It’s very nice to have you all here. And today is the full moon, and also Guru Poornima, which is a very special and auspicious day on the full moon that is traditionally offered to the Guru. You have Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Secretary’s day and Valentine’s Day, and in Vietnam they have a Teacher’s Day. I’m not sure if you have Teacher’s Day here, but in Vietnam it is very important. However, in India the teacher is called not only a teacher but rather a Guru. The day is called Guru Poornima, which means the full moon. So today, it happened to be the Guru Poornima, the Full Moon celebration of the Guru.
You can have a dance teacher, you can have a computer teacher, you can have a cooking teacher. Oftentimes people use this word Guru for this, you know, my cooking Guru, my dancing Guru, my music Guru, like this. But for us here the word Guru means a spiritual teacher, the person that teaches you the highest kind of knowledge that gives you liberation from suffering, liberation from bondage. That’s called a Guru. He / she is the one that removes your darkness and gives you some light. Tomorrow evening we have a puja, a special celebration, Puja, to dedicate to Guru Poornima.The topic of the upcoming four days retreat at the ashram here is called the “Yoga of Transition.” And at the same time, we welcome the TTC graduates in this “TTC refresher,” that means knowledge being refreshed. Because if you know something and you don’t think about it, it gets dusty, it gets rusty, so you have to renew from time to time.
Life is continuously flowing. You are always in movement from one state to another, because that’s how you feel alive. If your life is not moving, then you feel that you are stuck, stagnant and somehow you’re not moving forward. Everyone wants to move forward in life. Sometimes you get confused because you don’t know where you are now, what you are doing, where you are going, and what is the right thing, because sometimes you receive pressure from all around, your parents, your friends and yourself. You say, “Life is pulling me in different directions and I am confused.”The ancient teaching of the Vedas have given you some guidance. And of course, you need to have a teacher who knows you very well, who can tell you (more or less) where you are at, and what are the different steps that you need to take.
Today I’m going to present to you a little bit of these different ideas to guide you.Number one, you need to keep in mind all the time that you are an entity: body, mind, spirit. You are not just a body. Our bad habit is that we think of ourselves as only a body. If somebody asks you who you are, and you present yourself to somebody, you always say: “I’m 30 years old” or “I’m 20 years old.” You define yourself as the age of the body, as the physical body. But in fact you are more than that. And you need to keep that in mind.First, the physical body, as you know, is born and then it grows, and the cells are growing and then decaying. So the state of your body depends upon your age, and your age will change a lot of things.
So first remember the body.Second, you need to consider the astral body, which in general means your mind, your energy. This energy comes also from the maturity of your mind, it depends on the quality of what you think. The thought that you have in mind sometimes gives a lot of prana and certain thoughts that you have in mind block your flow prana and make you feel very small and weak. So, the astral body is very important: your prana level, your mind, your subconscious mind, your emotions, the way you think, and your idea of yourself, all these are influencing the way you conduct yourself in life and the way you move in life.Third, there is the core body which is called the causal body. The causal body is the seed body.
This means that there is a reason that you’re born in this particular body and circumstances. According to Yoga philosophy, you are born to pay certain karmic debts and learn certain lessons. That’s why each person has different kinds of circumstances in life.Somebody is born healthy, in a very rich family, and is loved, and somebody is born in a poor family, in a physically challenged body and is rejected and becomes an orphan. Why? There are different circumstances, different lessons that we need to learn. In the same manner, if you plant an orange seed in the ground, then what you expect is an orange tree. You cannot plant an orange seed and expect a banana tree. The law of cause and effect works very precisely.
Depending on the seed thought (the cause) that you have in mind, you will be born in the body of a male or a female in certain circumstances of your life, your father, your mother, your culture and all these things. There is something that governs your life in the core and that is your reason to be born. This is a karmic lesson to be learned at a deeper level.Then beyond all this there is the Atman. Atman is your Self. It is your freedom, your Sat Chit Ananda, your bliss, your ultimate goal, what you truly want. Whatever you want in life is to know the truth, to not have any difficulties and to be aware, to be awake and not to be ignorant, and also to be happy and blissful. In general, we say that your purpose is to find your true Self, and that’s the purpose of all the yoga meditation practices and all Vedanta study.
So you use the three bodies as your vehicles to navigate through life.This knowledge comes from the Vedas or the Vedic culture. They give different sign posts that will help you to navigate this life. Vedic culture includes Yoga, Vedanta, Ayurveda, Jyotisha and Vastu. In Vedic culture the Guru, the spiritual teacher, is important. The Guru will guide you through.
The other important idea that you need to keep in mind in order to understand yourself, is the idea of the three gunas. The idea is that in life you are evolving from Tamas to Rajas to Sattva. So if you ask yourself: “Am I evolving? Where am I going?” Then the answer has to be: “I am moving from darkness (tamas, inertia, darkness) to rajas (movement, restlessness, egoism) to sattva ( purity, clarity, wisdom).In tamas, the veil over your consciousness in the beginning is very thick, so you cannot see the oneness, you only see a big difference between you and me.
In rajas, there is a little bit less thick veil, but you can only see partially, as you are self-centered and you only see from your point of view and you cannot see other people’s point of view, because you don’t have wisdom. In Sattva, everything is clear, light is coming in, and you see the whole big picture.Your evolution from ignorance to wisdom corresponds with your age and stage in life. At a young age, there is tamas, ignorance. Then you grow up a little bit and then you care about yourself. Your ego becomes big and you only focus only on your needs.
During that time, you still don’t see the picture of your relationship with other people, your relationship with the world. And then eventually, you become more enlightened, you become more sattvic, you become more wise and at that time your vision opens up. And then you start to situate yourself in a more correct manner, in relation to the world and in relation to other people. You see the big picture about life.
And you also see the goal of life, which is to attain wisdom, to pay your karmic debt and to be free.Your maturity comes with age, your biology dictates a certain psychology, a certain maturity. However, to note exceptions to the norm: Some people are very young and they are very mature. I met a boy who was six years old and he talked like an old man.
He didn’t want to play, he was very serious with meditation and yoga. And I have met people 60-70-80 years old, and they are like kids. So, it depends on the individual.
In brahmacharya you are studying the basics about life and your separate self, you learn asanas, pranayama and keep brahmacharya. Your duty is to your parents and your teachers.Grihastha is when you get married, you have children and you participate in the society. Your duty is to your children, your family and also to your parents.