Seva charitable service vs Puja ritual remedies

Barbara Pijan Lama Jyotisha Vedic Astrology

Jyotisha Practice Puja versus Seva Sacrifice Transforming Ignorance into Wisdom Sample Seva recommendation	St. Elizabeth of Hungary, by Simone Martini, c. 1322-1326 Fresco cycle with scenes from the life of St. Martin of Tours; Chapel in lower church of San Francesco in Assisi, Italy
~~ Pema Chodron	"We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves."
Exposing the "Blind Spot" Find the missing answer Witness quality neutral attention to behavior of others Scientific observation, compassionate assistance Use the skills you already have Role model to those coming up behind you	Seva is very straightforward and effective. It works at a common-sense level for two reasons. First, it feels good to help other people. Noble actions raise the vitality. But second and more important at a pragmatic level of getting information that can change behavior, Seva when properly targeted is a scientific method of exposing a blind spot. Seva is an eye-opener. One targets a population that is suffering from one's own similar problem, yet in a slightly worse degree of suffering. In other words, these are people who are making the same mistake as oneself, but they are less advantaged in general – they have less intelligence, fewer resources, or just heavier karma overall. For example, let's say that a person is having financial problems. Expenses continually exceed income. Could be home finance or business finance. One begins to feel like a victim. Self-doubt overwhelms the native. Other emotions such as self-criticism, fear, and anger often emerge as the problem worsens. One feels beleaguered by apparently unanswerable "W-questions" [who-what-when-where-why-how]: What is happening? Why? Where is the money going? What negative path is the money following? Clearly there is a blind spot in one's management process. So, for example, Go teach a basic personal finance = "checkbook-management" class in a community center (including religious communities). Teach teenage parents how to handle money. A bigger task could be to help a well-intentioned but financially incompetent service group to rationalize its budget. The Seva-giver will see it pretty quickly. People with chronic money problems hold some cherished negative beliefs about money. They often believe that if they don't buy it now, it won't be there tomorrow (unstable emotions, lack of trust in one's power to create). They lack impulse control often. They are often invested in a negative expectation that there will never be enough: the religion of scarcity, inadequacy, insufficiency. We're talking deeply held beliefs. Teaching, training, meeting with these folks will be an eye-opener. One will see oneself reflected in their mirror rather quickly. Chances are that one's own positive intelligence will see the match in the lower folk and eradicate it, realizing that like attracts like. Only Seva can expose the blind spot. Works like a charm to solve one's own problem and helps others in the process.
Paramahansa Yogananda Autobiography of a Yogi, Ch. 16, Outwitting the Stars:	"Superstitious awe of astrology makes one an automaton, slavishly dependent on mechanical guidance. The wise man defeats his planets - which is to say, his past by transferring his allegiance from thecreation to the Creator. The more he realizes his unity with spirit, the less he can be dominated by matter. The soul is ever-free; it's deathless because birthless. It can't be regimented by stars.
Ritual Remedial Puja versus Charitable Service (Seva): which works better? Q: I know you disagree with Pooja as a technology for correcting bad karma. You would be disappointed to know that I got a KSY pooja done for myself recently.	A: IMO doing a KSY puja is perfectly OK and won't hurt anything! Plus, it will help the pujari financially. That is a nice thing for the pujari : ) I do not want to put every pujari out of work! But I do believe that ritual puja = much less remedially effective than direct charitable service offered to those suffering "immediately below" ones own social station. The choice to serve = effective when one's sacrificial intelligence is directed toward those who have precisely one's own type of suffering, but in a recognizable form (near to one's own social setting) and in a worse, more debilitating version.
Puja as Market Commodity	Major problem that blocks effectiveness: One is often quite psycho-emotionally disconnected from the puja. The religious ritual has become a "commodity" to be paid for and consumed. Since the beginning of Kali Yuga, just about everything in life has a price -- and puja is no exception. the originally sacred sacrifice,which is the cornerstone of all religions, has now become, in most applications and in most religions, what Karl Marx called a "fetish". the core rituals which once evoked the deepest inner connections to the Divineare now (often) mere external fascinations, approach as superstition, apprehended as a power outside oneself.
The power to change must always originate within.	Externalized, outer-material focused rituals are not really capable of creating change. An externalized ritual gives the illusion of "doing something" efficacious, but without the moral and spiritual engagement of direct committed participation in the action, the ritual has no meaning to the native , and it cannot provoke real change. When the puja becomes a commercial commodity that is passively bought and sold, the transformative "intention" of sacrifice is completely lost.
Great Saints Agree	During the past three millennia, religious reformers in all the great religions have noticed this degrading of authentic sacrifice in religious practice. They have tried to correct it by calling the people back to intimate prayer with the Divine and toward charitable service. They knew that "Intention", which is the dedicated purpose and personal engagement of the action, is where the transformative, healing power of human life is rooted. And they were aghast to see that sacrificial religion had become a business. Think of Jesus Christ turning over the money tables in the Temple in Jerusalem. Think of Martin Luther tacking up 95 theses rejecting the selling of indulgences and annulments. Think of Mahatma Gandhi, redirecting attention to the intentional acts such as cotton spinning and rejecting archaic superstition at every level. There are hundreds more saints like them who came to earth to reject superstition and materialism in favor of opening to Divine intelligence through humility and intentional devotional practice.
All the Great Teachers H.H. Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and About the Dalai LamaCompiled and edited by Sidney Piburn, foreword by Sen. Claiborne Pell	"Iam interested not in converting other people to Buddhism but in how we Buddhists can contribute to human society, according to our own ideas. I believe that other religious faiths also think in a similar way, seeking to contribute to the common aim .... Just as Buddha showed an example of contentment, tolerance, and serving others without selfish motivation, so did Jesus Christ. Almost all of the great teachers lived a saintly life - not luxuriously like kings or emperors but as simple human beings. Their inner strength was tremendous, limitless , but the external appearance was of contentment with a simple way of life. ... the motivation of all religious practice is similar - love, sincerity, honesty. The way of life of practically all religious persons is contentment. The teachings of tolerance, love, and compassion are the same. A basic goal is the benefit of humankind - each type of system seeking in its own unique ways to improve human beings. If we put too much emphasis on our own philosophy, religion, or theory, are too attached to it, and try to impose it on other people, it makes trouble. Basically All the great teachers , such as Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, or Mohammed, founded their new teachings with a motivation of helping their fellow humans. They did not mean to gain anything for themselves nor to create more trouble or unrest in the world. Most important is that we respect each other And learn from each other those things that will enrich our own practice. Even if all the systems are separate, since they each have the same goal, the study of each other is helpful."
True Puja = Sacrifice	Sacrifice = sacri + fice, "making sacred". Sacrifice means changing something from a low level of energy to a higher level of energy. Sacrifice means transforming ignorance into wisdom. True puja can be very sincerely and deeply efficacious for a religious person who is intimately and prayerfully involvedin the sacrifice. Unfortunately, in reality, most people "throw money at it" in a state of ego-dysfunctional anxiety. In the materialistic mentality, one feels that one cannot lose the productivity time or that one somehow does not have the "expertise" to conduct a proper sacrifice. As a result of the anxiety and fear perpetrated by a culture of materialistic superstition, one does not make the necessary effort to change oneself from the inside out (which is what true sacrifice is all about). Thus no sincere change occurs. Without the intention to personally open to the divine, which paid puja does not provide,, there is no benefit.. (Except of course the benefit to the pocketbook of the priest!)
Seva requires Intention	Approaching negative karma or suffering with the tool of charitable service or "seva", on the other hand, can give excellent results. Seva requires intention, to be present and personally engaged. In seva, the energy valuebeing "sacrificed"is one's personal intelligent participation and productivity time.
Highest Values: Time and Intelligence	In the modern individualized world, the citizen's waking time and applied intelligenceare high-value, essential survival resources. In mentalized material culture of the present era, time and intelligence are normally used strictly for purposes of generating money, prestige, physical sustenance or relaxation, or some other value of physical, social or material advancement. "Advancement" = essentially "accumulation" Accumulating skandha, which means rather literally getting to the "top of the heap". Each individual receives a certain allocation of these fundamental modern resources. One perceives a trajectory of "success" through material advancement which can be achieved by the skillful utilization of intelligence and time. (Presuming health, time of peace, economic freedom, etc.)
When the Competitive-Acquisitive Behavior is Blocked	When the advancement is blocked, when one can't mentally "figure out" the next step forward of the material-success trajectory, a modern educated person feels deep frustration leading to suffering. One is blocked in getting married, getting money, finding a job, getting a house, making a financial deal, landing a movie contract, etc. These mental blockages which would not have seemed very important to denizens of earlier non-mentalized ages. Nor do they seem so weighty to those surviving in garbage heaps or being tortured in prisons or fighting infectious disease or dying in war. Nevertheless the modern agony is realistic; for those caught in its clutches modern suffering is very real.
Heaping Compulsions: Survival and Guilt	The heap-building, acquisitive, ego-justification process that is driven by the mental engine and fueled by the guilty inner voice of "should" is urgently survival-compulsive. Although spiritual authorities uniformly recommend pulling back from the hysterical quest for more more more material acquisition, the reality is that most people cannot get off the Acquisitions addiction. At root, hoardingis a basic survival instinct programmed into our old carnivore brains. The brain signals that if one is going to have enough life force to produce offspring, one needs to go consume the life force of another animal. The life force moves from container to container, in tantric dance: eat and be eaten, says the oldest part of the human brain. It's very hard for an individual to separate from the cultural expectations long enough to get a clear perspective on the compulsion. Acquisitive behavior -- "getting" married, "getting" a job, "getting" respect -- is deeply programmed into the survival brain, and widely praised by collective brain of modern culture. Acquisitive and competitive "heaping" behaviormakes us feel socially valued and physically safe. On a psycho-mental level, very real - to the point where serious blockage on the progress-trajectory causes the native to try removing the blockage via suicide or divorce amongst other catastrophic "solutions".
H.H. Dalai Lama. (1994). the Path to Enlightenment. Glenn H. Mullin (Trans. and Ed.).:	"We should remember that everything but Dharma is useless at death, and instead of wasting our lives on meaningless activities, we should blend our mindstreams with the teachings and with practice. Doing so benefits us as individuals and benefits the world by strengthening its spiritual basis."
The Higher Truth	Indeed, the best spiritual advice is to completely abandon the heaping process. Compulsive goods-and-status acquisition is well known to bea colossal waste of Earth Life time. Yet, so few people can hear the truth that our Earth incarnations are rare and precious, and should be used for the highest purposes of merging the human consciousness with the Divine.
~~ H.H. Dalai Lama	Compassionis the desire for another to have freedom from suffering. Loveis the desire for another to have happiness.
Reality of the Common Person	The higher message is a lot of blah-blah to a person driven by hungry-mind and desperate for social approval. They think, if I don't please my parents and make a good marriage I am going to "die". That is reptile-brain speaking. If I lose my house through bank foreclosure I am going to "die". The inner snake, again. Periodically the USA news outlets will report married homeowners committing joint suicide because their house payments are too late.They will be forced by finances into what seems to the snake-brain like fatal loss of public dignity leading to certain death. In reality, they must move from a house into a rental apartment. Looking at this situation from the rational outside view, of course the decision to take one's life for such a superficial reason of local reputation is outrageous and an insult to God. Again, the snakey brain does this work. The traditional father who believes he must murder his daughter because she will not marry according to his wishes. He too is driven by the terrible urge to control for survival. Accumulate, control, command the material forces: this is the dangerous and pervasive voice of the reptile brain.
Compassionate Advice, Then	The compassionate approach to solving the blockage problem thus needs to take a step down and presume that the acquisitions addiction will keep barreling forward. What common folk need is the most effective psychic technology for removing the blockage and re-starting the flow of acquisitions. Nothing else make sense.
Material Mind at Work	The natural human commercial instinct is simply to trade one heap for another heap - i.e., give a cow or goat or 7 ratti gemstone to a priest. It seems reasonable that paying a penance to a spiritual technician should raise the psychic energy high enough to remove the "roadblock" open my path to a beautiful bride, a healthy child, a new house, or a promotion at work. This is how the material mind works.
Search for Effective Remedies	When blocked in desire-driven accumulations, the progress-oriented person seeks a familiar solution in the habitual field of material activity. The material mind is stuck in the modern habit of using the energy of consciousness to generate self-focused physical-mental-social value. Naturally, one looks for a commodity or technologyto open the way toward resumption of heaping. One makes a thoughtless donation of money or an animal; perhaps a gem of so many rattis; or one purchases a ritual puja.
If you prefer to offer Puja to protective deities, then keep in mind the power of an offering based in gratitude for one's blessings. Whether you choose puja or seva, the conscious intention is to express appreciation for one's advantage in life. Puja is a precious opportunity not to complain about how serious one's own problems are but more to emphasize how much one values the privilege of communicating with the Divine. The Union of Bliss and Emptiness: Teachings on the Practice of Guru Yoga by HH Dalai Lama, trans. Thupten Jinpa, p.35	"Offerings should not be influenced by fluctuations of motivation and they should not be procured by devious means--offerings procured through wrong means are not good offerings. They should be arranged with proper motivation. As explained in the precepts of refuge, you should make offerings of the first portion of your food or drink of the day, whether it be food, milk or tea. Offerings should be made of what is edible; it is not helpful to arrange a torma that could not be eaten and then to say OM AH HUM, OM AH HUM. If you can in reality transform something into delicious food just by reciting OM AH HUMthree times, then it is alright! On the other hand, if your offerings remain as mere tsampa (roasted barley flour) after having repeated OM AH HUM a thousand times, it will not help much. The offerings should be the best you can afford. At least you can offer the first portion of your daily food, as no one can live without food! Our offerings should be something which is edible.... [Even] if you make water offerings in a proper manner, you can generate great merit."
Change must come from within	Authentic sacrifice cannot be performed on one's behalf, absent one's present-time full-focus engagement, by another person. The exception is when the native is deeply spiritually engaged in austerities and self-reflection, while the priest is simultaneously linking to one's psychic intention. The intention has a clear shape on the astral plane, and if it is consciously harnessed to the puja, this can be indeed efficacious for re-directing the downstream from the astral plane to the material plane - and changing the course of material events. However this level of spiritual attunement between the practitioner and the priest is exceedingly rare.
from the comedy routine of Swami Beyondananda:	What did the Yogi say when he walked into the Zen Pizza Parlor? "Make me one with everything." When the Yogi got the pizza, he gave the proprietor a $20 bill. The proprietor pocketed the bill. the Yogi said "Don't I get change?" The proprietor said, "Change must come from within."
Q: I don't understand how Seva can help me solve these crushing problems. It's nice to help other people. I could go so far as to say like the Budhhists that it will create merit in this life or the next. Fine. But It seems to me that Seva is more recreational - volunteer work, something to fill in my extra time. It's not very useful for me personally. Why do you always recommend Seva as a one-size-fits-all solution - especially when the problems are serious, like mine are?	A: Seva is very straightforward and effective. It works at a common-sense level for two reasons. First, it feels good to help other people. Noble actions raise the vitality. But second and more important at a pragmatic level of getting information that can change behavior, Seva when properly targeted is a scientific method of exposing a blind spot. Seva is an eye-opener. One targets a population that is suffering from one's own similar problem, yet in a slightly worse degree of suffering. In other words, these are people who are making the same mistake as oneself, but they are less advantaged in general – they have less intelligence, fewer resources, or just heavier karma overall. For example, say that one is having financial problems. Expenses continually exceed income. Could be home or business. One begins to feel like a victim. What is happening, where is the money going, what negative path is the money following? Clearly there is a blind spot in one's management process. So, for example, go teach a basic checkbook-management class in a community center, or teach teenage parents how to handle money. The Seva-giver will see their blind spot pretty quickly in the *mirror of the served ones.* People with chronic money problems hold some cherished negative beliefs about money. They often believe that if they don't buy it now, it won't be there tomorrow (unstable emotions, lack of trust in one's power to create). They lack impulse control often. They are often invested in a negative expectation that there will never be enough: the religion of scarcity, inadequacy, insufficiency. We're talking deeply held beliefs. Teaching, training, meeting with these folks will be an eye-opener. One will see oneself reflected in their mirror rather quickly. Chances are that one's own positive intelligence will see the match in the lower folk and eradicate it, realizing that like attracts like. Only Seva can expose the blind spot. Works like a charm to solve one's own problem and helps others in the process.
	H.H. Dalai Lama: Religion = Optional "I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another--an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of metaphysical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit--such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others. While ritual and prayer, along with questions of nirvana and salvation are directly connected with religious faith, these inner qualities need not be, however. There is thus no reason why the individual should not develop them, even to a high degree, without recourse to any religious or metaphysical belief system. This is why I sometimes say religion is something we can perhaps do without . What we cannot do without are these basic spiritual qualities. " The Pocket Dalai Lama
Personal Engagement Required	A bought puja, paid for on the same instinct which tells an ovulating lion to eat a zebra, is just another material-plane solution with no personal spiritual engagement. Purchased "solutions" which do not require personal engagement do not create true sacrifice that evokes transformative change. Money exchanges will not "lift" the awareness out of the material plane and up to the astral or mental fields of consciousness, where one might gain the perspective needed to perceive a long-term solution.
Nothing originates on the material plane.	The material plane is the outcome, the result, "the buck stops here". Physical reality is end of a long process originating on the spiritual plane, percolating down to the mental plane, if not apprehended in the mental plane then dropping down to the astral plane, and only if the native cannot grasp any of the higher levels of perception does reality need to manifest on the material plane.
Common-sense Material Remedies	Material blockage usually does not have a material origin. Most material problems are mental or psycho-emotional in origin. Problems that are indeed material in origin can generally be solved with common-sense material remedies, such as medical treatment for a health problem or professional accounting to resolve financial distress. There can be a lateral transfer of energy on the material plane, but increased awareness requires moving the perspective up to a higher particulate level.
First, try mental and spiritual reflection	Before even considering the need to make an energy-transforming sacrifice, one should have already exhausted the common-sense levels of material remedy, including not only technical, professional help -- but also one's own psychic perception Do everything that can be done within one's capability, including both mental and spiritual reflection on the problem. Meditation, concentration, and reflection If the problems have not resolved after common-sense treatment, meditation and/or prayer, and intelligent personal inquiry into solutions, then the problem is not solvable within one's own capabilities, and an energy transformation on a higher plane will be required. Paid puja is a commercial transaction that occurs strictly on the material plane connecting one to the pujari. Unless some extraordinary circumstance are in place, which might connect one to the pujari on higher planes, continuing to expect improvement on the material plane after the common-sense remedies have been exhausted is not only fruitless but also really quite superstitious.
Seva raises the consciousness and makes changes at the astral level	The practice of Seva = selfless charitable service = efficacious for making substantial changes and releasing downflow blockages on the astral plane. Seva is efficacious because the native has injected the material value of one's time and intelligence, the tools of service, with love. Love (not desire, but love) is the most pure energy in existence. Love is the "glue" which holds together the material, astral, mental, and spiritual planes of reality. Without love connecting everything to everything else, the whole universe would go kablooey, in an instant!
Getting Un-Stuck: Seva is Love, and Love is Flow	In the act of commitment to Seva, the native has chosen to act from the motive of love (concern for another, or compassion) rather than the motive of survival (or accumulation). The Intention to use the assets of time and intelligence for the benefit of others, functions as a "reverse flush" . This psychic back-flush sends "stuck energy" that is plugging up the flow of acquisitions on the material plane, back up to the higher planes.
Love and Money	Love is the greatest "open secret" of all material life. The more love one invites into one's life, the more money and power one can access. Consider the amount of money and resources that some contemporary authentic spiritual figures are known to have at their disposal. They are authentic saints such as Mother Teresa, Ammachi, and H.H. Dalai Lama. They act almost exclusively for the benefit of others, from a motive of compassionate love. They do not personally hoard more than a few yards of cloth and a couple of pair of shoes. But they can access and control many millions in resources. Love actually does create money. But the person who lives immersed in love usually has no desire to hoard. Love only flourishes when it flows freely.
Intent	But let us say that one is not a great saint, and one cannot yet extend the consciousness to imagine living "immersed in love" and owning very little. One would rather live a bit closer to the Earth, enjoying a fat bank account, a happy healthy family, and a peaceful old age. This is achievable. It does take a bit more effort for the non-saint, though. The natural hoarder does not easily abandon the "me-first" state of mind which allows love to come in. It is easiest to start small, and it is essential to properly target one's service to achieve precise results. Begin with intent. The very decision to offer conscious service marks the germ-moment of transformative trajectory, out of anxious suffering and into conscious awareness. The decision to sacrifice one's conscious time, for the benefit of others, is truly momentous.
Target the Correct Beneficiaries	Then, target the time and intelligence toward actions in charitable service for those who have precisely the same problem as oneself, except in a greater degree of painful intensity. This helps to match the "energy going out" to the "energy going in" on the astral plane imagery, where the subconscious expectations are stored. When one is personally involved in the service work, inevitably the intelligence is engaged. Even while the less conscious flow of love and appreciation is ongoing, one is consciously learning something practical and insightful about the patterns of expectation and habitual reaction which trigger and perpetuate the troublesome karma. There are no victims in this world. Yet many people carry massively negative expectations. Without awareness, negativity in the mind will re-create cycles of poverty and violence almost indefinitely. The dark mind harbors afflicted emotions, such as anger and greed; assumptions about inevitable failure, and fear-driven reactive behaviors.
Noticing	If for example one is having trouble with financial management, and one goes to serve those who subsist on a few paisa each day, one may notice that despite their terrible victim state even this tiny money is partly spent for alcohol or sense pleasure. From one's higher but still similarly-suffering perspective, one may note the negative expectations, the exhaustion, and other aspects of victim-mind which drive the cycles of world poverty. This "noticing" is a moment of sacrifice, when a pattern of ignorance(not knowing how this pattern quite works) changes into a pattern of knowledge. One apprehends and identifies the destructive pattern. One transfers the wisdom of positive new knowledge back into one's own astral field of perception. One's own expectation and presumption is altered by the new knowledge. Thus the servant of those suffering severely may benefit quickly from insight gathered during the service action. Similar results might be gained from serving victims of a terrible accident, such as burned children. Are their parents attending with love and grace, not pleading or angry around their healing children but providing the best calm spiritual love environment for healing? One engaged in charitable service may notice a pattern applicable to one's own life, that the parents who can accept the tragedy without blame or complaint, whose prayers for their child's healing are calm and open to divine guidance, get a much faster healing both emotional and physical for their child. Transfer this value into one's own field of awareness. Such a point of intelligence is invaluable in aiding one's own solution. Information gained in properly targeted charitable service is usually of immediate usefulness! But anyway that is the power of sacrifice: transforming ignorance into wisdom. It is unlikely that paying a pujari or wrapping colored cloth strips around one's head or wearing of talismans or serving milk to statues will ever Directly Engage the native intelligence the way that hands-on, accurately targeted, charitable service can do.
Sample Seva recommendation	Seva is at least as effective as remedial ratna and often Seva provides a much more powerful correction to the karmic ignorance present at the time of birth. Seva is most efficient when the population served is suffering from one's own karmic dilemma but in a slightly more burdened setting. Seva is the single most efficient way to “move ahead” in life. the native seeking a gem recommendation was prescribed in order of priority (1) munga (2) Pushkara-raja (3) Manika. However the native was also advised to keep in mind that properly targeted Seva will provide as good or better results: *The gifts of Kanya-Mangala must be used very carefully* Mangala in a rashi of Kuja's enemy Budha can create career obstacles due to the precision of your thinking, which others can perceive as criticism of the quality their work. You are very good at finding the flaws in any argument, plan, or design – but having found the problem, you may not always be able to fix it. (Shani + Mangala) Kuja's drishti to lagna + Shukra can damage your naturally pleasant personality and cause you to deliver a complaining, critical or subtly discontent first impression during a job interview. Seva Target By offering Seva (selfless service) on behalf of adolescent(Mangala) students(5) who need instructionin analytical and manual skills(rashi of Budha) you can remove much of the subtle psychic debris which presently blocks your career path (gochara Shani in 10). The karma correction occurs as you gain experience in explaining complex procedures (Kanya) in simple and non-confrontational(Shani) ways to young people who are trying to get ahead, but find themselves in a very competitive (Mangala) labor (Shani) market and needing to gain more practical (Kanya) experience. Your service-teachingand leadership (10) will naturally benefit the students as they gain essential skills practice, but the real value of Seva goes to you the benefactor. The secret of obstacle-destroying Seva = one who serves those immediately below oneselfmay observe others of one's own same general disposition as they make one's same habitual mistakes, and suffer the same habitual consequences. Seeing others repeat one's own patterns, it becomes rather obvious rather quickly what the problem is. One may then apply highly intelligent course-corrections, based on the wisdom obtained via your service. Best Seva offerings for intelligent young students (Mesha-5) include tutoring and supervision in hands-on learning re: engineering problem-solving, engine-driven movements such as drilling, digging, propulsion fuels (Vrischika) esp oil uses of information technology, computer software, writing, especially analytical writing about problemssuch as safety reports Bottom line: if you are not presently able to work for salary (largely because of Shani Delay) keep your skills in marketable shape, keep building your professional record, and earn some wisdom by doing volunteer work in your field of trained expertise. Help those immediately below you - in your case, those who are also not working in a tight job market but who are worse off because they have not even finished their training and they need more practice. In general, when Shani transits one's radix karma bhava, one receives heavy responsibilities. So it is quite consistent with Shani gochara to accept some volunteer leadership responsibilities in a practical craft training venue, with emphasis on skilled work of the hands (Kanya) esp writing and problem analysis. Pay attention to student behaviors which might cause you, if you were the boss, to fire them or not hire them. Very likely you will notice some irksome (Mangala-Kanya) mental and verbal behaviors that are not producing a good first impression. That's your wisdom data! Now go make that important course correction. If possible, maintain some commitment to Seva throughout your life so that the annoying features of Mangala-Kanya can be kept in check while the analytical power and manipulative skills can be sustained.
--from Shantideva's Bodhicharyavatara	Until the essence of enlightenment is reached I go for refuge to the Buddhas. Also I take refuge in the Dharma And in all the host of Bodhisattvas.
--from For the Benefit of All Beings: A Commentary on "The Way of the Bodhisattva"by Tenzin Gyatso, HH Dalai Lama, translated by the Padmakara Translation Group	The first of these is the power of the support, which is to take refuge in the Three Jewels and to generate bodhichitta. The second power entails deep and sincere regret for all the negative actions we have done until now and the negative emotions we have indulged in. This requires reflection on the harmful effects of negative actions. The third power is the resolve never again to commit these negative actions, even if it were to cost us our lives. The fourth is the power of the antidotes, such as prostrations, recitation of mantras, and specific purificatory practices.
	file update: 17-May-2012 Copyright © 1994-2024 by Barbara Pijan Lama - Contact * How to Request a Jyotisha Reading - -- -- barbarapijan.com Barbara Pijan Lama Jyotisha Vedic Astrology Surya Sun Chandra Moon Mangala Mars Budha Mercury Guru Jupiter Shukra Venus Shani Saturn Rahu Ketu Graha Planets Dasha Timeline Nakshatra Navamsha Marriage Children Wealth Career Spiritual Wisdom Cycles of Death and Rebirth