Sunday, May 19, 2013

(May 19,2013) From the Scriptures and Wise Ones


From the Scriptures and Wise Ones
Divine Life Society Publication: Thus Awakens the Awakened One by Swami Krishnananda

·         Manu Smriti says: One-fourth of one’s knowledge comes from the Teacher, one-fourth from study, one-fourth from co-students and one-fourth by experience in the passage of time.
·         “He who is humbler than a blade of grass and more patient than a tree; who respects others but wants not any respect for oneself, is fit to take the Name of the Almighty Lord.” This was the famous instruction of Sri Gauranga Mahaprabhu.
·         Samsara or world-existence comes to an end only when the jiva recognises its true identity with the Absolute. The condition of the jiva-consciousness is just the condition of the sheath with which it identifies itself at any given time. When the Atman is discovered to be different form the sheaths, it is at once realised as Brahman. - Panchadasi
·         “He is called a ‘man’ who, when anger rises forcibly within, is able to subdue and cast it out as a snake casts away its slough with ease,” said Hanuman to himself when he suspected that the fire he set through the whole of Lanka might perhaps have burnt Sita, too.
·         “Poison is not real poison. Sense-objects are the real poison. Poison kills one life, but sense-objects can devastate a series of lives.”
·         These persons do not get sleep, says Vidura to Dhritarashtra: Those who are sick, those who have been overthrown by others and are deprived of power and assistance from any side, those who are afflicted with lust, and those who are scheming to deprive others of their possessions.
·         The Mahabharata says that the Vedas are afraid of him who tries to approach them without a knowledge of the correct import of the Epics and Puranas. Here is a covert suggestion that the Absolute of philosophy should also include the variety and conflict of practical life, in order to be real and not merely an object of speculation.
·         The four noble truths of the Buddha that there is suffering, that there is a cause for suffering, that there is a way out of suffering and that there is a state beyond suffering, are proof enough to show that he was not a nihilist in the sense in which the word is used today, but a practical man who had an eye to doing something than merely conjecturing about Truth and its realisation.
·         The teaching of the Yoga-Vasishta emphasises that when there is perception of an object by the seer or observer, there has to be pre-supposed the existence of a consciousness between the subject and the object. If this conscious connecting link were not to be, there would be no perception of existence. There cannot be a consciousness of relation between two things unless there is a consciousness relating the two terms and yet standing above them. The study of the perceptional situation discloses the fact that the subject and the object are phases of a universal consciousness.
·         “By excess of passion Ravana was destroyed; by excess of greed Duryodhana was killed; by excessive charity Kama came to ruin; excess is always to be avoided,” says a hitopadesa.
·         “By pranayama one should burn all dross; by pratyahara sever all attachments; by dharana all distraction; and by dhyana all undivine qualities.” - Manu Smritis
·         Krishna and Arjuna should be seated in one chariot. Isvara and jiva should partake of a single objective in all action. This mutual transfusion of the universal and the individual is Krishna-Arjuna-Samvada, the eternal Gita of the cosmos which is Dharmakshetra and Kurukshetra.
·         Tena tyaktena bhunjithah, is the exhortation of the Isopanishad. It means that our enjoyment in the real sense is possible of achievement only when we renounce everything. But what is this renunciation? It is implied in the earlier sentence of the verse, which states - isavasyam idam sarvam. All this universe is indwelt by the Lord. As such, desire for objects is an impossibility. This is true renunciation; which is also the true freedom and joy.
·         Sarvam paravasam duhkham, sarvam atmavasam sukham - ‘All dependence on persons and things is pain; all self-dependence is joy.’ This has to be practised gradually, by rise from the grosser to the subtler, from the external to the internal.
·         Each and every contact which the desireful nature establishes with the outer world is a piercing dart thrust into the heart of the person cherishing such nature.” - Vishnu Purana
·         “Our prosperity, our friends, our bondage and even our destruction are all in the end rooted in our tongue,” says a famous adage.
·         Draupadi exclaims in the court of the Kauravas: “That is not an assembly where there are no elders; they are not elders who do not know dharma; that is not dharma which is not in consonance with truth; that is not truth which has crookedness behind it.”
·         “He who knows, knows not; he who knows not, knows.” This is a statement in the Upanishad, meaning that one who has realised the Truth has no personality-consciousness, and one who has it knows not the Truth.

Continue to read:
From the Scriptures and Wise Ones -Thus Wakens the Awakened One” by Swami Krishnananda

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