Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.

Last night I was speaking for Mukthisudhakaram. Krishna is answering an important question of Uddhava about what is the very basis of considering something good and something bad, because Krishna mentioned that ultimately the sense of differentiation between good and bad is itself bad, and transcending the two is really good. So Uddhava was very much confused and also stunned. If good and bad differentiation itself is bad and one has to transcend both, then he was asking why the Vedas give a number of do’s and don’ts.

In our ordinary life also we have something called desirable and undesirable, acceptable and rejectable, etc. So will not the whole scriptures and the scriptural positions be defeated? This was the grave question that Uddhava had. Krishna is answering, answering, answering. And finally the point that I was emphasizing yesterday was सत्त्व सम्पन्नया बुद्ध्या, sattva sampannayā buddhyā . He says that there are many practices which can be resorted to in order to sublimate one’s own personality, spiritually, religiously, philosophically or yogically. He says the Sankhya vichara itself is one full exercise. What is Sankya vichara? You are all living in your own respective houses, within the four walls of the building. Your mind should be taken out. In order to take the mind out, you consider the whole universe as a house. The whole universe is built by panchabhūtas. The panchabhūtas themselves have derived their origin from something still subtler, subtler, and subtler. As the Sankya siddhanta describes, we have altogether 18 constituents in creation. They get condensed in order to have the world, and they get rarified in order to dissolve the world. So when the mind is given to this sort of introspection, automatically you will find that your thoughts expand and the riveted feeling that you had towards your body and the body’s belongings and the like, they will start becoming loose. There will be an expansion taking place. There are some disciplines in the form of yama and niyama. They are disciplines which govern our life in the world. Primarily the disciplines are resting upon our body, our mind, our speech, and our thoughts. They also extend to our behavior and interaction.

Then thirdly he says सत्त्व सम्पन्नया बुद्ध्या, sattva sampannayā buddhyā . There are a number of devotional practices which will increase the percentage of sattva guna in you, which means you will become more purified, more elevated, more expansive, more peaceful, more delightful. All our practices that you find in the form of pooja, worship, selection of materials, having idols, going for a holy bath, all these are such practices. We have a number of items to be offered to God, and depending upon the type of God, the materials also change. Mahavishnu worship is generally done with white and pro-white flowers. Devi worship is done by red and pro-red flowers. Lotus, which is generally born from slush, is considered to be the best for divine worship. We have many items like trimadhuram - three kinds of sweets. There are two kinds of trimadhurams. What are they? One is fruit, jaggery, and honey, the three forms of sweet available from nature. Mix all the three, offer it to God, and take one spoonful. So through food, we are trying to make you more and more sattvic. Then the air that you breathe, we burn incense. Very good incense is very healthy also. Now whatever incense sticks you are getting are chemical. It is not so. We have locally something called mattipal, that is the best form of fragrance. It is very good.

We have something called panchāmritam. Another form, this panchāmritam is very famous in Pazhani. Then we have appam and aravana in Sabarimalai. We have … ottayappam is offered to Ganesa or Ganapati. We have vadamāla for Hanuman. The idea is to get involved in such disciplines and such practices that everything will start purifying you. You use water as a part of your pooja. At the end of it, that sanctified and purified water, you take a spoonful. Similarly you chant many things, read many things. Read Ramayana, read Bhagavatam, read similar texts, Bhagavad Geeta. All these are orally feeding into your system sattvic gunas. Using the intelligence you start thinking about philosophical truths and propositions. We have something like elayadha being offered to some God. Somewhere it is malar. Another time it is flattened rice, avil. Now all these are methods and procedures by virtue of which you can administer sattva guna to yourself. Otherwise we are purely worldly, material, and sensory. The sensory worldly life is intercepted by all these items which we identify or think as divine.

So this सत्त्वगुण सम्पन्नया, sattvaguna sampannayā, you are having a little prayer and waving of lamp etc in the Samadhi Mandir, that is generating sattva guna and being soaked in it. Then you come here. We have a pushpa samarpanam and a Prabhata Rashmi. Here also the idea is to create a process, a situation, by virtue of which the participants, the pursuers will have a touch of sattva guna. They will enhance the sattva guna. This enhancement of sattva guna is actually the only benefit we get from all these practices, if you understand them properly. When sattva guna becomes more and more pronounced you will find that to that extent the Rajo guna and tamo guna dwindle, because altogether there can only be 100 and sattva guna is associated with prakasha, brilliance, joy, comfort, sukha, then knowledge, wisdom, spiritual wisdom. So if you start listening to discourses, reading the spiritual texts, thinking and reflecting about them, every inch and millimeter of it is actually supposed to generate sattva guna, its percentage more and more. This taking to sattvic things … when you have friends, have such good friends that discussions with them will always be stimulating and generating sattva guna. Similarly the books you read, the memories you have, the type of environment you keep in your own house, burn a lamp definitely in the evening, preferably also in the morning.

Everywhere as much as you can introduce these notes of divinity, so much it is good. So you will find that all our practices are meant to generate, stimulate, reinforce, and enhance more and more the sattva guna element in us. Once you understand it properly, it can be through purification of food, sattvic items you take,sattvic things you hear, sattvic things you smell, sattvic words you utter and sattvic thoughts you evolve and sattvic understanding you pursue. In that way you will find the transformation becomes faster, easier, and more thorough. He was emphasizing that. I thought of telling you this.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.