SLOKA 120 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT ARE THE HOLY ORDERS OF SANNYASA?
The holy orders of sannyasa are lifetime vows of poverty, obedience and chastity, never to be relinquished or rescinded. The sannyasins are the religious leaders, the bedrock of the Sanatana Dharma. Aum Namah Sivaya.
BHASHYA
The sannyasin’s first sacred vow is renunciation, the surrendering of the limited identity of the ego that the soul may soar to the depths of impersonal Being. It is a repudiation of worldly dharma and involvement, and thus includes poverty and simplicity. The sannyasin owns nothing, not even the robes he is given to wear. The second vow is obedience–a pledge to follow the traditional ways of the sannyasa dharma and the specific directions of his satguru. It embraces obedience to his own conscience, to scripture, to God and the Gods and to his illustrious guru parampara. The third vow is purity–a pledge to remain pure in thought, word and deed, to be continent throughout life, to protect the mind from all lower instincts: deceit, hatred, fear, jealousy, anger, pride, lust, covetousness and so forth. It includes the observance of ahimsa, noninjuriousness, and adherence to a vegetarian diet. Some orders also give vows of humility and confidentiality. The Vedas elucidate, ”Henceforth being pure, clean, void, tranquil, breathless, selfless, endless, undecaying, steadfast, eternal, unborn, independent, he abides in his own greatness.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 275 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
PEACE AND RIGHTEOUS WAR
In Gandhian philosophy ahimsa means nonviolent action which leads to passive resistance in order to put a point across. Basically, he taught, don’t hit your opponent over the head. If he tells you to do something, stall and don’t obey and don’t do it and frustrate him into submission. And yet, on the other hand, when a gang of tribals came in and raped the women in a village, Gandhi said there should not have been a man left alive in the village. They should have stood up for the village and protected it with their lives.
So, to me, that means if an intruder breaks into your house to rape the women or steal things, you have the right, even the duty, to defend your own, but you don’t have the right to torture him. Ahimsa needs to be properly understood, in moderation. Ahimsa in the Jain religion has been taken to extremes. To explain nonviolence, you have to explain what violence is, as opposed to protecting yourself. Is it violent to own a dog who would put his teeth to the throat of a vicious intruder? I don’t think it is. If nonviolence is to be something that the world is going to respect, we have to define it clearly and make it meaningful.
Not all of Earth’s one billion Hindus are living in a perfect state of ahimsa all of the time. Sometimes conditions at hand may force a situation, a regrettable exception, where violence or killing seems to be necessary. Hindus, like other human beings, unfortunately do kill people. In self-defense or in order to protect his family or his village, the Hindu may have to hurt an intruder. Even then he would harbor no hatred in his heart. Hindus should never instigate an intrusion or instigate a death; nor seek revenge, nor plot retaliation for injuries received. They have their courts of justice, punishment for crimes and agencies for defending against the aggressor or the intruder. Before any personal use of force, so to speak, all other avenues of persuasion and intelligence would be looked into, as Hindus believe that intelligence is their best weapon. In following dharma, the only rigid rule is wisdom. My satguru, Siva Yogaswami, said, ”It is a sin to kill the tiger in the jungle. But if he comes into the village, it may become your duty.” A devout Hindu would give warnings to scare the tiger or would try to capture the tiger without injury. Probably it would be the most unreligious person in the village who would come forward to kill the tiger.
Many groups on the planet today advocate killing and violence and war for a righteous cause. They would not agree with the idea that violence, himsa, is necessarily of the lower nature. But a righteous cause is only a matter of opinion, and going to war affects the lives of a great many innocent people. It’s a big karmic responsibility. Combat through war, righteous or not, is lower consciousness. Religious values are left aside, to be picked up and continued when the war is over, or in the next life or the one after that. It is said that in ancient India meat would be fed to the soldiers during military campaigns, especially before combat, to bring them into lower consciousness so that they would forget their religious values. Most higher consciousness people will not fight even if their lives depend on it. They are conscientious objectors, and there have been many in every country who have been imprisoned or killed because they would not take up arms against their brother and sister humans. This is the strictest expression of Hinduism’s law of ahimsa.
SUTRA 275 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
THE TRANSFORMATION CALLED CONVERSION
My ardent devotees well know that conversion means a change of one belief structure into another and is never without some degree of fire and pain. Counseling is necessary in this soul-searching time. Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 275 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
MAINTAINING THE BALANCE
Should the woman become aggressively intellectual and the man become passively physical, then forces in the home are disturbed. The two bicker and argue. Consequently, the children are upset, because they only reflect the vibration of the parents and are guided by their example. Sometimes the parents separate, going their own ways until the conflicting forces quiet down. But when they come back together, if the wife still remains in the pingala channel, and the husband in the ida channel, they will generate the same inharmonious conditions. It is always a question of who is the head of the house, he or she? The head is always the one who holds the pranas within the pingala. Two pingala spouses in one house, husband and wife, spells conflict.
The balancing of the ida and pingala into sushumna is, in fact, the pre-ordained spiritual sadhana, a built in sadhana, or birth sadhana, of all family persons. To be on the spiritual path, to stay on the spiritual path, to get back on the spiritual path, to keep the children on the spiritual path, to bring them back to the spiritual path, too–as a family, father, mother, sons and daughters living together as humans were ordained to do without the intrusions of uncontrolled instinctive areas of the mind and emotions–it is imperative, it is a virtual command of the soul of each member of the family, that these two forces, the ida and pingala, become and remain balanced, first through understanding and then through the actual accomplishment of this sadhana. There can be no better world, no new age, no golden future, no peace, no harmony, no spiritual progress until this happens and is perpetuated far into the future. This is the sadhana of the father. This is the sadhana of the mother. And together they are compelled by divine law to teach this sadhana to their offspring, first by example, then through explanation of their example, as youths mature into adulthood. Those unfortunate couples who neglect or refuse to perform this sadhana–of balancing the ida and pingala, and from time to time bringing both into the sushumna–are indeed distressed by their own neglect. At the time of death, as their life ebbs into the great unknown, they will, in looking back, see nothing but turmoil, misunderstanding, hurts–physical hurts, emotional hurts, mental hurts. Their subconscious will still be hurting, and they will know the hurt they gave to others will follow them into the next world, then into the next, to be reexperienced. Their pain knows no cure during their last few hours before transition from the physical body into one of the astral worlds they earned access to, as their good deeds, misdeeds and wrongful deeds are gathered together and totalled. Therefore, it is for the wise, the understanding, the hopeful parents to follow the ida-pingala-sushumna sadhana daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. This is the path for the family persons toward merger with Siva. It truly is.
