11am Sunday Talk: Giving Thanks, with Br. Shankara

 ~ Join via Zoom at https://tinyurl.com/y7veshzt ~

On Sunday morning, Nov. 21st at 11am, Br. Shankara will give a talk on Giving Thanks. Join us online (no in-person activities at this time) and participate in the discussion!

November is a month for study of Karma Yoga, a spiritual path leading to the abandonment of selfishness. As a karma yogi, you practice offering all actions and their results, as well as your perceptions, thoughts, and feelings to the Divine Presence.

In many Ramakrishna Mission centers, this prayer is chanted by the congregation, in unison, at the end of a puja’s homa fire ceremony:

“No matter what I may have done, said or thought, in waking, dreaming or dreamless sleep, with my mind, my tongue, my hands or my other members, may all that be an offering to the Divine Presence.” 

Even before fully knowing this Presence, you hold firmly to the belief that the Presence is within each person or other living being that you interact with or serve. Working and abiding in this spirit, you slowly and slowly release attachment to your activities and their results. This can yield the freedom and contentment promised by Karma Yoga.

“Even a little practice of this yoga will save you form the terrible wheel of rebirth and death …” — Sri Krishna, Bhagavad Gita, Ch. 2. 

America’s beloved Holiday of Thanksgiving is just a few days away. On Sunday morning we’ll talk about Giving Thanks, as a spiritual aspirant.

This is adapted from Swami Vivekananda’s book, Raja Yoga —

The Divine Mother gently takes your self-forgetting soul by the hand, as it were, and shows you all the experiences in the universe, all manifestations, bringing you higher and higher through various bodies, till your lost glory comes back, and you remember your own nature. 

At this beginning of our Holy Day Season, can we see a strong connection between what Swamiji wrote and an attitude of profound thankfulness?

Here are some thoughts from Henry David Thoreau. A 19th Century American spiritual teacher; he offers us a very practical kind of spirituality. Several quotes from his writings  have been strung together to make a kind of narrative:

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and endeavor to live the life which you have imagined, you will meet with a success unexpected in everyday circumstances.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Things do not change; we change.

This is karma yoga, the yoga of action. You may hear echoes of Sri Krishna’s lessons to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.