SLOKA 85 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
HOW IS FAMILY HARMONY MAINTAINED?
In the Hindu family, mutual respect, love and understanding are the bedrock of harmony. By not fighting, arguing or criticizing, members cultivate a spiritual environment in which all may progress. Aum Namah Sivaya.
BHASHYA
For a harmonious joint family, it is vital to make the home strong, the center of activity and creativity, kept beautiful and clean, a sanctuary for each member. While striving to increase wealth, the wise families live within their means, content with what they have. Activities are planned to bring the family close through shared experiences. A gentle but firm hierarchy of respect for elders is maintained throughout the family. In general, the younger, in humility, defers to the elder, allowing him or her the last word. The elder is equally obliged to not misuse authority. Older children are responsible for the safety and care of their younger brothers and sisters. Disputes among children are settled by their mother, but not kept a secret from the father. Actual discipline in the case of misconduct is carried out by the father. When disputes arise in the extended family, responsibility for restoring harmony falls first to the men. However, any concerned member can take the lead if necessary. The Vedas say of grihastha life, ”I will utter a prayer for such concord among family members as binds together the Gods, among whom is no hatred.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 85 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
SADHANA AND THE FIVE DUTIES
When we study and practice our religion, we are not necessarily performing deep sadhana. We are simply dispatching our religious duties. These duties are concisely outlined in the pancha nitya karmas, the five minimal religious obligations of Hindus. The first duty is dharma, proper conduct, living one’s life according to the teachings of the Tirukural and atoning for misconduct. The second duty is upasana, worship, performing a personal vigil each day, preferably before dawn, including a puja, followed by the performance of japa, scriptural study, and meditation. The third duty is utsava, holy days, observing each Friday (or Monday) as a holy day, as well as the major festival days through the year. On the weekly holy day, one cleans and decorates the home altar, attends the nearby temple and observes a fast. The fourth duty of all Hindus is tirthayatra, pilgrimage. At least once each year, a pilgrimage is made to a Hindu temple away from one’s local area. Fifth is samskaras, the observance of traditional rites of passage, including namakarana, name-giving; vivaha, marriage; and antyesti, funeral rites.
Another vital aspect of Hindu duty is service. The Vedas remind us, ”When a man is born, whoever he may be, there is born simultaneously a debt to the Gods, to the sages, to the ancestors and to men” (Shukla Yajur Veda, SB 1.7.2.1. ve, p. 393). Service to the community, includes helping the poor, caring for the aged, supporting religious institutions, building schools and upholding the lofty principle of ahimsa in raising one’s children. Hinduism is a general and free-flowing, relaxed religion, experienced in the temple, in the ashramas, the aadheenams, at festivals, on pilgrimage and in the home.
The performance of personal sadhana, discipline for self-transformation, is one step deeper in making religion real in one’s life. Through sadhana we learn to control the energies of the body and nerve system, and we experience that through the control of the breath the mind becomes peaceful. Sadhana is practiced in the home, in the forest, by a flowing river, under a favorite tree, in the temple, in gurukulas or wherever a pure, serene atmosphere can be found. A vrata, vow, is often taken before serious sadhana is begun. The vrata is a personal pledge between oneself, one’s guru and the angelic beings of the inner worlds to perform the disciplines regularly, conscientiously, at the same time each day.
SUTRA 85 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
THE HOME AS REFUGE
Siva’s men devotees, on arriving home from work, immediately bathe and enter their shrine for the blessings of Gods and guru to dispel worldly forces and regain the state of Siva consciousness. Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 85 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
STEP ONE: ATTENTION
The grand old man of the East who ordained me, Jnanaguru Yoganathan, Yogaswami of Jaffna, used to say time and time again, ”It was all finished long ago.” It’s finished already. The whole mind is finished, all complete, in all stages of manifestation. Man’s individual awareness flows through the mind as the traveler trods the globe.
Now we come to the real study, and this applies right to you and to you personally: the five steps on the path of enlightenment. What are they? Attention, concentration, meditation, contemplation and Self Realization. Those are the five steps that awareness has to flow through, almost gaining strength each time, on the path to enlightenment. When we first start, awareness is flowing through many areas of the mind. And if it is a mature awareness, we will say it’s a great big ball of light, flowing through the mind. And if it’s not a mature awareness, it’s like a little ping-pong ball, bouncing around. The little ping-pong ball awareness is not going to walk the path of enlightenment, so to speak. It’s going to bobble around in the instinctive mind, incarnation after incarnation, until it grows to a great big ball, like a great big beach ball. Then finally it will have enough experiences flowing through the mind to turn in on itself. When this happens, certain faculties come into being. One of them is willpower. And we learn to hold attention. We learn to hold awareness at attention. Awareness: attention!
What is attention? Attention is the first of the five steps on the path, that is, holding awareness steady, centralized in only one area of the mind, and the area that we choose it to be in, not the area that someone else has chosen it to be in. Our awareness is moved around by other people through the mind at such a fast rate that we think we are moving awareness ourself, so to speak. That’s a funny way to talk because I’m saying we move awareness as if awareness is something else other than us. But awareness and energy and willpower are all the same thing. So, we will just call it awareness from here on out. When other people move awareness through one area or another, we call that distraction, or worldly distractions. The mission is to move awareness yourself. How do you learn to do that? Holding it at attention.
How does attention work? Attention is awareness poised like a hummingbird over a flower. It doesn’t move. The flower doesn’t move, and awareness becomes aware of the flower–poised. The entire nerve system of the physical body and the functions of breath have to be at a certain rhythm in order for awareness to remain poised like a hummingbird over a flower. Now, since the physical body and our breath have never really been disciplined in any way, we have to begin by breathing rhythmically and diaphragmatically, so that we breathe out the same number of counts as we breathe in. After we do this over a long period of time–and you can start now–then the body becomes trained, the external nerve system become trained, responds, and awareness is held at attention.
