The Outlines of Dharma, Right Action

Beautiful fields and groves run wild with neglect and soon become unrecognizable bushland and thorny jungle; fine trees are hewn by greedy men and the shape of the landscape is changed. With the passage of time, people get accustomed to the new state of things. This has happened to Dharma also. Misunderstood by incompetent intelligence, unbridled emotion and impure reasoning, the scriptures have been grossly diluted and their glory has suffered grievously. Just as the raindrops from the clear blue sky get colored and contaminated when they fall on the soil, the unsullied message of the ancient rishis, the example of their shining deeds, and the bright untarnished urges behind their actions are all turned into ugly caricatures of the original grandeur, by uncultured interpreters and scholars. Hence, every one of you must acquaint yourselves with the outlines of Dharma, expounded in the Vedas, Sastras and the Puranas.

After a great evening in the center and everything seemed to remember out time we had spent with Swami in Prasanthi Nilayam, it was like present still in the morning in waking up and it was a good feeling. But we will go two together next February to India and I join, because it is better two than alone and I wouldn't go alone anymore and she just booked the flight for both of us and it is something we can look forward to.  

We feel Baba's presence if we practice what he is teaching. Now after he has left the body that is very important, before we just could take the airplane and fly to India and be in his presence, but now if we want to recharge the batteries, we have to practice what he told us for so many years. 

As we know from our Darshan with him that his presence takes away all those pains and sorrows and illusions we took with us to him. I had more than once someone arriving in the ashram and she was telling me that she needs to see Swami and she know he will give her an interview and in my thoughts I just said, settle down first, relax, go to Darshan and we will see, but usually I didn't say anything, because there was too much stress and strain in the air, but whoever that was arriving full loaded with a heavy mind, usually after a Darshan it was gone. His presence was enough to take it away. 

Whatever it is what overshadow our mind and daily life, as soon as he is present, it is all gone again and that we missed a lot after we couldn't go back to him. 

We got even used to it as he said not long ago, the mind gets used to everything and we thought it would always be like that. That was wrong, we had to go back in our own environment and in our own mind and if we don't practice and follow his teachings, we will also not feel his divine presence. The light is all there is, the light is real and we deal with highest wisdom here and that means everything else is illusion or the shadow and not real. 

If I arrive with heavy luggage full of mind stuff and it is all part of the shadow, it will evaporate in the presence of the divine light, but when coming back whatever is creating that shadow, for me it will be present again, because I had not realized yet that it is illusion. 

Therefore, we have as he said to follow the shadow. 

I always wondered what miracle made it just all go away, not matter how difficult it seemed in his presence it was gone, and I had a self-experience and it was separated from the body by a gap and in that gap was a blue ribbon and in it was written, self. In that sense I had experienced that the self was beyond the body and that the light is therefore only real and the other, the shadow is illusion, only at that time I didn't understand it yet. It has to be realized, but today I am surprised that I didn't realize it before. 

Beautiful fields and groves run wild with neglect and soon become unrecognizable bushland and thorny jungle; fine trees are hewn by greedy men and the shape of the landscape is changed.

We listen to the beautiful words and we are in the mind. We follow the shadow and now we have to find a way to experience the light again. 

If we don’t take good care of a garden, we have soon everything full of weeds and if we neglect it, it will look like wilderness after a while. We have to constantly take care it and I liked that in my parent’s house, both parents were into gardening. 

If we don’t take care of it, the law of entropy takes over and the perfect orderliness is gone. He tells us that we have to take care of it, doesn't he? 

With the passage of time, people get accustomed to the new state of things.

Between the sentences we find a gap of silence and the meaning has chanted. Here it is not anymore about taking good care of it, but about habit and that we get accustomed to the state of new things. If we didn't take care of the mind and now instead of living in a garden consciousness, we actually are back in the jungle, we did something wrong or we misunderstood something. 

We listen to the silence between the words, we read between the lines. Baba doesn't talk about the jungle or the mind state, but about something else, the tendency of the mind get accustomed to a new state of things and we think it will be like that forever. So we got used to be now in the wilderness of the jungle in our mind and to behave like a mad monkey and we don't even question it anymore. That is the bad thing about getting accustomed, we think it has to be like that or some will tell us, life is like that. 

This has happened to Dharma also. Misunderstood by incompetent intelligence, unbridled emotion and impure reasoning, the scriptures have been grossly diluted and their glory has suffered grievously.

With that allegory of the garden Swami explains how Dharma declined. In watching our own mind getting accustomed to new states of things, we look now at Dharma, right action.

First it was misunderstood by incompetent intelligence and we are not those knowing better and doing it better if we don't live his teaching. If we think actually we can do it and not he is the doer, we also follow our unbridled emotions and the result is impure reasoning. 

Incompetent intelligence and unbridled emotions, it is missing the right knowledge if the intelligence is incompetent and therefore wrongly directed into something that has nothing to do with Dharma, right action, but our mind of course thinks that we do the right thing and that we know Dharma, our duty, anyhow. Ignorance is looking for happiness at the wrong place. 

If we know that, we are careful, we have to use discrimination, trying to know the difference between the mind and the Atma. 

In the light of his words if we think it over we get aware of it, we get aware of our own shadow, illusion and for that we have to follow the shadow as he said. And he also told us to listen over and over again what we do with contemplation, we listen over and over again and by that we remove the outer cover of the fruit to be able to finally get to the sweet fruit itself. 

If we make this difference between pure and impure argumentation, so how do we reach pure argumentation? Swami talks about the unsullied message of the ancient rishis, the scriptures, the masters and their shining deeds and behind is untarnished, pure and perfect harmony and natural law, but the urge behind impure actions turned into ugly caricatures of the original grandeur, it means it got lost and if it got lost in India, what about the West? 

Just as the raindrops from the clear blue sky get colored and contaminated when they fall on the soil, the unsullied message of the ancient rishis, the example of their shining deeds, and the bright untarnished urges behind their actions are all turned into ugly caricatures of the original grandeur, by uncultured interpreters and scholars.

We have to acquaint the outlines of Dharma, right action and how do we do that?

It is expounded in the Vedas, Sastras and Puranas.

In the West we have not the slightest idea about it. The Puranas is the illustrated story of the Veda, like the Ramayana is part of the Purana. Sastras are more a scientific approach to wisdom and it refers also to the sutra, we experienced a 'sutra, and the difference is subtle and how do we get the right action and the meaning of Dharma. We have to listen to him over and over again, everytime after listening, we get some more insights and in the silence that follows the listening we absorb and that is how it grows. It is not only the listening that is important, but also the gap in between the listening, absorbing it is more a feeling for it than understanding. 

Hence, every one of you must acquaint yourselves with the outlines of Dharma, expounded in the Vedas, Sastras and the Puranas.

In Baba's words is the wisdom. We don't learn it from books, we learn it from a living master and that is how we think it over and over again, by that thinking it over we get closer to the pure thought behind and we begin to see the reflection in our own self, we have to see it in our own life to establish a relationship to it and it becomes part of our life and we have to go on no matter what obstacles are there.

Just as the raindrops from the clear blue sky get colored and contaminated when they fall on the soil, the unsullied message of the ancient rishis, the example of their shining deeds, and the bright untarnished urges behind their actions are all turned into ugly caricatures of the original grandeur, by uncultured interpreters and scholars.

The message already got lost, we have to take care of it that it gets restored and if we do nothing, that is not possible. We have to make sure that we understand it right to not do the same what has been done already, by impure reasoning we don't change anything, therefore, the first duty and aim should be to listen to his words over and over again to get a feeling for it and to understand the oneness between thoughts, words and deeds.