Video 1

Vedic Christianity · Class 1 · Practice of the Presence of God · Swami Chidbrahmananda

all right good evening everyone and uh this is actually i think my first class that i'm doing on any kind of regular basis here in hollywood um and i wanted to pick something that was very close to my heart and something that goes rather deep into some of my interests and some of my curiosities about the vedanta the title vedic christianity always raises an eyebrow people are quite wondering what that is and so i'll spend the first couple of minutes here uh talking about that and then i think we're going to dive into the practice of the presence of god by uh by brother lawrence and kind of plumb the depths of his relationship with the divine you'll see from his experiences that you know he walked with god i like to think he was a realized soul at least his words taste like that but when i got involved i was raised as a christian and i went to seminary back in 1983 at abilene christian university but had a rather i guess troubled break with christianity in the early 90s probably actually 1990. and wandered the world without religion for a good decade before i stumbled upon the vedanta and when i first started studying the vedantist the vedanta and and later joined the monastery there was a slight tinge of feeling like i was betraying you know jesus in a sense which you know didn't make any sense and wasn't a big problem for me because i had already left the the religion itself but there was still these heartstrings for jesus and for his teachings that you can't you can't just get rid of having been born and raised in that and the way that i came to peace with that through ramakrishna was in my own mind to understand that he who is ramakrishna and he who is jesus and he who is buddha and he who is rama and he who is krishna are all the same manifestation you know when when ramakrishna was asked who he was he said i am a whole through which god can be seen which said to me he's not a personality he's not a body in a mind he's an absence an absence of ego that manifests god purely and i thought that makes room for that to be true the g all of the avatars perhaps i would imagine are can be described that same way that they are holes through which god can be seen and a hole as a whole you know and so i saw jesus in taquer and i see now buddha in taquer and i see all of my ideal in sri ramakrishna and the more i studied and read about ramakrishna i was amazed and astounded that he practiced these different religions and came to his realization through the teachings of each of them and i took that quite seriously and as i've gone on in my monastic life i've really wanted to take that seriously and to do some experimenting to see how far can this go at this point in in my spiritual life for my own self i've decided that religion is not plural that there are not different religions that there is one religion practiced differently and to prove that to myself about oh it's well it is coming up on about 10 years now 10 years ago i decided to pick up the bible and as an experiment see if i could teach the vedanta using christian scripture to see if that was possible because i thought if truth is one though the sages have called by many names i should be able to look at any tradition and find the truth find the vedanta within it and i put vedant at the top because it's the oldest it's it's been there longer and was around when none of the others were around and about three years ago i took a leave of absence from the monastery in washington dc and moved into a benedictine monastery in upstate new york on the hudson river and i lived there for nine months and my idea at that time was uh to run these ideas past christian monastics to see if i was thinking or saying anything that was overtly offensive or unacceptable or impossible to them and also to use their vast library that they had there to to really dig in and i found that that i'm by no means unique in this effort and in this study from both sides of the aisle there have been hindus looking into christianity and trying to express it in in a hindu perspective and from the other side there's been many uh priests and christian monks who have decided that they're one and the same swami abhishek abhishek the nanda is one of them who wrote a wonderful manifesto on prayer and there's several monasteries around kerala that really blend the two they're christian monasteries technically but they wear garawa they chant the name of god of course for them it's jesus but they they do a hindu practice of chanting the name and getting up and doing meditation in the mornings so it's an idea that i feel like is is ready for a world where the boundaries are are fading because we're all growing into each other you know we we can't be little islands of distinct thought thinking that we're special and that we're unique and we're right and so this class this idea was kind of born of that if you're interested online at vedicmuse.org there's an article that i wrote i i i i was invited i guess at the time when i was up at a holy cross monastery i i made a trip to cambridge university in england they were having a seminar on dual belonging hinduism and christianity is it possible to be a member of both communities and be accepted by both communities and it was it was not a seminar for like where a group of people taught an audience it was a selection of people you know if i wasn't there i would have said experts you know people who were trained in social studies cultural studies uh psychic psychiatric studies religious studies there were two theologians from the catholic church there and i was filling in as the swami from hinduism there and the way that they did the process was that each of us had to write a paper about the topic can one belong to both the christian and the hindu community simultaneously and so i wrote i wrote i worked on that article and presented it there and then they had i guess three grad students who were going to school there who took all of these papers and read them and studied them and outlined them before the meeting and at the meeting what they did was each one of us was given a period of time around two hours or so to present our paper and then to have to be open to questions and discussion around its content so that paper is at vedicmuse.org if you want to read it where i just kind of dig through and make and make the case or the approach for a vedic christian a christian who who is a vedantist and so uh one of the ideas that was born of that was was trying to take some of the christian mystics and reread them and to take the scriptures the bible and open it and re-read it and just start taking it apart and and i found that being a vedantist reading the bible made it significantly easier to understand one of the big advantages that vedanta has is the fact that that the cosmology is so nicely outlined and so thoroughly described so you can understand the relationship of of all the things that you read in the scriptures and how they fit into the whole christianity because of the way their scriptures are written i don't know if you're familiar with the bible the bible is actually not a book it's a collection of 66 books i think it is 66 anyway quite a few of them written over a span of several thousand years with nothing holding them together there's books of philosophy there's books of wisdom there's books of biography there's books of poetry and music there's stories there's political documents historical documents all of them just pushed into between two covers and called the bible and no one in those 66 books drew out the big picture none of them gave you the cosmology that would tie all of it together and put it under a single umbrella and i couldn't believe the the rich experience of walking into the bible as a vedantist and having a tree fully grown upon which i could hang all of the things that i heard jesus say all the things i heard isaiah say all the things i read in the psalms and when i started decorating this tree i found that it was uniform that it that that it was nicely distributed and it gave that same interactive sense of meaning to the christian scripture that it gives to the words of taqwar and and to the upanishads and to the to the different teachings of the puranas and whatnot and so this class is kind of born of that fruit i think the easiest way to do it i'm going to give a lecture actually i think it's the next time i speak the first time it's going to be in santa barbara on vedic christianity where i present the paper in in lecture form to kind of give that overarching view but for our class something that we can really come down to i'm not interested in an academic study i'm never really interested in that because i joined to know god right to be joined we come here to realize and to understand the beloved and so i wanted to choose some of the christian mystics that i thought could really sit next to us and really share their experience of the divine as a as christian practitioners but for us to take what they're talking about and how they're talking about it and shine the vedic light on it shine the vedanta on it and take it deeper and to put it in a form that we can digest and that we can use and grow from so brother lawrence i'm going to read just read here i'll just read through the whole text actually not tonight but as the class goes on and we'll just pause quite significantly in places and discuss things to kind of draw out these meanings but the book itself is a very small pamphlet if you can get it i know i'm sure we sell it in the bookshop it's called the practice of the presence of god and it's by brother lawrence and it says this book consists of notes of several conversations had with and letters written by nicholas hermann of lorraine a lowly and unlearned man so an illiterate man who after having been a footman and a soldier was admitted a lay brother among the barefooted carmelites in paris in the year 1666 so quite some time ago and was afterward known as brother lawrence so he worked in this monastery as the cook and he was uneducated an extremely humble man which you'll find in some of his writings that we're going to read he was astonished at at the fruit of his relationship with god because he joined the monastery because he thought himself unfit for anything else and that he would throw himself at the feet of god who could maybe do something with him with his with his worthless life and this is truly the attitude he has it's quite funny when you read about it and when he actually found this beautiful bliss within that this this presence of god he's just awed by it he's overcome bite he can't believe that god would have something to do with him and and not just something to do with him but that god would become such a joy and such a a a a miraculous and fulfilling part of his life and so he he started writing these letters to friends of his just describing and saying i just you know i can't believe this is happening and uh you know he was afraid and he would he would talk to some of the church elders at the time and describe what he's having he was terrified that they were going to you know jump on him or tell him that he was you know practicing something incorrectly because he was like how could i give it up you know this this bliss and this joy that i get from this practice so we're in the year 1666 we've got this young illiterate uh man who sees himself as good for nothing joining a monastery and being assigned to the kitchen his conversion to christianity which took place when he was about 18 years old was the result under god of a mere sight in midwinter of a dry and leafless tree and of the and of the reflections it stirred respecting the change that the coming spring would bring so he had this experience this experience of god in the middle of the winter just looking at a leafless tree now when i was in washington dc that was a great visual to have because at this very time no tree on the east coast has leaves on it it looks like everything has died and so he was sitting there looking at it and thinking about the implications of that and he says from that time he grew eminently into the knowledge and love of god endeavoring constantly to walk as in his presence no wilderness wanderings seem to have intervened between the red sea and the jordan of his experience a holy consecrated man he lived his christian life as a pilgrim as a steward not as an owner and died at the age of 80 leaving a name which has been ointment poured forth so uh these conversations were supposed to have been written by a man named beaufort the grand victor of uh em de chalon formerly the cardinal of nuai by whose recommendation the letters were first published so this is one of the reasons i was interested in them this man was of no seeming import it was years before his letters were brushed you know dusted off and somebody actually read them and and found an amazing value in them and decided to gather them all together and to publish them and to print them and so here's the notes of the first conversation that he had with a man the first time i saw brother lawrence was upon the 3rd of august in 1666 he told me that god had done him a singular favor in his conversion at the age of 18. that in the winter seeing a tree stripped of its leaves and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed and after that the flowers and fruit would appear he received a high view of the providence and the power of god which has never since been effaced from his soul that this view had perfectly set him loose from the world and kindled in him such a love for god that he could not tell whether it had increased during the more than 40 years that he had lived since so it was a spiritual experience that he have and uh you know i'm thinking of avidutta and his his multiple gurus from the material world and you see here somebody who doesn't have any of that kind of teaching walking through the woods in winter and seeing a bare tree and reflecting on god and having being filled with such a love that he even after all of those years in the monastery he wasn't sure if that had love had increased because it was at such a maximum volume just from that exchange that god could renew a tree a lifeless thing in the cold of winter that god would bring it back to life and put the leaves back on it and bring fruit and flowers and that it would become this beautiful thing that that a tree is in the summer a great refuge for other people and he understood this at such a deep level that he became a monk that that he walked away from the world completely on that lesson alone so you you think about the power of contemplation you know we walk through our days the the sages say we walk through our days half asleep you know if half sleep we were fully asleep some of us you know takor says it's easy to wake someone up who's sleeping he says it's very difficult to wake somebody up who's pretending to sleep and so most of us walking through our days not really paying attention to things because we assume we already know we've seen it before we've put it in its category and in its box in our mind and we don't see it again for the rest of our life that's a dangerous way of living this moment is always unique this moment is always new sri nishagar maharaja says in one place that the universe is created anew at every moment and that uh in that he cautioned that when you approach the scriptures when you read the scriptures you should never assume that you've read them before because he said in this moment as you read nothing in the universe is in the same place or the same condition that it was in the time your mind remembers reading it before everything is new and that's that to me has always been what what distinguished scripture from good writing right a scripture can teach you multiple different things from the same sentence at different periods of time when you read it it will strike you in a different way it will touch you in a different way it will point out a different teaching that's necessary for you so when you approach a scripture and not just scripture when you approach life to be awake means seeing things for the first time again continually always being awake you don't go into that mode of been there done that and let the world pass you by the this relationship with the divine which is the experience of this moment it's a dance it's a dance with god himself herself your every moment of the day is a conversation everything that you do is a prayer everything that happens to you is a response every action is a communication between you and the beloved you and the divine and so to have that kind of awareness and to have that kind of vivid presence will put you in a constant dialogue with god you won't have to talk to a concept in your mind you won't have to you know fence god into a temple that has an atmosphere and a certain feeling and brings you to a certain space your life will do that for you to the pure mind everything is guru everything is a teacher just like a dead tree here for brother lawrence and through that opportunity of you looking at it and being that aware god may or may not give you this intense understanding of his divine love this depth of relationship with him so he says that he had been a footman to m foibert the treasurer and that he was a great awkward fellow uh who broke everything so so he was clumsy and uh this is truly it's marvelous to see what he thought of himself that he was just an awkward you know dude that that broke everything that he had desired to be received into a monastery thinking that there would be made to that there he would be made smart for his awkwardness and the faults that he should commit and so he should sacrifice to god his life with its pleasures but that god had disappointed him he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state so he went there to try and not be worthless you know he just to throw himself at god he's like look i'm clumsy i'm awkward i'm uneducated uh i've done nothing with my life i'm just going to throw myself at your mercy and the the expectation that he would be punished the expectation that he would be disciplined you know and that that god would teach him a lesson and raise him up properly and this is a recurring theme in here is his disappointment that he never suffered his disappointment that he never got to to you know suffer in conjunction with jesus and the passion of of you know the crucifixion which is an ideal within christianity that this had never happened that god had just continually poured one blessing after another on him and filled him with such joy and he felt nothing but guilt about that he's like what are you would you what are you doing hit me with you just him i deserve to be it why are you being so nice to me so that we should establish ourselves in a sense of god's presence by continually conversing with him that it was a shameful thing to quit his conversation to think of trifles and fooleries so that was his only practice you'll find a return to that over and over again that you should become aware that every thought that you have every action that you take everything that you say to your friends to your enemies on the phone in your sleep is a conscious conversation and exchange with god with that presence because we live in god and that is the reality karma is nothing more than that conversation put into a an excel spreadsheet as it were so that we should establish ourselves in a sense of god's presence by continually conversing with him that we should feel and nourish our souls with high notions of god right always thinking the highest we hear things like god's love is unconditioned what does that mean to you if you understood that you would have never felt guilty you would have never felt shame you would never feel a trepidation in sitting down before the beloved to pray to meditate you would never feel any sense of impurity in walking into a shrine and presenting yourself to the beloved if you understood that simple truth that god's love is unconditioned that we should feed and nourish our souls with these high notions of god which would yield us great joy in being devoted to him you know this is one of the things that really struck me growing up for me religion was a bore going to church was a real chore you know sitting there and it was all about discipline and all about you know listening and behaving myself and it really struck me when i first read the gospel the amount of laughter that's in the gospel every page people are are laughing talker is telling jokes he's you know pretending to be a woman he's making he's imitating people uh you know telling rather uh colorful jokes you know that that that he said that he had to give these young boys their fish soup you know otherwise they wouldn't keep coming back so this whole notion dogwood is so free takur is so available so able to meet us where we are and to walk around with that understanding and to develop that understanding by watching your thoughts and knowing that mother is present by sitting and conversing and knowing that mother is party to your actions to your desires to your dreams you know one of the one of the characteristics of love according to the bible in first corinthians chapter 13 actually is that love keeps no record of wrongs know that record of wrongs is kept in your own mind it's not kept by god god is not sitting there saying ah love always hopes always believes always trusts love never fails you know that this is the nature of god that he she that is closer to you than the closest person you know does the scripture say so closer than your own neck in one sense tacor says that one that one wonderful idea that god is so close he can hear the anklets on an ant you know so that's how intimate this relationship is with the beloved and for us to live in constant remembrance of that to not forget it like brother lauren says here that it was a shameful thing for him to quit his conversation in order to think of trifles and fooleries to get involved in the news you know to get involved in enjoyments or pleasures outside because he just didn't need it it wasn't that they were wrong it was that he had what his soul desired in this presence of the beloved that we ought to quicken or to enliven our faith that it was a lament that it was lamentable that we had so little faith and that instead of taking faith for the rule of their conduct men amused themselves with trivial devotions that changed daily that the way of faith was the spirit of the church and that it was sufficient to bring us to a high degree of perfection that we ought to give ourselves up to god with regard both to things temporal and spiritual and seek our satisfaction only in fulfilling of his will whether he lead us by suffering or by consolation for all would lie equal to a soul truly resigned to this this surrendering to the will of the divine you know as a as growing up and hearing things like that i always had this image of some third-party tyrant out there you're gonna do it my way you know you don't you can't do it your way you're going to do it my way but the vedanta has set me free from that notion because god's will and my will when my mind is pure are the same and that these miracles that we see in the lives of the saints are not miracles at all it's just that their mind and god's mind are the same and what god wants is he doesn't even have time for it to be a desire if it occurs in the mind of the beloved it is reality so i always use for an example for myself that when when sri ramakrishna wanted to build that fence around the panchavati and all of a sudden all that stuff washed up on the beach and we're all on you know we read that we're like oh my god a miracle look at that he wanted that and god washed all this stuff on the beach for him it's like no not at all the universe wanted that fence around the panchaviti being of pure mind had the same desire and the universe was conspiring to have it happen and we witnessed that and so all of these little things that we call coincidences you know these these little happenings during a day and the closer you get to god they happen more and more frequently these odd you know things that couldn't have happened if any other way if you think about it and you come to realize no i'm i'm i'm beginning to to resign my thoughts to the thoughts of the beloved that's a pure mind no longer to thoughts of mind and thoughts of body thoughts of ego but thoughts of the beloved thoughts of love and the more i align with that those thoughts the more i become true to myself so in the end it turns out that god's will was the will i longed for in myself that god's being was the being i longed for in myself and i come to realize that those two voices within you you know you have your conscience that's sitting there trying to tell you or pokes you when you do wrong tries to tell you what you need to do to do right and you sit there and you argue with it you know wow this is no big deal come on chill out i can sleep for another 15 minutes it's not a problem but really that conscience is your will it's your purified will it's not contrary to your will it's your weakness it's the body and mind that wants to lay in bed or the body and mind that wants to have that extra dumpling or that extra piece of cake you know but the will your true will your will as a pure human being who's manifesting his nature or her nature is the will of the divine it's bliss and that is that's why he's talking about here that in this constant conversation with the beloved that we constantly have one focus to do the will of god to do what's right in the moment you know because now yes it's the will of god but after 40 years of practice he comes to know it was his own that he has no will separate from the divine will he has no existence separate from the divine existence that he's never apart from the beloved god has never forgotten him a single time though he may have forgotten god a million times that he had desired to be received into the monastery and that god had disappointed him by by giving him nothing but satisfaction in that state he says that we ought to give ourselves up to god with regard to both things temporal and spiritual and to seek our satisfaction only in the fulfilling of his will whether he lead us by suffering whether we're getting the message in the teaching by suffering or by consolation and he makes this wonderful statement here he says for all would be equal to a soul truly resigned that if you know that it is god causing pain in order to teach or to bring you forward or to correct you that is as much a source of joy as god consoling you or nurturing you taking care of you because it is in fact the same thing you know sri nisr maharaja makes that statement he says all pain is an invitation to inquiry why because all pain is indicative of attachment indicative of broken expectation you know and so by observing the conditions of ourself at all times and interpreting everything is coming from the beloved this whole world all of maya will conspire to your freedom all of maya will conspire to bring you to your realization it will no longer be be emphasizing the avidya which takes you away from that because the presence of god is there swami prabhupada always told me he said that that if you have any trouble in your life any problem that you can't fix so that they can't work out he says sit with mother and put that problem in your hand and the two of you gaze at that together because he said the light of awareness in the light of awareness maya will untie its own knots so in that presence of god in that presence of the beloved truth is always revealed this world can take you to god this world can teach you to see god everywhere in it equally that it is that that there's two currents and you choose which one you follow there's the vidya which is going toward god and avidya if you're if you're if your body is your ideal if your mind is your ideal yeah you can go the wrong directions but if you are holding on to that conversation to that constant that constant conversation with the beloved with the divine everything becomes to your advantage and actually saint paul in romans 8 28 let me dig back 40 years romans 8 28 all things work together for good to those that love god and are called according to his purpose that you can know that everything in your life as a devotee everything in your life everything is for your good to bring you higher to bring you forward and what a marvelous strength that is as we're suffering and sitting there with god and saying look at this suffering and you look at it together and you find your attachments you find the things that the temporal things that you're holding on to that you want to be eternal you know in that that there needed fidelity in these dryness or incense that their needed fidelity in those dryness or insensibilities and irksomenesses in prayer by which god tries our love to him that then was the time for us to make good and effectual acts of resignation whereof one alone would often times very much promote our own spiritual advancement so he's saying that that is the time in that light of awareness in that moment of prayer in that moment of communion between you and the beloved that's the time to make your resignations that's the time to make your statements that's the time to bring out that truth and honesty about yourself no pretenses god doesn't want you to be something else for him he wants you to be authentically yourself before him and to work out the rough edges through that relationship through that love that he has already taken care of things for you in in that book by suzuki i quote this so much it's one of my most startling moments in the first chapter of his book zen mind beginner's mind he says that the buddhist practitioner does not sit in order to realize god he says the buddhist practitioner sits to realize he has already realized that the gift is already yours and i thought what a delight that is in your practice that when you sit to do your meditation with the divine there is nothing to be accomplished there is nothing to be done what you are doing is making yourself available to the divine light and that divine light will do everything for you it will purify your heart it will encourage you it will strengthen you it will give you a reason to get up and try again it will give you back your self-esteem it will give you your dignity why because that divine light is your own it is the reason that you're valuable it is the reason that you're beautiful it's not because of your accomplishments it's not because of the things you can turn out and say i've done or i'm doing it's not because of your amazing purity your amazing knowledge of the scriptures the hours that you've spent in a shrine meditating has nothing to do with your value as a person your beauty lies in one fact alone that you are a reflection of that divinity you are the image of the beloved and that when your ego stands aside and doesn't take this unconditioned infinite pool of love that you have to work in the world with when you get rid of an ego who forces it through a little tiny nozzle and only gives it in one direction at a time to whoever is deserving when you get rid of that ego that love flows from you naturally you don't have to learn to do it you don't have to learn to be it you have to surrender into it let that divine self that presence of god which is within you come out and what's your guarantee of that the fact that god is described as satchitananda right that bliss knowledge existence absolute that existence is key that's the one we we kind of jump over quite often we talk about the bliss a lot we talk about the intelligence the knowledge a lot but existence we're like yeah all existence that's pretty straightforward go to the next one that existence is your signature of god presence with you if god forgot you for a second even a split of a second you would disappear but the fact that you exist means that god has given you his existence her existence because you understand what your senses are presenting to you that is god's witness to you of his love and presence because he has given his intelligence to you the world makes sense or doesn't make sense you grow or don't grow because of the presence of god in you not because you're smart not because you've got a great brain not because you went to school it's because god's intelligence has been loaned to you god's existence has been loaned to you and all of the love that you feel and experience in life is because god has shared it with you he has given you the ability to experience bliss to create bliss to enjoy bliss to know bliss that's what faith is it's never forgetting that all that you have is a signature of god's love on his love note to you in the form of your existence in the form of your intelligence in the form of your ability to recognize and express love those three things that make life worthwhile those three things that make life beautiful those three things that allow you to recognize beauty it is that presence of god in the sunset that stops you in your tracks to go wow or when you see a great mountain you know or a beautiful snowstorm for the first time it is the presence of god in you that has taught you what is beautiful otherwise how is it that we know what's beautiful what is beauty what's the point of beauty if there is no divinity why make a sunset beautiful how would we know the difference you know this is your stamp of god's commitment to you as a person in your walk through this world that as for the miseries and the sins he heard of daily in the world he was so far from wondering at them that on the contrary he was surprised that there weren't more considering the malice that people were were capable of that for his part he prayed for them he but knowing that god could remedy the mischiefs they did when he pleased he gave himself no further trouble about it so he wasn't amazed at how mean people can be he wasn't amazed at the and how wrong people could be you know he didn't he didn't go down on hollywood boulevard and walk around going but rather he was amazed that people weren't doing more you know that they weren't that they weren't indulging even more than what they were doing but what was his reaction he prayed for them but this is the beautiful part he prayed for them but he knew that god could change them in a snap when he wanted so he didn't trouble himself about it anymore he understood he didn't have to fix them he wasn't responsible for telling them how to live or what they should do you know he brought their brought them to his beloved and say here help them and he knew that god would in his time help them he moved slowly toward that ideal of knowing he was not the doer and in that his interactions with others became his interaction with god which is that karma yoga that we do things out of worship because we know that god is taking care of the rest that's what faith is that's why when we sit for our meditations we're not sitting there trying to actually do something i always see meditation as being a a spiritual suntan parlor you know when you go in and you let when you go and lay down of course they don't do it anymore because it's so bad for you but you know when i was younger you'd go out and lay on a chaise lounge in the summer sun in order to get a tan not everybody did that but i did that and you know when you're laying there getting a tan you're not sitting there okay more melatonin to the right fingers more melatonin i feel some burn oh wait wait wait it's getting hot on the left elbow okay we need more attention over there you're not the one giving yourself a tan right you're laying in the sun and the sun is changing you that is spiritual practice that's spiritual practice you sit in your chair and you close your eyes and you think of the beloved and the sun changes you that presence of the light of the divine that presence of that light of awareness unties the knots of maya in you you do not do it it is done for you and you may sit there and think oh my gosh i was so scattered today as a matter of fact one of my stories i tell many many many times is when i first joined the monastery which in itself is hilarious that i would end up in a monastery but there i was in the monastery and i would sit in the shrine and you know i i had never in my life really been aware of what went on in my mind you know you're just kind of you just you just live your life you don't really think about that if you're not spiritual and for the first time i'm sitting there in the shrine you know trying to be holy and trying to sit and have my prayers and the thoughts that were coming and going in my mind you know it's like i wanted to crawl out the back fortunately there wasn't a back door but i wanted to crawl out the back door of the shrine you know to get it to get out and i remember telling my friend philip who was the one who brought me to the vedanta that you know i didn't really think that i should meditate i shouldn't go to the shrine to meditate i should probably do some practice runs in the basement by myself until i got to a certain place and then i could go into the shrine you know then it would be safe for me to go because i sort of expected that the shrine would fall on me at some day you know if i went in there as i was and and philip scolded me he said who are you to judge a meditation even your own he says only a realized soul knows what a good meditation is he said your mind may have been wandering everywhere you may have been thinking a million different things but mother was down here and mother was flicking a switch that's not going to affect you for five more years but in five more years that's going to wake you up into a bliss you've never experienced before and you think you had a bad meditation so do not judge your meditations you put forward your best effort you sit in the sun and expose yourself to that divine light and in that that that that what communion with the divine you are changed you grow and that's one thing that i know in my 22 years in a monastery since then is that none of the things i've worked on are the things that changed in me those things i'm still trying to bend them into the right shape my biggest accomplishments seem to have happened of their own accord my greatest joys seem to have occurred in their own time without any need for my intervention or my effort and my favorite things about my spiritual life now i had nothing to do with creating them sid with the lord sit with the beloved inundate yourself with the thoughts and the recognition of this marvel that we live in you know a sunset is easy but but look at a leaf you know just look at a leaf and and focus on the grandness of the divine think look this leaf has been a portable solar power factory that has existed for some hundred thousand years now at least and we still can't figure out how it's done we have to do these big giant bulky things and set them on our roof and get a fraction of energy from them this leaf portable small silent non-polluting you know its own energy source is going on it's like open yourself to the wonder of this world and know and take comfort in the fact that you know nothing you know nothing you are here as a guest in the house of the divine open your eyes and be content to wonder and let that wonder create in you a praise a song of gladness of happiness of amazement at how beautiful this opportunity is and how fortunate that for some unknown reason you were chosen to be here to exist to have a reality there's this wonderful youtube uh question that came out on youtube to that science guy i can't remember his name bill nye i guess there's several of them and they answered the question why is there anything you know if the if the universe really is just insentient and just why is there anything it would make more sense if there was just nothing everywhere why is there anything and why is that anything beautiful why is that anything astonishing why is it consistent why why at all can we understand it these things happen to you when you live consciously when you open your eyes and see things always for the first time and get rid of that assumption of ego that it knows something that it's figured something out you know one of the best realizations about being a babysitter is that you realize how little you know your knowledge is about three maybe four whys deep right you talk to a toddler why is the cloud up there you know oh well you know the sun heats the water and it rises up and turns why does the sun heat the water well you know the sun is this giant ball of fire and it just heats why you know and after the third y or fourth y it won't be many more than that before you're frustrated and you're like that's just the way it is kid it's like it's just the way it is so live like that just it's just the way it is accept it in its beauty and its wonder and commune with the beloved ask your why why why is this happening but when you ask don't get busy with something else before you get the answer sit there the answer will come it always does because this is not life it's a relationship it's a relationship between you and your beloved the beloved that you've seen in all of the things that you love the beloved that you've danced with in all of your dreams the beloved that is the satisfaction in all that you've accomplished this is what living is it's dancing with the divine that to arrive at such resignation as god requires we should watch attentively attentively over all the passions which mingle as well in spiritual things as in those of a grosser nature that god would give light concerning those passions to those who truly desire to serve him that if this was my design sincerely to serve god i might come to him as often as i pleased without any fear of being troublesome but if not that i ought to know more to that i ought no more to visit him so he knew in this relationship with the divine just like we chant that every day no rights are not needful no times are necessary for chanting of your name so great so vast as your mercy you know every time is the right time god is never troubled by your presence god is never troubled by your condition god never runs out of patience god never gives up seeing the purity that you can't attain in you he knows you he's outside of time he's not seeing you as you think you are he's seeing as he knows you are and that is that divine light that beautiful unconditioned love that you reflect back that's what god sees regardless of what you see and to have faith in yourself like swamiji says is exactly that not that you have faith in your capabilities not that you have faith in your abilities to do things you have faith in the fact that god sees himself in you you have faith in the fact that it's the divine light that makes you beautiful and valuable you know that nothing else is necessary there's two things that god has given you that you could not have learned from this world immortality and infinity those are the two sparks for faith in this world to me anyway because if you think about it you should know nothing of immortality you've never seen anything that was immortal so where did that concept come from it came because you brought it with you you brought it in your divine soul and that infinity you can see really big things but you've never seen an infinite thing infinite to us just means really big but infinity is bigger than big bigger than really big and there's nothing here that could have taught you about that concept so those two characteristics of yourself can be the seed of the faith that you grow i'm infinite and i'm immortal there is no other way for me to have known these ideas or to have these concepts than to have been given them by the divine in my existence in my love and in my intelligence so that's the first conversation from brother lawrence any comments or questions concerns um all right well very good we'll consider we'll continue on with brother lawrence uh it's it's only every other week so grab a copy of the book if you can there's one online for free if you search for practice of the presence of god brother lawrence there's pdfs of it all over the place this is every other week maha yogananda is going to be doing in the the other every other [Laughter] so the two of us are going to be doing the class but if there's anything in there while you're reading that you want to pull aside and sit on a bench and talk about i delight in that so uh we'll go on we'll go forward from there all right jaime j swamiji you