Fwd: Nithidhyasana

[Guest guest]

advaitin , S Venkatraman <svenkat52>

wrote:

Dear Bob,

 

From your question I get a feeling that you understand NithidhyAsana

as some sort of Meditation or contemplation. It is those things; but

it is also much more than that. To make myself clear I have to touch

briefly on the other 2 steps of the 3-step process that Vedantic

learning is:

 

1. Shravana - Here a student listens to the teaching with faith from

a teacher who is both well versed in the scriptures (because they

alone are reliable sources of such knowledge) as well as self-

realised (how can a person who has himself not been to a place show

another the way to it). At this stage the knowledge most probably

will suffer from 2 defects - that of shamshaya (doubt) and of

viparyaya (habit). The other 2 steps are for ridding the knowledge

of these 2 defects.

 

2. Mananna - Here the student approaches the teacher with all his

questions to clear his doubts. The questioning again is done with

faith i.e. with a view to clearing his own doubts on the subject

rather than for testing the knowledge of the teacher.

 

3. Nithidhyasana - After the doubts are cleared, the student's own

force of habit accumulated over his entire lifetime stands as an

obstacle to owning up of this knowledge. The student has always been

viewing the world from the perspective of the limited 'I' that he

cannot accept that there is total non-difference between him and the

rest of creation. For this one has to literally soak oneself in this

knowledge by constantly exposing oneself to this knowledge. This can

be done through meditation and contemplation but also through

participating in list discussions such as this, attending satsangs,

reading books, chanting scriptures like Gita (if not the original

one can read aloud repeatedly a good translation of which ther are

many) and generally living an ethical and moral life. This again

needs a lot of faith and a lot of patience as the process may last a

few lifetimes.

 

From my own experience I can tell you that the very act of living in

a competetive world may act counter to the above process of owning

up this knowledge. This requires some toning down of ones ambition.

Maintaining high levels of excellence (because the Gita says he who

does not contribute to the society as much as he receives from it is

a thief) with a toned down the ambition is the trick that I am at

present trying to master.

 

I would also recommend that you listen to Swami Paramathananda's

Gita lectures on www.yogamalika.org. What I have stated above is to

a large extent what I have learnt from the Swamiji. Every Monday a

new lecture is posted. The Swamiji will soon be starting Chapter 6

of the Gita which should among other things deal with the subject of

doing meditation/ contemplation as a part of the process of

nithydhyasana. I must warn you - the Swami's pronunciation is

heavily accented. It will be worth your while not to be put off by

it.

 

Regards,

Venkat

 

 

advaitin , Bob Freedman <rlfreed@p...> wrote:

 

 

> Namaste Professor-ji,

> I have a feeling that I want to do it, but I don't know what a

> " nididhyAsana " is. I looked it up in one of my books on Hinduism,

and

> it defines the word as " contemplation, " but I have a feeling that

it's a

> specific method of contemplation.

>

> Thanks for whatever you can tell me,

>

> Bob