Blog | Mindfulness, Meditation, Journaling & Walking in Nature
1257
blog,paged,paged-31,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,,select-theme-ver-2.1,vertical_menu_enabled, vertical_menu_width_290,side_menu_slide_from_right,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-6.9.0,vc_responsive
 
Writings and Readings Blog

Madhu Bazaz Wangu

The Fourteenth Teaching

Fourteenth Teaching Nature's (Prakriti's) Three Qualities (Gunas) 1-20 Krishna: I shall teach you further about true knowledge, ultimate knowledge, that all the sages have mastered and then reached perfection. Resorting to this knowledge, they follow my ways; when the world is created they are not reborn, when the world dissolves they suffer no sorrow. Nature is my womb; in it I place my seed, and from nature bursts forth the origin of all beings. Nature is the primal womb of all life forms that develop, and I am their seed-giving father. Lucidity (sattva), passion (rajas), and dark inertia (tamas)-the three qualities (gunas) inherent in nature bind the deathless self, atman, to the body. Of the three, lucidity, pure, luminous and without decay binds us by means of attachment to happiness and wisdom, Arjuna. Passion is emotional, born of craving...

Read More

The Thirteenth Teaching

The Thirteenth Teaching The Field and the Field Knower 1-6 What is the Self--the "Knower of the field?" What is the "field?" The body is the field; the one who watches whatever happens within it is called the Knower. Know me as the field-knower in every body; genuine knowledge is knowing both the field and its Knower. Listen from me the summary of the field; what changes take place in it, who is the Knower and what his powers are. Ancient seers have sung of this in many powerful ways, with varied meters and well argued with reasoning. The field contains the five elements, "I"-sense, the understanding, the ten senses, the mind and the five sense realms. 7-12 Longing, hated, happiness, suffering, bodily form, consciousness, resolve-all these components make up the field, with its various changes. Knowledge means...

Read More

The Twelfth Teaching

The Way of Love and Devotion 1-12 Arjuna: Who understands the discipline deeply? The man who worships you with pure devotion or the man who loves the Imperishable, Unmanifest? Krishna: Those men who love and worship me with true faith, entrusting their minds on me are perfect in yoga. But the men who love and worship Imperishable, Ineffable, Unmanifest, Omnipresent, Inconceivable, and Immutable at the summit of existence, rejoicing in the welfare of all beings-they too will reach me at last. But their path is much more arduous when they cling to my unmanifest nature; for embodies beings, the unmanifest is hard to attain. But those men intent on me, who renounce all actions to me and worship me, meditating with singular discipline, when they entrust their minds to me, Arjuna, I soon arise to rescue them from the ocean...

Read More

The Tenth Teaching

The Tenth Teaching Splendor of Divine Power 1-11 Krishna: Great Warrior, again hear my word in its supreme form; Desiring your utmost good, I tell you the greatest teaching. Neither the multitude of gods nor great sages know my origin, I am the source from which all the gods and sages emerge. Whoever knows me as the unborn, the Beginningless, the great Lord of all worlds-he alone sees truly and is free from all harm. Understanding, wisdom, non-delusion, patience, truth, control, tranquility, joy, suffering, being, nonbeing, fear and fearlessness, nonviolence, equanimity, contentment, penance, charity, glory, disgrace-all these arise from me alone. The seven ancient great sages and the four ancestors from whom all beings descend arose from my own depths, mind born. The man who can understand my power and my discipline is forever united with me by his unwavering...

Read More

The Ninth Teaching

The Ninth Teaching The Magnificent Mystery 1-4 Krishna I will teach you the secret of life, Arjuna because you trust me; Know it and you will be free from suffering. This is the supreme wisdom, knowing beyond all knowledge, experienced directly, in a flash, joyous to perform and unchanging. Men without faith cannot reach me, Arjuna; they return to the cycles of death and rebirth. My unmanifest form pervades the whole universe; All creatures exist in me, but I do not exist in them. 5-15 Behold the power of my discipline; these creatures are really not in me; myself I quicken creatures, sustaining them without being in them. Just as the wide-moving wind is constantly present in space, so all creatures exist in me; understand it to be so. As an eon ends, all creatures fold into my nature, Arjuna; and I create them...

Read More

The Eighth Teaching

The Immortal Spirit 1-2 Arjuna What is the infinite freedom, Krishna? What is the Self? What is the nature of action, the nature of beings and of divinities? How does one worship? What is it here in the body? And at the time of death how can a man be with you in spirit? 3-10 Krishna Infinite freedom is union with deathless; The Self is the essence of all beings; its creative force known as action is the source of all existence. True worship is myself here in the body. Know that beings die. Know that among gods I am the Supreme and know that true worship is I myself, here, in this body. At the time of death if a man thinks of me, without doubt, he enters my state of being. Whatever the state of being at the...

Read More

The Seventh Teaching

The Yoga of Wisdom & Realization 1-2 Krishna: Arjuna, you can know me without doubt by practicing nonattachment and surrendering to me. I will teach you the essence of this wisdom and its realization; when you master this there is nothing else in the world that needs to be known. 3-7 One man out of ten thousand strives for perfection, and of the ten thousand who strive, perhaps one man knows me in truth. My physical nature has eight aspects: Earth, water, fire, wind, space, mind, understanding and I-sense. This is my lower nature. But I have a higher nature too that sustains this universe. Know that this is the womb from which all beings arise; I am the source of the entire universe, and within me is also its dissolution. Nothing is more fundamental...

Read More

Thinkers and Scholars on the Bhagavad Gita

American thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), and Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) had one thing in common; they were impressed by the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. The Hindu scripture provided them with a new set of religious concepts that express spiritual energy. With the teachings of the Gita they were able to critique rationalism and materialism of the earlier centuries that so many of their contemporaries believed in. Emerson wanted individuals to become "Man thinking" rather than "Mere thinkers, or still worse the parrot of other men's thinking." He wanted his fellow countrymen to investigate their minds and to study the mind of the past through literature. By 1845 he had read Gita. In his Journal he writes, I owed-my friend and I owed-a...

Read More

The Sixth Teaching

The Practice of Meditation 1-10 Krishna: The man who does what must be done without concern for the fruit is a true man of yoga, not the man who shuns action. Know that right action itself, Arjuna, is renunciation; a true man of yoga renounces his selfish intent. For the man who desires to mature karma yoga (the way of action) is the path; for the man already mature raja yoga (the way of meditation) is the path. The man who is detached from sense objects and actions, who renounces his own selfish will, he is mature in yoga. Such a man should lift up his ordinary self with his Self and not be selfish; the self is the only friend of the Self, and its only enemy. The self is a friend of him who...

Read More