A nice Hindu pictorial of the path

Hi everybody!

Here is a nice Hindu pictorial of the path that I found on the TSA Forum.

http://theosophical.ning.com/forum/topics/...d-reincarnation

The woman at the botom is rather attractive!!!

Harvey,

Now I can see why you did not achieve nirvana in your last lifetime. Ha.

And why I'm not likely to achieve it in this lifetime, either.

Hi Harvey,

Me neither. Just like the picture shows, I still have a few more chains I need to break free from.

Hi everybody!

As the picture shows, the first step to get on the path is the casting off of fetters such as pride, lust, etc. Here is a fascinating article on a fetter called entitlement (which is a fetter I had never thought of before).

"Warren Buffett's son preaches values as wealth"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100510/lf_nm_...s_books_buffett

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett has an old-world spiritual message for today's money-rich parents: teach your children values and do not give them everything they want.

Musician and now author Peter Buffett preaches the message in his new book "Life is What You Make it: Finding Your Own Path to Fulfillment". Recently released in the United States, it describes how he wound up a "normal, happy" person instead of a spoiled child to one of the world's richest people.

Buffett, 52, teaches the rewards of self-respect and pursuing one's own passions and accomplishments rather than buying into society's concepts of material wealth.

"I am my own person and I know what I have accomplished in my life," he said. "This isn't about wealth or fame or money or any of that stuff, it is actually about values and what you enjoy and finding something you love doing."

People who are born with a silver spoon in their mouth can fall victim to what Buffett said his father has called a "silver dagger in your back," which leads to a sense of entitlement and a lack of personal achievement.

"Entitlement is the worst thing ever and I see entitlement coming in many guises," he said. "Anybody who acts like they deserve something 'just because,', is a disaster."

But Buffett wasn't always this wise. His own family gave him $90,000 in stock when he was 19, a small sum from such immense financial wealth. After studying at Stanford University, he moved to San Francisco and lived in a studio apartment with just enough room for his musical instruments.

"I was really searching," he said, adding that he began his musical career by working for free writing music for a local television station.

"I was kind of lost, but trying to find myself. It was definitely this strange period where I didn't really know where I was going," he said.

LOOKING AT THE BIG PICTURE

As well his musical passions, the values taught to him growing up and a sense of a bigger picture in life stayed with him during those trying times, he said.

"I was not only not handed everything as a kid, I was shown that there are lots of other people out there with very different circumstances," he said.

Although many people he encounters assume that his father wanted him to go into finance, he said his father accepted his choice to become a musician beginning with commercials then his own albums and composing for television shows and films.

"It was encouraged for a moment when I was open to the idea," he said about pursuing finance. But he added that as he grew older, it became clear the financial world "was not speaking to my heart."

Along with the book, Buffett has embarked on a "Concert & Conversation" tour in which he plays the piano, talks about his life and warns against consumerist culture and damaging the environment.

He said he eventually inherited more money after his mother died in 2004, but by then he had learned his lessons. Now he works on giving back to the world -- another of his life philosophies -- which includes through working for his father's NoVo charitable foundation.

"Economic prosperity may come and go; that's just how it is," he writes in the book. "But values are the steady currency that earn us the all-important rewards."

Interesting picture, but may be misleading. These steps are not of necessity in any order, right? Their importance would seem to be relative. Interesting how they threw in that Study Veda - true to Religious form (one Right religion.)

Christian,

I do not begrudge them the use of the word Veda in this way. This is a picture by Hindus for Hindus, and for Hindus the Vedas are sacred text. We cannot make a deductive leap and say that the artist who created this picture is preaching to non-Hindus that Hinduism is the One Religion.

It is an interesting question, whether these are the correct order in which to cast off these fetters. I had not thought about this before. (But I still prefer the order of steps as listed in the Theosophical book At the Feet of the Master.) Theosophy also teaches that specific fetters must have been successfully cast off for taking each of the seven Initiations, so perhaps that is also a way to look at which fetters we should cast off first. And of course, we are working on several of these fetters simultaneously, so it makes trying to put them into some kind of order even that much harder.

Hi Nick;
This is an interesting thought - is there any order in which to follow when casting off fetters that bind us? Years ago a very bright spiritually awakened man had his students, of which I was one, memorize H.P.B.’s Meditation Diagram. It is a method by which one acquires the correct attitude of mind. It is given in two parts and we were expected to consider both every time we began meditation.

The first part “Acquisitions” ask us first to conceive of Unity by Expansion in Space and infinite in Time. Then it asks us to visualize the correct way of thinking, while closing with the affirmation; “I am all Space and Time”. The second part deals with what she calls “Deprivations”. By that she means that we should perpetually imagine that “I am without” such things as personality, possessions, sensation; vanity, remorse, greed, selfishness, ambition, gluttony, lust, etc. We close this part with the affirmation; “I am without attributes”.

She did not put any order to these illusions of personality, time and forms. To her they were all one and we must come to a state of awareness where we realize that these things are impermanent. I came to believe that with an awakened state of consciousness all of these “attributes” as she called them, would be understood to be a source of bondage, ignorance and strife; with that realization, hence hold no power over us.

If you want to see a copy of it, I found this diagram in a book published by Point Loma Publications and entitled : The Inner Group Teachings of H.P. Blavatsky – Compiled and Annotated by Henk J. Spierenburg. Although the diagram was not included in the minutes of the inner group, but was part and parcel of esoteric instruction from H.P.B. and is included at the end of the book.

I’ll give you a link here, if you want to refer to it on line: H.P.B.’s Diagram of Meditation: http://www.newtheosophynetwork.com/?p=446
Sorry I don't know how to make the "link" work on this forum.

Shar,

Perhaps it is as you suggest, that we just have to cast off fetters, and not worry too much about the order we cast them off in. That sounds like good advice to me.

These attributes (possessions, sensation; vanity, etc.) are the exact attributes I believe we will have to give up when we achieve enlightenent and also pass into nirvana. The idea is, let's start practicing right now.

By the way, your link works just fine.

Practicing, ... hmmm. Are you suggesting we become familiar with the process, or that start putting it into practice? I hope it's the first, but suspect you mean the second.

Christian,

Both. I don't think it is too early to start taking a close look at what Nirvana will be like.