The Art of Joyful Living By Swami Rama (Summary)
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Blog Title: The Art of Joyful Living By Swami Rama (Summary)
Name: The Art of Joyful Living
Author: Swami Rama
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Book size: 248 pages
About Author:
Before talking about The Art of Joyful Living By Swami Rama let’s first discuss the book’s author Swami Rama. He gives a message of inspiration and optimism. Swami Rama says that You YOURSELF IS responsible for making your life happy and emanating that happiness to others.
Overview:
In this book, Swami shows you to maintain a joyful view of life even in difficult times. Through this book The art of joyful living author want us to know that with a clear conception of the philosophy and meaning of life we people can truly enjoy our lives. Through this book, author says that every culture teaches us to smile at others but here condition is that smile should be genuine it should be real. In order to achieve happy genuine real smile life, we people should have a clear concept of the meaning of life and the philosophy of life. When we learn this then we will learn to start living deeper level life and also will begin to enjoy our lives.
Let’s understand The Art of Joyful Living book in more detail:
At the start, author has shared few things we people need to learn in order to meditate:
- First how to relax our body
- How to sit in comfort, steady posture for meditation
- How to make our breathing process calmed and peaceful
- How to witness the object in the train of the mind
Author has also shared few steps of a meditation session:
Step 1: Preparing for a meditation session
Step 2: Relax and stretch the muscles
Step 3: Relaxation practices to prepare meditation
Step 4: Calming mind and nervous system with breathing practices
Step 5: Sitting in meditation
Chapter 1: A program for progress in meditation
In this chapter author says that for the first month or two sit at the same time every day and allow this to become your habit, Author says through this you will learn to ignore shakes, numbness, and perspiration, at start doing meditation for 15-20 minutes can work.
Author says at start learn the functioning of the four functions of mind and learn to coordinate with them. Author ask you to sit is relaxing posture and to practice breathing awareness. Author ask you to observe your breathing to see if you notice any problems with the hour irregularities of jerkiness, shallowness, noise and extended pause.
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Chapter 2: Flexibility in the practice sequence
Author says that meditation can be done at any time of night or day, but best time to do meditation can be when the circumstances are most possible to meditation are early morning or late evening, author says this timings are good because at this time environment begins to quiet down and you will not get disturbed by others.
Author asks you to select 1 or 2 brief periods 5-15 minutes when you can meditate without any inconvenience and disturbance of others.
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Chapter 3: The four functions of the mind
Author says that we people need to understand the fact that our mind is in the control of our senses breathe and body, author says that it is our mind who influences the senses and causes them to function in the external world, author says all spiritual practices means techniques and disciplines are actually done to train our mind, the foremost reason for doing spiritual practices is to make our mind aware that reality lies beyond itself. And that is immortality of the soul. Author says that our mind is the finest instrument that we possess, if our mind is in proper order then it will help us to do work properly but if it’s not in proper order and disciplined then it can distract our potential.
Author says that there is four distinct function of mind: Manas, Buddhi, Ahamkara and Chitta. Author says that we should understand these four functions and should learn to coordinate with them. Author says that manas is the lower mind, through which the mind interacts with the external world and takes it sensory impressions and data,
Author says buddhi is the higher aspect of the mind, this is the door to the inner wisdom, it has the capacity to decide, judge and make cognitive discrimination and differentiation.
Author says the third function is ahamkara and it is the sense of I-Ness, the individual ego, and the fourth function is Chitta and it is the memory bank which stores impressions and expressions.
Read More: The Seat of the Soul Summary
Chapter 4: the nature of the aspect of your self
In this chapter, author talks about senses, body, breath, conscious mind, unconscious mind and center of consciousness
Senses:
Author says that we people are sensing beings, author says that out of 10 we people have 5 sense of cognition which is hearing, seeing, touching, smelling and tasting, author also talks about five senses of actions which is moving, grasping, speaking, eliminating and reproducing, author says that these 10 senses functions because we are employed by our mind to express ourselves in the outer external world.
Body
Author says we have a body and it is compound of five elements which is earth, water, fire, air, and space. We people think and then we act and our body moves according to our thinking and feeling, hence we are not only physical beings but we are thinking beings as well.
Breath
Author says that there is a link between body and mind and that link is breath, without that link our mind and body can’t survive or function, hence this link is really important for our mind and body functioning.
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If you are interested towards meditation and towards peaceful mind then you should read this book. It will give you knowledge related to meditation and how it should be done. Do buy it from the given links.
Download Free Audiobook on Audible
BuyThe Art of Joyful Living on Amazon
Buy The Art of Joyful Living on Flipkart
Thank you.
