very true. im with you Jainarayan, i battle with much these days and frustratingly enough God is much of what i think about. i am still waiting on God to give me a sign for whicj religion I am supposed to be, whether or not that sounds silly.. i feel like a pig at a banquet.. it all looks good to me!
Like a kid in a candy store.
It's not silly, but it's a real issue for some of us. That was the whole thrust of this thread. Those of us who are/were seekers have a really hard time settling down. I've finally decided, probably to the horror of many people, if I ever get to read the Upanishads, great. If I ever get to read the Lotus Sutra, Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, or Dhammapada, great. If not, oh well, it's not for me. I'd rather read something from someone with practical experience in self-enquiry and self-discovery. Scriptures are great for the scholars to debate and ponder, but I'm not a scholar. I don't want to
read about God, I want to
feel God, either directly or through his creations. Besides, I like the Cliff Notes versions.
I'm not going to learn that by combing though five different translations of the Upanishads and the commentaries from those translators. So to that end, I'm putting aside all the scholarly books on yoga and vedanta and all that. It's too confusing. I'm even taking a page from Ramana Maharshi's book (no pun intended)... in another thread I posted his comment that he knew of the Bhagavad Gita only by hearsay, and when he heard a sloka, he took it at face value. That is, don't overthink it and delve too deeply. Sometimes the meaning is right on the surface. There are probably as many translations and commentaries as there are words in the book.
I think if you let go of thinking too much, it all settles down. Just tonight I pared down my shrine. I don't need a murthi of every deity, buddha and bodhisattva, nor do I need to include prayers and mantras to all of them. I think it was Odion who said to me that a little aniconism is not so bad.
I'm probably not making much sense; for some reason I'm really mentally drained tonight.
