Monday, July 1, 2013

Dawn of a New Day in Life!


(Excerpt from Chapter 2, Eternal Way to Bliss)
When life is going good, when we're happy, we never think of being free, pray to God, ponder questions about life, or ask "Who am I?" There is no need. Very few seek liberation, Moksha, when happy. Sri Krishna says that there are three types of people who come looking for God:

    1. Those who want to get rid of problems and misery.
    2. Those who want to gain something: a job, wealth, health, a child, whatever the object of desire is.
     3. Those who are sincere seekers of truth.

I have seen friends who become spiritual when they lose a job, or when they get health problems, or something bad happens to a family member. But a wise person who seeks the truth, God, and Self, even in happy times, will never become miserable in bad times. There is a saying on this by the fifteenth century Indian sage, Kabir:
"Dukh mein sumiran sab karen, sukh mein kare na koi. Jo sukh mein sumiran kare, to dukh kahe ko hoy." 

This ancient Vedic wisdom understands life so well. I am fortunate that there's someone who has so much experience of this knowledge to explain it to me. Here's how Swamiji puts it:
Problem definition: There is misery in life from problems related to health, wealth, relationships, and children. What values define a "good human being," and how do we overcome the obstacles to becoming one?
Cause:
     1. Ignorance.
     2. A disturbed and restless mind.
     3. Negativity or impurities like cravings (raga), aversions (dwesh), desires (kama), anger (krodha), greed (lobha), delusion (moha), self-infatuation (mada), jealousy (matsarya), malice (asuya)envy (irsya), hypocrisy (dambha), pride (darpa), and ego (ahamkara). 
Solution: What is the solution? The solutions follows...
God, or nature, gave us this life with its challenges and also handed us a solutions manual to figure out how to be happy. It lists the values we should incorporate to be a good human being. One such guide is the Bhagavad Gita. It's perfect because it's complete; nothing is missing.
According to an eastern wisdom tradition there is a path of evolution for an individual soul (Jiva) from the time it's created, separate from cosmic consciousness, to the many lives it lives, then the final merging back into consciousness (enlightenment). That prescribed path for a successful life was explained by Swamiji follows...




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