Purusharthas . . Things which fulfill our life .

What completes our life ? What are the things which fulfill our lives. What makes a ordinary persons life complete  ? not a saints .The ancient seers of India articulated the objectives which would serve for fulfillment of human life as " Purusharthas ".'Purusha' means an individual or person, and 'Artha' means "meaning " .Things which would give meaning to human life here .They articulated four Purusharthas as:Dharma : Righteousness, DutyArtha  : WealthKama   : DesireMoksha : LiberationDharma :Dharma is a difficult term to translate into English, but can roughly be translated as the rightful duty of a person. This is the true calling of a person, what they are born to do & what a person should do righteously at that moment. It's different from person to person . doing their responsible duty as a  mother, father, in office of position etc .Tuning into the inner guide of the heart allows a person to identify their dharma, their true calling.Artha: Artha is the pursuit of material wealth. Fulfillment of family requirements as food, housing is the duty of family man . It needs money. Some socially beneficial works like charities too require money. Earning money to fulfill ones wants. For maintenance of a well balanced society money or resources are required . Earning "artha" through a righteous way required .. People sometimes believe that the path of spiritual growth and pursuit of material wealth are mutually exclusive, or it's not so.Kama: Kama is fulfilling one's desires.  Desires -- to be wealthy, , sexual needs, recognition, a physical object etc. The Kama purushartha advocates that one's desires in this lifetime need to be fulfilled, albeit in a state of awareness and without harming anyone in the process. For a person to evolve spiritually and to reach the ultimate destination, the barrier of desires needs to be crossed. This can be done either by fulfilling the desires, or by sublimating or transcending them. Suppressing of desires is certainly not recommended because it is like a fully coiled spring that is held down by force, it can erupt unpredictably causing undesirable consequences. As one becomes aware of their desires and one goes about fulfilling them in awareness and without judgement, one soon reaches the stage of being able to sublimate them. Fulfilling desires and being happy is not a sin.Moksha: Moksha means finding God , reaching or liberation or realization of the Self, and is said to be the ultimate destination of this human birth. It is the stage of inner realization that the individual self is the same as the Supreme Self. It is the experience of the flow and fusion of the the cosmos, supreme in one's self. It is the experience of union, oneness. All of them complete a person . They vary in degrees from person to person . Not necessary everybody has them in same degree. Some may need more spiritual work , some may need less . .  Some paths are shorter than others, some are more arduous than others. The path can be difficult to navigate, and the path may not always be visible.With courtesy from ekatvam.org

ZEN DROPS !!

SHOW ME YOUR EGO-MIND



One of the most famous legends spun about Bodhidharma is that the seeker Huike (Chinese WadeGiles: Hui-k'o) patiently stood deep in the nocturnal snow outside the old master’s cave, yearning for instruction. He finally hacked off his own left forearm and presented it as a demonstration of his sincere aspiration for complete enlightenment. (In Daoxuan’s earlier and likely more accurate account, wandering bandits had cut off his arm.) Bodhidharma told Huike: “This enlightenment is not to be sought through another.” Huike begged to have his agitated self or mind pacified. The sage retorted, “Show me your self and I will pacify it.” Huike said “I’ve sought it many years but can’t get hold of it.” Bodhidharma then declared: “There! It is pacified once and for all!” Upon hearing this, suddenly Huike completely awakened to his transcendent True Nature before/beyond the ego-self. He was free in/as his Ever-Free Nature. (Huike would retrospectively later be designated the “second Patriarch” of a “Chan School” of Buddhism by authors writing around 700 CE).
But now, what about that forearm—was it still with Huike? Did he care? Was he not the fullness and wholeness of Perfect Realization? In any case, now we know where Hakuin (d.1768) got his famous Zen koan: "What is the sound of one hand?"
And if you pity Huike for that silly old lost forearm, he's still got one very good arm with which to smack you! 




----------------------



DRUNK
Japanese Zen master Oda Sesso (1901-66), abbot of Kyoto's Daitokuji monastery, warned, “There is little to choose between a man lying in the ditch heavily drunk on rice liquor, and a man heavily drunk on his own ‘enlightenment’!” 




-----------------------




Courtesy of :
http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/Zen_Humor.html

Some Thing's for New Year !