Theme for Contemplation: Dharana: Concentration
Views: 191
Views: 191
August 22, 2015 Theme for the Week: Dharana:
Concentration
“Men of sound judgement are freed from mental agitation
and perfected in self-mastery by restraining the flight
of mind and fixing it in inward meditation.”
—Valmiki
“This , then, remains: Remember to retire into this
little territory of thy own, and above all do not
distract or strain thyself, but be free.”
—Marcus Aurelius
August 23, 2015 Theme for the Week: Dharana:
Concentration
” Concentration, or yoga, is the hindering of the
modifications of the thinking principle .”
— Patanjali
“Spiritual culture is attained through concentration. It
must be continued daily and every moment to be of use.”
— H.P. Blavatsky
From day to day the circulation of the elementals, gunas, qualities, emotions, thought patterns etc. change and flow. These things effect meditation, or at least the take off and landing part. It seems to me that the object of meditation is to transcend the personal nature so that we can freeze it, so to speak, and reach up to our higher nature where there is freedom from the shifting currents of the persona.
So I suppose the answer to your question is yes...... keep trying. That is what the Teachers say, the only failure is the unwillingness to keep trying.
Hi Rodeweeks:
Do you know the differences in terms of methods, conditions, or states of mind between the times that you do succeed and the times you do not? Those are the things that I would look at.
Mr. Rodeweeks,- It is my opinion that all actions
follow thought, so let one guide their concentration
upon their thoughts and the thinking principle. Soon
we'll see what Alex had mentioned, and from there, sever notional
connection between the thoughts and thinker from the
observing consciousness. This, one can try to do at
every moment- waking or sleeping- only when rigid
concentration and stern mindfulness is kept. We mustn't
believe that meditations should be an isolated
event/activity, they must be a constant practice, so
I've read.
A letter Mr. WQ Judge has written, included a profound
method of meditation found in almost every Upanisad of
the Veda;
"I
am not separate from anything. “I am that which is.”
That is, I am Brahma, and Brahma is everything. But
being in an illusionary world, I am surrounded by
certain appearances that seem to make me separate. So I
will proceed to mentally state and accept that I am all
these illusions. I am my friends,—and then I went to
them in general and in particular. I am my enemies; then
I felt them all. I am the poor and the wicked; I am the
ignorant. Those moments of intellectual gloom are the
moments when I am influenced by those ignorant ones who
are myself. All this in my nation. But there are many
nations, and to those I go in mind; I feel and I am them
all, with what they hold of superstition or of wisdom or
evil. All, all is myself. Unwisely, I was then about to
stop, but the whole is Brahma, so I went to the Devas
and Asuras; the elemental world, that too is myself.
After pursuing this course a while, I found it easier to
return to a contemplation of all men as myself. It is a
good method and ought to be pursued, for it is a step
toward getting into contemplation of the All. I tried
last night to reach up to Brahma, but darkness is about
his pavilion."
Godspeed, Sir!
This is from the footnote on page 1 of the Voice of the Silence.
"Dharana is the intense and perfect concentration of the mind upon some one interior object, accompanied by complete abstraction from everything pertaining to the external Universe, or the world of the senses."
August 24, 2015 Theme of the Week: Dharana:
Concentration
“The revelation of Thought takes man out of servitude
into freedom.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is a mental phase of the will which can be
cultivated by practice; the fixed attention, or
concentration, in certain directions capable of
effecting desired results.”
— Robert Crosbie
To branch off of this line from Crosbie, I'd like to
include a few words of wisdom from a wise fellow;
"True
Occultism, whose Teachings are expounded in the Secret
Doctrine, does not recognize direct or indirect,
conscious or unconscious contacting of forces which are
not of white or beneficent magic. It demands rigid
self-discipline of life, the complete sub-dual of our
selfish and animal propensities, the unequivocal denial
to countenance in ourselves or in others any non-pure or
non-moral aspects of life, much less of impure and
immoral ones. The Road to the Masters is the Road of
Purity- all other roads are false.... the students, to
obtain real results, should earnestly, zealously and
devotedly attempt to live the necessary life of Purity,
of Self-Abnegation and Brotherliness."
[B.P. Wadia]
Good one back at you.
August 25, 2015 Theme for
the Week: Dharana: Concentration
“Thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself
and none of these things trouble her — neither sound,
nor sight, nor pain, nor pleasure, when she has a little
as possible to do with the body and has no bodily sense
or feeling, but is aspiring after Being.”
— Plato
“Will and Desire lie at the doors of Meditation and
Concentration.”
— W.Q. Judge
August 26, 2015
Theme of the Week: Dharana: Concentration
“Being wholly absorbed in the divinity, the soul is one with it, conjoining as it were, centre with centre.”
— Plotinus
” He who would hear the voice of Nada, the ‘Soundless Sound’ and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana.”
— The Voice of the Silence
August 27, 2015 Theme for the Week: Dharana: Concentration
“When there is concentration, one attains eternal silence in the process of acting, though because of insight, one attains eternal activity within the realm of silence.”
— Hui-Ssu
“This is the paradox that both the capacity to think deeply and the capacity to withdraw from thinking are needed to attain this goal.”
— Paul Brunton
This story about young archers being trained by a Master says a great deal about Dharana:
http://www.universaltheosophy.com/inspirational/stories/the-eye-of-...
Don't miss it.
Nice one!
August 28, 2015 Theme for the Week: Dharana: Concentration
“The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.”
— Wolfgang Goethe
