The Way of Fire, the Way of Love, and the Way of Emptiness
It’s a joy to see you all this evening. I decided it would be easier on you to inflict a class than to inflict a film that I thought maybe many of you would not enjoy either—so at least you’ll learn something from the class, I hope. I don’t know how much you would have gotten from the film.
But there are three reasons that I thought it would be appropriate to have this satsang tonight: one, is that we have two visitors who will be leaving in a couple of days, and since I won’t have time to have private meetings, I wanted to be able to wish you both blessings on your life journey from here, and to give you whatever last guidance or answers to any questions that you might have this evening. Because I think that conditions are going to be very difficult, and increasingly so, in the world out there.
So that’s the second reason for the satsang tonight: which is to go over the current events—at least some of them—that are having a very large impact on the state of the world, and of the state of consciousness, and the consequences of the current hysteria, and the very poor decisions that are being made by people of relative amounts of power in the world, and where that is taking us, and how quickly.
So, that’s two, and then the third reason is that we have coming up this week the beginning of the study group about The Dao of the Final Days, and I thought it would be useful to contextualize: what is the Dao of Sat Yoga, exactly? And how does this concept help us and guide us in our own sadhana? So I hope that’s a valid enough reason for holding the class.
Well, since I’ve already given my bon voyage, I’ll go to the second point, which is that the war hysteria over Russia’s demilitarization operation in the Ukraine—which is apparently nearly over, successfully for Russia, in a rather amazing blitzkrieg operation—the Ukrainian navy is destroyed, the air force seemingly is, the land forces are apparently surrounded in two different cauldrons, and are really in a hopeless situation—I think Russia hopes they will surrender so it doesn’t have to pick them off in a Turkey shoot, but I think the West would prefer that, to increase the anti-Russian sentiment in the world—because there are very few civilian casualties, this has been done in a very humanitarian way, with corridors for civilians to escape from the cities that were being surrounded, and the villages, and there has been a very light treatment; the internet, the phone system, the electricity in the Ukraine continues on. Russia has tried to disturb the life of people there as little as possible, but of course it has been disturbed, and there will certainly be long-term consequences of this.
And the Russophobia has reached such a point that it has created barriers now between Russia and NATO, and many other countries of the Western alliance, if you will, in which planes can no longer fly over Russian territory; Russian planes can’t land in most of the Western countries, but it’s going to increase the expense of flying, and the time, and even the feasibility. There is the gas of course, has already gone up, and there will be a continual rise in prices. The shipping has stopped between going to and coming from Russia, which will cut a huge number of supplies of all kinds, this will have huge economic effects in the West as well as in Russia. And of course the food supply has been cut—and Russia and Ukraine together make up a huge amount of the wheat that is produced in the world, and sent around the world, and that is now eliminated. And if you add that together with all of the other issues of the food supply in the world, we see a very much accelerated food shortage situation, globally, that will affect everyone, and the prices of food, if you can get it, are going to be going through the roof. But because of the barriers of trade in general, there will be many items that we have taken for granted, as being available, no longer will be. This will probably include construction materials, and fixtures, and things like that, that get imported. So it’s going to affect people at all levels of society.
Also there’s been a communication break—I don’t know if you’re all aware of it—but Russia Today, Sputnik, are intermittently unavailable, even here, but in many places completely blocked. Russia has now, of course, done the same with the Western media. So the “Iron Curtain” is back and much stronger than ever before, and this is now in a very dangerous mode, because of the absurdly irresponsible statements being made by US leaders, like telling people in Russia to assassinate their president, which can have huge effects, and obviously is not going to make Mr. Putin very happy, and that will have consequences. But also, talk of a no-fly zone, which would lead, as Putin himself said, I think today, there would be war instantly—that instant—with whatever countries attempted that.
So even though today that I actually wrote in an email that I didn’t think nuclear war was in the immediate future—I actually have to withdraw that—it may well be, because of the insanity of the people who have some political power, who have all seem to gone mad. And Russians are being fired from jobs, many of them are being expelled from different countries; you can’t—Italy is now not allowing people to study Dostoyevsky—it’s reached incredible levels of insanity.
So, the situation is ratcheting up, it’s not cooling down, even though the war itself (to the extent it really should be called that), is nearly over. But I don’t think that’s going to end the tensions; in fact I think they will continue to increase. The one thing that the West has not done is to stop the shipment of gas and oil from Russia—that they want—but it may well be that Russia chooses not to sell it to the West, under these conditions, which would of course create even far more amplified effects.
So, we’re at a situation now where the state of the world and the fragility of the various social systems throughout the world, are beginning to really shake at their foundations, and the decomposition of the fabric of society is well underway. And this could, of course, be magnified many times if China takes advantage of the situation to go into Taiwan, which is not unlikely as well. So we have a situation where war is ever more likely every day—nuclear war. So in this situation the attainment of liberation from the illusion of being a body is not just a luxury to put off to some future lives—it’s something that would be of very practical value in the immediate future, if not right now.
So I think it should inspire us to make extra efforts, and to be able to disseminate peace from our own fortunate place of having a refuge, to those in the world, and in the morphogenetic field in which we are all entangled, as a single consciousness, to send out that peace to all the souls who are suffering, and who are in anxiety and who are in war zones, and who are perhaps in dire straits in terms of not having availability of nourishment.
So that, I think, is one of the duties of the bodhisattva, to offer that kind of compassionate help on a spiritual level, and to help those who are leaving the body under those conditions, to be able to reach the light of God, and find peace, if not in the body, at least afterwards, and we have that ability to be of service if we ourselves have reached the light, and are able to transmit it.
So that’s the situation, I think, and the other aspect of it is, because the media now are so focused on the war politics, the pharmaceutical companies have taken advantage of the fog of war, to release documents that they had held back in the past, about all the adverse effects that the jab causes, and although many people may not be paying attention to it, but that information is out there now in a much more, let’s say, admitted state, and even though probably nothing will be done on a legal level about that, but at least it will have an awakening effect, on those who are able to find that information, whether they have already been jabbed or not. So that’s also going to have a political effect on those populations who will have, I assume in some cases at least, a great deal of anger and sorrow, and of confusion.
So we want to be of help to those as well, and to all the people who have been affected by this situation, to send them divine peace, to recognize that we are not bodies, and the illness, incapacity, or death of the body, or any painful symptom that the body might suffer, does not need to have a negative effect upon one, if one is in Atman-consciousness. One can abide in peace regardless of the state of one’s body, and as yogis we need to reach that state ourselves, and then be able to transmit that power that we have proven is real, is genuine, to those who are in need of attaining that level of their being.
So, that’s the news from Lake Wobegone, as used to be said on a program that I think is probably gone long ago. So let’s talk a little bit about the Dao, if you wish, and of course I’ll open the floor afterwards, and if anyone has any comments to make about the current situation or where it is leading, I’ll be glad to go back into it.
Most people want an ego liberated from suffering, but they don’t want a consciousness liberated from the ego. This is the problem that even yogis seem to have; you can’t reach liberation from suffering without annihilating the ego illusion, because the ego is the source of suffering, but it’s also the source of the crumbs of jouissance that the consciousness holds onto, that give it an illusion of some kind of control, power, enjoyment, and ability to think its way out of difficult situations that it doesn’t want to let go of in order to achieve the beatitude of union with God. But it is only the extinguishing of the ego illusion that will bring liberation from our pain, and our destiny of going around the wheel of rebirth again and again. And this is the moment, the last moment, in which liberation is attainable. The window of opportunity will close, at least in a practical sense, when the situation becomes more extreme, as it will, very soon.
So the Dao is the way of achieving that liberation, and that’s what we want to focus on. Actually, the Dao has two foci. I should probably elaborate on both of them.
(Shunyamurti writes on whiteboard).
So, the Dao of (non)action, the Dao of action that is non-action, the wu-wei, this is the use of the principles of spirituality in order to know how to navigate through the world, so long as the body is alive, and how to act in such a way to optimize the outcome of the events in your life. How to make wise decisions, how to act at the right moment without waiting too long, so that the window of opportunity closes on you. How to know which is the right fork in the road to take. All that wisdom, that intuitive function of the mind that comes from the transcendent connection to the Atman, can only be opened, awakened, and accurately perceived by the buddhi, at the Viveka Point. And this is an assemblage point just beyond the reach of the ego, so we have to get at least into soul-consciousness, to have that Dao of action to be activated.
And the Dao of Liberation requires, of course, going even beyond that. So the first level of the Dao, we could say, is the focus on how to live, how to make decisions, how to persevere, how to have the ability to connect with other people in a way that maximizes cooperation, and the achievement of collective goals, and of maintenance of harmony, in a community for example. So, all of that is part of this level of the Dao. The Dao is the general intelligence that opens up at the soul level, that enables us to know what to do, and what not to do, and to enable us to read other people, to know who we should even be making connections with, and what connections could actually lead to adverse effects—to use that phrase in this context—because there are people whose karma and whose projections are so negative that a naive kind of connection will lead to you being the toxic waste dump of those negative energies, and one has to know how to deal with that, with compassion and wisdom, but, at the same time, without being a victim.
So, there’s a dharma of great subtlety that’s involved in recognizing the Dao. One has to be free, oneself, from negative energies in order not to inflict them on other people as well. So there’s an ethic that is part of the Dao, and a need to have a very strong moral courage to not make judgements, negative projections, accusations, etc., without blinding oneself to what is happening at the subconscious level, and in the stream of karma and sanskaras of other beings, so to be able to be of optimal help to them, but also to not get entangled in any streams of, let’s say, karmic obligation, that could hinder one’s ascension, and one’s development in the world, free of ultimately the kind of negativity that creates a hostile dependent relation to others, that is lose-lose for all parties in a relationship.
So there has to be a great deal of the power to recognize that love often has to mean leaving, not staying, not going back, not trying to rescue, but separating in order to reach a high enough state that one is able to help the other, rather than to be trapped in the other’s frame of reference, in which the projections on one actually disempower one, and cause one to lose the ability to really serve the other, that one’s own love has caused one to go toward, in order to be of help.
So there’s a lot of self-sabotage that happens at the ego level, through its ignorance of its own limitations, its wishful thinking, and its inability to see clearly what its true duty is, in relation to God, and in relation to humanity, to family systems, and to social orders, etc. All of that has to be put into the right perspective, in order for clear and accurate decisions and assessments to be made. So that’s that level of the Dao, and I just wanted to outline it tonight, but that’s part of what’s in the book, that we’re going to be studying, but for us particularly as Sat Yogis, who are on the path of ascension, it is very important that we not fall from the Viveka point, in order to be able to live in that level of the Dao, and keep the community free from those kinds of negative projections that can create schisms, and create the kind of let’s say, negative karmic detritus, that produces a bitter taste in the energy field—we have to keep the honey of divine love flowing in order to keep the community successful, and able to thrive in this time, in which hatred and anger and all the other negative energies are loose in the world, so that we’re not contaminated by them.
So that’s all I think I’ll say for this evening on the Dao of non-action. But I hope that’s a useful orientation that will help you see that focus in the book as well. But the other focus is the Dao of Liberation, and that’s what I’d to speak more about this evening, because that’s our primary responsibility, and hopefully our primary inspiration and intention to attain.
This Post Has 6 Comments
Mannie Smith
8 Mar 2022I am eternally grateful for you and your wisdom. Thank you thank you thank you
Peter Krone
8 Mar 2022Dear Shunyamurti
Wanting to be of service as a Sat Yogi and being without desire. Are these two attributes not in contradiction with each other ?
Love and Namaste
Peter
Vajra Sat Yoga
16 Mar 2022Dear Peter,
There is no contradiction. The highest service is to be without desire. The Self serves out of love, not desire.
Om Shanti,
Shunyamurti
Lori D
9 Mar 2022When I learned about bodhisattva in an Eastern “Religions” course at my community college, I felt time fall away, and my heart let my mind remember that is my path. I have been selfish, stubborn, and impatient, and so I have been granted many life lessons to balance these with compassion, willingness, and patience…yet I feel I have only just begun. Thank you for teaching us💞🌠🥰
Ursula
9 Mar 2022While the enemy of your own anger is unsubdued,
Though you conquer external foes, they will only increase.
Therefore, with the militia of love and compassion
Subdue your own mind-
This is the practice of Bodhisattvas.
–Thogme Zangpo (Thirty-seven practices of the Bodhisattvas)
Liam D.
11 Mar 2022Second talk I’m listening to accompanying zazen before work.
“Am I really so lucky to have a job?”
He thinks.
*Simulation blares*
Thank you! Bowing.