What Is The Goal of Spiritual Practice?

Before we start walking a path, we should have some idea at least about why we are walking it and about where it leads. In the Buddha's eight-fold system, this is called "samyak drshti", the right view. 

When we consider the lives of great masters like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna, we are not only fired up by their fervor, intensity and renunciation but we can also learn something about what is to be valued in spiritual life and what is to be aimed for (and perhaps also what is to be avoided). 

In this lecture, as we come to the end of the year and wrap our 5th circumambulation around the sun together as a community, I thought it would be good to have a cutting conversation about the essentials in spiritual practice! 

I want to explore Sri Ramakrishna's central practice modality: yearning and sincerity, the sole means by which he was able to attain the direct perception and constant communion of Mā Kālī. As you know, Sri Ramakrishna first had the vision of Kālī and then only did he set out to practice spirituality in a formal way. And then years later, when instructing disciples and devotees, he would constantly return to this theme of yearning (vyakulatā) and sincerity as the principle method for realization, which was of course true in his case. In exploring this idea, we can ask a few questions: 

1. Often it is said that Sri Ramakrishna had no formal spiritual practice, only yearning at first and by that alone he attained Kali. But is that really true? I'll challenge this idea a little bit by discussing the two main initiations that Sri Ramakrishna had before he developed his yearning for God-vision. 

2. What does it really mean to "see" Kālī? Is this a goal everyone aspires to? Why would this even be a valuable goal to achieve in spiritual life? Here we can explore Sri Ramakrishna's first experience of Kālī as formless Pure Consciousness and then what happened after. 

3. Why did Sri Ramakrishna do spiritual practices after the vision of Kālī? What could spiritual practice accomplish after a profound spiritual experience like this? Here I want to make a very important point about integration and maybe we can have a slight digression exploring the "dangers of Bhakti and sentimentalism." Perhaps we can read a litle Swami Vivekananda excerpt on this! 

4. What does Sri Ramakrishna have in common with the Christ? Well...lots of things but mainly this one: the emphasis on prayer, yearning and the spontaneous renunciation that follows. May this be an offering at the altar of your spirituality! 

Jai Mā!

For more detailed instructions for how to perform Kālī pūjā, watch this playlist: https://www.patreon.com/collection/233799

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and Friday 10am PST and again Friday at 6pm PST.
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM