MyLifeYoga

Bhakti is devotion to God and Jnana is spiritual wisdom or knowledge. What is the relationship between the two? A question was asked to a knowledgable monk. Here is his response:

Bhakti and jnana are as inseparable as two sides of a coin. Jnana means spiritual wisdom. To gain the highest jnana–knowledge of God–an extraordinary degree of effort will certainly be required. But will our limited efforts ever be sufficient to scale the lofty heights of jnana to finally know God? Without grace, without the Lord’s blessings, those heights will forever remain beyond our grasp. Yet, when we invoke the Lord’s grace with our prayers and worship, then our sincere efforts to gain jnana will be blessed. Thus bhakti helps us attain jnana.

As for bhakti, consider this question: “How can we worship a God who is totally unknown to us?” In human relationships, we find it difficult to love people whom we do not know. Conversely, the more intimately we know a person, the stronger our bond of love grows. In the same way, the more intimately we know the Lord, the more intense our devotion will grow. Therefore, jnana, knowledge of the Lord, strengthens our bhakti.

In our lives of spiritual growth, we need both jnana and bhakti. How sad it is when someone says, “I am a very intellectual person; bhakti is not for me,” or when someone else says, “I am a very emotional person, so I avoid jnana.” We need both; we need all the help we can get! To focus exclusively on either bhakti or jnana and to ignore the other is to deny ourselves the very spiritual practices we need most to lift our minds and hearts to the Lord.

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Credits:
This is from the yahoo group HarshaSatsangh. Unfortunately it seems the name of the monk was mis-typed in the e-mail so we have omitted the name rather than misquote it.

Bette Calman is a 83 year old yoga star. Since she has taken up yoga in the 50s she has not been to a doctor for over 50 years! So the question is: Is Yoga the anti-aging elixir for a long life?

If we look at the core group of people who have been responsible for the spread and popularity of modern yoga we have to begin with Krishnamacharya. He lived to be over 100 years old. His most famous western disciple Indra Devi lived to be 102. His other world famous disciples are BKS Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois. BKS Iyengar is still alive at the age of 94 and Pattabhi Jois passed away in 2009 at the age of 93. In addition Tao Porchon Lynch is a 93 year old yoga teacher who teaches in the Iyengar style of yoga. All these people were not related to each other and the only common thing they have is a regular practice of Yoga in the style taught by Krishnamacharya. Clearly there seems to be some connection between practicing yoga regularly and living a long and healthy life.

One thing is clear is that the practice of yoga is not going to make you immortal or younger. This may be like stating the obvious but needs to be stated, as there are some texts both ancient and modern that make such tall claims. It is however true that if you are suffering from accelerated aging due to excessive stress, and you take up yoga regularly you may see that these effects will reverse and you may appear younger. But be sure that age will eventually catch up with you.

Since the ill effects of stress on health and wellbeing are well known it should come as no surprise that yoga, whose anti-stress qualities are now well researched, should result in a longer life span and healthier lives. Sadly there are no definitive studies done on this subject, but the correlation of long life pointed out among the group of individuals mentioned in this post seems to be more than just a happy coincidence.

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A recent NY times article provides an insider account of how the food industry is shaping our food habits. Following are some trends that this article highlights:

1. There is an increasing trend to replace home cooked meals with pre-packaged lunches known as “lunchables.” (Sales in US and UK approached the 1 Billion mark in 2013.)
2. When busy, there is a tendency to skip lunch and replace it with snacks, and the amount of snacking is growing steadily.
3. A 2011 study of over twelve thousand women and men over a 25 year period shows that as we grow older we tend to exercise less and watch more TV. And when combined with our change in eating style leads to an average increase of weight of around 3.3 pounds every four years.

The result of these trends is that one in three persons in the US is clinically obese along with one in five kids. While over half of the population in the US is overweight, 24 million people in the US have type II diabetes. Even gout, a painful form of arthritis, formerly known as a “rich man’s disease” and associated with gluttony is making a resurgence. More than eight million people in the US are afflicted with it. Of course as industrialization and mass marketing of processed food spreads to the developing world these statistics will spread there too.

While the article details some onerous industry practices such as marketing of lunchables directly to kids during the Saturday morning cartoon show, and it also talks about industry practice of engineering products like Cheetos that melt in the mouth quickly and trick the brain to consume endless quantities of it, in the end it is our responsibility to take charge of our own food habits. Here is a quick guide of what you can do to take charge: Continue reading →