„Life is not boring to one who believes in adventure. Adventure does not mean that you have to climb up the tallest mountain. To allow new ideas, fresh ideas, healthy ideas to enter into your mind – that is adventure.“
~ Sri Chinmoy
Life, like any adventure, has challenges. To overcome them and find peace, we seek practical, lasting solutions. With selections from the writings of Sri Chinmoy on numerous aspects of our everyday life, this book introduces us to a modern spiritual lifestyle with particular focus on health, diet, sport, family life and the workplace. There is a vaster realm of our selves: the realm of the soul, which inspires and fulfils our outer life. Let us open our hearts. New adventure beckons…
Excerpt
Yoga and life
Without Yoga there is no self-discovery. Yoga is not a religion. Yoga is the Universal Truth. It is the traditional truth of India. It is the most important experience of life. True Yoga and life go together. They cannot be separated. If you try to separate them, you will fail. Yoga and life are as inseparable as the Creator and the creation.
Anybody can practice Yoga and it can be practiced irrespective of age. Rut we must understand what Yoga really involves. Unfortunately, there are many people who think that Yoga means physical postures and breathing exercises. This is a deplorable mistake. These postures and exercises are preliminary and preparatory states, leading towards concentration and meditation, which alone can take us to deeper, higher and fuller life.
Hatha Yoga is the starting point. Practising Hatha Yoga is like studying in kindergarten, whereas concentration, meditation and contemplation are the university courses. Even if you do not study in the kindergarten, you may easily get to the university. There are some good students, brilliant students, who skip some grades. They need not go to kindergarten. They start in primary school and then continue. But if you don’t start, then how are you going to reach your destination? Whatever Hatha Yoga can teach us, we should willingly learn, but we must not give undue importance to this small branch of the great tree of Yoga.
A mystic can live on earth very firmly and well established, like a boat in the water.
The boat is in the water, but it is not affected by the water.
Our peace is within,
and this peace is the
basis of our life.
If your body is not strong enough, then today you will suffer from a stomach ache, tomorrow you will have a headache and the next day you will have some other disorder. Naturally, you will not be able to concentrate and meditate. For that reason it is important to keep the body fit. And Hatha Yoga
asanas are far better for the body than the vigorous exercises that are done in the West. Asanas will soothe your body as long as you do not do them too much. If asanas are done too dynamically, they may arouse aggressive feelings. But when you do them correctly, you get a kind, mild, soft vibration.
Hatha Yoga may help us a little bit spiritually, but we have to know where we stand in our spiritual journey. If we are very restless, we can do Hatha Yoga in the beginning to learn to sit calmly and quietly. But if we are not constant victims of restlessness, even if we are absolute beginners, Hatha Yoga is not needed, for when we enter into meditation we automatically enter into a calm, quiet state. By doing Hatha Yoga exercises, we feel that we are regulating and disciplining our life. But when we meditate properly and life-energy enters into us from our meditation, automatically our life is disciplined. The divine Peace and Light which we need, we can never, never get from Hatha Yoga. So if you want to do asanas for five or ten minutes daily to keep your body fit, you can do so. But if you want to do Hatha Yoga for two hours before you meditate, it will be a sheer waste of time.
What is Yoga? Yoga is self-conquest. Self-conquest is God-realisation. He who practises Yoga does two things with one stroke: he simplifies his whole life and he gets a free access to the Divine.
In the field of Yoga we can never pretend. Our aspiration must ring true. Our whole life must ring true. Nothing is impossible for an ardent aspirant. A higher Power guides his steps. God’s adamantine Will is his safest protection. No matter how long or how many times he blunders, he has every right to come back to his own spiritual home. His aspiration is a climbing flame. It has no smoke, it needs no fuel. It is the breath of his inner life. It leads him to the shores of the Golden Beyond. The aspirant, with the wings of his aspiration, soars into the realms of the Transcendental. Yoga means union. Union with whom? It is the union with God. By practising Yoga, that is, spiritual discipline, we unite ourselves with God.
