Sunday's Talk - July 26th @ 11am to noon
“A Jnana Yogi's Response to Transformation”
with Br. Shankara
Join us via Zoom at:
https://tinyurl.com/y7veshzt
July is a month for study of Jnana Yoga (Advaita Vedanta). As a jnana yogi, you practice discrimination, reason, detachment, and satyagraha (insistence on Truth).
The goal is freedom from limitation (moksha). Our teachers say that all miseries in life are caused by seeing inaccurately. An earnest and persistent jnani may break through this misapprehension (maya) and see only the Divine Presence (Brahman) everywhere, in everything and everyone.
The Chandogya Upanishad tells us the nature of maya, and our relationship to it. This is from Uddalaka’s discourse to his son:
“… in the beginning there was Existence alone — One only, without a second. He, the One, thought to himself: Let me be many, let me grow forth. Thus out of himself he projected the universe: and having projected out of himself the universe, he entered into every being and every thing. All that is has its self in him alone. He is the truth. He is the subtle essence of all. He is the Self. And that, (my son) … THAT ART THOU (Tat Twam Asi).”
Yet, Sage Vasistha, who was Lord Rama’s teacher, tells him: “O my dear child! How strange is this world-bewitching maya! Being deluded by this maya, one cannot know the Self; though the Self has pervaded all through the limbs of the body.” And,“As (a stage set) or as the mirage water in the desert, are not true, in the similar manner this observable universe is not true.”
It is the jnana yogi’s unbending intent to dispel maya’s delusion, to realize the Great Truth left to us by Sage Uddalaka — to actually become That which is beyond all name and form.
But right now, the world we share — perhaps the Universe itself — appears to be in the midst of a major transformation. Upheaval and danger affect practically every aspect of our daily lives. How does the ideal jnana yogi respond to this? That’s what we will explore on Sunday morning.
