Vedanta blog

We currently live in a very connected world, on youtube we have people from Aotearoa New Zealand, The United States, the UK, Australia, Japan, France, Germany Europe, China, India and elsewhere. We can speak directly to one another and being universal is our reality. We have to acknowledge this universality. I think dialogue is relatively easy and while there are cultural differences there is a shared space for dialogue probably moreso than any time in recorded history and likely we're more culturally homogenous.

I have done a lot of vlogs on Christian writers but now I want to venture into Hinduism, Vedanta, the spiritual traditions of Bharat or India. However you want to refer to it. I'll use the term Vedanta from now on. This has a personal connection for me. I grew up in a secular household, both my parents grew up in Anglican  households, but our family had moved away from wider family, we didn't attend church and I didn't even know people that were strongly religious, even now I don't know that many although there are two operating churches in the town where I live but they're hardly flourishing. Growing up I wasn't drawn to Christianity, although Tolkien's fiction had a strong influence on me. It was reallyVedanta that was first real to me and it was through that any appreciation of Christian spirituality was born in me. In cultural terms it interesting for me to trace Vedanta in recent history. The Theosophists spoke of Vedanta and while I find Blavatsky an interesting figure I  don't find their writings very clear or illuminating.

There are number of significant modern Vedantic figures: Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sri Aurobindo and Prabhupada. The English writer Arthur Osborne wrote as number of books on Ramana Maharshi as well as one on Shirdi Sai Baba and Paul Brunton claimed Ramana Maharshi was his guru in his pretty popular book a search in Secret India. Sri Ramakrsihna came figuratively to the West through his key devotee Swami Vivekananda who attended the first world parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and the story of his going there is an interesting one as he represented India there but he came with no formal accreditation as was required and hadn't realised he needed it, but through certain interesting events it all worked out and he was probably the most momentous speaker there and he spent quite a while in the United States and established Vedanta centres there. 

Vivekananda interestingly emphasised how there is truth in all religions and used the quote from the Bhagavad Gita: "As different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their waters in the sea, so, Oh Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."

Not that long afterwards in 1920 Paramahansa Yogananda came to the United States and for the most part lived there for the rest of his life establishing the Self Realisation Fellowship, he like Vivekanada arrived with little money and no contacts. Yogananda wrote the hugely influential book Autobiography of a Yogi. His tradition, the teachings through the line of his gurus was called Kriya Yoga. Yogananda has made his place in popular culture,his line of Gurus were included in the figures on the Beatles classic Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Interestingly my family has a nice tie into this album that dates back earlier than Vivekananda's visit to the US  back to 1856. Pablo Fanque who is featured in the song "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite" toured New Zealand, 

George Harrison who was responsible for Yogananda appearing on the Beatles cover used to have piles of copies of the Autobiography of Yogi which he would give away to his friends and acquaintences. The mahaguru at the start of Yogananda's lineage Babaji is celebrated in song on the Supertramp album Even in the Quietest moments which had a real appeal to me, the brother of one of my school friends had a copy of this album. I think George Harrison's song Dear One is about Yogananda. I was also from a young age a fan of the group Yes and their album Tales from Topographic Oceans was based on a footnote from Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. The singer from Yes: Jon Anderson has as his guru someone called Mother Aubrey who had as her spiritual ideal Ramakrishna. 

When I was about 30 years old I read Autobiography of a Yogi, I don't know that i was aware of the Beatles, Yes or Supertramp connections. I was interested in reading spiritual books but spirituality didn't really live for me, it felt like there was something of an abyss between me and spirit/God. This book changed that, Yogananda seemed to have and be able to convey having a living, personal and easy relationship with God. This came to me at a time when I desperately needed it, I was suffering from depression and  alienation from the spirit which was becoming intolerable. 

Some decades later I was initiated into Kriya Yoga by Swami Samapanananda now about 10 years ago and i have twice had spiritual retreats with the current Guru Paramahansa Prajnananandaji. The tradition luckily for a lover of reading like myself has a healthy literature. Prajnananandaji has written a lot of books, Yogananda too, his brother disciple Satyananda wrote a set of Biographies of the masters, Prajnanananda's guru Hariharananda wrote a number too. Yogananda's guru Sri Yukteswar wrote one called Holy Science and Prajnanada wrote a commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali based on the interepretations of that scripture by Sri Yuktesars's guru Lahiri Mahasya.

I'll make a few general comments about Vedanta, now one of the things i believe about religion generally is that it didn't used to be considered as a set of beliefs it was descriptive of actual experiences and could not be abstracted from other realms of life. Really only since modern times especially from the end of the middle ages the concept of the secular has opened up and we have come to conceive of religion as a set of beliefs and as something that could be abstracted from other realms of life. 

I'll now outline some key Vedantic concepts and practices: Dharma, Bhakti, Seva, Satsang, Dhyāna & Jnana. Your Dharma, is your path and could be translated as right conduct, speaking truthfully, compassion, we live with the Gunas or qualities: Thamas, Rajas and Sathwa or sloth, anger and Purity the first two are negative qualities but even the last  must eventually be transcended. Bhakti is devotion, prayer and devotional singing. Seva is service to others particularly the poor. Satsang is good company ,get togethers with other devotees. Dhyana or Meditiation is a practice and in Kriya yoga with initiation we are taught a specific mediation practice. And Jnana is wisdom, the study of the scriptures but more importantly the relisation of them and none of these are really seperate from one another. For instance in Jnana we are to realise our true nature is divine and in Seva or service to others we are acting on this by recognising the divinity in others, much like when Jesus said "what you do unto the least of these you do unto me."

David Bentley Hart wrote an excellent book the Experience of God, which compared the concept of God from Christianity the God of Classical Theism to that of Islam and the Vedantic conception of Sat Chit Ananda, or Being Consciousness Bliss. If God is essentially the same in these traditions then the metaphor of different paths to the one destination seems appropriate. 

I certainly make no claims to be a wonderful exemplar and atheists often point to less than perfect behaviour of religious people as hypocrasy and while that may sometimes be the case , often it is not. Religion is for the imperfect accepting teachings does not immediately mean you can fully live up to them. hypocracy is when you complain of the behaviour of others what you do yourself. 

I want to finish off by coming back to the start of this, I think we are now in a time when we can no longer ignore the fact that there are various religious traditions, also it may be that sincere practitioners of disparate traditions may find more in common than with many practitioners of those supposed to be within their own faith.