SLOKA 51 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
\nWHY IS THERE SUFFERING IN THE WORLD?
\nThe nature of the world is duality. It contains each thing and its opposite: joy and sorrow, goodness and evil, love and hate. Through experience of these, we learn and evolve, finally seeking Truth beyond all opposites. Aum.<\/p>\n
BHASHYA
\nThere is a divine purpose even in the existence of suffering in the world. Suffering cannot be totally avoided. It is a natural part of human life and the impetus for much spiritual growth for the soul. Knowing this, the wise accept suffering from any source, be it hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, famine, wars, disease or inexplicable tragedies. Just as the intense fire of the furnace purifies gold, so does suffering purify the soul to resplendence. So also does suffering offer us the important realization that true happiness and freedom cannot be found in the world, for earthly joy is inextricably bound to sorrow, and worldly freedom to bondage. Having learned this, devotees seek a satguru who teaches them to understand suffering, and brings them into the intentional hardships of sadhana and tapas leading to liberation from the cycles of experience in the realm of duality. The Agamas explain, ”That which appears as cold or as hot, fresh or spoiled, good fortune and bad, love and hate, effort and laziness, the exalted and the depraved, the rich and the poor, the well-founded and the ill-founded, all this is God Himself; none other than Him can we know.” Aum Namah Sivaya.<\/p>\n
LESSON 206 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
\nTHREE KINDS OF BRIBERY<\/p>\n
Let me tell you a true story. A young man is riding his motor scooter in busy Kuala Lumpur. His tail light is out and he knows it. Hearing a siren behind him, he slows and is pulled over by a motorcycle policeman. In Malay, the officer informs him of the infraction, and pulls out his ticket book, then indicates through well-known gestures that a small bribe would take care of the matter. Heart pounding, palms sweating, the boy musters up his courage and says, ”Officer, are you asking me to bribe you? I’m not paying you anything. What is your badge number? Take me to your superior!” Visibly shaken and seeing that the youth is no easy mark, the policeman spins around, mounts his bike and speeds away. There was a bad feeling about this real-life incident. The cop knew he was committing a crime. The youth was tempted to become the accomplice, but resisted, sidestepping for the moment one of society’s most sinister problems.<\/p>\n
Yes, briber and bribed are bound together in their dishonest, dark deed. Reluctance, resignation, efficiency, disdain–none of these sentiments relieve a person from the guilt, the ever-accumulating kukarma, the bad karma, of the crime. There are three kinds of bribery. The first is the most common–withholding services one has been paid to perform until that additional, secret compensation is paid. The second kind is a little more subtle. Favors–contracts, concessions, legal immunity, etc.–are given to those who pay a bribe in cash or kind. The briber offers money, saying, ”I am giving you this money, and this is what you can do for me,” and if the party accepts it, that is what he must do. It’s a purchase of secret, unauthorized use of influence, position or authority. The third form of bribery, even more subtle, is to provide a paid service and then exact an additional reward. This is, however, the most easily detected of all, because when asked for further service, it will be delayed or denied–that is, if the gift expected after the first service was performed was not given or was not large enough.<\/p>\n
Bribe comes from an Old French word, meaning a morsel of bread given to a beggar. Says Webster’s Dictionary, a bribe is ”1) anything, especially money, given or promised to induce a person to do something illegal or wrong; 2) anything given or promised to induce a person to do something against his or her wishes.” Bribery money when received, in cash or kind, is bad money, because it is wrongly gotten–in whatever of the three ways–by psychological force, the arousal of greed or by devious coercion.<\/p>\n
In many countries, bribery has become a way of life. Bribes are demanded, and usually paid, for most anything, from getting a contract signed to buying a train ticket. A prominent politician in India told me he finds it impossible, simply impossible, to get anything done without it. Most, but not everyone, would agree. A successful, sophisticated Bangalore businesswoman, now in her forties, swears she has never, ever paid a bribe in her entire life.
\nSUTRA 206 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
\nLIFE’S FOUR SEASONS
\nSiva’s ardent souls honor and conscientiously fulfill the duties of each of life’s four progressive stages of dharma: student (age 12-24), householder (24-48), respected elder (48-72) and religious solitaire after age 72. Aum.<\/p>\n
LESSON 206 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
\nAWARENESS EXTERNALIZED<\/p>\n
In concentrating on a flower, one of the sadhanas that you have been given, when awareness is held steady and only the flower exists within the mind, as well as outside your body, close observation and scrutiny of the flower can then begin. An intuitive flash will bring knowledge of the complete cycle of that particular form in all phases of its manifestation. This intuitive flash comes to those just beginning the processes of meditation. Later on, the process can be slowed down and sustained. We cannot be imaginative here or fantasize, for only through actually keying into the particular area in time and space does one begin to contemplate future and past in relationship to it.<\/p>\n
Living in the external area of the mind, it appears that thoughts are always changing. New concepts come and old ones go, as do customs and systems of living. From an inner perspective, it is similar to riding on a train, seeing the countryside, animals, people and buildings quickly pass by. Everything seems to be changing, but it is only you who is traveling through space. So it is within the mind. You travel through inner space rapidly or slowly, depending upon the nature of your sadhana or your natural emotional velocity. It is through holding fast to this perspective that a swift inroad to further enlightenment can be attained. If you hold to the perspective that thoughts and forms are always changing, your awareness automatically traps itself into the pygmy consciousness as a victim in a vast, ever-changing conglomerate of pranic mind substances. You have experienced this, no doubt, as it is the experience of those who have not awakened to the inner path.<\/p>\n
What we must seek to see is the all-pervading energy which permeates all form. It is not necessary to centralize on one thought or sequence of pictures as opposed to another to gain this new perspective, for we cannot, in a sense, climb up to it. We have to drop down into it by going deep within the essence of the mind and intuiting the all-pervading force. We come out of that state as a pure, unhindered awareness, able to flow and focus detachedly in the accustomed areas of mind that make up what we term ”our life,” and as new cavities of mind awaken before our vision, we flow in and out of them unhampered or hindered by what is seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SLOKA 51 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA WHY IS THERE SUFFERING IN THE WORLD? The nature of the world is duality. It contains each thing and its opposite: joy and sorrow, goodness and evil, love and hate. Through experience of these, we learn and evolve, finally seeking Truth beyond all opposites. Aum. BHASHYA There is a divine purpose even in the existence of suffering in the world. Suffering cannot be totally avoided. It is a natural part of human life and the impetus for much spiritual growth for the soul. Knowing this, the wise accept suffering from any source, be it <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-lesson-with-gurudeva","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}