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username
Registered User
(7/21/02 6:33 pm)
Reply 		Gandhi and Kriya Yoga
From Vows and Observances MK Gandhi

p 57

"The quest of truth cannot be prosecuted in a cave. Silence makes no sense where it is necessary to speak. One may live in a cave in certain circumstances, but the common man can be tested only in society."

P.64

"At morning prayer we first recite the shlokas (verses) printed in Ashram Bhajanavali (hymnal), and then sing one bhajan (hymn) followed by Ramdhun (repetition of Ramanama) and Gitapath (recitation of the Gita). In the evening we have recitation of the last nineteen verses of the second chapter of the Gita, one bhajan and Ramdhun, and then read some portion of a sacred book."


p. 68
"At the evening prayer we recite the last nineteen verses of the second chapter of the Gita as well as sing a hymn and repeat Ramanama"


So, Gandhi did not do the energization exercises. Nor did he do Yogananda's chants. Nor did he do kriya yoga!

soulcircle
Registered User
(8/11/02 1:03 am)
Reply 		perhaps
perhaps

legspinnr
Registered User
(10/4/02 12:29 am)
Reply 		Re: Gandhi and Kriya Yoga
from your post, we can also infer that he did not eat, that he did not go to the toilet, and that his name wasn't Gerald Bananafudge-McVitie. What more can we disprove this way? Suggestions, please.

Fernsy

Edited by: legspinnr at: 10/4/02 12:30:09 am
srflongago
Registered User
(10/4/02 12:29 pm)
Reply 		Re: Gandhi and Kriya Yoga: Fernsy
Oxford? The Oxford grads I know, and the many Professors and Fellows of the Colleges that I have known, all have good manners.

Edited by: srflongago at: 10/4/02 6:53:30 pm
redpurusha
Registered User
(12/9/02 4:25 pm)
Reply 		Re: Gandhi and Kriya Yoga
legspinnr, if you're still around, this is a great example of reductio ad absurdum, or of reducing a view, or in this instance an inductive argument, to absurdity. That was a good laugh.

prssmd
Registered User
(8/20/03 1:22 am)
Reply 		Re: Gandhi, Kriya Yoga, non-lying, terrorism, and pacifism
1. legspinnr pointed out quite correctly that the fact that Gandhi didn't list kriya yoga on his schedule doesn't at all show that he didn't do kriya yoga, because there are a lot of other things that he did that aren't on his schedule.

2. I'm interested in Gandhi mostly because of his great commitment to virtuous behavior. For instance, he decided to never tell a lie. I wonder how many of us would be able to get through life successfully if we adopted this practice. Just think how often we'd offend people, or produce unwanted and unintended results. For instance, when someone asks you how you liked the dinner she cooked for you, if you told her the truth, you might never have a dinner cooked by her for you again--a result that you might not want, for that dinner just might have been an unusually lousy one. Or, if your date asks you how like her dress, and you don't like it at all, and you tell her the truth, you might not get to make love to her that night--another result that you might not want. In these cases, we are dealing with what might be called "harmless white lies"--and I am unsure whether there's anything seriously wrong with them.

The late Swami Satchidananda of Yogaville, Virginia (d. 2002), once said that it's o.k. to tell white lies to avoid offending people. But he also said that if you perfect one virtue, you automatically perfect all the others. This would imply that if you perfected non-lying, you'd automatically become virtuous in every other way. I don't see how you could perfect non-lying if you told white lies, but Swami Satchidananda did live in the real world and gave advice to real people who had real lives and interacted with each other. Perhaps theory ought be modified and brought into line with practice.

3. Going back to Gandhi, of all his virtues, his COURAGE is what really stands out the most to me. He risked his life many times to stop conflicts and thereby save the lives of others. Unfortunately, due to the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism, today we live in a world in which hundreds of millions of people (mostly radical Moslems) rejoice and celebrate whenever innocent Indian Kashmiri children are murdered by Pakistani Moslem terrorists, whenever innocent Israeli children are murdered by Palestinian Moslem terrorists, and whenever innocent Australians and Americans are murdered by Indonesian Moslem terrorists.

Unless we have the courage to crush all terrorist movements and imprison for life without possibility of parole each and every member of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Qaida, Jemaah Islamiyah, etc., wherever they may be found, the rest of us will never be safe to practice kriya yoga or to do anything else.

The point I am trying to make is that Gandhi's PACIFISM, and the pacifism that is commonly found among Western Buddhists and yogis, is an unworkable policy that is doomed to failure. We have to abandon PACIFISM if we want to survive in the fact of the barbaric Islamic terrorism that is now being promoted by the governments of Syria, Iran, and others.

Is the terrorism now being inflicted on the United States just a matter of group karma? I find the notion of "group karma" absurd. According to this theory, it is just the operation of divine justice that led to the deaths in New York on 9/11 of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with any past errors committed by the U.S. government. How can the deaths of innocent people be considered divine, karmic justice? Yet I have heard this bizarre theory proposed by spiritual teachers.

Edited by: prssmd at: 8/20/03 3:04 am
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