TERMS STARTING WITH
Renunciation ::: Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. our renunciation must obviously be an inward renunciation; especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the senses and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 329
Renunciation Not a painful obligation, but the result of a free choice; nor the giving up of an object of desire in favor of another object of desire. The question of advantage or disadvantage does not enter into it; these are delusions of the personal ego. The one who truly renounces abandons the acquisitiveness and desire for personal advantage which are the law of the lower nature, and follows the law of the higher nature, which is the law of love and harmony. The question as to whether he gains or loses is then relatively meaningless for him, for he has forgotten himself, because he has found his greater self.
Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach,—no other renunciation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Page: 222
Renunciation
RENUNCIATION. ::: Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object ; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by nega-
renunciation ::: n. --> The act of renouncing.
Formal declination to take out letters of administration, or to assume an office, privilege, or right.
TERMS ANYWHERE
5. renunciation/generosity (S. tyāga; T. gtong ba rjes su dran pa; C. nianshi/shi suinian 念施/施隨念)
6. relinquishment/renunciation (S. prahāna/tyāga; T. spang ba/gtong ba; C. duan/shi 斷/施)
abdication ::: n. --> The act of abdicating; the renunciation of a high office, dignity, or trust, by its holder; commonly the voluntary renunciation of sovereign power; as, abdication of the throne, government, power, authority.
Abhiniskramanasutra. (T. Mngon par 'byung ba'i mdo; C.Fo benxing ji jing; J. Butsuhongyojukkyo; K. Pul ponhaeng chip kyong 佛本行集經). In Sanskrit, "Sutra of the Great Renunciation"; this scripture relates the story of Prince SIDDHARTHA's "going forth" (abhiniskramana; P. abhinikkhamana) from his father's palace to pursue the life of a mendicant wanderer (sRAMAnA) in search of enlightenment. There are no extant Sanskrit versions of the SuTRA, but the work survives in Tibetan and in several distinct recensions available in Chinese translation, one dating to as early as the first century CE. The best-known Chinese translation is the Fo benxing ji jing, made by JNANAGUPTA around 587 CE, during the Sui dynasty. The text claims to be a DHARMAGUPTAKA recension of the JATAKA, or past lives of the Buddha. (Franklin Edgerton has suggested that this text may instead be a translation of the MAHAVASTU, "The Great Account," of the LOKOTTARAVADA offshoot of the MAHASAMGHIKA school.) JNAnagupta's recension has sixty chapters, in five major parts. The first part is an introduction to the work as a whole, which relates how rare it is for a buddha to appear in the world and why people should take advantage of this opportunity. Reference is made to the various meritorious roots (KUsALAMuLA) that sAKYAMUNI acquired throughout his many lifetimes of training, in order to prepare for this final life when he would finally attain enlightenment. The second part enumerates the entire lineage of the buddhas of antiquity, a lineage that sAkyamuni would soon join, and the third part follows with a genealogy of the sAKYA clan. The fourth part describes the decisive stages in sAkyamuni's life, from birth, through his awakening, to the first "turning of the wheel of the DHARMA" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA). The last part gives extended biographies (going even into their past lives) of his prominent disciples, of which the stories involving his longtime attendant, ANANDA, are particularly extensive. In 1876, SAMUEL BEAL translated this Chinese recension of the sutra into English as The Romantic Legend of sAkya Buddha.
abjuration ::: n. --> The act of abjuring or forswearing; a renunciation upon oath; as, abjuration of the realm, a sworn banishment, an oath taken to leave the country and never to return.
A solemn recantation or renunciation; as, an abjuration of heresy.
abjurement ::: n. --> Renunciation.
abnegation ::: n. --> a denial; a renunciation.
abrenunciation ::: n. --> Absolute renunciation or repudiation.
Adīnava. (T. nyes dmigs; C. guohuan; J. kagen; K. kwahwan 過患). In Sanskrit and PAli, "dangers." More generically, Adīnava refers to the evils that may befall a layperson who is made heedless (PRAMADA) by drinking, gambling, debauchery, and idleness. More specifically, however, the term comes to be used to designate a crucial stage in the process of meditative development (BHAVANA), in which the adept becomes so terrified of the "dangers" inherent in impermanent, compounded things that he turns away from this transitory world and instead turns toward the radical nonattachment that is NIRVAnA. In the so-called graduated discourse (P. ANUPUBBIKATHA) that the Buddha used to mold the understanding of his new adherents, the Buddha would outline in his elementary discourse the benefits of giving (dAnakathA), right conduct (sīlakathA), and the prospect of rebirth in the heavens (svargakathA). Once their minds were pliant and impressionable, the Buddha would then instruct his listeners in the dangers (Adīnava) inherent in sensuality (KAMA), in order to turn them away from the world and toward the advantages of renunciation (P. nekkhamme AnisaMsa; see NAIsKRAMYA). This pervasive sense of danger thence sustains the renunciatory drive that ultimately will lead to nirvAna. See also ADĪNAVANUPASSANANAnA.
aga ::: outward renunciation of action due to inertia. tamasic ud udasinata
Ahamkara-tyaga: Renunciation of egoism.
AjAtasatru. (P. AjAtasattu; T. Ma skyes dgra; C. Asheshi wang; J. Ajase o; K. Asase wang 阿闍世王). In Sanskrit, "Enemy While Still Unborn," the son of King BIMBISARA of Magadha and his successor as king. According to the PAli account, when BimbisAra's queen VAIDEHĪ (P. Videhī) was pregnant, she developed an overwhelming urge to drink blood from the king's right knee, a craving that the king's astrologers interpreted to mean that the son would eventually commit patricide and seize the throne. Despite several attempts to abort the fetus, the child was born and was given the name AjAtasatru. While a prince, AjAtasatru became devoted to the monk DEVADATTA, the Buddha's cousin and rival, because of Devadatta's mastery of yogic powers (ṚDDHI). Devadatta plotted to take revenge on the Buddha through manipulating AjAtasatru, whom he convinced to murder his father BimbisAra, a close lay disciple and patron of the Buddha, and seize the throne. AjAtasatru subsequently assisted Devadatta in several attempts on the Buddha's life. AjAtasatru is said to have later grown remorseful over his evil deeds and, on the advice of the physician JĪVAKA, sought the Buddha's forgiveness. The Buddha preached to him on the benefits of renunciation from the SAMANNAPHALASUTTA, and AjAtasatru became a lay disciple. Because he had committed patricide, one of the five most heinous of evil deeds that are said to bring immediate retribution (ANANTARYAKARMAN), AjAtasatru was precluded from attaining any degree of enlightenment during this lifetime and was destined for rebirth in the lohakumbhiya hell. Nevertheless, Sakka (S. sAKRA), the king of the gods, described AjAtasatru as the chief in piety among the Buddha's unenlightened disciples. When the Buddha passed away, AjAtasatru was overcome with grief and, along with other kings, was given a portion of the Buddha's relics (sARĪRA) for veneration. According to the PAli commentaries, AjAtasatru provided the material support for convening the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST) following the Buddha's death. The same sources state that, despite his piety, he will remain in hell for sixty thousand years but later will attain liberation as a solitary buddha (P. paccekabuddha; S. PRATYEKABUDDHA) named Viditavisesa. ¶ MahAyAna scriptures, such as the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA and the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING ("Contemplation Sutra on the Buddha of Infinite Life"), give a slightly different account of AjAtasatru's story. BimbisAra was concerned that his queen, Vaidehī, had yet to bear him an heir. He consulted a soothsayer, who told him that an aging forest ascetic would eventually be reborn as BimbisAra's son. The king then decided to speed the process along and had the ascetic killed so he would take rebirth in Vaidehī's womb. After the queen had already conceived, however, the soothsayer prophesized that the child she would bear would become the king's enemy. After his birth, the king dropped him from a tall tower, but the child survived the fall, suffering only a broken finger. (In other versions of the story, Vaidehī is so mortified to learn that her unborn son will murder her husband the king that she tried to abort the fetus, but to no avail.) Devadatta later told AjAtasatru the story of his conception and the son then imprisoned his father, intending to starve him to death. But Vaidehī kept the king alive by smuggling food to him, smearing her body with flour-paste and hiding grape juice inside her jewelry. When AjAtasatru learned of her treachery, he drew his sword to murder her, but his vassals dissuaded him. The prince's subsequent guilt about his intended matricide caused his skin break out in oozing abscesses that emitted such a foul odor that no one except his mother was able to approach him and care for him. Despite her loving care, AjAtasatru did not improve and Vaidehī sought the Buddha's counsel. The Buddha was able to cure the prince by teaching him the "NirvAna Sutra," and the prince ultimately became one of the preeminent Buddhist monarchs of India. This version of the story of AjAtasatru was used by Kosawa Heisaku (1897-1968), one of the founding figures of Japanese psychoanalysis, and his successors to posit an "Ajase (AjAtasatru) Complex" that distinguished Eastern cultures from the "Oedipal Complex" described by Sigmund Freud in Western psychoanalysis. As Kosawa interpreted this story, Vaidehī's ambivalence or active antagonism toward her son and AjAtasatru's rancor toward his mother were examples of the pathological relationship that pertains between mother and son in Eastern cultures, in distinction to the competition between father and son that Freud posited in his Oedipal Complex. This pathological relationship can be healed only through the mother's love and forgiveness, which redeem the child and thus reunite them.
AjNAtakaundinya. (P. ANNAtakondaNNa / ANNAkondaNNa; T. Kun shes kaun di nya; C. Aruojiaochenru; J. Anyakyojinnyo; K. Ayakkyojinyo 阿若憍陳如). In Sanskrit, "Kaundinya (P. KondaNNa) who Knows"; the first person to understand the insights of the Buddha, as delivered in the first sermon, the DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA (P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA), and the first disciple to take ordination as a monk (BHIKsU), following the simple EHIBHIKsUKA (P. ehi bhikkhu), or "come, monk," formula: "Come, monk, the DHARMA is well proclaimed; live the holy life for the complete ending of suffering." Kaundinya was one of the group of five ascetics (BHADRAVARGĪYA) converted by the Buddha at the ṚsIPATANA (P. Isipatana) MṚGADAVA (Deer Park), located just north-east of the city of VArAnasī. According to the PAli account, he was a brAhmana older than the Buddha, who was especially renowned in physiognomy. After the birth of the infant GAUTAMA, he was one of eight brAhmanas invited to predict the infant's future and the only one to prophesize that the child would definitely become a buddha rather than a wheel-turning monarch (CAKRAVARTIN). He left the world as an ascetic in anticipation of the bodhisattva's own renunciation and was joined by the sons of four of the other eight brAhmanas. Kaundinya and the other four ascetics joined the bodhisattva in the practice of austerities, but when, after six years, the bodhisattva renounced extreme asceticism, they left him in disgust. After his enlightenment, the Buddha preached to the five ascetics at the Ṛsipatana deer park, and Kaundinya was the first to realize the truth of the Buddha's words. The PAli canon describes Kaundinya's enlightenment as proceeding in two stages: first, when the Buddha preached the Dhammacakkappavattanasutta, he attained the opening of the dharma eye (DHARMACAKsUS), the equivalent of stream-entry (SROTAAPANNA), and five days later, when the Buddha preached his second sermon, the ANATTALAKKHAnASUTTA, he attained the level of ARHAT. The Buddha praised him both times by exclaiming "Kaundinya knows!," in recognition of which AjNAta ("He Who Knows") was thereafter prefixed to his name. Later, at a large gathering of monks at JETAVANA grove in sRAVASTĪ, the Buddha declared AjNAtakaundinya to be preeminent among his disciples who first comprehended the dharma, and preeminent among his long-standing disciples. AjNAtakaundinya received permission from the Buddha to live a solitary life in the Chaddantavana forest and only returned after twelve years to take leave of the Buddha before his own PARINIRVAnA. After his cremation, AjNAtakaundinya's relics were given to the Buddha, who personally placed them in a silver reliquary (CAITYA) that spontaneously appeared from out of the earth.
anupassanA. (S. ANUPAsYANA). In PAli, "contemplation." A term applied to several sets of meditation practices, most notably as enumerated under the category of the four "foundations of mindfulness" (P. satipatthAna; S. SMṚTYUPASTHANA). The first foundation is called "contemplation of the body" (kAyAnupassanA, S. KAYANUPAsYANA) and comprises fourteen practices, which include mindfulness of breathing (P. AnApAnasati, S. ANAPANASMṚTI), mindfulness of postures or deportments (P., iriyApatha, S. ĪRYAPATHA), full awareness of bodily actions, contemplation of bodily impurities, contemplation of the four physical elements (DHATU, MAHABHuTA), and nine cemetery meditations (P. asubhabhAvanA, S. AsUBHABHAVANA). The second foundation is called "contemplation of sensations" (P. vedanAnupassanA, S. vedanAnupasyanA) and consists of one practice: mindfulness of physical sensations (VEDANA) as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. The third foundation is called "contemplation of mind" (P. cittAnupassanA, S. cittAnupasyanA) and consists of one practice: mindfulness of one's general state of mind (CITTA), e.g. as calm or distracted, elated or depressed, etc. The fourth foundation is "contemplation of mind-objects" (P. dhammAnupassanA, S. dharmAnupasyanA) and includes five meditations on specific categories of factors (P. dhamma, S. DHARMA), namely: the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA), the five aggregates (SKANDHA), the six sense bases and six sense objects (AYATANA), the seven enlightenment factors (BODHYAnGA), and the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. In the PAli SATIPAttHANASUTTA, the four anupassanAs are extolled as the one path leading to the realization of nibbAna (NIRVAnA). Another common set of anupassanAs found in the PAli tradition includes three members: (1) contemplation of impermanence (aniccAnupassanA), (2) contemplation of suffering (dukkhAnupassanA), and (3) contemplation of nonself (anattAnupassanA). In the PAtISAMBHIDAMAGGA, this list is expanded to ten with the addition of (4) contemplation of nirvAna (nibbAnAnupassanA), (5) contemplation of dispassion (virAgAnupassanA), (6) contemplation of cessation (nirodhAnupassanA), (7) contemplation of renunciation (patinissaggAnupassanA), (8) contemplation of signlessness (animittAnupassanA), (9) contemplation of desirelessness (appanihitAnupassanA), and (10) contemplation of emptiness (suNNatAnupassanA).
anupubbikathA. (S. anupurvikathA; T. mthar gyis pa; C. cidi shuofa/jianwei shuofa; J. shidai seppo/zen'i seppo; K. ch'aje solbop/chomwi solbop 次第法/漸爲法). In PAli, "graduated discourse" or "step-by-step instruction"; the systematic outline of religious benefits that the Buddha used to mold the understanding of new lay adherents and to guide them toward the first stage of enlightenment. In this elementary discourse, the Buddha would outline the benefits of generosity (dAnakathA) and morality (sīlakathA) before finally holding out for the laity the prospect of rebirth in the heavens (svargakathA). Once their minds were pliant and impressionable, the Buddha then would instruct his listeners in the dangers (ADĪNAVA) inherent in sensuality (KAMA) in order to turn them away from the world and toward the advantages of renunciation (P. nekkhamme AnisaMsa). Only after his listeners' minds were made fully receptive would the Buddha then go on to teach them the doctrine that was unique to the buddhas: the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS of suffering, origination, cessation, and path. Understanding the pervasive reality of the fact that "all that is subject to production is subject to cessation" (yaM kiNci samudayadhammaM taM nirodhadhammaM), the laity would then gain a profound personal understanding of the dharma, which often prompted the experience of "stream-entry" (SROTAAPANNA). The "graduated discourse" was such a stock formula in the standard sermon to the laity that it appears only in summary form in the NIKAYAs and AGAMAs. The only detailed treatment of the graduated discourse appears in the TundilovAdasutta (Advice to Layman Tundila), a late PAli apocryphon (see APOCRYPHA) probably composed in Sri Lanka in the eighteenth century. This late text provides a systematic outline of the specifics of the practice of generosity (DANA), morality (sĪLA), the heavens (SVARGA), the dangers in sensual desires, and the benefits of renunciation, leading up to the "perfect peace" of nibbAna (S. NIRVAnA).
anusaMsa. [alt. AnusaMsa; AnusaMsA, etc.] (P. AnisaMsa; T. phan yon; C. gongde/liyi; J. kudoku/riyaku; K. kongdok/iik 功德/利益). In Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, "blessing," "benefit," "reward," or "advantage" that accrues from leading a virtuous life or performing various types of virtuous actions. In the PAli MAHAPARINIBBANASUTTANTA, for example, while preaching on the benefits of moral rectitude to a gathering of lay disciples in the city of PAtaligAma (see PAtALIPUTRA), the Buddha enumerates five such blessings that a morally upright person can expect to acquire in this lifetime: first, great wealth (bhogakkhandha); second, a good reputation (kittisadda); third, self-confidence (visArada); fourth, a peaceful death (asammulho kAlaM karoti); and fifth, after he dies, a happy rebirth (saggaM lokaM upapajjati). In contrast, a morally dissolute person can expect in this lifetime: first, poverty due to sloth; second, a bad reputation; third, shame in the presence of others; fourth, an anxious death; and fifth, after he dies, an unhappy rebirth. In the so-called graduated discourse (P. ANUPUBBIKATHA), the Buddha also teaches the blessings of renunciation (nekkhamme AnisaMsa) as a prerequisite to understanding the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. Different lists of five, ten, or eighteen such blessings appear in Sanskrit sources. The PRAJNAPARAMITA literature has long passages praising the merit gained from writing out in book form, reading, memorizing, and generally worshipping the prajNApAramitA as compared, in particular, to worshiping a STuPA containing the relics of a TATHAGATA, and the commentarial literature lists the benefits (anusaMsa) of the BODHISATTVA's path of vision (DARsANAMARGA) when compared with the earlier understanding of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS.
apostasy ::: n. --> An abandonment of what one has voluntarily professed; a total desertion of departure from one&
aranya. (P. araNNa; T. dgon pa; C. [a]lanruo; J. [a]rannya; K. [a]ranya [阿]蘭若). In Sanskrit, "forest" or "wilderness"; the ideal atmosphere for practice, and one of the various terms used to designate the residences of monks. The solitude and contentment fostered by forest dwelling was thought to provide a better environment for meditation (BHAVANA) than the bustle and material comforts of city monasteries, and there is some evidence in mainstream Buddhist materials of discord between monks who followed the two different ways of life. Forest dwelling was frequently championed by the Buddha, and living at the root of a tree was one of the thirteen specific ascetic practices (S. DHuTAGUnA, P. DHUTAnGA) authorized by the Buddha. Forest dwelling is also used as a metaphor for the renunciation and nonattachment that monks were taught to emulate. Forest dwellers are called aranyaka (P. araNNaka or AraNNaka). See also ARANNAVASI; PHRA PA.
AriyapariyesanAsutta. (C. Luomo jing; J. Ramakyo; K. Rama kyong 羅摩經). In PAli, "Discourse on the Noble Quest"; the twenty-sixth sutta (SuTRA) in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA, also known as the PAsarAsisutta (a separate SARVASTIVADA recension appears as the 204th SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA); preached by the Buddha to an assembly of monks at the hemitage of the brAhmana Rammaka in the town of sRAVASTĪ. The Buddha explains the difference between noble and ignoble quests and recounts his own life as an example of striving to distinguish between the two. Beginning with his renunciation of the householder's life, he tells of his training under two meditation masters, his rejection of this training in favor of austerities, and ultimately his rejection of austerities in order to discover for himself his own path to enlightenment. The Buddha also relates how he was initially hesitant to teach what he had discovered, but was convinced to do so by the god BRAHMA SAHAMPATI, and how he then converted the "group of five" ascetics (PANCAVARGIKA) who had been his companions while he practiced austerities. There is an understated tone of the narrative, devoid of the detail so familiar from the biographies. There is no mention of the opulence of his youth, no mention of his wife, no mention of the chariot rides, no description of the departure from the palace in the dead of night, no mention of MARA. Instead, the Buddha states, "Later, while still young, a black-haired young man endowed with the blessing of youth, in the prime of life, though my mother and father wished otherwise and wept with tearful faces, I shaved off my hair and beard, put on the yellow robe, and went forth from the home life into homelessness." Although the accounts of his study with other meditation masters assume a sophisticated system of states of concentration, the description of the enlightenment itself is both simple and sober, portrayed as the outcome of long reflection rather than as an ecstatic moment of revelation.
asa ::: renunciation of (egoistic) action; giving up of identification of the jiva with the activity of the adhara.
asceticism ::: A way of life characterised by an austere existence that refrains from worldly pleasures. Those who practice ascetic lifestyles often perceive their practices as virtuous and pursue them to achieve greater spirituality. In a more cynical context, asceticism may connote some form of self-mortification, ritual punishment of the body, or harsh renunciation of pleasure, though the word itself does not necessarily imply a negative connotation.
Asceticism: The view that the physical body is an evil and a detriment to a righteous moral and spiritual life, and that through moderation or renunciation of the things generally considered pleasant, one can reach a higher spiritual state or degree of enlightenment. Also, the practice of this belief.
As early as one hundred years after the Buddha died and had entered his parinirvana, differences in the doctrines and discipline of the Order become manifest. In the course of the centuries two basic trends developed into what has become popular to call the Hinayana (the lesser vehicle or path) or Theravada (doctrine of the elders), and Mahayana (the greater vehicle or path). The Theravada emphasized the fourfold path leading to nirvana, total liberation of the arhat from material concerns. The Mahayana held the bodhisattvayana as the ideal, the way of compassion for all sentient beings, culminating in renunciation of nirvana in order to return and inspire others “to awake and follow the dhamma.” It is this fundamental difference in goal that characterizes the Old Wisdom School (arhatship) from the New Wisdom School (bodhsattvahood). See also BUDDHA OF COMPASSION; PRATYEKA BUDDHA
astAngasamanvAgataM upavAsaM. (P. atthangasamannAgataM uposathaM; T. yan lag brgyad pa'i gso sbyong; C. bazhaijie; J. hassaikai; K. p'alchaegye 八齋戒). In Sanskrit, the "fortnightly assembly with its eight constituents," more popularly known as the eight rules of conduct (sIKsAPADA; P. sikkhApada). On the fortnightly UPOsADHA days, Buddhist laity would take three additional precepts beyond their standard list of five precepts (PANCAsĪLA) to help foster a sense of renunciation. The full list of eight includes prohibitions against (1) killing, (2) stealing, (3) engaging in sexual misconduct, (4) lying, and (5) consuming intoxicants; these are supplemented by these three extra precepts prohibiting (6) resting on a high or luxurious bed, (7) using makeup and perfumes and enjoying music and dance, and (8) eating at improper times (viz., after midday). See also BAGUAN ZHAI; sĪLA.
Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors ; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura. For this reason most spiritual disciplines insist on a complete self-control, detachment and renunciation of all bondage to wealth and of all personal and egoistic desire for its possession. Some even put a ban on money and riches and proclaim poverty and bareness of life as the only spiritual condition. But this is an error ; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs 'and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the sadhaka.
baxiang. (J. hasso; K. p'alssang 八相). In Chinese, "eight episodes"; eight archetypal events in the life of any buddha: (1) descending from TUsITA heaven to undertake his final life as a BODHISATTVA; (2) entering the womb of his mother for his final life; (3) birth; (4) renunciation (i.e., leaving home to become a monk); (5) subjugating MARA; (6) attaining enlightenment; (7) turning the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) at the first sermon; (8) passing into PARINIRVAnA. Another common list is (1) descent from tusita heaven; (2) birth in LUMBINĪ; (3) seeing the four portents (CATURNIMITTA); (4) going forth into homelessness (PRAVRAJITA); (5) ascetic practice in the HimAlayas; (6) subjugating MAra beneath the BODHI TREE and attaining enlightenment; (7) turning the wheel of the dharma in the Deer Park (MṚGADAVA); (8) passing into parinirvAna beneath twin sALA trees. The lists may differ slightly, e.g., replacing subjugating MAra with gestation in the womb. These eight episodes are common themes in Buddhist art. See also TWELVE DEEDS OF A BUDDHA.
Bhadra-KapilAnī. (P. BhaddA-KapilAnī; C. Batuoluo Jiabeiliye; J. Batsudara Kahiriya; K. Palt'ara Kabiriya 跋陀羅迦卑梨耶). A female ARHAT whom the Buddha declared to be foremost among his nun disciples in her ability to recall former lives (PuRVANIVASANUSMṚTI). According to PAli sources, she was the daughter of a wealthy man named Kapila and was married to Pipphali, a landlord's son who later was to become the great arhat MahAkassapa (S. MAHAKAsYAPA). It is said that Pipphali was inclined toward renunciation and only agreed to his parents' request that he marry on the condition that it be a woman as lovely as a beautiful statue he had crafted. BhaddA was found to be the equal of the statue in beauty and arrangements were made for their wedding. But BhaddA too was similarly inclined toward renunciation and, although she and Pipphali finally consented to marry for the sake of their parents, they chose not to consummate their marriage. Pipphali was master of a grand estate and one day, while observing a plowman plow one of his fields, saw birds eating worms turned up by the plow. At the same time, BhaddA witnessed crows eating insects as they scurried among sesame seeds drying in the sun. Filled with pity and remorse for indirectly causing the death of those creatures, the couple resolved to renounce the world and take up the life of mendicancy. After shaving their heads and donning the yellow robes of mendicants, Pipphali and BhaddA abandoned their estate and wandered forth into homelessness, parting company at a fork in the road. Pipphali met the Buddha and was ordained as MahAkAssapa and soon attained arhatship. BhaddA took up residence in a hermitage near the JETAVANA Grove named TitthiyArAma. There she dwelled for five years, unable to take ordination because the nuns' (BHIKsUnĪ) order had not yet been established. When MAHAPRAJAPATĪ GAUTAMĪ was finally granted permission to begin a nuns' order, BhaddA took ordination from her and quickly attained arhatship. BhaddA KapilAnī became a famous preacher, though several of her disciples are recorded as having been unruly and ill disciplined.
bhava (sannyasochita bhava) ::: the state of mind conducive to renunciation.
bhiksu. (P. bhikkhu; T. dge slong; C. biqiu; J. biku; K. pigu 比丘). In Sanskrit, lit. "beggar"; a male "religious mendicant" or, as commonly translated, "monk." The female counterparts of bhiksu are BHIKsUnĪ (nuns). The term is derived from the Sanskrit root √bhiks meaning, among other things, "to beg for alms." The Tibetan translation of the term literally means "virtuous beggar"; the Chinese instead uses a transcription. Buddhism was one of the principal early groups of wandering religious (sRAMAnA), which constituted a new religious movement in the fifth century BCE, and coined the term bhiksu to distinguish its wanderers from those of other sramana sects, such as the JAINA and AJĪVAKA. A bhiksu holds the higher ordination (UPASAMPADA) of his VINAYA lineage and is thus distinguished from a novice, or sRAMAnERA. Novitiate status is attained by undergoing the "going forth" (pravrajyA; see PRAVRAJITA) ceremony and accepting a set of ten (and, in some traditions, expanded to thirty-six) precepts (sĪLA). After a period of service in the order, one may undergo the upasaMpadA ceremony, by which one attains full ordination. At that point, the bhiksu is expected to adhere to all the rules found in the litany of monastic discipline, or PRATIMOKsA, e.g., 227 in the PAli vinaya used in Southeast Asia, 250 in the DHARMAGUPTAKA vinaya used in much of East Asia, 253 in the MuLASARVASTIVADA vinaya followed in Tibet, etc. By rule, although not necessarily in practice, a bhiksu is allowed to possess only a set of four or eight "requisites" (PARIsKARA, P. parikkhAra), which provide him with the minimal necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. The duties of a bhiksu vary widely across the Buddhist tradition. These duties include, but are not limited to, preserving the teaching by memorizing, copying and/or reciting the scriptures; instructing younger monks, novices, and lay adherents; conducting a variety of different kinds of ceremonies; maintaining the monastery grounds, etc. Bhiksus were customarily presumed to be dependent on lay followers for their material requirements and, in return, served as a field of merit (PUnYAKsETRA) for them by accepting their donations (DANA). Within any given monastery, bhiksus maintain hierarchical relationships. Depending on the monk's tradition, seniority may be determined by the number of years since full ordination (see VARsA; C. JIELA), one's performance in examinations, or other factors. Literary evidence suggests that the first Buddhist monks were itinerant ascetics who resided in communities only during the monsoon season. Later, as the tradition grew, these temporary residences evolved into permanent monasteries. In the Hindu tradition, the term bhiksu may sometimes also be used to signify the fourth stage (Asrama) of life, in which one renounces worldly attachments for the sake of study and reflection (although this stage is more commonly referred to as saMnyAsin); in this context, however, no formal renunciation through ordination is necessarily required. Throughout much of the history of Buddhism, there have been regions and historical periods in which Buddhist monks married but continued to maintain the appearance of a fully-ordained bhiksu, including wearing monastic robes and shaving their heads. In English, such religious might better be called "priests" rather than "monks." See also BHIKKHU.
bodhisattvasaMvara. (T. byang chub sems dpa'i sdom pa; C. pusa jie; J. bosatsukai; K. posal kye 菩薩戒). In Sanskrit, lit. "restraints for the BODHISATTVA"; the "restraints," "precepts," or code of conduct (SAMVARA) for someone who has made the bodhisattva vow (BODHISATTVAPRAnIDHANA; PRAnIDHANA) to achieve buddhahood in order to liberate all beings from suffering. The mainstream moral codes for monastics that are recognized across all forms of Buddhism are listed in the PRATIMOKsA, which refers to rules of discipline that help adepts restrain themselves from all types of unwholesome conduct. With the rise of various groups that came to call themselves the MAHAYANA, different sets of moral codes developed. These are formulated, for example, in the BODHISATTVABHuMI and Candragomin's BodhisattvasaMvaraviMsaka, and in later Chinese apocrypha, such as the FANWANG JING. The mainstream prAtimoksa codes are set forth in the Bodhisattvabhumi as saMvarasīla, or "restraining precepts." These are the first of three types of bodhisattva morality, called the "three sets of restraints" (TRISAMVARA), which are systematized fully in Tibet in works like TSONG KHA PA's Byang chub gzhung lam. It seems that in the early MahAyAna, people publicly took the famous bodhisattva vow, promising to achieve buddhahood in order to liberate all beings. A more formal code of conduct developed later, derived from a number of sources, with categories of root infractions and secondary infractions. The bodhisattva precepts, however, could be taken equally by laypeople and monastics, men and women, and formal ceremonies for conferring the precepts are set forth in a number of MahAyAna treatises. In addition, there appear to have been ceremonies for the confession of infractions, modeled on the UPOsADHA rituals. Some of the precepts have to do with interpersonal relations, prescribing the kind of altruistic behavior that one might expect from a bodhisattva. Others are grander, such as the precept not to destroy cities, and appear to presuppose a code of conduct for kings or other important figures in society. There is also the suggestion that the bodhisattva precepts supersede the prAtimoksa precepts: one of the secondary infractions of the bodhisattva code is not to engage in killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, or senseless speech when in fact it would be beneficial to do so. The great weight given to the precept not to reject the MahAyAna as being the word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) suggests that, throughout the history of the MahAyAna in India, there were concerns raised about the questionable origin of the MahAyAna sutras. With the rise of TANTRA, the "three restraints" (trisaMvara) of bodhisattva morality were refigured as the second of a new set of precepts, preceded by the prAtimoksa precepts and followed by the tantric vows. There was much discussion, especially in Tibetan SDOM GSUM (dom sum) literature, of the relationships among the three sets of restraints and of their compatibility with each other. ¶ Although there is much variation in the listings of bodhisattva precepts, according to one common list, the eighteen root infractions are: (1) to praise oneself and slander others out of attachment to profit or fame; (2) not to give one's wealth or the doctrine, out of miserliness, to those who suffer without protection; (3) to become enraged and condemn another, without listening to his or her apology; (4) to abandon the MahAyAna and teach a poor facsimile of its excellent doctrine; (5) to steal the wealth of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA); (6) to abandon the excellent doctrine; (7) to steal the saffron robes of a monk and beat, imprison, and or expel him from his life of renunciation, even if he has broken the moral code; (8) to commit the five deeds of immediate retribution (ANANTARYAKARMAN) i.e., patricide, matricide, killing an arhat, wounding a buddha, or causing dissent in the saMgha; (9) to hold wrong views; (10) to destroy cities and so forth; (11) to discuss emptiness (suNYATA) with sentient beings whose minds have not been trained; (12) to turn someone away from buddhahood and full enlightenment; (13) to cause someone to abandon completely the prAtimoksa precepts in order to practice the MahAyAna; (14) to believe that desire and so forth cannot be abandoned by the vehicle of the sRAVAKAs and to cause others to believe that view; (15) to claim falsely, "I have withstood the profound emptiness (sunyatA)"; (16) to impose fines on renunciates; to take donors and gifts away from the three jewels; (17) to cause meditators to give up the practice of sAMATHA; to take the resources of those on retreat and give them to reciters of texts; (18) to abandon the two types of BODHICITTA (the conventional and the ultimate). See also BODHISATTVAsĪLA.
brahmacarya. (P. brahmacariya; T. tshangs spyod; C. fanxing; J. bongyo; K. pomhaeng 梵行). In Sanskrit, lit. "holy lifeway" or "religious life"; a term used most typically to mean "celibacy," viz., a religious way of life based on renunciation and chastity, and by extension to the monks and ascetics who follow that way of life. Within the Brahmanical tradition, brahmacarya refers to unmarried students of the Vedas, but the term was adopted by the Buddhists to refer more broadly to a religious mendicant's celibate way of life. Cf. PARAJIKA.
Renunciation ::: Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. our renunciation must obviously be an inward renunciation; especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the senses and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 329
Renunciation Not a painful obligation, but the result of a free choice; nor the giving up of an object of desire in favor of another object of desire. The question of advantage or disadvantage does not enter into it; these are delusions of the personal ego. The one who truly renounces abandons the acquisitiveness and desire for personal advantage which are the law of the lower nature, and follows the law of the higher nature, which is the law of love and harmony. The question as to whether he gains or loses is then relatively meaningless for him, for he has forgotten himself, because he has found his greater self.
Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach,—no other renunciation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Page: 222
Renunciation
Brother(s) of the Shadow ::: A term given in occultism and especially in modern esotericism to individuals, whether men or women,who follow the path of the shadows, the left-hand path. The term "shadow" is a technical expression andsignifies more than appears on the surface: i.e., the expression is not to be understood of individuals wholive in actual physical obscurity or actual physical shadows, which literalism would be simply absurd;but applies to those who follow the path of matter, which from time immemorial in the esoteric schoolsin both Orient and Occident has frequently been called shadow or shadows. The term originally arose,without doubt, in the philosophical conception of the word maya, for in early Oriental esotericism maya,and more especially maha-maya, was a term applied in one of its many philosophical meanings to thatwhich was contrary to and, indeed, in one sense a reflection of, light. Just as spirit may be considered tobe pure energy, and matter, although essentially crystallized spirit, may be looked upon as the shadowworld or vehicular world in which the energy or spirit or pure light works, just so is maya, as the garmentor expression or sakti of the divine energy, the vehicle or shadow of the divine side of nature, in otherwords its negative or nether pole, as light is the upper or positive pole.The Brothers of the Shadow are therefore those who, being essentially of the nature of matter,instinctively choose and follow the path along which they are most strongly drawn, that is, the path ofmatter or of the shadows. When it is recollected that matter is but a generalizing term, and that what thisterm comprises actually includes an almost infinite number of degrees of increasing ethereality from thegrossest physical substance, or absolute matter, up to the most ethereal or spiritualized substance, weimmediately see the subtle logic of this technical term -- shadows or, more fully, the Path of theShadows, hence the Brothers of the Shadow.They are the so-called black magicians of the Occident, and stand in sharp and notable contrast with thewhite magicians or the Sons of Light who follow the pathway of self-renunciation, self-sacrifice,self-conquest, perfect self-control, and an expansion of the heart and mind and consciousness in love andservice for all that lives. (See also Right-hand Path)The existence and aims of the Brothers of the Shadow are essentially selfish. It is commonly, buterroneously, supposed that the Brothers of the Shadow are men and women always of unpleasant ordispleasing personal appearance, and no greater error than this could possibly be made. Multitudes ofhuman beings are unconsciously treading the path of the shadows and, in comparison with thesemultitudes, it is relatively only a few who self-consciously lead and guide with subtle and nefastintelligence this army of unsuspecting victims of maya. The Brothers of the Shadow are often highlyintellectual men and women, frequently individuals with apparent great personal charm, and to theordinary observer, judging from their conversation and daily works, are fully as well able to "quotescripture" as are the Angels of Light!
Buddhacarita. (T. Sangs rgyas kyi spyod pa; C. Fosuoxing zan; J. Butsushogyosan; K. Pulsohaeng ch'an 佛所行讚). In Sanskrit, "Acts [viz., Life] of the Buddha"; the title of two verse compositions written in the first and second centuries CE that were intended to serve as a complete biography of the historical Buddha. The first was by the monk Sangharaksa (c. first century CE), whose work survives today only in its Chinese translation. The second version, which became hugely popular across Asia, was composed by the well-known Indian philosopher-poet AsVAGHOsA (c. second century), who was supposedly an opponent of Buddhism until he converted after losing a debate with the VAIBHAsIKA teacher PARsVA. Because of the early date of Asvaghosa's epic poem, it is of great importance for both the history of Indian Buddhism, as well as the study of classical Indian linguistics and thought. Asvaghosa's version of the Buddha's life begins with a description of his parents-King sUDDHODANA and Queen MAYA-and ends with the events that immediately follow his death, or PARINIRVAnA. His text is written in the style of high court poetry, or kAvya. In keeping with this style, the Buddhacarita is characterized by lengthy digressions and elaborate descriptions. For example, one entire canto is devoted to a detailed description of the sight of the women sleeping in the palace that precedes GAUTAMA's renunciation (pravrajya; see PRAVRAJITA). Canto XII provides an invaluable outline of the ancient Indian SAMkhya philosophical system. The Buddhacarita has served an important role within the Buddhist tradition itself, as the canonical works do not offer a systematic, chronological account of the Buddha's life from his birth through his death. Only the first half of the Buddhacarita is extant in its original Sanskrit; the remainder survives in Tibetan and Chinese translations.
By renunciation ^^e seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine Jivine,
By renunciation we seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine living.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 326
CariyApitaka. In PAli, "The Basket of Conduct"; fifteenth book of the KHUDDAKANIKAYA of the PAli SUTTAPItAKA. According to traditional accounts, the text was preached by Gotama (S. GAUTAMA) Buddha immediately after the BUDDHAVAMSA at the request of SAriputta (S. sARIPUTRA). Centuries later, the missionary MAHINDA is said to have converted thousands of Sri Lankans to Buddhism when he recited it in ANURADHAPURA. Divided into three chapters (vagga), the book contains thirty-five stories in verse of previous lives of the Buddha. These stories recount and extol the ten perfections (P. pAramī, S. PARAMITA) that Gotama developed while striving for enlightenment through many lives as a bodhisatta (S. BODHISATTVA). The stories in this collection are called cariyA ("conduct," or "act"), whence the name of the text, and in content they parallel corresponding prose narratives found in the JATAKA. The PAli tradition recognizes ten perfections as requisite for attaining buddhahood: generosity (DANA), morality (sīla, S. sĪLA), renunciation (nekkhamma, S. NAIsKRAMYA), wisdom (paNNA, S. PRAJNA), energy (viriya, S. VĪRYA), patience (khanti, S. KsANTI), truthfulness (sacca, S. SATYA), resolution (adhitthAna, S. ADHIstHANA), loving-kindness (mettA, S. MAITRĪ) and equanimity (upekkhA, S. UPEKsA). Of these ten, only seven are enumerated in this text. The first vagga is comprised of ten stories concerning the perfection of generosity. The second vagga has ten stories concerning morality. The third vagga contains fifteen stories, five of which are devoted to renunciation, six to truthfulness, two to loving-kindness, and one each to the perfections of resolution and equanimity. A commentary to the text, attributed to DHARMAPALA, is included in the PARAMATTHADĪPANĪ.
caturnimitta. (P. catunimitta; T. mtshan ma bzhi; C. sixiang; J. shiso; K. sasang 四相). In Sanskrit, the "four signs," "sights," or "portents," which were the catalysts that led the future buddha SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA to renounce the world (see PRAVRAJITA) and pursue liberation from the cycle of birth and death (SAMSARA): specifically, an old man, a diseased man, a dead man, and a religious mendicant (sRAMAnA). According to the many traditional biographies of the Buddha, eight brAhmana seers predicted at the time of his birth that, were Gautama to see all four of these portents, he would be led inexorably toward renunciation of his royal heritage. His father, sUDDHODANA, who wanted SiddhArtha to succeed him, sought to shield the prince from these sights. While distracting his son with all the sensual pleasures available in his palaces, the prince, at the age of twenty-nine, eventually became curious about the world beyond the palace and convinced his father to allow him to go out in his chariot, accompanied by the charioteer CHANDAKA. On four successive chariot rides, the prince saw an old man, a sick man, a corpse being taken to the charnel ground, and a mendicant. Gautama eventually determined to go forth (pravrajita) into homelessness after witnessing the four portents. The first three sights demonstrated to Gautama the vanity of life and the reality of suffering (DUḤKHA), and the sight of a religious mendicant provided him with the prospect of freedom of mind and a model to follow in finding a way leading to liberation. Some versions of the Buddha's biography refer only to the first three of these signs. In some versions, it is said that the four sights were not actually an old man, sick man, corpse, and mendicant, but apparitions of these created by the gods in order to spur the bodhisattva to renounce the world. In the LALITAVISTARA, it is the prince himself who creates the old man, the sick man, the corpse, and the mendicant, and then asks his charioteer who they are, pretending not to know the answer. Biographies of previous buddhas, such as VIPAsYIN, typically mention the role similar encounters played in their own renunciations.
Cetokhilasutta. (C. Xinhui jing; J. Shinnekyo; K. Simye kyong 心穢經). In PAli, "Discourse on Mental Obstructions"; the sixteenth sutta of the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a separate SarvAstivAda recension appears as the 206th sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA; a recension of unidentified affiliation also occurs in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARAGAMA), preached by the Buddha to a gathering of monks in the JETAVANA grove in the town of SAvatthi (sRAVASTĪ). The Buddha describes five mental obstructions and five fetters that constitute impediments to overcoming suffering. The five obstructions include (1) doubt about the teacher, the Buddha; (2) doubt about the dhamma (DHARMA); (3) doubt about the SAMGHA; (4) doubt about the value of morality (sīla; S. sĪLA), meditative concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (paNNA; S. PRAJNA); 5) ill will and animosity toward one's fellow monks. The five fetters include (1) attachment to sensual desires, (2) attachment to a sense of self, (3) attachment to material possessions, (4) excessive sleeping and eating, and (5) adopting the life of renunciation merely for the limited goal of a blissful existence in the heavens.
Chandaka. (P. Channa; T. 'Dun pa; C. Cheni; J. Shanoku; K. Ch'anik 車匿). The charioteer and groom of SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA, who accompanied the BODHISATTVA prince on two momentous occasions. First, Chandaka drove the prince's chariot when he ventured outside the palace, where he was confronted with the four portents (CATURNIMITTA), encountering on separate occasions an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a mendicant. Having been confronted with these realities, the prince resolved to go forth in search of liberation from birth and death. According to the story, during his youth, the prince had never seen an old person, a sick person, or a corpse before and so asked Chandaka what each was. Chandaka's explanation that old age, sickness, and death were the ultimate fate of all humans led the prince to decide to renounce his royal inheritance and go out in search of a state beyond aging, sickness, and death. Second, Chandaka accompanied the prince on his ride into renunciation as a mendicant (see PRAVRAJITA). When Gautama left his father's palace in KAPILAVASTU to lead the homeless life, Chandaka departed with him, together with Gautama's noble steed, KAntHAKA. Once outside the city, after cutting off his topknot, the prince removed his jewelry and handed it over to Chandaka, exchanged clothes with him, and then ordered his groom to return to the palace with his horse and inform his father that he would not return to the city until his quest for enlightenment was fulfilled. Kanthaka was so grief-stricken at his master's departure that he died on the spot, and Chandaka, crushed at both losses, asked for permission to join the prince in mendicancy but was refused. (Some accounts state instead that Chandaka feared for his life if he returned alone with all the prince's possessions, and so left the worldly life that very night.) Chandaka was eventually ordained by the Buddha. Because he was so swollen with pride at his close relationship with his former charge Gautama, it is said that he was arrogant in accepting discipline from his colleagues and was ostracized from the order more than once, in one case for siding with nuns in a dispute with monks, in another for repeatedly reviling sARIPUTRA and MAHAMAUDGALYAYANA. In the account of the Buddha's final days in the MAHAPARINIBBANASUTTANTA, the Buddha's last disciplinary act before he died was to pass the penalty of brahmadanda (lit. the "holy rod") on Chandaka, which required that he be ostracized by his fellow monks. When the Buddha's attendant ANANDA went to Chandaka to announce the penalty, it is said that Chandaka finally was contrite and became an ARHAT on the spot.
Chaturthasrama (Sanskrit) Caturthāśrama The fourth stage of sannyasa, complete renunciation of the world. (BCW 2:118)
Chhanda-riddhi-pada (Sanskrit) Chanda-ṛddhi-pāda [from chanda desire + ṛddhi supernormal power + pāda step, ray, beam] Pleasure-power-training; one of the steps enumerated in raja yoga: “the final renunciation of all desire as a sine qua non condition of phenomenal powers, and entrance on the direct path of Nirvana” (TG 324). The compound itself points out that by abandoning the lower desires and pleasures, one enters upon the path of obtaining the celestial joys and vast expansion of faculty and its spiritual use, although even this last is finally abandoned for a still higher stage.
Chitta-riddhi-pada (Sanskrit) Citta-ṛddhi-pāda [from citta intelligence, thought, memory + ṛddhi supernormal power + pāda step, inspiring ray] In raja yoga, the step of renunciation of the lower memory, in the attainment of supernormal faculty or power. “The third condition of the mystic series which leads to the acquirement of adeptship; i.e., the renunciation of physical memory, and of all thoughts connected with worldly or personal events in one’s life — benefits, personal pleasures or associations. Physical memory has to be sacrificed, and recalled by will power only when absolutely needed” (TG 324).
dasasīla. (P. dasasīla; T. tshul khrims bcu; C. shijie; J. jikkai; K. sipkye 十戒). In Sanskrit, "ten precepts"; an expansion and enhancement of the five lay precepts (PANCAsĪLA), which all male novices (sRĀMAnERA) and female novices (sRĀMAnERIKĀ) were required to follow as part of their training; also known as the "restraints for novices" (sRĀMAnERASAMVARA). The ten are framed in terms of training rules (sIKsĀPADA), viz., "I undertake the training rule to abstain from": (1) killing; (2) stealing; (3) sexual activity; (4) false speech; (5) intoxicants; (6) eating after midday; (7) dancing, singing, music, and other unseemly forms of entertainment; (8) using garlands, perfumes, and unguents to adorn the body; (9) using high and luxurious beds and couches; and (10) handling money. On full- and new-moon days (UPOsADHA), the laity have the option of taking all these precepts except the tenth; numbers 7 and 8 were then combined to give a set of eight precepts to be specially followed on these retreat days (S. uposadhasīla; P. uposathasīla) as a sort of temporary renunciation. In the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA followed in Tibet, these ten precepts are expanded to thirty-six.
dasya (dasya; dasyam) ::: service, "a service of God in the world of which the controlling power is the Divinity within us in whom we are one self with the universe and its creatures"; submission, surrender,"a surrender and submission to That which is beyond us enabling the full and free working of its Power"; the relation (bhava) between the jiva (or prakr.ti) and the isvara that is compared to that of a servant or slave with his or her master: "a giving up of one"s own will to be the instrument of the Master of works, and this not with the lesser idea of being a servant of God, but, eventually at least, of such a complete renunciation both of the consciousness and the works to him that our being becomes one with his being and the impersonalised nature only an instrument and nothing else", an attitude that "must lead finally to an absolute union of the personal with the Divine Will and, with the growth of knowledge, bring about a faultless response of the instrument to the divine Power and Knowledge"; an element of Mahasarasvati bhava.
defiance ::: n. --> The act of defying, putting in opposition, or provoking to combat; a challenge; a provocation; a summons to combat.
A state of opposition; willingness to flight; disposition to resist; contempt of opposition.
A casting aside; renunciation; rejection.
derainment ::: n. --> The act of deraigning.
The renunciation of religious or monastic vows.
detachment ::: n. --> The act of detaching or separating, or the state of being detached.
That which is detached; especially, a body of troops or part of a fleet sent from the main body on special service.
Abstraction from worldly objects; renunciation.
Dhammapāla. (d.u.). A celebrated Pāli commentator and author, Dhammapāla is known to have flourished sometime after the time of BUDDHAGHOSA (fl. fifth century CE), though his precise dates are uncertain. Numerous works are attributed to him, although the accuracy of these attributions is sometimes suspect because of the many Pāli authors who have the same name. The SĀSANAVAMSA states that Dhammapāla lived at Badaratittha in southern India. In several of his works, Dhammapāla records that he is a native of KaNcipuram and that he studied at the MAHĀVIHĀRA in the Sinhalese capital of ANURĀDHAPURA. THERAVĀDA congregations affiliated with the Mahāvihāra existed among the Tamils in South India, and it appears that he was familiar with their commentarial traditions. According to one legend, Dhammapāla was so renowned for his intelligence that the local king of KaNcipuram offered him his daughter in marriage. Being interested instead in a life of renunciation and scholarship, Dhammapāla prayed for his release before an image of the Buddha, whereupon the gods carried him away to a place where he could be ordained as a Buddhist monk. Seven of Dhammapāla's commentaries (AttHAKATHĀ) are devoted to the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA division of the SUTTAPItAKA; these include the PARAMATTHADĪPANĪ (a commentary on the UDĀNA, ITIVUTTAKA, VIMĀNAVATTHU, PETAVATTHU, THERAGĀTHĀ, and THERĪGĀTHĀ), as well as exegeses of the Vimānavatthu, Petavatthu, Itivuttaka, and CARIYĀPItAKA. He also wrote commentaries to the NETTIPPAKARAnA and the VISUDDHIMAGGA, the latter of which is titled the PARAMATTHAMANJuSĀ. Dhammapāla also wrote several subcommentaries (tīkā) on Buddhaghosa's exegeses of the Pāli canon, including the Līnatthavannanā on the suttapitaka, and subcommentaries on the JĀTAKA, the BUDDHAVAMSA, and the ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA.
Dhyeyatyaga: Renunciation of object in meditation; Absolute Experience or Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
disclaimer ::: n. --> One who disclaims, disowns, or renounces.
A denial, disavowal, or renunciation, as of a title, claim, interest, estate, or trust; relinquishment or waiver of an interest or estate.
A public disavowal, as of pretensions, claims, opinions, and the like.
Dvedhāvitakkasutta. (C. Nian jing; J. Nengyo; K. Yom kyong 念經). In Pāli, "Discourse on Two Kinds of Thoughts"; the nineteenth sutta contained in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension appears as the 102nd sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA); preached by the Buddha to his disciples gathered at the JETAVANA Grove in the town of Sāvatthi (sRĀVASTĪ). The Buddha explains that thoughts can be divided into two categories: unsalutary (P. akusala; S. AKUsALA) thoughts associated with sensual desire, ill will, and harmfulness; and salutary (P. kusala; S. KUsALA) thoughts associated with renunciation, non-ill will, and harmlessness. He describes his own practice prior to his enlightenment as discerning between these two types of thoughts and recognizing the advantages that come from developing the salutary and the disadvantages of the unsalutary. He advises his monks to examine their minds in the same way so that they too would develop salutary thoughts and overcome unsalutary thoughts.
Events in cosmic evolution and emanation were told under the guise of fairy tales such as the above, in order to hide the meaning from those whose right to know had not yet been established through proper training, self-devotion to truth, and renunciation of the temptations of ordinary life. Here Vach is the feminine form of the Logos, and Brahma is the masculine form; the Logos is a unit, but when worlds are evolved it produces from itself its alter ego for the purpose of the ensuing manvantara, which is called the feminine Logos in which the masculine Logos of intelligence drops the seeds of thought, and from the spiritual matter or feminine Logos emanate the hierarchies of beings. The two aspects of the Logos are inseparable, but appear as a manifested duality only at the very beginnings of manvantaric time. It is thus seen that when Brahma emanates Vach as one half of his body or self, it means that for the purposes of manvantaric emanational productions, the Logos enters upon its creative activities. Brahma in this case becomes what would in the Christian Trinity be called the Father, Vach the Holy Spirit (always feminine among the early Christians), out of which comes forth the third aspect of the Logos, the manifested Logos. Brahma therefore is the First or Unmanifest Logos, Vach the Second or Manifest-unmanifest Logos; the intelligence creating the hierarchies of beings is the Third or Manifesting Logos. Thus the three Logoi are yet but one, as the Christian Trinity is said to be composed of three persons or masks philosophically, and yet to form one Godhead or Godhood.
expatriation ::: n. --> The act of banishing, or the state of banishment; especially, the forsaking of one&
"For by an absolute self-giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart and there is a perfect union between the Divine and the individual soul through an inner renunciation of its separate living.” Essays on the Gita
“For by an absolute self-giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart and there is a perfect union between the Divine and the individual soul through an inner renunciation of its separate living.” Essays on the Gita
Great Sacrifice, Renunciation. See WATCHER; WONDROUS BEING
"If discipline of all the members of our being by purification and concentration may be described as the right arm of the body of Yoga, renunciation is its left arm. By discipline or positive practice we confirm in ourselves the truth of things, truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of love, truth of works and replace with these the falsehoods that have overgrown and perverted our nature; by renunciation we seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine living.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“If discipline of all the members of our being by purification and concentration may be described as the right arm of the body of Yoga, renunciation is its left arm. By discipline or positive practice we confirm in ourselves the truth of things, truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of love, truth of works and replace with these the falsehoods that have overgrown and perverted our nature; by renunciation we seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine living.” The Synthesis of Yoga
If you are attached to SAMSĀRA, you do not have renunciation.
In theosophical writings, advanced students of occultism who have acquired some knowledge and use of spiritual powers but misuse them for selfish purposes are called black magicians, Brothers of the Shadow, followers of the left-hand path, or sometimes dugpas. In their highest class they are adepts in spiritual evil. Whenever the forces of nature are used for selfish purposes, such misuse by anyone marks such person as a black magician, whether conscious or unconscious. Those who follow the pathway of self-renunciation, self-sacrifice, self-conquest, and an expansion of the heart, mind, and consciousness in love and service for all that lives are called white magicians or Sons of Light.
It will be seen that the scope we give to the idea of renunciation is different from the meaning currently attached to it. Currently its meaning is self-denial, inhibition of pleasure, rejection of the objects of pleasure. Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached; inhibition of pleasure is necessary because his sense is caught and clogged in the mud-honey of sensuous satisfactions; rejection of the objects of pleasure is imposed because the mind fixes on the object and will not leave it to go beyond it and within itself. If the mind of man were not thus ignorant, attached, bound even in its restless inconstancy, deluded by the forms of things, renunciation would not have been needed; the soul could have travelled on the path of delight, from the lesser to the greater, from joy to diviner joy. At present that is not practicable. It must give up from within everything to which it is attached in order that it may gain that which they are in their reality. The external renunciation is not the essential, but even that is necessary for a time, indispensable in many things and sometimes useful in all; we may even say that a complete external renunciation is a stage through which the soul must pass at some period of its progress,—though always it should be without those self-willed violences and fierce self-torturings which are an offence to the Divine seated within us. But in the end this renunciation or self-denial is always an instrument and the period for its use passes. The rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us because what the soul enjoys is no longer the object as an object but the Divine which it expresses; the inhibition of pleasure is no longer needed when the soul no longer seeks pleasure but possesses the delight of the Divine in all things equally without the need of a personal or physical possession of the thing itself; self-denial loses its field when the soul no longer claims anything, but obeys consciously the will of the one Self in all beings.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 333
Karmasannyasa Yoga (Sanskrit) Karmasannyāsa-yoga The attaining of at-one-ment with the highest by means of renunciation of action for personal benefit, treated in the fifth chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita. An ascetic who seeks nothing for self and rejects nothing for self, who is free from the influence of the pairs of opposites, is thereby released from the bonds forged by action or karma; but renunciation of action and devotion through action are both means of final emancipation, and of the two, devotion through action or karma yoga is superior to renunciation. Thus it is better for the personal man to act, and if necessary to act strongly, for spiritual things and causes, than to renounce personal action of any kind and thereby sink into fruitless quietism.
Karma Yoga ::: Aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the Divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 39-40
KARMA YOGA. ::: It alms at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Wilt. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an inter- ested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renuncia- tion it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre^ of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To that our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoislic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the
laying aside, putting down, abandonment, renunciation. The ultimate phase of life. One who is on this path is called a sanyasi.
Left-hand Path or path of shadows, those taking it called in theosophy brothers of the shadow. One of the two fundamental paths or courses in nature, the left-hand path or path of matter in contrast to the right-hand path or path of spirit. Shadow signifies matter, for spirit may be considered to be pure energy, and matter, although essentially crystallized spirit, may be looked upon as the shadow world or vehicular world in which the energy, spirit, or pure light works. Matter is but a generalizing term, comprised of an almost infinite number of degrees of increasing ethereality from the grossest physical substance, or absolute matter, up to the most ethereal or spiritualized substance, providing the logic of calling this the path of shadows. Those on this path are often called black magicians in contrast to white magicians or sons of light who follow the path of self-renunciation, self-conquest, and an expansion of the heart, mind, and consciousness in love and service for all that lives.
live means, h must be a renunciation, a complete rcnuneiation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fullilmem and a propressive rcnunciaUon of all that is lesser or only a partial achievement.
Lohiccasutta. (C. Luzhe jing; J. Roshakyo; K. Noch'a kyong 露遮經). In Pāli, "Discourse to Lohicca," the twelfth sutta of the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA (a separate DHARMAGUPTAKA recension appears as the twenty-ninth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHĀGAMA); preached by the Buddha to the brāhmana Lohicca at the village of Sālavatikā in KOsALA. According to the Pāli account, Lohicca holds the view that a sage who reaches certain wholesome states of mind should tell no one of it, for to do so would be to manifest craving and entangle him in new bonds. He puts this opinion to the Buddha who responds that, to the contrary, it would be selfish for such a person to remain silent if he had something of benefit to teach to others. The Buddha then describes three types of teachers who are worthy of blame. The first is one who, even though he himself has not attained true renunciation, teaches DHARMA and VINAYA to others but is rejected along with his teachings by his pupils. The second is one who, even though he himself has not attained true renunciation, is embraced along with his teachings by his pupils. The third is one who, even though he himself has attained true renunciation, is nevertheless rejected along with his teachings by his pupils. The Buddha then describes the teacher who is unworthy of blame as someone who awakens to the dharma and enters the Buddhist order, trains in the restraint of conduct and speech and observes minor points of morality, guards the senses, practices mindfulness, is content with little, becomes freed from the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA), attains joy and peace of mind, cultivates the four meditative absorptions (DHYĀNA), develops insight (P. Nānadassana; JNĀNADARsANA) into the conditioned nature and the impermanence of body and mind, and gains knowledge of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (CATVĀRY ĀRYASATYĀNI) and the destruction of the contaminants (ĀSRAVA). Lohicca is pleased by the sermon and becomes a lay disciple of the Buddha.
lokoparati ::: world-renunciation. lorsque l"esprit alors assemble les données et assouplit assez sa langue
Mahākāsyapa. (P. Mahākassapa; T. 'Od srung chen po; C. Mohejiashe; J. Makakasho; K. Mahagasop 摩訶迦葉). Sanskrit name of one of the Buddha's leading disciples, regarded as foremost in the observance of ascetic practices (P. DHUTAnGA; S. dhutaguna). According to the Pāli accounts (where he is called Mahākassapa) his personal name was Pipphali and he was born to a brāhmana family in MAGADHA. Even as a child he was inclined toward renunciation and as a youth refused to marry. Finally, to placate his parents, he agreed to marry a woman matching in beauty a statue he had fashioned. His parents found a match in Bhaddā Kapilānī (S. BHADRA-KAPILĀNĪ), a beautiful maiden from Sāgala. But she likewise was inclined toward renunciation. Both sets of parents foiled their attempts to break off the engagement, so in the end they were wed but resolved not to consummate their marriage. Pipphali owned a vast estate with fertile soil, but one day he witnessed worms eaten by birds turned up by his plowman. Filled with pity for the creatures and fearful that he was ultimately to blame, he resolved then and there to renounce the world. At the same time, Bhaddā witnessed insects eaten by crows as they scurried among sesame seeds put out to dry. Feeling pity and fear at the sight, she also resolved to renounce the world. Realizing they were of like mind, Pipphali and Bhaddā put on the yellow robes of mendicants and abandoned their property. Although they left together, they parted ways lest they prove a hindrance to one another. Realizing what had transpired, the Buddha sat along Pipphali's path and showed himself resplendent with yogic power. Upon seeing the Buddha, Pipphali, whose name thenceforth became Kassapa, immediately recognized him as his teacher and was ordained. Traveling to Rājagaha (S. RĀJAGṚHA) with the Buddha, Mahākassapa requested to exchange his fine robe for the rag robe of the Buddha. The Buddha consented, and his conferral of his own rag robe on Mahākassapa was taken as a sign that, after the Buddha's demise, Mahākassapa would preside over the convention of the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST). Upon receiving the Buddha's robe, he took up the observance of thirteen ascetic practices (dhutanga) and in eight days became an arahant (S. ARHAT). Mahākassapa possessed great supranormal powers (P. iddhi; S. ṚDDHI) and was second only to the Buddha in his mastery of meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA). His body was said to be adorned with seven of the thirty-two marks of a superman (MAHĀPURUsALAKsAnA). So revered by the gods was he, that at the Buddha's funeral, the divinities would not allow the funeral pyre to be lit until Mahākassapa arrived and had one last chance to worship the Buddha's body. Mahākassapa seems to have been the most powerful monk after the death of the Buddha and is considered by some schools to have been the Buddha's successor as the first in a line of teachers (dharmācārya). He is said to have called and presided over the first Buddhist council, which he convened after the Buddha's death to counter the heresy of the wicked monk SUBHADRA (P. Subhadda). Before the council began, he demanded that ĀNANDA become an arhat in order to participate, which Ānanda finally did early in the morning just before the event. At the council, he questioned Ānanda and UPĀLI about what should be included in the SuTRA and VINAYA collections (PItAKA), respectively. He also chastised Ānanda for several deeds of commission and omission, including his entreaty of the Buddha to allow women to enter the order (see MAHĀPRAJĀPATĪ), his allowing the tears of women to fall on the Buddha's corpse, his stepping on the robe of the Buddha while mending it, his failure to recall which minor monastic rules the Buddha said could be ignored after his death, and his failure to ask the Buddha to live for an eon or until the end of the eon (see CĀPĀLACAITYA). Pāli sources make no mention of Mahākassapa after the events of the first council, although the Sanskrit AsOKĀVADĀNA notes that he passed away beneath three hills where his body will remain uncorrupted until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. At that time, his body will reanimate itself and hand over to Maitreya the rag robe of sĀKYAMUNI, thus passing on the dispensation of the buddhas. It is said that the robe will be very small, barely fitting over the finger of the much larger Maitreya. ¶ Like many of the great arhats, Mahākāsyapa appears frequently in the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, sometimes merely listed as a member of the audience, sometimes playing a more significant role. In the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, he is one of the sRĀVAKA disciples who is reluctant to visit Vimalakīrti. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, he is one of four arhats who understands the parable of the burning house and rejoices in the teaching of a single vehicle (EKAYĀNA); later in the sutra, the Buddha prophesies his eventual attainment of buddhahood. Mahākāsyapa is a central figure in the CHAN schools of East Asia. In the famous Chan story in which the Buddha conveys his enlightenment by simply holding up a flower before the congregation and smiling subtly (see NIANHUA WEIXIAO), it is only Mahākāsyapa who understands the Buddha's intent, making him the first recipient of the Buddha's "mind-to-mind" transmission (YIXIN CHUANXIN). He is thus considered the first patriarch (ZUSHI) of the Chan school.
Mahāsaccakasutta. In Pāli, the "Great Discourse to Saccaka"; the thirty-sixth sutta contained in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (fragments are extant in Sanskrit, and portions corresponding to a untitled recension of uncertain affiliation are included in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA); preached by the Buddha to the JAINA adherent Saccaka (S. MAHĀSATYANIRGRANTHA) in the Mahāvana forest in Vesāli (VAIsĀlĪ). Saccaka asks about the proper method of cultivating the mind and the body in order to attain liberation. The Buddha explains the various methods of training mind and body he had tried during his own quest for liberation. Beginning with his renunciation of the householder's life, he tells of his training under two meditation masters, his rejection of meditation in favor of severe austerities, and his rejection of austerities for his own path midway between self-indulgence and extreme asceticism, which finally led to his enlightenment.
mārga. (P. magga; T. lam; C. dao; J. do; K. to 道). In Sanskrit, "path"; a polysemous term in Sanskrit, whose root denotation is a road, track, way, or course. As one of the most important terms in Buddhism, it refers to the metaphorical route from one state to another, typically from suffering to liberation, from SAMSĀRA to NIRVĀnA. The term derives in part from the view that the means of achieving liberation from suffering have been identified by the Buddha, and he himself has successfully followed the route to that goal, leaving behind tracks or footprints that others can follow. Indeed, it is the Buddhist view that each of the buddhas of the past has followed the same path to enlightenment. However, in the interval between buddhas, that path becomes forgotten, and the purpose of the next buddha's advent in the world is to rediscover and reopen that same path. The term mārga occurs in the Buddha's first sermon (S. DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA; P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA) as the fourth constituent of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (CATVĀRY ĀRYASATYĀNI), where it is identified as the eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA) between the two extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. Elsewhere, the path is associated with the threefold training (TRIsIKsĀ) in morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). However, there are numerous delineations of the path to enlightenment. For example, both the mainstream Buddhist schools and the MAHĀYĀNA describe three paths: (1) the path of the sRĀVAKA, culminating in attainment of NIRVĀnA as an ARHAT; (2) the path of the PRATYEKABUDDHA, also culminating in the nirvāna of an arhat; and (3) the path of the BODHISATTVA, culminating in the attainment of buddhahood. Each of these paths has its own stages, with a common system describing five (PANCAMĀRGA): (1) the path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA), (2) the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA), (3) the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA), (4) the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), and (5) the adept path, "where there is nothing more to learn" (AsAIKsAMĀRGA). In more technical descriptions, the path to enlightenment is described as a series of moments of consciousness in a process of purification, in which increasingly subtle states of contaminants (ĀSRAVA) and afflictions (KLEsA) are permanently cleansed from the mind. The term "path" figures in the title of a number of highly important Buddhist works, such as the VISUDDHIMAGGA ("Path of Purification") by the Pāli commentator BUDDHAGHOSA. The Tibetan exegete TSONG KHA PA wrote of the "three principal aspects of the path" (lam rtso rnam gsum): renunciation, BODHICITTA, and correct view. See also DAO.
naiskramya. (P. nekkhamma; T. nges 'byung; C. chuyaozhi/chuli; J. shutsuyoshi/shutsuri; K. ch'uryoji/ch'ulli 出要志/出離). In Sanskrit, "renunciation" (see also NIḤSARAnA; NIRVEDA) especially in the sense of leaving mundane life and embarking on a religious vocation. The Buddha repeatedly exhorts monks to develop renunciation as a means of eliminating attachment to the pleasures of the senses. As such, in the cultivation of the path (MĀRGA), renunciation is associated with right intention (SAMYAKSAMKALPA) and is essential for all three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ) in morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). In the Pāli tradition, renunciation constitutes the third perfection (P. pāramī; S. PĀRAMITĀ) mastered by the bodhisatta (S. BODHISATTVA) on the path leading to buddhahood. In the MAHĀYĀNA traditions, renunciation is lauded as a prerequisite to developing the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTA), since it is impossible to develop a wish to liberate all beings from SAMSĀRA unless one is dissatisfied with saMsāra oneself. In order to develop renunciation, the adept is advised to contemplate the rarity of human birth (KsAnASAMPAD), the suffering inherent in the realms of saMsāra, the cause and effect of actions (KARMAN), and the inevitability and unpredictability of death.
Nidānakathā. In Pāli, "Account of Origins," the introduction to the JĀTAKA, the collection of stories of the Buddha's past lives, which form the fifth and final part of the SUTTAPItAKA, the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA; it is traditionally attributed to the great fifth-century Pāli scholar BUDDHAGHOSA. The text gives an account of the Buddha's previous lives as a bodhisatta (S. BODHISATTVA), continuing through his last birth, his enlightenment, and his early ministry. The work is divided into three sections: (1) The "Dure Nidāna," or "Distant Epoch," begins with the bodhisatta's encounter, as the mendicant SUMEDHA, with the buddha DIPAMKARA. Sumedha could become DipaMkara's disciple and achieve liberation as an arahant (S. ARHAT) in that life, but instead vows to become a buddha in the far distant future. DipaMkara predicts that he will indeed become a buddha (see P. veyyākarana; S. VYĀKARAnA). The ten perfections (P. pāramī; S. PĀRAMITĀ) that he must practice in order to achieve buddhahood are then described. This is followed by an account of subsequent buddhas who also prophesied his eventual attainment of buddhahood, and the identity of the bodhisatta on each of those occasions. Next comes a list of perfections and the jātaka story that best exemplifies it. The first section ends with his penultimate birth as a divinity in TUsITA heaven. (2) The "Avidure Nidāna," or "Not Remote Epoch," recounts his descent from tusita heaven, through his birth as the son of King Suddhodana (S. sUDDHODANA) and Queen MĀYĀ, his princely life and marriage, and his renunciation and penances, concluding with his achievement of enlightenment. (3) The "Santike Nidāna" or "Present Epoch," recounts the period from his decision to teach the dhamma, through the conversion of his early disciples, and ends with the dedication of the JETAVANA grove as a monastery by the wealthy merchant Anāthapindika (S. ANĀTHAPIndADA). The Nidānakathā represents the earliest continuous narrative of the Buddha's life contained in Pāli sources, and it served as the basis of later expanded narratives, such as that found in the near-contemporary Manorathavilāsinī. It is important to note that these episodes do not provide a complete biography of the Buddha, beginning with his birth and ending with his death. Instead, they begin in the distant past with his vow to become a buddha, skip over his many births as a bodhisatta (which are contained in the jātaka stories to which the Nidānakathā serves as an introduction), and end with the donation of Jetavana, in the first years after his enlightenment. These Pāli accounts are all relatively late. Earlier biographies of the Buddha are found in Sanskrit works of other schools, such as the second-century CE BUDDHACARITA by AsVAGHOsA, the third-century MAHĀVASTU contained in the LOKOTTARAVĀDA VINAYA, and the third-century LALITAVISTARA.
niryāna. (T. nges 'byung; C. chuli; J. shutsuri; K. ch'ulli 出離). In Sanskrit, lit. "departure" or "going out." In the context of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni), it is an aspect of the third "truth of cessation" (NIRODHASATYA), where niryāna means the definite "escape" from suffering when its cause has been eliminated. In the context of the MAHĀYĀNA path, niryāna involves the final stages of a bodhisattva's progress (PRATIPATTI) leading to full enlightenment; the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA gives a list of eight niryānas based on aspects of the final destination. In some contexts, the term, like NIRVEDA and NIḤSARAnA, can mean "renunciation," in the sense of the conviction to be liberated or to emerge from rebirth in SAMSĀRA, whether one is following the path of the sRĀVAKA or PRATYEKABUDDHA in order to become an ARHAT, or is following the BODHISATTVA path in order to become a buddha. It is in this sense that the Tibetan translation of the term as "emergence" (nges 'byung) is deployed by TSONG KHA PA in his delineation of the "three principal aspects of the path" (LAM GTSO RNAM GSUM), where emergence is the first of the three aspects, followed by BODHICITTA and wisdom (PRAJNĀ).
Nishkrama (Sanskrit) Niṣkrama [from nis away from + the verbal root kram to go, set forth] Going forth, hence leaving the worldly life; renunciation.
Nivritti: Renunciation; retrospective life; stepping back from worldly activity.
Nivrittimarga: The path of renunciation or Sannyasa; the path of return to Para Brahman.
nivritti marg&
nivritti. ::: negation; the path of turning away from activity; withdrawal; renunciation
Nivrittirupa: Of the very form of renunciation and de tachment; Atman or Brahman.
niyatasya tu sannyasah karmano nopapadyate ::: [but the renunciation of rightly regulated actions is not proper]. [Gita 18.7]
nonsuit ::: n. --> A neglect or failure by the plaintiff to follow up his suit; a stopping of the suit; a renunciation or withdrawal of the cause by the plaintiff, either because he is satisfied that he can not support it, or upon the judge&
Nyasa: Renunciation; laying down.
Our renunciation must obwously be an inward renunciation, especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the senses and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the conscious- ness.
paNcasīla. (P. paNcasīla; T. bslab pa lnga; C. wujie; J. gokai; K. ogye 五戒). In Sanskrit, the "five precepts," five rules of conduct or "steps in training" (sIKsĀPADA) that form the foundation for Buddhist morality (sĪLA) for both lay and monastic followers. The five are (1) to abstain from killing living creatures (usually interpreted to mean not killing human beings); (2) to abstain from taking what is not given; (3) to abstain from engaging in sexual misconduct; (4) to abstain from lying (commonly defined as not to lie about the possession of high states of attainment or superhuman powers); and (5) to abstain from consuming intoxicants that cause heedlessness (PRAMĀDA). These rules are commonly administered as part of the ceremony of going for refuge (sARAnA), which is the formal acknowledgment of becoming an adherent of Buddhism. Each of these precepts is administered in the formula, "I undertake the training rule (siksāpada) to abstain from killing living creatures," etc. The precepts are regarded as steps in training that are useful in prompting virtuous actions (KUsALAKARMAN), in restraining unvirtuous deeds of body and speech, and in correcting the intention (CETANĀ) that prompts action. It is generally understood that the practitioner must become adept in maintaining the precepts before he can effectively engage in the cultivation of concentration (SAMĀDHI) and wisdom (PRAJNĀ), the next two stages in the threefold training (TRIsIKsĀ). Taking the precepts is considered karmically efficacious, since an act will be more virtuous if one first takes a vow to desist from an unvirtuous activity and then does so, rather than desisting from the activity without having first taken such a vow. ¶ These five precepts also figure in other important moral formulas. Monks and nuns take the five precepts (with the third precept defined as celibacy), with violation of the first four bringing "defeat" (PĀRĀJIKA) and, in some traditions, expulsion from the SAMGHA. These five precepts (with celibacy as the third) are augmented by three additional precepts to form a short-term code observed by lay disciples fortnightly on the new moon and full moon days (UPOsADHA; P. uposatha); this code is known as the eight "retreat precepts" (S. uposadhasīla; P. uposathasīla), a sort of temporary renunciation (see AstĀnGASAMANVĀGATAM UPAVĀSAM; BAGUAN ZHAI) that essentially turns the layperson into a monk for that day. The three additional precepts are (6) not to eat at an inappropriate time (generally interpreted to mean between noon and the following dawn); (7) not to dance, sing, play music, attend performances, or adorn one's body with garlands, perfumes, or cosmetics; and (8) not to sleep on high or luxurious beds. The same five precepts (with the third again defined as celibacy) are augmented by five additional rules that are kept by novice monks (sRĀMAnERA) and nuns (sRĀMAnERIKĀ) to constitute the "ten precepts" (DAsAsĪLA). The additional five are (6) not to eat at an inappropriate time; (7) not to dance, sing, play music, or attend performances; (8) not to adorn one's body with garlands, perfumes, and cosmetics; (9) not to sleep on high or luxurious beds; (10) not to handle gold and silver, viz. money. Fully ordained monks (BHIKsU) and nuns (BHIKsUnĪ) observe in turn hundreds of specific training rules, all putatively promulgated by the Buddha himself, which are set out in great detail in the PRĀTIMOKsA of various VINAYA traditions. See also sĪLA.
pāramitā. (P. pāramī; T. pha rol tu phyin pa; C. boluomi; J. haramitsu; K. paramil 波羅蜜). In Sanskrit, "perfection," a virtue or quality developed and practiced by a BODHISATTVA on the path to becoming a buddha. The term is paranomastically glossed by some traditional commentators as "gone beyond" or "gone to the other side" (see PARA), although it seems in fact to derive from Skt. parama, meaning "highest" or "supreme." The best-known enumeration of the perfections is a group of six: giving (DĀNA), morality (sĪLA), patience or forbearance (KsĀNTI), effort (VĪRYA), concentration (DHYĀNA), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). There are also lists of ten perfections. In the MAHĀYĀNA (specifically in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA), the list of ten includes the preceding six, to which are added method (UPĀYA), vow (PRAnIDHĀNA), power (BALA), and knowledge (JNĀNA), with the explanation that the bodhisattva practices the perfections in this order on each of the ten bodhisattva stages or grounds (BHuMI). Thus, giving is perfected on the first bhumi, morality on the second, and so on. In Pāli sources, where the perfections are called pāramī, the ten perfections are giving (dāna), morality (sīla), renunciation (nekkhamma; S. NAIsKRAMYA), wisdom (paNNā), effort (viriya), patience (khanti), truthfulness (sacca; S. SATYA), determination (adhitthāna; S. ADHIstHĀNA), loving-kindness (mettā; S. MAITRĪ), and equanimity (upekkhā; S. UPEKsĀ). The practice of these perfections over the course of the many lifetimes of the bodhisattva's path eventually fructifies in the achievement of buddhahood. The precise meaning of the perfections is discussed at length, as is the question of how the six (or ten) are to be divided between the categories of merit (PUnYA) and wisdom (JNĀNA). For example, according to one interpretation of the six perfections, giving, morality, and patience contribute to the collection of merit (PUnYASAMBHĀRA); concentration and wisdom contribute to the collection of wisdom (JNĀNASAMBHĀRA), and effort contributes to both. Commentators also consider what distinguishes the practice of these six from other instances of the practice of giving, etc. Some MADHYAMAKA exegetes, for example, argue that these virtues only become perfections when the bodhisattva engages in them with an understanding of emptiness (suNYATĀ); for example, giving a gift without clinging to any conception of giver, gift, or recipient.
Perfection (Siddhi) ::: "Not by abstention from works does a man enjoy actionlessness, nor by mere renunciation (of works) does he attain to his perfection,"—to siddhi, the accomplishment of the aims of his self-discipline by Yoga.
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Philo of Alexandria: (30 B.C.- 50 A.D.) Jewish theologian and Neo-Platonic philosopher. He held that Greek thought borrowed largely from Mosaic teachings and therefore justified his use of Greek philosophy for the purpose of interpreting Scripture in a spiritual sense. For Philo, the renunciation of self and, through the divine Logos in all men, the achievement of immediate contact with the Supreme Being, is the highest blessedness for man. -- M.F Philosopheme: (Gr. philosophema) An apodictic syllogism (Aristotle). -- G.R.M.
prenunciation ::: n. --> The act of announcing or proclaiming beforehand.
proprietary ::: n. --> A proprietor or owner; one who has exclusive title to a thing; one who possesses, or holds the title to, a thing in his own right.
A body proprietors, taken collectively.
A monk who had reserved goods and effects to himself, notwithstanding his renunciation of all at the time of profession. ::: a.
Rājagṛha. (P. Rājagaha; T. Rgyal po'i khab; C. Wangshe cheng; J. oshajo; K. Wangsa song 王舍城). Sanskrit name for the capital of the kingdom of MAGADHA during the time of the Buddha. Rājagṛha was known by several other names, including Girivraja, Vasumati, Bṛhadrathapura, Kusāgarapura, Magadhapura, and Bimbisārapura. During the Buddha's lifetime, Rājagṛha was the capital city of King BIMBISĀRA, the ruler of Magadha and the first royal patron of the Buddha and his SAMGHA. The Buddha's first visit occurred prior to his enlightenment, when he passed through the city shortly after his renunciation. He was watched on his alms round by Bimbisāra, who offered him half of his kingdom. The prince refused but promised to visit the city after he achieved his goal. When the Buddha returned to the city in the first year after his enlightenment, Bimbisāra donated a grove for the use of the Buddha and his monks during the rains retreat (VARsĀ). It was called VEnUVANAVIHĀRA, or "Bamboo Grove Monastery," and the Buddha spent several rains retreats after his enlightenment there (according to several sources, he spent his second, third, fourth, seventeenth, and twentieth rains retreat there). The Buddha received sĀRIPUTRA and MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA into the order in Rājagṛha. GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA, or "Vulture Peak," the site where the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras, among many others, were delivered, was located outside the city. Together with sRĀVASTĪ, Rājagṛha was one of the two most important centers of the Buddha's activities. The Buddha made a final visit to the city shortly before his death. After his cremation, the city received a share of the Buddha's relics (sARĪRA) and AJĀTAsATRU, Bimbisāra's son and successor, erected a STuPA to house them. It is said that Ajātasatru later gathered seven of the shares of the Buddha's relics and enshrined them in a single stupa, from which AsOKA later obtained the relics for the eighty-four thousand stupas he is said to have erected. The first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST) took place at Rājagṛha, during the first rains retreat immediately following the death of the Buddha. The great monastic university of NĀLANDĀ was located on the outskirts of Rājagṛha. Rājagṛha was in a dilapidated condition by the time the Chinese pilgrim XUANZANG visited the area in the seventh century CE.
rebellion ::: v. i. --> The act of rebelling; open and avowed renunciation of the authority of the government to which one owes obedience, and resistance to its officers and laws, either by levying war, or by aiding others to do so; an organized uprising of subjects for the purpose of coercing or overthrowing their lawful ruler or government by force; revolt; insurrection.
Open resistance to, or defiance of, lawful authority.
renouncement ::: n. --> The act of disclaiming or rejecting; renunciation.
RENUNCIATION. ::: Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object ; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by nega-
renunciation ::: n. --> The act of renouncing.
Formal declination to take out letters of administration, or to assume an office, privilege, or right.
renunciatory ::: a. --> Pertaining to renunciation; containing or declaring a renunciation; as, renunciatory vows.
retraxit ::: n. --> The withdrawing, or open renunciation, of a suit in court by the plaintiff, by which he forever lost his right of action.
Rosicrucians [from Latin rosa rose + crux cross] Rosy cross or rose cross, referring to the cross of the rose, the general medieval idea of the rose being an emblem of divine love, and the cross of renunciation and self-conquest. A medieval European mystical and quasi-occult fraternity, probably dating from about the mid-15th century. It represented one of the many cyclic attempts to reintroduce and keep alive the ancient wisdom, and its history is typical of most such enterprises. The name was first given to the disciples of a learned adept, Christian Rosenkreuz, the alleged surname itself being a German translation of rose-cross, leaving open whether Rosenkreuz was actually a family name or a surname mystically adopted to designate a particular body of mystical thought; the name Christian may be another such mystical name-adoption. At any rate, Rosenkreuz returned form a journey in Asia and founded a mystical order in Europe. He and his disciples encountered the determined opposition of the Christian Church which then held sway over so much of Europe. He dressed up his teachings in a Christian garb, using such names as Jehovah as screens for the real meaning, and communicating to his disciples the keys for an interpretation of his doctrines. He founded no formal association and built no colleges, for the utmost secrecy was necessary to escape persecution and even death. It is for these reasons that the true history of the Rosicrucians is so difficult to trace. The original Rosicrucians were fire-philosophers, successors of the theurgists and the Magi.
sadhana chatushtaya. ::: the four-fold aids to spiritual practice &
sākyamuni. (P. Sakkamuni; T. Shākya thub pa; C. Shijiamouni; J. Shakamuni; K. Sokkamoni 釋迦牟尼). In Sanskrit, "Sage of the sĀKYA Clan," one of the most common epithets of GAUTAMA Buddha, especially in the MAHĀYĀNA traditions, where the name sĀKYAMUNI is used to distinguish the historical buddha from the myriad other buddhas who appear in the SuTRAs. The sākyas were a tribe in northern India into which was born SIDDHĀRTHA GAUTAMA, the man who would become the historical buddha. According to the texts, the sākya clan was made up of KsATRIYAs, warriors or political administrators in the Indian caste system. The sākya clan flourished in the foothills of the Himālayas, near the border between present-day Nepal and India. Following the tradition's own model, which did not seek to provide a single and seamless biography of Gautama or sākyamuni until centuries after his death, this dictionary narrates the events of the life of the Buddha in separate entries about his previous lives, his teachings, his disciples, and the places he visited over the course of his forty-five years of preaching the dharma. In India, accounts of events in the life of the Buddha first appeared in VINAYA materials, such as the Pāli MAHĀVAGGA or the LOKOTTARAVĀDA school's MAHĀVASTU. Among the Pāli SUTTAs, one of the most detailed accounts of the Buddha's quest for enlightenment occurs in the ARIYAPARIYESANĀSUTTA. It is noteworthy that many of the most familiar events in the Buddha's life are absent in some of the early accounts: the miraculous conception and birth; the death of his mother, Queen MĀYĀ; his sheltered youth; the four chariot rides outside the palace where he beholds the four portents (CATURNIMITTA); his departure from the palace; and his abandonment of his wife, YAsODHARĀ, and his newborn son, RĀHULA. Those stories appear much later, in works like AsVAGHOsA's beloved verse narrative, the BUDDHACARITA, from the second century CE; the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school's third- or fourth-century CE LALITAVISTARA; and the NIDĀNAKATHĀ, the first biography of the Buddha in Pāli, attributed to BUDDHAGHOSA in the fifth century CE, some eight centuries after the Buddha's passing. Even in that later biography, however, the "life of the Buddha" ends with ANĀTHAPIndADA's gift of JETAVANA grove to the Buddha, twenty years after the Buddha's enlightenment and twenty-five years before his death. Other biographical accounts end even earlier, with the conversion of sĀRIPUTRA and MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA. Indeed, Indian Buddhist literature devotes more attention to the lives of previous buddhas and to the former lives (JĀTAKA) of Gautama or sākyamuni than they do to biographies of his final lifetime (when biography is taken to refer to a chronological account from birth to death). And even there, the tradition takes pains to demonstrate the consistency of the events of his life with those of previous buddhas; in fact, all buddhas are said to perform the same eight or twelve deeds (see BAXIANG; TWELVE DEEDS OF A BUDDHA). The momentous events of his birth, renunciation, enlightenment under the BODHI TREE, and first turning of the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) are described in detail in a range of works, and particular attention is given to his death, in both the Pāli MAHĀPARINIBBANASUTTA and the Sanskrit MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. And all traditions, whether MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS or the Mahāyāna, are deeply concerned with the question of the location of the Buddha after his passage into PARINIRVĀnA.
Sanga-tyaga: Renunciation of company or association.
Sannyasa: Renunciation of social ties; the last stage of Hindu life, viz., the stage of spiritual meditation.
sannyasa ::: laying aside; renunciation (of life and action).
SANNYASA. ::: Outward renunciation. Sannyma does not take away attachment ; it amounts only to running away from the object of attachment which may help but cannot by itself alone be the radical cure.
sannyasa ::: renunciation.
Sannyasa (Sanskrit) Saṃnyāsa [from sam together with + ni-as to reject, resign worldly life] Putting or throwing down, laying aside, abandonment; particularly renunciation of the world and material affairs and the assumption of the path leading to mystic knowledge. The practitioner is called a sannyasin.
sannyasa &
Sannyasin(Sanskrit) ::: One who renounces (a renouncer); from sannyasa, "renunciation," abandonment of worldlybonds and attractions. Resignation to the service of the spiritual nature.
Sannyasi (or Sannyasin): A monk; one who has embraced the life of complete renunciation; one belonging to the fourth or the highest stage of life, viz., Sannyasa.
Sarvatyaga: Renunciation of everything.
self-abnegation ::: n. --> Self-denial; self-renunciation; self-sacrifice.
self-renunciation ::: n. --> The act of renouncing, or setting aside, one&
Siddhi ::: "Not by abstention from works does a man enjoy actionlessness, nor by mere renunciation (of works) does he attain to his perfection," — to siddhi, the accomplishment of the aims of his self-discipline by Yoga.
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siksāpada. (P. sikkhāpada; T. bslab pa'i gzhi; C. xuechu; J. gakusho; K. hakch'o 學處). In Sanskrit, lit. "training step"; "training rules," "precepts," or "moral instructions"; viz., various rules of conduct incumbent on both lay and monastic adherents of Buddhism. Theoretically, the number of siksāpadas, in the sense of situations where it is incumbent on an adherent to maintain proper moral decorum, is infinite, but the number of rules a specific adherent was expected to follow depended on his or her level of commitment. All these moral instructions are administered in the formula, "I undertake the training rule (siksāpada) to abstain from..." Thus, the Buddhist moral codes are not regarded as commandments handed down from on high, but steps in training that are found to be useful in promoting wholesome actions (KUsALA-KARMAN) and in weaning the individual from clinging and attachment. It is generally understood that the practitioner must become adept in following these basic rules of training before he or she can go on to higher levels of training: the effective engagement in the cultivation of concentration (SAMĀDHI), wisdom (PRAJNĀ), and so on. The five basic rules of conduct required of all Buddhists, and specifically the laity, are the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA), viz., "undertaking the training rule to abstain from": (1) killing, (2) stealing, (3) sexual misconduct, (4) false speech, and (5) intoxicants. On full- and new-moon days (S. UPOsADHA, P. uposatha), the laity had the option of increasing the number of siksāpada for their training in morality and keeping an expanded set of eight precepts (P. uposathasīla, see AstĀnGASAMANVĀGATAM UPAVĀSAM) as a sort of temporary renunciation. These added three precepts to the preceding list of five, viz., abstaining from: (6) eating after midday, (7) dancing, singing, music, and other unseemly forms of entertainment, and using garlands, perfumes, and unguents (viz., cosmetics) to adorn the body, and (8) using high and luxurious beds and couches. Additionally on that day, the layperson was also expected to abstain from all sexual activity, rather than just sexual misconduct defined specifically for the lay person. Ordination as a male novice (sRĀMAnERA) or female novice (sRĀMAnERIKĀ) required the ordinand to increase the number of siksāpada (grounds for moral training) to ten (DAsAsĪLA) in the Pāli VINAYA, a number expanded to thirty-six in the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA. Fully ordained monks (BHIKsU) and nuns (BHIKsUnĪ) observed, in turn, a greatly expanded set of siksāpada codified in hundreds of specific training rules, set out in great detail in the various vinaya traditions. In MAHĀYĀNA and tantric Buddhist traditions, the siksāpada are expanded to include various activities, even those that seem antithetical to morality, under the general rubric of skillful means (UPĀYA). See also sĪLA; SAMVARA; PRĀTIMOKsA.
siksāsamuccaya. (T. Bslab pa kun las btus pa; C. Dasheng ji pusa xue lun; J. Daijoju bosatsugakuron; K. Taesŭng chip posal hak non 大乘集菩薩學論). In Sanskrit, "Compendium of Training," a work by the eighth-century Indian MAHĀYĀNA master sĀNTIDEVA. It consists of twenty-seven stanzas on the motivation and practice of the BODHISATTVA, including BODHICITTA, the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ), the worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas, the benefits of renunciation, and the peace derived from the knowledge of emptiness (suNYATĀ). The topic of each of the stanzas receives elaboration in the form of a prose commentary by the author as well as in illustrative passages, often quite extensive, drawn from a wide variety of Mahāyāna SuTRAs. Some ninety-seven texts are cited in all, many of which have been lost in their original Sanskrit, making the siksāsamuccaya an especially important source for the textual history of Indian Buddhism. These citations also offer a window into which sutras were known to a Mahāyāna author in eighth-century India. The digest of passages that sāntideva provides was repeatedly drawn upon by Tibetan authors in their citations of sutras. Although sāntideva's BODHICARYĀVATĀRA and siksāsamuccaya both deal with similar topics, the precise relation between the two texts is unclear. Several of the author's verses appear in both texts and some of the sutra passages from the siksāsamuccaya also appear in the Bodhicaryāvatāra. One passage in the Bodhicaryāvatāra also refers readers to the siksāsamuccaya, but this line does not occur in the DUNHUANG manuscript of the text and may be a later interpolation.
sīla. (P. sīla; T. tshul khrims; C. jie; J. kai; K. kye 戒). In Sanskrit, "morality"; those practices whose aim is to restrain nonvirtuous deeds of body and speech, often in conjunction with the keeping of precepts. Morality constitutes one of the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ), together with SAMĀDHI and PRAJNĀ, and the second of the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). In the traditional organization of the constituents of the noble eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA) under the rubrics of the three higher trainings (adhisiksā), the "morality group" (sīlaskandha; see ADHIsĪLAsIKsĀ) consists of right speech (S. SAMYAGVĀC; P. sammāvācā), right action (S. SAMYAKKARMĀNTA; P. sammākammanta), and right livelihood (S. SAMYAGĀJĪVA; P. sammājīva). The term also appears in the five precepts, or PANCAsĪLA, the five precepts taken by the Buddhist laity: "I undertake the training rules (sIKsĀPADA) to abstain from" (1) killing living creatures, (2) stealing, (3) sexual misconduct, (4) false speech, and (5) consuming intoxicants. On full- and new-moon days (UPOsADHA), the laity had the option of taking a modified version of these precepts as a sort of temporary renunciation, which are termed the eight precepts (S. see AstĀnGASAMANVĀGATAM UPAVĀSAM; BAGUAN ZHAI). They are (1) not to kill living beings, (2) not to steal, (3) not to engage to sexual activity, (4) not to lie about spiritual attainments, (5) not to use intoxicants, (6) not to eat after twelve noon, (7) not to sing, dance, play music, or attend entertainments and not to wear perfumes, garlands, or cosmetics, (8) not to sleep on high beds. All male novices (sRĀMAnERA) and female novices (sRĀMAnERIKĀ) were required to follow as part of their training the ten precepts (DAsAsĪLA), which were an expansion and enhancement of the five lay precepts (paNcasīla): "I undertake the training rule to abstain from" (1) killing, (2) stealing, (3) sexual activity, (4) false speech, (5) intoxicants, (6) eating after midday, (7) dancing, singing, music, and other unseemly forms of entertainment, (8) using garlands, perfumes, and cosmetics to adorn the body, (9) using high and luxurious beds and couches, (10) handling money. In the context of the bodhisattva's perfection of morality (sĪLAPĀRAMITĀ), the meaning of sīla is expanded to encompass the taking and keeping of the bodhisattva precepts (BODHISATTVASAMVARA); see SAMVARA; sĪLAPĀRAMITĀ; sĪLATRAYA.
Spiritual Powers Generally used in contradistinction to psychic powers; for while psychic powers pertain to the intermediate, psychomental part of human nature, the spiritual powers pertain to the higher part. Hence the psychic powers, precisely because intermediaries, may become the instrument either of our higher or of our lower nature, being vehicular products in themselves and subject to influx from above or below. The spiritual powers cannot be used for selfish and personal ends because their svabhava is universality and impersonality, attributes which link man with the surrounding universe. They emanate from the spiritual monad, atma-buddhi. We are able to use spiritual powers when our manas acts in conjunction with the spiritual monad. Such powers cannot be evoked by personal ambition or any form of acquisitiveness, because they do not rise above the intermediate or psychic nature and make no appeal to the spirit above; in fact, spiritual powers are the fruit of renunciation, of the replacing of the personal with the universal, the resigning of the limited for the virtually limitless, the giving up of the small for the great. Spiritual powers consist in a clear intuition of the truth, leading to right conduct, an ability to help and teach others — the powers which we attribute to a Buddha or Christ.
srāmanerasaMvara. (P. sāmanerasaMvara; T. dge tshul gyi sdom pa; C. qince lüyi; J. gonsakuritsugi; K. kŭnch'aek yurŭi 勤策律儀). In Sanskrit, "restraints for novices"; the ten precepts (DAsAsĪLA) that govern the conduct of a sRĀMAnERA (male novice). The ten are framed in terms of training rules (sIKsĀPADA): viz., "I undertake the training rule to abstain from": (1) killing, (2) stealing, (3) sexual activity, (4) false speech, (5) intoxicants, (6) eating after midday, (7) dancing, singing, music, and other unseemly forms of entertainment, (8) using garlands, perfumes, and cosmetics to adorn the body, (9) using high and luxurious beds and couches, (10) handling gold and silver (viz., money). On full- and new-moon days (UPOsADHA), the laity had the option of taking all these precepts except no. 10; nos. 7 and 8 were then combined to give a set of eight precepts to be specially followed on these retreat days (see S. AstĀnGASAMANVĀGATAM UPAVĀSAM) as a sort of temporary renunciation. In the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA these ten precepts are expanded to thirty-six.
Sthulavairagya: Gross dispassion; dispassion or renunciation of a lower type.
Stockholm Declaration ::: Five American Jewish leaders and Yassir Arafat met in Stockholm, Sweden and agreed on a four point statement on December 7, 1988. The four points included recognition by the PLO of Resolutions 242 and 338, recognition of Israel’s right to exist, renunciation of terrorism, and resolution of the refugee problem in accordance with law. This paved the way for the US to negotiate with the PLO.
Sufism: A system of Mohammedan mysticism, arising chiefly in Persia. It offers steps toward union with God, as repentance, abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust. Love is the keynote to the Sufi ethics.
Theopathy [from Greek theos god + pathos experience, feeling] The seventh stage of initiation in the Mysteries, where the candidate becomes a selfless channel for communion with his inner god; the third and last stage of spiritual development — the first being theophany, the second theopneusty. The sense of theopathy, originally used in the Greek Mysteries, was that the adept “suffered” the full influence of the god within him, becoming a selfless, consenting channel for the divine power pouring through him, in utter disregard of the personal self. Because of the immense personal renunciation involved, such an adept was said to suffer — meaning to bear or carry the divinity within. The second of these three initiatory grades, theopneusty, was the same as the third, but in less full degree, and signified that the initiate received the inspiration from above-within and, as it were, was breathed into from above, but did not carry the full load of the spiritual fire or inspirational flow. The first stage, theophany, was by comparison a temporary occurrence and signified the appearance of one’s divinity to the initiant’s self-conscious perception; the neophyte met his own inner god face to face, and the appearance or theophany lasted for a greater or less time depending upon various circumstances.
Theosophy or the wisdom-religion is the study of the ancient wisdom of the gods, and comprises in any one period that particular portion of knowledge which has been delivered to those who study it; whereas occultism in any age is that portion of the ancient wisdom dealing with matters which at such time are secret, hid, and unknown to the multitude. Thus occultism is that portion of theosophy which has not yet been openly and publicly promulgated. Occultism is founded on the principle that Divinity is concealed — transcendent yet immanent — within every living being. As a spiritual discipline occultism is the renunciation of selfishness; it is the “still small path” which leads to wisdom, to the right discrimination between good and evil, and the practice of altruism.
The solstices and equinoxes mark the four corners of the esoteric year, each associated with particular psychospiritual events in the initiation cycle. The winter solstice is associated with the birth of the inner Christ or Buddha; the summer solstice with the great renunciation of personal progress made by those of the hierarchy of compassion.
triune Infinite ::: Sri Aurobindo: "We do not seek to excise from our being all consciousness of the universe, but to realise God, Truth and Self in the universe as well as transcendent of it. We shall seek therefore not only the Ineffable, but also His manifestation as infinite being, consciousness and bliss embracing the universe and at play in it. For that triune infinity is His supreme manifestation and that we shall aspire to know, to share in and to become; and since we seek to realise this Trinity not only in itself but in its cosmic play, we shall aspire also to knowledge of and participation in the universal divine Truth, Knowledge, Will, Love which are His secondary manifestation, His divine becoming. With this too we shall aspire to identify ourselves, towards this too we shall strive to rise and, when the period of effort is passed, allow it by our renunciation of all egoism to draw us up into itself in our being and to descend into us and embrace us in all our becoming.” The Synthesis of Yoga
tyaga. ::: abandonment; renunciation; rejection; giving up
tyaga ::: a leaving, renunciation; [Gita]: the inward renunciation, an entire abandonment of all attached clinging to the fruits of our works, to the action itself or to its personal initiation or rajasika impulse, inner freedom from desire and attachment.
Tyaga: Renunciation (of egoism and Vasanas, and the world).
tyaga ::: renunciation. tyaga .U
Uparama: Satiety; Vairagya; renunciation of actions.
uparati. ::: renunciation of activities that are not duties; cessation of activities related to caste, creed or family; the power to ensure that the senses may not once again be drawn toward worldly objects; indifference toward the enjoyment of sense-objects; total calmness; tranquillity
Uparati: Satiety in the enjoyment of sense-objects; surfeit; discontinuance of religious ceremonies following upon renunciation; absolute calmness; tranquillity; renunciation.
Utpalavarnā. (P. Uppalavannā; T. Ut pa la'i mdog; C. Lianhuase; J. Rengeshiki; K. Yonhwasaek 蓮華色). One of two chief nun disciples of the Buddha, the first being KsEMĀ. According to Pāli accounts, where she is known as Uppalavannā, she was born into a banker's family in Sāvatthi (sRĀVASTĪ) and was renowned for her beauty. Her name, lit. "blue-lotus colored," refers to her skin complexion, which was dark like a blue lotus flower. Men of all ranks, royals and commoners, sought her hand in marriage. Her father, fearing to offend any of them, suggested to her that she renounce the world. Already inclined by nature to renunciation, Uppalavannā became a Buddhist nun. While sweeping an uposatha (S. UPOsADHA) assembly hall, she attained meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; DHYĀNA) by concentrating on the light of a candle, and soon became an ARHAT possessed of the analytical attainments (P. patisambhidā; S. PRATISAMVID). Uppalavannā was renowned for her various supernatural powers born from her mastery of meditative absorption. The Buddha declared her to be chief among his nun disciples in supranormal powers (P. iddhi; S. ṚDDHI). After she had become a nun and an arhat, Uppalavannā was raped by her cousin Ānanda (not the Ānanda who was the Buddha's attendant), who had been enamored of her when she was a laywoman. Although he was swallowed by the earth for his heinous crime, the case raised the question within the monastic community as to whether arhats are capable of experiencing sensual pleasure and thus had sexual desire. The Buddha asserted categorically that arhats are immune to sensuality. Several verses of the THERĪGĀTHĀ are attributed to Uppalavannā. She and sĀRIPUTRA are also said to have been the first to greet the Buddha at SĀMKĀsYA when he descended on ladders from the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven, where he had been instructing his mother, MĀYĀ; in order to make her way through the large crowd that had gathered, she disguised herself as a CAKRAVARTIN. Among the many crimes of the Buddha's evil cousin DEVADATTA was beating her to death after she chastised him for attempting to assassinate the Buddha; he thus committed the deed of immediate retribution (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN) of killing an arhat. The commentary to the Therīgāthā and the Sanskrit VINAYAVIBHAnGA provide differing accounts of how she became a nun. The first is briefer and has her come from Sāvatthi (S. sRĀVASTĪ); the latter is more extensive and has her come from TAKsAsILĀ (P. Taxila). In both accounts, she gives birth to two children by two different men and becomes separated from both children. Years later, she unknowingly marries her son, who then marries her daughter (whom Utpalavarnā also does not recognize) as his second wife, making Utpalavarnā husband to her son and co-wife to her daughter. In the Pāli account, her eventual recognition of this state of affairs is sufficient to cause her to renounce the world. In the Sanskrit account, she gives birth to a son by her first son and when she realizes this, she becomes a courtesan, who is hired to seduce MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA. She is unsuccessful, and his words convince her to renounce the world and become a nun.
Vairagya: (Skr. ) Disgust, aversion, renunciation of worldly things, recommended for the attainment of moksa (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
vairagya (vairagya; vairagyam) ::: disgust with the world, frequently vairagya a motive for asceticism and the renunciation of life; often used in the sense of tamasic vairagya.
Vasanatyaga: Renunciation of subtle desires.
Vāspa. (P. Vappa; T. Rlangs pa; C. Pofu; J. Bafu; K. Pabu 婆敷). Sanskrit proper name of one of the monks who belonged to the so-called group of five (PANCAVARGIKA; BHADRAVARGĪYA)-viz., KAUndINYA [alt. ĀjNāta-Kaundiya], AsVAJIT, VĀsPA, MAHĀNĀMAN, and BHADRIKA-who were converted by the Buddha at the Deer Park (MṚGADĀVA) in SĀRNĀTH. When the sage ASITA predicted that the infant bodhisattva, SIDDHĀRTHA GAUTAMA, would one day become a buddha, Vāspa and four other brāhmanas headed by Kaundinya became ascetics in anticipation of Siddhārtha's own renunciation. They practiced austerities with him for six years until Siddhārtha renounced asceticism. Dismayed with what they regarded as his backsliding, the five ascetics left him and took up residence in the Deer Park at ṚsIPATANA. After his enlightenment, the Buddha went there and preached to the five ascetics, and each of them attained enlightenment. The Pāli canon describes their enlightenment as proceeding in two stages: first, when the Buddha preached the DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA (S. DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA) ("Discourse Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma"), Kaundinya became a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA) and in the subsequent days the other four did as well; and second, when the Buddha preached the (ANATTALAKKHAnASUTTA; S. *Anātmalaksanasutra) ("Discourse on the Mark of Nonself"), they all attained complete liberation as ARHATs.
Vestals enjoyed special privileges in the State, and in most respects were not subject to the Roman law. On state occasions they were preceded by a lictor and at public spectacles the best seats were reserved for them. In all the greater ceremonies and state festivals they took a prominent part. They had undisputed power to pardon any criminal whom they might meet when on his way to execution, providing the meeting was not prearranged. They could be buried within the walls, a privilege they shared with the Roman Emperor alone. Public slaves were appointed to serve them; they were the custodians of important state papers. They lived in almost royal splendor in the magnificent Atrium Vestae which adjoined the official fanum of the pontifex maximus himself. Their chief festival was the Vestalia, held on June 9th. From the central fire which they tended, the altars of other gods obtained their fires, and even distant colonies were not held to be consecrated until their own altar fires were lighted with fire from the central hearth. Compared with this cult in other parts of the world, especially in India where originally there was a lofty worship requiring the completest chastity and renunciation of the devadasis or nachnis of the temples, the cult in Rome, despite worldliness, seems to have suffered less degeneration than might have been expected from the theoretical and actual power surrounding it.
Vidvatsannyasa: Renunciation after the attainment of the knowledge of Brahman.
vidvat sannyasa. ::: renunciation after the attainment of the knowledge of Reality; renunciation by the wise
Vividisha-sannyasa: Renunciation with the intention of knowing Brahman.
vividisha sannyasa. ::: renunciation for the purpose of knowing Reality
“We do not seek to excise from our being all consciousness of the universe, but to realise God, Truth and Self in the universe as well as transcendent of it. We shall seek therefore not only the Ineffable, but also His manifestation as infinite being, consciousness and bliss embracing the universe and at play in it. For that triune infinity is His supreme manifestation and that we shall aspire to know, to share in and to become; and since we seek to realise this Trinity not only in itself but in its cosmic play, we shall aspire also to knowledge of and participation in the universal divine Truth, Knowledge, Will, Love which are His secondary manifestation, His divine becoming. With this too we shall aspire to identify ourselves, towards this too we shall strive to rise and, when the period of effort is passed, allow it by our renunciation of all egoism to draw us up into itself in our being and to descend into us and embrace us in all our becoming.” The Synthesis of Yoga
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49 Sri Aurobindo
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1 Rabia al-Adawiyya
1 Our Lady to Fr. Stefano Gobbi
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1 Kaivalya Upanishad
1 James Austin
1 Buddhist Texts
1 Book of Golden Precepts
1 Bhagavad Gita XVIII. 49
1 Bhagavad Gita.XII. 12
1 Bhagavad Gita. 18.11
1 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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1:The criterion is within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
2:An outer renunciation by itself does not liberate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sex, #KEYS
3:He who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
4:Renunciation of desires: the essential condition for realisation.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T2],#KEYS
5:The giver of the Mantra is the real Guru, for by the repetition of this Mantra one obtains dispassion, and renunciation. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
6:Renunciation is an indispensable instrument of our perfection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
7:Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an objec. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
8:Viveka, discrimination, and vairagya, renunciation, are the two great purifying agents for the soul. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
9:The worldy soul can burst through the meshes of Maya by the wings of discrimination and renunciation. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
10:Divine compassion which strengthens the arm and clarifies the knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
11:There is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
12:Sannyasa is only the renunciation of the 'I-thought', and not the rejection of the external objects. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
13:We must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
14:If through intense Vairagya (renunciation) one attains god, then the inordinate temptations of lust fall off. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
15:Desire is limitation and insecurity in a hunger for pleasure and satisfaction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
16:Renunciation is always in the mind, not in going to the forest or solitary places, or giving up one's duties. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
17:The renunciation of karma comes of itself when the love of God swells up. Let them work who are made to do so by God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
18:We must rest at nothing less than the All, nothing short of the utter transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
19:Renunciation is to go to the extreme, but also enjoyment is to be equally integral. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #KEYS
20:Its disguises are endless and it will cling to every shred of possible self-concealment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
21:Perfection comes by renunciation of desires and surrender to a higher Will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Practical Concerns in Work, #KEYS
22:Not by work, not by family, not by riches, but by renunciation great beings attain to immortality. ~ Kaivalya Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
23:The rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
24:One succeeds if one develops a strong spirit of renunciation. Give up at once, with determination, what you know to be unreal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
25:It is from the shoot of self-renunciation that there starts the sweet fruit of final deliverance. ~ Book of Golden Precepts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
26:Renunciation of all in desire is the condition of the free enjoyment of all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: The Inhabiting Godhead, Life and Action, #KEYS
27:A man has the spirit of true renunciation who, upon meeting a beautiful young woman, turns away from her, seeing her as his mother ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
28:The Son of God is also the Son of Man and both elements are necessary to the complete Christhood. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
29:With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
30:If by the grace of God the spirit of immediate renunciation comes to one, then one may get rid of the attachment to lust and wealth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
31:There are desirable states of the soul which it is dangerous to rest in after they have been mastered. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
32:The yogi's heart beats for God, as a mother's for her child. A Yogi has the intense feeling of renunciation and wants nothing except God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
33:Renunciation of Kama-Kanchana has been enjoyed by those leading a monastic life. Monks must not do so much as look at the picture of women. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
34:The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
35:A divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation #KEYS
36:Renunciation of the world is followed by peace; its desire brings sorrow. Restrain your desires and discipline your self. ~ Rabia al-Adawiyya, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
37:renunciation of life cannot be the goal of life nor rejection of the world the object for which the world was created. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
38:Renunciation is always in the mind, not in going to forests or solitary places or giving up one's duties. The main thing is to see that the mind does not turn outward but inward. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
39:We regard the world not as an invention of the devil or a self-delusion of the soul, but as a manifestation of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
40:Even divine realisations must not be clung to, if they are not the divine realisation in its utter essentiality and completeness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
41:The mind of a worldly person is, no doubt, like muddy water; but it can be made clear by a purifying agent. Discrimination and renunciation are the purifying agent. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
42:Two kinds of joy are there, O my brothers, and what are they? The joy to possess and the joy to renounce; but nobler is the joy of renunciation. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
43:Love cannot be used for the fulfilment of desire, for its nature is renunciation. Renunciation is the renunciation of ritual works and worldly affairs. ~ Narada Sutra, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
44:Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach,—no other renunciation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To Motilal Roy, #KEYS
45:It is impossible for man who has a body to abstain absolutely from all action, but whoever; renounces its fruits, is the man of true renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita. 18.11, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
46:Ten high virtues: benevolence; spiritual life; intelligence; renunciation; perseverance; energy; patience; truthfulness; love for others; equality of soul. ~ Sangiti Sutta, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
47:The external renunciation is not the essential, but even that is necessary for a time, indispensable in many things and sometimes useful in all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
48:Man cannot teach by his own power. One cannot conquer ignorance without the power of God. He who teaches men gets his power from God. None but a man of renunciation can teach others. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
49:Knowledge is better than practice, concentration excels knowledge, the renunciation of fruits concentration; peace is the immediate result of renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita.XII. 12, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
50:Go and preach the necessity of penance and conversion, of return to the Lord along the way of prayer and repentance, of renunciation of Satan and all his wiles, of evil and the tyranny of the passions." ~ Our Lady to Fr. Stefano Gobbi, #KEYS
51:It is quite natural that man forgets God. Therefore whenever the need arises, God Himself incarnates on earth and shows the path by Himself practicing Sadhana. This time He has also shown the example of renunciation. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
52:The way to realize God is through discrimination, renunciation, and yearning for Him. What kind of yearning? One should yearn for God as the cow, with yearning heart, runs after its calf. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
53:We must be prepared to leave behind on the path not only that which we stigmatise as evil, but that which seems to us to be good, yet is not the one good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
54:We prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
55:The renunciation intended is an absolute renunciation of the principle of desire founded on the principle of egoism and not a renunciation of world-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #KEYS
56:As you stabilize in the consciousness, dispassion for the body and for the expressions through the body occurs spontaneously. It is a natural renunciation, not a deliberate one. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
57:When the thought of a man is without attachment, when he has conquered himself and is rid of desire, by that renunciation he reaches a supreme perfection of quietude. ~ Bhagavad Gita XVIII. 49, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
58:Worldly people think highly of their wealth. They feel that there is nothing like it. But does God care for money? He wants from His devotees knowledge, devotion, discrimination, and renunciation. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
59:Altruism and indifference are often its most effective disguises; so draped, it will riot boldly in the very face of the divine spies who are missioned to hunt it out. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
60:Any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature, #KEYS
61:And if it is a play of the All-Existence, then we may well consent to play out our part in it with grace and courage, well take delight in the game along with our divine Playmate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
62:It is useless to grow pale ever the holy Scriptures end the sacred Shastras without a spirit of discrimination exempt from all passions. No spiritual progress can be made without discrimination and renunciation ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
63:The divine Narayana of whom the universe is only one ray is revealed and fulfilled in man; the complete man is Nara-Narayana and in that completeness he symbolises the supreme mystery of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
64:For God u must renounce 'lust & greed', then finer desires - desire for name & fame - finer & finer, by degrees. As renunciation has no limit, so bliss is also without any limit. Bliss comes out of renunciation. The more the renunciation, the more the bliss. ~ Swami Akhandananda, #KEYS
65:Renunciation and realization are the same. They are different aspects of the same state. Giving up the non-self is renunciation. Inhering in the Self is Jnana or Self Realization. One is the negative and the other the positive aspect of the same single truth. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
66:Bhakti is to keep the mind on God by chanting His name and glories ... Bhakti, love of God, is the essence of all spiritual discipline. Through love one acquires renunciation and discrimination naturally. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Ramakrishna, #KEYS
67:Apr 21 Our Master & Swamiji make a complete ideal. You are to advance with these ideals before you. What more? Look at their renunciation and spiritual practices. Again look at their feeling for the sufferings of the people & their attempts to ameliorate them. This is spiritual life.~ Swami Akhandananda, #KEYS
68:It is to have the soul free from craving and attachment, but free from the attachment to inaction as well as from the egoistic impulse to action, free from attachment to the forms of virtue as well as from the attraction to sin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
69:And if we can thus be free in the spirit, we shall find out all the wonder of God's workings; we shall find that in inwardly renouncing everything we have lost nothing. 'By all this abandoned thou shalt come to enjoy the All.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Renunciation,#KEYS
70:a sign of progress :::
We may even come to feel that the body is in a certain sense non-existent except as a sort of partial expression of our vital force and of our mentality. These experiences are signs that the mind is coming to a right poise regarding the body...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, 345,#KEYS
71:three knots binding us to our lower nature :::
Again our renunciation must obviously be an inward renunciation; especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the senses and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, [T5],#KEYS
72:three first approaches of Karma Yoga :::
Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature, - these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita's way of Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [105],#KEYS
73:powers of freedom from subjection to the body :::
By a similar process the habit by which the bodily nature associates certain forms and degrees of activity with strain, fatigue, incapacity can be rectified and the power, freedom, swiftness, effectiveness of the work whether physical or mental which can be done with this bodily instrument marvelously increased, doubled, tripled, decupled.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, 346,#KEYS
74:But you must remember one thing. One cannot see God sporting as man unless one has had the vision of Him. Do you know the sign of one who has God-vision? Such a man acquires the nature of a child. Why a child? Because God is like a child. So he who sees God becomes like a child.
God-vision is necessary. Now the question is, how can one get it? Intense renunciation is the means. A man should have such intense yearning for God that he can say, 'O Father of the universe, am I outside Your universe? Won't You be kind to me, You wretch? ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
75:
Sweet Mother, You have written: So long as you have to renounce anything, you are not on this path. But doesn't all renunciation begin when one is on the path?
What I call being on the path is being in a state of consciousness in which only union with the Divine has any value - this union is the only thing worth living, the sole object of aspiration. Everything else has lost all value and is not worth seeking, so there is no longer any question of renouncing it because it is no longer an object of desire. As long as union with the Divine is not the thing for which one lives, one is not yet on the path. 21 April 1965
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#KEYS
76:Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,
Signs that the gods had left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,
One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Self-conquest
When one conquers a difficulty or goes forward, it creates a right current in the atmosphere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Right Attitude towards Difficulties
Self-Conquest
Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation,#KEYS
77:If renunciation is not embraced
By the pure motivation of bodhicitta,
It will not become a cause for the perfect bliss of unsurpassed awakening,
So the wise should generate supreme bodhicitta.
Beings are swept along by the powerful current of the four rivers,
Tightly bound by the chains of their karma, so difficult to undo,
Ensnared within the iron trap of their self-grasping,
And enshrouded in the thick darkness of ignorance.
Again and yet again, they are reborn in limitless saṃsāra,
And constantly tormented by the three forms of suffering.
This is the current condition of all your mothers from previous lives—
Contemplate their plight and generate supreme bodhichitta. ~ Tsongkapa,#KEYS
78:What then are the lines of Karmayoga laid down by the Gita? Its key principle, its spiritual method, can be summed up as the union of two largest and highest states or powers of consciousness, equality and oneness. The kernel of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit. An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness. The kernal of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit. An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [95],#KEYS
79:renunciation as a means :::
Therefore renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. We shall have no attachment to our life in the world; if that attachment exists, we must renounce it and renounce utterly; but neither shall we have any attachment to the escape from the world, to salvation, to the great self-annihilation; if that attachment exists, that also we must renounce and renounce it utterly.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, 329,#KEYS
80:A MARWARI DEVOTEE: "Sir, what is the way?"
Two ways of God-realization
MASTER: "There are two ways. One is the path of discrimination, the other is that of love. Discrimination means to know the distinction between the Real and the unreal.
God alone is the real and permanent Substance; all else is illusory and impermanent.
The magician alone is real; his magic is illusory. This is discrimination.
"Discrimination and renunciation. Discrimination means to know the distinction between the Real and the unreal. Renunciation means to have dispassion for the things of the world. One cannot acquire them all of a sudden. They must be practised every day.
One should renounce 'woman and gold' mentally at first. Then, by the will of God, one can renounce it both mentally and outwardly. It is impossible to ask the people of Calcutta to renounce all for the sake of God. One has to tell them to renounce mentally. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
81:the best we can conceive as the thing to be done :::
The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can command in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,#KEYS
82:the great division :::
Secondly, with regard to the movements and experiences of the body the mind will come to know the Purusha seated within it as, first, the witness or observer of the movements and, secondly, the knower or perceiver of the experiences. It will cease to consider in thought or feel in sensation these movements and experiences as its own but rather consider and feel them as not its own, as operations of Nature governed by the qualities of Nature and their interaction upon each other. This detachment can be made so normal and carried so far that there will be a kind of division between the mind and the body and the former will observe and experience the hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue, depression, etc. of the physical being as if they were experiences of some other person with whom it has so close a rapport as to be aware of all that is going on within him. This division is a great means, a great step towards mastery; for the mind comes to observe these things first without being overpowered and finally without at all being affected by them, dispassionately, with clear understanding but with perfect detachment. This is the initial liberation of the mental being from servitude to the body; for by right knowledge put steadily into practice liberation comes inevitably
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, 345,#KEYS
83:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#KEYS
84:Here the formula of the supreme knowledge comes to our help; we have nothing to do in our essential standpoint with these distinctions, for there is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments, equal in the individual and the group, and to realise that, to express that, to serve that, to fulfil that is all that matters. Self-satisfaction and altruism, enjoyment and indifference are not the essential thing. If the realisation, fulfilment, service of the one Self demands from us an action that seems to others self-service or self-assertion in the egoistic sense or seems egoistic enjoyment and self-indulgence, that action we must do; we must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. The influence of the environment works often with great subtlety; we prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within; we are impelled to drape ourselves in the vow of poverty, or in the garb of service, or in outward proofs of indifference and renunciation and a spotless sainthood because that is what tradition and opinion demand of us and so we can make best an impression on our environment. But all this is vanity and delusion. We may be called upon to assume these things, for that may be the uniform of our service; but equally it may not. The eye of man outside matters nothing; the eye within is all.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
85:Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others,—though to God nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral Yoga
For a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral yoga
To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire a thing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, The Mother's Love,#KEYS
86:Karma Yoga, the Path of Works; :::
The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 39,#KEYS
87:When a corner of Maya, the illusion of individual life, is lifted before the eyes of a man in such sort that he no longer makes any egoistic difference between his own person and other men, that he takes as much interest in the sufferings of others as in his own and that he becomes succourable to the point of devotion, ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of others, then that man is able to recognise himself in all beings, considers as his own the infinite sufferings of all that lives and must thus appropriate to himself the sorrow of the world. No distress is alien to him. All the torments which he sees and can so rarely soften, all the torments of which he hears, those even which it is impossible for him to conceive, strike his spirit as if he were himself the victim. Insensible to the alternations of weal and woe which succeed each other in his destiny, delivered from all egoism, he penetrates the veils of the individual illusion : all that lives, all that suffers is equally near to his heart. He conceives the totality of things, their essence, their eternal flux, the vain efforts, the internal struggles and sufferings without end ; he sees to whatever side he turns his gaze man who suffers, the animal who suffers and a world that is eternally passing away. He unites himself henceforth to the sorrows of the world as closely as the egoist to his own person. How can he having such a knowledge of the world affirm by incessant desires his will to live, attach himself more and more to life and clutch it to him always more closely ? The man seduced by the illusion of individual life, a slave of his egoism, sees only the things that touch him personally and draws from them incessantly renewed motives to desire and to will : on the contrary one who penetrates the essence of things and dominates their totality, elevates himself to a state of voluntary renunciation, resignation and true tranquillity. ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
88:indifference to things of the body :::
This detachment of the mind must be strengthened by a certain attitude of indifference to the things of the body; we must not care essentially about its sleep or its waking, its movement or its rest, its pain or its pleasure, its health or ill-health, its vigour or its fatigue, its comfort or its discomfort, or what it eats or drinks. This does not mean that we shall not keep the body in right order so far as we can; we have not to fall into violent asceticisms or a positive neglect of the physical frame. But we have not either to be affected in mind by hunger or thirst or discomfort or ill-health or attach the importance which the physical and vital man attaches to the things of the body, or indeed any but a quite subordinate and purely instrumental importance. Nor must this instrumental importance be allowed to assume the proportions of a necessity; we must not for instance imagine that the purity of the mind depends on the things we eat or drink, although during a certain stage restrictions in eating and drinking are useful to our inner progress; nor on the other hand must we continue to think that the dependence of the mind or even of the life on food and drink is anything more than a habit, a customary relation which Nature has set up between these principles. As a matter of fact the food we take can be reduced by contrary habit and new relation to a minimum without the mental or vital vigour being in any way reduced; even on the contrary with a judicious development they can be trained to a greater potentiality of vigour by learning to rely on the secret fountains of mental and vital energy with which they are connected more than upon the minor aid of physical aliments. This aspect of self-discipline is however more important in the Yoga of self-perfection than here; for our present purpose the important point is the renunciation by the mind of attachment to or dependence on the things of the body.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from Subjection to the Body,#KEYS
89:At the basis of this collaboration there is necessarily the will to change, no longer to be what one is, for things to be no longer what they are. There are several ways of reaching it, and all the methods are good when they succeed! One may be deeply disgusted with what exists and wish ardently to come out of all this and attain something else; one may - and this is a more positive way - one may feel within oneself the touch, the approach of something positively beautiful and true, and willingly drop all the rest so that nothing may burden the journey to this new beauty and truth.
What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a reality - perhaps of a not too distant future - a reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighed down by old habits, will surely have the good fortune not only to see but to realise. People sleep, they forget, they take life easy - they forget, forget all the time.... But if we could remember... that we are at an exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.
So, the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when one doesn't have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support, this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.
We can participate in it, we can become this new world. And truly, when one has such a marvellous opportunity, one should be ready to give up everything for its sake. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, [T1],#KEYS
90:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #KEYS
91:The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, clear state of mind and heart is established.
This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalini, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 36,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Renunciation is of the mind. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 2:Renunciation is in our blood. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 3:No freedom without renunciation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 4:There is no end to renunciation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 5:The secret of happiness is renunciation. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 6:There is nothing so high as renunciation of self. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 7:The price of civilization is instinctual renunciation. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 8:Self-love is the first teacher of self-renunciation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 9:Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 10:Renunciation means that none can serve both God and Mammon. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 11:Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 12:Everything is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 13:Highest love for God can never be achieved without renunciation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 14:Renunciation of thinking is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 15:The test of progress is the amount of renunciation that one has attained. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 16:Renunciation-is a piercing Virtue-The letting go A Presence-for an Expectation-. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 17:What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove 18:The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 19:Renunciation, and renunciation alone, is the real secret, the Mulamantra, of all Realisation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 20:We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 21:It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 22:Many a time comes when we want to interpret our weakness and cowardice as forgiveness and renunciation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 23:Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 24:Faith implies four things: self-renunciation, reliance with utter confidence on Christ, obedience, and a changed life. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 25:What is marriage but the renunciation of unchastity? The savage does not marry. Man marries because he renounces. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 26:Renunciation is always the ideal of every race; only other races do not know what they are made to do by nature unconsciously. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 27:Each and every object in Nature teaches us something. Renunciation and selflessness are the greatest lessons to learn from Nature. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 28:I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 29:Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 30:Q: How am I to practice desirelessness? M: No need of practice. No need of any acts of renunciation. Just turn your mind away, that is all. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 31:What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 32:Always remember that renunciation is the root idea. Unless one is initiated into this idea, not even Brahma and the World - gods have the power to attain Mukti ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 33:& 34:In all our Yogas this renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping-stone and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture - renunciation. This is religion - renunciation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 35:We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 36:I have lived hard and ruined the essential innocence [sic] in myself that could make it that possible [sic], and the fact that I have abused liquor is something to be paid for with suffering and death perhaps but not renunciation. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 37:Days come and ages pass, and it is ever he who moves my heart in many a name, in many a guise, in many a rapture of joy and of sorrow. Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 38:Renunciation is the background of all religious thought wherever it be, and you will always find that as this idea of renunciation lessens, the more will the senses creep into the field of religion, and spirituality will decrease in the same ratio. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 39:It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical religion-the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing. But to get the higher. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 40:To realize the spirit as spirit is practical religion. Everything else is good so far as it leads to this one grand idea. That realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation-renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 41:This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Real. We must go to the Real. Renunciation will take us to It. Renunciation is the very basis of our true life; every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 42:If we spend the time we waste in sighing for the perfect golden fruit in fulfilling the conditions of its growth, happiness will come, must come. It is guaranteed in the very laws of the universe. If it involves some chastening and renunciation, well, the fruit will be all the sweeter for this touch of holiness. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 43:Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics ... the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 44:Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 45:In any activity, we have to know what to expect, how to reach our objectives and what capacity we possess for the proposed task. The only people who can say they have renounced the fruit are those who, thus equipped, feel no desire for the results of the conquest, and remain absorbed in combat. You can renounce the fruit, but this renunciation does not mean indifference toward the result. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 46:I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 47:Renunciation - non-resistance - non-destructiveness - are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. Keep the ideal in view and work towards it. None can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state yet when the ideal can be realised in society. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 48:But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 49:Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 50:Tremendous purity, tremendous renunciation, is the one secret of spirituality. “Neither through wealth, nor through progeny, but through renunciation alone is immortality to be reached,” say the Vedas. “Sell all that thou hast and give to poor, and follow me,” says the Christ. So all great saints and prophets have expressed it, and have carried it out in their lives. How can great spirituality come without renunciation? ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 51:Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and everything shall be added unto you. This is the one great duty, this is renunciation. Live for an ideal, and leave no place in the mind for anything else. Let us put forth all our energies to acquire that which never fails-our spiritual perfection. If we have true yearning for realization, we must struggle, and through struggle growth will come. We shall make mistakes, but they may be angels unawares. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 52:The way to liberation lies through this realization of the Self, by God-communion and by remaining in this God-aware state of the soul while performing dutiful actions. Any individual can reach this supreme actionless state by the renunciation of all fruits of actions: performing all dutiful acts without harbouring in his heart any likes and dislikes, possessing no material desires, and feeling God, not the ego, as the Doer of all actions. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 53:It is human self-renunciation when a man denies himself and the world opens up to him. But it is Christian self-renunciation when he denies himself and, because the world precisely for this shuts itself up to him, he must as one thrust out by the world seek God's confidence. The double-danger lies precisely in meeting opposition there where he had expected to find support, and he has to turn about twice; whereas the merely human self-resignation turns once. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 54:That intense faith in another world, that intense hatred for this world, that intense power of renunciation, that intense faith in God, that intense faith in the immortal soul, is in you. I challenge anyone to give it up. You cannot. You may try to impose upon me by becoming materialists, by talking materialism for a few months, but I know what you are; if I take you by the hand, back you come as good theists as ever were born. How can you change your nature? ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 55:Love makes no distinction between man and man, between an Aryan and a Mlechchha, between a Brâhmana and a Pariah, nor even between a man and a woman. Love makes the whole universe as one's own home. True progress is slow but sure. Work among those young men who can devote heart and soul to this one duty - the duty of raising the masses of India. Awake them, unite them, and inspire them with this spirit of renunciation; it depends wholly on the young people of India. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 56:Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfill your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 57:Chastity, non-injury, forgiving even the greatest enemy, truth, faith in the Lord, these are all different Vrittis. Be not afraid if you are not perfect in all of these; work, they will come. He who has given up all attachment, all fear, and all anger, he whose whole soul has gone unto the Lord, he who has taken refuge in the Lord, whose heart has become purified, with whatsoever desire he comes to the Lord, He will grant that to him. Therefore worship Him through knowledge, love, or renunciation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 58:There can be no love so long as there is lust- even a speck of it, as it were, in the heart. None but men of great renunciation, none but mighty giants among men, have a right to that Love Divine. If that highest ideal of love is held out to the masses, it will indirectly tend to stimulate its worldly which dominates the heart of man- for, meditating on love to God by thinking of oneself as His wife or beloved, one would very likely be thinking most of the time of one's own wife- the result is too obvious to point out. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 59:In diligent exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and non-being, that you may arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with Him who transcends all being and all knowledge. For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and of all things you may be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine Darkness. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 60:Do thou, dear Timothy, in the diligent exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and non-being, that thou mayest arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with Him who transcends all being and all knowledge. For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of thyself and of all things, thou mayest be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential radiance of the divine Darkness. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 61:Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: & *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Renunciation is of the mind. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
2:Cultivate the art of renunciation. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
3:Renunciation is in our blood. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
4:Renunciation is submission to time. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
5:No freedom without renunciation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
6:There is no end to renunciation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
7:Renunciation is everyone's prerogative. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
8:With renunciation life begins. ~ Natalie Clifford Barney, #NFDB
9:As a parent you have to do some renunciation. ~ Robert Bly, #NFDB
10:The secret of happiness is renunciation. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
11:Renunciation without aversion is not lasting. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
12:Renunciation is freedom. Not wanting is power. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
13:Renunciation is liberation. Not wanting is power. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
14:Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
15:There is nothing so high as renunciation of self. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
16:The price of civilization is instinctual renunciation. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
17:There is no merit in the renunciation of a beggar. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
18:Self-love is the first teacher of self-renunciation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
19:The renunciation of the Gita is the acid test of faith. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
20:cleanliness, steadiness and self-control; renunciation of the ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
21:a starched collar affected him as a renunciation of freedom. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
22:Love determined God to the renunciation of his divinity. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
23:Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
24:The older I get, the more beauty I see in the word renunciation. ~ Robert Bly, #NFDB
25:The criterion is within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
26:Renunciation means that none can serve both God and Mammon. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
27:Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
28:the renunciation of aggression is inherent in its constitution. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
29:renunciation of selfishness in thought, word, and action ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
30:Everything is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
31:Highest love for God can never be achieved without renunciation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
32:…the more emphatic the renunciation, the less absolute its character. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
33:Liberty in acceptance; peace in enclosure; happiness in renunciation. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
34:Renunciation is realizing that nostalgia for samsara4 is full of shit. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
35:Renunciation of thinking is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
36:The secret of a happy life lies in renunciation. Renunciation is life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
37:Renunciation is the art of removing the barriers between one’s self and others. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
38:To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
39:Desirelessness or renunciation does not come for the mere talking about it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
40:The test of progress is the amount of renunciation that one has attained. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
41:An outer renunciation by itself does not liberate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sex, #NFDB
42:Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
43:Renunciation-is a piercing Virtue-The letting go A Presence-for an Expectation-. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
44:That matchless remedy (for self realisation) is renunciation of fruits of action. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
45:What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
46:On God's part creation is not an act of self-expansion but of restraint and renunciation. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
47:In spiritual matters, the only real glory is in the renunciation of glorifying self. ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
48:Seriousness is not Calvinistic, it's not a renunciation, it's the very opposite of that. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
49:The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
50:Renunciation--is a piercing Virtue--
The letting go
A Presence--for an Expectation ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
51:these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
52:He who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
53:Renunciation of desires: the essential condition for realisation.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T2],#NFDB
54:Renunciation, and renunciation alone, is the real secret, the Mulamantra, of all Realisation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
55:We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their pain and renunciation ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
56:Knowledge and devotion, to be true, have to stand the test of renunciation of the fruits of action. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
57:Renunciation is an indispensable instrument of our perfection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
58:Renunciation is the central sun, round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
59:Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away. ~ Robert Baker Aitken, #NFDB
60:We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
61:It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
62:Not by work, not by family, not by riches, but by renunciation great beings attain to immortality. ~ Kaivalya Upanishad, #NFDB
63:How seek the way which leadeth to our wishes? By renouncing our wishes. The crown of excellence is renunciation. ~ Hafez, #NFDB
64:Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an objec. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
65:Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is short-lived, however hard you may try. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
66:Sannyasa is only the renunciation of the ‘I-thought’, and not the rejection of the external objects. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
67:What an unilateral life, when from the material of a renunciation, we must fashion something we love. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
68:It is from the shoot of self-renunciation that there starts the sweet fruit of final deliverance. ~ Book of Golden Precepts, #NFDB
69:Many a time comes when we want to interpret our weakness and cowardice as forgiveness and renunciation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
70:I believe that renunciation of the Soviet Union was an expression of the free will of the Russian people. ~ Vladislav Surkov, #NFDB
71:It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct.... ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
72:Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
73:Divine compassion which strengthens the arm and clarifies the knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
74:Therefore by the example of Abram, entire self-renunciation is enjoined, that we may live and die to God alone. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
75:There is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
76:A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
77:We must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
78:We need a total renunciation of war. We must renounce war totally, because now we can destroy all life on earth. ~ Benjamin Creme, #NFDB
79:According to the letter of the Gita, it is possible to say that warfare is consistent with renunciation of fruit. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
80:There is one road to peace and happiness (keep the thought near by morning, noon and night): renunciation of externals; ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
81:Desire is limitation and insecurity in a hunger for pleasure and satisfaction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
82:Faith implies four things: self-renunciation, reliance with utter confidence on Christ, obedience, and a changed life. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
83:What is marriage but the renunciation of unchastity? The savage does not marry. Man marries because he renounces. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
84:Renunciation is dropping the fear, anger, respect, and disrespect but continuously radiating unconditional love for everyone. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
85:We must rest at nothing less than the All, nothing short of the utter transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
86:one is attractive due to (1) wealth, (2) power, (3) fame, (4) beauty, (5) wisdom and (6) renunciation. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup da, #NFDB
87:Renunciation is transforming all negative and positive energies of life into unconditional love for every being in the universe. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
88:Renunciation is to go to the extreme, but also enjoyment is to be equally integral. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #NFDB
89:Its disguises are endless and it will cling to every shred of possible self-concealment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
90:Perfection comes by renunciation of desires and surrender to a higher Will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Practical Concerns in Work, #NFDB
91:Renunciation, or refusing to identify with that which one gathers (however precious it may be), is the ultimate doorway to knowing. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
92:Borelius inquires mockingly: “Why didn’t he renounce his renunciation? Or renounce the idea of renouncing his renunciation? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
93:The rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
94:Asceticism is giving up selfish activities, as poets know, and the wise declare renunciation is giving up fruits of action. — Krishna. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
95:O Lord, self-renunciation is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, rather in this word is included all perfection. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
96:Renunciation is always the ideal of every race; only other races do not know what they are made to do by nature unconsciously. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
97:The giver of the Mantra is the real Guru, for by the repetition of this Mantra one obtains dispassion and renunciation. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
98:He who gives up action falls. He who gives up the reward rises. But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
99:Renunciation of all in desire is the condition of the free enjoyment of all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: The Inhabiting Godhead, Life and Action, #NFDB
100:The Son of God is also the Son of Man and both elements are necessary to the complete Christhood. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
101:With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
102:Each life has its share of heroism, an obscure heroism, born of abdication, of renunciation and acceptance under the merciless whip of fate. ~ Mariama B, #NFDB
103:Each and every object in Nature teaches us something. Renunciation and selflessness are the greatest lessons to learn from Nature. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
104:Not by refraining from action does man attain freedom from action. Not by mere renunciation does he attain supreme perfection. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
105:She had learned the lesson of renunciation and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
106:An act of renunciation is an act of union with God. The Divine Master looks lovingly upon a person who gains a victory over self. ~ Madeleine Sophie Barat, #NFDB
107:The peace within and flowing from sacred spaces and architecture places is clothed in forgiveness, renunciation, and reconciliation. ~ Norris Brock Johnson, #NFDB
108:I dare predict that the influence of the Treaty of Renunciation of War will be felt in a large proportion of all future international acts. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
109:I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
110:There are desirable states of the soul which it is dangerous to rest in after they have been mastered. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
111:Every choice is a renunciation. Indeed. Every choice is a thousand renunciations. To choose one thing is to turn one's back on many others. ~ Ronald Rolheiser, #NFDB
112:Renunciation is a commitment to let go of the things that create suffering. It is founded on the intention to stop hurting ourselves and others. ~ Noah Levine, #NFDB
113:Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
114:Love is then renunciation of all possession, of all confusion. One renounces being in order that there may be that being which one is not. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
115:Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
116:every choice has its obverse, that is to say a renunciation, and so there is no difference between the act of choosing and the act of renouncing ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
117:Solomon’s Song belongs to those who have made the greatest renunciation of all: the renunciation of self. For them, only the Beloved counts. ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
118:The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
119:Every choice has its obverse, that is to say a renunciation, and so there is no difference between the act of choosing and the act of renouncing. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
120:Renunciation which is natural does not herald its coming by the blowing of trumpets. It comes in imperceptibly without letting anyone notice it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
121:Two kinds of joy are there, O my brothers, and what are they? The joy to possess and the joy to renounce; but nobler is the joy of renunciation. ~ Buddhist Texts, #NFDB
122:That parrot's non-co-operation with the cage, with its master, will live for ever because it looks upon renunciation, non-co-operation, as a joy. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
123:Marriage is a state of penance. It calls for prayer, fasting, alms-deeds, renunciation, and the intention to increase the Kingdom of God. ~ Anne Catherine Emmerich, #NFDB
124:Renunciation - that is the great fact we all, individuals and classes, have to learn. In trying to avoid it we bring misery to ourselves and others. ~ Beatrice Webb, #NFDB
125:There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
126:Where renunciation and longing for liberation are weak, tranquillity and the other virtues are a mere appearance, like the mirage in the desert. ~ Adi Shankaracharya, #NFDB
127:Love cannot be used for the fulfilment of desire, for its nature is renunciation. Renunciation is the renunciation of ritual works and worldly affairs. ~ Narada Sutra, #NFDB
128:Truth, purity, self-control, firmness, fearlessness, humility, unity, peace, and renunciation - these are the inherent qualities of a civil resister. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
129:Sovereign King of Detachment and Renunciation, Emperor of Death and Shipwreck, living dream that gradually wanders among the worlds ruins and wastes! ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
130:The true strength of the Christian is the power of truth and love, which leads to the renunciation of all violence. Faith and violence are incompatible. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
131:What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
132:It is impossible for man who has a body to abstain absolutely from all action, but whoever; renounces its fruits, is the man of true renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita. 18.11, #NFDB
133:It is not possible to acquire renunciation all at once. By constantly hearing about renunciation one's desire for worldly objects gradually wears away. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
134:Refraining from harmful speech and action is outer renunciation; choosing not to escape the underlying feelings is inner renunciation. ~ Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully, #NFDB
135:In a truly global world, the renunciation of violent reprisal is bound to become, in a more and more obvious way, the indispensable condition of our survival. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
136:Renunciation made for the sake of service is an ineffable joy of which none can deprive anyone, because that nectar springs from within and sustains life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
137:Ten high virtues: benevolence; spiritual life; intelligence; renunciation; perseverance; energy; patience; truthfulness; love for others; equality of soul. ~ Sangiti Sutta, #NFDB
138:The highest and greatest goal that every soul has to reach is God. As everything needs renunciation, that highest goal needs the highest renunciation. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
139:renunciation of life cannot be the goal of life nor rejection of the world the object for which the world was created. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
140:To follow Jesus means self-renunciation and absolute adherence to him, and therefore a will dominated by lust can never be allowed to do what it likes. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
141:At one time I thought that if I could really understand renunciation and bodhichitta from the depths of my heart, then, for this lifetime that would be enough. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
142:We regard the world not as an invention of the devil or a self-delusion of the soul, but as a manifestation of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
143:If our life is not a course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians. ~ William Law, #NFDB
144:,There is never a moonlight night but wicked ideas in evil souls writhe like serpents in nests, and charitable ones sprout lilies of renunciation and dedication. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
145:Always remember that renunciation is the root idea. Unless one is initiated into this idea, not even Brahma and the World - gods have the power to attain Mukti ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
146:Knowledge is better than practice, concentration excels knowledge, the renunciation of fruits concentration; peace is the immediate result of renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita.XII. 12, #NFDB
147:A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
148:Even divine realisations must not be clung to, if they are not the divine realisation in its utter essentiality and completeness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
149:A man of conscience is one who never purchases comfort, well-being, success, public prestige, or approval by prevalent opinion if the price is the renunciation of truth. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
150:The life of Gautama Buddha illustrates the power of service, compassion and, most importantly, renunciation. He was convinced that material wealth is not the sole goal. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
151:The recollected go forth to lives of renunciation. They take no pleasure in a fixed abode. Like wild swans abandoning a pool, they leave one resting place after another. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
152:There is a great force in renunciation of power that those who are blinded by the lust for domination cannot understand because those who truly love do not desire power. ~ Alison Croggon, #NFDB
153:A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. People ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
154:Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach,—no other renunciation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To Motilal Roy, #NFDB
155:Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily and heartily: they have nothing to lose and hope for little. In renunciation lies a delicious taste of simplicity and deep peace. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
156:When the thought of a man is without attachment, when he has conquered himself and is rid of desire, by that renunciation he reaches a supreme perfection of quietude. ~ Bhagavad Gita XVIII. 49, #NFDB
157:His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him to make his contribution to the life of the community. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
158:The external renunciation is not the essential, but even that is necessary for a time, indispensable in many things and sometimes useful in all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
159:"I do not want to get material life, do not want the sense-life, but something higher." That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
160:Every time we discerningly renounce a possession, we free up energy that can be channeled into the pursuit of dharma. Renunciation was never meant to be for its own sake, but for the sake ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
161:Buddha gave up his throne and renounced his position, that was true renunciation; but there cannot be any question of renunciation in the case of a beggar who has nothing to renounce. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
162:This is not the man who ran away from something, but
the man who ran towards something. The man destined no longer
to seek but to fulfill himself. Not renunciation, but acceptance. ~ Henry Miller,#NFDB
163:The way to realize God is through discrimination, renunciation, and yearning for Him. What kind of yearning? One should yearn for God as the cow, with yearning heart, runs after its calf. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
164:One felt that in her renunciation of life she had deliberately abandoned those places in which she might at least have been able to see the man she loved, for others where he had never trod. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
165:In all our Yogas this renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping-stone and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture - renunciation. This is religion - renunciation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
166:We must be prepared to leave behind on the path not only that which we stigmatise as evil, but that which seems to us to be good, yet is not the one good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
167:Those... who find delight in freedom from attachment in the renunciation of clinging, free from the inflow of thoughts, they are like shining lights, having reached final liberation in the world. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
168:Every time we discerningly renounce a possession, we free up energy that can be channeled into the pursuit of dharma. Renunciation was never meant to be for its own sake, but for the sake of dharma. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
169:shaking people up.” Finally, art was for both of them not an end in itself but a way of achieving an ascetic renunciation of the world. “Art should be given the chance to phase itself out,” Gould ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
170:Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word decide means “slay,” as in homicide or suicide). ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
171:We prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
172:The renunciation intended is an absolute renunciation of the principle of desire founded on the principle of egoism and not a renunciation of world-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #NFDB
173:Those who conquer their minds are beings of renunciation and detachment. They are beings of renunciation and detachment they are lovingly focused on the True One, they realize and understand themselves. ~ Guru Nanak, #NFDB
174:What the warrior renounces is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself more available, more gentle and open to others. ~ Chogyam Trungpa, #NFDB
175:It would not be going too far to assert that ... conflict confronts every woman who ventures upon a career of her own and who is ... unwilling to pay for her daring with the renunciation of her femininity. ~ Karen Horney, #NFDB
176:Altruism and indifference are often its most effective disguises; so draped, it will riot boldly in the very face of the divine spies who are missioned to hunt it out. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
177:An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain, the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned for ever and quicken and purify the ideal as time passes. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
178:Bhakti is to keep the mind on God by chanting His name and glories.... Bhakti, love of God, is the essence of all spiritual discipline. Through love one acquires renunciation and discrimination naturally. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
179:There are Tantrics who deliberately seek to do more active forms of renunciation, so transgression of social norms and breaking of taboo, and breaking of social taboos especially, is a form of renunciation. ~ Zeena Schreck, #NFDB
180:Don't love too blindly: blindly you will love if you love at all, but a little care is still possible to a well-disciplined heart. May that heart be yours as it was not mine. Cultivate the art of renunciation. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
181:It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
182:Heroes abound at the dawn of civilizations, during pre-Homeric and Gothic epochs, when people, not having yet experienced spiritual torture, satisfy their thirst for renunciation through a derivative: heroism. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
183:Every time we are willing to let the story line go, and every time we are willing to let go at the end of the out-breath, that's fundamentally renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
184:My life had become weariness. It had wandered in a maze of unhappiness that led to renunciation and nothingness; it was bitter with the salt of all human things; yet it had laid up riches, riches to be proud of. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
185:Any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature, #NFDB
186:It is useless to grow pale ever the holy Scriptures end the sacred Shastras without a spirit of discrimination exempt from all passions. No spiritual progress can be made without discrimination and renunciation ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
187:We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
188:Buddha began to spread his philosophy, which propagated that all sorrows arise from desire; so to end sorrow, one must give up desire. The sanyas tradition, renunciation of material life, took root in a big way. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
189:Explosive force of any mortification. Every vanquished desire affords us power. We have the more hold over this world the further we withdraw from it, the less we adhere to it. Renunciation confers an infinite power. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
190:And if it is a play of the All-Existence, then we may well consent to play out our part in it with grace and courage, well take delight in the game along with our divine Playmate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
191:People who are involved in self-discovery lead different types of lives. The lives they lead are not necessarily the lives of renunciation. Rather, it is a structuring of the elements in your life in a particular way. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
192:...the church I mentioned will be established, but its foundation, in order to be truly solid, will be dug in flesh, its walls made from the cement of renunciation, tears, agony, anguish, every conceivable form of death. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
193:Both renunciation of action and the performance of action lead to Nirvana (Liberation); but these performance of action is superior to renunciation of action. The action of today becomes the destiny of tomorrow. ~ Chinmayananda Saraswati, #NFDB
194:Sattva brings non-attachment and infuses in the mind discrimination and renunciation. It is the Rajasic mind that causes the ideas ‘I’ and ‘mine’ and the difference of body, caste, creed, colour, order of life, etc. ~ Sivananda Saraswati, #NFDB
195:Faith itself has no merit; in fact, by its nature it is self-emptying. It involves our complete renunciation of any confidence in our own righteousness and a relying entirely on the perfect righteousness and death of Christ. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
196:Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
197:The renunciation of the child’s sexual ambitions and dyadic unity with the mother is established through the father’s presence, which stands for the regulating, organizing, symbolizing functions of language itself. Lacan ~ Stephen A Mitchell, #NFDB
198:And the cancer deaths of those harder to describe as losers, like Freud and Wittgenstein, have been diagnosed as the gruesome penalty exacted for a lifetime of instinctual renunciation. (Few remember that Rimbaud died of cancer.) ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
199:Agrarian Anabaptists, Christian Scientists, and Samurai are among the rare examples of renunciation stemming from an unwillingness to sacrifice the spiritual qualities of community life. Evidently there is no separate salvation. ~ Stephanie Mills, #NFDB
200:The Pali word parami refers to ten wholesome qualities in our minds and the accumulated power they bring to us: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, lovingkindness, and equanimity. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
201:I have lived hard and ruined the essential innocence [sic] in myself that could make it that possible [sic], and the fact that I have abused liquor is something to be paid for with suffering and death perhaps but not renunciation. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
202:The divine Narayana of whom the universe is only one ray is revealed and fulfilled in man; the complete man is Nara-Narayana and in that completeness he symbolises the supreme mystery of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
203:Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenuous. It is not knowledge, not content of feeling... it is not duty and not renunciation, it is not restriction: but in the infinite extent of the universe it is a direction of the heart. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
204:Bhakti is to keep the mind on God by chanting His name and glories ... Bhakti, love of God, is the essence of all spiritual discipline. Through love one acquires renunciation and discrimination naturally. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Ramakrishna, #index, #NFDB
205:1. Is anything impossible for the grace of God? Suppose you bring a light into a room that has been dark a thousand years; does it remove the darkness little by little? The room is lighted all at once. Intense renunciation is what is needed. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
206:The question is, can poverty be simulated? Poverty, after all, is not just a question of having no money or no possessions. Poverty is about having no power.
The battle of the poor and the powerless is one of reclamation, not renunciation. ~ Arundhati Roy,#NFDB
207:Days come and ages pass, and it is ever he who moves my heart in many a name, in many a guise, in many a rapture of joy and of sorrow. Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
208:Hitler, repeating his admiration for the British Empire, his search for an understanding, and that his only demand on Britain was the return of the former German colonies, blamed the renunciation of the naval pact on Britain’s ‘encirclement policy’. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
209:Christians who remain faithful to their baptismal vows can expect the same heavenly reward: heaven is not arranged in first-class, second-class, and third-class compartments, according to the degree of renunciation one has practiced in this life. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
210:When the boy headed off into the Alaska bush, he entertained no illusions that he was trekking into a land of milk and honey; peril, adversity, and Tolstoyan renunciation were precisely what he was seeking. And that is what he found, in abundance. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
211:Freedom, that is to say direct experience of samadhi, can be attained only by disciplined conduct and renunciation of sensual desires and appetites. This is brought about through adherence to the ‘twin pillars’ of yoga, abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
212:A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
213:Renunciation is the background of all religious thought wherever it be, and you will always find that as this idea of renunciation lessens, the more will the senses creep into the field of religion, and spirituality will decrease in the same ratio. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
214:Let us never be afraid of innocent joy; God is good and what he does is well done; resign yourself to everything, even happiness; ask for the spirit of sacrifice, of detachment, of renunciation, and above all, for the spirit of joy and gratitude. ~ Henri Fr d ric Amiel, #NFDB
215:He was a worker whose only desire was to penetrate with all his forces into the humble and difficult significance of his tools. Therein lay a certain renunciation of Life, but in just this renunciation lay his triumph, for Life entered into his work. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
216:The common mistake of the religious celibate has been to suppose that the highest spiritual life absolutely demands the renunciation of sexuality, as if the knowledge of God were an alternative to the knowledge of woman, or to any other form of experience. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
217:There is no task as urgent for us as to learn daily how to die, but our knowledge of death is not increased by the renunciation of life; only the ripe fruit of the here and now that has been seized and bitten will spread its indescribable taste in us. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
218:Meditation means this opening out of the soul to the Divine and letting the Divine shine in without obstruction from the personal self. Therefore it means renunciation. It means throwing away everything that one has, and waiting empty for the light to come in. ~ Annie Besant, #NFDB
219:In strength, the fear of enemies, In beauty, the fear of old age, In knowledge, the fear of defeat, In virtue, the fear of scandal, In the body, the fear of death. In this life all is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless. (In Search of God and ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
220:The Sermon on the Mount...went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. My young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, the `Light of Asia' and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
221:In the Bible, man is only free to submit or be damned. His one freedom is the renunciation of that freedom. He finds his “salvation” by freely accepting his subjugation. The Christian ideal, says Saint Paul, is to be freely “subservient to God” (Romans 6:22). ~ Alain de Benoist, #NFDB
222:To be ignorant or unconvinced of one's own needs has become the unforgivable anti-social act. The good citizen is one who imputes standardized needs to himself with such conviction that he drowns out any desire for alternatives, much less the renunciation of need. ~ Ivan Illich, #NFDB
223:States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
224:It is to have the soul free from craving and attachment, but free from the attachment to inaction as well as from the egoistic impulse to action, free from attachment to the forms of virtue as well as from the attraction to sin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
225:Senator Lugar will also travel to Libya for official meetings as a part of the president's initiative to move toward more normal relations reflecting that country's renunciation of terrorism and abandonment of its weapons of mass destruction and longer range missiles. ~ Dana Perino, #NFDB
226:Zarathustra received his revelations from the archangels at age thirty, when he began his prophetic mission; Siddhartha's great renunciation of his princely life took place in his thirtieth year. Thoreau at age thirty finished his self-imposed isolation at Walden Pond. ~ Kevin Dann, #NFDB
227:I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
228:Science, I repeat, produced many 'saints,' dedicating their lives with monastic devotion to their discipline-but no notable rebellious martyrs against the political establishment. Yet, as we shall note later, that alienation and renunciation are at last perhaps under way. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
229:It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical religion-the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing. But to get the higher. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
230:So few things we need to know.
And the old wisdoms shudder in us and grow slack.
Like renunciation. Like the melancholy beauty
of giving it all up. Like walking steadfast
in the rhythms, winter light and summer dark.
And the time for cutting furrows and the dance ~ Robert Hass,#NFDB
231:I got about half the time I wanted to write poetry. I got about half the time I needed to be a father. So there is something in adulthood that has to do with accepting the half of things, allowing a renunciation of the other half, accepting half a basket instead of a full basket. ~ Robert Bly, #NFDB
232:For a moment, he thought: "I could give up magic for her," but immediately realized how foolish that thought was. Love didn't require that kind of renunciation. True love allowed each person to follow their own path, knowing that they would never lose touch with their Soul Mate. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
233:Patriotism is for the ruled a renunciation of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish submission to those who are in power. Patriotism in its simplest significance is for the rulers nothing but a tool for attaining their ambitious and selfish ends. Patriotism is slavery. ~ Keith Giles, #NFDB
234:From what you know of her, you will not be surprised that she threw some exaggeration and wilfulness, some pride and impetuosity, even into her self-renunciation; her own life was still a drama for her, in which she demanded of herself that her part should be played with intensity. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
235:To realize the spirit as spirit is practical religion. Everything else is good so far as it leads to this one grand idea. That realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation-renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
236:Religion and practical life are not different. To take sanyas (renunciation) is not to abandon life. The real spirit is to make the country, your family, work together instead of working only for your own. The step beyond is to serve humanity and the next step is to serve God. ~ Bal Gangadhar Tilak, #NFDB
237:Yes - it was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities , and she saw that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.
"The House of Mirth ~ Edith Wharton,#NFDB
238:This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Real. We must go to the Real. Renunciation will take us to It. Renunciation is the very basis of our true life; every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
239:Our camera does not produce pretty pictures, but exact duplications that, through our renunciation of photographic effects, turn out to be relatively objective. The photo can optically replace its object to a certain degree. This takes on special meaning if the object cannot be preserved. ~ Bernd Becher, #NFDB
240:Renunciation is not about pushing something away, it is about letting go. It's facing the fact that certain things cause us pain, and they cause other people pain. Renunciation is a commitment to let go of things that create suffering. It is the intention to stop hurting ourselves and others. ~ Noah Levine, #NFDB
241:He reminds us that true renunciation is mental, not necessarily physical. We are not required to disown our husbands or wives and turn our children out of doors. We must only try to realize that they are not really ours; to love them as dwelling-places of Brahman, not as mere individuals. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
242:That renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left? ~ Jennifer Haigh, #NFDB
243:There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
244:I'll be in an institution for paupers, happy in my utter defeat, mixed up with the rabble of would-be geniuses who were no more than beggars with dreams, thrown in with the anonymous throng of those who didn't have strength enough to conquer nor renunciation enough to conquer by not competing. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
245:...that renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left? ~ Jennifer Haigh, #NFDB
246:And if we can thus be free in the spirit, we shall find out all the wonder of God's workings; we shall find that in inwardly renouncing everything we have lost nothing. 'By all this abandoned thou shalt come to enjoy the All.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Renunciation,#NFDB
247:I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
248:The second, “alternatives exclude,” is an important key to understanding why decision is difficult. Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word decide means “slay,” as in homicide or suicide). ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
249:To attain the purpose of life, it is necessary to do one’s duties, whether one lives in the world or outside it. The path of renunciation and the path of action, though two diverse ways, are equally helpful for attaining self-emancipation. One is the path of sacrifice, the other the path of conquest. ~ Swami Rama, #NFDB
250:Attachment brings misery, unattachment brings blissfulness. So use things, but don't be used by them. Live life but don't be lived by it. Possess things, but don't be possessed by them. Have things - that's not a problem. I am not for renunciation. Enjoy everything that life gives, but always remain free. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
251:To be unattached is not to renounce the world. If you renounce the world you are attached to the world; otherwise why should you renounce it? What is the point in renouncing it if you are not attached to it? Only attachment renounces. If you are really non-attached there is no question of any renunciation. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
252:To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For he who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
253:You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual—and thus the collapse of any political system that depends upon individualism. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
254:You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual- and thus the collapse of any political system that depends upon individualism. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
255:In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure selfishness and thereby ceases to be love. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
256:If we spend the time we waste in sighing for the perfect golden fruit in fulfilling the conditions of its growth, happiness will come, must come. It is guaranteed in the very laws of the universe. If it involves some chastening and renunciation, well, the fruit will be all the sweeter for this touch of holiness. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
257:We have one impermanent experience, and, unable to be at peace as it passes, we reach out and grab for another,
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition defines renunciation as accepting what comes into our lives and letting go of what leaves our lives. To renounce in this sense is to come to a state of simple being. ~ Sharon Salzberg,#NFDB
258:a sign of progress :::
We may even come to feel that the body is in a certain sense non-existent except as a sort of partial expression of our vital force and of our mentality. These experiences are signs that the mind is coming to a right poise regarding the body...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, 345,#NFDB
259:Potent Quotes “Whatever you do, or eat, or give, or offer in adoration, let it be an offering to me; and whatever you suffer, suffer it for me. Thus you shall be free from the bonds of Karma which yield fruits that are evil and good; and with your soul one in renunciation you shall be free and come to me.”—Bhagavad Gita ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
260:When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty. ~ Charles Horton Cooley, #NFDB
261:The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior ~ John le Carre, #NFDB
262:It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
263:It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
264:There is even in the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind in the exercise of self-sacrifice. Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
265:All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
266:\“… we must not only cut asunder the snare of the mind and the senses, but flee also beyond the snare of the thinker, the snare of the theologian and the church-builder, the meshes of the Word and the bondage of the Idea\” [[p. 330](/cwsa/23/renunciation# ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Passages from The Synthesis of Yoga, #NFDB
267:If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. ~ Samuel Adams, #NFDB
268:Know that the eradication of the identification with the body is charity, spiritual austerity and ritual sacrifice; it is virtue, divine union and devotion; it is heaven, wealth, peace and truth; it is grace; it is the state of divine silence; it is the deathless death; it is jnana, renunciation, final liberation and bliss. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
269:What if one of the core elements of a radical Christianity lay in a demand that we betray it, while the ultimate act of affirming God required the forsaking of God? And what if fidelity to the Judeo-Christian scriptures demanded their renunciation? In short, what if the only way of finding faith involved betraying it with a kiss? ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
270:Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics ... the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
271:Assess the work of whatever others do to you or say about you, and cultivate fortitude and the understanding to appreciate their behaviour and pardon their faults. This capacity is as invaluable as truth, righteousness, wisdom, non-violence, renunciation, delight and compassion. It is all that one need possess for spiritual advancement. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
272:The man who has determined to admit love of the world and its cares into his interior life finds that he has to accept a supreme renunciation. He has sworn to seek for himself outside himself, in other words to love the world better than himself. He will now have to realize what this noble ambition will cost him. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Cosmic Life, #NFDB
273:To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual, and thus the collapse of any political system that depends on individualism ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
274:It will require the renunciation or sublimation or transformation of our traditional appetites: to outbreed, outconsume, and conquer our rivals, especially our rivals in other tribes. These impulses may once have been adaptive. Indeed, they may even be hard-wired into our brains. But we no longer have the luxury of tolerating them. And ~ M Mitchell Waldrop, #NFDB
275:Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
276:There is a lake that one day refused to flow away and threw up a dam at the place where it had before flowed out and since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very act of renunciation provides us with the strength to bear it ; perhaps man will rise ever higher and higher when he no longer flows out into a God. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
277:The whole journey of renunciation, or starting to say yes to life, is first of all realizing that you've come up against your edge, that everything in you is saying no, and then at that point, softening. This is yet another opportunity to develop loving-kindness of yourself, which results in playfulness--learning to play like a raven in the wind. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
278:An unconditional equivalence of law with the results of any particular formal process, therefore, would only be blind subordination to the pure decision of the offices entrusted with lawmaking, in other words, a decision detached from every substantive relation to law and justice, and, consequently, an unconditional renunciation of any resistance. ~ Carl Schmitt, #NFDB
279:To ask for overt renunciation of a cherished doctrine is to expect too much of human nature. Men do not repudiate the doctrines and dogmas to which they have sworn their loyalty. Instead they rationalize, revise, and re-interpret them to meet new needs and new circumstances, all the while protesting that their heresy is the purest orthodoxy. ~ J William Fulbright, #NFDB
280:Deep level recovery from childhood trauma requires a normalization of depression, a renunciation of the habit of reflexively reacting to it. Central to this is the development of a self-compassionate mindfulness. Once again, mindfulness is the practice of staying in your body – the practice of staying fully present to all of your internal experience. ~ Pete Walker, #NFDB
281:No one wants to suffer, and yet nearly everyone seeks out pain and sacrifice, and then they feel justified, pure, deserving of the respect of their children, husbands, neighbors, God. Don't let's think about that now; all you need to know is that what makes the world go round is not the search for pleasure, but the renunciation of all that is important. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
282:The longer I live-especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death-the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
283:The very act of faith by which we receive Christ is an act of the utter renunciation of self, and all its works, as a ground of salvation. It is really a denial of self, and a grounding of its arms in the last citadel into which it can be driven, and is, in its principle, inclusive of every subsequent act of self-denial by which sin is forsaken or overcome. ~ Mark Hopkins, #NFDB
284:If there is such a thing as saintly renunciation, it is renouncing small gains for better gains; not for no gains, but seeing with open eyes what is better and what is inferior. Even if the choice has to lie between two momentary gains, one of these would always be found to be more real and lasting; that is the one that should be followed for the time. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
285:three knots binding us to our lower nature :::
Again our renunciation must obviously be an inward renunciation; especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the senses and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, [T5],#NFDB
286:But “the first act of the Christian life,” says Schmemann, “is a renunciation, a challenge.” In baptism, the Christian stands naked and unashamed before all these demons—all these impulses and temptations, sins and failures, empty sales pitches and screwy labels—and says, “I am a beloved child of God and I renounce anything or anyone who says otherwise.”12 ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
287:. . . the theme of the lonely journey . . .which somehow seems to be a spiritual pilgrimage on which the initiate becomes acquainted with the nature of death. But this is not death as a last judgment or other initiatory trial of strength: it is a journey of release, renunciation, and atonement, presided over and fostered by some spirit of compassion. P. 150 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
288:When they were old and uselessly wise their thoughts would go back to those days with insistent regret; they had been days when desire was always present because it was always overcome, when many beds had been offered and refused, when the sensual urge, because restrained, had for one second been sublimated in renunciation, that is into real love. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, #NFDB
289:Renunciation on its own has no staying power. You can renounce bananas all you like, but if you continue to live in your banana home on your banana street, if you keep your job at the banana warehouse and hang out with your banana-gobbling friends, you'll be eating bananas before you know it. Practice is doing the work. It is following up your intention with action. ~ Rolf Gates, #NFDB
290:The question is the same, for it springs from the same ground: the human situation, the conditions of the human existence. The answer varies. The question can be answered by animal worship, by human scrifice or military conquest, by indulgence in luxury, by ascetic renunciation, by obsessionnal work, by artistic creation, by the love of God, and by the love of Man. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
291:Renunciation
Renunciation -- is a piercing Virtue -The letting go
A Presence -- for an Expectation -Not now -The putting out of Eyes -Just Sunrise -Lest Day -Day's Great Progenitor -Outvie
Renunciation -- is the Choosing
Against itself -Itself to justify
Unto itself -When larger function -Make that appear -Smaller -- that Covered Vision -- Here -~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
292:Let it be granted, that according to the letter of the Gita it is possible to say that warfare is consistent with renunciation of fruit. But after forty years’ unremitting endeavour fully to enforce the teaching of the Gita in my own life, I have in all humility felt that perfect renunciation is impossible without perfect observance of ahimsa in every shape and form. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
293:three first approaches of Karma Yoga :::
Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature, - these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita's way of Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [105],#NFDB
294:But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that *you* yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again, for *your* benefit and behoof, only through that unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit." You are to benefit *yourself*, and yet you are not to seek *your* benefit ~ Max Stirner, #NFDB
295:The meanings that God calls us to in our lives are never abstract. Though the call may ask us to redefine, or refine what we know as life, it does not demand a renunciation of life in favor of something beyond it. Moreover, the call itself is always composed of life. That is, it is not some hitherto unknown voice to which we respond; it is life calling to life." ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
296:Eating Animals” closes with a turkey-less Thanksgiving. As a holiday, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. But this is Foer’s point. We are, he suggests, defined not just by what we do; we are defined by what we are willing to do without. Vegetarianism requires the renunciation of real and irreplaceable pleasures. To Foer’s credit, he is not embarrassed to ask this of us. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert, #NFDB
297:This kind of renunciation, in fact, has often been the strength, born of necessity, of the world's disinherited, of those who do not fit in with their surroundings or with their own body or with their own race or tradition and who hope, by means of renunciation, to assure for themselves a future world where, to use a Nietzschean expression, the inversion of all values will occur. ~ Julius Evola, #NFDB
298:But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result. In regard to every action one must know the result that is expected to follow, the means thereto, and the capacity for it. He, who, being thus equipped, is without desire for the result and is yet wholly engrossed in the due fulfillment of the task before him is said to have renounced the fruits of his action. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
299:In enjoyment is the fear of disease, In high birth, the fear of losing caste, In wealth, the fear of tyrants, In honour, the fear of losing it, In strength, the fear of enemies, In beauty, the fear of old age, In knowledge, the fear of defeat, In virtue, the fear of scandal, In the body, the fear of death. In this life all is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
300:It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from a more complex life form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another-the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
301:Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
302:The Buhha was a monastic, but the practice of mindfulness in the context of any lifestyle is one of renunciation. Every moment of mindfulness renounces the reflexive, self-protecting response of the mind in favor of clear and balanced understanding. In the light of the wisdom that comes from balanced undertanding, attachment to having things be other than what they ar falls away. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
303:... it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
304:In any activity, we have to know what to expect, how to reach our objectives and what capacity we possess for the proposed task. The only people who can say they have renounced the fruit are those who, thus equipped, feel no desire for the results of the conquest, and remain absorbed in combat. You can renounce the fruit, but this renunciation does not mean indifference toward the result. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
305:I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
306:Renunciation - non-resistance - non-destructiveness - are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. Keep the ideal in view and work towards it. None can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state yet when the ideal can be realised in society. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
307:The life of the cenobite is a human problem. When we speak of convents, those seats of error but innocence, of mistaken views but good intentions, of ignorance but devotion, of torment but martyrdom, we must nearly always say yes or no...The monastery is a renunciation. Self-sacrifice, even when misdirected, is still self-sacrifice. To assume as duty a strict error has its peculiar grandeur. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
308:I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness. I don't teach you renunciation, as it has been taught down the ages. I teach you: Rejoice, rejoice, and rejoice again! Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
309:If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
310:But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
311:The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely. ~ Selma Fraiberg, #NFDB
312:Most people who read the autobiography perceive the narrative as a story that now millions of people know, and it was - it's a story of human transformation, the powerful epiphany, Malcolm's X journey to Mecca, his renunciation of the Nation of Islam's racial separatism, his embrace of universal humanity, of humanism that was articulated through Sunni Islam. Well, that's the story everybody knows. ~ Manning Marable, #NFDB
313:Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the "religious." The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk's attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
314:You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature. What would become of me, if I tried to escape pain? Scorn and cynicism would be my only opium; unless I could fall into some kind of conceited madness, and fancy myself a favourite of Heaven because I am not a favourite with men. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
315:As Shantideva says, suffering has many good qualities because it purifies our negative karma, increases our renunciation and compassion, reduces our pride, and helps us to overcome our bad mental habits. If we think in this way we will feel that difficult circumstances are our best friends. When our mind is balanced in this way it becomes as stable as Mount Meru, and nothing can cause it to shake. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #NFDB
316:To conceive God as an all-powerful Person, or else, under the name of Christ, as a human person, is to exclude oneself from the true love of God. For this reason we must love the perfection of the heavenly Father even in the diffusion of sunlight. The divine and absolute model of that renunciation in us—which is obedience—is the creative and ordained principle of the universe, such is the fullness of being. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
317:The Wind of God took possession of D. L. Moody, an uneducated young business man in Chicago, and in the power of this resistless Wind, men and women and young people were mowed down before his words and brought in humble confession and renunciation of sin to the feet of Jesus Christ, and filled with the life of God they have been the pillars in the churches of Great Britain and throughout the world ever since. ~ R A Torrey, #NFDB
318:I never use the word renunciation at all. I say: "Rejoice in life,in love,in meditation,in the beauties of the world, in the ecstasy of existence--rejoice in everything!" Transform the mundane into the sacred. Transform this shore ino the other shore, transform the earth into paradise.
And then indirectly a certain renunciation starts happening. But that happens,you don't do it. It is not a doing, it is a happening. ~ Osho,#NFDB
319:Perhaps Westerners are in a better position to practice true renunciation than uneducated Orientals because most Western people, by the time they come to the Dharma, have led a pretty full worldly life with lots of sensual pleasures, money and lots of toys to play with. They have seen that the path of accumulation of worldly treasure does not lead to happiness or contentment. That's why they come to the Dharma. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
320:Your true wealth is your stock of virtue, and your true power the uses to which you put it. Rectify your heart, and you will rectify your life. Lust, hatred, anger, vanity, pride, covetousness, self-indulgence, self-seeking, obstinacy,- all these are poverty and weakness; whereas love, purity, gentleness, meekness, compassion, generosity, self-forgetfulness, and self-renunciation,- all these are wealth and power. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
321:Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
322:A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of the articulations necessary to advancement, and, in fact, more renunciation than you would like; and men flee from this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a sad society. Succeed--that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
323:Both David and Marcus, I came to realize, though they seemed happy enough, and looked forward to being doctors, had a certain sadness, a sense of loss and renunciation, about other interests they had given up.... Both became medical students, in part, to defer their call-up. But with this, I think, they deferred their other aspirations, a deferment that seemed permanent and irreversible by the time they returned to London. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
324:The entrance of the woman with equal rights into practical modern life, her new freedom, her finding herself side by side with men in the streets, offices, professions, factories, sports, and now even in political and military life, is one of those dissolutive phenomena in which, in most cases, it is difficult to perceive anything positive. In essence, all this is simply the renunciation of the woman's right to be a woman. ~ Julius Evola, #NFDB
325:Tremendous purity, tremendous renunciation, is the one secret of spirituality. “Neither through wealth, nor through progeny, but through renunciation alone is immortality to be reached,” say the Vedas. “Sell all that thou hast and give to poor, and follow me,” says the Christ. So all great saints and prophets have expressed it, and have carried it out in their lives. How can great spirituality come without renunciation? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
326:Without marriage there will be no renunciation, Buddha would not have left the world - for what? His wife, Yashodhara, must have created the situation - Mahavira would not have escaped to the mountains. Without marriage there would have been no Buddha, no Mahavira. Just think: the history would have been very flat, without any salt, tasteless. Marriage keeps this whole "sorry-go-round" on and on. People call it "merry-go-round". ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
327:Equally unthinkable among young men of today is a truly religious renunciation of the world, adhered to with daily self-denial. On the other hand almost any theological student is capable of something far more wonderful. He could found a society with the sole object of saving all those who are lost. The age of great and good actions is past, the present is the age of anticipation when even recognition is received in advance. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
328:Once renunciation and the awakened mind have been fully realized, the way to Buddhahood is clear. Liberation is complete and such liberated beings are then Bodhisattvas and Buddhas: "enlightened ones," or "empty dwellers." Their usefulness to others both before and after their physical death, is impossible to conceive. They are nothing but useful energy leading to liberation for all beings still caught in conditioned existence. ~ Maura O Halloran, #NFDB
329:powers of freedom from subjection to the body :::
By a similar process the habit by which the bodily nature associates certain forms and degrees of activity with strain, fatigue, incapacity can be rectified and the power, freedom, swiftness, effectiveness of the work whether physical or mental which can be done with this bodily instrument marvelously increased, doubled, tripled, decupled.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, 346,#NFDB
330:It is as if joy were the default setting of human emotion, not the furtive, fugitive glimpses it becomes in lives compromised by necessity, familiarity, ‘maturity,’ suffering. You must become as little children, Jesus said, a statement that is often used to justify anti-intellectualism and the renunciation of reason, but which I take actually to mean that we must recover this sense of wonder, this excess of spirit brimming out of the body. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
331:You must not give way to desires which you don't believe in. I know what you desire. You should, however, either be capable of renouncing these desires or feel wholly justified in having them. Once you are able to make your request in such a way that you will be quite certain of its fulfillment, then the fulfillment will come. But at present you alternate between desire and renunciation and are afraid all the time. All that must be overcome. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
332:Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and everything shall be added unto you. This is the one great duty, this is renunciation. Live for an ideal, and leave no place in the mind for anything else. Let us put forth all our energies to acquire that which never fails-our spiritual perfection. If we have true yearning for realization, we must struggle, and through struggle growth will come. We shall make mistakes, but they may be angels unawares. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
333:Resurrection does not have to do exclusively with what happens after we are buried or cremated. It does have to do with that, but first of all it has to do with the way we live right now. But as Karl Barth, quoting Nietzsche, pithily reminds us: “Only where graves are is there resurrection.” We practice our death by giving up our will to live on our own terms. Only in that relinquishment or renunciation are we able to practice resurrection. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
334:That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created? ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
335:The way to liberation lies through this realization of the Self, by God-communion and by remaining in this God-aware state of the soul while performing dutiful actions. Any individual can reach this supreme actionless state by the renunciation of all fruits of actions: performing all dutiful acts without harbouring in his heart any likes and dislikes, possessing no material desires, and feeling God, not the ego, as the Doer of all actions. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
336:At the same time, radical Pelagian tracts, such as the de divitiis—the relentlessly argued “Treatise on Riches”—had advocated the total renunciation of property by the rich.27 The author of this tract extended his plea for total renunciation to include a consequential denunciation of the existence of wealth in the first place: Tolle divitem et pauperem non invenies (Get rid of the rich and you will find no poor) was one of his many provocative slogans. ~ Peter R L Brown, #NFDB
337:Had I renounced the Western world? Renunciation, at least as Buddhists use the term, is a much-misunderstood concept. It is not about giving up what is good and beautiful. How foolish that would be! Rather it is about disentangling oneself from the unsatisfactory and moving with determination toward what matters most. It is about freedom and meaning—freedom from mental confusion and self-centered afflictions, meaning through insight and loving-kindness. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
338:A mutually fulfilled sexual union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide. But it is not quite real. It stops when the telephone rings. Such a passion can be kept at its early strength only by adding to it either more and more unhappiness (jealousy, separation, doubt, renunciation), or more and more artificiality (drink, technique, stage-illusions). Whoever has missed this has never lived, who lives for it alone is but partly alive. ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
339:Be fearless and pure; never waver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life. Give freely. Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve. Realize the truth of the scriptures; learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation. 2 Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all. 3 Cultivate vigor, patience, will, purity; avoid malice and pride. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
340:It is human self-renunciation when a man denies himself and the world opens up to him. But it is Christian self-renunciation when he denies himself and, because the world precisely for this shuts itself up to him, he must as one thrust out by the world seek God's confidence. The double-danger lies precisely in meeting opposition there where he had expected to find support, and he has to turn about twice; whereas the merely human self-resignation turns once. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
341:The great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
342:Life is a sea that brings waves of change, welcome or not. As the warrior-emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Time is a river of passing events. No sooner is one thing brought to sight than it’s swept away, and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” The Buddha, leaving behind both his protected childhood and ascetic renunciation, and having attained illumination, observed, “Everything that begins also ends. Make peace with this and all will be well. ~ Dan Millman, #NFDB
343:Renunciation mind has nothing to do with sacrificing. When we talk about renunciation, somwhow we get all scared because we think that we have to give up some goodies, somehing valuable, some important things. But there is nothing that is important; there is nothing that is solidly exisiting. All that you are give up is actually a vague identity . You realize thigs is not true; it's noe the ultimate. This how and why to develop renunciation ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, #NFDB
344:That intense faith in another world, that intense hatred for this world, that intense power of renunciation, that intense faith in God, that intense faith in the immortal soul, is in you. I challenge anyone to give it up. You cannot. You may try to impose upon me by becoming materialists, by talking materialism for a few months, but I know what you are; if I take you by the hand, back you come as good theists as ever were born. How can you change your nature? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
345:Renunciation
First light on the kitchen table
Breakfast for one. Beer and wine.
Feline eyes kiss fallen tart.
Lunch's a conceit of three. My cat,
Your snapshot and me. Secret rum
In mint tea. Invalidation of the sea.
Last light comes to sup. Dinner's a feat
In Rectitude. Water and Whisky.
Campaign of shadows. No despair.
A sliver of music around the ankles
In a dream's corridor.
Endless retreat of inaccessible feet.
~ C. P. Surendran,#NFDB
346:Love makes no distinction between man and man, between an Aryan and a Mlechchha, between a Brâhmana and a Pariah, nor even between a man and a woman. Love makes the whole universe as one's own home. True progress is slow but sure. Work among those young men who can devote heart and soul to this one duty - the duty of raising the masses of India. Awake them, unite them, and inspire them with this spirit of renunciation; it depends wholly on the young people of India. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
347:Only by a continual effort can I create. My tendency is to drift toward immobility. My deepest, surest inclination lies in silence and the daily routine…But I know that I stand erect through that very effort and that if I ceased to believe in it for a single moment I should roll over the precipice. This is how I avoid illness and renunciation, raising my head with all my strength to breathe and to conquer. This is my way of despairing and this is my way of curing myself. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
348:O servant, where dost thou seek Me?
O servant, where dost thou seek Me?
Lo! I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque:
I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies,
nor in Yoga and renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me:
thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.
Kabir says, ' O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath.'
~ Kabir, O Servant Where Dost Thou Seek Me
,#NFDB
349:Believing that each step of my life would mean contact with the horror of the New and that each new person I met was a new and living fragment of the unknown to be placed before me on the table for my daily horrified contemplation, I decided to abstain from everything, to go nowhere, to reduce action to the minimum, to avoid as far as possible meeting either men or events, to perfect abstinence and cultivate renunciation. That's how much living frightens and torments me. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
350:The seasons come and go, summer follows spring and fall follows summer and winter follows fall, and human beings are born and mature, have their middle age, begin to grow older and die, and everything has its cycles. Day follows night, night follows day. It is good to be part of all of this.’ When you begin to have that kind of trust in basic creativity and directness and fullness, in the alive quality of yourself and your world, then you can begin to understand renunciation. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
351:A swami may conceivably follow only the path of dry reasoning, of cold renunciation; but a yogi engages himself in a definite, step-by-step procedure by which the body and mind are disciplined and the soul gradually liberated. Taking nothing for granted on emotional grounds or by faith, a yogi practices a thoroughly tested series of exercises that were first mapped out by the ancient rishis. In every age of India, yoga has produced men who became truly free, true Yogi-Christs. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
352:A visitor asked Paramhansa Yogananda, "Is renunciation necessary on the spiritual path?"
"Yes!" declared the Master emphatically. "Whether married or single, one should always feel in his heart that God is his one true Beloved, Who alone resides in the temple of all human hearts.
"Renunciation means, above all, non-attachment. It is not how you live outwardly that matters, but how you live within.
"Make your heart a hermitage, I always say, and your robe your love for God. ~ Swami Kriyananda,#NFDB
353:Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism - born of a renunciation of struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
354:This is the unmistakable teaching of the Gita. He who gives up action falls. He who gives up only the reward rises. But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result. In regard to every action one must know the result that is expected to follow, the means thereto, and the capacity for it. He, who, being thus equipped, is without desire for the result and is yet wholly engrossed in the due fulfillment of the task before him is said to have renounced the fruits of his action. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
355:Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfill your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
356:Chastity, non-injury, forgiving even the greatest enemy, truth, faith in the Lord, these are all different Vrittis. Be not afraid if you are not perfect in all of these; work, they will come. He who has given up all attachment, all fear, and all anger, he whose whole soul has gone unto the Lord, he who has taken refuge in the Lord, whose heart has become purified, with whatsoever desire he comes to the Lord, He will grant that to him. Therefore worship Him through knowledge, love, or renunciation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
357:O Servant, where dost thou seek Me? Lo! I am beside thee. I am neither in temple nor in mosque: I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash: Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and renunciation. If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time. Kabr says, "O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath." [bk1sm.gif] -- from One Hundred Poems of Kabir: Translated by Rabindranath Tagore, by Kabir / Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
~ Kabir, Where dost thou seem me?
,#NFDB
358:Renunciation is not rejecting the family but accepting the whole world as family. Renunciation is not changing the name or dress. It is changing the attitude towards life. Renunciation is not removing the hairs form the head. It is eliminating the negative thoughts from the mind. Renunciation is not running away from responsibility, doership or fruits of action but it is focusing on the fruits and actions that will bring happiness to the whole world. Renunciation is the ultimate compassion and ultimate forgiveness. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
359:The conclusion to which I am ever more clearly coming is that the only hope of attaining a true system of economics is to fling aside,once and forever, the mazy and preposterous assumptions of the Ricardian school. Our English economists have been living in a fool's paradise. The truth is with the French school, and the sooner we recognize the fact, the better it will be for all the world, except perhaps the few writers who are far too committed to the old erroneous doctrines to allow for renunciation. ~ William Stanley Jevons, #NFDB
360:There can be no love so long as there is lust- even a speck of it, as it were, in the heart. None but men of great renunciation, none but mighty giants among men, have a right to that Love Divine. If that highest ideal of love is held out to the masses, it will indirectly tend to stimulate its worldly which dominates the heart of man- for, meditating on love to God by thinking of oneself as His wife or beloved, one would very likely be thinking most of the time of one's own wife- the result is too obvious to point out. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
361:This seemed an obvious sign from heaven. I should stop trying to write...So the rejection on the fortieth birthday seemed an unmistakable command: Stop this foolishness and learn to make cherry pie. I covered up the typewriter in a great gesture of renunciation. Then I walked around and around the room, bawling my head off. I was totally, unutterably miserable. Suddenly I stopped, because I realized what my subconscious mind was doing while I was sobbing: my subconscious mind was busy working out a novel about failure. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
362:... was the great and general renunciation which old age makes in preparation for death, the chrysalis stage of life, which may be observed wherever life has been unduly prolonged; even in old lovers who have lived for one another with the utmost intensity of passion, and in old friends bound by the closest ties of mental sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make, the necessary journey, or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know well that they will communicate no more in this world. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
363:But you must remember one thing. One cannot see God sporting as man unless one has had the vision of Him. Do you know the sign of one who has God-vision? Such a man acquires the nature of a child. Why a child? Because God is like a child. So he who sees God becomes like a child.
God-vision is necessary. Now the question is, how can one get it? Intense renunciation is the means. A man should have such intense yearning for God that he can say, 'O Father of the universe, am I outside Your universe? Won't You be kind to me, You wretch? ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#NFDB
364:Renunciation
Chloe's hair, no doubt, was brighter;
Lydia's mouth more sweetly sad;
Hebe's arms were rather whiter;
Languorous-lidded Helen had
Eyes more blue than e'er the sky was;
Lalage's was subtler stuff;
Still, you used to think that I was
Fair enough.
Now you're casting yearning glances
At the pale Penelope;
Cutting in on Claudia's dances;
Taking Iris out to tea.
Iole you find warm-hearted;
Zoe's cheek is far from roughDon't you think it's time we parted? . . .
Fair enough!
~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
365:Even so, Vigny would say those in uniform have made the greater sacrifice by losing the man in the soldier—what he calls the warrior's abnegation, his renunciation of thought and action. Vigny says a soldier's crown is a crown of thorns, amongst its spikes none more painful than passive obedience.’ ‘True enough.’ ‘He sees the role of authority as essentially artificial, the army a way of life in which there is as little room for uncontrolled fervour as for sullen indifference. The impetuous volunteer has as much to learn as the unwilling conscript. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
366:enjoying a tranquillity in which I
won’t write the works I don’t write now, and to keep on
not writing them I’ll come up with even better excuses
than the ones I use today to elude myself. Or I’ll be in an
institution for paupers, happy in my utter defeat, mixed
up with the rabble of would-be geniuses who were no more than beggars with dreams, thrown in with the
anonymous throng of those who didn’t have strength enough to conquer nor renunciation enough to conquer enough to conquer nor renunciation enough to conquer by not competing. ~ Fernando Pessoa,#NFDB
367:Indestructible and abiding as the stars, these experiences, though forgotten, could never be erased. Their series was the story of my life, their starry light the undying value of my being. My life had become weariness. It had wandered in a maze of unhappiness that led to renunciation and nothingness; yet it had laid up riches, riches to be proud of. It had been for all its wretchedness a princely life. Let the little way to death be as it might, the kernel of this life of mine was noble. It had purpose and character and turned not on trifles, but on the stars. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
368:It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
369:The process which had begun in her - and in he a little earlier only than it must come to all of us - was the great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
370:Consciousness and revolt, these rejections are the contrary of renunciation. Everything that is indomitable and passionate in a human heart quickens them, on the contrary, with its own life. It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one’s own free will. Suicide is a repudiation. The absurd man can only drain everything to the bitter end, and deplete himself. The absurd is his extreme tension, which he maintains constantly by solitary effort, for he knows that in that consciousness and in that day-to-day revolt he gives proof of his only truth, which is defiance. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
371:In every Magical, or similar system, it is invariably the first condition which the Aspirant must fulfill: he must once and for all and for ever put his family outside his magical circle.Even the Gospels insist clearly and weightily on this.Christ himself (i.e. whoever is meant by this name in this passage) callously disowns his mother and his brethren (Luke VIII, 19). And he repeatedly makes discipleship contingent on the total renunciation of all family ties. He would not even allow a man to attend his father's funeral!Is the magical tradition less rigid?Not on your life! ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
372:The man who is alone, who stands on his own feet, who is stripped bare, who asks for nothing and wants nothing, who has reached the apex of disinterestedness not through blind renunciation but through excess of clear vision, turns to the world which stretches out before him as a burned prairie, as a devastated city —a world in which no churches, asylums, refuges, ideals, are left—and says: “Though you promise me nothing I am still with you, I am still an atom of your energies, my work is part of your work; I am your companion and your mirror as you march on your merciless way. ~ Giovanni Papini, #NFDB
373:Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
374:experiences, though forgotten, could never be erased. Their series was the story of my life, their starry light the undying value of my being. My life had become weariness. It had wandered in a maze of unhappiness that led to renunciation and nothingness; it was bitter with the salt of all human things; yet it had laid up riches, riches to be proud of. It had been for all its wretchedness a princely life. Let the little way to death be as it might, the kernel of this life of mine was noble. It had purpose and character and turned not on trifles, but on the stars. Time has passed and much ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
375:Vairâgya or renunciation is the turning point in all the various Yogas. The Karmi (worker) renounces the fruits of his work. The Bhakta (devotee) renounces all little loves for the almighty and omnipresent love. The Yogi renounces his experiences, because his philosophy is that the whole Nature, although it is for the experience of the soul, at last brings him to know that he is not in Nature, but eternally separate from Nature. The Jnâni (philosopher) renounces everything, because his philosophy is that Nature never existed, neither in the past, nor present, nor will It in the future. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
376:The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live—that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
377:When? At this time, while you have all the opportunities, if you do not do your best to achieve the pure, stainless path to enlightenment when will you do it? If you don't meditate, don't practise the graduated path to enlightenment, especially bodhicitta, in this life, then when? When will you practise? When will you have this realization? If, in this life, you don't achieve renunciation, bodhicitta and sunyata, as well as the two stages of tantra, when will you? When will you have these attainments? When will you become enlightened? When will you perform perfect work for sentient beings? ~ Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, #NFDB
378:The concepts of health and sickness, good and evil, better and worse, have the same use and relation to life as those of long and short, high and low to carpentry: even a short piece of wood can be three inches long. Even cancer is called a growth, and when Ramana Maharshi was dying of cancer he resisted the doctors,
saying, “It wants to grow, too. Let it.” This is, perhaps, an extreme example of renunciation—not of love
or energy—but of willing right as against wrong, and thus of renouncing one’s own separateness from
everything that happens, which is what Tillich called “the courage to be. ~ Alan W Watts,#NFDB
379:Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,
Signs that the gods had left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,
One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Self-conquest
When one conquers a difficulty or goes forward, it creates a right current in the atmosphere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Right Attitude towards Difficulties
Self-Conquest
Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation,#NFDB
380:I had grown accustomed to living within myself. I was resigned to the knowledge that I had lost all appreciation of the outside world, that the loss of its bright colors was an inseparable part of the loss of my childhood, and that, in a certain sense, one had to pay for freedom and maturity of the soul with the renunciation of this cherished aura. But now, overjoyed, I saw that all this had only been buried or clouded over and that it was still possible—even if you had become liberated and had renounced your childhood happiness—to see the world shine and to savor the delicious thrill of the child’s vision. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
381:Tolerance, beyond a point, is not widely preached, even though, inevitably, when two people rub shoulders on a daily basis, when they inhale each other’s way of being as a life premise, there is going to be a sacrifice of sorts. You will not be the same person coming out of a relationship as you were going into it. Not that she understood this then, in the beginning. When she confronted him, when he apologized, when they shed tears, when they reaffirmed their love, when they did this time after time, she didn’t sense the renunciation that was going on within her, because after all he was Todd, and he was precious to ~ A S A Harrison, #NFDB
382:1142
To Put This World Down, Like A Bundle
527
To put this World down, like a Bundle—
And walk steady, away,
Requires Energy—possibly Agony—
'Tis the Scarlet way
Trodden with straight renunciation
By the Son of God—
Later, his faint Confederates
Justify the Road—
Flavors of that old Crucifixion—
Filaments of Bloom, Pontius Pilate sowed—
Strong Clusters, from Barabbas' Tomb—
Sacrament, Saints partook before us—
Patent, every drop,
With the Brand of the Gentile Drinker
Who indorsed the Cup—
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
383:Renunciation
ROSE of the desert of my heart,
Moon of the night that is my soul,
Thou can'st not know how sweet thou art,
Nor what wild tides thy beams control.
For all thy heart a garden is,
Thy soul is like a dawn of May.
And garden and dawn might both be his,
Who from them both must turn away.
Oh, garden of the Spring's delight!
Oh, dewy dawn of perfect noon!
I will not pluck thy roses white
Or warm thy May-time into June.
I can but bless thee, moon and rose,
And journey far and very far
To where the night no moonbeam shows,
To where no happy roses are!
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
384:Be poor, go down into the far end of society, take the last place among men, live with those who are despised, love other men and serve them instead of making them serve you. Do not fight them when they push you around, but pray for those that hurt you. Do not look for pleasure, but turn away from things that satisfy your senses and your mind and look for God in hunger and thirst and darkness, through deserts of the spirit in which it seems to be madness to travel. Take upon yourself the burden of Christ’s Cross, that is, Christ’s humility and poverty and obedience and renunciation, and you will find peace for your souls. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
385:Deliverance is not for me in renunciation.
I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various
colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim.
My world will light its hundred different lamps with thy flame
and place them before the altar of thy temple.
No, I will never shut the doors of my senses.
The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.
Yes, all my illusions will burn into illumination of joy,
and all my desires ripen into fruits of love.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, Senses
,#NFDB
386:For those few like me who live without knowing how to have life, what’s left but renunciation as our way and contemplation as our destiny? Not knowing nor able to know what religious life is, since faith isn’t acquired through reason, and unable to have faith in or even react to the abstract notion of man, we’re left with the aesthetic contemplation of life as our reason for having a soul. Impassive to the solemnity of any and all worlds, indifferent to the divine, and disdainers of what is human, we uselessly surrender ourselves to pointless sensation, cultivated in a refined Epicureanism, as befits our cerebral nerves. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
387:the striving (and anxious) Christian, deprived of the Catholic’s recourse to sacramental justification, could find signs of his being among the elect if he could successfully and unceasingly apply himself to disciplined work and his worldly calling. Material productivity was often the fruit of such effort, which, compounded by the Puritan demand for ascetic renunciation of selfish pleasure and frivolous spending, readily lent itself to the accumulation of capital. Whereas traditionally the pursuit of commercial success was perceived as directly threatening to the religious life, now the two were recognized as mutually beneficial. ~ Richard Tarnas, #NFDB
388:There are many moral principles, just as many drops fall from one fountain; but there is one stream that is at the source of all, and that is love. It is love that gives birth to hope, patience, endurance, forgiveness, tolerance, and to all moral principles. All deeds of kindness and beneficence take root in the soil of the loving heart. Generosity, charity, adaptability, an accommodating nature, even renunciation, are the offspring of love alone. The great, rare and chosen beings, who for ages have been looked up to as ideal in the world, are the possessors of hearts kindled with love. All evil and sin come from the lack of love. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
389:The natural desire of the human mind is to become special - to become special in the ways of the world, to have many degrees, to have much political power, to have money, wealth - to be special.
The mind is always ready to go on some ego trip. And if you are fed up with the world, then again the ego starts finding new ways and new means to enhance itself - it becomes spiritual. You become a great mahatma, a great sage, a great scholar, a man of knowledge, a man of renunciation; again you are special.
Unless the desire to be special disappears, you will never be special. Unless you relax into your ordinariness, you will never relax. ~ Osho,#NFDB
390:Moreover, the Games as a whole expressed a tragic doubt and renunciation; they became figurative statements of the dubiousness of all intellectual endeavour. At the same time, in their intellectual structure as well as in their calligraphic technique and perfection, they were so extraordinarily beautiful that they brought tears to one's eyes. Each of these Games moved with such gravity and sincerity towards solution, only at the last so nobly to forgo the attempt at solution, that it was like a perfect elegy upon the transitoriness inherent in all beautiful things and the ultimate dubiety immanent in all soaring flights of the intellect. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
391:I dreamily and digestively drowse. I have time, between synaesthesias. And it's extraordinary to think that, if I were asked right now what I want for this short life, I could think nothing better than these long slow minutes, this absence of thought and emotion, of action and almost o sensation itself, this inner sunset of dissipated desire. And then it occurs to me, almost without thinking, that most if not all people live like this, with greater or lesser consciousness, moving forward or standing still, but still with the very same indifference towards ultimate aims, the same renunciation of their personal goals, the same watered-down life. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
392:Buddha gave up his throne and renounced his position, that was true renunciation; but there cannot be any question of renunciation in the case of a beggar who has nothing to renounce. So we must always be careful about what we really mean when we speak of this non-resistance and ideal love. We must first take care to understand whether we have the power of resistance or not. Then, having the power, if we renounce it and do not resist, we are doing a grand act of love; but if we cannot resist, and yet, at the same time, try to deceive ourselves into the belief that we are actuated by motives of the highest love, we are doing the exact opposite. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
393:faith involves both a renunciation and a reliance. First, we must renounce any trust in our own performance as the basis of our acceptance before God. We trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve earned God’s acceptance by our good works. But we also trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve lost God’s acceptance by our bad works—by our sin. So we must renounce any consideration of either our bad works or our good works as the means of relating to God. Second, we must place our reliance entirely on the perfect obedience and sin-bearing death of Christ as the sole basis of our standing before God—on our best days as well as our worst. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
394:Take courage and confess your sin, says Luther, do not try to run away from it, but believe more boldly still. You are a sinner, so be a sinner, and don't try to become what you are not. Yes, and become a sinner again and again every day, and be bold about it. But to whom can such words be addressed, except to those who from the bottom of their hearts make a daily renunciation of sin and of every barrier which hinders them from following Christ, but who nevertheless are troubled by their daily faithlessness and sin? Who can hear these words without endangering his faith but he who hears their consolation as a renewed summons to follow Christ? ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
395:
Sweet Mother, You have written: So long as you have to renounce anything, you are not on this path. But doesn't all renunciation begin when one is on the path?
What I call being on the path is being in a state of consciousness in which only union with the Divine has any value - this union is the only thing worth living, the sole object of aspiration. Everything else has lost all value and is not worth seeking, so there is no longer any question of renouncing it because it is no longer an object of desire. As long as union with the Divine is not the thing for which one lives, one is not yet on the path. 21 April 1965
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#NFDB
396:Those were the best days in the life of Tancredi and Angelica, lives later to be so variegated, so erring, against the inevitable background of sorrow. But that they did not know then; and they were pursuing a future which they deemed more concrete than it turned out to be, made of nothing but smoke and wind. When they were old and uselessly wise their thoughts would go back to those days with insistent regret; they had been days when desire was always present because it was always overcome, when many beds had been offered and refused, when the sensual urge, because restrained, had for one second been sublimated in renunciation, that is into real love. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, #NFDB
397:Unless we have the courage to fight for a revival of wholesome reserve between man and man, we shall perish in an anarchy of human values… . Socially it means the renunciation of all place-hunting, a break with the cult of the “star,” an open eye both upwards and downwards, especially in the choice of one’s more intimate friends, and pleasure in private life as well as courage to enter public life. Culturally it means a return from the newspaper and the radio to the book, from feverish activity to unhurried leisure, from dispersion to concentration, from sensationalism to reflection, from virtuosity to art, from snobbery to modesty, from extravagance to moderation. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
398:Alcohol doesn't console," she wrote. "All it replaces is the lack of God." It does not necessarily follow, however, that if and when a substance vacates the spot (renunciation), God rushes in to fill it. For some, the emptiness itself is God; for others, the space must stay empty. "Lots of space, nothing holy": one Zen master's definition of enlightenment. For Emerson, dreams and drunkenness were but the "semblance and counterfeit" of an "oracular genius." Therein lies their danger: they mimic-- often quite well-- the "flames and generosities of the heart." I suppose he is advocating, in his "sermon", which steadily displace the God of theology with one of Nature, what we might now term "a natural high. ~ Maggie Nelson, #NFDB
399:No one is alone in their troubles; there is always someone else thinking, rejoicing, or suffering in the same way, and that gives us the stregnth to confront the challenge before us.
Does that include suffering for love?
It includes everything. If there is suffering, then it is best to accept it, because it won't go away because you pretend it is not there. If there is joy, then it is best to accept that too, even though you are afraid it might end some day. Some people can only relate to life through sacrifice and renunciation. Some people only feel part of humanity when they think they are happy.
I'm in love and I'm afraid of suffering.
Dont be afraid. The only way to avoid that suffereing is to refuse love. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
400:Renunciation Suzuki Roshi said, “Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away.” Everything is impermanent; sooner or later everything goes away. Renunciation is a state of nonattachment, acceptance of this going away. Impermanence is, in fact, just another name for perfection. Leaves fall; debris and garbage accumulate; out of the debris come flowers, greenery, things that we think are lovely. Destruction is necessary. A good forest fire is necessary. The way we interfere with forest fires may not be a good thing. Without destruction, there could be no new life; and the wonder of life, the constant change, could not be. We must live and die. And this process is perfection itself. ~ Charlotte Joko Beck, #NFDB
401:When there is no desire for fruit, there is no temptation for untruth or himsa (violence). Take any instance of untruth or violence, and it will be found that at its back was the desire to attain the cherished end. But it may be freely admitted that the Gita was not written to establish ahimsa. It was an accepted and primary duty even before the Gita age. The Gita had to deliver the message of renunciation of fruit. This is clearly brought out as early as the second chapter. 26. But if the Gita believed in ahimsa or it was included in desirelessness, why did the author take a warlike illustration? When the Gita was written, although people believed in ahimsa, wars were not only not taboo, but nobody observed the contradiction between them and ahimsa. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
402:[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. ~ Samuel Adams, #NFDB
403:The great point in Christianity is the search for an independent content for spiritual life which, according to the insights of its founder, could be elevated, not by the forces of a world external to the soul of man, but by the revelation of a new world within his soul. Islam fully agrees with this insight and supplements it by the further insight that the illumination of the new world thus revealed is not something foreign to the world of matter but permeates it through and through.
Thus the affirmation of spirit sought by Christianity would come not by the renunciation of external forces which are already permeated by the illumination of spirit, but by a proper adjustment of man's relation to these forces in view of the light received from the world within. ~ Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
404:This is the centre round which the Gita is woven. This renunciation is the central sun, round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets. The body has been likened to a prison. There must be action where there is body. Not one embodied being is exempted from labour. And yet all religions proclaim that it is possible for man, by treating the body as the temple of God, to attain freedom. Every action is tainted, be it ever so trivial. How can the body be made the temple of God? In other words how can one be free from action, i.e. from the taint of sin? The Gita has answered the question in decisive language: ‘By desireless action; by renouncing fruits of action; by dedicating all activities to God, i.e., by surrendering oneself to Him body and soul. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
405:No two persons could be so different from one another in their make up or temperaments. Tagore, the aristocratic artist, turned democrat with proletarian sympathies, represented essentially the cultural tradition of India, the tradition of accepting life in the fullness thereof and going through it with song and dance. Gandhi, more a man of the people, almost the embodiment of the Indian peasant, represented the other ancient tradition of India, that of renunciation and asceticism. And yet Tagore was primarily the man of thought, Gandhi of concentrated and ceaseless activity. Both, in their different ways had a world outlook, and both were at the same time wholly Indian. They seemed to present different but harmonious aspects of India and to complement one another. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
406:Dost thou renounce Satan, and all his Angels, and all his works, and all his services, and all his pride?" ...
The first act of the Christian life is a renunciation, a challenge. No one can be Christ's until he has, first, faced evil, and then become ready to fight it. How far is this spirit from the way in which we often proclaim, or to use a more modern term, "sell" Christianity today! ... How could we then speak of "fight" when the very set-up of our churches must, by definition, convey the idea of softness, comfort, peace? ... One does not see very well where and how "fight" would fit into the weekly bulletin of a suburban parish, among all kings of counseling sessions, bake sales, and "young adult" get-togethers. ...
"Dost thou unite thyself unto Christ? ~ Alexander Schmemann,#NFDB
407:With all respect to the Buddha and to the early Christian celibates, I sometimes wonder if all this teaching about nonattachment and the spiritual importance of monastic solitude might be denying us something quite vital. Maybe all that renunciation of intimacy denies us the opportunity to ever experience that very earthbound, domesticated, dirt-under-the-fingernails gift of the difficult, long-term, daily forgiveness {...} Maybe creating a big enough space within your consciousness to hold and accept someone's contradictions - someone's idiocies, even - is a kind of divine act. Perhaps transcendence can be found not only on solitary mountaintops or in monastic settings, but also at your own kitchen table, in the daily acceptance of your partner's most tiresome, irritating faults. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
408:The idea that modern labour has an ascetic character is of course not new. Limitation to specialized work, with a renunciation of the Faustian universality of man which it involves, is a condition of any valuable work in the modern world; hence deeds and renunciation inevitably condition each other to-day. This fundamentally ascetic trait of middle-class life, if it attempts to be a way of life at all, and not simply the absence of any, was what Goethe wanted to teach, at the height of his wisdom, in the Wanderjahren, and in the end which he gave to the life of his Faust. For him the realization meant a renunciation, a departure from an age of full and beautiful humanity, which can no more be repeated in the course of our cultural development than can the flower of the Athenian culture of antiquity. ~ Max Weber, #NFDB
409:The holy is that segment of time and space God has reserved for His presence. ... The holy is that point of time and space in which the presence of God is encountered by tzimtzum – self-renunciation – on the part of mankind. Just as God makes space for man by an act of self-limitation, so man makes space for God by an act of self-limitation. The holy is where God is experienced as absolute presence. Not accidentally but essentially, this can only take place through the total renunciation of human will and initiative. To the contrary: God has empowered mankind to use them to become His “partners in the work of creation”.
However, to be true to God’s purposes, there must be times and places at which humanity experiences the reality of the divine. Those times and places require absolute obedience. ~ Jonathan Sacks,#NFDB
410:Given that some ethnic groups—especially ones with high levels of ethnocentrism and mobilization—will undoubtedly continue to function as groups far into the foreseeable future, unilateral renunciation of ethnic loyalties by some groups means only their surrender and defeat—the Darwinian dead end of extinction. The future, then, like the past, will inevitably be a Darwinian competition in which ethnicity plays a very large role.
The alternative faced by Europeans throughout the Western world is to place themselves in a position of enormous vulnerability in which their destinies will be determined by other peoples, many of whom hold deep historically conditioned hatreds toward them. Europeans' promotion of their own displacement is the ultimate foolishness—an historical mistake of catastrophic proportions. ~ Kevin B MacDonald,#NFDB
411:But now the problem of the causa-sui project of the genius. In the normal Oedipal project the person internalizes the parents and the superego they embody, that is, the culture at large. But the genius cannot do this because his project is unique; it cannot be filled up by the parents or the culture. It is created specifically by a renunciation of the parents, a renunciation of what they represent and even of their own concrete persons-at least in fantasy-as there doesn't seem to be anything in them that has caused the genius. Here we see whence the genius gets his extra burden of guilt: he has renounced the father both spiritually and physically. This act gives him extra anxiety because now he is vulnerable in his turn, as he has no one to stand on. He is alone in his freedom. Guilt is a function of fear, as Rank said. ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
412:Love determined God to the renunciation of his divinity. Not because … God is love, but because of his love, of the predicate, … ; thus love is a higher power and truth[.] Love conquers God. It was love to which God sacrificed his divine majesty. … [W]hat sort of love was that? … [I]t was love to man. … [T]hough there is … a self-interested love among men, still true human love … is that which impels the sacrifice of self to another. Who then is our saviour … ? Love; for God as God has not saved us, but Love, which transcends the difference between the divine and human personality. As God has renounced himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce God; for if we do not sacrifice God to love, we sacrifice love to God, and, in spite of the predicate of love, we have the God – the evil being – of religious fanaticism. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
413:Once he had reached the top, he looked down on the town at his feet. Such repose, such tranquility, what a lesson in calmness! Seeing it, he was ashamed of his troubled existence. He renounced the love that brought him misery for the love of the town. It took hold of him again, suffusing his entire being as it had done during the first days of the Flemish Movement. How beautiful Bruges still was, seen from above, with its belfries, its pinnacles, its stepped gables like stairs to climb up to the land of dreams, to return to the great days of yesteryear. Among the roofs were canals fanned by the trees, quiet streets with a few women making their way in cloaks, swinging like silent bells. Lethargic peace! The sweetness of renunciation! A queen in exile, the widow of History whose only desire, basically, was to carve her own tomb. ~ Georges Rodenbach, #NFDB
414:WE HAVE COME here to learn about spirituality. I trust the genuine quality of this search but we must question its nature. The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit. The teachings are treated as an external thing, external to “me,” a philosophy which we try to imitate. We do not actually want to identify with or become the teachings. So if our teacher speaks of renunciation of ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego. We go through the motions, make the appropriate gestures, but we really do not want to sacrifice any part of our way of life. We become skillful actors, and while playing deaf and dumb to the real meaning of the teachings, we find some comfort in pretending to follow the path. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB
415:The second call
The first call is frequently to follow Jesus or to prepare ourselves to do wonderful and noble things for the Kingdom. We are appreciated and admired by family, by friends or by the community. The second call comes later, when we accept that we cannot do big or heroic things for Jesus; it is a time of renunciation, humiliation and humility. We feel useless; we are no longer appreciated. If the first passage is made at high noon, under a shining sun, the second call is often made at night. We feel alone and are afraid because we are in a world of confusion. We begin to doubt the commitment we made in the light of day. We seem deeply broken in some way. But this suffering is not useless. Through the renunciation we can reach a new wisdom of love. It is only through the pain of the cross that we discover what the resurrection means. ~ Jean Vanier,#NFDB
416:Renunciation isn't a moral imperative or a form of self-denial. It's simply cooperation with the way things are: for moments do pass away, one after the other. Resisting this natural unfolding doesn't change it; resistance only makes it painful. So we renounce our resistance, our noncooperation, our stubborn refusal to enter life as it is. We renounce our fantasy of a beautiful past and an exciting future we can cherish and hold on to. Life just isn't like this. Life, time, is letting go, moment after moment. Life and time redeem themselves constantly, heal themselves constantly, only we don't know this, and much as we long to be healed and redeemed, we refuse to recognize this truth. This is why the sirens' songs are so attractive and so deadly. They propose a world of indulgence and wishful thinking, an unreal world that is seductive and destructive. (142) ~ Norman Fischer, #NFDB
417:What then are the lines of Karmayoga laid down by the Gita? Its key principle, its spiritual method, can be summed up as the union of two largest and highest states or powers of consciousness, equality and oneness. The kernel of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit. An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness. The kernal of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit. An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [95],#NFDB
418:In the eight months he had been away, he had almost forgotten the gaze he found there, the gaze which came in moments like this, for it was not one of the looks that New Englanders use or have ever used to express a turn of mind or heart; it was a gaze more cold, more mean, more cruel even than the gaze a Vermont farmer gives a stranger asking directions; more cold, more mean, more cruel because it was completely blank, that very blankness a sign of the renunciation of alternatives, of tenderness or brutality, of pleasure or pain, of understanding or ignorance, of belief or disbelief, of compassion or intolerance, of reason or unswerving fanaticism; it was a gaze which signals the flicking off of the switch which controls the mechanism making man a human being; it said: Now we must fight. There is no time or need for talking; violence is already with us, part of us. ~ William Melvin Kelley, #NFDB
419:Barabbas (“Son of the Father”) is a kind of Messianic figure. Two interpretations of Messianic hope are juxtaposed here in the offer of the Passover amnesty. In terms of Roman law, it is a case of two criminals convicted of the same offense—two rebels against the Pax Romana. It is clear that Pilate prefers the nonviolent “fanatic” that he sees in Jesus. Yet the crowd and the Temple authorities have different categories. If the Temple aristocracy felt constrained to declare: “We have no king but Caesar” (Jn 19:15), this only appears to be a renunciation of Israel’s Messianic hope: “We do not want this king” is what they mean. They would like to see a different solution to the problem. Again and again, mankind will be faced with this same choice: to say yes to the God who works only through the power of truth and love, or to build on something tangible and concrete—on violence. Jesus ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
420:Do you not see — talking up this plea of Sattva, the country has been slowly and slowly drowned in the ocean of Tamas or dark ignorance? Where the most dull want to hide their stupidity by covering it with a false desire for the highest knowledge which is beyond all activities, either physical or mental; where one, born and bred in lifelong laziness, wants to throw the veil of renunciation over his own unfitness for work; where the most diabolical try to make their cruelty appear, under the cloak of austerity, as a part of religion; where no one has an eye upon his own incapacity, but everyone is ready to lay the whole blame on others; where knowledge consists only in getting some books by heart, genius consists in chewing the cud of others' thoughts, and the highest glory consists in taking the name of ancestors: do we require any other proof to show that that country is being day by day drowned in utter Tamas? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
421:4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live—that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
422:A MARWARI DEVOTEE: "Sir, what is the way?"
Two ways of God-realization
MASTER: "There are two ways. One is the path of discrimination, the other is that of love. Discrimination means to know the distinction between the Real and the unreal.
God alone is the real and permanent Substance; all else is illusory and impermanent.
The magician alone is real; his magic is illusory. This is discrimination.
"Discrimination and renunciation. Discrimination means to know the distinction between the Real and the unreal. Renunciation means to have dispassion for the things of the world. One cannot acquire them all of a sudden. They must be practised every day.
One should renounce 'woman and gold' mentally at first. Then, by the will of God, one can renounce it both mentally and outwardly. It is impossible to ask the people of Calcutta to renounce all for the sake of God. One has to tell them to renounce mentally. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#NFDB
423:renunciation as a means :::
Therefore renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. We shall have no attachment to our life in the world; if that attachment exists, we must renounce it and renounce utterly; but neither shall we have any attachment to the escape from the world, to salvation, to the great self-annihilation; if that attachment exists, that also we must renounce and renounce it utterly.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, 329,#NFDB
424:the best we can conceive as the thing to be done :::
The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can command in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,#NFDB
425:The annoyances or adversities that come to man always have three causes: man himself, the world, God. Depending on the point of view adopted, we may take into consideration one or another of these causes, but we cannot deny any of them.
Man is the author of his misfortune to the extent it is experienced as suffering; the world is its author to the extent the misfortune seeks to keep man in cosmic illusion; and God is the Author to the extent the misfortune comes to man as a sanction, though also as a purification, hence a trial.
The same thing is true mutatis mutandis of happy events: we can never say they do not come from God or that they do not come from the cosmic surroundings or that they do not result from our own nature. These events are also trials in their character of temptation; the corresponding virtue is renunciation or detachment (zuhd). The spiritual "traveler" (sālik) should be not only "patient" (sabūr) but also "detached" (zāhid). ~ Frithjof Schuon,#NFDB
426:We need not deplore the renunciation of historical truth when we put forward rational grounds for the precepts of civilization. The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new-born babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird signifies . But the child does not know it. He hears only the distorted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived; and we know how often his distrust of the grown-ups and his refractoriness actually take their start from this impression. We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
427:the rebels of 1905, at the frontier on which they stand united, teach us, to the sound of exploding bombs, that rebellion cannot lead, without ceasing to be rebellion, to consolation and to the comforts of dogma. Their only evident victory is to triumph at least over solitude and negation. In the midst of a world which they deny and which rejects them, they try, man after man, like all the great-hearted ones, to reconstruct a brotherhood of man. The love they bear for one another, which brings them happiness even in the desert of a prison, which extends to the great mass of their enslaved and silent fellow men, gives the measure of their distress and of their hopes. To serve this love, they must first kill; to inaugurate the reign of innocence, they must accept a certain culpability. This contradiction will be resolved for them only at the very last moment. Solitude and chivalry, renunciation and hope will only be surmounted by the willing acceptance of death. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
428:I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the wise will understand. After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words "my" and "mine" never had again the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said, "Abraham is rich," but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
429:Actually, the substitution of the reality-principle for the pleasure-principle denotes no dethronement of the pleasure-principle, but only a safeguarding of it. A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results, is given up, but only in order to gain in the new way an assured pleasure coming later. But the end psychic impression made by this substitution has been so powerful that it is mirrored in a special religious myth. The doctrine of reward in a future life for the—voluntary or enforced—renunciation of earthly lusts is nothing but a mythical projection of this revolution in the mind. In logical pursuit of this prototype, religions have been able to effect the absolute renunciation of pleasure in this life by means of the promise of compensation in a future life; they have not, however, achieved a conquest of the pleasure-principle this way. It is science which comes nearest to succeeding in this conquest; science, however, also offers intellectual pleasure during its work and promises practical gain at the end. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
430:For us, the falsity of a judgment is still no objection to that judgment — that’s where our new way of speaking sounds perhaps most strange. The question is the extent to which it makes demands on life, sustains life, maintains the species, perhaps even creates species. And as a matter of principle we are ready to assert that the falsest judgments (to which a priori synthetic judgments belong) are the most indispensable to us, that without our allowing logical fictions to count, without a way of measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world through numbers, human beings could not live — that if we managed to give up false judgments, it would amount to a renunciation of life, a denial of life.
To concede the fictional nature of the conditions of life means, of course, taking a dangerous stand against the customary feelings about value. A philosophy which dares to do that is for this reason alone already standing beyond good and evil. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
431:Transcendent renunciation is developed by meditating on the preciousness of human
life in terms of the ocean of evolutionary possibilities, the immediacy of death, the
inexorability of evolutionary causality, and the sufferings of the ignorance-driven,
involuntary life cycle. Renunciation automatically occurs when you come face-to-face
with your real existential situation, and so develop a genuine sympathy for yourself,
having given up pretending the prison of habitual emotions and confusions is just fine.
Meditating on the teachings given on these themes in a systematic way enables you to
generate quickly an ambition to gain full control of your body and mind in order at least
to face death confidently, knowing you can navigate safely through the dangers of further
journeys. Wasting time investing your life in purposes that “you cannot take with you”
becomes ludicrous, and, when you radically shift your priorities, you feel a profound
relief at unburdening yourself of a weight of worry over inconsequential things ~ Padmasambhava,#NFDB
432:The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of '93, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror,—did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
433:The life of the spirit has suffered in recent times by its association with traditional religion, by its apparent hostility to the life of the mind, and by the fact that it has seemed to centre in renunciation. The life of the spirit demands readiness for renunciation when the occasion arises, but is in its essence as positive and as capable of enriching individual existence as mind and instinct are. It brings with it the joy of vision, of the mystery and profundity of the world, of the contemplation of life, and above all the joy of universal love. It liberates those who have it from the prison-house of insistent personal passion and mundane cares. It gives freedom and breadth and beauty to men’s thoughts and feelings, and to all their relations with others. It brings the solution of doubts, the end of the feeling that all is vanity. It restores harmony between mind and instinct, and leads the separated unit back into his place in the life of mankind. For those who have once entered the world of thought, it is only through spirit that happiness and peace can return. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
434:To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But behind all asceticism the thought should be, ‘Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes?’ Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world- shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King’s stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else— since He has retained His own charger—should we accompany Him? ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
435:Men and women of today! if there be among you any pure, fresh flower, let it be laid on the altar of God. If there are among you any who, being young, do not desire to return into the world, let them give up! Let them renounce! This is the one secret of spirituality, renunciation. Dare to do this. Be brave enough to do it. Such great sacrifices are necessary. Can you not see the tide of death and materialism that is rolling over these Western lands? Can you not see the power of lust and unholiness, that is eating into the very vitals of society? Believe me, you will not arrest these things by talk, or by movements of agitation for reform; but by renunciation, by standing up, in the midst of decay and death, as mountains of righteousness. Talk not, but let the power of purity, the power of chastity, the power of renunciation, emanate from every pore of your body. Let it strike those who are struggling day and night for gold, that even in the midst of such a state of things, there can be one to whom wealth counts for nothing. Put away lust and wealth. Sacrifice yourselves. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
436:One peculiarity of our present [ethical] climate is that we care much more about our rights than about our 'good'. For previous thinkers about ethics, such as those who wrote the Upanishads, or Confucius, or Plato, or the founders of the Christian tradition, the central concern was the state of one's soul, meaning some personal state of justice or harmony. Such a state might include resignation or renunciation, or detachment, or obedience, or knowledge, especially self-knowledge. For Plato there could be no just political order except one populated by just citizens.... Today we tend not to believe that; we tend to think that modern constitutional democracies are fine regardless of the private vices of those within them. We are much more nervous talking about our good: it seems moralistic, or undemocratic, or elitist. Similarly, we are nervous talking about duty. The Victorian ideal of a life devoted to duty, or a calling, is substantially lost to us. So a greater proportion of our moral energy goes to protecting claims against each other, and that includes protecting the state of our soul as purely private, purely our own business. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
437:The great king Yudhishthira once said that the most wonderful thing in life is that every moment we see people dying around us, and yet we think we shall never die. Surrounded by fools on every side, we think we are the only exceptions, the only learned men. Surrounded by all sorts of experiences of fickleness, we think our love is the only lasting love. How can that be? Even love is selfish, and the Yogi says that in the end we shall find that even the love of husbands and wives, and children and friends, slowly decays. Decadence seizes everything in this life. It is only when everything, even love, fails, that, with a flash, man finds out how vain, how dream-like is this world. Then he catches a glimpse of Vairâgya (renunciation), catches a glimpse of the Beyond. It is only by giving up this world that the other comes; never through holding on to this one. Never yet was there a great soul who had not to reject sense-pleasures and enjoyments to acquire his greatness. The cause of misery is the clash between the different forces of nature, one dragging one way, and another dragging another, rendering permanent happiness impossible. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
438:Creation is, on God’s part, not an act of self-expansion, but a retreat, a renunciation. God and all his creatures are less than God alone. God accepted this diminishment. God emptied Himself of part of His being. God emptied Himself in the act of His divinity. This is why St. John says, ‘The Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world.’ God permitted things to exist other than Himself and worth infinitely less than Himself. By the act of creation, God denied himself, just as Christ told us to deny ourselves. God denied Himself in our favour to give us the possibility of denying ourselves for Him. This response, this echo, subject to our refusal, is the only possible justification for the folly of love in the act of creation. Religions with this conception of renunciation, this voluntary distance, this voluntary effacement of God, His apparent absence and His secret presence here below … these religions are the true religion, translations of the Great Revelation into different languages. Religions that represent divinity as commanding wherever it has the power to do so are false. Even if they are monotheistic, they are idolatries. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
439:The observation and experiments necessary for the pursuit of alchemy did not comport with the Greek idea of philosophy. This is shown by the saying of Socrates, that the nature of external objects could be discovered by thought without observation, and by the renunciation of all natural sciences by the Cynics. This came largely from the fact that they saw in the nature around them the mutable only. Plato separated logic, as the knowledge of the immutable, from physics, the knowledge of the mutable. That which was subject to indefinite change would not repay observing nor recording, therefore they could not conceive of astronomy and physics as serious objects of mental occupation. There was nothing to be learned from fields and trees and stones. One of the philosophers is said to have gone to the length of putting out his eyes, in order that his mind might not be influenced by external objects, but might wholly give itself to pure contemplation. The intellectual power and grasp of these philosophers were wonderful, but faulty and misleading, since the real and practical was left out. ~ Francis Preston Venable, A Short History of Chemistry (1894) pp. 9-10., #NFDB
440:I realized that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. 'I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows' is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only means that I have not yet clearly realized the necessity of definite action. 'But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow?' Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced. That is why Nishkulanand has sung:
'Renunciaton without aversion is not lasting.'
Where therefore the desire is gone, a vow of renunciation is the natural and inevitable fruit. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,#NFDB
441:What I'm sure of," he began, "is that you can't be happy without money. That's all. I don't like superficiality and I don't like romanticism. I like to be conscious. And what I've noticed is that there's a kind of spiritual snobbism in certain 'superior beings' who think that money isn't necessary for happiness. Which is stupid, which is false, and to a certain degree cowardly. You see, Mersault, for a man who is well born, being happy is never complicated. It's enough to take up the general fate, only not with the will for renunciation like so many fake great men, but with the will for happiness. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time. That's the only problem that's ever interested me. Very specific. Very clear."
(...)
"Oh, I know perfectly well that most rich men have no sense of happiness. But that's not the question. To have money is to have time. That's my main point. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be or to become rich is to have time to be happy, if you deserve it. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
442:Brigham, the greatest and certainly the most able economist and administrator and businessman this nation has ever seen, didn't give a hoot for earthly things: 'I have never walked across the streets to make a trade.' He didn't mean that literally. You always do have to handle things. But in what spirit do we do it? Not the Krishna way, by renunciation, for example... If you refuse to be concerned with these things at all, and say, "I'm above all that," that's as great a fault. The things of the world have got to be administered; they must be taken care of, they are to be considered. We have to keep things clean, and in order. That's required of us. This is a test by which we are being proven. This is the way by which we prepare, always showing that these things will never captivate our hearts, that they will never become our principle concern. That takes a bit of doing, and that is why we have the formula 'with an eye single to his glory.' Keep first your eye on the star, then on all the other considerations of the ship. You will have all sorts of problems on the ship, but unless you steer by the star, forget the ship. Sink it. You won't go anywhere. ~ Hugh Nibley, #NFDB
443:What I'm sure of is that you can't be happy without money. That's all. I don't like superficiality and I don't like romanticism. I like to be conscious. And what I've noticed is that there's a kind of spiritual snobbism in certain 'superior beings' who think that money isn't necessary for happiness. Which is stupid, which is false, and to a certain degree cowardly.... For a man who is well born, being happy is never complicated. It's enough to take up the general fate, only not with the will for renunciation like so many fake great men, but with the will for happiness. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time. That's the only problem that's ever interested me.... To have money is to have time. That's my main point. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be or to become rich is to have time to be happy, if you deserve it.... Everything for happiness, against the world which surrounds us with its violence and its stupidity.... All the cruelty of our civilization can be measured by this one axiom: happy nations have no history. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
444:You simply do not understand the human condition,” said the robot.
Hah! Do you think you do, you conceited hunk of animated tin?”
Yes, I believe so, thanks ot my study of the authors, poets, and critics who devote their lives to the exploration and description of Man. Your Miss Forelle is a noble soul. Ever since I looked upon my first copy of that exquisitely sensitive literary quarterly she edits, I have failed to understand what she sees in you. To be sure,” IZK-99 mused, “the relationship is not unlike that between the nun and the Diesel engine in Regret for Two Doves, but still… At any rate, if Miss Forelle has finally told you to go soak your censored head in expurgated wastes and then put the unprintable thing in an improbable place, I for one heartily approve.
Tunny, who was no mamma’s boy — he had worked his way through college as a whale herder and bossed construction gangs on Mars — was so appalled by the robot’s language that he could only whisper, “She did not. She said nothing of the sort.”
I did not mean it literally,” IZK-99 explained. “I was only quoting the renunciation scene in Gently Come Twilight. By Stichling, you know — almost as sensitive a writer as Brochet. ~ Poul Anderson,#NFDB
445:It would almost appear that he who first built the Kaaba - for since the time of Abraham the original structure has been rebuilt several times in the same shape - wanted to create a parable of man’s humility before God. The builder knew that no beauty of architectural rhythm and no perfection of line, however great, could ever do justice to the idea of God: and so he confined himself to the simplest three-dimensional form imaginable - a cube of stone...never had I felt so strongly as now, before the Kaaba, that the hand of the builder had come so close to his religious conception. In the utter simplicity of a cube, in the complete renunciation of all beauty of line and form, spoke this thought: ‘Whatever beauty man may be able to create with his hands, it will be only conceit to deem it worthy of God; therefore, the simplest that man can conceive is the greatest that he can do to express the glory of God.’ A similar feeling may have been responsible for the mathematical simplicity of the Egyptian pyramids - although there man’s conceit had at least found a vent in the tremendous dimensions he gave to his buildings. But here, in the Kaaba, even the size spoke of human renunciation and self-surrender; and the proud modesty of this little structure had no compare on earth. ~ Muhammad Asad, #NFDB
446:THE SANSKRIT WORD for meditation is dhyana; the Tibetan term is samten. Both refer to the same thing: steady mind. Mind is steady in the sense that you don’t go up when a thought goes up, and you don’t go down when it goes down, but you just watch things going either up or down. Whether good or bad, exciting, miserable, or blissful thoughts arise—whatever occurs in your state of mind, you don’t support it by having an extra commentator. The sitting practice of meditation is simple, direct, and very businesslike. You just sit and watch your thoughts go up and down. There is a physical technique in the background, which is working with the breath as it goes out and in. That provides an occupation during sitting practice. It is partly designed to occupy you so that you don’t evaluate thoughts. You just let them happen. In that environment, you can develop renunciation: you renounce extreme reactions to your thoughts. Warriors on the battlefield don’t react to success or failure. Success or failure is just regarded as another breath coming in and going out, another discursive thought coming in and going out. So the warrior is very steady. Because of that, the warrior is victorious—because victory is not particularly the aim or the goal. But the warrior can just be—as he or she is. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB
447:It was not until now, when she saw that she had lost Robert, that Caroline discovered how much he meant to her … she looked back and tried to determine exactly when her friendship for him had grown into love. It was a useless occupation, of course, and quite fruitless, for now it seemed to Caroline that she had always loved him. Perhaps the seed had been sown all those years ago at Elsinore and had lain dormant in her heart. She loved him in all sorts of different ways: she admired his character and enjoyed his humour, she felt an immense tenderness towards him and her heart beat faster when he was there. These feelings were so strong that they were difficult to disguise, and it was only by damping herself down that she could bear to be in the same room with him. Fortunately Caroline had learnt the lesson of renunciation; her life had taught her how to withdraw gracefully inside herself and how to bear disappointment and heartache with a smiling face, so instead of brooding upon her troubles she tried to banish them. She set to work and made a cake for the party. It was to be a magnificent cake, large and rich, full of eggs and fruit — an absolute pre-war cake. Comfort stood at her elbow, watching eagerly, helping to beat the mixture, breathing heavily with her exertions and chatting the while. ~ D E Stevenson, #NFDB
448:He rubbed his chin. “Then you have to believe that living as a Christian is in itself good. That renunciation, not succumbing to sin, has a value for human beings even in this earthly life. On a similar theme, I’ve read that sportsmen find the pain and effort of training meaningful in itself, even if they never win anything. If heaven didn’t actually exist, then at least we have a good, secure life as Christians, where we work, live happily, accept the possibilities God and nature give us, and look after each other. Do you know what my father—also a preacher—used to say about Læstadianism? That if you only counted the people the movement had saved from alcoholism and broken homes, that alone would justify what we do, even if we were preaching a lie.” He paused for a minute. “But it’s not always like that. Sometimes it costs more than it should to live according to Scripture. The way it did for Lea…The way I, in my delusion, forced Lea to live.” There was a faint tremor in his voice. “It took me many years to realise it, but no one should be forced by their father to live in a marriage like that, with a man they hate, a man who had taken them by force.” He raised his head and looked at the crucifix above us. “Yes, I remain convinced that it was right according to Scripture, but sometimes salvation can have too high a price. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
449:the great division :::
Secondly, with regard to the movements and experiences of the body the mind will come to know the Purusha seated within it as, first, the witness or observer of the movements and, secondly, the knower or perceiver of the experiences. It will cease to consider in thought or feel in sensation these movements and experiences as its own but rather consider and feel them as not its own, as operations of Nature governed by the qualities of Nature and their interaction upon each other. This detachment can be made so normal and carried so far that there will be a kind of division between the mind and the body and the former will observe and experience the hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue, depression, etc. of the physical being as if they were experiences of some other person with whom it has so close a rapport as to be aware of all that is going on within him. This division is a great means, a great step towards mastery; for the mind comes to observe these things first without being overpowered and finally without at all being affected by them, dispassionately, with clear understanding but with perfect detachment. This is the initial liberation of the mental being from servitude to the body; for by right knowledge put steadily into practice liberation comes inevitably
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, 345,#NFDB
450:Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus. (It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from more complex life-form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another — the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter.) Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
451:Freud did admit, though only grudgingly, that artists were not merely neurotics who used their gifts to evade reality. Art brings about a reconciliation between the two principles in a new way. An artist is originally a man who turns away from reality because he cannot come to terms with the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction which it at first demands, and who allows his erotic and ambitious wishes full play in the life of phantasy. He finds a way back to reality, however, from this world of phantasy by making use of special gifts to mould his phantasies into truths of a new kind, which are valued by men as precious reflections of reality. (SE, XII.224) This strange conception of art and artist implies that, although the artist may just escape falling into a neurosis, his art is still an indirect way of obtaining instinctual satisfactions which, if he were better adapted to reality, he would either enjoy or else renounce. In other words, art is primarily escapist. In an ideal world in which everyone had matured sufficiently to replace the pleasure principle by the reality principle, there would be no need for art. This conclusion, coming as it does from a brilliant writer who was deeply appreciative of both literature and the visual arts, will strike most readers as extremely odd. If Freud had lived long enough to become familiar with modern biological thinking, he might have revised his concepts. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
452:I had thought myself lost, had touched the very bottom of despair; and then, when the spirit of renunciation had filled me, I had known peace. I know now what I was not conscious of at the time—that in such an hour a man feels that he has finally found himself and has become his own friend. An essential inner need has been satisfied, and against that satisfaction, that self-fulfilment, no external power can prevail. Bonnafous, I imagine, he who spent: his life racing before the wind, was acquainted with this serenity of spirit. Guillaumet, too, in his snows. Never shall I forget that, lying buried to the chin in sand, strangled slowly to death by thirst, my heart was infinitely warm beneath the desert stars. What can men do to make known to themselves this sense of deliverance? Everything about mankind is paradox. He who strives and conquers grows soft. The magnanimous man grown rich becomes mean. The creative artist for whom everything is made easy nods. Every doctrine swears that it can breed men, but none can tell us in advance what sort of men it will breed. Men are not cattle to be fattened for market. In the scales of life an indigent Newton weighs more than a parcel of prosperous nonentities. All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming—a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
453:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#NFDB
454:Here the formula of the supreme knowledge comes to our help; we have nothing to do in our essential standpoint with these distinctions, for there is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments, equal in the individual and the group, and to realise that, to express that, to serve that, to fulfil that is all that matters. Self-satisfaction and altruism, enjoyment and indifference are not the essential thing. If the realisation, fulfilment, service of the one Self demands from us an action that seems to others self-service or self-assertion in the egoistic sense or seems egoistic enjoyment and self-indulgence, that action we must do; we must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. The influence of the environment works often with great subtlety; we prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within; we are impelled to drape ourselves in the vow of poverty, or in the garb of service, or in outward proofs of indifference and renunciation and a spotless sainthood because that is what tradition and opinion demand of us and so we can make best an impression on our environment. But all this is vanity and delusion. We may be called upon to assume these things, for that may be the uniform of our service; but equally it may not. The eye of man outside matters nothing; the eye within is all.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
455:The whole thing boils down to this paradox: if you are going to be a hero then you must give a gift. If you are the average man you give your heroic gift to the society in which you live, and you give the gift that society specifies in advance. If you are an artist you fashion a peculiarly personal gift, the justification for your own heroic identity, which means that it is always aimed at least partly over the heads of your fellow men. After all, they can't grant the immortality of your personal soul. As Rank argued in the breathtaking closing chapters of Art and Artist, there is no way for the artist to be at peace with his work or with the society that accepts it. The artist's gift is always to creation itself, to the ultimate meaning of life, to God. We should not be surprised that Rank was brought to exactly the same conclusion as Kierkegaard: that the only way out of human conflict is full renunciation, to give one's life as a gift to the highest powers. Absolution has to come from the absolute beyond. As Kierkegaard, Rank showed that this rule applied to the strongest, most heroic types-not to trembling and empty weaklings. To renounce the world and oneself, to lay the meaning of it to the powers of creation, is the hardest thing for man to achieve-and so it is fitting that this task should fall to the strongest personality type, the one with the largest ego. The great scientific world-shaker Newton was the same man who always carried the Bible under his arm. ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
456:On the value of the renunciation that we should practise inwardly and outwardly. You should know that no one has ever renounced themselves so much in this life that there was nothing left of themselves to renounce. But there are few people who are properly aware of this and who remain constant in their efforts. It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else. People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works. However holy our works may be, they do not in any way make us holy in so far as they are works, but it is we, in so far as we are holy and possess fulness of being, who sanctify all our works, whether these be eating, sleeping, waking, or anything at all. Little comes from the works of those whose being is slight. This teaches us then that we should make every effort to be good, and should worry not so much about what we do or the character of our actions, but we should be concerned rather about their ground. ~ Meister Eckhart, #NFDB
457:Thus political economy — despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance — is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theater, the dance hall, the public house, the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save — the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour — your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theater; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power — all this it can appropriate for you — it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
458:The female is uniformly more easily hypnotised than the male throughout the animal world, and it may be seen from the following how closely hypnotic phenomena are related to the most ordinary events. I have already described, in discussing female sympathy, how easy it is for laughter or tears to be induced in females. How impressed she is by everything in the newspapers! What a martyr she is to the silliest superstitions! How eagerly she tries every remedy recommended by her friends!
From their complete inability to attain personal truth, to be honest about themselves — the hysterical never think for themselves, they want other people to think about them, they want to arouse the interest of others — it follows that the hysterical are the best mediums for hypnotic purposes. But any one who allows him or herself to be hypnotised is doing the most immoral thing possible. It is yielding to complete slavery; it is a renunciation of the will and consciousness; it means allowing another person to do what he likes with the subject. Hypnosis shows how all possibility of truth depends upon the wish to be truthful, but it must be the real wish of the person concerned: when a hypnotised person is told to do something, he does it when he comes out of the trance, and if asked his reasons will give a plausible motive on the spot, not only before others, but he will justify his action to himself by quite fanciful reasons.
All women can be hypnotised and like being hypnotised, but this proclivity is exaggerated in hysterical women. ~ Otto Weininger,#NFDB
459:A divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others,—though to God nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral Yoga
For a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral yoga
To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire a thing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, The Mother’s Love,#NFDB
460:Our sin is our resistance to going along with God's initiative in making suffering reparative. We are deeply drawn towards God, but we also sense how following him will dislocate and transform beyond recognition the forms which have made life tolerable for us. We often react with fear, dismay, hostility. We are at war with ourselves, and responding differently to this inner conflict, we end up at war with each other. So it is undoubtedly true that the result of sin is much suffering. But this is by no means distributed according to desert. Many who are relatively innocent are swept up in this suffering, and some of the worse offenders get off lightly. The proper response to all this is not retrospective book-keeping, but making ourselves capable of responding to God's initiative.
But now if that's what sin is, then one can sympathize with a lot of the modern critique of a religion which focuses on the evil tendencies of human nature, and the need for renunciation and sacrifice. This is not because humans are in fact angelic, or there is no point to sacrifice. It's just that focusing on how bad human beings can be, even if it's to refute the often over-rosy views of secular humanists with their reliance on human malleability and therapy, can only strengthen misanthropy, which certainly won’t bring you closer to God; and propounding sacrifice and renunciation for themselves takes you away from the main points, which is following God's initiative. That this can involve sacrifice, we well know from the charter act in this initiative, but renunciation is not is point. ~ Charles Taylor,#NFDB
461:Karma Yoga, the Path of Works; :::
The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 39, #index,#NFDB
462:After so much imposture, so much fraud, it is comforting to contemplate a beggar. He, at least, neither lies nor lies to himself: his doctrine, if he has one, he embodies; work he dislikes, and he proves it; wanting to possess nothing, he cultivates his impoverishment, the condition of his freedom. His thought is resolved into his being and his being into his thought. He has nothing, he is himself, he endures: to live on a footing with eternity is to live from day to day, from hand to mouth. Thus, for him, other men are imprisoned in illusion. If he depends on them, he takes his revenge by studying them, a specialist in the underbelly of “noble” sentiments. His sloth, of a very rare quality, truly “delivers” him from a world of fools and dupes. About renunciation he knows more than many of your esoteric works. To be convinced of this, you need only walk out into the street … But you prefer the texts that teach mendicancy. Since no practical consequence accompanies your meditations, it will not be surprising that the merest bum is worth more than you … Can we conceive a Buddha faithful to his truths and to his palace? One is not “delivered-alive” and still a land-owner. I reject the generalization of the lie, I repudiate those who exhibit their so-called “salvation” and prop it with a doctrine which does not emanate from themselves. To unmask them, to knock them off the pedestal they have hoisted themselves on, to hold them up to scorn is a campaign no one should remain indifferent to. For at any price we must keep those who have too clear a conscience from living and dying in peace. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
463:An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia - and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance - represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.
A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand” “disarmament”! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before. ~ Vladimir Lenin,#NFDB
464:If you look, the first look will say to change the world, because it is so apparent around you. Change it! And that’s what you have been doing for many lives: continuously changing the world, changing this and that, changing houses, bodies, wives, husbands, friends – changing, but never looking to the fact that you remain the same, so how can you change the world?
That’s why a false tradition of renunciation came into existence all over the world. Escape from the house and go to the monastery. Escape from the market, go to the Himalayas. Escape from the world! To the Himalayas you can go easily, but how can you escape from yourself? You will create the same world THERE – the same! It may be a miniature world, it may not be so vast, but you will do the same. YOU are the same – how can you do anything else?
Deeper insight reveals that: change the mind, then the world changes. Then wherever you are a different world is revealed. You go deeper, and then you understand that if you want to be really without the world around you.... Because howsoever beautiful the world is, sooner or later it will become a boredom and you will be fed up. Even if it is a heaven you will start longing for the hell, because the mind needs change. It cannot live in the eternal, it cannot live in the non-changing, because the mind hankers for some new curiosity, some new sensation, some new excitement. It is not possible for the mind to stop time and to remain timelessly.
That’s why the mind cannot live in the now, the here, because now is not a part of time. It never changes, it is eternal. You cannot say it is unchanging, it is not permanent, it eternal. It is simply as it is. Nothing happens there. It is emptiness. ~ Osho,#NFDB
465:One thus gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature or civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed. And in fact it is not difficult to indicate those defects. While mankind has made continual advances in its control over nature and may expect to make still greater ones, it is not possible to establish with certainty that a similar advance has been made in the management of human affairs; and probably at all periods, just as now once again, many people have asked themselves whether what little civilization has thus acquired is indeed worth defending at all. One would think that a re-ordering of human relations should be possible, which would remove the sources of dissatisfaction with civilization by renouncing coercion and the suppression of the instincts, so that, undisturbed by internal discord, men might devote themselves to the acquisition of wealth and its enjoyment. That would be a golden age, but it is questionable if such a state of affairs can be realized. It seems rather that every civilization must be built upon coercion and renunciation of instinct; it does not even seem certain that if coercion were to cease the majority of human beings would be prepared to undertake to perform the work necessary for acquiring new wealth. One has, I think, to reckon with the fact that there are present in all men destructive, and therefore anti-social and anti-cultural, trends and that in a great number of people these are strong enough to determine their behavior in human society. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
466:He said, "Who is at my door?"
I said, "Your humble servant."
He said, "What business do you have?"
I said, "To greet you, 0 Lord."
He said, "How long will you journey on?"
I said, "Until you stop me."
He said, "How long will you boil in the fire?"
I said, "Until I am pure.
"This is my oath of love.
For the sake of love
I gave up wealth and position."
He said, "You have pleaded your case
but you have no witness."
I said, "My tears are my witness;
the pallor of my face is my proof.'
He said, "Your witness has no credibility;
your eyes are too wet to see."
I said, "By the splendor of your justice
my eyes are clear and faultless."
He said, "What do you seek?"
I said, "To have you as my constant friend."
He said, "What do you want from me?"
I said, "Your abundant grace."
He said, "Who was your companion on the journey?
I said, "The thought of you, 0 King."
He said, "What called you here?"
I said, "The fragrance of your wine."
He said, "What brings you the most fulfillment?"
I said, "The company of the Emperor."
He said, "What do you find there?"
I said, "A hundred miracles."
He said, "Why is the palace deserted?"
I said, "They all fear the thief."
He said, "Who is the thief?"
I said, "The one who keeps me from -you.
He said, "Where is there safety?"
I said, "In service and renunciation."
He said, "What is there to renounce?"
I said, "The hope of salvation."
He said, "Where is there calamity?"
I said, "In the presence of your love."
He said, "How do you benefit from this life?"
I said, "By keeping true to myself
Now it is time for silence.
If I told you about His true essence
You would fly from your self and be gone,
and neither door nor roof could hold you back!
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Who Is At My Door?
,#NFDB
467:HE SAID: "Who's knocking at my door?"
Said I: "Your humble servant!"
Said He: "What business have you got?"
Said I: "I came to greet You!"
Said He: "How long are you to push?"
Said I: "Until You'll call me!"
Said He: "How long are you to boil?"
Said I: "Till resurrection!"
I claimed I was a lover true
and I took may oaths
That for the sake of love I lost
my kingdom and my wealth!
He said: "You make a claim - the judge
needs witness for your cause!"
Said I: "My witness is my tears,
my proof my yellow face!"
Said He: "The witness is corrupt,
your eye is wet and ill!"
Said I: "No, by Your eminence:
My eye is sinless clear!"
He said: "And what do you intend?"
Said I: "Just faithful friendships!"
Said He: "What do you want from me?"
Said I: "Your grace abundant!"
Said He: "Who travelled here with you?"
Said I: "Your dream and phantom!"
Said He: "And what led you to me?"
Said I: "Your goblet's fragrance!"
Said He: "What is most pleasant, say?"
Said I: "The ruler's presence!"
Said He: "What did you see there, friend?"
Said I: "A hundred wonders!"
Said He: "Why is it empty now?"
Said I: "From fear of brigands!"
Said He: "The brigand, who is that?"
Said I: "IT is the blaming!"
Said He: "And where is safety then?"
Said: "In renunciation."
Said He: "Renunciation? That's ... ?"
Said I: "The path to safety!"
Said He: "And where is danger, then?"
Said I: "In Your love's quarters!"
Said He: "And how do you fare there?"
Said I: "Steadfast and happy."
I tested you and tested you,
but it availed to nothing -
Who tests the one who was once tried,
he will repent forever!
Be silent! If I'd utter here
the secrets fine he told me,
You would go out all of yourself,
no door nor roof could hold you ~ Rumi,#NFDB
468:When a corner of Maya, the illusion of individual life, is lifted before the eyes of a man in such sort that he no longer makes any egoistic difference between his own person and other men, that he takes as much interest in the sufferings of others as in his own and that he becomes succourable to the point of devotion, ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of others, then that man is able to recognise himself in all beings, considers as his own the infinite sufferings of all that lives and must thus appropriate to himself the sorrow of the world. No distress is alien to him. All the torments which he sees and can so rarely soften, all the torments of which he hears, those even which it is impossible for him to conceive, strike his spirit as if he were himself the victim. Insensible to the alternations of weal and woe which succeed each other in his destiny, delivered from all egoism, he penetrates the veils of the individual illusion : all that lives, all that suffers is equally near to his heart. He conceives the totality of things, their essence, their eternal flux, the vain efforts, the internal struggles and sufferings without end ; he sees to whatever side he turns his gaze man who suffers, the animal who suffers and a world that is eternally passing away. He unites himself henceforth to the sorrows of the world as closely as the egoist to his own person. How can he having such a knowledge of the world affirm by incessant desires his will to live, attach himself more and more to life and clutch it to him always more closely ? The man seduced by the illusion of individual life, a slave of his egoism, sees only the things that touch him personally and draws from them incessantly renewed motives to desire and to will : on the contrary one who penetrates the essence of things and dominates their totality, elevates himself to a state of voluntary renunciation, resignation and true tranquillity. ~ Schopenhauer, #NFDB
469:indifference to things of the body :::
This detachment of the mind must be strengthened by a certain attitude of indifference to the things of the body; we must not care essentially about its sleep or its waking, its movement or its rest, its pain or its pleasure, its health or ill-health, its vigour or its fatigue, its comfort or its discomfort, or what it eats or drinks. This does not mean that we shall not keep the body in right order so far as we can; we have not to fall into violent asceticisms or a positive neglect of the physical frame. But we have not either to be affected in mind by hunger or thirst or discomfort or ill-health or attach the importance which the physical and vital man attaches to the things of the body, or indeed any but a quite subordinate and purely instrumental importance. Nor must this instrumental importance be allowed to assume the proportions of a necessity; we must not for instance imagine that the purity of the mind depends on the things we eat or drink, although during a certain stage restrictions in eating and drinking are useful to our inner progress; nor on the other hand must we continue to think that the dependence of the mind or even of the life on food and drink is anything more than a habit, a customary relation which Nature has set up between these principles. As a matter of fact the food we take can be reduced by contrary habit and new relation to a minimum without the mental or vital vigour being in any way reduced; even on the contrary with a judicious development they can be trained to a greater potentiality of vigour by learning to rely on the secret fountains of mental and vital energy with which they are connected more than upon the minor aid of physical aliments. This aspect of self-discipline is however more important in the Yoga of self-perfection than here; for our present purpose the important point is the renunciation by the mind of attachment to or dependence on the things of the body.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from Subjection to the Body,#NFDB
470:The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination. ~ Ralph Barton Perry, The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918), #NFDB
471:This immense, still impending total human sacrifice cannot be appraised in the rational or scientific terms that those who have created this system favor: it is, I stress again, an essentially religious phenomenon. As such it offers a close parallel with the original doctrines of Buddhism, even down to the fact that it shares Prince Gautama's atheism. What, indeed, is the elimination of man himself from the process he in fact has discovered and perfected, with its promised end of all striving and seeking, but the Buddha's final escape from the Wheel of Life? Once complete and universal, total automation means total renunciation of life and eventually total extinction: that very retreat into Nirvana that Prince Gautama pictured as man's only way to free himself from sorrow and pain and misfortune. When the life-impulse is depressed, this doctrine, we know, exerts an immense attraction upon masses of disappointed and disheartened souls: for a few centuries Buddhism became dominant in India and swept over China. For similar reasons it is reviving again today.
But note: those who originally accepted this view of man's ultimate destiny, and sought to meet death halfway, did not go to the trouble of creating an elaborate technology to accomplish this end: in that direction they went no farther, significantly enough, than the invention of a water-driven prayer wheel. Instead they practiced concentrated meditation and inner detachment, acts as free from technological intervention as the air they breathed. And they earned an unexpected reward for this mode of withdrawal, a reward that the worshippers of the machine will never know. Instead of extinguishing forever their capacity to feel pleasure or pain, they intensified it, creating poems, philosophies, paintings, sculptures, monuments, ceremonies that restored their hope, their organic animation, their creative zeal: revealing once more in the erotic exuberance an impassioned and exalted sense of man's own potential destiny. Our latter-day technocratic Buddhism can make no such promises ~ Lewis Mumford,#NFDB
472:Where do you search me
Moko Kahan Dhundhere Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Teerath Mein, Na Moorat Mein
Na Ekant Niwas Mein
Na Mandir Mein, Na Masjid Mein
Na Kabe Kailas Mein
Mein To Tere Paas Mein Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Mein Jap Mein, Na Mein Tap Mein
Na Mein Barat Upaas Mein
Na Mein Kiriya Karm Mein Rehta
Nahin Jog Sanyas Mein
Nahin Pran Mein Nahin Pind Mein
Na Brahmand Akas Mein
Na Mein Prakuti Prawar Gufa Mein
Nahin Swasan Ki Swans Mein
Khoji Hoye Turat Mil Jaoon
Ik Pal Ki Talas Mein
Kahet Kabir Suno Bhai Sadho
Mein To Hun Viswas Mein
English Translation:
Where do you search me?
I am with you
Not in pilgrimage, nor in icons
Neither in solitudes
Not in temples, nor in mosques
Neither in Kaba nor in Kailash
I am with you O man
I am with you
Not in prayers, nor in meditation
Neither in fasting
Not in yogic exercises
Neither in renunciation
Neither in the vital force nor in the body
Not even in the ethereal space
Neither in the womb of Nature
Not in the breath of the breath
Seek earnestly and discover
In but a moment of search
Says Kabir, Listen with care
Where your faith is, I am there.
Kabir reveals in this verse the various search patterns adopted by mankind. And each one seems to be justifying his chosen method. Some say God will be realized through pilgrimages while some justify the idol worship. Some say He is up in the mountains while some believe that He is in places of worship. Some proclaim prayers and meditation the path, others believe realization through fasting. Many talk about yogic exercises (activity) and renunciation. When Kabir says that God is not in any of these things it does not mean that God is not in any of these but that to find God what one needs is but to believe and have faith, and when one will have faith he will find God in a moments search, for God is with him all the time. In this poem Kabir emphasises the all-pervading, omniscient, omnipresent qualities of God.
~ Kabir, Where do you search me
,#NFDB
473:He lavished on me a friendliness which was as far above that of Saint-Loup as that was above the affability of a mere tradesman. Compared with that of a great artist, the friendliness of a great gentleman, charming as it may be, has the effect of an actor’s playing a part, of being feigned. Saint-Loup sought to please; Elstir loved to give, to give himself. Everything that he possessed, ideas, work, and the rest which he counted for far less, he would have given gladly to anyone who could understand him. But, failing society that was endurable, he lived in an isolation, with a savagery which fashionable people called pose and ill-breeding, public authorities a recalcitrant spirit, his neighbours madness, his family selfishness and pride. And no doubt at first he had thought, even in his solitude, with enjoyment that, thanks to his work, he was addressing, in spite of distance, he was giving a loftier idea of himself, to those who had misunderstood or hurt him. Perhaps, in those days, he lived alone not from indifference but from love of his fellows, and, just as I had renounced Gilberte to appear to her again one day in more attractive colours, dedicated his work to certain people as a way of approaching them again, by which without actually seeing him they would be made to love him, admire him, talk about him; a renunciation is not always complete from the start, when we decide upon it in our original frame of mind and before it has reacted upon us, whether it be the renunciation of an invalid, a monk, an artist or a hero. But if he had wished to produce with certain people in his mind, in producing he had lived for himself, remote from the society to which he had become indifferent; the practice of solitude had given him a love for it, as happens with every big thing which we have begun by fearing, because we knew it to be incompatible with smaller things to which we clung, and of which it does not so much deprive us as it detaches us from them. Before we experience it, our whole preoccupation is to know to what extent we can reconcile it with certain pleasures which cease to be pleasures as soon as we have experienced it. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
474:At the basis of this collaboration there is necessarily the will to change, no longer to be what one is, for things to be no longer what they are. There are several ways of reaching it, and all the methods are good when they succeed! One may be deeply disgusted with what exists and wish ardently to come out of all this and attain something else; one may - and this is a more positive way - one may feel within oneself the touch, the approach of something positively beautiful and true, and willingly drop all the rest so that nothing may burden the journey to this new beauty and truth.
What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a reality - perhaps of a not too distant future - a reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighed down by old habits, will surely have the good fortune not only to see but to realise. People sleep, they forget, they take life easy - they forget, forget all the time.... But if we could remember... that we are at an exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.
So, the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when one doesn't have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support, this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.
We can participate in it, we can become this new world. And truly, when one has such a marvellous opportunity, one should be ready to give up everything for its sake. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, [T1],#NFDB
475:It is now time for us to ask the personal question put to Jesus Christ by Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, ‘What shall I do Lord?’ or the similar question asked by the Philippian jailer, ’What must I do to be saved?’ Clearly we must do something. Christianity is no mere passive acquiescence in a series of propositions, however true. We may believe in the deity and the salvation of Christ, and acknowledge ourselves to be sinners in need of his salvation, but this does not make us Christians. We have to make a personal response to Jesus Christ, committing ourselves unreservedly to him as our Savior and Lord … At its simplest Christ’s call was “Follow me.” He asked men and women for their personal allegiance. He invited them to learn from him, to obey his words and to identify themselves with his cause … Now there can be no following without a previous forsaking. To follow Christ is to renounce all lesser loyalties … let me be more explicit about the forsaking which cannot be separated from the following of Jesus Christ. First, there must be a renunciation of sin. This, in a word, is repentance. It is the first part of Christian conversion. It can in no circumstances be bypassed. Repentance and faith belong together. We cannot follow Christ without forsaking sin … Repentance is a definite turn from every thought, word, deed, and habit which is known to be wrong … There can be no compromise here. There may be sins in our lives which we do not think we could ever renounce, but we must be willing to let them go as we cry to God for deliverance from them. If you are in doubt regarding what is right and what is wrong, do not be too greatly influenced by the customs and conventions of Christians you may know. Go by the clear teaching of the Bible and by the prompting of your conscience, and Christ will gradually lead you further along the path of righteousness. When he puts his finger on anything, give it up. It may be some association or recreation, some literature we read, or some attitude of pride, jealousy or resentment, or an unforgiving spirit. Jesus told his followers to pluck out their eye and cut off their hand or foot if it caused them to sin. We are not to obey this with dead literalism, of course, and mutilate our bodies. It is a figure of speech for dealing ruthlessly with the avenues along which temptation comes to us. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
476:Most intellectuals and most artists belong to the same type. Only the strongest of them force their way through the atmosphere of the bourgeois earth and attain to the cosmic. The others all resign themselves or make compromises. Despising the bourgeoisie, and yet belonging to it, they add to its strength and glory; for in the last resort they have to share their beliefs in order to live. The lives of these infinitely numerous persons make no claim to the tragic; but they live under an evil star in a quite considerable affliction; and in this hell their talents ripen and bear fruit. The few who break free seek their reward in the unconditioned and go down in splendor. They wear the thorn crown and their number is small. The others, however, who remain in the fold and from whose talents the bourgeoisie reaps much gain, have a third kingdom left open to them, an imaginary and yet a sovereign world, humor. The lone wolves who know no peace, these victims of unceasing pain to whom the urge for tragedy has been denied and who can never break through the starry space,who feel themselves summoned thither and yet cannot survive in its atmosphere—for them is reserved, provided suffering has made their spirits tough and elastic enough, a way of reconcilement and an escape into humor. Humor has always something bourgeois in it, although the true bourgeois is incapable of understanding it. In its imaginary realm the intricate and manyfaceted ideal of all Steppenwolves finds its realisation. Here it is possible not only to extol the saint and the profligate in one breath and to make the poles meet, but to include the bourgeois, too, in the same affirmation. Now it is possible to be possessed by God and to affirm the sinner, and vice versa, but it is not possible for either saint or sinner (or for any other of the unconditioned) to affirm as well that lukewarm mean, the bourgeois. Humor alone, that magnificent discovery of those who are cut short in their calling to highest endeavor, those who falling short of tragedy are yet as rich in gifts as in affliction, humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism. To live in the world as though it were not the world, to respect the law and yet to stand above it, to have possessions as though "one possessed nothing," to renounce as though it were no renunciation, all these favorite and often formulated propositions of an exalted worldly wisdom, it is in the power of humor alone to make efficacious. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
477:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #NFDB
478:...it takes great humility to find oneself unjustly condemned and be silent, and to do this is to imitate the Lord Who set us free from all our sins. ... The truly humble person will have a genuine desire to be thought little of, and persecuted, and condemned unjustly, even in serious matters. ... It is a great help to meditate upon the great gain which in any case this is bound to bring us, and to realize how, properly speaking, we can never be blamed unjustly, since we are always full of faults, and a just man falls seven times a day, so that it would be a falsehood for us to say we have no sin. If, then, we are not to blame for the thing that we are accused of, we are never wholly without blame in the way that our good Jesus was. ... Thou knowest, my Good, that if there is anything good in me it comes from no other hands than Thine own. For what is it to Thee, Lord, to give much instead of little? True, I do not deserve it, but neither have I deserved the favors which Thou hast shown me already. Can it be that I should wish a thing so evil as myself to be thought well of by anyone, when they have said such wicked things of Thee, Who art good above all other good? ... Do Thou give me light and make me truly to desire that all should hate me, since I have so often let Thee, Who hast loved me with such faithfulness. ... What does it matter to us if we are blamed by them all, provided we are without blame in the sight of the Lord? ...meditate upon what is real and upon what is not. ... Do you suppose, ... that, if you do not make excuses for yourself, there will not be someone else who will defend you? Remember how the Lord took the Magdalen's part in the Pharisee's house and also when her sister blamed her. He will not treat you as rigorously as He treated Himself: it was not until He was on the Cross that He had even a thief to defend Him. His Majesty, then, will put it into somebody's mind to defend you; if He does not, it will be because there is no need. ...be glad when you are blamed, and in due time you will see what profit you experience in your souls. For it is in this way that you will begin to gain freedom; soon you will not care if they speak ill or well of you; it will seem like someone else's business. ... So here: it becomes such a habit with us not to reply that it seems as if they are not addressing us at all. This may seem impossible to those of us who are very sensitive and not capable of great mortification. It is indeed difficult at first, but I know that, with the Lord's help, the gradual attainment of this freedom, and of renunciation and self-detachment, is quite possible. ~ Teresa of vila, #NFDB
479:The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, clear state of mind and heart is established.
This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalini, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 36,#NFDB
480:Neoliberal economics, the logic of which is tending today to win out throughout the world thanks to international bodies like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund and the governments to whom they, directly or indirectly, dictate their principles of ‘governance’,10 owes a certain number of its allegedly universal characteristics to the fact that it is immersed or embedded in a particular society, that is to say, rooted in a system of beliefs and values, an ethos and a moral view of the world, in short, an economic common sense, linked, as such, to the social and cognitive structures of a particular social order. It is from this particular economy that neoclassical economic theory borrows its fundamental assumptions, which it formalizes and rationalizes, thereby establishing them as the foundations of a universal model. That model rests on two postulates (which their advocates regard as proven propositions): the economy is a separate domain governed by natural and universal laws with which governments must not interfere by inappropriate intervention; the market is the optimum means for organizing production and trade efficiently and equitably in democratic societies. It is the universalization of a particular case, that of the United States of America, characterized fundamentally by the weakness of the state which, though already reduced to a bare minimum, has been further weakened by the ultra-liberal conservative revolution, giving rise as a consequence to various typical characteristics: a policy oriented towards withdrawal or abstention by the state in economic matters; the shifting into the private sector (or the contracting out) of ‘public services’ and the conversion of public goods such as health, housing, safety, education and culture – books, films, television and radio – into commercial goods and the users of those services into clients; a renunciation (linked to the reduction in the capacity to intervene in the economy) of the power to equalize opportunities and reduce inequality (which is tending to increase excessively) in the name of the old liberal ‘self-help’ tradition (a legacy of the Calvinist belief that God helps those who help themselves) and of the conservative glorification of individual responsibility (which leads, for example, to ascribing responsibility for unemployment or economic failure primarily to individuals, not to the social order, and encourages the delegation of functions of social assistance to lower levels of authority, such as the region or city); the withering away of the Hegelian–Durkheimian view of the state as a collective authority with a responsibility to act as the collective will and consciousness, and a duty to make decisions in keeping with the general interest and contribute to promoting greater solidarity. Moreover, ~ Pierre Bourdieu, #NFDB
481:The Woman At The Cross-Roads
(Her lover speaks.)
AN equal love between a man and woman,
This is the only charm to set us free,
And this the only omen
Of immortality.
Only for us the long, long war is over
Between our aspiring spirits,
And all the flesh inherits,
Because, dear saint, your soul no less
Has got a lover,
Than has your body's long slim loveliness.
Ah, my beloved, think not renunciation
Of such a love as ours
Will bring you any strengthening of your powers,
Or calm, or dignity, or peace of mind
To be compared with that which you will find
In love's full consummation.
Talk not to me of other, older ties,
Of duty, and of narrower destinies,
Nor bid me see that we have met too late,
While we have lips and eyes
To kiss and call;
But rather thank our fate,
For this mad gift - that we have met at all.
Come to me then. Ah, must I bid you come?
Your heart is mine. Is then your will so loath?
Leave him from whom your spirit long since fled,
Whose house is not your home; your only home,
Although the same roof never cover both,
Is where I am, until we both are dead.
(Her child speaks.)
Why do you look at me with such a shade
Upon your eyes, so still and steadily?
I am not naughty, but I am afraid;
I know not why.
The world is huge and puzzling and perverse -
103
Even my nurse,
When most my heart is stirred,
Will put me by, with some complacent word;
Or, if she listens, in a little while
Babbles my deepest secret with a smile,
My mother, oh my mother, only you
Are kind and just and honorable and true.
Others are fond, others will play and sing,
Will kiss me, or will let me kiss and cling;
But only you, my mother, comprehend
How little children feel and love the truth;
Only you cherish like an equal friend
The shy and tragic dignity of youth.
(the woman answers her lover.)
All my life long, I think I dreamed of this.
Even as a girl, my visions were of you.
Alas, I grew incredulous of bliss;
And now too late, too late, the dream comes true.
Sweet are the charms you offer me, my lover,
To read the riddle of the universe,
And in your arms I should not soon discover
Our old, old mortal curse.
And yet I put them by, because I trust
In other magic, far beyond the ken,
Even of you, the tenderest of men,
In spells more permanent than any sorrow,
Which bind me to the past, and make to-morrow
My own, although I sleep it through in dust,
The revelation which to every woman
Her children bring,
Making her one not only with things human, With every living thing,
For only mothers raise no passionate cry
Against mortality;
For only they have learned the reason why
It is worth while to live; and presently,
Seeing nature's meaning, are content to die.
~ Alice Duer Miller,#NFDB
482:Via Amoris
I.
IT is not Love, this beautiful unrest,
This tremor of longing that invades my breast:
For Love is in his grave this many a year,
He will not rise--I do not wish him here.
It is not memory, for your face and eyes
Are not reflected where that dark pool lies:
It is not hope, for life makes no amends,
And hope and I are long no longer friends:
It is a ghost out of another Spring
It needs but little for its comforting-That I should hold your hand and see your face
And muse a little in this quiet place,
Where, through the silence, I can hear you sigh
And feel you sadden, O Virgin Mystery,
And know my thought has in your thought begot
Sadness, its child, and that you know it not.
II.
If this were Love, if all this bitter pain
Were but the birth-pang of Love born again,
If through the doubts and dreams resolved, smiled
The prophetic promise of the holy child,
What should I gain? The Love whose dream-lips smiled
Could never be my own and only child,
But to Love's birth would come, with the last pain,
Renunciation, also born again.
III.
If this were Love why should I turn away?
Am I not, too, made of the common clay?
Is life so fair, am I so fortunate,
I can refuse the capricious gift of Fate,
The sudden glory, the unhoped-for flowers,
The transfiguration of my earthly hours?
459
Come, Love! the house is garnished and is swept,
Washed clean with all the tears that I have wept,
Washed from the stain of my unworthy fears,
Hung with the splendid spoils of wasted years,
Lighted with lamps of hope, and curtained fast
Against the gathered darkness of the past.
I draw the bolts! I throw the portals wide,
The darkness rushes shivering to my side,
Love is not here--the darkness creeps about
My house wherein the lamps of hope die out.
Ah Love! it was not then your hand that came
Beating my door? your voice that called my name?
IV.
'It is not Love, it is not Love,' I said,
And bowed in fearful hope my trembling head.
'It is not Love, for Love could never rise
Out of the rock-hewn grave wherein he lies.'
But as I spake, the heavenly form drew near
Where close I clasped a hope grown keen as fear,
Upon my head His very hand He laid
And whispered, 'It is I, be not afraid!'
V.
And this is Love, no rose-crowned laughing guest
By whom my passionate heart should be caressed,
But one re-risen from the grave; austere,
Cold as the grave, and infinitely dear,
To follow whom I lay the whole world down,
Take up the cross, bind on the thorny crown;
And, following whom, my bleeding pilgrim feet
Find the rough pathway sure and very sweet.
The august environment of mighty wings
Shuts out the snare of vain imaginings,
For by my side, crowned with Love's death-white rose,
The Angel of Renunciation goes.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
483:How each sex has its own prejudice about love — Despite all the concessions that I am willing to make to the prejudice in favor of monogamy, I will never admit the claim that man and woman have equal rights in love; these do not exist. For man and woman have different conceptions of love; and it is one of the conditions of love in both sexes that neither sex presupposes the same feeling and the same concept of “love” in the other. What woman means by love is clear enough: total devotion (not mere surrender98) with soul and body, without any consideration or reserve, rather with shame and horror at the thought of a devotion that might be subject to special clauses or conditions. In this absence of conditions her love is a faith; woman has no other faith. Man, when he loves a woman, wants precisely this love from her and is thus himself as far as can be from the presupposition of feminine love. Supposing, however, that there should also be men to whom the desire for total devotion is not alien; well, then they simply are—not men. A man who loves like a woman becomes a slave; while a woman who loves like a woman becomes a more perfect woman. A woman’s passion in its unconditional renunciation of rights of her own presupposes precisely that on the other side there is no equal pathos, no equal will to renunciation; for if both partners felt impelled by love to renounce themselves, we should then get—I do not know what; perhaps an empty space? Woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, wants to be absorbed into the concept of possession, possessed Consequently, she wants someone who takes, who does not give himself or give himself away; on the contrary, he is supposed to become richer in “himself”—through the accretion of strength, happiness, and faith given him by the woman who gives herself. Woman gives herself away, man acquires more—I do not see how one can get around this natural opposition by means of social contracts or with the best will in the world to be just, desirable as it may be not to remind oneself constantly how harsh, terrible, enigmatic, and immoral this antagonism is. For love, thought of in its entirety as great and full, is nature, and being nature it is in all eternity something “immoral.” Faithfulness is accordingly included in woman’s love; it follows from the definition. In man, it can easily develop in the wake of his love, perhaps as gratitude or as an idiosyncratic taste and so-called elective affinity; but it is not an essential element of his love—so definitely not that one might almost speak with some justification of a natural counterplay of love and faithfulness in man. For his love consists of wanting to have and not of renunciation and giving away; but wanting to have always comes to an end with having. It is actually man’s more refined and suspicious lust for possession that rarely admits his “having,” and then only late, and thus permits his love to persist. It is even possible for his love to increase after the surrender; he will not readily concede that a woman should have nothing more to give him.— ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
484: ON
THE
PREACHERS
OF
DEATH
There are preachers of death; and the earth is full
of those to whom one must preach renunciation of life.
The earth is full of the superfluous; life is spoiled by
the all-too-many. May they be lured from this life with
45
the "eternal life"! Yellow the preachers of death wear,
or black. But I want to show them to you in still
other colors.
There are the terrible ones who carry around within
themselves the beast of prey and have no choice but
lust or self-laceration. And even their lust is still selflaceration. They have not even become human beings
yet, these terrible ones: let them preach renunciation
of life and pass away themselves!
There are those with consumption of the soul: hardly
are they born when they begin to die and to long for
doctrines of weariness and renunciation. They would
like to be dead, and we should welcome their wish. Let
us beware of waking the dead and disturbing these
living coffins
They encounter a sick man or an old man or a
corpse, and immediately they say, "Life is refuted."
But only they themselves are refuted, and their eyes,
which see only this one face of existence. Shrouded in
thick melancholy and eager for the little accidents that
bring death, thus they wait with clenched teeth. Or
they reach for sweets while mocking their own childishness; they clutch the straw of their life and mock that
they still clutch a straw. Their wisdom says, "A fool
who stays alive-but such fools are we. And this is
surely the most foolish thing about life."
"Life is only suffering," others say, and do not lie:
see to it, then, that you cease See to it, then, that the
life which is only suffering ceasesl
And let this be the doctrine of your virtue: "Thou
shalt kill thyself! Thou shalt steal awayl"
"Lust is sin," says one group that preaches death;
'let us step aside and beget no children."
"Giving birth is troublesome," says another group;
"why go on giving birth? One bears only unfortunates"
46
And they too are preachers of death.
"Pity is needed," says the third group. "Take from
me what I havel Take from me what I aml Life will bind
me that much less"
If they were full of pity through and through, they
would make life insufferable for their neighbors. To
be evil, that would be their real goodness. But they
want to get out of life: what do they care that with
their chains and presents they bind others still more
tightly?
And you, too, for whom life is furious work and
unrest-are you not very weary of life? Are you not
very ripe for the preaching of death? All of you to
whom furious work is dear, and whatever is fast, new,
and strange-you find it hard to bear yourselves; your
industry is escape and the will to forget yourselves. If
you believed more in life you would fling yourselves
less to the moment. But you do not have contents
enough in yourselves for waiting-and not even for
idleness.
Everywhere the voice of those who preach death is
heard; and the earth is full of those to whom one must
preach death. Or "eternal life"-tbat is the same to
me, if only they pass away quickly.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ON THE PREACHERS OF DEATH
,#NFDB
485:Much more than skeleton, it is flash, I mean the carrion flesh, which disturb and alarm us – and which alleviates us as well. The Buddhists monks gladly frequented charnel houses: where corner desire more surely and emancipate oneself from it? The horrible being a path of liberation in every period of fervor and inwardness, our remains have enjoyed great favor. In the Middle Ages, a man made a regimen of salvation, he believed energetically: the corpse was in fashion. Faith was vigorous than, invincible; it cherished the livid and the fetid, it knew the profits to be derived from corruption and gruesomeness. Today, an edulcorated religion adheres only to „nice” hallucinations, to Evolution and to Progress. It is not such a religion which might afford us the modern equivalent of the dense macabre.
„Let a man who aspires to nirvana act so that nothing is dear to him”, we read in a Buddhist text. It is enough to consider these specters, to meditate on the fate of the flash which adhered to them, in order to understand the urgency of detachment. There is no ascesis in the double rumination on the flesh and on the skeleton, on the dreadful decrepitude of the one and the futile permanence of the other. It is a good exercise to sever ourselves now and then from our face, from our skin, to lay aside this deceptive sheathe, then to discard – if only for a moment – that layer of grease which keeps us from discerning what is fundamental in ourselves. Once exercise is over, we are freer and more alone, almost invulnerable.
In other to vanquish attachments and the disadvantages which derive from them, we should have to contemplate the ultimate nudity of a human being, force our eyes to pierce his entrails and all the rest, wallow in the horror of his secretions, in his physiology of an imminent corpse. This vision would not be morbid but methodical, a controlled obsession, particularly salutary in ordeals. The skeleton incites us to serenity; the cadaver to renunciation. In the sermon of futility which both of them preach to us happiness is identified with the destruction of our bounds. To have scanted no detail of such a teaching and even so to come to terms with simulacra!
Blessed was the age when solitaries could plumb their depths without seeming obsessed, deranged. Their imbalance was not assigned a negative coefficient, as is the case for us. They would sacrifice ten, twenty years, a whole life, for a foreboding, for a flash of the absolute. The word „depth” has a meaning only in connection with epochs when the monk was considered as the noblest human exemplar. No one will gain – say the fact that he is in the process of disappearing. For centuries, he has done no more than survive himself. To whom would he address himself, in a universe which calls him a „parasite”? In Tibet, the last country where monks still mattered, they have been ruled out. Yet is was a rare consolation to think that thousands of thousands of hermits could be meditating there, today, on the themes of the prajnaparamita. Even if it had only odious aspects, monasticism would still be worth more than any other ideal. Now more then ever, we should build monasteries … for those who believe in everything and for those who believe in nothing. Where to escape? There no longer exist a single place where we can professionally execrate this world. ~ Emil M Cioran,#NFDB
486:There are many types of teachers out there from many traditions. Some are very ordinary and some seem to radiate spirituality from every pore. Some are nice, some are indifferent, and some may seem like sergeants in boot camp. Some stress reliance on one’s own efforts, others stress reliance on the grace of the guru. Some are very available and accessible, and some may live far away, grant few interviews, or have so many students vying for their time that you may rarely get a chance to talk with them. Some seem to embody the highest ideals of the perfected spiritual life in their every waking moment, while others may have many noticeable quirks, faults and failings. Some live by rigid moral codes, while others may push the boundaries of social conventions and mores. Some may be very old, and some may be very young. Some may require strict commitments and obedience, while others may hardly seem to care what we do at all. Some may advocate very specific practices, stating that their way is the only way or the best way, while others may draw from many traditions or be open to your doing so. Some may point out our successes, while others may dwell on our failures.
Some may stress renunciation or even ordination into a monastic order, while others seem relentlessly engaged with “the world.” Some charge a bundle for their teachings, while others give theirs freely. Some like scholarship and the lingo of meditation, while others may never use or even openly despise these formal terms and conceptual frameworks. Some teachers may be more like friends or equals that just want to help us learn something they happened to be good at, while others may be all into the hierarchy, status and role of being a teacher. Some teachers will speak openly about attainments, and some may not. Some teachers are remarkably predictable in their manner and teaching style, while others swing wide in strange and unpredictable ways. Some may seem very tranquil and mild mannered, while others may seem outrageous or rambunctious. Some may seem extremely humble and unimposing, while others may seem particularly arrogant and presumptuous. Some are charismatic, while others may be distinctly lacking in social skills. Some may readily give us extensive advice, and some just listen and nod. Some seem the living embodiment of love, and others may piss us off on a regular basis. Some teachers may instantly click with us, while others just leave us cold. Some teachers may be willing to teach us, and some may not.
So far as I can tell, none of these are related in any way to their meditation ability or the depths of their understanding. That is, don’t judge a meditation teacher by their cover. What is important is that their style and personality inspire us to practice well, to live the life we want to live, to find what it is we wish to find, to understand what we wish to understand. Some of us may wander for a long time before we find a good fit. Some of us will turn to books for guidance, reading and practicing without the advantages or hassles of teachers. Some of us may seem to click with a practice or teacher, try to follow it for years and yet get nowhere. Others seem to fly regardless. One of the most interesting things about reality is that we get to test it out. One way or another, we will get to see what works for us and what doesn’t, what happens when we do certain practices or follow the advice of certain teachers, as well as what happens when we don’t. ~ Daniel M Ingram,#NFDB
487:Let us now assume that under truly extraordinary circumstances, the daimon nevertheless breaks through in the individual, so to speak, and is this able to let its destructive transcendence be felt: then one would have a kind of active experience of death. Thereupon the second connection becomes clear: why the figure of the daimon or doppelgänger in the ancient myths could be melded with the deity of death. In the Nordic tradition the warrior sees his Valkyrie precisely at the moment of death or mortal danger.
In religious asceticism, mortification, self-renunciation, and the impulse of devotion to God are the preferred methods of provoking and successfully overcoming the crisis I have just mentioned. Everyone knows the expressions which refer to these states, such as the 'mystical death' or 'dark night of the soul', etc. In contrast to this, within the framework of a heroic tradition, the path to the same goal is the active rapture, the Dionysian unleashing of the active element. At its lower levels, we find phenomenons such as the use of dance as a sacred technique for achieving an ecstasy of the soul that summons and uses profound energies. While the individual’s life is surrendered to Dionysian rhythm, another life sinks into it, as if it where his abyssal roots surfacing. The 'wild host' Furies, Erinyes, and suchlike spiritual natures are symbolic picturings of this energy, thus corresponding to a manifestation of the daimon in its terrifying and active transcendence. At a higher level we find sacred war-games; higher still, war itself. And this brings us back to the ancient Aryan concept of battle and the warrior ascetic.
At the climax of danger and heroic battle, the possibility for such an extraordinary experience was recognized. The Lating ludere, meaning both 'to play' and 'to fight', seems to contain the idea of release. This is one of the many allusions to the inherent ability of battle to release deeply-buried powers from individual limitations and let them freely emerge. Hence the third comparison: the daimon, the Lar, the individualizing I, etc., are not only identical with the Furies, Erinyes, and other unleashed Dionysian natures, which themselves have many traits similar to the goddess of death — they are also synonymous with the storm maidens of battle, the Valkyries and Fravartis. In the texts, for example, the Fravartis are called 'the terrible, the all-powerful', 'those who attack in storm and bestow victory upon those who conjure them', or, more precisely, those who conjure them up in themselves.
From there to the final comparison is only a short step. In the Aryan tradition the same martial beings eventually take on the form of victory-goddesses, a transformation which denotes the happy completion of the inner experience in question. Just as the daimon or doppelgänger signifies a deep, supra-individual power in its latent condition as compared to ordinary consciousness; just as the Furies and Erinyes reflect a particular manifestation of daimonic rages and eruptions (and the goddesses of death, Valkyries, Fravartis, etc., refer to the same conditions, as long as these are facilitated by battle and heroism) — in the same way the goddess of victory is the expression of the triumph of the I over this power. She signifies the victorious ascent to a state unendangered by ecstasies and sub-personal forms of disintegration, a danger that always lurks behind the frenetic moment of Dionysian and even heroic action. The ascent to a spiritual, truly supra-personal condition that makes one free, immortal, and internally indestructible, when the 'Two becomes One', expresses itself in this image of mythical consciousness. ~ Julius Evola,#NFDB
488:The problem, Augustine came to believe, is that if you think you can organize your own salvation you are magnifying the very sin that keeps you from it. To believe that you can be captain of your own life is to suffer the sin of pride. What is pride? These days the word “pride” has positive connotations. It means feeling good about yourself and the things associated with you. When we use it negatively, we think of the arrogant person, someone who is puffed up and egotistical, boasting and strutting about. But that is not really the core of pride. That is just one way the disease of pride presents itself. By another definition, pride is building your happiness around your accomplishments, using your work as the measure of your worth. It is believing that you can arrive at fulfillment on your own, driven by your own individual efforts. Pride can come in bloated form. This is the puffed-up Donald Trump style of pride. This person wants people to see visible proof of his superiority. He wants to be on the VIP list. In conversation, he boasts, he brags. He needs to see his superiority reflected in other people’s eyes. He believes that this feeling of superiority will eventually bring him peace. That version is familiar. But there are other proud people who have low self-esteem. They feel they haven’t lived up to their potential. They feel unworthy. They want to hide and disappear, to fade into the background and nurse their own hurts. We don’t associate them with pride, but they are still, at root, suffering from the same disease. They are still yoking happiness to accomplishment; it’s just that they are giving themselves a D– rather than an A+. They tend to be just as solipsistic, and in their own way as self-centered, only in a self-pitying and isolating way rather than in an assertive and bragging way. One key paradox of pride is that it often combines extreme self-confidence with extreme anxiety. The proud person often appears self-sufficient and egotistical but is really touchy and unstable. The proud person tries to establish self-worth by winning a great reputation, but of course this makes him utterly dependent on the gossipy and unstable crowd for his own identity. The proud person is competitive. But there are always other people who might do better. The most ruthlessly competitive person in the contest sets the standard that all else must meet or get left behind. Everybody else has to be just as monomaniacally driven to success. One can never be secure. As Dante put it, the “ardor to outshine / Burned in my bosom with a kind of rage.” Hungry for exaltation, the proud person has a tendency to make himself ridiculous. Proud people have an amazing tendency to turn themselves into buffoons, with a comb-over that fools nobody, with golden bathroom fixtures that impress nobody, with name-dropping stories that inspire nobody. Every proud man, Augustine writes, “heeds himself, and he who pleases himself seems great to himself. But he who pleases himself pleases a fool, for he himself is a fool when he is pleasing himself.”16 Pride, the minister and writer Tim Keller has observed, is unstable because other people are absentmindedly or intentionally treating the proud man’s ego with less reverence than he thinks it deserves. He continually finds that his feelings are hurt. He is perpetually putting up a front. The self-cultivator spends more energy trying to display the fact that he is happy—posting highlight reel Facebook photos and all the rest—than he does actually being happy. Augustine suddenly came to realize that the solution to his problem would come only after a transformation more fundamental than any he had previously entertained, a renunciation of the very idea that he could be the source of his own solution. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
489:1.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.
2.
When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.
All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony - and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.
I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.
I touch by the edge of the far-spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.
Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord.
3.
I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement.
The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on.
My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!
4.
Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.
I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.
I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.
And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.
5.
I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.
Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.
Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.
Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.
6.
Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.
I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am aware, and the time of offering go by.
Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.
7.
My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.
My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.
8.
The child who is decked with prince's robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step.
In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move.
Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keeps one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.
9.
O Fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders! O beggar, to come beg at thy own door!
Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all, and never look behind in regret.
Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath. It is unholy - take not thy gifts through its unclean hands. Accept only what is offered by sacred love.
10.
Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet where live the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot reach down to the depth where thy feet rest among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
Pride can never approach to where thou walkest in the clothes of the humble among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
My heart can never find its way to where thou keepest company with the companionless among the poorest, the lowliest, and the lost.
11.
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.
12.
The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said 'Here art thou!'
The question and the cry 'Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance 'I am!'
13.
The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.
The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.
The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by. I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house.
The livelong day has passed in spreading his seat on the floor; but the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house.
I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.
14.
My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals; and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.
Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked - this sky and the light, this body and the life and the mind - saving me from perils of overmuch desire.
There are times when I languidly linger and times when I awaken and hurry in search of my goal; but cruelly thou hidest thyself from before me.
Day by day thou art making me worthy of thy full acceptance by refusing me ever and anon, saving me from perils of weak, uncertain desire.
15.
I am here to sing thee songs. In this hall of thine I have a corner seat.
In thy world I have no work to do; my useless life can only break out in tunes without a purpose.
When the hour strikes for thy silent worship at the dark temple of midnight, command me, my master, to stand before thee to sing.
When in the morning air the golden harp is tuned, honour me, commanding my presence.
16.
I have had my invitation to this world's festival, and thus my life has been blessed. My eyes have seen and my ears have heard.
It was my part at this feast to play upon my instrument, and I have done all I could.
Now, I ask, has the time come at last when I may go in and see thy face and offer thee my silent salutation?
17.
I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands. That is why it is so late and why I have been guilty of such omissions.
They come with their laws and their codes to bind me fast; but I evade them ever, for I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.
People blame me and call me heedless; I doubt not they are right in their blame.
The market day is over and work is all done for the busy. Those who came to call me in vain have gone back in anger. I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.
18.
Clouds heap upon clouds and it darkens. Ah, love, why dost thou let me wait outside at the door all alone?
In the busy moments of the noontide work I am with the crowd, but on this dark lonely day it is only for thee that I hope.
If thou showest me not thy face, if thou leavest me wholly aside, I know not how I am to pass these long, rainy hours.
I keep gazing on the far-away gloom of the sky, and my heart wanders wailing with the restless wind.
19.
If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it. I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience.
The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.
Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests, and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.
20.
On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.
That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to me that is was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.
21.
I must launch out my boat. The languid hours pass by on the shore - Alas for me!
The spring has done its flowering and taken leave. And now with the burden of faded futile flowers I wait and linger.
The waves have become clamorous, and upon the bank in the shady lane the yellow leaves flutter and fall.
What emptiness do you gaze upon! Do you not feel a thrill passing through the air with the notes of the far-away song floating from the other shore?
22.
In the deep shadows of the rainy July, with secret steps, thou walkest, silent as night, eluding all watchers.
Today the morning has closed its eyes, heedless of the insistent calls of the loud east wind, and a thick veil has been drawn over the ever-wakeful blue sky.
The woodlands have hushed their songs, and doors are all shut at every house. Thou art the solitary wayfarer in this deserted street. Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my house - do not pass by like a dream.
23.
Art thou abroad on this stormy night on thy journey of love, my friend? The sky groans like one in despair.
I have no sleep tonight. Ever and again I open my door and look out on the darkness, my friend!
I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path!
By what dim shore of the ink-black river, by what far edge of the frowning forest, through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading thy course to come to me, my friend?
24.
If the day is done, if birds sing no more, if the wind has flagged tired, then draw the veil of darkness thick upon me, even as thou hast wrapt the earth with the coverlet of sleep and tenderly closed the petals of the drooping lotus at dusk.
From the traveller, whose sack of provisions is empty before the voyage is ended, whose garment is torn and dustladen, whose strength is exhausted, remove shame and poverty, and renew his life like a flower under the cover of thy kindly night.
25.
In the night of weariness let me give myself up to sleep without struggle, resting my trust upon thee.
Let me not force my flagging spirit into a poor preparation for thy worship.
It is thou who drawest the veil of night upon the tired eyes of the day to renew its sight in a fresher gladness of awakening.
26.
He came and sat by my side but I woke not. What a cursed sleep it was, O miserable me!
He came when the night was still; he had his harp in his hands, and my dreams became resonant with its melodies.
Alas, why are my nights all thus lost? Ah, why do I ever miss his sight whose breath touches my sleep?
27.
Light, oh where is the light? Kindle it with the burning fire of desire!
There is the lamp but never a flicker of a flame - is such thy fate, my heart? Ah, death were better by far for thee!
Misery knocks at thy door, and her message is that thy lord is wakeful, and he calls thee to the love-tryst through the darkness of night.
The sky is overcast with clouds and the rain is ceaseless. I know not what this is that stirs in me - I know not its meaning.
A moment's flash of lightning drags down a deeper gloom on my sight, and my heart gropes for the path to where the music of the night calls me.
Light, oh where is the light! Kindle it with the burning fire of desire! It thunders and the wind rushes screaming through the void. The night is black as a black stone. Let not the hours pass by in the dark. Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.
28.
Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them.
Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed.
I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room.
The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love.
My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.
29.
He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow.
I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.
30.
I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?
I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.
He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.
He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.
31.
'Prisoner, tell me, who was it that bound you?'
'It was my master,' said the prisoner. 'I thought I could outdo everybody in the world in wealth and power, and I amassed in my own treasure-house the money due to my king. When sleep overcame me I lay upon the bad that was for my lord, and on waking up I found I was a prisoner in my own treasure-house.'
'Prisoner, tell me, who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?'
'It was I,' said the prisoner, 'who forged this chain very carefully. I thought my invincible power would hold the world captive leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.'
32.
By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs, and thou keepest me free.
Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone. But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.
If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart, thy love for me still waits for my love.
33.
When it was day they came into my house and said, 'We shall only take the smallest room here.'
They said, 'We shall help you in the worship of your God and humbly accept only our own share in his grace'; and then they took their seat in a corner and they sat quiet and meek.
But in the darkness of night I find they break into my sacred shrine, strong and turbulent, and snatch with unholy greed the offerings from God's altar.
34.
Let only that little be left of me whereby I may name thee my all.
Let only that little be left of my will whereby I may feel thee on every side, and come to thee in everything, and offer to thee my love every moment.
Let only that little be left of me whereby I may never hide thee.
Let only that little of my fetters be left whereby I am bound with thy will, and thy purpose is carried out in my life - and that is the fetter of thy love.
35.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
36.
This is my prayer to thee, my lord - strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart. Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows. Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service. Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might. Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles. And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.
37.
I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, - that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.
But I find that thy will knows no end in me. And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.
38.
That I want thee, only thee - let my heart repeat without end. All desires that distract me, day and night, are false and empty to the core.
As the night keeps hidden in its gloom the petition for light, even thus in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry - 'I want thee, only thee'.
As the storm still seeks its end in peace when it strikes against peace with all its might, even thus my rebellion strikes against thy love and still its cry is - 'I want thee, only thee'.
39.
When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy.
When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.
When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.
When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.
When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.
40.
The rain has held back for days and days, my God, in my arid heart. The horizon is fiercely naked - not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud, not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.
Send thy angry storm, dark with death, if it is thy wish, and with lashes of lightning startle the sky from end to end.
But call back, my lord, call back this pervading silent heat, still and keen and cruel, burning the heart with dire despair.
Let the cloud of grace bend low from above like the tearful look of the mother on the day of the father's wrath.
41.
Where dost thou stand behind them all, my lover, hiding thyself in the shadows? They push thee and pass thee by on the dusty road, taking thee for naught. I wait here weary hours spreading my offerings for thee, while passers-by come and take my flowers, one by one, and my basket is nearly empty.
The morning time is past, and the noon. In the shade of evening my eyes are drowsy with sleep. Men going home glance at me and smile and fill me with shame. I sit like a beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when they ask me, what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them not.
Oh, how, indeed, could I tell them that for thee I wait, and that thou hast promised to come. How could I utter for shame that I keep for my dowry this poverty. Ah, I hug this pride in the secret of my heart.
I sit on the grass and gaze upon the sky and dream of the sudden splendour of thy coming - all the lights ablaze, golden pennons flying over thy car, and they at the roadside standing agape, when they see thee come down from thy seat to raise me from the dust, and set at thy side this ragged beggar girl a-tremble with shame and pride, like a creeper in a summer breeze.
But time glides on and still no sound of the wheels of thy chariot. Many a procession passes by with noise and shouts and glamour of glory. Is it only thou who wouldst stand in the shadow silent and behind them all? And only I who would wait and weep and wear out my heart in vain longing?
42.
Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this our pilgrimage to no country and to no end.
In that shoreless ocean, at thy silently listening smile my songs would swell in melodies, free as waves, free from all bondage of words.
Is the time not come yet? Are there works still to do? Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore and in the fading light the seabirds come flying to their nests.
Who knows when the chains will be off, and the boat, like the last glimmer of sunset, vanish into the night?
43.
The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee; and entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd, unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon many a fleeting moment of my life.
And today when by chance I light upon them and see thy signature, I find they have lain scattered in the dust mixed with the memory of joys and sorrows of my trivial days forgotten.
Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust, and the steps that I heard in my playroom are the same that are echoing from star to star.
44.
This is my delight, thus to wait and watch at the wayside where shadow chases light and the rain comes in the wake of the summer.
Messengers, with tidings from unknown skies, greet me and speed along the road. My heart is glad within, and the breath of the passing breeze is sweet.
From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door, and I know that of a sudden the happy moment will arrive when I shall see.
In the meanwhile I smile and I sing all alone. In the meanwhile the air is filling with the perfume of promise.
45.
Have you not heard his silent steps? He comes, comes, ever comes.
Every moment and every age, every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes.
Many a song have I sung in many a mood of mind, but all their notes have always proclaimed, 'He comes, comes, ever comes.'
In the fragrant days of sunny April through the forest path he comes, comes, ever comes.
In the rainy gloom of July nights on the thundering chariot of clouds he comes, comes, ever comes.
In sorrow after sorrow it is his steps that press upon my heart, and it is the golden touch of his feet that makes my joy to shine.
-
46.
I know not from what distant time thou art ever coming nearer to meet me. Thy sun and stars can never keep thee hidden from me for aye.
In many a morning and eve thy footsteps have been heard and thy messenger has come within my heart and called me in secret.
I know not only why today my life is all astir, and a feeling of tremulous joy is passing through my heart.
It is as if the time were come to wind up my work, and I feel in the air a faint smell of thy sweet presence.
47.
The night is nearly spent waiting for him in vain. I fear lest in the morning he suddenly come to my door when I have fallen asleep wearied out. Oh friends, leave the way open to him - forbid him not.
If the sounds of his steps does not wake me, do not try to rouse me, I pray. I wish not to be called from my sleep by the clamorous choir of birds, by the riot of wind at the festival of morning light. Let me sleep undisturbed even if my lord comes of a sudden to my door.
Ah, my sleep, precious sleep, which only waits for his touch to vanish. Ah, my closed eyes that would open their lids only to the light of his smile when he stands before me like a dream emerging from darkness of sleep.
Let him appear before my sight as the first of all lights and all forms. The first thrill of joy to my awakened soul let it come from his glance. And let my return to myself be immediate return to him.
48.
The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.
We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pave more and more as the time sped by.
The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.
My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation - in the shadow of a dim delight.
The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.
At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!
49.
You came down from your throne and stood at my cottage door.
I was singing all alone in a corner, and the melody caught your ear. You came down and stood at my cottage door.
Masters are many in your hall, and songs are sung there at all hours. But the simple carol of this novice struck at your love. One plaintive little strain mingled with the great music of the world, and with a flower for a prize you came down and stopped at my cottage door.
50.
I had gone a-begging from door to door in the village path, when thy golden chariot appeared in the distance like a gorgeous dream and I wondered who was this King of all kings!
My hopes rose high and methought my evil days were at an end, and I stood waiting for alms to be given unasked and for wealth scattered on all sides in the dust.
The chariot stopped where I stood. Thy glance fell on me and thou camest down with a smile. I felt that the luck of my life had come at last. Then of a sudden thou didst hold out thy right hand and say 'What hast thou to give to me?'
Ah, what a kingly jest was it to open thy palm to a beggar to beg! I was confused and stood undecided, and then from my wallet I slowly took out the least little grain of corn and gave it to thee.
But how great my surprise when at the day's end I emptied my bag on the floor to find a least little gram of gold among the poor heap. I bitterly wept and wished that I had had the heart to give thee my all.
51.
The night darkened. Our day's works had been done. We thought that the last guest had arrived for the night and the doors in the village were all shut. Only some said the king was to come. We laughed and said 'No, it cannot be!'
It seemed there were knocks at the door and we said it was nothing but the wind. We put out the lamps and lay down to sleep. Only some said, 'It is the messenger!' We laughed and said 'No, it must be the wind!'
There came a sound in the dead of the night. We sleepily thought it was the distant thunder. The earth shook, the walls rocked, and it troubled us in our sleep. Only some said it was the sound of wheels. We said in a drowsy murmur, 'No, it must be the rumbling of clouds!'
The night was still dark when the drum sounded. The voice came 'Wake up! delay not!' We pressed our hands on our hearts and shuddered with fear. Some said, 'Lo, there is the king's flag!' We stood up on our feet and cried 'There is no time for delay!'
The king has come - but where are lights, where are wreaths? Where is the throne to seat him? Oh, shame! Oh utter shame! Where is the hall, the decorations? Someone has said, 'Vain is this cry! Greet him with empty hands, lead him into thy rooms all bare!'
Open the doors, let the conch-shells be sounded! in the depth of the night has come the king of our dark, dreary house. The thunder roars in the sky. The darkness shudders with lightning. Bring out thy tattered piece of mat and spread it in the courtyard. With the storm has come of a sudden our king of the fearful night.
52.
I thought I should ask of thee - but I dared not - the rose wreath thou hadst on thy neck. Thus I waited for the morning, when thou didst depart, to find a few fragments on the bed. And like a beggar I searched in the dawn only for a stray petal or two.
Ah me, what is it I find? What token left of thy love? It is no flower, no spices, no vase of perfumed water. It is thy mighty sword, flashing as a flame, heavy as a bolt of thunder. The young light of morning comes through the window and spread itself upon thy bed. The morning bird twitters and asks, 'Woman, what hast thou got?' No, it is no flower, nor spices, nor vase of perfumed water - it is thy dreadful sword.
I sit and muse in wonder, what gift is this of thine. I can find no place to hide it. I am ashamed to wear it, frail as I am, and it hurts me when press it to my bosom. Yet shall I bear in my heart this honour of the burden of pain, this gift of thine.
From now there shall be no fear left for me in this world, and thou shalt be victorious in all my strife. Thou hast left death for my companion and I shall crown him with my life. Thy sword is with me to cut asunder my bonds, and there shall be no fear left for me in the world.
From now I leave off all petty decorations. Lord of my heart, no more shall there be for me waiting and weeping in corners, no more coyness and sweetness of demeanour. Thou hast given me thy sword for adornment. No more doll's decorations for me!
53.
Beautiful is thy wristlet, decked with stars and cunningly wrought in myriad-coloured jewels. But more beautiful to me thy sword with its curve of lightning like the outspread wings of the divine bird of Vishnu, perfectly poised in the angry red light of the sunset.
It quivers like the one last response of life in ecstasy of pain at the final stroke of death; it shines like the pure flame of being burning up earty sense with one fierce flash.
Beautiful is thy wristlet, decked with starry gems; but thy sword, O lord of thunder, is wrought with uttermost beauty, terrible to behold or think of.
54.
I asked nothing from thee; I uttered not my name to thine ear. When thou took'st thy leave I stood silent. I was alone by the well where the shadow of the tree fell aslant, and the women had gone home with their brown earthen pitchers full to the brim. They called me and shouted, 'Come with us, the morning is wearing on to noon.' But I languidly lingered awhile lost in the midst of vague musings.
I heard not thy steps as thou camest. Thine eyes were sad when they fell on me; thy voice was tired as thou spokest low - 'Ah, I am a thirsty traveller.' I started up from my day-dreams and poured water from my jar on thy joined palms. The leaves rustled overhead; the cuckoo sang from the unseen dark, and perfume of babla flowers came from the bend of the road.
I stood speecess with shame when my name thou didst ask. Indeed, what had I done for thee to keep me in remembrance? But the memory that I could give water to thee to allay thy thirst will cling to my heart and enfold it in sweetness. The morning hour is late, the bird sings in weary notes, neem leaves rustle overhead and I sit and think and think.
55.
Languor is upon your heart and the slumber is still on your eyes.
Has not the word come to you that the flower is reigning in splendour among thorns? Wake, oh awaken! let not the time pass in vain!
At the end of the stony path, in the country of virgin solitude, my friend is sitting all alone. Deceive him not. Wake, oh awaken!
What if the sky pants and trembles with the heat of the midday sun - what if the burning sand spreads its mantle of thirst -
Is there no joy in the deep of your heart? At every footfall of yours, will not the harp of the road break out in sweet music of pain?
56.
Thus it is that thy joy in me is so full. Thus it is that thou hast come down to me. O thou lord of all heavens, where would be thy love if I were not?
Thou hast taken me as thy partner of all this wealth. In my heart is the endless play of thy delight. In my life thy will is ever taking shape.
And for this, thou who art the King of kings hast decked thyself in beauty to captivate my heart. And for this thy love loses itself in the love of thy lover, and there art thou seen in the perfect union of two.
57.
Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!
Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.
The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.
The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling, and it scatters gems in profusion.
Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling, and gladness without measure. The heaven's river has drowned its banks and the flood of joy is abroad.
58.
Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song - the joy that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws everything it has upon the dust, and knows not a word.
59.
Yes, I know, this is nothing but thy love, O beloved of my heart - this golden light that dances upon the leaves, these idle clouds sailing across the sky, this passing breeze leaving its coolness upon my forehead.
The morning light has flooded my eyes - this is thy message to my heart. Thy face is bent from above, thy eyes look down on my eyes, and my heart has touched thy feet.
60.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. they seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the patess sky, ships get wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
61.
The sleep that flits on baby's eyes - does anybody know from where it comes? Yes, there is a rumour that it has its dwelling where, in the fairy village among shadows of the forest dimly lit with glow-worms, there hang two timid buds of enchantment. From there it comes to kiss baby's eyes.
The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps - does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumour that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning - the smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps.
The sweet, soft freshness that blooms on baby's limbs - does anybody know where it was hidden so long? Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay pervading her heart in tender and silent mystery of love - the sweet, soft freshness that has bloomed on baby's limbs.
62.
When I bring to you coloured toys, my child, I understand why there is such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why flowers are painted in tints - when I give coloured toys to you, my child.
When I sing to make you dance I truly now why there is music in leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of the listening earth - when I sing to make you dance.
When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands I know why there is honey in the cup of the flowers and why fruits are secretly filled with sweet juice - when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands.
When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surely understand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light, and what delight that is that is which the summer breeze brings to my body - when I kiss you to make you smile.
63.
Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.
I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forget that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar.
When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the one in the play of many.
64.
On the slope of the desolate river among tall grasses I asked her, 'Maiden, where do you go shading your lamp with your mantle? My house is all dark and lonesome - lend me your light!' she raised her dark eyes for a moment and looked at my face through the dusk. 'I have come to the river,' she said, 'to float my lamp on the stream when the daylight wanes in the west.' I stood alone among tall grasses and watched the timid flame of her lamp uselessly drifting in the tide.
In the silence of gathering night I asked her, 'Maiden, your lights are all lit - then where do you go with your lamp? My house is all dark and lonesome - lend me your light.' She raised her dark eyes on my face and stood for a moment doubtful. 'I have come,' she said at last, 'to dedicate my lamp to the sky.' I stood and watched her light uselessly burning in the void.
In the moonless gloom of midnight I ask her, 'Maiden, what is your quest, holding the lamp near your heart? My house is all dark and lonesome- - lend me your light.' She stopped for a minute and thought and gazed at my face in the dark. 'I have brought my light,' she said, 'to join the carnival of lamps.' I stood and watched her little lamp uselessly lost among lights.
65.
What divine drink wouldst thou have, my God, from this overflowing cup of my life?
My poet, is it thy delight to see thy creation through my eyes and to stand at the portals of my ears silently to listen to thine own eternal harmony?
Thy world is weaving words in my mind and thy joy is adding music to them. Thou givest thyself to me in love and then feelest thine own entire sweetness in me.
66.
She who ever had remained in the depth of my being, in the twilight of gleams and of glimpses; she who never opened her veils in the morning light, will be my last gift to thee, my God, folded in my final song.
Words have wooed yet failed to win her; persuasion has stretched to her its eager arms in vain.
I have roamed from country to country keeping her in the core of my heart, and around her have risen and fallen the growth and decay of my life.
Over my thoughts and actions, my slumbers and dreams, she reigned yet dwelled alone and apart.
many a man knocked at my door and asked for her and turned away in despair.
There was none in the world who ever saw her face to face, and she remained in her loneliness waiting for thy recognition.
67.
Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well.
O thou beautiful, there in the nest is thy love that encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours.
There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the earth.
And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.
But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never, never a word.
68.
Thy sunbeam comes upon this earth of mine with arms outstretched and stands at my door the livelong day to carry back to thy feet clouds made of my tears and sighs and songs.
With fond delight thou wrappest about thy starry breast that mantle of misty cloud, turning it into numberless shapes and folds and colouring it with hues everchanging.
It is so light and so fleeting, tender and tearful and dark, that is why thou lovest it, O thou spotless and serene. And that is why it may cover thy awful white light with its pathetic shadows.
69.
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
70.
Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm? to be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy?
All things rush on, they stop not, they look not behind, no power can hold them back, they rush on.
Keeping steps with that restless, rapid music, seasons come dancing and pass away - colours, tunes, and perfumes pour in endless cascades in the abounding joy that scatters and gives up and dies every moment.
71.
That I should make much of myself and turn it on all sides, thus casting coloured shadows on thy radiance - such is thy maya.
Thou settest a barrier in thine own being and then callest thy severed self in myriad notes. This thy self-separation has taken body in me.
The poignant song is echoed through all the sky in many-coloured tears and smiles, alarms and hopes; waves rise up and sink again, dreams break and form. In me is thy own defeat of self.
This screen that thou hast raised is painted with innumerable figures with the brush of the night and the day. Behind it thy seat is woven in wondrous mysteries of curves, casting away all barren lines of straightness.
The great pageant of thee and me has overspread the sky. With the tune of thee and me all the air is vibrant, and all ages pass with the hiding and seeking of thee and me.
72.
He it is, the innermost one, who awakens my being with his deep hidden touches.
He it is who puts his enchantment upon these eyes and joyfully plays on the chords of my heart in varied cadence of pleasure and pain.
He it is who weaves the web of this maya in evanescent hues of gold and silver, blue and green, and lets peep out through the folds his feet, at whose touch I forget myself.
Days come and ages pass, and it is ever he who moves my heart in many a name, in many a guise, in many a rapture of joy and of sorrow.
73.
Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim.
My world will light its hundred different lamps with thy flame and place them before the altar of thy temple.
No, I will never shut the doors of my senses. The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.
Yes, all my illusions will burn into illumination of joy, and all my desires ripen into fruits of love.
74.
The day is no more, the shadow is upon the earth. It is time that I go to the stream to fill my pitcher.
The evening air is eager with the sad music of the water. Ah, it calls me out into the dusk. In the lonely lane there is no passer-by, the wind is up, the ripples are rampant in the river.
I know not if I shall come back home. I know not whom I shall chance to meet. There at the fording in the little boat the unknown man plays upon his lute.
75.
Thy gifts to us mortals fulfil all our needs and yet run back to thee undiminished.
The river has its everyday work to do and hastens through fields and hamlets; yet its incessant stream winds towards the washing of thy feet.
The flower sweetens the air with its perfume; yet its last service is to offer itself to thee.
Thy worship does not impoverish the world.
From the words of the poet men take what meanings please them; yet their last meaning points to thee.
76.
Day after day, O lord of my life, shall I stand before thee face to face. With folded hands, O lord of all worlds, shall I stand before thee face to face.
Under thy great sky in solitude and silence, with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face.
In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil and with struggle, among hurrying crowds shall I stand before thee face to face.
And when my work shall be done in this world, O King of kings, alone and speecess shall I stand before thee face to face.
77.
I know thee as my God and stand apart - I do not know thee as my own and come closer. I know thee as my father and bow before thy feet- I do not grasp thy hand as my friend's.
I stand not where thou comest down and ownest thyself as mine, there to clasp thee to my heart and take thee as my comrade.
Thou art the Brother amongst my brothers, but I heed them not, I divide not my earnings with them, thus sharing my all with thee.
In pleasure and in pain I stand not by the side of men, and thus stand by thee. I shrink to give up my life, and thus do not plunge into the great waters of life.
78.
When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first splendour, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang 'Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!'
But one cried of a sudden - 'It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain of light and one of the stars has been lost.'
The golden string of their harp snapped, their song stopped, and they cried in dismay - 'Yes, that lost star was the best, she was the glory of all heavens!'
From that day the search is unceasing for her, and the cry goes on from one to the other that in her the world has lost its one joy!
Only in the deepest silence of night the stars smile and whisper among themselves - 'Vain is this seeking! unbroken perfection is over all!'
79.
If it is not my portion to meet thee in this life then let me ever feel that I have missed thy sight - let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
As my days pass in the crowded market of this world and my hands grow full with the daily profits, let me ever feel that I have gained nothing - let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting, when I spread my bed low in the dust, let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me - let me not forget a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound and the laughter there is loud, let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house - let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
80.
I am like a remnant of a cloud of autumn uselessly roaming in the sky, O my sun ever-glorious! Thy touch has not yet melted my vapour, making me one with thy light, and thus I count months and years separated from thee.
If this be thy wish and if this be thy play, then take this fleeting emptiness of mine, paint it with colours, gild it with gold, float it on the wanton wind and spread it in varied wonders.
And again when it shall be thy wish to end this play at night, I shall melt and vanish away in the dark, or it may be in a smile of the white morning, in a coolness of purity transparent.
81.
On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time. But it is never lost, my lord. Thou hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands.
Hidden in the heart of things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts, buds into blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness.
I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed and imagined all work had ceased. In the morning I woke up and found my garden full with wonders of flowers.
82.
Time is endless in thy hands, my lord. There is none to count thy minutes.
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait.
Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.
We have no time to lose, and having no time we must scramble for a chances. We are too poor to be late.
And thus it is that time goes by while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.
At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate to be shut; but I find that yet there is time.
83.
Mother, I shall weave a chain of pearls for thy neck with my tears of sorrow.
The stars have wrought their anklets of light to deck thy feet, but mine will hang upon thy breast.
Wealth and fame come from thee and it is for thee to give or to withhold them. But this my sorrow is absolutely mine own, and when I bring it to thee as my offering thou rewardest me with thy grace.
84.
It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky.
It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all nights from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July.
It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joy in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet's heart.
85.
When the warriors came out first from their master's hall, where had they hid their power? Where were their armour and their arms?
They looked poor and helpless, and the arrows were showered upon them on the day they came out from their master's hall.
When the warriors marched back again to their master's hall where did they hide their power?
They had dropped the sword and dropped the bow and the arrow; peace was on their foreheads, and they had left the fruits of their life behind them on the day they marched back again to their master's hall.
86.
Death, thy servant, is at my door. He has crossed the unknown sea and brought thy call to my home.
The night is dark and my heart is fearful - yet I will take up the lamp, open my gates and bow to him my welcome. It is thy messenger who stands at my door.
I will worship him placing at his feet the treasure of my heart.
He will go back with his errand done, leaving a dark shadow on my morning; and in my desolate home only my forlorn self will remain as my last offering to thee.
87.
In desperate hope I go and search for her in all the corners of my room; I find her not.
My house is small and what once has gone from it can never be regained.
But infinite is thy mansion, my lord, and seeking her I have to come to thy door.
I stand under the golden canopy of thine evening sky and I lift my eager eyes to thy face.
I have come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish - no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears.
Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness. Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch in the allness of the universe.
88.
Deity of the ruined temple! The broken strings of Vina sing no more your praise. The bells in the evening proclaim not your time of worship. The air is still and silent about you.
In your desolate dwelling comes the vagrant spring breeze. It brings the tidings of flowers - the flowers that for your worship are offered no more.
Your worshipper of old wanders ever longing for favour still refused. In the eventide, when fires and shadows mingle with the gloom of dust, he wearily comes back to the ruined temple with hunger in his heart.
Many a festival day comes to you in silence, deity of the ruined temple. Many a night of worship goes away with lamp unlit.
Many new images are built by masters of cunning art and carried to the holy stream of oblivion when their time is come.
Only the deity of the ruined temple remains unworshipped in deatess neglect.
89.
No more noisy, loud words from me - such is my master's will. Henceforth I deal in whispers. The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.
Men hasten to the King's market. All the buyers and sellers are there. But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick of work.
Let then the flowers come out in my garden, though it is not their time; and let the midday bees strike up their lazy hum.
Full many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him; and I know not why is this sudden call to what useless inconsequence!
90.
On the day when death will knock at thy door what wilt thou offer to him?
Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life - I will never let him go with empty hands.
All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days and summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings of my busy life will I place before him at the close of my days when death will knock at my door.
91.
O thou the last fulfilment of life, Death, my death, come and whisper to me!
Day after day I have kept watch for thee; for thee have I borne the joys and pangs of life.
All that I am, that I have, that I hope and all my love have ever flowed towards thee in depth of secrecy. One final glance from thine eyes and my life will be ever thine own.
The flowers have been woven and the garland is ready for the bridegroom. After the wedding the bride shall leave her home and meet her lord alone in the solitude of night.
92.
I know that the day will come when my sight of this earth shall be lost, and life will take its leave in silence, drawing the last curtain over my eyes.
Yet stars will watch at night, and morning rise as before, and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains.
When I think of this end of my moments, the barrier of the moments breaks and I see by the light of death thy world with its careless treasures. Rare is its lowliest seat, rare is its meanest of lives.
Things that I longed for in vain and things that I got - let them pass. Let me but truly possess the things that I ever spurned and overlooked.
93.
I have got my leave. Bid me farewell, my brothers! I bow to you all and take my departure.
Here I give back the keys of my door - and I give up all claims to my house. I only ask for last kind words from you.
We were neighbours for long, but I received more than I could give. Now the day has dawned and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out. A summons has come and I am ready for my journey.
94.
At this time of my parting, wish me good luck, my friends! The sky is flushed with the dawn and my path lies beautiful.
Ask not what I have with me to take there. I start on my journey with empty hands and expectant heart.
I shall put on my wedding garland. Mine is not the red-brown dress of the traveller, and though there are dangers on the way I have no fear in mind.
The evening star will come out when my voyage is done and the plaintive notes of the twilight melodies be struck up from the King's gateway.
95.
I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life.
What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight!
When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother.
Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away, in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.
96.
When I go from hence let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.
I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light, and thus am I blessed - let this be my parting word.
In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.
My whole body and my limbs have thrilled with his touch who is beyond touch; and if the end comes here, let it come - let this be my parting word.
97.
When my play was with thee I never questioned who thou wert. I knew nor shyness nor fear, my life was boisterous.
In the early morning thou wouldst call me from my sleep like my own comrade and lead me running from glade to glade.
On those days I never cared to know the meaning of songs thou sangest to me. Only my voice took up the tunes, and my heart danced in their cadence.
Now, when the playtime is over, what is this sudden sight that is come upon me? The world with eyes bent upon thy feet stands in awe with all its silent stars.
98.
I will deck thee with trophies, garlands of my defeat. It is never in my power to escape unconquered.
I surely know my pride will go to the wall, my life will burst its bonds in exceeding pain, and my empty heart will sob out in music like a hollow reed, and the stone will melt in tears.
I surely know the hundred petals of a lotus will not remain closed for ever and the secret recess of its honey will be bared.
From the blue sky an eye shall gaze upon me and summon me in silence. Nothing will be left for me, nothing whatever, and utter death shall I receive at thy feet.
99.
When I give up the helm I know that the time has come for thee to take it. What there is to do will be instantly done. Vain is this struggle.
Then take away your hands and silently put up with your defeat, my heart, and think it your good fortune to sit perfectly still where you are placed.
These my lamps are blown out at every little puff of wind, and trying to light them I forget all else again and again.
But I shall be wise this time and wait in the dark, spreading my mat on the floor; and whenever it is thy pleasure, my lord, come silently and take thy seat here.
100.
I dive down into the depth of the ocean of forms, hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.
No more sailing from harbour to harbour with this my weather-beaten boat. The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.
And now I am eager to die into the deatess.
Into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss where swells up the music of toneless strings I shall take this harp of my life.
I shall tune it to the notes of forever, and when it has sobbed out its last utterance, lay down my silent harp at the feet of the silent.
101.
Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs. It was they who led me from door to door, and with them have I felt about me, searching and touching my world.
It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt; they showed me secret paths, they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart.
They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, and, at last, to what palace gate have the brought me in the evening at the end of my journey?
102.
I boasted among men that I had known you. They see your pictures in all works of mine. They come and ask me, 'Who is he?' I know not how to answer them. I say, 'Indeed, I cannot tell.' They blame me and they go away in scorn. And you sit there smiling.
I put my tales of you into lasting songs. The secret gushes out from my heart. They come and ask me, 'Tell me all your meanings.' I know not how to answer them. I say, 'Ah, who knows what they mean!' They smile and go away in utter scorn. And you sit there smiling.
103.
In one salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet.
Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed showers let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee.
Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single current and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to thee.
Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee.
In the introduction to Gitanjali, W.B Yeats says of Tagores poetry.
At every moment the heart of this poet flows outward to these without derogation or condescension, for it has known that they will understand; and it has filled itself with the circumstance of their lives.
An innocence, a simplicity that one does not find elsewhere in literature makes the birds and the leaves seem as near to him as they are near to children, and the changes of the seasons great events as before our thoughts had arisen between them and us.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali
,#NFDB
78 Integral Yoga
58 Yoga
9 Philosophy
9 Occultism
7 Poetry
6 Psychology
4 Mysticism
2 Sufism
2 Hinduism
2 Christianity
2 Baha i Faith
1 Theosophy
1 Thelema
1 Science
1 Mythology
1 Education
1 Alchemy
96 Sri Aurobindo
49 Sri Ramakrishna
29 The Mother
20 Nolini Kanta Gupta
12 Satprem
8 Saint John of Climacus
6 Aleister Crowley
5 Swami Vivekananda
5 A B Purani
3 Swami Krishnananda
3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Kabir
3 Jordan Peterson
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Rudolf Steiner
2 Rabindranath Tagore
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Carl Jung
2 Baha u llah
2 Aldous Huxley
48 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
33 The Synthesis Of Yoga
16 Essays On The Gita
11 Record of Yoga
8 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
7 Talks
7 Isha Upanishad
5 The Life Divine
5 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
5 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
5 Agenda Vol 04
4 Prayers And Meditations
4 Letters On Yoga II
3 The Study and Practice of Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
3 Maps of Meaning
3 Magick Without Tears
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Words Of Long Ago
2 Twilight of the Idols
2 The Perennial Philosophy
2 The Human Cycle
2 The Book of Certitude
2 Tagore - Poems
2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
2 Songs of Kabir
2 Raja-Yoga
2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
2 On Education
2 Liber ABA
2 Letters On Yoga IV
2 Kena and Other Upanishads
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
2 Bhakti-Yoga
2 Agenda Vol 07
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his mother in the discharge of her household duties. He gave more attention to reading and hearing the religious stories recorded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of Renunciation of the world and all-absorbing love of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and worship.
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The anguish of the inner soul of India found expression through these passionate words of the young Gadadhar. For what did his unsophisticated eyes see around him in Calcutta, at that time the metropolis of India and the centre of modem culture and learning? Greed and lust held sway in the higher levels of society, and the occasional religious practices were merely outer forms from which the soul had long ago departed. Gadadhar had never seen anything like this at Kamarpukur among the simple and pious villagers. The sadhus and wandering monks whom he had served in his boyhood had revealed to him an altogether different India. He had been impressed by their devotion and purity, their self-control and Renunciation. He had learnt from them and from his own intuition that the ideal of life as taught by the ancient sages of India was the realization of God.
When Ramkumar reprimanded Gadadhar for neglecting a "bread-winning education", the inner voice of the boy reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors — the legacy of Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya — was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God. And these noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life current of India is spirituality. This truth was revealed to Gadadhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the history of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous one hundred years.
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In the twelve Siva temples are installed the emblems of the Great God of Renunciation in His various aspects, worshipped daily with proper rites. Siva requires few articles of worship. White flowers and bel-leaves and a little Ganges water offered with devotion are enough to satisfy the benign Deity and win from Him the boon of liberation.
--- RADHAKANTA
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For the achievement of this goal the Vedanta prescribes an austere negative method of discrimination and Renunciation, which can be followed by only a few individuals endowed with sharp intelligence and unshakable will-power. But Tantra takes into consideration the natural weakness of human beings, their lower appetites, and their love for the concrete. It combines philosophy with rituals, meditation with ceremonies, Renunciation with enjoyment. The underlying purpose is gradually to train the aspirant to meditate on his identity with the Ultimate.
The average man wishes to enjoy the material objects of the world. Tantra bids him enjoy these, but at the same time discover in them the presence of God. Mystical rites are prescribed by which, slowly, the sense-objects become spiritualized and sense attraction is transformed into a love of God. So the very "bonds" of man are turned into "releasers". The very poison that kills is transmuted into the elixir of life. Outward Renunciation is not necessary. Thus the aim of Tantra is to sublimate bhoga, or enjoyment into yoga, or union with Consciousness. For, according to this philosophy, the world with all its manifestations is nothing but the sport of Siva and Sakti, the Absolute and Its inscrutable Power.
The disciplines of Tantra are graded to suit aspirants of all degrees. Exercises are prescribed for people with "animal", "heroic", and "divine" outlooks. Certain of the rites require the presence of members of the opposite sex. Here the aspirant learns to look on woman as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Mother of the Universe. The very basis of Tantra is the Motherhood of God and the glorification of woman. Every part of a woman's body is to be regarded as incarnate Divinity. But the rites are extremely dangerous. The help of a qualified guru is absolutely necessary. An unwary devotee may lose his foothold and fall into a pit of depravity.
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The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total Renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing cloth.
Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
--
Totapuri, coming to know of the Master's marriage, had once remarked: "What does it matter? He alone is firmly established in the Knowledge of Brahman who can adhere to his spirit of discrimination and Renunciation even while living with his wife. He alone has attained the supreme illumination who can look on man and woman alike as Brahman. A man with the idea of sex may be a good aspirant, but he is still far from the goal." Sri Ramakrishna and his wife lived together at Dakshineswar, but their minds always soared above the worldly plane. A few months after Sarada Devi's arrival Sri Ramakrishna arranged, on an auspicious day, a special worship of Kali, the Divine Mother. Instead of an image of the Deity, he placed on the seat the living image, Sarada Devi herself. The worshipper and the worshipped went into deep samadhi and in the transcendental plane their souls were united. After several hours Sri Ramakrishna came down again to the relative plane, sang a hymn to the Great Goddess, and surrendered, at the feet of the living image, himself, his rosary, and the fruit of his life-long sadhana. This is known in Tantra as the Shorasi Puja, the "Adoration of Woman". Sri Ramakrishna realized the significance of the great statement of the Upanishad: "O Lord, Thou art the woman. Thou art the man; Thou art the boy. Thou art the girl; Thou art the old, tottering on their crutches. Thou pervadest the universe in its multiple forms."
By his marriage Sri Ramakrishna admitted the great value of marriage in man's spiritual evolution, and by adhering to his monastic vows he demonstrated the imperative necessity of self-control, purity, and continence, in the realization of God. By this unique spiritual relationship with his wife he proved that husband and wife can live together as spiritual companions. Thus his life is a synthesis of the ways of life of the householder and the monk.
--
Gradually other Brahmo leaders began to feel Sri Ramakrishna's influence. But they were by no means uncritical admirers of the Master. They particularly disapproved of his ascetic Renunciation and condemnation of "woman and gold".1 They measured him according to their own ideals of the householder's life. Some could not understand his samadhi and described it as a nervous malady. Yet they could not resist his magnetic personality.
Among the Brahmo leaders who knew the Master closely were Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Vijaykrishna Goswami, Trailokyanath Sannyal, and Shivanath Shastri.
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The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of Renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. Born and brought up in a simple village, without any formal education, and taught by the orthodox holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opportunity to study the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western education on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, Renunciation being to him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos he learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God and the world. Educated young men were influenced more by the Western philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not dismayed, for he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he expounded to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious disciplines, yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their tastes and temperaments.
^The term "woman and gold", which has been used throughout in a collective sense, occurs again and again in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to designate the chief impediments to spiritual progress. This favourite expression of the Master, "kaminikanchan", has often been misconstrued. By it he meant only "lust and greed", the baneful influence of which retards the aspirant's spiritual growth. He used the word "kamini", or "woman", as a concrete term for the sex instinct when addressing his man devotees. He advised women, on the other hand, to shun "man". "Kanchan", or "gold", symbolizes greed, which is the other obstacle to spiritual life.
--
Through all this fun and frolic, this merriment and frivolity, he always kept before them the shining ideal of God-Consciousness and the path of Renunciation. He prescribed ascents steep or graded according to the powers of the climber. He permitted no compromise with the basic principles of purity. An aspirant had to keep his body, mind, senses, and soul unspotted; had to have a sincere love for God and an ever mounting spirit of yearning. The rest would be done by the Mother.
His disciples were of two kinds: the householders, and the young men, some of whom were later to become monks. There was also a small group of women devotees.
--
For the householders Sri Ramakrishna did not prescribe the hard path of total Renunciation. He wanted them to discharge their obligations to their families. Their Renunciation was to be mental. Spiritual life could not be acquired by flying away from responsibilities. A married couple should live like brother and sister after the birth of one or two children, devoting their time to spiritual talk and contemplation. He encouraged the householders, saying that their life was, in a way, easier than that of the monk, since it was more advantageous to fight the enemy from inside a fortress than in an open field. He insisted, however, on their repairing into solitude every now and then to strengthen their devotion and faith in God through prayer, japa, and meditation. He prescribed for them the companionship of sadhus. He asked them to perform their worldly duties with one hand, while holding to God with the other, and to pray to God to make their duties fewer and fewer so that in the end they might cling to Him with both hands. He would discourage in both the householders and the celibate youths any lukewarmness in their spiritual struggles. He would not ask them to follow indiscriminately the ideal of non-resistance, which ultimately makes a coward of the unwary.
--- FUTURE MONKS
But to the young men destined to be monks he pointed out the steep path of Renunciation, both external and internal. They must take the vow of absolute continence and eschew all thought of greed and lust. By the practice of continence, aspirants develop a subtle nerve through which they understand the deeper mysteries of God. For them self-control is final, imperative, and absolute. The sannyasis are teachers of men, and their lives should be totally free from blemish. They must not even look at a picture which may awaken their animal passions. The Master selected his future monks from young men untouched by "woman and gold" and plastic enough to be cast in his spiritual mould. When teaching them the path of Renunciation and discrimination, he would not allow the householders to be anywhere near them.
--- RAM AND MANOMOHAN
--
Sri Ramakrishna also became acquainted with a number of people whose scholarship or wealth entitled them everywhere to respect. He had met, a few years before, Devendranath Tagore, famous all over Bengal for his wealth, scholarship, saintly character, and social position. But the Master found him disappointing; for, whereas Sri Ramakrishna expected of a saint complete Renunciation of the world, Devendranath combined with his saintliness a life of enjoyment. Sri Ramakrishna met the great poet Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity "for the sake of his stomach". To him the Master could not impart instruction, for the Divine Mother "pressed his tongue". In addition he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, the editor, social reformer, and patriot; Iswar Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educator; Pundit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, moralist, and leader of Indian Nationalism; and Bankim Chatterji, a deputy magistrate, novelist, and essayist, and one of the fashioners of modern Bengali prose. Sri Ramakrishna was not the man to be dazzled by outward show, glory, or eloquence. A pundit without discrimination he regarded as a mere straw. He would search people's hearts for the light of God, and if that was missing he would have nothing to do with them.
--- KRISTODAS PAL
The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on Renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of Renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and Renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms Renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to man in a spirit of worship.
--- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
--
A few more meetings completely removed from Narendra's mind the last traces of the notion that Sri Ramakrishna might be a monomaniac or wily hypnotist. His integrity, purity, Renunciation, and unselfishness were beyond question. But Narendra could not accept a man, an imperfect mortal, as his guru. As a member of the Brahmo Samaj, he could not believe that a human intermediary was necessary between man and God. Moreover, he openly laughed at Sri Ramakrishna's visions as hallucinations. Yet in the secret chamber of his heart he bore a great love for the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna was grateful to the Divine Mother for sending him one who doubted his own realizations. Often he asked Narendra to test him as the money-changers test their coins. He laughed at Narendra's biting criticism of his spiritual experiences and samadhi. When at times Narendra's sharp words distressed him, the Divine Mother Herself would console him, saying: "Why do you listen to him? In a few days he will believe your every word." He could hardly bear Narendra's absences. Often he would weep bitterly for the sight of him. Sometimes Narendra would find the Master's love embarrassing; and one day he sharply scolded him, warning him that such infatuation would soon draw him down to the level of its object. The Master was distressed and prayed to the Divine Mother. Then he said to Narendra: "You rogue, I won't listen to you any more. Mother says that I love you because I see God in you, and the day I no longer see God in you I shall not be able to bear even the sight of you."
--
One day, soon after, Narendra requested Sri Ramakrishna to pray to the Divine Mother to remove his poverty. Sri Ramakrishna bade him pray to Her himself, for She would certainly listen to his prayer. Narendra entered the shrine of Kali. As he stood before the image of the Mother, he beheld Her as a living Goddess, ready to give wisdom and liberation. Unable to ask Her for petty worldly things, he prayed only for knowledge and Renunciation, love and liberation. The Master rebuked him for his failure to ask the Divine Mother to remove his poverty and sent him back to the temple. But Narendra, standing in Her presence, again forgot the purpose of his coming. Thrice he went to the temple at the bidding of the Master, and thrice he returned, having forgotten in Her presence why he had come. He was wondering about it when it suddenly flashed in his mind that this was all the work of Sri Ramakrishna; so now he asked the Master himself to remove his poverty, and was assured that his family would not lack simple food and clothing.
This was a very rich and significant experience for Narendra. It taught him that Sakti, the Divine Power, cannot be ignored in the world and that in the relative plane the need of worshipping a Personal God is imperative. Sri Ramakrishna was overjoyed with the conversion. The next day, sitting almost on Narendra's lap, he said to a devotee, pointing first to himself, then to Narendra: "I see I am this, and again that. Really I feel no difference. A stick floating in the Ganges seems to divide the water; But in reality the water is one. Do you see my point? Well, whatever is, is the Mother — isn't that so?" In later years Narendra would say: "Sri Ramakrishna was the only person who, from the time he met me, believed in me uniformly throughout. Even my mother and brothers did not. It was his unwavering trust and love for me that bound me to him for ever. He alone knew how to love. Worldly people, only make a show of love for selfish ends.
--
Baburam Ghosh came to Dakshineswar accompanied by Rakhal, his classmate. The Master, as was often his custom, examined the boy's physiognomy and was satisfied about his latent spirituality. At the age of eight Baburam had thought of leading a life of Renunciation, in the company of a monk, in a hut shut out from the public view by a thick wall of trees. The very sight of the Panchavati awakened in his heart that dream of boyhood. Baburam was tender in body and soul. The Master used to say that he was pure to his very bones. One day Hazra in his usual mischievous fashion advised Baburam and some of the other young boys to ask Sri Ramakrishna for some spiritual powers and not waste their life in mere gaiety and merriment. The Master, scenting mischief, called Baburam to his side and said: "What can you ask of me? Isn't everything that I have already yours? Yes, everything I have earned in the shape of realizations is for the sake of you all. So get rid of the idea of begging, which alienates by creating a distance. Rather realize your kinship with me and gain the key to all the treasures.
--- NIRANJAN
--
Sri Ramakrishna employed a ruse to bring Jogindra to him. As soon as the disciple entered the room, the Master rushed forward to meet the young man. Catching hold of the disciple's hand, he said: "What if you have married? Haven't I too married? What is there to be afraid of in that?" Touching his own chest he said: "If this [meaning himself] is propitious, then even a hundred thousand marriages cannot injure you. If you desire to lead a householder's life, then bring your wife here one day, and I shall see that she becomes a real companion in your spiritual progress. But if you want to lead a monastic life, then I shall eat up your attachment to the world." Jogin was dumbfounded at these words. He received new strength, and his spirit of Renunciation was re-established.
--- SASHI AND SARAT
--
The Master did not hide the fact that he wished to make Narendra his spiritual heir. Narendra was to continue the work after Sri Ramakrishna's passing. Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "I leave these young men in your charge. See that they develop their spirituality and do not return home." One day he asked the boys, in preparation for a monastic life, to beg their food from door to door without thought of caste. They hailed the Master's order and went out with begging-bowls. A few days later he gave the ochre cloth of the sannyasi to each of them, including Girish, who was now second to none in his spirit of Renunciation. Thus the Master himself laid the foundation of the future Ramakrishna Order of monks.
Sri Ramakrishna was sinking day by day. His diet was reduced to a minimum and he found it almost impossible to swallow. He whispered to M.: "I am bearing all this cheerfully, for otherwise you would be weeping. If you all say that it is better that the body should go rather than suffer this torture, I am willing." The next morning he said to his depressed disciples seated near the bed: "Do you know what I see? I see that God alone has become everything. Men and animals are only frameworks covered with skin, and it is He who is moving through their heads and limbs. I see that it is God Himself who has become the block, the executioner, and the victim for the sacrifice.' He fainted with emotion. Regaining partial consciousness, he said: "Now I have no pain. I am very well." Looking at Latu he said: "There sits Latu resting his head on the palm of his hand. To me it is the Lord who is seated in that posture."
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
These preach Renunciation, "virtue", cowardice in
every form.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; for the Great Master was so full of the spirit of Renunciation and humility that he disliked being lionised. It must be for this reason that no one knew about this precious diary of M. for a decade until he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in 1897 with the Holy Mother's blessings and permission. The Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: "When I heard the Kathmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he, the Master, who was saying all that." ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
The two pamphlets in English entitled the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna appeared in October and November 1897. They drew the spontaneous acclamation of Swami Vivekananda, who wrote on 24th November of that year from Dehra Dun to M.:"Many many thanks for your second leaflet. It is indeed wonderful. The move is quite original, and never was the life of a Great Teacher brought before the public untarnished by the writer's mind, as you are doing. The language also is beyond all praise, so fresh, so pointed, and withal so plain and easy. I cannot express in adequate terms how I have enjoyed them. I am really in a transport when I read them. Strange, isn't it? Our Teacher and Lord was so original, and each one of us will have to be original or nothing.
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Twice he found it necessary to go out of his way to make public pronouncements on important world-issues, which shows distinctly that Renunciation of life is not a part of his Yoga. "The first was in relation to the Second World War. At the beginning he did not actively concern himself with it, but when it appeared as if Hitler would crush all the forces opposed to him and Nazism dominate the world, he began to intervene."[2]
The second was with regard to Sir Stafford Cripps' proposal for the transfer of power to India.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a Renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for mankind. It can be, therefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the Renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider movement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, for the most part, observed.
The utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the world cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the forces around it. But it was a compromise, not an absolute victory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and purity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the world. Therefore, in the divine Providence the country of the Yogins and the Sannyasins has been forced into a strict and imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the element of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting to it.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the powers of disorder. The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is a careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by Renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine
Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established.
--
The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the Renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this Renunciation it so
The Conditions of the Synthesis
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This then is the supreme secret, not the Renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary human nature : first of all, its psychicisation, that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and work and achieve.
The soul or the true being in man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming forward to possess a divinised mind and life and body as an instrument and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment of the Divine Will and Purposesuch is the goal that Nature is seeking to realise at present through her evolutionary lan. It is to this labour that man has been called so that in and through him the destined transcendence and transformation can take place.
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere Renunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself in a thousand associations.1
The spirit of the age demands this new gospel. Mankind needs and awaits a fresh revelation. The world and life are not an illusion or a lesser reality: they are, if taken rightly, as real as the pure Spirit itself. Indeed, Spirit and Flesh, Consciousness and Matter are not antinomies; to consider them as such is itself an illusion. In fact, they are only two poles or modes or aspects of the same reality. To separate or divide them is a one-sided concentration or abstraction on the part of the human mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression through Matter; human life too reaches its highest term, its summum bonum, in embodying the spiritual consciousness here on earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That is the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in man and towards which he has been travelling through the ages in the course of the evolution of his consciousness. Many, however, are the prophets and sages who have set this ideal before humanity and more and more insistently and clearly as we come nearer to the age we live in. But none or very few have expressed it with such beauty and charm and compelling persuasion. It would be carping criticism to point out-as some, purists one may call them, have done-that in poetising and aesthetising the spiritual truth and reality, in trying to make it human and terrestrial, he has diminished and diluted the original substance, in endeavouring to render the diamond iridescent, he has turned it into a baser alloy. Tagore's is a poetic soul, it must be admitted; and it is not necessary that one should find in his ideas and experiences and utterances the cent per cent accuracy and inevitability of a Yogic consciousness. Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation.
--
"Deliverance is not for me in Renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight."Gitanjali,73.
Tagore the poet reminds one often and anon of Kalidasa. He was so much in love, had such kinship with the great old master that many of his poems, many passages and lines are reminiscences, echoes, modulations or a paraphrase of the original classic. Tagore himself refers in his memoirs to one Kalidasian line that haunted his juvenile brain because of its exquisite music and enchanting imagery:
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
by Renunciation or by perfect satisfaction of desire that
one can have the total experience of God.2 But isn't
--
"Only by perfect Renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the
utter embrace of God be experienced, for in both ways the essential precondition is
--
liberator. Not the Pundit, but the Yogin, not monasticism, but the inner Renunciation of
desire and ignorance and egoism."
--
You have written: "Of all Renunciations, the most
difficult is to renounce one's good habits." What exactly
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine Love is a greater fire than the low smouldering fire that our secular unregenerate life is. One has to choose and declare his adhesion. Indeed, the stage of conversion, the crucial turn from the ordinary life to the spiritual life Eliot has characterised in a very striking manner. We usually say, sometimes in an outburst of grief, sometimes in a spirit of sudden disgust and Renunciation that the world is dark and dismal and lonesome, the only thing to do here is to be done with it. The true Renunciation, that which is deep and abiding, is not, however, so simple a thing, such a short cut. So our poet says, but the world is not dark enough, it is not lonesome enough: the world lives and moves in a superficial half-light, it is neither real death nor real life, it is death in life. It is this miserable mediocrity, the shallow uncertainty of consciousness that spells danger and ruin for the soul. Hence the poet exclaims:
. . . . Not here
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of Renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of Renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
What I am aiming at is not a society like the present rooted in division. What I have in view is a Samgha [community] founded in the spirit and in the image of its oneness. It is with this idea that the name Deva Samgha has been given the commune of those who want the divine life is the Deva Samgha. Such a Samgha will have to be established in one place at first and then spread all over the country. But if any shadow of egoism falls over this endeavor, then the Samgha will change into a sect. The idea may very naturally creep in that such and such a body is the one true Samgha of the future, the one and only centre, that all else must be its circumference, and that those outside its limits are not of the fold or even if they are, have gone astray, because they think differently.
0 1963-08-17, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its about Renunciation.
There is that thing I said: acceptance and struggleboth together. What did he say about Renunciation?
94All Renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond.
And your question?
--
I never had much that experience of Renunciation. To renounce something, you must be attached to it, while I always had the thirst, the need to go farther, to go higher, to progress, to do better, to know better and instead of having a sense of Renunciation, you have rather a sense of good riddance! Something you get rid of that hampers you, weighs you down, hinders your advance.
In that light, its very interesting.
0 1963-08-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Then Mother returns to the aphorism on Renunciation. She remains silent. She still appears to be shaken.)
Its difficult because
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told you that the only process Ive known, and which recurred several times in my life, is to renounce an error. Something you believe to be truewhich probably was true for a timeon which you partly base your action, but which, in actuality, was only one opinion. You thought it was a truthful finding with all its logical consequences, and your action (part of your action) was based on it, so that everything proceeded from it automatically. Till suddenly an experience, a circumstance or an intuition warns you that your finding isnt so true as it appeared to be (!) Then there is a whole period of observation and study (sometimes too it comes as a revelation, a massive proof), and then its not just your idea or false knowledge that needs to be changed, but also all its consequences, perhaps an entire way of acting on a particular point. At that moment, you get a sort of sensation, something that feels like a sensation of Renunciation; that is to say, you have to undo a whole collection of things you had built. Sometimes its quite considerable, sometimes a very small thing, but the experience is the same: the movement of a force, a dissolving power, and the resistance of all that must be dissolved, all the past habit. It is the contact of the movement of dissolution with the corresponding resistance that probably translates in the ordinary human consciousness as the sense of Renunciation.
I saw that very recently; its something insignificant, the circumstances are completely unimportant in themselves (its only the study of the whole that makes it interesting). Its the only phenomenon that has recurred several times in my life and which for that reason I know well. And as the being progresses, the power of dissolution increases, becomes more and more immediate, and the resistance lessens. But I remember the time when the resistances were at their highest (more than half a century ago), and it never worked in any other way: it was always something outside menot outside my consciousness but outside my will something that resists the will. I never had the feeling I had to renounce things but I felt as if I had to exert a pressure on them to dissolve them. Whereas now, the farther I go, the more imperceptible the pressure becomes, its immediate: as soon as the Force that comes to dissolve a collection of things manifests, theres no resistance, everything gets dissolved; on the contrary, theres hardly any sense of liberation theres something that is amused every time and says, Ah, again! How many times you limit yourself. How many times you think youre constantly moving on, smoothly, without stopping, and how many times you set a little limit to your action (it isnt a big limit because its a very little thing within an immense whole, but its a limit nonetheless). And then when the Force acts to dissolve the limit, at first you feel liberated, you feel a joy; but now its not even like that any more: there is a smile. Because its not a sense of liberationyou very simply remove a stone that stands in your way.
--
That idea of Renunciation can occur only in an egocentric consciousness. Naturally, people (those whom I call quite unevolved) are attached to thingswhen they have something, they dont want to let go of it! That seems so childish to me! For them, if they are obliged to give it up, it hurts! Because they identify with the things they hold on to. But thats childish. The real process behind is the amount of resistance in the things that developed on a certain basis of knowledgea knowledge at a given time, no longer a knowledge at another timea partial knowledge, not fleeting but impermanent. There is a whole collection of things built on that knowledge, and they resist the Force that says, No! Its not true, (laughing) your basis is no longer true, away with it! But then, Oh, it hurts!thats what people feel as Renunciation.
The difficult thing is perhaps not so much to renounce as to accept [Mother smiles] when you see life as it is now. But then if you accept, how can you live in the midst of all that while having that untroubled rapture the untroubled rapture not up there but here?1
--
"All Renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond."
Let us recall in this connection the experience of many disciples who in their "dreams" see Mother much taller than she is apparently.
0 1963-08-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(There follows a discussion between Mother and Satprem to decide whether Mothers comment on the last aphorism, on Renunciation, should be published in the Bulletin in full or only in excerpts. At first Mother finds it too personal. This raises the problem of the publication of Mothers words.)
It should have been said objectively, not as my experience. But if I start saying my experience, I have to go right to the end of my experience, I cant stop halfway.
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
95Only by perfect Renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the utter embrace of God be experienced, for in both ways the essential precondition is effected,the desire perishes.
Its impossible to satisfy desire perfectlyits something. impossible. And to renounce desire too: you renounce one desire and get another one. Therefore, both ways are relatively impossiblewhats possible is to enter a condition in which there is no desire.
0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was the idea, I think, of all the apostles of Renunciation: eliminate all that comes from outside or from below, so that if something from above manifests, you will be in a fit state to receive it. But from the collective point of view, its a process that may take thousands of years! From the individual point of view, its possible; but then the aspiration to receive the true impulse should be kept intactnot the aspiration to total liberation, but the aspiration to the ACTIVE identification with the Supreme, in other words, to want only what He wants, to do only what He wants, to exist only through Him, in Him.
So the method of Renunciation may be tried, but its a method for someone who wants to cut himself off from others. And can there be an integrality in that case? It doesnt seem possible to me.
Announcing publicly what you intend to do helps considerably. It may give rise to objections, contempt, conflicts, but thats largely made up for by the public expectation, if we may say so: by what others expect from you. That was certainly the reason for those robes: to let people know. Obviously, you may incur the contempt and ill will of some people, but there are all those who feel, I mustnt touch this, I mustnt have anything to do with it, its not my concern.
--
Sannyasa: Renunciation of works and worldly life.
King of Mithila at the time of the Upanishads, famed for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, even though he led a worldly life.
0 1966-04-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two standpoints: the need for Renunciation and the futility of fleeing. Those are the two ideas that cause the hesitation. But in the chronological order of things, it should first be the need for Renunciation, then the discovery of the futility of fleeing, and then instead of a fleeing, there should be a return, free, without attachment. A return to life without attachment.
Apart from that, I understand: in order to write a book, one generally cannot describe more than one cycle, because theres a beginning, a development, and a culmination, a realization. Then another book, which starts from that realization and has the full experience of its futility. And then, the crowning realization: the return to life, free.
0 1966-09-28, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
She writes this: We must stop encouraging torturers, whether of men or of animals. I am writing to beg you to teach me how to obtain the powers to lessen sufferings in others through concentration of fluid, and how to act by inwardly returning blow for blow to the aggressors, without hatred but implacably. I beg you to help me. Which inner giving, which Renunciation is necessary? Who will teach me the force and justice that will enable me to act and not to always let evil triumph? It is too easy to forget, deny, minimize others suffering. I can no longer put up with it. I no longer want to shut my eyes and comfort myself till the next time. What should I undertake?
When did you get this letter?
0 1968-02-14, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do you know how the Hindu spiritual tradition was convincedwas forced to be convincedof the multiplicity of souls (they dont say souls), of the divine being in individuals? Because those people were very logical: had there been a single soul, that is, a single supreme consciousness, anywhere, at any time, once it had experienced liberation (flight into Nirvana, the Renunciation of everything, the whole illusion of life and creation), if there had been only one soul, the whole thing would have been over! But as it happens, a number of beings went through the experience, and it made no difference to the world (as a whole, at any rate). So they reached the conclusion that there were perhaps as many souls as there were individuals, and that they communicate only up above, not down here.
When someone said that to me, it quite amused me!
03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thus life has come to mean today the life exclusively of the senses, the life that is instinctive, reflexive, automatical in its elan, which is beyond the control of the conscious will and intelligence, the life that is interwoven and unified with body and matter. For it was this life which could never come to its ownnot even in man's primitive stage which was more or less a rigid system of taboos, religious and social, in spite of contrary appearances; it was this life which could not express freely and fully its own truth and reality in its own way, under the domination of what are known as the higher movements of the human consciousness. Life in another sense, as part of this higher and aristocratic movement, had had some autonomy and a field and scope of its own even under the old regime. The life-force that inspires noble ambitions, high enterprises, large creations, vast enjoyments, and proud Renunciations, and violent and sweeping passions, has always been to us a familiar element.
Today, however, in pursuit of the mystery of life we have entered into darker and more obscure regionsof cells and genes, of colloid actions and neuron reactions: the elementary instincts, the primary reflexes, the tangle of short and brief vibrations, and half-articulate pulsations of the most physical and material consciousness are the stuff of the life we seek to live and to capture and mirror. The creative and active force in life as well as in art is now invested in the nervous dynamism and sensational perception. The old morals and sthetics and the sentiments and notions around them are considered today merely conventional and bourgeois; they have given place to a freer life-movement, the expression and embodiment of an unrestrained and au thentic life, life in its natural, original; unspoilt (and crude and coarse) verity. We are probing into the mystery of the crust.
05.19 - Lone to the Lone, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Some mystics and philosophers recently come into vogue (inspired or encouraged by the Christian or the Buddhist way of Realisation) have emphasised this outlook. But it has also been counterbalanced by another way of spiritual growth and fulfilment: we may call it the modern way, for it has been a pronounced characteristic of the modern consciousness. We referred in our previous essay to the Existentialist who has attracted so much attention in these days, the linchpin of whose philosophy is the value of the individual person, especially the individual personal in relation to each other. Kierkegaard, the Danish mystic, from whom this school is supposed to originate, speaks of the Absolute as the Single One that excludes and annuls all "others", the crowd. He lays especial emphasis upon complete solitariness and total Renunciation as the very condition, sine qua non, of the soul's spiritual journey and yet characterises the singlenessof the one in terms that make of it an essential whole, an integer. Man must isolate himself from his phenomenal being, certainlyas the neti netiformula enjoins but also he must first find or become his real self, realise his true individuality before he can reach God, the Divine Self, identify himself with the Transcendent. It is only a freely and truly formed individual being that can give itself to the Divine or become one with it. This true individuality is indeed a solitary being away and apart from the crowd of personalities that surround itit has been called by the Indian mystics, the Purusha in the heart, no bigger than the thumb, the Dwarf Godhead (Vmana).
When one is a member of the crowd, he has no personality or individuality, he is an amorphous mass, moving helplessly in the current of life, driven by Nature-force as it pleases her: spiritual life begins by withdrawing oneself from this flow of Ignorance and building up or taking cognisance of one's true person and being. When one possesses oneself integrally, is settled in the armature of one's spirit self, he has most naturally turned away from the inferior personalities of his own being and the comradeship also of people in bondage and ignorance. But then one need not stop at this purely negative poise: one can move up and arrive at a positive status, a new revaluation and reaffirmation. For when the divine selfhood is attained, one is no longer sole or solitary. Indeed, the solitariness or loneliness that is attributed to the spiritual status is a human way of viewing the experience: that is the impression left on the normal mind consciousness when the Purusha soars out of it, upwards from the life of the world to the life of the Spirit. But the soul, the true spiritual being in the individual, is not and cannot be an isolated entity; the nature of the spiritual consciousness is first transcendence, no doubt, transcendence of the merely temporal and ephemeral, but it is also universalisation, that is to say, the cosmic realisation that has its classic expression in the famous mantra of the Gita, he who sees himself in other selves and other selves in his own self. In that status "own" and "other" are not distinct or contrary things, but aspects of the one and the same reality, different stresses in one rhythm.
06.30 - Sweet Holy Tears, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Cross symbolises all the suffering and difficulty, the Renunciation and self-denudation that the ascent to the Goal involves. The Calvary of the Christian legend means Ascension and Resurrection is Transformation in our sadhana. The Cross is also symbolic of the Transformed consciousness. It has three branches and represents the triple Divine, the Divine in his three modes of existence. The top branch, the vertical portion above the transverse line, stands for the supreme or transcendent Divine, one who is above manifestation; the middle the transverse or horizontal branch stands for the expanse of the universal consciousness, the Cosmic Divine; and the bottom portion, the vertical line below the transverse stands for the individual Divine immanent or imbedded in the manifestation. You will note that the flower we call transformation has a form similar to the Cross.
The Mother: Prayers and Meditations, 3 September 1919
1.012 - Sublimation - A Way to Reshuffle Thought, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We have been discussing a very important principle in the practice of yoga namely, self-restraint. I would like to touch upon another aspect of it which is an essential in the practice. Self-restraint or self-control is not a pressure of will exerted upon oneself, but a spontaneous growth inwardly experienced on account of transcendence and not by way of rejection. The term 'vairagya' also has some relevance to the meaning of the term 'self-control'. Vairagya is Renunciation, self-abandonment, relinquishment, etc. which is mostly interpreted as an abandonment of certain things in the world.
But vairagya is not an abandonment of things in the world. It is an abandonment of false values, the wrong interpretation of things, and a misconstruing of one's relationship with everything around oneself. It is this erroneous notion about things around oneself that is the reason for attachments, aversions, likes, dislikes, and what not. So also is the principle of self-control. A rejection of an existent value is impossible. This is very important to remember. Anything that is real cannot be rejected. If we think that the world is real, we cannot abandon it - the question of abandoning it does not arise. Anything which has already been declared to be real cannot be abandoned. How can we abandon real things? So, also, if self-control or self-restraint implies a withdrawal of consciousness from those things or values which are real and external to oneself, then it is impossible, because the consciousness or the mind which is expected to withdraw itself from externals will insist that abandonment of real values is impracticable and unadvisable.
1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
World, Renunciation and Enjoyment, Action and internal Freedom, the One and the
Many, Being and its Becomings, the passive divine Impersonality and the active divine
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M: "I don't understand what you mean by 'annas'. But of this I am sure: I have never before seen such knowledge, ecstatic love, faith in God, Renunciation, and catholicity anywhere."
The Master laughed.
1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
object:1.01 - On Renunciation of the world
subject:Christianity
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On Renunciation of the world
Our God and King is good, ultra-good and all-good (it is best to begin with God in writing to the servants of God). Of the rational beings created by Him and honoured with the dignity of free-will, some are His friends, others are His true servants, some are worthless, some are completely estranged from God, and others, though feeble creatures are equally His opponents. By friends of God, dear and holy Father,1 we simple people mean, properly speaking, those intellectual and incorporeal beings which surround God. By true servants of God we mean all those who tirelessly and unremittingly do and have done His will. By worthless servants we mean those who think of themselves as having been granted baptism, but have not faithfully kept the vows they made to God. By those estranged from God and alienated from Him, we mean those who are unbelievers or heretics. Finally, the enemies of God are those who have not only evaded and rejected the Lords commandment themselves, but who also wage bitter war on those who are fulfilling it.
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Those who aim at ascending with the body to heaven, need violence indeed and constant suffering6 especially in the early stages of their Renunciation, until our pleasure-loving dispositions and unfeeling hearts attain to love of God and chastity by visible sorrow. A great toil, very great indeed, with much unseen suffering, especially for those who live carelessly, until by simplicity, deep angerlessness and diligence, we make our mind, which is a greedy kitchen dog addicted to barking, a lover of chastity and watchfulness. But let us who are weak and passionate have the courage to offer our infirmity and natural weakness to Christ with unhesitating faith, and confess it to Him; and we shall be certain to obtain His help, even beyond our merit, if only we unceasingly go right down to the depth of humility.
All who enter upon the good fight, which is hard and narrow, but also easy, must realize that they must leap into the fire, if they really expect the celestial fire to dwell in them. But, let everyone examine himself, and so let him eat the bread of it with its bitter herbs, and let him drink the cup of it with its
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In the very beginning of our Renunciation, it is certainly with labour and grief that we practise the virtues. But when we have made progress in them, we no longer feel sorrow, or we feel little sorrow. But as soon as our mortal mind is consumed, and mastered by our alacrity, we practise them with all joy and eagerness, with love and with divine fire.
Those who at once from the very outset follow the virtues and fulfil the commandments with joy and alacrity certainly deserve praise. And in the same way those who spend a long time in asceticism4 and still find it a weariness to obey the commandments, if they obey them at all, certainly deserve pity.
Let us not even abhor or condemn the Renunciation due merely to circumstances. I have seen men who had fled into exile meet the emperor by accident when he was on tour, and then join his company, enter his palace, and dine with him. I have seen seed casually fall on the earth and bear plenty of
1 This means: If every baptized person is not saved, so the same can be said about monksnot all who have made the vow are real monks and will be saved. But I prefer to pass over this matter in silence.
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
mind, the lake, into various waves. Renunciation is the power
of battling against these, and holding the mind in check.
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into a wave form with regard to them is Renunciation; to
control the twofold motive powers arising from my own
--
them. This sort of mental strength is called Renunciation. This
Vairagyam is the only way to freedom.
1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
lest he should be moved to thoughts of life Renunciation; for it
had been prophesied at his birth that he was to become either
1.02.1 - The Inhabiting Godhead - Life and Action, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Enjoyment of the universe and all it contains is the object of world-existence, but Renunciation of all in desire is the condition of the free enjoyment of all.
The Renunciation demanded is not a moral constraint of self-denial or a physical rejection, but an entire liberation of the spirit from any craving after the forms of things.
The terms of this liberation are freedom from egoism and, consequently, freedom from personal desire. Practically, this Renunciation implies that one should not regard anything in the universe as a necessary object of possession, nor as possessed by another and not by oneself, nor as an object of greed in the heart or the senses.
This attitude is founded on the perception of unity. For it has already been said that all souls are one possessing Self, the Lord; and although the Lord inhabits each object as if separately, yet all objects exist in that Self and not outside it.
1.02.2.2 - Self-Realisation, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
line, fixing as the rule of divine life universal Renunciation of
desire as the condition of universal enjoyment in the spirit, has
1.028 - Bringing About Whole-Souled Dedication, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We were discussing the relationship between abhyasa and vairagya in the system of yoga. The practice of yoga becomes effective when it is charged with the power of vairagya or the spirit of Renunciation because, while practice is the endeavour to fix oneself in a particular attitude of consciousness, vairagya is a sympathetic attitude which simultaneously frees consciousness from attention to contrary objectives, or objectives which are irrelevant to the one that is taken up for the purpose of concentration and meditation. We cannot have a double attitude in yoga. That is, our attention cannot be diverted into two channels. Else, there would be split devotion, as they call it vyabhicharini bhakti not whole-souled devotion.
What is called for in this practice is wholeheartedness, and perhaps every other qualification is included in this. When we are wholehearted in anything, we shall succeed, whatever be the direction. But our difficulty seems to be that we can never be wholehearted in anything. It is merely a peculiar trait of the mind that it cannot give itself up entirely to any kind of effort, thought, feeling, or volition. There is an inherent inadequacy in the structural character of the mind, which makes it sometimes look like a double-edged sword, cutting both ways sometimes like a naughty child asking for what is impossible, and at other times trying to upset, every moment, what it is trying to achieve by its effort.
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Practice, or abhyasa, is always streng thened, and has to be streng thened, by a corresponding practice that goes on simultaneously with abhyasa, and that parallel practice is the automatic withdrawal of the mind from all distracting factors. If we are pulled in two directions with equal force, we will not be able to move even a little bit. We have had occasion to contemplate to some extent on the details of what Renunciation is, and what are the various stages of vairagya which Patanjali regards as indispensable to the practice of yoga. He tells us that the practice consists in an insistent attempt on our part to fix ourselves in a single or given attitude. Tatra sthitau yatna abhysa (I.13): Abhyasa or practice is the effort to fix one's own self in a given attitude. What is this given attitude? We have to choose a particular attitude in which to fix ourselves for a protracted period; this is called practice. The attitude in which we have to fix ourselves should be such that we would tend to greater and greater stages of freedom of the soul, and a lessening and decreasing of the intensity of bondage.
As we had occasion to observe, the practice commences with being seated in a particular posture; and sitting in a particular posture is itself a practice. Often we may be under the wrong notion that 'sitting' is not a very important part of yoga, because yoga is mental concentration. Yes, it is true, but the concentration of the mind will not be possible when we are seated in an awkward posture. We must remember that there is a vital connection obtaining among every part of our psychophysical organism. Right from the skin, which is the outermost part of our body, to the deepest level of our psychological being, there is an internal relationship. Any kind of disturbance that is felt in any part of this organic structure will be sympathetically felt to a particular degree in other parts or levels of this organic structure. The posture or asana, the steady seatedness in a particular mood not only of the mind, but also of the body, the nerves and the pranas is essential for the concentration of the mind on the objective.
1.02.9 - Conclusion and Summary, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
secondary position, exalting the opposite series, God, Renunciation, Quietism, the One, Cessation of Birth, the Knowledge,
until this trend of thought culminated in Illusionism and the
--
a dependence of one on the other. Renunciation is to go to the
extreme, but also enjoyment is to be equally integral; Action has
--
and to be possessed and enjoyed, not dependent either for acquisition or enjoyment on the Renunciation of life and bodily
existence. This thought has never entirely passed out of Indian
--
2. Renunciation and Enjoyment.
3. Action in Nature and Freedom in the Soul.
--
ENJOYMENT AND Renunciation
2. Real integral enjoyment of all this movement and multiplicity
in its truth and in its infinity depends upon an absolute Renunciation; but the Renunciation intended is an absolute Renunciation
of the principle of desire founded on the principle of egoism and
not a Renunciation of world-existence.2 This solution depends
on the idea that desire is only an egoistic and vital deformation of the divine Ananda or delight of being from which the
--
the Renunciation of desire and egoism as the essential but would hold that Renunciation of
egoism means the Renunciation of all world-existence, for it sees desire and not Ananda
as the cause of world-existence.
1.02 - Isha Analysis, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
On this conception the rule of a divine life for man is founded, - enjoyment of all by Renunciation of all through the exclusion of desire. (Verse 1, line 2)
There is then declared the justification of works and of the physical life on the basis of an inalienable freedom of the soul, one with the Lord, amidst all the activity of the multiple movement. (Verse 2)
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
may do without other advantages. Culture is thus attained through the Renunciation of instinctual
gratifications and furthered by every new development which serves the purposes of Renunciation.
In all this, we stand before the pure specimen of homo natura: bodily instinct, the gaining of pleasure
1.02 - Meditating on Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
realizing emptiness. The determination to be free is also called Renunciation.
It is a state of mind in which we have seen the defects of cyclic existence,
1.02 - On detachment, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
3. After our Renunciation of the world, the demons suggest to us that we should envy those living in the world who are merciful and compassionate, and be sorry for ourselves as deprived of these virtues. The aim of our foes is, by false humility, either to make us return to the world, or, if we remain monks, to plunge us into despair. It is possible to belittle those living in the world out of conceit; and it is also possible to disparage them behind their backs in order to avoid despair and to obtain hope.
4. Let us listen to what the Lord said to the young man who had fulfilled nearly all the commandments: One thing thou lackest; sell what thou hast and give to the poor1 and become a beggar who receives alms from others.
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9. No one will enter the heavenly bridechamber wearing a crown unless he makes the first, second and third Renunciation. I mean the Renunciation of all business, and people, and parents; the cutting out of ones will; and the third Renunciation, of the conceit that dogs obedience. Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean world.5 For who amongst them has ever worked any miracles? Who has raised the dead? Who has driven out devils? No one. All these
1 St. Mark x, 21.
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10. After our Renunciation, when the demons inflame our hearts by reminding us of our parents and brethren, then let us arm ourselves against them with prayer, and let us inflame ourselves with the remembrance of the eternal fire, so that by reminding ourselves of this, we may quench the untimely fire of our heart.
11. If anyone thinks he is without attachment to some object, but is grieved at its loss, then he is completely deceiving himself.
1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being-soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that "That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore." Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire Renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence. Mind has to cease to be mind and become brilliant with something beyond it. Life has to change into a thing vast and calm and intense and powerful that can no longer recognise its old blind eager narrow self or petty impulse and desire. Even the body has to submit to a mutation and be no longer the clamorous animal or the impeding clod it now is, but become instead a conscious servant and radiant instrument and living form of the spirit.
8:The difficulty of the task has led naturally to the pursuit of easy and trenchant solutions; it has generated and fixed deeply' the tendency of religions and of schools of Yoga to separate the life of the world from the inner life. The powers of this world and their actual activities, it is felt, either do not belong to God at all or are for some obscure and puzzling cause, Maya or another, a dark contradiction of the divine Truth. And on their own opposite side the powers of the Truth and their ideal activities are seen to belong to quite another plane of consciousness than that, obscure, ignorant and perverse in its impulses and forces, on which the life of the earth is founded. There appears at once the antinomy of a bright and pure kingdom of God and a dark and impure kingdom of the devil; we feel the opposition of our crawling earthly birth and life to an exalted spiritual God-consciousness; we become readily convinced of the incompatibility of life's subjection to Maya with the soul's concentration in pure Brahman existence. The easiest way is to turn away from all that belongs to the one and to retreat by a naked and precipitous ascent into the other. Thus arises the attraction and, it would seem, the necessity of the principle of exclusive concentration which plays so prominent a part in the specialised schools of Yoga; for by that concentration we can arrive through an uncompromising Renunciation of the world at an entire self-consecration to the One on whom we concentrate. It is no longer incumbent on us to compel all the lower activities to the difficult recognition of a new and higher spiritualised life and train them to be its agents or executive powers. It is enough to kill or quiet them and keep at most the few energies necessary, on one side, for the maintenance of the body and, on the other, for communion with the Divine.
9:The very aim and conception of an integral Yoga debars us from adopting this simple and strenuous high-pitched process. The hope of an integral transformation forbids us to take a short cut or to make ourselves light for the race by throwing away our impediments. For we have set out to conquer all ourselves and the world for God; we are determined to give him our becoming as well as our being and not merely to bring the pure and naked spirit as a bare offering to a remote and secret Divinity in a distant heaven or abolish all we are in a holocaust to an immobile Absolute. The Divine that we adore is not only a remote extracosmic Reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation present and near to us here in the universe. Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in the body, -- ihaiva, as the Upanishads insist, -- we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it. Life then we must accept in our Yoga in order utterly to transmute it; we are forbidden to shrink from the difficulties that this acceptance may add to our struggle. Our compensation is that even if the path is more rugged, the effort more complex and bafflingly arduous, yet after a point we gain an immense advantage. For once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit. Life becomes our helper. Intent, vigilant, integrally conscious, we can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its movements as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the powers that oppose us.
1.02 - The Age of Individualism and Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For this discovery by individual free-thought of universal laws of which the individual is almost a by-product and by which he must necessarily be governed, this attempt actually to govern the social life of humanity in conscious accordance with the mechanism of these laws seems to lead logically to the suppression of that very individual freedom which made the discovery and the attempt at all possible. In seeking the truth and law of his own being the individual seems to have discovered a truth and law which is not of his own individual being at all, but of the collectivity, the pack, the hive, the mass. The result to which this points and to which it still seems irresistibly to be driving us is a new ordering of society by a rigid economic or governmental Socialism in which the individual, deprived again of his freedom in his own interest and that of humanity, must have his whole life and action determined for him at every step and in every point from birth to old age by the well-ordered mechanism of the State.1 We might then have a curious new version, with very important differences, of the old Asiatic or even of the old Indian order of society. In place of the religio-ethical sanction there will be a scientific and rational or naturalistic motive and rule; instead of the Brahmin Shastrakara the scientific, administrative and economic expert. In the place of the King himself observing the law and compelling with the aid and consent of the society all to tread without deviation the line marked out for them, the line of the Dharma, there will stand the collectivist State similarly guided and empowered. Instead of a hierarchical arrangement of classes each with its powers, privileges and duties there will be established an initial equality of education and opportunity, ultimately perhaps with a subsequent determination of function by experts who shall know us better than ourselves and choose for us our work and quality. Marriage, generation and the education of the child may be fixed by the scientific State as of old by the Shastra. For each man there will be a long stage of work for the State superintended by collectivist authorities and perhaps in the end a period of liberation, not for action but for enjoyment of leisure and personal self-improvement, answering to the Vanaprastha and Sannyasa Asramas of the old Aryan society. The rigidity of such a social state would greatly surpass that of its Asiatic forerunner; for there at least there were for the rebel, the innovator two important concessions. There was for the individual the freedom of an early Sannyasa, a Renunciation of the social for the free spiritual life, and there was for the group the liberty to form a sub-society governed by new conceptions like the Sikh or the Vaishnava. But neither of these violent departures from the norm could be tolerated by a strictly economic and rigorously scientific and unitarian society. Obviously, too, there would grow up a fixed system of social morality and custom and a body of socialistic doctrine which one could not be allowed to question practically, and perhaps not even intellectually, since that would soon shatter or else undermine the system. Thus we should have a new typal order based upon purely economic capacity and function, guakarma, and rapidly petrifying by the inhibition of individual liberty into a system of rationalistic conventions. And quite certainly this static order would at long last be broken by a new individualist age of revolt, led probably by the principles of an extreme philosophical Anarchism.
On the other hand, there are in operation forces which seem likely to frustrate or modify this development before it can reach its menaced consummation. In the first place, rationalistic and physical Science has overpassed itself and must before long be overtaken by a mounting flood of psychological and psychic knowledge which cannot fail to compel quite a new view of the human being and open a new vista before mankind. At the same time the Age of Reason is visibly drawing to an end; novel ideas are sweeping over the world and are being accepted with a significant rapidity, ideas inevitably subversive of any premature typal order of economic rationalism, dynamic ideas such as Nietzsches Will-to-live, Bergsons exaltation of Intuition above intellect or the latest German philosophical tendency to acknowledge a suprarational faculty and a suprarational order of truths. Already another mental poise is beginning to settle and conceptions are on the way to apply themselves in the field of practice which promise to give the succession of the individualistic age of society not to a new typal order, but to a subjective age which may well be a great and momentous passage to a very different goal. It may be doubted whether we are not already in the morning twilight of a new period of the human cycle.
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
surely the mightiest act of Renunciation in spiritual history.
No new edition of the old fiasco
1.031 - Intense Aspiration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
In the external change that we bring about, which is the first step in vairagya, as people generally understand it, we leave the homestead and go to Badrinath or Uttarkashi, or somewhere. This initial step that we regard as vairagya or Renunciation is to be converted into an internal discipline and change of attitude, for which proper guidance is necessary. Everything is a system of thinking, a change in the attitude of consciousness, and even the first step that we take is only towards that end. Unless there is a corresponding transformation inside, external movements have no meaning. If proper care is taken, an external discipline has some effect upon the internal character. But proper care has to be taken; we have to be very vigilant, and we cannot be vigilant if we give a long rope to our old ways of thinking. We can change anything, but our ways of thinking cannot change, because that is a part of us part of our nature.
What we should do is, together with our effort at change of physical atmosphere, also try to bring about a gradual change in our internal atmosphere by resorting to certain spiritual disciplines, such as the utilisation of the time on hand for certain definite chosen purposes. When we live in a particular place we have left our homes and have come to Uttarkashi, for instance how do we use our time? Do we go about from place to place, chatting? Then we should go back to our home and stay there. Why do we come to Uttarkashi? We have to utilise the time for a purpose which is more intimate to the object on hand than the way in which we lived earlier. Generally, people take to mantra purascharana a disciplined type of chanting of the mantra that has been given to them by their Guru and sacred study of scriptures, such as the Srimad Bhagavata or the Ramayana, or any other holy text which is conducive to pinpointing the mind on the liberation of the soul, which is the ultimate objective.
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: You need not do it now; it is a thing guaranteed. But you cannot make even that a condition for entering this Yoga. It is a high adventure, as I told you. It is not like the other yogic systems where you get some touch of the Higher Reality and leave the rest untransformed. My Yoga makes demands that have to be met, it is a radical transition from the present state of human consciousness. We accept life but that does not mean that in this Yoga there is no Renunciation. It only means we do not annul any of the faculties of the human being. What we put forth is not something mental, vital or physical but that which comes from the Supramental.
Athavale: I would do as you suggest; but at present I do not know any working higher than the Mind. What is to be done till then?
1.03 - On exile or pilgrimage, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Exile means that we leave forever everything in our own country that prevents us from reaching the goal of the religious life. Exile means modest manners, wisdom which remains unknown, prudence not recognized as such by most, a hidden life, an invisible intention, unseen meditation, desire for humiliation, longing for hardship, constant determination to love God, abundance of charity, Renunciation of vainglory, depth of silence.
Those who have come to love the Lord are at first unceasingly and greatly disturbed by this thought, as if burning with divine fire. I speak of separation from their own, undertaken by the lovers of perfection so that they may live a life of hardship and simplicity. But great and praiseworthy as this is, yet it requires great discretion; for not every kind of exile, carried to extremes, is good.
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after his Renunciation will certainly either fall into their traps or will defile his heart by thinking about them; or if he is not defiled himself yet by condemning those who are defiled, he too will himself be defiled.
Concerning dreams that beginners have
1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What then are the lines of Karmayoga laid down by the Gita? Its key principle, its spiritual method, can be summed up as the union of two largest and highest states or powers of consciousness, equality and oneness. The kernel of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit. An inner Renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness.
But this must be a oneness in dynamic force and not only in static peace or inactive beatitude. The Gita promises us freedom for the spirit even in the midst of works and the full energies of Nature, if we accept subjection of our whole being to that which is higher than the separating and limiting ego. It proposes an integral dynamic activity founded on a still passivity; a largest possible action irrevocably based on an immobile calm is its secret, - free expression out of a supreme inward silence.
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Equality, Renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature, - these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita's way of Karmayoga.
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The rest of Arjuna's questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament and character. When he is told that once the soul-state is assured there need be no apparent change in the action, he must act always by the law of his nature, even if the act itself seem faulty and deficient compared with that of another law than his own, he is troubled. The nature! but what of this sense of sin in the action with which he is preoccupied? is it not this very nature which drives men as if by force and even against their better will into sin and guilt? His practical intelligence is baffled by Krishna's assertion that it was he who in ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again revealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose. He is again perplexed by the words in which Krishna continues to reconcile action and Renunciation of action and asks once again for a decisive statement of that which is the best and highest, not this "mingled" word. When he realises fully the nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to embrace, his pragmatic nature accustomed to act from mental will and preference and desire is appalled by its difficulty and he asks what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails, whether it does not lose both this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires and falling from both perish like a dissolving cloud?
When his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive knowledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. How
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is the Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience? What are the great manifestations of its self-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realise it by meditation? May he not see even now the divine cosmic Form of That which is actually speaking to him through the veil of the human mind and body? And his last questions demand a clear distinction between Renunciation of works and this subtler Renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual difference between Purusha and Prakriti, the Field and the Knower of the Field, so important for the practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine Will; and finally a clear statement of the practical operations and results of the three modes of Prakriti which he is bidden to surmount.
To such a disciple the Teacher of the Gita gives his divine teaching. He seizes him at a moment of his psychological development by egoistic action when all the mental, moral, emotional values of the ordinary egoistic and social life of man have collapsed in a sudden bankruptcy, and he has to lift him up out of this lower life into a higher consciousness, out of ignorant attachment to action into that which transcends, yet originates and orders action, out of ego into Self, out of life in mind, vitality and body into that higher nature beyond mind which is the status of the Divine. He has at the same time to give him that for which he asks and for which he is inspired to seek by the guidance within him, a new Law of life and action high above the insufficient rule of the ordinary human existence with its endless conflicts and oppositions, perplexities and illusory certainties, a higher Law by which the soul shall be free from this bondage of works and yet powerful to act and conquer in the vast liberty of its divine being. For the action must be performed, the world must fulfil its cycles and the soul of the human being must not turn back in ignorance from the work it is here to do. The whole course of the teaching of the Gita is determined and directed, even in its widest wheelings, towards the fulfilment of these three objects.
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
17:It is this revolt of Spirit against Matter that for two thousand years, since Buddhism disturbed the balance of the old Aryan world, has dominated increasingly the Indian mind. Not that the sense of the cosmic illusion is the whole of Indian thought; there are other philosophical statements, other religious aspirations. Nor has some attempt at an adjustment between the two terms been wanting even from the most extreme philosophies. But all have lived in the shadow of the great Refusal and the final end of life for all is the garb of the ascetic. The general conception of existence has been permeated with the Buddhistic theory of the chain of Karma and with the consequent antinomy of bondage and liberation, bondage by birth, liberation by cessation from birth. Therefore all voices are joined in one great consensus that not in this world of the dualities can there be our kingdom of heaven, but beyond, whether in the joys of the eternal Vrindavan4 or the high beatitude of Brahmaloka,5 beyond all manifestations in some ineffable Nirvana6 or where all separate experience is lost in the featureless unity of the indefinable Existence. And through many centuries a great army of shining witnesses, saints and teachers, names sacred to Indian memory and dominant in Indian imagination, have borne always the same witness and swelled always the same lofty and distant appeal, - Renunciation the sole path of knowledge, acceptation of physical life the act of the ignorant, cessation from birth the right use of human birth, the call of the Spirit, the recoil from Matter.
18:For an age out of sympathy with the ascetic spirit - and throughout all the rest of the world the hour of the Anchorite may seem to have passed or to be passing - it is easy to attribute this great trend to the failing of vital energy in an ancient race tired out by its burden, its once vast share in the common advance, exhausted by its many-sided contri bution to the sum of human effort and human knowledge. But we have seen that it corresponds to a truth of existence, a state of conscious realisation which stands at the very summit of our possibility. In practice also the ascetic spirit is an indispensable element in human perfection and even its separate affirmation cannot be avoided so long as the race has not at the other end liberated its intellect and its vital habits from subjection to an always insistent animalism.
1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "But you don't belong to that class. Mere pundits are like diseased fruit that becomes hard and will not ripen at all. Such fruit has neither the freshness of green fruit nor the flavour of ripe. Vultures soar very high in the sky, but their eyes are fixed on rotten carrion on the ground. The book-learned are reputed to be wise, but they are attached to 'woman and gold'. Like the vultures, they are in search of carrion. They are attached to the world of ignorance. Compassion, love of God, and Renunciation are the glories of true knowledge."
Vidyasagar listened to these words in silence. The others, too, gazed at the Master and were attentive to every word he said.
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Living beings, the universe, mind, intelligence, love, Renunciation, knowledge - all these are the manifestations of His power. (With a laugh) If an aristocrat has neither house nor property, or if he has been forced to sell them, one doesn't call him an aristocrat any more. (All laugh.) God is endowed with the six supernatural powers. If He were not who would obey Him? (All laugh.)
Different manifestations of God's power
1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Sometimes I used to assume a rajasic mood in order to practise Renunciation. Once I had the desire to put on a gold-embroidered robe, wear a ring on my finger, and smoke a hubble-bubble with a long pipe. Mathur Babu procured all these things for me. I wore the gold-embroidered robe and said to myself after a while, 'Mind! This is what is called a gold-embroidered robe.' Then I took it off and threw it away. I couldn't stand the robe any more. Again I said to myself, 'Mind! This is called a shawl, and this a ring, and this, smoking a hubble-bubble with a long pipe.' I threw those things away once for all, and the desire to enjoy them never arose in my mind again."
It was almost dusk. The Master and M. stood talking alone near the door on the southeast verandah.
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MASTER: "Bhakti, love of God, is the essence of all spiritual discipline. Through love one acquires Renunciation and discrimination naturally."
Disciplines of Tantra
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Narendra and his friends came down from their seats on the raised platform of the Panchavati and stood near the Master. He returned to his room with them. The Master continued: "When you plunge in the water of the ocean, you may be attacked by alligators. But they won't touch you if your body is smeared with turmeric. There are no doubt six alligators - lust, anger, avarice, and so on - within you, in the 'heart's fathomless depths'. But protect yourself with the turmeric of discrimination and Renunciation, and they won't touch you.
Futility of mere lecturing
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"First of all invoke the Deity, and then give lectures to your heart's content. First of all dive deep. Plunge to the bottom and gather up the gems. Then you may do other things. But nobody wants to plunge. People are without spiritual discipline and prayer, without Renunciation and dispassion. They learn a few words and immediately start to deliver lectures. It is difficult to teach others. Only if a man gets a comm and from God, after realizing Him, is he entitled to teach."
Thus conversing, the Master came to the west end of the verandah. M stood by his side. Sri Ramakrishna had repeated again and again that God cannot be realized without discrimination and Renunciation. This made M. extremely worried. He had married and was then a young man of twenty-eight, educated in college in the Western way. Having a sense of duty, he asked himself, "Do discrimination and dispassion mean giving up 'woman and gold'?" He was really at a loss to know what to do.
M. (to the Master): "What should one do if one's wife says: 'You are neglecting me. I shall commit suicide?' "
1.04 - Money, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine it is delegated here and in the ignorance of the lower Nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose. This is indeed one of the three forces - power, wealth, sex - that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura. For this reason most spiritual disciplines insist on a complete self-control, detachment and Renunciation of all bondage to wealth and of all personal and egoistic desire for its possession. Some even put a ban on money and riches and proclaim poverty and bareness of life as the only spiritual condition. But this is an error; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the Sadhaka.
2:You must neither turn with an ascetic shrinking from the money power, the means it gives and the objects it brings, nor cherish a rajasic attachment to them or a spirit of enslaving self-indulgence in their gratifications. Regard wealth simply as a power to be won back for the Mother and placed at her service.
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Obedience is absolute Renunciation of our own life, clearly expressed in our bodily actions. Or, conversely, obedience is the mortification of the limbs while the mind remains alive. Obedience is unquestioning movement, voluntary death, simple life, carefree danger, spontaneous defence by God, fearlessness of death, a safe voyage, a sleepers progress. Obedience is the tomb of the will and the resurrection of humility. A corpse does not argue or reason as to what is good or what seems to be bad. For he who has devoutly put the soul of the novice to death will answer for everything. Obedience is an abandonment of discernment in a wealth of discernment.
The beginning of the mortification both of the souls desire and of the bodily members involves much hard work. The middle sometimes means much hard work and is sometimes painless. But the end is insensibility and insusceptibility to toil and pain. Only when he sees himself doing his own will does this blessed living corpse feel sorry and sick at heart; and he fears the responsibility of using his own judgment.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
then takes asceticism worldly Renunciation to an extreme: reduced almost to the state of a skeleton, he
finally came to resemble a heap of dust.444 That approach, too, proves insufficient. Finally having tasted
1.04 - The Core of the Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Thus, there are those who make the Gita teach, not works at all, but a discipline of preparation for renouncing life and works: the indifferent performance of prescribed actions or of whatever task may lie ready to the hands, becomes the means, the discipline; the final Renunciation of life and works is the sole real object. It is quite easy to justify this view by citations from
Essays on the Gita
the book and by a certain arrangement of stress in following out its argument, especially if we shut our eyes to the peculiar way in which it uses such a word as sannyasa, Renunciation; but it is quite impossible to persist in this view on an impartial reading in face of the continual assertion to the very end that action should be preferred to inaction and that superiority lies with the true, the inner Renunciation of desire by equality and the giving up of works to the supreme Purusha.
Others again speak of the Gita as if the doctrine of devotion were its whole teaching and put in the background its monistic elements and the high place it gives to quietistic immergence in the one self of all. And undoubtedly its emphasis on devotion, its insistence on the aspect of the Divine as Lord and Purusha and its doctrine of the Purushottama, the Supreme Being who is superior both to the mutable Being and to the Immutable and who is what in His relation to the world we know as God, are the most striking and among the most vital elements of the Gita.
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Vivekananda is perfectly in consonance with this teaching. Nay, although the Gita prefers action to inaction, it does not rule out the Renunciation of works, but accepts it as one of the ways to the Divine. If that can only be attained by renouncing works and life and all duties and the call is strong within us, then into the bonfire they must go, and there is no help for it. The call of God is imperative and cannot be weighed against any other considerations.
But here there is this farther difficulty that the action which
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First, by the Renunciation of desire and a perfect equality works have to be done as a sacrifice by man as the doer, a sacrifice to
Essays on the Gita
1.05 - On painstaking and true repentance which constitute the life of the holy convicts; and about the prison., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Repentance is the renewal of baptism. Repentance is a contract with God for a second life. A penitent is a buyer2 of humility. Repentance is constant distrust of bodily comfort. Repentance is self-condemning reflection, and carefree self-care. Repentance is the daughter of hope and the Renunciation of despair. A penitent is an undisgraced convict. Repentance is reconciliation with the Lord by the practice of good deeds contrary to the sins. Repentance is purification of conscience. Repentance is the voluntary endurance of all afflictions. A penitent is the inflicter of his own punishments. Repentance is a mighty persecution of the stomach, and a striking of the soul into vigorous awareness.
Gather together and come near, all you who have angered God; come and listen to what I expound to you; assemble and see what He has revealed to my soul for your edification. Let us give first place and first honour to the story of the dishonoured yet honoured workers. Let all of us who have suffered an unexpected and inglorious fall listen, watch and act. Rise and be seated, you who through your falls are lying prostrate. Attend, my brothers, attend to my word. Incline your ears, you who wish to be reconciled afresh with God by a true conversion.
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
to curb his passions, in as much as they of their own accord follow the good. So long as self-chastisement is necessary, no one can pass a certain stage of esoteric development; for a virtue practiced under constraint if futile. If there is any lust remaining, it interferes with esoteric development, however great the effort made not to humor it. Nor does it matter whether this desire proceeds from the soul or the body. For example, if a certain stimulant be avoided for the purpose of self-purification, this deprivation will only prove helpful if the body suffers no harm from it. Should the contrary to be the case, this proves that the body craves the stimulant, and that abstinence from it is of no value. In this case it may actually be a question of renouncing the ideal to be attained, until more favorable physical conditions, perhaps in another life, shall be forthcoming. A wise Renunciation may be a far greater achievement than the struggle for something which, under given conditions, remains unattainable. Indeed, a Renunciation of this kind contri butes more toward development than the opposite course.
The six-petalled lotus flower, when developed,
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
construed loyalty to that development to mean Renunciation of any personal development whatsoever!
As Nikolai Adamovich Vilenchuk said, after serving seventeen years: We believed in the Party and
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prevent the Renunciation of earlier theories. It is really only a detail or specific aspect of what happens
everywhere in life, for we could not recognize anything without projection; but it is also the main
1.05 - THE MASTER AND KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
BRAHMO DEVOTEE: "Sir, can't we realize God without complete Renunciation?"
MASTFR (with a laugh): "Of course you can! Why should you renounce everything? You are all right as you are, following the middle path-like molasses partly solid and partly liquid. Do you know the game of nax? Having scored the maximum number of points, I am out of the game. I can't enjoy it. But you are very clever. Some of you have scored ten points, some six, and some five. You have scored just the right number; so you are not out of the game like me. The game can go on. Why, that's fine! (All laugh.) "I tell you the truth: there is nothing wrong in your being in the world. But you must direct your mind toward God; otherwise you will not succeed.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It has been found, as a matter of experience, that it is dangerous to lay down detailed and inflexible rules for right livelihooddangerous, because most people see no reason for being righteous overmuch and consequently respond to the imposition of too rigid a code by hypocrisy or open rebellion. In the Christian tradition, for example, a distinction is made between the precepts, which are binding on all and sundry, and the counsels of perfection, binding only upon those who feel drawn towards a total Renunciation of the world. The precepts include the ordinary moral code and the commandment to love God with all ones heart, strength and mind, and ones neighbour as oneself. Some of those who make a serious effort to obey this last and greatest commandment find that they cannot do so whole-heartedly, unless they follow the counsels and sever all connections with the world. Nevertheless it is possible for men and women to achieve that perfection, which is deliverance into the unitive knowledge of God, without abandoning the married state and without selling all they have and giving the price to the poor. Effective poverty (possessing no money) is by no means always affective poverty (being indifferent to money). One man may be poor, but desperately concerned with what money can buy, full of cravings, envy and bitter self-pity. Another may have money, but no attachment to money or the things, powers and privileges that money can buy. Evangelical poverty is a combination of effective with affective poverty; but a genuine poverty of spirit is possible even in those who are not effectively poor. It will be seen, then, that the problems of right livelihood, in so far as they lie outside the jurisdiction of the common moral code, are strictly personal. The way in which any individual problem presents itself and the nature of the appropriate solution depend upon the degree of knowledge, moral sensibility and spiritual insight achieved by the individual concerned. For this reason no universally applicable rules can be formulated except in the most general terms. Here are my three treasures, says Lao Tzu. Guard and keep them! The first is pity, the second frugality, the third refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven. And when Jesus is asked by a stranger to settle a dispute between himself and his brother over an inheritance, he refuses (since he does not know the circumstances) to be a judge in the case and merely utters a general warning against covetousness.
Ga-San instructed his adherents one day: Those who speak against killing, and who desire to spare the lives of all conscious beings are right. It is good to protect even animals and insects. But what about those persons who kill time, what about those who destroy wealth, and those who murder the economy of their society? We should not overlook them. Again, what of the one who preaches without enlightenment? He is killing Buddhism.
1.06 - On remembrance of death., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
A true sign of those who are mindful of death in the depth of their being is a voluntary detachment from every creature and complete Renunciation of their own will.
He who with undoubting trust daily expects death is virtuous; but he who hourly yields himself to it is a saint.
1.06 - Psychic Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When a child makes a mistake, one must see that he confesses it to the teacher or the guardian spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confessed, he should be made to understand with kindness and affection what was wrong in the movement and precaution should be taken to see that he does not repeat it. A fault confessed must be forgiven. The child should be encouraged to think of wrong impulses not as sins or offences but as symptoms of a curable disease, alterable by a steady and sustained effort of the will, - falsehood being rejected and replaced by truth, fear by courage, selfishness by sacrifice, attachment by Renunciation and malice by love.
Due care should be taken to see that unformed virtues are not rejected as faults. The wildness and recklessness of many young natures are only the over-flowing of excessive strength, greatness and nobility. They should be purified and not discouraged.
1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The True Vital Thus, there is a kind of threshold to be crossed if we want to find the true life force behind the troubled life of the frontal man. According to traditional spiritual teachings, this crossing involves mortifications and Renunciations of all sorts (which, by the way, serve mainly to enhance the ascetic's high opinion of himself), but we are after something quite different. We do not seek to leave life but to widen it;
we do not want to give up oxygen for hydrogen, or vice versa, but to study the chemical composition of consciousness and to see under what conditions it will yield a clearer water and a more efficient operation. Yoga is a greater art of life,70 proclaimed Sri Aurobindo.
The attitude of the ascetic who says "I seek nothing" and that of the worldly man who says "I want this thing" are the same, remarks Mother. The one may be as attached to his Renunciation as the other is to his possession. Actually, as long as we need to renounce anything at all, we are not ready; we are still submerged in dualities. Yet,
without any special training, anyone can make the following observations. First, all we have to do is tell the vital, "You have to renounce this or to abandon that," for it to be seized with the opposite desire; or if it does agree to renounce something, we can be certain it will expect to be paid back a hundredfold, and it would just as soon deal with a big Renunciation as a small one, since in either case it is at the center of the show, negatively or positively: both sides are equally nourishing it. If we unmask this simple truth, we will have understood the whole functioning of the vital, from top to bottom, namely, its utter indifference to our human sentimentalism; pain appeals to it as 69
The Synthesis of Yoga, 20:71
1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Therefore I say, at the beginning of religious life a man makes much ado about work, but as his mind dives deeper into God, he becomes less active. Last of all comes the Renunciation of work, followed by samdhi.
"Generally the body does not remain alive after the attainment of samdhi. The only exceptions are such sages as Narada, who keep their bodies alive in order to bring spiritual light to others. It is also true of Divine Incarnations, like Chaitanya. After the well is dug, one generally throws away the spade and the basket. But some keep them in order to help their neighbours. The great souls who retain their bodies after samdhi feel compassion for the suffering of others. They are not so selfish as to be satisfied with their own illumination. You are well aware of the nature of selfish people. If you ask them to spit at a particular place, they won't, lest it should do you good. If you ask them to bring a sweetmeat worth a cent from the store, they will perhaps lick it on the way back. (All laugh.)
--
The Master was very happy to see Narendra and expressed a desire to watch the young men at their worship. Narendra sang and then the worship began. One of the young men conducted it. He prayed, "O Lord, may we give up everything and be absorbed in Thee!" Possibly the youth was inspired by the Master's presence and so talked of utter Renunciation. Sri Ramakrishna remarked in a whisper, "Much likelihood there is of that!"
Rajmohan served the Master with refreshments.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
which is Renunciation. Why should we drive new cars, live in luxurious
houses, go on expensive vacations, and wear fashionable clothing?
1.07 - Raja-Yoga in Brief, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Dhyana is spoken of, and a few examples are given of what to meditate upon. Sit straight, and look at the tip of your nose. Later on we shall come to know how that concentrates the mind, how by controlling the two optic nerves one advances a long way towards the control of the arc of reaction, and so to the control of the will. Here are a few specimens of meditation. Imagine a lotus upon the top of the head, several inches up, with virtue as its centre, and knowledge as its stalk. The eight petals of the lotus are the eight powers of the Yogi. Inside, the stamens and pistils are Renunciation. If the Yogi refuses the external powers he will come to salvation. So the eight petals of the lotus are the eight powers, but the internal stamens and pistils are extreme Renunciation, the Renunciation of all these powers. Inside of that lotus think of the Golden One, the Almighty, the Intangible, He whose name is Om, the Inexpressible, surrounded with effulgent light. Meditate on that. Another meditation is given. Think of a space in your heart, and in the midst of that space think that a flame is burning. Think of that flame as your own soul and inside the flame is another effulgent light, and that is the Soul of your soul, God. Meditate upon that in the heart. Chastity, non-injury, forgiving even the greatest enemy, truth, faith in the Lord, these are all different Vrittis. Be not afraid if you are not perfect in all of these; work, they will come. He who has given up all attachment, all fear, and all anger, he whose whole soul has gone unto the Lord, he who has taken refuge in the Lord, whose heart has become purified, with whatsoever desire he comes to the Lord, He will grant that to him. Therefore worship Him through knowledge, love, or Renunciation.
"He who hates none, who is the friend of all, who is merciful to all, who has nothing of his own, who is free from egoism, who is even-minded in pain and pleasure, who is forbearing, who is always satisfied, who works always in Yoga, whose self has become controlled, whose will is firm, whose mind and intellect are given up unto Me, such a one is My beloved Bhakta. From whom comes no disturbance, who cannot be disturbed by others, who is free from joy, anger, fear, and anxiety, such a one is My beloved. He who does not depend on anything, who is pure and active, who does not care whether good comes or evil, and never becomes miserable, who has given up all efforts for himself; who is the same in praise or in blame, with a silent, thoughtful mind, blessed with what little comes in his way, homeless, for the whole world is his home, and who is steady in his ideas, such a one is My beloved Bhakta." Such alone become Yogis.
1.07 - The Ego and the Dualities, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:That new life and power of the human integer must necessarily repose on a realisation of the great verities which translate into our mode of conceiving things the nature of the divine existence. It must proceed through a Renunciation by the ego of its false standpoint and false certainties, through its entry into a right relation and harmony with the totalities of which it forms a part and with the transcendences from which it is a descent, and through its perfect self-opening to a truth and a law that exceed its own conventions, - a truth that shall be its fulfilment and a law that shall be its deliverance. Its goal must be the abolition of those values which are the creations of the egoistic view of things; its crown must be the transcendence of limitation, ignorance, death, suffering and evil.
7:The transcendence, the abolition are not possible here on earth and in our human life if the terms of that life are necessarily bound to our present egoistic valuations. If life is in its nature individual phenomenon and not representation of a universal existence and the breathing of a mighty Life-Spirit, if the dualities which are the response of the individual to its contacts are not merely a response but the very essence and condition of all living, if limitation is the inalienable nature of the substance of which our mind and body are formed, disintegration of death the first and last condition of all life, its end and its beginning, pleasure and pain the inseparable dual stuff of all sensation, joy and grief the necessary light and shade of all emotion, truth and error the two poles between which all knowledge must eternally move, then transcendence is only attainable by the abandonment of human life in a Nirvana beyond all existence or by attainment to another world, a heaven quite otherwise constituted than this material universe.
1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Bondage removed by strong Renunciation
VIJAY: "What must the bound soul's condition of mind be in order to achieve liberation?"
MASTER: "He can free himself from attachment to 'woman and gold' if, by the grace of God, he cultivates a spirit of strong Renunciation. What is this strong Renunciation? One who has only a mild spirit of Renunciation says, 'Well, all will happen in the course of time; let me now simply repeat the name of God.' But a man possessed of a strong spirit of Renunciation feels restless for God, as the mother feels for her own child. A man of strong Renunciation seeks nothing but God. He regards the world as a deep well and feels as if he were going to be drowned in it. He looks on his relatives as venomous snakes; he wants to fly away from them. And he does go away. He never thinks, 'Let me first make some arrangement for my family and then I shall think of God.' He has great inward resolution.
Parable of the two farmers
"Let me tell you a story about strong Renunciation. At one time there was a drought in a certain part of the country. The farmers began to cut long channels to bring water to their fields. One farmer was stubbornly determined. He took a vow that he would not stop digging until the channel connected his field with the river. He set to work. The time came for his bath, and his wife sent their daughter to him with oil. 'Father,' said the girl, 'it is already late. Rub your body with oil and take your bath.' 'Go away!'
thundered the farmer. 'I have too much to do now.' It was past midday, and the farmer was still at work in his field. He didn't even think of his bath. Then his wife came and said: 'Why haven't you taken your bath? The food is getting cold. You overdo everything. You can finish the rest tomorrow or even today after dinner.' The farmer scolded her furiously and ran at her, spade in hand, crying: 'What? Have you no sense?
--
His mind was filled with peace and joy. He went home, called his wife, and said to her, 'Now give me some oil and prepare me a smoke.' With serene mind he finished his bath and meal, and retired to bed, where he snored to his heart's content. The determination he showed is an example of strong Renunciation.
"Now, there was another farmer who was also digging a channel to bring water to his field. His wife, too, came to the field and said to him: 'It's very late. Come home. It isn't necessary to overdo things.' The farmer didn't protest much, but put aside his spade and said to his wife, 'Well, I'll go home since you ask me to.' (All laugh) That man never succeeded in irrigating his field. This is a case of mild Renunciation.
"As without strong determination the farmer cannot bring water to his field, so also without intense yearning a man cannot realize God. (To Vijay) Why don't you come here now as frequently as before?"
--
Eating a bit of the sweets, he said to Prankrishna with a smile: "You see, I chant the name of the Divine Mother; so I get all these good things to eat. (Laughter.) But She doesn't give such fruits as gourd or pumpkin. She bestows the fruit of Amrita, Immortality-knowledge, love, discrimination, Renunciation, and so forth."
A boy six or seven years old entered the room. The Master himself became like a child.
--
"Discrimination and Renunciation. Discrimination means to know the distinction between the Real and the unreal. Renunciation means to have dispassion for the things of the world. One cannot acquire them all of a sudden. They must be practised every day.
One should renounce 'woman and gold' mentally at first. Then, by the will of God, one can renounce it both mentally and outwardly. It is impossible to ask the people of Calcutta to renounce all for the sake of God. One has to tell them to renounce mentally.
1.08 - Adhyatma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
28. Cultivate the divine qualities: humility, harmlessness, purity, steadfastness, self-control, dispassion, unostentatiousness, non-attachment, balance of mind, fearlessness, angerlessness, self-restraint, Renunciation, straightforwardness, truthfulness, compassion, non-covetousness, steadiness. You will attain Wisdom of the Self or Brahma-Jnana.
29. Be cautious. Be vigilant. Be diligent. Be alert. The senses are very turbulent. They will hurl you down into the abyss of ignorance at any moment. Always do Japa, do Kirtan. Meditate ceaselessly.
1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He continued, "The gist of the whole thing is that one must develop passionate yearning for God and practise discrimination and Renunciation."
Guru and Ishta
--
"Worldly people learn Renunciation by seeing the complete Renunciation of a monk; otherwise they sink more and more. A sannyasi is a world teacher."
Friday, March 9, 1883
--
Therefore Chaitanya banished him. What a severe punishment! How hard is the rule for one who has accepted the life of Renunciation! Again, what love the Master cherishes for this devotee! He is warning him even now, lest he should run into danger in the future."
"Beware, holy man!" These words of the Master echoed in the hearts of the devotees, like the distant rumbling of thunder.
--
MASTER (at the sight of the ochre cloth): "Why this gerrua? Should one put on such a thing for a mere fancy? A man once said, 'I have exchanged the Chandi for a drum.' At first he used to sing the holy songs of the Chandi; now he beats the drum. (All laugh.) "There are three or four varieties of Renunciation. Afflicted with miseries at home, one may put on the ochre cloth of a monk; but that Renunciation doesn't last long. Again, a man out of work puts on an ochre wearing-cloth and goes off to Benares. After three months he writes home: 'I have a job here. I shall come home in a few days. Don't worry about me.' Again, a man may have everything he wants. He lacks nothing, yet he does not enjoy his possessions. He weeps for God alone. That is real Renunciation.
"No lie of any sort is good. A false garb, even though a holy one, is not good. If the outer garb does not correspond to the inner thought, it gradually brings ruin. Uttering false words or doing false deeds, one gradually loses all fear. Far better is the white cloth of a householder. Attachment to worldliness, occasional lapses from the ideal, and an outer garb of gerrua-how dreadful!
1.09 - ADVICE TO THE BRAHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
True Renunciation
Narendra said to the Master with a smile, referring to Bhavanath, "He has given up fish and betel-leaf."
--
The Renunciation of 'woman and gold' is the true Renunciation.
"Where is Rkhl?"
--
"Then there is the class of the everperfect. They are born in each life with their spiritual consciousness already awakened. Think of a spring whose outlet is obstructed. While looking after various things in the garden, the plumber accidentally clears it and the water gushes out. Yet people are amazed to see the first manifestations of an everperfect soul's zeal for God. They say, 'Where was all this devotion and Renunciation and love?'"
The conversation turned to the spiritual zeal of devotees, as illustrated in the earnestness of the gopis of Vrindvan. Ramlal sang:
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The two motive powers of our actions are (1) what we see ourselves, (2) the experience of others. These two forces throw the mind, the lake, into various waves. Renunciation is the power of battling against these forces and holding the mind in check. Their Renunciation is what see want. I am passing through a street, and a man comes and takes away my watch. That is my own experience. I see it myself, and it immediately throws my Chitta into a wave, taking the form of anger. Allow not that to come. If you cannot prevent that, you are nothing; if you can, you have Vairgya. Again, the experience of the worldly-minded teaches us that sense-enjoyments are the highest ideal. These are tremendous temptations. To deny them, and not allow the mind to come to a wave form with regard to them, is Renunciation; to control the twofold motive powers arising from my own experience and from the experience of others, and thus prevent the Chitta from being governed by them, is Vairagya. These should be controlled by me, and not I by them. This sort of mental strength is called Renunciation. Vairagya is the only way to freedom.
16. That is extreme non-attachment which gives up even the qualities, and comes from the knowledge of (the real nature of) the Purusha.
1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can comm and in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the Renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego. We may think otherwise, but we are deceiving ourselves; we are making our idea of the Divine, our sense of duty, our feeling for our fellow-creatures, our idea of what is good for the world or others, even our obedience to the Master a mask for our egoistic satisfactions and preferences and a specious shield against the demand made on us to root all desire out of our nature.
3:At this stage of the Yoga and even throughout the Yoga this form of desire, this figure of the ego is the enemy against whom we have to be always on our guard with an unsleeping vigilance. We need not be discouraged when we find him lurking within us and assuming all sorts of disguises, but we should be vigilant to detect him in all his masks and inexorable in expelling his influence. The illumining Word of this movement is the decisive line of the Gita, "To action thou hast a right but never under any circumstances to its fruit." The fruit belongs solely to the Lord of all works; our only business with it is to prepare success by a true and careful action and to offer it, if it comes, to the divine Master. Afterwards even as we have renounced attachment to the fruit, we must renounce attachment to the work also; at any moment we must be prepared to change one work, one course or one field of action for another or abandon all works if that is the clear comm and of the Master. Otherwise we do the act not for his sake but for our satisfaction and pleasure in the work, from the kinetic nature's need of action or for the fulfilment of our propensities; but these are all stations and refuges of the ego. However necessary for our ordinary motion of life, they have to be abandoned in the growth of the spiritual consciousness and replaced by divine counterparts: an Ananda, an impersonal and God-directed delight will cast out or supplant the unillumined vital satisfaction and pleasure, a joyful driving of the Divine Energy the kinetic need; the fulfilment of the propensities will no longer be an object or a necessity, there will be instead the fulfilment of the Divine Will through the natural dynamic truth in action of a free soul and a luminous nature. In the end, as the attachment to the fruit of the work and to the work itself has been excised from the heart, so also the last clinging attachment to the idea and sense of ourselves as the doer has to be relinquished; the Divine Shakti must be known and felt above and within us as the true and sole worker.
4:The Renunciation of attachment to the work and its fruit is the beginning of a wide movement towards an absolute equality in the mind and soul which must become all-enveloping if we are to be perfect in the spirit. For the worship of the Master of works demands a clear recognition and glad acknowledgment of him in ourselves, in all things and in all happenings. Equality is the sign of this adoration; it is the soul's ground on which true sacrifice and worship can be done. The Lord is there equally in all beings, we have to make no essential distinctions between ourselves and others, the wise and the ignorant, friend and enemy, man and animal, the saint and the sinner. We must hate none, despise none, be repelled by none; for in all we have to see the One disguised or manifested at his pleasure. He is a little revealed in one or more revealed in another or concealed and wholly distorted in others according to his will and his knowledge of what is best for that which he intends to become in form in them and to do in works in their nature. All is ourself, one self that has taken many shapes. Hatred and disliking and scorn and repulsion, clinging and attachment and preference are natural, necessary, inevitable at a certain stage: they attend upon or they help to make and maintain Nature's choice in us. But to the Karmayogin they are a survival, a stumbling-block, a process of the Ignorance and, as he progresses, they fall away from his nature. The child-soul needs them for its growth; but they drop from an adult in the divine culture. In the God-nature to which we have to rise there can be an adamantine, even a destructive severity but not hatred, a divine irony but not scorn, a calm, clear-seeing and forceful rejection but not repulsion and dislike. Even what we have to destroy, we must not abhor or fail to recognise as a disguised and temporary movement of the Eternal.
5:And since all things are the one Self in its manifestation, we shall have equality of soul towards the ugly and the beautiful, the maimed and the perfect, the noble and the vulgar, the pleasant and the unpleasant, the good and the evil. Here also there will be no hatred, scorn and repulsion, but instead the equal eye that sees all things in their real character and their appointed place. For we shall know that all things express or disguise, develop or distort, as best they can or with whatever defect they must, under the circumstances intended for them, in the way possible to the immediate status or function or evolution of their nature, some truth or fact, some energy or potential of the Divine necessary by its presence in the progressive manifestation both to the whole of the present sum of things and for the perfection of the ultimate result. That truth is what we must seek and discover behind the transitory expression; undeterred by appearances, by the deficiencies or the disfigurements of the expression, we can then worship the Divine for ever unsullied, pure, beautiful and perfect behind his masks. All indeed has to be changed, not ugliness accepted but divine beauty, not imperfection taken as our resting-place but perfection striven after, the supreme good made the universal aim and not evil. But what we do has to be done with a spiritual understanding and knowledge, and it is a divine good, beauty, perfection, pleasure that has to be followed after, not the human standards of these things. If we have not equality, it is a sign that we are still pursued by the Ignorance, we shall truly understand nothing and it is more than likely that we shall destroy the old imperfection only to create another: for we are substituting the appreciations of our human mind and desire-soul for the divine values.
--
11:Before this labour for the annihilation of desire and the conquest of the soul's equality can come to its absolute perfection and fruition, that turn of the spiritual movement must have been completed which leads to the abolition of the sense of ego. But for the worker the Renunciation of the egoism of action is the most important element in this change. For even when by giving up the fruits and the desire of the fruits to the Master of the Sacrifice we have parted with the egoism of rajasic desire, we may still have kept the egoism of the worker. Still we are subject to the sense that we are ourselves the doer of the act, ourselves its source and ourselves the giver of the sanction. It is still the "I" that chooses and determines, it is still the "I" that undertakes the responsibility and feels the demerit or the merit.
12:An entire removal of this separative ego-sense is an essential aim of our Yoga. If any ego is to remain in us for a while, it is only a form of it which knows itself to be a form and is ready to disappear as soon as a true centre of consciousness is manifested or built in us. That true centre is a luminous formulation of the one Consciousness and a pure channel and instrument of the one Existence. A support for the individual manifestation and action of the universal Force, it gradually reveals behind it the true Person in us, the central eternal being, an everlasting being of the Supreme, a power and portion of the transcendent Shakti.2
--
14:Immediately he must take the further step of relegating himself to the position of the Witness. Aloof from the Prakriti, impersonal and dispassionate, he must watch the executive Nature-Force at work within him and understand its action; he must learn by this separation to recognise the play of her universal forces, distinguish her interweaving of light and night, the divine and the undivine, and detect her formidable Powers and Beings that use the ignorant human creature. Nature works in us, says the Gita, through the triple quality of Prakriti, the quality of light and good, the quality of passion and desire and the quality of obscurity and inertia. The seeker must learn to distinguish, as an impartial and discerning witness of all that proceeds within this kingdom of his nature, the separate and the combined action of these qualities; he must pursue the workings of the cosmic forces in him through all the labyrinth of their subtle unseen processes and disguises and know every intricacy of the maze. As he proceeds in this knowledge, he will be able to become the giver of the sanction and no longer remain an ignorant tool of Nature. At first he must induce the NatureForce in its action on his instruments to subdue the working of its two lower qualities and bring them into subjection to the quality of light and good and, afterwards, he must persuade that again to offer itself so that all three may be transformed by a higher Power into their divine equivalents, supreme repose and calm, divine illumination and bliss, the eternal divine dynamis, Tapas. The first part of this discipline and change can be firmly done in principle by the will of the mental being in us; but its full execution and the subsequent transformation can be done only when the deeper psychic soul increases its hold on the nature and replaces the mental being as its ruler. When this happens, he will be ready to make, not only with an aspiration and intention and an initial and progressive self-abandonment but with the most intense actuality of dynamic self-giving, the complete Renunciation of his works to the Supreme Will. By degrees his mind of an imperfect human intelligence will be replaced by a spiritual and illumined mind and that can in the end enter into the supramental Truth-Light; he will then no longer act from his nature of the Ignorance with its three modes of confused and imperfect activity, but from a diviner nature of spiritual calm, light, power and bliss. He will act not from an amalgam of an ignorant mind and will with the drive of a still more ignorant heart of emotion and the desire of the life-being and the urge and instinct of the flesh, but first from a spiritualised self and nature and, last, from a supramental Truth-consciousness and its divine force of supernature.
15:Thus are made possible the final steps when the veil of Nature is withdrawn and the seeker is face to face with the Master of all existence and his activities are merged in the action of a supreme Energy which is pure, true, perfect and blissful for ever. Thus can he utterly renounce to the supramental Shakti his works as well as the fruits of his works and act only as the conscious instrument of the eternal Worker. No longer giving the sanction, he will rather receive in his instruments and follow in her hands a divine mandate. No longer doing works, he will accept their execution through him by her unsleeping Force. No longer willing the fulfilment of his own mental constructions and the satisfaction of his own emotional desires, he will obey and participate in an omnipotent Will that is also an omniscient Knowledge and a myterious, magical and unfathomable Love and a vast bottomless sea of the eternal Bliss of Existence.
1.09 - ON THE PREACHERS OF DEATH, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
of those to whom one must preach Renunciation of life.
The earth is full of the superfluous; life is spoiled by
--
yet, these terrible ones: let them preach Renunciation
of life and pass away themselves!
--
doctrines of weariness and Renunciation. They would
like to be dead, and we should welcome their wish. Let
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
spent in Renunciation, anmia and other virtues,--at least the suicide
frees others from the sight of him, at least he removes one objection
1.10 - The Absolute of the Being, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The contrary method may certainly have its advantages and this other may have dangers which in certain epochs caused the preference to be given to its opposite. They become one to the view of the soul that knows the death to oneself and the expanding of life, Renunciation and the assumption of our true being to be one and the same thing. Our expansion is also a Renunciation, not of our love for what we can aspire to be, but of our exclusive self-love which separates us from all that we really are. Not our possibilities of infinite joy, but our actualities of suffering should be the object of our Renunciation.
In each of its sufferings the being should recognise the error of its egoistic desire, but in each of its desires it should discover the will of an Absolute in itself which it ignores.
1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Continuing, the Master said: "And one must always chant the name and glories of God and pray to Him. An old metal pot must be scrubbed every day. What is the use of cleaning it only once? Further, one must practise discrimination and Renunciation; one must be conscious of the unreality of the world."
BRAHMO: "Is it good to renounce the world?"
--
my, the illusion of knowledge, and Avidy-my, the illusion of ignorance. Through the help of Vidy-my one cultivates such virtues as the taste for holy company, knowledge, devotion, love, and Renunciation. Avidy-my consists of the five elements and the objects of the five senses-form, flavour, smell, touch, and sound. These make one forget God."
Why there is evil in the world
1.10 - The Scolex School, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
To don Nirmanakaya's humble robe is to forego eternal bliss for self, to help on man's salvation. To reach Nirvana's bliss but to renounce it, is the supreme, the final step the highest on Renunciation's Path.[15]
Follows a common-sense comment by Frater O.M.
1.10 - The Three Modes of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Self-Power and Bliss other than our own personal being or its building of Nature. This is a state of freedom which can come in the Yoga of works through Renunciation of ego and desire and personal initiation and the surrender of the being to the cosmic Self or to the universal Shakti; it can come in the Yoga of knowledge by the cessation of thought, the silence of the mind, the opening of the whole being to the cosmic Consciousness, to the cosmic Self, the cosmic Dynamis or to the supreme Reality; it can come in the Yoga of devotion by the surrender of the heart and the whole nature into the hands of the All-Blissful as the adored Master of our existence. But the culminating change intervenes by a more positive and dynamic transcendence: there is a transference or transmutation into a superior spiritual status, trigun.atta, in which we participate in a greater spiritual dynamisation; for the three lower unequal modes pass into an equal triune mode of eternal calm, light and force, the repose, kinesis, illumination of the divine Nature.
This supreme harmony cannot come except by the cessation of egoistic will and choice and act and the quiescence of our limited intelligence. The individual ego must cease to strive, the mind fall silent, the desire-will learn not to initiate. Our personality must join its source and all thought and initiation come from above. The secret Master of our activities will be slowly unveiled to us and from the security of the supreme Will and Knowledge give the sanction to the Divine Shakti who will do all works in us with a purified and exalted nature for her instrument; the individual centre of personality will be only the upholder of her works here, their recipient and channel, the reflector of her power and luminous participator in her light, joy and force. Acting it will not act and no reaction of the lower
1.10 - The Yoga of the Intelligent Will, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not an external asceticism, the physical Renunciation of the objects of sense that I am teaching, suggests Krishna immediately to avoid a misunderstanding which is likely at once to arise. Not the Renunciation of the Sankhyas or the austerities of the rigid ascetic with his fasts, his maceration of the body, his attempt to abstain even from food; that is not the selfdiscipline or the abstinence which I mean, for I speak of an inner withdrawal, a Renunciation of desire. The embodied soul, having a body, has to support it normally by food for its normal physical action; by abstention from food it simply removes from itself the physical contact with the object of sense, but does not get rid of the inner relation which makes that contact hurtful.
It retains the pleasure of the sense in the object, the rasa, the
11.14 - Our Finest Hour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The individual seems always to precede the society. What begins in and with the individual is spread abroad and established in wide commonalty. But this individual self-concentration does not mean that one should withdraw from the world and its activities and sit and settle within oneself, apart and aloof. It does not mean while you are in prison, to accept imprisonment, dig a cave there and go into mere meditation. In other words, to find the inner solution it is not necessary to escape from the world, go into the solitude of mountain-tops or into the depths of the forests, take to the path of total Renunciation till you attain perfect siddhi and then turn back and share your light and leading with humanity. Some great souls have done thisBuddha and Christ and Vivekananda. And it is not for every man to try that path in the way they did. But even if the path is not easy, to some extent at least every one of us has to follow it; for we must remember our aim is not easy either. The pioneers have to accept the difficulty of the path. Pursuing the figure of the prison, of the dungeon, we may say, instead of trying to break it down because of the hopelessness of the attempt, or as the alternative: sit down quiet for the inner illumination to come; instead of that one may cut a tunnel under the wall. That should be the nature of our activity in our present situation.
The new truth, the new capacity you have to acquire in and through the activities of the normal life. It was what Sri Krishna taught to Arjuna. Arjuna was a representative of the common man, Arjuna was thought to be always in the yogic consciousness even while he was engaged in battle.
1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the passage is long and the labour arduous before we can look upon him with eyes that see true, and still longer and more arduous must be our endeavour if we would rebuild ourselves in his true image. The Master of the work does not reveal himself at once to the seeker. Always it is his Power that acts behind the veil, but it is manifest only when we renounce the egoism of the worker, and its direct movement increases in proportion as that Renunciation becomes more and more concrete. Only when our surrender to his divine shakti is absolute, shall we have the right to live in his absolute presence. And only then can we see our work throw itself naturally, completely and simply into the mould of the Divine Will.
There must, therefore, be stages and gradations in our approach to this perfection, as there are ill the progress towards all other perfection on any plane of Nature. The vision of the full glory may come to us before, suddenly or slowly, once or often, but until the foundation is complete, it is a summary and concentrated, not a durable and all-enveloping experience, not a lasting presence. The amplitudes, the infinite contents of the Divine Revelation come afterwards and unroll gradually their power and their significance. Or, even, the steady vision can be there on the summits of our nature, but the perfect response of the lower members comes only by degrees. In all Yogas the first requisites are faith and patience. The ardours of the heart and the violences of the eager will that seek to take the kingdom of heaven by storm can have miserable reactions if they disdain to support their vehemence on these humbler and quieter auxiliaries. And in the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience.
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The hathayogi practises physical exercises. His goal is to acquire supernatural powers: longevity and the eight psychic powers. These are his aims. But the aim of rajayoga is the attainment of devotion, ecstatic love, knowledge, and Renunciation. Of these two, rajayoga is the better.
Seven planes of the Vedas
--
MASTER: "There is a way. One succeeds if one develops a strong spirit of Renunciation.
Give up at once, with determination, what you know to be unreal. Once, when I was seriously ill, I was taken to the physician Gangaprasad Sen. He said to me: 'I shall give you a medicine, but you mustn't drink any water. You may take pomegranate juice.'
1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE YOGA of the intelligent will and its culmination in the Brahmic status, which occupies all the close of the second chapter, contains the seed of much of the teaching of the Gita, - its doctrine of desireless works, of equality, of the rejection of outward Renunciation, of devotion to the Divine; but as yet all this is slight and obscure. What is most strongly emphasised as yet is the withdrawal of the will from the ordinary motive of human activities, desire, from man's normal temperament of the sense-seeking thought and will with its passions and ignorance, and from its customary habit of troubled manybranching ideas and wishes to the desireless calm unity and passionless serenity of the Brahmic poise. So much Arjuna has understood. He is not unfamiliar with all this; it is the substance of the current teaching which points man to the path of knowledge and to the Renunciation of life and works as his way of perfection. The intelligence withdrawing from sense and desire and human action and turning to the Highest, to the One, to the actionless Purusha, to the immobile, to the featureless Brahman, that surely is the eternal seed of knowledge. There is no room here for works, since works belong to the Ignorance; action is the very opposite of knowledge; its seed is desire and its fruit is bondage. That is the orthodox philosophical doctrine, and
Krishna seems quite to admit it when he says that works are far inferior to the Yoga of the intelligence. And yet works are insisted upon as part of the Yoga; so that there seems to be in this teaching a radical inconsistency. Not only so; for some kind of work no doubt may persist for a while, the minimum, the most inoffensive; but here is a work wholly inconsistent with knowledge, with serenity and with the motionless peace of the self-delighted soul, - a work terrible, even monstrous, a bloody strife, a ruthless battle, a giant massacre. Yet it is this that is
--
The Teacher first makes a distinction between the two means of salvation on which in this world men can concentrate separately, the Yoga of knowledge, the Yoga of works, the one implying, it is usually supposed, Renunciation of works as an obstacle to salvation, the other accepting works as a means of salvation. He does not yet insist strongly on any fusion of them, on any reconciliation of the thought that divides them, but begins by showing that the Renunciation of the Sankhyas, the physical Renunciation, Sannyasa, is neither the only way, nor at all the better way. Nais.karmya, a calm voidness from works, is no doubt that to which the soul, the Purusha has to attain; for it is Prakriti which does the work and the soul has to rise above involution in the activities of the being and attain to a free serenity and poise watching over the operations of Prakriti, but not affected by them. That, and not cessation of the works of Prakriti, is what is really meant by the soul's nais.karmya.
Therefore it is an error to think that by not engaging in any kind of action this actionless state of the soul can be attained and enjoyed. Mere Renunciation of works is not a sufficient, not even quite a proper means for salvation. "Not by abstention from works does a man enjoy actionlessness, nor by mere Renunciation (of works) does he attain to his perfection," - to siddhi, the accomplishment of the aims of his self-discipline by
Yoga.
--
the Sankhyas that the intelligence of the man who engages in the activities of Nature, is entangled in egoism, ignorance and desire and therefore drawn to action; on the contrary, if the intelligence draws back, then the action must cease with the cessation of the desire and the ignorance. Therefore the giving up of life and works is a necessary part, an inevitable circumstance and an indispensable last means of the movement to liberation. This objection of a current logic, - it is not expressed by Arjuna, but it is in his mind as the turn of his subsequent utterances shows, - the Teacher immediately anticipates. No, he says, such Renunciation, far from being indispensable, is not even possible.
"For none stands even for a moment not doing work; everyone is made to do action helplessly by the modes born of Prakriti."
--
free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection. Do action thus self-controlled, says Krishna, niyatam kuru karma tvam: I have said that knowledge, the intelligence, is greater than works, jyayas karman.o buddhih., but I did not mean that inaction is greater than action; the contrary is the truth, karma jyayo akarman.ah.. For knowledge does not mean Renunciation of works, it means equality and non-attachment to desire and the objects of sense; and it means the poise of the intelligent will in the Soul free and high-uplifted above the lower instrumentation of Prakriti and controlling the works of the mind and the senses and body in the power of self-knowledge and the pure objectless self-delight of spiritual realisation, niyatam karma.2 Buddhiyoga is fulfilled by karmayoga; the Yoga of the self-liberating intelligent will finds its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works.
Thus the Gita founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, nis.kama karma, and unites the subjective practice of the Sankhyas - rejecting their merely physical rule - with the practice of Yoga.
--
At first, however, the Gita takes up the Vedic statement of the idea of sacrifice and phrases the law of sacrifice in its current terms. This it does with a definite object. We have seen that the quarrel between Renunciation and works has two forms, the opposition of Sankhya and Yoga which is already in principle reconciled and the opposition of Vedism and Vedantism which the Teacher has yet to reconcile. The first is a larger statement of
112
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
as to be a full reward for all possible Renunciation that can
be demanded of him here. This is offered, - not an enlarged
--
into the one Reality, but the conclusion is identical. It is the Allpossessing and All-enjoying, who is reached by the Renunciation
of separate being, separate possession and separate delight.
--
the soul enters by knowledge and Renunciation. It is therefore a
state not belonging to the Ignorance, but to Knowledge. It is, in
--
of a passionate fleeing and Renunciation can only be powerful
in passing epochs or else on the few strong souls in each age
1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
escape by a spiritual self-annihilation, even as the true Renunciation is not the mere physical abandonment of family and society;
it is the inner identification with the Divine in whom there is no
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The Divine Mother has revealed to me the essence of the Vednta. It is that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory. The essence of the Git is what you get by repeating the word ten times. The word becomes reversed. It is then 'tagi', which refers to Renunciation. The essence of the Git is: 'O man, renounce everything and practise spiritual discipline for the realization of God.' "
NAVADVIP: "But how can we persuade our minds to renounce?"
--
M: "All your words tally with the scriptures. Navadvip Goswami also said that the other day at the festival at Pnihti. You told us that day that by repeating the word 'Git' a number of times one reverses it and it becomes 'tagi', which refers to Renunciation.
Renunciation is the essence of the Git. Navadvip Goswami supported your statement from the grammatical standpoint."
--
"Padmalochan was a man of deep wisdom. He had great respect for me, though at that time I constantly repeated the name of the Divine Mother. He was the court pundit of the Maharaja of Burdwan. Once he came to Calcutta and went to live in a garden house near kamarhati. I felt a desire to see him and sent Hriday there to learn if the pundit had any vanity. I was told that he had none. Then I met him. Though a man of great knowledge and scholarship, he began to weep on hearing me sing Ramprasad's devotional songs. We talked together a long while; conversation with nobody else gave me such satisfaction. He said to me, 'Give up the desire for the company of devotees; otherwise people of all sorts will come to you and make you deviate from your spiritual ideal.' Once he entered into a controversy, by correspondence, with Utshavananda, Vaishnavcharan's guru. He told me an interesting incident. Once a meeting was called to decide which of the two deities, iva or Brahma, was the greater. Unable to come to any decision, the pundits at last referred the matter to Padmalochan. With characteristic guilelessness he said: 'How do I know? Neither I nor any of my ancestors back to the fourteenth generation have seen iva or Brahma.' About the Renunciation of 'woman and gold', he said to me one day: 'Why have you given up those things? Such distinctions as "This is money and that is clay" are the outcome of ignorance.' What could I say to that?
I replied: 'I don't know all these things, my dear sir. But for my part, I cannot relish such things as money and the like.'
1.13 - The Lord of the Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Purusha or Brahman; it is to make it dwell always on the one idea of the one Self and not in the many-branching conceptions of the mind and many-streaming impulses of desire. Taken by itself this path would seem to lead to the complete Renunciation of works, to an immobile passivity and to the severance of the soul from Nature. But in reality such an absolute Renunciation, passivity and severance are impossible. Purusha and Prakriti are twin principles of being which cannot be severed, and so long as we remain in Nature, our workings in Nature must continue, even though they may take a different form or rather a different sense from those of the unenlightened soul. The real Renunciation - for Renunciation, sannyasa, there must be - is not the fleeing from works, but the slaying of ego and desire.
The way is to abandon attachment to the fruit of works even while doing them, and the way is to recognise Nature as the agent and leave her to do her works and to live in the soul as the witness and sustainer, watching and sustaining her, but not attached either to her actions or their fruits. The ego, the limited and troubled personality is then quieted and merged in the consciousness of the one impersonal Self, while the works of Nature continue to our vision to operate through all these
--
and acting and moving, under her impulsion entirely, in this one infinite Being; our own finite existence is seen and felt to be only one of these and its workings are seen and felt to be those of Nature, not of our real self which is the silent, impersonal unity. The ego claimed them as its own doings and therefore we thought them ours; but the ego is now dead and henceforth they are no longer ours, but Nature's. We have achieved by the slaying of ego impersonality in our being and consciousness; we have achieved by the Renunciation of desire impersonality in the works of our nature. We are free not only in inaction, but in action; our liberty does not depend on a physical and temperamental immobility and vacancy, nor do we fall from freedom directly we act. Even in a full current of natural action the impersonal soul in us remains calm, still and free.
The liberation given by this perfect impersonality is real, is complete, is indispensable; but is it the last word, the end of the whole matter? All life, all world-existence, we have said, is the sacrifice offered by Nature to the Purusha, the one and secret soul in Nature, in whom all her workings take place; but its real sense is obscured in us by ego, by desire, by our limited, active, multiple personality. We have risen out of ego and desire and limited personality and by impersonality, its great corrective, we have found the impersonal Godhead; we have identified our being with the one self and soul in whom all exist. The sacrifice of works continues, conducted not by ourselves any longer, but by Nature, - Nature operating through the finite part of our being, mind, senses, body, - but in our infinite being. But to whom then is this sacrifice offered and with what object? For the impersonal has no activity and no desires, no object to be gained, no dependence for anything on all this world of creatures; it exists for itself, in its own self-delight, in its own immutable eternal being. We may have to do works without desire as a means in order to reach this impersonal self-existence and selfdelight, but, that movement once executed, the object of works is finished; the sacrifice is no longer needed. Works may even then continue because Nature continues and her activities; but there is no longer any further object in these works. The sole reason
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Achalananda did not support his own children. He said to me, 'God will support them.' I said nothing. But this is the way I felt about it: 'Who will support your children? I hope your Renunciation of wife and children is not a way of earning money. People will think you are a holy man because you have renounced everything: so they will give you money. In that way you will earn plenty of money.'
"Spiritual practice with a view to winning a lawsuit and earning money, or to helping others win in court and acquire property, shows a very mean understanding.
--
Master's Renunciation of money
"Mahendra Pal of Sinthi once gave Ramlal five rupees. Ramlal told me about it after he had gone. I asked him what the gift was for, and Ramlal said that it was meant for me.
--
MASTER (with a smile): "Did you hear that story? One succeeds in spiritual life when one develops a faith like that boy's. (To Ishan) Tell us about the Renunciation of activities."
ISHAN: "After the attainment of God, religious duties such as the sandyha drop away.
--
"There is no harm in chewing betel-leaf, eating fish, smoking, or rubbing the body with oil. What will one achieve by renouncing only these things? The one thing needful is the Renunciation of 'woman and gold'. That Renunciation is the real and supreme Renunciation. Householders should go into solitude now and then, to practise spiritual discipline in order to cultivate devotion to God; they should renounce mentally. But the sannyasi should renounce both mentally and physically.
"I once said to Keshab, 'How can a typhoid patient be cured if he remains in a room where a pitcher of water and a jar of pickles are kept?' Now and then one should live in solitude ".
1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
It was the day of the annual festival of the Sinduriapatti Brahmo Samaj. The ceremony was to be performed in Manilal Mallick's house. The worship hall was beautifully decorated with flowers, wreaths, and evergreens, and many devotees were assembled, eagerly awaiting the worship. Their enthusiasm had been greatly heightened by the news that Sri Ramakrishna was going to grace the occasion with his presence. Keshab, Vijay, Shivanath, and other leaders of the Brahmo Samaj held him in high respect. His God intoxicated state of mind, his intense love of spiritual life, his burning faith, his intimate communion with God, and his respect for women, whom he regarded as veritable manifestations of the Divine Mother, together with the unsullied purity of his character, his complete Renunciation of worldly talk, his love and respect for all religious faiths, and his eagerness to meet devotees of all creeds, attracted the members of the Brahmo Samaj to him. Devotees came that day from far-off places to join the festival, for it would give them a chance to get a glimpse of the Master and listen to his inspiring talk.
Sri Ramakrishna arrived at the house before the worship began, and became engaged in conversation with Vijaykrishna Goswami and the other devotees. The lamps were lighted and the divine service was about to begin.
1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The quietist, the ascetic, on the other hand cannot see any possibility of perfection into which life and action enter. Are they not the very seat of bondage and imperfection? Is not all action imperfect in its nature, like a fire that must produce smoke, is not the principle of action itself rajasic, the father of desire, a cause that must have its effect of obscuration of knowledge, its round of longing and success and failure, its oscillations of joy and grief, its duality of virtue and sin? God may be in the world, but he is not of the world; he is a God of Renunciation and not the Master or cause of our works; the master of our works is desire and the cause of works is ignorance. If the world, the
Kshara is in a sense a manifestation or a lla of the Divine, it is an imperfect play with the ignorance of Nature, an obscuration
1.15 - LAST VISIT TO KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Can one ever bring God under control through wealth? He can be tamed only through love. What does He want? Certainly not wealth! He wants from His devotees love, devotion, feeling, discrimination, and Renunciation.
Different classes worshippers
1.15 - On incorruptible purity and chastity to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Certain learned men have well defined Renunciation, by saying that it is hostility to the body and a fight against the stomach.
With beginners falls usually occur by reason of luxury; with intermediates because of haughtiness as well as from the same cause which leads to the fall of beginners; and with those approaching perfection, solely from judging their neighbour.
1.16 - PRAYER, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
To pretend to devotion without great humility and Renunciation of all worldly tempers is to pretend to impossibilities. He that would be devout must first be humble, have a full sense of his own miseries and wants and the vanity of the world, and then his soul will be full of desire after God. A proud, or vain, or worldly-minded man may use a manual of prayers, but he cannot be devout, because devotion is the application of an humble heart to God as its only happiness.
William Law
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M. went walking alone in the Panchavati and other places in the temple garden. He thought about the Master's assurance that God can be easily realized, and about his exhortation to lead a life of intense Renunciation, and his saying that maya, when recognized, takes to flight.
Image worship
--
MASTER: "While striving for the realization of God, the aspirant has to practise Renunciation, applying the logic of 'Neti, neti'-'Not this, not this', But after attaining the vision of God, he realizes that God alone has become all things.
"At one time Rma was overpowered by the spirit of Renunciation. Dasaratha, worried at this, went to the sageVasishtha and begged him to persuade Rma not to give up the world. The sage came to Rma and found him in a gloomy mood. The fire of intense Renunciation had been raging in the Prince's mind. Vasishtha said: 'Rma, why should You renounce the world? Is the world outside God? Reason with me.' Rma realized that the world had evolved from the Supreme Brahman. So, He said nothing.
"Buttermilk is made from the same substance as butter. One who realizes this knows that butter goes with buttermilk and buttermilk with butter. After separating the butter with great effort-that is to say, after attaining Brahmajnana-you will realize that as long as butter exists, buttermilk also must exist. Wherever there is butter there must be buttermilk as well. As long as one feels that Brahman exists, one must also be aware that the universe, living beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles exist as well.
1.17 - M. AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
SRI RAMAKRISHNA was seated in his room with his devotees. He spoke highly of Devendranath Tagore's love of God and Renunciation, and then said, pointing to Rkhl and the other young devotees, "Devendra is a good man; but blessed indeed are those young aspirants who, like Sukadeva, practise Renunciation from their very boyhood and think of God day and night without being involved in worldly life.
Nature of worldly people
--
"You see, Narayan Shastri developed a spirit of intense Renunciation. He was a great scholar. He gave up his wife and went away. A man attains yoga when he completely effaces 'woman and gold' from his mind. With some, the characteristics of the yogi are well marked.
"I shall have to tell you something of the six centres. The mind of the yogi passes through these, and he realizes God through His grace. Have you heard of the six centres?"
--
"Why should it not be possible to practice the discipline of the formless God? But it is very difficult to follow that path. One cannot follow it without renouncing 'woman and gold'. There must be complete Renunciation, both inner and outer. You cannot succeed in this path if you have the slightest trace of worldliness.
"It is easy to worship God with form. But it is not easy as all that.
1.17 - Religion as the Law of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Western recoil from religion, that minimising of its claim and insistence by which Europe progressed from the mediaeval religious attitude through the Renascence and the Reformation to the modern rationalistic attitude, that making of the ordinary earthly life our one preoccupation, that labour to fulfil ourselves by the law of the lower members, divorced from all spiritual seeking, was an opposite error, the contrary ignorant extreme, the blind swing of the pendulum from a wrong affirmation to a wrong negation. It is an error because perfection cannot be found in such a limitation and restriction; for it denies the complete law of human existence, its deepest urge, its most secret impulse. Only by the light and power of the highest can the lower be perfectly guided, uplifted and accomplished. The lower life of man is in form undivine, though in it there is the secret of the divine, and it can only be divinised by finding the higher law and the spiritual illumination. On the other hand, the impatience which condemns or despairs of life or discourages its growth because it is at present undivine and is not in harmony with the spiritual life, is an equal ignorance, andha tama. The world-shunning monk, the mere ascetic may indeed well find by this turn his own individual and peculiar salvation, the spiritual recompense of his Renunciation and Tapasya, as the materialist may find by his own exclusive method the appropriate rewards of his energy and concentrated seeking; but neither can be the true guide of mankind and its law-giver. The monastic attitude implies a fear, an aversion, a distrust of life and its aspirations, and one cannot wisely guide that with which one is entirely out of sympathy, that which one wishes to minimise and discourage. The sheer ascetic spirit, if it directed life and human society, could only prepare it to be a means for denying itself and getting away from its own motives. An ascetic guidance might tolerate the lower activities, but only with a view to persuade them in the end to minimise and finally cease from their own action. But a spirituality which draws back from life to envelop it without being dominated by it does not labour under this disability. The spiritual man who can guide human life towards its perfection is typified in the ancient Indian idea of the Rishi, one who has lived fully the life of man and found the word of the supra-intellectual, supramental, spiritual truth. He has risen above these lower limitations and can view all things from above, but also he is in sympathy with their effort and can view them from within; he has the complete inner knowledge and the higher surpassing knowledge. Therefore he can guide the world humanly as God guides it divinely, because like the Divine he is in the life of the world and yet above it.
In spirituality, then, understood in this sense, we must seek for the directing light and the harmonising law, and in religion only in proportion as it identifies itself with this spirituality. So long as it falls short of this, it is one human activity and power among others, and, even if it be considered the most important and the most powerful, it cannot wholly guide the others. If it seeks always to fix them into the limits of a creed, an unchangeable law, a particular system, it must be prepared to see them revolting from its control; for although they may accept this impress for a time and greatly profit by it, in the end they must move by the law of their being towards a freer activity and an untrammelled movement. Spirituality respects the freedom of the human soul, because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of ones own nature, dharma. This liberty it will give to all the fundamental parts of our being. It will give that freedom to philosophy and science which ancient Indian religion gave,freedom even to deny the spirit, if they will,as a result of which philosophy and science never felt in ancient India any necessity of divorcing themselves from religion, but grew rather into it and under its light. It will give the same freedom to mans seeking for political and social perfection and to all his other powers and aspirations. Only it will be vigilant to illuminate them so that they may grow into the light and law of the spirit, not by suppression and restriction, but by a self-searching, self-controlled expansion and a many-sided finding of their greatest, highest and deepest potentialities. For all these are potentialities of the spirit.
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
concentration, and yogic practices in order to attain "liberation." As we might imagine, though, Sri Aurobindo's Ashram had little to do with this particular definition, except for the fact that the disciples were indeed gathered around Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It was not an exotic kind of monastery, and still less a place for refuge and peace; it was more like a forge: This Ashram has been created . . . not for the Renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life. 380 Even before his arrest in Bengal, at a time when he was not even remotely dreaming of founding an ashram, Sri Aurobindo had said: The spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga. . . . It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. 381 Hence, Sri Aurobindo wanted his Ashram to be fully involved in everyday life, right in the midst of the world-at-large, since that is where the transformation had to take place, and not upon some Himalayan peak. Except for the main building, where the Mother lived and where Sri Aurobindo's monument is located, the 1,200-odd disciples of all nationalities and all social classes (men, women and four to five hundred children)
were scattered throughout the city of Pondicherry in more than three hundred different houses. There were no protective walls in the Ashram, except for one's own inner light; the bustle of the bazaar was just next door.
1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"You may learn a great deal from books; but it is all futile if you have no love for God and no desire to realize Him. A mere pundit, without discrimination and Renunciation, has his attention fixed on 'woman and gold'. The vulture soars very high but its eyes are fixed on the charnel-pit.
"That alone is knowledge through which one is able to know God. All else is futile. Well, what is your idea about God?"
--
"But no spiritual progress is possible without the Renunciation of 'woman and gold'. I renounced these three: land, wife, and wealth. Once I went to the Registry Office to register some land, the title of which was in the name of Raghuvir. The officer asked me to sign my name; but I didn't do it, because I couldn't feel that it was 'my' land. I was shown much respect as the guru of Keshab Sen. They presented me with mangoes, but I couldn't carry them home. A sannyasi cannot lay things up.
"How can one expect to attain God without Renunciation? Suppose one thing is placed upon another; how can you get the second without removing the first?
"One must pray to God without any selfish desire. But selfish worship, if practised with perseverance, is gradually turned into selfless worship. Dhruva practised tapasya to obtain his kingdom, but at last he realized God. He said, 'Why should a man give up gold if he gets it while searching for glass beads?'
1.18 - The Divine Worker, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the outward Renunciation, tyaga and sannyasa. The latter, it says, is valueless without the former, hardly possible even to attain without it, and unnecessary when there is the inward freedom.
In fact tyaga itself is the real and sufficient Sannyasa. "He should be known as the eternal Sannyasin who neither hates nor desires; free from the dualities he is happily and easily released from all bondage." The painful process of outward Sannyasa, duh.kham aptum, is an unnecessary process. It is perfectly true that all actions, as well as the fruit of action, have to be given up, to be renounced, but inwardly, not outwardly, not into the inertia of
1.19 - Equality, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In tamasic equality by itself there is no real liberation; but it can be made a powerful starting-point, if, as in Indian asceticism, it is turned into the sattwic by the perception of the greater existence, the truer power, the higher delight of the immutable Self above Nature. The natural turn of such a movement, however, is towards Sannyasa, the Renunciation of life and works, rather
194
--
than to that union of inner Renunciation of desire with continued activity in the world of Nature which the Gita advocates. The
Gita, however, admits and makes room for this movement; it allows as a recoiling starting-point the perception of the defects of the world-existence, birth and disease and death and old age and sorrow, the historic starting-point of the Buddha, janmamr.tyu-jara-vyadhi-duh.kha-dos.anudarsanam, and it accepts the effort of those whose self-discipline is motived by a desire for release, even in this spirit, from the curse of age and death, jara-maran.a-moks.aya mam asritya yatanti ye. But that, to be of any profit, must be accompanied by the sattwic perception of a higher state and the taking delight and refuge in the existence of the Divine, mam asritya. Then the soul by its recoil comes to a greater condition of being, lifted beyond the three gunas and free from birth and death and age and grief, and enjoys the immortality of its self-existence, janma-mr.tyu-jara-duh.khair vimukto
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
There is nothing like discrimination and Renunciation. The worldly man's devotion to God is momentarylike a drop of water on a redhot frying-pan. Perchance he looks at a flower and exclaims, 'Ah, what a wonderful creation of God!'
Yearning for God
--
MASTER: "Now let me tell you something that will agree with your mood. According to the Vednta one has to know the real nature of one's own Self. But such knowledge is impossible without the Renunciation of ego. The ego is like a stick that seems to divide the water in two. It makes you feel that you are one and I am another. When the ego disappears in samdhi, then one knows Brahman to be one's own inner consciousness.
"One must renounce the 'I' that makes one feel, 'I am Mahima Chakravarty', 'I am a learned man', and so on. But the 'ego of Knowledge' does not injure one.
--
"A man will have the courage to practise Renunciation if he sees one hundred percent Renunciation in a sannyasi. Then only will he try to give up 'woman and gold'. If a sannyasi does not set this example, then who will?
"One may lead a householder's life after realizing God. It is like churning butter from milk and then keeping the butter in water. Janaka led the life of a householder after attaining Brahmajnana.
1.2.07 - Surrender, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One can have the Brahmic condition without self-giving, because it is the impersonal Brahman to which one turns. Renunciation of desires and of all identification with Nature is its condition.
One can have self-giving of the nature to the Divine as well as of the soul and reach by it the Brahmic condition which is not only negative but positive, a release of the nature itself and not only a release from the nature.
1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
a fire kindled turns to ashes its fuel, so the fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes." By this it is not at all meant that when knowledge is complete, there is cessation from works. What is meant is made clear by the Gita when it says that he who has destroyed all doubt by knowledge and has by Yoga given up all works and is in possession of the Self is not bound by his works, yoga-sannyasta-karman.am atmavantam na karman.i nibadhnanti, and that he whose self has become the self of all existences, acts and yet is not affected by his works, is not caught in them, receives from them no soul-ensnaring reaction, kurvann api na lipyate. Therefore, it says, the Yoga of works is better than the physical Renunciation of works, because, while Sannyasa is difficult for embodied beings who must do works so long as they are in the body, Yoga of works is entirely sufficient and it rapidly and easily brings the soul to Brahman. That Yoga of works is, we have seen, the offering of all action to the Lord, which induces as its culmination an inner and not an outer, a spiritual, not a physical giving up of works into the Brahman, into the being of the Lord, brahman.i adhaya karman.i, mayi sannyasya. When works are thus "reposed on the Brahman," the personality of the instrumental doer ceases; though he acts, he does nothing; for he has given up not only the fruits of his works, but the works themselves and the doing of them to the
Lord. The Divine then takes the burden of works from him; the
--
God, but, eventually at least, of such a complete Renunciation both of the consciousness and the works to him that our being becomes one with his being and the impersonalised nature only an instrument and nothing else. All result good or bad, pleasing or unpleasing, fortunate or unfortunate, is accepted as belonging to the Master of our actions, so that finally not only are grief and suffering borne, but they are banished: a perfect equality of the emotional mind is established. There is no assumption of personal will in the instrument; it is seen that all is already worked out in the omniscient prescience and omnipotent effective power of the universal Divine and that the egoism of men cannot alter the workings of that Will. Therefore, the final attitude is that enjoined on Arjuna in a later chapter, "All has been already done by Me in my divine will and foresight; become only the occasion, O Arjuna," nimitta-matram bhava savyasacin. This attitude must lead finally to an absolute union of the personal with the Divine Will and, with the growth of knowledge, bring about a faultless response of the instrument to the divine Power and Knowledge. A perfect, an absolute equality of self-surrender, the mentality a passive channel of the divine Light and Power, the active being a mightily effective instrument for its work in the world, will be the poise of this supreme union of the
Transcendent, the universal and the individual.
1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Will-power needed for Renunciation
"In order to be able to renounce, one must pray to God for the will power to do so. One must immediately renounce what one feels to be unreal. The rishis had this will-power.
--
"What is the use of printing and advertising? He who teaches men gets his power from God. None but a man of Renunciation can teach others. I am the greatest of all fools!"
(All laugh.)
--
A young man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, known as Thakur Dada, entered the room with a few friends and saluted the Master. He lived at Baranagore and was the son of a brahmin pundit. He was practising the kathakata in order to earn money to meet his family's expenses. At one time he had been seized with the spirit of Renunciation and had gone away from his family. Even now he practised spiritual discipline at home.
MASTER: "Have you come on foot? Where do you live?"
--
Two kinds of Renunciation
(To Thakur Dada and the others) There are two kinds of Renunciation: intense and feeble. Feeble Renunciation is a slow process; one moves in a slow rhythm. Intense Renunciation is like the sharp edge of a razor. It cuts the bondage of my easily and at once.
"One farmer labours for days to bring water from the lake to his field. But his efforts are futile because he has no grit. Another farmer, after labouring for two or three days, takes a vow and says, 'I will bring water into my field today, and not till then will I go home.' He puts aside all thought of his bath or his meal. He labours the whole day and feels great joy when in the evening he finds water entering his field with a murmuring sound. Then he goes home and says to his wife: 'Now give me some oil. I shall take my bath.' After finishing his bath and his meal he lies down to sleep with a peaceful mind.
"A certain woman said to her husband: 'So-and-so has developed a spirit of great dispassion for the world, but I don't see anything of the sort in you. He has sixteen wives. He is giving them up one by one.' The husband, with a towel in his shoulder, was going to the lake for his bath. He said to his wife: 'You are crazy! He won't be able to give up the world. Is it ever possible to renounce bit by bit? I can renounce. Look! Here I go.' He didn't stop even to settle his household affairs. He left home just as he was, the towel on his shoulder, and went away. That is intense Renunciation.
"There is another kind of Renunciation, called 'Markata Vairgya', 'monkey Renunciation'.
A man, harrowed by distress at home, puts on an ochre robe and goes away to Benares. For many days he does not send home any news of himself. Then he writes to his people: 'Don't be worried about me. I have got a job here.'
1.22 - ADVICE TO AN ACTOR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Master stood up, as he heard about Chaitanya's Renunciation, and went into samdhi. The devotees put garlands of flowers around his neck. Bhavanath and Rkhl supported his body lest he should fall on the ground. Vijay, Kedr, Ram, M., Ltu, and the other devotees stood around him in a circle, recalling one of the scenes of Chaitanya's kirtan.
The Master gradually came down to the sense plane. He was talking to Krishna, now and then uttering the word "Krishna". He could not say it very distinctly because of the intensity of his spiritual emotion. He said: "Krishna! Krishna! Krishna! Krishna Satchidananda! Nowadays I do not see Your form. Now I see You both inside me and outside. I see that it is You who have become the universe, all living beings, the twenty-four cosmic principles, and everything else. You alone have become mind, intelligence, everything. It is said in the 'Hymn of Salutation to the Guru': 'I bow down to the Guru by whose grace I have realized Him who pervades the indivisible universe of the animate and the inanimate.'
--
BHAVANATH: "Words of Renunciation, too."
The Master said, "Ah, how thrilling!" Then he sang about Gaurnga and Nityananda : Gora bestows the Nectar of prema;
--
"The sannyasi must renounce 'woman and gold' for his own welfare. Even if he is unattached, and consequently not in danger, still, in order to set an example to others, he must not keep 'woman and gold' near him. The sannyasi, the man of Renunciation, is a world teacher. It is his example that awakens the spiritual consciousness of men."
It was nearly dusk. The devotees saluted the Master and took their leave.
1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
At this point Pratap bade the Master good-bye. He did not wait to hear the end of Sri Ramakrishna's words about the Renunciation of "woman and gold". Those burning words touched the hearts of the devotees and were carried away on the wind through the gently rustling leaves in the garden.
A few minutes later Mani Mallick said to Sri Ramakrishna: "Sir, it is time for you to leave for Dakshineswar. Today Keshab's mother and the other ladies of his family are going to the temple garden to visit you. They will be hurt if they do not find you there."
--
MASTER: "What will one gain by renouncing betel-leaf and tobacco? The real Renunciation is the Renunciation of 'woman and gold.'
"I came to know in an ecstatic mood that, though Niranjan had accepted a job in an office, he would not be stained by it. He is earning money for his mother. There is no harm in that.
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: Is not samsara a hindrance? Do not all the holy books advocate Renunciation?
M.: Samsara is only in your mind. The world does not speak out, saying
--
The Self alone is permanent. Renunciation is non-identification of the Self with the non-self. On the disappearance of ignorance the non-self ceases to exist. That is true Renunciation.
D.: Why did you then leave your home in your youth?
--
M.: This desire to renounce things is the obstacle. The Self is simple Renunciation. The Self has renounced all.
D.: It is true from Bhagavan's standpoint. But for us .... my work demands the best part of my time and energy; often I am too tired to devote myself to Atma-chintana.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: Is not samsara a hindrance? Do not all the holy books advocate Renunciation?
M.: Samsara is only in your mind. The world does not speak out, saying
--
The Self alone is permanent. Renunciation is non-identification of the Self with the non-self. On the disappearance of ignorance the non-self ceases to exist. That is true Renunciation.
D.: Why did you then leave your home in your youth?
--
M.: This desire to renounce things is the obstacle. The Self is simple Renunciation. The Self has renounced all.
D.: It is true from Bhagavans standpoint. But for us .... my work demands the best part of my time and energy; often I am too tired to devote myself to Atma-chintana.
--
Complete Renunciation is the index of fitness.
Talk 321.
1.24 - PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Master continued: "When I first heard about you, I inquired whether you were merely erudite or whether you had discrimination and Renunciation. A pundit who doesn't know how to discriminate between the Real and the unreal is no pundit at all.
Preacher with God's commission "There is no harm in teaching others if the preacher has a commission from the Lord.
1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The way lies through discrimination, Renunciation, and passionate yearning for God.
Unless a man practises discrimination, he cannot utter the right words. One time, after expounding religion at great length, Pundit Samadhyayi said, 'God is dry.' He reminded me of the man who once said, 'My uncle's cowshed is full of horses.' Now, does anyone keep horses in a cowshed? (With a smile) You have become like a chnbar fried in butter. Now it will be good for you and for others as well, if you are soaked in syrup a few days. Just a few days."
--
MASTER: "You see, there is no need to read too much of the scriptures. If you read too much you will be inclined to reason and argue. Nangta used to teach me thus: What you get by repeating the word 'Git' tell times is the essence of the book. In other words, if you repeat 'Git' ten times it is reversed into 'tagi', which indicates Renunciation.
"Yes, the way to realize God is through discrimination, Renunciation, and yearning for Him. What kind of yearning? One should yearn for God as the cow, with yearning heart, runs after its calf."
PUNDIT: "The same thing is said in the Vedas: 'O God, we call on Thee as the cow lows for the calf.'"
1.25 - On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
3. Let all who are led by the Spirit of God enter with us into this spiritual and wise gathering, holding in their spiritual hands the God-inscribed tablets of knowledge. We have met, we have investigated, and we have probed the meaning of this precious inscription. And one said: It2 means constant oblivion of ones achievements. Another: It is the acknowledgement of oneself as the last of all and the greatest sinner of all. And another: The minds recognition of ones weakness and impotence. Another again: In fits of rage it means to forestall ones neighbour and be first to stop the quarrel. And again another: Recognition of divine grace and divine mercy. And again another: The feeling of a contrite soul, and the Renunciation of ones own will. But when I had listened to all this and had attentively and soberly considered it, I found that I had not been able to comprehend the blessed sense of that virtue from what had been said. Therefore, last of all, having gathered what fell from the lips of those learned and blessed fathers as a dog gathers the crumbs that fall from the table, I too gave my definition of it and said: Humility is a nameless grace in the soul, its name known only to those who have learned it by experience. It is unspeakable wealth, a name and gift from God, for it is said: Learn not from an angel, not from man, and not from a book, but from Me, that is, from Me indwelling, from My illumination and action in you, for I am meek and humble in heart and in thought and in spirit, and your souls shall find rest from conflicts and relief from arguments.3
4. The appearance of this sacred vine is one thing during the winter of the passions, another in the spring of fruit-blossom, yet another in the actual harvest of the virtues. Yet all these different stages concur in gladness and fruit-bearing, and therefore they all have their own signs and sure evidence of fruit to come. For as soon as the cluster of holy humility begins to blossom within us, we at once begin, though with an effort, to hate all human glory and praise, and to banish from ourselves irritation and anger. In proportion as this queen of virtues makes progress in our soul by spiritual growth, so we regard all the good deeds accomplished by us as nothing, or rather as an abomination, assuming that
1.26 - FESTIVAL AT ADHARS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
What shall I say to these people? Nothing can be achieved without discrimination and Renunciation."
Renunciation, true and false
Sri Ramakrishna had now regained full consciousness of the world, and he continued: "There are many kinds of Renunciation. One of them may be called 'Markata Vairgya', 'Monkey Renunciation'. It is a false Renunciation stimulated by the afflictions of the world. That Renunciation doesn't last long. Then there is real Renunciation. A man with everything in the world, lacking nothing, feels all to be unreal.
"It is not possible to acquire Renunciation all at once. The time factor must be taken into account. But it is also true that a man should hear about it. When the right time comes, he will say to himself, 'Oh yes, I heard about this.'
"You must also remember another thing. By constantly hearing about Renunciation one's desire for worldly objects gradually wears away. One should take rice-water in small doses to get rid of the intoxication of liquor. Then one gradually becomes normal.
"An aspirant entitled to the Knowledge of God is very rare. It is said in the Git that one in thousands desires to know God, and again, that among thousands who have such a desire, only one is able to know Him."
--
"The mind of a worldly person is, no doubt, like muddy water; but it can be made clear by a purifying agent. Discrimination and Renunciation are the purifying agent."
The Master spoke to the devotees from Shibpur.
--
M: "We feel in you a wonderful synthesis of knowledge, love, and Renunciation, and on the surface a natural spontaneity. Many divine experiences have passed, like huge steamboats, through the deep of your inner consciousness; still you maintain outwardly this utter simplicity. Many cannot understand it, but a few are attracted by this state alone."
MASTER: "There is a sect of Vaishriavas known as the Ghoshpara, who describe God as the 'Sahaja', the 'Simple One'. They say further that a man cannot recognize this 'Simple One' unless he too is simple. (To M.) Have I any ego?"
--
M: "But mental Renunciation is prescribed for those who cannot give up the world outwardly. For superior devotees total Renunciation is enjoined-both outer and inner."
Sri Ramakrishna was silent a few minutes and then resumed the conversation.
MASTER: "How did you like what I said about Renunciation a little while ago?"
M: "Very much, sir."
MASTER: "Tell me, what is the meaning of Renunciation?"
M: " Renunciation does not mean simply dispassion for the world. It means dispassion for the world and also longing for God."
1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Advice to Adhar about Renunciation
MASTER: "Nivritti alone is good, and not pravritti. Once, when I was in a God-intoxicated state, I was asked to go to the manager of the Kli temple to sign the receipt for my salary. They all do it here. But I said to the manager: 'I cannot do that. I am not asking for any salary. You may give it to someone else if you want.' I am the servant of God alone. Whom else shall I serve? Mallick noticed the late hours of my meals and arranged for a cook. He gave me one rupee for a month's expenses. That embarrassed me. I had to run to him whenever he sent for me. It would have been quite a different thing if I had gone to him of my own accord.
--
MASTER: "Worldly people think highly of their wealth. They feel that there is nothing like it. Sambhu said, 'It is my desire to leave all my property at the Lotus Feet of God.' But does God care for money? He wants from His devotees knowledge, devotion, discrimination, and Renunciation.
"After the theft of the jewelry from the temple of Radhakanta, Mathur Babu said: 'O God, You could not protect Your own jewelry! What a shame!' Once he wanted to give me an estate and consulted Hriday about it. I overheard the whole thing from the Kli temple and said to him: 'Please don't harbour any such thought. It will injure me greatly.' "
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Complete Renunciation is the index of fitness.
Talk 321.
1.3 - Mundaka Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the Yoga of Renunciation, all in the hour of their last end
passing beyond death are released into the worlds of the
1.4.01 - The Divine Grace and Guidance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Suicide solves nothing - it only brings one back to life with the same difficulties to be faced in worse conditions. If one wishes to escape from life altogether, it can only be by the way of complete inner Renunciation and merging oneself in the Silence of the Absolute or by a bhakti that becomes absolute or by a karmayoga that gives up one's own will and desires to the will of the Divine.
I have said also that the Grace can at any moment act suddenly, but over that one has no control, because it comes by an incalculable Will which sees things that the mind cannot see. It is precisely the reason why one should never despair, - that and also because no sincere aspiration to the Divine can fail in the end.
14.04 - More of Yajnavalkya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the spiritual sphere also Sri Aurobindo gives us the same ideal and outlook. In the early days spiritual realisation was sought for personal salvation, a complete Renunciation of the world, absolute freedom from this transient unhappy world anityam asukham lokam imam. The individual person leaves his individual existence upon earth and retires and merges into the Infinite Brahman. But here in Sri Aurobindo's Revelation we are taught that the individual realisation and spiritual attainment is not to dissolve oneself into the nameless formless Beyond but to maintain it, preserve it in a pure divine form, for the sake of the sorrowful ignorant world. The knowledge, the power, the delight that the individual gains-not as something merely individual but as the result of one's identity with the universal are at the service of earth and humanity so that these may be transformed and share in the same realisation. One becomes spiritually free and complete and enters into all so that all may be transformed into a new divine reality.
Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram, Sri Aurobindo' Birth Centenary Library, Vol. 1, p. 516.
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
[Deathlessness is not obtained through action or begetting offspring or wealth. Some attain that state through Renunciation.
The Sages (that have conquered the senses) attain that Sat which is more supreme than Heaven and shining all alone in the Heart.
The adepts who by Renunciation and one-pointedness are pure in heart and have known the certainty of Truth by the special knowledge
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi proclaimed by Vedanta, get fully released in the Brahmaloka from the causal Maya at the dissolution of the body.
--
That is the whole content of nishkama Karma (unselfish action). It means true Renunciation. If the giving nature is developed it becomes tyaga. If anything is willingly given away it is a delight to the giver and to the receiver. If the same is stolen it is misery to both. Dana, dharma, nishkama Karma are all tyaga only. When mine is given up it is chitta suddhi (purified mind). When I is given up it is jnana.
When the nature to give away is developed it results in jnana.
--
To an Andhra seeker, Sri Bhagavan said: Sannyasa is mentioned for one who is fit. It consists in Renunciation not of material objects but of attachment to them. Sannyasa can be practised by anyone even at home. Only one must be fit for it. Again.
A Kutichaka is one who takes sannyasa and lives in a hermitage;
--
whereas the jnana means Renunciation. What is the true meaning of
Renunciation? Subjugation of lust, passion, greed, etc., is common
--
not freedom from passions indicate Renunciation? Or is Renunciation
different, meaning cessation of the active life? These questions are
--
D.: Sri Sankara emphasises the jnana marga and Renunciation as
preliminary to it. But there are clearly two methods dwividha
--
D.: Is it then necessary to leave the home and lead a life of Renunciation?
M.: Is the home in you? Or are you in the home?
--
D.: Now I see. Renunciation is only action without the sense of being
the karta.
--
In Maharaja Turavu (the Renunciation of the king) he says: He was
seated on the bare ground, the earth was his seat, the mind was the
chamara; the sky was the canopy; and Renunciation was his spouse:
Then Sri Bhagavan continued: I had no cloth spread on the floor in
1.52 - Family - Public Enemy No. 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Christ himself (i.e. whoever is meant by this name in this passage) callously disowns his mother and his brethren (Luke VIII, 19). And he repeatedly makes discipleship contingent on the total Renunciation of all family ties. He would not even allow a man to attend his father's funeral!
Is the magical tradition less rigid?
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
That is the whole content of nishkama Karma (unselfish action). It means true Renunciation. If the giving nature is developed it becomes tyaga. If anything is willingly given away it is a delight to the giver and to the receiver. If the same is stolen it is misery to both. Dana, dharma, nishkama Karma are all tyaga only. When 'mine' is given up it is chitta suddhi (purified mind). When 'I' is given up it is jnana.
When the nature to give away is developed it results in jnana.
--
To an Andhra seeker, Sri Bhagavan said: Sannyasa is mentioned for one who is fit. It consists in Renunciation not of material objects but of attachment to them. Sannyasa can be practised by anyone even at home. Only one must be fit for it. Again.
558
1.55 - Money, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But this is by the way; the text, tenor and thesis of the illuminated and illuminating discourse is the above Epigram, which is not merely one of the extravagant absurdities for which I am justly infamous. It is the Pearl of Great Price. Observe that, formally it is a generalization of the principle of the old injunction "to buy the egg of a perfectly black hen without haggling." I want you to realize the supreme importance of this. For one thing, it goes hand-in-hand with the whole doctrine of so-called Renunciation which is nothing of the sort. You don't "renounce" five shillings if you pay that for a country house with 3000 acres of shooting, and the best salmon fishing on Deeside, do you? This is the Greater Interpretation of the Injunction, that no equation is possible: Magical Power is immeasurably more valuable than any amount of money. But the Epigram is severely practical. It may sound a little romantic, but here goes! A community which thinks in terms of wealth is rich; in terms of money, poor. How so? Because the former includes the imponderables.
A couple of Japanese wrestlers may be worth more than Phidias, Robert Browning, Titian and Mozart in terms of butchers' meat. We might alter that incorrect truism "money cannot by anything worth having" to "things worth having cannot be estimated in terms of money." You see, no counting. The operation to save your child's life: do you care if the surgeon wants five pounds or fifty? Of course, you may not have the fifty, or be obliged to retrench in other ways to get it; but it makes no odds as to what you feel about it. What is the value of a University Education? The answer is that it is a pure gamble. The student may use his advantages to make a rich marriage, to attract the wife of a millionaire, to earn a judgeship or a post in the Cabinet, to earn 500 a year as a doctor, 150 as a schoolmaster or he may die in the process. So with all the spiritual values; they are, in the most literal sense, inestimable. So don't start to count!
1914 01 13p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And in that great love which enveloped me and that consciousness of perfect Renunciation there was an immense serenity vaster than the universe and a sweetness so intense and so full of infinite compassion that tears began to flow slowly from my eyes. Nothing could have been more remote from both suffering and happiness, it was unutterable peace.
O sublime Love, centre of our life, Marvel of marvels, at last I find Thee again and live anew in Thee, but how much more powerfully, how much more consciously than before! How much better I know Thee, understand Thee! Each time I find Thee anew, my communion with Thee grows more integral, more complete, more definitive.
1914 05 12p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This morning passing by a rapid experience from depth to depth, I was able, once again, as always, to identify my consciousness with Thine and to live no longer in aught but Thee;indeed, it was Thou alone that wast living, but immediately Thy will pulled my consciousness towards the exterior, towards the work to be done, and Thou saidst to me, Be the instrument of which I have need. And is not this the last Renunciation, to renounce identification with Thee, to renounce the sweet and pure joy of no longer distinguishing between Thee and me, the joy of knowing at each moment, not only with the intellect but by an integral experience, that Thou art the unique Reality and that all the rest is but appearance and illusion. That the exterior being should be the docile instrument which does not even need to be conscious of the will which moves it, is not doubtful; but why must I be almost entirely identified with the instrument and why should not the I be entirely merged in Thee and live Thy full and absolute consciousness?
I ask, but I am not anxious about it. I know that all is according to Thy will, and with a pure adoration I trust myself joyously to Thy will. I shall be what Thou wouldst have me be, O Lord, conscient or inconscient, a simple instrument as is the body or a supreme knowledge as art Thou. O the sweet and peaceful joy when one can say All is good and feel Thee at work in the world through all the elements which lend themselves to that transmission.
1916 12 10p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Certain apparent weaknesses are sometimes more useful to Thee for Thy work, O Lord, than too evident a perfection. A manifest perfection seems to be the possible prerogative only of one who has withdrawn both from the world and from work in the world. But for him whom Thou hast chosen as one of Thy workers upon earth, I see clearly that certain weaknesses, imperfections (provided they are only apparent and not real), are in Thy eyes more useful, and hence more perfect than perfection itself. And to renounce perfection in its apparent form is part of an integral Renunciation of the ignorance of the separate self.
Is that why, O Lord, Thou givest me only so rarely the ecstasy of complete identification and perfect consciousness?
1917 01 29p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But true Beauty is as difficult to discover, to understand and above all to live as any other expression of the Divine; this discovery and expression exacts as much impersonality and Renunciation of egoism as that of Truth or Bliss. Pure Beauty is universal and one must be universal to see and recognise it.
O Lord of Beauty, how many faults I have committed against Thee, how many do I still commit. Give me the perfect understanding of Thy Law so that I may not again fail to keep it. Love would be incomplete without Thee, Thou art one of its most perfect ornaments, Thou art one of its most harmonious smiles. At times I have misunderstood Thy role, but in the depths of my heart I have always loved Thee; and the most arbitrary and radical doctrines could not extinguish the fire of worship which, from my childhood, I had vowed to Thee.
1929-04-14 - Dangers of Yoga - Two paths, tapasya and surrender - Impulses, desires and Yoga - Difficulties - Unification around the psychic being - Ambition, undoing of many Yogis - Powers, misuse and right use of - How to recognise the Divine Will - Accept things that come from Divine - Vital devotion - Need of strong body and nerves - Inner being, invariable, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One of the commonest forms of ambition is the idea of service to humanity. All attachment to such service or work is a sign of personal ambition. The Guru who believes that he has a great truth to teach to humanity and who wants many disciples and who feels uncomfortable when the disciples go away or who seizes on anybody that comes and tries to make him a disciple, is evidently following nothing but his ambition. You must be able, if you are ready to follow the divine order, to take up whatever work you are given, even a stupendous work, and leave it the next day with the same quietness with which you took it up and not feel that the responsibility is yours. There should be no attachmentto any object or any mode of life. You must be absolutely free. If you want to have the true yogic attitude, you must be able to accept everything that comes from the Divine and let it go easily and without regret. The attitude of the ascetic who says, I want nothing and the attitude of the man of the world who says, I want this thing are the same. The one may be as much attached to his Renunciation as the other to his possession.
You must accept all thingsand only those things that come from the Divine. Because things can come from concealed desires. The desires work in the subconscious and bring things to you which, although you may not recognise them as such, nevertheless do not come from the Divine but from disguised desires.
1951-03-10 - Fairy Tales- serpent guarding treasure - Vital beings- their incarnations - The vital being after death - Nightmares- vital and mental - Mind and vital after death - The spirit of the form- Egyptian mummies, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are people who spend their life organising their mind. I have known some who had made of their mind a kind of fortress, a huge construction (I am speaking of people who had uncommon mental capacities). They had made of their mind quite a big edifice, very powerful and of such a fixity, with such solid walls that they had lost all contact with the outer mental world: they lived completely within their own construction and all the phenomena of their consciousness were of their own making they had no longer any contact with the outside mental world. They retained contact with their own vital and their body, in a way, but all the phenomena of their consciousness were lodged within their mental construction they could no longer get out of it. Well, this happens very strongly to people who seek for a spiritual life through the classical methods of a Renunciation of the material consciousness, a concentration on their inner being and identification with it. If I gave you the names of some, you would be quite astonished. They construct for themselves a conception in which one finds all the gradations of the mind, a construction so solid and so fixed that they become imprisoned within it and when they believe they have reached the supreme Truth, they have only reached the centre of their own mental construction.
And they have all the experiences they used to foresee: the experience of liberation, the experience of going out of the body, the experience of identification with the Supreme, all, all, but all of their own making; this has no contact with the universal reality. Then if someone touches it, if for some reason or other someone has the power to touch it or simply to make a breach in one of the walls, at first they are completely upset, then they come to regard the force that could do this as a force of terrible destruction, a manifestation of a hostile force of the worst kind!
1956-02-29 - Sacrifice, self-giving - Divine Presence in the heart of Matter - Divine Oneness - Divine Consciousness - All is One - Divine in the inconscient aspires for the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sweet Mother, what part in us sets itself against a total Renunciation?
It is as if you asked me, What is unconscious in us? But in fact, everything is unconscious except the Divine. And it is only when one can unite with the Divine that one re-establishes the true consciousness in ones being. The rest is a kind of mixture of semi-consciousness and semi-unconsciousness.
1957-01-02 - Can one go out of time and space? - Not a crucified but a glorified body - Individual effort and the new force, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This means that it is just the thing which can make the goodwill of mankind, the best being expressed on earth today, progress. It has taken a rather special form because this goodwill came from a Christian country and naturally there was quite a special Christian influence, but this is an attitude which is found everywhere in the world, differently expressed according to the country and the religion, and it was as a reaction against the ignorance of this attitude that I wrote this. Naturally, there is the same idea in India, this idea of the complete Renunciation of all physical reality, the profound contempt for the material world which is considered an illusion and a falsehood, that leaves, as Sri Aurobindo used to say, the field free to the sovereign sway of the adverse forces. If you escape from the concrete reality to seek a distant and abstract one, you leave the whole field of concrete realisation at the full disposal of the adverse forceswhich have taken hold of it and more or less govern it nowin order to go away yourself to realise what Sri Aurobindo calls here a zero or a void unitto become the sovereign of a nought. It is the return into Nirvana. This idea is everywhere in the world but expresses itself in different forms.
Because until now evil has been opposed by weakness, by a spiritual force without any power for transformation in the material world, this tremendous effort of goodwill has ended only in deplorable failure and left the world in the same state of misery and corruption and falsehood. It is on the same plane as the one where the adverse forces are ruling that one must have a greater power than theirs, a power which can conquer them totally in that very domain. To put it otherwise, a spiritual force which would be capable of transforming both the consciousness and the material world. This force is the supramental force. What is necessary is to be receptive to its action on the physical plane, and not to run away into a distant Nirvana leaving the enemy with full power over what one abandons.
It is neither sacrifice nor Renunciation nor weakness which can bring the victory. It is only Delight, a delight which is strength, endurance, supreme courage. The delight brought by the supramental force. It is much more difficult than giving everything up and running away, it demands an infinitely greater heroism but that is the only way to conquer.
Nothing else? I have some questions here, but now it is rather late.
1957-07-24 - The involved supermind - The new world and the old - Will for progress indispensable, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful Renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a realityperhaps of a not too distant futurea reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighed down by old habits, will surely have the good fortune not only to see but to realise.
People sleep, they forget, they take life easythey forget, forget all the time. But if we could remember that we are at an exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.
1962 01 21, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The state I found myself in was like a memorya memory that is eternally presentof that Consciousness of supreme Love which the Lord emanated upon earth, in the earthin the earth tobring it back to Him. For that was truly a descent into the most total negation of the Divine, the negation of the very essence of the divine Nature, and therefore a Renunciation of the divine state in order to accept earths obscurity and bring earth back to the divine state. And unless this supreme Love becomes all-powerfully conscious here on earth, the return can never be final.
This experience came after the vision of the great divine Becoming,1 and I asked myself, Since this world is progressive, since it is becoming more and more the Divine, will there not always be this intensely painful feeling of the thing which is undivine, of the state which is undivine compared to the one which is to come? Will there not always be what we call adverse forces, that is, something which is not following the movement harmoniously? Then the answer came, the vision came: no, indeed the time for this possibility is near, the time for the manifestation of that essence of perfect Love which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and the bad will which results from it into a progression that is luminous, joyful, eager for perfection and allinclusive.
1963 08 11? - 94, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
94All Renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond.
I have rarely had this experience of Renunciation for there to be Renunciation, one must be attached to things, and there was always this thirst, this need to go further, to go higher, to feel better, to do better, to have something better. And rather than having a feeling of Renunciation one has the feeling that it is a good riddanceyou get rid of something cumbersome that weighs you down and hinders your advance. That is what I was saying the other day: we are still everything we no longer want to be and He is everything we want to becomewhat we call we in our egoistic stupidity is precisely what we do not want to be any more, and we would be so happy to throw all that off, to get rid of all that, so as to be able to be what we want to be.
This is a very living experience.
The only process that I have known, and which has been repeated several times during my life, is the Renunciation of an error: something you believe to be truewhich probably was true for a timeon which you base part of your action, but which in fact was only an opinion. You thought that it was a true evaluation with all its logical consequences, and your actionpart of your actionwas based on that, and it all followed automatically; and suddenly, an experience, a circumstance or an intuition, warns you that your evaluation is not as true as it looked. Then there is a whole period of observation, of studyor sometimes it comes like a revelation, a massive demonstration and not only the idea or the false knowledge, but all its consequences must be changedperhaps a whole way of acting on some point. And at that moment there is a kind of sensation, something akin to the sensation of Renunciation, which means that you must break up a whole set of things which had been built sometimes it can be quite extensive, sometimes it is something very small, but the experience is the same: it is the movement of a force, a power that dissolves, and there is resistance from everything which has to be dissolved, from all the past habits; and it is this movement of dissolution, with its corresponding resistance, which is probably expressed in the ordinary human consciousness as a feeling of Renunciation.
I saw this very recentlyit is insignificant, these circumstances have no importance in themselves; they are interesting only in the context of the study. This is the only phenomenon that is familiar to me because it has been repeated several times in my life. As the being progresses, the power of dissolution increases, becomes more and more immediate and the resistance diminishes. But I have the memory of a period of maximum resistanceit was more than half a century agoand it was nothing but that, it was always something outside myselfnot outside my consciousness, but outside my will something which resisted the will. I have never had the feeling of having to renounce anything, but I have had the feeling of having to apply pressure on things to dissolve them. Whereas now, more and more, the pressure is imperceptible, it is immediate; as soon as the force to dissolve a whole set of things manifests, there is no resistance, everything dissolves; on the contrary, there is hardly any feeling of liberation there is something which is amused again and says: Oh, again! How many times one limits oneself. How many times you think that you are advancing, continuously, smoothly, uninterruptedly, and yet how many times you set a little limit in front of yourself. It is not a big limit, for it is a very small thing in an immense whole, but it is a small limit to your action. And so when the Force acts to dissolve the limit, at first you feel liberated, you are glad; but now, it is not even that, it is a smile. Because it is not a feeling of liberation, it is simply like removing a stone from your path so that you can go on.
This idea of Renunciation can only arise in a self-centred consciousness. Naturally, people the ones I call altogether primitiveare attached to things: when they have something, they do not want to let it go! It seems so childish to me! When they have to part with something, it hurts! Because they identify themselves with the things they have. But this is childishness. The true process behind all this is the amount of resistance in things that were formed on a certain basis of knowledgewhich was a knowledge at a particular time and which is no longer so at anothera partial knowledge, not fleeting but impermanent. There is a whole set of things built upon this knowledge and they resist the force that says: No! it is not true, (laughing) your basis is no longer true, lets take it away! And then, oh! it hurtsthis is what people experience as Renunciation.
The difficulty is not really to renounce, but to accept (Mother smiles) when we see life as it is now. But then, if we accept, how can we live in the midst of all this and have this untroubled rapturenot there, but here?
1963 11 04, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
95Only by perfect Renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the utter embrace of God be experienced, for in both ways the essential precondition is effected,desire perishes.
It is impossible to satisfy desire perfectlyit is something impossible. And also to renounce desire. You renounce one desire and you have another. Therefore both are relatively impossible; what is possible is to enter into a state where there is no desire.
1964 09 16, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I suppose this was the idea of all the apostles of Renunciation: to eliminate everything coming from outside or from below so that if something from above should manifest one would be in a condition to receive it. But from the collective point of view, this process could take thousands of years. From the individual point of view, it is possible; but then one must keep intact the aspiration to receive the true impulsionnot the aspiration for complete liberation, but the aspiration for active identification with the Supreme, that is to say, to will only what He wills, to do only what He wants: to exist by and in Him alone. So one can try the method of Renunciation, but this is for one who wants to cut himself off from others. And in that case, can there be any integrality? It seems impossible to me.
To proclaim publicly what one wants to do is a considerable help. It may give rise to objections, scorn, conflict, but this is largely compensated for by public expectation, so to say, by what other people expect from you. This was certainly the reason for those robes: to let people know. Of course, that may bring you the scorn, the bad will of some people, but then there are all those who feel they must not interfere or meddle with this, that it is not their concern.
--
Renunciation of the life and works of the world.
Ancient king of Mithila, famous for having attained spiritual knowledge while leading the life of the world.
1969 10 13, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
172Law cannot save the world, therefore Moses ordinances are dead for humanity and the Shastra of the Brahmins is corrupt and dying. Law released into freedom is the liberator. Not the Pundit, but the Yogin; not monasticism, but the inner Renunciation of desire and ignorance and egoism.
This is irrefutably clear and it is exactly what we are trying to do. But human nature is rebellious and finds it difficult to win freedom at the price of renouncing desire and ignorance and egoism.
1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen
In habit the human being's mode of existence is 'natural', and for that reason not free; but still free, so far as the merely natural phase of feeling is by habit reduced to a mere being of his, and he is no longer involuntarily attracted or repelled by it, and so no longer interested, occupied, or dependent in regard to it. The want of freedom in habit is partly merely formal, as habit merely attaches to the being of the soul; partly only relative, so far as it strictly speaking arises only in the case of bad habits, or so far as a habit is opposed by another purpose: whereas the habit of right and goodness is an embodiment of liberty. The main point about Habit is that by its means man gets emancipated from the feelings, even in being affected by them. The different forms of this may be described as follows: (a) The immediate feeling is negated and treated as indifferent. One who gets inured against external sensations (frost, heat, weariness of the limbs, etc., sweet tastes, etc.), and who hardens the heart against misfortune, acquires a strength which consists in this, that although the frost, etc. - or the misfortune - is felt, the affection is deposed to a mere externality and immediacy; the universal psychical life keeps its own abstract independence in it, and the self-feeling as such, consciousness, reflection, and any other purposes and activity, are no longer bothered with it. (b) There is indifference towards the satisfaction: the desires and impulses are by the habit of their satisfaction deadened. This is the rational liberation from them; whereas monastic Renunciation and forcible interference do not free from them, nor are they in conception rational. Of course in all this it is assumed that the impulses are kept as the finite modes they naturally are, and that they, like their satisfaction, are subordinated as partial factors to the reasonable will. (c) In habit regarded as aptitude, or skill, not merely has the abstract psychical life to be kept intact per se, but it has to be imposed as a subjective aim, to be made a power in the bodily part, which is rendered subject and thoroughly pervious to it. Conceived as having the inward purpose of the subjective soul thus imposed upon it, the body is treated as an immediate externality and a barrier. Thus comes out the more decided rupture between the soul as simple self-concentration, and its earlier naturalness and immediacy; it has lost its original and immediate identity with the bodily nature, and as external has first to be reduced to that position. Specific feelings can only get bodily shape in a perfectly specific way ( 410); and the immediate portion of body is a particular possibility for a specific aim (a particular aspect of its differentiated structure, a particular organ of its organic system).
To mould such an aim in the organic body is to bring out and express the 'ideality' which is implicit in matter always, and especially so in the specific bodily part, and thus to enable the soul, under its volitional and conceptual characters, to exist as substance in its corporeity. In this way an aptitude shows the corporeity rendered completely pervious, made into an instrument, so that when the conception (e.g. a series of musical notes) is in me, then without resistance and with ease the body gives them correct utterance.
1.jr - Who Is At My Door?, #Rumi - Poems, #Jalaluddin Rumi, #Poetry
I said, "In service and Renunciation."
He said, "What is there to renounce?"
1.kbr - O Servant Where Dost Thou Seek Me, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
nor in Yoga and Renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me:
1.kbr - Where dost thou seem me?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Rabindranath Tagore Original Language Hindi O Servant, where dost thou seek Me? Lo! I am beside thee. I am neither in temple nor in mosque: I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash: Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and Renunciation. If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time. Kabr says, "O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath." [bk1sm.gif] -- from One Hundred Poems of Kabir: Translated by Rabindranath Tagore, by Kabir / Translated by Rabindranath Tagore <
1.kbr - Where do you search me, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
Neither in Renunciation
Neither in the vital force nor in the body
--
Kabir reveals in this verse the various search patterns adopted by mankind. And each one seems to be justifying his chosen method. Some say God will be realized through pilgrimages while some justify the idol worship. Some say He is up in the mountains while some believe that He is in places of worship. Some proclaim prayers and meditation the path, others believe realization through fasting. Many talk about yogic exercises (activity) and Renunciation. When Kabir says that God is not in any of these things it does not mean that God is not in any of these but that to find God what one needs is but to believe and have faith, and when one will have faith he will find God in a moments search, for God is with him all the time. In this poem Kabir emphasises the all-pervading, omniscient, omnipresent qualities of God.
1.rt - Gitanjali, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
Deliverance is not for me in Renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim.
1.rt - Senses, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
Deliverance is not for me in Renunciation.
I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
20.01 - Charyapada - Old Bengali Mystic Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Yes, one must give up all, all worldly conventions and respectabilities. The Kapali has given up all that for the sake of his divine companion and chosen her life of austere labour and Renunciation, outside the pale of genteel falsehood and Ignorance.
The soul comes down and enters into the muddy pool of earthly life. She seeks there the lotus of immortality that grows and blooms there in the mud. She seizes it and devours it with mad eagerness.
2.01 - AT THE STAR THEATRE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The youngsters are now in the stage of sadhana. They are aspirants. For them the only thing now is Renunciation. A sannyasi must not look even at the portrait of a woman. I say to them: 'Don't sit beside a woman and talk to her, even if she is a devotee. You may say a word or two to her, standing.' Even a perfect soul must follow this precept for his own protection and also to set an example to others. When women, come to me, I too say to them after a few minutes, 'Go and visit the temples.' If they don't get up, I myself leave the room. Others will learn from my example.
Master's attraction for people
--
Hazra entered the room. He had been living with Sri Ramakrishna in the temple garden for the past two years and had first met the Master in 1880 at Sihore in the house of Hriday, the Master's nephew. Hazra's native village was near Sihore, and he owned some property there. He had a wife and children and also some debts. From youth he had felt a spirit of Renunciation and sought the company of holy men and devotees. The Master had asked him to live with him at Dakshineswar and looked after his necessities. Hazra's mind was a jumble of undigested religious moods. He professed the path of knowledge and disapproved of Sri Ramakrishna's attitude of bhakti and his longing for the young devotees. Now and then he thought of the Master as a great soul, but again he slighted him as an ordinary human being. He spent much of his time in telling his beads, and he criticized Rkhl and the other young men for their indifference to the practice. He was a strong advocate of religious conventions and rules of conduct, and made a fad of them.
He was about thirty-eight years old.
--
"You may say, even though you dive deep you are still in danger of sharks and crocodiles, of lust and anger. But dive after rubbing your body with turmeric powder; then sharks and crocodiles will not come near you. The turmeric is discrimination and Renunciation.
Master's spiritual practice
--
"I vowed to the Divine Mother that I would kill myself if I did not see God. I said to Her: 'O Mother, I am a fool. Please teach me what is contained in the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, and the other scriptures.' The Mother said to me, 'The essence of the Vednta is that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory.'The Satchidananda Brahman described in the Vedas is the Satchidananda iva of the Tantra and the Satchidananda Krishna of the Purana. The essence of the Git is what you get by repeating the word ten times. It is reversed into 'tagi', which indicates Renunciation.
"After the realization of God, how far below lie the Vedas, the Vednta, the Purana, the Tantra! (To Hazra) I cannot utter the word 'Om' in samdhi. Why is that? I cannot say 'Om' unless I come down very far from the state of samdhi.
--
MASTER: "He may become a vijnni in the end. But it is not good to force oneself into Renunciation."
RAM: "Keshab Sen used to say: 'Why do people go to him so much? One day he will sting them and they will flee from him.' "
2.01 - The Preparatory Renunciation, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
object:2.01 - The Preparatory Renunciation
author class:Swami Vivekananda
--
THE PREPARATORY Renunciation
We have now finished the cobsideration of what may be called the preparatory Bhakti, and are entering on the study of the Para-Bhakti, or supreme devotion. We have to speak of a preparation to the practice of this Para-Bhakti. All such preparations are intended only for the purification of the soul. The repetition of names, the rituals, the forms, and the symbolsall these various things are for the purification of the soul. The greatest purifier among all such things, a purifier without which no one can enter the regions of this higher devotion (Para-Bhakti), is Renunciation, This frightens many: yet, without it, there cannot be any spiritual growth.
In all our Yogas this Renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping-stone and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture- Renunciation. This is religion Renunciation.
When the human soul draws back from the things of the world and tries to go into deeper things; when man, the spirit which has here somehow become concretised and materialised, understands that he is thereby going to be destroyed and. to be reduced almost into mere matter, and turns his face away from matter, then begins Renunciation, then begins real spiritual growth. The Karma-Yogis Renunciation is in the shape of giving up all the fruits of his actions; he is not attached to the results of his labours; he does not care for any reward here or hereafter. The Raja-Yogi knows that the whole of nature is intended for the soul to acquire experience, and that the result of all the experiences of the soul is for it to become aware of its eternal separateness from nature. The human soul has to understand and realise that it has been spirit, and not matter, through eternity; and that this conjunction of it with matter is and can be only for a time. The Raja-Yogi learns the lesson of Renunciation through his own. experience of nature. The Jnana-Yogi has the harshest of all Renunciations to go through, as he. has to realise from the very first that the whole of this solid-looking nature is all an illusion. He has to understand that all that is any kind of manifestation of power in nature, belongs to the soul, and not to nature. He has to know, from the very start, that all knowledge and all experience are in the soul, and not in nature; so he has at once and by the sheer force of rational conviction to tear himself away from all bondage to nature. He lets nature and all that belongs to her go, he lets them vanish and tries to stand alone!
Of all Renunciations, the most natural, so to say, is that of the Bhakti-Yogi. Here, there is no violence, nothing to give up, nothing to tear off, as it were, from ourselves, nothing from which we have violently to separate ourselves; the Bhaktas Renunciation is easy, smooth, flowing, and as natural as the things around us. We see the manifestation of this sort of Renunciation, although more or less in the form of caricatures, every day around us. A man begins to love a woman; after a while he loves another, and the first woman he lets go. She drops out of his mind smoothly, gently, without his feeling the want of her at all. A woman loves .a man; she then begins to love another man, and the first one drops off from her mind quite naturally. A man loves his own city, then he begins to love his country; and the intense love for his little city drops off smoothly, naturally. Again, a man learns to love the whole world; his love for his country, his intense, fanatical patriotism drops off without hurting him, without any manifestation of violence. An uncultured man loves the pleasures of the senses intensely; as he becomes cultured, he begins to love intellectual pleasures, and his sense-enjoyments become less and less. No man can enjoy a meal with the same gusto or pleasure as a dog or a wolf; but those pleasures which a man gets from intellectual experiences and achievements, the dog can never enjoy. At first, pleasure, is in association with the lower senses; but as soon as an animal reaches a higher plane of existence, the lower kind of pleasures becomes less intense. In human society, the nearer the man is to the animal, the stronger is his pleasure in the senses; and the higher and the more cultured the man is, the greater is his pleasure in intellectual. and such other finer pursuits. So, when a man gets even higher than the plane of the intellect, higher than that of mere thought, when he gets to the plane of spirituality and of divine inspiration, he finds there a state of bliss, compared with which all the pleasures of the senses, or even of the intellect, are as nothing. When the moon shines brightly, all the stars become dim; and when the sun shines, the moon herself becomes dim. The Renunciation necessary for the attainment of Bhakti is not obtained by killing anything, but just comes, in as naturally as in the presence of an increasingly stronger light, the less intense ones become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish away completely. So this love of the pleasures of the senses and of the intellect js all made dim and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God Himself. That love of God grows and assumes a form which, is called Para-Bhakti, or supreme devotion. Forms vanish, rituals flyaway, books are superseded, images, temples, churches, religions and sects, countries and nationalitiesall these little limitations, and bondages fall off by their own nature from him who knows this love of God. Nothing remains to bind him or fetter his freedom. A ship, all of a sudden, comes near a .magnetic rock; and its iron bolts and bars are all attracted and drawn out, and the planks get loosened and freely float on the water. Divine grace thus loosens the binding bolts and bars of the soul, and it becomes free. So in this Renunciation, auxiliary to devotion, there is no harshness, no dryness, no struggle, nor repression or suppression. The Bhakta has not to suppress any single one of his emotions, he only strives to intensify them and direct them to God.
2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth. Of moks.a we have no personal need; for the soul is nityamukta and bondage is an illusion. We play at being bound, we are not really bound. We can be free when God wills; for he, our supreme Self, is the master of the game, and without his grace and permission no soul can leave the game. It is often God's will in us to take through the mind the bhoga of ignorance, of the dualities, of joy and grief, of pleasure and pain, of virtue and sin, of enjoyment and Renunciation: for long ages, in many countries, he never even thinks of the yoga but plays out this play century after century without wearying of it. There is nothing evil in this, nothing which we need condemn or from which we need shrink, - it is God's play. The wise man is he who recognises this truth and knowing his freedom, yet plays out God's play, waiting for his comm and to change the methods of the game.
The comm and is now. God always keeps for himself a chosen country in which the higher knowledge is through all chances and dangers, by the few or the many, continually preserved, and for the present, in this Chaturyuga at least, that country is India.
--
Purusha who merely watches, consents to God's work, holds up the Adhar and enjoys the fruits that God gives. The work itself is done by God as Shakti, by Kali, and is offered up by her as a Yajna to Sri Krishna; you are the Yajamana who sees the sacrifice done, whose presence is necessary to every movement of the sacrifice and who tastes its results. This separation of yourself, this Renunciation of the kartr.tva-abhimana (the idea of yourself as the doer) is easier if you know what the Adhar is. Above the buddhi which is the highest function of mind is the higher buddhi, or vijnana, the seat of the satyadharma, truth of knowledge, truth of bhava, truth of action, and above this ideal faculty is the ananda or cosmic bliss in which the divine part of you dwells. It is of this vijnana and this ananda that Christ spoke as the kingdom of God that is within you.
The Yoga and Its Objects
--
God in others and Renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until
God by the full light of self-knowledge, jnanadpena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion.
2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The husband's argument: "Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is not a yoga of Renunciation and even if Renunciation was to be carried out I shall carry it out gradually. I am not able to control myself. I want to know: What is the relation between man and woman in this Yoga?"
Sri Aurobindo dictated the following by way of reply:
This is not a yoga of Renunciation in the sense that one has to reject life or the world externally. But that does not mean that one has to give room to lower forces and allow them full play in their lower forms.
This is a Yoga of rising into the divine nature from the lower nature. What that higher nature is you will understand afterwards. You have to become fit for it. You can now see your lower nature, especially the vital play of Kama (lust) and Krodha (anger) etc., is essentially the functioning of the animal-man. You have to rise into the divine nature by rejecting the lower nature. How can you get the divine nature unless you conquer the nature of the animal-man in you? The first step has been given to you: you must learn to separate yourself as the Purusha, and look unmoved at all the play of Nature in you. You must externalise the play and see all its actions as outside yourself. You ought not to allow any mental justification for the play of the lower forces of the vital being. The Shuddhi purification necessary in this Yoga cannot be attained with the forces of lust and anger and there is no question of harbouring them.
--
Sri Aurobindo: No. Jivan Mukti is the same as Videha Mukti. The example of Janaka is usually given and the current idea is that Jivan Mukti is more difficult to attain than the liberation that is attained either by Renunciation or by giving up the body.
Disciple: Souls like Vivekananda come down for a specific work in this world and after doing their work they again ascend to their high status. Is this true?
2.02 - The Bhakta.s Renunciation results from Love, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
object:2.02 - The Bhakta.s Renunciation results from Love
author class:Swami Vivekananda
--
THE BHAKTAS Renunciation RESULTS FROM LOVE
We see love everywhere in nature. Whatever in society is good and great and sublime is the working out of that love; whatever in society is very bad, nay diabolical, is also the ill-directed working out of the same emotion of love. It is this same emotion that gives us the pure and holy conjugal love between husb and and wife, as well as the sort of love which goes to satisfy the lowest forms of animal passion. The emotion is the same, but its manifestation is different in different cases. It is the same feeling of love, well or illdirected, that impels one man to do good and to give all he has to the poor, while it makes another man cut the throats of his brethren and take away all their possessions. The former loves others as much as the latter loves himself. The direction of the love is bad in the case of the latter but it is right and proper in the other case. The same fire that cooks a meal for us may bum a child, and it is no fault of the fire if it does so; the difference lies in the way in which it is used.
--
The Bhakti-Yogi, however, knows the meaning of life's struggles; he understands it. He has passed through a long series of these struggles, and knows what they mean, and earnestly desires to be free from the friction thereof; he wants to avoid the clash and go direct to the centre of all attraction, the great Hari. This is the Renunciation of the Bhakta: this mighty attraction in the direction of God makes all other attraction vanish for him; this mighty infinite love of God which enters his heart leaves no place for any other love to live there. How can it be otherwise? Bhakti fills his heart with the divine waters of the ocean of love, which is God Himself; there is no place there for little loves. That is to say, the Bhakta's Renunciation is that Vairagya, or non-attachment for all things, that are not God, which results from Anuraga or great attachment to God.
This is the ideal preparation for the attainment of the supreme Bhakti. When this Renunciation comes, the gate opens for the soul to pass through and reach the lofty regions of Supreme Devotion or Para-Bhakti. Then it is that we begin to understand what Para-Bhakti is; and the man who has entered into the inner shrine of the Para-Bhakti, alone has the right to say that all forms and symbols are useless to him as aids to religious realisation. He alone has attained. that supreme state of love commonly called the brotherhood of man; the rest only talk. He sees no distinctions; the mighty ocean of love has entered Into h Im, and he sees not man in man, but beholds his Beloved everywhere. Through every face shines to him his Hari. The light in the sun or the moon is all His manifestation. Wherever there is beauty or sublimity, to him it is all His. Such Bhaktas are still living; the world is never without them. Such, though bitten by a serpent, only say that a messenger came to them from their Beloved. Such men alone have the right to talk of universal brotherhood.
They feel no resentment; their minds never react in the form of hatred or jealousy. The external, the sensuous; has vanished from them for ever. How can they be angry when, through their love, they are always able to see the Reality behind the scenes ?
2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
abandonment, by tyaga or Renunciation. This is a curious expression, t
n (y4
--
must needs be greater. By Renunciation you can increase your
enjoyments a hundredfold; if you are a true patriot, you will feel
--
after Renunciation and devoted to God, - these & these only -
do not cling to a man, do not bind him in their invisible chains
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
[Book I ] Chapter I. The Law of Renunciation.
[Chapter] I. God All and God Everywhere
--
[Chapter] VII. The Meaning of Renunciation
[Book II ] Chapter II. Salvation through Works
--
The Law of Renunciation.
I. God All and God Everywhere
--
VII. The Meaning of Renunciation
The Karmayogin therefore will abandon the world that he may
--
follow the path of spiritual Renunciation, have had experience.
It is this that such Renunciation is often followed by a singular
tendency for wealth to seek him who has ceased to seek wealth.
--
Eternal. Selflessness then is the real & only law of Renunciation;
in the love of one's wider self in others, it has its rise; by the
--
Actions performed after Renunciation, actions devoted to God,
these only do not cling to a man nor bind him in their invisible
--
spiritual Vairagya, the Renunciation of desire, not through physical separation from the objects of desire. This the Upanishad
emphasizes in the second line of the verse. "Thus to thee; and
--
but that the Renunciation of desire is essential to salvation; every
Yogin, be he Jnani, Bhakta, or Karmi, must devote whatever
2.03 - Renunciation, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:2.03 - Renunciation
class:chapter
--
There is in books a lot of talk about Renunciation that you must renounce possessions, renounce attachments, renounce desires. But I have come to the conclusion that so long as you have to renounce anything you are not on this path; for, so long as you are not thoroughly disgusted with things as they are, and have to make an effort to reject them, you are not ready for the supramental realisation. If the constructions of the Overmind the world which it has built and the existing order which it supportsstill satisfy you, you cannot hope to partake of that realisation. Only when you find such a world disgusting, unbearable and unacceptable, are you fit for the change of consciousness. That is why I do not give any importance to the idea of Renunciation. To renounce means that you are to give up what you value, that you have to discard what you think is worth keeping. What, on the contrary, you must feel is that this world is ugly, stupid, brutal and full of intolerable suffering; and once you feel in this way, all the physical, all the material consciousness which does not want it to be that, will want it to change, crying, I will have something else something that is true, beautiful, full of delight and knowledge and consciousness! All here is floating on a sea of dark unconsciousness. But when you want the Divine with all your will, all your resolution, all your aspiration and intensity, it will surely come. But it is not merely a matter of ameliorating the world. There are people who clamour for change of government, social reform and philanthropic work, believing that they can thereby make the world better. We want a new world, a true world, an expression of the Truth-Consciousness. And it will be, it must beand the sooner the better!
It should not, however, be just a subjective change. The whole physical life must be transformed. The material world does not want a mere change of consciousness in us. It says in effect: You retire into bliss, become luminous, have the divine knowledge; but that does not alter me. I still remain the hell I practically am! The true change of consciousness is one that will change the physical conditions of the world and make it an entirely new creation.
2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Complete Renunciation for religious teachers
"But the Renunciation of the world is needful for those whom God wants to be teachers of men. One who is an chrya should give up 'woman and gold'; otherwise people will not take his advice. It is not enough for him to renounce only mentally; he should also renounce outwardly. Only then will his teaching bear fruit. Otherwise people will think, 'Though he asks us to give up "woman and gold," he enjoys them himself in secret.'
"A physician prescribed medicine for a patient. and said to him, 'Come another day and I'll give you directions about diet.' The physician had several jars of molasses in his room that day. The patient lived very far away. He visited the physician later and the physician said to him: 'Be careful about your food. It is not good for you to eat molasses.' After the patient left, another person who was there said to the physician: 'Why did you give him all the trouble of coming here again? You could very well have given him the instructions the first day.' The physician replied with a smile: There is a reason. I had several jars of molasses in my room that day. If I had asked the patient then to give up molasses, he would not have had faith in my words. He would have thought: "He has so many jars of molasses in his room, he must eat some of it. Then molasses can't be so bad." Today I have hidden the jars. Now he will have faith in my words.
--
Master's Renunciation
(To the Mrwri devotee) "The rules for a sannysi are extremely hard. He cannot have the slightest contact with 'woman and gold'. He must not accept money with his own hands, and he must not even allow it to be left near him.
2.04 - ADVICE TO ISHAN, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Those who develop dispassion from early youth, those who roam about yearning for God from boyhood, those who refuse all worldly life, belong to a different class. They belong to an unsullied aristocracy. If they develop true Renunciation, they keep themselves at least fifty cubits away from women lest their spiritual mood should be destroyed. Once falling into the clutches of women, they no longer remain on the level of unsullied aristocracy. They fall from it and come to a lower level. People who practise Renunciation from early youth belong to a very high level. Their ideal is very pure. They are stainless.
How to conquer passion
--
"Therefore a man should act in such a way that he may have bhakti for the Lotus Feet of God and love God as his very own. You see this world around you. It exists for you only for a couple of days. There is nothing to it." PUNDIT (smiling): "Revered sir, I feel a spirit of total Renunciation when I am here. I feel like going away, giving up the world."
MASTER: "No, no! Why should you give up? Give up mentally. Live unattached in the world.
--
"You cannot achieve anything by moving at such a slow pace. You need stern Renunciation. Can you achieve anything by counting fifteen months as a year? You seem to have no strength, no grit. You are as mushy as flattened rice soaked in milk. Be up and doing! Gird your loins!
"I don't like that song:
--
I don't care for the line, 'Thus striving, some day you may attain Him.' You need stern Renunciation. I say the same thing to Hazra.
"You ask me why you don't feel stern Renunciation. There is a reason for it. You have desires and tendencies within you. The same is true of Hazra. In our part of the country I have seen peasants bringing water into their paddy-fields. The fields have low ridges on all sides to prevent the water from leaking out; but these are made of mud and often have holes here and there. The peasants work themselves to death to bring the water, which, however, leaks out through the holes. Desires are the holes. You practise japa and austerities, no doubt, but they all leak out through the holes of your desires.
"They catch fish with a bamboo trap. The bamboo is naturally straight. But why is it bent in the trap? In order to catch the fish. Desires are the fish. Therefore the mind is bent down toward the world. If there are no desires, the mind naturally looks up toward God.
--
The devotees listened spellbound to Sri Ramakrishna. His burning words entered their souls, spurring them along the path of Renunciation.
Now he spoke to Ishan in a serious voice.
--
The Master entered his room accompanied by M. He was humming a song. The forceful words of Renunciation that he had just spoken to Ishan found expression through its words. He sang the lines:
Mother, take everything else away from me,
2.04 - Concentration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:This use of concentration implies like every other a previous purification; it implies also in the end a Renunciation, a cessation and lastly an ascent into the absolute and transcendent state of Samadhi from which if it culminates, if it endures, there is, except perhaps for one soul out of many thousands, no return. For by that we go to the "supreme state of the Eternal whence souls revert not" into the cyclic action of Nature305a; and it is into this Samadhi that the Yogin who aims at release from the world seeks to pass away at the time of leaving his body. We see this succession in the discipline of the Rajayoga. For first the Rajayogin must arrive at a certain moral and spiritual purity; he must get rid of the lower or downward activities of his mind, but afterwards he must stop all its activities and concentrate himself in the one idea that leads from activity to the quiescence of status. The Rajayogic concentration has several stages, that in which the object is seized, that in which it is held, that in which the mind is lost in the status which the object represents or to which the concentration leads, and only the last is termed Samadhi in the Rajayoga although the word is capable, as in the Gita, of a much wider sense. But in the Rajayogic Samadhi there are different grades of status, -- that in which the mind, though lost to outward objects, still muses, thinks, perceives in the world of thought, that in which the mind is still capable of primary thought-formations and that in which, all out-darting of the mind even within itself having ceased, the soul rises beyond thought into the silence of the Incommunicable and Ineffable. Ill all Yoga there are indeed many preparatory objects of thought-concentration, forms, verbal formulas of thought, significant names, all of which are supports305b to the mind ill this movement, all of which have to be used and transcended; the highest support according to the Upanishads is the mystic syllable AUM, whose three letters represent the Brahman or Supreme Self in its three degrees of status, the Waking Soul, the Dream Soul and the Sleep Soul, and the whole potent sound rises towards that which is beyond status as beyond activity305c. For of all Yoga of knowledge the final goal is the Transcendent.
4:We have, however, conceived as the aim of an integral Yoga something more complex and less exclusive-less exclusively positive of the highest condition of the soul, less exclusively negative of its divine radiations. We must aim indeed at the Highest, the Source of all, the Transcendent but not to the exclusion of that which it transcends, rather as the source of an established experience and supreme state of the soul which shall transform all other states and remould our consciousness of the world into the form of its secret Truth. We do not seek to excise from our being all consciousness of the universe, but to realise God, Truth and Self in the universe as well as transcendent of it. We shall seek therefore not only the Ineffable, but also His manifestation as infinite being, consciousness and bliss embracing the universe and at play in it. For that triune infinity is His supreme manifestation and that we shall aspire to know, to share in and to become; and since we seek to realise this Trinity not only in itself but in its cosmic play, we shall aspire also to knowledge of and participation in the universal divine Truth, Knowledge, Will, Love which are His secondary manifestation. His divine becoming. With this too we shall aspire to identify ourselves, towards this too we shall strive to rise and, when the period of effort is passed, allow it by our Renunciation of all egoism to draw us up into itself in our being and to descend into us and embrace us in all our becoming. This not only as a means of approach and passage to His supreme transcendence, but as the condition, even when we possess and are possessed by the Transcendent, of a divine life in the manifestation of the cosmos.
5:In order that we may do this, the terms concentration and Samadhi must assume for us a richer and profound meaning. All our concentration is merely an image of the divine Tapas by which the Self dwells gathered in itself, by which it manifests within itself, by which it maintains and possesses its manifestations by which it draws back from all manifestation into its supreme oneness. Being dwelling in consciousness upon itself for bliss, this is the divine Tapas; and a Knowledge-Will dwelling in force of consciousness on itself and its manifestations is the essence of the divine concentration, the Yoga of the Lord of Yoga. Given the self-differentiation of the Divine in which we dwell, concentration is the means by which the individual soul identifies itself with and enters into any form, state or psychological self-manifestation (bhava) of the Self. To use this means for unification with the Divine is the condition for the attainment of divine knowledge and the principle of all Yoga of knowledge.
2.04 - The Secret of Secrets, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All that has gone before laid the foundations of the knowledge or prepared its first necessary materials or scaffolding, but now the full frame of the structure is to be placed before his unsealed vision. All that is to come after will have its great importance because it will analyse parts of this frame, show in what this or that in it consists; but in substance the integral knowledge of the Being who is speaking to him is to be now unveiled to his eyes so that he cannot choose but see. What has gone before showed him that he is not bound fatally to the knot of the ignorance and egoistic action in which he had hitherto remained contented till its partial solutions sufficed no longer to satisfy his mind bewildered by the conflict of opposite appearances that make up the action of the world and his heart troubled by the entanglement of his works from which he feels himself unable to escape except by Renunciation of life and works. He has been shown that there are two opposed ways of working and living, one in the ignorance of the ego, one in the clear self-knowledge of a divine being. He may act with desire, with passion, an ego driven by the qualities of the lower Nature, subject to the balance of virtue and sin, joy and sorrow, preoccupied with the fruits and consequences of his works, success and defeat, good result and evil result, bound on the world machine, caught up in a great tangle of action and inaction and perverse action which perplex the heart and mind and soul of man with their changing and contrary masks and appearances. But he is not utterly tied down to the works of the ignorance; he may do if he will the
The Secret of Secrets
2.05 - Renunciation, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:2.05 - Renunciation
If discipline of all the members of our being by purification and concentration may be described as the right arm of the body of Yoga, Renunciation is its left arm. By discipline or positive practice we confirm in ourselves the truth of things, truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of love, truth of works and replace with these the falsehoods that have overgrown and perverted our nature; by Renunciation we seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine living. Renunciation is an indispensable instrument of our perfection.
How far shall this Renunciation go ? what shall be its nature ? and in what way shall it be applied? There is an established tradition long favoured by great religious teachings and by men of profound spiritual experience that Renunciation must not only be complete as a discipline but definite and final as an end and that it shall fall nothing short of the Renunciation of life itself and of our mundane existence. Many causes have contri buted to the growth of this pure, lofty and august tradition. There is first the profounder cause of the radical opposition between the sullied and imperfect nature of life in the world as it now is in the present stage of our human evolution and the nature of spiritual living; and this opposition has led to the entire rejection of world-existence as a lie, an insanity of the soul, a troubled and unhappy dream or at best a flawed, specious and almost worthless good, or to its characterisation as a kingdom of the world, the flesh and the devil, and therefore for the divinely led and divinely attracted soul only a place of ordeal and preparation or at best a play of the All-existence, a game of cross-purposes which He tires of and abandons. A second cause is the soul's hunger for personal salvation, for escape into some farther or farthest height of unalloyed bliss and peace untroubled by the labour and the struggle; or else it is its unwillingness to return from the ecstasy of the divine embrace into the lower field of work and service. But there are other slighter causes incidental to spiritual experience, -- strong feeling and practical proof of the great difficulty, which we willingly exaggerate into an impossibility, of combining the life of works and action with spiritual peace and the life of realisation; or else the joy which the mind comes to take in the mere act and state of Renunciation, -- as it comes indeed to take joy in anything that it has attained or to which it has inured itself, -- and the sense of peace and deliverance which is gained by indifference to the world and to the objects of man's desire. Lowest causes of all are the weakness that shrinks from the struggle, the disgust and disappointment of the soul baffied by the great cosmic labour, the selfishness that cares not what becomes of those left behind us so long as we personally can be free from the monstrous ever-circling wheel of death and rebirth, the indifference to the cry that rises up from a labouring humanity.
For the Sadhaka of an integral Yoga none of these reasons are valid. With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealings; a divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be, they are that very nature of the Divine which he would take upon himself as a robe of spiritual light and beauty. The revolvings of the great wheel bring to him no sense of terror or giddiness; he rises above it in hia soul and knows from above their divine law and their divine purpose. The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. He has learned that the joy, the peace and the deliverance are an imperfect crown and no real possession if they do not form a state secure in itself, inalienable to the soul, not dependent on aloofness and inaction but firm in the storm and the race and the battle, unsullied whether by the joy of the world or by its suffering. The ecstasy of the divine embrace will not abandon him because he obeys the impulse of divine love for God in humanity; or if it seems to draw back from him for a while, he knows by experience that it is to try and test him still farther so that some imperfection in his own way of meeting it may fall away from him. Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others, -- though to God nothing is impossible; for a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. If life is an insanity, then there are so many million souls to whom there must be brought the light of divine reason; if a dream, yet is it real within itself to so many dreamers who must be brought either to dream nobler dreams or to awaken; or if a lie, then the truth has to be given to the deluded. Nor, if it be said that only by the luminous example of escape from the world can we help the world, shall we accept that dogma, since the contrary example of great Avataras is there to show that not only by rejecting the life of the world as it is can we help, but also and more by accepting and uplifting it. And if it is a play of the All-Existence, then we may well consent to play out our part in it with grace and courage, well take delight in the game along with our divine Playmate.
But, most of all, the view we have taken of the world forbids the Renunciation of world-existence so long as we can be anything to God and man in their working-out of its purposes. We regard the world not as an invention of the devil or a self-delusion of the soul, but as a manifestation of the Divine, although as yet a partial because a progressive and evolutionary manifestation. Therefore for us Renunciation of life cannot be the goal of life nor rejection of the world the object for which the world was created. We seek to realise our unity with God, but for us that realisation involves a complete and absolute recognition of our unity with man and we cannot cut the two asunder. To use Christian language, the Son of God is also the Son of Man and both elements are necessary to the complete Christhood; or to use an Indian form of thought, the divine Narayana of whom the universe is only one ray is revealed and fulfilled in man; the complete man is Nara-Narayana and in that completeness he symbolises the supreme mystery of existence.
Therefore Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a Renunciation, a complete Renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive Renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. We shall have no attachment to our life in, the world; if that attachment exists, we must renounce it and renounce utterly; but neither shall we have any attachment to the escape from the world, to salvation, to the great self-annihilation; if that attachment exists, that also we must renounce and renounce it utterly.
Again our Renunciation must obviously be an inward Renunciation; especially and above all, a Renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the senses and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness. For these things are the three knots by which we are bound to our lower nature and if we can renounce these utterly, there is nothing else that can bind us. Therefore attachment and desire must be utterly cast out; there is nothing in the world to which we must be attached, not wealth nor poverty, nor joy nor suffering, nor life nor death, nor greatness nor littleness, nor vice nor virtue, nor friend, nor wife, nor children, nor country, nor our work and mission, nor heaven nor earth, nor all that is within them or beyond them. And this does not mean that there is nothing at all that we shall love, nothing in which we shall take delight; for attachment is egoism in love and not love itself, desire is limitation and insecurity in a hunger for pleasure and satisfaction and not the seeking after the divine delight in things. A universal love we must have, calm and yet eternally intense beyond the brief vehemence of the most violent passion; a delight in things rooted in a delight in God that does not adhere to their forms but to that which they conceal in themselves and that embraces the universe without being caught in its meshes315.
Self-will in thought and action has, we have already seen, to be quite renounced if we would be perfect in the way of divine works; it has equally to be renounced if we are to be perfect in divine knowledge. This self-will means an egoism in the mind which attaches itself to its preferences, its habits, its past or present formations of thought and view and will because it regards them as itself or its own, weaves around them the delicate threads of "I-ness" and "my-ness" and lives in them like a spider in its web. It hates to be disturbed, as a spider hates attack on its web, and feels foreign and unhappy if transplanted to fresh viewpoints and formations as a spider feels foreign in another web than its own. This attachment must be entirely excised from the mind. Not only must we give up the ordinary attitude to the world and life to which the unawakened mind clings as its natural element; but we must not remain bound in any mental construction of our own or in any intellectual thought-system or arrangement of religious dogmas or logical conclusions; we must not only cut asunder the snare of the mind and the senses, but flee also beyond the snare of the thinker, the snare of the theologian and the church-builder, the meshes of the Word and the bondage of the Idea. All these are within us waiting to wall in the spirit with forms; but we must always go beyond, always renounce the lesser for the greater, the finite for the Infinite; we must be prepared to proceed from Illumination to illumination, from experience to experience, from soul-state to soul-state so as to reach the utmost transcendence of the Divine and its utmost universality. Nor must we attach ourselves even to the truths we hold most securely, for they are but forms and expressions of the Ineffable who refuses to limit himself to any form or expression; always we must keep ourselves open to the higher Word from above that does not confine itself to its own sense and the light of the Thought that carries in it its own opposites.
But the centre of all resistance is egoism and this we must pursue into every covert and disguise and drag it out and slay it; for its disguises are endless and it will cling to every shred of possible self-concealment. Altruism and indifference are often its most effective disguises; so draped, it will riot boldly in the very face of the divine spies who are missioned to hunt it out. Here the formula of the supreme knowledge comes to our help; we have nothing to do in our essential standpoint with these distinctions, for there is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments, equal in the individual and the group, and to realise that, to express that, to serve that, to fulfil that is all that matters. Self-satisfaction and altruism, enjoyment and indifference are not the essential thing. If the realisation, fulfilment, service of the one Self demands from us an action that seems to others self-service or self-assertion in the egoistic sense or seems egoistic enjoyment and self-indulgence, that action we must do; we must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. The influence of the environment works often with great subtlety; we prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within; we are impelled to drape ourselves in the vow of poverty, or in the garb of service, or in outward proofs of indifference and Renunciation and a spotless sainthood because that is what tradition and opinion demand of us and so we can make best an impression on our environment. But all this is vanity and delusion. We may be called upon to assume these things, for that may be the uniform of our service; but equally it may not. The eye of man outside matters nothing; the eye within is all.
We see in the teaching of the Gita how subtle a thing is the freedom from egoism which is demanded. Arjuna is driven to fight by the egoism of strength, the egoism of the Kshatriya; he is turned from the battle by the contrary egoism of weakness, the shrinking, the spirit of disgust, the false pity that overcomes the mind, the nervous being and the senses, -- not that divine compassion which streng thens the arm and clarifies the knowledge. But this weakness comes garbed as Renunciation, as virtue : "Better the life of the beggar than to taste these blood-stained enjoyments; I desire not the rule of all the earth, no, nor the kingdom of the gods." How foolish of the Teacher, we might say, not to confirm this mood, to lose this sublime chance of adding one more great soul to the army of Sannyasins, one more shining example before the world of a holy Renunciation. But the Guide sees otherwise, the Guide who is not to be deceived by words; "This is weakness and delusion and egoism that speak in thee. Behold the Self, open thy eyes to the knowledge, purify thy soul of egoism." And afterwards? "Fight, conquer, enjoy a wealthy kingdom." Or to take another example from ancient Indian tradition. It was egoism, it would seem, that drove Rama, the Avatara, to raise an army and destroy a nation in order to recover his wife from the King of Lanka. But would it have been a lesser egoism to drape himself in indifference and misusing the formal terms of the knowledge to say, "I have no wife, no enemy, no desire; these are illusions of the senses; let me cultivate the Brahman-knowledge and let Ravana do what he will with the daughter of Janaka"?
The criterion is within, as the Gita insists. It is to have the soul free from craving and attachment, but free from the attachment to inaction as well as from the egoistic impulse to action, free from attachment to the forms of virtue as well as from the attraction to sin. It is to be rid of "I-ness" and "my-ness" so as to live in the one Self and act in the one Self; to reject the egoism of refusing to work through the individual centre of the universal Being as well as the egoism of serving the individual mind and life and body to the exclusion of others. To live in the Self is not to dwell for oneself alone in the Infinite immersed and oblivious of all things in that ocean of impersonal self-delight; but it is to live as the Self and in the Self equal in this embodiment and all embodiments and beyond all embodiments. This is the integral knowledge.
It will be seen that the scope we give to the idea of Renunciation is different from the meaning currently attached to it. Currently its meaning is self-denial, inhibition of pleasure, rejection of the objects of pleasure. Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached; inhibition of pleasure is necessary because his sense is caught and clogged in the mud-honey of sensuous satisfactions; rejection of the objects of pleasure is imposed because the mind fixes on the object and will not leave it to go beyond it and within itself. If the mind of man were not thus ignorant, attached, bound even in its restless inconstancy, deluded by the forms of things, Renunciation would not have been needed; the soul could have travelled on the path of delight, from the lesser to the greater, from joy to diviner joy. At present that is not practicable. It must give up from within everything to which it is attached in order that it may gain that which they are in their reality. The external Renunciation is not the essential, but even that is necessary for a time, indispensable in many things and sometimes useful in all; we may even, say that a complete external Renunciation is a stage through which the soul must pass at some period of its progress, -- though always it should be without those self-willed violences and fierce self-torturings which are an offence to the Divine seated within us. But in the end this Renunciation or self-denial is always an instrument and the period for its use passes. The rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us because what the soul enjoys is no longer the object as an object but the Divine which it expresses; the inhibition of pleasure is no longer needed when the soul no longer seeks pleasure but possesses the delight of the Divine in all things equally without the need of a personal or physical possession of the thing itself; self-denial loses its field when the soul no longer claims anything, but obeys consciously the will of the one Self in all beings. It is then that we are freed from the Law and released into the liberty of the Spirit.
We must be prepared to leave behind on the path not only that which we stigmatise as evil, but that which seems to us to be good, yet is not the one good. There are things which were beneficial, helpful, which seemed perhaps at one time the one thing desirable, and yet once their work is done, once they are attained, they become obstacles and even hostile forces when we are called to advance beyond them. There are desirable states of the soul which it is dangerous to rest in after they have been mastered, because then we do not march on to the wider kingdoms of God beyond. Even divine realisations must not be clung to, if they are not the divine realisation in its utter essentiality and completeness. We must rest at nothing less than the All, nothing short of the utter transcendence. And if we can thus be free in the spirit, we shall find out all the wonder of God's workings; we .shall find that in inwardly renouncing everything we have lost nothing. "By all this abandoned thou shalt come to enjoy the All." For everything is kept for us and restored to us but with a wonderful change and transfiguration into the All-Good and the All-Beautiful, the All-Light and the All-Delight of Him who is for ever pure and infinite and the mystery and the miracle that ceases not through the ages.
2.06 - The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the last chapter we have spoken of Renunciation in its most general scope, even as we spoke of concentration in all its possibilities; what has been said, applies therefore equally to the path of Works and the path of Devotion as to the path of Knowledge; for on all three concentration and Renunciation are needed, though the way and spirit in which they are applied may vary. But we must now turn more particularly to the actual steps of the Path of Knowledge on which the double force of concentration and Renunciation must aid us to advance. Practically, this path is a re-ascent up the great ladder of being down which the soul has descended into the material existence.
The central aim of Knowledge is the recovery of the Self, of our true self-existence, and this aim presupposes the admission that our present mode of being is not our true self-existence. No doubt, we have rejected the trenchant solutions which cut the knot of the riddle of the universe; we recognise it neither as a fiction of material appearance created by Force, nor as an unreality set up by the Mind, nor as a bundle of sensations, ideas and results of idea and sensation with a great Void or a great blissful Zero behind it to strive towards as our true truth of eternal non-existence. We accept the Self as a reality and the universe as a reality of the Self, a reality of its consciousness and not of mere material force and formation, but none the less or rather all the more for that reason a reality. Still, though the universe is a fact and not a fiction, a fact of the divine and universal and not a fiction of the individual self, our state of existence here is a state of ignorance, not the true truth of our being. We conceive of ourselves falsely, we see ourselves as we are not; we live in a false relation with our environment, because we know neither the universe nor ourselves for what they really are but with an imperfect view founded on a temporary fiction which the Soul and Nature have established between themselves for the convenience of the evolving ego. And this falsity is the root of a general perversion, confusion and suffering which besiege at every step both our internal life and our relations with our environment. Our personal life and our communal life, our commerce with ourselves and our commerce with our fellows are founded on a falsity and are therefore false in their recognised principles and methods, although through all this error a growing truth continually seeks to express itself. Hence the supreme importance to man of Knowledge, not what is called the practical knowledge of life, but of the profoundest knowledge of the Self and Nature321 on which alone a true practice of life can be founded.
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The Self is an eternal utter Being and pure existence of which all these things are becomings. From this knowledge we have to proceed; this knowledge we have to realise and make it the foundation of the inner and the outer life of the individual. The Yoga of Knowledge, starting from this primary truth, has conceived a negative and positive method of discipline by which we shall get rid of these false identifications and recoil back from them into true self-knowledge. The negative method is to say always "I am not the body" so as to contradict and root out the false idea "I am the body," to concentrate on this knowledge and by Renunciation of the attachment of the soul to the physical, get rid of the body-sense. We say again "I am not the life" and by concentration on this knowledge and Renunciation of attachment to the vital movements and desires, get rid of the life-sense. We say, finally, "I am not the mind, the motion, the sense, the thought" and by concentration on this knowledge and Renunciation of the mental activities, get rid of the mind-sense. When we thus constantly create a gulf between ourselves and the things with which we identified ourselves, their veils progressively fall away from us and the Self begins to be visible to our experience. Of that then we say "I am That, the pure, the eternal, the self-blissful" and by concentrating our thought and being upon it we become That and are able finally to renounce the individual existence and the Cosmos. Another positive method belonging rather to the Rajayoga is to concentrate on the thought of the Brahman and shut out from us all other ideas, so that this dynamo of mind shall cease to work upon our external or varied internal existence; by mental cessation the vital and physical play also shall fall to rest in an eternal Samadhi, some inexpressible deepest trance of the being in which we shall pass into the absolute Existence.
This discipline is evidently a self-centred and exclusive inner movement which gets rid of the world by denying it in thought and shutting the eyes of the soul to it in vision. But the universe is there as a truth in God even though the individual soul may have shut its eyes to it and the Self is there in the universe really and not falsely, supporting all that we have rejected, truly immanent in all things, really embracing the individual in the universal as well as embracing the universe in that which exceeds and transcends it. What shall we do with this eternal Self in this persistent universe which we see encompassing us every time we come out of the trance of inner meditation ? The ascetic Path of Knowledge has its solution and its discipline for the soul that looks out on the universe. It is to regard the immanent and all-encompassing and all-constituting Self in the image of the ether in which all forms are, which is in all forms, of which all forms are made. In that ether cosmic Life and Mind move as the Breath of things, an atmospheric sea in the ethereal, and constitute from it all these forms; but what they constitute are merely name and form and not realities; the form of the pot we see is a form of earth only and goes back into the earth, earth a form resolvable into the cosmic Life, the cosmic Life a movement that falls to rest in that silent immutable Ether. Concentrating on this knowledge, rejecting all phenomenon and appearance, we come to see the whole as an illusion of name and form in the ether that is Brahman; it becomes unreal to us; and the universe becoming unreal the immanence becomes unreal and there is only the Self upon which our mind has falsely imposed the name and form of the universe. Thus are we justified in the withdrawal of the individual self into the Absolute.
2.06 - The Wand, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
73:So with these early practices of Renunciation it will now be clearly understood that they were but of temporary use. They were only of value as training. The adept will laugh over his early absurdities - the disproportions will have been harmonized; and the structure of his soul will be seen as perfectly organic, with no one thing out of its place. He will see himself as the positive Tau with its ten complete squares within the triangle of the negatives; and this figure will become one, as soon as from the equilibrium of opposites he has attained to the identity of opposites.
74:In all this is will have been seen that the most powerful weapon in the hand of the student is the Vow of Holy Obedience; and many will wish that they had the opportunity of putting themselves under a holy Guru. Let them take heart - for any being capable of giving commands is an efficient Guru for the purpose of this Vow, provided that he is not too amiable and lazy.
2.06 - WITH VARIOUS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Daaratha sent the sage Vasishtha to Rma to dissuade Him. Vasishtha found Him filled with intense Renunciation. He said to Rma: 'First of all, reason with me, Rma; then You may leave the world. May I ask You if this world is outside, God? If that is so, then You may give it up.' Rma found that it is God alone who has become the universe and all its living beings. Everything in the world appears real on account of God's reality behind it.
Thereupon Rma became silent.
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"While I was talking to Devendra, I suddenly got into that state of mind in which I can see a man as he really is. I was convulsed with laughter inside. In that state I regard scholars and the book-learned as mere straw. If I see that a scholar has no discrimination and Renunciation, I regard him as worthless straw. I see that he is like a vulture, which soars high but fixes its look on a charnel-pit down below.
"I found that Devendra had combined both yoga and bhoga in his life. He had a number of children, all young. The family physician was there. Thus, you see, though he was a Jnni, yet he was preoccupied with worldly life. I said to him: 'You are the King Janaka of this Kaliyuga.
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M: "That day you spoke only words of Renunciation to Ishan. Since then many of us have come to our senses. Now we are eager to reduce our duties. You said that day, 'Ravana died in Ceylon and Behula wept bitterly for him.'"
Sri Ramakrishna laughed aloud.
2.06 - Works Devotion and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For by an absolute self-giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart and there is a perfect union between the Divine and the individual soul through an inner Renunciation of its separate living. All will, all action, all result become that of the Godhead, work divinely through the purified and illumined nature and no
IX. 23-25.
2.07 - BANKIM CHANDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (sharply): "Eh? You are very saucy! What you do day and night comes out through your mouth. A man belches what he eats. If he eats radish, he belches radish; if he eats green coconut, he belches green coconut. Day and night you live in the midst of 'woman and gold'; so your mouth utters words about that alone. By constantly thinking of worldly things a man becomes calculating and deceitful. On the other hand, he becomes guileless by thinking of God. A man who has seen God will never say what you have just said. What will a pundit's scholarship profit him if he does not think of God and has no discrimination and Renunciation? Of what use is erudition if the mind dwells on 'woman and gold'?
"Kites and vultures soar very high indeed, but their gaze is fixed only on the charnel-pit.
2.07 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Knowledge and Ignorance inherently potential in it; all we have to do is to recognise the fact and find a means of escape out of the Ignorance - through the Knowledge, but into what is beyond both Knowledge and Ignorance - by Renunciation of life, by recognition of the universal impermanency of things and the vanity of cosmic existence.
But our mind cannot remain satisfied - the mind of Buddhism itself did not remain satisfied - with this evasion at the very root of the whole matter. In the first place, these philosophies, while thus putting aside the root question, do actually make far-reaching assertions that assume, not only a certain operation and symptoms, but a certain fundamental nature of the Ignorance from which their prescription of remedies proceeds; and it is obvious that without such a radical diagnosis no prescription of remedies can be anything but an empiric dealing.
2.07 - The Release from Subjection to the Body, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We say then to the mind "This is a working of prakriti, this is neither thyself nor myself; stand back from it." We shall find, if we try, that the mind has this power of detachment and can stand back from the body not only in idea, but in act and as it were physically or rather vitally. This detachment of the mind must be streng thened by a certain attitude of indifference to the things of the body; we must not care essentially about its sleep or its waking, its movement or its rest, its pain or its pleasure, its health or ill-health, its vigour or its fatigue, its comfort or its discomfort, or what it eats or drinks. This does not mean that we shall not keep the body in right order so far as we can; we have not to fall into violent asceticisms or a positive neglect of the physical frame. But we have not either to be affected in mind by hunger or thirst or discomfort or ill-health or attach the importance which the physical and vital man attaches to the things of the body, or indeed any but a quite subordinate and purely instrumental importance. Nor must this instrumental importance be allowed to assume the proportions of a necessity; we must not for instance imagine that the purity of the mind depends on the things we eat or drink, although during a certain stage restrictions in eating and drinking are useful to our inner progress; nor on the other hand must we continue to think that the dependence of the mind or even of the life on food and drink is anything more than a habit, a customary relation which Nature has set up between these principles. As a matter of fact the food we take can be reduced by contrary habit and new relation to a minimum without the mental or vital vigour being in any way reduced; even on the contrary with a judicious development they can be trained to a greater potentiality of vigour by learning to rely on the secret fountains of mental and vital energy with which they are connected more than upon the minor aid of physical aliments. This aspect of self-discipline is however more important in the Yoga of self-perfection than here; for our present purpose the important point is the Renunciation by the mind of attachment to or dependence on the things of the body.
Thus disciplined the mind will gradually learn to take up towards the body the true attitude of the Purusha. First of all, it will know the mental Purusha as the upholder of the body and not in any way the body itself; for it is quite other than the physical existence which it upholds by the mind through the agency of the vital force. This will come to be so much the normal attitude of the whole being to the physical frame that the latter will feel to us as if something external and detachable like the dress we wear or an instrument we happen to be carrying in our hand. We may even come to feel that the body is in a certain sense non-existent except as a sort of partial expression of our vital force and of our mentality. These experiences are signs that the mind is coming to a right poise regarding the body, that it is exchanging the false viewpoint of the mentality obsessed and captured by physical sensation for the viewpoint of the true truth of things.
2.07 - The Supreme Word of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
and Lord of things. For his utmost self-existent way of being is indeed an unthinkable, acintyarupam, an unimaginable positive, an absolute quintessence of all absolutes far beyond the determination of the intelligence. The method of negative passivity, quietude, Renunciation of life and works by which men feel after this intangible Absolute is admitted and ratified in the Gita's philosophy, but only with a minor permissive sanction. This negating knowledge approaches the Eternal by one side only of the truth and that side the most difficult to reach and follow for the embodied soul in Nature, duh.kham dehavadbhir avapyate; it proceeds by a highly specialised, even an unnecessarily arduous way, "narrow and difficult to tread as a razor's edge."
Not by denying all relations, but through all relations is the
2.08 - AT THE STAR THEATRE (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to Girish): "One can realize God through intense Renunciation. But the soul must be restless for Him, as restless as one feels for a breath of air when one's head is pressed under water.
"A man can see God if he unites in himself the force of these three attractions: the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man, the husband's attraction for the chaste wife, and the child's attraction for its mother. If you can unite these three forms of love and give it all to God, then you can see Him at once.
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"God-vision is necessary. Now the question is, how can one get it? Intense Renunciation is the means. A man should have such intense yearning for God that he can say, 'O
Father of the universe, am I outside Your universe? Won't You be kind to me, You wretch?'.
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MASTER (sharply): "His case was different. He was an Incarnation of God. There is a great difference between him and an ordinary man. The fire of Chaitanya's Renunciation was so great that when Sarvabhauma poured sugar on his tongue, instead of melting, it evaporated into air. He was always absorbed in samdhi. How great was his conquest of lust! To compare him with a man! A lion eats meat and yet it mates only once in twelve years; but a sparrow eats grain and it indulges in sex-life day and night. Such is the difference between a Divine Incarnation and an ordinary human being. An ordinary man renounces lust; but once in a while he forgets his vow. He cannot control himself.
(To M):"He who has realized God looks on man as a mere worm. 'One cannot succeed in religious life if one has shame, hatred, or fear.' These are fetters. Haven't you heard of the eight fetters?
2.08 - The Release from the Heart and the Mind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As with action and inaction, so it is with this dual possibility of indifference and calm on the one side and active joy and love on the other. Equality, not indifference is the basis. Equal endurance, impartial indifference, calm submission to the causes of joy and grief without any reaction of either grief or joy are the preparation and negative basis of equality; but equality is not fulfilled till it takes its positive form of love and delight. The sense-mind must find the equal rasa of the All-Beautiful, the heart the equal love and Ananda for all, the psychic Prana the enjoyment of this rasa, love and Ananda. This, however, is the positive perfection that comes by liberation; our first object on the path of knowledge is rather the liberation that comes by detachment from the desire-mind and by the Renunciation of its passions.
The desire-mind must also be rejected from the instrument of thought and this is best done by the detachment of the Purusha from thought and opinion itself. Of this we have already had occasion to speak when we considered in what consists the integral purification of the being. For all this movement of knowledge which we are describing is a method of purification and liberation whereby entire and final self-knowledge becomes possible, a progressive self-knowledge being itself the instrument of the purification and liberation. The method with the thought-mind will be the same as with all the rest of the being. The Purusha, having used the thought-mind for release from identification with the life and body and with the mind of desire and sensations and emotions, will turn round upon the thought-mind Itself and will say "This too I am not; I am not the thought or the thinker; all these ideas, opinions, speculations, strivings of the intellect, its predilections, preferences, dogmas, doubts, self-corrections are not myself; all this is only a working of prakriti which takes place in the thought-mind." Thus a division is created between the mind that thinks and wills and the mind that observes and the Purusha becomes the witness only; he sees, he understands the process and laws of his thought, but detaches himself from it. Then as the master of the sanction he withdraws his past sanction from the tangle of the mental undercurrent and the reasoning intellect and causes both to cease from their importunities. He becomes liberated from subjection to the thinking mind and capable of the utter silence.
2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: In the Avadhuta Gita, attributed to Dattatreya, great stress is laid on Vairagya, Renunciation of the world. It teaches the abandonment of the world and nature.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but that does not seem to be the whole of the Yoga of Dattatreya. It seems only one side of it. There is the other side the side that accepts every determination of the Infinite free from all relations or relativities. There is unbridled pleasure or enjoyment on the one hand, there is Renunciation of pleasure on the other.
Disciple: There are some people who claim to have met Dattatreya.
2.09 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to Narendra and the others): "Let me tell you this: really and truly I don't feel sorry in the least that I haven't read the Vednta or the other scriptures. I know that the essence of the Vednta is that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory. And what is the essence of the Git? It is what you get by repeating the word ten times. Then it is reversed into, 'Tagi', which refers to Renunciation. The pupil should hear the essence of the scriptures from the guru; then he should practise austerity and devotions. A man needs the letter he has received from home as long as he has not learnt its contents.
After reading it, however, he sets out to get the thing he has been asked to send.
--
"The Renunciation of 'woman and gold' is for sannysis. It is not for you.
Now and then you should go into solitude and call on God with a yearning heart. Your Renunciation should be mental.
"Unless a devotee is of the heroic type he cannot pay attention to both God and the world. King Janaka lived a householder's life only after attaining perfection through austerity and prayer. He fenced with two swords, the one of Knowledge and the other of action."
--
"The bhakta takes shelter under Vidy-my. He seeks holy company, goes on pilgrimage, and practises discrimination, devotion, and Renunciation. He says that, since a man cannot easily get rid of his ego, he should let the rascal remain as the servant of God, the devotee of God.
Meaning of liberation
--
The room is lighted all at once. (To Atul) Intense Renunciation is what is needed. One should be like an unshea thed sword. When a man has that Renunciation, he looks on his relatives as black cobras and his home as a deep well.
"One should pray to God with sincere longing. God cannot but listen to prayer if it is sincere."
2.11 - The Modes of the Self, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The distinction between the Personal and the Impersonal is substantially the same as the Indian distinction, but the associations of the English words carry within them a certain limitation which is foreign to Indian thought. The personal God of the European religions is a Person in the human sense of the word, limited by His qualities though otherwise possessed of omnipotence and omniscience; it answers to the Indian special conceptions of Shiva or Vishnu or Brahma or of the Divine Mother of all, Durga or Kali. Each religion really erects a different personal Deity according to its own heart and thought to adore and serve. The fierce and inexorable God of Calvin is a different being from the sweet and loving God of St. Francis, as the gracious Vishnu is different from the terrible though always loving and beneficent Kali who has pity even in her slaying and saves by her destructions. Shiva, the God of ascetic Renunciation who destroys all things seems to be a different being from Vishnu and Brahma, who act by grace, love, preservation of the creature or for life and creation. It is obvious that such conceptions can be only in a very partial and relative sense true descriptions of the infinite and omnipresent Creator and Ruler of the universe. Nor does Indian religious thought affirm them as adequate descriptions. The Personal God is not limited by His qualities. He is Ananta-guna, capable of infinite qualities and beyond them and lord of them to use them as He will, and He manifests Himself in various names and forms of His infinite godhead to satisfy the desire and need of the individual soul according to its own nature and personality. It is for this reason that the normal European mind finds it so difficult to understand Indian religion as distinct from Vedantic or Sankhya philosophy, because it cannot easily conceive of a personal God with infinite qualities, a personal God who is not a Person, but the sole real Person and the source of all personality. Yet that is the only valid and complete truth of the divine Personality.
The place of the divine Personality in our synthesis will best be considered when we come to speak of the Yoga of devotion; it is enough here to indicate that it has its place and keeps it in the integral Yoga even when liberation has been attained. There are practically three grades of the approach to the personal Deity; the first in which He is conceived with a particular form or particular qualities as the name and form of the Godhead which our nature and personality prefers365; a second in which He is the one real Person, the All-Personality, the Ananta-guna; a third in which we get back to the ultimate source of all idea and fact of personality in that which the Upanishad indicates by the single word Lie without fixing any attributes. It is there that our realisations of the personal and the impersonal Divine meet and become one in the utter Godhead. For the impersonal Divine is not ultimately an abstraction or a mere principle or a mere state or power and degree of being any more than we ourselves are really such abstractions. The intellect first approaches it through such conceptions, but realisation ends by exceeding them. Through the realisation of higher and higher principles of being and states of conscious existence we arrive not at the annullation of all in a sort of positive zero or even an inexpressible state of existence, but at the transcendent Existence itself which is also the Existent who transcends all definition by personality and yet is always that which is the essence of personality.
2.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES IN CALCUTTA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Master praises Renunciation
" Renunciation of 'woman and gold' from boyhood! Amazing indeed! It falls to the lot of a very few. A person without such Renunciation is like a mango struck by a hail-stone. The fruit cannot be offered to the Deity, and even a man hesitates to eat it.
"There are people who during their youth committed many sins, but in old age chant the name of God. Well, that is better than nothing.
2.12 - THE MASTERS REMINISCENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Master continued: "That is called intense Renunciation. No sooner did the man discriminate than he renounced. He went away with the towel on his shoulder. He didn't turn back to settle his worldly affairs. He didn't even look back at his home.
"He who wants to renounce needs great strength of mind. He must have a dare-devil attitude like a dacoit's. Before looting a house, the dacoits shout: 'Kill! Murder! Loot!'
2.13 - The Difficulties of the Mental Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This brings into the field the second possibility open to the mental being; for if its first possibility is to rise out of itself into a divine supramental plane of being, the other is to call down the divine into itself so that its mentality shall be changed into an image of the divine, shall be divinised or spiritualised. This may be done and primarily must be done by the mind's power of refleeting that which it knows, relates to its own consciousness, contemplates. For the mind is really a reflector and a medium and none of its activities originate in themselves, none exist per se. Ordinarily, the mind reflects the status of mortal nature and the activities of the Force which works under the conditions of the material universe. But if it becomes clear, passive, pure, by the Renunciation of these activities and of the characteristic ideas and outlook of mental nature, then as in a clear mirror or like the sky in clear water which is without ripple and unruffled by winds, the divine is reflected. The mind still does not entirely possess the divine or become divine, but is possessed by it or by a luminous reflection of it so long as it remains in this pure passivity. If it becomes active, it falls back into the disturbance of the mortal nature and reflects that and no longer the divine. For this reason an absolute quietism and a cessation first of all outer action and then of all inner movement is the ideal ordinarily proposed; here too, for the follower of the path of knowledge, there must be a sort of waking Samadhi. Whatever action is unavoidable, must be a purely superficial working of the organs of perception and motor action in which the quiescent mind takes eventually no part and from which it seeks no result or profit.
But this is insufficient for the integral Yoga. There must be a positive transformation and not merely a negative quiescence of the waking mentality. The transformation is possible because, although the divine planes are above the mental consciousness and to enter actually into them we have ordinarily to lose the mental in Samadhi, yet there are in the mental being divine planes superior to our normal mentality which reproduce the conditions of the divine plane proper, although modified by the conditions, dominant here, of mentality. All that belongs to the experience of the divine plane can there be seized, but in the mental way and m a mental form. To these planes of divine mentality it is possible for the developed human being to arise in the waking state; or it is possible for him to derive from them a stream of influences and experiences which shall eventually open to them and transform into their nature his whole waking existence. These higher mental states are the immediate sources, the large actual instruments, the inner stations382 of his perfection.
2.13 - THE MASTER AT THE HOUSES OF BALARM AND GIRISH, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"One cannot realize God without Renunciation. Who will accept my words? I have been seeking a companion, a sympathetic soul who will understand my feelings. When I see a great devotee, I say to myself, 'Perhaps he will accept my ideal.' But later on I find that he behaves in a different way.
"A ghost sought a companion. One becomes a ghost if one dies from an accident on a Saturday or a Tuesday. So whenever the ghost found someone who seemed to be dying from an accident on either of these days, he would run to him. He would say to himself that at last he had found his companion But no sooner would he run to the man than he would see the man getting up. The man, perhaps, had fallen from a roof and after a few moments regained consciousness.
--
my away from Him. Knowledge, devotion, compassion, and Renunciation belong to the realm of vidy. With the help of these a man comes near God. One step more and he attains God, Knowledge of Brahman. In that state he clearly feels and sees that it is God who has become everything. He has nothing to give up and nothing to accept. It is impossible for him to be angry with anyone.
"One day I was riding in a carriage. I saw two prostitutes standing on a verandah. They appeared to me to be embodiments of the Divine Mother Herself. I saluted them.
2.14 - AT RAMS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"A worldly person should also receive instructions from a sadguru, a real teacher. Such a teacher has certain signs. You should hear about Banras only from a man who has been to Banras and seen it. Mere book-learning will not do. One should not receive instruction from a pundit who has not realized the world to be unreal. Only if a pundit has discrimination and Renunciation is he entitled to instruct.
"Samadhyayi remarked that God was dry. Think of his speaking like that of Him who is the embodiment of sweetness! It sounds like the remark, 'My uncle's cowshed is full of horses.' (All laugh.)
--
Sri Ramakrishna began to speak about the Renunciation of action. But he also said that those who felt they must do their duties should do them in a detached spirit.
MASTER: "After attaining Knowledge one cannot do much work."
--
MASTER: "Worldly people wander about to the four quarters of the earth for the sake of happiness. They don't find it anywhere; they only become tired and weary. When through their attachment to 'woman and gold' they only suffer misery, they feel an urge toward dispassion and Renunciation. Most people cannot renounce 'woman and gold'
without first enjoying it.
--
"But one cannot succeed unless one renounces 'woman and gold'. Only by Renunciation is ignorance destroyed. The sun's rays, falling on a lens, burn many objects. But if a room is dark inside, you cannot get that result: 'you must come out of the room to use the lens.
"But some people live in the world even after attaining jnna. They see both what is inside and what is outside the room. The light of God illumines the world. Therefore with that light they can discriminate between good and bad, permanent and impermanent.
2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is that unmanifest Unknowable; there is this manifest knowable, partly manifest to our ignorance, manifest entirely to the divine Knowledge which holds it in its own infinity. If it is true that neither our ignorance nor our utmost and widest mental knowledge can give us a hold of the Unknowable, still it is also true that, whether through our knowledge or through our ignorance, That variously manifests itself; for it cannot be manifesting something other than itself, since nothing else can exist: in this variety of manifestation there is that Oneness and through the diversity we can touch the Oneness. But even so, even accepting this coexistence, it is still possible to pass a final verdict and sentence of condemnation on the Becoming and decide on the necessity of a Renunciation of it and a return into the absolute Being. This verdict can be based on the distinction between the real reality of the Absolute and the partial and misleading reality of the relative universe.
For we have in this unfolding of knowledge the two terms of the One and the Many, as we have the two terms of the finite and the infinite, of that which becomes and of that which does not become but for ever is, of that which takes form and of that which does not take form, of Spirit and Matter, of the supreme Superconscient and the nethermost Inconscience; in this dualism, and to get away from it, it is open to us to define Knowledge as the possession of one term and the possession of the other as Ignorance. The ultimate of our life would then be a drawing away from the lower reality of the Becoming to the greater reality of the Being, a leap from the Ignorance to the Knowledge and a rejection of the Ignorance, a departure from the many into the One, from the finite into the infinite, from form into the formless, from the life of the material universe into the Spirit, from the hold of the inconscient upon us into the superconscient Existence. In this solution there is supposed to be a fixed opposition, an ultimate irreconcilability in each case between the two terms of our being. Or else, if both are a means of the manifestation of the Brahman, the lower is a false or imperfect clue, a means that must fail, a system of values that cannot ultimately satisfy us. Dissatisfied with the confusions of the multiplicity, disdainful of even the highest light and power and joy that it can reveal, we must drive beyond to the absolute one-pointedness and one-standingness in which all self-variation ceases. Unable by the claim of the Infinite upon us to dwell for ever in the bonds of the finite or to find there satisfaction and largeness and peace, we have to break all the bonds of individual and universal Nature, destroy all values, symbols, images, selfdefinitions, limitations of the illimitable and lose all littleness and division in the Self that is for ever satisfied with its own infinity. Disgusted with forms, disillusioned of their false and transient attractions, wearied and discouraged by their fleeting impermanence and vain round of recurrence, we must escape from the cycles of Nature into the formlessness and featurelessness of permanent Being. Ashamed of Matter and its grossness, impatient of the purposeless stir and trouble of Life, tired out by the goalless running of Mind or convinced of the vanity of all its aims and objects, we have to release ourselves into the eternal repose and purity of the Spirit. The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal. The Eternal is our refuge; all the rest are false values, the Ignorance and its mazes, a self-bewilderment of the soul in phenomenal Nature.
2.16 - The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The finding must be by a synthesis or an integration and, since development is clearly the law of the human soul, it is most likely to be discovered by an evolutionary synthesis. A synthesis of this kind was attempted in the ancient Indian culture. It accepted four legitimate motives of human living, - man's vital interests and needs, his desires, his ethical and religious aspiration, his ultimate spiritual aim and destiny, - in other words, the claims of his vital, physical and emotional being, the claims of his ethical and religious being governed by a knowledge of the law of God and Nature and man, and the claims of his spiritual longing for the Beyond for which he seeks satisfaction by an ultimate release from an ignorant mundane existence. It provided for a period of education and preparation based on this idea of life, a period of normal living to satisfy human desires and interests under the moderating rule of the ethical and religious part in us, a period of withdrawal and spiritual preparation, and a last period of Renunciation of life and release into the spirit. Evidently, if applied as a universal rule, this prescribed norm, this delineation of the curve of our journey, would miss the fact that it is impossible for all to trace out the whole circle of development in a single short lifetime; but it was modified by the theory of a complete evolution pursued through a long succession of rebirths before one could be fit for a spiritual liberation. This synthesis with its spiritual insight, largeness of view, symmetry, completeness did much to raise the tone of human life; but eventually it collapsed: its place was occupied by an exaggeration of the impulse of Renunciation which destroyed the symmetry of the system and cut it into two movements of life in opposition to each other, the normal life of interests and desires with an ethical and religious colouring and the abnormal or supernormal inner life founded on Renunciation. The old synthesis in fact contained in itself the seed of this exaggeration and could not but lapse into it: for if we regard the escape from life as our desirable end, if we omit to hold up any high offer of life-fulfilment, if life has not a divine significance in it, the impatience of the human intellect and will must end by driving at a short cut and getting rid as much as possible of any more tedious and dilatory processes; if it cannot do that or if it is incapable of following the short cut, it is left with the ego and its satisfactions but with nothing greater to be achieved here. Life is split into the spiritual and the mundane and there can only be an abrupt transition, not a harmony or reconciliation of these parts of our nature.
A spiritual evolution, an unfolding here of the Being within from birth to birth, of which man becomes the central instrument and human life at its highest offers the critical turning-point, is the link needed for the reconciliation of life and spirit; for it allows us to take into account the total nature of man and to recognise the legitimate place of his triple attraction, to earth, to heaven and to the supreme Reality. But a complete solution of its oppositions can be arrived at only on this basis that the lower consciousness of mind, life and body cannot arrive at its full meaning until it is taken up, restated, transformed by the light and power and joy of the higher spiritual consciousness, while the higher too does not stand in its full right relation to the lower by mere rejection, but by this assumption and domination, this taking up of its unfulfilled values, this restatement and transformation, - a spiritualising and supramentalising of the mental, vital and physical nature.
2.17 - THE MASTER ON HIMSELF AND HIS EXPERIENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"God alone dwells inside this body. Such Renunciation of 'woman and gold!' Could I have accomplished that myself? I have never enjoyed a woman, even in a dream.
Totapuri
--
Master's Renunciation
"Well, what do you think of this? When I touch a coin my hand gets twisted; my breathing stops. Further, if tie a knot in the comer of my cloth, I cannot breathe. My breathing stops until the knot is untied."
2.17 - The Soul and Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Uplifted into the Spirit the soul is no longer subject to Nature; it is above this mental activity. It may be above it in detachment and aloofness, udasina, seated above and indifferent, or attracted by and lost in, the absorbing peace or bliss of its undifferentiated, its concentrated spiritual experience of itself; we must then transcend by a complete Renunciation of Nature and cosmic existence, not conquer by a divine and sovereign possession. But the Spirit, the Divine is not only above Nature; it is master of Nature and cosmos; the soul rising into its spiritual poise must at least be capable of the same mastery by its unity with the Divine. It must be capable of controlling its own nature not only in calm or by forcing it to repose, but with a sovereign control of its play and activity. In the lower poise this is not possible because the soul acts through the mind and the mind can only act individually and fragmentarily in a contented obedience or a struggling subjection to that universal Nature through which the divine knowledge and the divine Will are worked out in the cosmos. But the Spirit is in possession of knowledge and will, of which it is the source and cause and not a subject; therefore in proportion as the soul assumes its divine or spiritual being, it assumes also control of the movements of its nature. It becomes, in the ancient language, svarat, free and a self-ruler over the kingdom of its own life and being. But also it increases in control over its environment, its world. This it can only do by universalising itself; for it is the divine and universal will that it must express in its action upon the world. It must first extend its consciousness and see the universe in itself instead of being like the mind limited by the physical, vital, sensational, emotional, intellectual outlook of the little divided personality; it must accept the world-truths, the world-energies, the world-tendencies, the world-purposes as its own instead of clinging to its own intellectual ideas, desires and endeavours, preferences, objects, intentions, impulses; these, so far as they remain, must be harmonised with the universal. It must then submit its knowledge and will at their very source to the divine Knowledge and the divine Will and so arrive through submission at immergence, losing its personal light in the divine Light and its personal initiative in the divine initiative. To be first in tune with the Infinite, in harmony with the Divine, and then to be unified with the Infinite, taken into the Divine is its condition of perfect strength and mastery, and this is precisely the very nature of the spiritual life and the spiritual existence.
The distinction made in the Gita between the Purusha and the prakriti gives us the clue to the various attitudes which the soul can adopt towards Nature in its movement towards perfect freedom and rule. The Purusha is, says the Gita, witness, upholder, source of the sanction, knower, lord, enjoyer; prakriti executes, it is the active principle and must have an operation corresponding to the attitude of the Purusha. The soul may assume, if it wishes, the poise of the pure witness, saksi; it may look on at the action of Nature as a thing from which it stands apart; it watches, but does not itself participate. We have seen the importance of this quietistic capacity; it is the basis of the movement of withdrawal by which we can say of everything, -- body, life, mental action, thought, sensation, emotion, -- "This is prakriti working in the life, mind and body, it is not myself, it is not even mine," and thus come to the soul's separation from these things and to their quiescence. This may, therefore, be an attitude of Renunciation or at least of non-participation, tamasika, with a resigned and inert endurance of the natural action so long as it lasts, rajasika, with a disgust, aversion and recoil from it, sattvika, with a luminous intelligence of the soul's separateness and the peace and joy of aloofness and repose; but also it may be attended by an equal and impersonal delight as of a spectator at a show, joyous but unattached and ready to rise up at any moment and as joyfully depart. The attitude of the Witness at its highest is the absolute of unattachment and freedom from affection by the phenomena of the cosmic existence.
As the pure Witness, the soul refuses the function of upholder or sustainer of Nature. The upholder, bharta, is another, God or Force or Maya, but not the soul, which only admits the reflection of the natural action upon its watching consciousness, but not any responsibility for maintaining or continuing it. It does not say "All this is in me and maintained by me, an activity of my being," but at the most "This is imposed on me, but really external to myself." Unless there is a clear and real duality in existence, this cannot be the whole truth of the matter; the soul is the upholder also, it supports in its being the energy which unrolls the spectacle of the cosmos and which conducts its energies. When the Purusha accepts this upholding, it may do it still passively and without attachment, feeling that it contri butes the energy but not that it controls and determines it. The control is another. God or Force or the very nature of Maya; the soul only upholds indifferently so long as it must, so long perhaps as the force of its past sanction and interest in the energy continues and refuses to be exhausted. But if the attitude of the upholder is fully accepted, an important step forward has been taken towards identification with the active Brahman and his joy of cosmic being. For the Purusha has become the active giver of the sanction.
--
This it becomes when the soul accepts its complete function as the knower, lord and enjoyer of Nature. As the knower the soul possesses the knowledge of the force that acts and determines, it sees the values of being which are realising themselves in cosmos, it is in the secret of Fate. But the force is itself determined by the knowledge which is its origin and the source and standardiser of its valuations and effectuations of values. Therefore in proportion as the soul becomes again the knower, it becomes also the controller of the action. Nor can it do this without becoming the active enjoyer, bhokta. In the lower being the enjoyment is of a twofold kind, positive and negative, which in the electricity of sensation translates itself into joy and suffering; but in the higher it is an actively equal enjoyment of the divine delight in self-manifestation. There is no loss of freedom, no descent into an ignorant attachment. The man free in his soul is aware that the Divine is the lord of the action of Nature, that Maya is His Knowledge-Will determining and effecting all, that Force is the Will side of this double divine Power in which knowledge is always present and effectual; he is aware of himself also, even individually, as a centre of the divine existence, -- a portion of the Lord, the Gita expresses it, -- controlling so far the action of Nature which he views, upholds, sanctions, enjoys, knows and by the determinative power of knowledge controls; and when he universalises himself, his knowledge reflects only the divine knowledge, his will effectuates only the divine will, he enjoys only the divine delight and not an ignorant personal satisfaction. Thus the Purusha preserves its freedom in its possession, Renunciation of limited personality even in its representative enjoyment and delight of cosmic being. It has taken up fully in the higher poise the true relations of the soul and Nature.
Purusha and prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha: the Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its shakti, -- that is prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects, unrolling the worlds and viewing them, acting in them and upholding the action, executing works and giving the sanction without which the force of Nature cannot act, executing and controlling the knowledge and the will and knowing and controlling the determinations of the knowledge-force and will-force, ministering to the enjoyment and enjoying, -- the Soul possessor, observer, knower, lord of Nature, Nature expressing the being, executing the will, satisfying the self-knowledge, ministering to the delight of being of the soul. There we have, founded on the very nature of being, the supreme and the universal relation of prakriti with Purusha. The absolute joy of the soul in itself and, based upon that, the absolute joy of the soul in Nature are the divine fulfilment of the relation.
2.18 - SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M. (to himself): "So we must accept both-the Absolute and the Relative. Since the introduction of the Vednta philosophy in Germany, some of the European philosophers, too, have been thinking along that line. But the Master says that one cannot realize both the Nitya and the Lila without complete Renunciation, that is to say, without totally giving up 'woman and gold'. Such a person must be a true renouncer; he must be totally detached from the world. Here lies the real difference between him and such European philosophers as Hegel"
Dr. Sarkar on Incarnation
--
(To the doctor) "The Renunciation of 'woman and gold' is meant for the sannysi. He must not look even at the picture of a woman. Do you know what a woman is to a man?
She is like spiced pickle. The very thought of pickle brings water to the tongue; it doesn't have to be brought near the tongue.
--
"But this Renunciation is not meant for householders like you. It is meant only for sannysis. You may live among women, as far as possible in a spirit of detachment. Now and then you must retire into solitude and think of God. Women must not be allowed there. You can lead an unattached life to a great extent if you have faith in God and love for Him. After the birth of one or two children a married couple should live as brother and sister. They should then constantly pray to God that their minds may not run after sense pleasures any more and that they may not have any more children."
GIRISH (to the doctor, with a smile): "You have already spent three or four hours here.
2.19 - THE MASTER AND DR. SARKAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
(To Dr. Sarkar and Dr. Dukari) "But Renunciation of 'woman and gold' is not meant for you. You may renounce these mentally. That is why I said to the goswamis: 'Why do you speak of Renunciation?' That will not do for you. You have to attend the daily worship of Syamasundar.'
Hard rules for sannysis
"Total Renunciation is for sannysis. They must not look even at the picture of a woman.
To them a woman is poison. They must keep themselves at least ten cubits away from her; and if that is not possible, at least one cubit. And they must not talk much with a woman, no matter how devout she may be. Further, they should choose their dwelling at a place where they will never, or scarcely ever, see the face of a woman.
2.2.01 - Work and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is of course also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot live ascetically or follow a life as bare as the barest anchorites. Obviously, greed for wealth and money-making has to be absent from his nature as much as greed for food or any other greed and all attachment to these things must be renounced from his consciousness. But I do not regard the ascetic way of living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by the Divine. If it were not so, there would not have been great spiritual men like Janaka or Vidura in India and even there would have been no Krishna or else Krishna would have been not the Lord of Brindavan and Mathura and Dwarka or a prince and warrior or the charioteer of Kurukshetra, but only one more great anchorite. The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the Renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmi, is un-Indian, European or Western and unspiritual.
***
2.2.04 - Practical Concerns in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What most want is that things should be done according to their desire without check or reference. The talk of perfection is humbug. Perfection does not consist in everybody being a law to himself. Perfection comes by Renunciation of desires and surrender to a higher Will.
***
2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "What will mere scholarship accomplish without discrimination and Renunciation? I go into a strange mood while thinking of the Lotus Feet of God. The cloth on my body drops to the ground and I feel something creeping up from my feet to the top of my head. In that state I regard all as mere straw. If I see a pundit without discrimination and love of God, I regard him as a bit of straw.
"One day Dr.Rmnryan had been arguing with me, when suddenly I went into that mood. I said to him: 'What are you saying? What can you understand of God by reasoning? How little you can understand of His creation! Shame! You have the pettifogging mind of a weaver!' Seeing the state of my mind he began to weep and gently stroked my feet."
--
MASTER: "But a man who feels intense Renunciation within doesn't calculate that way.
He doesn't say to himself, 'I shall first make an arrangement for the family and then practise sdhan.' No, he doesn't feel that way if he has developed intense dispassion. A goswami said in the course of his preaching, 'If a man has ten thousand rupees he can maintain himself on the income; then, free from worries, he can pray to God.'
--
A few minutes later Narendra began to sing. The songs were full of the spirit of Renunciation. He sang:
O Lord, must all my days pass by so utterly in vain?
2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Shall I tell you the truth? What will you gain by mere scholarship? The pundits hear many things and know many things-the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras. But of what avail is mere scholarship? Discrimination and Renunciation are necessary. If a man has discrimination and Renunciation, then one can listen to him. But of what use are the words of a man who looks on the world as the essential thing?
"What is the lesson of the Git? It is what you get by repeating the word ten times. As you repeat 'Git', 'Git', the word becomes reversed into 'tagi', 'tagi'-which implies Renunciation. He alone has understood the secret of the Git who has renounced his attachment to 'woman and gold' and has directed his entire love to God. It isn't necessary to read the whole of the Git. The purpose of reading the book is served if one practises Renunciation."
DR. SARKAR: "A man once explained the meaning of Radha to me. He said to me: 'Do you know the meaning of Radha? Reverse the word and it becomes "dhara." That's the meaning.' (All laugh.) Well, let us stop here for today."
--
M: "You told him about that Bhagavata scholar who owned bullocks and ploughs. (The Master smiles.) Further, you told him about the king who said to the pundit of the Bhagavata, 'You had better understand it yourself first.' (The Master smiles.) "Then you told him about the Git, whose essence is the Renunciation of 'woman and gold', Renunciation of the attachment to 'woman and gold'. You said to him, 'How can a worldly man who has not renounced "woman and gold" teach others?' Perhaps he didn't understand the drift of your words. He changed the subject."
Sri Ramakrishna was thinking about the welfare of his devotees. Purna and Manindra were two of his young devotees. He sent Manindra to talk to Purna.
2.21 - Towards the Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And first the Gita restates the body of its message. It summarises the whole outline and essence in the short space of fifteen verses, lines of a brief and concentrated expression and significance that miss nothing of the kernel of the matter, couched in phrases of the most lucid precision and clearness. And they must therefore be scanned with care, must be read deeply in the light of all that has gone before, because here it is evidently intended to extract what the Gita itself considers to be the central sense of its own teaching. The statement sets out from the original starting-point of the thought in the book, the enigma of human action, the apparently insuperable difficulty of living in the highest self and spirit while yet we continue to do the works of the world. The easiest way is to give up the problem as insoluble, life and action as an illusion or an inferior movement of existence to be abandoned as soon as we can rise out of the snare of the world into the truth of spiritual being. That is the ascetic solution, if it can be called a solution; at any rate it is a decisive and effective way out of the enigma, a way to which ancient Indian thought of the highest and most meditative kind, as soon as it commenced to turn at a sharp incline from its first large and free synthesis, had moved with an always increasing preponderance. The Gita like the Tantra and on certain sides the later religions attempts to preserve the ancient balance: it maintains the substance and foundation of the original synthesis, but the form has been changed and renovated in the light of a developing spiritual experience. This teaching does not evade the difficult problem of reconciling the full active life of man with the inner life in the highest self and spirit; it advances what it holds to be the real solution. It does not at all deny the efficacy of the ascetic Renunciation of life for its own purpose, but it sees that that cuts instead of loosening the knot of the riddle and therefore it accounts it an inferior method and holds its own for the better way. The two paths both lead us out of the lower ignorant normal nature of man to the pure spiritual consciousness and so far both must be held to be valid and even one in essence: but where one stops short and turns back, the other advances with a firm subtlety and high courage, opens a gate on unexplored vistas, completes man in God and unites and reconciles in the spirit soul and Nature.
And therefore in the first five of these verses the Gita so phrases its statement that it shall be applicable to both the way of the inner and the way of the outer Renunciation and yet in such a manner that one has only to assign to some of their common expressions a deeper and more inward meaning in order to get the sense and thought of the method favoured by the Gita. The difficulty of human action is that the soul and nature of man seem fatally subjected to many kinds of bondage, the prison of the ignorance, the meshes of the ego, the chain of the passions, the hammering insistence of the life of the moment, an obscure and limited circle without an issue. The soul shut up in this circle of action has no freedom, no leisure or light of self-knowledge to make the discovery of its self and the true value of life and meaning of existence. It has indeed such hints of its being as it can get from its active personality and dynamic nature, but the standards of perfection it can erect there are much too temporal, restricted and relative to be a satisfactory key to its own riddle.
How, while absorbed and continually forced outward by the engrossing call of its active nature, is it to get back to its real self and spiritual existence? The ascetic Renunciation and the way of the Gita are both agreed that it must first of all renounce this absorption, must cast from it the external solicitation of outward things and separate silent self from active nature; it must identify itself with the immobile Spirit and live in the silence.
It must arrive at an inner inactivity, nais.karmya. It is therefore this saving inner passivity that the Gita puts here as the first object of its Yoga, the first necessary perfection in it or Siddhi.
"An understanding without attachment in all things, a soul selfconquered and empty of desire, man attains by Renunciation a supreme perfection of nais.karmya."
This ideal of Renunciation, of a self-conquered stillness, spiritual passivity and freedom from desire is common to all the ancient wisdom. The Gita gives us its psychological foundation with an unsurpassed completeness and clearness. It rests on the common experience of all seekers of self-knowledge that there are two different natures and as it were two selves in us. There is the lower self of the obscure mental, vital and physical nature subject to ignorance and inertia in the very stuff of its consciousness and especially in its basis of material substance, kinetic and vital indeed by the power of life but without inherent selfpossession and self-knowledge in its action, attaining in the mind to some knowledge and harmony, but only with difficult effort and by a constant struggle with its own disabilities. And there is the higher nature and self of our spiritual being, self-possessed and self-luminous but in our ordinary mentality inaccessible to our experience. At times we get glimpses of this greater thing within us, but we are not consciously within it, we do not live in its light and calm and illimitable splendour. The first of these two very different things is the Gita's nature of the three gunas.
Its seeing of itself is centred in the ego idea, its principle of action is desire born of ego, and the knot of ego is attachment to the objects of the mind and sense and the life's desire. The inevitable constant result of all these things is bondage, settled subjection to a lower control, absence of self-mastery, absence of selfknowledge. The other greater power and presence is discovered to be nature and being of the pure spirit unconditioned by ego, that which is called in Indian philosophy self and impersonal Brahman. Its principle is an infinite and an impersonal existence one and the same in all: and, since this impersonal existence is without ego, without conditioning quality, without desire, need or stimulus, it is immobile and immutable; eternally the same, it regards and supports but does not share or initiate the action of the universe. The soul when it throws itself out into active
--
One must become an understanding unattached in all things, asakta-buddhih. sarvatra. Then all desire passes away from the soul in its silence; it is free from all longings, vigata-spr.hah.. That brings with it or it makes possible the subjection of our lower and the possession of our higher self, a possession dependent on complete self-mastery, secured by a radical victory and conquest over our mobile nature, jitatma. And all this amounts to an absolute inner Renunciation of the desire of things, sannyasa.
Renunciation is the way to this perfection and the man who has thus inwardly renounced all is described by the Gita as the true Sannyasin. But because the word usually signifies as well an outward Renunciation or sometimes even that alone, the Teacher uses another word, tyaga, to distinguish the inward from the outward withdrawal and says that Tyaga is better than
Sannyasa. The ascetic way goes much farther in its recoil from the dynamic Nature. It is enamoured of Renunciation for its own sake and insists on an outward giving up of life and action, a complete quietism of soul and nature. That, the Gita replies, is not possible entirely so long as we live in the body. As far as it is possible, it may be done, but such a rigorous diminution of works is not indispensable: it is not even really or at least ordinarily advisable. The one thing needed is a complete inner quietism and that is all the Gita's sense of nais.karmya.
If we ask why this reservation, why this indulgence to the dynamic principle when our object is to become the pure self and the pure self is described as inactive, akarta, the answer is that that inactivity and divorce of self from Nature are not the whole truth of our spiritual release. Self and Nature are in the end one thing; a total and perfect spirituality makes us one with all the Divine in self and in nature. In fact this becoming Brahman, this assumption into the self of eternal silence, brahma-bhuya, is not all our objective, but only the necessary immense base for a still greater and more marvellous divine becoming, madbhava. And to get to that greatest spiritual perfection we have indeed to be immobile in the self, silent in all our members, but also to act in the power, Shakti, Prakriti, the true and high force of the Spirit. And if we ask how a simultaneity of what seem to be two opposites is possible, the answer is that that is the very nature of a complete spiritual being; always it has this double poise of the Infinite. The impersonal self is silent; we too must be inwardly silent, impersonal, withdrawn into the spirit.
--
This first pursuit of impersonality as enjoined by the Gita brings with it evidently a certain completest inner quietism and is identical in its inmost parts and principles of practice with the method of Sannyasa. And yet there is a point at which its tendency of withdrawal from the claims of dynamic Nature and the external world is checked and a limit imposed to prevent the inner quietism from deepening into refusal of action and a physical withdrawal. The Renunciation of their objects by the senses, vis.ayams tyaktva, is to be of the nature of Tyaga; it must be a giving up of all sensuous attachment, rasa, not a refusal of the intrinsic necessary activity of the senses. One must move among surrounding things and act on the objects of the sense-field with a pure, true and intense, a simple and absolute operation of the senses for their utility to the spirit in divine action, kevalair indriyais caran, and not at all for the fulfilment of desire. There is to be vairagya, not in the common significance of disgust of life or distaste for the world action, but Renunciation of raga, as also of its opposite, dves.a. There must be a withdrawal from all mental and vital liking as from all mental and vital disliking whatsoever. And this is asked not for extinction, but in order that there may be a perfect enabling equality in which the spirit can give an unhampered and unlimited assent to the integral and comprehensive divine vision of things and to the integral divine action in Nature. A continual resort to meditation, dhyana-yogaparo nityam, is the firm means by which the soul of man can realise its self of Power and its self of silence. And yet there must be no abandonment of the active life for a life of pure meditation; action must always be done as a sacrifice to the supreme Spirit.
This movement of recoil in the path of Sannyasa prepares an absorbed disappearance of the individual in the Eternal, and Renunciation of action and life in the world is an indispensable step in the process. But in the Gita's path of Tyaga it is a preparation rather for the turning of our whole life and existence and of all action into an integral oneness with the serene and immeasurable being, consciousness and will of the Divine, and it preludes and makes possible a vast and total passing upward of the soul out of the lower ego to the inexpressible perfection of the supreme spiritual nature, para prakr.ti.
This decisive departure of the Gita's thought is indicated in the next two verses, of which the first runs with a significant sequence, "When one has become the Brahman, when one neither grieves nor desires, when one is equal to all beings, then one gets the supreme love and devotion to Me." But in the narrow path of knowledge bhakti, devotion to the personal Godhead, can be only an inferior and preliminary movement; the end, the climax is the disappearance of personality in a featureless oneness with the impersonal Brahman in which there can be no place for bhakti: for there is none to be adored and none to adore; all else is lost in the silent immobile identity of the Jiva with the Atman. Here there is given to us something yet higher than the Impersonal, - here there is the supreme Self who is the supreme Ishwara, here there is the supreme Soul and its supreme nature, here there is the Purushottama who is beyond the personal and impersonal and reconciles them on his eternal heights. The ego personality still disappears in the silence of the Impersonal, but at the same time there remains even with this silence at the back the action of a supreme Self, one greater than the Impersonal.
--
Nothing can be more positive than the Gita's statement in this matter. "And by doing also all actions always lodged in Me he attains by my grace the eternal and imperishable status." This liberating action is of the character of works done in a profound union of the will and all the dynamic parts of our nature with the Divine in ourself and the cosmos. It is done first as a sacrifice with the idea still of our self as the doer. It is done next without that idea and with a perception of the Prakriti as the sole doer. It is done last with the knowledge of that Prakriti as the supreme power of the Divine and a Renunciation, a surrender of all our actions to him with the individual as a channel only and an instrument. Our works then proceed straight from the Self and Divine within us, are a part of the indivisible universal action, are initiated and performed not by us but by a vast transcendent Shakti. All that we do is done for the sake of the Lord seated in the heart of all, for the Godhead in the individual and for the fulfilment of his will in us, for the sake of the Divine in the world, for the good of all beings, for the fulfilment of the world action and the world purpose, or in one word for the sake of the Purushottama and done really by him through his universal Shakti. These divine works, whatever their form or outward character, cannot bind, but are rather a potent means for rising out of this lower Prakriti of the three gunas to the perfection of the supreme, divine and spiritual nature. Disengaged from these mixed and limited dharmas we escape into the immortal Dharma which comes upon us when we make ourselves one in all our consciousness and action with the Purushottama. That oneness here brings with it the power to rise there into the immortality beyond Time. There we shall exist in his eternal transcendence.
Thus these eight verses carefully read in the light of the knowledge already given by the Teacher are a brief, but still a comprehensive indication of the whole essential idea, the entire central method, all the kernel of the complete Yoga of the Gita.
2.22 - THE MASTER AT COSSIPORE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Narendra became silent again. A fire of intense Renunciation was burning within him. His soul was restless tor the vision of God. He resumed the conversation.
NARENDRA (to M.): "You have found peace, but my soul is restless. You are blessed indeed."
--
MASTER: "Well, can you tell me what is happening to these youngsters? Some are running off to Puri and some to Gangasagar. All have renounced their homes. Look at Narendra! When a man is seized with the spirit of intense Renunciation, he regards the world as a deep well and his relatives as venomous cobras."
M: "Yes, sir. Life in the world is full of suffering."
--
MASTER: "Mental Renunciation is the essential thing. That, too, makes one a sannyasi."
Sri Ramakrishna kept silent a few minutes and then went on.
--
Since his father's death Narendra had been in great distress about his mother and brothers. Now and then they had been threatened with starvation. Narendra was the family's only hope: they expected him to earn money and feed them. But Narendra could not appear for his law examination; he was passing through a state of intense Renunciation. He was going to Calcutta that day to make some provision for the family. A friend had agreed to lend him one hundred rupees. That would take care of the family for three months.
NARENDRA: "I am going home. (To M.) I shall visit Mahimacharan on the way. Will you come with me?"
--
"Even after attaining jnana, the jnani can live in the world, retaining vidyamaya, that is to say, bhakti, compassion, Renunciation, and such virtues. This serves him two purposes: first, the teaching of men, and second, the enjoyment of divine bliss. If a jnani remains silent, merged in samadhi, then men's hearts will not be illumined. Therefore Sankaracharya kept the 'ego of Knowledge'. And further, a jnani lives as a devotee, in the company of bhaktas, in order to enjoy and drink deep of the Bliss of God.
"The 'ego of Knowledge' and the 'ego of Devotion' can do no harm; it is the 'wicked I' that is harmful. After realizing God a man becomes like a child. There is no harm in the 'ego of a child'. It is like the reflection of a face in a mirror: the reflection cannot call names. Or it is like a burnt rope, which appears to be a rope but disappears at the slightest puff. The ego that has been burnt in the fire of Knowledge cannot injure anybody. It is an ego only in name.
--
MASTER: "He is beyond the gunas and maya — beyond both the 'maya of knowledge' and the 'maya of ignorance'. 'Woman and gold' is the 'maya of ignorance'. Knowledge, Renunciation, devotion, and other spiritual qualities are the splendours of the 'maya of knowledge'. Sankaracharya kept this 'maya of knowledge'; and that you and these others feel concerned about me is also due to this 'maya of knowledge'.
"Following the 'maya of knowledge' step by step, one attains the Knowledge of Brahman. This 'maya of knowledge' may be likened to the last few steps of the stairs. Next is the roof. Some, even after reaching the roof, go up and down the stairs; that is to say, some, even after realizing God, retain the 'ego of Knowledge'. They retain this in order to teach others, taste divine bliss, and sport with the devotees of God."
NARENDRA: "Some people get angry with me when I speak of Renunciation."
MASTER (in a whisper): " Renunciation is necessary.
--
"I mean mental Renunciation. Not one of those who have come here is a worldly person. Some of them had a slight desire — for instance, a fancy for woman. (Rakhal and M. smile.) And that desire has been fulfilled."
The Master looks at Narendra tenderly and becomes filled with love. Looking, at the devotees, he says, "Grand!"
--
MASTER (smiling): "I see that preparations are going on for a grand Renunciation."
Narendra and the devotees look silently at the Master. Rakhal resumes the conversation.
--
Sri Ramakrishna asks Narendra to sing. Narendra intones a hymn. His mind is full of Renunciation. He sings:
Unsteady is water on the lotus petal;
2.22 - The Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Jiva in his own true spiritual nature. The Renunciation of the first must be complete, the transition to the second absolute.
This is the distinction on which the Gita dwells here with all possible emphasis. On the one side is this poor, trepidant, braggart egoistic condition of consciousness, ahankr.ta bhava, the crippling narrowness of this little helpless separative personality according to whose view-point we ordinarily think and act, feel and respond to the touches of existence. On the other are the vast spiritual reaches of immortal fullness, bliss and knowledge into which we are admitted through union with the divine Being, of whom we are then a manifestation and expression in the eternal light and no longer a disguise in the darkness of the ego-nature.
--
There is little difference between these experiences and the first impersonal activity inculcated by the Gita. The Gita also demands of us Renunciation of desire, attachment and ego, transcendence of the lower nature and the breaking up of our personality and its little formations. The Gita also demands of us to live in the Self and Spirit, to see the Self and Spirit in all and all in the Self and Spirit and all as the Self and Spirit. It demands of us like the Taoist thinker to renounce our natural personality and its works into the Self, the Spirit, the Eternal, the Brahman, atmani sannyasya, brahman.i. And there is this coincidence because that is always man's highest and freest possible experience of a quietistic inner largeness and silence reconciled with an outer dynamic active living, the two coexistent or fused together in the impersonal infinite reality and illimitable action of the one immortal Power and sole eternal Existence. But the Gita adds a phrase of immense import that alters everything, atmani atho mayi. The demand is to see all things in the self and then in "Me" the Ishwara, to renounce all action into the Self, Spirit, Brahman and thence into the supreme Person, the Purushottama. There is here a still greater and profounder complex of spiritual experience, a larger transmutation of the significance of human life, a more mystic and heart-felt sweep of the return of the stream to the ocean, the restoration of personal works and the cosmic action to the Eternal Worker. The stress on pure impersonality has this difficulty and incompleteness for us that it reduces the inner person, the spiritual individual, that persistent miracle of our inmost being, to a temporary, illusive and mutable formation in the Infinite. The Infinite alone exists and except in a passing play has no true regard on the soul of the living creature. There can be no real and permanent relation between the soul in man and the Eternal, if that soul is even as the always renewable body no more than a transient phenomenon in the Infinite.
It is true that the ego and its limited personality are even such a temporary and mutable formation of Nature and therefore it
2.23 - The Core of the Gita.s Meaning, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Gita rejects none of these things in their place, - for it insists on the performance of the social duty, the following of the dharma for the man who has to take his share in the common action, accepts Ahinsa as part of the highest spiritualethical ideal and recognises the ascetic Renunciation as a way of spiritual salvation. And yet it goes boldly beyond all these conflicting positions; greatly daring, it justifies all life to the spirit as a significant manifestation of the one Divine Being and asserts the compatibility of a complete human action and a complete spiritual life lived in union with the Infinite, consonant with the highest Self, expressive of the perfect Godhead.
All the problems of human life arise from the complexity of our existence, the obscurity of its essential principle and the secrecy of the inmost power that makes out its determinations and governs its purpose and its processes. If our existence were of one piece, solely material-vital or solely mental or solely spiritual, or even if the others were entirely or mainly involved in one of these or were quite latent in our subconscient or our superconscient parts, there would be nothing to perplex us; the material and vital law would be imperative or the mental would be clear to its own pure and unobstructed principle or the spiritual selfexistent and self-sufficient to spirit. The animals are aware of no problems; a mental god in a world of pure mentality would admit none or would solve them all by the purity of a mental rule or the satisfaction of a rational harmony; a pure spirit would be above them and self-content in the infinite. But the existence of man is a triple web, a thing mysteriously physicalvital, mental and spiritual at once, and he knows not what are
2.23 - THE MASTER AND BUDDHA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
NARENDRA: "How great his Renunciation was! Born a prince, he renounced everything! If a man has nothing, no wealth at all, what does his Renunciation amount to? After attaining Buddhahood and experiencing Nirvana, Buddha once visited his home and exhorted his wife, his son, and many others of the royal household to embrace the life of Renunciation. How intense his Renunciation was! But look at Vyasa's conduct! He forbade his son Sukadeva to give up the world, saying, 'My son, practise religion as a householder.'"
Sri Ramakrishna was silent. As yet he had not uttered a word.
--
"But it is quite different with sannyasis. They are able to fix their minds on God alone, completely withdrawing them from 'woman and gold'. They can enjoy the Bliss of God alone. A man of true Renunciation cannot enjoy anything but God. He leaves any place where people talk of worldly things; he listens only to spiritual talk. A man of true Renunciation never speaks about anything but God. The bees light only on flowers, in order to sip honey; they do not enjoy anything else."
Girish went to the small terrace to rinse his hands.
2.24 - THE MASTERS LOVE FOR HIS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Narendra's scepticism — Narendra and M. — Devotees about the Master — Bliss of Brahman and bliss of the world — Master on Buddha — On "woman and gold" — Sri Ramakrishna and woman — Encouraging Bhavanath — Hirananda — Narendra argues with Hirananda — Narendra's spirit of Renunciation — Master's exalted vision — Master and Hirananda — Girish and M. — Master's kindness to M. and his wife.
Wednesday, April 21, 1886
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The loin-cloth of the sannyasi; it is an emblem of Renunciation.
As Sri Ramakrishna heard the line, "Contemplating day and night the Absolute Brahman", he said in a very low voice, "Ah!" Then, by a sign, he said to the devotees, "This is the characteristic of the yogi."
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^The loin-cloth of the sannyasi; it is an emblem of Renunciation.
^After Sri Ramakrishna's death M. published his notes of conversations with the Master in five volumes. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna is an English translation of these books from the original Bengali.
2.24 - The Message of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
"If, again, there were only the truth of an eternal impersonal self that neither acts nor creates, then the world and your soul would be illusions without any real basis. If you limit your faith and knowledge to this one lonely aspect, the Renunciation of life and action is your only resource. But God in the world and you in the world are realities; the world and you are true and actual powers and manifestations of the Supreme. Therefore accept life and action and do not reject them. One with God in your impersonal self and essence, an eternal portion of the Godhead turned to him by the love and adoration of your spiritual personality for its own Infinite, make of your natural being what it is intended to be, an instrument of works, a channel, a power of the Divine. That it always is in its truth, but now unconsciously and imperfectly, through the lower nature, doomed to a disfigurement of the Godhead by your ego. Make it consciously and perfectly and without any distortion by ego a power of the
Divine in his supreme spiritual nature and a vehicle of his will and his works. In this way you will live in the integral truth of your own being and you will possess the integral God-union, the whole and flawless Yoga.
--
"This way of divine works is a far better release and a more perfect way and solution than the physical Renunciation of life and works. A physical abstention is not entirely possible and is not in the measure of its possibility indispensable to the spirit's freedom; it is besides a dangerous example, for it exerts a misleading influence on ordinary men. The best, the greatest set the standard which the rest of humanity strive to follow. Then since action is the nature of the embodied spirit, since works are the will of the eternal Worker, the great spirits, the master minds should set this example. World-workers should they be, doing all works of the world without reservation, God-workers free, glad and desireless, liberated souls and natures.
* *
2.25 - AFTER THE PASSING AWAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Baranagore Monastery — First members — Surendra's magnanimity — Ascetic zeal of the young sannyasis — Renunciation of "woman and gold" — Siva festival at the math — Narendra's reminiscences of the Master — Narendra's foreknowledge of things — Narendra's ego — About Nityagopal — Rakhal's reminiscences of the Master — The Master and Narendra — Master's love for Narendra — Prasanna's austere sadhana — Vidyasagar's reluctance about preaching — About Sashi — Rakhal's yearning for God — Tarak and Prasanna — Narendra asks Prasanna to practise self-surrender — Narendra's longing for God-vision — About Rabindra.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA passed away on Sunday, August 15, 1886, plunging his devotees and disciples into a sea of grief. They were like men in a shipwreck. But a strong bond of love held them together, and they found assurance and courage in each other's company. They could not enjoy the friendship of worldly people and would talk only of their Master. "Shall we not behold him again?" — this was the one theme of their thought and the one dream of their sleep. Alone, they wept for him; walking in the streets of Calcutta, they were engrossed in the thought of him. The Master had once said to M., "It becomes difficult for me to give up the body, when I realize that after my death you will wander about weeping for me." Some of them thought: "He is no longer in this world. How surprising that we still enjoy living! We could give up our bodies if we liked, but still we do not." Time and again Sri Ramakrishna had told them that God reveals Himself to His devotees if they yearn for Him and call on Him with whole-souled devotion. He had assured them that God listens to the prayer of a sincere heart.
--
Surendra was indeed a blessed soul. It was he who laid the foundation of the great Order later associated with Sri Ramakrishna's name. His devotion and sacrifice made it possible for those earnest souls to renounce the world for the realization of God. Through him Sri Ramakrishna made it possible for them to live in the world as embodiments of his teaching, the Renunciation of "woman and gold" and the realization of God.
The brothers lived at the math like orphan boys. Sometimes they would not have the money to pay their house-rent; sometimes they would have no food in the monastery. Surendra would come and settle all these things. He was the big brother of the monks. Later on, when they thought of his genuine love, the members of this first math shed tears of gratitude.
The new monastery became known among the Master's devotees as the Baranagore Math. Narendra, Rakhal, and the other young disciples were filled with intense Renunciation. One day Rakhal's father came to the math and asked Rakhal to return home. "Why do you take the trouble to come here?" Rakhal said to him. "I am very happy here. Please pray to God that you may forget me and that I may forget you too." The young disciples said to each other: "We shall never return to the worldly life. The Master enjoined upon us the Renunciation of 'woman and gold'. How can we go back to our families?"
Sashi had taken charge of the daily worship in the math. The Master's relics had been brought from Balaram's house and Sri Ramakrishna was worshipped daily in the worship hall. Narendra supervised the household. He was the leader of the monastery. He would often tell his brother disciples, "The selfless actions enjoined in the Gita are worship, japa, meditation, and so on, and not worldly duties." The brothers at the math depended on him tor their spiritual inspiration. He said to them, "We must practise sadhana; otherwise we shall not be able to realize God."
--
Narendra was smoking and talking to M. and the others. He said; "Nothing can be achieved in spiritual life without the Renunciation of 'woman and gold'. 'Woman' is the doorway to hell. All people are under the control of women. The cases of Siva and Krishna are quite different. Siva turned His Consort into His servant. Sri Krishna, no doubt, led a householder's life. But how unattached He was! How quickly He renounced Vrindavan and the gopis!"
RAKHAL: "And how He renounced Dwaraka, too, where He was king!"
--
M. arrived at the Baranagore Math to visit his brother disciples. Devendra accompanied him. M. had been coming to the monastery very frequently and now and then had spent a day or two. The previous week he had spent three days at the math. He was very eager to observe the spirit of intense Renunciation of these young men.
It was evening. M. intended to spend the night in the monastery. Sashi lighted the lamp in the worship room and chanted the name of God. Next he burnt incense before all the pictures of gods and goddesses in the various rooms. The evening service began. Sashi conducted the worship. The members of the math, with M. and Devendra, stood with folded hands and sang the hymn of the arati.
--
NARENDRA: "Does mere emotion make a man spiritually great? Youngsters like Kali, Sarat, Sashi, and Sarada are more spiritual than Gopal. How great their Renunciation is! Gopal does not accept the Master, does he?"
M: "That is true. The Master remarked that Gopal did not belong to the circle of his devotees. But I saw him show great reverence for Sri Ramakrishna."
--
Narendra and the other brothers of the monastery were full of yearning for God-realization. A fire of intense Renunciation raged in their hearts.
NARENDRA: "I don't care for anything. You see, I am now talking with you, but I feel like getting up this minute and running away."
--
NARENDRA: "I see that your body is the obstacle in your path of Renunciation. Isn't that so? I mean you, Devendra Babu—"
M. laughed and said to himself, "Is it merely the body?"
--
Rakhal had renounced the world, leaving behind his wife and child. A fire of intense Renunciation burnt day and night in his heart. He was thinking seriously of going away, by himself, to the bank of the Narmada or some other holy place. Still, he was trying to persuade Prasanna not to run away from the monastery.
RAKHAL (to Prasanna): "Where do you want to go, running away from here? Here you are in the company of holy men. Wouldn't it be foolish to run away from this? Where will you find another like Narendra?"
--
M. remained spellbound as he listened to these hymns sung by Narendra. He said to himself: "How intense Narendra's dispassion is! This is how he has infused the spirit of dispassion into the hearts of the other brothers of the monastery. The very contact with them awakens in the hearts of the Master's householder devotees the desire for Renunciation of 'woman and gold'. Ah, how blessed are these all-renouncing brothers! Why has the Master kept us few in the world? Will he show us a way? Will he give us the spirit of Renunciation, or will he delude us with worldliness?"
After the meal all were resting. The elder Gopal was copying some songs. Niranjan was on a visit to his mother. Sarat, Baburam, and Kali were in Puri.
--
Prasanna asked Rabindra to change his wet cloth and gave him a dry gerrua cloth. Narendra said to M., "Now he is going to put on the cloth of Renunciation."
M. (with a smile): "What kind of Renunciation?"
NARENDRA: "Why, the Renunciation of 'woman and gold'."
Rabindra put on the ochre cloth and entered Kali Tapasvi's room to meditate.
2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
| 04-10-25 | Yoga: marriage, Renunciation, love, passivity-activity |
| 07-10-25 | Karma Yoga, Raja Yoga, and this Yoga |
2.3.02 - The Supermind or Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Ananda. But such a passage would be rare; ordinarily a silence of the mind, a liberation of the consciousness, a Renunciation of its belief in the final value or truth of the mind's imperfect representations or constructions would be enough for the higher working to be possible.
(7) Now about the cosmic consciousness and Nirvana. Cosmic consciousness is a complex matter. To begin with, there are two sides to it, the experience of the Self free, infinite, silent, inactive, one in all and beyond all and the direct experience of the cosmic Energy and its forces, workings and formations, this latter experience not being complete till one has the sense of being commensurate with the universe or pervading, exceeding and containing it. Till then there may be direct contacts, communications, interchanges with cosmic forces, beings, movements, but not the full unity of mind with the cosmic Mind, of life with the cosmic Life, of body and physical consciousness with the cosmic material Energy and its substance. Again there may be a realisation of the Cosmic Self which is not followed by the realisation of the dynamic universal oneness. Or on the contrary there may be some dynamic universalising of consciousness without the experience of the free static Self omnipresent everywhere, - the preoccupation with and pleasure of the greater energies that one would thus experience would stop the way to that liberation. Also the identification or universalisation may be more on one plane or level of consciousness than on another, predominantly mental or predominantly emotional (through universal sympathy or love) or vital of another kind (experience of the universal life forces) or physical. But in any case, even with the full realisation and experience it should be evident that this
29.03 - In Her Company, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Renunciation is there, no renouncer;
Way there is, no wayfarer.
30.03 - Spirituality in Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In fact, in the eyes of a sadhu, that God alone is holy who is pure, unsullied and who cannot be stained by any earthly impulse. The God of a sadhu shines there alone where there is the complete absence of human impurity, sense-turmoil and grossness. In the eyes of a sadhu he alone is the real artist whose aim is to manifest God who is behind the play of daily transient activities of life and who is All-Good and free from all worldly sin. That artist alone is dear to him who has depicted men as above wants and afflictions and the restlessness of the senses and endowed them with the glow of nobility. To a sadhu God may possibly be a disciplined, liberated Being, but to an artist He is also the slave of the mind, vital and body. A sadhu takes delight in Renunciation, sanctity. It is the artist who can reveal that the delight of the physical enjoyment or even of the enjoyment which we call impure is no other than and in no way inferior to the delight of God. A sadhu may remain absorbed in tranquil pure bliss, but, if he fails to appreciate the ambrosial bliss which the artist finds in his artistic work in the midst of the surging current of earthly life, then has he not found God piecemeal? God dwells in the generosity, the nobility of man as well as in the regions beyond the senses. But the same God also dwells in the meanness, narrowness and sensuality of man. The sadhu wants the former. But the artist can portray both the aspects equally in the full manifestation of their truth and beauty.
The aim and object of a sadhu and those of an artist are not the same. A sadhu and a reformer want to mould men and the world after an ideal. Chastity, truthfulness are such ideals. The demand of a sadhu is that all women for all time should remain chaste and all men remain truthful for ever. That is why he is averse to seeing and showing the picture of an unchaste woman or a man addicted to falsehood. For he fears that such an act may awake unchastity and falsehood in the society. The things that are morally undesirable must be undesirable also in art and in all fields of life. But the artist argues: "The things that we do not want to have or to become also harbour God. They too are images of the One who is infinite. They too contain truth. They too have their special nature and the secret reason of their existence and I would comprehend them and manifest them before the world's eyes. I may not like sin, but why should I remain blind to it? In actual life I may very well be a pious man, if it be the Will of God to establish virtue in the world through me, but in spite of being a virtuous man why should I refrain from appreciating the play, the object and the ultimate essence of sin? Nobody likes to grow old. Eternal youth should be the aim of all. The gods have eternal youth. But, for that reason, are we to say that there is no truth or beauty in old age? Or are we to depict the picture of an old man in such a way that men may have disrespect and hatred for years and feel more attracted to the youthful than to the aged?"
--
We have already said that the fundamental principle of art is the expression of the infinite truth. This truth is vast, all-pervading. There is a hidden truth in everything which may appear beautiful or ugly to the eyes, which may appear attractive or repulsive to our disposition or which may appear good or bad to our intelligence. The truth of a thing consists in its quality, in its uniqueness and speciality and in the part it has to play on the stage of the world. This truth itself is eternal and full of delight. The artist tries to manifest the essence of this truth. Whatever there is in the world may not appear conducive to welfare or convenient to a sadhu or a religious reformer. But there is nothing that is absolutely untrue. Everything manifests itself through some truth in the core of its being. This truth is the solid delight itself, and therein lies its beauty and this itself is the image of God in it. The manifestation of this God is the aim of the artist. The ability of the artist that can awaken the spirit of an absolute Renunciation is the same as that which can awaken the thirst for action in the man of action. The artist's prestige does not suffer even when he depicts the madness of lust in a lustful man. There is no conflict between art and true spirituality. Rather, spirituality is the life-breath of art and its alpha and omega. Spirituality means things related to the Self. The quintessence of the yogi lies in his yoga and that of a carnal man in his carnality. The artist will reach the acme of his art if he can bring out the quintessence of yoga in the picture of a yogi and the quintessence of carnality in the portrait of the carnal, and godliness in the picture of the gods and beast-hood in the likeness of the beast. In this sense the artist alone is the true spiritual man. An artist may depict Lord Buddha, the Incarnation of compassion, but that is no reason why the atrocious Nadir Shah's picture should be banished from the domain of art. In the pen of Kalidasa is found the spiritual description of sex-appeal. If this picture proves tendentious to some readers, then, is the fault to be ascribed to Kalidasa the poet? His very purpose was to give expression to this idea. Under certain circumstances this idea may prove an obstacle to spiritual practice, but for that reason who can say that it is fundamentally untrue and ugly?
The picture of a naked woman is offensive to our eyes and not only to our sense of morality but also to our aesthetic sense. For the picture we often see is not verily a work of art but only a photograph, an exact imitation of nature. What is ugliness? Ugliness is that which shows only the outer form of a thing, phenomenon, and which fails to show the raison d'treof the thing, noumenon. A photograph of anything is often ugly, be it of a naked woman or a saintly man. For we see therein only a naked woman and not the nakedness of a woman. We see therein a sadhu's lock of hair and the bark for his loins and not his saintliness. If we judge from an artistic point of view then the pictures of the gods and the goddesses drawn by Ravi Varma are as ugly as the worthless novels of the street. Where there is only body and where we do not get the meaning of the body in some deeper truth behind it, the other-worldliness of the saint is an object of contempt equally to the moralist's sense of decency and the artist's aesthetic sense.
30.13 - Rabindranath the Artist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Among Indians, the Bengalis are supposed to have particularly acquired a capacity for appreciation of beauty. That this acquisition has been largely due to the contri bution of the Tagore family can by no means be denied. We do not know how we fared in this respect in the past. Perhaps our sense of beauty was concerned with the movements of the heart or at most with material objects of art. Perhaps, we had never been the worshippers of beauty in the outer life like the Japanese. Yet whatever little we had of that wealth of perfection within or without had died away for some reason or other. The want of vitality, the spirit of Renunciation, poverty, despair, sloth, an immensely careless and extreme indiscipline made our life ugly. At length the influence that had especially manifested around Rabindranath came to our rescue and opened a new channel to create beauty.
Why should we speak of our own country alone, why should we try to keep his influence confined to Bengal or India only? I believe Europe, the West, have honoured him so much not primarily for his poetry. The modern world, freed from its life devoid of beauty due to the unavoidable necessity of technology and machinery of utility and efficiency, was eager at last to follow in the footsteps of Rabindranath to enter into an abode of peace and beauty, a garden of Eden.
30.14 - Rabindranath and Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not for me liberation through Renunciation.
or,
3.03 - The Ascent to Truth, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
unshakable will and nerves of steel are needed to overcome all these obstacles. I am ready for every sacrifice, every austerity, every Renunciation in order to make myself worthy of the sublime goal I have set before me.
ARTIST (turning to the others)
3.03 - The Consummation of Mysticism, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
In it, development culminates in Renunciation; attachment
to things at the same time separates us from everything in
3.06 - The Sage, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One whose mind is well established in all the degrees of knowledge, who, detached from all things, delights in his Renunciation, and who has mastered his appetites, he is resplendent, and even in this world he attains Nirvana.
There is a sentence here which is particularly felicitous. It is the very first sentence we have read, We should seek the company of the sage who shows our faults, as if he were showing us a hidden treasure.
3.07 - The Formula of the Holy Grail, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
in a sense, for it is the formula of Renunciation.1 It is also the Last!
This Cup is said to be full of the Blood of the Saints; that is, every
31.01 - The Heart of Bengal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have spoken about the simple and unostentatious beauty of Bengal. But again, it cannot be denied that Bengal is the worshipper of wealth and grandeur. Bengal has wanted a synthesis between the glorious and the sweet, between the simple and the beautiful. She may not like pomp, but she has never disdained prosperity. Bengal may be fond of life-activity, but on that account she is not prepared to forget spirituality. She might have shunned Renunciation, but did not reject liberation. Bengal wants to remain within herself, but wants to keep communion with the world abroad.
The fundamental quality of the Bengali race is affectionate attachment, family closeness. Throughout Bengal flow the sportive ways of Nature's movements. The Bengalis are often called a feminine race. There is much truth in this saying. A woman's sensitivity, keenness of sensibility, softness and plasticity, unsteadiness of mood, yet at the same time her firm tenacity, her beauty and coyness and, above all, her natural power of direct understanding - these qualities we distinctly find in the character, action, literature and art of the Bengali race. As the vital world is the basis of the women-folk, as the vital tune and colour resound and tinge their entire world, likewise the Bengali race has taken its stand on the vital plane, in the current of the life-force. Bengalis do not know how to resort to bare spirituality. This is why they do not want to be spiritual ascetics in order to understand the meaning of the Illusion; yet they are not content to live in exclusive materialism. This is one of the reasons why they are so backward in trade and commerce and mere politics. They have a reputation for being not at all practical. But actually they have occupied the region between these two extreme ways of life. Owing to this attitude they have had to dangle in the air like Trishanku many times. But that through this attitude they are going to attain to a greater synthesis, a profounder truth, can hardly be denied.
31.05 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In his philosophical views, Vivekananda subscribed to the doctrine of Maya, but in practice Karmayoga was the motto of his life. According to him, the true Mayavada is freedom from the bondage of limitation, the backward pull of attachment - a sense of infinity which sunders the knots of the heart and before which the entire world appears to be quite insignificant, a mere toy in one's palm to play with. Therefore Vivekananda's conception of the Brahman is totally different from the static, immobile and the infinite Void of Shankara. He looked upon the Brahman as absolute Power. The Brahman signifies the full glory and magnificence of the soul of man. He has viewed the static Brahman too with an eye of appreciation, because its immobility comprises perfected power self-absorbed. He aspired for the Infinite Void as well. For the individual soul feels a unique and powerful urge to identify itself with the Infinite Void. Vivekananda has sung the glory of Renunciation as a source of strength. But as a matter of fact, his nature was that of a man poised in meditation and yet not averse to action. He wanted action founded on the Brahman, what he called practical Vedanta. Vivekananda sought to establish India's life on the Brahman. He has awakened and dynamised the eternal soul and spiritual being of India and stimulated her life. .
The eternal power of the Brahman residing in the soul of India has been activised by this lion of a man. But how to give it a practical form in life in all its minute detail and to make a subtle and apt application of it - that he has not indicated; and to approach him for this is to take him amiss.
31.09 - The Cause of Indias Decline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Firstly, in order of time and importance, the root-cause is the institution of Sannyasa, ascetic Renunciation, and the influence of the theory of illusion. What does the ideal of Sannyasa teach us? The world is an illusion. The highest good consists in escape from life and withdrawal from action. The play of the natural instincts and propensities which comprise the ordinary social life of man is considered the lower nature. If man wants to attain to his highest nature, his true Self, then he will have to control his outgoing tendencies, stop them totally and finally turn them inward. The summum bonumof life is the absorption in the static Brahman.1
Needless to say that a creed whose fundamental principle is to escape from life cannot but dry up the sap of life. The outgoing faculties of human life are bound to recede, dwindle and vanish or remain atrophied when it is inculcated that life and the living of life lead one astray from the ultimate Truth. The conception of life as a mirage cannot help life to bloom and manifest. On the contrary, it is sure to effect a gradual cessation of life.
It may be argued however that the ideal of Sannyasa, Renunciation, was never meant for the whole of humanity. The Sannyasins neither expect nor wish that all and sundry should give up their respective vocations in life and retire to the mountains and forests and remain absorbed in the sole communion with God. They also admit the necessity of the outgoing movements in human life. The world is not an ultimate reality, but its pragmatic reality cannot be denied. In the course of leading a normal life when spontaneously a spirit of Renunciation dawns on one, then that is the proper time to accept the life of Renunciation for spiritual attainment. The institution of Sannyasa stands at the top of the society. One has to reach it through the household life fulfilling one's duties as a householder.
Quite true. But the ideal of Renunciation gained slowly and occupied people's mind to such an inordinate degree that all other ideals fell into insignificance before this one ideal. The real truth, the real good lies outside the pale of worldly life. The sooner one can get rid of this life, the better. Besides, life was considered not as a way to the Goal beyond, but as a great obstacle to it. To our normal conception a householder is but a despicable sinner. We began to look down upon life and its activities even when we were within the precincts of life itself. Instead of enlarging all the spheres of our activities we wanted to dig out and cast away their very roots. But in spite of such an attitude the common men did not become pure of passion and life-attachments. For as the Gita declares, "All creatures follow the bent of their own nature; repression is of no avail."
The upshot amounts to this that even while we remained in active life, our zeal for action slowed down and diminished. We became overwhelmed with a pensive mood - a collective sense of the vanity of vanities brooded on our life. The active life was, no doubt; retained, but restricted within a narrow compass, and it was unavoidable. The way of life in the end became confined solely to the physical plane. Only the animal propensities were attended to. We missed all high ideals of action. In the social life we were deprived of all collective enterprises. Our only aim was somehow to satisfy our personal needs and those of our family members. And this is called praktana-kaya, - "exhausting the consequences of past actions". We paid no heed to the high or large enterprises of the life-energy, and these became altogether meaningless to us. All our energies were diverted to and hemmed in the channels of envy, jealousy and ill-feeling; "eat, drink and be merry" - as much as your depleted life-energy allows - became the motto of our life From outside, new shackles were imposed on the life-energy that was already diminishing and dying out from within. The religious codes of Manu and others prescribed the routine of life in all its details. The canons enjoined on us taught how to regulate our life, what to do and not to do. The march of our life followed the rut of the rules laid down by the law-givers for the regulation of our daily life and the duties on special occasions. We could not deviate from the rules in the least for fear of censure and tyranny of the society. The customs that were in the beginning merely a spontaneous discipline changed into an inexorable chain and bondage. It is true that the living current of life does not and cannot adhere to all these injunctions of fixed laws. Life has a rhythm of its own. It creates its own law. The rules that do not take into account this rhythm and law become a hindrance to the natural progress of life. The urge of life, being hampered at every step, is bound to become weakened and crippled. The hard and fast rules that the mentors of our society had introduced even for inessential and trifling matters of life deprived the life-energy of its natural zest and zeal, made it move like .a machine. Consequently our vitality waned and life became nothing more than a bundle of rules. Perhaps the original intention was not to allow the vital energy to run amuck or break the bounds of discipline. Anyhow we missed the art of maintaining freedom in the midst of bondage.2
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The genuine spirituality of India as embodied in the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita has never approved of the Renunciation of life and action. "Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred yearn. Thus it is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man." *Isha Upanihad (Translated by Sri Aurobindo)*
Many people hold that this rigid discipline saved Hinduism and the characteristic features of India during the periods of foreign incursions. But it cannot be admitted that if India had followed her own normal bent of life she would not have been able to save herself, assimilate the foreigners, the members of other religions and cast away what was not worthy of assimilation. On the whole, this austere discipline, the attempt at it which had, as it were, enfeebled and confined the life-energy within a dungeon, has done more harm than good. This is the second cause that robbed India of her vitality.
3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is the entire inner rejection of the sex-pulls and vital pulls that is necessary, a rejection by the whole lower vital itself the outer rejection can only be effective if this inner rejection comes to reinforce it. Usually people adopt the outer rejection because otherwise (if these things are indulged) the inner rejection is not likely to come since the vital trend is always being confirmed by the outer action but if the outer is rejected, then the conflict is confined to the internal desire and fought out there. Naturally an outer Renunciation by itself does not liberate.
***
--
It [ Renunciation of contact with women] has been prescribed not only in your case, but to all who drag the sex-idea into their relations with women in the Yoga. External as well as internal Renunciation of the sex-relation vital or physical has been made the rule. The idea of internal detachment and external indulgence has been found always to be a cover under which the vital continues its operations. For you the continuance would be dangerous both spiritually and for the body.
***
33.01 - The Initiation of Swadeshi, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I thought I should now break the news to my father. I distinctly remember the scene. I was then aged seventeen and a student of the Third Year, not exactly a kid, you see. One evening, as my father rested in bed after his dinner, I came and sat by his side. I had come determined to tell him, but there was a little hesitation about the way of putting it. I could not obviously just blurt out. "I am going to leave home in order to do patriotic work." At last, I managed to put it like this, for we had a deep respect for our father: "I shall not be studying any more at the Presidency College; I shall join the National College." To join the National College had become a craze at the time, and I thought that to put it that way would be to give the least offence. I stopped with that one sentence. My father listened to me and then he began his discourse: "Whatever you do, you should do after a good deal of thought. Never do anything under a sudden impulse, for that might later give you cause for regrets. First, you must remember that you are the eldest son in the family. We are getting on in age and you have younger brothers and sisters of whom it is incumbent on you to take charge, or else they would find themselves thrown out on the streets. Secondly, if you want to serve your country, that is a good thing and I do not stand in your way. But if you can succeed in becoming a somebody, in learning and position, then you would be able to do much better and bigger things, wouldn't you? You don't have to go very many years, at the most two or three, to finish your education. Once you acquire a decent position in life, you will not need to be just a common worker; you can, with your learning and intellectual gifts, become one of the leaders. Look at Atul Gupta, for instance. He didn't have to give up his studies, he has just done his M.A. and is now reading Law. He has acquired a name and some fame and will be able to work for the country ten times better as a man of position. And besides, there is another thing. If you feel a true urge for Renunciation, like Shankara or Chaitanya, that is another matter, for that would add lustre to our family. But you must first look into yourself carefully to see if you have developed in yourself that strength and capacity. If it is just the caprice of a moment, then there will be no end of regrets afterwards..."
He went on in this strain for some time. I sat silent and motionless like a block of stone. But I felt a sense of release within: I had said what I wanted to say, done my duty. And as to my decision, that would be unshaken, "as long as shone a sun and a moon", yavaccandra-divakarau.
37.07 - Ushasti Chakrayana (Chhandogya Upanishad), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
Indra - Virochana and Prajapati Asceticism and Renunciation
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On Upanishadic ThoughtUshasti Chakrayana (Chhandogya Upanishad)
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Indra - Virochana and Prajapati Asceticism and Renunciation
3.7.1.12 - Karma and Justice, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This will be evident if we consider our own greater motives of action. The pursuit of Truth may entail on me penalties and sufferings; the service of my country or the world may demand from me loss of my outward happiness and good fortune or the destruction of my body; the increase of my strength of will and greatness of spirit may be only possible by the ardours of suffering and the firm Renunciation of joys and pleasures. I must still follow after Truth, I must do the service to my race my soul demands from me; I must increase my strength and inner greatness and must not ask for a quite irrelevant reward, shun penalty or make a bargain for the exact fruits of my labour. And that which is true of my action in the present life, must be equally true of my connected action and self-development through many births. Happiness and sorrow, good fortune and ill-fortune are not my main concern whether in this birth or in future lives, but my perfection and the higher good of mankind purchased by whatever suffering and tribulation. Spinozas dictum that joy is a passage to a greater perfection and sorrow a passage to a lesser perfection is a much too summary epigram. Delight will be indeed the atmosphere of perfection and attends too even the anguish of our labour towards it, but first a higher delight which has often much trouble for its price, and afterwards a highest spiritual Ananda which has no dependence on outward circumstances, but rather is powerful to new-shape their meanings and transform their reactions. These things may be above the first formulation of the world energy here, may be influences from superior planes of the universal existence, but they are still a part of the economy of Karma here, a process of the spiritual evolution in the body. And they bring in a higher soul nature and will and action and consequence, a higher rule of Karma.
The law of Karma is therefore not simply an extension of the human idea of practical justice into future births and a rectification there of the apparent injustice of life. A justice or rather a justness there must be in all the workings of the world-energy; Nature certainly seems to be scrupulous in her measures. But in the life of man there are many factors to be taken into the reckoning; there are too stages, grades, degrees. And on a higher step of our being things do not look the same nor are quite the same as on a lower grade. And even in the first normal scale there are many factors and not only the ethical-hedonistic standard. If it is just that the virtuous man should be rewarded with success and happiness and the wicked man punished with downfall and pain at some time, in some life, on earth or in heaven or in hell, it is also just that the strong man should have the reward of his cultivated strength, the intellectual man the prize of his cultivated skill, the will that labours in whatever field the fruit of its effort and its works. But it does not work rightly, you say, not morally, not according to the ethical law? But what is right working in this connection of will and action and consequence? I may be religious and honest, but if I am dull, weak and incompetent? And I may be selfish and impious, but if I have the swift flame of intellect, the understanding brain, the skill to adapt means to ends, the firm courageous will fixed on its end? I have then an imperfection which must impose its consequences, but also I have powers which must make their way. The truth is that there are several orders of energy and their separate characteristic working must be seen, before their relations can be rightly discovered in the harmonies of Nature. A complex web is what we have to unravel. When we have seen the parts in the whole, the elements and their affinities in the mass, then only can we know the lines of Karma.
38.01 - Asceticism and Renunciation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
object:38.01 - Asceticism and Renunciation
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Bengali Essays and Poems of Sri AurobindoAsceticism and Renunciation
Asceticism and Renunciation
THE Discipline (Dharma) spoken of in the Gita can be followed by everyone; it is open to all. And yet the supreme status in this Discipline is not a whit less than that of any other. The Discipline of the Gita is the Discipline of desireless works. In this country with the resurgence of Aryan Discipline a flood of asceticism has spread everywhere. A man seeking Rajayoga cannot rest content with the life or the work of a householder. For the practice of his yoga he needs to make tremendously laborious efforts to be able to meditate and concentrate. A slight mental disturbance or contact with the outside upsets the poise of meditation or completely destroys it. Difficulties of this kind one meets abundantly in home-life. Therefore it is quite natural for those who are born with an urge for yoga, derived from past lives, to turn towards asceticism. When such souls with an inborn yogic urge begin to increase in number and by contagion to spread among the youthful generation a strong movement to asceticism, the doors are opened indeed for the good of the country, in one sense; but also along with the good there arise causes for apprehension. It is said that the ascetic discipline is the very best, but very few are competent to follow it. The incompetent who enter the path go a certain distance and then in the midway stop short through a kind of satisfaction arising from lethargy and inertia. One can in this way pass one's life upon earth in ease, but then one does no good to the world and also it becomes very difficult for such it one to rise to the higher reaches of the world.
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In the Gita, Sri Krishna has time and again directed Arjuna not to follow asceticism. Why? He admits the virtue of Sannyasa and yet, in spite of the repeated questionings of Arjuna overwhelmed as he was with the spirit of asceticism, abnegation and altruism, Sri Krishna never withdrew his injunctions with regard to the path of action. Arjuna asked, "If desireless Intelligence, founded in Yoga, is greater than karma, then why do you engage me in this terrible work of slaying my elders?" Many have repeated the question of Arjuna, some even have not hesitated to call him the worst Teacher, one who shows the wrong way. In answer, Sri Krishna has explained that Renunciation is greater than asceticism, to remember God and do one's appointed work without desire is far greater than freedom to do as one likes. Renunciation means Renunciation of desire, Renunciation of selfishness. And to learn that Renunciation one need not take refuge in solitude. That lesson has to be learnt through work in the field of work; work is the means to climb upon the path of yoga. This world of varied play has been created for the purpose .of bringing delight to its creatures. It is not God's purpose that this game of delight should cease. He wants the creatures to become his comrades and playmates, to flood the world with delight. We are in the darkness of ignorance; that is because, for the sake of the play the Lord has kept himself aloof and thus surrounded himself with obscurity. Many are the ways fixed by him which, if followed would take one out of the darkness, bring him into God's company. If anyone is not interested in the play and desires rest, God will fulfil his desire. But if one follows His way for His sake, then God chooses him, in this world or elsewhere as His fit playmate. Arjuna was Krishna's dearest comrade and playmate, therefore he received the teaching of the Gita's supreme secret. What that supreme secret is I tried to explain in a previous context. The Divine said to Arjuna, "It is harmful to the world to give up work, to give up work is the spirit of asceticism. And an asceticism without Renunciation is meaningless. What one gains by asceticism one gains also by Renunciation, that is to say, the freedom from Ignorance, equanimity, power, delight, union with Sri Krishna. Whatever the man worshipped by all does, people take that as the ideal and follow it. Therefore, if you give up work through asceticism, all will follow that path and bring about the confusion of social values, and the reign of the wrong law. If you give up the desire for the fruit of action and pursue man's normal law of life, inspire men to follow each his own line of activity, then you will unite with my Law of life and become my intimate friend." Sri Krishna explains furthermore that the rule is to follow the right path through works and finally at the end of the path attain quietude, that is to say, renounce all sense of being the doer. But this is not Renunciation of work through asceticism, this is to give up all vital urge to action involving immense labour and effort through the rejection of egoism and through union with the Divine - and transcending all gun as, to do works as an instrument impelled by His force. In that state it is the permanent consciousness of the soul that he is not the doer, he is the witness, part of the Divine; it is the Divine Power that works through his body created for action by his own inner law of being. The soul is the witness and enjoyer, Nature is the doer, the Divine is the giver of sanction. The being so illumined does not seek to help or hinder any work that the Divine Power undertakes. Submitted to the Shakti, the body and mind and intellect engage themselves in the work appointed by God. Even a terrible massacre like that of Kurukshetra cannot stain a soul with sin if it is sanctioned by God, if it occurs in the course of the fulfilment of one's own dharma (Inner Law), but only a few can attain to this knowledge and this goal. It cannot be the law of life for the common man. What then is the duty for the common wayfarers? Even for them the knowledge that He is the Lord, I am the instrument is to a certain extent within their reach. Through this knowledge to remember always the Divine and follow one's inner law of life is the direction that has been given.
"Better is one's own law of works, swadharma, though in itself faulty, than an alien law well wrought out; death in one's own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an alien law."1
38.02 - Hymns and Prayers, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
Asceticism and Renunciation Mute
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Bengali Essays and Poems of Sri AurobindoHymns and Prayers
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Asceticism and Renunciation Mute
4.01 - Prayers and Meditations, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Between the extreme of an individual who has fully and perfectly realised all he had conceived and that of one who has been incapable of realising anything at all, there is, of course, an almost unlimited range of intermediate cases; this range is remarkably complex, because not only is there a difference in the degree of realisation of the ideal, but there is also a difference between the varied qualities of the ideal itself. There are ambitions which pursue mere personal interests, material, sentimental or intellectual, others which have more general, more collective or higher aims, and yet others which are superhuman, so to say, and strive to scale the peaks that open on the splendours of eternal Truth, eternal Consciousness and eternal Peace. It is easy to understand that the power of ones effort and Renunciation must be commensurate with the breadth and height of the goal one has chosen.
At any level, from the most modest to the most transcendent, one rarely finds a perfect balance between the sum of self-control, the power of sacrifice available to the individual who has chosen a goal, and the sum of Renunciations of every kind and nature which the goal requires.
When the constitution of an individual permits this perfect balance, then his earthly existence yields its utmost possible result.
4.0 - NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
of those they rule. Their new holiness, their Renunciation of
happiness and ease, must be their first principle. To the lowest they
4.0 - The Path of Knowledge, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
disturbing influences from his personality. These laws must constantly direct him. Should he begin to do something that he has recognized as right and fail to content his personal feelings, he may not for that reason forsake the road he has entered on. But, on the other hand, he may not pursue it because it gives him joy if he finds that it is not in accordance with the laws of the eternally Beautiful and True. In everyday life people allow their actions to be decided by what contents them personally, by what bears fruit for themselves. In this way they force upon the course of the world's events a direction influenced by their personality. They do not bring to realization the True that is already prescribed in the laws of the spirit world, they realize the demands of their self-will. They act in harmony with the spiritual world only when they follow its laws alone. The Path seeker may not ask, "What brings me advantages, what will bring me success?" but only, "What have I recognized as the Good?" Renunciation of the fruits of action in the interest of his personality, Renunciation of all self-will, these are the weighty laws
p. 214
4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
94. All Renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond.
95. Only by perfect Renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the utter embrace of God be experienced;
434
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Pandit, but the Yogin; not monasticism, but the inner Renunciation of desire and ignorance & egoism.
173. Even Vivekananda once in the stress of emotion admitted the fallacy that a personal God would be too immoral to be suffered and it would be the duty of all good men to resist Him.
4.3.3 - Dealing with Hostile Attacks, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That it is the same hostile force would be shown, even if its presence were not for us visible and palpable, by the fact that the suggestions it makes to the minds of its victims are always the same. Its one master sign is always this impulse to get away from the Asram, away from myself and the Mother, out of this atmosphere, and at once. For the force does not want to give time for reflection, for resistance, for the saving Power to be felt and act. Its other signs are doubt; tamasic depression; an exaggerated sense of impurity and unfitness; the idea that the Mother is remote, does not care for one, is not giving what she ought to give, is not divine, with other similar suggestions accompanied by an inability to feel her presence or her help; a feeling that the Yoga is not possible or is not going to be done in this life; the desire to go away and do something in the ordinary world the thing itself suggested varying according to the personal mind. If it were not this one invariable hostile force acting, there would not be this exact similarity in all the cases. In each case it is the same obscurities thrown on the intelligence, the same subconscious movements of the vital brought to the surface, the same irrational impulses pushing to the same action,departure, Renunciation of the souls truth, refusal of the Divine Love and the Divine Call.
It is the vital crisis, the test, the ordeal for you as for othersa test and ordeal which we would willingly spare to those who are with us but which they call on themselves by persistence in some wrong line of movement or some falsification of the inner attitude. If you reject entirely the falsehood that this force casts upon the sadhaka, if you remain faithful to the Light that called you here, you conquer and, even if serious difficulties still remain, the final victory is sure and the divine triumph of the soul over the Ignorance and the darkness.
6.01 - THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[667] One should not be put off by the physical impossibilities of dogma or of the coniunctio, for they are symbols in regard to which the allurements of rationalism are entirely out of place and miss the mark. If symbols mean anything at all, they are tendencies which pursue a definite but not yet recognizable goal and consequently can express themselves only in analogies. In this uncertain situation one must be content to leave things as they are, and give up trying to know anything beyond the symbol. In the case of dogma such a Renunciation is reinforced by the fear of possibly violating the sanctity of a religious idea, and in the case of alchemy it was until very recently considered not worth while to rack ones brains over medieval absurdities. Today, armed with psychological understanding, we are in a position to penetrate into the meaning of even the most abstruse alchemical symbols, and there is no justifiable reason why we should not apply the same method to dogma. Nobody, after all, can deny that it consists of ideas which are born of mans imagining and thinking. The question of how far this thinking may be inspired by the Holy Ghost is not affected at all, let alone decided, by psychological investigation, nor is the possibility of a metaphysical background denied. Psychology cannot advance any argument either for or against the objective validity of any metaphysical view. I have repeated this statement in various places in order to give the lie to the obstinate and grotesque notion that a psychological explanation must necessarily be either psychologism or its opposite, namely a metaphysical assertion. The psychic is a phenomenal world in itself, which can be reduced neither to the brain nor to metaphysics.
[668] I have just said that symbols are tendencies whose goal is as yet unknown.54 We may assume that the same fundamental rules obtain in the history of the human mind as in the psychology of the individual. In psycho therapy it often happens that, long before they reach consciousness, certain unconscious tendencies betray their presence by symbols, occurring mostly in dreams but also in waking fantasies and symbolic actions. Often we have the impression that the unconscious is trying to enter consciousness by means of all sorts of allusions and analogies, or that it is making more or less playful attempts to attract attention to itself. One can observe these phenomena very easily in a dream-series. The series I discussed in Psychology and Alchemy offers a good example.55 Ideas develop from seeds, and we do not know what ideas will develop from what seeds in the course of history. The Assumption of the Virgin, for instance, is vouched for neither in Scripture nor in the tradition of the first five centuries of the Christian Church. For a long time it was officially denied even, but, with the connivance of the whole medieval and modern Church, it gradually developed as a pious opinion and gained so much power and influence that it finally succeeded in thrusting aside the necessity for scriptural proof and for a tradition going back to primitive times, and in attaining definition in spite of the fact that the content of the dogma is not even definable.56 The papal declaration made a reality of what had long been condoned. This irrevocable step beyond the confines of historical Christianity is the strongest proof of the autonomy of archetypal images.
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
demonstration of Renunciation and independence, but to the
patient's irreversible insight into the conditioned quality of all
7.08 - Sincerity, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the Brahmin Vasishtha did not think so, for he knew that Vishvamitra had acted out of vanity; his Renunciation was not sincere. And so he refused to address him as a Brahmin.
In his fury the king had a hundred children of Vasishthas family put to death. But in spite of all his grief, Vasishtha persisted in his refusal to say what he did not think was true.
9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Avadhuta: A holy man of great Renunciation mentioned in the Bhagavata.
Avatar: Incarnation of God.
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Bhagavan: (Lit., One endowed with the six attributes, viz. infinite treasures, strength, glory, splendour knowledge, and Renunciation) An epithet of the Godhead; also the Personal God of the devotee.
Bhagavata: A sacred book of the Hindus, especially of the Vaishnavas dealing with the life of Sri Krishna.
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jnanayoga: The path of knowledge, consisting of discrimination, Renunciation, and other disciplines.
jnani: One who follows the path of knowledge and discrimination to realize God; generally used to denote a non-dualist.
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Nimai-sannyas: "Chaitanya's Renunciation"; a play describing Sri Chaitanya's embracing of the monastic life.
Niranjan(a): (Lit., the Stainless One) A name of God; also one of the intimate disciples of Sri Ramakrishna.
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six treasures: Namely, treasure, glory, strength, splendour, knowledge, and Renunciation; these six in their entirety are the treasures of the God-head.
smriti: The law books, subsidiary to the Vedas, guiding the daily life and conduct of the Hindus.
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vairagya: Renunciation.
Vaisakh: The first month of the Hindu calendar, falling in the summer season.
Bhagavad Gita, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
5. The Yoga of Renunciation of Action
6. The Yoga of Meditation
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18. The Yoga of Liberation by Renunciation
DS4, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
of self, being, life, and soul, sorrow and delusion, possession and Renunciation, love and hate. The
Buddha teaches us to practice charity, to rid ourselves of all attachments within, and to benefit all
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tells us how. All the Buddhas teachings can be summarized by the word Renunciation. But
Renunciation is another word for charity. By renouncing attachment to a self, we become arhans. By
Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
thee of mine own Frailty. Thou knowest that I made Renunciation of my
Wage, taking this Body immediately after my Death, the Death of Eliphas
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with another; and Renunciation, being sorrowful, is not worthy of
Acceptance. But he must with Joy unite all he is and hath, heaping the
Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
"midnight blossom" implies a certain monastic Renunciation of all
desire, which reaches to all planes. One must however distinguish
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thou hast to lave thy feet in Waters of Renunciation. Beware lest thou
should'st set a foot still soiled upon the ladder's lowest rung. Woe
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Renunciation's Path.
All this about Gautama Buddha having renounced Nirvana is apparently
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48. 'Tis from the bud of Renunciation of the Self, that springeth the
sweet fruit of final Liberation.
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74. Know that the bodhisattva who Liberation changes for Renunciation
to don the miseries of "Secret Life," is called, "thrice Honoured," O
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still the fruits of long and bitter duty. Aye, Renunciation for the
sake of others, of suffering fellow men."
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greater Renunciation.
A SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD is he.
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greater Renunciation is a Saviour of the World-it is the dogginess of a
dog that makes it doggy. It is not the virtue of a dog to be doggy. A
dog does not become doggy by the Renunciation of non-dogginess. It is
quite true that you and I value one kind of a Buddha more than another
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Here, however, we come to the question of the final Renunciation. It is
undoubtedly true that one may push spiritual experience to the point of
LUX.04 - LIBERATION, #Liber Null, #Peter J Carroll, #Occultism
In creating life out of the primeval slime, Chaos has always sought to increase its possibilities of expression and to diversify its manifestations. During the evolution of life there have been many stagnant periods and some reversals. But overall, the inherent superiority of the most flexible, adaptable, inclusive, and complex creatures, cultures, men, and ideas always wins out. To seek these qualities is to achieve more liberation than any bizarre feat of Renunciation or reorganization of political power is likely to create.
It is a mistake to consider any belief more liberated than another. It is the possibility of change which is important. Every new form of liberation is destined to eventually become another form of enslavement for most of its adherents. There is no freedom from duality on this plane of existence, but one may at least aspire to choice of duality.
r1912 07 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Agni is the Tapas (Chit-tattwa in energy) & the activity of the tapas is the most important siddhi now in progressan activity born of a fire purified from rajas. The disappearance of rajasic tendency is now being finally [effected]1 (the tamasic still lasts), even the last dust of it in the annamaya environment is being swept up and out. This purified tapas is that to be contained by the jnani in me. But in addition the tapas born of devotional self-dedication is needed, especially, by the karmi the first belongs to the realisation of the nirgun sad Brahman, the second to the conception of universal Narayana. The first by itself makes for Sannyasa, the second for divine activity. The reference is to the passing away of the mere sannyasochita bhava in its last remnants at the end of June, the fulfilment of tyaga, the passing beyond the limitations of the sadhan of the Gita to the sadhan of the Veda. It is true this had already been effected in essence, but the last tendencies in the annamaya mind to the sanskaras of asceticism & mere Renunciation have only now expired.
(2) Brihad Aranyaka.
r1912 12 28, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The drag of the vague defect of anima on the body still continues. A very slight visrishti in the afternoon; subsequently there was a tendency to flatulence. The cough has not returned, but there is a tendency to phlegm in the nostrils. The physical ananda tends to recover its frequency & intensity. The aishwarya was strong today & lipi frequent; but the trikaldrishti much disturbed, rupadrishti almost suspended; particular tejas acts, but general tejas is discouraged and faith depressed. The Nirukta progresses and has attained a certain perfection of method, but not yet of vijnanamay substance, since possibility still has its play. The great gain in the method of work is Renunciation of haste & a consequent thoroughness.
Sleep, nearly six hours.
r1913 01 14, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is a growing passivity in the intelligence and the physical struggle is being made the instrument for the Renunciation of intellectual judgment, the remnants of which are at present the chief obstacle to the possession of the whole system by the vijnana. Trikaldrishti & jnana are taking possession of the script, the vanis, the thought perceptions as well as the vangmaya thought, but the process cannot be completed owing to the excessive tapas, tejasic or tamasic, on the thing seen which converts a truth into a falsehood by overstressing it & so overprolonging its applicability in time or place or exaggerating its results. The perception of the locality of things or people not seen or their personality or nature is becoming stronger, but not yet sufficiently precise; e.g. a thing not found, it is at once known whether it is in the room or not and vaguely indicated that it is in such a place or in a place of such and such a nature, anyone knocking at the door, it is indicated who is at the door or else what class of person; in the morning, it is invariably indicated whether the girl is coming immediately, a little later or much later etc. If once the excess of tapas is removed, there is no reason why intellectual infallibility should not be established; for then the other obstacle of uncertainty will have nothing on which to feed its existence. The fulfilment of the powers of Knowledge & the accomplishment of the divine Satyam are therefore certain, although the time of fulfilment is not yet revealed; for after the general working of the power is established without defect, there will still remain its perfect application to Bhasha, Nirukta, Itihasa, Darshana, Kala, Dravyajnana etc. The powers of Force, Kriyashakti, are less surely developed, although they are growing, & their success in particular instances is slow, often uncertain, in many things inoperative, especially in the objective world, but also in the subjective. It is this difficulty & opposition which has to be attacked in its centre by applying the Powers to the karma and to objective happenings and movements.
In yesterdays programme, only the first item was thoroughly fulfilled. In the second, there was a progress; the samadhi overcame the obstacle to continuity, but the continuity attained was slight; the rupadrishti succeeded only in the barest possible manner, the momentary stability of a perfect form, the longer stability of a form developed but not sufficient in material substance. Aishwarya began the movement towards generalising success, by trying to get rid of such willings as are not consonant with the central movement of the Supreme Will, but the process is not yet complete; the struggle continued in health, utthapana & kamananda, but they did not prevail, except in effecting an obscure, moderate & preparatory success & in streng thening the force of their sukshma vaja or subtle material substance, of which, however, shansa, the actual bringing out into material being has not yet been realised. Chitraratha and Madira still increase.
r1913 01 31, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The second principle, which has also been long preparing, is the Renunciation of nigraha or as it used to be called, tapasya. Not that the Tapas may not have to persist under difficulties, but no violence has to be done to the Prakriti. It has to work out its own defects. This is now possible, because of the growth of the supreme or quaternary dasya, by which the very thought & feeling comes only as things impelled by the divine hand of the Master & Sarathi. Absolute Samata & passivity are now possible.
Therefore in action there will be no planning, only seeing of the way the thing to be done will develop under the shaping of the divine Tapas whether through myself or others; in writing no composition, only the record of the vak as it flows down from above and forms itself in the Sat of Mind; in Yoga no sadhan, but only the acceptance of the self-organising movements of the anandamaya vijnanamaya Prakriti as it progressively takes entire possession of this inferior mental & physical kingdom.
r1914 03 28, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The difficulty now felt by the intellect with regard to the tapas, is why there should be insistence by the tapas on a movement not willed by God. So long as there is ignorance, the tapas may be exercised in the confidence that it is a means of Gods workings even when the event is to be the opposite of the result attempted; but in the present stage this rule no longer satisfies as a rule of action. It is evident that there is a movement towards the Renunciation of preferential Tapas not in accordance with knowledge. It is not likely however that this movement will be seriously effective for some time to come. Still, from henceforth, intellectual tapas in action must be renounced, like intellectual tapas in knowledge.
The vangmaya is now re-ascending to the inspirational form & it appears that it will act for some time indifferently in the higher & lower vijnanas & vijnana buddhi, but always with a tendency to finish rapidly its work in the vijnana buddhi & confine itself to the pure vijnana. A more general movement of the subjective thought-trikaldrishti is being attempted as opposed to the objective trikaldrishti which follows the movement of an extant object or present event. In the former the difficulty of the intellectual belief is that there is no means of physical verification or contradiction except when it is applied to history or the past of living men; in the second the telepathic difficulty (of misplacement & overstress) is yet unannulled & really unconquered in the normal perception, even if partially dominated when the siddhi is active.
r1914 04 04, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8) The delight of the ideal responsibility(ie the Renunciation of the personal responsibility of the ego & the acceptance of the universal responsibility of the Prakriti to fulfil the commands of the Ishwara)
9) It is still .. tonight (ie still resisted in the trikaldrishti tonight success)
r1914 04 14, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Power now is easily effective where the object is passive & not occupied by an opposite law of action; partially or ultimately effective where there is, to combat it, only an immediate intention or preoccupation (for it either changes or modifies the intention or acts when that is gone); slowly effective, & often after long continued failure, when there is, to combat it, a habit, trait of character or fixed & customary intention. It fails in immediate purpose when an active force works against it which is too strong & obstinate to be overpowered even after battle, because there is still in the nature the easygoing weakness of Mahasaraswati which is unwilling to face the necessity of ugrata & tapasya. It fails also as yet in changing easily fixed habits of working in the annamaya prakriti. The Ananda of battle has to be increased (this is the meaning of the lipi battle constantly given in the last few days) and the habit of physical weariness, lassitude & Renunciation of effort eliminated. At the same time it is not the rajasic shakti which must dispel it, but the pure ugrapravritti of the trigunata shakti.
Last night, the symbol rupa was shown in bahirdarshi of a red sun changing into a rosy sun followed by a blue-green sun, ie the ugrapravritti of Mahakali developing love (Mahalakshmi) and pouring itself into beneficence governed by spiritual temperament and knowledge (the Sun is always vijnana). Afterwards the universal prema settled itself in the system as a part of the temperament and the temper of doing all things as paropakara, even apparent injury being done for an ultimate good to the individual & the world.
r1914 10 05, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The lipi finality in the midst of obstruction is now being fulfilled. Indeed, the obstruction is being made an instrument of finality, as in the normality of the tertiary dasya & the Renunciation of the remnants of tapasic stress.
***
r1914 10 06, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The attempt of the Asiddhi is, by disturbing the Samata, to compel tamasic udasinata and Renunciation of tapas. The perfected Nati is attacked and the udasinata touched more than superficially. Owing to the constant siege of Asiddhi faith also is diminished.
***
r1914 11 20, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is noticeable that now relapse is no longer general & activity of progress is rapidly resumed after a movement of recoil. But it changes its location, leaving the parts affected to undergo a period of suffering & depression. Nevertheless even there there is no longer the tendency of entire quiescence, udasinata & temporary Renunciation.
***
r1927 01 19, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards a crisis of questioning and a Renunciation of personal action (in the suggestive mental Devasura) and an entire passivity in which some kind of action professedly gnostic or semi-gnostic is going on in a narrow and rigid form of inspirational imperative and a minor form of interpretative imperative thoughtforce
***
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
defects of her character rectified and came to be endowed with supreme Renunciation. From him,
Totapuri, his spiritual preceptor in the path of Advaita, learned the secret of the love of the Personal
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disciples, especially by the young men who took to the life of Renunciation, following in his footsteps.
What did Sri Ramakrishna teach? Evidently he taught more by his life than by words. He never wrote or
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unselfishness. A man cannot be unselfish unless he is imbued with the spirit of Renunciation.
Renunciation means the giving up of Kama and Kanchana, i.e., lust and greed. The spirit of Renunciation
manifests in life as purity of character, as devoted service to fellow beings, and as a strong and steady
aspiration for the Divine. The vision of God dawns in a heart in which the spirit of Renunciation and the
intensity of aspiration have reached their maturity. If a man does not reach this goal, or at least make
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264. Renunciation of 'woman and gold' has been laid down only for those that lead a monastic life.
Monks must not even look at the pictures of women. Even the thought of spiced pickles causes the
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only if one takes to the life of Renunciation (Sannyasa).
296. Who is a fit candidate for the holy order of Sannyasins? He who gives up the world altogether
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set an example to mankind he must make a rigorous Renunciation of 'woman and gold'. For only when
they notice the thoroughness of the Sannyasin's Renunciation, will men take courage; only then will they
make efforts to renounce sex and riches. And who indeed will impart this lesson on Renunciation, if not
the Sannyasin ?
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written upon; so when such a soul is 'chalked' over with Renunciation, it becomes fit again for spiritual
progress.
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thoroughly saturated with the magnetic remedy of Renunciation before he can have any spiritual
progress.
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56l. Jnana never comes without Renunciation of lust and possessions. With the dawn of Renunciation is
destroyed all ignorance, all Avidya. Many things can be burnt by Means of a lens held in such a manner
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the mind. You must take it out of the dark cell of this world and expose it to the full blaze of selfeffulgent Divinity. Then alone true Renunciation will come, and with it all ignorance will be destroyed.
562. - Knowledge (Jnana) cannot be communicated all at once. Its attainment is a question of time.
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of the men of the world, and does not help one to attain the Truth. Firm conviction and Renunciation these are the necessary things. With these alone can one realise the Truth. Or else a person may profess
in mere words that the world is unreal and non-existent, and that Brahman alone is existent; but the
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764. Devotion effloresces into right discrimination, Renunciation, love of all creatures, service to pious
men, keeping company with the devoted, singing the praises of the Lord, truthfulness and other virtues.
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831. Renunciation of work comes of itself when intense love of God swells up in the heart. Let them
work who are made to do so by God. When the time is ripe, one must renounce everything and say,
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less will it grow. Finally comes the complete Renunciation of work and the attainment of Samadhi.
Generally the body does not remain long after the attainment of Samadhi. But in the case of some it
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of purity and Renunciation without feeling restlessness and discomfort.
1061. Once a sage was lying by the roadside deeply immersed in Samadhi. A thief, while passing by that
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whose heart the fire of Renunciation burns intensely, who pants after God as a mother's heart does for
her child-he wants nothing except God. To him the world appears like a well without a wall; and he is
Talks 125-150, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Dr. Syed again asked: Should anyone desirous of spiritual progress take to action or Renunciation (pravritti-marga or nivritti-marga)?
M.: Do you go out of the Self? What is meant by giving up?
Talks 151-175, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: What is Renunciation?
M.: Giving up of the ego.
Talks 500-550, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
[Deathlessness is not obtained through action or begetting offspring or wealth. Some attain that state through Renunciation.
The Sages (that have conquered the senses) attain that Sat which is more supreme than Heaven and shining all alone in the Heart.
The adepts who by Renunciation and one-pointedness are pure in heart and have known the certainty of Truth by the special knowledge
511
Talks 600-652, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The Karma advocates non-attachment to action and yet an active life, whereas the jnana means Renunciation. What is the true meaning of Renunciation? Subjugation of lust, passion, greed, etc., is common to all and forms the essential preliminary step for any course. Does not freedom from passions indicate Renunciation? Or is Renunciation different, meaning cessation of the active life? These questions are troubling me and I beg lights to be thrown on those doubts."
Bhagavan smiled and said: "You have said all. Your question contains the answer also. Freedom from passions is the essential requisite.
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D.: Sri Sankara emphasises the jnana marga and Renunciation as preliminary to it. But there are clearly two methods dwividha mentioned in the Gita. They are Karma and Jnana (Lokesmin dwividha nishtha...).
M.: Sri Acharya has commented on the Gita and on that passage also.
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D.: Is it then necessary to leave the home and lead a life of Renunciation?
M.: Is the home in you? Or are you in the home?
--
D.: Now I see. Renunciation is only action without the sense of being the karta.
Is there not action for a jivanmukta?
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In Maharaja Turavu (the Renunciation of the king) he says: He was seated on the bare ground, the earth was his seat, the mind was the chamara; the sky was the canopy; and Renunciation was his spouse:
Then Sri Bhagavan continued: I had no cloth spread on the floor in earlier days. I used to sit on the floor and lie on the ground. That is freedom. The sofa is a bondage. It is a gaol for me. I am not allowed to sit where and how I please. Is it not bondage?
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Vairagya the feeling of Renunciation that comes to one in a cemeterya
temporary state of world-disgust.
--
their Renunciation!
SRI AUROBINDO: How?
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
the post-Newtonian era in physics, with its Renunciation of all models
and representations, in terms of sensory experience.
The Book of Certitude - P1, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
In like manner, reflect how the elevated heavens of the Dispensations of the past have, in the right hand of power, been folded together, how the heavens of divine Revelation have been raised by the command of God, and been adorned by the sun, the moon, and stars of His wondrous commandments. Such are the mysteries of the Word of God, which have been unveiled and made manifest, that haply thou mayest apprehend the morning light of divine guidance, mayest quench, by the power of reliance and Renunciation, the lamp of idle fancy, of vain imaginings, of hesitation, and doubt, and mayest kindle, in the inmost chamber of thine heart, the new-born light of divine knowledge and certitude.
Know verily that the purpose underlying all these symbolic terms and abstruse allusions, which emanate from the Revealers of God's holy Cause, hath been to test and prove the peoples of the world; that thereby the earth of the pure and illuminated hearts may be known from the perishable and barren soil. From time immemorial such hath been the way of God amidst His creatures, and to this testify the records of the sacred books. ["Know verily that..."] The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh vol. 1 p. 173
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Were men to meditate upon the lives of the Prophets of old, so easily would they come to know and understand the ways of these Prophets that they would cease to be veiled by such deeds and words as are contrary to their own worldly desires, and thus consume every intervening veil with the fire burning in the Bush of divine knowledge, and abide secure upon the throne of peace and certitude. For instance, consider Moses, son of 'Imrán, one of the exalted Prophets and Author of a divinely-revealed Book. Whilst passing, one day, through the market, in His early days, ere His ministry was proclaimed, He saw two men engaged in fighting. One of them asked the help of Moses against his opponent. Whereupon, Moses intervened and slew him. To this testifieth the record of the sacred Book. Should the details be cited, they will lengthen and interrupt the course of the argument. The report of this incident spread throughout the city, and Moses was full of fear, as is witnessed by the text of the Book. And when the warning: "O Moses! of a truth, the chiefs take counsel to slay Thee" 1 reached His ears, He went forth from the city, and sojourned in Midian in the service of Shoeb. While returning, Moses entered the holy vale, situate in the wilderness of Sinai, and there beheld the vision of the King of glory from the "Tree that belongeth neither to the East nor to the West." 2 There He heard the soul-stirring Voice of the Spirit speaking from out of the kindled Fire, bidding Him to shed upon Pharaonic souls the light of divine guidance; so that, liberating them from the shadows of the valley of self and desire, He might enable them to attain the meads of heavenly delight, and delivering them, through the Salsabíl of Renunciation, from the bewilderment of remoteness, cause them to enter the peaceful city of the divine presence. When Moses came unto Pharaoh and delivered unto him, as bidden by God, the divine Message, Pharaoh spoke insultingly saying: "Art thou not he that committed murder, and became an infidel?" Thus recounted the Lord of majesty as having been said by Pharaoh unto Moses: "What a deed is that which Thou hast done! Thou art one of the ungrateful. He said: 'I did it indeed, and I was one of those who erred. And I fled from you when I feared you, but My Lord hath given Me wisdom, and hath made Me one of His Apostles.'" 3 1. Qur'án 28:20.
2. Qur'án 24:35.
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Likewise, He saith: "On the day when the heaven shall give out a palpable smoke, which shall enshroud mankind: this will be an afflictive torment." 1 The All-Glorious hath decreed these very things, that are contrary to the desires of wicked men, to be the touchstone and standard whereby He proveth His servants, that the just may be known from the wicked, and the faithful distinguished from the infidel. The symbolic term "smoke" denotes grave dissensions, the abrogation and demolition of recognized standards, and the utter destruction of their narrow-minded exponents. What smoke more dense and overpowering than the one which hath now enshrouded all the peoples of the world, which hath become a torment unto them, and from which they hopelessly fail to deliver themselves, however much they strive? So fierce is this fire of self burning within them, that at every moment they seem to be afflicted with fresh torments. The more they are told that this wondrous Cause of God, this Revelation from the Most High, hath been made manifest to all mankind, and is waxing greater and stronger every day, the fiercer groweth the blaze of the fire in their hearts. The more they observe the indomitable strength, the sublime Renunciation, the unwavering constancy of God's holy companions, who, by the aid of God, are growing nobler and more glorious every day, the deeper the dismay which ravageth their souls. In these days, praise be to God, the power of His Word hath obtained such ascendancy over men, that they dare breathe no word. Were they to encounter one of the companions of God who, if he could, would, freely and joyously, offer up ten thousand lives as a sacrifice for his Beloved, so great would be their fear, that they forthwith would profess their faith in Him, whilst privily they would vilify and execrate His name! Even as He hath revealed: "And when they meet you, they say, 'We believe'; but when they are apart, they bite their fingers' ends at you, out of wrath. Say: 'Die in your wrath!' God truly knoweth the very recesses of your breasts." 2 1. Qur'án 44:10.
2. Qur'án 3:119.
The Book of Certitude - P2, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
Verily He Who is the Day-star of Truth and Revealer of the Supreme Being holdeth, for all time, undisputed sovereignty over all that is in heaven and on earth, though no man be found on earth to obey Him. He verily is independent of all earthly dominion, though He be utterly destitute. Thus We reveal unto thee the mysteries of the Cause of God, and bestow upon thee the gems of divine wisdom, that haply thou mayest soar on the wings of Renunciation to those heights that are veiled from the eyes of men.
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Purge thy sight, therefore, from all earthly limitations, that thou mayest behold them all as the bearers of one Name, the exponents of one Cause, the manifestations of one Self, and the revealers of one Truth, and that thou mayest apprehend the mystic "return" of the Words of God as unfolded by these utterances. Reflect for a while upon the behaviour of the companions of the Muhammadan Dispensation. Consider how, through the reviving breath of Muhammad, they were cleansed from the defilements of earthly vanities, were delivered from selfish desires, and were detached from all else but Him. Behold how they preceded all the peoples of the earth in attaining unto His holy Presence-the Presence of God Himself-how they renounced the world and all that is therein, and sacrificed freely and joyously their lives at the feet of that Manifestation of the All-Glorious. And now, observe the "return" of the self-same determination, the self-same constancy and Renunciation, manifested by the companions of the Point of the Bayán 1. Thou hast witnessed how these companions have, through the wonders of the grace of the Lord of Lords, hoisted the standards of sublime Renunciation upon the inaccessible heights of glory. These Lights have proceeded from but one Source, and these fruits are the fruits of one Tree. Thou canst discern neither difference nor distinction among them. All this is by the grace of God! On whom He will, He bestoweth His grace. Please God, that we avoid the land of denial, and advance into the ocean of acceptance, so that we may perceive, with an eye purged from all conflicting elements, the worlds of unity and diversity, of variation and oneness, of limitation and detachment, and wing our flight unto the highest and innermost sanctuary of the inner meaning of the Word of God. 1. The Báb. [Bayán] God Passes By, p. 24-25
160
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Among them is the tradition, "And when the Standard of Truth is made manifest, the people of both the East and the West curse it." The wine of Renunciation must needs be quaffed, the lofty heights of detachment must needs be attained, and the meditation referred to in the words "One hour's reflection is preferable to seventy years of pious worship" must needs be observed, so that the secret of the wretched behaviour of the people might be discovered, those people who, despite the love and yearning for truth which they profess, curse the followers of Truth when once He hath been made manifest. To this truth the above-mentioned tradition beareth witness. It is evident that the reason for such behaviour is none other than the annulment of those rules, customs, habits, and ceremonials to which they have been subjected. Otherwise, were the Beauty of the Merciful to comply with those same rules and customs, which are current amongst the people, and were He to sanction their observances, such conflict and mischief would in no wise be made manifest in the world. This exalted tradition is attested and substantiated by these words which He hath revealed: "The day when the Summoner shall summon to a stern business." 1 1. Qur'án 54:6.
239
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
expressive symbol of the sacrifice, of the Renunciation the science demands? Everything is
paid for down here, not with gold, but with work, with suffering, often by leaving a part of
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
13) It is useless to grow pale ever the holy Scriptures end the sacred Shastras without a spirit of discrimination exempt from all passions. No spiritual progress can be made without discrimination and Renunciation ~ Ramakrishna
14) For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. ~ Corinthians
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6) It is impossible for man who has a body to abstain absolutely from all action, but whoever; renounces its fruits, is the man of true Renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita. 18.11
7) He who sees that in inaction there is an act and that in works there can be freedom from the act, is the wise among men...When a man has given up the fruit of his works and is eternally content and without dependence upon things, then though occupied in works, it is not he that is doing any act. ~ Bhagavad Gita. 4.18,20
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1) Love cannot be used for the fulfilment of desire, for its nature is Renunciation. Renunciation is the Renunciation of ritual works and worldly affairs. ~ Narada Sutra
2) The insensate enter into the world, seduced by its false splendours. But just as it is easier to get into a net than to escape from it, so is it easier to enter into the world than, having once entered, to renounce it. ~ Ramakrishna
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4) Knowledge is better than practice, concentration excels knowledge, the Renunciation of fruits concentration; peace is the immediate result of Renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita.XII. 12
5) To renounce one's self is not to renounce life. ~ Tolstoi
--
9) Not by work, not by family, not by riches, but by Renunciation great beings attain to immortality. ~ Kaivalya Upanishad
10) Only he who lives not for himself, does not perish. ~ Lao-Tse
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16) When the thought of a man is without attachment, when he has conquered himself and is rid of desire, by that Renunciation he reaches a supreme perfection of quietude. ~ Bhagavad Gita XVIII. 49
17) In union by a purified understanding, controlling himself by a firm perseverance, abandoning the objects of the senses, putting away from him all liking and disliking, when one resorts to solitude, lives on little, masters speech and mind and body, ever in meditation and fixed in withdrawal from the desires of the world, when he has loosened from him egoism and violence and pride and lust and wrath and possession, then calm and without thought of self, he is able to become one with the Eternal. ~ Bhagavad Gita XVIII. 51-53
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6) Ten high virtues: benevolence; spiritual life; intelligence; Renunciation; perseverance; energy; patience; truthfulness; love for others; equality of soul. ~ Sangiti Sutta
7) What is the root of evil? Greed, disliking and delusion are the roots of evil. And what then are the roots of good? To be free from greed and disliking and delusion is the root of good. ~ Sangiti Sutta
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22) Two kinds of joy are there, O my brothers, and what are they? The joy to possess and the joy to renounce; but nobler is the joy of Renunciation. ~ Buddhist Texts
23) Two kinds of joy are there, O my brothers, and what are they? The joy of egoism and the joy to forget oneself; but nobler is the joy of self-oblivion. ~ Buddhist Texts
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21) When a corner of Maya, the illusion of individual life, is lifted before the eyes of a man in such sort that he no longer makes any egoistic difference between his own person and other men, that he takes as much interest in the sufferings of others as in his own and that he becomes succourable to the point of devotion, ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of others, then that man is able to recognise himself in all beings, considers as his own the infinite sufferings of all that lives and must thus appropriate to himself the sorrow of the world. No distress is alien to him. All the torments which he sees and can so rarely soften, all the torments of which he hears, those even which it is impossible for him to conceive, strike his spirit as if he were himself the victim. Insensible to the alternations of weal and woe which succeed each other in his destiny, delivered from all egoism, he penetrates the veils of the individual illusion : all that lives, all that suffers is equally near to his heart. He conceives the totality of things, their essence, their eternal flux, the vain efforts, the internal struggles and sufferings without end ; he sees to whatever side he turns his gaze man who suffers, the animal who suffers and a world that is eternally passing away. He unites himself henceforth to the sorrows of the world as closely as the egoist to his own person. How can he having such a knowledge of the world affirm by incessant desires his will to live, attach himself more and more to life and clutch it to him always more closely ? The man seduced by the illusion of individual life, a slave of his egoism, sees only the things that touch him personally and draws from them incessantly renewed motives to desire and to will : on the contrary one who penetrates the essence of things and dominates their totality, elevates himself to a state of voluntary Renunciation, resignation and true tranquillity. ~ Schopenhauer
22) Yes, from thenceforward, is there any suffering for one who sees this unity of the universe, this unity of life, this unity of the All? The separation between man and man, man and woman, man and child; nation and nation, that is the real cause of all the misery of the world. Now this separation is not at all real ; it is only apparent, it is only on the surface. In the very heart of things is the unity which is for ever. Go into yourself and you will find this unity between man and man, women and children, race and race, the great and the little, the rich and the poor, gods and men : all of us are one, even the animals, if you go down to a sufficient depth. And to the man who goes so far nothing can cause any illusion. ..where can there exist for him any illusion ? What can deceive him ? He knows the reality of everything, the secret of everything. Where can there exist any misery for him ? What can he desire ? He has discovered the reality of everything in the Lord who is the centre, the unity of all and who is the eternal felicity, the eternal knowledge, the eternal existence. ~ Virekananda
--- Overview of noun renunciation
The noun renunciation has 4 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (1) repudiation, renunciation ::: (rejecting or disowning or disclaiming as invalid; "Congressional repudiation of the treaty that the President had negotiated")
2. apostasy, renunciation, defection ::: (the state of having rejected your religious beliefs or your political party or a cause (often in favor of opposing beliefs or causes))
3. renunciation, renouncement ::: (an act (spoken or written) declaring that something is surrendered or disowned)
4. renunciation, forgoing, forswearing ::: (the act of renouncing; sacrificing or giving up or surrendering (a possession or right or title or privilege etc.))
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun renunciation
4 senses of renunciation
Sense 1
repudiation, renunciation
=> rejection
=> speech act
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
apostasy, renunciation, defection
=> rejection
=> situation, state of affairs
=> state
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
renunciation, renouncement
=> resignation
=> speech act
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
renunciation, forgoing, forswearing
=> rejection
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun renunciation
3 of 4 senses of renunciation
Sense 1
repudiation, renunciation
=> disclaimer
=> disownment, disowning
Sense 3
renunciation, renouncement
=> relinquishment, relinquishing
Sense 4
renunciation, forgoing, forswearing
=> forsaking, giving up
=> abnegation, self-abnegation, denial, self-denial, self-renunciation
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun renunciation
4 senses of renunciation
Sense 1
repudiation, renunciation
=> rejection
Sense 2
apostasy, renunciation, defection
=> rejection
Sense 3
renunciation, renouncement
=> resignation
Sense 4
renunciation, forgoing, forswearing
=> rejection
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun renunciation
4 senses of renunciation
Sense 1
repudiation, renunciation
-> rejection
=> repudiation, renunciation
=> rebuff, snub, repulse
=> short shrift, summary treatment
Sense 2
apostasy, renunciation, defection
-> rejection
=> apostasy, renunciation, defection
=> disfavor, disfavour
=> excommunication, exclusion, censure
=> reprobation
Sense 3
renunciation, renouncement
-> resignation
=> abdication, stepping down
=> renunciation, renouncement
Sense 4
renunciation, forgoing, forswearing
-> rejection
=> brush-off
=> avoidance, turning away, shunning, dodging
=> abandonment, forsaking, desertion
=> renunciation, forgoing, forswearing
=> nonacceptance, turndown
=> banishment, proscription
=> displacement
--- Grep of noun renunciation
renunciation
self-renunciation
Wikipedia - Abdication -- Voluntary or forced renunciation of sovereign power
Wikipedia - Abjuration -- Repudiation, abandonment, or renunciation by or upon oath
Wikipedia - Apostasy in Islam -- Renunciation of Islam
Wikipedia - Apostasy -- Formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion
Wikipedia - Baptismal vows -- Renunciations required of an adult candidate for baptism
Wikipedia - Forgiveness -- Renunciation or cessation of resentment, indignation or anger
Wikipedia - Great Renunciation -- Event in the life of Gautama Buddha
Wikipedia - Papal renunciation -- Resignation of the pope of the Roman Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Renunciation
Wikipedia - Vairagya -- Dispassion, detachment, or renunciation in Hinduism and Jainism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sannyasa#Renunciation_in_Dharma_Literature
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Renunciation
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:04_Renunciation,_Fight_with_Mara_and_First_Teaching,_3c_(35022545002).jpg
Great Renunciation
Papal renunciation
Renunciation
Renunciation of citizenship
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