Month: March 2012

The most effective medicine
Here on earth
Is love unconditional.

– Sri Chinmoy

To love and be loved is something we all wish to cultivate – either consciously or unconsciously. Yet, we can go through life without giving it the attention it deserves. Love can create heaven on earth, and its absence can create the opposite, as William Shakespeare writes. “Absence from those we love is self from self – a deadly banishment.” – [1. William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act III, Scene i]

Sri Aurobindo writes:

Intuitively, we feel this statement to be true, but at the same time true love can be elusive and difficult to experience. But, what we focus on we will ultimately experience. These are some suggestions for cultivating real love.

• Always remember the source. Don’t see other people as separate individuals, but think of the world as one family. Treat others as you would yourself. This is the secret of love.
• To love others, you have to be able to love yourself. This is not the egotistical self-love, but an awareness of your real self. It is also important to always be true to your inner self. Love does not mean changing who we are. We first have to accept ourselves as who we really are. If we have to change our principles and identity, this is a false basis of love. But, if we can accept and love ourselves, it will be much easier to love others.
• Think not what you can get from the relationship. Consider how you can serve and offer to other people. We need to give to other people in a way that also reflects our principles, and gives us joy. The secret is to feel joy from giving and helping others. Selfless love means we don’t have any expectations about how the other person will treat us.

Continue reading “How to Cultivate Love”

When I was young, my very limited religious instruction suggested to me religion was a matter of faith – the belief in things you couldn’t actually see.

I never really understood this concept of faith. To my mind, I reasoned why should we believe things that we can’t see? Why should we believe things which we don’t know whether they happen? There was a time when I believed  faith seemed to be a clever way of getting people to believe in things that don’t really exist. Without too much thought, I just drifted away from religion to aspects of life which had a more immediate reality.

But, at a later day, I gained an interest in meditation and spirituality. I never approached it from a perspective of faith; the great attraction of meditation was that it offered the chance to actually experience spirituality – and not just about holding an intellectual faith. Meditation didn’t require a belief in things you couldn’t see or believe in; it was simply offering you the opportunity to see and experience for yourself.

Meditation was an interesting journey. There were glimpses of an ethereal peace and joy unknown in the world. The glimpses were never enough or as frequent as I would have liked, but there was definitely something. Even just 30 seconds of one profound experience of meditation stays with you throughout your life. Once, your consciousness has been turned on its head you can never doubt there is really another reality beyond the world. Sri Chinmoy writes:

“What you call Faith I call the Soul’s foreknowledge of the Highest Truth” [1]

 

This is the intuitive feeling you can get from meditation, you come to be aware of the soul and its latent capacities.

After a few steps along the path of meditation, I found it natural and spontaneous to believe in ideas I had previously summarily dismissed. The idea of God-realisation, reincarnation, liberation. The world no longer seemed a question of matter and the human mind, but of the spirit and the soul.

Long after I had forgotten about my rejection of ‘religious faith’ I realised that my teacher, Sri Chinmoy frequently wrote poems about the importance of faith – faith in yourself, faith in your Guru, faith in God.

This time, faith seemed rational, it also seemed important. One day, you could have the greatest meditation, the next day, you might start to think there’s no point in striving to reach higher goals. If you are not vigilant, the excuses and complaints of the mind can cloud your previous soulful experiences. So you always need to maintain this faith, this remembrance of your own meditation, the remembrance of your soul’s foreknowledge.

But, without some inner discipline and practice, it’s hard to maintain faith in higher ideals.

The poet, Emily Dickinson wrote:

“Faith” is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!

To me, the microscope is meditation, and spiritual writings which seem intuitively true. Faith without  spiritual practice becomes a mere intellectual hope. Faith strengthened my meditation and prayer reminds you to have faith in your soul and God.

In the beginning of the spiritual life there is an element of give and take. We say to God, give us a little experience, and we’ll believe a little more.  The truly great seekers are those who don’t have any concept of give and take, but implicit 100% faith; there is no expectation only cheerful surrender.

Yet, for those who worry about approaching the spiritual life lacking in faith, it may be worth remembering the words of Sri Aurobindo:

” When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion.”

– Sri Aurobindo The Uttarpara Address (1909)

Related

• Things I have learnt from Meditation

[1] Excerpt from Rainbow-Flowers by Sri Chinmoy.

photo, Tejvan, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries.

 

Karma is a universal law that relates to  thoughts and actions which create a cycle of cause and effect. Essentially what we create comes back to us, in some form.

If we offer goodwill to others, this goodwill comes back. If we offer pain to others, the law of karma states that equally we will have to experience that pain. The law of karma applies to actions, words and thoughts. Even our inner thoughts also create karma.

The great Spiritual Masters teach ‘do unto others, as you would have done to yourself’. In a way this is the logical consequence of the law of karma. The way we treat others, is how ultimately we will be treated ourselves. If we are mean-spirited and unkind, we will experience this ourselves. If we are kind and compassionate, this also will have a karmic effect.

It has been said that karma is really an opportunity to meet ourself. It is only when we see the consequences of our actions that we can learn from them. If we could act in isolation, then we would never learn. Thus karma could be seen as an opportunity to learn, to progress – and not a ‘punishment’ for past wrongs.

Instant Karma.

The Buddha taught that our thoughts are like boomerangs which unmistakably come back to their creator.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. “

– Lord Buddha

If we think negative thoughts, that negativity is our instant bad karma. We create our own heaven or hell by what we allow into our mind. If we offer loving thoughts, that is our instant good karma. There is a short analogy. Suppose someone tries to speak ill of you – they are in effect trying to give you something (let us call it a ‘gift’). But, if you totally reject their ‘gift’ of criticism, if we reject their offering, it stays with that person. Therefore, if we criticise others, that negativity becomes part of us. Our negativity is our instant karma.

Beyond Karma

The law of karma may encourage us to do good deeds on the basis – that if we do good to others, we will benefit in the future. This could make us rather calculating, we count up our good deeds and expect a reward. This makes our action conditional. A different spiritual attitude is to do an action unconditionally, i.e we are motivated by a selfless love – rather than an expectation of reward. This is a higher and nobler ideal.

Continue reading “What is Karma?”