Posts Tagged ‘Chandogya Upanishad’
Follow Your Heart ~
Treasure Hunt Instructions
“The way is not in the sky.
The way is in the heart.”
~ Buddha
“As far, verily, as this world-space extends,
so far extends the space within the heart…”
~ Chandogya Upanishad 8.1.3
“Follow your heart – even if it contradicts my words”
“If there is love in your heart,
you don’t have to worry about rules.”
~ Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.”
“These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.”
“Beautiful people do not just happen.”
~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, (Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975)
“It is in the darkness that one finds the light.”
~ Meister Eckhart
“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow,
but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”
~ Leo Tolstoy
“Suffering is the way for Realization of God.”
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;
the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
~ Khalil Gibran
“None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.“
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri Book Two
Ron’s Introduction to “Follow Your Heart ~ Treasure Hunt Instructions”
Dear Friends,
The following brief but profound “Follow Your Heart” sutra-poem was first composed and mailed to my daughter Jessica for her twenty ninth birthday anniversary, on May 27, 1995. Soon after launching the SillySutras website, it was published online.
As fatherly advice, I had previously counseled both Jessica and her brother Joshua to:
‘Follow your heart;
don’t harm other beings;
and if possible try to help them.’
And Jessica already had courageously followed her heart in dropping out of Amherst to seek wisdom of the East, even after her distinguished Professor of Buddhist studies, Dr. Robert Thurman, had recommended that she stay and graduate before going to India.
But in 1995 I wanted to assuage Jessica’s concerns, cheer her up, and encourage her to keep following her inner guidance. So I intuitively composed and sent her this ‘follow your heart’ sutra-poem which I first titled: “Birthday Treasure Hunt Instructions” (Later, in publishing the poem’s timeless advice, I excised the word “birthday”)
I don’t remember my thoughts about the poem when I intuitively composed and sent it to Jessica. Maybe my fatherly advice was supposed to summarize one of my favorite Shakespeare passages, in which Polonius emphasizes to his embarking son Laertes:
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any [person].”
~ William Shakespeare ~ Hamlet, Act I, Scene III
And maybe my poetic advice to Jessica, was mindfully intended to encompass the essence of the Golden Rule of reciprocal empathy that:
We do no harm and treat all beings
with the same dignity we wish for ourselves,
and that they wish for themselves.
Nor do I recall whether in 1995 I was already aware of the profound scriptural passages which I have cited above. But these sutra-poem verses can be understood as consistent with them.
Only much later did I discover Mark Twain’s humorously memorable observation that
“The two most important days in your life
are the day you are born
and the day you find out why.”
~ Mark Twain
Perhaps I was unknowingly sending Jessica a message on the anniversary of the ‘first most important day of her life’ about how to discover and celebrate the ‘second most important day of her life’.
In all events, I was convinced that by following our Sacred Heart we will be in harmony with all life everywhere.
So that as my beloved Guruji revealed:
“If there is love in your heart,
you don’t have to worry about rules.”
~ Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
Initial Dedication of “Follow Your Heart”
Thus, this sutra-poem was first deeply dedicated to inspiring us
– no matter what we experience in our worldly lives –
to always heed and follow (for us and for all others)
the Eternal inner wisdom of our shared Sacred Heart:
Follow Your Heart ~ Treasure Hunt Instructions
Follow your heart
to find what you wish.Follow your heart
to seek what you miss.Follow your heart
and you shall know this:You are your heart,
you are your bliss,You are what you seek,
you are what you miss.So follow –
and find –Your HEART.
Ron’s audio explanation and recitation of “Follow Your Heart ~ Treasure Hunt Instructions”
2023 Epilogue to “Follow Your Heart ~ Treasure Hunt Instructions”
“Follow Your Heart” was initially inspired and composed when my daughter Jessica had recently returned from seven years in India and re-enrolled at Amherst College to complete the curriculum from which she had dropped out one semester short of graduation. Since she was much older than other undergraduates she was feeling out of place, uncertain and somewhat depressed.
Thereafter Jessica graduated Amherst; attained a Smith College masters degree; met and married a ‘best friend’ husband of 23 years, and birthed two beautiful daughters one of whom is a “special needs” child who has required Jessica’s continuing personal attention.
Today, May 27, 2023, 29 years after composing the foregoing “Follow Your Heart” sutra verses I am republishing them with added above key quotations from Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, world renowned scientist, teacher, author and pioneering authority on death and dying, and others, to encourage and inspire our realization that our relative reality “inner” and “outer” space/time duality experiences are obverse perspectives of the same Absolute non-duality REALITY.
That thereby we can fearlessly endure, inwardly evolve from, and ultimately transcend previously unforeseen intense sufferings, by always remembering that
“Beautiful people do not just happen.”
~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
“It is in the darkness that one finds the light.”
~ Meister Eckhart
“Suffering is the way for Realization of God.”
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;
the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
~ Khalil Gibran
“None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.“
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri Book Two
.
Rededication and Invocation of “Follow Your Heart”
Thus, “Follow Your Heart” is deeply rededicated
to inspiring our fearless endurance of previously
unknown and unforeseen intense sufferings
with the intention of helping us and all others
to follow the Eternal Wisdom of our shared Sacred HEART
– no matter what happens in our worldly lives.
Invocation
May we always fearlessly follow
Our shared Sacred HEART –
As Eternal Peace, Life, Light, and LOVE,
No matter what happens in our worldly lives.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Open Heart Therapy
“The way is not in the sky.
The way is in the heart.”
~ Buddha
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
~ Rumi
“Your pain is the medicine by which the
physician within heals thyself.”
“Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun,
so must you know pain.”
~ Kahlil Gibran
“We must feel our heart
to heal our heart.
Feeling hastens healing.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“The best and most beautiful things in the world
cannot be seen or even touched –
they must be felt with the heart.”
~ Helen Keller
“There is a light that shines beyond all things on Earth, …
beyond the highest, the very highest heavens.
This is the light that shines in your Heart.”
~ Chandogya Upanishad 3.13.7
“As far, verily, as this world-space extends,
so far extends the space within the heart…”
~ Chandogya Upanishad 8.1.3
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
~ King Solomon – Proverbs 23:7
“The release of atom power ..changed everything
except our way of thinking…
the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.”
~ Albert Einstein
“If there is love in your heart,
you don’t have to worry about rules.”
~ Sri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
Open Heart Therapy
Introduction to “Open Heart Therapy”
Dear Friends,
The following sutra-poem was inspired by my realization that a broken heart (from a very painful divorce), had opened my spiritual heart to previously suppressed deep devotional feelings and frequent tears; that a broken heart had triggered an awakened evolutionary healing process – a ‘‘breakdown-breakthrough” from decades of ego-mind afflictions.
Since long-ago composing “Open Heart Therapy”, I’ve become a “faith-based optimist”. Hence, following the sutra-poem’s words and recitation below, I optimistically explain with comments and quotes, why I now foresee that a “critical mass” of awakened people with opened spiritual hearts will soon actualize an elevated a new earth-age – an historically unprecedented era transcending current worldwide human insanity which catastrophically threatens all life on our precious planet.
These sutra verses and writings are deeply dedicated to optimistically inspiring our energetically uplifted transcendence of ego-mind’s evolutionary impediments, and so to hastening our spiritual transformation.
May they thereby encourage us to enjoy health and freedom, beyond fearful ego-mind sufferings.
Ron Rattner
Open Heart Therapy
We must feel our heart
to heal our heart.
Feeling hastens healing.
A closed heart is a cold heart.
An open heart is a warm heart –
a compassionate heart.
As our heart ever opens,
its capacity for compassion ever grows.
And as its boundaries expand,
so do its possibilities ever expand.
An opened heart
is an illumined heart;
a limitless, boundless heart;
a loving heart.
Ron’s audio recitation of “Open Heart Therapy”
Ron’s Reflections on “Open Heart Therapy”
for Awakening to an Elevated New Age.
Dear Friends,
We live in an age of mental malaise. Delusional human behaviors are threatening all Earth life as we have known it. For our peaceful survival, we must transcend these insane behaviors and resolve the problems they have caused.
As Albert Einstein aptly observed:
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” …
“The release of atom power ..changed everything except our way of thinking … the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.”
Thus for our peaceful survival on planet Earth, the critical problems now confronting humanity must be transcended – societally and individually – through spiritually elevated heartfelt awareness.
According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
“Ultimately, the decision to save the environment must come from the human heart. [From] a genuine sense of universal responsibility that is based on love, compassion and clear awareness.”
Also the Dalai Lama says that, for such a heart level of universal planetary responsibility, we need ethics based on spirituality “beyond religion” – because religion alone “is no longer adequate”.
How can this happen?
With ever expanding empathy for all life everywhere we must follow ‘the Golden Rule’. For millennia wisdom teachers from virtually all enduring ethical, religious, and spiritual traditions have proposed a simple ethical rule which if conscientiously followed will change the world.
Its essence is that we do no harm; that we treat all sentient beings with the same dignity that we wish for ourselves and that they wish for themselves.
Though easy to understand, this Golden Rule of reciprocal empathy can not easily be followed until we awaken within – beyond ego-mind’s “optical illusion” of separateness – to indivisible spiritual Wholeness with all beings and all life everywhere.
Then as Einstein suggests we must gradually
“widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Eventually, we won’t even need the Golden rule. As my beloved Guruji Shri Dhyanyogi revealed:
“If there is love in your heart,
you don’t have to worry about rules.”
Ultimately, by following our sacred heart we’ll be in harmony with all life everywhere.
Conclusion and Dedication
As a “faith-based optimist”, I now foresee that a “critical mass” of awakened people with opened spiritual hearts will soon actualize an elevated new earth-age – an historically unprecedented era transcending current worldwide human insanity which catastrophically threatens all life on our precious planet.
Thus today’s sutra verses and writings are optimistically dedicated to inspiring our energetically uplifted transcendence of ego-mind’s evolutionary impediments to an egalitarian new age, and so to hasten our spiritual transformation beyond fearful suffering to health and spiritual freedom.
Invocation
With opened and awakened hearts,
may we envision and actualize an egalitarian new age,
wherein everyone everywhere treats all beings and all life
with the same dignity that they wish for themselves –
with a “genuine sense of universal responsibility
that is based on love, compassion and clear awareness.”
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
Inner Illumination
“There is a light that shines beyond all things on Earth, …
beyond the highest, the very highest heavens.
This is the light that shines in your Heart.”
~ Chandogya Upanishad 3.13.7
“You are the light of the world.”
~ Matthew 5:14
Inner Illumination
Beyond duality “reality” of darkness and light –
of outer light casting shadows –
There glows within each of us
a timeless shadowless effulgence;
The invisible Source of all visible light.
Knowingly or unknowingly,
but irresistibly,
we seek to emerge from all shadows
And to merge with THAT
shadowless inner effulgence
Which is our own true Self –
The light of universal Awareness:
Ever glowing,
Ever growing,
Ever knowing –
Itself.
Ron’s audio recitation of Inner Illumination
Invocation
May we ever honor
“the light of the world”
THAT timeless Source of all light –
of all creation;
The inner light of Self
gleaming in each of us.
as Eternal LOVE.
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
When and How Shall We Think?
“The heart has its reasons
that reason does not know.”
~ Blaise Pascal
“If you correct your mind,
the rest of your life will fall into place.”
~ Lao Tzu
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift,
and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honors the servant
and has forgotten the gift.”
~ Albert Einstein
“I think with intuition.
The basis of true thinking is intuition.
Indeed, it is not intellect,
but intuition
which advances humanity. ”
~ Albert Einstein
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
~ Albert Einstein
“We are formed and molded by our thoughts.
Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts
give joy when they speak or act.
Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.”
~ Buddha
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
~ Proverbs 23:7
When and How Shall We Think?
Q. When and how shall we think?
A. The power of rational thought is a great gift.
But, like a tool, it’s best to choose it before we use it.
Before thinking rationally, if we still the ‘voice in our head’,
we can feel and listen to our Heart – our intuition and soul.
Thus we can first hear our Heart, not our head.
In our metaphoric Heart shines the Eternal light of Truth –
the light of Love. As stated in ancient Vedic scriptures:
“There is a light that shines beyond all things on Earth, … beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your Heart.”
~ Chandogya Upanishad 3.13.7
Logic has its limits. When confused or misused as ego, rational thought can impede spiritual evolution, causing perpetual karmic suffering. But Truth and Love are boundless and timeless.
So, it’s best to honor our Heart, over our rational mind –
using innate intellect to serve and follow our Sacred Heart.
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
Invocation
May we still our minds,
to follow our Heart.
And as we so follow our Heart,
May we uncover and discover
ever expanding happiness, empathy and awareness.
With which we consciously and cooperatively
co-create an ever better world –
as we intend, intuit, and imagine it to be.
Related Post:
How Can We Think More Objectively?
It’s In Every One of Us
~ The Eyes Have It
“The way is not in the sky.
The way is in the heart.”
~ Buddha
It’s in every one of us to be wise
Find your heart
And open up both your eyes
We can all know every thing
Without ever knowing why
It’s in every one of us by and by
~ David Pomeranz
The eyes are the windows of the soul.
~ Traditional Proverb
“The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.”
~ John Greenleaf Whittier, My Psalm
“Open thine eyes — bright windows to the soul”
~ William Hetherington
“It is the soul itself which sees and hears,
and not those parts which are, as it were,
but windows to the soul…”
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
“There is a light that shines beyond all things on Earth, …
beyond the highest, the very highest heavens.
This is the light that shines in your Heart.”
~ Chandogya Upanishad 3.13.7
“Let my soul smile through my heart
and my heart smile through my eyes,
that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.”
~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Anandamayi Ma (April 30, 1896 – August 27, 1982)
Ron’s Introduction
Dear Friends,
Soon after my midlife spiritual awakening in the 1970’s, I listened (on New Dimensions Radio) to a then popular spiritual song “It’s In Every One of Us”, composed, arranged and beautifully sung by David Pomeranz. I found the lyrics and heartfelt performance to be exceptionally inspiring. They authentically communicated a simple but very profound spiritual message, about looking within to find and follow our heart.
I don’t remember ever again hearing this song for many years after the 1970’s. Then, more than thirty years later, while preparing to launch the SillySutras website, I synchronistically discovered an online video of David Pomeranz’s original performance, enhanced by inspiring visuals of the luminous eyes of diverse members of our global family.
Soon after launching SillySutras.com I posted the video, together with my “The Eyes Have It” poem below (that it inspired) about our eyes as windows of the soul.
Especially in these extraordinarily challenging times of extreme global turmoil and stress, I sincerely think that this exceptionally artistic video, with its profound spiritual message of finding peace and happiness within by following our heart, can be very helpful.
So I’ve again posted it, with refrain lyrics and amended poetry verses. And I sincerely hope you enjoy it.
Ron Rattner
The Eyes Have It
~ by Ron Rattner
The eyes are
the Sacred soul’s
windows to the world;
The eyes have it –
They gleam with Divinity
of Inner Infinity –
With our Sacred Heart’s
Eternal Light of LOVE.
May they ever remind us
that our Truth and our Way
is always within –
Not in the outer World,
But always
“In Every One of Us”.
And so shall it be!
Ven. Kalu Rinpoche (1905 – May 10, 1989)
“It’s In Every One of Us” – by David Pomeranz
Photos & Video by Wernher Krutein.
“It’s In Every One of Us” – Refrain Lyrics:
It’s in every one of us to be wise
Find your heart
And open up both your eyes
We can all know every thing
Without ever knowing why
It’s in every one of us by and by
Dedication
May the luminosity of the foregoing music, images and writings
open our hearts to the Eternal Light in every one of us,
and help uplift each of us – like Paramahansa Yogananda – to
“Let my soul smile through my heart
and my heart smile through my eyes,
that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.”
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
