Creation

Sri Yantra

Then was not non-existent nor existent.
There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal.No sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One, breathless, breathed by its own nature.Apart from It was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darknessAll was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of warmth was born that Unit.
Thereafter rose desire in the beginning.Desire was the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

Rig Veda X, 129

Happy Birthday Gandiji!

Gandhi's room in Mumbai

October 2, 1869 - The anniversary of Gandhi's birth

"To me God is truth and love, God is ethics and morality, God is fearlessness, God is the source of light and life and yet he is above and beyond all these. God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist. For in his boundless love God permits the atheist to live. He is the searcher of hearts. He transcends speech and reason. He knows us and our hearts better than we do ourselves. He does not take us at our word for he knows that we often do not mean it, some knowingly and others unknowingly. He is a personal God to those who need His personal presence. He is embodied to those who need His touch. He is the purest essence. He simply is to those who have faith*. He is all things to all men. He is in us and yet above and beyond us".


Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

(Young India March 5, 1925)

The world is a reflection of the imagination

"We know the outside world made ​​up of sensations and actions, but we know very little of our inner world of thoughts and feelings.

The first purpose of meditation is to become aware of our inner life and enter into intimacy with it. The ultimate goal is to reach the Self, the source of life and knowledge.

The world is only a reflection of the imagination. Know the Self as the only reality and all else as temporary and transitory, is freedom, peace and joy."

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The end justifies the means?

The end justifies the means? This the thought of Gandhi.

"The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree, and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. We reap exactly what we sow."

M. K. Gandhi

January 30, 1948: The death of Gandhi

The Mahatma - 'Gandhi bazar' in Bangalore

On 30 January 1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma was killed. I want to remember this anniversary with a his thought. It seems particularly suited to the historical period which is experiencing India in view of the upcoming national elections scheduled for May.

* * * * * 

"Is the Indian Union to be a theocratic State and are the tenets of Hinduism to be imposed on non Hindus? I hope not. The Indian Union will then cease to be a land of hope and promise, a land to which all Asiatic and African races look, indeed the whole world. 

The world expects not littleness and fanatism from India whether as the Union or Pakistan. It expects greatness and goodness from which the whole world can derive a lesson and light in its prevailing darkness."

M. K. Gandhi

Other posts about Gandhi

Inside our heart

"This place within our heart is as big as a large space that the eye can see. Inside there are this and that, the sky and the earth.

Here dwell the fire and ether, the sun and the moon, lightning and the stars, all that belongs to this universe and also what does not belong."

Chandogya Upanishad VIII, I, 3

The westerner is hopeless

Although I study and I take care of India and Hinduism for years and even though, when I can, I go to India, I am always taken by agitation and anxieties like westerner.

That calls to my mind a thought reported by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj who said:

"The westerner is hopeless, unable to grow in the spiritual path because he does not have the ability. It's better not to say anything of moksha and liberation. Let him live a useful life and gain a rebirth in India. Then he will have a chance. "

I guess I can only hope for a rebirth in India!

Ikea in India

Soon in a house of Varanasi or Pune, in a hut of Bihar or in an apartment in Mumbai will never find a charpai or four-poster beds, simple wooden shelves, mirrors framed with bamboo canes and teak  or mango wood tables. We will find the library Billy and  armchair Karlstad, bed Malm and the coffee table Lack.

Well, yes. The Indian government has finally allowed Ikea to open ten stores in India over the next ten years and fifteen more in subsequent years. The first phase of the investment is worth almost $ 2 billion.

Laws to protect the small shops that have so far hindered the realization of large retail supermarkets and attempt to land as the American Walmart were not used to lock the Swedish giant. The Indian law in fact permits foreigners to carry out retail chains if the products are monobrand, as in the case of Ikea that  sells only products under its own brand, while the multi-brand sales (i.e. supermarkets) have restrictions.

And because the Indians should not have what we have, cheap furniture? Maybe, but this homogenization saddens me and scares me.

I do not want to bore you, but I have to mention one more time that Mahatma Gandhi was convinced that India had a mission to accomplish in the world and should be for all other nations a beacon to indicate a  peaceful and different from that Western pattern of life.

Gandhi in Young India on 11 August 1927 wrote:

"Wisdom is no monopoly of one continent or one race. My resistance to Western civilisation is really a resistance to its indiscriminate and thoughtless imitation based on the assumption that Asiatics are fit only to copy everything that comes from the West. I do believe, that if India has patience enough to go through the fire of suffering and to resist any unlawful encroachment upon its own civilisation which, imperfect though it undoubtedly is, has hitherto stood the ravages of time, she can make a lasting contribution to the peace and solid progress of the world."

Tirthas, the sacred places of Hinduism

"The sanctuary holiest of all sanctuaries, the most sacred of all tirthas is meditation on Brahman, control of the senses, inner discipline and purity of heart."

Garudapurana

Ganges, Varanasi: a hinduist thirtha

They are called tirthas, are the holy places of Hinduism. Those can be a river, a tree, a mountain. In these places the Hindu devotees go on pilgrimage because those are the places favorable to devotion.

Tirtha in Sanskrit means ford, passage, path, it is the door leading from one state to another, is the tool to get what you want. Even a temple is a tirtha.

Some tirthas are indicated for the cult of the deads and a step of the pilgrimage that leads to the sacred tirtha of Gaya is an important step for the soul of the deceased to the skies. Other tirthas are given to wash away the sins, others to propitiate a good marriage, and others to achieve moksha, liberation from the cycle of rebirth. One of these is Prayag, near Allahabad, where the Ganges joins the Yamuna, 'the pubis of the earth', Varanasi is also a sacred tirtha,  the soul of one who dies here gets immediately moksha and the union with Brahman.

But it isn't enough to go on a pilgrimage to a tirtha, you must follow the specifications of the sacred books which provide meticulously clothing, the time, the need or otherwise of the tonsure of the hair, the height of the stick, the rites to be performed, the songs to be sung.

The Kurmapurana for example, recalls that "it will not bring any fruit the pilgrimage to a tirtha done using a vehicle or bragging or impatience".

But Garudapurana at the beginning of this post reminds us that the tirtha par excellence, the holiest of holy places is there, where the God hid a small part of himself, the man's heart.

Our Self is within our heart

The Atman, our Self, is within our heart. He is smaller than a grain of rice, than a grain of barley, he is smaller than a mustard seed or a grain of millet. The Self within our heart is greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greter than heaven, greter than all worlds.

Chandogya Upanishad III, 14, 3

Happy Easter!

Nishkam karma, desireless action

"You are qualified simply with regard to action, never with regard to its results. You must be neither motivated by the results of action nor attached to inaction."

Bhagavad Gita II, 47

Arjuna and Krishna, his charioteer

Among the problems of Hindu philosophical thought that the rejection of the world and the tendency to inaction is very attractive.

We know that the world we live in is nothing but maya, illusion. Indeed, it is the manifestation of Brahman, the Supreme Being, and that conceals the Brahman.

The nine doors of man are all facing outwards, to this false reality and the senses and the passions of the man turn away from true reality, which is Brahman, which can only be achieved by 'looking' within us and not outside.

It would therefore seem coherent with this view favor inaction over action, asceticism compared to living in the real world.

It is the same dilemma of Arjuna, the Pandava hero of the Mahabharata, when he must begin to fight, but he sees the opposing side cousins, uncles, friends, teachers and tried to retreat, not to act in fact.

Krishna explains to the hero because the action is preferable to inaction.

It is the Bhagavad Gita - text of mediation and synthesis of the various Hindu schools of thought - who theorizes the concept of nishkam karma or naishkarmykarma, detached action, action which is not based on the desire, the fulfillment of duty for duty, the action done without thought of recompense, the action free from any individual impulse.

Live in the world but not be of the world, act, but in a spirit of inner renunciation of the world.

The river of life flows between two banks

Kerala - India

"The river of life flows between the banks of pain and pleasure. The problem arises only when the mind refuses to flow with life and is stranded on the shore. 

To flow I mean acceptance: accept what comes and let go what goes. 

Don't desire, don't worry, look at the present, as and when it happens, because you are not what happens, but the one to whom it happens."

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

January 30, 1948: The death of Gandhi

Today is the anniversary of Gandhi's death. About the violent end of Mahatma I wrote (click here) and also about his murderess.

Today I want to remember him with this thought.

"To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.

And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. 

That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics, and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humilty, that those who say that the religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means."

Mahandas Karamchand Gandhi

Shut all doors

Having shut all the body's doors and confined his mind in his heart, having installed his vital breath in his head, a man is fixed in yogic concentration.

The man who, abandoning the body, dies pronuncin the one-syllabled om, while thinking on me, attains the highest goal.

Bhagavad Gita VIII, 12-13

Creation

Sri Yantra

Then was not non-existent nor existent.
There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal.No sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One, breathless, breathed by its own nature.Apart from It was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darknessAll was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of warmth was born that Unit.
Thereafter rose desire in the beginning.Desire was the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

Rig Veda X, 129

October 2, 1869: Happy Birthday Gandhiji!

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

India has two aspects

Rabindranath Tagore

I do not want to wander about any more. I am pining for a corner in which to nestle down snugly, away from the crowd.

India has two aspects—in one she is a householder, in the other a wandering ascetic. 

The former refuses to budge from the home corner, the latter has no home at all. I find both these within me. I want to roam about and see all the wide world, yet I also yearn for a little sheltered nook; like a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast sky for flight.

I hanker after a corner because it serves to bring calmness to my mind. My mind really wants to be busy, but in making the attempt it knocks so repeatedly against the crowd as to become utterly frenzied and to keep buffeting me, its cage, from within. If only it is allowed a little leisurely solitude, and can look about and think to its heart's content, it will express its feelings to its own satisfaction.

This freedom of solitude is what my mind is fretting for; it would be alone with its imaginings, as the Creator broods over His own creation.

Rabindranath Tagore

Indian thoughts

That light which shines above this heaven, above all the worlds, above everything, in the higest worlds not excelled by other worlds, that is the same light which is within man.

Chandogya Upanishad III, 13, 7

Happy birthday Gandhiji!

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on october 2, 1869 in Porbandar. I wish to remind him today writing a his very timely thought about India.

"I do not believe thet industrialization is necessary in any case for any country. It is much less so for India. Indeed, I believe thet Indipendent India can only discharge her duty towards a groaning world by adopting a simple but ennobled life by developing her thousands of cottage industries and living at peace with the world. High thinking is inconsistent with complicated material life based on high speed imposed on us by Mammon worship. All the graces of life are possible only when we learn the art of living nobly."

From Harijan, 1 september 1946