Sunday 31 July 2016

Power of the Instruments - 3

The control of the body and life by the mind and its thought and will is the first step towards this change. All Yoga implies the carrying of that control to a very high pitch. But afterwards the mind must itself give place to the spirit, to the spiritual force, the supermind and the supramental force. And finally the body must develop a perfect power to hold whatever force is brought into it by the spirit and to contain its action without spilling and wasting it or itself getting cracked. It must be capable of being filled and powerfully used by whatever intensity of spiritual or higher mind or life force without any part of the mechanical instrument being agitated, upset, broken or damaged by the inrush or pressure, – as the brain, vital health or moral nature are often injured in those who unwisely attempt Yogic practice without preparation or by undue means or rashly invite a power they are intellectually, vitally, morally unfit to bear, – and, thus filled, it must have the capacity to work normally, automatically, rightly according to the will of that spiritual or other now unusual agent without distorting, diminishing or mistranslating its intention and stress. This faculty of holding, dharana shakti, in the physical consciousness, energy and machinery is the most important siddhi or perfection of the body.

(Sri Aurobindo.  Synthesis of Yoga, Chap XIV, Power of the Instruments)

To Be Continue ....

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कथा : विवेकानन्द केन्द्र { Katha : Vivekananda Kendra }
Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org
Read n Get Articles, Magazines, Books @ http://prakashan.vivekanandakendra.org

Let's work on "Swamiji's Vision - Eknathji's Mission"

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मुक्तसंग्ङोऽनहंवादी धृत्युत्साहसमन्वित:।
सिद्ध‌‌यसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥

Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26

Saturday 30 July 2016

Power of the Instruments - 2

The first thing the will has to do with the body is to impose on it progressively a new habit of all its being, consciousness, force and outward and inward action. It must be taught an entire passivity in the hands first of the higher instruments, but eventually in the hands of the spirit and its controlling and informing Shakti. It must be accustomed not to impose its own limits on the nobler members, but to shape its action and its response to their demands, to develop, one might say, a higher notation, a higher scale of responses. At present the notation of the body and the physical consciousness has a very large determining power on the music made by this human harp of God; the notes we get from the spirit, from the psychic soul, from the greater life behind our physical life cannot come in freely, cannot develop their high, powerful and proper strain. This condition must be reversed; the body and the physical consciousness must develop the habit of admitting and shaping themselves to these higher strains and not they, but the nobler parts of the nature must determine the music of our life and being.

(Sri Aurobindo.  Synthesis of Yoga, Chap XIV, Power of the Instruments)

To Be Continue ....




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कथा : विवेकानन्द केन्द्र { Katha : Vivekananda Kendra }
Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org
Read n Get Articles, Magazines, Books @ http://prakashan.vivekanandakendra.org

Let's work on "Swamiji's Vision - Eknathji's Mission"

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मुक्तसंग्ङोऽनहंवादी धृत्युत्साहसमन्वित:।
सिद्ध‌‌यसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥

Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26

Friday 29 July 2016

Swamiji on Ideal of Ancient India

My idea of education is Gurugriha-vasa. Without the personal life of the teacher, there would be no education. One should live


from his very boyhood with one whose character is a blazing fire and should have before him a living example of the highest


teaching. In our country the imparting of knowledge has always been through men of renunciation. The charge of imparting


knowledge should again fall upon the shoulders of Tyagis.



The old system of education in India was very different from the modern system. The students had not to pay. It was thought that

knowledge is so sacred that no man ought to sell it. Knowledge should be given freely and without any price. The teachers used to

take students without charge and not only so, most of them gave their students food and clothes. To support these teachers, the

wealthy families made gifts to them and they in their turn had to maintain their students. The disciple of old used to repair to the

hermitage of the Guru, fuel in hand, and the Guru, after ascertaining his competence, would teach him the Vedas, fastening round

his waist the threefold filament of Munja, a kind of grass, as the emblem of his vow to keep his body, mind and speech in control.


There are certain conditions necessary in the taught and also in the teacher. The conditions necessary for the taught are purity, a

real thirst after knowledge, and perseverance. Purity in thought, speech and act is absolutely necessary. As for thirst after

knowledge, it is an old law that we all get whatever we want. None of us can get anything other than what we fix our hearts upon.

There must be a continuous struggle, a constant fight, an unremitting grappling with our lower nature, till the higher want is actually felt

and victory is achieved. The student who sets out with such a spirit of perseverance will surely find success at last.

Thursday 28 July 2016

Power of the Instruments

The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action. All working of mind or spirit has its vibration in the physical consciousness, records itself there in a kind of subordinate corporeal notation and communicates itself to the material world partly at least through the physical machine. But the body of man has natural limitations in this capacity which it imposes on the play of the higher parts of his being. And, secondly, it has a subconscient consciousness of its own in which it keeps with an obstinate fidelity the past habits and past nature of the mental and vital being and which automatically opposes and obstructs any very great upward change or at least prevents it from becoming a radical transformation of the whole nature. It is evident that if we are to have a free divine or spiritual and supramental action conducted by the force and fulfilling the character of a diviner energy, some fairly complete transformation must be effected in this outward character of the bodily nature. The physical being of man has always been felt by the seekers of perfection to be a great impediment and it has been the habit to turn from it with contempt, denial or aversion and a desire to suppress altogether or as far as may be the body and the physical life. But this cannot be the right method for the integral Yoga. The body is given us as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. If it is imperfect, recalcitrant, obstinate, so are also the other members, the vital being, heart and mind and reason. It has like them to be changed and perfected and to undergo a transformation. As we must get ourselves a new life, new heart, new mind, so we have in a certain sense to build for ourselves a new body.

To Be Continue....

(Sri Aurobindo.  Synthesis of Yoga, Chap XIV, Power of the Instruments)



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कथा : विवेकानन्द केन्द्र { Katha : Vivekananda Kendra }
Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org
Read n Get Articles, Magazines, Books @ http://prakashan.vivekanandakendra.org

Let's work on "Swamiji's Vision - Eknathji's Mission"

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मुक्तसंग्ङोऽनहंवादी धृत्युत्साहसमन्वित:।
सिद्ध‌‌यसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥

Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26

Wednesday 27 July 2016

The Importance of Finding the Strength Within


It is of no use waiting for the strength before one tries; the strength will come with repeated trials. Neither must you fear failure or be discouraged by failure – for these things do not always succeed at once….

There is something a little too personal in your attitude – I mean the insistence on personal strength or weakness as the determining factor. After all, for the greatest as for the smallest of us our strength is not our own but given to us for the game that has to be played, the work that we have to do. The strength may be formed in us, but its present formation is not final,- neither formation of power nor formation of weakness. At any moment the formation may change – at any moment one sees, especially under the pressure of yoga, weakness changing into power, the incapable becoming capable, suddenly or slowly the instrumental consciousness rising to a new stature or developing its latent powers.

Above us, within us, around us is the All-Strength and it is that that we have to rely on for our work, our development, our transforming change. If we proceed with the faith in the work, in our instrumentality for the work, in the Power that missions us, then in the very act of trial, of facing and surmounting difficulties and failures, the strength will come and we shall find our capacity to contain as much as we need of the All-Strength of which we grow more and more perfect vessels.

- Sri Aurobindo



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कथा : विवेकानन्द केन्द्र { Katha : Vivekananda Kendra }
Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org
Read n Get Articles, Magazines, Books @ http://prakashan.vivekanandakendra.org

Let's work on "Swamiji's Vision - Eknathji's Mission"

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मुक्तसंग्ङोऽनहंवादी धृत्युत्साहसमन्वित:।
सिद्ध‌‌यसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥

Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26

Tuesday 26 July 2016

The Importance of Finding the Strength Within

Life is often a struggle, outside and within. We are confronted with forces and circumstances which try to depress and discourage us. We do not know how to face them and handle them.

The question arises : Where can we find the strength which can help us to become master of circumstances, to surmount difficulties and failures, to become an instrument of the Divine?

We give here two very beautiful and reassuring letters of Sri Aurobindo, where he says that the Strength we seek lies within us, and it is possible for each one of us to find it. And its action can change even weakness into power and turn incapacity into capacity.

You should not be so dependent on outward things; it is this attitude that makes you give so excessive an importance to circumstances. I do not say that circumstances cannot help or hinder – but they are circumstances, not the fundamental thing which is in ourselves, and their help or their hindrance ought not to be of primary importance.

In yoga, as in every great or serious human effort, there is always bound to be an abundance of adverse interventions and unfavourable circumstances which have to be overcome. To give them too great an importance increases their importance and their power to multiply themselves, gives them, as it were, confidence in themselves and the habit of coming. To face them with equanimity – if one cannot manage a cheerful persistence against them of confident and resolute will – diminishes, on the contrary, their importance and effect and in the end, though not at once, gets rid of their persistence and recurrence.

It is therefore a principle in yoga to recognise the determining power of what is within us – for that is the deeper truth – to set that right and establish the inward strength as against the power of outward circumstances. The strength is there – even in the weakest; one has to find it, to unveil it and to keep it in front throughout the journey and the battle.

 - Sri Aurobindo



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कथा : विवेकानन्द केन्द्र { Katha : Vivekananda Kendra }
Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org
Read n Get Articles, Magazines, Books @ http://prakashan.vivekanandakendra.org

Let's work on "Swamiji's Vision - Eknathji's Mission"

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मुक्तसंग्ङोऽनहंवादी धृत्युत्साहसमन्वित:।
सिद्ध‌‌यसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥

Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26

Sunday 24 July 2016

Who is more cultured?

Sri Vishwasji was telling. A teacher from VKV Niausa who had been to Pongchou was to return to Niausa. Govt bus frequency is very less. Timing is there. At least half an hour before, a family - father, mother, a son and a daughter - all had come and sat in the bus occupying the seats. It was time to start. But more than that the bus is for the convenience of the people & these days economy also needs to be seen and hence, the conductor was waiting for more passengers. When the bus was full, the conductor gave the whistle and driver started the vehicle.

And as the starter was put on, whole of this Wancho family got down from the bus. It was already bit late and therefore, all those sitting inside were getting annoyed for further delay. Teacher said : All four of them went in front of the bus. Did namaskar. Had pradakshina to the bus. Once more Namaskar to bus and all around. And then all four boarded the bus.

Who is more cultured? A thought came to my mind on hearing this incident. The Wanchos in that remote area also have understood and is in their practice that everything in the world is but God. The bus too is the God.

When will I grow like them?


Saturday 23 July 2016

खेल का महत्त्व

वीडियो कॉन्फ़्रेंसिंग के माध्यम से रिलायंस फाउंडेशन युवा खेलों के शुभारंभ पर प्रधानमंत्री श्री नरेन्द्र मोदी के भाषण का मूल पाठ

आप सब को मेरी बहुत शुभकामनाएं हैं। खेल अपनेआप में सामान्य व्यक्ति के जीवन का हिस्सा होना चाहिए और अगर खेल को हम जिंदगी का हिस्सा नहीं बनाते हैं तो जीवन एक प्रकार से विकसित नहीं होता है। कुछ लोगों के दिमाग में ऐसा भरा पड़ा है कि शारीरिक स्वास्थ्य (physical health) के लिए खेल जरूरी है। ये बहुत ही सीमित सोच है। व्यक्तित्व के संपूर्ण विकास के लिए, सर्वांगीण विकास (overall development) के लिए खेल जीवन का हिस्सा होना बहुत अनिवार्य है। खेल से समाज-जीवन भी विकसित होता है, राष्ट्र-जीवन भी विकसित होता है।

 भारत जैसे देश जहां पर करीब-करीब 100 भाषाएं हों, 1700 बोलियां (dialects) हो, भांति-भांति के पहनावे हो, भांति-भांति के खान-पान हो। हमारे देश में तो एक छोर से दूसरे छोर तक जिला स्तर (district level) की टीमें अगर खेलती रहें, 12 महीनें खेलती रहें तो खेल ही नहीं राष्ट्रीय एकीकरण (National Integration) का ये सबसे बड़ा एक आधार बन सकता है। और इसलिए भारत में खेल तो व्यक्तित्व के विकास के साथ, समाज के अंदर एक आत्मीयता (lubrication) के लिए, क्योंकि जो स्पोर्ट्स हो तो खेलभाव (sportsman spirit) आता है और जब खेलभाव (sportsman spirit) होता है तो एक प्रकार से पारिवारिक जीवन में, सामाजिक जीवन में, राष्ट्र जीवन में ये आत्मीयता (lubrication) का काम करता है, खुलापन लाता है, दूसरों को स्वीकारने का सामर्थ्य देता है।

 खेल में जीतने का जितना आनंद होता है, उससे ज्यादा पराजय को पचाने की एक बहुत बड़ी ताकत खेल से आती है। जो व्यक्ति जिंदगी में खेलता रहता है, कभी लुढ़क जाता है फिर कभी उठकर खड़ा हो जाता है, वो कभी जिंदगी के और अवसरों पर हार नहीं मानता है। खेल एक जीवन के अंदर ऐसे गुणों को विकास करता है, जीवन भर जूझने का सामर्थ्य देता है, खिलाड़ी कभी हार नहीं मानता है। जो खिलाड़ी सिर्फ शारीरिक खेल खेलता है, उसकी मैं बात नहीं करता हूं। जो शरीर और मन से खेल से जुड़ा हुआ होता है, वो इसको पा सकता है और इसलिए खेल का अपने जीवन में, राष्ट्र के जीवन में महत्व होना चाहिए।

 आप सब आज फुटबाल खेलने की शुरुआत कर रहे हैं, खेल रहे हैं और मैं रिलायंस स्पोर्ट्स फाउंडेशन (Reliance sports foundation) को बधाई देता हूं कि उन्होंने देश की युवा पीढ़ी के साथ जुड़कर के खेल को महत्व देना का प्रयास किया है। प्रतिभा (Talent) को खोजना, ये सबसे बड़ा काम होता है और जब तक व्यापक स्तर पर हमारे बाल मित्रों को खेलने का मौका नहीं मिलता है, प्रतिभा का पता ही नहीं चलता है और आज स्पोर्ट्स के साथ, ग्लैमर (glamour) भी आई है और उसके कारण कभी-कभी परिवार के लोग भी बच्चों को खिलाड़ी तो बनाना चाहते हैं लेकिन सुबह 4 बजे मेहनत करने की बात आए तो थोड़े पीछे रह जाते हैं तो पहले इसमें ग्लैमर आए, भले ही उसमें सिलेब्रिटी (celebrity) का स्टेटस (status) बन जाए लेकिन खेल कठोर परिश्रम के बिना आगे नहीं बढ़ सकता है।

 मुझे विश्वास है कि रिलायंस फाउन्डेशन के द्वारा लगातार स्पोर्ट्स को बढ़ावा देने के लिए अंतिम धरातल (grass route) पर अनेक विभिन्न स्पर्धाएं चलती रहेंगी और स्पर्धाओं में से प्रतिभा (talent) निकलेंगी और जितनी स्पर्धा से प्रतिभा निकलेंगी, उतना ज्यादा लाभ होगा। मेरी रिलायन्स फाउन्डेशन को, नीता बहन को बहुत-बहुत शुभकामनाएं हैं और आप सभी विद्यार्थियों को, आप बाल मित्रों को, स्पोर्ट्स के जीवन में पराजय को हमेशा अवसर मानना, पराजय से कभी परेशान मत होना। पराजय सिखाता है, बहुत कुछ सिखाता है और जो खेलता नहीं है वो न जीतता है और न ही पराजित होता है। जीतता भी वही है, पराजित भी वो ही होता है जो खेलता है और खिलता भी वही है जो खेलता है।

 जो खेले, वो खिले अगर आप खेलते ही नहीं है तो खिल भी नहीं सकते हैं। और इसलिए व्यक्तित्व का विकास करना है, खुद को खिलते हुए देखना है। जैसे कमल का फूल खिलता है, जैसे एक पौधा खिलता है, वैसे ही जीवन भी खिलता है और खेल खिलने के लिए एक सबसे बड़ी औषध है, सबसे बड़ा अवसर है, सबसे बड़ी चुनौती (challenge) भी है। और इसलिए मैं आज आप सब बाल मित्रों के माध्यम से खेल जगत से जुड़े हुए सबको शुभकामनाएं देता हूं। स्पोर्ट्स शब्द, उस एक शब्द से हम खेल जगत की दिशा क्या हो, खेल जगत की दृष्टि क्या हो इसको भलीभांति व्याखित कर सकते हैं। जब हम स्पोर्ट्स (sports) कहते हैं :

S stands for Skill,

           P stand for Perseverance,

       O stands for Optimism,

        R stands for Resilience,

    T stands for Tenacity,

   S stands for Stamina,

इन सब चीजों को लेकर हम पूरी अपनी रचना करेंगे तो हमको बहुत सफलता मिलेगी और आज इस अवसर पर मैं आप सबको बहुत-बहुत शुभकामनाएं देता हूं, I wish you all the best.

 

....courtesy..Sri Lakhesh ji