June Monastery Letter
Dear Friends,
May, too, was a quiet month, but with such unusually heavy rains that flowers are blooming everywhere on our hillside, some kinds that we have not seen before in the previous years.
The one outstanding event was my finally completing the commentary on the Yoga Sutras. It has taken so long because the sutras were frequently so obscure that I hesitated to interpret them. But after a while I would manage and press on until the next snag. Now I need to give my attention to putting the book on Om Yoga into final shape.
And that is all the news I have to relay. So I will include some questions I recently received and their answers.
The Ribhu Gita seems to say that the mind and its concepts are all unreal. That all is Brahman. Does this mean that they have no reality or that they are within Brahman?
It is important to realize that in the East a statement can mean many things simultaneously. Also the East believes that all verbal statements are only hints or approximations to the way things really are; that human beings are not at all capable of seeing or grasping the full truth of anything. Consequently words are always far from the full reality of anything. Please keep this in mind always when considering anything relating to the Eternal Dharma.
Brahman alone is real; everything is Brahman. This is the fundamental position of the enlightened. But they also tell us that all things are held in the consciousness of Brahman and their essential nature is consciousness alone. So there is a sense in which they are unreal, but remember that a dream or a hallucination is real as an experience.
I prefer the way Yogananda explained it. God is the Cosmic Dreamer, dreaming (holding in his consciousness) all things, and we are co-dreamers with him, living and moving in his dream as we dream the dreams of our individual lives. The reality or unreality of it depends entirely on what we consider to be the nature of reality. If we hold a materialistic view of existence, then nothing is real. But we we hold a spiritual (spirit-based) view, then everything is real, since God is real and God is All.
Do advaita and Buddhism teach non-existence upon liberation or Nirvana?
This is another of those Eastern riddles!
Advaita teaches that all is One: Brahman. Since Brahman is existence itself, non-existence is impossible. In the Gita Krishna says to Arjuna: “That which is non-existent can never come into being, and that which is can never cease to be. Those who have known the inmost Reality know also the nature of
is and
is not” (Bhagavad Gita 2:16). Just before that he said: “There was never a time when I did not exist, nor you…. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be” (Bhagavad Gita 2:12).
Mahayana Buddhism teaches the existence of the Buddha Nature within each sentient being. Therefore they exist forever. As far as the Theravadins are concerned, I do know that the monks of the Thai Forest tradition believe there is an eternal part of each one of us that exists forever.
Within the ocoy system of yoga, is Time considered as Linear or Cyclic?
The yogis of India have for centuries been assuring us that time, along with space, is an illusion, a mere appearance of a misperceived reality. They also say that time is both linear and cyclic according to how we look at it. They do not take it very seriously, because like the Maltese Falcon time and space are really “the stuff of which dreams are made.”
To someone who wrote asking how to cure the habit of negative thoughts.
The solution to negative thinking is immersion of the mind in positive thought–specifically in the japa (repetition) and meditation of Om. Regarding negative thought patterns, Shankara says: “they are dissolved along with the receptacle, the chitta…. Because they have no effect, they are not given attention, for when a thing is falling of itself there is no point in searching for something to make it fall.” I. K. Taimni says: “As the object of meditation continues to fill the mind completely there can be no question of emptying the mind.” It is simple. Not easy, but worth the effort.
Someone wrote the brief message: I AM A SINNER AND I DO NOT DESERVE FORGIVENESS.
All human beings have sinned and may sin, but they are not sinners by nature. Rather, they are divine, eternal spirits ever one with God. But many births in the material world have darkened their consciousness and they have forgotten their real nature.
No one needs forgiveness because God cannot be “offended” or “angered.” A religion which teaches he can be is demonic falsehood and should be abandoned. What is needed is awakening to actual spiritual realities. Buried within each one is the divine light covered over so only darkness is perceived. Yoga is the means by which the holy light is uncovered and we know ourselves as we really are. The continual invocation (japa) of Om and meditation on Om is The Way.
Yours in the Light of the Spirit, the Atma Jyoti,
Abbot George Burke
(Swami Nirmalananda Giri)