IndiaPost.com - Nithyananda brings modern perspective to Jain Sutras

India Post News Service

BUENA PARK, CA: In a series of six talks on sutras, or aphorisms culled from the Jain tradition of Mahavira at the Jain temple in Buena Park, CA, Paramahamsa Nithyananda brought a fresh clarity, and unsurpassed richness of personal wisdom that is much beyond his 30 years of age.

The audience was held spellbound by the profound truths delivered in contemporary terms, with practical solutions and everyday examples from both the life of Nithyananda himself, as well as those found in our daily lives. Far from being a sermon with a Swami preaching morality, this was an opportunity for all of us to reexamine our own lives in the light that Nithyananda held in our direction, an opportunity to experience the bliss which he spoke about.

Through his powerful words, one got a glimpse of the energy and consciousness which he urged us to rediscover within ourselves. The first day started with a discourse on the topic "Understand & Transcend", which served as the foundation on which the later sutras would be based. Nithyananda praised Mahavira, the Tirthankara or Master who conceived the selected sutras covered in the series of talks, as a "Master who was able to create the technology to not only reproduce enlightened beings, but to also create the purest tradition." Nithyananda added that "there is no other Master who can boast of a beautiful first generation who was fully enlightened.

" Nithyananda's take on the seven levels of religion was startling, and illustrated the mechanisms behind the conflicts underlying our world today. These seven levels of religion, he explained, were ignorance based, fear based, greed based, logic based, love based, meditation based and the ultimate, bliss based. The first four levels only offer some support, but not solutions and answers for life. Love, meditation and celebration or bliss based religions and traditions don't have the problems of using ignorance, fear, and greed based approaches.

Even after 2500 years, Nithyananda said, the core of Mahavira's truths based on love, meditation and celebration is still followed. The following days delved into deeper subjects, including how to transcend desires, true knowledge, and the power of wisdom and discrimination. Especially enlightening was the beautifully expressed understanding of how one may live a life of enrichment while using the senses judiciously, while remaining established in the high energy state of bliss, or ananda through pratyahara, or smart inner allocation and optimization of sensory resources. In response to the question, "you are enlightened, do you have no desires?" Nithyananda answered, "In an enlightened being, the inner space is like one million acres of land, with only 10 acres used for agriculture of desires.

I am not asking you to destroy the 10 acres of agriculture you already have in your inner space. I am asking you to expand your space, so that the present noise doesn't disturb you and suffocate you. "Whenever you feel you wish to posses something, try a simple method. Visualize how it will feel not to have that person or object in your life.

Un-clutch from the idea. Even if you go through some suffering at not having it, allow it to happen and go through it with awareness. This suffering will teach you, purify you and liberate you. You cannot constantly suffer; slowly you will settle down, the depression will leave your inner space, and you will achieve aparigraha. No other Master can teach you like suffering can. Using even suffering and failures to mature yourself, is a very powerful technique." Interestingly, Nithyananda also spoke on taking risks in life, to enable one to move beyond possessiveness, and into a space of freedom from security. In his words,

"A person who is too possessive with his own life will not take risks to expand life, and will only be a couch potato - sleeping and vegetating!" "Life without risks is not worth living; then you are merely waiting for death to happen," He then added, "To fully realize, do not become too serious about life. Become playful, and don't spend all your life designing security. Then, you will find that the existential energy fills you, and gives you all you need to live in freedom." Nithyananda also boldly declared that the very fact that one has taken a human body meant that in some corner of the mind one has the deep desire for liberation.

Otherwise, why choose to be a human, because the human body goes through much suffering, with full awareness of it. We are also aware of suffering around the world. Animals do not have to watch the news. They do not have to suffer thinking of other animals being slaughtered. With the human body we have the possibility to suffer the pain of other creatures, but even then, we chose to incarnate as humans, Nithyananda said.

"You must have had the thirst for liberation. Especially with the current situation in the world, every soul who has taken a human birth in the past 30 or 40 years has done so because of the possibility of liberation," he emphasized. The concluding day drove home the final and revolutionary truths of liberation from the Moksha Marga sutras, which Nithyananda said are such a powerful expression of truth, that only a sincere seeker is attracted to them. There was a time when the idea of liberation was used to rule over the masses, but this sutra does not make possible such control, said Swamiji, because it is the essence of undiluted truth, with no room for error. In conclusion, he drove home the powerful concluding message, saying, "You have pure consciousness which animates your body, and a connection like a knot called the chit-jada granthi.

This connection is called ignorance, or maya. But if you look really deeply, you will find that there is no connection at all, and in that moment you are liberated." Nithyananda clarified further, "It is like you are in a room with only three walls, and are crying that you are trapped, when someone says to you, that one side is open, and that you are actually free. Suddenly you realize, that you were never bound. So, let you realize this pure truth, that you are the Ocean that has become the wave, the wave and Ocean are One, and that you are always connected to the Source. You are already enlightened!" Paramahamsa Nithyananda, Enlightened Master and modern mystic from South India is touring eight cities in the United States and Canada this spring. He will be delivering a series of talks on Shiva Sutras in Sanatan Dharma Temple in Norwalk, CA starting March 19, and also conduct a weekend meditation workshop on March 24 and 25.