CHAPTER VI
INDIA
Buddha's Sixteen fold Compassion
Buddha's Teaching
Buddha's Wheel of Life
The Invocation
The Wheel of Yogas of Patanjali
The Upanishads
The Songs of Kabir
Rabindranath Tagore
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Ampitheatre of India
The Wheel of Life of Buddha
Buddha's Sanctuary
The Wheel of Yogas of Patanjali
The Yoga Sanctuary
The Upanishads
The Rock of Kabob
Toga
RECOMMENDED FIRST MEDITATIONS
"The Teachings of Buddha"BUDDHA'S SIXTEEN FOLD COMPASSION
My children,
The Enlightened One, because he saw Mankind drowning in the Great Sea of Birth, Death and Sorrow, and longed to save them,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw that they lay wallowing in the mire of the Five Lusts, in dissolute abandonment,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw them still fettered to their wealth, their wives and their children, knowing not how to cast them aside,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw them doing evil with hand, heart and tongue, and many times receiving the bitter fruits of sin, yet ever yielding to their desires,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw that they slaked the thirst of the Five Lusts as it were, with brackish water,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw that through they longed for happiness, they made for themselves no karma of happiness; and though they hated pain, yet willingly made for themselves a karma of pain: and though they coveted the joys of Heaven, would not follow his commandments on earth,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw them afraid of birth, old age and death, yet still pursuing the works that lead to birth, old age and death,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw them consumed by the fires of pain and sorrow, yet knowing not where to seek the still waters of Samadhi,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw them living in an evil time, subjected to tyrannous kings and suffering many ills, yet heedlessly following after pleasure,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw them living in a time of wars, killing and wounding one another: and knew that for the riotous hatred that had flourished in their hearts they were doomed to pay an endless retribution,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because many born at the time of his incarnation had heard him preach the Holy Law, yet could not receive it,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw the men of the world plowing their fields, sowing the seed, trafficking, huckstering, buying and selling: and at the end winning nothing but bitterness,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw men cease to do good,
For this he was moved to compassion.
Because he saw men learn to do evil,
For this he was moved to compassion.
And for this the Enlightened One, instead of entering the Nirvana, returned to earth to set into movement the Wheel of the Eight fold Noble Inner Path and the Wheel of the Eight fold Noble Outer Path at Deer Park in Benares where the Wheel of the Teaching was born: THE SIXTEEN DHARMA TO CONQUER THE SIXTEEN FOLD SAMSARA.BUDDHA'S TEACHING
We are surrounded by an Ocean of Suffering, the Samsara. There is nothing more important and urgent than to remedy suffering in and around us through the understanding of the Four Noble Truths and the following of the Noble Eight fold Path. The two causes of suffering are Ignorance (Avidja) and Thirst (Tanha) for the wrong pleasures, for which we have to pay two very high prices: Our health and our peace of mind.
Health is the greatest blessing, contentment the best possession, a true friend to the nearest of kin.
Attach ourselves to the wise, to the intelligent, to the learned. Sweet is the solitude and peace of mind. Sweet is to be free from fear and desire. Hold fast to the truth as your refuge.
BUDDHA'S WHEEL OF LIFE
Buddhism is one of the deepest and highest of all religions. It has never brought the loss of a single drop of blood. It has had more followers than any other religion.
Everything is in motion and is turning like a wheel in an endless circle of life and death. This is Samaras. All living beings are drawn by thirst: for the pleasures of life, for life itself, for all those things man wants to acquire, of which he never has enough. The thirst (Tanha) for the pleasures of life is blind; man has no control over it. He is carried about like the fallen leaves of a tree, or an object tossed on the waves of the ocean.
Existence in Samara is suffering: birth is suffering; death is suffering; loss is suffering. There is a way out of suffering and death of things that appear and disappear on the endlessly turning Wheel of Life. That way is Nirvana. Nirvana is like the central point on the wheel, the point which does not move nor turn nor appear and disappear. The path to Nirvana is like the spokes on the wheel leading from its revolving circumference to the immovable central point. This is the Noble Eight fold Path of Buddha.
Man is enmeshed in the revolving wheel of life, his feet on the circumference, his head on the motionless point at the center himself unmoving, traversed by all the powers and forces which pass continually through him. There is a part in man which connects him to Nirvana. It is the spiritual point on his forehead above and between the eyes, which exactly coincides with the unmoving point on the Wheel of Life -- The meditation point. The only way out of running around in the endless circle of Samaras is by concentrating on the point in the center of the forehead. When this point on the forehead coincides with the central point on the Wheel of Life, there is no more endless turning, no more the insatiable thirst of Tanha. To talk on the Eight fold Path leads man to Nirvana. To meditate on the Wheel of Life, contemplating the ever moving field of forces, the unchanging Nirvana, man's place in the universe and in life, is to realize how to escape from the aimless circling, and how to reach the lofty central point.
The unity of all forms of life, the unity of men in the ocean of suffering, on the Noble Eight fold Path and in Nirvana, was taught by Buddha. The ancient cosmological symbol o of the Tibetan Wheel of Life is one of the great world pictures in the history of human thought.
THE INVOCATION
I take refuge in Buddha
I take refuge in Dharma
I take refuge in SanghaTHE WHEEL OF YOGAS OF PATANJALI
This link takes you to the wheel and the Professor's discourse on Yoga.Prakrita Yoga: union through Power
Bhakti Yoga: union through Love
Jnana Yoga: union through Wisdom
Chakra Yoga: union through Preservation
Raja Yoga; union through Creation
Satya Yoga: union through Eternal Life
Karma Yoga: union through Work
Samadhi Yoga: union through Peace
Ha Yoga: union through Sun
Shat Yoga: union through Water
Pranayama Yoga: union through Air
Sattwic Yoga: union through Food
Laya Yoga: union through Man
Laya-Kriya Yoga: union through Earth
Hatha Yoga: union through Health
Mantra Yoga: union through JoyTHE UPANISHADS
"To love is to go on teaching forever without becoming weary"
May quietness descend upon my limbs,
My speech, my breath, my eyes, my ears:
May all my senses grow clear and strong.THE SONGS OF KABIR
"The Purana and the Koran are mere words;
lifting up the curtain, I have seen."O servant, where dost thou seek Me?
Lo! I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque:
I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies,
nor in Yoga and renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at
once see Me: thou shalt meet Me
in a moment of time.
Kabir says, "O Sadhu! God is the
breath of all breath."*****
The moon shines in my body, but my
blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me; but my deaf
ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamours for the I
and the Mine, his works are as naught:
When all love of the I and Mine
is dead, then the work ofhe lord
is done.
For work has no other aim than the
getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put
away.
The flower blooms for the fruit: when
the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but it seeks,
it not within itself: it wanders
in quest of grass.*****
O how may I ever express that secret
word?
O how can I saw He is not like this,
and He is like that?
If I say that He is within me, the
universe is ashamed:
If I say that He is without me, it is
falsehood.
He makes the inner and the outer
worlds to be indivisibly one;
The conscious and the unconscious,
both are His footstools.
He is neither manifest nor hidden,
He is neither revealed nor
unrevealed:
There are no words to tell
that which He is.*****
How could the love between Thee and
me sever?
As the leaf of the Lotus abides on the
water: so Thou art my Lord, and
I am Thy servant.
As the night-bird Chakor gazes all night
at the moon: so Thou art my Lord and
I am Thy Servant.
From the beginning until the ending
of time, there is love between
Thee and me; and how shall such
love be extinguished?
Kabir says: "As the river enters
into the ocean, so my heart touches
Thee."RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Let my love, like sunlight, surround you
and yet give you illumined freedom.Thou art the sky, and thou art the nest as well.
O thou beautiful, therein the nest it is thy love that encloses
the soul with colors and sounds and odors.
There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right
hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the earth.
And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows
deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool
droughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean
of rest.But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in,
reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor night, nor form nor color, and never, never a word.*****
Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song -- the joy that
makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the
joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over
the wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking
and waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with
its tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws
everything it has upon the dust, and knows not a word.*****
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where it mind is led forward by thee into ever widening
thought and action --
Into that heaven, my Father, let my country
awake.