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Karma: What Every Aspiring Yogi Needs to Know

karma - what goes around comes around

A selection on Understanding Karma, from Perspective on Yoga, a new book to be published later this year.

Everything, without exception, material, or immaterial, arises from a cause, and is a revelation of that cause. Because of this, everything has a meaning.

Those who believe in karma should carefully analyze their life situation in order to understand what kind of actions from the past are coming to fruition now and to see what their minds were like in that past. The real lesson to be learned is that just as the present is created by the past, the future is created by the present, sometimes combined with elements from the past.

Before, we were unaware that we were creating the future, but now we do know, and can take complete charge of our destiny. The best thing, of course, is to “fry” the karmic seeds through yoga sadhana.

The key to understanding

The knowledge of cause and effect is an absolute necessity if we are going to understand anything about our life. Those that do not understand about karma and rebirth have no idea why they are here and how they should live. All the religiosity in the world cannot substitute for practical spiritual knowledge.

Consider how the “one lifers” lay all the blame for human suffering and misery at God’s door rather than rightly attributing it to human action (karma). So they claim that all this mess is “God’s will” supposedly “for a reason.”
Buddha meditating

Buddha and the Law of Karma

Buddha stated the essence in the Four Aryan Truths: There is suffering. There is a cause of suffering. Suffering can end. There is a way to end suffering. The power behind all four of these statements is insight into the Law of Karma. Otherwise we keep whirling and suffering.

It is our karma that brings us here and takes us away, until enlightenment frees us and we leave of our own liberated will.

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The Science of Sound and Breath in Meditation: Essential Facts

Sound and Breath in Meditation

This article on Sound and Breath in Meditation is taken from “Perspectives on Yoga,” a book by Abbot George Burke to be published later this year.

Although there is a great deal of interest in gimmicks and tricks in yoga and endless expositions of “shakti” and suchlike, the yogi really has one all-absorbing interest: sound (shabda).

He begins with sound and ends with sound, and his involvement in sound is what carries him along the path and ensures his success and prevents his going astray. Those who do not follow this path will almost surely go astray and wander afar.

Every element (bhuta) has a sensory experience that is common or “native” to it.

  • Earth (prithvi) has smell;
  • water (apa) has taste;
  • fire (agni) has sight;
  • air (vayu) has touch;
  • and ether (akasha) has sound (shabda).

The power of sound alone has both an active and passive aspect. Akasha possesses the power to both generate sound and to hear it. Furthermore, Akasha alone is pure; all the other elements have admixtures of one another, including akasha.

Even more, the elements predominate in each one of our five bodies.

  • Earth predominates in the annamaya kosha, the physical body.
  • Water predominates in the pranamaya kosha, the pranic body.
  • Fire predominates in the manomaya kosha, the body that is the sensory mind.
  • Air predominates in the jnanamaya kosha, the body of the intellect.
  • Ether predominates in the anandamaya kosha, the body of the will.

The two powers of the Ether

Since Ether is the ruler of the elements, and it has two powers, will and sound, yoga is based on sound produced by the yogi’s will and in which he becomes absorbed in meditation.

This is an important principle to keep in mind because many aspirants throughout the ages have wasted their lives practicing methods not based on these two powers of ether, and therefore became wanderers, and often self-distracters and self-deluders.

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Bhakti: The Yogi’s Perspective, from “Perspectives on Yoga”

Bhakti from This and That for Yogis

We have published a new book entitled “Perspectives on Yoga” by Abbot George Burke. We will begin posting excerpts here from the book, beginning with this one on Bhakti, which we hope to publish before year is out. Here is what the author says about the book:

This is a compilation of random thoughts I put down quite some time ago that were completely without any order. Unlike Satsang With the Abbot, it is now somewhat arranged according to subjects, though the final section is not. I hope it will be useful to those who read it.

I certainly wish someone had told me these things when I first attempted to be a yogi. Things would have been much easier and I would have avoided wasting a great deal of time.

Abbot George Burke
(Swami Nirmalananda Giri)

(Perspectives on Yoga: Living the Yoga Life is now available in paperback and as an ebook on Amazon.com here.)


 

This and That on Bhakti

Unfortunately bhakti is usually considered to be emotion directed to God, especially as love. But bhakti means dedication in the search for God. It is Ishwarapranidhana, the offering of the life to God, which Patanjali says is the way to superconsciousness (Yoga Sutras 2:45). Shankara simplified and clarified it greatly when he said that bhakti is seeking God and jnana is finding God.

In the sixth chapter of Raja Yoga, Vivekananda wrote:

“All over the world there have been dancing and jumping and howling sects, who spread like infection when they begin to sing and dance and preach; they also are a sort of hypnotists. They exercise a singular control for the time being over sensitive persons, alas! often, in the long run, to degenerate whole races. Ay, it is healthier for the individual or the race to remain wicked than be made apparently good by such morbid extraneous control.

One’s heart sinks to think of the amount of injury done to humanity by such irresponsible yet well-meaning religious fanatics. They little know that the minds which attain to sudden spiritual upheaval under their suggestions, with music and prayers, are simply making themselves passive, morbid, and powerless, and opening themselves to any other suggestion, be it ever so evil.

Little do these ignorant, deluded persons dream that whilst they are congratulating themselves upon their miraculous power to transform human hearts, which power they think was poured upon them by some Being above the clouds, they are sowing the seeds of future decay, of crime, of lunacy, and of death.

Therefore, beware of everything that takes away your freedom. Know that it is dangerous, and avoid it by all the means in your power.”

Vivekananda knew what he was talking about because Bengal, his native land, was gripped by the false bhakti of the “dancing and jumping and howling sects,” especially Gaudia Vaishnavism (the Hare Krishna movement in the West), and still is to a great extent.

His fellow countryman, Paramhansa Yogananda, said:

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