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Spiritual teachings by Shunyamurti, the founder and director of the Sat Yoga Ashram - a wisdom school, ashram, and the home of a vibrant spiritual community based in Costa Rica. Visit us at satyoga.org
Episodes
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping? - 04.22.10
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
Student Question: There has been a lot of talk recently about Zen riddles, koans, and I was wondering if I could hear one in order to see what my mind would do with it?
“A Zen riddle, to be an accurate Zen riddle, has to be given at the right moment to the right person. It’s not something to toy around with. It is a very deep, sacred instrument for learning,” explains Shunyamurti, the Zen Master of the Sat Yoga Institute. Though Zen schools today have codified and organized koans into a rational, hierarchical structure, they have lost their true Shakti, their transmissible power of awakening. But nevertheless, “one purpose of the koans is to create a situation that is so paradoxical that the rational mind eventually has to give up; it can do nothing with it.” But today we have koans in contemporary science: Gödel’s proof in mathematics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the double-slit experiment in quantum physics, etc. “There’s a limit to our knowledge. Our rational minds cannot know aspects of reality, and the more we try to know, the more the reality changes before our very eyes. . . . That’s a Zen koan, but it’s a Zen koan that reality itself presents. God is the Zen Master who is forcing us to realize that reality is not what our rational minds think it is, and we cannot make sense of it at that level. So we no longer need Zen koans: Life is a Zen koan.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 22, 2010.
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
Sentient Beings - 04.22.10
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
Student Question: In many traditions there is a reference to the term "sentient beings," and it appears to me that that’s a very specific term that I don’t think I really understand and I was wondering if you could speak to that?
“It’s difficult to speak to that issue for the simple reason that there are many sentient beings that are not corporeal,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “That’s why here we often use the term actants . . . versus actors. There are many actants in any given situation, which are forces that are operating, some of which are bodiless. . . . But everything is an actant . . . everything that we think of as a thing or an object, even if we think of it as inanimate, is a sentient being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 22, 2010.
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
The Ego is a Koan - 04.22.10
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
Thursday Apr 22, 2010
Student Comment: I was wondering if the ego itself is a koan, and then I though no, because it has its own logic for everything it does whether that’s conscious or not. So the ego itself isn’t a koan.
“Oh yes it is because the ego is inconsistent,” maintains Shunyamurti, the spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And part of the reason for transformational sessions is to allow oneself to hear the contradictions inherent in one’s fantasies, desires, and other unconscious melodramas. “And when you realize that and have to laugh at your own ego for being ridiculous . . . you have to let it go.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 22, 2010.
Thursday Apr 15, 2010
The Act of Aspiration - 04.15.10
Thursday Apr 15, 2010
Thursday Apr 15, 2010
The Indian sage “Sri Aurobindo says that the primary act, central act, that a meditator is performing is an act of aspiration,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “You are aspiring to lift your consciousness. You’re for two things: one is the ascent of consciousness from ego mind to Sat Mind, and at the same time you are invoking the descent, the presence of the Supreme Consciousness, the Supracosmic. One’s own consciousness at an individual level must go from the protomental, the emotional, to the mental, to the supramental, and then it must meet the supracosmic. And it is in that the yogic power is ignited.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 15, 2010.
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Refuse to Feed on Delusion - 04.08.10
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
“There was a great Zen master of the 14th century in Japan, named Bassui, who was asked about fasting and he said, ‘The only real fasting is to refuse to feed on delusion.’ Any other fasting may be helpful for the body, maybe not, but the real key is to transcend delusion,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And, of course, this means fasting from identity itself: “The moment you believe you’re a someone who has something, some treasure, some priceless knowledge—let alone thinking you have some priceless material object or partner or money, or whatever else—any of those are delusional—but even the highest level of subtlety of sophisticated metaphysical conceptualization of reality is pure delusion.” And, your true nature “cannot be seen or known in any way in which the mind tends to conceptualize even the process of knowing. So this is sometimes referred to as a path of Gyana Yoga,” and Gyana is “translated as knowledge, but it is knowledge that is Being. You are That which you Know; you don’t know it conceptually. There is no subject/object separation in that state because both those poles of subject and object are illusions. There is no subject. Any subject is always going to be, simply, a conceptualization. That’s what the ego is, a self-image, or it could be a very sophisticated set of self concepts. So the ego can exist on a spectrum, but all of it is an illusion. . . . So there is no subject, and the object, of course, is simply form that arises within that very same consciousness that thinks it is looking at it. And so all there is, is that which Is. . . . So let’s give ourselves that gift of realizing that there is only one Sat, one Mind, and we are all That, together as a unity, not in separation. And let us not be a mind that is in a state of separation from that ultimate Reality. We are That.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 8, 2010.
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Where is the Heart? - 04.08.10
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
“Sri Ramana was often asked, ‘Where is the Heart?’ and sometimes he’d point to the right side of the chest . . . but then he would always say, ‘I had to tell them something. They needed to know a physical location. The Heart isn’t in the body. And the world doesn’t really exist.’ And when he found a mature seeker, he would say, ‘The world is ajata,’ which means it’s unborn. It doesn’t exist. It was never created. . . . Relax all of your worries about the world, and just simply allow the love to emerge in the fullness of the glory of your being. . . . And then you will see that you are everywhere, you’re not in the body. You’re non-localized. You are the Cosmic Mind Itself, simply having taken form as the Christian metaphor: God became man so that man could realize he is God. And we are each in that position of the Christ, realizing the truth of our being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 8, 2010.
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Hide-And-Seek - 04.08.10
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Student Question: There are a lot of things going through my mind right now so I’m going to try to make sense. I have, through native understanding, the notion that one day the Great Eagle will swoop down and take everything that’s been gleaned from this human experience, from this earth experience, and then who knows what. And I’m trying to understand my relationship to whatever it is that’s trying to understand Itself through consciousness. Is it lacking something by creating all of us and this?
“Well, first of all, know that you are the Great Eagle, and this is all a game that the Eagle plays,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. It’s just a game. “You play hide-and-seek and the one who is hiding isn’t really lost, and the one who is seeking isn’t really seeking. It’s play on both sides. So the one who is hiding is not lacked by the other. And when that is recognized, then even the hide-and-seek you're playing with yourself—or with the Great Eagle—is only a game for enjoyment.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 8, 2010.
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Are the Chakras Within the Body? - 04.08.10
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Thursday Apr 08, 2010
Student Question: We talk about the chakras as levels of consciousness. Is there also an energetic kundalini within the body? Do the chakras manifest at different points in the body?
“It is more that the body is within the chakra than that the chakra is within the body,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Nevertheless there are symbolic links with different parts of the body, chakra two being linked with the sexual organs is an example, but the entire body becomes activated in order to fulfill that chakra. The chakras can also be linked individually to certain parts of the body that have to do with unconscious phantasies which are particular to each person. “But it takes a lot of sensitivity to be able to deduce from the symptom, the logic of the unconscious structure.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 8, 2010.
Tuesday Apr 06, 2010
Love of the Unknown - 04.06.10
Tuesday Apr 06, 2010
Tuesday Apr 06, 2010
Student Question: What is behind the fear of the unknown when you are trying to be flexible but you can’t, or you’re trying to be spontaneous and you’re caught in planning? Or when you’re meditating and your mind won’t stop chattering and it’s hard to free yourself?
“You see, as a child, you’re natural state is to love the unknown,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. But you get commands, originally intended for safety, to fear the world. And this is alright so long as one can let go of these irrational fears and paranoia that no longer serves one as an adult. “And that’s what ego death is really about: the ego that was created in childhood must die so the Real Self can now emerge and all the glory and the power that is our True Self—and the love! And that will come out as soon as you let go of that.” Recorded on the evening of Tuesday, April 6, 2010.