Nisargadatta Maharaj

Bhadraiah Mallampalli vaidix at HOTMAIL.COM
Fri Jan 31 01:56:06 CST 2003


Sri Prasad,

In the Platonian model of the politics, there would be many pressure groups
each pulling in different directions. There is going to be some balance of
power between the groups depending on relative strength of the pressure
groups. This is the reason why such a political system results in people
taking extreme positions. You will have extreme liberals, extreme
conservatives etc. Agreeably there would be some moderates also, but even
these people may be staunch capitalists and stubbornly anti-communist.

Whereas in sanatana dharma, every individual is going to balance all aspects
of life oneself at personal level. Thereby a person does not become a slave
of an ideology, but balances all ideologies at the same time according to
the universal principle of balance which is inherent in the jeeva. If a
specific situation demands a particular action (such as going to war) it
will be done.

Our body/mind contains billions of living cells, but we act as one organism.
Some cells may act as capitalists, some as communists and so on, but our
system balances all these forces every fraction of a second. The chief
presiding deity of this balancing function in the body/mind is samaana.

Very often we do not balance because we want to get rid of some set of ideas
that we hate, and we like to preserve some other set of ideas that we love.
Whatever we like to renounce, we renounce them with exhalation (Prana).
Whatever set of ideas we like to preserve, we preserve them using inhalation
(apana), because day dreaming involves inhalation. To keep visualizing the
objects we like, we need to keep feeding the relevant memory with energy, so
we need to inhale. Isn't it that simple?

Two other functions called vyana and udana are successively higher than
Prana and Apana, but they need not be discusssed when we mention the highest
force Samana. There is nothing higher than Samana.

Savitriji, when Ch.U says "Name indeed is Rgveda, Name is yajurveda, Sama
veda and Atharva veda the fourth...., Name is Brahman, meditate on Name",
the idea is we should try to understand the concept of Name. I doubt Ch.U.
intends japam, but I hate to create another dualism now. Japam is the common
man's way of understanding the Names. A scholar studies the names more
seriously, that is all. If we limit our intellect to japam when we are
capable of thinking, we are back to Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj's comment.

Best regards
Bhadraiah

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus



More information about the Advaita-l mailing list