VASHISTA'S YOGA: Understanding the Mind

In preparation for a teleseminar I'm taking this evening*, I've spent the month of February studying one of my favorite yogic texts-- VASHISTA'S YOGA (aka YOGA VASHISTA).

I'm one of those bookworms who takes notes in the margins, underlines passages that speak to me, writes my favorite quotes, and their respective page numbers, on the inside cover of the book, the title page, and anywhere else there is free space. My favorite books have dog eared pages and Post-It Notes and bookmarks in enough places to render them useless.

Here's a gem of wisdom I underlined in VASHISTA'S YOGA last year:

Thought is the mind: there is no distinction between the two.

I love this quote. It's so succinct and eloquent in its Truth. It's one of those truths that is so easy to forget. I'm thinking I'd like to have it tattooed on my inner eyelids so I will see it every time I close my eyes.

Or I could just write it on a Post-It Note and stick it on the wall next to my bed. And stick one on my mirror. One on my door. One on my TV. One on my cat...

This quote is one that will certainly free you if you contemplate it daily. VASHISTA'S YOGA is filled with gems like this. 

Here's looking forward to a wonderful three week immersion into VASHISTA'S YOGA, and inquiry into the mind!

Blessings,
Bhakti



*The teleseminar is being taught by my dear friend Sally Kempton. Please visit www.SallyKempton.com for more information.

BHAKTI BROPHY QUOTE No. 0112358: THE NATURE OF CHANGE

"The only thing that stays the same is change."



©1991 Brophy

SHANKARACHARYA: THE VEDANTA SUTRAS

 "Mâyâ, under the guidance of the Lord*, modifies itself by a progressive evolution into all the individual existences (bheda), distinguished by special names and forms, of which the world consists; from it there spring in due succession the different material elements and the whole bodily apparatus belonging to sentient Beings. In all those apparently, individual forms of existence the one indivisible Brahman is present, but, owing to the particular adjuncts into which Mâyâ has specialised itself, it appears to be broken up—it is broken up, as it were—into a multiplicity, of intellectual or sentient principles, the so-called jîvas (individual or personal souls). What is real in each jîva is only the universal Brahman itself; the whole aggregate of individualising bodily organs and mental functions, which in our ordinary experience separate and distinguish one jîva from another, is the offspring of Mâyâ and as such unreal."

~ SHANKARACHARYA
Rendering of the Vedanta Sutras


* (In this context "Lord" is Brahman.  --Bhakti)



Source: Gutenberg.org