Liebe Besucher,
Liebe Devotees,
nach monatelanger intensiver und freudiger Arbeit an dieser Webseite zusammen mit unserer Webdesignerin bin ich sehr glücklich, dass nun alles soweit vollendet ist. Heute am 9.9.2016
ist zudem der Erscheinungstag von Shrimati Radharani, ein äußerst glücksverheißender Tag
für die Premiere unseres Forums und dieser Webseite als Ganzes.
Anstelle von Verhaltensregeln möchte ich einfach alle TeilnehmerInnen höflich darum bitten,
nett zueinander zu sein und auch bei Meinungsverschiedenheiten – die naturgemäß immer irgendwann bei Diskussionen auftreten werden – stets den guten Ton zu wahren.
Ich freue mich auf einen regen Austausch.
Euer Vedanta
Babaji's Bhakti Bites
Money
The nature of money is that it likes to move.
And it will make your mind move to make a plan for your material pleasures.
Money is called currency because it likes to move like a river current.
The problem is not with the money.
The problem comes in your mentality.
If you are not fixed on God, you will have problems with money,
whether you have money or no money.
If your mind is not fixed on God,
then you cannot accept the situation if you are poor
and that's when stress and anxiety comes.
If you believe that God is the regulator of everything
and if you love Him and trust Him
- then why get in anxiety?
***
- Thanks to Joshika for sharing!
Curse or Blessing?
Sometimes a situation that is troublesome is also a boon.
Things that look like a curse from a material point of view may actually be a boon spiritually. Sometimes what happens to spiritual people, material people cannot understand.
A spiritual person may have a situation externally that looks like a curse,
but internally they are relishing because the situation brings them closer to Krishna.
King Parikshit was cursed to be bitten by a snake and die in seven days.
From material point of view it looked like a curse
because he was losing his kingdom, relations and the very life.
But it turned out to be a boon
because he got the association of the greatest sages of the world
and an opportunity to hear Shri Bhagavata Purana
and ultimately an opportunity to attain Krishna.
***
- Thanks to Joshika for sharing!
Logic and Faith
Shastra says that the world was created by God - aham sarvasya prabhavo [Bhagavad Gita, 10.8] - therefore we accept it. But if somebody does not accept Shastra then what is the solution? Then you have to only defeat him with logic. That's why many times people think that logicians are atheists or logicians are this and that because they don't talk much about God. Their problem is that they are dealing with people who don't believe in Shastra. So how to talk to them? You have to talk to them only in their language.
Buddhists accept only pratyaksha pramana [direct experience] and anumana pramana [logic], only two means of knowledge, direct perception and inference. So if you want to defeat them you have to use only these two. You cannot quote Bhagavad Gita to them. They will say "you are quoting from Bhagavad Gita, i will quote from our Bodhisutra". So then the problem will come. But the problem with logic is this only, that it can go on. All you need is you have to just sit down and work a little bit on it with concentrated mind and you can always find something against logic.
He [Shri Rupa Gosvami] says in case of bhakti it doesn't work like that. That means if one is working on bhakti simply on the basis of logic ... - like we hear the story in Chaitanya-charitamrita the debate between Haridas Thakur and Chapala Gopal. "How is it that just by chanting the Holy Name sin can be removed?" It sounds like a logical thing: you want to remove sin then you should perform some sacrifice, give some charity or you do some prayaschitta [atonement]. But simply you say the Name of Shri Bhagavan and all your sins are removed? This is not logical. So he was talking from the point of logic but the point is that there is something above logic.
God
is not under the influence of logic.
It is not that God is illogical.
He is logical and illogical also.
Up to a certain extent there is logic.
But He is also beyond that.
He is sarva karana karanam.
Logic is only giving you the cause.
But what,
if somebody is without cause?
Then what will you do?
If He is causeless, then logic will not work.
Therefore in those fields, only faith works.
If you have faith then you take to the process,
you follow it and see it for yourself.
And if you don't have faith
then there is nothing you can do about it.
***
- Excerpt from Babaji's class on Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, Tape 9
Bhakti is Not a Dry Process
When people do these kinds of austerities and repress their desires, they become very angry. Like you have a desire to eat chocolate. You are repressing all of your desires and they accumulate a lot of power. And it comes out as anger. You get angry for a very small thing, like a pressure cooker building up steam. Where is the steam going? It's not going anywhere - the steam is inside you. So therefore Bhagavatam says take to Bhakti yoga because you can still eat your chocolate. Bhakti is not a dry process. It is rasa. Bhagavatam wants to give you rasa, the supreme taste of life.
Thanks to Joshika for sharing!
Serving Great Personalities is Very Difficult
It is very difficult to serve great people. You have to understand the mind of that person if you want to serve them. Great people don't function as we function because the material world functions on raga and dvesha. That is the basis of all human psychology. If you can understand peoples' likes and dislikes, the mind works on these two inspirations, then you will know how they act. But great persons function on prema, on love. And that is why their behavior is very difficult to understand. Intelligence lies in understanding the chitta of the Guru and try to please him. That takes a lot of sense control and a lot of sacrifice because you have to forget about yourself.
Thanks to Joshika for sharing!
The Honeymoon is Over!
Babaji announced in his Sanskrit class at the end of last week that, "The honeymoon is over," as he smiled and started delving into some seemingly complicated rules of this ancient language of the Gods. So today - day 1 of week #2 of the course, Babaji delivered as he promised. He diverted his lecture for a minute and mentioned one small thing about how Sanskrit is the language that is designed to write poetry. My ears perked up as I hoped that he went into more detail on poetry, but he did not. He stayed on point, teaching us the rules for combining vowels. He talked about how important it is to pronounce the words correctly because different pronunciations can mean so many different things. A student asked about the importance of proper pronunciation when chanting the Holy Name. Babaji responded, "The Holy Name is a whole different ball game. In Bhakti the important thing is Bhav - the emotions, the feelings, that is important. Krishna accepts the emotions of a person and he is not so concerned about the pronunciation. He is very lenient. But he knows if you have the proper understanding, you should correct it.
Thanks to Joshika for sharing!
Monkeys in Vrindavan
One special aspect of being a student in the Babaji's Bhakti Tirtha course, is listening to the spontaneous dialogue between Babaji and the other teachers. For example, today in the Yoga Sutras class, Professor Bryant was telling a funny story about how the monkeys in Vrindavan are so smart that they know how to do "trade." He was explaining how the monkeys take people's glasses, and then will give them back to you if you give them biscuits. Even though the original subject matter today was about samskaras and desires, somehow he ended up on this topic of the monkeys.
And then Babaji chimed in and said, "The monkeys were businessmen in Loi Bazaar in their last life so that is their samskara." The whole room erupted in laughter.
Thanks to Joshika for sharing!
Making mistakes
Today Babaji called on different students to write words in Sanskrit on the board. When students would write something incorrectly, he would respond lovingly by saying things like,
Making mistakes is good because this is how you learn. This is how you develop the muscles of your brain. That is why in shastra there are wrong examples given so you know what is wrong. To know what is pramana you also have to know what is error.
At one point he called on two different students, who are a couple, and both of them had written the word incorrectly. Babaji said,
Love means to make mistakes together.
Then he went on to explain,
Sanskrit is the language of love, so we join everything together.
Thanks to Joshika for sharing!
