Professor
Desani delivered a talk in old Bombay in the late 1960s titled Ethics,
Nirvana, and Sundry Items. Todd Katz has today edited and published
(.pdf) this
here. It is the item at the top of the list of other "samples".
Some excerpts:
"These things by themselves do not lead us to the ideal. They help us
approach the ideal. A person who keeps his conduct Good – as
defined so far – is the one who qualifies. It is quite in
order to ask what it is for which one should qualify.
"To know this, to experience this.....is to attain
excellence, freedom, mukti, Nirvana. But to attain it, one
needs bala or balāni; power, or powers.
"You need to have in your favor,
prārabdha;
a fate, a destiny, a beginning in the past. To be possessed of a good
‘past’ is a
bala (a power). By ‘past’ is meant the
infinite or a ‘history’ of a
Consciousness. An individual
born with an enormous bank balance, any prince or princess of a
ruling house, with a few or no obligations or responsibilities, has
to his or her credit a ‘past’. An individual born with an
infirmity, an incurable disease, robbing him of the freedom of
action, has a ‘past’. Both he, and an individual born with gifts,
experience the advantages, and the disadvantages, of their
situations, and regardless of their
Will.
Faith is a
bala. A person without faith is the one who has his palm
formed into a fist. You cannot give him anything. He cannot receive
it. If a person
exerts, practices, he has
bala, or
power. If a person has
samādhi – he has concentration of
mind, has calmness, as opposed to the
restlessness of
Lobha
[that] I mentioned, he has real
bala, power."
.........
"Methods vary. Some look at and contemplate an image – a pratimā.
Some visualize – ‘see’ mentally, direct attention to – a
thought, a notion, a concept, a quality. (To contemplate one’s
God as supreme, as good, as true, as merciful,
as just, as love, as wisdom, is to contemplate
the qualities of supremacy or power, goodness, truth, mercy,
justice, love and wisdom. To venerate in a contemplation Gautama, the
Buddha, or any other Buddha, as omniscient, as enlightened, as
virtuous, free from Lobha, Dosa, Moha – regardless of its
value as a prayer or a communication – would be a contemplation of
his qualities.) It does not matter what means are employed so
long as those lead to success in controlling that operation of
Consciousness called ‘attention’. The Buddha recommends
that we contemplate maître – lovingkindness for all beings
whatsoever, human, infra-human, supra-human; and karunā
– compassion for all beings, the good, the evil, all; muditā
– altruistic joy in the happiness of all; upeksha –
equanimity, the quality that enables us to accept, with calmness, and
dignity, both joy and sorrow. The contemplation of these – with
method and technique – can lead us to high samādhi, to the
bala, power, of a concentrated mind. And to develop these
qualities, as character traits, is as high an ethical aim as
one can conceive."
...................
"...it is possible, citing an experience,
just to ‘see’ a tree.
It is possible, by controlling the mind, by
freeing it,
freeing it of all concepts – through the techniques the Buddha has
taught us, by developing
Sati and
Samādhi
– to ‘barely’ ‘see’ a tree, for a
millionth-millionth part of a second. And to declare that
it does
not exist: or to say – from lacking the means to communicate
exactly an experience – that the tree ‘exists’ only in the
‘mind’, in your
C, in your particular scheme of knowing
and understanding. At any rate, such a judgment would be as ‘true’
or as ‘false’, or more ‘true’ and less ‘false’, than the
summary assertion
“I saw a tree.” The Buddha has asked us
to barely see. He has asked us to
barely see (and not
involve
mana, the mind, in reactions, responses). That is true
‘seeing’.
The ethical implications of such an appraisal of the
world – both external and internal – are enormous."
...................
"The nearest conceivable lakṣaṇa – mark or feature – of
Nirvana – according to Gautama, the Buddha, is peace.
Bhagwan was careful to point out that the peace – the śanti
lakhana of Nirvana – is not the ‘peace’ experienced by
creatures in the world of phenomena."
