SADHANA: SPIRITUAL PRACTICE, READING SPIRITUAL BOOKS

srikrishnachaithanya.wordpress.com

Over the weekend I did a bit of house cleaning and I also dusted my book shelf. I came across the Srimad Bhagavatam a multi-volume collection of stories about Krsna’s pastimes, His glories and the glories and stories of His devotees and associates. This eighteen-thousand verse collection of pure nectar fills up the whole shelf and I was stunned that I read all these books and not even that- they touched my heart so deeply that I put the most loved verses of each booklet onto the back and sometimes on the first pages if there wasn’t enough space. Because there were so many!

Like the Yoga sutras and the Upanishads, the Srimad Bhagavatam is pure and perfect. Once you start reading it you just simply cannot put it down and before you notice, you have read all the many Cantos (translated and commented by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Srila Prabhupada).

This is the thing about spiritual knowledge: it is always fresh, new and so attractive. You feel it comes from a place that is pure and of utmost beauty, reflected in the language used, the concepts portrayed and the unconditional love that resides in every single word. Nothing else compares to it. This is one of the verses that I picked out and pasted onto the back of Canto One, Part III. It is very simple yet so powerful:

 

‘The devotees of the Lord are accustomed to licking up the honey available from the lotus feet of the Lord. What is the use of topics which simply waste one’s vulnerable life?’

(Canto 1, Part 3, chapter 16, text6)

 

When you read texts like the Srimad Bhagavatam or the Upanishads or the Yoga Sutras or the Bhagavat Gita, you automatically lose interest in mundane topics. They are predictable, boring, stale and limited in comparison. When I walk into a commercial book store in fact, I never browse through books other than perhaps some nice vegetarian or vegan cook books because I already know all the stories and places and things portrayed in them. Seen and heard it so many times before. But a spiritual book always remains fresh and the more you read it the more meaning it reveals. There is no end- but most of all, it is so beautiful!

Why waste words if not to describe the highest?

Why waste thoughts if not about the highest?

What waste energy and deeds if not in service to it?

It truly seems like  a waste of time.

The same applies to yoga which is also a sadhana! (spiritual practice). Why is it so different to other forms of ‘physical activity’? Why so much more attractive and fulfilling? Because it addresses everything. Not only the body but also the mind and the soul. The physical asana help to calm and master the body. The breathing, pranayam, helps to calm and master the mind. And when body and mind are calm and peaceful, we can see things more clearly, our inner light, soul or true self can shine trough and everything in life takes on a different turn. If we align to the Higher Intelligence or Self everything in life becomes effortlessly, falls into place naturally. I am talking out of my own experience... but who am iJ... there are thousands of much more elevated souls whose lives reconfirm this. We always think we have to do so much, to organise and plan and make sure everything goes the way we think is right.

But is it not much simpler to stop wrecking the mind with thoughts and worries. To find this place within us where nothing needs to be done at all. First, because everthing is already here. And second because we start to realise this: that everything is already here and we do not need to do anything at all.

There is so much beauty in this.

The scriptures are a good reminder. This is why it is a great pastime to do some regular reading. But ultimately no book can convey or tell you something that is already here. It might help to realise it, to be reminded.

Om Shanti shanti shanti

Julia