What is it that people really care about?

[drawrof]

Gurfateh to all,

I am writing this post to address a question that haunts me ever so often. I have been keeping things light with my hip-hopreet singh "gangsta" posts for a while, but I really sat down and asked myself....what am I doing on this site, and what type of posts am I looking for?

This came across my mind as I was searching and I thought to myself, do people (including myself) really care about getting close to god? do people really want to love god or are they in it for the tail end spiritual bliss we can get....and those who want to love god, would they really care about higher spiritual tastes?......doesn't the idea of seeing a light or hearing a hum etc etc...just act as another spiritual nothch on the bedpost of our bhagti?

Do I (I am refraining from using people, to avoid the backlash...but for anyone who feels that they need to blow some steam after reading this post; I bow my head and say "yes"....call me a manmukh) actually care about my bhagtee; or am I just another person who has failed (judging by my own yardstick) in every other aspect of life and now trying to over-compensate by diving into something that'll make my ego feel unique and worthwhile?

To be very honest, I tie a very messy looking pagh, I have let weight pile on like a stack of pancakes, I am generally going through a rough period in my life, apathy is biggest virtue at the moment, I live my days aimlessly. Now, when I used to read gurbani, I had a polar view of the world. I would think.....yes A,B,C are doing bad things...I am not....they are manmukhs, and I am a gurmukh for not doing worldly things (mind you I was probably around 16 when I thought this way), and I evolved as I did each of the actions I once abhorred to only realise that there were some I wanted to do repeatedly and others that just didn't sit with me.

The purpose of my opening sentence in this paragraph is one to make me really self reflect, because I am not taking sanyaas...nor am I really an anarchist who is rebelling from the establishment; I am simply a person who has fallen into complacency....and I can rest assure you that my life is not running on any schedule or with any real priority....this could be considered mastana...if I had the bal and uddham of a mastana fakir...but I don't. My current state of life is just an attestation to the modern punjabai adage "time-paass".....

Let me steer this now in a more positive light, I am going to pose some questions and I'd like the sangat to reflect. Memorized, Textbook, and Repeated answers are fine.....but I do warn those of you who are younger than me (age wise, experience wise, spirituality wise <assuming>) that this may be that one oppurtunity to actually realise an inner gem....and by resorting to the status quo; you may find yourselves caught in the same rut and writing or thinking like I am sometime in the near future.....I will get off the podium and just ask the following questions

1) Will God/Guru really care which khand you got to? (simply put, when god is realising god through this creation....what is our real spiritual contribution)?

2) Is it all about how we are on the inside?.....in reality no matter what we put into our body...it comes out as feces, and when you open up a body...it all looks the same......and further....WHAT IS INSIDE OF US THAT IS REALLY OURS or simply put...what is the origin of our virtues that we can call them ours?

3) Why do we complain and fail to accept the presence of god?...and in doing so how is it is that we only take ownership of that which we feel directly affects us....and even that is based on our own self constructed paradigm.....let me give an example, we live off of the sustenance of the sun (please don't let this venture into surya namaskar), but does it ask anything of us....does it ever fail us???....

4) How is it that the mind that can't even do the same thing repetitiously judge that which has a precedent dating to beyond the birth of anything we know? How is it that a mind that is fickle and can not do the same thing repititiously without question and equipose feel that it can devalue that which rarely changes

5) If volition is a gift, how do we polish it so that we can be there at every moment in the right mode and state?

Thanks so much for those of you who have chosen to at least skim over this...It'd be enlightening for me to see what others have to say

ps. please do not say this is a good post unless you are sharing your own thoughts...because if it hasn't made you think and question and go within your current set of habits, virtues, vices, ideologies, thoughts, etc.... the comment is as powerful as "that was a good cup of coffee".....

tata

3) What was a good action before culture and society

[drawrof]

ps. excuse the mistakes, I wrote this last one from my heart and some of the words registered in my mind but didn't transfer onto this blackboard...I will not edit my post, but I will, at any given time, try my best to clarify...enjoy

[Guest Javanmard]

WOW great post veer ji!

[tSingh]

Where to begin. Yes, this is a the very crux of everything really. I find myself waking up to this question when I've slept in on amritvela. Do I REALLY want to attain brahmgyan? I am one of and have met people who like the 'idea' of it but are lax on or blind to the requisites. I have met an even greater number who are in the very heart of hearts not in the slightest interested really and are instead drawn to other aspects of it, such as you say the 'image' or the excitement arising from flexing doctrinal intellect, etc.

I love butterscotch ice cream, I love good cheese. I've come back to these things after a few initial years of asceticism. Why do I like them? I know why. Some will argue that it is fine to enjoy good cheese in gurmat. That may well be truthful arising from doctrine, but not in my practice since what it means is that i'm attached to the pleasure I gain, which is disproportionate to the pleasure I gain from say makhan lassi which is truely foul. On the subject of food, I love the way on Punjabi buses the popcorn sellers pitch their bundles as 'time paaas'. Genius; grazing cows.

To your questions;

1) Well this is a very heavy question and I presume an eternal one at that. Would God mind? I'd imagine maharaj wouldn't give a damn! The theory goes that karm puts you back where you started or somewhere else and long it continues until you recognise your own suffering. My personal angle is slightly more optimistic. I feel strongly that it is possible for every autonomous human being to have a mystical experience and experience the power it has on our being. It is in my opinion the most important thing since it represents an experience of truth, that is my basic position. Beyond that I rely on teaching.

2) I personally feel that our outside is equally very important (I'm not talking about the colour of your kachay, but our actions and our responsibility to the pursuit of justice and liberation). On the inside, again, I personally hold that when Guru Maharaj states that 'tirath tap dya dat daan je ko paave til ka maan' that the point here is that virtues are a means to an end. Virtues that we should attain to are the means to that mystical experience, thus regardless of who is acrediting who, the point remains that without them no real progression can occur. Guru Maharaj states that without first having attained virtue how can spiritual practice be beneficial? This is important. Now the tricky bit. To recognise your own virtue is haumai!! hehe that is funny. So its about feeling what is truthful what is correct, unconditioning the mind.

3) I'm not sure whether this is rhetorical! If it is then excuse my foolishness. This is the human condition. With vivek and shardaa or with conviction, material and emotional hinderances lose their importance through perspective taking. The pain and anguish of losing our savings for example arise from a sense of fear and unpredictability regarding the future. Yet through faith and discriminative intelligence these things can be transcended.

There is another form of 'complaining' which i do not see as ego-based. That is the recognition, expression and discussion of events deemed injust or dangerous. On these thoughts action should be taken. Likewise there is still the danger of ego relishing and reaffirming itself in contrast to these things, but if one is focused on satya here then there is no room for such thinking. It is also very easy to become overly attached to that injustice. Compare for example Dalai Lama to Khalistanis. One is filled with hate, the other love. Dalai Lama keeps pushing for change, yet he writes of tibetans who survived and brutality by visualising their r loving his children, i.e. this practice stops the demonisation and distortion of that individual who is acting in extreme ignorance and in ego.

Questions four and five I don't get. Is four talking about spiritual practice maybe?

3 refrain) What was a good action before culture and society. Quite! It is certainly the modern view that our actions are clearly conditioned and relative to society. I reject this total relativism. Repetative I know, but through inquiry, reflection and devotion I feel that within the human condition the mystical experience requires and brings about a set of universal moral assumptions that manifest in all creeds in some form or other. These assumptions are not static in the sense that compassion and violence are not oppossed within different contexts. It can get quite gritty after this, since for example, if I say everyone can understand that murder is wrong thats not entirely true, since there is the issue of insanity. What is insanity? Some say social labelling for the minority opinion! hmm.

A bit warbley, and sorry if any of that is foolish or patronising!

[Mekhane'ch Jannat]

I suppose it depends on what you want. And how badly you want it. This is where i suppose reasoning comes in. Through correct reasoning the strangeness of the world is apparent and shaktee is gained from thinking about the world in a correct way. The more you reject the more shaktee you get. The way in which I use the word rejection is not as in forest recluse way, but a subtle rejection of any external gain, internally. So a person analysing his own state gives himself the gift of shaktee to dive deeper into the depths of his mind and unearth more hidden gems. You write in your introductory post whether people want to get closer to God or just get a buzz, i'd say it depends on how deep they want to go into themselves, and how much fear of god (he is too big) they are willing to sustain, there are numerous demons to overcome to get the treasures it depends on how good a warrior you inherently are or how hard your willing to train.

In attempt to answer 2 - i don't think anyone has any pure virtues they may have for a little while but as long as you identify with your body those virtues are tainted. To say that I have a virtue is a adharam because in reality i ain't got s**t. For a normal person who does not wish to pursue immersion in the formless he can say he has virtue and its true- in accordance with dharam - if he is virtuous, but someone who aim is different it is a gunah to say he has virtue when he spends time praising the cause of all things, it would make him a hypocrite. Whether you have virtue depends on who you are and what you are doing and where you want to be.

Q 4 is interesting. The mind is the door through which you can have his darshan. My view is that when people talk about spirituality they mean a specific mental conditioning. The mind is the site of a great war - the Devas and Asura's battling it out for eternity. If the mind cannot do the same thing repetitiously that is because its the nature of the mind not to focus on one thing. So the mind cannot judge God? This for me is the crux of the matter, how do we mould the mind to become something else and not make judgements about something the outward mind can have no conception of. Inwardness is the beggining further i can't say, except that constant effort and grace must have something to do with it.

[vinegar]

doesn't the idea of seeing a light or hearing a hum etc etc...just act as another spiritual nothch on the bedpost of our bhagti?

the more you get detached from physical maya the more other other forms of maya attack you. The lights, hums, visions of devte that are not abhed in Waheguru are all forms of illusion trying to test you, failing which you move away from your final goal of complete realisation that there is only God and nothing else.

THis is why you get more shakti the cleaner/more accurate your view of the world gets, its all a test. The more shakti that comes to do your seva the harder you have to work to maintain the fram of mind that none of this is yours, there is no you, and they are in reality serving God, not you.

you cant really analogise this with 'notches on a bedpost', seeing as bedpost notches are more or less independent events unless, er, 'word gets around of your 'skill'' so to speak, whereas the experiences during meditation are constantly there providing the opportuinty to move further and further along the path until there is no more 'you' and only God is left.

thats how i see it anyway...

[Hari]

Is the script written already? Or is it being written? Chak de!!