Teaching
Shivapuri Baba appears to have been the first modern yoga master to transplant the wisdom of India to the West. He had no fewer than 18 audiences with Queen Victoria, who considered this great sage a friend. He was blessed with a very long life, which, after his awakening at the age of 50, he dedicated entirely to the spiritual welfare of others.He was also known for his eloquence, good well being personality because of his spiritual power and divine.
Shivapuri Baba taught that as humans we have three principal duties: first, physical duty, consists mainly in maintaining body and mind through proper livelihood, including the obligation to help one’s dependents to accomplish the same. Second, moral duty, consisting in remaining sensitive to the obligation to seek the truth 24 hours a day. Third, spiritual duty, by which he meant the worship of the Divine. He felt certain that if we attend carefully to the first two duties for a decade, we will naturally become able to fulfill the third duty. Physical discipline, he noted, brings pleasure. Moral discipline gives us serenity. Spiritual discipline yields deep peace and ultimate happiness.
Shivapuri Baba was dismissive of conventional yogic paths, because he saw in them potential distractions that might keep a person from performing the three duties. On closer inspection, his own sensible prescriptions are in fact a form of yoga.
He is said to have not been harmed by dangerous animals such as tigers or snakes in the forest. Instead, they were his "good friends" and would visit him regularly to eat what he offered to them.
Read more about this topic: Shivapuri Baba
Famous quotes containing the word teaching:
“The discipline of the Old Testament may be summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die to it.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)
“This teaching is not practical in the sense in which the New Testament is. It is not always sound sense in practice. The Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of caste, of impassable limits of destiny and the tyranny of time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)