Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

24/03/2017. Chapter 9: Yoga Meditation -8 Yoga or meditation can be freed from all these preconceived associations which make us feel a sense of holiness in ourselves – as if we are lifted above the world and not connected with anything else outside us. It may be a holy exercise, but it is not holy in the sense that other things are unholy to us, because that unholy or extraneous element around us, which becomes a content of our consciousness for any reason whatsoever, also becomes an object of meditation for us, and it ceases to be unholy and irrelevant. A thing that is totally irrelevant for our purposes cannot become a content of our thought or consciousness; we cannot define it, and we will not feel a need to say anything about it – or, much less, think about it. Swami Krishnananda    To be continued ....

19/03/2017. Chapter 9: Yoga Meditation -7. 1. Whenever we feel a necessity to be healthily associated with anyone, anything, or any condition, we are performing an act of meditation. The effort on our part to be in union with that which is outside us, is the act of our meditation. 2. When we are in a parliament house as a member thereof, we are nevertheless in a state of meditation, because the necessity we feel to be non-conflictingly involved in the body called the parliament is our meditation. 3. Otherwise, we know how we behave when we are not in the parliament. When we go to purchase vegetables in a shop, we do not feel the necessity to behave like a member of parliament or to inwardly commune ourselves with the body called the parliament. 4. Whenever it becomes necessary for us to be in tune with whatever is external to us, we are in a state of meditation, though we may not be willing to consider that meditation as a sort of holy or spiritual exercise, as we

12/03/2017. Chapter 9: Yoga Meditation -6. I have tried to mention that there is no necessity to demarcate the inner essentials of what is known as ‘yoga’ and what is called ‘meditation’.  For our practical purposes, they are one and the same thing because even when we are not attempting to meditate in the proper sense of the term, even when we seem to be taking only the initial step in the direction of yoga, that initial preliminary step also is a kind of meditation. I told you that even the physical exercise of yoga is a condition of meditation. It may be one type of meditation; nevertheless, it is that. Therefore, yoga is meditation. Yogah samadhih says the great commentator on the sutras of Patanjali. Yoga is virtually meditation; it is nothing else. Even when it appears to be something else, it is just that in one form. Swami Krishnananda    To be continued ....

03/03/2017. Chapter 9: Yoga Meditation -5. I. The point is not in what environment we are. II. The point is how we are able to get on with this environment. III. But if there is a perpetual rub which we feel between ourselves and our environment, it is something for us to think deeply upon why this situation should arise at all. IV. There is a vehemence on both sides : - the environment refuses to adjust itself to our way of living, and our way of living refuses to adjust itself with the environment. V. Both sides assert a sort of individuality of their own, and this affirmation is from two parties which are somehow related to each other for important reasons. VI. The irreconcilability of the circumstances of two sides, which are really not two sides literally, is the conflict of life. VII. It is the problem of existence, and it is the sorrow of man. VIII. This is solved, or is attempted to be solved, by what people call yoga or pinpoint as the way of meditation.