SLOKA 102 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
HOW ARE TEMPLES FOUNDED AND BUILT?
Siva temples are founded by God Himself, often designated in a vision or dream of a devout Saivite, then erected by temple craftsmen usually following Agamic law. In such a holy place, holiness itself can reside. Aum.
BHASHYA
Because of its holiness, a Siva temple is most often and properly established by God Siva through His devotees and not founded by men. Once the site is known, hereditary temple architects, known as sthapatis, are commissioned to design and construct the temple. By tradition, every stone is set in place according to the sacred architecture found in the Agamic scriptures. When properly consecrated, the temple becomes a place upon the earth in which the three worlds can communicate for the upliftment of mankind and the fulfillment of Siva’s dharmic law. Siva has deliberately established many temples to communicate His love to His children throughout the world, who live in every country of the world and long for their Lord’s ever-present love. They build temples in His name and install His image, chant His praises and thus invoke His presence. Lord Siva accepts all these temples as His own and sends a divine ray to vivify and vitalize them. Siva’s Vedas annunciate, ”Brahman is the priest, Brahman the sacrifice; by Brahman the posts are erected. From Brahman the officiating priest was born; in Brahman is concealed the oblation.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 257 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
CHARTING A COURSE
When we set our dharma through the personal course of selecting a profession, we have to be very sure what we want to do through life; and it has to be in accordance with either stri dharma or purusha dharma to the best of our knowledge, and all of our family and relatives have to agree. For when we follow dharma, we are content; everyone in the community is happy.
Now, in this technological era, we have many choices of dharma. What would be some of them? To become a doctor would be a dharma, which is helping people, healing people mentally, emotionally and physically. To perform the dharma of a doctor, not just eight hours a day, but twenty-four hours a day, we have to be healing. Then the great healing forces from the great Gods of our religion come pouring through us, whether we are a medical doctor, an ayurveda healer, a nutritionist, a surgeon, a psychiatrist, a neurologist, or whatever we choose in that field as our dharma. This becomes our total pattern to be lived out in this birth.
What upsets dharma and makes karma? When we make karma, we either make negative burdens for ourselves, or we make helpful and useful karmas that bring us merit. For a youth to choose to be a doctor and then, in the middle of his career, decide he doesn’t want to do that anymore, and make another choice in the middle of his life that he is going to now be a businessman and run a drugstore because it is more profitable to go into business–that would be abandoning dharma and making karma, karma which would have to be lived through, perhaps in another life. When that doctor made his decision to become a storekeeper, he started a new dharma, or a new karma, for which he was not trained from youth. He is, therefore, vulnerable to making many mistakes, because he has wandered off the pathway of dharma.
Why is the world in such a mess? Because people are not following dharma. They are adharmic. They are not following the path of dharma. They are following the path of karma, both bad karma and good karma. So, in our religion, the Saivite Hindu religion, we are bound to follow the path of dharma the best that we can understand it. We know it is unwise to do otherwise. And who teaches the wisdom of following the path of dharma? The grandfather, the grandmother, the father, the great uncle, the elders of the community, the family guru, the temple priest–they know how the dharma should be followed for a healthy, thriving society. When we make our choices in life, those choices should have the support of the family and the community. Then we are in the path of proper dharma, and it is easier for us to become successful in it since everyone is behind it. It is a difficult world in which we live, but we can go through it without being harmed by it by following the path of svadharma, the perfect personal pattern of an individual’s life.
Dharma is something that only the Hindu religion, the Buddhist religion, the Jain religion, the Sikh religion and other Eastern religions know about. They know about the path of dharma. The other religions don’t know too much about that path. But we know about the path of dharma–our duty to be fulfilled in this life, for family, friends, relatives, deceased relatives, community, guru and temple. We have, each and every one of us, a duty to this temple we are sitting in this morning, to see that it is cared for, supported and kept clean. That is one of the duties of our dharma. We have a duty to the community. We have a duty to our mother, duty to our father, duty to our guru, a duty to the world also. And good, religious people make good citizens of the world.
We hear a lot about human rights these days. It was in Sri Lanka in 1949 that I encountered the Eastern vision of human rights, learned that duty is greater than privilege, service is superior to security. Hindu Dharma is religion, duty and justice woven together, I discovered. I sometimes explain it as a simple box of controls which holds the actions of this life and those that preceded it and their corresponding reactions. Just what is the Hindu view on human rights? It is the right of all humans to be free enough to experience their experiences and learn from their ability to overcome, without holding resentments or indulging in anger, giving out harsh words, their misdeeds, sins and other wrongdoings and reactions to their former actions. From a mystical point of view, what happens to us is important, but not as important as how we react and respond to things, good or otherwise, that happen to us. The human rights of Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were terribly abused, yet they were not destroyed. Let us work for the most humane of human rights, but also teach that their absence in life need not destroy us. Greatness is in accepting whatever comes with open arms. All this abuse–which does exist despite the wishes of so many that it did not–can be a blessing when embraced by a pure soul. And we each have within us the power to accept, a power no one can deprive us of under any conditions.
SUTRA 257 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
FOUR VEHICLES OF SERVICE
My devotees give full energy and dedication to Saiva Siddhanta Church, Himalayan Academy, Hinduism Today and Hindu Heritage Endowment. These four form a mighty, unified force for Sanatana Dharma. Aum.
LESSON 257 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
OVERCOMING KARMA
Seekers ask, ”How can I stay awake when I meditate? I fall asleep almost every time. This happens even during the day. It’s terrible.” The answer is, it is absolutely impossible to go to sleep while in meditation and still call it meditation. It is possible to put the body to sleep deliberately and then go into meditation. If you catch yourself dropping off to sleep while sitting for meditation, you know that your meditation period is over. The best thing to do is to deliberately go to sleep, because the spiritual power is gone and has to be invoked or opened up again. After getting ready for bed, sit in a meditative position and have a dynamic meditation for as long as you can. When you become sleepy, you may put yourself to sleep by deliberately relaxing the body and causing the pranas to flow. Mentally say: ”Prana in the left leg, flow, go to sleep; prana in the right leg, flow, go to sleep; prana in the right arm, flow, go to sleep; prana in the left arm, flow, go to sleep; torso actinodic prana, flow, go to sleep; head with inner light, go to sleep.” Then the first thing you know, it is morning.
How does meditation affect one’s karmas? Karma is congested magnetic forces, and meditating is rising above karmic binding influences. You can control the congestion of karma or avoid the congestion and thus control your karma. This proves to yourself that you are the creator, the one who preserves and the destroyer simultaneously on the higher levels of consciousness. Yet, you have to come back occasionally to the ”little old you” on this level and do the things that you have been accustomed to doing as a human, until you fully have the complete realization of the Self God–the emkaef experience. Then you penetrate the doors of the Absolute into the core of existence itself, and you become the Self that everyone is searching for. But to overcome karmic patterns, the will must be tremendously strong and stable, and that means we must demand perfection in our life.
Why would you ever want to place demands of perfection upon yourself? You now walk the path of perfection, and you must be so to walk that path. What is this perfection? First, it is a clarity of cognition. Second, it is a bursting of actinic love for your fellow man. Third, it is an openness and willingness to serve and fit in, in any capacity. Fourth, it is living a contemplative lifestyle better every day. Fifth, it is mastering all of your yoga disciplines given to you by your guru. Sixth, it is the ability to hold responsibility, maintain a continuity of your own karma yoga, yet have the mobile quality to be ever ready to do something different without losing continuity of what you have been doing in holding your responsibility.
If you can gear yourself to accomplish all this, you are on the path of enlightenment and you will surely prove to yourself, when you have your realization, that you are a free man in a free world, subject to nobody, to no power, even the power of karma. How could That which is formless and causeless be subject to anything?
