Thursday, March 11, 2010

Swami Nithyananda - 10 minutes of action vs 10 years of action

http://rpbsubramanian.wordpress.com/

Swami Nithyananda has become a celebrity in a single day, because of the video that got released last week! After reading some blogs/comments, I felt, I wanted to give my opinion on some of the common questions.

1) How can a sannyasin (Nithyananda) enjoy women?

Sannyas is a practice of renouncing attachments to the material world, not in anyway renouncing the material world. A Sannyasin can enjoy all the sensual pleasure, but without having attachment to it.

2) Nithyananda preaches brahmacharya, but he himself is not a Brahmachari?!

Brahmacharya is a process of disciplining yourself from falling into sensual pleasures. It is a practice which appears to be refraining from pleasures of the world, but its whole purpose is for you to enjoy both the inner world (spirituality) and outer world (material world).

Is Nithyananda going to be benefited anyway, if you practise brahmacharya?….NO!. It is for your own benefit. When you have disciplined yourself or when you are more conscious of yourself and your action, then you can enjoy pleasures of the world. In fact you can really enjoy, when you are aware of yourself

In Vedic gurukul system, brahmacharya is practiced during teenage years, following which, the student is sent to the real world to experience all the pleasures and pains with no attachment to it. If he prefers marriage… he can even get married and live a family life. All the saptha rishis have got married.

Nithyananda didn’t ask everyone to be a brahmachari, In fact most of his disciples are married and he himself presided over some of his disciple’s marriage.

In short…

A Kid studying first standard cannot ask his father “You are asking me to do homework, but you go to movie”. Any man of sense would understand, homework is for kid’s benefit

3) Did Ramanamaharshi or Buddha enjoyed women/sensual pleasures after enlightenment? Didn’t they live a life of a Saint? Then why can’t Nithyananda be like that?

Let me try to change the Upanishad story for this situation…

Two parrots are sitting in a tree…one parrot (Miserable parrot) is eating the fruits of sour/bitter taste, because it is not aware of what it is eating…so it simply lives a miserable life. Another Parrot (Enlightened) informs the miserable one “Hey listen…you can eat sweet fruits…look here” after eating the sweet fruit, miserable parrot started worshipping the enlightened one. Next day the miserable parrot could not believe its eyes when it sees the enlightened one eating a fruit of sour taste and enjoying it. Now this miserable parrot becomes more miserable and forms a group against enlightened one shouting with a slogan “You cheated us…your enlightenment is fake”.

Don’t be that miserable parrot, listen to this…

Whole purpose of life is to experience life….then why you wanted only sweet fruits?! Experience sour…it has its own taste. Experience the bitter…it has its own taste and benefits. Experience everything…your life would be richer. Now, who is responsible for making the choice what fruit to be eaten?! Its individual’s choice! Ramanamaharshi, Buddha didn’t enjoy, because they didn’t want to. Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed lived with women, because that’s the way they wanted to live. It is individual’s freedom! We cannot expect every flower that blossoms in a garden to be roses or jasmine. The world has millions of flowers; each has its own beauty, fragrance and uniqueness.

4) Nithyananda, who preaches Vedic tradition, broke our great tradition! Our tradition says you have to be married to experience pleasures from women.

All the Traditions/Disciplines/Moralities are for those who live unconscious life. If you are going to a new place (God/Godliness) you follow the map (Religion). If you are very much aware of the route then why bothered to follow the map?! You can even experiment and find other ways.

If Nithyananda has done anything illegal, then Law and justice will take its action, but if you say, your religious sentiments got hurt, please examine/re-examine the teachings of your religion. Just blind worship or doing rituals can give you identity of Hindu, Muslim or Christian, but it cannot make you religious.

5) I know I’m very conscious of myself and my actions, am I allowed doing what Nithyananda did?!

Our mind always finds a shortcut…so listen to your heart, if your heart says so, you can do it, Even if the whole world is against you, you will have the courage to face it. If your mind says that… then the consequence could be sometimes favorable and sometimes not, but be watchful, you will learn from life or it will be simply a suffering.

6) These days spirituality has become a big business! Swami Nithyananda charges so much for his meditation; makes millions and lives king’s life. Why can’t he do it for free, if he really wants to help society? Did Buddha/ Jesus/Sankara charge for spirituality?

Common man’s understanding is, all spiritual masters should live under a tree with a begging bowl and should not possess anything, in addition to it…he has to do spiritual service for free. When he sees them living rich life with no worries, he comes to the conclusion….all spiritual gurus are after money or he tag them as sex guru! If he is little intelligent, he should ask himself “Why can’t I enjoy?!...What is preventing me to experience all the beauties of this world?! ”

To run any organization, you need money. In ancient days, temples/spiritual places were built by kings, now….from where did king get the money? Tax, Fines and Stealing from other countries, isn’t that public money? More over, even if the king has enough money to build temples, he wants to get everybody’s participation, because pupil in his kingdom should feel, it is their temple not king’s temple, so money is collected again. Now kings are gone and replaced by vysyas (corporates), Government doesn’t support for spirituality, so all those spiritual groups has to act as corporations for its survival.

If you are thirsty, you are going to drink…but why so much advertisement for water? If you are sleepy, you are going to sleep, why so much advertisement for mattresses? The things that you are going to do no matter what the situation is…have so much advertisement, but spirituality?! We don’t even have thirst for it! So all those spiritual groups have to create thirst in you and have to show you the way to quench it, so it has to have all the departments that any business corporation have. If needed, it can even do friendly competition with other spiritual groups.

So, you are right...it is business and nothing wrong in that!

7) Sun TV/Lenin shouldn’t have broadcasted the private life of someone...it has made a mistake!

We do not know if it is a mistake or not, we don’t know the intention behind it! If you see in the place of SUN TV, It is a competition among TV channels, if not SUN TV, some other channel will air it.

Lenin did Guru droha?!

Only Lenin can answer this question! Any common man would get agitated when he sees a swami sleeping with a woman. There is always a gap in understanding between individual consciousness (Nithyananda) and Group consciousness (Society/Lenin)…All enlightened masters have faced this problem, but I could simply see this incidence as something positive for Swami Nithyananda.

If there is no Oregon Commune and surrounding controversies, Osho’s life story may not be that spicy

If Krishna didn’t play with Gopikas, his life story may not be that juicy

If there is no Crucifixion of Jesus, there is no Jesus

If Nithyananda has said, “I’m a saint I shouldn’t touch women”, then he is just a brahmachari who is on his way to reach god.

I didn’t see any guilt in his face in that video. I didn’t even see him doing any amorous move towards that woman; in fact it was the other way.

In a way, thanks to SUN TV for adding a peacock feather to his crown and showing to the world Nithyananda is not a uni-color saint, but a multicolored enlightened person

India has closed the door to OSHO and missed a lot, I hope it will not do the same mistake again for Swami Nithyananda.