Tag Archives: meditation

Chandogya Upanishad ( Chapters 6 to 8) Part 12

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Part 11

Chapter 8 Section 6 [8.6.1 to 8.6.4]                                                                                 By practicing meditation, a jiva after death goes to Brahm- loka where he has two choices. He may enjoy the available pleasures, take rebirth. Alternatively, he may choose to get Self-knowledge from Brahmaji and be liberated. It is krama mukti. It is not of much relevance to a seeker of liberation in the current life. Therefore, it is briefly discussed. Death is fall of physical body and separation of subtle body from it.  The jiva is in the form of subtle body. As the death approaches, the subtle body is gradually withdrawn from gross body towards heart. From the heart through a special capillary (susuma nadi), it reaches a subtle aperture in the head and leaves the gross body. Thereafter, it travels through shukla gati (bright path) and reaches Brahm loka.

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ChAndogya Upanishad (Chapters 6 to 8) Part 10

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Part 9

Part 11

Chapter 8
Introduction
The chapter has 15 sections. Sections 1 to 6 deal with meditation on Saguna Brahman, sections 7 to 12 deal with Nirguna Brahman in the form of a dialogue between Prajapati and Indra. The last three sections discuss spiritual disciplines. The perception of objective world is dependent on sense organs. And the capacity of the sense organs is finite. They cannot provide the complete reality because the Absolute is supra-sensuous. The externality that is characteristic of the outer world prevents it from revealing the Absolute because one of the aspects of the Absolute is subjectivity which is inside.

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ChAndogya Upanishad (Chapters 6 to 8) Part 7(3)

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Part 7(2)

Part 8

There is a need to take a pause and listen to what SwAmi KrishnAnada has to say. “As we go further and further in this chapter, we will find it is more and more difficult to understand the intention of the Upanishad. The instructions are very cryptic in their language. Even the Sanskrit language that is used is very archaic, giving way to various types of interpretations. But, the general background of the thought of the teacher here seems to be that there is necessity to rise gradually from the lower level to the higher level of comprehension. Here, by comprehension we mean the capacity of consciousness to include within its being, not merely within its thought or understanding, the reality that is outside. The more the extent of the reality outside that gets absorbed into our own being, the more is the power we can exercise over that realm of reality. This is a point, of course, that will be clear to anyone. Power is not merely imposed on us by any kind of ordinance or mandate. It is an outcome that arises automatically on account of the identity of our Being with that extent of reality with which we have become one.”

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 36

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Part 35

Part 37

Chapter 6 JnAna and Moksha
6-10-2 Anuvaka 10 The Upanishad prescribes two groups of meditation. In each group, there are several meditations: adhyAtma Brahman upAsanA, Adhidaiva Brahman upAsanA, AkAsa Brahman upAsanA.

adhyAtma Brahman upAsanA-. Here different organs in the body are locus for invocation. May you meditate upon Brahman in the form of well-being in speech. If a person’s speech is proper and appropriate, it can bring all-round wellness. Speech is the best ornament of a person. May you meditate on Brahman as yoga and ksema residing in prAna and apAna. PrAna rises from the lung upward and goes out, while apAna goes in from the nostrils and travels down to the lung. In this prAna and apAna, yoga-ksema is present. Yoga means all forms of acquisition – money, house, health, food etc. Ksema. means preservation of whatever has been acquired. Yoga and ksema reside in our breathing, because they exist only when we are alive. Once we cease breathing (die), they become irrelevant.

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part 27

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Part 26

Part 28

Chapter 6 JnAna and Moksha

6-7 Mundaka Upanishad

6-7-4 Mundaka 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 The Upanishad explains how Brahman can be known though it is formless. It is subtler than the subtlest. It shines through all experiences. It is cognized in the hearts of all beings as revealing Itself through such functions as seeing, hearing, thinking, knowing. It is therefore very near for wise. It is the support of all living and non-living things, all the worlds and the dwellers of the worlds like all the spokes fixed on the navel of the chariot wheel. It pervades all that is subtle and gross, yet not polluted by and is beyond them. It is the highest goal and the most desirable. By knowing It one is contented as if all desires are fulfilled.

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Waking Up (Conclusion)

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Part 4 (conclusion) of the review of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

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Drugs

Many pages are devoted to a discussion of Near Death Experiences, although the reason for this is unclear – it is quite disproportionate, given the supposed topic of the book. He rightly condemns them as having nothing to do with spirituality, since they are merely the result of a cocktail of naturally produced chemicals in the brain. But then, inexplicably, he lauds hallucinogens as a mechanism for artificially inducing spiritual experiences, when all that they do is introduce a cocktail of man-made chemicals into the brain! You know full well (afterwards) that any experience you might have had was chemically created and therefore unreal. How can it possibly teach you anything useful? This is the height of irresponsibility and should have been rejected by the publisher.

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Waking Up (Part 3)

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Part 3 of the review of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

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Other Religions and Non-duality

It is not at all obvious why ‘religion’ should be so disparaged. He recognizes “the needless confusion and harm that inevitably arise from the doctrines of faith-based religions”. The literal meaning of ‘religion’ is ‘joining back’, from the Latin ‘re ligare’. Its essential aim (and, I suggest, one rather more worthy) has nothing to do with psychology or personal happiness but with the nature of reality itself. It is difficult to understand how someone could place more value on a drug-induced experience than upon use of reason applied to scriptural revelation.

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Eight Upanishads (Topic-wise) Part11

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Part 10

Part 12

Chapter 5 Preparation

5-6 Prasna Upanishad

5-6-4 Prasna 3.10
Though all the questions have been answered, there is an extended answer for the 4th question. How does the prAna leave the body? As death nears, our thoughts are no longer determined by our will. The willpower becomes weak in old age and the latent tendencies become strong. UdAnA pulls subtle and causal bodies and they enter the next body, the blueprint of which is already available.

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‘nididhyAsana’ – as Shankara explains – 2/2

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[Part – 1/2]

Putting together 4.1.2, BSB and 1.1.6, muNDaka bhAShya, we can draw five conclusions from bhagavatpada prasthānatraya bhAShya prakriyA as given below:

  1. It is possible to get the Knowledge of the Self in just one hearing of the Vedic statement ‘That thou art’. But, to achieve this it has to be a highly eligible seeker.
  2. Those who have but a vague idea of the meaning of a text on hearing it once do come to shed their various misconceptions and understand it rightly after repeated hearings.
  3. There are some for whom the meanings of words ‘that’ and ‘thou’ are obscured by ignorance, doubt and misunderstanding. In their case merely hearing the text ‘That thou art’ will not yield Knowledge of its True meaning. A seeker can only understand the meaning of the sentence after understanding the meaning of the words in it. In case of such people, repeated hearing followed by reasoning upon them is needed to first get the true meaning of words.
  4. The Knowledge gained by the most well-qualified in one hearing and that gained by another seeker over repeated hearings is not different; i.e. there isn’t anything more to be done by either of them. Because gaining the Knowledge itself is “gaining” the Self (unlike in karma kANDa where knowledge about a ritual which bestows heaven will not by itself take the seeker to heaven. After knowing, the seeker has to perform the ritual and body has to fall off in course of time. Only after that, s/he may be taken to heaven).
  5. For most highly qualified seekers all it takes is one hearing alone. For the remaining seekers (including Svetaketu Aruni) it needs repeated attempts. But in every attempt what is needed is shravaNa+manana+nididhyAsana combined together.

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‘nididhyAsana’ – as Shankara explains – 1/2

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[“nididhyAsana” is a very important and popular term in Advaita Vedanta.  Every teacher tends to give his or her own interpretation of what it means as per his/her understanding and/or the philosophical school s/he belongs to. A sincere seeker in Shankara tradition, however, would like to know what “nididhyAsana” stands for according to Shankara.

To answer this, Shri Michael Ji kindly collected Shri Prasanth Neti Ji’s comments from several separate posts on the subject and turned them into a single post at the FB SAV Group. I feel it provides an authentic picture of how Shankara himself explicates the term. Both Shri Prasanth Ji and Michael Ji have been very generous in letting me post the Article here. I trust the Readers will find this post interesting and useful – ramesam.]

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Maitreyi asks her husband, Sage Yajnavalkya:  Continue reading →