SLOKA 36 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT ARE THE FOUR STAGES ON THE PATH?
The path of enlightenment is divided naturally into four stages: charya, virtue and selfless service; kriya, worshipful sadhanas; yoga, meditation under a guru’s guidance; and jnana, the wisdom state of the realized soul. Aum.
BHASHYA
Charya, kriya, yoga and jnana are the sequence of the soul’s evolutionary process, much like the natural development of a butterfly from egg to caterpillar, from caterpillar to pupa, and then the final metamorphosis to butterfly. These are four padas, or stages, through which each human soul must pass in many births to attain its final goal. Before entering these spiritual stages, the soul is immersed in the lower nature, the anava marga, or self-centered path, bound in fear and lust, hurtful rage, jealousy, confusion, selfishness, consciencelessness and malice. Then it awakens into charya, unselfish religious service, or karma yoga. Once matured in charya, it enters kriya, devotion or bhakti yoga, and finally blossoms into kundalini yoga. Jnana is the state of enlightened wisdom reached toward the path’s end as a result of Self Realization. The four padas are not alternative ways, but progressive, cumulative phases of a one path, San Marga. The Tirumantiram says, ”Being the Life of life is splendrous jnana worship. Beholding the Light of life is great yoga worship. Giving life by invocation is external worship. Expressing adoration is charya.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 36 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
SANTOSHA: CONTENTMENT
Contentment, santosha, is the second niyama. How do we practice contentment? Simply do not harm others by thought, word or deed. As a practitioner of ahimsa, noninjury, you can sleep contentedly at night and experience santosha then and through the day. Contentment is a quality that everyone wants, and buys things to obtain–”Oh, if I only had my house redecorated, I would be content.” ”A new wardrobe would content me, give me joy and serenity.” ”To be content, I must have a vacation and get away from it all. There I can live the serene life and have joyous experiences.”
The dharmic way is to look within and bring out the latent contentment that is already there by doing nothing to inhibit its natural expression, as santosha, the mood of the soul, permeates out through every cell of the physical body. Contentment is one of the most difficult qualities to obtain, and is well summed up within our food blessing mantra, from the Shukla Yajur Veda, Isa Upanishad invocation, ”That is fullness. Creation is fullness. From that fullness flows this world’s fullness. This fullness issues from that fullness, yet that fullness remains full.” This joy we seek is the joy of fullness, lacking nothing.
Life is meant to be lived joyously. There is in much of the world the belief that life is a burden, a feeling of penitence, that it is good to suffer, good for the soul. In fact, spiritual life is not that way at all. The existentialist would have you believe that depression, rage, fear and anguish are the foremost qualities of the human temper and expression. The communists used to have us believe that joy and serenity as the outgrowth of religion are just an opiate of the people, a narcotic of unreality. The Semitic religions of the Near East would have us believe that suffering is good for the soul, and there is not much you can do about it. The Saivite Hindu perspective is that contentment is a reflection of centeredness, and discontentment is a reflection of externalized consciousness and ramified desire.
Maintaining joy and serenity in life means being content with your surroundings, be they meager or lavish. Be content with your money, be it a small amount or a large amount. Be content with your health. Bear up under ailments and be thankful that they are not worse than they are. Protect your health if it is good. It is a valuable treasure. Be content with your friends. Be loyal to those who are your long-time, trusted companions. Basically, contentment, santosha, is freedom from desire gained by redirecting the forces of desire and making a beautiful life within what one already has in life.
The rich seeking more riches are not content. The famous seeking more fame are not content. The learned seeking more knowledge are not content. Being content with what you have does not mean you cannot discriminate and seek to progress in life. It doesn’t mean you should not use your willpower and fulfill your plans.
It does mean you should not become upset while you are striving toward your goals, frustrated or unhappy if you do not get what you want. The best striving is to keep pushing along the natural unfoldment of positive trends and events in your life, your family life and your business. Contentment is working within your means with what is available to you, living within your income, being grateful for what you have, and not unhappy over what you lack.
There are many frustrated souls on the path who torment themselves no end and walk around with long faces because they estimate they are not unfolding spiritually fast enough. They have set goals of Self Realization for themselves far beyond their abilities to immediately obtain. If people say, ”I am not going to do anything that will not make me peaceful or that will threaten my peace of mind,” how will they get anywhere? That is not the idea of santosha. True santosha is seeing all-pervasiveness of the one divine power everywhere. The light within the eyes of each person is that divine power. With this in mind, you can go anywhere and do anything. Contentment is there, inside you, and needs to be brought out. It is a spiritual power. So, yes, do what makes you content. But know that contentment really transcends worrying about the challenges that face you. Santosha is being peaceful in any situation. The stronger you are in santosha, the greater the challenges you can face and still remain quiet on the inside, peaceful and content, poised like a hummingbird hovering over a flower.
SUTRA 36 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
GANAPATI, FIRST AMONG THE GODS
Siva’s followers all believe in the Mahadeva Lord Ganesha, son of Siva-Shakti, to whom they must first supplicate before beginning any worship or task. His rule is compassionate. His law is just. Justice is His mind. Aum.
LESSON 36 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
THE PURITY OF AWARENESS
To the awakened mystic, there is only one mind. There is no ”your mind” and ”my mind,” just one mind, finished, complete in all stages of manifestation. Man’s individual awareness flows through the mind as the traveler treds the globe. Just as the free citizen moves from city to city and country to country, awareness moves through the multitude of forms in the mind.
Before we meditate, we view the cycles of our life and erroneously conclude that the mind changes, that it evolves. We view joy one moment, and despair the next and, because we feel so different in these states, assume we have changed. We grow up and look back on our childhood and again see the appearance of change. Through meditation, however, we observe that we have not changed at all. Awareness becomes our real identity, and it is pure and changeless. It was the same at seven years of age as it is today. It is the same in happiness as it is in sadness. Pure awareness cannot change. It is simply aware. Therefore, you are right now the totality of yourself. You never were different, and you never will be. You are perfect at this very moment. Change is only a seeming concept created through false identification with the experiences we have in various areas of the one mind.
Everything in the world and everything in the mind is as it should be–in a perfect state of evolution. Superconsciously, we can clearly see this through the eyes of our soul. When looking at it through the instinctive-intellectual mind, we don’t see this perfection. It is as if we have blinders on both sides of our eyes, like a donkey. The carrot of desire dangles right in front of our nose when we are in the instinctive-intellectual mind, and we are going after it, step at a time, step at a time, with our blinders on. We have to go in and in and in and reach an expanded state of awareness and gain that mountaintop consciousness where we perceive that there is no injustice in the world. There is not one wrong thing. All is in perfect order and rhythm in Siva’s cosmic dance.
