Category: Living With Siva

Twenty Disciplines

The niyamas are: 1) hrī, “remorse,” being modest and showing shame for misdeeds; 2) santosha, “contentment,” seeking joy and serenity in life; 3) dāna, “giving,” tithing and giving generously without thought of reward; 4) āstikya, “faith,” believing firmly in God, Gods, guru and the path to enlightenment; 5) Īśvarapūjana, “worship of the Lord,” the cultivation of devotion through daily worship and meditation; 6) siddhānta śravaṇa, “scriptural listening,” studying the teachings and listening to the wise of one’s lineage; 7) mati, “cognition,” developing a spiritual will and intellect with the guru’s guidance; 8) vrata, “sacred vows,” fulfilling religious vows, rules and observances faithfully; 9) japa, “recitation,” chanting mantras daily; 10) tapas, “austerity,” performing sādhana, penance, tapas and sacrifice.

In comparing the yamas to the niyamas, we find the restraint of noninjury, ahiṁsā, makes it possible to practice hrī, remorse. Truthfulness brings on the state of santosha, contentment. And the third yama, asteya, nonstealing, must be perfected before the third niyama, giving without any thought of reward, is even possible. Sexual purity brings faith in God, Gods and guru. Kshamā, patience, is the foundation for Īśvarapūjana, worship, as is dhṛiti, steadfastness, the foundation for siddhānta śravana. The yama of dayā, compassion, definitely brings mati, cognition. Ārjava, honesty—renouncing deception and all wrongdoing—is the foundation for vrata, taking sacred vows and faithfully fulfilling them. Mitāhāra, moderate appetite, is where yoga begins, and vegetarianism is essential before the practice of japa, recitation of holy mantras, can reap its true benefit in one’s life. Śaucha, purity in body, mind and speech, is the foundation and the protection for all austerities.

The twenty restraints and observances are the first two of the eight limbs of ashṭāṅga yoga, constituting Hinduism’s fundamental ethical code. Because it is brief, the entire code can be easily memorized and reviewed daily at the family meetings in each home. The yamas and niyamas are the essential foundation for all spiritual progress. They are cited in numerous scriptures, including the Śāṇḍilya and Varāha Upanishads, the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā by Gorakshanatha, the Tirumantiram of Rishi Tirumular and the Yoga Sūtras of Sage Patanjali. All of these ancient texts list ten yamas and ten niyamas, with the exception of Patanjali’s classic work, which lists just five of each. Patanjali lists the yamas as: ahiṁsā, satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha (noncovetousness); and the niyamas as: śaucha, santosha, tapas, svādhyāya (self-reflection, scriptural study) and Īśvarapraṇidhāna (worship).

In the Hindu tradition, it is primarily the mother’s job to build character within the children, and thereby to continually improve society. Mothers can study and teach these guidelines to uplift their children as well as themselves. Each discipline focuses on a different aspect of human nature, its strengths and weaknesses. Taken as a sum total, they encompass the whole of human experience and spirituality. You may do well in upholding some of these but not so well in others. That is to be expected. That defines the sādhana, therefore, to be perfected.

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NANDINATHA SŪTRA 9: PURPOSE, PLAN, PERSISTENCE AND PUSH
Śiva’s devotees approach each enterprise with deliberate thoughtfulness, and act only after careful consideration. They succeed in every undertaking by having a clear purpose, a wise plan, persistence and push. Aum.

How to Live With Śiva

Religion teaches us how to become better people, how to live as spiritual beings on this Earth. This happens through living virtuously, following the natural and essential guidelines of dharma. For Hindus, these guidelines are recorded in the yamas and niyamas, ancient scriptural injunctions for all aspects of human thought, attitude and behavior. In Indian spiritual life, these Vedic restraints and observances are built into the character of children from a very early age. For adults who have been subjected to opposite behavioral patterns, these guidelines may seem to be like commandments. However, even they can, with great dedication and effort, remold their character and create the foundation necessary for a sustained spiritual life. Through following the yamas and niyamas, we cultivate our refined, spiritual being while keeping the instinctive nature in check. We lift ourself into the consciousness of the higher chakras—of love, compassion, intelligence and bliss—and naturally invoke the blessings of the divine devas and Mahādevas.

Yama means “reining in” or “control.” The yamas include such injunctions as noninjury (ahiṁsā), nonstealing (asteya) and moderation in eating (mitāhāra), which harness the base, instinctive nature. Niyama, literally “unleashing,” indicates the expression of refined, soul qualities through such disciplines as charity (dāna), contentment (santosha) and incantation (japa).

It is true that bliss comes from meditation, and it is true that higher consciousness is the heritage of all mankind. However, the ten restraints and their corresponding practices are necessary to maintain bliss consciousness, as well as all of the good feelings toward oneself and others attainable in any incarnation. These restraints and practices build character. Character is the foundation for spiritual unfoldment.

The fact is, the higher we go, the lower we can fall. The top chakras spin fast; the lowest one available to us spins even faster. The platform of character must be built within our lifestyle to maintain the total contentment needed to persevere on the path. These great ṛishis saw the frailty of human nature and gave these guidelines, or disciplines, to make it strong. They said, “Strive!” Let’s strive to not hurt others, to be truthful and honor all the rest of the virtues they outlined.

The ten yamas are: 1) ahiṁsā, “noninjury,” not harming others by thought, word or deed; 2) satya, “truthfulness,” refraining from lying and betraying promises; 3) asteya, “nonstealing,” neither stealing nor coveting nor entering into debt; 4) brahmacharya, “divine conduct,” controlling lust by remaining celibate when single, leading to faithfulness in marriage; 5) kshamā, “patience,” restraining intolerance with people and impatience with circumstances; 6) dhṛiti, “steadfastness,” overcoming nonperseverance, fear, indecision, inconstancy and changeableness; 7) dayā, “compassion,” conquering callous, cruel and insensitive feelings toward all beings; 8) ārjava, “honesty, straightforwardness,” renouncing deception and wrongdoing; 9) mitāhāra, “moderate appetite,” neither eating too much nor consuming meat, fish, fowl or eggs; 10) śaucha, “purity,” avoiding impurity in body, mind and speech.

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NANDINATHA SŪTRA 8: FLOWING WITH THE RIVER OF LIFE
Śiva’s devotees live vibrantly in the eternity of the moment and flow with the river of life by giving up negative attachments, releasing the pains, injustices, fears and regrets that bind consciousness in the past. Aum.

Every Temple Made of Brick

How strong you must be to find this Truth. You must become very, very strong. How do you become strong? Exercise. You must exercise every muscle and sinew of your nature by obeying the dictates of the law, of the spiritual laws. It will be very difficult. A weak muscle is very difficult to make strong, but if you exercise over a period of time and do what you should do, it will respond. Your nature will respond, too. But you must work at it. You must try. You must try. You must try very, very hard. Very diligently. How often? Ten minutes a day? No. Two hours a day? No. Twenty-four hours a day! Every day! You must try very, very hard.

Preparing you for the realization of the Self is like tuning up a violin, tightening up each string so it harmonizes with every other string. The more sensitive you are to tone, the better you can tune a violin, and the better the violin is tuned, the better the music. The stronger you are in your nature, the more you can bring through your real nature; the more you can enjoy the bliss of your true being. It is well worth working for. It is well worth craving for. It is well worth denying yourself many, many things for—to curb your nature. It is well worth struggling with your mind, to bring your mind under the dominion of your will.

Those of you who have experienced contemplation know the depth from which I am speaking. You have had a taste of your true Self. It has tasted like nothing that you have ever come in contact with before. It has filled and thrilled and permeated your whole being, even if you have only remained in that state of contemplation not longer than sixty seconds. Out of it you have gained a great knowing, a knowing that you could refer back to, a knowing that will bear the fruit of wisdom if you relate future life experiences to that knowing, a knowing greater than you could acquire at any university or institute of higher learning. Can you only try to gain a clear intellectual concept of realizing this Self that you felt permeating through you and through all form in your state of contemplation? That is your next step.

Those of you who are wrestling with the mind in your many endeavors to try to concentrate the mind, to try to meditate, to try to become quiet, to try to relax, keep trying. Every positive effort that you make is not in vain. Every single brick added to a temple made of brick brings that temple closer to completion. So keep trying and one day, all of a sudden, you will pierce the lower realms of your mind and enter into contemplation. Then you will be able to say: “Yes, I know, I have seen. Now I know fully the path that I am on.” Keep trying. You have to start somewhere.

The Self you cannot speak of. You can only try to think about it, if you care to, in one way: feel your mind, body and emotions, and know that you are the Spirit permeating through mind, which is all form; body, which you inhabit; and emotions, which you either control or are controlled by. Think on that, ponder on that, and you will find you are the light within your eyes. You are the feel within your fingers. “You are more radiant than the sun, purer than the snow, more subtle than the ether.” Keep trying. Each time you try you are one step closer to your true Effulgent Being.

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NANDINATHA SŪTRA 7: ACCEPTING OUR KARMA
Śiva’s devotees accept all experiences, however difficult, as their self-created karma, without cringing or complaining. Theirs is the power of surrender, accepting what is as it is and dealing with it courageously. Aum.

The Self God Within

The Self: you can’t explain it. You can sense its existence through the refined state of your senses, but you cannot explain it. To know it, you have to experience it. And the best you can say about it is that it is the depth of your Being, the very core of you. It is you.

If you visualize above you nothing; below you nothing; to the right of you nothing; to the left of you nothing; in front of you nothing; in back of you nothing; and dissolve yourself into that nothingness, that would be the best way you could explain the realization of the Self. And yet that nothingness would not be the absence of something, like the nothingness inside an empty box, which would be like a void. That nothingness is the fullness of everything: the power, the sustaining power, of the existence of what appears to be everything.

After you realize the Self, you see the mind for what it is—a self-created principle. That is the mind ever creating itself. The mind is form ever creating form, preserving form, creating new forms and destroying old forms. That is the mind, the illusion, the great unreality, the part of you that in your thinking mind you dare to think is real. What gives the mind that power? Does the mind have power if it is unreal? What difference whether it has power or hasn’t power, or the very words that I am saying when the Self exists because of itself? You could live in the dream and become disturbed by it. You can seek and desire with a burning desire to cognize reality and be blissful because of it. Man’s destiny leads him back to himself. Man’s destiny leads him into the cognition of his own Being; leads him further into the realization of his True Being. They say you must step onto the spiritual path to realize the Self. You only step on the spiritual path when you and you alone are ready, when what appears real to you loses its appearance of reality. Then and only then are you able to detach yourself enough to seek to find a new and more permanent reality.

Have you ever noticed that something you think is permanent, you and you alone give permanence to that thing through your protection of it?

Have you ever stopped to even think and get a clear intellectual concept that the Spirit within you is the only permanent thing? That everything else is changing? That everything else has a direct wire connecting it to the realms of joy and sorrow? That is the mind.

As the Self, your Effulgent Being, comes to life in you, joy and sorrow become a study to you. You do not have to think to tell yourself that each in its own place is unreal. You know from the innermost depths of your being that form itself is not real.

The subtlety of the joys that you experience as you come into your Effulgent Being cannot be described. They can only be projected to you if you are refined enough to pick up the subtlety of vibration. If you are in harmony enough, you can sense the great joy, the subtlety of the bliss that you will feel as you come closer and closer to your real Self.

If you strive to find the Self by using your mind, you will strive and strive in vain, because the mind cannot give you Truth; a lie cannot give you the truth. A lie can only entangle you in a web of deceit. But if you sensitize yourself, awaken your true, fine, beautiful qualities that all of you have, then you become a channel, a chalice in which your Effulgent Being will begin to shine. You will first think that a light is shining within you. You will seek to find that light. You will seek to hold it, like you cherish and hold a beautiful gem. You will later find that the light that you found within you is in every pore, every cell of your being. You will later find that that light permeates every atom of the universe. You will later find that you are that light and what it permeates is the unreal illusion created by the mind.

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NANDINATHA SŪTRA 6: LIVING CONTEMPLATIVELY
Śiva’s devotees cultivate a contemplative nature by meditating daily, seeking the light, drawing the lesson from each experience and identifying with infinite intelligence, not with body, emotion or intellect. Aum.

Working with Your Karma

Seekers more than often ask, “Why has Śiva given us karma to go through? Could He just have made us perfect from the beginning and avoided all the pain?” My answer is: accept your karma as your own, as a healing medicine and not a poison. As you go through your self-created experiences in daily life and seed karmas awaken, as your actions come back through your emotions, even in this life, not in a future one, resolve each and every experience so that you do not react and create new cycles to be lived through. Whether it is happy karma, sad karma, miserable karma or ecstatic karma, it is your karma. But it is not you, not the real you. It is the experience that you go through in order to evolve, in order to grow and to learn and to attain, eventually, wisdom. This is all Śiva’s mysterious work, His way of bringing along devotees, His way to bring you close and closer to Himself.

The great Vedic ṛishis have explained that Śiva has created the body of the soul, permeated that body with His being, His essence. All souls are evolving back to His holy feet, and there are many lessons to be learned along the way. The lessons learned in the karma classroom are part of the process of evolution, the mechanism of evolution, the tool of evolution. Why did He do all of this? The ṛishis give no reason. They call it His dance. That is why we worship God Śiva as Naṭarāja, the King of Dance. Why does one dance? Because one is full of joy. One is full of life. Śiva is all life, God of life, God of death that brings new life, God of birth that brings through life. He is all life and He is everything. He danced with the ṛishis. He is dancing for you. You are dancing with Śiva. Every single atom in this room is dancing His dance. He is every part of you this very moment. By seeing Him, you see yourself. By drawing near to Him, you are drawing nearer to yourself. Our great satguru, Śiva Yogaswami, made a most perceptive remark. He said, “There is one thing only that God Śiva cannot do. He cannot separate Himself from me.” He cannot separate Himself from you, because He permeates you. He is you. He created the soul, the Vedas and Āgamas tell us. He created your soul, and your soul is evolving, maturing through karma, through life, on its way back to Him. That is the goal of life, to know Śiva, to love Śiva and to find union in Him, to dance with Śiva, live with Śiva and merge with Śiva. This is what the oldest religion on the Earth teaches and believes.

Śiva is the God of love and nothing else but love. He fills this universe with love. He fills you with love. Śiva is fire. Śiva is earth. Śiva is air. Śiva is water. Śiva is ether. Śiva’s cosmic energy permeates everything and gives light and life to your mind. Śiva is everywhere and all things. Śiva is your small, insignificant worry, the concern that you have been holding in your mind for so many years. See God Śiva everywhere and His life energy in all things. First we dance with Śiva. Then we live with Śiva. The end of the path is to merge with Śiva, the Self God within.

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NANDINATHA SŪTRA 5: SEEKING WHILE STRONG
Śiva’s devotees heed the ancient wisdom: “The physical body does not last forever. Age prowls like a leopard. Before the limbs lose their vitality, one should take to the auspicious path to the Self.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Knowing Self by Self

In the earlier stages, before sādhana is undertaken, the mind is agitated by current karmas and perhaps discouraged by its inability to know or to fulfill dharma. In this agitated state the world looks bleak and terrible, and it would be inconceivable to him for God to be any place but in the temple. “Certainly God could not reside within myself,” the unenlightened concludes.

In the second stage, when the mind rests peacefully in the fulfillment of a life’s pattern, dharma, when it has sufficient maturity to control and to dispatch past and current karmas through meditation, prayer and penance, then indeed God is seen as a helping hand within, but most potently felt within His temple.

In the third stage, the helping hand within becomes more than an aid to the troubled mind; it becomes pure consciousness itself. Rather than seeking God outside, God is enjoyed as a vital, integral dimension of the person, the Life of life, the power and radiant energy of the universe. The calm within is greater than the outside disturbance. In this stage of bliss-consciousness, it is clearly seen and exuberantly experienced that God is indeed within us. The experiencer’s perceptions become acute, and in his daily life he becomes a witness, observing that others do not see God within themselves. He has a secret that he has discovered. God within becomes soul-realized as Truth-Knowledge-Bliss, Satchidānanda, the pervasive energy that glues all things together. Mind becomes serene, peace is seen to be everywhere, and the bliss so strong. A deeper inner eye opens at this stage, and it is truly perceived that this same presence of Śiva is in each and every living being, permeates every atom of the universe as the great, sustaining substratum of all that exists. Only when this is experienced can one truly say that God is within man and man is within God.

To know philosophy without experience is like going on a vacation to a distant and wonderful place by simply reading a book about the destination, hearing what others claim is to be enjoyed there. It is not true experience at all. The only spiritual experience is personal experience. My satguru, Siva Yogaswami, made it clear that “You will not attain jñāna, wisdom, even if you read a thousand scriptures. You must know your Self by yourself.”

How can we with our finite mind come to understand Infinity, come to understand God? How can we intellectually encompass something as great as God? Our scriptures tell us that God Himself is Śaṅkara, the author of all knowledge, creator of the intellect. He is the great architect of the universe. Then if God created the intellect, how can the intellect understand Him? Well, it is possible. It has been done. The intellect has to expand, and awareness has to transcend the rational mind and see directly from superconscious knowing. That is why we worship Śiva in His highest form, symbolized by the Śivaliṅga, the simple elliptical stone.

It is good that you are trying to see Śiva everywhere. Keep trying. It will come. Who else can give your Self to you? The unfoldment of the Self within you is but Śiva. He can give you wealth. He can give you health. He can bestow everything that you would ever need or even desire. But to worship Him as formless, as we are doing tonight, carries the mind into infinity. Mind can only encompass what it identifies with. Mind cannot identify Truth in this subtle form which represents Śiva as beyond the mind—formless, timeless and spaceless. Yet, within you this very instant, only shrouded by your ignorance, only shrouded by the ego, which is the sense of personal identity and separation, is Śiva. He is there right now, not at some fictitious future time. Just get rid of the māyā, the āṇava and resolve the karma, and there He will be. The ego is the last thing to go. It is the last bond to break.

Once the bondage of personal ego is broken, it is seen that this mysterious God is all-pervading. He is what He has created. Think about that. It is very deep. Śiva pervades His creation constantly as ever-present Love and Light of the mind of everyone, as Intelligence and Being; and yet God also has a form.

In the subtle worlds, Śiva has the most beautiful form, not unlike a human form, but an absolutely perfect human form. He thinks. He talks. He walks. He makes decisions. We are fortunate to worship such a great God who pervades everything and yet transcends it, who is both form and beyond form, who is the Self within your very self at this very moment. So, all of you seekers of nondual Truth, you have a truly great path that offers God experience in form and beyond form. How fortunate you are!

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NANDINATHA SŪTRA 4: ONENESS WITH THE SATGURU
Śiva’s devotees strive to be inwardly one with their satguru, acknowledging the paramount need for a spiritual preceptor to guide them on the upward climb, the straight path that leads to Lord Śiva’s holy feet. Aum.