Vedanta Center of Atlanta: November events
Vedanta Center of Atlanta: November events
Times:
10:30am-11am: silent meditation in the Chapel before each Sunday’s talk.
11am-noon: talk and worship in the chapel.
noon-1:30pm: devotees and friends meet in the Monastery for tea, coffee, snacks and a continuation of our spiritual fellowship.
Please join us!
PS: Please be on time. The service starts promptly at 11AM.
Venue: 2331 Brockett Rd, Tucker, GA 30084
Contact: (770) 938-6673 ; http://vedantaatlanta.org, http://vedantaatlanta.org/calendar-of-activities-events/
See Calendar for details about any particular Sunday.
Note: There is silent meditation in the Chapel from 10:30-11am, before each Sunday’s talk. After the talk, devotees and friends meet in the Monastery from noon to 1:30pm, for tea, coffee, snacks and a continuation of our spiritual fellowship.
Spiritual talks and classes are open to the public and free of charge.
November is a month for study of Karma Yoga, a spiritual path leading to the abandonment of selfishness. As a karma yogi, you practice offering your actions and their results, as well as your perceptions, thoughts, and feelings to the Divine Presence.
Even before fully knowing this Presence, you hold firmly to the belief that the Presence is within each person or other living being that you interact with or serve. Working and abiding in this spirit, you are increasingly able to release attachment to your activities and their results. This yields the freedom and contentment promised by Karma Yoga.
“Even a little practice of this yoga will save you form the terrible wheel of rebirth and death …” — Sri Krishna, Bhagavad Gita, Ch. 2
Sunday, November 4, 2018, 11am
(Free) Talk: The Master’s Story-Part 2
Speaker: Br. Shankara
The life and the society we share has many forms. One of the most persuasive is the system of agreements — the complicated “story” — that members of a civilization hold in common. These agreements are just a tiny fraction of a complex web of shared understanding, about what our world is and how it works. Yet, scientists like Rachel Carson, socio-economic theorists like Peter Drucker, historians like Barbara Tuchman, and philosophers such as Charles Eisenstein tell us that our present civilization is in the midst of a major transformation — that our story is changing.
On Sunday morning we will review what these and other savants are telling us about the inevitable decay of the civilization we have known. Then we’ll preview what the saints of our lineage — Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother, and Swami Vivekananda — told us about the age that is dawning: The Master’s Story.
These are the basic lessons Sri Ramakrishna left us: When you understand my message, reduce your reading and reasoning, and start practicing. The message is, “Find God. That is the only purpose in life.” We will explore these instructions, and the teachings offered by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (Ch. 3), and the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
November 10 @ 10-10:30am (Sat)
Chandi Hymns will be read in English
Led by Br. Shankara. No experience required.
November 10 @ 10am-2pm (Sat)
SEVA SATURDAY: Seva means serving in the fellowship of volunteers or Karma Yogis. Please join us for gardening, cleaning, organizing, lunch, and lots of camaraderie. It's not necessary for you to stay the entire time... come and stay for as long as you can. Your Center is self-supporting and depends on your participation and support to keep things running. A delicious (free) lunch is served around noon. Please join us this month!
Sunday, November 11, 2018 @ 11am-12pm
Talk: Your Spiritual Mother’s Guiding Hand
Speaker: Br. Shankara
As a small child, perhaps you walked with your mother in places where the path was uneven or narrow. Were you not more comfortable — less likely to fall — when she held your hand? If you held hers, you might let go at just the wrong moment and take a tumble. When she held yours, that wrong moment was the time when she gripped your hand more tightly, making sure that even if you stumbled you would keep your feet.
Sri Ramakrishna used this relationship as a metaphor, encouraging you to “offer your hand” to your spiritual parent. Religious literature is rich with this personalization of the Divine Presence, from the Hebrews’ Shechinah (the Divine dwelling within as Mother) to the Incas’ Pachamama (Mother of the Universe). Our recent celebration of the Mother Season seems a natural time to discuss the Divine’s maternal aspect. This coming Sunday morning, we’ll explore the Motherhood of God.
November 18 @ 11am-12pm (Sun)
Talk: Giving Thanks
w/Br. Shankara
America’s beloved Holiday of Thanksgiving is just a week away. This coming Sunday morning we will talk about Giving Thanks, as a spiritual aspirant.
Last Sunday we ended the talk with this thought (paraphrased from Swami Vivekananda’s Raja Yoga) —
The Divine Mother gently takes your self-forgetting soul by the hand, as it were, and shows you all the experiences in the universe, all manifestations, bringing you higher and higher through various bodies, till your lost glory comes back, and you remember your own nature.
On Sunday we’ll discuss why, as a karma yogi, you can make a strong connection between Swamiji’s promise and an attitude of profound thankfulness.
First, some thoughts from Henry David Thoreau. A 19th Century American spiritual teacher, he offers us a very practical kind of spirituality. Several quotes from his works have been strung together to make a kind of narrative:
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and endeavor to live the life which you have imagined, you will meet with a success unexpected in everyday circumstances.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Things do not change; we change.
This is karma yoga, the yoga of action. If you hear echoes of Sri Krishna’s lessons to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, don’t be surprised. Thoreau wrote: “In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial …” — Walden
November 22 @ 1:30-3:30pm (Thur)
Thanksgiving Celebration & Potluck Feast
Join fellow devotees and friends in the Monastery and Fellowship Hall for a fun, relaxed celebration and feast. Your Center will provide the traditional holiday dishes. Please bring a beverage, side dish, salad, or desert to share. See you there!
November 24 (Sat)
Saturday Retreat w/Swami Atmarupananda
Topic: Chapter 3 of Bhagavad Gita
Morning session 10am-12:30pm - "Basic Principles of Karma Yoga" | Lunch and Rest Break 12:30- 2pm | Afternoon session 2-4:30pm - "Streams of Practice in Karma Yoga"
November 25 @ 11am-12pm (Sun)
Talk: "Prabuddha America -- Awakened America"
w/Swami Atmarupananda
Followed by a Potluck Lunch & Reception for the Swami.
