Eucharist

I come from a different faith – Hindu – but your post reminds me of one of our great saints – Princess Mira, who so fell in love with God, that she abandoned her home and went singing in the wilderness about her love for him. In childhood she told her mother – O mother i dreamt last night that the lord came as my groom – her royal house disowned her, for her indiscretions, but she bacame one of India’s greatest mystic poets and today her songs of love (for God, Krishna for her) resonate from every corner of the land.

Peg Pondering Again

Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh…Our Lord came as the new Adam. In my sinfulness, I am fallen Eve and must become Woman so to become one with Him. If I become Him, and share in the pains of the hatred the world had for Him so be it, as He had already become me, on His cross. I must become one with Him in the Eucharist as our Lord truly is there. I must repent. I must confess and I must believe. I must love my Love with all my heart, strength soul and mind. I must love my neighbor as my Lord has loved. I must die to self and live in Christ in order to be in Love. I accept.

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Tiniest Space

Thanks, this is so profound – it is quite amazing that the Gita ( or Lord Krishna in the ‘Song celestial’) hardly ever calls the soul as the soul (Atma), rather persists in calling it the dweller within (Antaryami) as if to empahasize that it is indeed a fragment of God that dwells within us.

Source of Inspiration

That which is without
finishes and decays.
What is within is eternal.
Always becoming, the kernel
is tiny but blossoms into
spirals of eternity.

The outside is not your task.
It only temporarily houses
your true work. Listen only
within; become filled with
Source. Within can not be
measured. It is so tiny,
occupying the tiniest of
spaces: Infinity.

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Krishna to Arjuna

Thanks for stating the central message of the Gita in your blog, If you allow me, I would like to try and explain what I understand from this verse in the Gita –

 As far as I understand, dispassionate action means acting without concern for reward,  doing your best as you know careless for the outcome.  You can only do your BEST when you are not self conscious that it may well fail, having put in your very best – that is what matters to the Universe – not that you succeeded – the universe is concerned about how hard and fully you tried – not what it finally produced – that is what Krishna is saying to Arjun – what the Universe is saying to you.

water yoga banana

“To the work alone are you entitled, never to its fruit…” – Lord Krishna to Prince Arjuna on the battlefield.

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A Favorite Zen Parable

‘Produce it and i shall pacify your soul ‘ is what the master said to the disciple – indeed that is what we are seeking to know – what is this soul that all speak about and none can know?

For this very reason i began my blog – SEARCH FOR THE SOUL – AND LET US SEE IF WE CAN FIND AN ANSWER – my journey like the disciples begins with the question what is the soul – in many faiths, in New Age thought, as  also in science, the question arises what is the essence, that we call the soul – let us explore this and share our answers – i wish to be enlightened as much as you do.

water yoga banana

There was once a very famous monk who had spent seven years sitting in one place, facing a low stone wall, meditating. Because of his success with this feat he was regarded very highly by other monks. One day, a younger (…samurai?) visited the venerable man, hoping to speak with him. The meditating monk did not break his concentration. The young monk stood beside him for seven days and seven nights, waiting. At dawn on the eighth day, the young man drew his sword…I have to log off, but I’ll be back to finish.

Ok, I’m back. This is good, because now I’m at my house, and I have the book wherein I first read this story. “Myths To Live By,” copyright 1972 by Joseph Campbell. He’s amazing. I shall re-begin the story as it is actually written on page 141.

“When Buddhism, in the first century A.D., was carried…

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Birds

Can i dare to comment on your wonderful poem?
well –

Its not God that loses ‘herself ‘in creating the human form-
The bird is innocent, un-self conscious, cause it doesnt have an ego to wrestle with
while the intelligence of the human gives it a self-consciousness producing an ego – the apple in the ‘garden of eden’
the love affair does indeed begin – that of life and the struggle against the ego
to become innocent like the bird
God cannot interfere – his creation is free as he ordained to, do as it wishes – no puppets here,

two forces now interplay
matter as the ego, disillusioned
and spirit as the innocent song of the bird.

Accessing the soul

(CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST)

In India people are enjoined to meditate on the divinity within and seek to sense the presence of the soul, as an exercise in evolution. The purpose of life is to get to know ones ‘true’ nature (Svabhav in Sanskrit), which is the perfection of the indwelling soul, itself an extension of the Universal Essence. The goal is to recognize and access this divinity within. This is enabled by prayer, contemplation and meditation but above all through dispassionate, compassionate and altruistic action. However, the scriptures mention the great difficulty of sensing the soul. The Gita cautions that the soul is indeed quite inconceivable and difficult to access. It is shown as dwelling within the gross body, divine, eternal, blissful and inactive, mysterious and virtually unfathomable. The Gita speaking of the soul says for instance:

”Some look upon the Self as a marvel, as a marvel another speaks of it and as a wonder another hears of it but though all hear of it none know it.”

According to seers, the difficulty of sensing the soul, divinity within, is so great that people find it easier to objectify divinity by worshipping or admiring a prophet, an Avatar, a Guru, a saint, or even an idol as a sacred symbol.

The soul’s reincarnation and rebirth

Reincarnation – Rebirth
Credit ISKCON

 (CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST)

We now arrive at the theory of reincarnation. Though Hindu, Buddhist and Jain cosmologies are entirely different from one another, the common denominator in all three faiths is the belief in rebirth. Here of course we shall solely be examining the concept of reincarnation in the Hindu context and more particularly as expounded by the Gita.

Let us begin by asking, whose rebirth? When we say ‘your’ rebirth we do not mean rebirth only of the personality-ego complex which represent you in your subtle body, now modified for the next lifetime at the moment of rebirth. What is also meant is the rebirth of the entrapped soul force within you, the ‘indweller’, the one who during the lifetime was shrouded by your body, ego and personality. The eternal soul now sheds the deceased body/personality and assumes a new one. Here let us see what the Gita has to say:

”It (the soul) is neither born nor does it die. Coming into being and ceasing to be, do not take place in it. Unborn, eternal, constant and ancient, it is not killed when the body is slain.”

”As a man casting off worn out garments puts on new ones, so the embodied one (the soul), casting off worn out bodies, enters others that are new.”

The analogy is aptly one of  shedding an old garment and wearing a new one. But the new garment, to extend the analogy further, is not one which the soul can choose. It cannot demand an exquisite garment from a designer shop. On the contrary it lies before the soul, tailor-made according to Karmic specifications. The traces, effects and ‘odours’ registered in the Subtle Body ( discussed in an earlier post – The subtle body and the law of Karma) determine the kind of new garment the soul is obliged to ‘wear’ – the new body/personality which will embody the soul for the next lifetime. Thus rebirth takes place with a new modified entity as the host of the soul.

Reincarnation – Rebirth
Credit: ISKCON

(CONTINUED IN NEXT POST)

The soul’s purpose and role

(CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST)

credit; krishna.com

We saw that the soul does not act nor is it an agent of action. Actions arise from the free will of the ego and the personality – ego – body which then  faces the consequences. As the soul does not engage in action it is not tainted by it, though it continues to inhabit the body that commits those actions. If the soul is not tainted by the actions of the body, urged by the ego ( neither participating nor taking responsibility for them) and cannot control or direct those actions, we may well ask what is the purpose or role of the soul inhabiting that body! What indeed is the role or utility of this apparently passive, non- acting soul as ‘indweller’.

The soul is the great guide within, the inner voice, the conscience. Its purpose is to perpetually engage in inspiring, counselling and messaging, softly, unobtrusively and without compulsion of any kind, the correct path of righteous action, our duties and responsibility – right from wrong. The most creative and compassionate acts, like the works of art by Michelangelo, inspirational discoveries and inventions and the humanitarian labours of Mother Teresa and other saints, take place when the ‘Host’ fully heeds the soul’s counselling. Thus, the ‘Host’ body hears it all, may take heed, or as is generally the case, ignore or rationalize the advice of the inner voice, to suit its ego generated compulsions and purposes or worse dismiss the inner voice as an irrelevant thought. Having stirred the conscience the souls purpose is completed. The rest is up to ‘You’. The soul is therefore the compass on the corporeal boat and yet many ‘ships’ are lost on the high seas of life.

Are you your soul?

(CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST)

In the previous post we saw that the soul is not the agent of action, the ego is. We also saw that it does not dictate terms to the ego. We are also familiar with the idea that the soul is a fragment of the Divine Essence and the ‘indweller” in the body. Often in India the devout call God the indweller (Antaryami) and when in prayer or meditation they look inwards to the God within. Does the fact that divinity resides within us make us divine? No it does not. The content is divine not the container. There is divinity within you but you are not divine.

As this is so, the question arises whether a person can identify himself with his soul. When he says ‘I’, whom is he referring to? The ‘I’ of a person is his personality and ego, his actions, acts of omission and commission, in the present and in past lives, which have registered in his subtle body and which produce the Karmic dynamics for shaping his future incarnations. Like the DNA of a cell, his actions past and present are the determinant of his future form and incarnation. the ‘I’ is therefore not his soul under any circumstances. The soul is within the host but distinct. One may call it the benign Alien within.

(MORE IN THE NEXT POST)

The Soul Speaks

Your Video ”I had a dream” was really beautiful, moving and meaningful. Many people complain that God is always hiding and never shows himself. I thought about that for a long time wondering why. Then one day while walking it simply struck me that that was not at all true. I realized that he had peeped up so often through my grandsons smiling face and that was why i felt it to be such a special moment. He showed himself in a stunning beautiful flower that one could not take ones eyes off or breathtaking vista or a superb work of art – and he stirred within my heart when i felt great love and emotion for people other than myself.