Karma Yoga: The Path of Action (Part 1) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

Transcript

Om Asato Maa Sadgamaya Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om Lead us from the unreal to the real. Lead us from darkness unto light. Lead us from death to immortality. Om Peace Peace Peace So the subject of the four yogas it covers the entire range of spiritual life One way of understanding the four yogas is this See the answer to spiritual life, the question of spiritual life depends on how one conceives of the problem Karma yoga the way of work or service, Bhakti yoga the way of love, devotion, Raja yoga the way of meditation And Jnana yoga the way of knowledge, what is the problem and what is the solution All of these are about spiritual life in themselves they are paradigms of spiritual life In Karma yoga it is understood as the problem is selfishness and the solution is unselfishness It is selfishness that ties us to this little body and mind, this little personality So all the efforts that I do in life, all the work that I do, all my thoughts Everything through the days and months and years of my life is directed at making this happy Why this? Why particularly this? Because I am this, I am this We never question it, it goes without question that I am this thing I am reminded of a couple of very interesting incidents Today I received an email from a doctor in Edinburgh He says all my life I have never been particularly interested in spirituality or religion Oncologist, yet recently just a few days ago, some time ago What he did was, he says we are examining, I was looking at x-rays of the body And then I thought I can identify every bit of this body Looking inside the body also, every bit of it, I know, I have studied it I can identify it, I can actually see pictures taken by x-rays And yet where in all of this is I? It might seem like a simple question, yet it struck him with a full force for the first time In all of this, where is I, the one who is thinking now? The one who is enjoying suffering, the one who I call myself, where am I in all of this? Each is a piece of this body So that was his insight Recently I was on a flight from Nova Scotia to Toronto And in the seat next to me, there was a young mother with her little daughter Baby daughter, Victoria, she was 17 months old And the mother was pointing out different things, she was continuously talking to the child And pointing out different things and naming it for the baby One thing I understood is that babies understand language much before they can speak I think this is like common knowledge for any mother or father But I never thought of that They understand language, they understand what you are saying very clearly Just that they are babbling at that time, they can't actually talk They can't pronounce clearly So whatever the mother said, she understood the baby Victoria And she was fascinated by this color or something So whatever her mother showed, she would turn around with big eyes and show me also So look, there is a cloud in the window, look there is a plane And she had a little soft toy, look that's Mr. Bear That's relevant, bears, Mr. Bear And she would show, Victoria would show, with a big smile And then the mother showed a picture of the baby Her own picture, the baby's picture on her mobile phone Who is this? And Victoria turned to me with big eyes and proud look and I Now what struck me later, not at that time, later struck me It's a very Vedantic insight What is the insight? When she is saying plane, that's a plane Cloud, she is showing me, that is a cloud Mr. Bear, this is Mr. Bear But when she is shown the picture of baby Victoria And she says this, she is not saying this is baby Victoria Like Mr. Bear, this is cloud, plane, she is saying I am this 17 months old, I am this Do you see the distinction? Automatically, all the other things are this, this, this, this You should also say that picture is this No I I Automatically we identify with the body And yet as the doctor saw, where in this body am I? Which one is me? Outside, which one is me? Inside with all the x-ray pictures, which one is me? So we take this body and mind to be ourselves Without question and Vedanta of course says this is wrong This is the root of samsara And then we try our best throughout our lifetime to please this body Give it the food it wants, give it the music it wants Give it the things it wants to see And all of the pleasing the senses And then whatever is related to the body My house, my property, my father, mother My husband, wife, child, grandchild, mine My means which my? This body This is called selfishness Sri Ramakrishna put it this way He had an inimitable way of playing with words He said my nephew, my niece, this is called maya All are my Gopala, my baby Krishna is Everybody, Krishna is appearing in all these forms He says this is called daya He is playing on the words maya and daya Worldliness and spirituality Look the same people This is mine and that's not mine My nephew and my niece, my son, my daughter and not mine And just the opposite All are my beloved Lord So this movement from selfishness to unselfishness Selfishness is the problem which traps us in samsara and unhappiness And unselfishness is the solution This is the karma yoga paradigm Bhakti yoga paradigm is Our desire, all our attraction flows outward This is nice, this is beautiful I must have this, I must enjoy this, I must see that The desire for sense objects is the problem And the solution is to take all that desire and focus it on God The desire is the same, I want But the object has changed now First is I want the world Now it becomes I want, same I want but God I want God The world giving up, changing the focus to God That is the bhakti yoga paradigm The problem is all our passions, desires flow to the world And then turn that river around And focus it towards God Same desire, same desire, focus towards God, bhakti That is the solution That's the bhakti yoga paradigm The raja yoga meditation paradigm is All my thoughts are scattered and about the world And because my thoughts are scattered The spiritual truth is not revealed to me The problem is, the raja yogi says The problem is not whether you want God or not Whether you are selfish or unselfish The problem really is our minds are unsteady They keep flickering, they are scattered If we would focus the mind If we would only focus the mind Then the truth would be revealed to us So from scattered mind to focused mind From mind scattered in the world to mind gathered and focused On God, Atman, whatever you call it From unmeditative mind to meditative mind That is the problem and from there to the solution That's the raja yoga paradigm The jnana yoga, the way of knowledge The paradigm is, the problem is ignorance We do not know what we are Who we are right now, right here And this is called ignorance And the solution to ignorance is knowledge So from ignorance to knowledge The jnana yoga paradigm From scattered mind to concentrated meditative mind First was jnana yoga paradigm Second one is raja yoga paradigm From mind desires pouring out into the world To desires all concentrated on God Bhakti yoga paradigm From selfishness scattered in a hundred selfish pursuits For this one body and mind All the activities are now channelized unselfishly That is the karma yoga paradigm Of course I am giving you a general case Very oversimplified version We will go slowly into the depth of it So right now the discussion is on karma yoga This session and the next one Now karma yoga has something unique First of all, of all the yogas This is the only one which is not private Your meditation, your devotion All your philosophy, it's yours Really doesn't have too much to do with me I may get the fruits of it When you are fairly well along the path But otherwise not much to do with me But karma yoga is engaged with the world With the public So your karma yoga is that spiritual path Which is directly in contact with the world Another fact is in today's world Work is very important All of us Whether you are in ashram or in a family or in a workplace You are active You are doing things You are coming in contact with people You are coming in contact with problems This takes so much time and energy That if we cannot spiritualize our work life Then spirituality is a losing proposition It will always lose If we clearly make a distinction My secular life and my spiritual life Then out of 365 days How many days retreat, star lake retreat? Three days 362 days What about the other 362 days? Not spiritual 24 hours in a day How many hours are spiritual? Maybe at the most half an hour Busy days then 5 minutes, 10 minutes And the rest Good deal of it is spent in sleep And the rest is spent in Like Manhattan, the city that never sleeps I saw a poster Manhattan, the city that never sleeps but always dreams Yeah So Yeah that's a good one She is saying it's a good one I am sure somebody in Wall street must have come Or some Madison Avenue Somebody must have come up with it So Spirituality will always lose If you do not spiritualize your whole life Our energy, time, concerns are mostly with the world Mostly with work Only a little is left over for spirituality One Swami told me If you cannot spiritualize your work Then you are a vagabond As a monk when I first came to the ashram What are you doing? Other people out there in the world They are earning money They are doing They are working They are raising families What are you doing? See you are working in a school or a hospital If that's not spiritual If that's not connected to your goal of God realization Then why are you doing it? Others are doing it The doctor is doing it because he earns money The teacher is doing it because he earns money He takes care of his family Why are you doing it? Unless you can spiritualize it So work has to be spiritualized Otherwise this distinction between secular and spiritual Karma yoga erases that It makes everything spiritual It makes everything spiritual So we are going to talk about karma yoga There is a lot to learn I am going to call it an info dump I am going to tell you a lot of things Remember if you have any short specific questions I can answer right away Otherwise we will keep it till the end of the class I am primarily going to be using Swami Bhajanananda ji's book He wrote a little monograph about it Very spiritual, saintly, very illumined Very intellectual monk of our order His work is based mostly on Swami Vivekananda's karma yoga I think we have copies of it here, yes So that's the standard work to go to Swami Vivekananda it was his favorite yoga you might say He gave great emphasis on karma yoga, great emphasis on karma yoga So we will see more and more why So first I am going to give you several points One after another today and tomorrow in the morning There is a lot to understand here A lot to clarify Karma yoga we don't think much about it But yet it is so important for us Especially in Manhattan, in United States, in America In 21st century advanced countries of the world I was in Boston day before yesterday And this Uber driver he said he is from Liberia I said do you ever go to your country? He said every year And he was a very funny and nice young man I go there to relax, I work here Here you can't relax, you know man you can't relax here And then he said you go to Liberia man you just let it go For some time, why all this? So when you are working so much And you cannot not work If you do that, if you try to do that by force you will end up feeling guilty You will end up feeling uneasy in this economy, in this society So how do you spiritualize work? so karma So let's get into it, I have got some notes and stuff That's why I wanted this Karma translates into work But here is the thing, not all work The moment we say work there are different meanings of that word So for example physics, motion is related to work All motion, there is so much motion going on in nature Sun and the moon and even the river and the wind Motion is going on, is that work? No Machines are doing some, in fact there are formula we learnt in physics classes as kids Calculate work done in energy units and all Is that karma? No Karma is that which is done by a living being In a living body So the word karma as it occurs in karma yoga relates to one Work done by living being in a living body, sentient being That work Second, it's consciously done work There must be a sense of agency, a sense of feeling of I am doing it So my tummy is now busy digesting the food we just ate Is that karma being done? No no no So I am doing it consciously, agentship must be involved there Third, there must be results for which we are working towards So there is bhoktritva, bhoktritva means the enjoying Literally karma is kattritva, agentship And bhoktritva means, it is translated as enjoyership But it's not actually enjoyer, it can also be suffering, mostly it is suffering The work that we do, the results that come from that work we enjoy and suffer that So that also is a part of what we mean by karma here A machine does a lot of work but it's neither enjoying nor suffering Neither enjoying nor suffering, even a computer which does intelligent work Deep blue beats a chess grandmaster And the chess grandmaster who played hard to win and loses Is feeling disappointed, depressed and humiliated But deep blue does not feel triumphant and joyful, no So is it beyond triumph and joy, beyond depression, is it a perfect karma yogi? No, the term karma does not apply to what deep blue is doing It applies to what the grandmaster is doing So there has to be agentship in Sanskrit kattritva There has to be enjoyership, sufferership, no no I am coining new words Enjoying and suffering, bhoktritva Then there must be what is called the cosmic result That by doing this karma I get some result See number 4 you write down moral obligation Karma has a moral dimension Good bad righteous unrighteous These things become involved So for example a baby might consciously do something But what the baby is doing is not good or bad When baby is very young Animals do many things but you don't call the cops on the animal which creates a nuisance Nor do you give a, although they give medals to dogs nowadays For bravery in war and all of that But generally good and bad A moral obligation, a sense of there is a moral dimension in karma Which need not be there in all kinds of activities or work So moral dimension is two parts Morality, good, bad and freedom of choice If we think a little bit we will realize quickly That without freedom of choice, without free choice You cannot have good and bad You cannot praise a person for action, good action done consciously Or you cannot blame a person for evil done consciously Unless that thing was done freely If a person is forced to do something bad you cannot really blame that person And that person unknowingly does something great You cannot really praise that person So moral dimension is there And moral dimension means one is that there must be good and bad involved in that And second is there must be freedom of choice Karma, another idea And the last one is what is called cosmic result, karma phala This is usually the way karma is understood in Sanskrit and in Indian languages When my karma is bad, what do you mean my karma is bad? We understand that the results of our past karma are what we are experiencing now The law of karma states Good good bad bad Swami Vivekananda's poem, song of sannyasin Good, good, bad, bad and none escape the law None escape the rule, the law But whosoever wears a form wears the chain too So good, good, good karma leads to good results Good results means pleasant things tend to happen to you Bad karma, remember in the sense of consciously done immoral action Bad karma leads to unpleasant things happening to us So good, good, bad, bad and none escape the law Whosoever wears a form, this body wears the chain too What is the chain? The chain is this fifth aspect of karma I am talking about The cosmic result We have existed in past lives, we have done many things and the results are upon us now So that is called our past karma We are what we are now because of many lives So babies, they are not new creatures If you look into the eyes of a baby you see an ancient creature staring out at you So we come with a lot of, lot and lot of baggage Let me write it down quickly Yes My understanding is that good doesn't necessarily mean that you will get good results in life But in your own mind Keep that in mind because we will take it up later What are the results of karma? That is a point I am going to come to just a little later But right now I am just clarifying the word karma So we see five points Living being, not a machine This distinguishes the word karma we use in Karma Yoga from the word work in science And many other things you can use Then agency, Kattritva Then suffering, enjoying, I am using the Sanskrit word Bhoktritva Bhoktritva It means enjoying and suffering Then there is moral dimension which includes choice This is a very good idea, please sing the microphone here I could spend the whole day here Moral dimension I just reminded the famous French philosopher Foucault, Michel Foucault He talked about the Greek idea of parresia parresia means truth telling Ancient Greeks had a very interesting idea, parresia means truth telling What is truth telling? Foucault explains that the sun rises in the east So this is a fact, I have told the fact Is it truth telling? No, this is not the idea of truth telling When I tell a truth which is harmful to my perceived interests My own selfish worldly interests It's true but if I tell it I might be exposed to harm Then I have told the truth Sri Ramakrishna says something similar He says if a man can confess to his faults simply, openly Then one must understand there is some spiritual substance in the man In Bengali he said Je log nijer dosh pod pod kare bole rite pare, buste habe tar modde kichu aach So moral dimension is there and including choice And this other one, the real thing which most people understand by karma A result which will come to us in life Cosmic result This is what most people mean in India when they talk about karma In Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism By the way this karma, this idea of karma Good good bad bad Consciously done good leads to good results in this life or the next Consciously done evil leads to bad results in this life or the next This is something accepted by all the Indian religions Hinduism, all varieties of Hindus Who do not agree on almost anything else I often introduce Hinduism in schools in America When they are asked about Hinduism I say that any question that you may ask about Hinduism The answer is usually yes and no Belief in God, yes and no There are philosophies God is male, yes and no The song which Patrick sang at the beginning Shakuli tumari ichcha, all is thy will Is sung to God as the mother, divine mother God has form, yes and no But there is something that all Hindus If they call themselves Hindus believe in That is karma And associated with that multiple life existences Before this birth, after this And all Buddhists who do not believe in an eternal soul Who do not believe in God But they believe in karma Buddhists believe in karma, they believe in many lives Jains, so all Indian philosophies believe in this cosmic result Why do I say belief? Notice one thing All these are not really controversial If you think about it, we know this But this one is a matter of belief, faith There is a component of faith here Because there are people who will say No I don't know How do I know that I had past lives? How will I know? Maybe not So anyway, this whole thing was a clarification of the term karma Let's go ahead So what is Karma Yoga? Now we come to Karma Yoga Dharma, religion has two broad aspects in Hinduism, in Vedanta Pravritti and Nivritti Swami Vivekananda said there is no good English translation for them But the nearest he can say is Pravritti means circling outwards Going out, flowing into the world And Nivritti means circling inwards Turning inwards Basically What I sometimes call religion and spirituality Or the higher religion and the lower religion So Pravritti means engaging with the world, going out into the world But doing it ethically And that's religion Mass religion is like that basically And Nivritti is turning inwards, seeking the transcendental Not interested in worldly pursuits anymore So that is the higher spirituality One would be I want pleasure and I want success and I want to be rich But how can religion help me here? Belief in God, belief in karma, being ethical and moral This is the sustainable way to live in this world This is a good way to live in this world Moral and ethical way You cannot have a society without this You cannot have an organization without this You cannot have a family without this So that is called Pravritti And most religion, churches, temples, mosques They are all basically teaching this Ethical life, good life Then there is a secret esoteric inner dimension The core of spirituality That there is something beyond this world Even a moral life, even a good life Beyond this also there is something higher to be achieved Call it Nirvana, Moksha, God realization All mystics, saints, sages, bodhisattvas, avatars That was the core teaching Every scripture of the world, the core teaching is this In every religion The core, the essential teaching is There is something beyond even the moral life Even the ethical life Ethical life and moral life is preparation for this higher spirituality So Pravritti and Nivritti Shankaracharya in his introduction to the Bhagavad Gita He starts the introduction by saying this Dvidhokta hi vedokta dharma ha Pravritti lakshana, Nivritti lakshana The Vedic religion is twofold First sentence Vedic religion is twofold One is the path of Pravritti One is the path of Nivritti Now why am I saying this? The work that is done in the path of Pravritti is Karma It's not Karma Yoga Karma Yoga entirely belongs to the path of Nivritti Karma Yoga is a yoga The purpose is God realization Moksha Nirvana freedom enlightenment The Karma that is the work that is done in the path of Pravritti Is moral action, ethical action Yes the goal is still your eyes are on the bottom line of the company But how to start in B school, business school Not how to attain enlightenment But business ethics Business ethics teaches you how to do business Attain your goals but ethically Without cheating people, without destroying the economy, destroying the company When the economy collapsed the last time And it won't be the last time When the economy collapsed the last time There was an article as usual in Time magazine And said that actually we all know what happened At the core of it is not a systemic failure Every time it happens they try to fix it by changing the laws and all of that And the guys who break the laws are smarter They will find another way of breaking the law They said it's greed and the form of that greed They said in Wall Street there is a saying YBG IBG YBG, IBG means you will be gone, I will be gone Let's do this, let's make our millions Company will collapse, Wall Street will collapse Then the American economy will collapse Along with that the rest of the world economy will collapse fine But we will be retiring with millions of dollars This is Adharmic Karma This is also Pravritti But it's done unreligiously, immorally How can you live a good life morally? That is Pravritti, that is Karma Dharmika Karma but it is called Sakama Karma Karma done with desire How to do it morally? Religion teaches you that Every religion teaches you that But the Nivritti Marga, the higher religion Spirituality, what is the role of Karma there? There Karma becomes Karma Yoga So this distinction Then another distinction One just basic errors This is more common in India All people who do a lot of work are not Karma Yogis They may do a lot of Karma but they are not necessarily Karma Yogis Why? In India, I don't know if it is still there But you would see advertisement obituary One great businessman has died Say it so and so, X, Y, Z He has passed away He was a great Karma Yogi He established a multi-million dollar business Now that said as a praise of that person But that's a misnomer He was a great worker, no doubt I am sure he was a great entrepreneur I am sure he was a workaholic I am sure he earned millions of dollars But crores of rupees But that's not Karma Yoga So that's one error Second error is everybody can be Karma Yogi No no no Karma Yoga also requires preparation It's a spiritual practice like everything else You only have to look at the life of Mahatma Gandhi In this country, Martin Luther King Or in India Vinoba Bhave and many others An ascetic lifestyle With moral and ethical training A high spiritual goal in life With engagement with the world So it's not easy to become a Karma Yogi Meditation is difficult I fall asleep when I meditate I'd rather be a Karma Yogi Not easy Bhakti Yoga is difficult I really don't have any faith in God I'd rather do Karma Yoga Not easy Jnana Yoga is difficult I read what they are talking about in Jnana is not very clear Karma Yoga is easy No Alright So Karma Yoga also requires preparation Let me go ahead Okay A quick note on What Shankara and Vivekananda thought of Karma Yoga Adi Shankaracharya, you know Of the Advaitha Vedanta Yes Why am I giving trouble to the poor camera? Running around here and there Adi Shankaracharya, you know I'm going to summarize his position very quickly He is often regarded as a person who criticized Or downplayed Karma Even Karma Yoga That's true and not true Let's see Shankara and Vivekananda on Karma Yoga This is the thing This will be familiar to many people Who come to the Vedanta Society From Adi Shankara's perspective What is spiritual practice? It's this matrix This matrix You remember the problem, solution, method Yes So problem Solution and method Very quickly Do any of you remember? First problem Ignorance I see that repetition has a value Ignorance And the solution is, of course, knowledge Yes And the method is Jnana Yoga, sravana, manana and nididhyasana Jnana Yoga The method of Jnana Yoga And then The next level of problems is The scattered mind Unfocused mind Which is a big problem today Even in Harvard University All these brilliant kids But they are always on there I'm being unfair Almost nobody was on there Maybe they were a little overawed to be on In Harvard, but very soon they'll get back on their Mobiles and all Scattered mind And the solution is Focus Method is Raja Yoga Who says? Adi Shankaracharya, Shankara's approach Raja Yoga, meditation He will even put Bhakti here Because it gives you focus on God In that sense only And then third and last Bottom level of problems Impure mind Solution? No brainer Pure mind Method? Here we are Karma Yoga So this is in Sanskrit Chitta Mala Pure mind Chitta Shuddhi Purification of the mind With Karma Yoga Mind is purified Impure mind is removed And you get a pure mind With the pure mind You meditate And scattered mind is Concentrated, you get a focused mind With the pure mind Vikshepa Ekagrata Ekagrata Means focus So with focused mind And pure mind, when you come to Jnana Yoga, knowledge will come In Sanskrit, Jnana Is knowledge And it removes, agnana Ignorance What happens then? You realize that I am Brahman And the problem is solved You were Brahman anyway, you didn't know it You need to know it, you try to know it Doesn't work, why doesn't it work? Mind is scattered Rajasika mind when you come to Jnana Yoga, it's scattered and thinks of so many things I often have this experience When I'm teaching Vedanta I tell you Drig Drishya Viveka The method of the seer and the seen Or the method of the analysis of the Five levels of the human personality And somebody or the other will say Swami can I understand it In terms of space, time, energy Something else he has read somewhere That comes in Maybe at some time You can think about it later But first learn what's being taught here Don't bring in your theories right now Then Mind is scattered because of Rajas If the mind has so much tamas Then what will happen is Upanishad class, Jnana Yoga Going on, teacher is teaching Then In Uttarakhand Suddenly some faint Humming sound is coming somewhere And this monk who is teaching He says in Hindi, are Mishraajee kya hua, Mishraji what happened, gets up like this What happened? I had a little Samadhi That is Tamasic mind, falling asleep The moment you start It dozes off Occupational hazard I've discovered of being a student I'm on this side but I'm not getting the experience of sitting on your side So I have all sympathy So focus is required Otherwise scattered mind, unable to grasp That is not working Again that is also not working, why? Mind is full of desires, mind is being pulled away From interiorizing So that purity is required And that's where Shankaracharya gives Karma Yoga Notice Shankaracharya does not say Karma Yoga will give you enlightenment I am Brahman by Karma Yoga Karma Yoga then Bhakti or Raja Yoga Meditation basically The word he likes is not Raja Yoga Shankaracharya does not use this Again difficult to say This is the problem of going to school You have to be careful about what you say Because otherwise Day before yesterday They were saying in the classroom Every word you say you have to justify You have to defend every word you put down So there is actually a place where Shankaracharya uses the word Raja Yoga Doesn't matter He likes the word Upasana He likes the word Karma Upasana Jnana These are the words he uses So by these practices By Karma, purity of mind By Upasana, concentrated mind Then by Jnana Yoga We come to the Vedanta teaching And then you will become enlightened But in contrast to this Vivekananda says Do it by work Do it by love Do it by meditation Do it by philosophy He uses the word philosophy In his original description By one or more Or all of these And be free Is he doing something strange Is he going against Shankara Not necessarily Because if you go to one of the later masters Vishishtadvaita of Ramanuja He also says All of these are necessary But Ramanuja he changes the order Karma Yoga always the poor guy at the bottom And then He puts Jnana Yoga And then Ramanuja puts Bhakti Yoga at the top By Karma Yoga Purification of the mind The usual function And then by Jnana Yoga you realize I am not the body, I am not the mind I am a spark of divine consciousness And then by Bhakti You relate this individual spark of consciousness To the supreme consciousness Jivatma to Paramatma That's your relationship with God Ramanuja puts it that way All of the Acharyas They say That All the Yogas are necessary They don't reject the Yogas Basically practically it boils down That we must do all of the Yogas Again exception So in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition If you go to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu And the teachers of Gaudiya Vaishnavism They will actually say that No no no All of them are not necessary Bhakti alone is enough to do everything So with that provison So here is the difference Swami Vivekananda gives a lot of emphasis On Karma Yoga It comes from the way he teaches Advaita Vedanta Advaita Vedanta To put it very simply Can be taught in one way By emphasizing the falsity of the world To show the reality of Brahman Or by emphasizing the oneness of the world That also shows the reality of Brahman How? Remember the classic snake rope example Rope is false Rope is true, snake is false That's the result of having a heavy dinner So rope is true You understand what example I am talking about So rope is true, snake is false You can say that the snake is false One Or you can say snake is nothing other than the rope The snake is really the rope Or even so far as to say The snake is real as the rope Why are we talking about snakes and ropes here Rope stands for Brahman The ultimate reality Snake stands for the world which we think is real We thought the snake was real When we investigated it It turned out to be a rope We think that this is the reality When we investigate this Ourselves and the world It turns out to be nothing other than Brahman Often I indiscriminately use the word God Some people objected This is not technically correct But I don't want to be technically correct Because they are all referring to the same reality One must at times Make it a little fuzzy Because if you make too many distinctions Between Atman, Brahman The God of religion And the God of different religions You create an impression in the minds of people You are talking about many different things You are not actually There is only one thing All religions are trying to point out So Swami Vivekananda Shankara is Approximately put it He is the person who is saying Snake is false Jagat Mithya The world is an appearance And hence Brahman is real Swami Vivekananda is saying The snake is nothing other than the rope The world is nothing other than God See God in everything In everybody And it's true Our whole problem is We think I am this much And everything else is separate from me Shankara says all that is separate from you Put everything into that separateness The world is separate from you But the body is also not you The mind is also not you When you put it all away like that Then you discover the real you within And you see everything else is an appearance So that is reality Brahman is real, the world is an appearance And you are none other than Brahman Karma plays a secondary role there But Swami Vivekananda says The world is also nothing other than Brahman You are also nothing other than Brahman And all of these people are also nothing other than Brahman And you can engage Work is also nothing other than Brahman Truly understood Your activities in the world can be and should be spiritualized Bhagavad Gita Take the verse we chant before food Brahmaarpanam brahmavi Brahma agno brahmanautam Brahmaiva tena gantavyam Brahma karma samadhena Brahman is the offering Brahman is the Fire into which you offer Brahman is the Priest who makes the offering Brahman is the action of offering One who sees Brahman in all action It does not say one who regards all action as false It says one who sees Brahman in all action That one attains to Brahman That's what Swami Vivekananda is emphasizing And don't think that he is He is deviating from traditional Advaita Vedanta Ramana Maharshi Who is a very staunch Advaithian Taken as the Epitome of modern Advaita He says in one place Who can say the world is real Our immediate response would be We say we are ignorant people We think the world is real The great enlightened people think the world is false He says no no no It is only the enlightened person who can say the world is real The enlightened person can say the world is real We think the world is real It has no value at all We do not know what reality is The enlightened person realizes Brahman The reality And sees that everything is Brahman That is the real world What we live in is like a dream But we are all talking about the same thing I hope I have confused you enough So this is the difference between Swami Vivekananda's approach Swami Vivekananda now regards The world as an appearance As nothing other than Brahman Not real in itself But if you know it truly For the one who truly understands it The world is actually a shining forth A manifestation of Brahman Just as every ornament Is actually expressing Golden ornament, expressing the gold within Every wave Is basically an expression of the water In the same way Everything in this world is an expression of God So Sri Ramakrishna's teaching Shiva Jnana Jiva Seva Serve all beings Knowing them to be Shiva That becomes the basis For Swami Vivekananda's Karma Yoga Serve all beings Knowing them to be Shiva Shiva means God Knowing them Not thinking about them Not believing them to be Shiva Knowing them to be Shiva Just as you know that the waves are nothing but water Ornaments are nothing but gold All beings are nothing but God So that's Vivekananda and Shankara Karma Yoga Okay I'll make one more point quickly Then we'll take a few questions You have a question? Yeah, quick clarification In order to know that every person or who is Shiva You have to be an enlightened soul Yes, you have to be In order to know that So until then you have to believe Until then you have to believe, yes How do we proceed? How do we proceed? In the path of Bhakti We take it on faith Bhakti is a path of faith That's why I say One sadhu in Uttarakhand said There are only two ways Either you believe or you know In Hindi Either you believe it or you know it Either you believe it or you know it Now in most of the world Especially western world in USA Religion is taken as faith In fact the word used for religion in USA is faith But you know That is an uneasy word For something like Buddhism Buddhism Buddhism is not faith in that sense It's an uneasy word to apply to yoga for example Patanjali yoga We will see Raja yoga And definitely it's not appropriate word to apply to Advaita Vedanta It's a path of knowing Now until you say no But until you know you have to believe Not in the sense that you believe in other religions It's more like when you go to college You go to a teacher I have given this example many times What is our attitude To what the teacher is teaching In a physics class or a math class Our attitude is The teacher is telling the truth The text books are correct I don't get it yet Let me work at it, I will get it And the purpose is to get it The purpose is not to believe it Because if the teacher tells you something And says do you get it And if you say I don't understand. But you are great I believe you Teacher is not going to be happy at all You have to understand it That is the difference between the path of Jnana and the path of Bhakti So in the path of Jnana always the effort is to understand In the path of Bhakti you will be told There is no point in trying to understand now Believe it and live accordingly And it will be shown to you in time Usually after post mortem, after death Okay One more point quickly And then I am done Are there snacks after 8.30? And are they available for some time or will they disappear? Oh 30 minutes, so I should not take too much time Okay The effects of karma Yes Jano ya mano mano means believe it God exists, karma exists After death you will continue to exist Before birth you were there How do I know that? You don't know it, you have to believe it That is one path Most religion is like that Another path is that I am not the body and mind This actually can be understood Not believed So Jnana yoga is the path of understanding it Jano means Jnana Knowledge It is not a question of believing it You have to understand it Effort is continuously to understand it And it can be understood The whole point is that we do not understand And the point is to understand it Problem is we don't understand The solution is to understand Remember understanding is not the end of it That understanding has to deepen into enlightenment Or realization But understanding is part of it The other path Doing it is important Karma yoga In bhakti yoga doing or understanding is not that much important Believing, having faith is important So different paradigms Just to address your point Karma has three effects Karma, action has three effects In the sense we mean karma What are the three effects? One is the immediate effect You give food to a hungry person The hungry person is fed and the hunger is removed Direct effect, everybody sees it No question about it Second is what you said An effect on your own mind Keep doing it and you develop the good habit of sharing The joy of doing things for others Psychological effect It is called samskara Third one is karma phala Which we talked about here In Sanskrit Paapapunya merit demerit Which will result in some pleasant or unpleasant effect Sukha dukha So the law is like this Dharma, good action Consciously done Leads to punya These are words which are used by just about every Indian But we use it unthinkingly Dharma leads to punya Punya means merit Merit leads to sukha, happiness So the meaning is All good things which are happening to us Now are because of some merit we have And that we earned in earlier lives But equally all the unpleasant things Happening to us Nobody's fault It's we who have generated it We have set in motion Mighty energies Though subtle in some ancient time And the result we are getting now So adharma leads to paapa Paapa means sin or demerit And paapa leads to dukha And they are all limited Consciously done good action Generates some limited amount of merit That generates some merit That generates some limited amount of merit That generates some limited amount of nice things Similarly So that's why There is no unlimited heaven or unlimited hell There are limited heavens and limited hells And they are all worldly This worldly, that worldly But all worldly They are not spiritual Spirituality is freedom from all of this Freedom from the whole mess Worldly mess and other worldly mess Worldly mess is called this And other worldly mess is that That stands for heaven and hell Both are mess And freedom from this causality is So Swami Vivekananda's poem Good good Bad bad And none escape the law But whosoever wears a form Wears the chain too This much is karma Then what is Vedanta Far beyond name and form Is Atman ever free Far beyond name and form Is Atman ever free Know thou art that Say Om Tat Sat Know thou art that Sannyasin bold Say Om Tat Sat On that beautiful note let's end Those Let me do a Shanti chant Those who want to grab a quick snack I will wait for questions Don't worry But we don't want the snacks to run away Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Hari Om Tat Sat Sri Ram Krishna Arpna Mastu Yes Yes You can pass the microphone Or you can come up here And ask the question And others please feel to Come up here And ask the question And others please feel to Come up here And others please feel to Leave Question Life is only real when I am Yes Just repeat the comment Just the comment was that Gurjeev has a book named Life is only real when I am Very deep point Yes the question Swami can you explain A little bit more the difference between Bhokta and cosmic result Is this Bhokta Is this life you enjoy Bhokta means bhoga that means To experience Bhoga can be of two types Bhoga means to experience To have some experience it could be a pleasant experience Which is called Ishta which means desirable experience An unpleasant experience Pain Disease Unhappiness Failure So it's called Anishta Undesirable experience But both are bhoga And I am the bhokta The moment I say I see I hear, I smell, I taste I touch so I suffer I enjoy, I am bhokta And for that I do work to get the Desirable bhoga The objects of enjoyment And to avoid undesirable experiences This is called Bhoktrittva So karma is connected with bhoktrittva But even the cosmic result Is the same thing Cosmic result is by doing karma These experiences Come to me The bhoga comes to me The bhoga is generated by the cosmic result Bhoga is the thing which you experience The thing will come to you Pleasant and unpleasant things Desirable and undesirable things will come to you And you will experience it, I will experience it So I am the bhokta But the thing which I experience That is the cosmic result That is generated by my past karma So all the things that we experience It comes to us because of our past karma And these are not good things None of the whole thing is not good news at all From a spiritual point of view This is samsara. This is what we are trapped in endlessly And to expand beyond this Into our infinite nature is freedom, Yes Swamiji I am confused about What you said about Shankaracharya's teaching The cause and effect Does the karma yoga Purify your mind Or does purifying your mind Make you a karma yogi No, when you practice karma yoga It purifies the mind We can immediately see why What is the essence of this kind of impurity. Its selfishness So trying the best, my level best To make this particular body happy Why am I trying to make it happy As Victoria said I am this Obviously I will try to make it happy Because I am this But Vedanta insists you are not this Fatal error One day this body will age And decay and die In spite of our best efforts I am gone also No, that's the problem You will still be there You will suddenly realize I spent my life time Taking care of the car Now the car is broken and gone I am still there I should have used the car for my purposes But I lived my life trying to take care of the car This is from a famous science fiction story Written in the 60s, 50s Report on planet 3 or something Alien has come and sees This planet It never mentions earth But it sends a report back to its home planet I found Inhabited planet Inhabited by intelligent and powerful beings Here is a report These intelligent and powerful beings Who inhabit this land, this planet They are shiny Made of metal and they have 4 wheels And they have Servants Whom they carry within themselves And those servants clean them, feed them Maintain them, do everything for them That is a commentary on the car culture 1950s, 60s in USA When it was booming Very intelligent science fiction story I will come to you Let her ask first, I will come back to you You had a question If my experience is the result of my karma Good and bad How do you reconcile that Not the fact God is the doer And I am merely the instrument We cannot The only thing is because we do not feel that So that God is the doer And I am merely the instrument Then you are a perfect karma yogi That is the highest level of karma yoga Let me quickly state 3 levels, karma yoga also has levels People don't understand this First level of karma yoga, phala tyaga Second level of karma yoga, karma tyaga Third level of karma yoga, katritva tyaga What does it mean? Phala tyaga means giving up the result I am doing the work not because I want the thing for myself I am doing the work as worship of the lord So the results I consign unto the lord So renunciation of the result mentally Second, higher level than this Renunciation of the work itself Not that I will not do the work I will do the work but I have no more choice regarding the work Swami Vivekananda said about the second level Neither seek nor avoid We have choice Likes and dislikes about the work But if it is all worship of the lord Why should I say I will worship in this way and not in that way That person really feels So work becomes It is a worship And then third level Is that Katritva tyaga I am not the doer also That is difficult to understand now Because we inevitably feel I am the doer And that comes of deep identification with the body and mind As the third level one begins to clearly see Nature is doing everything God is doing everything through nature Through maya All impulses, think about it Where do our thoughts come from From thoughts comes speech and action But where does the thought come from We think I am thinking the thought Not true If you just watch a little bit It bubbles up from unknown depths of our consciousness Everything here is being done by nature Bhagavad Gita says Prakriti eva karmaani kriyamanani sarvasah Prakriti alone does every action here in the entire universe Scientists will be so happy Bhagavad Gita says absolutely correct Everything here is done by nature Not one thing is done by you The conscious being Ya pasyati tathaatmanam akartaram sa pasyati The one who sees oneself in that way That I am not the doer Nature is the doer That person sees The consciousness within does not do anything Here he does not bring God into the equation at all But the devotee will say God does everything That was the whole meaning of the song we started with Shakoli tomari ichcha All is thy will my divine mother You do thy work People say I am doing the work You make the lame cross mountain ranges And you trap the elephant in a swamp You make somebody enlightened Brahma Jnana You make the elephant plunge into the mires of samsara We think we are doing it I am a great saint by my efforts That person is a sinner No ultimately you will see God is behind everything That's fun for the enlightened person Not so much fun for the sinner But even that so called sinner is also nothing other than God That person is also ultimately safe So at that level no more I am the experiencer of the results You will not think I am the doer I am not even the experiencer You are already free That's the highest level of Karma Yoga Work and worship First level Work is there and worship is there Second level Work as worship I know it's work But I am now trying to see it as worship It's a practice Third level Work is worship We have a slogan for this Not so easy at all If work is worship We would always feel that we are As good as deep meditation You really should go for the snacks We will take it up later We will talk about it as we go along I can see that if I don't go nobody is going God Bless