AFTER THE DOG, THE BEST MAN’S FRIEND ARE BOOKS

And Silence 

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The text Books Are Man’s Best Friend Besides a Dog is a continuation of the text about quality of life and about how to change old, stale habits and become a noble person.

 

If a man wants to know more about whether and how a book is a man’s best friend besides a dog, he can watch his dog.

He sits silently looking around, thinking, exploring people’s moves, their silence, sadness or their scream, waiting for food, waiting to go outside and waiting for love. The same love he gives. He gives a lot of love. The dog helps humans and other animals without asking why, to whom or when and he is expecting nothing in return. This kind of love is the only true and such love is called unconditional love. And above all, the dog is endlessly patient.

So the dog is, in fact, the best yogi.

But you can be an even better yogi than a dog. You can transform everything you have seen, heard, received, done, said. You can even transform love. You can transform your desperate desire for love by becoming love yourself. And all in silence.

 

The silence reflects. In silence you learn what patience is. And so you can help yourself.

What else one can do in silence you can read on the next page but on this page you can read more about which books can help you to find peace within.

 

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We all listen but very few of us really know how to listen.

If we do not feel good and happy, which are actually every person’s natural states, we should ask ourselves whether we are truly surrounded by the right people, whether our diet is right, whether we read the right books (nowadays, rarely people read printed books. For many, the only education is unfortunately reading what is being written on social networks).

If we do not feel good in our own skin, we should ask ourselves whether we so easily allow others to manipulate us.

Words, whether spoken, read, or heard, whether those with knowledge or without knowledge, are all impressions (samskaras) that are deeply embedded in our subconscious. Over time, these impressions become thoughts and thoughts become feelings.

Our emotions affect the entire body system, its cells, tissues, organs, fascia, nerves. And so, basically, anyone can choose what he wants to be.

In essence, one is free to choose one’s own happiness and mental health.

 

But the quality of human life definitely depends on what the ears, eyes, stomach, heart and brain are nourished with.

 

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Ancient civilizations had a deep knowledge of human psychology and existence. The wise old books talk about good mental care, saying that man is a mortal body but that his real nature is an immortal being.

Today’s thoughts of a modern man are mostly about how to save more, how to get more shoes or a bigger car. The thoughts of today’s man mostly revolve around things of a material nature. But an even bigger problem is that a man thinks that he is a mortal being.

Whatever thoughts a man is obsessed with he could always feel much better by grabbing any of the old spiritual books and diving into their depths for a moment. There is, in fact, nothing new about the human mind today and in essence, nothing special in the human mind has changed since the time of the hieroglyphs. Just the problems have become bigger and seem more unsolvable.

Old books are inspiring stories, though many of them are often considered mystical today because the average person is wrapped in a veil of ignorance and the pursuit of the material instead of the spiritual. The “average” man can be a man of all intelligence.

A liberated mind is the mind of any man freed of thoughts that destroy him, from the unreal desires that enslave his heart, from the acts that bring suffering to his life, from the miserable lust for the unreal which shortens his breath slowly, surely and with much suffering.

Whether one is seeking answers to questions about the creation of the Universe, or about man and woman, or about how to manage everything in one’s own life, relationships with others and with nature, these books:

Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the best translations buy and read here, read here

The Book of the Dead or here 

any of the Vedas, the Rigveda, the Samaveda, the Yajurveda, the Atharvaveda or Yoga Sutra are some of the right choices.

Anyone can understand this Sutra (thread) of Yoga because every man has some deity. No matter which spiritual book is closer to his imaginations, one should read those scriptures with a very open mind.

Self-study by studying ancient texts in the language of Yoga is called Svadhyaya.

 

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Svadhyaya literally means self-study. The word sva means „one’s own, self“ and adhyaya means „study, lecture, scripture“. It is about the study of old wisdoms in general.

But studying is definitely not about learning ancient texts by heart, repeating them proudly in the company being so nothing more than a walking quote. It is not even about identifying with texts. It is about experiencing the echo of those words, while being detached from them.

Scriptures are one thing and personal experience is another. Experience is what brings wisdom, not mechanical reading and memorizing.

 

Today one can find many interpretations of the ancient scripts in bookstores or on the Internet. Many, though, are written with massive ignorance of topic they write about, as Swami Vivekananda once said.

„A silly man reads three letters of Sanskrit and translates a whole book“.

However, if you are not fortunate to read the scriptures in their original issue it is better to read the texts translated and commented by the sincerely dedicated knower of the topic.

However, if you are not happy to read these texts in the original, read those translations and comments that have been written by a connoisseur sincerely and devoted to the topic for decades.

The man’s best friend next to the dog is definitely books, reading and listening to their reflections in silence. Books are not just a pile of paper on bookshelves that would make a man look like “sophisticated when his guests visit his home.”

 

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Being blindly stuck in a single book without seeing the distance and variety is not the best help to the innate wisdom.

 

It is always good to read, study, being tolerant and adopting different spiritual books. Adhyaya also means “entering into”.

As you grow spiritually, naturally grows your power of understanding. But no one can grow spiritually with one single book.

 

When attention is blindly focused on a single topic, the mind definitely becomes narrower. Rare are those who are freed next to one single book. Such rare person could be Agafia Lykova. But how many people on Earth could love like a Russian hermit alone in the Taiga?

When the mind is narrowed so is the heart, which, indeed, is not really the planned mission of human existence. Narrowed mind and heart can (and constantly do) cause great confusion in the world.

The point of reading and studying spiritual books is not to become blind and accept the rules, formalities and dogmas, but to ask questions. An insecure and passive seeker always enriches his mind and spirit by following a single guru (“guru” is one who “removes the darkness of ignorance”), a belief system or a system and its rituals.

One who blindly follows a single idea or one single person is not a free man. The mind of such a man is inflexible and intolerant. The heart of such a person cannot move from his frozen point which can be very dangerous for himself and for all of humanity and the environment.

At the moment, people are slaughtering each other in the name of one book or rather – in the name of the misunderstood messages of those books.

 

There is always a choice.

Work persistently on the evolution of understanding.

Understanding does not happen overnight, it is a step-by-step path.

Books are man’s best friend, not his strongest enemies.

 

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Adi Sankaracharya notes in the VIVEKACHUDAMANI that:

„The study of the Scriptures is useless so long as the highest Truth is unknown, and it is equally useless when the highest Truth has already been known.“

Many ancient books are, in fact, written for those who have already transcended the lower mind.

The lower mind is the mind that does not know and for many these old books remain incomprehensible.

It can easily happen that an (unprepared) person losses himself in the ocean of information. An ordinary mind cannot so easily perceive all informations.

Reading books does not mean that we have knowledge.

Wisdom definitely does not come from reading books alone.

Even wisdom alone is not the realization of a higher Truth.

How many people do you know who have realized the higher Truth?

 

So many yogis you know.

 

 

There is one simple yogic trick to liberate the mind from the shackles of conservatism.

Simply repeat a pranava mantra.

Pranava is the atmospheric-cosmic sound of OM. And the mantra is defined as:

mananat trayate iti mantraha, which means „that which liberates the mind is mantra“.

 

Liberated mind is best man’s mind friend.