Hari OM
From Monday April 8th to Friday
April 12th 2019, Pujya Swami Swaroopananda-ji presented evening discourses to
the public at the Merrylands Civic Centre, NSW Australia. The focus of his
talks this year was Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita, and more specifically,
shlokas 1-32. Some of the learning and insights will be shared over several
posts.
Lord Krishna has been trying to get Arjuna to understand that
carrying out his dharma in the battlefield, even against family, matters little
in the universal scheme of things. The Lord has been pointing out that the
Aatmaa is all-pervasive and ever-effulgent. It is incapable of being affected
by the little actions carried out by the human, which carries just a fraction of
its light.
We spend so much of our time, so many of our days, concerned about
the minutiae of life. There are definitely some basics which must be addressed.
We have been given the human form to experience life and, therefore, there is a
duty to at least ensure that the body in which we ride is well-maintained,
through the cleanest living that we can manage. If we have family, then we have
a duty towards them also. Then beyond that, we have a duty to our community, our
society and our nation, then the world as a whole. We should spread ourselves
as far as we are able - and for each of us, that is a different level according
to our spiritual development and place in society.
Never feel guilty about what you are not doing - unless you know
that you could be doing it! Do always
what you can do to the very best of your ability and if you can manage a little
more, all the better.
However, it has ever been the case that as individuals, we become
rather obsessed with things directly related to us. We want to look good in the
eyes of others, but rarely wish to make the efforts required to properly
deserve this. Remember, we are witnessing Arjuna seeking to avoid taking on any
responsibility. What in life is more important than living according to sattva,
serving our family, our community, and so forth?
Whilst at the beginning of every evening during the discourse, folks
were asked to switch off their phones, invariably at least one, if not more,
would ring. At the time Swami-ji was bringing out the correlation of Arjuna's
plight and our own situation, expressing how it is we get so caught up in
irrelevances and nonsense, two phones rang, almost simultaneously. He could
have been - quite rightly - deeply annoyed by the interruption, but instead
used this as an example of how totally caught up we are in the idea that we are
more important than the scripture and the teacher bringing out its value to us.
The world and its distractions mean more to us than to be free of it for ninety
minutes. Attending discourses (or other spiritual functions), we look good.
When our phones ring, we are flaunting our bondage. We separate ourselves from
the totality (the group sitting in the satsang) and define ourselves as being
separate.
None of us is an individual. Only Maya and her trickery have us
believing so - exercising the ego (ahangkaara) portion of our antaH karana, tickling the
'feeler-thinker' (manas) portion of our antaH karana and even justifying
ourselves through the intellect (buddhi) portion of the antaH karana.
It is through the mental processes that we allow ourselves to be
deluded that this world is more important than our spiritual gain and we
concern ourselves that spiritual gain is not something we can manage because of
this, that or the other. So many excuses we come up with for ourselves! The
concept of a single Aatmaa reflecting through each and every one of us can seem so esoteric that, despite coming along
to hear about it, we cannot focus upon it for even one short evening.
THIS is the basis of our misery in life. That we are not prepared to
rise above it for even this long.
If your daughter's husband's aunty's cousin is sick in bed and a
prayer circle is required, decide whether your priority is to attend there, or
be in the satsang sending Universal Energy her way as you do so. If your
cousin's best friend's uncle's dog is unwell, decide whether you are to visit
there, or send Universal Energy its way from the satsang. If you need to be
receiving constant updates of either situation - why are you not there, rather
than in the satsang?
This is the battlefield of life, and we need to prioritise!!!
