker 2:So this whole universe is energy. We are also an energy. That energy flows through us. Does it get dissipated out, like a river going down the creek from the mountains? All the energy water just gets wasted. Or you build a dam and you build up that pressure and then you can run a turbine and generate electricity. So this body, the mind and everything is the channel through which energy flows. If we learn the art of harnessing that energy, not dissipating it through the senses, practicing, so it's yama and niyama in the first two steps of Raja Yoga, are those techniques, practices, right? And the most important one in there is Brahmacharya. Okay, that is the most powerful energy within our human body, and if we can arrest it, restrain it and channelize it through sadhana, it becomes transformed into a wonderful spiritual energy called Ojas that gets stored in the brain, and the real power of the brain, of mind, actually comes from that. So it doesn't happen just like that. That is why this institution of monasticism came in different religions, among the Christians and the Soviet. It's across the board isn't it.
Speaker 1:Almost every religion has some sort of monastery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they understood that if you want to aspire for that higher climb the Everest, you have to harness and arrest its energy and channelize it. Only then it can elevate you to that level. So in time that buddha will open. Actually, a particular nerve develops in the brain. It's called medha. Medha is tremendous, not only memory. A subtle nerve develops that can discriminate and see through things between the appearance and see, penetrate and see the reality. Okay, that develops through these spiritual practices.
Speaker 2:It's difficult to explain, it's your own thing. You know, you develop it and say, hey enough, 20 years ago my mind seemed to be so dull compared to now I can. It's so sharp, I can grasp the subtle truths that I was reading the same scriptures, but they throw out a whole different meaning to it. When I look at the world, I see through another set of eyes. It looks like I'm looking at things through a microscope. Now before I was looking at things through naked eye. You see. So that capacity develops.
Speaker 2:Secondly, along with that, along with that capacity of discrimination, a tremendous amount of willpower is necessary, because you understand one thing to be able to pursue that is another thing. And most people don't have that willpower. A little bit of difficulty comes and they abandon. You know it's too hard or I can't have that willpower. A little bit of difficulty comes and they abandon. It's too hard or I can't sustain that pressure to break through the barriers.
Speaker 2:So in Jnana Yoga, very strong willpower is necessary, because your old conditioning will try to take the mind down, identify itself with the body, identify you with the world and make you react to that. Okay, so it gets caught out there. These are the things that you own. We become attached to them. We think we possess them, but they really possess us. You are possessed by them. Any change that happens to them affects you, you know All right. So how do you discriminate and say, hey, that's not me, this is my duty, my responsibility. I do, but I will not let them to be my master and I will be their slave and my happiness and misery depends on them. And I dance to that music, to their music. That's the problem with many people.
Speaker 2:So that willpower by which we can extricate ourselves, it's not easy, it's developed systematically, but that's an essential part in the practice of Jnana Yoga, because it's like you're trying to climb the mountain hill straight up the slope. It's very steep and so it's not for everyone and anyone. Intellectually it might appeal very much. Lot of people who have studied some degree in this they say, oh, I love Jnana Yoga and this and that, and it mostly becomes intellectual gymnastics, but in the everyday life there's no practice of it. So when Swami Vivekananda asked us, taught us, he said that, look, these four yogas are not watertight compartments, they're interrelated and you can harmonize them beautifully and the ideal is to synthesize and harmonize them. And that's what's represented in the logo of the Ramakrishna mission. And so in our practice, yes, are we Jnana Yogis? Are we Karma Yogis? Are we devotees? Are we meditators? Are we all of them? In our practice, all of them are beautifully harmonized.
Speaker 1:Okay, so in the practice, how is the mission? It's the Ramakrishna mission. How is this practice?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:So let's take up. You might see this Swami Saradeva doing various types of services In India. You'll see other medical services, educational services or relief services, interacting with people. You know what are they getting? Any money, job salary? No, what are they doing For them?
Speaker 2:It's a spiritual practice. It's not charity like Red Cross or philanthropy. You know, you see somebody suffering and you want to help them poor fellow type thing. No, no, no, that's not the idea.
Speaker 2:The idea is this wonderful teaching that I have been talking about, that we are all divine. You are divine. I am divine here and now. Okay, my eyes, when I look at you, sunil, I see a male guy person, but my mind, looking through the Vedanta glasses, there is a spiritual being whom I am seeing as a human being Just when I close my eyes and I say I am a spiritual being, even though I feel I am a human being. But I am trying to assert my spiritual identity as the primary identity and everything is a covering and I look at you, if I can hold on to that idea that this personality, this person, whatever is his bio data and cv type of thing you know, behind that is that one people, consciousness which is atman. That is what this, this teaching was of gyan yoga, all right, but okay, so you, you read the scriptures, have the discussions intellectually, it's all very good. Go out into the world, can you hold on to that and put into practice?
Speaker 2:So that's why Swami Vivekananda started and introduced this Karma Yoga. But he, it was not just Karma, it was a synthesis of all the yogas. So the teaching is Shiva, jnani, jiva Seva. That's the formula, means Shiva, my knowledge that Shiva dwells in the human being, and I will serve that living God in the human form. Okay, so see the power form. Yeah, okay, so see the power of this idea. It's a very simple teaching and when you go out in the world, you interact with people, starting from your home. Your mother and father are the divinity in this human form and you love them, care for them, but without any attachment. It's you know, it doesn't bind you. Your wife or husband, your children, you do all those, interact with them, do your duties. You're not a cold-hearted, indifferent person because you say, hey, the world is false and I'm going to.
Speaker 2:No, that is a misunderstanding. Giving up the world, yeah, no, that's not giving up the world, that is misunderstanding. Yes, no, you have to give up the ignorance about the world. You have to give your perception of the appearance, not the world literally, physically. You might need to detach yourself slightly to practice that, but you have to come back and re-engage with it.
Speaker 2:So when you go out to your various professions, if somebody is a teacher, for example, all the students, if the teacher says, after studying this, vedanta and Jnana Yoga and all that, inside all of them is that same infinite divine being. Their manifestation is less and it will become more and more. But instead of me treating them in a very ignorant way through the appearance only, color, gender, age and all those type of things, I will convert this work into worship. Yeah, okay, it's not easy. When things are going on right, you you know, then you're able to hold on to that idea. But you might be thinking of that person as god. The other person doesn't know. Know, he is God and is not going to behave like that, and that's your test. When they react in an opposite way, they get angry, sweat you or whatever, criticize you Anything other than God they do, can you still hold on to your idea? That's where that willpower comes. Okay, if your willpower is weak, you get swept off your feet, you forget and you react. But if you can hold in the midst of all that, okay, you'll see that you'll be able to maintain that balance, that rhythm, that poise. So this gives you a grounding.
Speaker 2:Yes, in the whole day you might remember this idea 10 times in the midst of your work, but every time you remember you'll feel very happy. Okay, because the knowledge brings that joy. Out of the 10 times, 8 times you might slip off and forget about it, okay. But if you remember in 2 times, you know going through some hard, difficult interaction with people, your colleagues, with boss, and all that, and you're able to remind yourself. This guy there whoever it is, really the mask is speaking. I'm not going to forget who is there, and that will prevent you from reacting, and not to react is very, very powerful. So on what do you stand? This knowledge? But if you cultivate that all the time reading, thinking, reading, thinking and practicing in good situations people will come and say, swamiji, it's alright, you know, but you come across these terrible people and try to treat them like God, it's not easy. Start with the good ones. Ok, develop your muscles, yeah, first, before you try the hard ones yeah, before the hard ones yeah before the hard ones, you know.
Speaker 2:Okay, otherwise you'll get swept away. So, shiva Gyane, jeeva Seva, nar Seva, narayan Seva, Jan Seva, janardhan Seva. Okay, that is the idea, and so if we spend so much time in our life going out and doing work, can we transform that work into worship by introducing this knowledge perspective to it?
Speaker 1:So what you've done here is we've talked about Karma Yoga already, right, and now this is what you're saying is now you've got the knowledge part.
Speaker 2:That adds to Karma Yoga Otherwise.
Speaker 2:Karma becomes very dry. This is like it gives a little bit of grease to it, takes out that friction. You know you're going out there Every day is a challenge. You're not only going to earn money. You're going into the battlefield to say I'm going to be a spiritual warrior, I'm going to do all those things, but of course I'll get my salary. But I want to get something more than that and I'm going to test myself and if you're alert throughout life, then you'll make progress.
Speaker 2:You might be starting as a graduate with that row, but by the time you mature and you've held on to this one idea day in, day out, day in, day out, tested yourself 99, 99 times. You failed once you succeeded, until success comes. And by the time you retire, you are unshakable. You know nothing, is able to talk of your balance, you are able to deal with anyone and everyone and it brings out the best in you. You know, you don't become angry, you don't become critical, you don't become cynical. You don't become angry, you don't become critical, you don't become cynical. You don't see the defects of others. You say that's the appearance, only the reality. Everyone is divine and if you keep on doing that, keep on doing that. Keep on doing that. Every time you do this will leave a spiritual impression in your mind. We talked about karma yoga, how every thought, word, deed leaves an impression. So when you do that again and again and again, the sum total of the spiritual impressions will begin to pile up, build up.
Speaker 1:These are all the good impressions.
Speaker 2:Higher energy, higher energy, positive. That's why Swami Vivekananda says to be good, to do good. That's the whole of religion, you know. He made it so simple. So why? Because he knew the practicality of it. You keep on doing good. It keeps on building your samskaras.
Speaker 2:At some point, all this power, good, some samskaras, will become so powerful that you will be good in spite of yourself. All right, it becomes your natural thing. You know, kindness, happiness. So you'll find people who are just naturally like, helpful and kind. And why? Because Because they've done it so many times. It has become this habit in second nature. So in the beginning we do this and this will override the opposite type things, you know. And at some point this will become more powerful and dominating, and then you'll find it becomes easier. In the beginning it's a little hard struggle because you had very small 5% of Gursam's karas and 95 were pointing the other way. So, but work has become ocean, you see. So karma with jnani, what's the difference?
Speaker 2:An ordinary man goes out in the world and he thinks this world is real and he's looking for some material end and results and things. He doesn't have a spiritual understanding of the people and the world that he's dealing with the Aboriginal culture, the Maori culture, the Vedic culture. They all say this universe is consciousness, that appears as these things. The consciousness is primary and they interact with the world through the land, the rivers, the mountains, the ancestors. You know you're worshipping Kailash Shiva. Another person say there's a mountain, why you know. No, but for the devotee that is the divine being behind that he's not worshipping the mountain, he's worshipping the divinity that he visualizes. Or he says Shiva Linga or a stone image. So if one can worship God in this shivalinga, in a parvat, in a picture photograph or a marble statue, why can't he worship the more living God in front of him as a human being?
Speaker 2:This is what Swami Vivekananda says. Don't go and create gods. God is there, right in front of you. Open your eyes and see him with the eye of knowledge and interact with him. Ok, so it's not like going to church or temple Once a week. You're all the time interacting with God. In ignorance, he is called man. That's why Swami Vivekananda says I preach unto you that God whom in ignorance, people call man, nice.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:I preach unto you that God whom, in ignorance, people call man. Wow, you see, god is right in front of us, wearing all these masks. If you read the gospel of shri ram krishna, he says my divine mother has become the whole in the 24 cosmic principles and the whole, all living beings he could palpably see, high in every one of, because his spiritual eye, through his spiritual eye, he could see. For others, we see all the shortcomings black, white, brown, male, female, in all the differences, and then we are critical, we are judgmental, we like this, we hate others. And see there's a cause of so much struggle, strife in this world, and see the power of this one single piece of Vedanta principle, how it can transform for one person. So much peace and balance will come. At least you are not getting rattled, you are not reacting and you are not creating and contributing to more confusion in this world. Yes, that's right. So suppose this was taught to us from childhood. We drank it with our mother's milk, so to say.
Speaker 2:In the scriptures there was a queen, queen Madalasa. While she's rocking the cradle of the child, she's singing, and there's this beautiful song. It's there. Search on the internet and on the lines is you are the pure perfect one, wow, okay. And the child is listening to that. It will go deep in its psychology so many other things she is teaching, and when the child grows up that knowledge at some point will sprout. That is the type of knowledge that we need and that upbringing we need. And at the school the teacher should teach. At work your boss should tell everyone hey.
Speaker 2:I am not going to take care of your shortcomings. Inside you is something pure and perfect. You can do anything. The moment you tell that to your you know subordinates or employees, you know the best comes out of them. You know they cheer up. They admit their shortcomings or mistakes they made, they apologize and they promise I'm going to do this. Admit their shortcomings or mistakes they made, they apologize and they promise I'm going to do this. Otherwise, they're defensive and this and that finger pointing punishment fear One single idea.
Speaker 2:And if it becomes the ethos of the company, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Okay, that's what Swami Vivekananda says. Call upon the sleeping soul and see how it. Call upon the sheep and see how it begins to respond as the line power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come and everything that is excellent will come. When the sleeping soul is roused to self conscious activity, that knowledge is hidden and we are behaving like miserable. We don't do justice to our true nature. So this is the power of Vedanta Jnana Yoga. Think about it, discuss it, meditate on it, put it into practice in your decision making, in your interaction with people around there. It just makes a soul transformational.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it just makes a point, you know.
Speaker 2:Work out in your own workplace and situation, identify 10 cases where I say I'm going to practice this, this, this each one will have their own list of things and start January and try to keep on working on that and come December you will find you have transformed yourself and if you keep on doing that your whole lifetime, you come leave this world much more spiritually advanced than we entered into this world and that's big, and that's big in itself. Yeah, it's good for us, it's good for everyone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've actually added positive energy into this world system yeah, it's so powerful Instead of negative energy.
Speaker 2:That's why Sri Krishna in the Gita says there's no purifier greater than knowledge in this world. Nahi jnana sadhiresham pavitram yaha vidyate. Okay, the spiritual knowledge. The more we cultivate it, the more we think about it, the more we discuss it, the more we apply it, the darkness fades away, we begin to see things in the proper light and ultimately, what's the proper light? I'm divine, everyone else is divine. You are perfect. Apparently, we put on all these different masks and playing different roles, and this is a stage where we are actors, they're heroes, they're villains. Everything is there, but this is only an appearance. This is not the reality. Gyan Yoga is trying to tell the two actors who are appearing as heroes and villains in the movie are good friends behind the stage.
Speaker 2:Don't get carried away and think that they are enemies.
Speaker 1:Let's go shake hands at the end. Wow, that is quite powerful actually, samji, when you start to think of the application of Khyan Yoga in combination with Karma Yoga, especially because, as you say, it's quite difficult to just do one of the yogas so you have to harmonize the two, and that makes your daily work, your daily activities, spiritualizing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when you come back, suppose you come back, go through a hard time, difficulty, when you come back and introspect and reflect and then you say say hey, this is where I slipped. You know, I could have done better. This idea did not come to my mind. I reacted in that way. I lost my cool and said something. I didn't see the divine in from me. I reacted to the appearance, only I got swept off my feet.
Speaker 2:Next time I'm going to be a little bit more alert, you know become more vigilant and alert and next time maybe a similar situation comes, but this time you did not react and you will feel so good, my god, you see, and that is the power now. This is the power of the knowledge, self knowledge, and if you keep on practicing, it becomes natural. It's so wonderful, yeah excellent.
Speaker 1:Thank you so wonderful. Yeah, excellent. Thank you, swamiji. That was another great episode with a lot of very good chat. Most welcome, sunil, thank you. Thank you, swamiji.
