Title: Today's Hinduism Category: Hinduism and Tradition Duration: 47 seconds

Cybertalk: Gurudeva gives a short response to a question about how Hinduism is faring in the modern age. Is it like it was in Vedic times?

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Sutra 1

Siva's devotees strive for God Realization as the first and foremost goal of life. They learn to dance with Siva, live with Siva, merge with Siva. Deep within, they discover their eternal, immortal oneness with God. Aum.

Monday

LESSON 1

Awakening
Comes Slowly

Good evening, everyone! It's a great pleasure to see all of your happy faces here in the Indescribable One's holy temple on this, His most sacred, night. You have come such long distances to worship Him here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on this lovely Garden Island.

My satguru, Siva Yogaswami, was a great siddha, a master and a knower of God. He would say, "Liberation is within you." He would order his seekers to "See God in everything. You are in God. God is within you. To realize the Supreme Being within you, you must have a strong body and a pure mind." He was a powerful mystic from Sri Lanka, near India--perhaps the greatest to live in this century--and his words drove deeply into the hearts of all who heard them. "God is in everyone. See Him there. God is overwhelmingly present everywhere. Regard everything as a manifestation of God, and you will realize the Truth" were his words. Simple words for a simple truth, but very, very difficult to practice.

As we go on through life we see only parts of life. We don't see the whole. We can't see the whole. Yogaswami said, "How can a part see the whole?" So we live with a small part, our small part. We seek to avoid the painful areas and attract to us the joyous ones. Most people live in this duality life after life, bound in the forces of desire and the fulfillment of it. Occasionally a more mature soul breaks away from this cycle of desire-fulfillment-pleasure-loss-pain-suffering-and-joy, and asks questions such as: Who is God? Where is God? How can I come to know God?

God has no names, but all names are the names of God. Whether you call Him this or that, He remains Who He is. But in our tradition we call God by the loving name Siva, which is only one of His 1,008 traditional names. Supreme God Siva is both within us and outside of us. Even desire, the fulfillment of desire, the joy, the pain, the sorrow, birth and death--this is all Siva, nothing but Siva. This is hard to believe, for the unenlightened individual cannot see how a good, kind and loving God could create pain and sorrow. Actually, we find that Siva did not, not in the sense that is commonly thought. God gave the law of karma, decreeing that each energy sent into motion returns with equal force.

In looking closely at this natural law, we can see that we create our own joy, our own pain, our own sorrow and our own release from sorrow. Yet we could not even do this except for the power and existence of our loving Lord. It takes much meditation to find God Siva in all things, through all things. In this striving--as in perfecting any art or science--regular daily disciplines must be faithfully adhered to.

This is how God Siva can be seen everywhere and in everyone. He is there as the Soul of each soul. You can open your inner eye and see Him in others, see Him in the world as the world. Little by little, discipline yourself to meditate at the same time each day. Meditate. Discover the silent center of yourself, then go deep within, to the core of your real Being. Slowly the purity comes. Slowly the awakening comes. Does this seem too difficult?

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