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0:00 So now I'm going to give two interpretations. First I will give the classical vdantic adita vantic interpretation and then a broader interpretation more inclusive interpretation. But first the classical interpretation according to classical adita vanta adanta shankara post shankara dwa vanta these practices which have been mentioned here broadly they fall into three groups and all of them are necessary but they have to be done in sequence at any time one will be more important than the other. You can do them all together but one will be more efficacious and more necessary for us. Uh so three why these three yo three
0:48 spiritual practices three yogas why because we have three levels of problems we are we struggle at three levels the first level the most obvious level is of course as we have noticed we don't know who we are we don't know this so ignorance is our first problem and the solution for ignorance is always knowledge and knowledge is produced by path called the way of knowledge, ghanai yoga. And what what do you do in Ghanai yoga? You listen, you reflect and you meditate. Shana, man, three components are there. Now ghani yoga then that should be straightforward. But it isn't.
1:35 We we may listen we may have um listened to YouTube lectures by the hour you know and once I went a couple of years back I went back to our main monastery in India and um Brahmachadi who was a mon monastic novice he came up a very humorous chap he comes up to me with a big smile he's it's the first time he's seeing me in person he said ah my YouTube uh practice is complete today. You have you have manifested yourself. He he was joking. He said, "I have watched hours and hours of your YouTube talks and then I became a monk." This is the first time I'm seeing you in the flesh. He said it in Hindi. I'll tell
2:22 his Hindi is even more funny. He said uh so my YouTube sadena is my YouTube spiritual practice is so even YouTube is a yoga YouTube yoga but it doesn't work not so easy either it doesn't appeal to us it seems very academic and dry or it seems fascinating but doesn't seem practical People say tell us something practical. I always say the to me the most practical thing seems to be the way of knowledge. The most direct most practical it's an immediate answer and solution to our problems. But for most people it seems theoretical.
3:08 Many call it dry. And people say okay I find it interesting but my life but this much must be admitted. My life isn't changing. I'm still the same person. I have no realization. You know you have to realize in the self the self by the self nothing is happening I'm still the same self same person so what's wrong here the vanta says our problem lies at a um there's a more surface level of the problem which is u called the mind is a flickering mind distracted mind if you have ignorant mind solution is knowledge but distracted mind. The solution is meditation.
3:55 Solution is solution is focus, concentration. To get focus or concentration, we need meditation. In Sanskrit, upasana. Here two yogas will become useful. Baki yoga and your raja yoga both will become useful here. Raja yoga because it trains the mind in calmness and focus. It stills the mind. Still the mind is not going to sleep. Still the mind is like when your mind is focused when you're studying concentrating deeply on some activity. That's the still mind. It's very active but in active in one direction like a laser beam focused. Usually activity of the mind for us means flickering and we misunderstand
4:40 stilling for going to sleep. Your mind is still there. That's that's not what is meant by still mind. Still mind is the same object, the same thought, the same um center of attention again and again and again focused on that. It's not something that we are unaware of, unaccustomed to. We do that in our lives. If you have studied deeply, if you have played a musical instrument well, if you have concentrated on a game of tennis or whatever you we have, we know what concentration is. Focus is and bi also is very useful for this. A great amount of our distraction is due to desires. A flickering mind here and there pulled here and there, anxieties, desires. Great devotion to God focuses our mind. What the heart
5:28 loves, the mind will follow. Our attention will go where where our love is. So if my love is for the Lord, my attention will be there also. In the Bible, it is said where your treasure is, there your heart is. So my treasure is there. So my heart, my attention, my thoughts will be there. Um also anxieties, fears that also disturbs our mind. You have a great support. The mightiest power in the universe behind you. None greater than God. God is my support. Then I'm I am free. I do not depend on anything and anybody except God. So great. It'll focus the mind. It'll settle the mind. I have been practicing meditation for
6:14 long years and still nothing has changed. Whenever I try to meditate, my mind either I fall asleep or my mind is flickering here and there. I'm waiting how long when can I get up? It happens to everybody. That restless mind is is due to what is called rajas. Rajas means the element of impurity, dynamism, energy, um activity, restlessness in the mind. That's the quality then or it falls asleep. That's due to a quality called tamas, darkness, inertia, um a kind of heaviness which comes. So why why isn't meditation succeeding? Meditation supposed to calm my mind, still my mind so that I can catch the vantic truth,
7:01 the knowledge will will blossom, will appear in my mind. Not not happening. So Vanta tells us that uh there is a third even more surface level of the problem which is uh impurity in the mind. Impure mind. We have thrown a lot of garbage into this mind in our lifetime due to incious living careless or carefree living. Um you have and many lifetimes there are layer after layer of impurities and darknesses negativities in this mind. Those have to be purified. They will not allow the mind to settle down. Again, Bible, blessed, short, short
7:47 statements. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. They shall see God. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. What we are talking about here, self-realization, God realization, purity of the heart. Swami Prahabanandh in his book sermon on the mount according to Vanti. He says suppose I say I am pure I think at least how do I know that I'm not pure? He says simple try to hold on to a thought in the mind for a few minutes. So it's easy and we say easy peasy. So take up a mantra omnashiv or something any mantra think of of the lord Krishna Krishna Krishna Ramakrishna
8:34 Ramakrishna jishriakrishna think about that a form of the lord and a mantra within seconds within minutes you'll find it has been tossed out some other thought has come in I made up my mind my mind my decision my thought for just 5 minutes or 10 minutes can't do it why it's worth asking asking this question why my mind is so intimate close to me it should it should be in my hands in my under my control my direction it seems to be easiest to handle the body is close to me I can control the body the mind is even closer to me so I should be able to control the mind but I can't why so difficult and the biggest reason
9:19 is impurity of mind is clouded by impurities and so that the effect of the impurities is restlessness, slipperiness. Our mind is we are unable to control the mind. It blows hither and thr like the wind. Arjuna says to Krishna, the mind is as difficult to control as the wind. One might as well try to trap the wind. You can't. So this is due to impure. Is it impossible to control? No. No. It can be controlled. Yogis do control the mind. How? By purifying. So impure mind is the problem. Solution: pure mind. Nobrainer. But how? And that's the difficult part. One powerful way of purifying the mind is called karma yoga. Karma yoga. Karma yoga is spiritualizing
10:07 our actions. Whatever we are doing in life to dedicate it to the lord instead of all our actions are automatically by default are all about I, me, mine, self-centered. And here the self does not mean limitless existence consciousness please. just means this guy everything is for myself. Everything is for myself. This selfish tendency is reversed by karma yoga selfless. When I try to do this selfless action, what happens is layer after layer of the mind is purified karma yoga. So now we have got karma yoga to purify the mind. Then we have meditation and bi yoga also. I'll say
10:52 one more thing about bacti yoga later. Meditation to concentrate the purified mind and ghana yoga the way of knowledge to generate knowledge in the purified concentrated mind. So I always say you you try to make a matrix in your mind about visualize a matrix 3 + 3 matrix three rows three rows and three columns. What are the three columns? Um the um so so the the three kinds of the the three columns are problem solution method problem solution method and the three rows the outermost problem is impure mind solution is pure
11:37 mind method is karm yoga spiritualization of our lives our actions both so-called worldly secular life and also our uh spiritual religious life spiritualization of of our lives and that's done the central idea is unselfish selfless one powerful way of making it selfless is to dedicate it to God then the next row the middle row problem distracted mind solution concentrated mind method meditation final the deepest First level of the problem the core ignorant mind solution knowledge method the way of knowledge
12:24 ghana yoga what we do in adwita and there the method is shana here reflect meditate so there are two notice meditation has come twice once for focus for polishing the mind focusing the mind concentrating the mind and the next one to dwell on the results of your ghanai yoga practice By hearing and by discriminating by analysis you have come to a certain result. I am not the body mind. I am the awareness to which the body mind is appearing. Now you have to stay with that awareness. That's another kind of meditation which is called nidhasana nondual meditation. So this is the matrix of sadhana. And according to adita vanta they will try very hard to fit this what Krishna
13:10 has said into that matrix of sadhana. is bacti yog. Now bhti yoga remember I introduced it halfway. Uh why I did that? The Sanskrit names for the practices are ghana upasana karma ghana knowledge. Upasana has two meanings. Worship meditation. The usual meaning of upasana in all Indian languages generally is worship. But if you go to Vedas, upasana is a series of meditations, vic meditations. And then karma, the Vedas themselves are divided into broadly into three three categories. One is karmakandanda, the ritualistic
13:57 portion, rituals, actual religious rituals which you perform, light a fire and chant the mantras and offer the old kind of ritual which Hindus used to do. Even now nothing dies in Hinduism. Everything will go on but layers are added. Now the modern ritual is more puja what we call puja. You have Ganesh puja, dura puja, shivaratri puja. Then we are we going to have ramnamavi the birthday of Lord Rama coming up this Sunday. Jan Mashtami. So these are pujas and daily puja in the temples in your homes your puja. But before this modern kind of puja modern means about two three 2,000 or years old or so. But before
14:44 that what was in vogue was the vic rituals from agnihotra which was done at home the small fire ritual to big um multi- priest affairs which would go on for days. That is all of that was the source for that the text for that the source text for that were what are called the karmakandanda the ritualistic portions of the vedas but then there's another smaller part of the vedas called the upasana which are not physical rituals but are visualizations and meditations the word upasana later came to mean puja worship what we do is also called upasana the ritualistic worship and prayer
15:29 altogether now is now in modern Hinduism it's called upasana but in Vedas upasana was meditations various kinds of visualizations and finally we have something in the vedas called the ghanakanta the knowledge portion another name for ghanakanda we all know that vanta there's a vanta society of New York so vanta is the knowledge portion of the veda so you're looking at the core or the final or the acme of Vantic teachings or Vic teachings. Vanta is only the knowledge portion but it is backed up by the work portion and the meditation portion and that develops into these three kinds of yogas later on. The work portion if
16:16 you spiritualize it it becomes karma yoga and broaden it. It's not just Vic rituals. Any kind of work. That's what Gri Krishna did in the Bhagavad Gita. He broadened action to include any kind of action including down to this most horrible the worst kind of action which is fighting wars Arjun the battlefield that also he says you can spiritualize do it as your duty and that will purify you. So action can be spiritualized and should be so becomes karma yoga. The meditation portion can be spiritualized that becomes dana yoga. Meditation the way of meditation or what viveananda called raja yoga and also it it is bi yoga. Upasana is also bi yoga. Upasana
17:04 means bi actually worship, adoration, worship. And the knowledge portion becomes ghana yoga. Adwita vanta is primarily ghana yoga. Remember it presupposes that we have done the hard work. The um foundational work has been done. This is a superructure but the foundation the ground work has to be done. The ground work is prepar purification of the mind and focus of the mind. What Viveand put it in this way. All we can do is polish the mirror. That polishing the mirror has two aspects. One is wipe it and then scrub it. So wiping it is purifying the mind karma yoga and scrubbing it making make it shine that is ghana yoga make it
17:52 onepointed so the mind is becomes a most powerful instrument all knowledge vandanda would say depends upon concentration the power of concentration give nature a hard knock with the power of concentration and she will yield up her secrets so knowledge comes from focus concentration Both purity and concentration are already taken for granted in the way of knowledge. And so Krishna here teaches that these are what are required. Now I'm still in the classical this adanta framework. So advant framework is through knowledge
18:37 you'll attain. Enlightenment is knowledge is just another name for enlightenment. Enlightened. What does it mean light? Oh, I get it. Knowledge. Why is that knowledge required at all? Because our problem is ignorance. You are already Atman. You're already Brahman. You're already one with God. You're already limitless, immortal, self-fulfilled, self- luminous. But we don't know any of it. This is ignorance. And this ignorance is removed by knowledge. And knowledge is generated by this this Ghana yoga. know is by knowledge alone you will get liberation and there's no other way there's simply no other way everything else um it's like darkness only way of removing darkness is to switch on the light
19:23 you can't scrub darkness away you can't yell at darkness go away no you can't beat a drum darkness will will disappear no you to switch on the light only knowledge will remove darkness of ignorance. So and but for knowledge to arise the mind must be prepared and the preparation of the mind requires karma yoga and dhana yoga meditation. Bhi yoga devotion to God is useful at all three levels actually. It purifies the mind. Impure mind is made pure by love of God. It wonderfully concentrates the mind. So scattered mind is collected after all
20:09 bacti is what it is concentrated desire. All desires the 100fold desires which flow out to the world are collected into one almighty love of god. So it's a focus it's focus of the mind and by the grace of god also this knowledge or enlightenment becomes possible. So both all three purification, concentration and enlightenment all become or all are helped by bacti. All are mediated by bacti. So bi works at all three levels. All right. So this is the traditional approach. What does the what would the commentator say here? This is the sequence. We stand by it because ultimately it has to be knowledge. Uh so we stand by this sequence but um
20:56 it has to be all of these are required and they are combined and they are combined in sequence. Ultimately however it has to come to knowledge. It has to culminate in this realization. I am Brahman. I am this limitless self and then only realization is possible in the self by the self. Realization of the self. Yeah. In this body and mind with the mind which has been purified, focused and saturated with vanta knowledge what will be realized the true self. I am such anand I am Brahman. I am the atman. That will be realized. Um therefore if you see the commentator here this one particular commentary I'm reading um this is Sridhar Swami there
21:42 he says because Krishna here does not clearly indicate um a sequence what I just said the matrix is not at all clear here Krishna seems to say that there are multiple paths and so there is some realized by meditation some realized by sananka some realized by yoga some realized by ka yoga Become Swami Viveanandas messenger. Share the video with three of your friends. [Music]
