Brahma

There's a steadiness to this pleasure, a reliability.

It makes it a lot easier to let go of sensual pleasures and to not be afraid of the fact that you may be leaving sensual pleasures because you could be going to one of the higher realms of the devas, the Brahma's, where the pleasure is constant, the ease is constant, the refreshment is constant.

That's one way of dealing with these, these fears.

Then there's the fear of losing the body.

You don't feel lost when you die.

If you don't penetrate any higher, you'll be reborn in a Brahma realm.

You can expect eleven benefits when the heart's release by love has been cultivated, developed and practiced, made a vehicle and a basis, kept up, consolidated and properly implemented.

The Man from the City of Attaka At one time Venerable Ananda was staying near Wasali in the little village of Belowa.

So here, this is the point which is taken all the time, even in Bhagavad Gita.

Seh yajna prajasrishtva puravacha prajapati anena prasvadhyamesha vostheshta kamadhukh So Prajapati Brahma, he created human beings along with yajna.

And yajna is called as kamadhukh.

Kamadhukh means it gives the milk of fulfilling your desires.

So he says that is well known, so Krishna did not speak.

So bhagavata is to know that I am the Ishwara.

Not others, Brahma, Rudra, etc.

They are not the controllers.

Um, and that's where our, our chapter falls.

The Brahma-viharas, or the sublime attitudes, are meditation practices based on a foundation of morality.

And then the last third of the path of purification is the wisdom practices of going deeper into insight and vipassana and coming to be aware of the way things are.

And you mention morality or ethics in, uh, also in terms of a calm mind.

Mm-hmm

... at least this particular tradition of Buddhism.

So here you turn to the Brahma-vihāras or the sublime attitudes as you've translated them, which are described as four kinds of attention.

So can you talk about the Brahma-vihāras and love as a form of attention?

Many of the Upanishads focus on oneness, but those who are only able to see that oneness without seeing the plurality of the supreme spirit within all of life, they are lost also.

They are in-- It's said that they become blinded by the light of the Brahman.

Why? The Upanishad also states, said, "Within the tree of the body, there reside two souls." Turn it down? Okay.

We will.

There would not be a God.

It would just be a unique, uh, impotent, formless absolute, which is what those who do not receive the grace of the Lord perceive it as.

Those who do not receive the grace of the Lord perceive ultimate superstrata of reality as formless, undifferentiated Brahman, devoid of any variety.

And in our consideration then, in that case, this material reality is better because it has variety, has love, has all these things associated with it.

In the first Valli, we talked about the Virata or the Vishwaroopa.

So he's saying that by at least doing that, the person will reach the Brahmaloka and learn the knowledge from the best Guru, Brahma himself.

So basically, it's a krama mukti.

We talked about this, again, as part of Sagar Gita.

But Katrupanishad talks about eleven.

So, what are the other two gates? So, one is the navel from which we are fed before we are born.

And then the last one is the Brahman earth.

From which the...

And it's a It might not just be a poetic addition, this detail, because you'll remember in chapter 16, when we were discussing outwitting the stars, he was there occasionally intercepting the moonlight before he was healing.

Brahman's Yogananda.

So there could be even here some subtle astrological reference that we know not of, because the position of the moon and the time is all very relevant for things like auspicious moments to make announcements and let news be heard.

all that kind of stuff so yeah yeah we don't know but it could be he says so he says smiling to yogananda you are that one that babaji promised to send me which is very sweet isn't it he says i was happy where yogananda is saying swami yogananda at this point is saying i was happy to learn that babaji had directed my steps to liri maashai Yet it was hard for me to visualize myself in the remote west away from my guru and the sinful hermitage peace.