SLOKA 100 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT ARE OTHER IMPORTANT FESTIVALS?
Besides the temple festivals, there is a multitude of home, community and national celebrations, notably Dipavali, Hindu New Year, Tai Pongal, guru puja days, kumbha melas, Jayanti and Guru Purnima. Aum Namah Sivaya.
BHASHYA
Dipavali, the ”festival of lights” in October-November, is a most popular festival, esteemed as a day of Hindu solidarity, when all sects gather in love and trust. It begins the financial year and is celebrated by opening new accounts, giving greeting cards, clothing and other gifts and by lighting rows of oil lamps. Family bonds are strengthened and forgivenesses sought. The several Hindu New Years are important observations. Tai Pongal, in January-February, is a harvest thanksgiving and invocation for prosperity. God Surya, the Sun, is honored, and daughters are presented with gifts. We venerate saints and sages by conducting guru puja on the anniversary of their passing, or mahasamadhi. We celebrate our satguru’s birthday, or Jayanti, with special puja to his shri paduka, ”sandals,” or holy feet. We honor him again on Guru Purnima, the full moon of July. Kumbha melas, humanity’s largest gatherings, are held at four pilgrimage centers in India every three years. The Vedas proclaim, ”Thus have we now approached the All-Knower, the one who is the best procurer of good things. Endow us, O Majesty, with strength and glory.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 255 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
HELP FROM THE GODS
What is a bad birth, one might wonder. It is being born into an area of the mind below the muladhara chakra where the instinctive nature reigns supreme, where the intellectual nature runs amuck by pursuing dead-end sequences of thought and desire. This is considered a bad birth. It is where no consciousness of God or of the Gods exists, where there is no known pattern for life, no dharma, and where little or no knowledge of the laws of karma and reincarnation survive. This is a bad birth when within the chakras of our being, the centers of nerve force, thought and emotion, values of external existence remain supreme, and the many, many pitfalls of suffering, anguish, confusion, tears and sorrow all exist. These areas of consciousness in the lower chakras below the muladhara can reap birth after birth and are considered by the Hindu as births to be avoided. They are avoided through finding and then following unrelentingly one’s dharma life after life.
The Hindu dharma is the clear pattern within the mind, earning the right to see the cumulative patterns of the karmas and the impressions of all past existences molded into a one pattern to be lived out in this life to the benefit of all patterns. Such a life is the fulfillment of all previous efforts and thus erases the uncomplimentary deeds and adds beneficial ones, so a next birth can be most rewardingly great and useful to the whole of mankind. This is the evolution of the soul, and the duty of the great God Ganesha and of the Mahadevas who protect the soul, of the devas who guard and guide the soul and of the rishis and seers, saints and satgurus who are the guardians of mankind in this First World existence.
They assure that, little by little, this pattern unfolds through the performance of good dharma, through earning good karma. It does not take a deep understanding or a tremendous intellect to find one’s perfect pattern among the many patterns of life. For Hindu souls, it does require being born into or gaining formal entrance into the Hindu religion, being properly introduced to the Gods and bearing the name of one of the Gods as one’s own legal name. Then authority is given to make clear the pattern for this life, to receive the blessings and the protection of the benevolent God Ganesha, protector of human evolution. This is one of the most basic benefits for all Hindus, for then we can serve the Gods well and work through our karma toward a greater dharma through working for the Gods.
We have one duty to perform, which is to pass our religion on to the next generation, the next and the next. And how do we do this? How is this done? It is done by causing the children to memorize the precepts of our scriptures. Our Saivite scriptures are the heritage of the children. They own those scriptures. It is our duty to give them the scriptures. Among others, we now have the Tirukural in the English language, entitled Weaver’s Wisdom. It must be memorized by them, by each and every one of them, along with the hundreds of Vedic verses in Hinduism’s Contemporary Catechism, Dancing with Siva. The teachings of our other scriptures should be familiar as well. That establishes them in their dharma. The sooner we get our scriptures into the minds of the children, the better we build the children into fine citizens. Crime is very expensive for any nation. Crime is very expensive for any family, for they suffer and the individual suffers. Nothing is gained by crime. Good citizenship comes from a good religious education. A good religious education starts with memory, and it is fulfilled in the realms of reason when the child is older and able to discuss his religion with his elders. We must educate the youth. We must educate them well in the Saivite Hindu religion. Start with the Tirukural. Lord Murugan will help you. God Ganesha will open doors and give you wisdom of how to proceed. Lord Murugan will give you the willpower–He is the God of Will–to perform this one supreme duty, and duty is also dharma, to pass our Saivite religion on to the next generation, the next and the next.
SUTRA 255 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
NO TOLERANCE FOR SLANDER
Siva’s devotees never listen to criticism of their satguru. If slander is heard, they extol the guru and warn the trespasser of his encroachment. If he persists in ignorance, they leave in eloquent silence. Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 255 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
THOUGHT, DIET AND DESIRE
Devotees occasionally ask, ”When you experience a thought you don’t like, should you go around the thought, or go to the center of the thought and find out why you don’t like it?” Look at thoughts as people. I see thoughts when I’m in the world of thought like a school of fish. I’m there in the ocean, sitting and looking, and a school of fish goes by, right in front of me. Well, look at thoughts as people. You are aware of other people, but you are not other people. You are just aware of other people. So, when you see someone you do not like, you don’t have to do anything about it. Let him be. It’s the same with thoughts. When a thought comes passing by that you don’t like, let it go. You don’t have to glue yourself onto it and psychoanalyze it; it doesn’t do the thought any good to be psychoanalyzed by you!
A vegetarian diet is a big help on the spiritual path. Of course, it’s only one of the helpers on the path. I’ve worked out a very simple look at food. I look at food in four ways. You have four types of food: fresh food, dead food, clean food and dirty food. Not necessarily all fresh food is clean food. Much fresh food that we get nowadays is dirty food, because food is like a sponge. It will sponge up into itself chemicals, smog and inorganic substances. These are harmful to the physical body, because the physical body is organic. So, the object of nutrition for meditation is to eat clean, fresh, organically grown food and to avoid eating dead, chemically grown, dirty food. Every time you have a delicious dinner in front of you, ask yourself the question, ”Is this clean fresh food or dead dirty food? Or, is this clean dead food or is it fresh dirty food?” After that, have a wonderful dinner, if you can! Basically, we eat one-third fruits, nuts and seeds and two-thirds fresh vegetables, salads, grains and dairy products. Such a diet keeps the physical and emotional forces subtle and refined, which therefore makes meditation subtle and refined, too. The within is very refined. We always try to the best of our ability, and we’re not finicky at all about watching the combination of foods.
We have talked before about desire and transmutation. The idea of transmuting one’s desires really means becoming aware of something inside that you want even more than the external desires. Ultimately, man’s greatest desire and urgency is for the realization of the Self in this life–the core of his Being. Realize that and live with it and enjoy it while on this planet. Once we intensify that desire, other desires become less intense, only because we are less aware of them. They are still intense for the people who are aware of them, because they still exist, right in the mind substance.
Here’s a wonderful meditation that I think you will enjoy. It shows you how simple the mind can be. How many hairs are there on your head? Thousands, but there’s only one hair in the total mind structure. People have thousands, and animals even have more, but basically there is only one hair. Think about that. There is only one eye. People have two, and so do animals. But study one eye and you know them all. There’s only one tooth. People have a lot of them, and so do animals, but there is basically only one in the universe of the mind. Meditate on that and bring everything to the one. Then, when you get it all worked out–that there’s only one hair, there’s only one eye, there’s only one tooth, there’s only one fingernail, and there’s only one of everything–start throwing those few things away. Throw away the tooth and make it disappear. Throw away the hair and make it disappear. This will take you right to the essence, the total essence of your being. Of course, probably your awareness will wander in the meantime, and you won’t get through this meditation. But keep working at it and working at it and really make everything extremely simple. We look at the world with our two physical eyes and we see such a complexity that it’s almost mind-boggling to encompass the entirety of it all. It’s much simpler than that on the inside.
