This philosophy is saying that you are not just a dignitary. You are what is. We are back talking dat-ba-donk-donk with another reflection on that TDV. That TDV.
I don't know if I can use that, the David, the document. It's kind of like saying ATM machine. It's a bit redundant on the acronym front. And everyone at Mac...
By the way, people at MatchMind, they all know that I hate acronyms. So I rarely even call this TDV. The reason I hate acronyms is because people love to toss in acronyms left and right, make themselves sound smart or out of convenience, and then you lose two or three of the audience members on a five-person email, but no one wants to ask what the acronym is because they don't want to see dumb in the midst of you seem smart. But, and I'm not a fan of a lot of things that Elon Musk does or says, but man, if you Google Elon Musk acronyms, if you've ever dealt with just acronym overload at work or in communications, and you want a reference to tell people this is too much, Elon Musk acronyms.
If you Google that, you'll see an email he wrote, I think it was to SpaceX, not to Tesla, but beautiful articulation on why teams or humans just should not use a bunch of acronyms. Slight tangent, but a little peek in how we operate a MagicBond. Very few acronyms. And today's reflection has nothing to do with that.
But it does kind of have to do with, well, none of that actually. But, and I was searching, is there a segue? There isn't. So I'm jumping right into the reflection.
And that is, it came from on Sunday. My wife and our daughters were at the church that we go to here in Santa Monica, in LA. And the church is called Vintage LA. It is conventionally dualistic in many ways, but there's two pastors, one of which is a Christian mystic, author, pastor, John Mark Comer.
And his sermons are always non-dualistic, beautifully, so pot to go with Vedanta. And the other pastor, also, if it is a sermon on Christ's words, then you're going to be able to, I am able to pull out one line, two lines, one event, two events, that I could spend a lifetime doing on. And so sometimes that's where I just naturally go. If the sermon's going on, maybe a lot of it is a bit more conventional, a bit more devotional than I might be wired, because it's the breakdown of the three classical spiritual paths, according to the Vedas, the Upanishads, Vedanta, Vedanta meaning the end of the Vedas, the four oldest textbooks in the world.
And the breakdown of the three classical paths are karma yoga, which just means service, union with the divine through service, bhakti yoga, which Sanskrit just means devotional, yoga devotional, union with the divine. Both of those are dualistic. I'm serving people around me. I'm devoting my time, my rituals, my love, my identification, my practice to God, but in a dualistic separate way.
And then the highest form is nyan yoga between knowledge, wisdom, and union through knowledge, studying the words of the masters, truly understanding, not just memorizing or reading, reciting, but truly understanding and embodying the words of the masters. It could be Christ, it could be Socrates, it could be Augustine, it could be Plato. It really could be your choice of someone that we've been speaking about for 2,000 years. They're probably on a pretty powerful path.
And it's something that each one of us, and one of my favorite aspects of the Vedanta is that each one of us is wired differently. Some are wired for a bhakti-esque devotional path. That's what a lot of conventional Christianity is. But then you have these amazing Christian mystics throughout history, Augustine, Meister Eckhart, today there's Richard Rohr.
You have, even in the last century, certain Christian mystics that have said, the Christian of the future will either be a mystic or will not exist at all. Carl Rayner, the Catholic priest that said that. You have Christian mystic traditions today, like, I mean, the Greek Orthodox tradition is almost entirely mystical, non-dualistic. You have some very explicit non-dual schools of Christianity and hesychism in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
But in conventional Sunday sermons here in the U.S., they might be more on the devotional path. But like what I was saying, one of my favorite aspects of the Vedanta is it recognizes that there are as many paths of God as there are people on earth. People have a mix of all three of these that are so individual to you. So you might be more oriented towards a dualistic view and you can get to the divine through that path.
And many conventional Christians today are wired that way. That sermon on Sunday might be speaking to, in the right way, to the audience that is just perfect for that. And I'll hook on to something that Christ says, said in a non-dualistic way and just chew on that for sometimes weeks. Recently where the sermon was on Christ washing the feet of his disciples the night before knowing he is going to his death.
Peter's saying we should escape. We shouldn't do this. If you know this is going to happen, we shouldn't do this. And Christ says, get thee behind me, Satan.
You're thinking thoughts of man. I'm thinking thoughts of God. Rides into Jerusalem. They have the last supper and he's washing their feet.
Holy shit, you could spend 40 lifetimes just reflecting on that. But the reflection from this past Sunday, the pastor was talking about, Pastor Gare was talking about how you have certain dignitaries where at your house maybe you have fine china that you only bring out once a year. And he's British, so maybe it's much more of a tradition there than it is here on the West Coast in Cali, but you bring out the fine china once a year. Imagine if you are a dignitary where everywhere you go, everybody's bringing out their fine china.
The reflection that I had was that this philosophy is saying that you are not just a dignitary. You are what is. And every aspect, everywhere we go is the finest of plates, cutlery, the meal itself. Everything is so exquisitely procured for your feast, for our feast, with every experience.
He mentioned this fine china and being a dignitarian and everywhere you went, everybody's bringing out the finest of china for that person. It made me think that within the Vedantic lens, the three daily practices of question everything, don't take anything for granted, study and reflect daily. The second one, don't take anything for granted. And how this philosophy in the ashram, the lectures, which anyone can view, just download the app from the ashram, Vedanta World, that's the app.
And it's mentioned so often from Swami that everything is so perfectly laid out for all of us. It's not an exercise of gaining some notoriety, becoming some dignitary to be able to see just how fine the china is everywhere we look, every meal and every experience. It's much more about dialing in our sensitivity to how immaculate all of us have it. All of us.
Swamiji will use these examples where the exact air pressure that's needed is provided for all of us. The undulation of seasons, the fact that a banana, and this is an example that's used often of, do you need a $200,000 car to blow you away? Do you need to experience Niagara Falls to become inspired? Or can you cultivate that ability, that awareness, that ability to not take anything for granted that just peeling a banana leaves you in ecstasy?
The sensitivity and awareness of everything that's gone in to putting that banana in your hand, to peeling back nature's packaging, this perfectly, immaculately crafted treat, falling from trees. I don't know if bananas come from trees, actually. It could be some type of one of those weird things where we think it's a tree and some type of shrub or something. But that sensitivity and awareness, do we require the one of 200 Rolex watches for us to be blown away?
Or even more, beyond peeling the banana, a $50,000 watch? If we can find ourselves in the midst of, man, I'm going through intense knee pain, but I'm not going to take this for granted. There's something beautiful within this. I'm going through the loss of a child, the loss of a family member, which I've talked about on this podcast a handful of times.
You go through what you would have never designed and in the midst of it, on the other side of it, you recognize it. It might be the most beautiful thing you would have never designed. Whether it's the inspiration from peeling the banana, the illumination, the progression, the beauty in that which you would have never designed, not needing Niagara Falls, not needing some mountaintop, not needing some $50,000 watch, but cultivating the awareness to not take anything for granted. To where your gratitude list is filled over time with things that you would have been ungrateful for, that you would have wished away, because there's such a bright awareness of what we've been given.
The beauty is, with that sensitivity, we become dignitaries everywhere we go, with everything we experience. It's fine china everywhere. It has nothing to do with reputation or notoriety. It is the inner cultivation of our own awareness.
That's today's reflection on the Daily Vedantic. We'll see you next time. Sous-titrage ST' 501 Thank you.