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Teachings of Krishna

How to Counter Critics of Sanatana Dharma

Why say anything to critics of Sanatana Dharma? They obviously have their minds made up. Do not bother with the fault-finders, accusers and nay-sayers. Sri Ramakrishna said that when an elephant walks down the road the little dogs bark, but the elephant keeps walking on and leaves them behind.

How “Wisdom” Can Get It Wrong

Arjuna looked out at the battlefield, and seeing those he loved and even revered was overwhelmed with the enormity of killing them, and expressed his feelings to Krishna. Krishna’s reaction to this impassioned speech was to smile and say: “Your words are wise, Arjuna, but you are wrong.”

How to Deal With the Illusions of Life

Simply saying: “It is all an illusion,” really does very little. Consider how we attend a play or a motion picture and become completely engrossed in the spectacle, responding with various emotions. All the time we know it is just pretend, but that does not keep us from responding as though it were real. How is this? It is the nature–yes, the purpose–of the mind!

There Are No Dead

“Lead me from death to immortality” is not a petition to gain a state where we will nevermore experience bodily death, but a plea to be led from the outward-turned consciousness that produces death to the in-turned consciousness that produces life. It is spirit itself that is immortality–nothing else. “Change and decay all around I see. O Thou Who changest not: abide with me.” What we are praying for is consciousness itself.

Tapasya: How You Can Burn Your Karmic Seeds

Tapasya: how to burn your karmic seeds

A selection from the book The Bhagavad Gita for Awakening,
available for reading online, as a free PDF download, or as a paperback or ebook.

Tapasya is practical (i.e., result-producing) spiritual discipline. Literally it means the generation of heat or energy, referring to spiritual practice and its effect, especially the “roasting” of karmic seeds, the “burning up” of karma. It also refers to the heat necessary for the hatching of an egg. Without tapasya there is no significant spiritual progress. So Krishna tells us of three levels of tapasya as well as its characterization according to the dominant guna of the persons engaging in tapasya..

Tapasya of the body

“Reverence for the devas, the seers, the teachers and the sages; straightforwardness, harmlessness, physical cleanliness and sexual purity; these are the virtues whose practice is called austerity of the body.” (Bhagavad Gita 17:14)

Reverence (pujanam) is internal, so why does it come first in the list of physical austerity? Because Krishna is not thinking of mere philosophizing or abstraction–in other words, empty words. He is thinking of action, of kriya, which creates positive karma in the form of purification and enlightenment. Puja is the word usually translated “worship,” and some translators use it rather than reverence. Worship in Krishna’s view is not mere verbal praise or glorification, but a living out of the interior attitude of reverence.

As Jesus once asked: “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46) So to reverence a spiritual authority is not to flatter, grovel, and promote them or shower them with money and gifts. Rather, it is faithfully and seriously applying their teachings. Krishna speaks of four kinds who deserve our reverence: devas, seers, teachers, and sages.

Devas are gods–not the Supreme God, but highly evolved beings who can affect our life. We might think of them as angels or saints, bodiless beings that interact with humans and help them in many ways. All viable religions have some form of devas.

The dwijas (seers) are the “twice-born.” Often this term applies to those who have undergone the upanayanam ritual and received instruction in the Gayatri mantra, but here a wider sense is meant.

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