Advaita Bhakti thro. Contemplative Practice of Narayaniyam (ABCPN - 8)(fwd)

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

Forwarded message from Jagannath Chatterjee

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jagannath Chatterjee <jagchat01 at yahoo.com>

Dear Friends,

Here is something from Ramprasad, a poet saint from
Bengal. He describes how we can constantly contemplate
on God even while doing our daily chores;

" O Mother, whatever I eat is your prasad,
  when I sleep I am meditating on you,
  when I walk around the village I am actually
                            circumbulating you
  whatever I think, I think of you
  whatever I talk, I talk of you
  because there exists nothing in this world
                            which is not you"

We have to take the spirit of the song. Contemplating
on this will automatically focus our thoughts on the
Lord, whatever we may be doing.

I also remember what Kalia the snake told Sri
Krishna., "Oh Lord, my poison is actually an offering
to you, because you have not given me anything else".

Regards
Jagannath
>From ADVAITA-L at LISTS.ADVAITA-VEDANTA.ORG Sun Dec  8 07:52:46 2002
Message-Id: <SUN.8.DEC.2002.075246.0500.ADVAITAL at LISTS.ADVAITAVEDANTA.ORG>
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 07:52:46 -0500
Reply-To: List for advaita vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara
        <ADVAITA-L at LISTS.ADVAITA-VEDANTA.ORG>
To: List for advaita vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara
        <ADVAITA-L at LISTS.ADVAITA-VEDANTA.ORG>
From: Anand Hudli <anandhudli at HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: World-view as dream

>>Sure. But even those imagined objects have to have some base in the
>>experential world for the mind to be able to envision them. For eg even in
>>an non-existent example like "horns of a rabbit" we have experienced horns
>>and rabbits (albeit seperately) and that's the base on which the
>>non-existent example is conceptualized. Even planes were "dreamt up" with
>
>The point still remains that the entity "hare with horns" has no material
>referent in waking reality.
>
>>birds in mind. Simply put it seems that the mind can only think of that
>>which exists - atleast in parts.
>
>The problem with this is about where to draw the line with respect to the
>parts that constitute the whole in the dream. The mind can certainly think
>of absolutely non-existent entities, both in waking state and in the dream
>state. If we could not think of the non-existent, we could never have any
>knowledge of the non-existent, the "atyanta asat".
>

 These are vexing problems in advaita.

 1. Is the dream state in some way dependent on the waking state in
    the sense a dream object is always based on waking state object(s)?
 2. Is the reality of a dream object "less" than the reality of a
    waking state object?

 To add to the problems, what happens when you add more states that
 have objects, such as the World of Virtual Reality??? Then you will
 have similar questions to deal with for those states.

 If you have been to one of such Virtual Reality worlds, the objects
 there can be just about anything. You can perceive not only flying
 horses, flying elephants, etc. which are based on objects seen in
 the real world but also objects that are NOT perceived in the
 actual world such as strange monsters with strange shapes
 and attributes performing strange acts!

 The human imagination knows no bounds! So it seems.

 However, an erudite advaita scholar of our times, Shri Ranganath
 Sharma says that whatever is imagined/perceived should fall within
 the (3-dimensional) bounds of nAma-rUpa-kriyA or name, form (attributes),
 and action. Since all objects in ANY state have some combination of
 name, form, and action, all objects are in some sense reducible to
 nAma-rUpa-kriyA. This nAma-rUpa-kriyA is the basis of ALL objects
 in ALL states. You can add as many states as you like to the list of
 waking, dream, virtual reality, hallucination, illusion, etc.

 Now comes the assertion that the nAma-rUpa-kriyA basis is itself
 unreal (mithyA).

 If we understand this assertion, the mind becomes peaceful.

Anand