Will it get confusing if I start posting my most recent thoughts about the scriptures I am reading right now? I think it might, huh? But maybe I can at least provide some small pieces of background information every once in awhile. There are a lot of different ways that one can "be a Hindu." In fact, some would argue that everyone is a Hindu - some of you just haven't realized it yet. : )
But seriously, there are some basic things that just about everybody does, and then most people choose which of the four main yogas, or paths, to which they will dedicate themselves. The yoga one chooses is determined to a certain degree (or at least influenced) by one's stage of life and one's station in life (caste). For example, it would be very difficult for a craftsmen in the householder stage of life to practice raja yoga, which requires many hours of meditation and many austerities. But bhakti or karma yoga would fit into his daily life very easily.
There are references to the different yogas scattered throughout, but if you'd like rough sketches, I'll provide them next time or in a separate post. I don't want to make this entry so long its unreadble.
April 17, 2007
6 am. I kind of began meditating today. I sat on the couch for 10 minutes and tried to focus on my scripture, which is St. Francis' prayer. I got through it 5 times. So a full half hour should be between 8-10 times at that speed (but was that the right speed?). Even in that short time I noticed how undisciplined my mind is. It may get easier once I'm sure of the words, not reaching for them, but there sure feels like a lot of room for spare, random thoughts to creep in. And my body was wracked with yawns I had no chance of stifling. I can see there will be great difficulties ahead in learning to bring these wild horses, this driverless chariot under control. But isn't that what life is for?
Yesterday I had such strong impressions of people – especially on TV – as being incredibly deformed by their vanity, insecurity, their desire to be liked and admired. I am not quite communicating the feeling I had, nor the insight. Unhappiness, a deep unhappiness with self and soul and spirit, pervades our culture. And people wear it on their faces, in their search for something they hope will make them feel better, and they hope will last. Their bodies and faces are deformed, as by a cancer, a malignant growth twisting their features. All of us searching like crazy for love, and for meaning. It made me very sad. Appropriate to where I am in the Gita, with Arjuna slumped in grief and sorrow, heavy with the knowledge that his actions hurt the world.
Second Teaching
Arjuna asks "How can I fight with arrows those I should be worshipping?" While not a warrior, all of my actions in a day hurt someone, contribute to the pain of the world. And like Arjuna, it is because of my position in the world. If I were a poor farmer in China, I wouldn't do quite as much damage, though even then my "meals . . . would be smeared with the blood . . . of those I killed." Here, as a middle-class American, there are virtually no products, including vegetable foods, that weren't created by exploiting and ruining other souls.
The flow of pity
Blights my very being;
Conflicting sacred duties
Confound my reason.
As Arjuna refuses to fight, so I too have felt helpless. There is my duty to go to work, to research lives, to exploit subjects, students, and eat, drive, use paper, while at the same time I have the sacred duty of honoring each life, of treating the earth gently and with respect. Does one fight the neocons with all one's might? Or pray for them, hug them, love them?
It is so easy to be paralyzed into doing nothing at all. And now it is near 7 am, but I don't want to leave us again in this place of despair, so let's look at Krishna's answer, the start anyway.
You grieve for those beyond grief,
And you speak words of insight;
But learned men do not grieve
For the dead or the living.
Never have I not existed,
Nor you, nor these kings;
And never in future
Shall we cease to exist.
He reminds Arjuna of the infinity of the soul, of reincarnation. Reminds him not to put too much stock into information provided by his senses. They are fleeting. Only when we are immune to hot and cold, pleasure and pain, are we ready for "heaven"/immortality. Wise men are able to see that there is a boundary between being and non-being, and since we are all being now, we always will be.
Indestructible is the presence
That pervades all this;
No one can destroy
This unchanging reality.
I cannot fatally wound the earth and its creatures. A helpful message to take with me today.
April 18
[Spent most of the morning writing about the Virginia Tech massacre, and how class discussions of it went]
Second Teaching, cont'd
Again, always, the scripture speaks to me:
You grieve for those beyond grief
Our bodies are known to end
But the embodied self is enduring
He who thinks this self a killer
And he who thinks it killed,
Both fail to understand;
It does not kill, nor is it killed.
This is a good and right message for the day – for every day. We are born and die and are re-born. Those who died on Monday are not gone, they will return to life, just as they would have had they died later in this life.
Over and over Krishna makes this point, saying "therefore do not grieve." Your lament is not appropriate. It is a fundamental of this faith, and in fact I do believe it. I feel as if I've always believed, or known it, and became absolutely certain when I first did LSD. Still, it is not possible to just shrug off these deaths. It still feels wrong that they were unable to do more of what they needed to do before they have to start over.
One professor survived the holocaust only to be shot and killed by a student 60 years later. Was there more he needed to do this life? Or this cheerful, friendly, smart young black man who aimed to be a neurosurgeon? Even poor Cho, could not he have learned this life that it is not all pain and suffering? This is where the second main meaning helps – we are all one. "It does not kill, nor is it killed." The Jewish professor, the black student, Cho and I – we are all one. One being. Somewhere/time, there is a part of us that knows this. That understands the relationship between all of us. Somewhere Cho and I are best of friends; know and are known. So there is – whoa – this closeness, this knowledge of where each one is at and what they need and will do next.
It does somehow make it easier to bear when one realizes that the killer and killed are One. How can it be felt in the same way when one understands it is like a play, with one person playing all the parts? I'll take that through the day to chew on.
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