A murti of Lord Ganesh from Indonesia, Java Island. See more pictures here.

“Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin: to say that you are weak, or others are weak.”

-Swami Vivekananada

Jai Shri Krishna!

“The question of whether there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by book, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies on in total ignorance of self. To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.”

- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From the Known.

” Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune

I found this quote as the introduction to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Self Reliance.  It draws me to think on the divine potential within man, and karma yoga.

“There is not a fellow under the sun who is my disciple. On the contrary, I am everybody’s disciple. All are the children of God. All are His servants. As for me, I consider myself as a speck of the dust of the devotee’s feet.”

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886)

Traditionally, we have been lead to believe that spiritual or religious inquiry has been a matter of faith or belief. However, a number of people have challenged this notion. After all, we, as a society, constantly question the world, and each other. According to Swami Vivekananda, this idea of faith or belief being the pillar of spirituality is false.

…We see that in the study of this …Yoga, no faith or belief is necessary. Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself; that is what teaches us. Truth requires no prop to make it stand.

Here Swamiji is turning this conventional notion on its head. Note that in this context, yoga does not mean the popular system of physical exercise (hatha yoga), but rather the quest for union with divinity. Swami Dayananda Saraswati also explains that it is teaching that is required for spirituality, rather than preaching. He explains that in preaching, a person makes a statement, that other people may decide to believe or not. If they do not believe, then the preaching does not have any effect, as there is no basis for them to move to belief. If they do believe, even then the preaching does not have an effect, as it is merely restating what they already believe.  As I wrote in our discussion on values:

All of our confusion arises from a lack of understanding, not a lack of belief. We certainly believe that telling the truth is good, but do we understand why we should tell it? If our confusions arise from lack of understanding, and not belief, then, as Swamiji says, “We don’t need any preachers, what we need is teachers.” This is an important fundamental point. All the preaching in the world about telling the truth may not affect you, because you already believe it at some basic, albeit one-sided level. It is teaching the value, the full understanding of the value, and all its implications that really changes a person’s life.

What does this mean for us?  Well it means we should seek answers to ethical and spiritual questions with the same zeal, and with the same skeptical criteria, as we do all other questions in life.

I was too busy during Diwali to post anything about this wonderful, glorious festival, so I thought I’d just add a few thoughts right now.Most people from India, or who know Hindu people, know that Diwali is the festival of lights. I won’t go over the basic details, you can find them here:

http://www.diwalifestival.org/diwali-meaning-significance.html

and the Wikipedia article also has some nice explanations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali

The victory of Light over Darkness, of Good over Evil, that is what Diwali symbolizes. But does this stock phrase really have meaning? What is the victory of Light over Darkness, and how does it come about? Instead of lighting a few firecrackers (although that can be quite a bit of fun!) maybe we should spend some time thinking on this topic.

(more…)

Fascinating fact of the day:

Interestingly enough, the world Juggernaut, meaning an unstoppable powerful force, was originally derived from the form of Lord Krishna worshiped in Puri: Jagganath. The name Jagganath means Lord of the Universe in Sanskrit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut

Jai Jagganath!

Also, a bonus video of the Rath Yatra in Puri.

-D

You will find an excellent online repository of many Hindu spiritual texts here:

http://www.celextel.org/

Translations of the Sri Bhagvad Gita, various Upanishads, and many stotras are available here, along with the original devanagari in pdf format.