Life 36 (May 20 - Sep 20)

Life 36 (May 20 - Sep 20)

Postby winston » Fri May 22, 2020 8:13 am

What is the most important instruction of spiritual education?

Spiritual learning (vidya) instructs you to remember yourself first.

After transforming yourself, try to reform others: that is the advice offered by spiritual knowledge.

The delusive attachment to the objective world, can be uprooted by means of selfless service rendered as worship to the Divine.

Devotion to the motherland, love of the motherland — these are to be reckoned as far less than love and devotion towards all mankind.

Genuine spiritual devotion (bhakti) is characterised by love for all, at all times, everywhere.

The characteristic of nature is “to manifest as manifold”; the characteristic of the Divine is “to absorb into unity”.

So, those who dislike or hate another or demean and denigrate another are indeed fools, for they thereby dislike, hate, demean or denigrate only themselves! But they are unaware of this truth.

Spiritual knowledge instructs one to become established in this truth and demonstrate the underlying Divinity.

- Vidya Vahini, Ch 8.

The yearning to do selfless service must flow in every nerve of your body, penetrate every bone and activate every cell.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Sun May 24, 2020 10:18 am

Concentrate Your Effort

Intelligence or lack of it does not matter; between the dull and the sharp-witted there is no distinction.

If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the Way.

—Eihei Dogen Zenji,“The Principles of Zazen”
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Mon May 25, 2020 8:20 am

Why should we pay attention to every small aspect of our life from our thoughts, actions, appearance, food habits and so on?

Your nature is revealed by your acts, gestures, looks, speech, food habits, dress and gait. Therefore, pay attention to ensure that your speech, movements, thoughts, behaviour are all right — full of love, pure and devoid of wildness and waywardness.

Eating food is a holy ritual. It should not be performed during moments of anxiety or emotional tension. Food must be considered as medicine for the illness of hunger and as the sustenance of life.

You must develop the humility to believe that you have much good to learn from others. Your enthusiasm, your strong ambition, your resolution, your capacity to work, your store of knowledge, your wisdom — these have to be related to all others and not utilised for you alone.

Your heart should take all others in. Your thoughts too should be patterned on broad lines. Treat each trouble you encounter as a fortunate opportunity to develop your strength of mind and to toughen you with greater strength.

- Vidya Vahini, Ch 8.

Ego is very dangerous and powerful. It ruins your character.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Mon May 25, 2020 9:15 pm

Imagine the War Being Over

Victory is no balm for loss.

Any of us may celebrate a moment, but we live a long time, and finality is not what we need, compassion is what we need.

Let the future think about the war being over because then it will be.

—George Evans,“A Walk in the Garden of Heaven”
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Tue May 26, 2020 8:39 am

What is the most important ingredient to achieve success in our efforts on the path of spirituality?

The benefit we can derive from anything, is directly proportional to the faith we place in it.

From adoration of gods, pilgrimages, chanting mantras, or resorting to doctors, we derive benefits only according to the measure of our faith.

For the growth of faith and for the fostering of understanding, an essential requirement is purity of the heart, of the very base of thought and of the level of consciousness.

Without this purity, the sudden effort of self-inquiry or investigation into the self-existent Inner-Self, while in the midst of diverse worldly and material entanglements, will be rendered fruitless, since it will not stem from an eager will.

The consciousness must first be withdrawn from the objective world and turned inward toward the awareness of the Inner-Self.

Seeds can sprout fast only when planted in a well-ploughed land. So too, the seed of Inner-Self wisdom can sprout in the heart-field only when it has undergone the necessary refining process.

- Vidya Vahini, Ch 9.

A pure heart is the essence of all spiritual practices.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Tue May 26, 2020 9:03 pm

How to Unearth Natural Freedom

Exposed to the lucidity of simple awareness, practice dissolves into a practice of no practice (which is not the same thing as abandoning practice), where no one is doing or not doing anything, and natural freedom, no longer yearned for, naturally prevails.

—Joel Agee,“Not Found, Not Lost”
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Wed May 27, 2020 12:12 pm

Why is goodness and righteousness, a necessary condition for spiritual union or yoga?

The union in yoga is between dharma (righteousness) and Divinity.

The more such evils as lust and anger breed in a person, the greater the diminution of the divinity. That is to say, faith in the Inner-Self will decline fast, as the evils develop.

Faith is all important, faith in one’s reality being the Atma — that is the real spiritual knowledge.

When lust, anger, etc., diminish and disappear, faith in the Inner-Self and in the rightness of spiritual inquiry will grow and get confirmed.

Non-attachment is the very foundation for attaining awareness of Brahman, the Universal Absolute.

Even for a small structure, the foundation has to be stable and strong, or else it will pretty soon fall as a heap.

When a garland has to be made, we need a string, a needle and flowers, don’t we? So too, when spiritual wisdom has to be won, devotion (the string), non-attachment (the needle), and steady single-pointedness (flowers) are essential.

- Vidya Vahini, Ch 9.

Any faithful individual need not worry about who will take care of them, if they truly devote all their time to thoughts of the Divine and practice of His divine message.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Thu May 28, 2020 9:31 am

Is it sufficient to just listen to discourses?

When what really exists is only One, there is no room for any difference in attitudes.

The same life force that is present in an elephant, is also present in a dog or in a cow.

Since this life force present in all livess is one and the same, we observe that everything is an aspect of the divine.

So long as you have the feeling of ownership or keep saying, “Mine, Mine, Mine,” you will not have a chance to observe things other than yours.

As long as you have this attitude you will never be able to understand what is not yours.

On the day when you give up this idea, you will really understand this aspect of equanimity.

You must reduce your attachment to things. So long as jealousy and ego are uppermost in your mind, the Divine will be at a distance from you.

When you are able to get rid of these qualities, the Divine will come close to you.

- Ch 21, Summer Showers 1978.

So long as you have the feeling that you are separate from the Divine, you have to pray.
Once you realise that you are one with Him, you need not pray.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Thu May 28, 2020 9:19 pm

Alleviating Disruptions from Your Life

Anger, annoyance, and impatience deplete energy.

Patient effort strengthens our resources.

We need to practice cooling emotional fires and alleviating fierce disruptions from our lives.

—Allan Lokos,“Cooling Emotional Fires”
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Re: Life 35 (Jan 20 - Jul 20)

Postby winston » Fri May 29, 2020 4:09 am

We brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it.

1 Timothy 6:7

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