Vikram Hazra's blog

Thank you all for those excellent responses; I have learnt from all of
them. Wanted to share this one in particular from an old friend called
Sagar, whose family has been instrumental in bringing AOL to New
Barrackpore, a suburb of Kolkata.
I feel we shd hv more such stories every now and then to stimulate the
intellect and deepen our spiritual experience. What say?
Jgd
V

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>
>

> Dear Vikramda,
>
> My regards for choosing to open discussion on such a great subject.
> Here's my take on the topic (it's a dare given the fact that this is
> something that you also are struggling to figure). This reply is ju
> st merely my effort to unravel the story and I request you to correc
> t me and show me the way to understand the story better. Thanks agai
> n for sharing this story with us.
>
> (1) The Master is the Self personified. He is the window to the
> reality. Though he does speak, words fail to carry the greatest of
> the truth as the 'word' is also a vehicle, a component of this
> ever-changing flimsy existence. What remains of this ever-emerging a
> nd ever-perishing world is an innate experience of the substratum. T
> hus the real communication is in silence which is the truth itself.
> [Recalling the great quote "sach hain to sirf Guru ka maun"]
>
> That's why Patanjaali had to impart knowledge only through silence a
> s that is how the experiential truth can be shared.
>
> (2) The veil signifies the limit of the worldly existence. As Sri
> Ramakrishna Paramahansa shares in a commentary with his disciples in
> Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, wherein he held his linen towel (gamcha)
> in front of his face and said 'See, can you see me?' and then
> removed it to show his face. Then he said, 'This is Mahamaya. Pray t
> o her continuously so that she removes this web of unreal which cove
> rs the Real. With her grace only can we see the truth.'
>
> All our wisdom and knowledge reaches zenith at a point where we are
> just separated from the true Self by our body because beyond that is
> the realm of Adwaita, the truth. The Master is the knowledge because
> when he imparts those experiential truth to his students, he is
> sharing the fact that there is no second, all this and all that are
> the same. The intent disciple and the master merges into the same.
> The veil will thus remain as it denotes the limits to our existence
> in this body. As the shastras say, it will just erode from a thick
> fortress wall to a line drawn on water but it will stay.
>
> The burning down of the students signifies the merge, the meltdown
> because beyond the veil where is the master and where are the
> students. All is one and One is all. If the veil of worldly
> existence is removed, where is the world? So when the most curious
> disciple dared to move the curtain, where is he and the others? All
> he would find that "Sarvam Brahm Mayam". Each and every atom is
> the manifestation of the same energy.
>
> (3) Why was the one boy forgiven? Why would he be not! The Master is
> compassion personified. This, I think, also signifies the fact that
> the Divine has left ways for this wonderful knowledge to remain
> within reach of us mortals. However disastrous maybe the scope of
> affairs, there always remains a way in this worldly drama for the
> ultimate truth to manifest in some name and form. Had the boy not
> been there, how would the lineage of the magnificent knowledge from
> Patanjaali continue to thrive?
>
> Also it signifies that a disciple with a good intent, care and
> reverence for the Master and the ability to cling to truth at the
> most precarious of situations would be given the knowledge. He may
> have to suffer from the laws of this world (as he did as a
> BrahmaRakshash) but for everybody and every being the path to ascent
> and exit will be opened in time.
>
> (4) The goat is most likely the manifestation of ignorance. Is it
> not true that when covered by the dark veil of ignorance, the
> greatest of the knowledge given is also treated with least
> importance and ignored? Here lying was the Patanjaali sutras, the
> godsent remedy to worldly maladies, somehow saved from the brink of
> extinction by repeated intervention by the Divine but to a goat it
> was no more than a few juicy palm leaves and food for the stomach.
>
> This signifies that the knowledge is different shapes and form is
> everywhere in this world but to the ignorant it will not be
> revealed. Though the greatest of the truth can always be seen by the
> Master everywhere, the seeker or the disciple can see it at times
> through Master's Grace whereas the ignorant will be never be able to
> find or see it anywhere because even if he assimilates the greatest
> of these knowledge, it will never appear to him as an experience an
> d hence will remain a 'concept'.
>
> (5) The significance of the story:
>
> The Master is the Reality, the Divine. Our journey to become humans
> and have this ability to perceive wisdom and use logic is proof
> enough of the benevolence of the Divine that He wishes us to know
> the truth behind this drama.
>
> Whenever the truth will be shrouded the Divine will emerge as the
> Master and will take us to the zenith of the wisdom. Few of us will
> wonder beyond the veil to know that 'No Two' is what remains. We
> are the same substance and the being which is the smallest atom and
> the largest star. The same Being which propagates the universe is al
> so the meekest of the insects trodden under an unintentional footstep.
>
> The other significant gesture the story makes is that the whole of
> the knowledge is not available for us to perceive in this form. The
> little forgiven boy was given the 'rest' of the Patanjaali
> sutras. Of that when Patanjaali himself came and wrote them down, so
> me of it was eaten by the goat and the rest was carried for propagat
> ion. Here comes the 'wonder' factor which Guruji reiterates time
> and again. The fact that one knows the part allows him to
> 'wonder' about the Whole!
>
> Sri Ramakrishna always used to ask his Brahma disciples not to
> illustrate the magnitude of the entire universe and its existence
> for the purpose of inducing devotion. He always claimed that we are
> ants standing in front of mountains of sugar grains. How can we even
> measure what the full is! The only tool for us is amazing 'I
> don't know!' uttered in wonder.
>
> The other very important strain from the story is the fact that it
> reiterates the compassion of the Master. Consistently the Master,
> who is Divine personified, showers compassion on his disciples -
> right from gathering them, imparting knowledge, forgiving them,
> coming back to save them suffering from the claws of worldly laws
> and finally drawing on his own blood to write the sutras. Where is
> the knowledge without the Master! But for that we would all be goats
> chewing on tasty palm leaves.
>
> Lastly the story signifies that all these happen in worldcycles or
> Kalpas. The knowledge is there and it is going to stay. But from
> time to time the Masters will come to impart it to us and by their
> grace some of us will move out of this endless cycle of worldly
> laws. For others, the Master will strive to reach out the farthest
> and many will move ahead. But to the Master, none of these matters
> as he is ever sure of his presence and knows that in time, each one
> of us will move to perfection in some worldcycle or other.
>
> Jai Gurudev!
>
> Drop a line if you wish..........
>
> Love and regards,
>
> Sagar Bhattacharya

copyright: Vikram Hazra

Guruji begins His amazing commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
with this conundrum. I haven't figured it out yet so i thought of
handing it over to you all. Enjoy :)

Sri Sri:
We will begin with a story, the greatest and most effective way of
conveying knowledge. Once upon a time, long ago, all the munis and
rishis approached Lord Vishnu to tell him that even though He
(incarnated as Lord Dhanvanthari) had given them the means to cure
illnesses through Ayurveda, people still fell ill. They also wanted to
know what to do when people got sick. Sometimes it is not just
physical illness, but mental and emotional illness too that needs to
be dealt with. Anger, lust, greed, jealousy etc. How does one get rid
of all these impurities? What is the formula? Vishnu was lying on the
bed of snakes the serpent Adishesha with a 1,000 heads. When the
Rishis approached Him, he gave them Adishesha, the symbol of
awareness, who took birth in the world as Maharishi Patanjali. So
Patanjali came to this earth to give this knowledge of yoga which came
to be known as the yogasutras. Patanjali said he was not going to
discuss the yogasutras unless 1,000 people got together. So 1,000
people gathered south of Vindhya Mountains to listen to him. Patanjali
had another condition he would put a screen between him and his
students and told them that nobody was to lift the screen or leave.
Everybody had to stay in the hall till he finished. So Patanjali
stayed behind the curtain and he transmitted his knowledge to the
1,000 gathered. Each of them absorbed this knowledge. It was an
amazing phenomenon and even amongst the students, they could not
believe how they were getting this knowledge, how the master was
making each of them understand without uttering words from behind the
curtain. Everybody was amazed. Each one of them experienced such a
blast of energy, such a blast of enthusiasm, that they could not even
contain it. But they still had to maintain the discipline. But one
little boy had to go out to attend natures call. So he left the room.
He thought to himself that he would go quietly and return quietly.
Another person became curious. What is the Master doing behind the
curtain? I want to see. He got so curious that he lifted the curtain
to see the Master. But just as he did so, all 999 disciples were burnt
to ashes. Now, Patanjali became very sad. There he was, ready to
impart knowledge to the whole world and all of his disciples were
burnt. At this moment, that one little boy returned. Patanjali asked
him where he had gone. The boy explained and asked his forgiveness.
Patanjali was compassionate and felt that at least one of his
disciples was saved. So he gave him the rest of the sutras, the rest
of the knowledge. But the student had violated the law and Patanjali
was not willing to forget that. So he said, Since you have violated
the law, you will become a Brahmarakshasa, a ghost and hang on the
tree. And the only way he could liberate himself from the curse is to
teach one student. Saying this Patanjali disappeared. Now
Brahmarakshasa, hanging on a tree, would ask everyone who passed by
one question and when they could not answer he would eat them. He had
no choice and for a few thousand years this was the story. He could
not find a single person to whom he could teach the yogasutras. So he
remained in the tree as a Brahmarakshasa (the lesson here being that
for the one who has great knowledge, and who does something wrong, the
state of Brahmarakshasa will come. An intelligent person becoming a
criminal becomes more dangerous than an innocent person becoming a
criminal. If a person, who knows all knowledge and then turns a
criminal, it is much more dangerous). So the Brahmarakshasa was
hanging there and waiting for relief. Then out of compassion,
Patanjali himself becomes a disciple and comes as a student to
Brahmarakshasa who told him all the sutras, which Patanjali wrote on
the palm leaf. The story goes that to redeem one disciple, the Master
became the disciple of a disciple. Patanjali wrote the sutras sitting
on the top of the tree as that was where the Brahmarakshasa sat. Also,
Brahmarakshasa worked only in the night. So he dictated the sutras at
night and Patanjali wrote them on the leaves. He plucked all the
leaves and made a small scratch, drew blood and wrote. This went on
for seven days. At the end of it, Patanjali was tired and put
everything he had written on a piece pf cloth and set it down and went
to bathe. But when Patanjali returned, he found that a goat had eaten
most of the leaves. Patanjali then took the cloth bag and the rest of
the leaves and walked away. In this story, there is a lot of depth.
The puranas do not give any explanation. They just give a story and it
is for us to unlock the meaning. So what is that you all have to find
out? (1) How did the master convey the knowledge to everybody without
uttering a word? (2) What was the significance of the veil and when it
was lifted why did everybody burn down? (3) Why was the one boy
forgiven? (4) What is the significance of the goat? (4) What is the
significance of this story? You should think about all this and come
up with your own answers. This is the first in a series on yoga sutras

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It really is nice to be home. Nice friendly vibe, familiar food and smells, books and CDs smiling like old buddies, and of course the guitars and racquets and other tools of the trade, my weapons of choice for sonic warfare ;)


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Finally heading back to bbay today after two wonderful weeks in the
ashram with Guruji; first for the Sri Sri Yoga teacher training
program and then for a meeting of senior teachers with Guruji. Didn't
carry a laptop, guitar and other paraphernalia; just the iPhone. Also
didn't get onto the wifi there, so it has been like a digital detox
for me as well. Shall resume my blog posts with renewed fervour tomm.
Hope you all have been well, and have enjoyed the knowledge from
Guruji which I hv been posting these days. This is thanks to a
fantastic app on iPhone called the Sri Sri app; it's free so please
inform all your iPhone using friends to download and install it
immediately. Thanks to whoever has scripted this app, it's a very
valuable service that they have provided to us all! Jgd
Ps I'm finally learning to type on the iPhone touchpad so I shall soon
have the guts and enthu to post longer msgs even when all I'm carrying
is the phone :) it's actually a lot easier than I imagined, and this
was my major reservation against iPhone along with the poor battery
life. Well that one is yet to be resolved -- maybe one of the Mophie
juice battery packs is in the offing ;)

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The Sanskrit word for birthdays is Jayanti. Jayanti means the pinnacle
of victory. Victory is always associated with duality, war, conflict,
but birth is beyond conflict because it is celebration. This is when
the ocean became the wave and will become ocean again after some
years. A birthday is a time to remember that the Atman (Soul/Self) was
free at one time, then took name and form and became an individual
being. After so many years once again the wave will go back to the
ocean.

Therefore a birthday is a time for the wave to remember its
magnanimity; it's true nature that it is part of the universal
spirit, divinity. Then the atman gets the strength of the ocean.

On Birthdays here we don't blow out candles but light lamps. We move
from light to light. We rejoice in the memory of our true nature and
pray for more and more victory in all aspects of our life so that we
can do more service. Knowledge is when we remain happy in our true
nature, which is love.

No celebration is complete without meditation. Meditation helps to
seep the celebration/ happiness deeper into our being. So meditate 5-7
minutes whenever you celebrate.
(From the Office of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)
© The Art of Living Foundation

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One of my favourite songs, by Joni Mitchell, is Both Sides Now -- which talks about how life is full of paradox, humour and change (the same three principles which are outlined so well in the movie The Peaceful Warrior) and concludes with "I guess I don't know life at all" And yet, this is a note of optimism and wonder, not despair or frustration -- there is so much to live through and imbibe each moment of every day -- wish one had the luxury of only studying throughout life!


In the past few weeks, I have been busy teaching not only a Part 1 course, but also several thought-provoking sessions with AOL teachers and volunteers. At each step, we were overwhelmed by the depth and magnitude of the knowledge which Guruji has been transmitting to us so simply and effortlessly all these years, and which seems impossible to absorb. It's like the salt doll exploring the nature of the ocean -- in knowing the ocean, it loses its own identity, and then its last grain ceases to exist, it is nothing but ocean.


On more terrestrial terms, I have been re-evaluating my life in terms of changing paradigms of technology (shall write more on this later -- TED has some interesting views on it) and relearning my entire way of organising my life -- work, sports, family -- everything operates
on different rules these days, and often it is just the abject refusal to adapt to these changes that insulates and eventually isolates us from a teeming ocean of life and activity around us.


I'm particularly impressed with the new iPhone, which has taken the whole concept of user interfacing to an otherworldly level -- now this is often the only thing I carry with me, replacing a notebook/planner, camera, ipod, laptop, novels and magazines! Increasing amounts of my work are stored in a virtual "cloud" that I can freely access and share from anywhere at anytime.


Basically this frees me up to "be creative" at all times -- not just when I am with paper and pen or guitar and recorder and so on. At the same time, it also pains me that most of India lives in such poverty and deprivation while a very select few of us enjoy cutting-edge technology and its apparent attendant benefits. Our goal must be to reconcile these conflicting areas of our countrymen's lives before we can truly call ourselves "developed".


I also finally joined Facebook, almost exclusively for my schoolfriends and family; and it has been rewarding having all of them in such a close virtual loop. Sorry, but I have closed off FB access to most people, as I still feel that my public interaction is best served through this blog, and through your questions and responses.


My band's sound continues to evolve, and an uncanny energy has pervaded recent concerts, even corporate audiences have been stunned into reverie, as a palpable Grace floods the hall and elevates each soul.


What next, I ask, along with all of you?
And the answer is still a wonder -- I don't know :)
Jai Gurudev

Article:
You have always thought of God as a father, up in the heavens   somewhere. But can you see God as a child? When you see God as a  father, you will want to demand and take from Him. But when you see  God as a child, you have no demands. God is the very core of your existence. You are pregnant with God. You have to take care of your   pregnancy and deliver this Child into the worl d. God is your child  who clings onto you like a baby till you grow old and die. This child clings on to you crying for nourishment. Sadhana, Satsang and Seva are the nourishment.


It is difficult to see God as formless and it is difficult to see God as form. The formless is so abstract and God in a form appears to be too limited. So some people prefer to be atheists. But atheism is not a reality, it is just a matter of convenience.


When you have a spirit of inquiry, or are in search of truth, atheism falls apart. With a spirit of inquiry, you cannot deny something which you have not disproved. An atheist denies God without first disproving it. In order to disprove God, you must have enormous knowledge. And when you have enormous knowledge, you cannot disprove God For one to say  that something does not exist, one should know about the whole universe. So you can never be 100 percent atheist. An atheist is only a believer who is sleeping In fact an atheist is someone who has a concept of God For a person to say, I dont believe in anything, means he must believe in himself so he believes in himself about whom he
does not even know

An atheist can never be sincere because sincerity   needs depth and an atheist refuses to go to the depths. Because the  deeper he goes, he finds a void, a field of all possibilities he has
to accept that there are many secrets he does not know. He would then   need to acknowledge his ignorance, which he refuses to do, because the moment he is sincere, he seriously starts doubting his atheism.

A   doubt-free atheist is next to impossible So you can never be a sincere and doubt-free atheist. When the atheist realises his ignorance, what does he do? Where does he go? Does he go to a Guru? What does a guru do to him? Atheism is when one does not believe either in values or in the abstract. When an atheist comes to the guru, what happens? You
start experiencing your own form and discover that you are indeed formless, hollow and empty. And this abstract non-form in you becomes   more and more concrete

The guru makes the abstract more real and what   you thought as solid appears to be more unreal. Sensitivity and subtlety dawns. Perception of love, not as an emotion, but as the
substratum of existence becomes evident. The formless spirit shines through every form in creation and the mystery of life deepens, shattering the atheism. Then the journey begins and it has four  stages.

The first stage is Saarupya (to see the formless in the form)   ie, seeing God in all the forms. Often, one feels more comfortable seeing God as formless rather than with a form, because with a form, one feels a distance, a duality, a fear of rejection and other limitations.

In life all our interactions are with the form, other than in deep sleep and in Samadhi. And, if you do not see God in the form, then the waking part of life remains devoid of the Divine. All those who accept God to be formless use symbols, and perhaps love the
symbols more than God himself If God comes and tells a Christian to leave the cross or a Muslim to drop the crescent, perhaps he may not do it To begin with, loving the formless is possible only through forms.

The second stage is Saamipya (closeness) ie, feeling absolutely close to the form you have chosen and reaching out to the formless. This leads to a sense of intimacy with the whole of creation. In this stage, one overcomes the fear of rejection and other fears. But this
is time and space bound.

The third stage is Saanidhya feeling the presence of the Divine by which you transcend the limitations of time  and space. Then the final stage is Saayujya, ie, when you are firmly
entrenched with the Divine. It is then that you realise you are one with the Divine. There is a total merging with the Beloved and all duality disappears.

Take care of your God Atheists lurk around the corner Doubts, disbelief and ignorance are the atheists in your mind so you better take care

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