Swadharma » Reactions

Approaches to Prayer

Sonali — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 04:48:21 +0000

From our weekly discussions, it seems that even among those who believe in God, our approaches to God/religion vary. For the most part, I’ve noticed two main ways of thinking of God/religion. Of course, many of us probably mix both approaches together in our practice of religion. Also, please correct me if you’ve noticed other views, or if these distinctions make no sense!

Approach 1: God is a being with infinite strength, and His grace can lead us to success in this life. For this reason, we pray to him for things like strength, peace, and material success.

Approach 2: God is not some outside being, but rather, We are God — that strength, peace, and success all comes from within us. For this reason, we pray to be able to find this source of inner strength so that we can spread strength, peace and success to others.

My ideal has always been to be so grounded in my spirituality that I no longer prayed for myself (the first approach) but rather that I prayed as a way of reminding myself of my inherent divinity. In other words, I want to have such inner strength/peace/happiness that I don’t need to ask any outside entity to supply me with it. Then, prayer will be a way for me stay charged and strong, so that I can constantly give without asking for anything in return. In that way, achieving that second approach to prayer is my goal.

Given that, I thought I would share the following poem with you – a close friend sent it to me, and it struck me as a beautiful way of expressing this goal. The poem was written by the venerated Saint Francis of Assisi, a Catholic friar and preacher — its similarity to the sentiments echoed in Hindu philosophy are striking!

“Prayer of St. Francis”

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

How do you approach religion? Do you think the sentiments expressed in this poem can actually lead to inner peace and happiness, or is it just meaningless self-sacrifice? What is the point of prayer?

Go Not To the Temple…. A friend recently sent me this poem; I hadn’t read...
A mother’s heart… Since today is Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share a...
On Prayer In the early years of the 16th century, a great...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Misinterpreting Freedom

Sonali — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:52:48 +0000

Recently, I was discussing Hinduism and the ideas of freedom and maya with one of my close friends. When I explained to her that for me, the goal of Hinduism — and of my life — is to become free and to understand that there is more to reality than just this physical world, she made a really interesting point: doesn’t such thinking justify our lack of concern about the deterioration of the world around us?

In other words, if we assume that the world is an illusion, it becomes really easy to do all sorts of terrible things; if the world isn’t real, then it doesn’t really matter if we pollute it, or brings species to extinction, or exhaust our natural resources, or wage wars; thinking that the world is an illusion may give some people license to damage the earth.

I wasn’t sure how to respond, other than that people who honestly believe that there is something beyond this world would naturally act in ways that help others and in ways that don’t damage the earth…But I thought she had a really important point, that it is really easy to misinterpret this idea of freedom.
How would you guys respond to this? How can we know the correct way to interpret our religion, assuming that my earlier explanation is “correct”?

Different approaches to “Overcoming Greed” Today in his lecture at the Vedanta Society, Swami Tyagananda...
Thinking of Freedom, Religiously Perhaps April is the month of freedom. It certainly...
Psychology and Maya Yesterday in my psychology class, we learned about the nature...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Worshiping God as Mother

Sonali — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:15:40 +0000

Since we recently celebrated Navratri, the idea of worshiping God in the form of Mother has increasingly been on my mind. A close family friend recently sent me an email about a service she had attended in the New York Ramakrishna Vedanta Center, where the topic of the lecture was “Worship of God as Mother.” I really liked one of the explanations that Swami Yuktatmananda gave during the lecture:

It is like as long as a child is playing with toys his mother attends to all her other duties; but the moment the child throws away all toys and cries for Mother, she runs to him and take him in her lap. Mother — Mayamaya — also lets us play with things of world until we are not satisfied with them. As long as we are happy with the worldly enjoyments, she lets us be absorbed in them. Once we are done with these joys, we begin to search for something abiding, permanent. We begin the search for Mother, and finally find her so close to us.

I thought it was a really beautiful way of explaining Maya, as well as our relationship to God.

Testing our limits I was watching The Day the Earth Stood Still the...
A mother’s heart… Since today is Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share a...
Different approaches to “Overcoming Greed” Today in his lecture at the Vedanta Society, Swami Tyagananda...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A beautiful verse on Kṛṣṇa

Gokul — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:05:36 +0000

This is a gorgeous verse on Kṛṣṇa, in a style that I’ve never seen before. I found it in Michael Coulson’s Teach Yourself Sanskrit (which is a good heavy introduction to the language, but no substitute for personal instruction ), and I was immediately struck by its unusualness of description.

mand(r)a-kvāṇita-veṇur ahni śithile vyāvartayan gokulam / barhâpīḍakam uttamâṅga-racitaṃ go-dhūli-dhūmraṃ dadhat |

mlāyantyā vana-mālayā parigrahaḥ śrānto ‘pi ramyâkṛtir / gopa-strī-nayanôtsavo vitaratu śreyāṃsi vaḥ keśavaḥ ||

I’m going to try to translate it thus:

As the day slackens—

His flute’s music slow and soft, he circles Gokula,

the crest-jewel peacock feather adorning his head all red from the cows’ dust;

embraced by a garland of wildflowers, withered;

tired, and yet beautiful to look at,

May Keśava—

the delight of the gopīs’ eyes!—

bestow felicity upon us.

I’m curious about the possible theological implications of such a depiction of Kṛṣṇa. What does it mean to depict a form of God (and at least for Rūpa Gosvāmin and many modern Hindus, the supreme form of God) in this particular mode? This is a very human portrayal of Kṛṣṇa, much more so than those of Kṛṣṇa as a playful child or a beautiful young man, and associates with him the human qualities (some would call them “failings”) of exhaustion and dustiness; even the flowers he wears are withered. And despite all of that, he is gopa-strī-nayanôtsavaḥ, the limitless joy and exultation of the eyes of the lovely women of Vraja. Why? How? What does this mean?

Muhammad Yunus: An exemplary karma yogi? Yesterday, I had the good fortune of attending a lecture...
Reason and Faith at Harvard At Harvard, there is a clear emphasis on the importance...
Question of the Week: Religion and Existentialism Many of us have heard Karl Marx’s famous statement: “Religion...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Polygamy, continued

Anjali — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:41:54 +0000

Last year I wrote a post that referenced the question of polygamy. I’d like to continue that discussion by citing this recent New York Times article, which features the stories of those in India who are part of some of the few remaining polyandrous marriages (one woman, multiple husbands). The article goes on to explain the practicality of polyandry:

In the remote villages of this Himalayan valley, polyandry, the practice of multiple men marrying one wife, was for centuries a practical solution to a set of geographic, economic and meteorological problems.People here survived off small farms hewed from the mountainsides at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and dividing property among several sons would leave each with too little land to feed a family. A harsh mountain winter ends the short planting season abruptly. The margin between starvation and survival is slender.

“We used to work and eat,” Ms. Devi said, her face etched by decades of blistering winters, her fingers thick from summers of tilling the soil. “There was no time for anything else. When three brothers share one lady, they all come back to one house. They share everything.”

…

“If you marry a different woman, then there are more chances of family disputes,” Mr. Bhagsen said. “Family property is divided, and problems arise.”

Was this precisely the reality of Draupadi and the five Pandavas? Was her loyalty to five husbands key to them sticking by each other (“paanchon mili to ban gaye mutthi” -Lagaan)?

The article continues to say that the practice of polyandry is now outdated:

“That system had utility for a time,” Mr. Bhagsen said. “But in the present context it has outlived its usefulness. The world has changed.”

Do you agree? Maybe the larger question is, and remains, do we marry for some emotion called love, or for more practical considerations? And if it is the latter, which I am inclined to think (because love can presumably sustain itself without marriage, whereas we look for a lifestyle – a practical consideration – when choosing to marry), then could polygamy/polyandry have some degree of usefulness that we are just not willing to admit?

And what about the moral question of having more than one “jeevansaathi”? What restricts us from having multiple soulmates, or life partners? What makes us uncomfortable about being in a nonexclusive relationship? I would hazard a guess to say it has something to do with having some sort of absolute power and control over another being. But maybe it is about absolute and equal trust and loyalty, which we cynically believe cannot occur between more than two people. What do you think?

Conversion and Polygamy My uncle sent me this simultaneously amusing and disturbing article...
Alcohol in Hinduism It can be noted that almost all of the religions...
Gender and Misperceptions I was procrastinating and I happened to see this article...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.