Jivanta: Jivantayana

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23 December 2007

Seven Levels of Spiritual Practice

Different spiritual practices correspond to one or more of the seven levels:

(1) The physical body: the spiritual practices of physics, chemistry, and biology; and exercise, work, and karma (shani) yoga, awakening the body. The realization is that life is matter.

(2) The pranic and energic body: the spiritual practices of out-shining, brightness, the masculine yoga, and raja (shukra) yoga, awakening the will. The realization is that life is energy/power.

(3) The emotional and devotional mind: the spiritual practices of relationship, devotion, the feminine yoga, and bhakti (brihaspati) yoga, awakening the emotions. The realization is that life is selfless love.

(4) The intellectual and discriminative mind: the spiritual practices of mathematics, logic, and jnana (budha [sic]) yoga, awakening discrimination. The realization is that life is thought/mind.

(5) Life transcending the body-mind: the rising of life from the muladhara chakra to the sahasrara chakra, and radical renunciation (mangala yoga). The realization is that life is totally separate from the body-mind.

(6) Life centering the body-mind: the fall of life into the right-side of the chest and simple abiding as life (chandra yoga). The realization is that life is both separate and non-separate from the body-mind.

(7) The Divine enlivening both life and body-mind: the tantric transformation of life into the awareness of the Heart, and the meeting of the Heart and the Beloved in the tantric union of Heart-Beloved (surya yoga). The realization is that life and body-mind arise, exist, and decrease from, within, and as very Reality.

22 December 2007

Jivanta Mantra

The mantra for the Heart is silence, the womb of awareness.

The mantra for the Beloved is sincerity, the mark of insight.

The mantra for the Buddha is science, the logic of truth.

The mantra for the Jivanta is simplicity, the integrity of life.

The Most Supreme Mantra (Paraparamantra): [Silence]

The Supreme Mantra (Paramantra): [Sincerity], in 4 variations:
1. "The Enchanting Couple" ("Radha-Krishna"): I am Love.
2. "The Liberating One" ("Christ"): I am Light.
3. "The Awakening One" ("Buddha"): I am Logic.
4. "The Holistic Deepness" ("Allah"): I am Life.

The Great Mantra (Mahamantra): [Science], in 3 variations:
1. "All this is God" ("Brahma Idam")
2. "The Universe is True" ("Vishva Sat")
3. "There is nothing but God" ("La Ilaha Il Allah")

The Noble Mantra (Aryamantra): [Simplicity], in 3 variations:
1. "All this is beautiful" ("Sundara Idam")
2. "All this is enjoyment" ("Rasa Idam")
3. "All this is luminous" ("Rocana Idam")

The practice of Jivanta is founded upon S^⁴:
1. The practice of silence, or meditation
2. The practice of sincerity, or good company
3. The practice of science, or creativity
4. The practice of simplicity, or healing

Jivanta is the Origin, and Destiny, of all religions.
Everyone is a Jivanti, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

Sanatana Dharma exemplifies the Heart.
Christianity exemplifies the Beloved.
BuddhaDhamma exemplifies the Buddhas.
Islam exemplifies the Jivanta.

The Divine Mother, the Heart, the Deepest, Simple Being
The Heavenly Father, the Beloved, the Highest, the Primal Soul
The Only Begotten Son, the Buddha, the Tantric, the Perfected Soul
The Holy Spirit, the Jivanta, the Lowest, Nature

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
(Commentary: The "Name" refers to the Heart; the "Father", the Primal God; the "Son", the Buddha; the "Holy Spirit", Jivanta. Thus, the "Name of the Father" refers to the Very Heart of the Primal God.)

The Jai Theotokos:
Jai Theotokos Virgin Mary, Full of Grace,
The Lord is with You.
Blessed are You among women, and
Blessed is the fruit of Your womb, Jesus Buddha.
Holy Mary, Heart of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The Jivanta Rosary:
I go for refuge in the Heart
I go for refuge in the Primal God
I venerate the Buddhas
I venerate Nature

The Jivanta Confession:
I have faith in the Heart
I have faith in the Primal God
I have faith in the Buddhas
I have faith in Nature

Silence,
Sincerity,
Science,
Simplicity:

One Love,
One Light,
One Logic,
One Life.

The First Truth: Men and women suffer.
The Second Truth: Men and women suffer from lust, anger, ignorance, and fear.
The Third Truth: Lust, anger, ignorance, and fear are caused by lack of love, light, logic, and life.
The Fourth Truth: Lust, anger, ignorance, and fear are penetrated by love, light, logic, and life.

24 November 2007

Jivanta Yoga

Each causal soul is an atma.

Each atma is infinitely centered.

Each atma can potentially realize its infinite expansiveness as well as its infinite centeredness.

Infinite expansiveness is realized after the realization of infinite centeredness.

The realization of infinite centeredness is the realization of the atma as the Heart.

"Hridaya Tvam Asi": Heart Thou Art.

Once the Heart is realized infinitely deep, the Beloved shines, infinitely above.

The realization of both infinite centeredness and infinite expansiveness is the marriage of consciousness and energy, of the Heart felt infinitely deep in the chest and the Beloved shining infinitely above the head.

Realization of the Heart is provoked by direct awareness and direct energy.

True knowledge -- full feeling, full desire, full thought, and full action -- characterizes direct awareness and direct energy.

True knowledge is always already available from, in, and as the Heart.

True knowledge is always already available in silence, stillness, and simplicity.

Open the Book of the Heart. Everything is there.

The Yoga of Jivanta, or Jivanta Yoga, includes five methods:

1. Hridaya Yoga: feeling-contemplation of the heart-area of the chest
2. Vallabha Yoga: feeling-contemplation of the top of the head
3. Buddha Yoga: feeling-contemplation of the forehead
4. Jivanta Yoga: feeling-contemplation of the lower torso
5. Purna Yoga: feeling-contemplation of the whole body

Feeling-Contemplation refers to feeling-and-contemplating of, in, and as Love, Light, Logic, Life; verbally conceptualized as "I am".

S is the Heart. I is the Beloved. V is the Buddha. A is the Jivanta.

Thus, Sivoham: I am Siva.

If I am Siva, then I must love, enlighten, think, and live as Siva.

The Work of Jivanta, or Jivanta Karma, has four aspects:

1. Research
2. Writing
3. Teaching
4. Learning

To research is to light the flame.
To write is to walk the earth.
To teach is to fly the skies.
To learn is to swim the seas.

To research is to practice raja yoga.
To write is to practice karma yoga.
To teach is to practice jnana yoga.
To learn is to practice bhakti yoga.

To research is to embody the Beloved.
To write is to embody Jivanta.
To teach is to embody the Buddha.
To learn is to embody the Heart.

Instead of be-lieving, be-loving
Instead of doubting, do.
Don't search. See.
Don't imit-ate. Cre-ate.

23 June 2007

Seven Levels

The conditioned cosmos manifests in two processes: wholeness and fragmentation. Religion and spirituality, at their best, transform the dis-ease of fragmentation into the health of wholeness. In the human body, the process of fragmentation/wholeness appears within seven levels: (1) the physical body; (2) the pranic and energic body; (3) the emotional and devotional mind; (4) the intellectual and discriminative mind; (5) the causal soul; (6) the causal soul enlightening the body-mind; (7) the uncreated Divine enlivening both the causal soul and body-mind. True religion; true therapeia; or true healing, health, and wholeness; operates at all seven levels.

24 May 2007

There is No Hindu, No Muslim, No Christian, No Buddhist

Let action be your mantra.
Let Truth be your japa.
Let creativity be your concentration.
Let Nature be your meditation.
Let wilderness be your Church.
Let simplicity be your scripture.
Let silence be your guru.
Let unboundedness be your devotion.
Let work be your prayer.
Let earth be your heaven.
Let this life be your next life.
Let the Heart be your God.
Let lack of love be your hell.
Let fear be your satan.
Let compassion be your salvation.
Let accomplishment be your liberation.
Let constant growth be your eucharist.
Let energy be your confession.
Let charity be your chanting.
Let justice be your kneeling.
Let the home be your shrine.
Let discipline be your evangelism.
Let men and women be your angels.
Let all living beings be your saints.
Let doing good be your ashram.
Let abandoning evil be your yoga.
Let the creation of beauty be your puja.
Let fighting dukkha be your renunciation.
Let outshining the darkness be your non-attachment.
Let relationship be your sadhana.

See Shiva in the Sun.
See Shakti in the Shark.
See Jesus in the Genome.
See Siddhartha in the Sequoia .
See Mahavira in the Monoceros.
See HaShem in the Himalayas.
See Allah in the Alligator.
See Krishna in the Cosmos.

[Inspired by Guru Nanak.]

15 February 2007

Out and In

The Heart is neither transcendent nor immanent.

The Beloved is fully transcendent.

The Buddha is fully transcendent and immanent.

The Jivanta is fully immanent.

The breath-cycle replicates the nature of reality.

Breathing-in mirrors the Jivanta.

The stillness-after-breathing-in mirrors the Buddha.

Breathing-out mirrors the Beloved.

The stillness-after-breathing-out mirrors the Heart.

Each breath is communion.

Awareness of the breath awakens the Heart.

21 January 2007

Aum Namah Jivantayah

"Jivanta" means "that which is alive, and that which is living". From the Heart and the Beloved comes forth Jivanta, all that is alive: the light, the atoms, the molecules, the stars, the seas, the land, the sky, the plants, the animals, the men, and the women. The presence of men and women then makes possible the appearance of the Buddha, who then points directly back to the Heart and the Beloved.

Aum namah Jivantayah: I venerate all living beings.

Aum Namah Buddhayah

According to classical Buddhism, the "Buddha" is the one who has most fully realized and manifested wisdom and compassion.

If we take the most basic meaning of "Buddha" as "one who is Awake and Aware", then the number of Buddhas we have known becomes potentially endless. I'll just name a few Buddhas I've known:

Zarathustra
Krishna
Abraham
Vardhamana
Siddhartha Gautama
Kongfutzu
Yeshu
Muhammad
Guru Nanak

Aum namah Buddhayah: I venerate the Buddha in us all.

20 January 2007

Vallabham Saranam Gacchami

Vallabha means Beloved. Unlike Sri Sankara, Sri Vallabhacharya posited that only God is real, and rejected the notion of maya (or the "illusory power of God"), since to assume the existence of maya would violate God's utter sole reality.

Vallabham saranam gacchami: I take refuge with the Beloved.

16 January 2007

Hridayam Saranam Gacchami

The Buddhist practice of Refuge takes the not-yet-Buddhist into the realm of the Buddhas. By having taken Refuge, the newly-born-Buddhist has placed his or her ultimate trust in the Buddha (the Realizer), the Dharma (the Revelation), and the Sangha (the Community).

Buddham saranam gacchami: I take refuge in the Buddha.
Dharmam saranam gacchami: I take refuge in the Dharma.
Sangham saranam gacchami: I take refuge in the Sangha.

The Buddha is one who has realized the Heart (Sanskrit, "Hridayam").

Hridayam saranam gacchami: I take refuge in the Heart.

Foundations

On one level, I'm what you might call a "pre-conciliar Christian Buddhist". That is, within the first three-hundred years or so after the ascension of Christ, the Christian tradition existed without a council defining what Christians had to believe in order to be Christian. One can take the dual commandments of Jesus (Mark 12:28-34) as defining what it means to be Christian:

Jesus replied, "The first is this: 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart [causal soul], with all your soul [energy bodies], with all your mind [mental bodies], and with all your strength [physical body].' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

Since God is Truth, and Truth is One, we can summarize these dual commandments as "Love Truth, and love self and others equally". One may, then, love Truth and love self and others equally whether one adheres to any number of religious-philosophical frameworks. I am formally associated with a Baptist lineage, Christianity forms my cultural heritage and environment, and my Christianity finds inspiration from this ancient, and yet always new, pre-council, or pre-conciliar, era. I am also formally associated with Buddhism, and Buddhism forms a basis of my psychology and cosmology. And by "Buddhism" I include the larger Dharmic Tradition underlying the Indic traditions as well as the Abrahamic traditions. I understand Jesus the Christ within this Dharmic context, as a Buddha, or a Bodhisattva, or an Avatar. In this sense, I am "Christic", rather than orthodoxly "Christian". Yet, I accept the label "Christian", or even "Catholic".

I was raised in the West, within a Christian culture; and I've taken initiation into the Christian tradition. I've taken this to mean that my spiritual practice in this lifetime is meant to be Christic in its form and action, understanding the Christ-Man and the Christian tradition, especially in its Semitic, Hellenic, Roman, English, and American cultural forms, primarily within a framework of the Dharma and the Buddha.

On any given Sunday, I may attend church, usually either Baptist or Catholic. One could say -- following the Nicene Creed -- that I am of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, even if many of my doctrinal positions do not exist within orthodox Christianity. Fully practiced and lived, Christianity -- whether heterodox or orthodox -- can serve as a field of salvific liberation just as efficiently as any other tradition. Indeed, the challenge and destiny of Christianity is to form, transform, embody, and transmit the teachings of Christ, the Buddha of the West, also known as Yeshua the Nazarene, whose heritage may be temporally traced both through the Vedic, Zarathustrian, Abrahamic, Judaic, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Baptist lineages; and the Sramanic, Jain, Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana lineages.

To affirm Jesus as Lord, is to affirm the Buddha as Bhagavan. Indeed, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" -- the Dharma, the Satya, and the Ayur. Granted, most of my fellow Christians would not agree with such an equation of affirmation. That's fine. The Christian tradition, or even any one particuar Christian church or parish, can contain many diverse perspectives. I have no need to convert others to my ideals, or to undermine the Christian ideals of others.

If someone non-Christians asks, "Do you really believe in x, y, and z", where "x, y, and z" include Christian doctrines and dogmas apparently insulting to reason; the only appropriate question is to ask "What do you mean by 'x, y, and z'?" From a Catholic perspective, take the example of papal infallibility. Who defines "papal", or "infallibility"? In within what linguistic, social, and historical context does "papal infallibility" exist? Analyzing further, one finds that "papal infallibility" is made up of non-"papal infallibility" elements: thus, "papal infallibility" is not self-existing, or eternally true in and of itself; rather, it is a product of various impermanent elements linguistic, social, and historical. As such "papal infallibility" may be a useful idea, within a particular linguistic, social, and historical context, but it is not absolute truth. No dogma or doctrine would be absolute truth. There is no reason to take any dogma or doctrine absolutely seriously, as if taking God absolutely seriously were not enough! It is this understanding of "only-God-is-absolute" that is the contextual matrix within which a true Christian must understand his or her tradition's dogmas, doctrines, and teachings. Many Protestants misunderstand the biblical scriptures, reading them through the lens of sola scriptura. Catholics do a bit better, arguing correctly that scripture is simply one aspect of a larger Tradition. However, both scripture itself, and the larger Tradition, are organic growths out of solus Deus, "God-Alone", or Christian Non-Dualism. The only thing I believe in, is God (Love, Light, Logic, and Life); everything else is debatable.

However, to simply argue for the non-ultimacy of any particular dogma and doctrine is too easy a way out, especially if the one arguing has not him/herself realized non-duality. In such a case, Christian dogmas and doctrines that insult logic can be best understood as symptoms of the ultimate poverty of logic itself, when it is divorced from the Heart.

I heart-embrace all religions, because all religions share a common, socio-cultural genetic code symbolized by the Heart, the Beloved, the Buddha, and Jivanta. I consider myself equally Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Taoist, Confucian, to mention a few; because they all diversified from the same basic realization, revelation, realizer, and embodiment. "Religion", though, is different from "religious philosophy". Any one religious philosophy (or any one conceptual system of perspective-cosmic) cannot totally reflect reality. Yet, religion -- the totality of life lived in wisdom and understanding, as expressed in various human-cultural manifestations -- serves as a powerfully agapic-karunan diaphany of very reality. There is nothing that anyone has verbally or mentally conceptualized, that is totally and permanently true, but truth can be pointed to, directly or indirectly, and, most importantly, truth can be lived.

The practice and worldview to which I adhere collectively may be called Jivanta, the fulfillment of Life; Christic Advaita, Christian non-duality; Christic Siddhanta, the Christian way of completion; Christanta, the fulfillment of Christianity; Avatar Jesus Buddha Catholicism; Indu Christic, the Christ-consciousness as understood within a Buddhist framework; Hridaya-Yoga, the Way of the Heart; or Bio-Energetic Depth-Transcendence, the essence (Depth, Heart) and culmination (Transcendence, Beloved) of self-awareness (the communion-union of Life-Energy, Buddha-Jivanta). If all of that is too complicated, just call it Scientific-Tantra, the open-ended analytical inquiry of Unbroken Wholeness.

Christ's dual-mitzvot to love God and to love self and others equally, can be translated, into Jivantic terms. To love Truth is to love deeply from, in, and as the Heart; and to love expansively from, in, and as the Beloved. To love self and others equally (and, thus, all living beings, whether animate or non-animate) is to love the energy/matter cosmos of Jivanta; and to love the Buddhas, or centers of actualized or potential awareness. To practice Jivanta is to practice the Heart of all religions, to fufill them in their very essence. To practice Jivanta is to practice the way of the Buddhas, to commune with the Christ, to praise Ahura Mazda, to usher in the Messianic Era, to emulate the Conquerors, to utter the Name of Truth, to pray towards the Holy City, and to install the Bright Guru, the Great Ahamasmi. Different religions and spiritualities are different experimental laboratories for pointing toward truth, different existential adventures into nature and deeper-than-nature; and all of them can offer novelty and sacrifice, and all of them can (and will) be transformed.

Essentially, I am neither merely Christian nor merely Buddhist nor merely both nor merely neither. I practice the Spiritual Science of observation-awareness, problem-recognition, hypothesis-formulation, and solution-testing; this is the genetic code, the tantric-method, the theo-algorithm, the Spiritual Science, by which all religions and spiritualities function. Both my Buddhism and my pre-conciliar Christianity are Spiritual Sciences to which I have concrete, formal connections. I also have equally deep, but non-concrete, non-formal connections to Hinduism and Islam, and am equally Hindu and Muslim. Hinduism represents the Heart; Christianity, the Beloved; Buddhism, the Buddha; and Islam, Jivanta. Though Hinduism represents the Heart, Hinduism is not to be equated to the Heart. The Heart is the source of Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam; and the realizers associated with these religious traditions all realized the Heart and communicated that realization in diverse ways, ways dependent upon their physical, emotional, intellectual, cultural, and social contexts. Any differences among these religious traditions are differences of non-ultimate import; and if there seem to be differences of ultimate import, then know that those differences have been mis-interpreted, mis-applied, or mis-understood. These four faiths together thus symbolize the entirety of humanity's spiritual adventure; they serve as gate-ways to the larger vistas of the almost infinitely creative fields of human religion and bio-spirituality; and this diversity, and reality itself, arises out of the most basic, and highest, Dharma, the Scientific-Tantric matrix, the always-already intimate, always-new and ever-ancient, Tantric-Eucharistic communion-union, satsang-yoga, of rejection and acceptance, skepticism and trust, compassion and wisdom, yang and yin, Adam and Eve, Christ and the Church, Sun and Moon, Shiva and Shakti, Jina and Jiva, Krishna and Radha, the Creator and the UnCreated, the Beloved and the Heart, originally, continually, and finally realized in every single form.

23 December 2007

22 December 2007

24 November 2007

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24 May 2007

15 February 2007

21 January 2007

20 January 2007

16 January 2007

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