Reflections on the Self Unfoldment Book by Swami Chinmayananda

What is Happiness ? On the contrary, how do we treat unhappiness ? are both important questions to internal spiritual progress and personal progress. The book suggests that all sorrow come from two reasons. First is the revulsion to sorrow, and the second is yearning for joy. These two issues are important. Furthermore, the book defines that happiness is a state of mind. There is also an equation that we define happiness by: Happiness = Number of desires fulfilled/number of desires entertained. When the number of desires entertained is very little, and the number of desires fulfilled is large the happiness quotient is higher. Lets remember that this does not mean that a person minimize desires. We will learn later that desires are a function of vasanas. We just cannot avoid them. However, we must remember that there are two kinds of desires; (a) selfish desire and (b) unselfish desires. Unselfish desires have the quality of lifting up our vision and thoughts. So in the denominat

As we reflect on the highlights of this chapter, there are important issues to consider. In particular, as students, we must understand what we want from this book. The key is to think about what really holds us back in life ? Is it us, or is it the outer world ? How are these two related? This question is of paramount importance. The book enables us to answer these issues for ourselves. Without the reflection component of the book, it is impossible to get anything reasonable out of this book. I believe that the reflections are the most important aspect. In thinking about freedom, let us ask ourselves, what is true freedom? Freedom from our own inner habitual shackles, or freedom in the sense of can do whatever we want to do, whenever ? We always argue that outer freedom is a right of every individual, however, do we talk about inner freedom and how it can help us? Personally, I think that is the precise understanding we all need in order to make progress, and achieve our stated goa

My objective is not to unfold the self here. However, I certainly want to reflect on a key aspect that can lead to gradually unfold the self in this blog. How should we approach reading this wonderful book. My reflections have led me to consider proposing a general framework based on which Karma Yoga can be classified. It primarily concerns with two key characteristics -- Action and Attitude. Let me illustrate this by a simple 2x2. As a professor in Business, this two by two is a staple of my understanding of most concepts. Figure: The Karmayoga Framework Lets reflect on the above 2x2. To me the book is most useful if your attitude is fixed first on how you approach the process of self-unfoldment. If our fundamental attitude is wrong, the action, no matter what, is bound to result in an aggravation of ego. We just think we are better than others, and there is no concept of the "self" other than "myself."  The greatest opportunity of the book is i

Dear All, Welcome to this blog on the book "Self Unfoldment" by Swami Chinmayananda. The purpose of this blog is to provide an interactive forum for interactions for the Lansing Balvihar class for Self Unfoldment. As its instructor, I will be sharing my ideas on this forum, and certainly want more people to interact so we all can learn from it. Clearly, "Self unfoldment" is a two way process. As the student unfolds, the teacher (who is also a student) is still unfolding. It is like an onion that we keep peeling away, until there is nothing left to peel, but that ! As the name suggests, the book is really about unfolding the self. The book walks us through a step by step process into unfolding our inner world with the objective of knowing our true self -- hence the beautiful name (Self unfoldment). As we go through the various modules, I will be posting some of my thoughts on this blog. Sometimes, we can even edit some of the writings on this blog to reflect s