ANANDA YOGA🔗

Ananda is bliss. Nanda is something that can die out, disappear. It is related to suffering. Ananda is that which can never disappear from your being. It is bliss. It is not joy. Joy brings suffering in its wake. Ananda is beyond joy. Pleasure is what you feel through your senses based on outer objects - music, fragrance, a beautiful sight, physical touch. When you feel ecstasy without sensory inputs or nature, or even forms of God, when only from your inner core of energy, without any external input...it is bliss!

Yoga: it is important to understand what is not yoga! Yoga is not physical exercise or breath control; these are but a part of Yoga. Yoga is union; union with the Divine; union with the cosmic power. It is chitta vritti nirodaha: cessation of the mind to cause the union.

The blissful technique to unite yourself with the Divine is Ananda Yoga - using bliss itself to unite.

Ananda Yoga is the path of ecstasy, not the path to ecstasy. The very path, the very travel is ecstasy, not just the goal. Life has no goal, it has only purpose. It is not something you find at the end, you find it all along the way. Living has a purpose. If life is a goal, it's a rat race. Even if you win the race you are still a rat. The very living is bliss when you go without a goal, only with a purpose of enjoying the path. In the path of ananda, there are no restrictions, nothing to renounce.

The first key is 'acceptance of life'. Never grudge or grumble. Just have the intelligence to accept life. This is thathata which is ease, ease of acceptance. A middle aged lady went to Buddha with her son's dead body one early morning, 'Lord please revive him.' Buddha knew that what ever he could say would be unacceptable to her. He said, 'Go and get a handful of mustard seeds from a house where there has been no death ever.' The lady went from house to house but could not find a single such house. She then easily fell into acceptance of what had happened in her life.

We worry because we feel others do not have worries. If we realize every one has worries, we won't worry! We need to see others unhappy to reduce our unhappiness. When the lady understood this truth she became a nun, a bikku. She said, 'Even if you had given my child life, my life would have gone on as usual. Now I am transformed.' Giving life is not a miracle. Transforming life is the miracle.

Next is a conscious decision to live joyfully.

A small gathering in USA, immersed in blissful work.

Here's a Sufi story: The great master Abdullah was always happy - in laughter, in bliss. One disciple asked him, 'How are you so joyful? Please teach us.' He replied, 'Every day when I get up, I ask, 'Abdullah, Abdullah, Abdullah! What do you want today? Joy or Suffering? Mind says: I want bliss. I say: have bliss. That's all!' The disciple said, 'But there is so much suffering.' Abdullah said, 'So what? If you suffer, does it help? No! If you live in bliss, miracles happen in your life!'

Never take Abdullah's decision for two days. Decide only for one day; the next twenty four hours.

Today, they are all swamis and brahmacharis of the Nithyananda Order.

Follow these three techniques; your path will be bliss and your goal will be bliss.