Radha Madhav temple visit in Korea

Nowadays I hear people say “The time is very bad. When will God send his angels to help us?” Well, all I want to tell them is this: “The angels are waiting for you. Just give them a chance to help you.” Yesterday, I met few of those angels.

It was a cloudy Sunday, a normal fall day in Korea. I had a day off from the office. Fresh from missing Diwali and New Year celebrations, I had no plan for Sunday. Then suddenly I saw one announcement on our kitchen notice board. There is diwali pooja and celebrations in Radha-Madhav temple. All these in Korea!! I was surprised to find that head priest of that temple is a Korean monk who studied Vedas in ISKCON. I wanted to visit the place and join in the kirtan. The place name was of course new for me. The person, who brought this information – Yagna, gave me all the required information to reach there. Still my confused face told him all. It told him that I might not possibly be able to go there on my own. Being working here for more than 1 year, he is half Korean by now. On Saturday evening, I was still thinking to go or not. Just to clear my confusion before night, he called me and told me that he will accompany me till half journey for my mission. I thanked God.

Come Sunday. Normally a lazy day with 12 hours of sleep. Not today. I got ready by 9 and waited for Yagna. He came all the way from his house to my guest house to pick me up and we went to bus stop. Got a bus for Gangnam and then reached the place where temple bus was waiting for me. I was the only passenger!! Well, I thanked Yagna for taking all the pains to guide me till then.

After getting few more passengers, and enjoying beautiful landscapes, we reached at Radha- Madhav temple. Immediately I heard “Hare Krishna” maha-mantra. Absorbing it inside me, I scanned “Bhagvad Gita – As it is” and read few of random verses. And then we started Kirtan. As we all know, everything has one vibration energy and frequency. If any frequency matches to your basic frequency, Resonance happens. The sound is very effective way of getting that energy. Few sound vibrations can awaken your consciousness and dormant energy. “Hare Krishna” Maha-mantra is one of those. Kirtan has always been a very effective way of sadhana in Bhakti-marga.

There was “Bhagvad-Gita verse” discussion on verse 40 of chapter 2.

nehabhikrama-naso ’sti pratyavayo na vidyate
sv-alpam apy asya dharmasya trayate mahato bhayat

“In this endeavor there is no loss or diminution, and a little advancement on this path can protect one from the most dangerous type of fear.”

The speaker told how material success, degrees and money will not be carried over next birth. But higher consciousness, bhakti and knowledge will come with us as chitta from one lifetime to another.

After pooja and bhakti, there is Prasadam. We enjoyed very Satvik prasadam prepared by volunteers. There can never be more joy to eat Prasadam after offering it to Lord.

Return journey was as colorful as our stay there. It became a “Tirth-yatra” bus with chanting and kirtan. Being new to this group, I was asked to introduce myself. I not only introduced myself, but also took that opportunity to sing kirtans of Shri Ram and Krishna. It was a long awaited dream come true. To start kirtan and getting others to join. We found my new devotees as friends.

There was a question about how will I come back. Well, when you are on a mission, the commander takes care of everything. So, Lord arranged a nice person to accompany me till my place. We had lots of discussions and thoughts on various subjects. When I reached at my guest house, I was exhausted because of journey but my mind was escalated. I had lived one day in Krishna consciousness. I pray to God to give me strength for retaining this consciousness.

Hare Krishna…

A chat with a friend

Sunil:

Tell me one thing. Sometimes it is said that man has no free will. “patta bhi bhagwaan ki icchha se hi hilta hai” . And sometimes it is said that man has free will to choose what he wants to do. How are these two consistent?

Uday:

there is a concept called Scientific circumstances evidences. When a person says I have free will to do what I want, he is saying that his mind/chitta has found some work to be noble (or due to any other motivation) to do it. He is free to put effort in it. But whether the work output will be according to his wish is not decided based on his effort only. There are so many other factors involved in it.

if everything goes according to his wish he declares it as the result of his free will and if not he declares – it is “Hari Icchhaa”.

Scientific circumstances evidence is the sum of all the other factors involved in deciding fruits of any Karma. God’s will is a simpler name for it.

Sunil:

Let’s approach it from another angle.

When we see misery in the world, it is said that though we all are god’s creations, he does not force our hand, he has given us free will to decide what we would do. this free will then is a self-causal phenomenon, wherein what we do keeps on modifying what our free will is, in this interpretation free will is nothing but manas(mind) doing work according to its vacillations which in turn causes pain.

At the same time to explain the net effect of karma, it is said that the outcome is not in your control. There is God’s will at play. How do the two fit?

Uday:

These two fit in perfectly. Our freedom is in putting effort. By thoughts, we get motivation to do Karma. This thought pattern is governed by our Sanskara. These Sanskara is accumulated mind impressions of various births. So finally it all comes to mind. where else did we get motivation for doing any Karma ?

You are free to put efforts in the Karma (work) of your choice. but you don’t have control on the fruits of that action.

Sunil:

You are active and inactive at the same time. What you are doing in essence is just affecting you. The feeling that it affects the world is illusory. Herein lies the dynamism. That is why things are always in transit, in motion because the whole process is self-causal. You do actions based on mind; the mind gets modified in the process, changing the very trigger which causes action effect modifies the cause.

Uday:

Yes, this feedback mechanism brings good aspect with it. Mind impressions can get changed due to proper feedback. Pure, unattached work can eventually burn unripe seeds of mind impressions.

Dada Bhagwan has given extensive discourse on Karma. Here are few excerpts from book “Aptavani”.

“human beings act according to their innate nature (prakruti) but merely claim, ‘I am the doer’ and thus exercise their ego. What exactly does one do in all this? What people refer to, as purusharth in this world is really a language of illusion. Things occur and materialize because of your past karmas coming into effect, and to claim ‘I did it’ is subtle pride (gaarva) and egoism. The real purusharth, the true purusharth begins only after one becomes the Purush (Selfrealised). It is only then your belief of ‘I am the doer’ is destroyed. It is the state of absolute ‘non-doer ship’. All that is relative is prakruti and the Purush (the Self) is real. What then is real purusharth? Real purusharth is when You (the Self) remain the knower (gnata) and the seer (drashta) when someone is cutting your hand. Gnankriya (knowing) and darshankriya (seeing) are the only activities of the Self. The Soul does not have any other activities. True purusharth is when the Self remains in the state of the knower and the seer.

You cannot just sit around claiming that everything is destined (prarabdha). If you do, then you become completely idle. The mind will become restless with such a dependency. If this dependency on destiny is correct, then you should not have any worries, but in fact you are the factory of worries. Therefore even that dependency is lame. It is not real. It is not scientific. People in India are miserable and suffer because they have been given the support of such a dependency. That is why their progress is obstructed. My search, over a million life times, has brought me to the scientific fact that both destiny and independent effort are lame supports. The only real support is vyavasthit. What is vyavasthit? It is that which happens only through scientific circumstantial evidences. That is called vyavasthit. The knowledge of vyavasthit renders total satisfaction in every situation. I will give you a simple example. If this glass in your hand begins to slip out of your hand and you make every effort to save it and it still breaks. Who broke the glass? You had no intention of breaking it; on the contrary you made all efforts to save it. Then, did the glass wish to break? No, that cannot be so. No one else was present to break it either, so who broke it? It was Vyavasthit; vyavasthit works under exact principles of natural laws.

The mind is like a rhizome. It is made up of many tubers and is very subtle. When any situation arises, it expresses attachment or abhorrence towards that situation and it remains absorbed in that situation. Because of this, a new causal-mind is created, the effect of which is brought into fruition by vyavasthit (scientific circumstantial evidences), and this effect manifests as ‘effective-mind’. Everyone’s mind is different because his or her causal-mind is different.

Dada bhagwan foundation Link

Going on a voyage…

It is said that “if you are lonely when you are alone, probably you don’t know yourself properly.” Well, I am going to be alone for almost more than two months at a place far far away from our India and I precisely want to know myself. No, it is not that I am hoping to know my true Self in this period; it is only that I want to continue my quest more intensely during that period for the simple reason that I am going to have only few things to do there. Work, eat, sleep and being content with self.

I have seen in my first trip to South Korea that at times, one tends to loose that enthusiasm of being somewhere at foreign land and starts feeling lonely. One then takes few emotional ups and downs very seriously and demands emotional needs from one’s near ones. Not getting that emotional need can cause serious emotional drama in one’s relations. I only wish to watch these emotions if they arise in me.

One more thing that I observed was that working hard doesn’t harm you, at least mentally. Resisting what is does harm.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music…

Bye Bye India, Welcome S.Korea…

Where God lives ?

When the master was studying the tradition of his people, one of his friends said jockingly.
“I will give you one rupee if you can tell me where God lives.”
“I will give you two rupees if you can tell me where He doesn’t live.” replied the master.

Welcome back , on the old voyage !!

I have always been a true admirer of literature. I started writing letters at the age of 8. I started writing Haikus and poems at the age of 13. I started writing diary at the age of 14. And in last few years, I have written extensively. Diaries were like my alter ego. want to know me ? Read my diaries. But all these faded away in my two years at IIT Guwahati. It was not that there was no thrust or motivation for writing, it is only that I was practicing another discipline.

There are few thoughts I intend to write on this blog. This will not be a blog of my daily routine descriptions or acts. It would be about my inner strenth and weaknesses. It would be about my journey as a seeker and the challenges that I face on the path. It would be about my being me and my being mind. It would be about me and me…

Let us all know our true self.

- Uday