Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita by Ram Dass

Author:Ram Dass
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2007-12-17T15:00:00+00:00

The Puja Bazaar: A bazaar sprang up outside the hall, where people brought religious photos, craft items, and ritual objects to sell and barter, everyone trying good-naturedly to bargain and at the same time to remain mindful that “everything is God.” It was a creative attempt to stay conscious through the temptations of the marketplace.

we give anonymously, it’s just a subtler hype: “Look at how good I am—I gave anonymously.” See? Just more ego-feeding!

In dealing with money, it’s useful to try adopting the notion that you’re merely the bookkeeper in the firm. It’s not your money; you’re just there to administer it in a responsible way. It wasn’t really my father’s money, he was merely the keeper of that energy at that moment, because it was his karma to play that role. It’s your karma to work with your money, or with whatever other corner on the energy market might have been given to you, but the energy doesn’t belong to you.We’re all just moving God’s energy around from hand to hand.

People often bring me little gifts of one kind or another. Sometimes someone wants to give me something, and I find I can’t take it, because I feel they want something while they’re giving the gift. Other people just have some beautiful thing that they want to share with me; then I’ll take it, and I’ll use it for a while, and I’ll pass it on to somebody else. It’s just a sharing of energy; it’s not yours or mine—whose is it, anyway?

When the United States gives food as foreign aid, like sending wheat to Biafra, we stamp on it, “Gift of the United States of America.” It’s like we’re demanding gratitude—and so everybody ends up hating us, and we can’t understand why. It’s not our gift to give in the first place—it’s God’s wheat! Why are we making such a big deal about it? Because it grew on our land—our land? What’s that about? My mother used to go around “our” property and say, “That’s my tree and that’s my tree and that’s my tree.” Far-out concept, “my tree.” They’re all God’s trees. Nobody owns anything—how absurd! We’re just working with the energy that’s passing through us.

If we have the energy, we’re responsible for it.We can use it to create more heaven or more hell; we can relieve the suffering of sentient beings, or we can take them deeper into illusion. Which way we use it will depend on whether we think the energy belongs to us, and whether we think the other beings are us. We can’t simultaneously be protecting our little stash, hoarding it away, and at the same time opening our hearts to other people. Practicing aparigraha is about renouncing first-chakra stuff like possessiveness and greed, so we can start playing in a more conscious way with whatever energies have been given to us.

Asteya- non-stealing- is obvious: If everybody’s “us,” who are you going to steal from? Are you going to rip yourself off? Are you going to steal out of the cookie jar at home? You’re just taking it from yourself.

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