Contemplations from the 3rd Lesson on the
Shiva Sutras
Sutra 2: Jnanam bandhah
‘Knowledge held on to,
becomes bondage.’
The nature of your original mind is
boundless empty openness. It contains, at all times, every possibility that
ever was and will ever be, it is the source of all knowledge. It’s your BIG
MIND, something like the Internet. Your personal mind or little mind is akin to
a ‘PC’. On its own it can input, store and process information, which is useful
but desperately limited. Yet, how would it be if you are able to connect the
‘PC’ of your little mind, into the Internet of the BIG MIND and download what
you need when you need it!
In this second sutra, Shiva is urging us
forward, saying: “Forget what you think you know, for there is so much more if
you are willing to let go. Your old knowledge is like a graveyard, stop
resurrecting corpses of the past and come live in the aliveness of the
present. Don’t let your mind hold onto knowledge and build a temple of it. Use
it and move on, keep opening your mind, however painful, to new possibilities.”
Our personal mind is limited and if we
depend on its stored knowledge, over time this knowledge will become a prison
for us. What we know does not make us
who we are. Who we are is who we are and what we know is what we know. Don’t
confuse the two. We are not what we think ourselves to be, we are what we are
when we stop thinking! What is the good of gaining all the knowledge of the
world if we have no idea who we are? Shiva says ‘Any knowledge without knowledge of the Self
is not only limited, its bondage’.
If you want to grow in wisdom, put down
what you know, empty yourself and listen, for there is an intelligence available
to you that cannot be learned, only tuned into, but this station never plays
the same music twice.
How would it be if you saw an ex-lover? How
many slides of the past would come before your eyes to colour your perception
and distort your reality? Maybe it has been seven years since you saw him, not
a single cell in his body is the same. He is a completely new person; yet, all
you can see is the man from seven years before. Shiva says, ‘knowledge is
bondage’.
You are a conscious being, how much has
your understanding of life changed in the past year? The knowledge and
understanding you had a year ago was fine for then but not for now. What you saw as truth then, is not your truth
now. So is it not so that the understanding you have now will also seem limited
in a year from now?
It is only through the force of this
realization that we will be prompted to check ourselves when we become aware we’ve
formed fixed ideas, opinions and beliefs, or pass judgment on others.
This self-watching is our work for the week
in this 3rd lesson of the Shiva Sutras.
utterly "mind boggling" wow, beautiful <3
ReplyDeleteLoving the sutras. Can't wait to read more.
ReplyDeleteLoving the sutras. Can't wait to read more.
ReplyDelete