1.1M
Downloads
1079
Episodes
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 Jul 08, 2010
The Entity Known as “Language” - 07.08.10
Thursday Jul 08, 2010
Thursday Jul 08, 2010
Student Comment: I’ve heard you say before that “language has colonized our minds,” which really helps me clear my head during meditation. I would like to know, however, if language really is a non-corporeal entity, or if I am simply literalizing the metaphor.
“It’s an entity in the sense that it is used by the collective consciousness so that language becomes the carrier of particular messages of any given society,” begins Shunyamurti, the spiritual and linguistic master of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And those signifiers then take on a life of their own and create patterns of belief about the nature of one’s self, what should be one’s goals, what should be one’s desires and fears. And to the extent that one is entrained into that social link, then one has lost one’s free will into the will created by language—which, once it is internalized, you imagine is your own thought, whereas it is actually a thought placed there. . . . And so it is only by silencing the mind, and cleaning it out . . . that one can discover who one is before the ego was implanted through the naming and the emplacement of fantasy structures . . .” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 8, 2010.
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
Becoming a Chud Master - 07.01.10
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
“The journey to spiritual liberation is a rocky journey for everyone,” reminds Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Along the journey, one recognizes one’s own suffering. And the cause of one’s suffering is linked to an inability to love, and a fear based on the mis-perception of separation from the world, also known as the ego. “But the odd thing is we cherish this very ego that is the cause of our suffering, and we won’t let it die; we think it protects us. Ego death is the goal of every spiritual tradition,” and we are reminded of the Bible which says, “unless a kernel of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” So it is with ego death.
“And yet, how many of us will let that ego die. And we don’t let it die because we are afraid of loneliness. One of the words for ego death in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition, begun by Patanjali, is Kaivalya. . . . And for Patanjali, what this meant was a separation of Purusha from Prakriti, and then Purusha lives in complete solitude; Kaivalya means solitude. You’re all alone. And indeed we are all alone, and we don’t want to face that we’re all alone. And we would rather have a bad object out there, that we can be angry at and think ‘Well, if only it wasn’t for them I’d be OK and loved and alright,’ rather than realizing we are absolutely alone in a world that is our own projection.”
“The irony is that once we allow ourselves to enter into the solitude, we find [that] it’s not a solitude that is an isolation from the world; it’s not a loneliness. It is a unity with all that is. You are alone because there is no other; we are all One. . . . But we must let the mind die in order to know that, and the fear of that keeps the negative thought cycle going on and on. . . . But when we allow that all to settle, we find that the Divine Self is right there, it has been right there all along. . . . It’s on the surface, but we just don’t connect with it out of fear of losing this ego cycle that we think keeps us alive and actually keeps us from truly living.”
“There’s a great tradition in the Tibetan Buddhist lineage called ‘Chud.’. . . What it means is that you cut the self-cherishing of the ego. You cut all your connection to wanting to have this ego which will then give you all your suffering. . . . Then, once they have cut the connection to needing the ego to survive, they will find that under that fear is great joy. . . . So we all have to become Chud Masters here, and cut away the cherishing of the ego which creates the suffering and that cuts us off from the love that we all have within. And we want it to come out and manifest, and to be a gift to all others in the world. And that’s the only thing that will fulfill us.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 1, 2010.
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
Living an Authentic Existence - 07.01.10
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
Student Comment: My whole life I’ve felt the need to live an authentic life. So what you said tonight was very poetic for me.
“This is what all of human culture is about,” reminds Shunyamurti, the authentic director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And through time, the different philosophers have given their own spin on that. But that’s been the essential question: ‘How shall I live?’ . . . All of culture, whether at the popular level or the high cultural level, [people] are always asking this question: ‘Do you want to be in the matrix and have a comfortable, inauthentic existence, or do you want to face the adventure of insecurity?’ . . . We have the insecurity of not knowing, not depending on someone to take care of us when it means betraying our values, not depending on cultural values that we know are not authentically true, caving in to the herd and not following our truth and our heart. If you don’t lead that authentic existence, you're lost.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 1, 2010.