The Foundation of Spiritual Progress
Author: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
Description: Spiritual unfoldment is slow and steady. Habitual consciousness can be raised up life after life. The foundation is built by sadhana. Raising children is as important as meditation in fulfilling dharma. It is our duty to pass on our religion to the next generation.
Transcription:
Living with Siva lesson for today.
"What is a bad birth, one might wonder? It is being born into an area of the mind below the muladhara chakra where the instinctive nature reigns supreme, where the intellectual nature runs amuck by pursuing dead-end sequences of thought and desire. This is considered a bad birth. It is where no consciousness of God or of the Gods exists, where there is no known pattern for life, no dharma, and where little or no knowledge of the laws of karma and reincarnation survive. These areas of consciousness in the lower chakras below the muladhara can reap birth after birth and are considered by the Hindu as births to be avoided. They are avoided through finding and then following unrelentingly one's dharma life after life. "
The last sentence there is the key one because, of course, we're interested in how to avoid it, right. That's an important point for bringing it up.
So Gurudeva's giving the classic Hindu point of view on the spiritual unfoldment which is that it is a slow and steady progress. It's not like the modern concept we find in western countries where spiritual enlightenment comes easily.
But, we were talking to our guests from Malaysia and there's a swami there who gives initiation, gives a kind of shaktipata and opens up everyones' chakras and beginning and end of the matter. Makes it sound very easy.
Just one touch from someone else, that's all you have to do is manage to get touched by someone else and there's nothing else to do. What an easy path. But, of course, what goes up will come down unless there's the foundation built by sadhana. In other words, if something lifts our consciousness up, be it a festival such as we had the other day or being in the presence of a swami who has an active kundalini, it won't stay up. It'll come back to its normal habitual consciousness.
So, where that habitual consciousness is, is something we can raise up slowly by slowly, life after life. So, when we do go up in consciousness we don't come down so far.
The corollary, of course, is that, not to separate secular and religious life which again is a western concept and the classic example was the T.M. person I know who was really disciplined. And, as I always say when I talk about T.M., it's have to respect anyone who can meditate for hours a day regularly. You know, this is worthy of respect. But the problem is when you look at that as your spiritual life and your family life has nothing to do with your spiritual life. So, in the case of this person he neglected his children, neglected his wife and ended up getting divorced cause he separated life and just focused on meditation.
But, raising your children is just as important as meditation in terms of making spiritual progress because it's part of fulfilling dharma. Life after life.
"We have one duty to perform..."
Anyone remember what that is?
Yes?
[Participant replies:]
Pass on.
[Bodhinatha resumes:]
Pass on, yes.
"...which is to pass our religion on to the next generation, the next and the next..."
So we got three of them in there. What's that, the great grandchildren? Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. So, great grandchildren.
"And how do we do this? How is this done? It is done by causing the children to memorize the precepts of our scriptures. Our Saivite scriptures are the heritage of the children. They own those scriptures."
[crash, breaking noise]
(Is that just wood? Okay. Little, usually we get a gecko, exploding, exploding wood. [laughter] Okay. )
"It is our duty to give them the scriptures. Among others, we now have the Tirukural in the English language, entitled Weaver's Wisdom. It must be memorized by them, by each and every one of them, along with the hundreds of Vedic verses in Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism, Dancing with Siva. The teachings of our other scriptures should be familiar as well. That establishes them in their dharma. The sooner we get our scriptures into the minds of the children, the better we build the children into fine citizens. A good religious education starts with memory, and it is fulfilled in the realms of reason when the child is older and able to discuss his religion with his elders."
That's the key there is, it starts with memory and we're hoping sometime in the next few years after we get the Guru Biography done, to produce some more scripture that children can memorize. Right now, the scripture we have is, we haven't really put it forward for memorization. Tirumantirum and different scriptures but ideally, we would start doing that in a few years and create more scripture that can be studied and memorized.
"Start with the Tirukural. Lord Murugan will help you. God Ganesha will open doors and give you wisdom of how to proceed. Lord Murugan will give you the willpower -- He is the God of Will -- to perform this one supreme duty, and duty is also dharma, to pass our Saivite religion on to the next generation, the next and the next."
Okay, well that's good for today. Have a wonderful day.
[End of transcript.]