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How to Gain the Vision of God | Monastic Life Podcast 3

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Abbot George's Reflections on Monastic LifeWhen I was very young there was a television program called The Big Picture. Most people live in The Little Picture with small ideas and small goals, all short term.

But some live in The Big Picture, considering their life as a whole extending through many years, realizing that the small aspects will be forgotten, but the overall character of their life will determine their future beyond this world as well as within it.

Having this perspective, I wanted to be a living sacrifice, a living offering to God! I wanted to be able to stand unashamedly before the face of God and truthfully say: “Behold, I have forsaken all and followed Thee.” To be like Christ, not just in glory but in living sacrifice, like him, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” This was my aspiration–the aspiration of monastics throughout the ages.

An undivided heart

Monastic life is a life of undivided loyalty to the One. Jesus Himself warns us that “no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.” The religious egotist considers himself wiser than Christ, Whose words he tactfully ignores utterly. He knows better! He can certainly please himself and please God. (Ah, but Jesus spoke about serving!)

Those who love cannot run the risk of despising their Beloved and clinging to their own egoic god. How often we hear statements about what God “does not expect” of us and what “does not matter” to God. The problem is, when most people say “God” they really mean their ego “god,” that of course expects and cares about nothing that does not serve its own desires.

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Why You Should Avoid Lazy, Stupid “Knowledge”

“That [knowledge], however, which is attached to one single effect as if it were all, and without reason, without a real purpose and small in significance, is declared to be tamasic” (Bhagavad Gita 18:22).

[This article is an excerpt from the article “Knowledge, Action, Doer and the Three Gunas” from the Bhagavad Gita for Awakening.]

Definition of tamas from A Brief Sanskrit Glossary: Dullness, inertia, folly, and ignorance. One of the three gunas.

Tamasic knowledge (Tamo guna)Since the world of humanity is in the death-grip of tamas, we need to analyze this, for we have become so used to it that we often miss the awful implications in such a view.

  • Attached to one single effect as if it were all.

This is a constant in modern society. People are absolute idolators of their mentally lazy clichés–whether social, political, religious, scientific, or personal. There is only one right way to do a thing, or to think, worship, eat, behave, etc., etc. “My way is the only way” is the fundamental principle. “All the ills of the world will vanish if everyone thinks and acts like me,” is the doctrine.

Often a single thing is chosen and harped on constantly, as if there is no wider picture. Simplistic is the watchword. Simple, lazy, and stupid–that sums it all up. A refusal to learn anything new is necessary for the maintenance of this tamasic condition.

  • Without reason.

“The says it and I believe it!” The same with prophets, teachers, parents, and whoever has put a thumbprint in their brain. No need to think: they have been TOLD.

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Yama: Your First Important Steps to Success in Yoga

yamaThis important subject is a Commentary on Sutras 29 and 30 of Book Two of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Yoga Sutras 2: 29. Self-restraints [yama], fixed observances [niyama], posture [asana], regulation of breath [pranayama], abstraction [pratyahara], concentration [dharana], contemplation [dhyana], trance [samadhi] are the eight parts (of the self-discipline of Yoga).

These eight “limbs” (angas) of yoga will now be considered in detail. I will be presenting sections from The Foundations of Yoga regarding them.

Yoga Sutras 2: 30. Vows of self-restraint [yama] comprise abstention from violence [ahimsa], falsehood [satya], theft [asteya], incontinence [brahmacharya] and acquisitiveness [aparigraha].

Non-injury: The first precept of Yama

Ahimsa: non-violence, non-injury, harmlessness

In his commentary on the Yoga Sutras, Vyasa begins his exposition of ahimsa: “Ahimsa means in no way and at no time to do injury to any living being.” “In no capacity and in no fashion to give injury to any being,” says Shankara. This would include injury by word or thought as well as the obvious injury perpetrated by deed, for Shankara comments: “Ahimsa is to be practiced in every capacity–body, speech, and mind.”

Even a simple understanding of the law of karma enables us to realize the terrible consequences of murder for the murderer. As Vyasa explains: “The killer deprives the victim of spirit, hurts him with a blow of a weapon, and then tears him away from life. Because he has deprived another of spirit, the supports of his own life, animate or inanimate, become weakened. Because he has caused pain, he experiences pain himself…. Because he has torn another from life, he goes to live in a life in which every moment he wishes to die, because the retribution as pain has to work itself right out, while he is panting for death.”

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Shall We Meet Again After Death?

Q: Do you think people somehow ever meet again after passing? Yes, we do meet again in various ways. Sometimes we see the departed, sometimes we may hear their voice, sometimes ideas or memories pop into our minds that are definitely from them, and sometimes … Continue reading