Fire Vs Fire

Fire consumes everything. Its thousand fanning mouths devour anything that crosses its path. Fire can create a maelstrom and an inferno in a moment, destroying everything, sending plumes of smoke into the sky. Such is the power of destruction that we ought to be careful with it.

Fire external

But there is a fire, which is deadlier, darker and more dangerous that the fire mentioned above. This fire can create a collateral damage for the entire humanity. This is the fire in the senses.

Fire in the Senses:

The fire ensues when the senses come in contact with the sense objects. Particularly, the eyes, which is a powerful sense organ, which ignites in contact with a sense object. What happens then? The fire devours the sense object, unmindful of the obstacle it poses – even to the point of death, subduing the rules of society and law in its blind charge towards the sense object and circumventing any right mode of attaining the object.

This is the beginning of a cycle, the beginning of a movement contrary to the peace; the beginning of an expectation towards the object, the beginning of disappointment in not getting the object and at last, the beginning of fury towards the object, and beginning of a resolution in destroying the object. This the beginning of a deadlier cycle, which exposes the human moral frailty – in the form of greed, seething anger, and annihilation.

Destruction – this is where it ends. We in our lives, often create these cycles and destroy ourselves. The result is pain and suffering. The fire of senses has often destroyed our lives. The external fire becomes meaningless, which pales into insignificance when compared to this inner fire.

Fire Vs Fire:

                2500 years ago, there was an encounter between ascetics, who worshiped fire and performed rituals and Buddha, the enlightened, who recognized the portent of the latter fire. Buddha perceived the fire rituals to be meaningless unless the inner fires are quenched. He perceived a world of fire phenomena. Everything was burning to him. He, in his vision, pursued the train of burning, beginning from senses, sense objects, contact, lust, hatred, and delusion etc., to pain, sorrow, aging, and death, leading to a series of infinite births and deaths.

Fire dented by Buddha

                The ascetics, bent on performing fire rituals, were unmindful to the sense of urgency in quenching the inner fire. They still seemed to be attached to the objects of the world, thinking it to be permanent. Buddha questioned the efficacy of fire rituals when the inner fires of desire, hatred and delusion remained.

The Fire Sermon:

                "Bhikkhus, all is burning.”

"The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs…….”

This is the famous fire sermon of Buddha, which ends by an earnest appeal from Buddha to desist from all contact with sensual objects.

This sermon took a major jolt on the ancient Hindu religious practices, which were then predominantly ritualistic in nature. In the later period, Hinduism incorporated various teachings of Buddha and even went to the extent of recognizing Buddha as an avatar of Lord Vishnu.

Ritual Slaughter:

But rituals are not completely obliterated. Many gory forms of rituals, in the form of animal sacrifice, still prevail in the multi-faceted Hindu religion and the recent one which witnessed a huge hue and cry is the slaughter of more than 200, 000 animals (buffaloes and goats) in Gandimai festival in Nepal. The CNN dubbed it as the ‘World’s biggest ritual slaughter’.

Gory rituals in Nepal

I feel, we still have not grasped or fully incorporated the teachings of Buddha, except idolizing him as God. Religion still had to move from primitive – animal slaughter and ritualistic to a more broadening of love and meditation.

Thank You.

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The Differentiation and Integration of Universal Consciousness

The man is a Universal Being. The attributes of love, sacrifice, feelings for the man in suffering, and unselfishness etc. points out the inherent universal consciousness in man. Universal consciousness is that which transcends the individual consciousness, and its associated attributes of ‘I’, ‘Me’, ‘Mine’, body, language, culture, religion and nation etc. For example, love cannot be pertained to be an attribute of a particular person, race or religion. It is universal. The whole lot of suffering of mankind is due to the fact of ignorance of the universal consciousness of man. As soon as man understands his stature, in proportion to the universal consciousness, his or her suffering ceases.

Universal consciousness:

                In the universe, there is rise and fall. Rise and fall of objects, rise and fall of civilizations, rise and fall of nations, rise and fall of celestial systems and so on. The question is where do they rise from and where do they fall. The rise and fall are in a static or in a universal substratum or consciousness, which again is both static and dynamic as we see, which again is infinite, and which doesn’t come under the confines of a space-time continuum.

Rise and fall of celestial bodies

The famous analogy is the ocean. As we go deep into the ocean, we find that it is static; but on the surface, there is a tumult of rising and falling of the waves. The objects rise and melt away in the ocean of universal consciousness.

                Similarly, the man, in essence, is infinite like the ocean. But the problem of man, is that he identifies himself with the drop or a wave, which it seems to have a form, which it seems to have a rise and fall, which it seems to have attributes, which it seems to have differentiated from the ocean, which it seems to be a finite entity, Which it seems to have a time in the process of rising and falling and so on. But don’t worry, man is infinite.

Differentiation of Universal consciousness:

                This is what we are now, differentiation of universal consciousness, with a body – to perform all physiological activities; with a mind – to perform critical reasoning and cognition; with the elements – which make up the body; with innumerable identifications – identification in the form of biological inheritance, identification in terms of age – child, youth and old etc., identification in terms of colour and beauty, identification in terms of race, identification in terms of religion, identification in terms of country, identification in terms of innumerable institutions. The list goes on.

                The root of all this identification lies in ‘I’ - the wave or a drop in the ocean, which has all the individual attributes mentioned above. Man thinks he is the wave - finite, subjected to rising and falling – birth and death, subjected to time, subjected to form – in a body, subjected to all finiteness in every way. 

Wave - Finite

             This is what we call ignorance. Ignorance of wrong understanding of our own selves, in terms of finite consciousness, but, in reality, a universal consciousness. That is why, sometimes, the questions persist in our mind, who am I? How I came into being? what am I? and so on. Now let’s move on a wave to the ocean.

Integration with Universal Consciousness:

                Drop all identifications, be free and dissolve yourselves into the ocean – infinite. As long as identification exists, man is subjected to suffering in finiteness. To integrate ourselves with the universal consciousness, we have to dissociate with the sense objects, associated with the individual consciousness. Conversely, we have to think more of the world and less of ourselves. Only non-violence and love can integrate with the whole world. Man cannot grow except reaching out to the whole world, in terms of help for the suffering ones, in terms of love, in terms of prayer, in terms of meditation etc.,

Ocean - Infinite

            The man has to move from person to principle, higher principles of life. As man progresses, he becomes the principle itself. There is no death for a principle. The ‘I’ must be done with, make sure that it does not sprout again. When you have done away with it, the universal consciousness reveals itself. The man then becomes synonymous with it. There is no way but to make headway with the universal consciousness.

Thank You.

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The 5S Principle: Its Implements in Spiritual Life

Straight to the point. This principle holds good for spiritual life as well. We are all well aware of the fact that this principle is applied in industries and in households as a standard practice for cleanliness and efficiency. Surprisingly this is the method or the route which we have to follow for discovering and unraveling our infinite selves.

    

Here is the brief overview of this principle. The 5S principle stands for the Japanese words Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke.

1.    Seiri – Sorting out necessary and unnecessary objects.

2. Seiton – Setting the objects in order by proper arrangement.

3.   Seiso – Cleaning the workplace on a regular basis.

4. Seiketsu – Standardizing the process of sorting, arrangement, and cleaning.

5.    Shitsuke – Sustaining the above process.

We will now apply this principle in our spiritual practice. It is only the practice of this principle that is likely to bring results. Therefore, keep experimenting with this principle. We will have a brief overview of how to do it.

Seiri:

As we have concluded from our past experience, that the sense objects invariably brings pain, we are going to avoid it in future. So the first thing would be segregating sense objects from the non-sense objects. We are going to remove the clutter of sense objects from our lives forever. So our effort must be made in identifying and discarding the sense objects once for all.

How to differentiate between a sense object and a non-sense object? The sense objects exist for the sole purpose of enjoyment, whereas the non-sense objects exist for the purpose of utility and resourcefulness in our daily lives.

In Short: Sort out and discard sense objects.

Seiton:

                After discarding the sense objects, the next step would be to sustain a life without these objects. Care must be taken to avoid all contacts with these objects. All external movement of the mind towards sense objects has to be barred.

                As we progress in this principle, we will find that the subject – the infinite self is reflected in the objects outside. For example: When we clean our house, it is not a mere cleaning, but cleaning our ‘selves’. When we wash our clothes, it is not a mere washing, but cleaning our ‘selves’. We will now do this process in a conscious way.

                Now we will sort out the non-sense objects. The rules are here,

1.       Keep minimum objects.

2.       Pack the rest.

3.       Take the rest only when it is necessary.

4.       keep the objects in the same place.   

By this rule, we can solve a maximum number of problems. Many times we search for objects in the entire house only to find it in the midst of ourselves. We will have clear, precise goals with a minimum number of objects.

In short: Keep a minimum number of objects.

Seiso:

After having a minimum number of objects, the next step would be to clean it. The only rule is ‘you have to clean it daily’. As mentioned earlier, we are not cleaning our house or objects, but cleaning ourselves. The pure self is superimposed on the objects outside.

The same is applicable in our workplace as well. We should work not for the objects but for the sake of cleaning ourselves or unfolding our spiritual selves. Everything must be given a subjective turn. By this way the mind grows sharper, subtle and clean, thereby doing the work efficiently, and at the same time revealing our subject.

In Short: You have to it clean every day.

Seiketsu:

                Spiritual goals cannot be attained in one shot. Those who give up sense objects for a day will find themselves, the objects appear redoubled. Because beneath the layers of the mind, there are hard sense impressions which bring these objects again to the sensual plane.

              Now is the time to avoid contact and say ‘No’, but in spite of our preparations we may succumb to the sense objects again, and experience the painful part. Therefore, the process has to be repeated. We are already doing this in our lives unconsciously. But the time taken to come to our senses is much longer than we do it consciously. Therefore repeating the process is necessary.

                Just like in a computer where temporary files are generated, so also here we generate these objects, in spite of our best caution, and therefore we clean them again. Here are some rules,

1.       Take up work which negates ‘I’ and sense impressions.

2.       Do exercise regularly.

3.       Discard-sort-clean the sense objects regularly.

In Short: Repeat - discard, sort and clean the sense objects.

Shitsuke:

                The result of above process is peace-infinite. You will inhale fresh air, will find peace everywhere – in your movements, in your work, in doing all daily chores. The peace will not let you go. Another great result is that the mind is now ripe or ready for meditation. Having cleansed the subject-object outside, we now shut down the objective world completely and remain ourselves on the subject.

                There are a great joy and peace in remaining ourselves in the subject, not letting the mind go outside and not experiencing the painful part. The other aspect is to identify yourself with the whole world. You feeling for the world will grow and you will become a humanitarian. You no longer think about yourselves but always for the welfare of others. This is the process and in the end, your will find yourselves in gigantic proportions – in your infinite self.

In Short: Meditate and pray

Thank You.

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The Formula for R.I.P

'Please don't bother about R.I.P...that comes later in life.' If you are the one who think in this fashion then you are wrong. You die everyday, unconsciously, even without your knowing by succumbing to sense objects. Though physically alive, we die in the self. 

Death is nothing but the summation of or cumulative effect of individual acts of deaths, which we experience in everyday life by succumbing to sense objects, culminating in the demise of the physical body. 

The formula for R.I.P is,

D1+D2+D3+…. +Dn = ∑D

Where D1, D2, Dn refers to individual acts of death and ∑D refers to the culmination of individual deaths or demise of the body.

So, what are these individual acts of death? Do we really die every day? Here is the explanation.

There are many ways in which we experience this individual acts of death but hardly we are conscious of it. For example,

Death by colors:

Have you ever come across hoardings of popular television brands across showrooms, throwing out latest technologies with advanced screen resolutions like 720p, 1080p, 4K UHD, 8K UHD etc., ever wondered why the brands are buoying up for such high resolutions? Though such technologies find implements in medical applications, but the concept of high resolution combined with entertainment presents one of the formidable sense objects to shake with.

The color is invariably associated with sense objects. But the colors associated with nature are harmless. For example, the colors of sunrise or sunset are something which is elevating. The artificial or man-made objects-color combination presents a veritable sense object.

We succumb to these combinations of objects-color, which gives an idea of permanence and fall for it. We thereby get locked and bind ourselves to an idea of finite self. This is nothing sort of an act of death. Though physically alive, we are dead in the self.

Death by taste:

                The combination of Objects-Color-Taste again presents a formidable sense object…..

Interruption…..

 Could you please stop here! Are you going to say that life should be like a water, a colorless and tasteless substance instead of a juice or candy? Life without colors and taste is meaningless and empty.

The answer....

You may take a juice or a candy but look at the label behind. It says added artificial colors, taste enhancers and other artificial stuff which is certainly going to harm you but water doesn’t.

The point here is not about food or television but about the sense objects which are clothed in the permanence of colors and in the permanence of tastes. It is about objects which again deludes the mind and which is not going to be satisfied when you succumb to it and which is going to generate a painful experience in life.

We at several points and at several instances give way or succumb to these objects which according to me is death and not the one which comes at a later stage in life.

Thank You.

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