Meditation, Appreciation and the Jain Way of Life
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Meditation, Appreciation and the Jain Way of Life
- 2. Navkar Mantra Exercise What goes through your head when you say the Navkar Mantra? Nothing, other than the words you’ve memorized?
- 3. Stop Crawling - Stand Up 30 5 (hours, lives) (hours, lives)
- 4. 14 Stages of Spirituality How to Focus: Once You’ve Navkar Stages of Reaching Using your Arrived: Appreciation Mantra, The Spirituality Shukhla Power What Next? Right Way Dhyan
- 6. Most of Our Lives Are spent in Stage Two The problem isn’t wrong faith It’s unfocused faith
- 7. Solutions Sensory Deprivation Tank (These actually exist) Correct Meditation SOUL overtakes the MIND Time ceases to exist
- 8. Four Levels of Meditation The 4 Dhyans Shukhla Dharma Arta Raudra The boundaries between levels are not set in stone Kaussaga – Think about it
- 9. Takeaways We must move up the spiritual ladder Why? To understand and evaluate anything (your life, why you do what you do in Jainism, Sutras, Navkar) in a whole new way Siddhashila, Moksha are the ultimate goal To Stand Up and Stop Crawling With meditation, 30 lives till Moksha 5 lives till Moksha How? Removing all external distractions Taking effort to focus the soul to beat the mind and body How to Focus: Once You’ve Navkar Stages of Using your Reaching Arrived: Appreciation Mantra, The Spirituality Power Shukhla Dhyan What Next? Right Way
- 10. How to Focus: Once You’ve Navkar Stages of Using your Reaching Arrived: Appreciation Mantra, The Spirituality Power Shukhla What Next? Right Way Dhyan
- 11. What Next? Get “Lost in Thought” So you’re thinking, once I clear my mind from all external inputs, what next? The thought process going through your head becomes your reality For all you know, nothing else exists around you Mahavir Swami getting his ears drilled (Story)
- 12. Appreciation in Jainism Almost all things in Jainism are ways to step back from your life and appreciate what you take for granted Activity: Think of Jain beliefs and how they are simple forms of appreciation Take time each day to think about what you have – even if you aren’t religious – realize how lucky you are
- 13. Navkar Mantra, Correctly Each of the 1st five lines is greater than the last 4 lines combined Each line should be invoking a well thought out idea (unique to you) This shows true appreciation The Navkar Mantra is the strongest form of appreciation
- 17. Trying the Navkar Mantra Close your eyes Focus the mind completely, Clear any External Input Say the Navkar Mantra in your head After saying each line, think about the meaning Don’t memorize and repeat what you read, understand what each line is by formulating your own meaning for it Get ‘Lost in Focused Thought’ Only some of you will move up the spiritual ladder to Stage 3 or 4 The truth is, most of our lives are spent in blind faith We rarely know why we do things, and this is to most important piece
- 18. How to Focus: Once You’ve Navkar Stages of Reaching Arrived: Appreciation Mantra, The Power Spirituality Shukhla What Next? Right Way Dhyan
- 19. Knowledge vs. Understanding Anyone/Anything can present you with knowledge But understanding it and combining it is left upon you Example
- 20. Takeaways Meditate Correctly Why? How? Appreciate Often Enjoy the Journey of Life How to Focus: Once You’ve Navkar Stages of Reaching Arrived: Appreciation Mantra, The Power Spirituality Shukhla What Next? Right Way Dhyan
- 21. Game Suppose I am a patient at an insane asylum (Shutter Island) You all are the doctors and nurses examining me I suffer from the delusion that I am God You may want to do something with me; humor me; or ask me questions I am perfectly willing to submit to your examinations and your treatment And so I invite you to help yourselves
- 22. Contact Me Chintav7@yahoo.com Facebook (732) 675-8035 Thank You for Listening! If you know what this alludes to, tell me 1/8 = 50 ||||=0
Notas do Editor
- (95% of people probably fall into that category)How many of you, in your entire lives, have spent over 30 seconds doing one navkar mantra? 20 seconds? What if I told you doing the navkar mantra correctly should take anywhere from 40 seconds to 1 hour? Well, guess what, it’s the truth. We just run through it like a broken record. You need to see that this is where the problem lies. And it’s not just you, it’s how you have been taught. What is happening, is that we have become like cd players. You press play, and the words come out of your mouth or the words form in your mind. Think about it, when we go to the derasar, it’s always count 3 navkars once you enter. And when we do pratikraman? 160 navkars, a complete speed race where you don’t want to be the last one left behind. Well, that benefits no one. But the words themselves mean nothing. If your mind is blank when you’re saying these words, you could just as well be saying apple banana cat dog elephant and it’d do you better, at least an idea is forming in your head when you say that. It’s the idea that the words create in your mind that matters, but when we have everything around us creating a speed race, even the effort to create an idea in your mind disappears.I’m not saying you’ve been saying the navkar mantra wrong your entire life. Though, I am saying you’ve been doing it wrong. Stop pressing play and actually take the effort to think, for at least 15 seconds, for each one of the 9 lines of the navkar mantra. You’re probably thinking, okay, well what do I think about? Or what does each line even mean? And some of you are thinking, hold up, the navkar mantra has lines? Well, We’ll answer all these questions later.
- Metaphor: Each and every single one of you is on a path to moksha. Imagine its a marathon that we all run. Well if you’re not meditating correctly, if you haven’t awoken to see truth, you’re crawling on your knees, as slowly as a turtle. You need to stand up and run. Then Maybe the 30 lives you have to endure until you become liberated and reach Nirvana may become 5 lives. The same way if you crawl you’ll take 30 hours to finish a marathon, but if you run you can finish it in 5 hours.I just toldall of you that you’ve been luredinto doing the navkar mantra, the one and most important piece of jainism, without a huge part of it for most of your life. So today, you’ll have the rare chance to stand up.
- Gunasthanaks – It’s essentially a set of stages. There is a ladder, and we are all ants scrambling up its slippery edges. We can climb all we want, but sometimes we hit an area that drags us right back down. Well every soul in this universe lies somewhere on this spiritual ladder.
- Most people, Jains included, myself included, lay in the second Gunasthanak most of their lives. There are brief times where we move up, but it takes effort to do so.We can only reach higher stages through a pathway of true faith, and a pure meditative state of mind.True faith is true understanding and belief in not just Jainism, but a spiritual life and universe (compared to material related thought, speech, and action – which we spend most of our lives in pursuing)Recap briefly before moving on
- Methods to reach this level - it's not easy and takes effort: 1) a sensory deprivation tank (these exist), 2) meditationThe tank requires actually taking a few hours from your day to try out, and finding a place that has a tank, which is something that most people don’t have the time to do. The second(deep actual meditation), which is the outcome for the tank (essentially the floatation tank more easily induces a state of deep thought), is rarely successfully achieved by most people. Most people never are able to meditate correctly in a way that detaches them enough from worldly thought.The thing is, when we are supposed to do a Kausagga, which is just standing still with your hands at your sides, when you go to the derasar or during pratikraman, you are supposed to enter deep meditation like sadhus do. But we rarely do it right.
- **Kaussaga is an attempt to make one lose all sensory input and reach ShukhlaDhyan while prayingWe even say Annatha before just to apologize (32 faults) for moving our body even a little during KaussagaSo there’s 4 Dhyans, or states of mind. Shukla, Dharma, ArtaRaudra. (Maybe even bring up the short story about king prassanachandra) (100 percent shukladhyan is impossible in this era, but it was possible 2500 years back during mahavir swami’s time.)However, reaching 40 percent shukladhyan and 60 percent dharma dhyan, or essentially glimpses or small doses of shukladhyan is possible today. And how do you reach higher percentages of shukladhyan? You have to reach these deeper stages of meditation. The more focused you are, the more your state of meditation will be in shukhladhyan, and the more you will learn, realize, and understand like a God. (or an arihant). So if you want to briefly experience what it is like to be a God, learn to meditate correctly and try. Because it takes a lot of strength to remove all of your senses, especially in a setting with other people. On top of all that you have to stop worrying about all of your memories and let go of it all. (which is what you do before you sleep)Every single one of us has the power to be god, and how Jainism is a relatively atheistic religion, we have no Gods and everyone has the potential to be a God based on what your definition of god is.----Now here is what actually happens within your body when you reach higher levels of spirituality through one of these 2 methods. (At any given moment, our senses are taking in constant feedback. Our neurons are always turned on all throughout our body. Well, in this floatation tank or in deep stages of meditation, what happens is a person's neuron/neural/chemical energy stops transmitting itself all around the body, and it all gets focused back into its original source. This source is the soul. (Give an example of how touching a table sends neuron impulses/electrical signals from the source to your chest and arm back to your brain. Well, when you detach yourself from everything material, visual, and even detach yourself from your memories, what is left is your consciousness. Think about what it's like the moment you lay down to fall asleep, but aren't asleep. Only your awareness/conscious is at work. Well, when meditating, your awareness, your soul, the source of this neural energy - this is what you become. If you've ever seen the matrix, in a way the main character was right. Everything around you is only a matrix - our bodies are the puppets that we control that move around in this fake world. We experience the world in one container at a time. From life to life, or even from youth to old age, this container changes, but we have to try to change what’s inside the container, our soul and state of mind. The truth lies only when you detach yourself completely from the matrix through meditation and focus.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nif01WZ9aI&list=FLvkSC_tX7R1-rWiR69nODUgUse the ladder metaphor. Climbing it is when you are focusing your mind. You have the thought when you are at the new level/rung of the ladder. Then you slide back down to Stage 1, come back to reality after the thought, and then realize that you had reached a higher state of mind. Explain the you know only after you reach it: this is how you know you are doing it right. if you close your eyes, and empty your mind, all it feels like is your looking into darkness. You are no longer attached to a body, you become nothing and everything at the same time because you simply exist, your awareness/conscious just exist. Now that’s the start. You have to focus on a specific idea or concept, so much so that you get lost in thought. your mind is so preoccupied with thinking about this, and understanding it, that you actually forget that you are closing your eyes, and sitting down at this moments, and that there's a ground beneath you. if you are truly 'lost in thought', you won't even know it until after it's over. only after you come back to reality, you'll realize that you were very deeply lost in thought. so what i'm saying is, you need to be so focussed on 1) clearing your mind, but then 2) thinking, actually thinking and not repeating a memorized phrase (which does you no good) about an idea. If you're thinking about appreciating everything in the universe that cultimated together for you to be where you are today, then lose yourself in that idea. a few weeks ago there was a gnanpachham, which is a day to celebrate knowledge. so if you want to do that, think of all the people that created language, passed down information to you, all the teachers that you had in kindergarden who taught you to read and write, your parents who taught you to speak. It's like daydreaming and you have to have control of your thoughts, you go into a trance, and only once you snap out of it you'll realize that you were lost in a thought. Once your soul momentarily overrides your primal brain:You enter the new state of mind, you climb the ladderYour power to understand becomes incredibleAnswers and Truths come straight to you For all you know, nothing else exists around you because your conscious is so preoccupied with the thoughts you are thinking4) 1 - Clear your mind 2 - Stop thinking about anything and everything related to the past, future, and your senses 3 - Close your eyes and simply listen to the words in this video. Let your soul be free and answer these questions in your lifehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nif01WZ9aI&list=FLvkSC_tX7R1-rWiR69nODUgThere’s a lot of clutter in your head that you’ll have to push through before you’ll reach ShuklaDhyan. Show them a sample: how tirthankars teachings passed down through the centuries to reach me and help me. Then after you can realize that you were in a state, but not during.
- Most sutras are simple tools of appreciation of what we have. You will see how the first 5 lines of the Navkar mantra are essentially, I bow down to these people. Think of Logassa. (For whoever that doesn’t know, it’s a Sutra where a portion of it just names the 24 Tirthankars.Only once you don’t have it anymore, you realize how amazing it was (childhood, any other example)The necessity for happiness in the future is what drives us to do everything in our lives. It’s why we study, why we work, why we learn, why we even exercise. But if we look inward the answer to the what we want out of life it is much different. It’s no longer the need for external happiness, which can be created through expensive entertainment, expensive food, and an expensive yet comfortable lifestyle. This isn’t the answer, if it was we wouldn’t be seeing everyone so miserable all the time. Chasing the horizon: It is like running after the horizon; the faster you go, the faster it moves away from you. One day, you realize that you are standing on it. What you were running after is where you already are and always will be.Music & Life video fits in perfectly right here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4The actual way to create internal happiness, that lasts forever is much more simple. It is conquering greed. Being content with what we have, and like in the video, enjoying the journey rather than the pot of gold at the end. Along with countering the other 3 kashays. That leads to a true happy life. Contentment. And how do you get there? Through true appreciation every single day for what you have and not taking it for granted.Which brings me to how most things in jainism are simple a way for you to step back, appreciate what you do have and truly realize it. Why do we do upvas or any tapa? Its to realize what we take for granted each day, to see how it feels to go without food and then to appreciate what we have by experiencing briefly not having it.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqav5eBlf50Now to go into the ultimate form of appreciation; the navkar mantraNavkar mantra; namoarihantam specifically, should invoke the idea, i bow to arihants(but you shouldn't say it, you should understand it, be thinking about it) à “i respect and desire to be like them, in that they conquered their inner karmas, their anger ego greed and deceit, and spread their teachings during enlightenment in the most perfect, the most everlasting way possible, with kevalgnan knowing it would one day reach me, making me a better person. I thank them for that.” This was just one time. Every time it can be a different thought or concept. And there’s so much more you could be thinking of – every Arihant has 12 attributes, 12 more distinct ideas that can come up in your head. I mean if you are in a deep state of meditation, 1 Navkar Mantra can take an hour or even longer, and that’s probably what people did in the past. How else did Mahavir spend 12 years of his life in the forest doing nothing but meditating?
- THE MORE YOU KNOW, THE MORE YOU HAVE AT YOUR DISPOSAL TO THINK ABOUT You don’t by any means have to go through all of these It just helps to know them as a starting point, and you can go into anything that relates to your life after that. LikeI give my obesiance to the arihants who attained infinite bliss, by realizing what true happiness is, by seeing what the difference between internal happiness and external momentary happiness is, and took the path towards everlasting happiness. That much is good enough, go through the thought in your head, and then move onwards to namosiddhanam.
- Close your eyesFocus extremely hard to clear any external input We’re going to have 2-5 minutes of complete silence, where you’ll take everything I taught you and put it together. Get into a meditative state, forget about everything around you, and begin the Navkar. After each line, give yourself 10 seconds, or 30 seconds, or even 2 minutes if you go into a really deep thought about your life, and then move on to the next line. Theres no race, no pressure to finish, nothing, go as far as you want, just focus your mind for as long as you can until some time is up. Once you finish a navkar, start from the beginning and keep going.Close the lights around you if possible. Say the Navkar Mantra while thinking correctlyMaybe some of you will move up the spiritual ladder to Stage 2 or 3, but only momentarilyThe truth is, most of our lives are spent in blind faithWe know what is right and what to do, but we rarely know why
- All religions are simply constructions that are created by enlightened people who figure out the best way for people to live harmoniously, live fulfilling lives, and have the highest probability of reaching a spiritual state (experiencing ShukhlaDhyan). No religion’s principles are just right and wrong, it was simply at the time the best way to display ideas. Jainism and Christianity believe in a geocentric model of the world because at their revitalization (during Mahavir’s time) or construction (Jesus’s time), anything against this view would go against the scientific observations and theories that people had. Which, in turn, would make the religion seem wrong and lose followers. So even if, with enlightenment, Mahavir, or Jesus, or the Buddha knew that the Earth actually revolved around the Sun, they could not say so. From 1000 BC to 1500 AD, the entire world, in mathematical astronomy, had detailed theories and proofs that the Earth was in the center of the universe. Ptolemy, Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates’ geocentric model carried onwards for centuries and centuries. So even if Mahavir and the compiler of the Agams, Sthulibhadra, knew that the Sun was actually at the center, at the time, it was best to tell everyone that the Earth was actually in the center. Imagine he said at the time the Sun was at the center of the universe? Jainism may have died out by 1000 or 1300 AD, who knows. Here’s the takeaway from this example. Sometimes you may not know the truth behind a religious principle, but there’s a reason that everything is done. You have two options – you can question it all you want, or you can use your faith to accept what is as true. While it’s not wrong to question, it can sometimes lead people away from the truth because of their arrogance blinding themthat everything that they know must be correct, but it is simple the case sometimes that someone doesn’t have all the information. So have strong faith in what you learn and see as being correct, and you won’t need to question everything.(This is my own theory – may or may not be 100% accurate – but there’s a point to be made)This entire thing wasn’t taught to me, and I never read it anywhere. I only knew the pieces of the puzzle, like I knew who Mahavir was, and I learned in a philosophy class about Plato and geocentricism. But this entire combination of ideas to create a conclusion came to me in a meditative state, where I did reach some partial form of ShukhlaDhyan. This is why you went to Pathshala when you were younger, in order to gain the knowledge of who Mahavir was, when he lived, and what the Jain belief of the universe is. And only once you are older, you can finally use this knowledge under ShukhlaDhyan to see truths like never before.All of you can do this too. And you can use this power to improve your direct lives as well. The things that are true, which are usually so far repressed in your mind, come to the forefront only when you reach a pure state of mind. Evaluate all these things and you can fix any and every problem you encounter in your life. But it’s your job to get to the state of mind, and it’s your job to remember to think about the truth once you’re there.