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Now for the post:

Compared to our fellow animals, as human beings we are blessed with the unique intellectual capacity to observe, learn, ponder, and change our behavior. Having observed the suffering and trivialities of the ephemeral world of everyday life, we recognize that there must be something more to life than the illusion of maya we encounter all around us. Hindu doctrine asserts that the only way to break free from maya and worldly suffering is through self-realization.

Although I believe that householders can make significant spiritual progress through seva, meditation, and mantra/japa, I have always generally associated self-realization with swamis and sadhus. While many of us may desperately want to break free from the seemingly endless cycle of karma and worldly suffering, most of us here at Harvard have no immediate intention of embarking on a life of self-renunciation and could never see ourselves as future sanyasins.

All of us are extremely busy with schoolwork, clubs, and friends.  We don’t recite mantras/japa all day, do seva all day, or ponder the Gita all day — if at all. While we may regularly think of God during times time of reflection or right before our midterms, our minds are not singularly focused on the divine.

I personally have tried to justify this reality by rationalizing that I’m a student and that my highest obligation lies in studying (so I can one day do God’s work) and enjoying the people around me. But in reality, very soon I’ll be consumed working, raising a family, and will one day ultimately die.  Our lives will very soon flash before our eyes and everything we think we have to show for will be nothing more than the trappings of maya.

Put simply, if we don’t get around to making spiritual progress in our current life, in the grand scheme of multiple reincarnations our current lives will literally have been wasted. So then, are we to abandon our problem sets and spend hours meditating in the cozy Dharma prayer space? Or are we to be typical Harvard students and go on to run hedge-funds or develop new cancer drugs, and leave the self-realization for another lifetime?  Perhaps, there is some ideal happy medium between the two -– but what does it look like?

Clearly we must somehow incorporate spiritual practice/values into our everyday lives. But, how do we go about doing this? And once we have this internal awareness, how can we stay aware of our actions and live a selfless life? How do we make time for God, so we can incrementally make substantial spiritual progress while still staying busy fulfilling all our other duties?

Take care, everyone. See you all on Friday!

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The second article, “What Is Yoga and the Purpose of Yoga?” by Meena Modi is based in part on a combined lecture and yoga session the author offered at Harvard in April 2007 as part of Harvard Dharma’s Hinduism Awareness Week. To me, the most interesting part of the article consisted of the following two paragraphs:

The second aphorism of the Yoga Sutra defines yoga from the mental perspective yogaschitta vritti nirodha: yoga is the elimination of mental fluctuations. Patanjali then goes on to explain what this means, why it is important, and how to achieve this state. The late Mircea Eliade, who headed the department of religion at the University of Chicago, wrote in his classic book Yoga: Immortality and Freedom: ‘Instead of knowing through forms and mental states, as formerly, the yogin now contemplates the essence of all objects directly.’ Yogic techniques of pranayama, pratyahara, and dharana are developed to give a direct experience of Consciousness, the true nature of the individual self…

When the mental fluctuations are removed from the mind, they no longer cloud the mind. The mind becomes completely still and clear. It sees its true Self. This state of the mind is exceptionally aware and perceptive. It is incredibly focused, relaxed, balanced, and capable of great achievements [emphasis added]. Research being done here at Harvard, MIT, and various other universities on many different meditation techniques is showing a clear effect on the human brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex. That area of the brain is more developed in advanced meditation practitioners…

In a comment, I had mentioned that the best advice I ever received was to 1) define your goals and ensure that all action is consistent with the goal, and 2) “let the universe manifest itself”. The first part of this path is what the above two paragraphs are talking about: from one perspective, yoga is focused action. In fact, the article goes on to note: “Anything done with mindfulness, engaging the body and the mind as the portals to be in communion with the Self, is yoga.”

I found these ideas particularly interesting since I had essentially just seen them in school, through from a very different perspective. Last fall, I took a course in information theory, not so much for the math but more for the “way of thinking” I thought it might offer. While the course focused on coding theory (as expected), the course did in fact raise some interesting philosophical points. The one that relates most directly to this post comes from complexity theory. Loosely defined, one way to measure the complexity of an object is by the length of a computer program needed to generate that object.

Suppose our object is a binary string; i.e. a string of 0s and 1s. A gambler is given the opportunity to guess what the bits are. It turns out that if he follows the optimal betting strategy, the lower bound on the (base 2) logarithm of his wealth is the length of the string minus the Kolmogorov complexity of the string. In other words, the lower the complexity of the string, the higher your potential wealth.

How does this relate to yoga? Recall one definition of yoga the article noted: ”Anything done with mindfulness, engaging the body and the mind as the portals to be in communion with the Self, is yoga.” When we do things with mindfulness, we are decreasing the complexity of the situations we face, thereby increasing the potential gains from our actions. The only way to decrease the complexity of a situation is to define your goals clearly and ensure that everything you do is consistent with those goals — exactly what the first part of that advice I received is saying.

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We decided to all sit together in the living room, eat some chocolates and relax until the electricity would come back on (at that point, we didn’t know it would take many hours to get back the electricity). Using our cell phones as lights, we were able to find candles to light up the room. Once the three candles we found had been lit, it felt like such a beautiful moment. Everything was quiet. There were no humming air conditioning units or blaring TVs or computers playing loud music. There were just three candles, four people and a box of chocolates.

I tried to take in the scene as much as I could. I looked at the small statue of Krishna in the corner of the room and couldn’t help but smile as I saw the candlelight gently caress his face as he stood in his classic pose of playing the flute.  Next to Krishna was another small statue, this one of Shiva the form of Nataraja performing the Thandav Nritya (dance of destruction). The moving flame of the candle made the shadow of Shiva seem as if it was actually dancing. I then saw the faces of my parents and of my brother, all glowing from the light that emanated from the candles. We joked around, we laughed, we reminisced. This was like a mini-vacation for me, where I could free my mind of troubles that had been bothering me, allowing me to enjoy the simplicity that was in the air.

What I learned from this experience is that all of us are so eager to find something that we can enjoy in our life, when that something we are looking for is what many of us take for granted every single day. As Albert Schweitzer had said,

In hopes of reaching the moon, men fail to see the flowers blossoming at their feet.

I also realised that sometimes, if situations are too stressful or tense, it may be best to get away from everything and just take a mini-vacation. Try it out! When you’re feeling stressed, do some meditation or japa, or creatively vent out your worries through art such as painting or singing. If all else fails, go to the electric box and switch off the electricity!

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Although the meditation technique is non-religious, Vipassana is a historically Buddhist technique, so much of the philosophy that’s espoused shares common ideas with Hinduism. One of the main things we were taught from the first day was that we spend our lives being controlled by our cravings and aversions. The technique of meditation is supposed to provide a way to come out of the cycle of attachment and accept things as they occur. As abstract ideas, these were not new to me, but what the technique of meditation provided me with that religious teachings had not was a straightforward explanation of how to change my thinking.

This was interesting to me, as the secular method of meditation actually gave me a better understanding of what it is that Hinduism values so highly. Before, it was difficult for me to realistically understand what it meant to minimize attachments, because it seems like such an unattainable goal. However, after over a hundred hours of meditation, I had spent so much time thinking that it was easier for me to look at my life objectively.

I’ve found that it’s hard to explain what my experience was like because so much of it was mental and I had more time than I ever have to contemplate everything — including things I didn’t necessarily want to think about. This gave me the chance to really evaluate my thoughts and actions, and then I was able to better understand what it meant to avoid attachments. It doesn’t mean that I can’t have friends or that I can’t enjoy experiences, but rather that I need to avoid becoming dependent on these things. Obviously, this is a lot harder to do than it is to comprehend, and I’m still only at the stage of understanding. Still, the increased sense of peace that I have has made me understand why gurus encourage their students to minimize their attachments within the world.

Given that not everyone can (or wants to) spend ten days silently meditating, there have to be other ways to make small changes that can help us get out of this cycle of craving and aversion. I thought that the introspection that was prompted by isolation was very, very interesting. I realized how much we use other people as a gauge, and we depend on others for constant advice and support. While this isn’t a bad thing, sometimes it’s not necessary to share things with others — I don’t need to be texting my friend saying “I’m bored” when I don’t want to study. It’s important to learn how to rely on ourselves as a resource; of course, other people are always there as well. I found that I actually know more about myself than I credit myself with knowing, and usually I can figure out what the right thing to do is when I’m making a personal decision. Although I’m still attached to my friends and loved ones, I’ve learned to appreciate the value of giving myself primary responsibility for my actions. What it comes down to is that I need to be comfortable with my thoughts and my behavior, because in the end I am accountable for what I do.

Do you think this is a valid way of minimizing attachments? Or is it just a personal development that doesn’t really have any bearing on my attachment to the world and other people?

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