Gurugram January 2024 | Preface
Om Namah Sivaya
Blessed Self
We wish you all a luminous new year! May it bring you much strength, inner expansion, and trust that all is happening to teach us to surrender to the Divine grace.
The Ashrams held well attended and joyful retreats over the Christmas and New Year season, bringing much joy and warmth. Guests were grateful for this time of sharing and feeling part of a wider spiritual family. All left with a new determination to apply the yogic tools in their daily life and develop new positive habits.
The Centres are ready to welcome their students on this auspicious time of the year, when everyone focuses on their new year resolves..
A special prayer for the staff members of our centre in Israel, serving the local community beautifully with many free online programmes to help all deal with the stress of the war.
We continue our monthly online OM Namo Narayanaya chanting for peace every first Sunday of the month, please join us in this effort to create vibrations of peace.
With our best wishes for health and inner peace
Om shanti
Swami Kailasananda on behalf of the Acharyas of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres.
Join us for the monthly Sivananda “Meditation for a Peaceful Planet” on Sunday 4th February, 2024 at 2pm CET. Check our website for information. https://sivanandaorleans.org/unite-for-a-healthy-planet
Donations: Your donations and financial support would be very gratefully received by any of the International Sivananda Yoga Centres and Ashrams. Please contact any Sivananda Ashram or Centre on how to proceed.
Take stock of the past year. Turn back the leaves of your spiritual diary. Mark your spiritual progress. Note how far you have advanced in cultivating virtues like humility, courage, truthfulness, cosmic love, purity etc. and in the control of the mind and the senses. – Sri Swami Sivananda
Upcoming Courses
2024 Update
SIVANANDA YOGA Teachers’ Training Courses are available both Online (TTCOL) and in-person in residence. Please check with each TTC/ATTC location for any TTCOLs.
Please check with each TTC/ATTC location whether COVID-19 has affected your selected course.
The SIVANANDA YOGA Teachers’ Training Courses are available either online (TTCOL) or in residence, depending on the location. Please check with each TTC/ATTC location whether your selected Teacher Training Course is available online or in residence as some Ashrams have opened, while others remain closed. Thank you for your patience as schedules change during COVID.
To view all 2024/2025 TTC/ATTC/SI courses on the Sivananda website: https://sivananda.org/teachers-training/programme-calendar/
See the full list of other international courses and events: https://www.sivananda.org/
Even if there is a setback in certain things, nil desperandum. March forward, O Adhyatmic hero. Look not back. A brilliant future is awaiting you. – Sri Swami Sivananda
Raja Yoga
From Discourse IV: “Kaivalya Pada – On Realisation”
IV.16 na caika-citta-tantraṃ vastu tad-apramāṇakaṁ tadā kiṃ syāt
An object is not dependent on one’s mind, for it still exists whether or not it is perceived by that mind.
God is the source of all happiness. All beings abide in Him. – Sri Swami Sivananda
Bhagavad Gita Quote
Chapter VI: The Yoga of Meditation
VI.35 śrī bhagavān uvāca
asamśayaṃ mahābāho mano durnigrahaṃ calam
abhyāsena tu kaunteya vairāgyeṇa ca gṛhyate
The Blessed Lord said:
Undoubtedly, O mighty-armed Arjuna, the mind is difficult to control and restless; but, by practice and by dispassion it may be restrained.
Commentary:
The repeated effort to keep the wandering mind steady by means of constant meditation on the centre, ideal, goal or object of meditation, is termed abhyāsa or practice. The same idea or thought of the Self must be constantly maintained. This constant repetition destroys the vacillation of the mind and its desires, and makes it steady and one-pointed.
Vairāgya: dispassion; indifference to sense-objects in this world or in the other, here or hereafter, seen or unseen, heard or unheard, achieved through constant perception of evil in them.
You have to train the mind by means of constant reflection on the immortal, all-blissful Self. You must make it realise that all worldly enjoyments are transitory. You must suggest to it to look for its enjoyment, not in the perishable and changing external objects, but in the immortal, changeless Self within.
God is one. God and his law are one. – Sri Swami Sivananda
Quick Links
Spiritual Calendar
| JANUARY 2024 1 New Year’s Day 7 Ekadasi 11 New Moon 20 Ekadasi 26 Full moon FEBRUARY 2024 Understand life. Live divinely. Seek good company. Fear not. Waste not time. Depend on God. – Sri Swami Sivananda |
Glossary
Abhyasa
Abhyasa or practice is the effort to secure steadiness of the modifications of the mind. The effort to restrain all the vrittis (waves) of the mind and to make the mind steady like the jet of a lamp in a windless place is called abhyasa. To drive back the mind to its source – Hridaya Guha (the cave of the heart) and get it absorbed in Atman (the Self) is abhyasa. To make the mind inward and to destroy all its outgoing tendencies is abhyasa. And this practice should be done for a long time without any break and with perfect devotion.
Through abhyasa you will have to change the outgoing vishaya vrittis of the mind. Without the vrittis of the mind you cannot enjoy sensual objects, and if the vrittis along with samskaras are controlled, manonasa or the annihilation of the mind follows.
Abhyasa becomes fixed and steady when practised for a long time without any break and with perfect devotion. Constant, steady application is indispensable for perfect control of the mind and attainment of asamprajnata samadhi which alone can fry all the seeds of samskaras. Therefore, constant and intense practice is needed for a long time. Then alone the wandering mind will come under your perfect control. Then alone wherever it is directed it will be ever at rest. Without practice nothing can be achieved. The practice should be accompanied by perfect faith and devotion. If there is no faith and regularity, success is impossible. Abhyasa should be continued until you get perfection.
From Sadhana by Swami Sivananda