[Advaita-l] On Bhakti Yoga

[Anant Upadhyayula]

Namaste Sandeep,
I read your example of coffee to associate likes and dislikes.
Your doubt was how same experience can leave a liking and disliking thought
on different individual.
The way I understood is - human beings eternal pursuits is to be happy, some
say they want to go to heaven and get material things. If you put one why at
the end of all the desires or pursuits of humans; then we can easily
conclude that it is to gain happiness. The life of becoming something starts
with a subtle desire to be happy. A person wants to be happy, who would want
to happy. A person who is not happy can only want to be happy.

Now regarding the coffee example, the person who has inner unhappiness,
inner void will find happiness in sense pleasures. If you give coffee to a
Jyani then he would simply drink it and would not associate any name,
feelings to it. Where as the other person who is on a quest for happiness
but did not know; would keep thinking that coffee gives him pleasure, or any
other senses gives him pleasure.

Any person who derives any kind of sense pleasure he would remain Ajyani. I
heard about Ramana Maharshi, he used to mix, rice curry, dal and all other
ingredients and then eat it. He eliminated the taste of individual items, he
knew the purpose of food to is support body not to gives names as per
appearances and tastes.

And a person who develops dislikes has a preset thoughts based of his
senses, if thing is not as per his senses then he would develop dislike and
if it is as per his preset notions then he would develop liking.
I hope this gives some insight, even though seems my thoughts are not well
organized.
enjoy learning
Anant

On Feb 11, 2008 6:53 PM, <shyam_md at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Pranams
> Very nicely put.If I may add a few thoughts.
> The concept of Ishwara or Paramatma in Vedanta is not of a individual
> sitting in a distant Heaven or Vaikuntha and hearing his praise or stutis.
> Parameshwara is the Whole - he is Poornam and even more so - in His vision
> you and me are also Poornam - there being nothing other than the Whole. So
> He has no use for praise.
>
> Then why pray? Why sing his glories and sahasransmas? Not for Him but to
> sublimate our own ahamkara - our own sense of notional separation from
> Ishwara. Hence alone we pray - that our sense of limitation may resolve -
> and while in our ignorance we initially tend to pray for ephemeral things
> that we mistakenly feel will resolve this limitation, hopefully with Grace
> and viveka we mature into praying for a removal of that sense of limitation
> itself and thus become jijnasus.
> Now Ishwara is not partial to bhaktas because of praise. He does not
> reward bhaktas for what they say but for what they ask. Whatever we do as
> action, the Order that is Ishwara will bless us with the appropriate result.
> When we pray we invoke the Order to bless us with the result of our desire.
> To the Lord there can be no difference between a bhakta and a nonbhakta
> inasmuch as the Sun makes no differentiation on whom it shines - someone may
> choose to harness its Power for solar energy, another may choose to wear
> darkglasses to ward it off - it is all based on exercise of free will.
> When a devotee surrenders to Ishwara, what he does is let the Order that
> is Ishwara take over - he acknowledges his own limitation and surrendes his
> ahankara - then Ishwara's will takes over.
>
> Now one may also wonder - why should I pray for anything? He afterall is
> the Antaryam _ does he not already know what His bhakta wants? Again in His
> vision there is naught separation between you and Him. He doesn't know what
> you want because you are already Him - anything you want despite this(!) is
> only out of your ignorance.
>
> Humble pranams
> Hari OM
> Shri gurubhyoh namah
> Shyam
>
> Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
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