Notes from Swamiji's speech

Yesterday I attended the speech given by Sampujya Swamiji Sri Poornamritanda Puri at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham during the cultural programme SAMAVARNAM 2012.

It was a spontaneous and wonderful talk and I took the following notes for my own reference:

In India, women are always protected because they are the most valuable, according to Manu smriti. Some women may think that they are not given freedom but they are protected as the way a president of a country is protected.

Life is always full of problems. It is like we are in the exam hall. We are expected to perform in the exam and in the same way, we are expected to perform well in our life also.

God never punishes anyone but we punish ourselves and others by our own words, thoughts and actions. Like the stone thrown above our head will definitely hit the head, the same way our karma will act upon us. Like one can protect the head from the stone falling from the sky using a helmet, the same way we could protect ourselves from our own karma using devotion. God does not need our devotion but it is for own protection only.

Having self-confidence is very very important. Without this, we will not be able to perform well.

Easy life without problem will make us lazy.

We have four states of consciousness: Waking, Dream, Deep Sleep and Turiya. The real waking state is Turiya. When we have problems in our dream state, the only solution for all the problems is to wake up to go into the waking state. The same way, for all our problems in the so-called waking state, we should go into Turiya state to really wake up. In order to go into turiya state, one has to do meditation daily.

As Buddha said, doing every action with awareness becomes meditation.

Having smiling face will give us confidence and happiness. Like happiness make us smile, the same way smiling will make us happy.

Amma said that one should respect their body. Body is a gift and hence it should never be insulted. One should keep their body and mind healthy to live a peaceful and happy life.

Who Moved My Cheese?

I read a book written by Dr. Spencer Johnson yesterday evening called 'Who Moved My Cheese?'

I finished this book within an hour as it contains about 96 pages.

This is a self help book aimed to reach all sorts of audience including kids. My 11 year old daughter read the book and she also grasped the idea.

The author's main point is that change is inevitable in life. We all have four personalities mentioned in the book in the form of characters namely

• Sniff -- One who sniffs the change
• Scurry -- One who scurries into action to get comfortable with the change
• Hem -- One who resists the change by getting afraid of worse situation and
• Haw. -- One who adapts to change quickly.

It is up to us to choose the personality and go with the flow to find the new cheese. Here, the new cheese could be a new job, relationship, investment, health goal or anything important to us.

Authors important message is to laugh at us when we get uncomfortable with the change. This will help us to find the new cheese.

Another important message is to visualize ourselves to live in the new change. This itself will motivate us to find the new cheese.

Vanavasam by Kannadasan

I went to Chennai during the week of Diwali (26. 11. 2011) to celebrate with my parents. It was quite nice because I celebrated Diwali with my parents after nine years.

After Diwali, I went to Vanathi Pathippakam in Pondy Bazaar and picked up a book called VANAVASAM written by Kaviyarasu Kannadasan.

I finished reading the book couple of days back.

This book was written in the year 1962 after the poet quitted his political life. Usually vanavasam means a very hard life (similar to life in the forest) as it normally refers to Pandavas' 13 year vanavasam or Lord Rama's 14 years vanavasam. In his case, it was 10 year vanavasam.

His political career was just an accident after he was influenced by DMK leader Anna Durai's speech against brahminism. After many struggles, he realized that political life was not for him and this ended his vanavasam.

This book is not much interesting to me like his other books such as Arthamulla Indumatham (10 volumes).

But, there are few statements I would like to remember from this book:

• When suffering people come together, they become friends.
• When greedy people come together, they become enemies.
• Goalless and unplanned life will not take us anywhere.
• Unidentified people live peacefully when compared to identified people. Here, he refers to kind of popularity as identification.
  

Choice of the Spiritual Path

Though there are countless number of books and websites to talk about different paths to self realization, I always wondered how I could choose the correct path for myself.

Is it just a matter of taste or someone should specify it for me?

When I was reading Dr. David Frawley's book on Yoga and Ayurveda, I found that it should be based on the mental and body types as per ayurvedic principles.

For example, devotional path is well suited for a person with vata mind. When I practiced meditation with concentration, I always lost sleep at night but when devotion was practiced through prayers, more calmness was felt at night.

Whatever path one chooses, it always boils down to one thing i.e. to remind our selves that we are not just the body and the mind.

Though Dr. Frawley's book may help to identify the path for an individual, the perfect person to prescribe the path is the individual's Sathguru. Because, a Sathguru knows the entire history of individual's evolution and prescribes the path accordingly.

Life Purpose

Many people define their life purpose in different ways. As my school of faith is Advaitha, most of books that I have read say - the real life purpose is to do self realization.

What is self realization? My understanding is that we need to realize who we are.

Why should we need to realize when we already knew who we are by some identification?

Advaitha says that we are not the body, the mind and the intellect but a pure consciousness. Though I don't understand what this means, I strongly believe in that because I was blessed to be with many self realized masters, with whom I could feel the blissful energy, divine wisdom etc.,

One of the tamil poet called Avaiyar says that getting a human birth is very very rare. (That is, மானிடராய் பிறப்பது அரிது அரிது.) Hence make maximum use of your life time to realize your Self.

When I was listening to Amma's bhajan Oru nimishamenkilum, I found the following:

• Human birth is very rare.
• You have got the human birth after countless births like grass, plant, worm, lizard, birds, animals (Hindu scriptures say that atman takes human birth only after taking birth of 84,000,000 species.
• Hence, do not lose your peace of mind by searching for material happiness in the world.
• Every second is precious.
  

Welcome to My Brief Notes blog!

I created this blog to capture all my notes online so as to share them with my fellow readers. Though I have about 15+ years of experience in software development, I have interests in other topics such as ayurveda, vedic astrology, yoga, meditation, spirituality,  cooking etc., Whatever notes is given in this blog is mainly used for my reference. Hence you will read notes from all these topics.

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