Upcoming Events

Thu, Oct 03, 6:30-7:30 pm: Swami will be speaking on Durga Saptasati (700 verses on Durga) at the Hindu Temple of RI at 40 Crystal Rd, Warwick. All welcome.

Durga Puja: Sat Oct 05; 11 am to 7 pm. There will be Puja ritual, flower-offering by devotees, devotional music, Prasad-lunch, video, dance on Mother Durga.

VEENA CONCERT BY DURGA KRISHNAN: Sun, Oct 06, 6:15-7:45 pm (after the Sun lecture & Arati)

Daylong Spiritual Retreat: Saturday, Oct 19, 9:30 am to 7:00 pm.
Swami Ishadhyanananda from Vedanta Society, Sacramento, CA will give classes on 2^nd Chapter of Bhagavad Gita. Prior registration required. Registration can be done by email, mail or in person in the book-store. Reg fee $30 ($20 if paid on or before Sat Oct 12).
Click here for Online Registration  and more information.

Weekly Schedule (in addition to Daily Schedule given below)

Past Events

Swami Akhandananda Birth-day, Sat Sept 28: Observed with the Disciple-chant in the morning, and birth-day song and bio-reading after the evening Arati.

Swami Traveled to Queens, NY, Sat Sept 28 and from there to Vedanta Society of NY: He did the worship and then a lecture on Bhakti and Karma Yoga.  at the Shree Divya Dham, 34-63 56th St, Woodside, NY . Over 220 sevotees present.  then at Vedanta Society of New York he gave a lecture on ‘I Love You’ on Sun, Sept 29 and was back in time to give the Sun service lecture in  Providence.

Synopses of Past Classes
(All classes given by Swami Yogatmananda, unless otherwise stated)

Friday, Sept 27  – Study Class on Svetasvatara Upanisad
Class 39  Ch 5, Verses 4-7:
The divine Lord illuminates all things, is the repository of goodness and greatness, and presides over everything that has a cause. Accordingly, we should feel that every single thing in us is directly connected to God. Because it is so difficult for us to fathom this point, many questions arise. One question we ask is How does the non-dual become a cause? The non-dual becomes a cause when we see that very non-dual as this inscrutable multiplicity. In other words, it is by our ignorance. Everywhere is the presence of the divine, and it must be felt in and through our being. God is the source of divine wisdom, and all scriptures have sprung from that divine reality. Therefore, by fully following the scriptures we can realize God. This is a special feature of this knowledge: we become That by knowing That because we are That. Through this process of Vedanta our ignorance dissipates and the awareness of our true oneness with the divine dawns. Due to our strong attachment to “I and mine,” we become embroiled in the multiplicity and suffer the consequences. On the one hand, we dislike our attachments because they bind us, but on the other hand we do not want them taken away. By realizing the ways God functions through each of us, we will transcend our attachments.

Sunday Service, Sept 29 – Universal Consciousness
Immanuel Kant said that what we perceive is x plus the mind. We get attached and bound by what we know. A thought experiment would be to put the brain outside the body, connected by long nerves. In that case, is the brain watching you or are you watching the brain? The Kenopanishad asks: Who is making the lifeforce within me go on, who is making the mind think, who is making all the organs like ears-eyes function? The sage replies that the instruments are being used by the eye of your eye (and the ear of your ear and the mind of your mind). Shankaracharya says that ‘pointing out’ means showing characteristics perceived by the senses and the mind. The way to understand the sage is to go deep in meditation and to try to see reality not visible by the senses. This is like the wave seeing its connection to the ocean. Swami Ranganathananda said that our identification with the body is our dumbness. If we are not the body, then we were never born, and we are immortal. The Kenopanishad says that consciousness in everyone is the same. There is something hidden in every perception, the way the screen is hidden in the movie. The scientist J.C. Bose obliterated the line between the living and the non-living. The physicist Erwin Schrödinger said that consciousness is a singular, of which the plural is unknown. The instruments feel that they do all the work, but they are powerful only when connected to the source. We need to reduce the ego and find what is essential.

Tuesday, Oct 01 – Study Class on Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play
Manifestations of Power as a Guru Pgs. 465-467
Sri Ramakrishna’s life was not driven by selfish motives. We may ask what were His ambitions and aspirations (since we are all driven by these)? Incarnations are not in need of anything, so they don’t have such ambitions and aspirations. Their sole purpose is to teach us the truth, that each of us is potentially divine. We are limited by our “Upadhis” (limiting adjuncts). Just as by putting on a shirt, we don’t become a shirt, similarly by putting on a body, we don’t become a body. Our true aspiration is to become happy. We should see, who is happy. We find that an incarnation of God is always in bliss. So, we should stand in line and follow the incarnation. This will lead to happiness.
Every aspect of Sri Ramakrishna’s life is demonstrating this teachership. ? Why did Sri Ramakrishna marry? Some common ideas do not apply in His case. Who else would take the trouble to cook for Him? He also said that marriage is among the 10 sacraments for a brahmin. Again, he used to say that a paramhamsa must go through all experiences in life, only then can true renunciation come.
Scriptures teach us that wedlock is not meant for physical enjoyment only. Recognizing that ordinary persons have inherent needs for physical enjoyment, marriage provides a limited expression for this instinct – to limit it to one person. Scriptural injunctions are not needed for telling people to get physical enjoyments – people would go headlong in these enjoyments irrespective of the injunctions. Scriptural injunctions for marriage are provided so that there is a divine element in it. It becomes a way to take you to the goal of renunciation through a gradual course. One needs to go beyond the attraction and repulsion of senses through this graded course to achieve the true renunciation that Sri Ramakrishna talked about.