Lesson 216
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Sloka 61 from Dancing with Siva
What Is the Meaning of Good Conduct?
Good conduct is right thought, right speech and right action. It is virtuous deeds in harmony with divine law, reflecting the soul's innate purity. As a staff is used to climb a mountain, so must virtue be used in life. Aum.
Bhashya
Good conduct, sadachara, determines our behavior in day-to-day life. We should be uplifting to our fellow man, not critical or injurious. We should be loving and kind, not hateful or mean. We should express the soul's beautiful qualities of self-control, modesty and honesty. We should be a good example to others and a joy to be around, not a person to be avoided. Good conduct is the sum of spiritual living and comes through keeping good company. When heart and mind are freed of baseness, when desires have been tempered and excesses avoided, dharma is known and followed, and good conduct naturally arises. The Hindu fosters humility and shuns arrogance, seeks to assist, never to hinder, finds good in others and forgets their faults. There is no other way to be called a true devotee, but to conduct ourself properly within ourself and among our fellow men. The Vedas say, "Let there be no neglect of Truth. Let there be no neglect of dharma. Let there be no neglect of welfare. Let there be no neglect of prosperity. Let there be no neglect of study and teaching. Let there be no neglect of the duties to the Gods and the ancestors." Aum Namah Sivaya.
Lesson 216 from Living with Siva
Hinduism On the Net
The World Wide Web is difficult to say fast, all those w's one after another. It comes out "wurlwyewep." The pros just call it the Web. But what is it? I have been learning a little about the Web. It took me a while to get the Internet connection on my Power Macintosh working right, and the monks had to install some special software for me. But soon I was out there on the Infobahn, in the slow lane. I found that the Web is the first user-friendly, interactive global information medium. It extends any individual's reach, facilitating everything from the sharing of information to finding it. Soon, we hope, all the religionists of the Global Forum for Human Survival and Parliament of World Religions will communicate their thoughts, programs and knowledge on the Web. I remember when in Moscow and Rio de Janiero, at Global Forum gatherings of political and religious leaders, the former US Vice President Al Gore unveiled his vision to expand the Internet, previously only available to the government and universities, into an Information Highway to tie the world together. Congratulations, Mr. Gore. Just three years later your vision of a digital superhighway adds four new users every minute, and we are among them.
From Hinduism Today's home page, by a click of a button you can bring up a page that allows you to write an instant, postage-free letter to the editor. Another click sends you into the vastness of cyberspace. It's that easy, and easy to get lost, too. Give it a try. They say the Web has changed things completely. The old Internet was OK for physicists, but it was an unfriendly, type-only, black-and-white technical world. The Web added images, color, a variety of typefaces, pictures, designs, animation and buttons that lead to the next destination. Now it's everybody's tool. Click on a button and go to a home page of Vedic verses in Bangalore. Click a button there about astrology and suddenly you're in San Francisco or browsing a London database on ayurveda. Click again and you're reading a page on Sanskrit studies in Durban. It's called hyperlinking. I learned how to make bookmarks yesterday--links to connections you have made, kept by a program in case you want to return but don't recall the address. Just click and you're there again. Easy. Another nice thing is the Web is so democratic. Whether you are Birla Pvt. Ltd., IBM or Mrs. Bhatt, a poetess from Pune, everyone is equal on the Web.
Electronic mail is like having the post office in your house. Messages come and go through the phone lines and can be read almost immediately anywhere in the world. Our institutions use the Web to connect the missions we oversee in several countries. We put new information on the home page in Hawaii, and members in Mauritius, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka or Germany can access it instantly. Not only that, it's nearly free. Most of those big fax and phone bills are gone. Hindu institutions are working hard to upgrade to the Web, driven by an amazing group of Hindu engineers who have become a driving force in the Internet world. These cyberspace networks are all interconnected, but totally disorganized and decentralized, just like Hinduism, so everyone will feel at home there! Let's meet on the "wurlwyewep" and share our experience, vision and tools.
The editor of a Jain magazine in London once asked, "Gurudeva, how do you feel about using all this modern technology to promote religion?" I said, we marvel at our ancient handwritten scriptures. The stylus and the olai leaf were modern technology at one point in time, the pen and paper at another, as was the old typewriter at yet another point in time. Now we have computers and the Internet--modern technology capable of bringing the spiritual beings and all religious people of the world closely together wherever they live. This one thing the typewriter could not do, the pen and paper could not do, the stylus and olai leaf did not do.
Sutra 216 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Cremation And Dispersal Of Ashes
Devout Hindus always cremate their dead. Burial is forbidden by tradition. Embalming is never permitted, and no autopsy is performed unless required by law. Ashes are ceremoniously committed to a river or ocean. Aum.
Lesson 216 from Merging with Siva
Experience Odic Prana
Fill six glasses with water. Place them on a table before you. Take one of these glasses of water and hold it in one hand while with the other hand you shake the fingertips into the glass but without touching the water. Feel the odic prana falling from the hand and fingers into the water, being absorbed into the water and held there. Thus we have mixed two forms of odic power, that of the physical-health odic prana and the odic manifestation of water. This creates magnetism when these two forces come together in the external, odic water. Mark the glass of water that you have magnetized so that only you will later be able to identify it, then place it with the other five glasses. Switch the glasses around so that it is not apparent which glass was magnetized. If you are doing this exercise by yourself, you may close your eyes when you switch the glasses so that you do not identify the glass that has been magnetized. Now, the test. Close your eyes and drink from each glass. You close your eyes so that your taste will be most keen, and you will not be distracted by anything you see, having your entire mind on your taste buds. As you taste each glass of water, you will notice a distinct difference in the taste of the water in the glass you magnetized with odic prana.
You will achieve a great control over your pranic sheath by learning to breathe diaphragmatically. The following experiments, coupled with diaphragmatic breathing, will help you awaken your own knowledge of the controls over odic prana and your own odic pranic sheath. Take a deep breath through the nostrils, at the same time holding a mental picture of taking odic prana into the body from within the air. You may visualize it in the form of a vapor, like the odic prana you perhaps saw around your hand. Visualize the odic prana going all the way down to your solar plexus, while the air is only held in your lungs. The odic prana stays in your solar plexus while you exhale air from the lungs. From the solar plexus area, the odic prana will automatically flow through the muscle tissue to the blood and begin to store up in various nerve centers in reserve for future use. In mastering this exercise, you will build up the vital body energies and calm the nerves. It is not necessary to do this often, only when you feel the need of storing up odic prana.
Odic prana is often used unknowingly for healing various physical distresses, emotional upsets and mental strains. A child runs to his mother; the odic prana coming from the mother, freely flowing toward the child, comforts any distress the child may be going through. The child runs off vigorously, taking a good supply of odic prana from his mother through absorption. You can supply odic prana to any part of your body that may be ailing, and gain some relief. For emotional distress, store odic prana in the solar plexus, and to relieve mental strain store it in the upper back and chest area.
As you inhale odic prana, draw a mental picture of the process. When you make a mental picture, you are also employing odic force to form the picture, for all mental pictures are made out of odic force. After the mental picture of the physical area in your body that is in distress is well formed, visualize the odic prana being sent to that particular organ or part of the body. Inhale, then hold your breath a few seconds as you visualize the odic prana flowing from the solar plexus to that area of your physical body. When you manage to flow enough odic prana into the distressed area of your physical body and the health body becomes more vibrant, you will notice the distress ease. Do this for short periods of time. Remember, inhale, hold a few seconds while sending the energy to the distressed area, then exhale the air, holding the odic prana in the part of the body that needs extra energy most. "Where awareness goes energy flows." All breathing should be through the nostrils, not the mouth, deep and slow, natural and rhythmic.