Stabilising the Mind in God 6. Swami Krishnananda.
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18/01/2020.
The Twelfth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita.
(Spoken on June 26, 1983)
POST-6.
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1.
If you feel the necessity to think something else also at the same time, you are not fully convinced that God is the Ultimate Reality. He is one among the many other equally good realities, perhaps. The secondary importance that we may sometimes give to God in the midst of many other relative realities which also impinge on our mind or attract our attention is a failure.
2.
Therefore, the teaching says: Do this practice again and again. ‘Practice’ means the habituation of the mind to a single thinking continuously for a protracted period.
The definition of practice is given by Patanjali. Abhyasa and practice mean the same thing. A very long time is necessary. Even to digest a meal you require four hours, and for a sapling to grow into a powerful tree takes years.
Likewise, the mind takes its own time to accustom itself to this thought of its own notion of the ultimacy of God. So sit every day at a particular time, as you sit for your breakfast, lunch or dinner. Select a particular time of the day, every day, every day, every day. Do not miss it even a single day. If you miss a single day in sitting for this purpose, tell your mind, “I shall also miss a meal this day.” Because of this punishment that you are threatening it with, you may not miss that sitting.
3.
Be seated in a single posture, whatever be your comfortable posture. Sit, if possible, at the same time. If not, if you are a busy person, sit at any other time also when it is convenient, but for a uniform duration. If it is half an hour, let it be half an hour every day. If it is more, whatever the time be, stick to that duration. And tell the mind that now you are going to unite yourself, commune yourself with what is finally meaningful in this world.
All meaning and all value, whatever is of any worth and significance in this world, is summed up and concentrated in this thing that you are now going to meditate upon: “Thus, my dear mind, do not hop like a grasshopper here and there because of recognition of meaning, value, or significance in things in the world. I am telling you that all these are present here. That is the focus point, the concentrated centre of all the values that you can imagine as worthwhile in this world. It is the seabed of the ocean and of all the rivers of value that you can think of in the world.
Therefore, stupid mind, go not hither and thither. If you think there are values in the world, okay, granted, there are also values in the world. But they are originally present in that with which you are now trying to commune yourself. Even these values and meanings and significances in life are reflections of that original value.
Stupid mind, these beauties and joys, glamours and perfections of life in the world which attract you so much are shadows cast by the original, and if the shadows can pull you to such an extent, with such force, what is the power of the original if you contact it?
If the shadow is so beautiful, attractive and tasty a dish to the senses, what will be the taste of that original which casts this dark shadow of the world?”
To be continued ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18/01/2020.
The Twelfth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita.
(Spoken on June 26, 1983)
POST-6.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.
If you feel the necessity to think something else also at the same time, you are not fully convinced that God is the Ultimate Reality. He is one among the many other equally good realities, perhaps. The secondary importance that we may sometimes give to God in the midst of many other relative realities which also impinge on our mind or attract our attention is a failure.
2.
Therefore, the teaching says: Do this practice again and again. ‘Practice’ means the habituation of the mind to a single thinking continuously for a protracted period.
The definition of practice is given by Patanjali. Abhyasa and practice mean the same thing. A very long time is necessary. Even to digest a meal you require four hours, and for a sapling to grow into a powerful tree takes years.
Likewise, the mind takes its own time to accustom itself to this thought of its own notion of the ultimacy of God. So sit every day at a particular time, as you sit for your breakfast, lunch or dinner. Select a particular time of the day, every day, every day, every day. Do not miss it even a single day. If you miss a single day in sitting for this purpose, tell your mind, “I shall also miss a meal this day.” Because of this punishment that you are threatening it with, you may not miss that sitting.
3.
Be seated in a single posture, whatever be your comfortable posture. Sit, if possible, at the same time. If not, if you are a busy person, sit at any other time also when it is convenient, but for a uniform duration. If it is half an hour, let it be half an hour every day. If it is more, whatever the time be, stick to that duration. And tell the mind that now you are going to unite yourself, commune yourself with what is finally meaningful in this world.
All meaning and all value, whatever is of any worth and significance in this world, is summed up and concentrated in this thing that you are now going to meditate upon: “Thus, my dear mind, do not hop like a grasshopper here and there because of recognition of meaning, value, or significance in things in the world. I am telling you that all these are present here. That is the focus point, the concentrated centre of all the values that you can imagine as worthwhile in this world. It is the seabed of the ocean and of all the rivers of value that you can think of in the world.
Therefore, stupid mind, go not hither and thither. If you think there are values in the world, okay, granted, there are also values in the world. But they are originally present in that with which you are now trying to commune yourself. Even these values and meanings and significances in life are reflections of that original value.
Stupid mind, these beauties and joys, glamours and perfections of life in the world which attract you so much are shadows cast by the original, and if the shadows can pull you to such an extent, with such force, what is the power of the original if you contact it?
If the shadow is so beautiful, attractive and tasty a dish to the senses, what will be the taste of that original which casts this dark shadow of the world?”
To be continued ...
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