From: Roger Adams <RADAMS@cerritos.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Effort vs clinging on the spiritual path
Date: 16 Nov 1992 22:19:37 -0800
Organization: Cerritos College, Norwalk CA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandman.caltech.edu

In article <45933@ogicse.ogi.edu>, 
kish@athos.rutgers.edu (Bill Kish) writes:

> 	Part of the problem is that "effort" can turn out to be action
> which all to easily becomes usurped by what you refer to as
> ego-consciousness.  I agree with you that the "peace of meditation"
> (and "scientific meditation") requires a certain kind of effort, at
> least until it becomes effortless.  But you might wish to reconsider
> encouraging anyone to "hold on" to it.  The whole point of this peace
> is that you don't *have* to hold on to it. This peace is not manufactured 
> by effort, since you are in fact already enlightened. 

I quite agree that the peace is not manufactured. What we are doing in
meditation, is getting rid or letting go of the obstacles to feeling the
peace which is already there were previously oblivious to. The
peace felt in meditation does tend to linger on its own to a certain extent.
Paramahansa Yogananda's advice to hold on to the peace of meditation means to 
not allow the obstacles to feeling this inner peace to reign again and trample 
over the peace within.  The spiritual path is a moving upstream, against the 
current. Maya (delusion at the macro or universal level) and avidya (delusion 
at the individual level) is the downstream and where you are when flowing
with the current (ie. conditioning of environment, heredity, family influence,
peer pressure, karma, etc.) so it can be said to be the "default" if we do 
nothing else. If you meditate for an hour then allow the peace to be clouded 
over and muddied by mental restlessness and self-centeredness, you are pretty
much trashing the benefits of meditation although even a little spiritual
practice will begin to lift the veil of ignorance and so the benefit of
meditation alone will still be a good influence.

> 	I take it from the Hindu proverbs you use in your .signature and
> the general tenor of you posts that Hinduism is a little closer to your
> heart than Buddhism.  Do you feel that Buddhists and Hindus mean different 
> things when they use words or phrases like "enlightenment" and
> "effort-on-the-path", and are you perhaps expressing a preference for
> a particular strain of Hindu thinking here ?

My signature quotation actually came from a California State University
at Long Beach (where I graduated) newsletter. It was their motto, so to
speak (maybe still is). My guru is Paramahansa Yogananda through the teachings
of Self-Realization Fellowship. Yogananda was a God-Realized master who
showed the essential unity and oneness of original Christianity as taught
by Christ and original Yoga as taught by Krishna. He taught the essential
truth in all religions. At Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, California
where there is a Mahatma Ghandi memorial (where some of Ghandi's ashes are),
Yogananda had a little monument built to honor all the great religions
(Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity), displaying the
main symbols for each of them. The followers of Buddhism and Hinduism
may mean different things by the use of words like "enlightenment" but the
God-realized masters have no essential differences. Each of the great ones
emphasized certain points of universal sanatan Dharma for the time, place,
and culture that they found themselves in so they may seem different at
the superficial level only. The followers of these great ones eventually
added man-made doctrines and dogmas which caused these 5 great religions
to have seemingly unreconcilable differences. God-realized masters can
cut through dogmas and doctrines and see the essential truth behind all
of them.


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	Roger Adams
	radams@cerritos.edu               To those in whom love dwells,
	Cerritos College                  the whole world is one family.
	11110 Alondra Blvd                             A Hindu Proverb
        Norwalk, California 90650
	USA        		          292 Dwapara :-)
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