Bodhinatha speaks a bit about the Jivana Ritau and its focus on looking at areas we are weak in and trying to upgrade. The yamas and niyamas are the ideals we are striving for, and it's alright to fall short. Don't get stuck in feeling bad for falling short. Try again, and try to do better each time.

Unedited Transcript:

As we talked about last phase, we are in the Jivana ritau and Gurudeva's ritau and he would pull out 'Living with Siva' and find a few sutras and start scolding everyone. Of course, we are not going to do that this year. But , the spirit of the ritau is to try and look and see if there are areas that we are weak in and areas we have slacked off in terms of 'Living with Siva'. You will have to scold yourself this year! If you can find any areas, then it is appropriate to try and upgrade. Just do a little better.

It fits into the 'Yama and Niyama' concept. The yamas and niyamas talks we gave a number of months ago, are now getting posted on the web in transcription form. We are starting to get some e-mails in from those that don't listen to the talks but read them. Very appreciative e-mails on the yamas and niyamas. One statement that came in struck me. They liked the idea, that the yamas and niyamas are ideals we are striving for and if we fall short, that is alright. Of course, it is the way Gurudeva states it.

The person liked that because they know they have fallen short, and said, "Oh, okay. It is all right to fall short. I feel better about myself already." That was kind of the message that was being said, without being said.

"Oh, it is great to read this because we don't want to get stuck in the concept we have fallen short. This is terrible. I am an unworthy person, everybody else is better than me," or something.

That is missing the point. If we fall short, we want to try again and try to do better. That is the ideal of the yamas and niyamas, it is the ideal. You keep trying to do better in manifesting the ideal. But if and when we do fall short of the ideal, we don't want to blame ourself or feel badly about what has happened. We want impress ourselves that we have fallen short, try and figure out how not to repeat that and how to do a little better in manifesting each of the yamas and niyamas.

Have a wonderful phase.