Navagraha Puja
June 30, 2008
What you see in the image above is a puja table for a Navagraha (nine planet) yagya. Each of the planets has a special place in the mandala, as well as a specific grain and shape.
In the center is the Surya, the Sun represented by wheat and to the right of the Sun is Jupiter represented by chick peas. To the left of the Sun is a reddish lentil which represents Mars.
In the front row we have, from left to right, Moon represented by rice, Venus in the center represented by a white bean, and on the right mung beans for Mercury.
The row in the back has, from left to right, black beans for Rahu, very dark lentils for Saturn and a multicolored grain for Ketu.
Of course everything is framed by the beautiful and astonishingly fragrant jasmine malas that are prevalent in south india. And all the way in the back is the kalasha pot which contains the purified water and into which the deities are invoked.
And of course after the yagya, there are flowers everywhere and the priests performs the final offering of light (aarti).
What is your Gotra?
June 23, 2008
When a person attends a puja or yagya there is a point at which the sponsors of the event are recognized and their names are read. This is called sankalpam, or the statement of purpose. In this, a person is known by their name, their gotra, and their nakshatra (vedic constellation).
For westerners we can state our name and nakshatra but knowing what to say for the gotra has always been a problem. Traditionally every family traces their lineage back to one of the original rishis of the Vedas. But westerners obviously can not do this.
I recently met a North Indian priest and when he ask me my gotra, I I just shrugged and he said that a westerner should always use “Kashyapa” as a gotra. From the perspective of the vedic tradition, Kashyapa was the father of the devas and asuras and and all of humanity. He is married to Aditi with whom he is the father of Agni. He is also the father of Surya, the sun.
So from that perspective, we are all descendants of Kashyapa rishi.
Yajnavalkya
June 18, 2008
Earlier in May we had a series of yagyas that featured the Shukla Yajur Veda. What you see above is an image of Yajnavalkya, the rishi who cognized this Veda. The story is that he had a fight with his Guru and Yajnavalkya’s guru got so mad that he demanded that Yajnavalkya give back all the knowledge that the guru had given him. So, Yajnavalkya vomited up all the knowledge! The guru’s other disciples turned themselves into partridge birds and gobbled up the knowledge.
Then Yajnavalkya went off, determined not to have any more human gurus and he did very long severe penence to Surya Bagavan who eventually came to him and gave him all the knowledge of Yajur Veda but in a slightly different form. So in the image above you see Yajnavalkya teaching with the Sun at his head. There were 14 disciples and there were 14 sections or sakas to the Veda that he received from the Sun. Unfortunately all but two are lost now.
If you want to learn more about Yajnavalkya…and he was quite an interesting character….listen to podcasts #70 and #71.
Some rambling thoughts on relationships and enlightenment
May 26, 2008
In my Jyotish practice I get asked about relationships all the time because certainly it is something that everyone wants and what would life be without them in their various forms; husband/wife, brother/sister, parent/child, or business partners. But more often than not the questions are about marriage relationships.
A Jyotish chart is organized with 12 houses, each with their own meaning. The essence of “you” is contained in the 1st house….and exactly opposite that is the 7th house of the “partner”.
This partner can be anyone with whom you have a long lasting relationship; it could be a marriage partner or it could be a business partner. In either case it is the “other”….opposite to ourselves. The planets that influence those points will give a clue as to the nature of your relationship experience. Good, well disposed planets suggest harmony and malefic planets suggest that relationship will take more work. A combination of benefic and malefic influences will be complex…as is life itself.
Does it mean that we are to be denied an enjoyable relationship if we have malefic planets associated with the 7th house? Not at all. More often it means that there are lessons to be learned within the context of a relationship.
In the end, the universe has to be based on a balance of action and reaction, but more importantly, the universe is a place to learn and the purpose of karma is to teach, not punish. Ultimately it is difficult to imagine a way that we could learn the lessons we need to learn, without being able to have relationships. We learn by interacting with others.
Modern Buddhist teachings offer a related, but distinctly different perspective from the vedic tradition. In this case it comes from the book “No Time to Lose” by Pema Chodron. This quote is from her commentary on Shantideva’s Bodhi Charyavatara and it is full of great insight and humor. This text was written in the 8th century, generally the same time period as Adi Shankaracharya.
With regard to relationships, he hints at the nature of karma when he says,
“It was I in the past
who did harm to beings such as these
And so, when others do me mischief
it is only just that they should injure me…
If I repay them harm for harm
indeed they’ll not be saved thereby.”
So in one sense I think that we all have to serve out our karmas…developing patience and absorbing all the “stuff” that seems to come to us in a relationship. It is only what we have created coming back to us.
If you are reading this blog and participating in yagyas, then certainly on some level your soul has decided that enough is enough and it is time to solve this puzzle and undo the bondage of karma. Ultimately we understand intuitively that there is no lasting satisfaction to be found in the “real” world.
So we set about to work on our karmas. And according to the vedas, our store of karmas can be dissolved through meditation, personal pujas, mantra japa, and most powerfully, yagyas. If we are making so much effort, is it realistic to expect that we will wake up one day and everything will be just wonderfully and magically perfect?
When we don’t get what we “want” (relationship, money, success) it is very easy to get frustrated but….it can also be the universe telling us not to settle for too little; not to settle for less than the infinite peace and satisfaction of Brahman. We do our spiritual practices and then go about our day to day lives, doing the best we can and little by little life gets better; our consciousness expands, there is more built in contentment, and we “need” less from the outside world. That, in turn changes our relationship to the world and the things we do and want.
Traditionally that is called detachment. But I think that the deeper sense of the word if often times missed in that this is not a mood, or attitude. What would happen if you had radiating from within a source of satisfaction and happiness? Consider how that would change your relationship with everything else in the world. What would you need and what could you give? The point that gets missed is that in order to develop that inner independence we have to detach ourselves from the habitual clinging to the outside world and its varied sources of pleasure.
Oddly enough it reminds me of saying to my children, “Turn off the TV when you are doing your homework!”. I have to detach them from TV so they can focus on the task at hand. Like that, the malefic planets like Saturn and Rahu/Ketu detach us from our connections to the outside world so that we can focus on the spiritual growth that will be ultimately fulfilling and liberating. But like my kids who complained when the TV was turned off, we don’t necessarily like it at the moment it is happening.
The ways of karma…
April 29, 2008
Over the past few days I have engaged in an email conversation with an individual who has been listening to the podcasts for the past two years. He related a story about him and his son which I want to paraphrase here because it is a wonderful example of what Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita; “the ways of karma are unfathomable”.
Usually we think of this as meaning that our vast personal karmas are so bad and complicated that attempting to understand them is a fruitless waste of time. But this story illustrates what I think is another dimension to this thought. Some times, the little things that we do can have unexpectedly positive effects in the world.
“I have been listening to them [the podcasts] for about eighteen months…maybe closer to two years. Last August I took a long drive with my son to the Florida Keys as a going away ritual as he was about to leave for the Navy. We listened to many of the podcasts while driving (along with his music choices) and also some bhajans. Well, three weeks later he goes to boot camp and volunteers to be the “Chaplin” for his boot camp company. He was pretty aware of the New Testament and his Christian heritage…but he also asked me to send him something else…he asked me to send him the Gayatri Mantra in transliterated Sanskrit. He introduced it as a prayer for wisdom and getting closer to God and added it routinely to the prayers he lead every evening.”
Divine protection
April 24, 2008
Yagyas are wonderfully mystical events that do not readily lend themselves to the sorts of scientific logic and analysis that we usually live with in our modern age. I mean, just try and come up with a scientific explanation for mantras and you’ll see what I mean. Yet we all know that they work and in the end, the lack of an intellectually rigorous explanation really shouldn’t hinder our appreciation of them…and it certainly doesn’t hinder their effectiveness.
Over the years there have been many different events reported by the yagya participants and I take them pretty much at surface value although one who is more skeptical and scientific in their outlook would probably be very doubtful.
Earlier today. I received an email from a long time yagya participant which I thought I would reproduce here. Since it is my opinion that the main effect of yagyas is to “burn up karma” and therefore change the experiences that come to us in life, I thought this was a wonderful example of how that might be experienced.
“My friend R. had a great experience the night/early morning after the most recent yagyas 4/20. She had a vision of herself and my daughter in a car together, heading towards a collision with another vehicle, when, just before the impending collision the 2nd car transformed into sparkles of gold light, averting the collision.
Both she and my daughter are in mangal antar-dasha and averting accidents was one intended purpose to have the yagyas.
Ferrari in India
April 23, 2008
Right now, there are two 12 cylinder Ferraris (seen above) making a complete lap around India starting in Delhi going to Kolkata, all the way down south, then up to Mumbai and back to Delhi. Check out the map below.
In the announcement they mentioned that they increased the ride height and added a lot of metal underneath. Having been on a lot of the roads they will be driving on, I can attest that their modifications are going to be needed.! What I don’t think they anticipate is that India is largely a 35 mph country. Rarely have I ever been more than 50 mph on any road there. So this may be the first long term journey in a Ferrari that is done entirely in first gear…maybe second on a good day.
The purpose of the post is to mention an email that I received in which the author said that what ever happens to us in life, we are bound by our karma. Our efforts can only take us so far and if a certain destiny is not indicated in the birth chart, then it can’t manifest in our life. I agree and the example that I always give is that, I think that a Ferrari is a work of art. The sound of the exhaust is a form of music and the special Ferrari red color and the elegant lines of each model are exceptional.
But…alas in my birth chart the ruler of my 4th house which represents vehicles is in the 8th, a weak house. I would say that my destiny doesn’t seem to include a nice red Ferrari, in spite of all the years of yagyas and spiritual service that I have performed.
Does this mean that the yagyas “haven’t worked”?
When I imagine actually having a Ferrari, I suspect that it would amount to a huge distraction that would keep me from things that are more important to my evolution. So it isn’t a matter of deprevation, although I always stand and watch when one goes by.
The thing about the puja.net yagyas is that we can absolutely guarantee that they are performed properly and to the highest traditional standards. But ultimately the effects of the yagyas are not up to us. As Krishna says in the Gita; “You have control over action alone. The results are up to me.” Philosophically, we can say that whatever happens as the result of a yagya will be that which is most beneficial to us from the long term perspective of our journey to enlightenment.
By performing yagyas we eliminate bad karmas and desirable qualities like health, wealth, family, knowledge, etc are enhanced and flow into our lives more readily. We are, as they say in the traditional texts, “earning merit” to ensure that we have an auspicious future in this life and the next. The specifics of what happens is difficult to control because what we think would be best for us (a new 12 cylinder Ferrari), may in the long run, not be most beneficial (a jail term for excessive speeding). So it is not we who decide….a higher power who is not succeptible to the lure of 600 hp, rich handmade seats, F1 style paddle shifters….that’s who decides.
But hope springs eternal. Maybe in some distant future my soul will need to be rich and to go really really fast in an Italian work-of-art automobile. I’d even be willing to drive around India in 1st gear! We’ll see, but somehow I doubt it. I’ll bet I’d end up with a bumper sticker that says “I’d rather be meditating”.
Churning the Ocean of Milk
April 18, 2008
I was corresponding with someone this week about how it is possible to practice meditation for many years and to sponsor yagyas and still feel like the outer world just never gets “fixed”. Certainly if you read the whole of the Mahabharata or the Ramayana, no one’s life every seemed to get fully “fixed“. Certainly there were times of relative peace and calm, but they were not permanent. So perhaps, one of the lessons of these great epics is that outer life is always going to be fully of chaos and trouble. It is the inner life that needs to be developed so that we have some independence from the turmoil of the outer world. I suspect that the enlightenment of the rishis is all inner and the outer life becomes largely irrelevant, at least as far as satisfaction and happiness are concerned.
The story of the churning of the ocean of milk really is a great myth for this. The gods wanted to become immortal and so they churned the ocean (consciousness) and what comes out first? Poison! Not love and bliss and happiness….poison! But in the end everything they wanted, and more was given to them.
What happened to the poison? Shiva held it in his throat neither swallowing it nor spitting it out. So in the same way we have to accept the crap that comes out of our own churning…our own efforts at living and growing and evolving. You can’t reject it because it is the product of our own karma. And you can’t swallow it. And by that I think that the myth means that you can’t take it all too seriously. You can’t swallow it and let it become a part of you. It is just karma and you can develop some distance from it, or as you point out, develop a sense of dispassion. It is admittedly a fine line distinction. I suppose the old zen saying holds true, that everything is important, but nothing matters.
It is possible through meditation, and yagyas, and conscious effort to begin to recognize the push and pull of the different planets in your psyche. And having done so, when you get reactive about a particular situation, you can say to yourself…oh…that’s my Saturn acting up again. I’m letting myself get depressed. Maybe I’m being too serious. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic. I think I’ll let it go…and see what happens.” In an odd sort of way Saturn challenges us to let go and trust the universe more than we are readily capable of, or think we can.
There is no question that crappy things happen in life and sometimes we are helpless. The bad stuff we endure has to be chalked up to paying back past bad karma. In the rest of life we can find balance and see the planets the way they are just pulling and pushing us.
There is no evidence in the vedic tradition that our karma ends and suddenly we are transported into the garden of eden. I think that we develop an independence from all the ups and downs and they don’t affect us as they used to. We are less reactive, and our fulfillment is less tied to the outcome of events because what we “want”…the satisfaction is built into our awareness and it enhances the outer experiences…rather than comes from them.