The Tree of Life -2.6: Swami Krishnananda.

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Chinmaya Mission :

On November 26, 2023, Chinmaya Mission Houston (CMH) witnessed the inaugural Kumbhabhisekam ceremony of Saumyakasi Sivalaya. 

The festivities spanned several days, featuring symbolic rituals and a Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Yatra conducted by over 400 Bala Vihar children. 

This ritual harked back to a tradition initiated during the Sivalaya's inauguration 16 years prior.

During his address, Pujya Acarya Gaurang Nanavaty traced the inception of Pujya Gurudev's vision, while the Consul General of India in Houston acknowledged CMH's significant role in preserving Hindu culture. 

The culmination on Sunday, marked by homas and a Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Yatra, saw devotees gracefully participating in the abhishekam ceremony, facilitated by meticulous arrangements.

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Saturday, 16 Dec 2023 07:20.

Discourse 2: The Search For Wholeness - 6.

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Ishvara and jiva, God and the individual, are both seated on the same tree. This tree is this body, our family, our community, our nation; this tree is the whole of mankind, the whole universe. All these are but the same tree manifesting itself in various degrees of expression. There are not many trees; the tree is one, but the degree of its expression varies according to the stages of the development of experience. The whole is present in every degree, in every stage. I have been saying again and again that the whole human being is present in the baby, in the adolescent, in the adult, and in the mature person. In every stage there is a wholeness of the human being. Likewise, the whole tree is present in the seed, in the tendril, in the plant, and in its vast expanded maturity. The whole is present everywhere in every degree, only in different degrees of expression, so that the whole of God is present in us; but it is only in one degree, which is not sufficient or adequate.

Because of the inadequacy of the consciousness of the presence of this wholeness in us, we are pursuing the experience of this wholeness according to the knowledge with which we are endowed. Action is preceded by knowledge. Knowledge comes first, action comes afterwards. We have already an idea of what to do, and then only we start doing it merely as an outward implementation of this idea that is contained inside. We will never do anything without having an idea of it. First we think, and then we act. So the action is nothing but the form of the thought that is in our mind.

Hence, the search for wholeness, which can be equated with the search for happiness, is manifest in our lives as a search for an external object. The tree moves up in the direction of the sun in the high sky for this purpose alone. It seeks completeness of its life and imagines that this completeness can be experienced only by manifesting itself through an outward ramification in space and time.

What is it that we are seeking in life? Salary, high status, long life, soft beds, big buildings, large areas of land—are these the things that we are asking for? No. These are definitely not the things that we are asking for. When we are presented with a bundle of currency notes we feel happy, as if we are possessing something worthwhile, but we know very well we are not going to eat these currency notes. They cannot do anything except act as a means of getting something else which is our requirement. Nobody wants currency notes or coins. We need these as instruments for procuring something else. So our desire is not for money in the form of notes and coins, but for something else which we imagine can be acquired through this instrumentality. If we go further, we will find even that second thing is not our aim. That also is an instrument for a third thing which we are actually wanting. So on it goes, further and further, until we realise, to our horror, that we are asking for something which is beyond human comprehension through the instrumentalities of these little visible finite expressions of life.

What is it that we are asking for, if not all these things? We are asking for a relief of all tension, which is equivalent to happiness as we conceive it. Happiness is the release of all tensions—nervous, muscular and psychological—and our personality is in a state of tenseness because of some kind of pressure which is exerted upon our personality by something over which we evidently have no control, and of which we have no knowledge.

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To be continued

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