There Are No Shortcuts
The idea of a shortcut that transcends religion and brings one quickly to the peak is a fallacy. We hear and read many stories of sages who have seemingly leapt from the valley to the peak on the power of tremendous austerities or rigorous mental control. Some of us may have heard of Ramana Maharshi or Rama Tirtha, great sages of India’s recent past. We may recall that both of them climbed to the heights of Vedāntic truths while young, apparently unencumbered by traditional religious performance. Or at least this is the way we hear of them. True, they were both young when they reached great spiritual illumination. But their relationship with traditional religion needs clarification. In fact, each of these sages passed through religion, not around it.
For the would-be Vedāntin to shirk his religion, thinking he is following Ramana Maharshi or Rama Tirtha, is like the college dropout thinking that he is following the example of a graduate. The dropout and the graduate are similar in that they both have left college. But whereas the dropout was unable to absorb and fulfill the teachings of a college, and is unfit for anything that requires more than a high school diploma, the graduate has not only mastered the teachings but is the living fulfillment of the teachings. We could say that both Ramana Maharshi and Rama Tirtha were “A” students of the Hindu religion. How many people, as a fifteen-year-old child, like Ramana Maharshi, would walk each day to their village temple and prostrate before the image of God, weeping for the Lord’s grace that he be able to live a pure and spiritual life as exemplified by his religion? How many of us could, as Rama Tirtha did from his earliest years, daily attend temple services, chant incessantly the holy words of his religion, read fervently his scriptures, become so enraptured with love of God that his pillow each morning would be soaking wet from tears of devotion inspired by his silent prayers? These are men of religion who dove so deeply into their religion that they became the very fulfillment, the very proof, of the power of religion.
And so it is with all the world’s religions and the saints they have produced. There is no true path that leads away from religion. Hard work, diligence and perseverance in religious practices will be found as the spiritual foundation in the lives of all the world’s great saints. In Hinduism, the word we use to denote religion, its theology and practices, is Siddhānta. Siddhānta is the path that one follows which leads to the mystic vision of Vedānta. When we read of the yogas of bhakti, karma and rāja, discipleship to a guru, the fulfillment of spiritual dharma and temple worship, these are all part of the path, part of Siddhānta.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 303: USING OUR MYSTICAL LANGUAGES
All my devotees are encouraged to embrace Sanskrit as their language of ritual worship, Shūm Tyēīf as their language of meditation and the Tyēīf script for offering prayers to the devas through the sacred homa fire. Aum.