Social Issues or Yoga

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 5 years before Mar 16, 2017

MiBeloved 5 years ago

Questions from an email:

How often you spend meditating and devoting time to spiritual practices vs social commitments. Do you become involved in social matters the minimal amount and mainly focus on your books and spiritual practice.

MiBeloved’s Response:

For me social commitments are a sheer waste of time, but still they are necessary. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna was explaining to Arjuna that the material world was a lot of hogwash, and then Krishna was telling Arjuna, that he (Arjuna) should complete his duties perfectly.

So Arjuna got confused and asked Krishna to clarify what to do, either to get into the hogwash or take care of self realization.

Krishna told Arjuna that both things had to be done, the social thing and the self-realization puzzle but he insisted on Arjuna’s completion of social duties.

When Krishna was speaking to Uddhava in the Uddhava Gita, Krishna shut down any access of social duties and family concerns and pivoted Uddhava in the direction of self realization on a full time basis.

This all means that what we do for spiritual success will vary according to our position in relation to the social world. For me, I do not have to be too concerned with the social situation.

Mostly we are involved socially because of having many desires which can only be fulfilled through social involvements.

A guy went to meditate in the forest just outside a village in India. After a while he began to think that he would have to get something to eat. An old man whom he spoke to told him that if he wanted milk, he would have to get a cow.

So he got a cow but the animal was miserable most of the time, because there was no good pasture in that part of the forest. So this guy was advised to acquire some pasture. He did this and then the cow got pregnant. After the calf was born, the guy was happy because milk came from the udders. He later became doubtful about the whole thing because of the time it took to care for the cow and calf and also milking the cow.

He was advised that he needed a wife to help him with the chores. He got married. After time, his wife showed some irritability. When he asked some elders about that, they said that a wife needed to have sex which would also produce the bonus of children.

So you can see where I am going with this, that social involvements will multiply and suck up all the time required for spiritual life. Therefore each yogi must draw a line as to how much involved they will become and it begins by controlling desires.

Patanjali told us that desire energies are eternal. Now if we are to believe what he wrote, then it means that the elimination of desires is out. Don’t let us waste our time with that but at least we can learn how to side step and avoid desires. If something is a permanent reality, then you are not going to kill it. But you might be able to get out of its way.

A yogi has to learn to evade desires. Once a desire latches on to you, you are toast for it. So a yogi has to learn how to be resistant to and also how to hide from desire energies, otherwise he or she will have no time for self-realization.

I have met many people who are at a loss as to what spiritual life and as to how to achieve it. For me it is easy to understand what spiritual life is, because for me it is something that I am trying to reestablish.

I can remember other existences and also previous lives in physical bodies on this planet, so for me I am desperate to get away from this. The other thing is that I took this body for a specific purpose which has nothing to with the social trappings that were necessary to just to have this body. So I have tried to settle up with nature for using this body, to settle up with ancestors for using this body. Otherwise I stick to the reason why I took this body.

Most people have no idea of any past life and have no idea of a reason for taking a body, because for them they are the body. For me I am not the body but I had to take the body to do what I wanted to do physically.

Still with that came the obligation to persons who contributed to the creation of this body, relatives, parents, teachers, government officials and so on.

The trick is to meet these obligations efficiently but not to expand them. If they are expanded then they will encroach on the time which could be used for self realization.

I raised a family, had four children. I am done with that. I tried to serve some of my relatives in a very fair way. So for me there is not much to do other than my self-realization. I do not have many desires. The main desire was the itch to complete books for giving information about meditation. I have done most of that as of today.

Other desires do not attract me because I can see that in the end they will fizz out to be nothing, or worse, fizz out as unwanted obligations in this or in a future life. Those who cannot see anything outside of this life have to fulfill desires without knowing where it will lead them in this or in a future life.

If you think that self realization is or should be your main concern, then you have to meet social obligations head on in an efficient way, where you fulfill them but do not expand them any further, and at the same time, you have to use every bit of your spare time to push on with self-realization.

Be clear about it, that this body will die. It will be taken away from you regardless of if you want to give it up or not. The father of my body was not ready to give it up when he laid on a hospital bed in South American and was in the last day of his life. Do not be like that. This body will be taken back by nature.

Once you see that then you have to ask yourself, “Then What? Where will I go? Who will I be? How can I prepare for that right now?”

All social issues pale in their significance if one keeps that in mind at all time.

I needed a body to write down information in English about self-realization and therefore I had to sign a pact stating that I would beget children and that I would do this and do that. I signed on.

So I had some obligations like that and met them head on. Was it a hassle? Did it screw up my spiritual life?

It doesn’t really matter because an obligation is just what it is. It does not have to be something that one likes. It is not like, I am doing this job because it is what I like to do.

It is not like that. Taking a body is a business contract. Once you get that in your head, it will all be easy for you to know how much time is for social and how much is for self-realization.