Styles of teaching

I was listening to a talk recently where the speaker was elaborating on the distinction between spiritualism and religion. He said that spiritualism is about seeking. The practitioner realises that he does not know the answers to many questions and he seeks those answers, expanding knowledge through direct experience. Religion is about believing. The practitioner does not know, but accepts a set of answers and believes in them without direct experience of them.

While the definitions can be debated, it struck me that these apply to the styles of education as well. There is one type of teaching style that inculcates seeking in students, giving them the questions and encouraging them to find out the answers on their own, with a little guidance. There is another type of teaching style that gives the answers along with the questions, in tutorial style, making them practice the steps over and over with limited focus on the reasoning and core logic, thus making believers out of students.

In that context, spiritual style will possibly produce more enlightened students. Unfortunately, that is a style not so common in India, the land of spiritualism.

God's kaleidoscope

The purpose of my existence is experiencing. Not doing.

I, on the other hand, am obsessed with doing and focus very little on experiencing.

God experiences through me. That was all he was really interested in. To experience himself, his self-creation, through the experiencing tool of the anandamaya kosha.

Doing is the secondary purpose of my (or any other jiva's) existence. Doing modifies the state of creation, so that there is a variety, a movement, a gradual sophistication and complexity in the state of creation. This makes the experiencing more interesting.

All my other koshas are designed for doing. The annamaya kosha physically touches the world, the pranamaya kosha energises the movements, the manamaya kosha tells what to do at this point, the vigyanmaya kosha defines long-term goals of action.

But these are all tools of change.The primary purpose of existence is experiencing.

Our sensual experience, however, is forever modified - embellished or sterilised - by our mind, before it is presented to the creator. Is this the experience he wanted? Did he want the pure input or the modified mental imaged input, for his enjoyment? I feel that he wanted the pure input, but by the sheer design constraints of the jiva, the inputs are always channelised through the mind and distorted. The inputs can reach the anadamaya kosha without distortion only if the mind is tranquil. And this is the only reason why I have to make so much effort to still my mind by going through the regimens of sadhana - simply in order to ensure that the pure sensual inputs pass through to the creator and he can enjoy the beauty of his creation in its purest form, undistorted.

Enlightened beings provide this clear path and are the instruments of God. Instruments of PERFECT PERCEPTION, mind you. That they do great good to the world by their actions is just a corollary.

Problems are not the problem

There are many events or situations around us that are not favourable to us. Only a few of them we tag as "problems". For example, my pick-up to airport, if late, is a problem. The latest space shuttle, launched a few minutes late, is not a troublesome problem although it probably involves rework or corrections worth a lot more money and effort.

What do we call a problem? Firstly, the event should affect my well-being. And secondly, it should be within my scope of correction. This second point is a very subtle one. If I am told I have incurable cancer with a month to live, after the anguish, it will not be a problem. Problem involves the invoking of a state of doership. I feel I can handle it, or I am expected to handle it, and I am tense about whether I will actually be able to handle it, and to me that issue is then a PROBLEM.

Problems do not come into our lives. Situations come, and a few of them, the handlable ones, we call Problems.

Therefore when we say that every problem has a solution, it is a tautology. Only because it is in our power to resolve, do we decide to call it a problem.

Vision

We learnt in physics and biology that an inverted image of what is in front of us falls on the retina. And the brain, very smartly, turns it upside down and sees it.

Seriously? That retina is the last point where the object exists as a light pattern. The rods and cones in the retina are energised, the photovoltaic pulses travel to the optic nerve and stream to the brain where..... what happens? Well, the optic centre in the brain is receiving only pulses, like dots and dashes of morse, and the mind simply CONSTRUCTS a reality inside the mind itself. In that sense what we "see" is not really what is falling as an inverted image on the retina. Who knows what that shape and form and colour is actually.

No wonder the scriptures call this world mithya. This is one of the reasons or angles through which the world is so called, the perceived being probably quite different from the actual. There are other philosophical reasons for calling it maya as well, but even at this simplistic level, I find the above thought mind-boggling.

What do you think?

Visitors

What do I find interesting in a temple?

Paying respect to the idol is a five-minute occupation. After that I watch the visitors. Sometimes the person is alone, or with family, or with children. Whatever he may be outside the premises, in the temple, he has come to meet his personal god.

No tension in the face, no impatience with a restless child, no lack of courtesy in the queue, no ego in prostration, no shame in prayer,  no greed at the prosaad, no lethargy in walking around the building. All visitors merge into this mass of characteristics, undivided, bhakta. That is where I glimpse the divine.

Gods don't make a place of worship. Devotees do.

Health and happiness

Do we blame other people for our lack of  physical health? Then why do we tend to blame others for our mental illness, which is called misery?

Happiness is our own responsibility, just as health is. There is a difference however. Physical health has built-in corrective systems that bring health back on track. But mental health has an destructive system called the mind on one hand and a corrective system called the intellect on the other. The intellect has to manage the emotional mind and bring it back on even keel quickly, so that happiness is restored. That is why, to continue to be happy, our intellect has to be on guard 24x7.

Even when in the grip of emotions, we have to first listen to our intellect.

Friendship

We see so many posts and nice pithy write ups that encourage us to recognise and appreciate our friends.

The goal of having friends seems to emerge from my need of a support group, people from whom care and pampering can flow to me, who can try to fill some hole, some incompleteness inside me.

If we wish to grow as human beings, and in our role as friends, I feel we should focus more on being a friend than in needing a friend.

So let's see a series starting "You know you have been a good friend when..."