Latest / Inspiration and Transformation / Can We Do Bhakti and Karma Yoga and NOT Achieve Moksha?
Transcript
- 0:05Welcome to inspiration and transformation from the banks of the Gunga with Sadvi Bagwati Saraswati,
- 0:11an American Sanyasi living at the parmarth Nikitan Ashram in Rishikesh, India.
- 0:16Sadvi is President of the Divine Shakti Foundation, a charitable organization bringing education,
- 0:23vocational trainee, upliftment and empowerment programs to women and children. Sadvi is also
- 0:29Secretary General of the Global Interfaith Wash Alliance and director of the world famous International
- 0:35Yoga Festival. Joined the musings of an American Sanyasi as Sadvi shares the wisdom
- 0:40and teachings of her Guru, His Holiness Pujiaswami Chinnant Saraswatiji, Welcome everyone to
- 0:51inspiration and transformation from the holy banks of the Sacred Gunga River in the land
- 1:02of Rishakesh, India. Is Moksha mandatory. It depends what your goal is.
- 1:10Is it enough to just live a good life, doing a little bit
- 1:12of buck thief for God and doing some good deeds, Well, it depends
- 1:18what your goal is. It's like saying, you know, do I have
- 1:25to drive a long distance or is it okay to not drive a long distance,
- 1:34Well, it depends where you want to end up. I mean,
- 1:37if you want to go to Paris, you've got to drive a long distance
- 1:44or get on a flight. But if you only want to go to hard
- 1:49or well, then you don't need to drive very far. In the same
- 1:56way, you need to ask yourself what is my goal. There's no spiritual
- 2:02police that says thou shalt crave moksha. What do we do know is that
- 2:09ultimately the final highest destination experience of our soul, this jeevathma is what we
- 2:24call moksha liberation, meaning the drop becomes one with the ocean, that instead
- 2:31of being separate, I become one. I merge back into the divine from
- 2:42which I came, from which I was never separate. You don't want to
- 2:51do it this lifetime, no problem. The universe is infinitely patient. You
- 2:59don't want to do it next lifetime, no problem. The universe is infinitely
- 3:04patient. You get to keep coming back. I'm doing as much as you
- 3:10want each lifetime. The question, of course becomes why, like why would
- 3:23you unnecessarily take lots of extra time to go somewhere that you know is the
- 3:30destination? Anyway, if you could actually get there faster. But that's that's
- 3:40entirely up to you. We've been created with willpower, with free will,
- 3:47with budthi, with the ability to be disciplined or not so disciplined, to
- 3:54choose whatever we want to choose, to do a little buck thee, to
- 3:59do a lot of the Actually I could tell you, I'm not I'm not
- 4:02one hundred percent sure what a little buck te means. Meaning either you love
- 4:10someone or you don't. I don't know. If you can love a little
- 4:21you may you may do few things for the loved one. I mean,
- 4:26there are people who shower their husbands or wives or children with lots of gifts
- 4:32and write poems for them and write songs for them. I mean, there's
- 4:36you know, we all know those people who just are these sort of effusive
- 4:41beings of constant giving. Every five minutes they're saying, oh my God,
- 4:47I love you so much. And then we all know those people who love
- 4:53just as deeply, but maybe you've never actually heard them say I love you.
- 5:00They love just as deeply, but maybe they maybe they don't show up
- 5:04every day with a gift, or even every year with a gift but you
- 5:10know it, you feel it, and it's just as good when you really
- 5:17know someone deeply loves you. That's what matters. And God is the same,
- 5:27God is even more. I mean, as a human we may still
- 5:30think, well though, if you could bring a gift every once in a
- 5:32while, that would be nice. But with God, all God wants that
- 5:38we should love. So you chant sometimes a chant all the time. Okay,
- 5:49you do poojah. Sometimes you do poojah a little, you do poojah
- 5:54a lot, all right, either way, the main thing is that you
- 5:57love God. And if you don't love God, then all the pooja and
- 6:03all the chanting it's wonderful as vehicles as paths to help you start to love
- 6:11God. But they're not a substitute for loving God. They are ways of
- 6:18catalyzing love of God in your hearts. We read scriptures, we chant God's
- 6:24name, we tell beautiful stories, not as substitutes for loving God, but
- 6:30as ways to trigger us to start to love God. And when you do,
- 6:38you know Poojaswamiji always says, when you love someone, you don't actually
- 6:43have to take amala and go racer racer, racer ka. You know you
- 6:49love Raca, you don't need to be doing her jubmala. And so with
- 6:58God, the point is to really love God, you do a little pooja
- 7:04or a lot of pouja. I don't actually think God matters minds that much
- 7:09either way. I don't necessarily think either of them determines moksha. And the
- 7:16reason is that we've got sages and saints and mystics and enlightened beings of all
- 7:24different religions in the world, including some that don't do puja. And so
- 7:30if pooja were a prerequisite for attaining enlightenment, that would be like saying that
- 7:38all of the prophets and seers of different religions actually hadn't attained enlightenment, which
- 7:45I don't believe. So moksha is the goal, the goal of your soul
- 7:57here in the body, ultimately returning to its oneness. What you choose to
- 8:07do in this lifetime to have that experience, to attain gyon wisdom that leads
- 8:16to the smoke shaw, that's up to you. But spirituality is not something
- 8:22that you want to be looking at. Kind of what's the bare minimum I
- 8:24need to do to skim by? You'll just come back next lifetime and do
- 8:31the rest, but also realize that it's not like a full time job with
- 8:37a really long to do list that you have to stop everything else you're doing
- 8:43in order to get through all of these I've got to do this much chanting,
- 8:46this much prayer, this much pujah, this much. Just love God
- 8:54deeply fully, and if you don't have that deep buck thee yet engage in
- 9:05a path of gan, attain wisdom, read scriptures, discover the reason you're
- 9:16here, the truth of you, and slowly, slowly, gon will blossom.
- 9:24Buck the will blossom. And through it all, recognize that every single
- 9:31moment, through your actions, through your karma, you actually have the opportunity
- 9:41to reach Mosha. How to allow every action to be won that is in
- 9:50service of my awakening, every action that is in service of loving God,
- 10:00of serving God, every action in service of truth, in alignment with truth.
- 10:07So we've got all these different ways of how to live, but don't
- 10:11go looking for the shortest possible way. You've been given a very powerful gift
- 10:18in this human birth. Don't waste it, but don't take it like a
- 10:24big stressful bird neither. It's a joy. It's a joy like wisdom,
- 10:31is a joy like love is a joy like awakened action is joy. Take
- 10:39it like that and then that moksha comes even while we're living what we call
- 10:46jeevamukti, because it's not freedom from the body, it's freedom in the body.
- 10:56And again, doesn't happen this life, no problem. You'll get to
- 10:58come back to this beautiful plant again, assuming we've done our part to take
- 11:05care of it. You're listening to OTRFM, part of the IOM Radio Network.
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- 11:52soul. Hi, this is Christina Ricci with rain. Every two minutes,
- 12:00another American is sexually assaulted. If you or someone you know has been sexually
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- 12:20N O RG, brought to you by RAIN and this station. Welcome back
- 12:28to inspiration and Transformation. I'm so glad to have you all back here with
- 12:37me. I'm going through some things in my personal life and it's taking everything
- 12:45I have to stay grounded and centered. When people ask me if I'm okay,
- 12:52I lie and I say everything is fine. I don't like to lie,
- 12:58but I don't want to talk about what's really going on. How can
- 13:03I stay honest in the midst of all that's happening. When Biguan Krishna speaks
- 13:24about the right speech tupas of speech, dharmic speech, yogic speech, right
- 13:37speech, he says it must be three things kind, true, and beneficial.
- 13:48Those are the criteria. Now, if you're going through something personal when
- 13:56somebody asks you about it. Now, on the one hand, to give
- 14:01them the full story would be true, but it's neither kind to yourself,
- 14:13nor is it beneficial to either you or them unless, unless, there's someone
- 14:20you want to confide in, And of course I would always recommend having at
- 14:28least one person you can confiding, one person at least with whom you can
- 14:35be totally open and honest. But there's no reason to put your inner struggles
- 14:45on display for everyone who just asks, hey, how are you? In
- 14:50many cases people people aren't ready for it, they don't necessarily actually want all
- 14:56of it. We ask how our are you? Almost habitually. In fact,
- 15:03there's a great story of an enlightened master who somebody says to him,
- 15:16how are you? And he says, you asked me that this morning,
- 15:22And the person who asked him said, well, well, yes, but
- 15:26now it's evening. And he said, and why do you believe that I
- 15:33would change how I am from morning to evening? Like why would my experience
- 15:41of the self change from morning to evening? And I love that because we
- 15:48all have this habit of pretty much every time you see someone, maybe we
- 15:54see someone ten fifteen times a day, Hey how are you? Is how
- 16:00most of us are goes up and down constantly. So you ask me once
- 16:06and I say, oh, I'm great. An hour later you ask me
- 16:11and I say, oh my god, this happened. An hour later,
- 16:15you ask me, and again, I'm great or I'm something else. The
- 16:21whole nature of how most of us are is so dependent on what's happening around
- 16:29us. That's why in meditation you'll notice I kept saying in different ways,
- 16:37unhook that attention from the outer world, bring it in. Well, that's
- 16:47it's not only something that's necessary for us to meditate, but it's also a
- 16:56beautiful skill to learn for life. It doesn't mean we don't pay attention.
- 17:03It doesn't mean I don't notice the table in front of me and therefore trip
- 17:07over it and fall. It doesn't mean that I don't have the ability to
- 17:15perceive what's happening. Of course we do. But it means that who I
- 17:21am, how I experience myself, how I am, isn't hooked into these
- 17:29things. It's raining, so I'm miserable. The rain stops, the sun
- 17:34comes out, I'm great. Then it starts raining again. I'm miserable.
- 17:40People are nice to me, I'm happy. They're not nice to me,
- 17:45I'm miserable. If we can unhook that deep awareness, attention, focus,
- 18:00consciousness a bunch of different words with slightly different meanings, but for this purpose.
- 18:07It's all about where we are directing our ability to pay attention, where
- 18:18we are directing our minds. Is it within ourself or is it on everything
- 18:27happening around us? And on that basis we determine how we are. So
- 18:36as far as the person who's asked this question, you should also recognize that
- 18:41the majority of people who ask how you are actually are not even really looking
- 18:47for the full story. A lot of times, if someone says how are
- 18:52you, and you actually do give them the full thing, well, you
- 18:56know, my god, I'm really struggling, and you can just start to
- 19:00see them sort of figure out how they're going to escape from the conversation,
- 19:06Like really, all they wanted was a one word I'm fine, I'm good,
- 19:10I'm great. How are you? It's a social nicety. It's a
- 19:15rare person who actually asks how are you wanting a deeply honest answer. So
- 19:26you shouldn't feel badly not giving people something that most of them aren't looking for
- 19:33anyway. That certainly isn't kind to you or beneficial to you to bury your
- 19:42heart to someone who may or may not be trustworthy. They may or may
- 19:49not be someone who really can contain hold what you're sharing, so there's no
- 20:00need to give it. To say you're fine is not a lie, because
- 20:08even though you are going through some things, you still are fine. Fine
- 20:15doesn't mean every single thing in my life is going exactly the way that if
- 20:21I had a magic wand they would make it. Fine doesn't mean I have
- 20:26managed to completely overcome anger in my life. I've managed to completely overcome restlessness
- 20:37or frustration or boredom or jealousy or anguished. If that were the definition of
- 20:45fine, none of us would be able to say we were fine. We're
- 20:52still human. Fine Fine means who I am in this moment and in every
- 21:03moment is okay. When I was growing up, I don't know how many
- 21:10of you are from America and around my age range, but when I was
- 21:17growing up, there was a book that I had, all of my friends
- 21:22had, everybody had that was called You Are Okay or something like that.
- 21:30The theme was you are Okay, and the book was basically it was for
- 21:34young readers, and the book was I'm okay, and You're okay, and
- 21:40we're all okay, and it was all about whatever happens in the world,
- 21:45we are okay, and you know, it was a book for four year
- 21:48olds, five year olds, six year olds. But it was such a
- 21:53beautiful lesson. I'm okay. Yes, my brother stole my thing, or
- 22:00my sister did this, or my mom that, or my dad this,
- 22:03or my teacher that, but I'm okay. So saying I'm fine or I'm
- 22:11okay, instead of thinking of it as a lie, think of it as
- 22:18an assertion of truth that is actually deeper than what you're struggling with. Your
- 22:26okayness runs much deeper than your struggles, and so you're actually affirming to the
- 22:37other person and to yourself at that moment, your actual okayness. So do
- 22:48not feel badly, but just as you're saying it, see if instead of
- 22:55your mind thinking this is a lie because I'm actually sad, ad or confused
- 23:02or angry, troubled, frustrated. Instead of the mind thinking that that's a
- 23:08lie and thinking that your frustration or your jealousy or your anger supersedes your okayness,
- 23:19allow saying to others I'm okay to actually be an opportunity for you to
- 23:26remember deeply that you are okay, that you are fine, that you're going
- 23:34to make it through this. We all go through things, We all go
- 23:40through times, and this too shall pass. There will be a time when
- 23:49you will look on this in the past tense. So it's a time to
- 23:56do the work to go through it, to create spaciousness for But don't think
- 24:02that your okayness is a lied Isn't you are okay whatever you're going through.
- 24:11This is OTRFM, part of the IOM Radio network. Ome Times Magazine is
- 24:18one of the leading online content providers of positivity, wellness, and personal empowerment.
- 24:23A philanthropic organization, their net proceeds are funneled to support worldwide charity initiatives
- 24:30via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment to creating community and providing conscious content,
- 24:36they aspire to uplift humanity on a global scale. Home Times co creating
- 24:41a more conscious lifestyle. Do you have time to read that inspiring book or
- 24:48that blog post you've been meaning to get to in your busy world? How
- 24:52do you improve yourself and keep your life going? I'm Lisa Kay and my
- 24:56Between Heaven and Earth Radio show can transform your life just by listening. Be
- 25:02uplifted with inspiring topics, positive stories and ideas that really work. Between Heaven
- 25:08and Earth Radio is conscious living for your at Saul every Wednesday at four pm
- 25:14Eastern Time, like Baldwin with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I
- 25:21grew up loving circuses and other traveling animal shows, but it never occurred to
- 25:25me what life might be like for the animals. Training wild animals to do
- 25:29things they don't understand takes force routine discipline with a hook or whip with the
- 25:34heel of a boot shows the animal exactly who's the boss. Don't patronize animal
- 25:40acts. Please contact People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals seven six two two
- 25:45peta welcome back. This is Sadvi Bagavati Saraswati with inspiration and transformation. How
- 25:57can I live ingratitude? I'm grateful for a lot of stuff, but I'm
- 26:06not at the point that I can say I'm grateful for the air I breathe,
- 26:11or for a baby's laughter, or for a sunrise. I find myself
- 26:18only grateful for the big stuff, like my house and my car. So
- 26:30gratitude practice is to me one of the most powerful easy ways of connecting with
- 26:47the divine, with ourselves, with joy, with peace, with love,
- 26:57and so I'm always a very big advocate for gratitude practices. The big things
- 27:08are easy. Having a vehicle great, if you didn't have one, you'd
- 27:17have to walk. Having a house absolutely, what a beautiful thing to be
- 27:22grateful for. I mean, there's so many people who don't have hounds.
- 27:30It's easy to be grateful for our loved ones people in our lives. We
- 27:34love to be grateful for our opportunities, but ultimately the goal is to be
- 27:45grateful for as much as we can, because it's hard to sustain gratitude for
- 27:52one thing all day long. Like, yeah, I'm really happy to have
- 27:56a house, but that may not be able to sustain my gratitude all day
- 28:03long. And that's why it's really good to have a variety, to have
- 28:10the ability to be spontaneously grateful, because to simply carry your gratitude for your
- 28:18house all day long, it's going to start to feel very repetitive and it's
- 28:23probably going to lose some of that depth. A really beautiful way to practice
- 28:34gratitude is wherever you are, every minute, can you be grateful of something
- 28:42right there? The air that we breathe is a huge one, and if
- 28:48you can't be grateful for it, just ask a friend to hold your head
- 28:55underwater for just long enough until you think you're about to pass out, and
- 29:00then let you up and see whether you don't develop some gratitude for having air
- 29:07to breathe. There's actually a great story about that of a a seeker in
- 29:15a a monastery and ostrom a retreat center, and he he goes to the
- 29:22Master and he says, I want God, but I'm not I'm not really
- 29:34experiencing it. You know, when we meditate, my mind wanders. I
- 29:40know that I should be connecting to God, but every time I close my
- 29:44eyes, mind wanders, and it's not happening. I'm not connecting with God.
- 29:49And the Master takes him down to the river and literally holds his head
- 29:56underwater, and first the guy thinks it some kind of ritual, and then
- 30:03he starts to think, my Guru is trying to kill me, because literally
- 30:07he's not letting his head up. And just before the guy passes out,
- 30:11the Master pulls his head up and the Master says to him, so what
- 30:19were you thinking about down there? And the guy says, thinking about I
- 30:23was dying to breathe, and the Master says, did your mind wander?
- 30:30The guy's like mind wander? Of course not, I thought I was going
- 30:34to die, and the Master said, when you want God as much as
- 30:44you wanted a breath, your mind will stop wandering. So I love that
- 30:52story for so many reasons. But going back to gratitude, whatever you're having
- 30:59difficulty feeling grateful for, you just deprive yourself of it. Not able to
- 31:06generate the appropriate gratitude for the meal in front of you, fast for twenty
- 31:11four hours. See how grateful you are when you break your fast, not
- 31:18feeling so grateful for the air, hold your breath underwater, not feeling grateful
- 31:30for the water that comes out of our taps. I mean, that's a
- 31:33huge one. So many people in this world don't have access to water at
- 31:40all. I mean here in the Himalayas, just drive up a little ways
- 31:45and you'll see on the road women walking for hours to get a bucketful of
- 31:52water from the nearby handpap. There's cities in India. We're the only way
- 32:00people get water is a tanker comes into town once a day, once every
- 32:05two days, once every three days, and they fill up buckets. So
- 32:14one of the ways of generating gratitude, if it does not come easily,
- 32:20it's just deprive yourself of that. If you're not able to generate gratitude,
- 32:27deep gratitude for your loved ones, just take a moment and imagine what your
- 32:35life would be like without them. Imagine that you got a phone call that
- 32:40they've been in an accident and we're about to pass away. Don't hold that
- 32:50too long, it'll turn into depression and misery. But just for that moment,
- 32:55and then when you come out and you realize, oh my god,
- 32:58they're still alive and they're hell and there was no accident. It's an automatic
- 33:04gratitude producer. And in terms of a sunrise or a baby's smile, to
- 33:15me, these are just beautiful examples of divine creation. And so when you
- 33:22love God, you're able to love all of these elements of the creation.
- 33:31It's like if you've got a child, a young child, and that young
- 33:36child gives you a piece of paper that they've scribbled all over and it's illegible.
- 33:42I mean, it's nothing, it's a two year old scribbles. But
- 33:45if you love that kid, you're going to take that piece of paper of
- 33:50scribbles and you're going to stick it up on the fridge and you're gonna take
- 33:53a picture and post it on social media for all your friends to see,
- 33:59because you of the creator of that paper of scribbles. And in the same
- 34:07way, if we love God and are grateful for God's presence in our life,
- 34:19then we start to see everything a flower, a tree, a sunrise,
- 34:23a sunset, stars in the sky, the smile of a baby as
- 34:30we stand in line at a checkout counter. And it's a baby and a
- 34:37stroller in front of us or behind us, or a baby in someone else's
- 34:42arms. But it just immediately reconnects us to that gratitude to the divine whatever
- 34:51name you use, it doesn't matter whatever your spiritual path, maybe it doesn't
- 34:58matter, but that that divine creator. So work on being grateful to the
- 35:10creator, and then you'll find it's a lot easier to be grateful for the
- 35:15creation. But gratitude is it's an incredible practice and it's something that I would
- 35:23really recommend everyone start and end their days with. It doesn't need to take
- 35:30more than just a couple of minutes, just lying in bed when you wake
- 35:36up in the morning, think of five things you're grateful for. Did your
- 35:44eyes open, Well, that's something to be grateful for. Think of how
- 35:49many people's eyes didn't open that morning, Or how many people's eyes open but
- 35:54they can't see out of them. Do you have legs that can carry you
- 36:04to the bathroom? What a beautiful thing to be grateful for? How many
- 36:10don't. We've seen over the last few days here are beautiful young women with
- 36:17prosthetic limbs, girls who lost their limbs and now are dancing on prosthetics.
- 36:30Such joy, such gratitude, such vibrancy. But they had to overcome a
- 36:37lot. So many of us are not able to dance on the actual limbs
- 36:43that we've got, healthy, strong limbs, because we're not quite grateful enough
- 36:49for them. So just think, go basic. You don't have to think
- 36:53of you know, some really esoteric thing to be grateful for. Is there
- 37:00a blanket over you? Does your roof not leak? Right? I mean,
- 37:08so much to be grateful for, just as you lie in bed in
- 37:14the morning and then again at the end of the day. Did someone smile
- 37:21at you? Did someone do anything for you? Hold open a door,
- 37:25hand you a glass of water, do anything for you? Did you do
- 37:34anything for someone? Were you able? Were you able and blessed to be
- 37:39able to serve in some way? A big way? A small way,
- 37:45a noticed way, an unnoticed way, an appreciated way, an unappreciated way
- 37:51doesn't matter. But were you able to serve? So many things to be
- 38:00grateful for? So just expand your creativity and you'll find them. If you
- 38:08can't generate gratitude for a sunrise, yet, no problem, there's so many
- 38:14other things to generate it for. You already said you're grateful for your car,
- 38:19Well, are you grateful to have enough money to put gas in it?
- 38:24You're grateful for your house already? Will you grateful for the people you
- 38:30share that house with? Are you grateful for the food and the fridge of
- 38:36that house, for the water running through the pipes of that house? For
- 38:42your ability to open your house's door to others, to friends, to loved
- 38:49ones, to people in need. So just start with wherever you are and
- 38:58expand creatively. This is OTRFM, part of the IOM Radio network. Ome
- 39:08Times Magazine is one of the leading online content providers of positivity, wellness and
- 39:15personal empowerment. A philanthropic organization, their net proceeds are funneled to support worldwide
- 39:21charity initiatives via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment to creating community and providing
- 39:27conscious content. They aspire to uplift humanity on a global scale. Home Times
- 39:31co creating a more conscious lifestyle. Do you have time to read that inspiring
- 39:38book or that blog post you've been meaning to get to in your busy world?
- 39:44How do you improve yourself and keep your life going? I, Lisa
- 39:47Kay and my Between Heaven and Earth Radio show can transform your life just by
- 39:52listening. Be uplifted with inspiring topics, positive stories, and ideas that really
- 39:59work. Between Heaven and Earth Radio is conscious living for your soul every Wednesday
- 40:05at four pm Eastern Time. Like Baldwin with People for the Ethical Treatment of
- 40:10Animals. I grew up loving circuses and other traveling animal shows, but it
- 40:15never occurred to me what life might be like for the animals. Training wild
- 40:20animals to do things they don't understand takes force routine discipline with a hook or
- 40:25whip with the heel of a boot shows the animal exactly who's the boss.
- 40:30Don't patronize animal acts. Please contact People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals seven
- 40:36five seven six two two PETA Welcome back. This is Sadvi Bagavati Saraswati with
- 40:45inspiration and transformation. I want to be a saddu and let go of everything
- 40:54that I have. Now I'm also twenty eight and a girl and still menstruating,
- 41:04but I want to join an Ashra. I've really lost interest in the
- 41:08material world and I'm tired of chasing things that are not permanent. It's not
- 41:15giving me peace. Signed a Shiva devotee. So your your intention is beautiful,
- 41:38that longing, that urge to to anchor yourself in something that is lasting,
- 41:49that is real. You know, when I first came to India at
- 41:53twenty five and realize this is where I belonged. That was twenty six years
- 42:01ago now, But in the first several years, when I would talk to
- 42:05people, I would always say that I felt like I had been born in
- 42:09America by accident, that somehow it was some kind of accident and I really
- 42:15should have been born in India, and you know that, or maybe I
- 42:20had done something wrong in a past birth and that's why God sort of sent
- 42:24me off to be confused for the first few decades of my life and this
- 42:29one and I had all of these ideas that somehow having been born in India
- 42:36would have been better. But I realized as the years went by, actually
- 42:43how incredibly perfect it was that I had been born in America, because if
- 42:52I had grown up as a young sheltered girl in India, I mean,
- 43:00I come from a beautiful family, an amazing family, of a lot of
- 43:06privilege, a lot of opportunity, a lot of caring and sheltering in many
- 43:14ways. And if that had been an Indian family rather than an American family,
- 43:23I would by the age of twenty five, I would have seen very
- 43:27little. I would have experienced very little. Now things are changing, but
- 43:34remember I've been here more than a quarter of a century. I started growing
- 43:38up fifty one years ago, so I would have been raised in a very
- 43:44different way. I would have been sheltered in a very different way. And
- 43:49even if I had had these very powerful experiences here, there might have been
- 43:55a part of me that always wondered, well, I wonder what that's like,
- 44:01or I wonder what that's like, or what if I hadn't taken vows
- 44:07of monasticism, and what if I had, you know, engaged in sensual
- 44:13pleasures and relationship and this and that and there? There probably would have been
- 44:19in my mind always some kind of question if I wonder what that's like.
- 44:23I wonder what that's about. Maybe I made maybe I made a wrong decision,
- 44:30and I realized how incredibly perfect it was that I actually had grown up
- 44:35in America where and in la where, by the age of twenty five,
- 44:40I had seen so much, I had done so much, I had experienced
- 44:47so much that when I decided to take rows of renunciation, I knew that
- 44:55I never was going to wonder, God, I wonder what that's like or
- 45:00this is like, because I had actually experienced all of those things. And
- 45:07when we experience what we call the world of some sada, that that never
- 45:15ending cycle of you know, illusion and yearning and desiring and aversion and grabbing,
- 45:23and when we when we live in that, we find ourselves chasing after
- 45:42what we think is going to bring happiness, but of course it never does.
- 45:49And when you've when you've actually experienced that, and you've experienced it from
- 45:55a place of having things from succeeding, very quickly, if you're plugged in,
- 46:07if you're tuned in internally, you realize very quickly, this is not
- 46:15actually what life really is about. This actually is not giving me that joy,
- 46:22that piece, that meaning, that that sense of fulfillment that I'm looking
- 46:32for it, and so as the beautiful questioner who's only twenty eight but growing
- 46:40up in a new India, or maybe she's not in India, maybe she's
- 46:45a Shiva devotee somewhere else, but she's, as we say, seen it,
- 46:52done it, been there, and when we have it's it's very beautiful
- 47:00to realize. Okay, I don't want to waste any more time. I
- 47:06don't want to waste any more energy running after things that are not what's going
- 47:14to give me the real peace, the real meaning, the real joy.
- 47:20So to a Shiva dvoti, it's beautiful that you think like that. Ashrams
- 47:27are wonderful places. They are of course challenges as well. You know,
- 47:31sometimes people say, well, I'm tired of the challenges of the world.
- 47:36I want to come join an ashram, and I always say, well,
- 47:39you're just going to exchange one set of challenges for an entirely different set of
- 47:44challenges. An ashram is not a place that's devoid of challenges, because challenges
- 47:51are in our mind. It's not the outer world that actually creates challenges.
- 47:58And wherever you bring yourself there, you are so as long as you've got
- 48:06tendencies toward anger, tendencies toward jealousy, tendencies toward grabbing or aversion or either,
- 48:16or judgment or competition or lust or greed or all of the different I
- 48:23don't like the word vices. It sort of implies that we, you know,
- 48:29deserve to be locked up somewhere. They're just they're tendencies of the mind,
- 48:36and there are tendencies that take us in a direction that we don't want
- 48:38to go in. So if you've got those tendencies of mind wherever you are,
- 48:45whether it's in a big city, whether it's lying on a Caribbean beach,
- 48:52or whether it's in an usher, if your mind is there, you're
- 48:58going to still struggle with There's always going to be opportunities to feel angry,
- 49:07to want to grab, to want to push away, to compete, to
- 49:12judge, to have the ego play its games. So the astrum is is
- 49:19a different kind of crucible in which you get You get burned literally in a
- 49:30whole different way. But in that burning, you get purified. It's like
- 49:37when a potter makes ceramics on a wheel and then they stick it in the
- 49:40kiln, and in that kiln it gets fired and finished. So by all
- 49:52means, you are welcome in ashrums, and I would hope that most astrums
- 49:57would welcome women, even young women. There's certainly no rule that says thou
- 50:05shalt not join an ashram until you know you've gone through menopause. At this
- 50:21time of your life, though, there are going to be challenges. I
- 50:29mean there's challenges at any time. But there's gonna be challenges with family.
- 50:31We know that, there's going to be challenges with society. You know that.
- 50:36But if you're really sure, I would suggest going to an ashram,
- 50:40spending two weeks a month, six weeks two months before you really decide that
- 50:49this is what you want to do, because an ashram is not a place
- 50:52to run away too, it's a place to run toward. You don't want
- 50:59to join in ostrom because you're fed up with the world. There's two ways
- 51:05to go anywhere either because you're pushing away the alternative, and therefore you end
- 51:10up over here. So I'm pushing against the east, therefore I end up
- 51:16in the west. I keep pushing and pushing and pushing. You know,
- 51:21if you push away Rishikesh in a southernly direction, you're gonna end up in
- 51:25Delhi, not because you necessarily were thinking for Delhi. You were just pushing
- 51:30away, hike, but another way to go as instead of pushing away,
- 51:38you turn around and you move consciously, actively forward. And the way to
- 51:45join an oshrom is consciously actively forward. Not I'm pushing away being fed up
- 51:52with the world, or I'm pushing away responsibilities and troubles, because you'll just
- 52:00create more troubles for yourself for others. You should only join an ashram if
- 52:07you are really actively wanting to move toward a life that's dedicated to personal practice,
- 52:22a life that's dedicated to truth, to awareness, to working through your
- 52:30mental tendencies so that you can actually be a clearer pure not in the sense
- 52:38of the soul, but in the sense of the vehicle instrument in the hands
- 52:45of the divine. And if that's what's pulling you, then by all means
- 52:51come and don't let the fact that you're a girl or menstruating or twenty eight
- 52:57stop you. You know, I I find myself going to a lot of
- 53:05events that I wouldn't ordinarily necessarily go to your type of events, where there's
- 53:12lots and lots and lots of religious leaders on a stage with one theme,
- 53:15and everybody gets to speak for you know, two minutes or three minutes,
- 53:22and I find myself going to those that I wouldn't necessarily ordinarily go, but
- 53:29I go because I know I'm going to be the only woman on the stage
- 53:36and that if I don't go, there won't be a woman on the stage.
- 53:38And I go so that if a young woman like this, or any
- 53:45woman or any girl is watching this event in person or online and she thinks
- 53:52that spirituality isn't for her because she's a girl, that she would see me
- 53:59and say, oh, I guess it can be for me too. I
- 54:05guess there is a place for me to So do not feel that as a
- 54:10as a woman, as a fertile woman, that you are disqualified from spiritual
- 54:20practice or from grace. Yeah, there's certain mariadas that we follow during that
- 54:24time of the month, but they're just they're little things that we do and
- 54:31that we don't same way that in so many other situations in life. There's
- 54:37things we do and things we don't, but they're little and they're easily easily
- 54:43adapted to. As a twenty five year old coming in from America. It
- 54:46was easy for me to adapt, so it would be easy for anyone to
- 54:52And if this is what you want, then come. This brings to a
- 55:00close this hour of inspiration and transformation. Thank you so much for joining me.
- 55:09I'm so glad to be together with you all each week, and I
- 55:15look forward to being together again next Thursday, same time on Home Time's Radio.
- 56:08But it can't be. Don't because to be, because Doc ben overkind
- 56:37with being it, I can't be Dave Becay have something? Only then can
- 57:00say to the