Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
“Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus”
Om Mani Padme Hum (sacred in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism) is a Sanskrit Mantra which means “Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus”
The “Jewel in the Lotus” is a metaphor for Insight, Wisdom, or Spiritual Enlightenment
“…the six syllables, Om Mani Padme Hum, mean that in dependence on the practice of a path which is an indivisible union of method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech, and mind into the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha”
– H.H. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
Kirtan
Ram Dass about Kirtan from Be Here Now:
“Song, dance, chanting and prayer have been throughout the ages traditional forms of bhakti yoga. At first such rituals are a matter of curiosity, and you are the observer. Then you arrive at the stage of peripheral participation-a “sing along.” Then in time you become familiar with the routines and you start to identify with the process. As your identification deepens, other thoughts and evaluations fall away until finally you and the ritual become one. At that point the ritual has become the living process and can take you through the door into perfect unity. To know that these stages exist does not mean you can jump ahead of where you are. Whatever stage you are in, accept it. When you have fully accepted your present degree of participation, only then will you experience the next level.
Singing and music: Most familiar to us is the use of a song to open the heart. Hymns such as Holy, Holy, Holy . . .Amazing Grace-have touched the hearts of millions with the spirit. In India, bhajan (the singing of holy songs) has been until recent times practically the only social function in the villages. Evenings, the men gather, squatting or sitting on the ground in a circle with their chillums (pipes) and a harmonium, a set of tabla (drums), perhaps a serangi or violin (stringed instruments) and cymbals . . . and they take turns singing the stories of the holy beings such as Krishna and Ram. Night after night they participate in this simple pastime, keeping themselves close to the Spirit.
It is often startling to the Westerner to realize that it is not the beauty of the voice but the purity of spirit of the singer that is revered by these people. It was only when music was profaned that it became a vehicle for gratification of the senses. Prior to that, it was a method of communion with the Spirit.
A special form of bhajan is called kirtan . . .which is the repetition in song of the Holy Names of God.
The melody of kirtan is usually basically simple and it is only after many repetitions that the process of coming into the spirit starts to happen. Singing the same phrases over for two to five hours is not unusual for the true seeker. And you will find as you let yourself into the repetitive rhythm and melody that you experience level after level of opening.”
Source: http://kirtanwallah.wordpress.com/
The Bagavad Gita
There was never a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be.
Feelings of heat and cold, pleasure and pain, are caused by the contact of the senses with their objects. They come and go, never lasting long. You must accept them. A serene spirit accepts pleasure and pain with an even mind, and is unmoved by either. He alone is worthy of immortality.
Know this Atman
Unborn, undying,
Never ceasing,
Never beginning,
Deathless, birthless,
Unchanging for ever.
How can It die
The death of the body?
Not wounded by weapons,
Not burned by fire,
Not dried by the wind,
Not wetted by water:
Such is the Atman,
Not dried, not wetted,
Not burned, not wounded,
Innermost element,
Everywhere, always
Being of beings,
Changeless, eternal,
For ever and ever.
You have the right to work, but for the work's sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either.
Perform every action with you heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failure: for it is this evenness of temper which is meant by yoga.
Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahma. They who work selfishly for results are miserable.
He knows bliss in the Atman
And wants nothing else.
Cravings torment the heart:
He renounces cravings.
I call him illumined.
Not shaken by adversity,
Not hankering after happiness;
Free from fear, free from anger,
Free from the things of desire.
I call him a seer, and illumined.
The bonds of his flesh are broken.
He is lucky, and does not rejoice;
He is unlucky, and does not weep.
I call him illumined.
The abstinent run away from what they desire
But carry their desires with them:
When a man enters Reality,
He leaves his desires behind him.
Even a mind that knows the path
Can be dragged from the path:
the senses are so unruly.
But he controls the senses
And recollects the mind
And fixes it on me.
I call him illumined.
Thinking about sense-objects
Will attach you to sense-objects;
Grow attached, and you become addicted;
Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger;
Be angry, and you confuse your mind;
Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience;
Forget experience, you lose discrimination:
Lose discrimination, and you miss life's only purpose.
When he has no lust, no hatred,
A man walks safely among the things of lust and hatred.
Water flows continually into the ocean
But the ocean is never disturbed:
Desire flows into the mind of the seer
But he is never disturbed.
The seer knows peace:
The man who stirs up his own lusts
Can never know peace.
He knows peace who has forgotten desire.
He lives without craving:
Free from ego, free from pride.
This is the state of enlightenment in Brahman:
A man does not fall back from it
Into delusion.
Even at the moment of death
He is alive in that enlightenment:
Brahma and he are one.
Whatever wish men bring me in worship,
That with I grant them.
whatever path men travel
Is my path:
No matter where they walk
It leads to me.
Action does not contaminate me. I have no desire at all for the fruits of action. A man who understands my nature in this respect will never become the slave of his own activity.
He who sees the inaction that is in action, and the action that is in inaction, is wise indeed. Even when he is engaged in action he remains poised in the tranquillity of the Atman.
The seers say truly
That he is wise
Who acts without lust or scheming
For the fruits of the act:
His act falls from him,
Its chain is broken,
Melted in the flame of my knowledge.
Turning his face from the fruit,
He needs nothing:
The Atman is enough.
He acts, and is beyond action.
Not hoping, not lusting,
bridling body and mind,
He call nothing his own:
He acts, and earns no evil.
What God's Will gives
He takes, and is contented.
Pain follows pleasure,
He is not troubled:
Gain follows loss,
He is indifferent:
Of whom should he be jealous?
He acts, and is not bound by his action.
United with Brahma,
Cut free from the fruit of the act,
A man finds peace
In the work of the spirit.
Without Brahma,
Man is a prisoner,
Enslaved by action,
Dragged onward by desire.
Already, here on earth,
Before his departure,
Let man be the master
Of every impulse
Lust-begotten
Or fathered by anger:
Thus he finds Brahma,
Thus he is happy.
Shutting off sense
From what is outward,
Fixing the gaze
At the root of the eyebrows,
Checking the breath-stream
In and outgoing
Within the ;nostrils,
Holding the senses,
Holding the intellect,
Holding the mind fast,
He who seeks freedom,
Thrusts fear aside,
Thrusts aside anger
And puts off desire:
Truly that man
is made free for ever.
When thus he knows me
The end, the author
Of every offering
And all austerity,
Lord of the worlds
And the friend of all men:
O son of Kunti
Shall he not enter
The peace of my presence?
Utterly quiet,
Made clean of passion,
The mind of the yogi
Knows that Brahma:
His bliss is the highest.
His heart is with Brahma,
His eye in all things
Sees only Brahma
Equally present,
Knows his own Atman
In every creature,
And all creation
Within that Atma.
Who burns with the bliss
And suffers the sorrow
Of every creature
Within his own heart,
Making his own
Each bliss and each sorrow:
Him I hold highest
Of all the yogis.
Great is that yogi who seeks to be with Brahma,
Greater than those who mortify the body,
Greater than the learned,
Greater than the doers of good works:
Therefore, Arjuna, become a yogi.
You must know that whatever belongs to the states of sattva, rajas and tamas, proceeds from me. They are contained in me, but I am not in them. The entire world is deluded by the moods and mental states which are the expression of these three gunas. That is why the world fails to recognize me as I really am. I stand apart from them all, supreme and deathless.
But if a man will worship me, and meditate upon me with an undistracted mind, devoting every moment to me, I shall supply all his needs, and protect his possessions from loss. Even those who worship other deities, and sacrifice to them with faith in their hearts, are really worshipping me, though with a mistaken approach. For I am the only enjoyer and the only God of all sacrifices. Nevertheless, such men must return to life on earth, because they do not recognize in my true nature.
Those who sacrifice to the various deities, will go to those deities. The ancestor-worshippers will go to their ancestors. Those who worship elemental powers and spirits will go to them. So, also, my devotees will come to me.
Whatever man gives me
In true devotion:
Fruit or water,
A leaf, a flower:
I will accept it.
That gift is love,
His heart's dedication
My face is equal
To all creation,
Loving no one
Nor hating any.
Nevertheless,
My devotees dwell
Within me always:
I also show forth
And am seen within them.
Though a man be soiled
With the sins of a lifetime,
Let him but love me,
Rightly resolved,
In utter devotion:
I see no sinner,
That man is holy.
Holiness soon
Shall refashion his nature
To peace eternal;
O son of Kunti,
Of this be certain:
The man that loves me,
He shall not perish.
Whosoever works for me alone, makes me his only goal and is devoted to me, free from attachment, and without hatred toward any creature- that man, O Prince, shall enter into me.
Quickly I come
To those who offer me
Every action,
Worship me only,
Their dearest delight,
With devotion undaunted.
Be absorbed in me,
Lodge your mind in me:
Thus you shall dwell in me,
Do not doubt it,
Here and hereafter.
If you cannot become absorbed in me, then try to reach me by repeated concentration. If you lack the strength to concentrate, then devote yourself to works which will please me. For, by working for my sake only, you will achieve perfection. If you cannot even do this, then surrender yourself to me altogether. Control the lusts of your heart, and renounce the fruits of every action.
Concentration which is practiced with discernment is certainly better than the mechanical repetition of a ritual or a prayer. Absorption in God -to live with Him and be one with Him aalways- is even better than concentration. But renunciation brings instant peace to the spirit.
A man should not hate any living creature. Let him be friendly and compassionate to all. He must free himself from the delusion of "I" and "mine." He must accept pleasure and pain with equal tranquillity. He must be forgiving, ever-contented, self-controlled, united constantly with me in his meditation. His resolve must be unshakable. He must be dedicated to me in intellect and in mind. Such a devotee is dear to me.
He neither molests his fellow men, nor allows himself to become disturbed by the world. He is no longer swayed by joy and envy, anxiety and fear. Therefore he is dear to me.
He is pure, and independent of the body's desire. He is able to deal with the unexpected: prepared for everything, unperturbed by anything. He is neither vain nor anxious about the results of his actions. Such a devotee is dear to me.
He does not desire or rejoice in what is pleasant. He does not dread what is unpleasant, or grieve over it. He remains unmoved by good or evil fortune. Such a devotee is dear to me.
His attitude is the same toward friend and foe. He is indifferent to honor and insult, heat and cold, pleasure and pain,. He is free from attachment. He values praise and blame equally. He can control his speech. He is content with whatever he gets. His home is everywhere and nowhere. His mind is fixed upon me, and his heart is full of devotion. He is dear to me.
Some, whose heart are purified, realize the Atman within themselves through contemplation. Some realize the Atman philosophically, by meditating upon its independence of Prakriti. Others realize it by following the yoga of right action. Others, who do not know these paths, worship God as their teachers have taught them. If these faithfully practice what they have learned, they also will pass beyond death's power.
Sattva the shining
Can show the Atman
By its pure light:
Yet sattva will bind you
To search for happiness,
Longing for knowledge.
Rajas the passionate
Will make you thirsty
For pleasure and possession:
Rajas will bind you
To hunger for action.
Tamas the ignorant
Bewilders all men:
Tamas will bind you
with bonds of delusion,
Sluggishness, stupor.
Fruit of the righteous act
is sattva, purest joy:
As for the deeds of rajas,
Pain is their fruit:
Truly, ignorance is all
The fruit of tamas.
Hell has three doors: lust, rage and greed. These lead to man’s ruin. Therefore he must avoid them all.
Men whose temperament is dominated by sattva, worship God, in His various aspects. Men of rajas worship power and wealth. As for the rest -the men of tamas- they worship the spirits of the dead, and make gods of the ghosts of their ancestors.
The sages tell us that renunciation means the complete giving-up of all actions which are motivated by desire. And they say that non-attachment means abandonment of the fruits of action.
To love is to know me,
My innermost nature,
The truth that I am:
Through this knowledge he enters
At once to my Being.
All that he does
Is offered before me
In utter surrender
My grace is upon him,
He finds the eternal,
the place unchanging.
Give me your whole heart,
Love and adore me,
Worship me always,
Bow to me only,
And you shall find me:
This is my promise
Who love you dearly.
Lay down all duties
In me, your refuge.
Fear no longer,
For I will save you
From sin and from bondage.
Monday, August 25, 2014
Shivkumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia - The Valley Recalls
Published on Jul 19, 2012
This performance is a sequel to a blockbuster Call Of The Valley album released in 1967 by EMI. The maturing of Sharma and Chaurasia is visible in their presentation of their music and despite a huge gap since their previous duet, the clear fusing of their minds and music is simply magical! It is as natural and seamless as one could possibly imagine! Hearing this concert on a CD gave one flutters but to see it being performed visually makes one fully realise what an incredible performance this is! Apart from the pedigree, it is better to identify The Valley Recalls more as iconic in its own right rather than a sequel, per se, to what in the 1960s was a mould breaking effort to bring classical music in an idiom more widely acceptable and enjoyable.
Uploaded by Manohar Tejomurtula
Uploaded by Manohar Tejomurtula
Kaushiki Chakrabarty - A devotional bhajan in raga Bhairavi with Soumik ...
Published on Sep 21, 2013
MERU Concert live - A soulful devotional bhajan in raga Bhairavi performed by Kaushiki Chakrabarty with Soumik Datta on Sarod and Pt. Vijay Ghate on tabla; Parmomita Mukherji on harmonium and Allarakha Yaminkhan on sarangi - 21 July 2013 at Oranjerie Theater in Roermond, The Netherlands.
Kaushiki Chakrabarty - Singer Par Excellence - Raga Multani
Published on Oct 23, 2013
MERU Concerts Live - Kaushiki Chakrabarty's memorable performance with other Maestros of Indian Classical Music at theater Oranjerie on 21 July 2013 at Roermond, The Netherlands. Here Kaushiki is rendering raga Multani in Vilambit Khayal followed by a dhrut composition. She is accompanied by Pandit Vijay Ghate on tabla, Paromita Mukherjee on harmonium and Allarakha Yaminkhan on sarangi.
Tibetan Music Therapy with Spiritual Music Sounds for Zen Meditation
Published on Aug 21, 2013
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/yin...
Tibetan Singing Bowls and Nature Sounds for Chakra Balancing and find Self Acceptance again, Zen New Age Music to fight Axieties and Depression thanks to this Youtube Music Video, ideal Mindfulness Meditation Music with Sounds of Nature as Water Sounds and Bird Songs to find Inner Peace of Mind
Tibetan Singing Bowls and Nature Sounds for Chakra Balancing and find Self Acceptance again, Zen New Age Music to fight Axieties and Depression thanks to this Youtube Music Video, ideal Mindfulness Meditation Music with Sounds of Nature as Water Sounds and Bird Songs to find Inner Peace of Mind
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Requiem - Mozart by Gardiner
Uploaded on Dec 14, 2011
Requiem of Mozart - John Eliot Gardiner
Barbara Bonney, Soprano.
Anne Sofie von Otter, Mezzo-soprano.
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor.
Alastair Miles, Bass.
Monteverdi Choir
English Baroque Soloists
Filmed at the Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona, in December 1991.
Bonus: Requiem by Solti (1991) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkyWXg...
Barbara Bonney, Soprano.
Anne Sofie von Otter, Mezzo-soprano.
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor.
Alastair Miles, Bass.
Monteverdi Choir
English Baroque Soloists
Filmed at the Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona, in December 1991.
Bonus: Requiem by Solti (1991) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkyWXg...
AGNUS DEI - Sacred Choral Music - The Choir of New College, Oxford. E.HI...
Published on Dec 31, 2012
A gorgeous anthology of famous Sacred Masterpieces performed by the Choir of New College of Oxford, conducted by Edward HIGGINBOTTOM.
Recorded in New College Chapel-Oxford-England, january/april 1996. [DDD /HD]
TRACKS LIST / TIMING : total time : 72,36mn.
00:00 1 BARBER : Agnus Dei
08:00 2 FAURE : Cantique de Jean Racine
13:25 3 PALESTRINA : Kyrie (Missa Papae Marcelli
17:42 4 MOZART : Ave Verum Corpus
20:50 5 BACH : Jesus joy of man's derising -Jesus bleibet meine Freude
23:49 6 RACHMANINOV : Ave Maria
27:18 7 ELGAR : Lux Aeterna
31:50 8 GORECKI : Totus Tuus
40:14 9 MENDELSSOHN : Hear my Prayer
51:15 10 TAVENER : The Lamb
54:32 11 FAURE : In Paradisum (Requiem)
57:43 12 ALLEGRI : Miserere mei, Deus
[ DISCLAIMER : Music & Pictures belong to their respective owners and are not owned by LAMIRAL45 ]
Recorded in New College Chapel-Oxford-England, january/april 1996. [DDD /HD]
TRACKS LIST / TIMING : total time : 72,36mn.
00:00 1 BARBER : Agnus Dei
08:00 2 FAURE : Cantique de Jean Racine
13:25 3 PALESTRINA : Kyrie (Missa Papae Marcelli
17:42 4 MOZART : Ave Verum Corpus
20:50 5 BACH : Jesus joy of man's derising -Jesus bleibet meine Freude
23:49 6 RACHMANINOV : Ave Maria
27:18 7 ELGAR : Lux Aeterna
31:50 8 GORECKI : Totus Tuus
40:14 9 MENDELSSOHN : Hear my Prayer
51:15 10 TAVENER : The Lamb
54:32 11 FAURE : In Paradisum (Requiem)
57:43 12 ALLEGRI : Miserere mei, Deus
[ DISCLAIMER : Music & Pictures belong to their respective owners and are not owned by LAMIRAL45 ]
Saturday, August 23, 2014
B. K. S. Iyengar, Helped Bring Yoga to the West
B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95 - NYTimes.com: "headline: B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
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B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95
By ELLEN BARRY
AUG. 20, 2014
NEW DELHI — B. K. S. Iyengar, who helped introduce the practice of yoga to a Western world awakening to the notion of an inner life, died on Wednesday in the southern Indian city of Pune. He was 95.
The cause was heart failure, said Abhijata Sridhar-Iyengar, his granddaughter.
After surviving tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria as a child, Mr. Iyengar credited yoga with saving his life. He spent his midteens demonstrating “the most impressive and bewildering” positions in the court of the Maharaja of Mysore, he later recalled.
A meeting in 1952 with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, an early yoga devotee, proved to be a turning point, and Mr. Iyengar began traveling with Mr. Menuhin, eventually opening institutes on six continents.
Among his devotees were the novelist Aldous Huxley, the actress Annette Bening and the designer Donna Karan, as well as a who’s who of prominent Indian figures, including the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the Bollywood siren Kareena Kapoor. He famously taught Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, 85 at the time, to stand on her head.
B.K.S. Iyengar in 2005.CreditMisha Erwitt for The New York Times
In a 2005 book, “Light on Life,” Mr. Iyengar mused about the vast changes he had seen.
“I set off in yoga 70 years ago when ridicule, rejection and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India,” he wrote. “Indeed, if I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect.”
The news about Mr. Iyengar — or “guru-ji,” as many here called him, using a Sanskrit honorific — rippled through India on Wednesday morning. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that he was “deeply saddened” by Mr. Iyengar’s death and offered “condolences to his followers all over the world.”
Mr. Iyengar’s practice is characterized by long asanas, or postures, that require extraordinary will and discipline. A reporter who watched daily practice in 2002, when Mr. Iyengar was 83, said that he held one headstand for six minutes, swiveling his legs to the right and the left, and that when he finished, “his shoulder-length hair was awry, he seemed physically depleted,” but he wore the smile of a gleeful child.
Ms. Sridhar-Iyengar said her grandfather recognized early on that yoga, up until then viewed as a mystical pursuit, “had something for everybody, not just the intellectually or spiritually inclined.”
“He felt satisfied,” she said. “Even at the end, even a few weeks before, he said, ‘I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.’ He took yoga to the world. He knew that.”
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar was born on Dec. 14, 1918, into a poor family in the southern state of Karnataka. The 11th of 13 children, he was born in the midst of an influenza outbreak. Three of his siblings died before reaching adulthood, and he watched his father, a teacher, die of appendicitis when he was 9 years old. Mr. Iyengar himself contracted tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria; by the time he began studying yoga, at 16, he was painfully frail.
“My arms were thin, my legs were spindly, and my stomach protruded in an ungainly manner,” he wrote. “My head used to hang down, and I had to lift it with great effort.”
His first teacher was his brother-in-law, a Brahmin scholar who had set up a school of yoga at the Jaganmohan Palace, and who sometimes denied his student food if his performance was deemed inadequate. Mr. Iyengar, then a teenager, was the youngest member of the Maharaja of Mysore’s entourage, and was asked to demonstrate his ability to stretch and bend his body for visiting dignitaries and guests.
Mr. Menuhin, who visited India in 1952, heard of his practice and penciled him in for a five-minute meeting, and was so instantly impressed that the session went on for more than three hours. Mr. Iyengar recalled, in an interview with CNN, that “the moment I adjusted him and took him, he said, ‘I’ve never felt this sense of joy, elation.’ ”
Photo
Mr. Iyengar performing yoga at his institute in Pune, India. He credited the practice with saving his life after bouts of illness. CreditBhaskar Paul/India Today Group, via Getty Images
The violinist later brought Mr. Iyengar to Switzerland, where he introduced him to other prominent Westerners who became his followers. In his first visit to New York in 1956, Mr. Iyengar said he encountered little interest in yoga. It was not until the next decade that he began to attract crowds.
“We were just coming out of the ’60s change-your-consciousness thing, and many of us were in our heads, and wanting to meditate, and reach Samadhi,” or enlightenment, Patricia Walden, a longtime student of Mr. Iyengar’s, said in an interview in 2000. “Iyengar was, like, ‘Stand on your feet. Feel your feet.’ He was so practical. His famous quote was, ‘How can you know God if you don’t know your big toe?’ ”
Were it not for his celebrity in the West, Mr. Iyengar would hardly have gained a reputation in India, said Latha Satish, who heads a major yoga institute in the southern city of Chennai.
“He was at the right time at the right place; he would not have survived here,” Mr. Satish said. In India, he said, “everybody was interested in Western education; yoga was not so popular.” Mr. Iyengar’s trademark improvisations — like the use of blocks, blankets and straps to assist in holding difficult postures — were adopted “because of the need of students abroad,” he said.
Mr. Iyengar’s survivors include a son, Prashant; five daughters, Geeta, Vinita, Suchita, Sunita and Savitha; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Past students recalled Mr. Iyengar as warm and charismatic, but also strict. Elizabeth Kadetsky, who wrote a memoir of the year she spent studying with him, recalled that she was standing on her head in a class when he “took his fingers and shoved them in my upper back, and bellowed, ‘In the headstand, this portion of the back is not straight.’ ”
As his influence spread, she said, he was fiercely competitive with other leading yoga gurus, and would get cranky when asked about their methods.
“He demanded loyalty,” she said. “One had to be 100 percent with him.”
By the time he reached his 80s, Mr. Iyengar had become accustomed to the kind of reception usually reserved for pop stars. As power yoga became a multimillion-dollar industry, he occasionally cringed at the commercialization of the practice, and wondered whether it would survive its own popularity. But the pleasure he took in the practice was unaffected.
At the end of a session in 2002, he lay on his back, knees bent so that his calves were beneath his thighs, arms out to either side, weights holding him down. He lay still for 12 minutes, perfectly immobile except for the twitch of a pinkie. Asked what he was thinking, he replied, “Nothing.”
“I can remain thoughtfully thoughtless,” he said. “It is not an empty mind.”
Nida Najar and Suhasini Raj contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on August 21, 2014, on page B17 of the New York edition with the headline: B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95
NEW DELHI — B. K. S. Iyengar, who helped introduce the practice of yoga to a Western world awakening to the notion of an inner life, died on Wednesday in the southern Indian city of Pune. He was 95.
The cause was heart failure, said Abhijata Sridhar-Iyengar, his granddaughter.
After surviving tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria as a child, Mr. Iyengar credited yoga with saving his life. He spent his midteens demonstrating “the most impressive and bewildering” positions in the court of the Maharaja of Mysore, he later recalled.
A meeting in 1952 with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, an early yoga devotee, proved to be a turning point, and Mr. Iyengar began traveling with Mr. Menuhin, eventually opening institutes on six continents.
Among his devotees were the novelist Aldous Huxley, the actress Annette Bening and the designer Donna Karan, as well as a who’s who of prominent Indian figures, including the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the Bollywood siren Kareena Kapoor. He famously taught Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, 85 at the time, to stand on her head.
B.K.S. Iyengar in 2005.CreditMisha Erwitt for The New York Times
In a 2005 book, “Light on Life,” Mr. Iyengar mused about the vast changes he had seen.
“I set off in yoga 70 years ago when ridicule, rejection and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India,” he wrote. “Indeed, if I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect.”
The news about Mr. Iyengar — or “guru-ji,” as many here called him, using a Sanskrit honorific — rippled through India on Wednesday morning. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that he was “deeply saddened” by Mr. Iyengar’s death and offered “condolences to his followers all over the world.”
Mr. Iyengar’s practice is characterized by long asanas, or postures, that require extraordinary will and discipline. A reporter who watched daily practice in 2002, when Mr. Iyengar was 83, said that he held one headstand for six minutes, swiveling his legs to the right and the left, and that when he finished, “his shoulder-length hair was awry, he seemed physically depleted,” but he wore the smile of a gleeful child.
Ms. Sridhar-Iyengar said her grandfather recognized early on that yoga, up until then viewed as a mystical pursuit, “had something for everybody, not just the intellectually or spiritually inclined.”
“He felt satisfied,” she said. “Even at the end, even a few weeks before, he said, ‘I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.’ He took yoga to the world. He knew that.”
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar was born on Dec. 14, 1918, into a poor family in the southern state of Karnataka. The 11th of 13 children, he was born in the midst of an influenza outbreak. Three of his siblings died before reaching adulthood, and he watched his father, a teacher, die of appendicitis when he was 9 years old. Mr. Iyengar himself contracted tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria; by the time he began studying yoga, at 16, he was painfully frail.
“My arms were thin, my legs were spindly, and my stomach protruded in an ungainly manner,” he wrote. “My head used to hang down, and I had to lift it with great effort.”
His first teacher was his brother-in-law, a Brahmin scholar who had set up a school of yoga at the Jaganmohan Palace, and who sometimes denied his student food if his performance was deemed inadequate. Mr. Iyengar, then a teenager, was the youngest member of the Maharaja of Mysore’s entourage, and was asked to demonstrate his ability to stretch and bend his body for visiting dignitaries and guests.
Mr. Menuhin, who visited India in 1952, heard of his practice and penciled him in for a five-minute meeting, and was so instantly impressed that the session went on for more than three hours. Mr. Iyengar recalled, in an interview with CNN, that “the moment I adjusted him and took him, he said, ‘I’ve never felt this sense of joy, elation.’ ”
Photo
Mr. Iyengar performing yoga at his institute in Pune, India. He credited the practice with saving his life after bouts of illness. CreditBhaskar Paul/India Today Group, via Getty Images
The violinist later brought Mr. Iyengar to Switzerland, where he introduced him to other prominent Westerners who became his followers. In his first visit to New York in 1956, Mr. Iyengar said he encountered little interest in yoga. It was not until the next decade that he began to attract crowds.
“We were just coming out of the ’60s change-your-consciousness thing, and many of us were in our heads, and wanting to meditate, and reach Samadhi,” or enlightenment, Patricia Walden, a longtime student of Mr. Iyengar’s, said in an interview in 2000. “Iyengar was, like, ‘Stand on your feet. Feel your feet.’ He was so practical. His famous quote was, ‘How can you know God if you don’t know your big toe?’ ”
Were it not for his celebrity in the West, Mr. Iyengar would hardly have gained a reputation in India, said Latha Satish, who heads a major yoga institute in the southern city of Chennai.
“He was at the right time at the right place; he would not have survived here,” Mr. Satish said. In India, he said, “everybody was interested in Western education; yoga was not so popular.” Mr. Iyengar’s trademark improvisations — like the use of blocks, blankets and straps to assist in holding difficult postures — were adopted “because of the need of students abroad,” he said.
Mr. Iyengar’s survivors include a son, Prashant; five daughters, Geeta, Vinita, Suchita, Sunita and Savitha; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Past students recalled Mr. Iyengar as warm and charismatic, but also strict. Elizabeth Kadetsky, who wrote a memoir of the year she spent studying with him, recalled that she was standing on her head in a class when he “took his fingers and shoved them in my upper back, and bellowed, ‘In the headstand, this portion of the back is not straight.’ ”
As his influence spread, she said, he was fiercely competitive with other leading yoga gurus, and would get cranky when asked about their methods.
“He demanded loyalty,” she said. “One had to be 100 percent with him.”
By the time he reached his 80s, Mr. Iyengar had become accustomed to the kind of reception usually reserved for pop stars. As power yoga became a multimillion-dollar industry, he occasionally cringed at the commercialization of the practice, and wondered whether it would survive its own popularity. But the pleasure he took in the practice was unaffected.
At the end of a session in 2002, he lay on his back, knees bent so that his calves were beneath his thighs, arms out to either side, weights holding him down. He lay still for 12 minutes, perfectly immobile except for the twitch of a pinkie. Asked what he was thinking, he replied, “Nothing.”
“I can remain thoughtfully thoughtless,” he said. “It is not an empty mind.”
Nida Najar and Suhasini Raj contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on August 21, 2014, on page B17 of the New York edition with the headline: B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95
Buddhist monk, burns himself to death
Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, burns himself to death to protest against religious persecution. Saigon, 1963
Link: https://twitter.com/HistoryPixs/status/428939524862128128/photo/1
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Monday, August 11, 2014
St. Hildegard von Bingen - Spiritus Sanctus
Published on Nov 13, 2012
St. Hildegard von BINGEN, Antiphon "Spiritus Sanctus" (Psalm 110/111)
-- Vesper in der Abtei Sankt Hildegard --
Schola der Benediktinerinnenabtei Sankt Hildegard;
Leitung/Direction: P. Johannes Berchmans Göschl (OSB) & Sr. Christiane Rath (OSB)
If you want to buy the CDs or other monastery products/Ob Sie die CDs oder anderen Klosterswaren kaufen wollen/Pour acheter les CDs ou autres articles du cloître:
Abbey of St. Hildegard: http://www.abtei-st-hildegard.de/
http://www.abtei-st-hildegard.de/?pag...
-- Vesper in der Abtei Sankt Hildegard --
Schola der Benediktinerinnenabtei Sankt Hildegard;
Leitung/Direction: P. Johannes Berchmans Göschl (OSB) & Sr. Christiane Rath (OSB)
If you want to buy the CDs or other monastery products/Ob Sie die CDs oder anderen Klosterswaren kaufen wollen/Pour acheter les CDs ou autres articles du cloître:
Abbey of St. Hildegard: http://www.abtei-st-hildegard.de/
http://www.abtei-st-hildegard.de/?pag...
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Whale Shark
Catch of the Day: Whale Shark
REUTERS/Stringer
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Secret Tibetan Book of the Dead | History Channel Documentary
Published on Jun 18, 2013
Bardo Thodol: The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State, it is often referred to in the West by the more casual title, Tibetan Book of the Dead, a name which draws a parallel with the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, another funerary text.
The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, during the interval between death and the next rebirth. This interval is known in Tibetan as the bardo. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death, and rituals to undertake when death is closing in, or has taken place. It is the most internationally famous and widespread work of Tibetan Nyingma literature.
According to Tibetan tradition, the Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State was composed in the 8th century by Padmasambhava, written down by his primary student, Yeshe Tsogyal, buried in the Gampo hills in central Tibet and subsequently discovered by a Tibetan terton, Karma Lingpa, in the 14th century.[7][8] There were variants of the book among different sects.[9] The Tibetan Book of the Dead was first published in 1927 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz chose this title because of the parallels he found with the Egyptian Book of the Dead.[10]
The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State is recited by Tibetan Buddhist lamas over a dying or recently deceased person, or sometimes over an effigy of the deceased. The name means literally "liberation through hearing in the intermediate state".
The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, during the interval between death and the next rebirth. This interval is known in Tibetan as the bardo. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death, and rituals to undertake when death is closing in, or has taken place. It is the most internationally famous and widespread work of Tibetan Nyingma literature.
According to Tibetan tradition, the Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State was composed in the 8th century by Padmasambhava, written down by his primary student, Yeshe Tsogyal, buried in the Gampo hills in central Tibet and subsequently discovered by a Tibetan terton, Karma Lingpa, in the 14th century.[7][8] There were variants of the book among different sects.[9] The Tibetan Book of the Dead was first published in 1927 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz chose this title because of the parallels he found with the Egyptian Book of the Dead.[10]
The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State is recited by Tibetan Buddhist lamas over a dying or recently deceased person, or sometimes over an effigy of the deceased. The name means literally "liberation through hearing in the intermediate state".
Om Mani Padme Hum - Original temple mantra version
Published on Jun 21, 2013
Om Mani Padme Hum - Original temple buddhist mantra version
ओं मणिपद्मे हूं | ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ | 唵嘛呢叭咪吽 | Úm ma ni bát ni hồng | โอมฺ มณิ ปทฺเม หูมฺ |옴 마니 파드메 훔 | Ом мани падме хум | オーン マニ パドメー フーン
オン マニ ペメ フン
"Mantras may be interpreted by practitioners in many ways, or even as mere sequences of sound whose effects lie beyond strict meaning.
ओं मणिपद्मे हूं | ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ | 唵嘛呢叭咪吽 | Úm ma ni bát ni hồng | โอมฺ มณิ ปทฺเม หูมฺ |옴 마니 파드메 훔 | Ом мани падме хум | オーン マニ パドメー フーン
オン マニ ペメ フン
"Mantras may be interpreted by practitioners in many ways, or even as mere sequences of sound whose effects lie beyond strict meaning.
The middle part of the mantra, maṇipadme, is often interpreted as "jewel in the lotus," Sanskrit maṇí "jewel, gem, cintamani" and the locative of padma "lotus", but according to Donald Lopez it is much more likely that maṇipadme is in fact a vocative, not a locative, addressing a bodhisattva called maṇipadma, "Jewel-Lotus"- an alternate epithet of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. It is preceded by the oṃ syllable and followed by the hūṃ syllable, both interjections without linguistic meaning."
Peace
Link: http://youtu.be/VFIQguh2yYI
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