Eastern Thoughts, Western Thoughts

By Swami Kriyananda

Swami Kriyananda's wise and witty reflections are both timely and timeless. In this book he looks at Western civilization and its issues from a perspective of deep attunement to the ancient teachings and truths as taught by the sages of India—and especially those of his great Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda (author of the classic Autobiography of a Yogi). Readers can expect rich new insights, revelations, and laughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Clarity Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781565895836

Swami Kriyananda

Swami Kriyananda “Swami Kriyananda is a man of wisdom and compassion in action, truly one of the leading lights in the spiritual world today.” —Lama Surya Das, Dzogchen Center, author of Awakening the Buddha Within A prolific author, accomplished composer, playwright, and artist, and a world-renowned spiritual teacher, Swami Kriyananda (1926–2013) referred to himself simply as close disciple of the great God-realized master, Paramhansa Yogananda. He met his guru at the age of twenty-two, and served him during the last four years of the Master’s life. He dedicated the rest of his life to sharing Yogananda’s teachings throughout the world. Kriyananda was born in Romania of American parents, and educated in Europe, England, and the United States. Philosophically and artistically inclined from youth, he soon came to question life’s meaning and society’s values. During a period of intense inward reflection, he discovered Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, and immediately traveled three thousand miles from New York to California to meet the Master, who accepted him as a monastic disciple. Yogananda appointed him as the head of the monastery, authorized him to teach and give Kriya Initiation in his name, and entrusted him with the missions of writing, teaching, and creating what he called “world brotherhood colonies.” Kriyananda founded the first such community, Ananda Village, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California in 1968. Ananda is recognized as one of the most successful intentional communities in the world today. It has served as a model for other such communities that he founded subsequently in the United States, Europe, and India.

Book preview

1

Change—Or Transformation?

The winds of change are blowing over this world. Un-ease soars the restless currents, swooping down here to touch a carefree stroller: Having nowhere special to go, suddenly he thinks, I must get there quickly! There it touches an office worker, a postman, a housewife; abruptly the thought seizes them: We must hurry, lest we miss . . . ? Well, whatever it is, surely it is important! Unease grips the hearts of simple villagers in Bengal, of farmers on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, of bakers in sleepy towns on the Dordogne. Nowhere nowadays are the winds of change not being felt. Hurry! has become the universal password. Something awaits us. We may not know what it is, but if it slips us by shall we ever be able to capture it again?

These are all symptoms of a sort of changing of the guard — the crumbling of an old order, the heralding of a new. But in the midst of all this confusion it behooves us to ask: What about us? Need we, too, submit to the general impatience?

O restless mind! Where is there for you to go? Why be like a wave, tossed helplessly every time the gales of history blow? Be glad for what passes. Be glad also for what stays. Soar the ever-changing currents on responsive wings. Accept all, yet be inwardly identified with nothing. Seek freedom not in change, but in your changeless Self.

O mind — O restless one: Seek peace within!

If you identify yourself with a situation, any ensuing change in it will seem painful to you. Unfortunately, of all things in life change is the most certain. That is why life for most people is so full of pain.

Change comes not only with the passing of time. Already even in present suffering one can see, if one watches closely, the first ripples of gladness. And already in laughter — in the sadness of knowing that this moment must pass, or in the soul’s silent reproof that its true bliss is being compromised — one can see the spreading, dull stain of tears. Change is pain. Even the change from tears to laughter can seem painful, once we have accepted tears as our reality.

What is the solution? To be non-attached. Come, let us leap boldly astride the winds of change, clap hands with the thunder, sing when the lightning strikes!

A friend of mine and I the other day were discussing a certain institution. It saddens me, she said. The founder is now old. I wonder what will happen to his organization after he dies?

Why, I said in surprise, perhaps it will collapse. What’s so sad about that?

She looked horrified, so I hastened to reassure her, adding that, as long as a thing is needed, surely it will survive. But in that case, again I thought, if it dies why weep? Surely its need will have passed. And isn’t that what death is for — to make way for new forms of life?

Worldly life is like a deck of cards, endlessly shuffled. Rearrange the deck how you will, it remains changed in nothing but sequence.

Do you think by social, scientific, or political changes to bring radical improvements to the human scene? Without a corresponding change of consciousness, any outward reform will be merely like hanging costly paintings in a cow barn.

It is ourselves we must change if we would truly improve our lot. And to other men what we should try above all to give is the inspiration to change themselves. Growth lies not in things. The sky seems bright or sad according to our own changing moods, not to its own. True growth comes first by improving our own attitudes. Following that, outward reforms too can be fresh and new, and no longer the same old deck of cards, reshuffled yet once again.

Sooner or later, a straightforward view of things cannot but lead to the confession: I haven’t got what I’ve been looking for in life. I have things; I haven’t the fulfillment that I sought in things. I have friends and loved ones, but not perfect companionship and understanding. Life affords one the merest glimpses of those things for which he truly longs. Man looks at reality as if through a bamboo fence. Always the view is fleeting, always so fragmentary!

May we not pass through that fence? Our deepest instinct is not only to glimpse, but fairly to revel in the fields beyond it, to roll in their grasses, to smell their wild flowers and breathe their fragrant, cool air. But how are we to get in through that fence? The secret lies in finding our way out of an enclosure, not into one! For what is enclosed is no far-flung meadow, but our own petty selves. It is time we stopped fencing ourselves off from reality, crying, This much I want of life, but no more.

Whatever your experience of life to date — tell me, are you satisfied with that? You may say, But I’m happy! I have money, friends, a loving family. Nice, I reply. But back to my question: Are you satisfied?

You well know the answer! Whatever you have of things, so long as things seem meaningful to you you will always want more of them. You may have them to superfluity; even so you will want more. Desires, said the great sage, Paramhansa Yogananda, "if kept ever fed, are never satisfied." The way out of them is not to increase or vary the outward fare, but to learn to find contentment within ourselves.

Even the search for more things has a spiritual origin. Instinctive in the very fact of living is a constant demand for expanding experience, for expanding identification with the world around us, with truth, with reality. It is the soul’s longing, not merely to possess superficially, but to become everything.

What is right, moral living? A denial of human nature? What would be so moral about that? Keep a frog from jumping, and it will still twitch its legs. Morality should be a pathway to higher fulfillment.

Why revile your present nature, however unregenerate? If you want to play a drum, will you try stroking it with a bow? Obviously, you must beat it with a drumstick. And if you want to play divine music on the instrument of your mind, you must first accept it realistically — indeed, respectfully — for what it is. Then and then only may you develop its potentials, step by step, until this once-clumsy instrument resounds to the harmonies of angels.

To extricate oneself from the coils of a rope, one must see where the knots are. It won’t do to cry, "There is no rope! Even so, to get out of the coils of ignorance one must see where the knots of his mistakes lie, and not affirm brazenly with his ego, as so many new-style meta-physicians do, I am perfect!" But even while seeking out error, his mind should dwell on the thought of ultimate freedom. Otherwise he will find himself only tying new knots while endeavoring to untie old ones.

Each of us in his own way is seeking, more than anything else, his own personal fulfillment. Can you deny it?

But here’s a paradox: With all this self-seeking nobody likes an egoist!

Again, most of us would like in some way to be outstanding, yet nobody likes a braggart. Why not? Is it only that we don’t like competition? I don’t believe so. For even when no threat to our egos is implied, the boaster continues to displease us.

I think we instinctively recognize an unloveliness in egotism. The fulfillment we seek in life is a radiation outward from ourselves, a reaching out to embrace broader realities in the universe around us. But egotism reverses this trend: It embraces limitation. We dislike egotism in others because, essentially, we dislike it in ourselves — even when we succumb to the exhilaration