Friday, September 25, 2015

92) The impact of Swami Dayananda's Teachings in my life



Pujya Guruji Swami Dayananda Sarswathi ( founder Arsha Vidya Gurukulam  and a great Vedanta Teacher ) attained Samadhi on the night of Wed 23 Sept 2015 at his Ashram in Rishikesh and I do not want to write about his life , achievements etc as they are easily available in the public domain and so  this blog post is more about what benefit I received from the teachings of Swami Dayananda .


I have never personally met Swami Dayananda or been part of his Vedanta Training Programs in his Ashrams and I have only attended few of his public talks but have read most of his books and what I am sharing here is based on the knowledge I gained through reading his books .

One thing I found in all of Swami Dyananda's Teachings be it a Vedantic Text or a general talk on a Vedanta related topic is that there is lot of depth and clarity in his teachings . Reading his books is not just reading any other spiritual book and unless and until one decides to spend time in studying and reflecting  seriously on what he has written one will not understand what he is trying to convey . Like everything in life even spirituality has become very superfical and many spiritual masters in the name of giving simple talks / advice end up giving superficial talks , advice and might be for a beginner such talks will be useful and appealing but for a serious spiritual aspirant such talks will hardly help him / her get calrity . Swami Dayanada's talks and teachings have depth as well as clarity but you will get clarity only when you are willing to go to the depth of what he is conveying . Very few people are willing to committ to such serious study of the scriptures and everyone wants a quick fix superficial intrepretation of the same .

For a long time I was going through many of the books written by many other great spiritual masters and while their intention was good they lacked clarity in what they were conveying . They were only giving superfical advice like BE GOOD ,DO GOOD , HELP EVER ,HURT NEVER, JUST ENQUIRE WHO YOU ARE , IT IS ALL IN THE MIND ,FORGIVE AND FORGET , DO NOT GET ATTACHED  , SURRENDER ALL TO GOD ,etc etc and were gving advice that was either BLACK , WHITE but these does not help much an aspirat who is in the world that has various shades of GREY between BLACK and WHITE  and hence confused by these sort of superficial advice and statements . I am not blaming those spiritual masters but only pointing it out that their well intentioned statements lack depth and does not have much use for the common man after some time .

Let me illustrate this with an example : The word MEDITATION is very popular and also many books are written about Meditation but very few books define what Meditation is and at the most they define Meditation either as Concentration or giving an abstract definition to Meditation like it is  supersensory experince that cant be described etc etc . But if you study what Swami Dayananda has written there will be a clear definition of Meditation like :"saguṇa-brahma-viṣaya-mānasa-vyāpāraḥ," and he will unfold step by step what the above definition of Meditation is and once you understand the same you will not confuse  Meditation with Concentration or get trapped in some mystical definition of Meditations .

The same applies to all other terms that are commonly used in spirituality but either wrongly or very poorly defined and elaborated and that is why inspite of so many spiritual publications many are still confused but once you study Swami Dayananda's Teachings properly in depth most of such confusions would be wiped out .

The word GURU means one who removes darkness and while I had various masters influencing my spiritual life at differnt situations in my life but as far as VEDANTA is concered I got clarity only through the teachings of Swami Dayananda that I received by reading his books and  also through the Sastangs of Swami Paramarthananda ( one of his senior most disciples ) I consider Swami Dayananda , Swami Paramarthananda to be my primary Vedanta Gurus .

Swami Dayananda is no more in the physical body but his teachings are very much available as books and CDs and everyone can still benefit from his teachings plus he has also trained an excellent group of Vedanta Teachers who are alwayss available  to guide serious students in the path of Vedanta and hence the Traditional Teaching Sampradya will continue .

I  Will ever be grateful to Pujya Swamiji for helping me develop more clarity in Vedantaas well as on Sanathana Dharma  and the best way I can show my respect to him is to study his works seriously and live the teachings in my own day to day life .

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

91) Limitations of Various Healing Technqiues and What is the solution for the same

The last few years especially in India there has been a mushrooming of lot of Healing Technqiues and these are conducted mostly  as 1 Day workshops or at the most Week End workshops and many of these Healing Technqiues has various levels in them Level-1 , Level-2 , Level-3 or Basic , Intermediate , Advanced etc and I was surprised to find that some Healing Technqiues have up to 9 levels of  Healing Courses . I have attended a couple of these Healing Workshops myself but though they appear different in content they are mostly common in what they produce as a result  of regular parctice which is a calm mind . All these various healing technqiues no doubt help our minds become calm and also feel bit energetic if we practice them daily for 30 mts of so ( most healing technqiues require us to minimum practice them for 30 mts ) and initially after attending these workshops many people get excited and start serioously practicing them and you can see a glow in their face and they are very enthusiastic and report good sleep , calm mind , able to solve some long standing problems that were struct and after this healing workshop they were able to identify those problems and address them . No doubt many of these Healing Workshops does help to bring in these changes in the initial days but the problem is after 3-6 months the same person is back to where he was before and in fact more frustrated with the extra  guilt that he is unable to practice those healing technqiues and he comes with a list of complaints - lack of time to practice the healing technique , even if he/she has time they are unable to focus and do it properly , the healing technique does not work for all situations  and then they have the doubt whether is there any fault in the Healing Technqiue or the fault is with them and so he/she enrols again for the next level of  Same Healing or switches to another Healing and again the same thing continues - bubbling with joy the first few days /weeks and then back to square one after 3-6 months . I have come across people spending more than 10-15 years trying various Healing Technqiues and yet remain frustrated and bitter and not satisfied . Where is the fault  ? Is the fault in the Individual or Is the fault with the various Healing Technqiues itself ? This blog post is basically to investigate that problem .
No individual is perfect and every individual carries a mind that is already filled with various mental conditioning through his birth , his family , his surroundings and  these mental conditioning prevents him / her from having a smooth run in all departments of their respective life . Some may be expert in their job but very poor when it come in handling  their personal relationships and vice versa and there is no quick fix solution for these problems . Each Individual has expertise in only one domain area and when he / she faces life that is multi dimensional then they find themselves challenged to address all these various dimensions effectively and when the fail to do so they end up stressed and finally enroll in these sort of healing programs to get some break and no doubt it does help them to address the problematic issue of their life for the time being but in the longer run these sort of healing technqiues will not help . Then what is the solution ? The simple answer is SELF KNOWLEDGE and that alone will help an invidual understand himself , the world and people around , the various situations and experiences he goes through and give him a broader picture to  understand himself , his value systems , his strengths , his weakness and also how he can reduce his weakness gradually and also build up his strengths . There is no quick fix solution for this SELF KNOWLEDGE and it involves a long period of  systematic study of Scriptures under an Authentic Teacher for a length of time and also reflecting on the same and slowly working out all the problamatic areas of his /her life step by step . This cannot happen in a single day or in a weekend and involves a long period of time as our mental patterns are so strong and bringing in the necessary changes will take a long time . Different people have different meaning for SELF KNOWLEDGE but here I refer to Vedantic Study of the Scriptures ( at least the Bhagavad Gita ) when it comes to SELF KNOWLEDGE .
But then are the various Healing Technqiues useless ? No They are not . They have a very good value but for them to be effective in the longer run they must be practiced along with the Systematic Study of the Scriptures ( at least the Bhagavad Gita ) for bringing in a very good psychological transformation in oneself .