As water cannot rise higher than its own level, thought cannot think what is higher than thinking. It cannot conceive the mind which thinks and still less the power which generates the mind...
...when the human mind gets out of its depth it drowns and vomits up a lot of dead ideas.
Alan Watts
I right now am once again dipping into Hindu teachings...indirectly through Alan Watts and Ram Dass as they speak to the wisdom of the Gita and to Rabindranath Tagore as he speaks mainly to the wisdom of the Upanishads. As a person brought up very strongly in Christian teaching, it felt very strange to me, almost blasphemous, to read these classic scriptures, let alone study them in the way I first did years ago...but something drew me in. (My father would be making the sign of the cross on himself if he were still alive and heard me saying that.) But like everything that has great wisdom in it ( I don't mean knowledge...I mean the kind of stuff that taps into some true knowing within) I feel compelled to go back again and again. I have done that with the bible too, if you are wondering. Lately, I kind of just fall into whatever shows up in front of me in the form of teaching if it feels right. The audio book, Shadana and these lectures from from Watts and Ram Dass showed up and they feel right.
A hero of mine...well of most people, I suppose, Mahammad Ghandi, relied heavily on the Gita which is quite strange being that he was a man of nonviolence and the Gita is actually a story about Lord Krishna, the embodiment of Vishnu/God, disguised as a charioteer on a battlefield, talking a reluctant warrior by the name of Arjuna to go off and kill his kin. Quite violent, right? Certainly not representing, it seems, the "turn the other cheek" teachings from Christ. Or is there some actual similarities in the wisdom shared between Christian and Hindu teachings? The more I study and compare the two, the more I see the similarities. As far as the level of violence in these ancient scriptures, we have to remember that the Old Testament beats the Gita any day on the amount of violence in it.
Of course, the differences lie mainly in the idea of soul. Christians, Watts reminds us, see the soul as individual and Hindus tend to see the soul as universal. In Christianity it is blasphemous to consider ourselves anywhere near God-like, while in Hinduism we are reminded that Atman ( soul) is Brahman. The other "apparent" distinction is that of reincarnation. And I use the word "apparent" because many great scholars propose that the original bible included the possibility of reincarnation in it but that part of the bible, along with the Gospel of Thomas, was removed by one of the popes prior to the middle ages.
What I like about the Gita and the Upanishads is that they touch that deep seated wisdom in all of us if we are open, that I am just beginning to tap into. They offer a living wisdom...a way of approaching Life with non duality and detachment, much like the Buddhist teachings offer. As a yogi, of some kind just beginning to understand the other limbs of yoga that exist beyond the Hatha component...I like the reference of yoga throughout the Gita in relation to action...
...treating alike pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, engage in the battle, for the sake of the battle, and thus you will incur no sin. To action alone has thou a right, not at all to its fruition...fixed in yoga, do thy work...abandoning attachment, with an even mind, in success and future. Evenness of mind is called yoga...Yoga is skill in action.
I still get a little weebie-geebie when I read the part about engaging in battle but am called to understand it. If Ghandi, the most peaceful man who lived in our recent past, could find solace in these words they must be pointing to something deeper than I can understand...and that takes me to the above quote again from Watts.
And these words of wisdom from Chapter Three of Sadhana...remind that there is so much more to this than what appears...
- every so called evil or imperfection will be corrected by the greater all
- what is immoral is perfectly moral [this needs to be explained]
- We can partake in life with disinterested goodness
- Man’s individuality is not highest self
- Man’s deepest joy is in growing greater and greater in union with the ultimate
- The most important lesson we are to learn is not that there is pain but that it is up to us to transmute that pain into joy
- Accepting pain as an element of our joy is what we are here to do
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· I don't know...just rambling because I am rumbling with these idea, I suppose. I know that what we are to learn goes way beyond thought and mind, so how can it be put into words, especially with my meager ones?
All is well
Be Here and Now/ Ram Dass & Alan Watts .Essential Teachings of the Gita: Being in the Way, Ep.11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww8DdVhIPWQ
Greatest AudioBooks/ Rabindranath Tagore. Shadana: The Realization of Life.
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