I read this in a quote this morning. "There is enough
good in the worst of us" and "enough bad in the best of us"... the point being that we should never judge another...
And it really made me think about the "bad" in me. And it's THERE. My bad is never active but only reactive to stress, hunger, tiredness, etc. Ask anyone around me, they will tell you, it is THERE.
First of all, before I get into this, I want to thank you here at the forum for allowing the tangled ball of my mind to unravel before you. And that is what is happening to me now and your support and honesty is so very, very helpful to me.
The above quote started this in me:
Is the tapas of women different from that of men? Many spiritual men practice austerities, and even though they may not be eating, they do not want anyone around them to go hungry. Mother, I believe, would not eat until her husband would eat, (boy would that make me ill with him!...just being honest) Then it made me think of the story of the woman, who's husband died and she tricked Yama from taking her husband seven times. (Wasn't she determined?)
It also made me wonder...if truth is not created (I'm making an assumption here, that this is accurate) then what is untruth?
These two subjects are related in my mind. Right now,I can't tell you how.
Thank you all very much for listening to me.
Sri Ramakrishna would pray to the Divine Mother by offering to Her the various pairs of opposites in exchange for pure love for her. "Mother, here is thy knowledge, here is thy lack. Take them both, and give me pure love for thee." He did this with virtue and vice, good deeds and bad deeds, etc.
But one offering he could not make. He could not offer "untruth" to Mother, even though it would have been HER "untruth" as well as her Truth.
The pairs of opposites only exist within this realm of existence, which is also the realm of ignorance. Everything in our world is made up of, for example, good and bad. It's simply not possible to isolate either, according to Hindu cosmology and religion.
What we do -- if we wish to do a good action is try to choose the best action. When the "mix" is about equal, we become aware that we are chosing the better option, often called "the lesser of two 'evils'". When the mix is imbalanced, we are less aware that our choices still cantain both elements along a continuum. If we place "good" at one end and "bad" at the other, everthing falls at some point in between.
It is this Hindu understanding of existence, I think, that gives rise to the wise practice of detachment. No matter what we do, we cannot guarantee our actions will produce the ideal results. So, better we concentrate on our own motives, purifing our intentions and leaving the results to God.
Why purify our intention and leave the outcomes to God? Because, (a) we have it is our control to do so and (2) the practice, though excedingly difficult, helps to free us froms the chains of ignorance and attachment. Within this realm there can be the continuum of truth and untruth, as there is heat and cold, light and darkness, pleasure and pain, good and evil, etc. We seek freediom from all of these.
I've gotten off track it seems. Yet the Truth we seek is beyond this experience of the world of made from the pairs of opposites. It is Absolute Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss, which have no "opposites".
As a note, the wisdom of Hindu understanding of the nature of creation also gives us reason not to beat ourselves up for the "negative" qualities we find in ourselves. They are there by nature. When we discover a negative qualty we can instead work on changing ourselves, purifying our intentions, and making our way towards Truth.
Thank you again, Jayanti. Your understanding overwhelms me. The point about Sri Ramakrishna not being able to offer the Divine Mother "untruth" stays with me. This is a point I will ponder on.
