Gita

[Aravinda Rao]

I am attaching the link to my recent talk on the Gita.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4JU-BrlLuI&list=PLWjpkY4mU2RBqCm12Z7wd5bXjXxXJgDQp&index=1

Aravinda Rao 

[Sundar Rajan]

Why Yuval Noah Harari meditates

Why Yuval Noah Harari meditates

60 Minutes is as American as Apple Pie to most Americans. It is a primetime TV news program on Sunday dinner time when families sit down to relax and chill. On a recent 60 minutes show, Anderson Cooper, a well know TV host asks the guest, Yuval Harari about meditation. Harari, a Israeli Historian and author of the best selling book 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind'.

This interview segment is a casual chat, less than two minutes long and hardly 5 or 6 sentences. Yet I found it fascinating that I found the few words Harari spoke about Meditation map to the Yoga Sutras and Bhagavad Gita! The techie in me even created a PowerPoint slide to capture the links.

Ok watch the video (it is only a couple of minutes long) and follow along with my commentary:

Anderson Cooper: You meditate everyday?

Yuval Noah Harari: Yes I start my day when I wake up in the morning, so the first thing I do is I meditate for an hour in the morning

Anderson Cooper: for a full hour?

Harari:

Yes, and then some time in the afternoon I meditate for an full hour

Me: When I listened, this reminded me of Yoga Sutra on Abhyasa, the Practice of Meditation

Yoga Sutra (1.13) – tatra sthitau yatnah abhyasa

Practice (abhyasa) by applying effort(yatnah) and actions to establish a stable and tranquil state (sthitau)

Yoga Sutra (1.14) - sa tu dīrgha kāla nairantarya satkārā ‘‘sevito dṛḍhabhūmiḥ

Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and with deep devotion or enthusiasm (satkara).

Then Anderson Cooper carries on and asks this question: For you what has meditation done? Why is it worth 2 hours a day?

Harari: At one level to get in touch with reality

The mind constantly produces these stories about society, about the world and constantly comes between me and reality

And Meditation is about learning how to let go of these stories

And just see what is actually happening

Me: These map to a bunch of Yoga Sutras

(1.3) tada drashtuh svaroope avasthanam

At that time (during intense meditation ) you are established in reality

(1.4) vrittisaroopyam itaratra

At other times, Sage Patanjali dismissively says, your mind is doing ‘walkabouts’. Itaratra like the Hindi इधर उधर means here and there..

Yoga Sutra (IV.15) - vastu-sāmye citta-bhedāt tayor vibhaktaḥ panthāḥ

Each individual person perceives the same object in a different way, according to their own state of mind and projections.

Harari:

Meditation - It starts with the simplest thing, like you start with observing your breath, coming in and out of your nostrils

Anderson Cooper: You just focus on that?

Harari:

Yet it is an incredible difficult thing to do

I was doing my Phd at Oxford and I really thought I was a very intelligent person. That I am in control of my mind and know myself

Yet even this basic ability to observe like the simplest thing in the world without my mind wandering away to some fantasies, so what chance I have to know the deep sources of my psychological structures and understand the economic systems and political systems if I cant observe the reality of my own breath?

Me: This reminded me of the classic Arjuna complaint to Lord Krishna in Bhagavad Gita , bemoaning meditation is very hard to do and he can't imagine ever doing it!

cancalam hi manah krsna

pramathi balavad drdham

tasyaham nigraham manye

vayor iva su-duskaram

For the mind is restless, turbulent, obstinate and very strong, O Krsna, and to subdue it is, it seems to me, more difficult than controlling the wind.

There you have it. It was a minute long segment on a popular TV show but had the depths of Yogic philosophy in it!

[S Venkatraman]

Excellent post. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 19-Apr-2022, at 10:24 AM, 'Sundar Rajan' via advaitin <adva...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



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