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Om Shri Gurave Namaha. Om Shri Sivanandaya Namah.

Om Shri Krishnanandaya Namah. Om Shri Chidanandaya Namah.

This Week's Svadyaya page

 

Spiritualise All Activity

Sadhana is the hallmark of a sadhaka, yoga-abhyasa of a yogi, prayer, worship
and devotion of a devotee. The hallmark of the dhyana-yogi is discipline, self-control,
ceaseless effort to ingather the mind and to check its wandering and to focus it towards
the great ideal. The hallmark of a karma-yogi is engaging in one’s duties and activities
worshipfully, remembering the Divine Being throughout the activity, and offering the
activity at the feet of the ever-present supreme Reality.

Thus, in the ultimate context, all spiritual life, all yoga, all sadhana is the devout
engaging in the right and appropriate kind of spiritual activity by the seeker. The Lord
says in the Gita that whether you wish it or not, the cosmic Nature with its outgoing
tendency of the mind will compel you to engage in numerous various activities. When
this is inevitable, why not be wise and spiritualise activity? Why not be wise and make it
a means of connecting yourself with the Divine?

Such wisdom in action is called Yoga. “Yogah karmasu kaushalam – Skill in action lies in
(the practice of this) Yoga.” [Gita 2.50] If I have to engage in action, let me be wise. Let
me have inner awareness, so that my activity is done with an attitude that makes it a
means of moving towards God.

Arjuna responded by “Karishye Vachanam Tava – Thy will be done, and let me have the
insight and the power to engage in action for the due fulfilment of Thy will.” [Gita 18.73]
Even so, the disciple should engage in spiritual sadhana, but without a sense of
abhiman, ego. “I am able to do this by Your supreme mercy and grace. “Naham Karta
Harih Karta Tatva Puja Karama chaa Khilam – I am not the doer, Lord Hari is the doer.
All work is Thy worship.” Thus acting, the actor becomes not merely a karma-yogi, he
also becomes a jnana-yogi. He desires to elevate his activity to such sublime heights
because of his desire, great love for attaining the Lord. There is bhakti. When bhakti and
jnana becomes the moving forces infilling all activity, it is filled with vairagya, dispassion.
It is a liberating activity, a God-oriented activity – activity at the centre of which there is
wakefulness. The inner svarupa of activity is purely spiritual.

May your life be such confluence of bhakti, janana and yoga, and may all your activity be
a sadhana for God-realisation! May it be God-oriented, and thus helping you to connect
yourself with God at every step, at every moment!

May your entire life be a divine life!

-Swami Chidananda

Sri Aurobindo on Meditation - Part I

There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of Dhyana, “Meditation” and “Contemplation”.  Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject.  Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration.  Both these things are forms of Dhyana, for the principle of Dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge.

There are other forms of Dhyana.  There is a passage in which Vivekananda advises you to stand back from your thoughts, let them occur in your mind as they will and simply observe them and see what they are.  This may be called concentration in self-observation.

This form leads to another, the emptying of all thought out of the mind so as to leave it a sort of pure vigilant blank on which the divine knowledge may come and imprint itself, undisturbed by the inferior thoughts of the ordinary human mind and with the clearness of a writing in a white chalk on a black board.  You will find that the Gita speaks of this rejection of all mental thought as one of the methods of yoga and even the method it seems to prefer.  This may be called the Dhyana of liberation, as it frees the mind from slavery to the mechanical process of thinking and allows it to think or not to think, as it pleases and when it pleases, to choose its own thoughts or else to go beyond thought to the pure perception of Truth called in our philosophy Vijnana.

Meditation is the easiest process for the human mind, but the narrowest in its results; contemplation more difficult, but greater; self-observation and liberation from the chains of Thought the most difficult of all, but the widest and greatest in its fruits.  One can choose any of them according to one’s bent and capacity.  The perfect method is to use them all, each in its own place and for its own object; but this would need a fixed faith and firm patience and a great energy of Will in the self-application to the yoga.

References:

Growing within – The psychology of Inner Development

(Compilation of the works of Sri Aurobindo)