Author Archive

The mystery of death

emily-dickinson-death-stop

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

Emily Dickinson


The mystery of death holds both fear and fascination. On the one hand we fear death – death of the body and death of the ego; to some, death is the extinction of all that we hold dear in the world.

But, if we live not only for worldly possessions, we come to feel that maybe there is more to life than this physical being. The Seers and mystics proclaim that death is but a transition: a chance for renewal and rebirth. Death is an end for the body; but for the soul, death is merely the process of discarding its worn-out garment and moving to something higher.


 

Death is not the end
Death can never be the end.

Death is the road.
Life is the traveller.
The Soul is the Guide

Sri Chinmoy


“They will come back – come back again, as long as the red Earth rolls.
He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls ?”

Rudyard Kipling


 

 Sri Aurobindo on death

“Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride
The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,
A grey defeat pregnant with victory”

– Sri Aurobindo, Savitri

To understand the perspective of a Seer poet on death, I recommend the Debate of love and death in Savitri by Sri Aurobindo. It is a beautiful and thought provoking dialogue between Savitri and death – between human mortality and the divine.

References

[1] Because I could not stop for death

[2] Quotes on Death

[3] The Sack of the Gods R.Kipling

The Stormy Life

med

 

The Stormy life can be braved
Only by the heart’s sunny
Meditations

 

– Sri Chinmoy, Sri Chinmoy’s Heart-Garden

Oneness and Happiness

 

 

Practise the feeling of oneness.
Do not try to get ahead of others
You are bound to be supremely happy.

– Sri Chinmoy

Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees no. 38,315

Read On…

How Yama and Niyama Affect Daily Life and Yoga Practise

This is a guest post by Manatita

In this essay, the writer will first show the essentials of Yama and Niyama and its relation to Yoga, and will conclude with the practical aspect of how these two ?abstinences?, has affected his daily life and Yoga practice.

Yama and Niyama are the first steps in Yoga practice. They are considered the foundations of Yoga. They are the first two limbs of the eight-fold Path of Patanjali – the ancient sage – the rest being:-

  • Asana – bodily postures. They combine a series of exhaustive exercises, widely known in the West as Hatha Yoga, for the health and discipline of the physical. They are also useful for the movement of the life-force and the attainment of the Higher Yoga.
  • Pranayama – control of the life-force. It involves the inhaling, retention and exhaling of breath.
  • Pratyahara – withdrawal of the senses from the external world
  • Dharana – concentration – control of or steadying of the mind on a particular object to the exclusion of everything else.
  • Dhyana – the gazing or fixing of the mind on a Higher Consciousness. Sri Chinmoy, in his book The Silent teaching, 1985, refers to it as conscious self-expansion?.?silence, energizing and fulfilling?the eloquent expression of the inexpressible?
  • Samadhi – profound contemplation or the tuning of the inner self with the Universal Self. This is a profound state and achieved by only a few. (Gibson, WB: The Key to Yoga, 1958)

Quotes on Criticism

To deliberately criticise
Another individual
May cause an indelible stain
On the critic.

– Sri Chinmoy

 

Those who serve the world constantly
Do not have time
To criticise others,
While those who do not serve
Others selflessly
Have endless time
To criticise the whole world.

– Sri Chinmoy.

 

Even absent-mindedly,
We must not
Criticise others.

– Sri Chinmoy.

Read On…