Part IV Pointers for Practice – Jewels from the Indra Net

The Experimental Basis

XIII.24 By meditation, some see the Self in the self by the self. VI.27 Supreme bliss comes to the yogin who is pure, passion laid to rest, his mind stilled; he becomes Brahman. The Gītā is a textbook of yoga (a word which has also the sense of ‘method’ and ‘addition’). It is not an intellectual or religious analysis ending up in blind belief or disbelief. The ancient Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad of at least 600 BC declared: ‘To this day whoever thus knows It as “I am Brahman” becomes universal.’ Śaṅkara, over a thousand years later, commented: ‘Some might think …

Mistakes

Mistakes A pupil who lived rather carelessly remarked: ‘Mistakes are a necessary part of the path of training. If you read the biographies of even the greatest, they all say that they made many mistakes. Some of them say that mistakes are necessary – one learns from them. So I don’t worry about my own conduct: let the mistakes come, I think, let ’em all come. I’ll go through them and come out the other side. It is all part of the path.’ This was put to a senior pupil, a business woman, for her opinion. She remarked: ‘You need …

The Four Vocations

IV.13 The four-class system was created by Me In accordance with distinctions of guṇa-s and results-of- actions (karma). XVIII.41–4 The actions of Brahmins, of warriors, of businessmen, and of those who do service, Are distinguished according to the guṇa-s that come up out of their inborn nature. Calm, self-control, austerity (tapas), purity, patience and uprightness, Knowledge theoretical and practical, faith – are the nature-born behaviour of the Brahmin. Heroism, majesty, firmness, resourcefulness, not yielding in fight, Generosity, dignity – are the nature-born behaviour of the warrior. Farming and trade are the nature-born behaviour of businessmen; Service is the nature-born …

Uprush

Uprush Yogic action begins with following the traditional instructions on life, but it cannot remain a question of obedience, sometimes cheerful and sometimes reluctant. There might be no time to think, ‘What ought I to do?’ If yoga has been practised faithfully, habits of right action are set up which cover most cases. But the time comes when things are not clear: perhaps duties conflict, or cause suffering to innocent people. The yoga practices of meditation lay down luminous, semi-transparent saṃskāra-impressions at the root of the mind. At first these are mostly just good thinking-patterns and good action-patterns, which reproduce …

Human Nature

III.33 People act in conformity with their own nature – even the wise man; Beings follow their nature: what can forcible restraint avail? ‘It’s only human nature’ is an excuse often made. It rests on the unspoken assumption that human nature is unchangeable – an eternally boiling spring of desire, anger and other passions, which can be held down for a time, but must then burst out with redoubled force, perhaps in concealed form. The Gītā analysis is quite different. Human nature is the latent deposit of dynamic seeds laid down previously; they include impulses to balance, peace and …

The Spiritual Teacher

The Bhagavad Gītā is a teaching for crisis. In many ways it is quite different from the situations in the Upaniṣads, where a seeker after truth attends on a teacher. The Upaniṣadic procedure is however described in a group of Gītā verses beginning with IV.34, in the context of Knowledge: Go to those who have knowledge and have realized it directly. Learn by bowing down, by questioning, and by being attentive; They will teach you Knowledge. The word translated ‘being attentive’ is literally ‘service’, but Śaṅkara here and elsewhere explains it as basically ‘wanting to hear’. It is not …

Rebirth

II.22 As the wearer casts off worn-out clothes and puts on himself others which are new, Even so, casting off worn-out bodies, the body-wearer passes on to new ones. This great verse on reincarnation comes at the beginning of the teachings, and it refers to the great Self which takes on itself the illusion of the succession of bodies. A master of meditation remarked that the idea of reincarnation contains hints at wider truths than the bare idea of things wearing out and being replaced, which to many older people has a depressing ring. They find their bodies less …

Play

Yoga sees another causality underlying the causality of the world. A stage play has its own causal sequence: within the play, daggers kill, kings are honoured, the mother loves a baby. But there is a deeper causal sequence which is quite different: the daggers do not kill though the stabbed man falls, the king is a very minor role, the baby over which the mother croons is a doll. All the events, though they seem determined by the stage situation, are in fact free choices by the cast. They are careful to preserve the play situation. They do not …