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YOGA - AND OTHER
PATHS TO PERFECTION
SAVING ONE'S SOUL is a very selfish thing to do - or so it seems to this learner who can’t find his karma.
“Saving one’s soul”, Hinduism teaches, is a trap set by the ego.
The trick, it appears, is to surrender one’s soul.
This is not easy.
Nonethless, Hinduism offers some interesting exercises on how to reach your soul – long before you hand it over. But, be warned. . .
Millions of Hindus, including most members of the Hindu Nationalist Party, seem to have lost their way totally, even without the Swastika.
No. It’s not easy
Yoga
Westerners are aware that Yoga is good for them.. Good for the tummy muscles. Good for the soul.
Fewer are aware that Yoga offers eight or ten steps to Nirvana. Ten steps! Do you know anyone who is even half way there? (Not counting sadhus and gurus of course.)
One glance at the Yoga path makes one proud to associate with anyone who is on just the first step. Most of us cannot even remember what the steps are – so help has again been sought from our expert.
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Without using the Hindi names, one might list the Yoga steps as:
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Abstain from the obvious evils such as murder, lying, possessing property (!)
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Observe purity and practice of austerities.
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Adopt yogic postures that encourage a steady mind and a disciplined body.
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Do breathing exercises to improve the lungs, heart and nervous system.
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Shut out external thoughts and turn the mind inward.
[You’re now halfway there, but you’re nowhere near being a yogi – you’re not yet even into real Yoga!
Practise. Practise. Practise.
And if you want a short-cut, attempt Transcendental Meditation.
M is “a simple technique for expanding consciousness and eliminates the five early stages of Yoga. TM has benefits, but orthodox disciples dismiss it as a futile search for “instant enlightenment without the preliminary basic training”.]
Concentrate. Then concentrate again, perhaps on the light within one’s turned-in mind. .
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Meditate. Induce a continuous flow of thought and energy to this object.
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Reach for the final state known as Samadhi – using two more steps
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Conscious Samadhi allows a yogi, through all his practice, to become clairvoyant, a mind-reader and adept at ESP.
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NOW…Ignore these supernatural powers.
Instead, become a superconscious nirvikalpa samadi.At this point yogis becomes liberated souls. Apart from being nearly in touch with Nirvana, they can slow down their heartbeats and lie buried in a box without food for days on end.
You may not want to do that.
But you definitely want Nirvana.. Working along some other Yoga-like paths may, just may, help you to reach your goal.
Yantra and Tantra
Yantra is often confused with a Mandala. The latter has nothing to do with the vaguely similar name of a modern human icon of Africa. A Mandala is more like a Yantra. Except that it is an illustrated circle focusing on cosmic and physic energies. It is a sacred space depicting the universe and a receptacle for the gods.
But don’t get jumpy. Forget Mandala. Think of Yantra.
By comparison Yantra is fairly simple. According to Tantra, “Yantra has mantra as its soul”.The significance is that the deity is the soul of the mantra. And mantra and deity are like body and soul.
Put another way, Yantra is, like, well body-painting, like. But you need to understand, or rather believe, that it is not two-dimensional painting but four dimensional.
Perhaps you don’t like that either. . .
But you should like Tantra.
Tantra is like, well, Yoga – except that it is meant to lead to divine ecstacy rather than to dizziness. You reach Tantra’s goal less by discipline and concentration and much more by erotic tactics and out-of-this-world forbidden pleasures. Tantra teaches liberation through bogha (enjoyment). The core of Tantra is the feminine, generative reproductive principle of shakti – without which our bodies wouldn’t be here.
Tantra is seen in sensual art and sculptures on Indian temples. The sculptures represent “the coupling of male and female as union with the divine and the total release of the soul in the godhead.”
Powerful stuff. The good news is that eroticism is seen as a means to the eternal Brahman.
On the other hand, many devotees to Hindusim and Yoga see Tantra as a test of whether one has purged one’s mind of temptations and worldly thoughts before entering the temple.
It’s a matter, once again, of how you interpret things.
Karma
Now things get serious, for there is little room for different interpretations of Karma, even in a gentle, permissive religious philosophy.
You are facing divine retributive justice.
In principle it is the same in every religion. The struggle between good and evil, and the human striving to resist temptation, are eternal and unambiguous elements of our existence.
Karma is the belief that, every good deed you do, every good thought, gets you a one-up mark in your next life. Every bad deed – every tiny, evil thought – comes back to harm you as you try, next time round, to progress.
That’s the bottom line. But nothing is immutable in this life. A bad person can make good before he dies – there’s always time. And a good person could fall to evil at the very moment of his or her highest progress in a current existence,. That’s life.
Nirvana
This is where the striving ends – where peace and bliss and all-knowing is finally reached. Nirvana is union with the Supreme, the Absolute.
The cycle of birth and death, the suffering of flesh-and-blood; the strains of mental stress, the pain and punishment inflicted by the self and all its spiritual doubts cease to be. The Bhagavad-Gita states it explicitly: Nirvana is Brahma-nirvana, which is nothing less than union with Brahman, or extinction (of your ego) in Him.
This means that mortal woman or man finally reaches a stage where he/she becomes part of God; or, if you chose, the Absolute..
Of interest is the other side of the arrangement. Hinduism teaches that God, in many shapes and incarnations, comes down to Earth in critical times – manifesting him/herself as man or woman .
In the Gita, Lord Krishna says: “I manifest myself . . . for the protection of the righteous and the destruction of the wicked . . . I come into being from age to age.”
The doctrine of Hinduism’s God taking human form reached its fullest development during the Puranic period in the first millennium after Christ.
The thing that some of us mere mortals might possibly worry about in the concept of Nirvana is how long it takes to complete the cycles of suffering and birth-and-death before one joins God (or enters the Absolute). How long for good guys who seldom slip? How long for bad guys currently taking one step forward and three back?
Time, as mortal mankind now knows, is a relative thing. But Hinduism long ago worked out a sort of time-scale to ponder. In Hindu cosmology the basic cycle of the universe (which passes through all eternity) is known as ‘the Day of Brahma’ – which is equivalent to 4,320,000,000 years. A night is the same length of cosmic time, making 24 hours, lasts close on ten thousand million years. Brahman’s Year lasts 360 of these lengthy days and nights. He is expected to live 100 of those somewhat extended years.
Oh God. What vision. What faith. What expansiveness Hinduism has found - , when its countless gods appear; disappear; disguise themselves as each other, or are incarnations of each other (eg Buddha is the ninth incarnation of Vishnu. Vishnu can appear as Krishna ). And the three prime Gods are also the Holy Trinity.
You are entitled to believe in any or all; in one, or many gods. Just remember it is your Self; your burdensome, irritating Ego, that you are lugging through the universe towards Nirvana.
Drop it.
The Swastika
Hitler really messed up the history of the Aryans (as the Mahabharata once did with its gossipy legends). And he gave the Swastika a very bad name.
‘Swasti’ usually represents good. A good deed, good wishes – anything that is benevolent. You see its symbol scrawled on doors of humble houses across India – not as a curse as it was in Europe, but as a symbol to ward off evil spirits. It has also been adopted as a Tantric symbol, and it also is the focus for prayer at the Festival of Lights – or when gamblers’ luck or wealth are fervently sought.
The symbol they use is the righthanded Swastika with arms that are bent from left to right. The lefthanded Swastika is an evil omen and has hardly ever been willingly displayed (CHECKexcept in Nazi times in Germany).
The Swastika, it is claimed, goes back 5,000 or more years ago to Vedic times, and is said to represent the changing universe or the wheel of Vishnu.
Clearly it has been the subject of misinterpretation many times in its history.
It reminds one of another form of misrepresentation. The slant of nationalism attached to the Hindu religion. A slant that embraces xenophobia and hate. Nationalism in India sank to its ugly nadir while the new nation and Pakistan were claiming their independence in mid-20th century. Hate and anger were fanned by the persistent fanaticism of many Indo-Muslims, and in equal measure by Hindus. The result was the bloodshed that stained Partition...
The hate – the nationalism – is still there today.
As this was being written, headlines went round the world reading: “THREE DIE AS MUSLIMS, HINDUS CLASH”.
This time the deaths occurred in riots in the northern Indian town of Aligarh where an Indian nationalist politician had been shot. This time the blame seemed to belong to fanatical Muslims. But blame, usually, needs to be put squarely on the Hindu nationalists who over recent years in India have demonstrated provocative intolerance, violence and mob frenzy.
These are so-called “religious” Hindus who have tried to tear down mosques in mutual holy places in pretence that God wants them to rebuild the ruins of ancient temples in those particular spots. The merits of each case are not relevant here. It is the religious, politically-inspired hysteria which is so disturbing – and so unexpected from people who pride themselves on their permissive gentleness.
And Hinduism does not appear to have answers for much of modern life - with its discord of bright lights and instant gratification pitted against over-crowding and desperate poverty. Crimes against women, for instance have been rising rapidly over the past ten years. In India today there is a murder every 16 minutes, a riot every nine minutes, a kidnapping or abduction every 23 minutes, a theft every two minutes. One woman is raped every 30 minutes. Abuse of children rose by 25 percent recently according to police reports. With a population the size of India’s this is not as bad as it sounds – but it has been increasing rapidly in the past 10 to 15 years according to official reports, and it is worst in the richer, bigger cities.
The Caste System
Hinduism totally rejects the caste system. It never started it, and it disowns it.
But there was a time. . .
The caste system is believed to have been introduced by Indo-Aryans when they invaded India and – instead of slaughtering the locals, ‘absorbed them into society and gave them a definite place’.
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It seemed such a good idea that at some stage, in the period of strict Brahmin authority presumably, four classes were designated.
The Brahmins, or priestly class at the top
The Kshatriyas or warriors, to support them and the system
The Vaishyas or people of commerce
The Sudras or working class, as usual.
later
The ‘untouchables’ or ‘outcasts’ below the bottom of the heap. However, to quote our learned source: “There is no religious sanction whatsoever in Hinduism for the concept of untouchability.”
Except that . .
“later additions on the subject were inserted in the scriptures to justify its existence.
“ It was a purely social practice introduced by the upper castes to provide themselves with menial labour to perform tasks repulsive to themselves such as cemetery-keeping, scavenging, etc.”
During the invasions from Persia, Afghanistan and Mongolia from the West after the 11th century CE, “when life, property and chastity of women were of little value to the invaders”, the caste system became protective, and even more rigid. For example it sanctioned child marriages (before a girl could be of an age attractive enough to be abducted by invaders).
With the spread of education the caste system came under pressure. Today it is outlawed.
But while the law forbids discrimination on the grounds of caste – and government even has an affirmative action programme to help the hitherto under-privileged – the system remains in the hearts and minds of millions of people. And it is covertly practised still in some communities.
But don’t blame (the permissive codes of) Hinduism, you will be told.
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