SLOKA 55 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
DOES GOD EVER PUNISH WRONGDOERS?
God is perfect goodness, love and truth. He is not wrathful or vengeful. He does not condemn or punish wrongdoers. Jealousy, vengefulness and vanity are qualities of man’s instinctive nature, not of God. Aum Namah Sivaya.
BHASHYA
There is no reason to ever fear God, whose right-hand gesture, abhaya mudra, indicates ”fear not,” and whose left hand invites approach. God is with us always, even when we are unaware of that holy presence. He is His creation. It is an extension of Himself; and God is never apart from it nor limited by it. When we act wrongly, we create negative karma for ourselves and must then live through experiences of suffering to fulfill the law of karma. Such karmas may be painful, but they were generated from our own thoughts and deeds. God never punishes us, even if we do not believe in Him. It is by means of worship of and meditation on God that our self-created sufferings are softened and assuaged. God is the God of all–of the believers within all religions, and of the nonbelievers, too. God does not destroy the wicked and redeem the righteous; but grants the precious gift of liberation to all souls. The Agamas state, ”When the soul gradually reduces and then stops altogether its participation in darkness and inauspicious powers, the Friend of the World, God, reveals to the soul the limitless character of its knowledge and activity.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 210 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
BRIBERY IN THE HOME
Then there is bribery of children: ”I’ll give you a sweet if you do what I want you to do. I’ll take the sweet away if you don’t.” Some call this discipline, but true discipline is training and teaching, learning to uphold a known rule. Anything else is punishment, which closes the lines of communication between the elder and the child. The child has to be clearly taught what the rules are and who is in charge. The child has to know what he is going to get and not get, according to his or her misdeeds. But to bribe the child who has not been educated in this way, to awaken his desire for something and not give it to him, that is a form of corruption. The child will carry that out into the community. He will not be a good citizen, and his kukarma will reflect upon the family and several generations back and several generations in the future. The blame is upon the father and the mother, because children follow the example of the parents. Bribing and beating go hand in hand. When it becomes a way of life, children are bribed to behave, to get good grades, to go to bed on time.
There is still another, even more insidious, form of bribery that happens within the home. This is emotional bribery: ”I shall be unhappy unless you please me,” ”I shall be happy to include you in my will if you do what I want, but if you don’t, you’re out of my will.” That is bribery. It inhibits the freedom of the individual. ”Marry this girl and you will please your family. After all we have done for you, you have to marry the way we want you to marry, and you have to give up the girl you really, really love.” Even if the boy has been having an affair with that girl, even if she is pregnant, his family will bribe him to marry someone else by threatening exclusion from the family, disrespect and the ruin of his name in the community. Oh, that is a favorite form of bribery: ”I shall blacken your name in the community, make up stories about your character. I shall ruin your reputation. Your name will look like mud in the minds of an ever-increasing group of people unless you buckle down and do what we say.” That is a form of intimidation or blackmail that is used quite often in today’s world. Blackmail is a kind of reverse bribery. While a briber demands money to do something for you, a blackmailer demands money to not do something against you. The blackmailer says, ”Give me what I want or I’ll expose the secrets I know about you.” This demand for hush money is an ominous form of reverse bribery, but bribery nonetheless. There is serious karma involved in all forms of bribery, which are part of the negative culture which tears down a nation, which tears down a community, which tears down a family, which the younger generation, hopefully, will not put up with.
SUTRA 210 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
RENUNCIATION AFTER AGE 72
Siva’s unmarried men and widowers may renounce the world after age 72, severing all ties with their community and living as unordained, self-declared sannyasins among the holy monks of India. Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 210 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
BECOME THE WATCHER
We must be aware that it is only reawakening consciousness into a natural state, and that there is nothing mystical, difficult or inward that has to occur to hold an awareness of the inner and outer simultaneously from one central point in the mind. It is only because one is not accustomed to thinking in this way that it may seem difficult. But little children are in this state much of the time, and it is natural to them.
The beginning stages of watching the mind think I shall describe as similar to sitting quietly with your eyes open and while not thinking about anything in particular, simply looking at what is around you–all of the time feeling somewhat empty on the inside, but seeing what is in front of you, to the left side of you, to the right side of you, above you, below you, and knowing what each object is, but not thinking about any object or collection of objects. Your eyes are watching; who lives behind them is the watcher. The objects that the mind perceives are similar to thoughts.
When you close your eyes and begin thinking about the objects you have been looking at, duplicating your surroundings in your mind by creating thought pictures of those objects, there is a deeper you who is the watcher of those thoughts. This you can practice all through the day almost anywhere you are. It takes no particular skill or practice. It can be done at any time. You are simply becoming conscious of the natural processes of awareness, consciousness and thought which have been going on day after day all through your life up to this point.
Each time you practice being the watcher, using the method just outlined, as soon as you begin to succeed, you will immediately receive the impact of realization of the extent of involvement in the external mind that had occurred between these periods of practice. You will find that the more you practice regularly, increasingly, more frequently, you will remember to continue ”the witness” in the midst of daily life–while riding in conveyances, talking with people, shopping in crowded stores, even in the midst of a disagreement or at the pinnacle of a creative flow. ”You,” the watcher, will preside, and in presiding will carry that inner presence so necessary for a full and fruitful life.
With this in mind, be encouraged, for we must remember that total involvement in the externalities of the mind seems to be the cultural trait of this century. Therefore, it may take a few years to change the pattern. To send awareness soaring within to home base is not easy when the rest of the world is plunging in the opposite direction. If at first you only succeed a few minutes a day being able to watch the mind think or watch the eyes see, that is sufficient, as long as the practice is regular and consistent, day after day.
Other kinds of practice previously outlined in the sadhana of this book will strengthen this ability and increase your capacity to maintain that equal balance between the inner and the outer, if performed with regularity. This intricate study of awareness steadied versus fluctuating thought can only be pursued by taking the slow and sometimes arduous approach, not being overly enthused by success or discouraged by failure.
