Om muktidaya namaha, Salutations to the One who is the giver of Mukti, liberation from the cycle of birth and death.
mukti: 1 Final beatitude, the delivery of the soul from the body and exemption from further transmigration; the re-absorption of the emancipated spirit into its great primary source, identification with GOD.
mukti: 2 Liberation, setting or becoming free or loose.
mukti: liberation Adi 3.17, Adi 5.30, Adi 8.18, Adi 12.40,
mukti: of liberation Madhya 6.263
mukti: such liberation Madhya 6.264-265
mukti: of liberation from material activities Madhya 19.149
mukti: for liberation from the material world Madhya 19.158
mukti: to become liberated from material bondage Madhya 19.175
mukti: and for liberation from material existence Madhya 19.176
mukti: of impersonal liberation Madhya 22.35
daya: 1 To give.
daya: 2 To move.
daya: 3 To take.
daya: 4 To protect.
hṛdaya: 1 The mind, the seat or faculty of thought and feeling.
For liberation to come, the mind must come to rest; the mind must come to equanimity, to steadiness, to calm.
This raises the question of the Moon as the giver of steadiness, of calm, of equanimity, all those qualities we mention above. Where the Moon is in the birth chart largely determine our journey to mukti, to liberation, for it represents the state of the mind that has come across with the soul to the new body. Lord Krishna teaches in Bhagavad Gita, the mind accompanies the soul to the new birth. We are not born with the blank slate of the mind, the focus of the mind at death in the previous incarnation will be shown in the next birth. It will also be shown in the birth chart. What is the relation between the mind and the Moon?
Well, the night is dominated by the Moon. The Moon has 16 kalas or fractions; and each day when it wanes a fraction is reduced, until it is annihilated on New Moon Night. After that, each day a fraction is added, until it completes itself on Full Moon Night. The Moon is the presiding deity of the Mind; “Chandramaa manaso jaathah“, out of the mind of the Primeval Person, the Supreme Spirit, the Moon was born. There is a close affinity between the mind and the Moon; both are subject to decline and progress. The waning of the Moon is the symbol for the waning of the mind; for the mind has to be controlled, reduced and finally destroyed. All spiritual effort is directed towards this end. The mind has to be killed, so that illusion may be rent asunder and the reality revealed. Every day during the dark half of the month, the Moon, and symbolically its counterpart in man, the mind, wane, and a fraction is diminished: its power declines . and finally, on the fourteenth night there is just a wee bit left, that is all. If a little extra effort is made that day by the spiritual person, even that bit can be wiped off and full-restraint, full-control of the mind is achieved.
The mind causes bondage. Mukti is the removal of delusion, the removal of attachment to joy and grief, and removal from all ideas of being bound in this world. Jivanmukti (Liberation for the individual) is essentially liberation from the illusory belief that the world perceptible to the senses is real, and that each individual is a separate entity with independence of choice and actions, rather than a part of the total impersonal functioning of the manifestation – for when the sun rises, there remains no difference between light and darkness.
Consider the longing for Moksha or Liberation. This longing cannot arise from either riches or from the scholarship that may be won at great expense of money. Nor can it emerge from wealth or progeny, or rites and rituals recommended in the scriptures or acts of charity, for Moksha (liberation from grief and acquisition of bliss) can come only from the conquest of ignorance. A person might master all the sacred scriptures along with all the learned commentaries written on them by experts; he might propitiate all the gods by performing the prescribed modes of worship and ceremonies; but these cannot grant the boon of Liberation. These are all motivated to earn benefits and boons, other than the supreme knowledge, wisdom. Success in the path of knowledge alone can confer salvation. A person might have every article needed for cooking a meal but, if fire is not available, how can the meal be prepared? So too, if awareness of Atma as the only Reality is not won, Liberation if it is declared that one can attain Mukti or Liberation if he bathes in the waters of sacred rivers, what shall we say of the fish and other aquatic species that spend all their lives in the rivers! If it is believed that spending years in mountain caves will lead to Liberation, what do mice, what do wild beasts attain? If, by means of ascetic practices like eating roots and tubers and chewing leaves for sustenance of the body, one can attain Liberation, must goats who feed on leaves and pigs that dig out tubers also attain Liberation? When plastering the entire body with ash is hailed as asceticism, can dogs and donkeys which roll on ash heaps claim Liberation? These beliefs and practices are signs of poor understanding. One must concentrate on achieving the Awareness of the Atma, the soul, and the supreme wisdom that this is the All.
Om muktidaya namaha, Salutations to the One who is the giver of Mukti, liberation from the cycle of birth and death.
Download 108 Names of Chandra The Moon
